Obama Writes to the T4 Campaign

The letter was released a bit late for the election, but I think it says what we all like to hear. Now its that implementation thing that's tricky. My favorite section:

I will also re-commit federal resources to public mass transportation projects across the country. I’ve worked to improve transportation access to jobs for people with lower incomes since my time in the Illinois State Senate, and I will continue this work as President. And I will further promote transit by creating incentives for transit usage that are equal to the current incentives for driving.

As you know, all of these measures will have significant environmental and metropolitan planning advantages and help diversify our nation’s transportation infrastructure. Everyone benefits if we can leave our cars, walk, bicycle and access other transportation alternatives. I agree that we can stop wasteful spending and save Americans money, and as president, I will re- evaluate the transportation funding process to ensure that smart growth considerations are taken into account.

I will build upon my efforts in the Senate to ensure that more Metropolitan Planning Organizations create policies to incentivize greater bicycle and pedestrian usage of roads and sidewalks. And as president, I will work to provide states and local governments with the resources they need to address sprawl and create more livable communities.

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.

Individuals Make the Difference

In an article in the Wall Street Journal (Via City Fix), it seems as if Americans control their Carbon Destiny.

U.S. consumers have direct or indirect control over 65% of the country's greenhouse-gas emissions, according to new statistics tallied by consultant McKinsey & Co. The figure for consumers in the rest of the world is just 43%. Americans, largely because of how they drive and how they build and use their homes and offices, lead some of the most energy-intensive lives in the world.

It's not just how they drive and build, it's where. The placement is the greatest determinant. Driving cars a long distance to work and the store versus walking can make a difference.

Passenger cars account for 17% of U.S. emissions -- something consumers could affect by driving more-efficient cars or by driving less. Residential buildings and appliances contribute another 17% of emissions, underscoring the impact consumers could have if they lived in smaller buildings, or added more insulation, or bought a more energy-efficient model next time they replaced their washing machine.

Walking and Biking is Wacky

h/t Treehugger

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."

Unconventional Streets Wisdom

For those who watch the numbers, it should be no surprise that San Francisco's Sunday Streets would be a success for merchants at Fisherman's Wharf. However, the merchants still stuck in auto mode were complaining about the embarcadero shutdown today. However their fears, as many predicted, were unfounded. There was also a little help from demonstration E-Line service which hopefully will come online as full time sooner rather than later. Via the MSR blog:

Plenty of riders came out to take part in the free demonstration service, especially later in the morning. And it's a good thing that the E cars were on the line because, north of the Ferry Building they were needed to reduce the crush loads on the F. Muni added three shuttle buses on top of the regularly scheduled vintage shuttles, and everything was packed. Apparently, the Mayor's Sunday Streets idea worked to get more people to the Wharf, instead of fewer, as Wharf merchants had feared. The closed northbound traffic lanes of The Embarcadero were filled with skaters, walkers, and bikers.

Monday Night Can't Watch the DNC Because I Don't Have Cable Linkage

Augusta is looking at streetcars. One of the points that Streetcar Salesman Charlie Hales talks about in this article that I don't see in too many of them is the difference in pedestrian traffic before and after the streetcar. This is one of the things I think Jan Gehl talks about that I just love, prove things with data. Data data data. Jan is all about doing ped counts to tell shop keepers that their shop isn't suffering because they don't have parking if they have 1,000 people walking by per hour.

The Albany Times Union has an article stressing something that should be adopted as one of our memes. Public transit is an investment, not an expense. Ed Tennyson says this all the time and it certainly makes a lot of sense. Since it is an investment, we need to amortize over the life of the transit to get its true benefits and operational costs.

Finally, Dave Reid at Urban Milwaukee has an awesome post on drinking and not driving.

As a society we say “don’t drink and drive” but in this case actions speak louder than words. Zoning and land use policies have an impact on the built environment that often promotes driving and limits other transportation options. These regulations to some extent mandate how we get home from work and unfortunately how we get from the tavern, home. Many regulations are involved in this problem but with adjustments to the three below a real reduction in drunk driving can be promoted.

Option of Urbanism: Metro Brings Fundamental Change

This is something we already knew, but it blows back in the face of all those folks who say cities in the United States don't have the density to support transit. In fact, if the land is available to support future density, transit should be an infrastructure given.

Since construction began in the 1970's the Metro system has fundamentally changed how the metropolitan area works... Twenty years ago, there were two regional-serving walkable urban places in the region-Georgetown and Old Town, Alexandria Virginia-both relying on tourism, based upon the historic fabric of these 18th century towns. By the mid-2000s, there were 17 regional serving walkable-urban places in the DC area, and five more are emerging. Of these 17, 16 are built around Metro stations and one without Metro service (Reston Town Center) will get a station by 2012.

This is something that is much overlooked by opponents and people that don't get why transit is important. Sure the Metro takes about 800,000 rides a day, but how many trips by car do those 17 centers bypass? The 800,000 rides is a measure of the transit, but what the cost-effectiveness measure and the FTA misses is the ability of these districts to reduce auto-trips. I wish that DC would do a travel survey that showed the difference between mixed use and good transit versus auto dependence like Portland did in 1994. The investment is paying off.

Option of Urbanism: The Endless Landscape

If you haven't read Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full, I highly recommend it. It was a great story with the real estate markets of San Francisco and Atlanta used as backgrounds. I wasn't surprised when a specific quote showed up in the Option of Urbanism.

The only way you could tell you are leaving one community and entering another is when the franchise chains start repeating and you spotted another 7-Eleven, another Wendy's, annother Costco, another Home Depot... [T]he new monuments were not office towers or monuments or city halls or libraries or museums but 7-Eleven stores.

I was somewhat reminded of this in downtown Houston where chains dominated much of the landscape and shopping centers with parking out front and a little bit different finish than the last one seen were the norm.

The Option of Urbanism

On the plane I had a chance to read The Option of Urbanism by Chris Leinberger who is a visiting fellow at Brookings and a professor at Michigan. The book basically covers the changing demographics and wants of the part of the market that doesn't want sprawl anymore. I suggest the read. I'm going to pull out some quotes as well. Thought they would create some good reactions here.

The promise of the Futurama Exhibit helped launch an interlocking system of policies ans subsidies that unwittingly pushed aside all historical precedents in city building and produced the car-only, drivable suburban pattern of growth. It is the land use equivalent of the supposed Henry Ford dictate that the buyer can have a Model T "in any color, so long as it's black."

I'm going to be posting quotes from the book one by one over the next few days. Enjoy.

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?

Walk Score 2 is Out

The new walk score is out. I tend to agree with Richard that it needs a transit component. My score is a 91, but I also have a half block to the J Church Muni Metro and a half mile to BART. That should increase the score even more in neighborhoods that might not be as well connected.

A Little West of the Mission

Is where I live. But that's close enough right? With the J just a half block away, the grocery store a half mile away and BART a half mile the other way, what's not to like? Apparently Forbes thinks so as well. The interesting thing though is this:

As some politicians see it, where you live is now a matter of national energy policy. Places with plenty of mass transit and high rates of bicycle usage have received applause from presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on the campaign trail lately. And some on Capitol Hill want to legislate shorter commutes that require less fuel.

Congressman Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) recently introduced a bill that would enable home buyers to qualify for lower interest rates on mortgages for homes located near mass transit. Although it isn't expected to get to a floor vote before November elections, it has an ally in powerful House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

H/T Commuter Page Blog

Community Investments

There are a lot of problems with comparing costs across modes. You never know what is going to be included in the estimate and often times critics will take total costs and point out their expense. For example, the City of Houston has to approve Metro to build light rail in their streets. But in addition there need to be other mobility improvements including sidewalks and bike infrastructure.

In this instance it will be provided by the City of Houston, but in the case of Minneapolis and the Central Corridor, the street reconstruction costs are added into the rail line's total costs. The Central Corridor will end up costing $1 B for 11 miles. At first blush you think, wow that's expensive, until you realize that includes reconstructing the whole street and sidewalks.

University Avenue reconstruction, to include the mill and overlay of travel lanes and the reconstruction of 85 percent of the curbs, gutters and sidewalks. Central Corridor planners stated that the City of St. Paul and Ramsey County are considering funding the remaining 15 percent as part of the project.

In terms of pure people carrying capacity though this is important because when compared to highways, it's all throughput, but there aren't any walkers and bikers on a freeway. They also don't need a place to park at their end destination (bikes need space but take up less space for sure). So when we look at costs we should be careful to see all what is involved in the project. There might be more going on than the other side cares to acknowledge.

Holy Conversation Change Batman: Walkscore

The walkscore widget flew through the transit and planning blogosphere in about July of last year. There's even an evil twin called drive score which Transit Miami covered in January. Now that gas prices are high, its getting some attention in the larger progressive blogosphere. This might show a tipping point in the transit and planning discussion whereas it becomes more a part of people's consciousness. It's on Barack Obama's mind at least.

Atrios
Yglesias
Kos

Oh, and my score is 92. I'm not sure what else I need to get 100, but there is no bonus for transit. Since BART is a half mile walk and the J-Church streetcar is half a block away I think I might have a higher score.

The Tragedy of California

Yglesias laments the weather wasted in Southern California. I would include Northern California and most of the Bay Area that is not served by transit in that assessment.

The thing you really forget about the deplorable land use and development patterns in southern California (and the Southwest more generally) until you come back out here is how goddamn nice the weather is, a fact that takes the situation out of the realm of farce and into tragedy. You know what a good place to never walk anywhere would be? Boston or Chicago in the winter. Or maybe DC or New York in the summer. That's some nasty weather to be walking around in.

But LA would be a great place to walk or ride a bike to work all year 'round. But it's our bad weather belt that has the walkable cities, and our sunny and temperate all the time region that barely has sidewalks.

Juno & Planning

There's not much that I agree with Sam Staley on, but i thought this post on Planetizen captured some of what I was thinking when I watched the film Juno.

This perception fits the landscape. As Juno is driving to meet Vanessa and Mark, we see her drive through her run-down neighborhood of eclectic single family homes and enter into the wealthier, cookie-cutter sprawl of large, well adorned ones inhabited in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

This sets up a cinematically and artistically visual contrast. It turns out Juno’s family, living in the decidedly less affluent neighborhood (albeit early 20th century sprawl), is far more stable, loving, and grounded than the picture perfect couple in the wealthier contemporary suburb.

From the looks of the neighborhood, Juno probably lived in a Streetcar Suburb.

Growing Up and Walking

I was out walking around the city a few days ago with my family and noticed that my sister and her husband loved the fact that we could walk everywhere (Grocery store, restaurants etc). In fact when we they didn't have to drive the minivan for two days they seemed quite refreshed by the idea. However the kids thought differently. Every time we said we were walking somewhere it was a groan here and "do we have to?" there. They live in Bakersfield and are accustomed to driving everywhere. But as we know it gets to be a crutch.

So when I read this quote, it made me understand how meaningful it is to walk. The recently assassinated former prime minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, had this to say about being sheltered and walking to school.

So sheltered was Benazir's life that, at 16, she was completely unprepared for life at Radcliffe College, Harvard University.

"I cried and cried and cried because I had never walked to classes in my life before," she once told an interviewer. "I'd always been driven to school in a car and picked up in a car, and here I had to walk and walk and walk. It was cold, bitterly cold, and I hated it ... but it forced me to grow up. "

Perhaps some walking would make some folks grow up when it comes to the discussion on walkability versus autocentricity. My family is all about walking. When I lived in Bakersfield, and even in Texas, I walked and biked to school. It made me a little more aware of direction, and perhaps a little more of an explorer. It also builds a bit of independence. Anyone want to share any stories of walking to school as a kid?

H/T Leroy Demery of PublicTransit.us for the quote