Austin's Trends

There is a lot to like but a lot to reframe in a recent article in the Austin Chronicle. CAMPO, the local MPO is looking to go a different direction with the regional transportation planning they've been doing and has stumbled upon visioning as an acceptable way to move forward. Unfortunately survey respondents are split between what is basically the Envision Central Texas model and the sprawl as usual. But why are they split? Is it because they weren't told the true costs or that they don't mind wasting their money? A telling part of why folks might not have chosen the more sustainable method is the following:

The trends concept is basically a recipe for continued sprawl: It leaves regional development patterns up to current policies and market trends. It assumes that all $2.4 billion worth of projects in the current investment pipeline get built.

Market trends? Since when was sprawl market based? I always assumed it was fueled by a big fat subsidy to home owners through unequal housing subsidies and road subsidies. I must be wrong since the frame is that it's actually the market pushing that direction. The biggest challenge for advocates as shown by this paragraph is reframing the debate. We need to jump on it and own it. We should be the fiscally responsible ones, the ones who care about whether locals get to keep their hard earned money. It's also because shifting demographic and market trends are swinging away from what they used to be.

I do like the idea of allocating 50% of monies to the centers in the region which would go along way towards improving transit ridership numbers and hopefully focusing growth on employment as well as housing. Hopefully they actually build transit into the centers instead of around them. I'd probably focus on that first along with better pedestrian and bike amenities.

But there are many other considerations to deal with. First is affordability. How much does that housing and transportation cost eat up a family budget. How much money is going to be left in the typical Austinite's pocket by this plan? What are the citizens going to get out of it? That determines how the local economy grows. This should be part of the decision making matrix. Too often these decisions are made in silos. Integrate them with housing plans, water plans, employment plans, state plans, school district bonds and every other plan under the sun. How are you going to house your workers affordably? Is it more affordable housing plans or is it allowing greater supply creation? How are you going to provide energy on a smart grid to all these people? How does that work together with transportation? Trolley bus wires? We could go on...

Another is how much money can be saved in terms of infrastructure if you go with the centers plan. If you spend less on sprawl, how much are you going to have in your pocket for other worthy investments? Transform did this in the Bay Area with stunning results. Hopefully we can focus on what people care about, saving money. In the end as Professor Davies always said, if you want to get people to pay attention, "hit them in the pocketbook".

Two Thirds Green, One Third Black

It looks like New York will get a once in a lifetime opportunity. I trust that someone good will be found that can change the face of traffic engineering in New York City. Now if only we could pass a stimulus package that would make Danes proud. What kind of package would they pass you ask? Well one with two thirds green and one third black. Perhaps we could learn something about framing.

Last Thursday, the Danish government agreed to invest 94 billion kroner ($16 billion) to improve the nation’s roads, railways and bike lanes by 2020.

Traffic Minister Lars Barfoed was quoted by The Copenhagen Post as saying, “The shape of the agreement is clear: two-thirds green, one-third black,” meaning that most of the budget will go towards public transit infrastructure and the rest will be spent on asphalt road projects.

Much different than the 80/20 highways to transit we promote here. 4/5ths Black. Does that mean 4/5ths home ownership?

Inertia Continued

A serious (R) blogger at the Oregonian believes that automobiles are tied to our DNA.

Now, I'm not trying to dismiss Maus' opinion (he's a good guy and certainly knows his stuff when it comes to bike issues), but we still live in an auto-centric society. Car ownership is part of America's DNA. In most places across the country, bicycling as a primary mode of transportation is indeed, I hate to say it, considered a fringe movement.

I think we need some gene therapy. Of course when people write these types of things, it's just continuing the self fulfilling prophecy. Of course people will continue to be auto-centric if they aren't given an alternative. It's just like those people that say, no one takes transit, so why build it so they can?

And it looks like we have our new Ma "Bike's Aren't Transport" Peters in Minority Leader John Boehner. He stated that he saw bike paths as not stimulus. Some will say he means recreational trails, but we know these guys think any bike infrastructure is just for recreation. These guys are just out of touch.

Youth Vote? Gone. We ask for nothing from these idealistic voters, we offer little except chastisement of their lifestyle choices and denial of global warming, and we are woefully behind the Democrats in learning how to connect with them.

Lifestyle choices such as biking, transit and urbanism. Keep chipping away John.

Reframing a "Highway" Bill

We need to stop calling it the "Highway Bill". It should never fund mostly highways ever again. It's just like the needed reframing of the "Farm Bill." Michael Pollan has called for it to be called the food bill.

Doing so starts with the recognition that the "farm bill" is a misnomer; in truth, it is a food bill and so needs to be rewritten with the interests of eaters placed first. Yes, there are eaters who think it in their interest that food just be as cheap as possible, no matter how poor the quality. But there are many more who recognize the real cost of artificially cheap food--to their health, to the land, to the animals, to the public purse. At a minimum, these eaters want a bill that aligns agricultural policy with our public-health and environmental values, one with incentives to produce food cleanly, sustainably and humanely.

If we follow this logic to its transportation end, we should be calling the transportation bill something else entirely. Livable mobility bill? This means that the bill should be written with livability placed first. Is that so hard a goal? Let's try Michael's paragraph replacing the food words with transportation words.

Doing so starts with the recognition that the "highway bill" is a misnomer; in truth, it is a livable mobility bill and so needs to be rewritten with the interests of people placed first. Yes, there are people who think it in their interest that driving just be as cheap as possible, no matter how poor the quality. But there are many more who recognize the real cost of artificially cheap driving--to their health, to the land, to themselves, to the public purse. At a minimum, these people want a bill that aligns transportation policy with our public-health and environmental values, one with incentives to move us cleanly, sustainably and humanely.

Sounds pretty good huh? If you have something better than the livable mobility bill, let's hear it.

Friday Night Linkfest: Streetcars & Secretaries

Streetcar projects are still having problems getting past the FTA Cost Effectiveness measure. Can we rewrite this thing already?
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Sources say former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk is one of two supposed finalists for the Transportation Secretary job along with Steve Heminger from the Bay Area MTC. The article says nothing about what Kirk has done on transportation issues and only that he was an early supporter and friend to Obama. Who wants cronies! Anyone have any more info on this person? I will note that he was in Office when light rail started running in Dallas.

Heminger on the other hand took any mention of electric transit out of the report for the recent Revenue Policy Study. It was put back, but he's also famous around the Bay Area by progressive transport nerds for his stance on promoting HOT lanes as the only way short term to cut congestion and pollution.
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Rep Peter Defazio is certain that an Obama administration will fund the East Side Streetcar project in Portland. This could bode well for other projects.
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This is heartening, but I'd really like to hear more about it than this.

While details have not been finalized, the bill is expected to include tens of billions of dollars for highway, mass transit, airport, and intercity passenger and freight rail improvements.

Bush's transportation philosophy "seemed to be, 'This is what the federal government should be responsible for and nothing else.' And the 'nothing else' category was public transportation," said William Millar, executive director of the American Public Transportation Association, whose members include transit agencies.

Obama, on the other hand, has described himself as a strong advocate of mass transit.

While Bush proposed what some lawmakers described as "starvation budgets" for Amtrak, Obama has pledged support for the passenger rail carrier and for developing a national network of high-speed passenger trains.

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The BRT - Light Rail saga continues on the Purple Line. A bad frame was used at a recent meeting. David Alpert fixes it.

It's too bad Gonzalez is thinking about the project using this analogy. A Lamborghini and a VW both get you from point A to point B, and except in a drag race, in pretty much the same amount of time. Not so with the bus versus light rail option. The light rail is faster, carries more people, and would use its own right of way for big chunks of the route, avoiding a lot of traffic. A better analogy would be, if the County builds a new school, should they buy big yellow buses or little golf carts to transport kids to school? Even if they're much slower and hold fewer students, they cost less, so why not?

Framing Livable Communities: Density Terms

I guess we need to start a new series on Framing Livable Communities. Because of the intense press against density and transit, there are some things that need to be communicated differently. Today's instance is density and the need for the media to describe it as "packing people in". I might feel differently if we were setting up sardine tins like exists on the 30 and 38 buses, but density doesn't always mean Hong Kong just like suburbia doesn't always mean 1 unit per acre.

Not that this article from Raleigh Durham is a particularly bad one, but the headline "Raleigh Plan Picks Areas to Pack Growth" leads people to believe you're trying to force them to do something rather than giving alternatives to the single choice we currently have. We also know that focusing growth should be the true conservative point, due to the fact that actually saves money for cities and the people who live in them. Though it has been said that "density creates democrats". My hope is that when we make investments in our infrastructure including transit, that we make the decisions that save money for everyone and that includes smarter, denser growth. Growth that doesn't "pack us in".

Framing Livable Communities

I know we've discussed this before, but we need to change the way we talk about livable communities and mobility. Today's version comes from the San Francisco Chronicle who's writer Rachel Gordon sits on the side of the automobile when she talks about "anti-car crusades". Since we're not in the 10th century and ridding ourselves of cars is not the ultimate goal, this is a way for reporters to make the world into black and white instead of shades of gray. Fortunately, Nat Ford says it right.

"Our goal is to encourage more bicycling and walking in San Francisco, and we will continue to work on every front - from education to engineering - to make those activities as safe as possible," said Nathaniel Ford, executive director of the Municipal Transportation Agency.

But we need to make sure that when we talk to the press, the framing isn't an us versus them. It's about creating livable communities. It's about encouraging all levels of cyclists and pedestrians to participate in the streets renaissance (H/T Mike L) and creating situations where people can ditch their car keys if they so choose. I have a car and live in San Francisco. I can use it when I really need it, but for the most part, I have options, and this means that filling up is once a month if that and I get some good hill workouts in. Sure it's not for everyone, but there is a huge demand out there that is not being filled.

More on City Competitiveness & The MEniverse

In a similar discussion as the post below on Charlotte's competitiveness, Brendan O'Shaughnessy at the Indianapolis Star discusses why it is that Indianapolis isn't as competitive. The reason? The want to keep the cost of government low.

Indianapolis spends far less than these other cities on government -- and consequently spends far less on such things as parks, public transportation, the arts and libraries, amenities that some people view as optional but that experts see as critical to making a city vibrant and competitive.

Indianapolis' spending choices underscore two core community values: thrift and an affinity for small government.

It sure explains a lot and offers a vision of what a more libertarian type future would be like. The point seems to be that they don't value the commonwealth ideals as much as regions like Portland and Seattle who value parks and libraries.

"The unwillingness to gut it up for big expenditures made it hard to keep pace with other cities," Hudnut said. "It's very tough to fund some of these necessary improvements if you campaign on a no-tax mantra."

The no-tax mantra is alive and well as we know from the famous Grover Norquist wish to shrink government so much that it could be drowned in a bathtub. But this no-tax policy also seems to be killing needed services and common goals. Unfortunately, people don't quite understand the value of networks when thinking about the beginning of transit or parks for that matter. It's all about what benefits me now and not the Universe of benefits but rather the MEniverse.

Melyssa Donaghy, an anti-tax activist with Hoosiers for Fair Taxation, acknowledges as much. "I don't use the parks except the Monon Trail," she said. "I don't think it's affecting my quality of life. What's affecting my quality of life is the ability to pay my bills."

Sure it might not be affecting your quality of life, but what about others? What about things that do affect your quality of life that others don't want to pay for. This comes up with transit as well. Why should I pay for that if I don't use it. Well, the people who will take transit often pay for your roads, why should they do that? If I take BART to work every day, why should I pay for the new Bay Bridge span? It doesn't benefit me directly. Therein lies the problem.

I think this answers why older rust belt cities are doomed to die a slow painful death. Places like Cincinnati and Indianapolis will never be havens for the creative class unless they start investing money in their cities instead of being misers. Being cheap in the MEniverse is easy. Investing in all aspects of community, well that takes civic pride and a willingness to provide common wealth for the common good.

Let's Not Use the Word Boondoggle

Mass Transit Magazine says so, and I tend to agree.