The Fight for Access

I'm a bit late posting this one...

One persons station access is another persons time added to the commute:

This north-side resident found the light rail underwhelming—the train chugs along at street level at a modest speed, stopping 10 times, even stopping at times for traffic lights. It’s still faster to take the express bus from downtown. So it was interesting to hear a south-side community organizer speak Wednesday about working during the light-rail planning process to get precisely the things that annoyed me. “We [told transit planners] we wanted more stops and we don’t want intersections cut off,” said Yolanda Sinde,

I suggest reading the rest of the post as well as it delves into gentrification and smart growth as well.

Respect - Pass It On

I saw this commercial the other day. More people need to learn this rule. There are a lot of kids that don't know it.

Over Time

This is a great way to show the expansion of a system over time. Check out David Alpert's time lapse of Metro expansion. What is interesting to me is how its done slowly over time and in segments. I think a lot of cities can learn from this.

Incenting Employment to Centers

Peter Bell has a big job at one of two regional governments in this country (Portland the other). It's understandable that he threads a fine line between suburban and urban constituencies when discussing mobility and other issues a regional government deals with. However I do feel like he has an important duty to steer growth with transportation policy and employment incentives.

The current problem as I see it with the Twin Cities is that its expanding at a rapid clip. While the article mentions this growth has slowed, I don't really buy it. Much of this expansion is a continuation of the post 1950s suburban housing and job growth that continues to suck up resources at the expense of the region's two central cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul. Much of it headed to the favored quarter to the Southwestern part of the region in the areas of Edina and Bloomington.

But with the expansion of employment in those areas, it allows people to move further and further away from the core. The more we move away from the core, the less likely people are to live in urban neighborhoods designed for walking, biking and transit. Something Peter Bell seems to mention in passing but not completely understand is that those exurban sewer and road expansions cost a lot of money. A lot more money over the long term that creating capacity and value through density and transit. But once he expands sewer service to the outlying areas with septic tanks, then the community beyond wants the service, the community after that will ask for it, and then the employment follows workers and then the workers follow that employment. It's a growth strategy that is inherently unsustainable.

And really what I wish they would do is stop and think about how to make existing centers of commerce in the region less suburban and more like downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul. This way these areas can serve a diverse housing stock that people want while also allowing them to not be so dependent on the automobile. This requires that the Met Council work even harder to incent job growth in centers that will also contain the spread of residential development. Ultimately the first line of defense is containing job sprawl and the Met Council can get a better hold on that than they can on residential areas.

Since most people in the United States have around a 30 minute commute, there needs to be a way to keep that 30 minutes static to existing centers in the coming century. Ultimately that means that the Met Council would have to expand jobs in centers, connect the centers via high quality transit, make the centers walkable, and finally stop extending services to the exurbs unless they are going to pay full price for it. Tipping the balance sheets towards more favorable long term sustainable product doesn't just make environmental sense, it makes fiscal sense. If we think all of these cities and towns that have budget issues today during this recession, imagine the recessions in the future where all this extra infrastructure we build today will have to be maintained tomorrow. Only places of significant intrinsic value will be saved from the scourges that continue to occur on a bi/tri-century basis.

This is why I believe that Peter Bell can't just throw up his hands and say he can't do anything about it because too many people are giving him a hard time. I think he needs to lead, and in this sense he needs to take fiscal responsibility for the future of the region. I'm not a huge environmentalist. I can appreciate where they come from. My biggest concern is living outside of our means. Specifically with regards to suburbanism where we're basically just taking away from the economic generators that are cities and spreading our money outward instead of closer to the belt. My Geography professor in college that got me into all this planning stuff always said, if you want someone to pay attention, "hit them in the pocket book". This is ultimately what needs to be done. It might not be the easy way or the most popular way, but someone needs to start thinking about the fiscal ramifications of growth in the region, and the person that should be starting that discussion is Peter Bell.

Open Thread

Wow so I have been so busy I didn't even realize that I haven't posted in a long time. Consider this an open thread. I have a lot of posts I want to write but just haven't had time to write them. NJH asks in the previous post about the Central Subway starting construction. It's kind of beating a dead horse. How would you kill such a project? And why can't we close Stockton to ped traffic only? Does anyone think its going to actually get to Fisherman's Wharf at some point?

Bicycles are Hard to Draw

So says Stephen Pastis.

Jack London Calling

Jack London is closing Barnes and Noble book store. It seems like the perfect place for an urban renaissance but its so disconnected from Downtown Oakland by the freeway that it hasn't drawn any of the energy from the employment center. There's even a relatively close BART station if you consider the blocks are of a walkable size and most of the attractions are about a half mile away. But the highway is daunting. I often wonder what would have happened if they trenched the freeway or just made it an urban boulevard for a number of blocks to allow a smoother connection between the urban fabric that existed before the freeway. Ultimately I believe that this is the perfect connection for a streetcar, but it would be nice if there were no highway as well.

(The photo shows Jack London just south of the freeway before the waterway. The Lake Merritt BART station is just north and downtown Oakland is Northwest)

Sunday Night Notes

A few things to chomp on:

State lawmakers in California are understanding what parking is not. Free.
~~~
MARTA is a big reason why UPS located its headquarters in northern Atlanta. It's pretty interesting how much development happened around the MARTA stations outside of downtown.
~~~
Since High Speed Rail is such a newfangled thing to most people in the United States, many want to put it into the urban transit category when thinking about its mission. However this is not the case. In my opinion its intercity transport like airplanes. Often opposition to HSR brings out the density straw man to oppose expansion of intercity rail lines but then they would also have to argue that airports and greyhound bus stations need density to operate as well.

I also believe that HSR is a one way train. It's not necessary to have density to operate between cities but it starts the conversation on increased density and transit service once it gets there. And I feel that the comparisons to Europe and density are really mischaracterized discussions about connectivity and service levels. Ultimately the reason why HSR is fairly useful in Europe is because you can get a train to everywhere. Much like the Hub and Spoke airport system in the United States.
~~~
Wendell Cox is always a fun comic relief.

Music Sunday: City Pavement

I always like posting songs related to urbanism or city life. Here's one from the UK.

Wednesday Night Notes

A quick post because today was a blockbuster for articles:

Core Vitality Imperative - The Urbanophile - Aaron is really rocking these posts and is always thoughtful. If you're not reading you should start now.
~~~
"I will walk, I will ride a bike, I'll even crawl to get the debt load off our children,"

This quote was an angry response to raising taxes for transit. These tea-baggers are too much.
~~~
Who knew? Walking briskly makes you healthy. In cities you walk more.
~~~
Ryan has two papers of interest. Paper 1 - Paper 2

According to the authors, it does seem that in polycentric regions, small cities can enjoy some of the labour productivity gains from a large market without having all of the disadvantages of a single large city (including high costs and congestion).

~~~
Yonah asks how you connect a multi-polar region like the Triangle.
~~~
From Switchboard:

Today NRDC released Location Efficiency and Mortgage Default, a study that shows a direct, statistically significant link between the high costs of personal transportation imposed by poor location efficiency and a much higher risk of default.