Smart Growth? No, Zev Growth!

Ah good 'ole Zev Y. in LA is up to no good again. For those who don't know, he is one of the good folks that brought us the Orange Line busway because of a law he created that said no subways or rail on that corridor. Well he's at it again saying that LA shouldn't grow denser. That smart growth thing is for sissies. But basically he is just playing politics with the frames. He's all about smart growth, just not density. He also wants to keep parking requirements...nothing says don't drive like an open parking space!

Urged on by some elected officials, city planners have decided that the "smart" and "elegant" way to grow the city's housing stock is to double the allowable size of new buildings,bust through established height limits and reduce parking-space requirements -- effectively rolling back more than two decades of neighborhood-protection laws.

What is it with these neighborhood protection folks that they actually want to stunt neighborhood evolution and affordability? It's actually not protection but rather a form of Nimbyism. What annoys me most about these clowns is that they just don't want any growth, it has nothing to do with Smart Growth at all. Here is a perfect example.

But it makes no sense to reflexively boost residential density and building size along every Metro Rapid bus route, as the city's version of the state's density-bonus law allows, when the streets that the buses travel often cross low-density, pedestrian-friendly commercial districts serving some of the city's most charming neighborhoods.

Let's not build more density near the high capacity pedestrian friendly transit. That'll make our transit work better! No one is going to go into the center of a single family neighborhood and build a high rise. All of this is just scare tactics to get elected. I for one hope he gets destroyed.

Extortion in Virginia

This is rich. Apparently Norfolk State University signed a deal a few years ago that would allow light rail to run through campus. A few years later new leadership has moved into the presidents mansion on campus and apparently doesn't like the idea. Instead of going with the original agreement, the University is resorting to extortion.

Norfolk State University wants the city to purchase its president’s home and build a parking deck near campus. The requests are part of a wish list submitted to the city in a letter dated March 26. They are some of the most expensive ideas offered by NSU to resolve an impasse with the city and Hampton Roads Transit over the light rail line under construction next to the campus. No price tags are available for the university’s proposals. However, city officials said the items are not in the project’s $232.1 million budget.

But good for the Mayor, he's not buying it.

Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim said he wouldn’t support the request under any circumstances. “I don’t think we could use public dollars for that purpose,” he said.

It seems recently that there have been a lot of anti-transit campus sentiment. The purple line in Maryland comes to mind, worried about vibrations through campus from light rail and most recently the dumbfounding move by the University of Minnesota who didn't get their tunnel through campus due to our favorite cost effectiveness measure. Now they want a rerouting that would kill the line's federal funding. Something tells me that these folks know nothing about the benefits of a line through campus for students. All over the country there are college campuses that thrive on transit connections. Unfortunately these situations above will have to be forced.

Overheard in Oakland

A real conversation I overheard today:

Girl #1: Have you learned the bus routes yet?
Girl #2: No I have only used BART.
Guy #1: BART is much better than the bus
Girl #1: I use the 51 sometimes, it comes all the time, but I can't read on it.
Guy #1: I can't either, I feel like I have no room for my arms on the bus and it bounces all over the place
Girl #1: Yeah.
Girl #2: Well I'll figure it out.
Girl #1: Just take BART if you have a choice.

I seem to run into planning related conversations in the background wherever I go. The other night I was eating sushi with a friend and one lady in front of me loudly said: "Urban Planners don't know what they are doing, they just build those roads everywhere" and made a circular motion with her hand. I didn't say anything, but I was thinking "that's the highway engineers lady."

The Affordability Index is Online

The affordability index is a different way to look at housing affordability. Since housing has been going down the tubes lately, its not surprising that the crises is hitting the suburbs of major metropolitan areas the hardest. Why? Because they are out in the middle of nowhere and its getting expensive to move around by car alone. Well folks are now starting to measure the housing + transportation costs of families and individuals showing that true affordability isn't a cheap home in the suburbs, but rather the sum of these two costs.

Take a look at the costs of different neighborhoods. In a transit rich neighborhood with all housing being equal, your cost of would be 41%. But if you had to drive everywhere, your costs would be 57%. That's quite a lot of savings by living near transit. See for yourself if you live in a transit rich or auto dependent neighborhood.

H/T Carless in Seattle.

True Patriotism

Streetsblog posted this video earlier today. I never saw it on TV, but it mentions sticking it to OPEC. Be patriotic, drink some beers and ride some bikes (or transit).

Thoughts on Transit and New Urbanism

I am a member of the CNU. I've been going to congresses over the last 4 years but have noticed that a lot of other members don't really get transit or that transit should be an integral part of NU. In a session last weekend about value capture strategies, Scott Polikov showed some diagrams of communities he helped code south of San Antonio and in Leander at the end of Capital Metro's commuter rail line. While they were nice and could probably promote more walking internal of the neighborhood, he showed boutique retail and limited transit access and circulation for both projects. G.B. Arrington, former transit and TOD planner at Tri-Met in Portland who heads Parsons Brinkerhoff's place making division, raised his hand and asked a very pointed question.

"Isn't this just walkable sprawl?"

And therein lies the problem. Much of what the new urbanism is known for is their walkable sprawl which includes the Kentlands and Seaside as the projects most representative of New Urbanism from an outsiders perspective. At the end of the day all of the jobs are somewhere else and without alternative connections to those jobs and a location on the far reaches of a region, the same VMT and overall degradation of the environment will continue.

New Urbanism in principle says the right things in the Charter, but right now we're mostly neglecting the transit and mobility. This includes the understanding of bikes. I heard that Liz Moule of Moule Polyzoides who designed the Del Mar TOD stated that its silly to have showers at every place of employment to support cycling. This angered some of my colleagues who want to make the trip between neighborhoods and work accessible by bike.

If we aren't able to build places by reducing VMT, then whats the point? Building good looking internally walkable places is nice but really at the end of the day there is a reason for building it if you have to drive to get anywhere outside of the community? Without metrics or final purpose, we don't know what we're doing. Some like Andres Duany say that its all about providing happiness. But in reality there are many people out there who are happy with their freeways and huge gas guzzling SUVs.

Jan Gehl, who was responsible for bike and pedestrian renaissances in Melbourne and Copenhagen has a simple metric that destroys any argument against his improvements. Pedestrian counts. In fact he rebuked some store owners who said that they were slowly fading due to reduced auto access. He was able to prove that they were getting much increased pedestrian activity in front of the store by before and after counts.

So if we are going to build transit and build communities that reduce the autocentricity that begets sprawl, then we need to measure the effects. Else we are no better than other ideologues that state their ideas are right, without proof to back it up. I believe that we need to measure New Urbanism to make sure its working, and by working I mean reducing VMT because if we can't do that, its just walkable sprawl.

Congestion Pricing Dies on the Vine

I have to say that even though I wanted this plan because it would have proven the benefits of transit over cars, there is a very small piece of me that is glad that Mary Peters got the shaft. This money came off the backs small bus agencies around the country and that should not be tolerated. People that depend on transit the most were paying for these pilot projects. Not that the idea didn't have merit, but if you're going to play with money, why not take it out of the ginormous highway fund instead of the bus fund.

Eric says it best, New York just approved a citywide parking lot.

China Subway Expansion

Wired Autopia has been really up on transit and transportation news. Well recently they've had a lot of news on China's huge subway expansion including a crazy map of the built out system. As they say, it looks like a bowl of chow mein.

Streetcars: Getting Out of Our Silos

This began as a response to some comments on a thread over at the Seattle Transit Blog. Almost everyone over there on that thread is supportive of streetcars, just not how they are implemented. Some want fixed guideways, some think buses are better and others believe that streetcars are worthless.

When we look at streetcars from a purely transportation standpoint, we are missing the point. We are creating silos in which to put different aspects of the city. Transportation here, land use here, city fiscal responsibility here, and the environment here.

If we are to look at the overall benefits and needs, we see that there is a great benefit to streetcars when they are appropriate which I believe they were in Portland and Seattle given the goals of these lines. The goals implicitly or explicitly were to tie downtown to a new neighborhood that would boost walkability and livability in the city for more people. There is an important lesson for how cities benefit from transportation such as the streetcar.

1. The Corridor vs. Node

Streetcars are not meant to be rapid transit but rather pedestrian accelerators within districts and areas just outside of town. If you think that streetcars are the solution to everything, you are wrong. A system is needed but how the technology influences land use is important to the decision. Given that the streetcar is pedestrian scaled, it creates a corridor of pedestrian oriented development. This is why many of the first ring suburbs have commercial strips that were once served by streetcars. It's also why many of the former interurban lines formed small towns around the station, just like light rail creates a node of development today. Two different transit modes, two different purposes.

2. Streetcar Corridors Create More Density/Value

More density means more rooftops means more close retail means more walking. This is important because when we build new neighborhoods we want people not to do the same things they do in sprawl. The key to the streetcar is increasing the envelope for density on a corridor. In fact the streetcar in Portland pushed developers to get closer to their density maximums closer to the line. 90% of the envelope was filled one block from the line. 75% two blocks and further down. Seattle is doing the same thing. Building at higher densities that would usually be built because of developer confidence in the future of the streetcar.

But why is this important? Well it means that over the long term, that piece of land will create more tax revenue than whatever dreck was built next to the bus line. So when we look at the streetcar funding issue versus the bus, how much more value was created for the community? What is the tax creation of a 10 story building over 100 years versus a 5 story building? So in the whole scheme of things, the bus is a cheap alternative that in the end costs the city more. We need to get out of that silo.

3. It Creates the Pedestrian Experience

Part of the reason for building the streetcar and creating the density is creating a good pedestrian and street environment. Who wants a bus running by your dinner? Your coffee?



But also, the creation of a pedestrian environment and pedestrian accelerators increased the area folks are willing to walk. And the creation of more of these neighborhoods on a corridor by streetcars is important because this increased walking has been shown to reduce VMT. In fact the 7,200 housing units along the Portland Streetcar line have been estimated to reduce VMT by 53 million miles a year. Thats nothing to sneeze at and will be something that decreases greenhouse gases. But all of this is not attributable to the streetcar, but to the creation of a walkable environment from the densities and streetscapes. Developers are more willing to create these densities and places with the streetcar instead of a bus.

As I have said before, its not always about speed. Creating an environment for pedestrians means also a slower environment, a safer environment. While 43,000 a year die on the highways, I heard this weekend from Rick Gustafson of Portland Streetcar Inc that the Streetcar has had accidents, but no one has been seriously injured.

So while a bus might be more flexible, as a circulator and distributer the streetcar serves a community organizing purpose. It is not for every corridor and in fact it might animate less used streets such as the North-South streets chosen for Portland's streetcar. That does not mean that the route should travel away from the preferred corridor such as Guadalupe street in Austin and Guadalupe should have a dedicated lane due to its traffic volumes. But these are decisions that should be made based on the location and with the whole vision in mind. We need to stop thinking in our silos and think about and articulate all the benefits of certain investments from all standpoints, not just transportation and moving people. After all, thats all the highway engineers do and look what it gets us, big roads that move cars faster while killing street life.

More Light Rail Traffic Density Reports

Interested in Traffic Density of light rail and streetcar systems around the world? Look no further than Publictransit.us.