Podcast: Yonah Freemark on TOD

This week we have Yonah Freemark on the podcast to talk about TOD in Chicago.  How come the population is shrinking even in strong market parts of the city and what can we do about it?  Yonah also mentions why the zoning code is the way that it is and his definition of TOD.  Listen in to hear more.

Tuesday Night Notes

It's just not like when we grew up. I remember riding my bike to school.

"The biggest problem presented in the report is the fact that cities are being planned especially for cars and for adults,"

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Redevelopers have tighter funding these days.
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Learning to live without a car. Moving from the burbs to the bright lights.

I used to make a big grocery shopping trip just about every Saturday, driving several miles to a store and throwing half a dozen shopping bags into the trunk. Now I can walk to a supermarket three blocks away

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Suburbanization and climate change. They are linked.
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Apple will spend some cash to revitalize a Chicago Subway Station.
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I couldn't agree with Ryan more on this point.

There is a terrible chicken-and-egg problem to transportation planning, in which planners express regret that there is so little transit demand and so much traffic before building new roads. They have to accommodate the demand they've got! But you can't have transit demand if you don't have transit, and if you don't recognize that, then you're doomed to keep building roads forever. No one in the mind of the planners has yet invented a substitute for the automobile.

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The electric transit revolution is upon the British. Trolleybuses return.

Extended Chicago

Chicago is looking to extend their Red, Orange, and Yellow El lines at their ends. I'm not going to say that I know Chicago as well as some other cities but I'm wondering if 9 miles of rapid transit on the outside edges for $1.7 billion is a higher and better use than greater capacity in the core? Especially with the Olympics coming up.

Considering the North South deficit of rapid transit on the Western edges of the El network, would North-South LRT/Rapid Streetcar lines and dedicated bus lanes be a better use of money? What do you all think?

Mid Week Linkfest

This sure would have been a lot easier if we had some money for a Dunbarton rail bridge no?
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Growing up instead of sprawling out in Melbourne.

The report says just 10 per cent of the existing urban area could be used to accommodate projected growth in Melbourne's population from about 4 million to 5 million by 2030. About 34,000 sites on major corridors could be suitable for multi-level development, it says. These include more than 12,400 sites along tram lines and 22,000 along priority bus routes such as Johnston Street. The sites could accommodate about 500,000 new dwellings in total.

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There's also two big elevated freeways on that side of town.

If you had doubts that air pollution from nearby industries exacerbated asthma in children, this map may quell them.

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I've been harsh on LaHood. Maybe I should give him some slack since he's a runner! Just like me a long time ago.
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I think they need both Smart and Streetcars. Though I still think that ignoring downtown Novato is a dumb move.
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I guess Blago wasn't the only one who likes to block transit in Chicago.

Upgrades, No New Transit for Chicago Olympics

So says the bid book for the 2016 Olympics bid:

Chicago’s consolidated and compact venue plan places 21 sports, the Olympic Village and the IBC/MPC along Lake Shore Drive, a magnificent thoroughfare on the shores of Lake Michigan. An additional 4 sports will take place within the Olympic Ring. Venues have been proposed near existing public-transit lines and high capacity roadways, maximizing the use of existing infrastructure and eliminating the need for any new lines or roads. Thorough pedestrian and vehicle flow modeling will ensure the safe, efficient movement of all constituent groups.

In addition, the plan is to have a two tiered dedicated road lane system for moving people around and increase headways of existing transit.

Olympic Lanes will connect venues and provide freeflowing, safe transport for Olympic Family vehicles and spectator shuttles on a network of more than 590 km of dedicated roadways.
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To meet the heightened demand for rail transport, Chicago will increase the frequency of train cars during the Games period.

Now that's not to that using funds to upgrade existing systems in need of serious funding is bad. That is an extreme need Chicago and other legacy systems have needed for a while. The book states that over $1.5 billion would be budgeted for track, signal and terminal facility upgrades of CTA Heavy rail lines, $2.8 billion for Metra Commuter rail upgrades. This is half of what is planned for O'Hare at $8.2 billion dollars. (Update: Payton says that these are already budgeted in regular formula funding, meaning there would be no new expenditures for the Olympics) I would like to see this coincide with a plan and start of high speed rail lines into Chicago from other regions. It would be amazing if a plan was set in place to upgrade infrastructure like this so that it could be in place for the Olympics. Talk about stimulus.

But the plan lacks imagination for my taste. Especially considering what could happen if they spent $10 billion dollars on dedicated rapid streetcar lanes. That would be 333 miles of new fixed rail infrastructure that would serve the city long after the Olympics. Think about the reduced energy usage, the reduced operations costs per passenger and the increase in value that would be generated by such an ambitious expansion plan. Alas nothing like this is planned and no new transit infrastructure would be built.

So if Chicago is really getting nothing new out of this in terms of transit but the idea of pedestrian ways is something I'm willing to think about. Is there specific bike infrastructure for the city in these ped ways? Will there be consideration to keeping these ped ways after the Olympics are over? The big question is though, is an Olympic bid worth it?

I'm still fuming at Gavin for screwing this up for San Francisco. It would be amazing to have the games here and it surely would have pushed for serious upgrades to infrastructure and a speeding up of long term projects that need to be sped up. That said, its expensive and you have to weight the pros and cons. But being able to live in the city and go see the track events would have been amazing for this former aspiring olympian. I'll get to the Olympics eventually. Hopefully here in San Francisco.

H/T Payton C via FB Status

On the Hiawatha Today

So if you follow my twitter account you'd have seen my tweet noting that I was on the Hiawatha Light Rail line in Minneapolis. What you didn't see is what I was thinking on my way to downtown Minneapolis. It was strange now that I think back on it. A colleague and I were on the train and just chatting away with our bags in our laps but I didn't feel like it was out of the ordinary. I felt perhaps like some do when they dream in a foreign language after learning it for a long time. I've learned to take transit and expect it to be there yet this isn't a serious option in many of our regions and cities and that makes me a bit sad.

It should always be so easy to just hop on the train. In the last few weeks I've been able to not drive a car since I left Chicago. I took the Orange line to the airport, flew to San Francisco, took BART home. Today I walked down to BART, flew to Minneapolis and rode light rail to downtown. It's second nature now I guess, looking for the easy accessible transit. During those rides I was able to chill and not worry about whether I was going to be late. I was able to check email or listen to a podcast. I didn't need to worry about parking my car. I just needed to be. Is that so hard to understand for folks so opposed?

Ryan Dempster Walks to Work at Wrigley

This is cool. I like how they call the life he lives the American Dream as well.

Dempster, 31, is nearly halfway through the four-block walk from his office to his home, and there is no getting around the notion that, at this very moment, it is quite possible no one in the entire universe has it better than he. "My office is Wrigley Field," he says, as if in disbelief. "I walk to work. I pitch for the Cubs. We're going to the playoffs."

Where You Live, and What It Costs

CEO for Cities made a nifty little movie showing the difference between two neighborhoods in Chicago and why people spend so much on transportation. How much money do you transfer to oil companies?

Two Views of CO2

Wired has two maps on CO2 emissions. One is the per capita emissions map that shows cities are actually better at dealing with CO2 than exurban areas. The other is the total CO2 map which shows cities as the main culprits when it comes to CO2 emissions. What is interesting is that they point out the west is much worse off due to its sprawlyness.

There's a lot of information you could mine from these maps, but one thing stood out to me: the West, for all of our hippie do-gooders, isn't doing well (as a whole) from a per-capita emissions perspective. We simply don't live in dense enough situations to benefit from the efficiency gains created by urban living. Lots of infrastructure serving only a few people generates high per-capita emissions.

This comes after CNT put out the same types of maps a few years ago for Chicago. Guess where the CO2 emissions are per capita, not along the Metra lines or in the transit rich core. Interesting.

Transfer and Land Taxes for Transit

After getting more funding from the legislature for transit, Chicago went after a real estate transfer tax, which was highly opposed by who else but the real estate lobby. Well Mayor Daley held aldermen's feet to the fire and they eventually voted yes. Thanks to CTA Tattler for the coverage. More here from the Chicago Tribune.

What is interesting is that I've been hearing more about the transfer tax and land taxes lately. While the transfer tax is basically a mechanism that taxes the transfer of property, a land tax would be a tax on the land for transit, not the buildings or improvements. It makes a lot of sense for transportation given that accessibility is one of the factors which improves land values. I was also shocked to read something that made a lot of sense from the Heartland Foundation (A conservative think tank home to our favorite Wendell Cox) on using a land tax for transit.

Only part of transit's benefit goes to those who pay fares. The whole community benefits from transit. Where do those benefits show up in the economy?

As dozens of studies across the globe have shown, the benefits of transit show up as increased land values. Land served by public transportation is worth more than land not served. The amount varies, of course, depending on the quality of service, type of development, general standard of living, etc., but the effect is large.

A study published in 1997 for RTA, "The Effect of CTA and Metra Stations on Residential Property Values," by Gruen Gruen & Associates, implies that just the existing rail system adds land value in excess of $1.6 billion a year.

I'm wondering also if a land tax would be enough to pay for improvements on a specific line. So if improvements were made such as a light rail line, would the increase in revenue from a land tax in the area around the improvement be enough to offset the investment over time? It's certainly an idea worth exploring.