Anti-Sprawl Transit Chief?

Former Charlotte transit chief Keith Parker has pushed San Antonio towards Streetcar and BRT faster than anywhere else I've seen in the last few years.  He had just moved in to that position back in 2009.  According to the Express News, he hopes to have lines under construction by January of 2012.

The best part isn't the streetcar push though, it's that they are taking funding to spend on urban projects that would have been spent in unincorporated parts of the county.  

“Removing $55 million from the county,” he [opponent] said, “diminishes our ability to provide infrastructure services in unincorporated areas of the county.”

For those of you not familiar with Texas land use issues, unincorporated areas generally have no zoning restrictions and very little subdivision restrictions.  Regions like Houston have areas outside the city limits that form Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs) to provide water and sewer infrastructure but ultimately they end up sucking a lot of transportation funding away from cities given their peripheral nature. To be fair, I grew up in a place that was once a MUD and then annexed by Houston.  It was well planned for a burb but most of them are not master planned communities that end up with 65,000 people.

In planning school one year we had class t-shirts that said "In the ETJ, no one can hear you scream".  The extra territorial jurisdiction is a part of the county which the city can't zone but can annex, meaning you're going to get the worst sprawl you've ever seen from those parts of the region.  So with this quote I was quite happy to hear that the county wasn't going to get sprawl generating funds and that it quite possibly could be used for a streetcar.

Double Vision

While it's great that the Chronicle and others are calling on Houston Metro to have a regional vision with goals, it means nothing without a tandem city land use and development infrastructure strategy. While Houston has no zoning in the usual sense, it does have everything else needed to regulate development (restrictive covenants, parking requirements, setbacks etc). The region can't just keep building HOV lanes and even light rail/commuter rail lines to chase development. Chasers never prosper, but leaders do.

Spinning the Dials

The state is stepping forward to do scenario plans for the State of California. It will be interesting to see what the wizards over at Calthorpe associates can put together. They've done similar work for Salt Lake City, Austin, and Portland. But I don't think anyone has seen it done at this level before.

But even if a formal state plan doesn't emerge, Vision California could affect state policy. The impetus to reduce carbon emissions is one example: State agencies eventually could draw on the studies to require local governments to allow additional high-density development near bus and train stops. "Once we build the base cases, we have a tool where we can spin the dials," Calthorpe said. "Let's just get the information together. That's a giant step forward in itself."

Ultimately the scenarios will show how much the path we are going down now will cost. My guess is that it will be shocking but educational to know how much we just toss away.

Imagine This Story Times Millions

It's never fun when eminent domain is used. But when I think of it, it always brings me back to the thought of how many people were displaced and how much tax revenue has been lost because of the Interstate Highway System ripping through cities. One need only go back and watch Robert Caro's speech at CNU last year to understand the price of automobiling. As I've said many times before, Eisenhower marveled at and wanted to emulate the freeways between cities, not through them.

The autobahn was a rural network, without segments into and through Germany's cities. This seemed appropriate to Eisenhower, but in Washington, Thomas H. MacDonald and Herbert Fairbank of the U.S. Public Roads Administration (the name of the Federal Highway Administration's predecessor during the 1940's) saw the absence of metropolitan segments as a flaw that made the autobahn a poor model for America's future. Unlike Germany, traffic volumes were high in America where car ownership was widespread. Congestion in America's cities had long been a serious complaint that MacDonald and Fairbank would address in their vision of the Interstate System.

We sure tackled that congestion problem...that wasn't really addressed because that wasn't the point.

...MacDonald acknowledged with surprising candor that the urban components of the system were not designed to alleviate urban congestion, except to the extent that they would provide relieve to those motorists for whom the city was an inconvenient obstruction...

We all know Lewis Mumford had it right though when arguing against the highway system slashing through cities.

The key to reviving our center cities, Mumford said, "rests on the restoring of the pedestrian scale of distances to the interior of the city, of making it possible for the pedestrian to exist." He added, "We are faced, it is fairly obvious to me, with the blunders of one-dimensional thinking, or thinking very expertly about a single characteristic, a single feature that we are interested in, and forgetting the realities that surround us."

A Good Time to Buy ROW

Seems as if we have a golden opportunity to take advantage of the financial crisis. One way is the lowered value of property. Virginia Beach, perhaps looking to extend light rail from Norfolk, is setting aside $10 million as half of a $20 million payment to buy Norfolk Southern ROW for the line. Just a short time ago, it was worth about $50 million.

Negotiations have stalled before because the city and railroad company officials couldn't agree on price. The city also has considered condemning the land. Norfolk Southern appraisal last year valued the right of way at $50 million, said Robin Chapman, a company spokesman.

"That was done at the height of real estate values, and property values have declined since then," Chapman said. "We are nevertheless insistent on getting fair market value for it." He wouldn't say how much the company would take.

Planning for Kids

Our friends at Planetizen (Tim "Treasure Hunt" Halbur and Chris Steins) have put together a kids book on planning as a way to engage kids early on as to what planning is and how it works. Check it out.

Related Comedy

GEORGE: Ladies and gentlemen, this (Opens the door, Steven is standing there) is Steven Koren. His G.P.A. is a solid 2.0! Right in that meaty part of the curve - not showing off, not falling behind.

WYCK: George, the quailifications for this scholarship were suppose to be… largely academic.

GEORGE: I'm sure we're all aware of the flaws and biases of standardized tests.

WYCK: These aren't standardized tests - these are his grades.

GEORGE: Besides, Steven Koren has the highest of aspirations. He wants to be (pauses for effect) an architect.

WYCK: Is that right?

STEVEN: Actually, maybe I could set my sights a little bit higher.

GEORGE: (Laughs) Steven, nothing is higher than an architect.

STEVEN: I think I'd really like to be a city planner. (Sits down, addressing the entire foundation board) Why limit myself to just one building, when I can design a whole city?

Related Comedy

Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy.

This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require building of a hyperspatial express route through your system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for destruction. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.

Oh, there’s no point acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years. You’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint, and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.

Why Does High Standard of Living = Bigger House

Mr. Glaeser annoys me again.

If you think about the lifestyle of ordinary Americans living on the fringe of Houston or Dallas, for example, compared to what their lifestyle would be in an older European city -- living in a walk-up apartment there compared to a 2,500-square-foot house here they bought for $130,000 with a 24-minute commute -- it's extraordinary in the low-cost areas of this country what a $60,000 family income gets you.

Obviously I would take the walk-up in downtown or a European suburb anytime. I feel like analysts and newspaper writers don't get it. They don't understand that big house does not equal better lifestyle for everyone. Sure there is a segment of the market that wants that. But again, there is a reason why its more expensive to live in San Francisco than other places, it provides a certain type of lifestyle you can't get in the outskirts of Dallas. How many people in Plano can walk down the street to their grocery store or the local park where a movie plays with hundreds of people watching every Wednesday?

Public Transportation in Advertising

My dad sent me a Shell ad from The Economist a few weeks ago. He thought it was good that they mentioned the importance of urban planning and public transport. My guess is that this was from the Shell International Office in Den Haag. It is a dutch company. I wish they would say this a little louder here, perhaps in newspapers and TV advertisements.

The United Nations predicts that half the world’s population will live in urban areas by the end of 2008 and about 70% will be city dwellers by 2050. There are expected to be more than 27 ‘mega-cities’ - each with more than 10 million people - by 2050.

More crowded cities means more fumes, more noise and more smog. So what to do?

At Shell, we believe the solution is a combination of cleaner fuels, cleaner engines, better public transport and better urban planning. We are doing our best with fuel improvements.

You can find the full text here at the Shell site.

(Full disclosure: My dad worked for shell for over 30 years before retiring.)

Could TOD be Limited by the World Trade Organization?

It's possible if this column in Planetizen is true:

The proposed WTO restrictions will apply to “measures relating to” licensing and qualification requirements and procedures and technical standards. Therefore, not only are the actual requirements and standards covered but as well any government measure related to requirements and standards. Thus, Council decisions around the issuance of contracts, the licensing of businesses (in general, as well as specific licenses for taxi’s, food vendors, and other specialized services) and more is at stake. But more dramatic still is the possibility that licensing could also include all aspects of the development process. The US delegation has expressed concern that such a broad definition of licenses could cover “permits related to construction [and] the operation or use of facilities…”

The development of standards and guidelines are the hallmark of much innovative municipal policy. Yet under the proposed disciplines, the notion of standard is so broad as to include everything from zoning bylaws (a form of land-use standard relating to the permitted uses and characteristics of development on a given site), sustainable and “green” building standards, design guidelines and more.

As an antidote to the current level of open-endedness, GATS negotiators could work to protect municipal regulatory authority to limit the definitions of what the disciplines cover. So far, this hasn’t happened. Another way could be to make an exception for zoning and hours of operation regulations, as one GATS proponent has recommended. Again, this sort of amendment has yet to appear.

It seems to me that the world trade organization shouldn't have jurisdiction over local planning processes such as design standards, zoning, or building regulation. However if what these folks say is true, a large corporation could challenge any building restrictions and regulations. This means that if a a Wal Mart wanted to move into a light rail station area and challenged the regulations that go along with it, they might get away with their usual junk.

It might also mean the end to local only store preference in places like San Francisco that keep out chains:

Municipal regulations or procedures that “discriminate” against foreign companies by either directly or indirectly favouring local business (e.g. through a local procurement, or economic development policy) can already be challenged under the GATS. Now, however, the proposed disciplines would create grounds for challenge to the much broader category of “non-discriminatory” regulations, which includes the majority of the tools of city government. Non-discriminatory regulations include things like zoning and building-related bylaws, sewage bylaws, health bylaws and regulations that set development charges. For municipalities, this will be the first time that their most elementary forms of regulations and procedures could be disciplined in an enforceable way by an international institution.

Kind of scary that they would have this kind of power and regulatory authority over local government.

The Bears are Moving In

Exporting Urban Tax Base

Wow. Milwaukee Wisconsin is in an abusive marriage. They are a member of a regional planning agency that has 7 counties, of which three people from each county are representatives. There are no representatives from the city itself which provides 1/3 of the agencies operating budget. This agency, the SEWRPC, is in charge of land use and transportation planning for the counties.

The City of Milwaukee has 100,000 more residents than the combined populations of a majority of SEWRPC counties - Kenosha, Walworth, Washington and Ozaukee - but has zero seats on the commission.

Yet Milwaukee County pays the largest share of SEWRPC's operating budget that is collected from the seven counties' annual property tax levies - more than 33%, or $834,000 of $2,370,000 for 2007, records show.

Funny then how this happens...

Little wonder, then, that a major SEWRPC activity in this decade has been the creation of a $6.5 billion regional transportation plan that does not contain a single penny for any transit upgrade or initiative.

The plan is about to launch, over the City of Milwaukee's formal objection, a $1.9 billion, eight-year project segment including a new fourth I-94 lane from Milwaukee to Illinois. The plan deliberately omits a commuter rail plan that is available for the same corridor.

Even though gasoline has broken the $4-per-gallon barrier and demand for transit is up, neither the state nor SEWRPC will revisit the plan, its assumptions, spending and goals. That's not planning. That's denial.

So this is what happens when you give suburban jurisdictions control of the transportation funding that is regional in nature. No wonder they can't get the KRM line built or a reasonable transit network. They are always getting bad planning advice and have no funding clout.