Phoenix as Everycity: A Closer Look at Sprawl in the Desert - Design with the Desert: Conservation and Sustainable Development - page 255

67 million miles—and this number is projected to increase significantly in the next
40 years. 18 Both the traffic and the increase in vehicle miles traveled contribute significantly
to air quality problems—despite lower emissions from newer vehicles, a large percentage
of the air pollution still comes from vehicles.
Approximately 34% of the volatile organic compounds and 65% of the oxides of nitrogen
that contribute to the formation of ozone pollution come from mobile sources. 19 The
American Lung Association of Arizona gave Maricopa County, which includes the City of
Phoenix and 24 other municipalities, an “F” for ozone pollution and a “C” for particulate
pollution in its State of the Air Report for 2012. 20 In 2000, noted national researcher C.
Arden Pope III from Brigham Young University told the governor's Brown Cloud Summit
that poor air quality in the Phoenix area is reducing a person's life expectancy by 1%. 21
Beyond the significant impact poor air quality has on public health, it also has enormous
pocketbook costs. In the Phoenix area, recent research indicates that there is a strong
correlation between asthma-related emergency room visits for children and poor air
q u a l it y. 21 Hospitalization costs associated with asthma in Arizona are $650 million. 22
Sprawl development and lack of planning for pedestrian and bicycle transportation
have other downright dangerous health implications. According to another Surface
Transportation Policy Project study that covered 2002-2003, Phoenix was one of the 10
most hazardous metro areas for walking with a slight improvement in the 2007-2008
period when it ranked as 16th most hazardous for walking.* ,23 The Phoenix area averages
about 2.44 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 people, despite the fact that only about 2.1% of the
population walks to work. 23
Finally, setting aside the economic costs and impacts on physical health, let us not forget
the impact of traffic congestion and sprawl on the nonquantifiable issues. How many hours
of being stuck in traffic are too many? According to the U.S. Census, people in Phoenix
spend just over 4 days per year commuting to work. 24 These 4.3 days per year spent in a
car waiting to get to and from work is an unfortunate loss of time that could otherwise
be spent with family, friends, and other more relaxing and reinvigorating pursuits. Unless
Maricopa County pursues more transit options and more sensible planning in the very
near future, commute times will continue to get longer as the Valley continues to grow.
14.3.2 Sprawl Burdens Infrastructure and Inner City Residents
Beyond roads, sprawl places a significant burden on other infrastructure as well. Fire
response times increase dangerously; communities cannot build enough new stations to
accommodate growth, so firefighters have to drive farther and farther to the scenes of
accidents or emergencies. This, too, has a cost.
Schools are also overburdened. In the winter of 1998, schools in Peoria (a north Phoenix
suburb), overwhelmed by a surge in population growth, closed their doors to new stu-
dents. Rapid, uncontrolled growth—in Peoria and many other Phoenix-area cities—has
also resulted in a proliferation of portable classrooms that often eat up playground space.
According to the Arizona Education Association, Arizona ranks second highest in both
growth of student population and in student-teacher ratio. 25
Sprawl often leads to situations in which residents that live in the central city and
inner suburbs subsidize development at the fringes. As growth moves to the edges of
the metropolitan area, farther away from the existing infrastructure, it costs cities and
* Ernst, M. and Shoup, L., Dangerous by Design—Solving the Epidemic of Preventable Pedestrian Deaths (and Making
Great Neighborhoods) . Surface Transportation Policy Project, 2009.