BRT Will Kill Your Children and Drink Their Blood

Ok. I'm not a huge fan of BRT as you know, but this is ridiculous. Some people are just over the top. Yes I know it's the Berkeley Daily Wacko, but the fact that there are people out there like this shouldn't come as a shock.

BRT is bigger than you think. Its pattern follows the national trend that General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe in World War II, famously named the military/industrial complex. Eisenhower (a Republican dedicated to preserving the Constitution) said government and private industries are determined to feed the war machine at the expense of all else and would ruin this country and the world if not checked by an alert citizenry.
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“Policy-makers” care nothing for the residents and businesses along Telegraph Avenue. Not only does BRT mean turning Telegraph into an un-bike-able traffic nightmare; it also means large scale re-development under the rubric of turning Telegraph into a ‘transit corridor’: goodies for developers, fees for the city, and “closed” signs for existing businesses, many of which are likely to be replaced by corporate chains that duct money out and away from the local economy.

Because there's nothing like improving transit and slowing down cars for killing a streetscape!

Another Short Film: What If the Trams Were Gone?

A very cool video that probably saved Melbourne's Tram system from the usual suspects back in the day. Visit Keep Melbourne Moving for More...

What's Going On Out There

In case you missed it:

The Washington Post has an interesting article on the affects of gas prices on housing. Great graphic as well.

Federal spending is about 4 to 1 in favor of highways over transit. Today, more than 99 percent of the trips taken by U.S. residents are in cars or some other non-transit vehicle, largely as a result of decades of such unbalanced spending.

I do wonder how long Alan Pisarski will keep drinking his own cool aid. He mentions that the trend of driving will continue and that jobs will keep pushing towards the periphery. Technology will save us!

Pisarski and others say technological advances, telecommuting, flexible scheduling, carpooling and stringing errands together can reduce vehicle use. After all, most vehicle trips and miles are compiled not on commutes to work but on other trips.

Not only will this continuation of sprawl exacerbate the problem, his reasoning of shorter trips proves the need for more walkable communities. He also derides apartments in a complete misunderstanding of demographic trends and market preferences as well as a bit of snobbery.

In other news, the New Republic has an article about demographic inversion about people moving back into cities.

Chicago is gradually coming to resemble a traditional European city--Vienna or Paris in the nineteenth century, or, for that matter, Paris today. The poor and the newcomers are living on the outskirts.

Option of Urbanism: Real Development Subsidization

Another interesting quote from the book. We've covered the costs of sprawl, but there are some fun analogies in here.

A 2004 Albuquerque assessment of the marginal cost of drivable sub-urban development found that it was twenty-two times more costly than walkable urban development for four categories(roads, drainage, public safety, and parks). Yet generally the taxes and fees mandated by municipal law dictate that all development, high-density or low-density, has to pay about the same. The result is that high-density development, as well as the general taxpayer is subsidizing drivable suburbanism. It is just as if by law all restaurants have to be all-you-can eat; those customers who eat very little subsidize those who eat a lot.

During a dinner conversation, a power company CEO was asked what it cost the company to build and service low-density development versus high-density development. He at first looked confused, then responded, "we don't look at our cost structure that way." Because his company is regulated by the state public utility commission, it adds up its costs and divides them evenly across the housing units that it serves, charging all residential users the same per kilowatt. There is no reason for the company to even worry about its marginal cost of doing business, something taught in accounting 101 during the first year of business school.

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.

Gotta Have More Trolley

Another short film from the start of the week. This one is from the Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego across from the convention center.

Restructuring Our Cities and Brains

I'm starting to think we should just scrap this New Starts system. First there needs to be more transit funding period. But second, why are we making cities fight each other tooth and nail for scraps when there is clearly a need and demand for better transit. A recent GAO report covers the issues related to the program, not the least of which is how bad the TSUB formulation is and how the cost-effectiveness measure is maiming projects.

Probably the best part of the report is the graphic explaining the TSUB process (AKA cost effectiveness). It's so freakin complicated but this is at least better than all that jargon.


But if you still want the jargon, there's plenty in the report. Here is a slap in the face though:

According to FTA, such transit user benefits are the distinct and primary benefit of transit investments. Most other benefits of transit projects, such as economic development, are considered secondary benefits because they are still directly related to mobility improvements. For example, transportation investments that improve the accessibility and attractiveness of certain locations can result in higher property values in those areas, which can affect the type and density of development that occurs in the area of the investment.

The transportation literature and different experts we consulted agreed that such increases in property values are generally the result of mobility improvements. As such, they noted that conducting a separate evaluation of secondary benefits, such as economic development, may be inappropriate because it can result in double counting certain project impacts.

I personally don't think its inappropriate at all. The reason being is that the type of development that happens near transit has other benefits that don't have to do with the mobility that happens with the transit itself. There's the energy efficient buildings benefit, the infrastructure cost reduction benefit, transportation cost savings from less driving due to walkability, pollution reductions from less driving due to walkability etc etc etc. I don't think that is counted in mobility or the cost-effectiveness measure, yet they are true benefits of transit investments.

A lot of people including some "experts" continue to have their head in the sand on this issue. A particular quote on page 46 will make some of you laugh, or perhaps cry.

One expert in particular said that FTA should retain its primary focus on funding projects that improve mobility and not on those designed to change the structure of cities.

Seriously? Because mobility problems of today have NOTHING to do with the awful structure of our cities. I'm sure that person doesn't mind that big freeway social engineering experiment that has been happening since the 1950's.

Option of Urbanism: Favored Quarter

In real estate speak, there is such a thing as the favored quarter, where developers follow the infrastructure and investment. From The Option of Urbanism:

These housing and retail trends began to reveal a new and unexpected metropolitan development trend. Each metro area began to grow in a single predominant direction: the favored quarter, a ninety degree arc that starts in the traditional downtown of the major city in the region and fans outward in one direction.
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The unlikely consequence of this pattern of infrastructure development is that the whole region pays for infrastructure that tends to be placed in the favored quarter; the poor pay the infrastructure of the rich.

Very interesting concept that I had never heard of before. Some examples would include northwest Austin and East Seattle towards Redmond. He mentions that 70% of Seattle's office space is in this quarter. Some cities such as San Francisco and New York have multiple favored quarters because they are such large regions.

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.

In San Diego...

Whew...sorry I was gone so long....what did I miss? I was in Houston for a little while and now I'm in San Diego for the ESRI International Users Conference. Learning some interesting things about the future of Geographic Information Systems and what we can expect in the future, like real time data updates from mobile phones. Cool stuff.

So after things wrapped up I went and took a few pictures. You know me...

So the next two pictures are from Barrio Logan in San Diego. A case study was done of the Affordable Housing near the station in the New Transit Town. I was a bit underwhelmed but understand that it was a step in the right direction. It's a not so great part of town that could really use some infrastructure boost and movement on what has already been accomplished. As of now it seems a bit stalled and not much attention has been paid to details outside the station area.



Here is downtown from the convention center.


And here is the end of the Orange Line where two cars were coupling into a three car train for the evening rush hour.