Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Talking Headways Podcast: Speeding By Design
This week my guest host Tim Halbur and I chat about how we set speed limits, the design of complete streets for trucks, and the airbnb-ification of parking spaces. You might also hear some stories about selling parking spaces to fund parties. Listen in below.
Monday, February 2, 2015
The Role of Mayors In Transportation Planning
Last week, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced the “Mayors Challenge for Safer People and Safer Streets.” Foxx, who was the mayor of Charlotte from 2009 to 2013, urges mayors to make pedestrian and bike safety a priority for the next year. While road deaths in other categories have dropped over the last few years, the rate of biking and pedestrian deaths in the US has trended upwards since 2009.
A big part of pedestrian and bike safety is street design, and a major part of the Mayors Challenge is committing to take a Complete Streets approach to making transportation decisions. The Mayors Challenge isn’t a funding solution, but it is an opportunity for mayors to take on the challenge of assessing the current state of their street design guidelines and actively pursue the best practices to transform their transportation networks
A study of over 70 US mayors finds that regardless of city size, mayors often had the same priorities: growing their cities while managing transportation and operations within their limited budget constraints. The three most common policy priorities cited by US mayors for the next year are economic development, quality of life and infrastructure.
However, mayors can’t transform their cities completely on their own. The mayors of San Francisco and Seattle, in particular, have come out and said that they do need the help of the federal government on transportation issues, particularly infrastructure. As American cities continue to grow, a national urban agenda and support from the federal government is necessary to ensure that our cities succeed.
But it looks like we'll need the mayors of our cities to get it started.
A big part of pedestrian and bike safety is street design, and a major part of the Mayors Challenge is committing to take a Complete Streets approach to making transportation decisions. The Mayors Challenge isn’t a funding solution, but it is an opportunity for mayors to take on the challenge of assessing the current state of their street design guidelines and actively pursue the best practices to transform their transportation networks
A study of over 70 US mayors finds that regardless of city size, mayors often had the same priorities: growing their cities while managing transportation and operations within their limited budget constraints. The three most common policy priorities cited by US mayors for the next year are economic development, quality of life and infrastructure.
However, mayors can’t transform their cities completely on their own. The mayors of San Francisco and Seattle, in particular, have come out and said that they do need the help of the federal government on transportation issues, particularly infrastructure. As American cities continue to grow, a national urban agenda and support from the federal government is necessary to ensure that our cities succeed.
But it looks like we'll need the mayors of our cities to get it started.
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Atlanta's Transportation Barriers
Atlanta has had an issue with freeways for a long time. Just yesterday an article from Curbed Atlanta reported out how freeways tore apart the fabric of the city in the 1950s. (Also see the Institute for Quality Communities for some fun time series maps)
But that was just the start, it's been a long slow devolution in a region of highways, sprawl, and ridiculous county boundaries for a long time. I remember in college reading Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full and thinking that the region was crazy, with lots of development leapfrogging and questionable deals.
The place sprawls like no other city and is hard to serve with transit due to freeway blockages and absent a grid or rationally organized street network. Seems like MARTA CEO Keith Parker is working to fix it, but it's a long, very winding, road even if they end up reworking all the transit routes.
And the region could be the archetype for Chris Leinberger's favored quarter where much of the jobs march North as the Southern parts flounder. When I was at Reconnecting America, I did some work in Atlanta and for kicks made the chart below. While not as stark as I thought it might be when I started pulling the numbers, it still shows the imbalance between jobs and where workers live. Many low and moderate workers live in the southern part of the region while the vast majority of the jobs are above I-20.
And then look at where people who make low wages live...
And where they work...
VS. Where High Wage Workers Live
That to me is the biggest transportation issue. Connecting low wage workers with low and moderate wage employment. I wonder if the next SPLOST will address this more.
But that was just the start, it's been a long slow devolution in a region of highways, sprawl, and ridiculous county boundaries for a long time. I remember in college reading Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full and thinking that the region was crazy, with lots of development leapfrogging and questionable deals.
The place sprawls like no other city and is hard to serve with transit due to freeway blockages and absent a grid or rationally organized street network. Seems like MARTA CEO Keith Parker is working to fix it, but it's a long, very winding, road even if they end up reworking all the transit routes.
And the region could be the archetype for Chris Leinberger's favored quarter where much of the jobs march North as the Southern parts flounder. When I was at Reconnecting America, I did some work in Atlanta and for kicks made the chart below. While not as stark as I thought it might be when I started pulling the numbers, it still shows the imbalance between jobs and where workers live. Many low and moderate workers live in the southern part of the region while the vast majority of the jobs are above I-20.
And then look at where people who make low wages live...
And where they work...
VS. Where High Wage Workers Live
And where they work...
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Keep Austin Employment Downtown
Julio G. makes the case that Austin's general transit ridership is stagnating and that population decline in the most transit productive areas is to blame. Part of that comes from NIMBYs and a restrictive development code. But I would also argue that transit ridership is on the decline because the most productive destination for transit is declining in share as well.
Employment drives a large percentage of transit ridership and Austin is likely to be no different. 16% of all trips are by transit, but 34% of transit trips (p5) are work trips. APTA on board surveys have put that number around 59%.
So we can't just think of residential, but rather employment in the region. We know Austin has been sprawling for some time, but let's look at the numbers.
Julio says that for the last 15 years, population has increased 34% in the region. Because data from LED is only available from 2002 on, that leaves us with a 13 year period. But the growth in jobs in that 13 years has been 26% or ~675K to ~852K according to LED data.
But for downtown, which I looked at as West of I-35, North of Barton Springs Road, East of Lamar, and South of MLK employment growth is much smaller. Only an 18% change, from ~112K in 2002 to ~132K in 2011. The share of employment that resides in this downtown sector has gone down too. In 2002 it was 16.5% of total jobs in the region, while in 2011 it was 15.5% of total jobs.
1% isn't huge, but its enough to show that employment sprawl is a big issue. And if you depend on employment to drive transit ridership, and your #1 market is losing share, it gets hard to serve.
So in addition to getting more housing in Austin's core, I would argue that for VMT reduction, getting employment into the core is just as important. Right now people are driving to Round Rock or 360 or many other places. Create centers, serve them with good transit, and the ridership will grow.
Obviously easier said than done.
15 Year Population Change
34%
12 Year Employment Change
26%
Austin 2002
Regional Jobs - 675K
Downtown Jobs - 112K
Downtown Share - 16.5%
Austin 2011
Regional Jobs - 852K
Downtown Jobs - 132K
Downtown Share - 15.5%
Employment drives a large percentage of transit ridership and Austin is likely to be no different. 16% of all trips are by transit, but 34% of transit trips (p5) are work trips. APTA on board surveys have put that number around 59%.
So we can't just think of residential, but rather employment in the region. We know Austin has been sprawling for some time, but let's look at the numbers.
Julio says that for the last 15 years, population has increased 34% in the region. Because data from LED is only available from 2002 on, that leaves us with a 13 year period. But the growth in jobs in that 13 years has been 26% or ~675K to ~852K according to LED data.
But for downtown, which I looked at as West of I-35, North of Barton Springs Road, East of Lamar, and South of MLK employment growth is much smaller. Only an 18% change, from ~112K in 2002 to ~132K in 2011. The share of employment that resides in this downtown sector has gone down too. In 2002 it was 16.5% of total jobs in the region, while in 2011 it was 15.5% of total jobs.
1% isn't huge, but its enough to show that employment sprawl is a big issue. And if you depend on employment to drive transit ridership, and your #1 market is losing share, it gets hard to serve.
So in addition to getting more housing in Austin's core, I would argue that for VMT reduction, getting employment into the core is just as important. Right now people are driving to Round Rock or 360 or many other places. Create centers, serve them with good transit, and the ridership will grow.
Obviously easier said than done.
15 Year Population Change
34%
12 Year Employment Change
26%
Austin 2002
Regional Jobs - 675K
Downtown Jobs - 112K
Downtown Share - 16.5%
Austin 2011
Regional Jobs - 852K
Downtown Jobs - 132K
Downtown Share - 15.5%
How Should The Government Fix Affordable Housing?
Many American cities are experiencing a shortage of affordable housing. It’s a big problem that needs to be addressed, but there’s little consensus about how to address it. Add to that the NIMBY attitude that many people seem to hold toward affordable housing projects, and we’re looking at a problem that is both complex and politically charged.
Housing costs in San Francisco have skyrocketed in the past few years and it doesn’t look like they’ll stop increasing any time soon. One of the reasons for the price increase is because discretionary permitting prevents the housing supply from increasing rapidly as the population grows. Some such as the blog Market Urbanism believe that reforming regulations so that development is less restricted would go a long way in addressing the issue. On top of that, creating a land tax would encourage denser development, and funding housing vouchers with that tax money would ensure that the amount of funding increases when housing demand goes up and drives up the cost of land.
Los Angeles is suffering from a lack of affordable housing as well, and some feel that the local government should be doing far more to address the issue. Some suggested solutions to LA’s affordable housing issue include overhauling the zoning code so that it’s easier to develop, offering incentives to developers for building affordable housing, and preserving the current stock of affordable housing.
All of these proposed solutions include some form of government intervention. However, we have seen that some government responses, like rent control and subsidized housing, have not exactly solved the affordable housing problem in the past. If that’s the case, how should the government intervene in affordable housing issues? Whichever way we choose to address the problem, it’ll be important to understand the housing market, as well as acknowledge the shortcomings of our previous solutions.
Housing costs in San Francisco have skyrocketed in the past few years and it doesn’t look like they’ll stop increasing any time soon. One of the reasons for the price increase is because discretionary permitting prevents the housing supply from increasing rapidly as the population grows. Some such as the blog Market Urbanism believe that reforming regulations so that development is less restricted would go a long way in addressing the issue. On top of that, creating a land tax would encourage denser development, and funding housing vouchers with that tax money would ensure that the amount of funding increases when housing demand goes up and drives up the cost of land.
Los Angeles is suffering from a lack of affordable housing as well, and some feel that the local government should be doing far more to address the issue. Some suggested solutions to LA’s affordable housing issue include overhauling the zoning code so that it’s easier to develop, offering incentives to developers for building affordable housing, and preserving the current stock of affordable housing.
All of these proposed solutions include some form of government intervention. However, we have seen that some government responses, like rent control and subsidized housing, have not exactly solved the affordable housing problem in the past. If that’s the case, how should the government intervene in affordable housing issues? Whichever way we choose to address the problem, it’ll be important to understand the housing market, as well as acknowledge the shortcomings of our previous solutions.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Talking Headways Podcast: Free Ranging Kids and Uber Data
Hopefully we'll start to see more posts after quite a long hiatus around here. In addition to Kelly's posts from The Direct Transfer, we're going to be also posting my weekly podcast that Streetsblog hosts. Unfortunately my co-host Tanya is not going to be podding with me every week (She'll be back as a guest), but we'll have some sweet guest hosts talking about all things transportation and cities.
This one below is the last full pod from Tanya and me. In it we talk about free range kids and whether the Uber data dump is just a PR move or will actually help transportation planners. If you haven't been listening to us, hopefully you will enjoy it. You can find us on iTunes and Stitcher as well if you wish to subscribe.
This one below is the last full pod from Tanya and me. In it we talk about free range kids and whether the Uber data dump is just a PR move or will actually help transportation planners. If you haven't been listening to us, hopefully you will enjoy it. You can find us on iTunes and Stitcher as well if you wish to subscribe.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)