War on the Car

It moves forward. It feels like I'm reading Killer Angels again...

The War on The Car drags on. The Resistance continues to suffer heavy casualties. Our foot soldiers, mounted forces, and transit brigade have launched numerous offensives this past year, but made only minor advances.

Monday Night Notes

Ah it's been a while. Got a bit of a chance today to throw you some links

Anyone wonder if the PDC could redevelop the Post Office property in a more urban fashion and then lease a single urban building back to the Postal Service with 5 blocks for more urban development?
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San Jose could take back roads from Caltrans in order to do things that actually move more people. San Francisco should do this with Van Ness as well. We might have actually had BRT by now if we did...
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Innovative financing mechanism in Australia for infrastructure.

The deal will enable the government to charge developers $95,000 per hectare to fund infrastructure in new fringe suburbs instead of ordinary home buyers. And instead of paying the tax up front they will pay 30 per cent when they purchase the land and the remainder in stages as the land is subdivided.

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David Lazarus says it's hard to get around on transit in LA. I wonder how far people go in LA versus other regions that makes transit so hard for people to consider. In Europe, new cell phone studies say people don't stray more than 6 miles (via Planetizen)from their home. I'd be interested to see what LA's sphere is like.
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Aaron makes a really big point that I honestly never realized was missing in the news I consume.

Newspapers used to explain what national and international trends and events meant to us, to our towns. They put the major events of the day in a local context.

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CTOD releases it's TOD and GHG report.

Double Vision

While it's great that the Chronicle and others are calling on Houston Metro to have a regional vision with goals, it means nothing without a tandem city land use and development infrastructure strategy. While Houston has no zoning in the usual sense, it does have everything else needed to regulate development (restrictive covenants, parking requirements, setbacks etc). The region can't just keep building HOV lanes and even light rail/commuter rail lines to chase development. Chasers never prosper, but leaders do.

Missles Are Quicker

I love Pearls Before Swine. This one stuck my fancy as a planner.

Open Thread

When I don't post for a while I get emails from folks interested in chatting about anything from high speed rail to the absence of overhead wires. I feel like I should foster a greater ability to have conversations outside of topic posts. So if you have something to say or share, I'll try to have more open threads.

Movement Depression and the Way Forward

It's been a bit rough lately. With the economy in the tank and people not wanting to spend any money, I've had great hope that some places were continuing to move forward with their urban rail plans. But the opponents fight harder than ever because they see the threat or people don't plan things enough to go forward with any confidence. Just today, the list of articles that show how hard we have to keep working was a bit much for me to handle.

Houston - The Mayor questions whether there is money to pay for two lines of the new five line light rail expansion in the city.

Austin - The Mayor decides its not time to have a bond election to pay for a future urban rail line.

Scotland - The company building Edinburgh's tram wants to delay 30 months after the rough ride they have already had.

Tampa - Ballot issue for rail dead for now due to lack of decision in how much of the funding would go to the rail project.

Bellevue: The city council is a bunch of morons there and don't want to run the line through a dense employment center.

There is a ray of hope out there. The Mayor of Los Angeles made me feel a bit better recently when he decided that he was going to ask to get things done faster. Ask for a loan so you can save billions in construction costs and have something built for your money faster. I would like to think that is how we work in the United States. But sometimes reading all the news I do just gets so depressing. At least someone has suggested a way forward. Whether we follow it or not is up to us.

Oscars Miss the Train Again

Every year I feel like I harp on this because I think that outside of these people with fancy gowns, there are a lot of folks including press that could get there via the subway. The first year I noticed this was the year that Al Gore won for An Inconvenient Truth. It's somewhat unfortunate that people aren't hopping on to make a statement. They might even get to the show faster.

February 27 2007 - An Inconvenient Truth
February 22 2009 - Oscars Lame Again

Saturday Night Notes

Opening up cities to new media.
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Where there's a bad freeway, Norquist is trying to tear it down.
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The tension between growth and saving industrial land is at the leading edge in Oakland.
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Why the Lagos bashing asks Next?
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More Urban Form

In an attempt to go a little deeper into the previous post I went looking for more pictures of Rotterdam and Houston and found even better comparisons and interesting views than the photos I posted before.

It should also be said that I don't mean to discount the devastation of war to people and property. There is a difference between choosing to build parking lots and having your life and possessions destroyed.

First Rotterdam:

This from scientific psychic:


And this from the special collections of the Wageningen Library:


Next Houston:

Clearance of housing to build US59 via TexasFreeway.com, an amazing resource if you want to see how freeways were built in Texas.


Also via TexasFreeway.com, a view of Houston from the same angle as the previous post's shot:



This is from Aerial viewpoint. A historic shot from 1945 compared with today. Notice the freeway intrusion. Also notice the downtown getting taller. Finally, where Union Station used to be is where highway 59 rockets through on the east side of downtown and Minute Maid park now exists with a token train filled with oranges.

Parking Bombs

More! That's the scream of merchants and others who believe that a downtown without an endless sea of parking is not worth going to. But once the whole downtown turns into a parking lot it's not really worth much anymore is it? Yet we still see the discussion of parking dominate without an eye for the destruction that it can cause a downtown if left unfettered.

Before Portland's miraculous return as an urban Mecca, it too was once infested by parking. So was the city of Houston, where parking lots took over most of the downtown at one point.

Via Mike Lydon and Transit Miami (Via the book City Shaped)

Perhaps you can say how different this is from Rotterdam after German bombing...


It's unfortunate that we didn't see what we were doing to our wonderful cities in the name of cars first. Europe had war, yet we dismantled our cities in a similar way in the name of progress. So much parking though, what has that done to the city's value? What has it taken away in terms of tax revenue from land and greater employment agglomerations? A study by Anne Moudon and Dohn Wook Sohn showed that offices that were clustered had greater values than those that weren't in the Seattle region. In addition to the spending on highways that expanded our regions to their current far reaches, how much real estate value did we destoy?

Greater value for downtowns was lost and in the process we saw places like Hartford, as found by Dr. Norm Garrick at UConn lose population, employment, and their character. Not just the loss from parking, but from the gutting of the city by the Interstate System. Here are some slides from Dr. Garrick showing the destruction. When he toggled through the first time, the room I was in audibly gasped for air.

Hartford Pre Interstate


Hartford Post Interstate


So what's the damage? The amount of tax creating employment did not grow and parking spots skyrocketed.


So in aggregate what did this look like? The red shows it all:


Lost revenue, lost agglomeration, lost value. Will these examples teach us a lesson about too much parking? Perhaps