Building Livable Cities for Our Aging Population

Cities, for the most part, are built for the young and the mobile. For the elderly, cities can be hostile environments. Walk signals don’t last long enough for them to make it through the crosswalk, pavements are uneven, and lighting is insufficient. This is an urgent problem that will need to be addressed. By 2030, two-thirds of the world will live in cities, and in developed areas, as many as one in four people will be over the age of 60. The World Health Organization’s Age-Friendly Cities program sets out to counteract this very problem. Currently, 258 cities have signed up and vowed to become more “age-friendly.”

But as our population ages, what exactly can we do to improve the livability for seniors? For cities like Philadelphia, where one in seven people is over 65, the problem will have to be dealt with sooner rather than later. While the US tends to focus on Social Security and Medicare as big issues for the elderly, one of the biggest problems seniors face is the lack of affordable and accessible housing. Philadelphia has adopted zoning changes so that accessory dwelling units are easier to build. These units can allow the elderly to live in the accessory units while renting out their home for extra income, or letting their family live in their home as caregivers.

Another phenomenon occurring in cities where the elderly population is growing is NORCs, or naturally occurring retirement communities. In some neighborhoods, the senior population may have strong ties to the community and attachment to their homes. As a result, they tend to stay in place rather than move to a smaller home in a better climate, and the community will have a higher number of senior citizens. As communities like this occur more often, the neighborhoods will have to change to adapt to the needs of its residents: better transit, accessible buildings, and pedestrian-friendly streets.

The AARP recently created a livability index that may help measure a community’s suitability for seniors. The index scores neighborhoods in seven different categories on a scale from 1 to 100: housing, transportation, environment, health, engagement, opportunity, and neighborhood. It’s not perfect, but it may help cities improve in areas where they are lacking, and become more livable for their elderly residents.

How Two Way Streets Can Improve Cities

To improve the livability of neighborhoods, cities often turn to methods like building bike and pedestrian infrastructure or adding trees. However, one of the easiest and most affordable ways to improve cities might be to simply get rid of one-way streets. One-way streets became prevalent when cars were being introduced to the American public, as they were better suited to the higher speeds. A car would be able to travel faster along a wide one-way than a similarly wide two-way. But one-way streets might have done American cities more harm than good.

A study of 190 neighborhoods in Louisville shows that the risk of collision and injury in areas with many one-ways is about double that of areas with only two-way streets. Cyclists and pedestrians are also more likely to get injured on one-way streets. Not only that, property values in neighborhoods with one-way streets tend be lower--on average, they were worth half of what homes were worth in neighborhoods that didn’t have one-ways.

One way streets don’t only have higher rates of collisions and injury, they also seem to come with higher rates of crime and neglect. Streets that were converted into one-ways in the 1950s and 1960s seem to have deteriorated more so than two-way streets. It’s far easier to keep an eye out for law enforcement or flee on one-way streets. And because two-way streets are less conducive to high speeds, it is more likely that people passing by would see if a crime was taking place, making one-ways more desirable for breaking the law.

Of course, similar effects could also possibly be created on one-way streets. If the main cause of two-way streets being safer and less crime-ridden is slower speeds, then perhaps one-way streets can be made just as safe using traffic-calming methods.

Podcast: Most Roads Don't Pay for Themselves

Kevin DeGood of the Center for American Progress joins the podcast this week to discuss a recent report that reminds us no transportation pays for itself, even roads. We talk about the study, how 5.5% of the roads get 55% of the travel, and what's going on in DC. You can find it on Stitcher, iTunes, Streetsblog USA or the player below.

Podcast: A Discussion with Karoliina Korppoo, Lead Designer for Cities: Skylines

There's a new city building game out!  From all the rave reviews its much better than the most recent SimCity release and you can do some cool things with modifications to terrain and your own buildings that weren't possible before. 

In this week's podcast, we talk to Karoliina about what has made the game successful, some of the cool new features that are coming out, and background on some of the nifty assets in the game including smiling sims and subway infrastructure.

Take a Listen

San Francisco's New Luxury Bus Service

There’s a new private service in San Francisco offering luxury bus rides to downtown from a few select neighborhoods. For $6 each way, Leap buses have free wifi, usb ports, and sell coffee and fresh juice on board during commutes. Leap is just one of a slew of new startups that are providing luxury or private transit services in the context of San Francisco’s often overcrowded and less than stellar public transit.

Muni has been struggling to keep up with its ridership for awhile, and recently announced a plan to improve its service. Under the plan, Muni’s service hours will increase by 2.5%. The bus shelters will receive slight improvements, like better maps, solar-powered lights that will glow even when it’s foggy, and bike racks. Muni will also try to meet service standards with more regularity. These upgrades are much needed and long awaited, but whether or not they will result in meaningful improvement to Muni has yet to be seen.

In the meantime, services like Leap are trying to corner a sector of the market that public transit just isn’t satisfying. Although Leap may reek of elitism, it is also shaking up transit industry and may drive the public sector to improve. Companies like Leap are much more flexible and experimental than public transit, and as a result, are the ones driving innovation in transit. One great feature of Leap, for instance, is that riders can pay using their smartphones or even check in via bluetooth so that they don’t even have to touch their phones. Riders can also check their phones to know how far away the bus is and how many seats are left.

Yet Leap Transit doesn’t seem to have taken off so far. The bus, which currently only serves the Marina District and North Pacific Heights, runs in the morning and takes passengers downtown, and then back to the neighborhoods in the evening. While the interior is fashionable and the service feels exclusive, the bar seating doesn’t seem very practical, and ridership seems low so far. It’s questionable whether the company will make it, but there’s no doubt that the public sector can learn some valuable lessons from it.

Podcast: Lighting in Cities with Clifton Lemon and Steve Lawton

This week on the Talking Headways Podcast Steve Lawton and Clifton Lemon of LightPlace Advisors talk about LEDs and the future of city lights.  We chat about lighting for pedestrians and how lighting has changed as cities grew up.  Join us for an enlightening adventure :)

City Building Games Can Help Illuminate Planning Issues

For those who are fans of the SimCity games, there’s a new game that’s taken the city building genre by storm. Cities: Skylines, by the Finnish game development company Colossal Order, was released last month, and it’s quickly become one of the top city building games. While there’s nothing in particular that’s is completely new or innovative about the game, it is rigorous in modelling all the traditional parts of city building simulations, a welcome change as the SimCity franchise has moved its focus towards the social engineering aspect of the game instead of the actual city building simulation.

Similar to SimCity, the player acts as mayor and builds a city by zoning land, building infrastructure, and developing public spaces like parks and schools. However, one of the biggest differences between Cities: Skylines and SimCity is that Cities: Skylines is far more robust in its modelling of transit. The game’s developers also built the transit simulation game Cities In Motion, and as a result, this game’s spectrum of transit options is much fuller: you’re able to draw bus and rail lines on top of just designating bus stops, as well as set overall service levels.

On top of being an entertaining game to play, Cities: Skylines can also be a fun way to understand urban and transportation issues. One of the greatest criticisms of the SimCity games was that it was a good game for building sprawled cities, but the lack of transit options made it impossible to model denser cities that rely on public transit. This game allows for the simulation of many more city archetypes. As you develop these cities, different issues may arise: traffic congestion, pollution, and most importantly, you’re able to see how your city’s budget holds up and its cost efficiency per citizen.

Podcast: Houston Part II - Transportation Time

This week we continue our conversation with Christof Spieler on Houston, this time focusing on transportation including discussions about BRT, High Speed Rail, the bayou bike network and implementation of the bus re-imagining program.

Egypt’s Plan for a New, Purpose-Built Capital

Egypt’s housing minister Mostafa Madbouly has announced a plan to build a completely new capital city, possibly as soon as within seven years. Cairo, which has a population of 20 million residents and is expected to continue growing, is overpopulated and polluted. The new city is expected to help alleviate some of that congestion and modernize Egypt’s capital. Unsurprisingly, this plan has been met with plenty of doubt. Egypt has built several “satellite” cities for Cairo in the past in an attempt to reduce congestion, but many of these cities now lay desolate. If that’s the case, how can a new capital city hope to attract the urban population of Cairo, which has over 1000 years of history?

The plan itself is ambitious, grand, and big. The new capital city is expected to house five million residents over 270 square miles of land, with 663 health centers, 1,250 mosques and churches, and 1.1 million homes. Taking notes from more successful purpose-built cities, the new capital will consist of mixed-use development, be connected to transit, and have plenty of green space. Madbouly believes that 1.5 million jobs will be created, and generate enough economic incentive for locals to move into the city. While planned cities have a bad reputation today, there are a few success stories, such as Brasilia.

But some have a much darker view of the plan. Egypt’s government, which rules by an authoritarian military regime, does not necessarily serve its people, and this new capital city is just as likely to be a tool for control as it is a solution to Cairo’s urban issues. Cities can be designed to make it easier for the military to quell riots and keep the poor out of sight. Not only that, this new city will be a monument to president Abdel Fatah al-Sis and his new vision for the country as well as help distance himself from Tahrir Square, where his past two predecessors were overthrown.

Podcast: Talking About Houston with Christof Spieler

This week on the podcast Houston Metro board member Christof Spieler joins me to chat about the wonder that is Houston Texas.  We chat about the densification of the urban core as well as the sprawl as it pertains to Houston's non-existent zoning.  Have a listen to this first part of a two part series.  You can subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher and you can always find it at it's original home at Streetsblog USA.

The Cost of Street Parking Spaces

Cities are adding bicycle lanes to streets with heavy bike traffic as a means of improving safety, but the process is constantly being hindered by strong opposition from the businesses along the streets where the lanes are proposed. Most small businesses with street parking spots are reluctant to give them up for parking lanes out of fear that decreased parking space will affect their business.

This was recently highlighted in San Francisco, when bike lanes were proposed for Polk Street. Though Polk was considered one of the most dangerous streets in the city for cyclists and pedestrians, the plan to add a bike lane faced heavy backlash from local merchants, and as a result, took over 2 years to implement. The backlash from local merchants provoked enough contention in bike advocates that some started a Yelp campaign against an optometrist who lobbied the Mayor to remove his block from the Polk Street bike lane plan.

However, the fears of bike lanes damaging local business are unfounded. In fact, many studies show that rather than decreasing business, increased bike traffic actually seems to promote more spending. While people in cars tend to spend more money per shopping trip, people on bikes tend to take more trips and will ultimately spend more. This has been seen in cities throughout the US and internationally, so any opposition to bike lanes based on negative economic impacts have yet to be justified.

Bike lanes aren’t the only use for parking spots that can be good for business. Parklets are popping up in front of stores and restaurants in many cities, and they too, can increase sales for nearby businesses. Parklets take up only one or two parking spots, but their occupancy rate and turnover are far higher than a parking spot. As a result, places that install parklets often find that the extra activity promotes extra business.

Talking Headways Podcast: Joe Cortright Discusses Central City Employment

On this week's podcast, Joe Cortright joins the show to discuss his new report Surging City Center Job Growth at City Observatory.  We talk about employment, employment data, and even self driving buses!  Join us either at Streetsblog or listen below.

You can always subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher as well.

How Accurate, Accessible Arrival Info Can Affect Ridership

The US continued its trend of increasing transit ridership last year, despite the dramatic drop in gas prices. While numbers varied widely across cities, the total number of transit trips in the country increased by 1% relative to 2013. Some of the increases in ridership were attributed to growths in transit service, while others were a result of economic growth. Interestingly enough, most of the national growth in heavy rail transit ridership can actually be ascribed to one city: New York. New York City makes up about one-fourth of all transit ridership in the US, so any changes there will have a significant effect on the overall numbers.

As mass transit continues to grow, one of the most useful tools to riders will undoubtedly be accurate, real-time information about their buses or trains. In fact, a study of New York’s Bus Time program, which provides real time bus tracking, found that ridership grew by about 2% on busy routes in the boroughs where the program was launched in 2011. A study done in Chicago found similar results, with ridership increasing about 2% for buses where a real-time information system was implemented. These are promising results for real-time tracking programs, but unfortunately, many of such systems in the US are often inaccurate, or broken.

On Monday, Google and Trimet rolled out a wireless train arrival beacon in Portland for the MAX light rail. The beacon connects to bluetooth-enabled Android phones and sends automatic notifications to riders at the MAX station. Whether the beacon will be a success will have to be seen: the service is not available for ios, and currently only works with Android 5.0 or newer. Riders can also access their train info online, so it’s uncertain if having an extra notification when they are already at the station will be worthwhile. Nonetheless, as public transit grows in the US, it’ll be important to expand and improve our current systems of tracking arrivals.

How Self Driving Cars Will Change Our Cities

Self-driving cars are getting a lot of publicity--and for good reason.

Some think that driverless cars will completely reshape our cityscapes. With fewer traffic accidents due to human error, autonomous vehicles would change the car repair and insurance industries. Ride-hailing companies like Uber and car-share companies like Zipcar could be transformed. One of the biggest changes, however, will be that cities won’t need nearly as many parking facilities. While there will still be a place for private car ownership, many major cities will end up having surplus parking space that can be turned into parks or even repurposed for new commercial uses.

But no matter how transformative they are, autonomous cars are unlikely to replace mass transit. One big reason is because mass transit is simply more efficient in terms of density. In cities, where space is both limited and expensive, a bus or train that can carry dozens or even hundreds of passengers will always be more efficient in terms of space and cost. And because more and more people are moving to cities, the real innovation that may come out of autonomous vehicle technology might not be the cars, but self-driving buses. After all, the US road system was built for cars, and it works just as well for buses.

Some experts fear that self driving cars will promote sprawl. Long, arduous commutes incentivize living near urban centers, but if commuting by car became much easier, the allure of city life might give way to the appeal of lower costs and bigger homes in suburbs. Many projections estimate that self driving cars could roll out as soon as the early 2020s, and since we’ve seen the effects of sprawl on health and economic mobility, it’s a big concern that planners will need to deal with soon.

Do Buses Have an Image Problem?

More often than not, transit agencies in the US will choose to develop rail service where public transit is needed, even though a bus service would be far more affordable while providing a similar level of service. The reason, according to a 2009 Federal Transit Administration report, is that bus service in the United States suffers from an image problem. Riding buses carries a “shame factor” that is not associated with trains. Unfortunately, this negative perception of buses can also extend to bus rapid transit. Successful bus rapid transit lines, with high frequency and dedicated lanes, like Los Angeles’ Orange line, aren’t even seen as buses by many riders--they are described as train-like or even bourgeois.

A poll of 1,370 people in 6 Australian cities shows that a majority of people will rank rail over bus rapid transit, despite being aware of both modes of transit. While this may suggest that people simply prefer rail to buses, a closer analysis shows that the quality of transit service is more important that type of transit. The data from Sydney, which recently improved its bus service, seems to support this, as it ranked buses highest out of all the cities. Other factors that made it more likely for a rider to rate buses positively include having a seat for the entire trip or even just riding the bus recently.

Another problem with buses may also be that transit agencies don’t run enough buses to comfortably satisfy the demand. In New York, the buses are so crowded that if they were to have better marketing, and attract those who currently take cabs, it is highly unlikely that every rider would have access. In this case, it seems that the bus’ negative image is at least in part derived from its inadequate service, and not simply because it needs better marketing.

Regardless, buses deserve a bit more credit in the US. This goes especially for bus rapid transit systems that have level boarding, dedicated lanes, reliable service, and off-board fare payment.

Podcast: Ann Cheng Discusses GreenTrip

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, Ann Cheng from Transform joins me to talk about how developers can lower their parking obligations through Green Trip, a certification program for development in the Bay Area.



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The Problematic Rapid Development of China

China has become one of the world’s largest economies in only a couple short decades. While the country’s average growth has slowed--its GDP grew by only 7.4% last year--it has established its place as a global economic superpower and will most likely maintain its ranking with a formidable economy estimated to be at $11.3 trillion in 2015.

However, this rapid growth has not come without its issues. China’s growth may have been rapid, but it has also been immensely sprawled. China became the world’s largest auto market, surpassing the United States’ 17 million car sales with 20 million car sales last year. While the country has taken measures to promote greener, more sustainable development, this auto-centricity has encouraged urban sprawl and devoured agricultural land. The destruction of agricultural land for development has in turn sparked worries over food production in China. With many farms being overtaken by airports and roads, food safety and food security are becoming increasing concerns.

This sprawl has also come with environmental costs. Many Chinese cities have become notorious for their smog levels, a consequence of its rapid urbanization which embraced cars, wide streets, and grandiose buildings. As the country developed, it welcomed foreign models of urban development, not accounting for the environmental effects that such development would have in an industrializing country with over a billion residents.

Not only that, as the country’s wealth has grown, its obesity rates have risen as well. Like other developed areas, China has seen a large influx of processed food and convenience stores. While malnutrition is no longer a big concern in urban China, obesity rates have risen quickly and dramatically. In 2012, an estimated 300 million out of 1.2 billion people were obese, making health care policy a growing priority.

China’s rapid development has been remarkable, but also challenging. It’s an opportunity for creative urban planning solutions and the development of growth policies that are more comprehensive, deliberate, and sustainable.

Changing the Dialogue Around Biking

Bike culture has seen a huge resurgence in the US over the last decade, and this has led to a growth in bike infrastructure as well as increasing concern surrounding bike safety. Bike safety has become a growing issue not only in discussions amongst bike advocates, but also in all levels of urban policy. Last week, Senator Carol Liu proposed a mandatory bike helmet law for the state of California. Liu has been a long-time supporter of active transportation, and feels that this law would promote safer biking.

However, no mandatory legislation can increase bike safety as much as promoting a bike culture that is informed, aware, and cautious. A new book, titled The Urban Cycling Survival Guide, gives a rundown on how to navigate urban streets on a bike, as well as how to bike defensively. A bike advocacy group in Seattle found that merely changing the language with which we speak about biking has a huge effect on its public perception and makes it much easier to promote bike culture. By using phrases that are people-centric, such as “people on bikes” rather than “cyclists,” bike advocates were able to rebrand the bike argument into one that is centered around safety and personal responsibility.

Of course, some areas of the US are more bike-friendly than others. Recently, San Luis Obispo established a powerful bike funding policy that will allot 20% of transportation spending from the general fund to biking. This is an extraordinary amount of bike funding for an American city, and the figure is derived from the city’s larger transportation goals to increase biking and walking levels. San Francisco, which is one of the most bike-friendly cities in the US, will be completing 3 blocks of protected bike lanes and pedestrian upgrades this coming April, albeit after numerous delays. These are encouraging signs which bode well for bike safety in the US, and a sure sign of progress for bike culture overall.

They Know Where the Bodies Are Buried

The local advocates that is.  Mariia Zimmerman of MZ Strategies joins me on the podcast this week to talk about her new report on local transportation advocacy called Transportation Transformation.

Mariia, former Chief of Staff to Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer and former Deputy Director of the Office of Sustainable Communities at HUD, brings case studies and extensive research to the discussion about how advocates can move forward with a winning transportation advocacy strategy at the local level.

Check out the report and listen in below.

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Regulating the Sharing Economy

Services like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb have revolutionized private taxis and temporary housing rentals. At the same time, these large-scale sharing economy services are in their infancy, and legislators often disagree about whether or not to regulate them, and if they do, how to regulate them.

Many cities, like New York, are concerned about the effects that Airbnb may have on affordable housing, while others have been far more accepting. Following the footsteps of San Francisco, London recently announced that they will be legalizing Airbnb, which is prohibited under the current legislation. The new legislation will allow homeowners to rent out their properties for up to 3 months of the year. While some support the move, stating that the current legislation is outdated and inconsistently reinforced, others fear that legalizing Airbnb will disrupt neighborhoods and reduce the amount of long-term housing for locals, therefore driving up the cost of rent.

Services like Uber are also troubling to local governments, because they operate outside the scope of traditionally established laws for private taxis. As a result, they’ve forced traditional taxis to reform their operations and improve the quality of their service. However, because they aren’t governed by traditional taxi laws, there are concerns over whether or not their insurance is adequate and if their drivers have been vetted enough. Not only that, there are currently no laws requiring Uber to provide services to people with disabilities, or to people who don’t have Internet access or credit cards.

Despite all the headaches that these sharing economy services give to legislators, one thing is certain: they are innovative and challenge the status quo. It’ll be interesting to see how cities will regulate these services, but hopefully they’ll able to do it in a way that won’t stifle innovation.

How Technology Transforms Planning

Tech is transforming everything, and urban planning hasn’t been overlooked.

Uber recently offered to share its private trip data starting with the city of Boston, and this, as well as other private data, has some big implications for traffic planning. Private car data can be lifted from phones, taxis, sensors, and cameras. It can elucidate real-time traffic patterns and has the potential to help planners drastically improve street networks and remedy traffic congestion. It does have some downsides however with the data coming from certain demographics and geography limitations. 

Tech has also introduced some really useful tools that have the potential to make planning far more efficient, simple, and transparent. Transitmix was created as a fantasy bus route tool, where users could create bus routes, see their costs, plan their stops, and even overlay Census data such as income. It soon became apparent that a tool like this could be invaluable to professionals--it’s almost difficult to imagine that transit planners went so long without a specialized tool to quickly map out transit possibilities.

Social media opens up a channel of communication between transit agencies and their constituencies. In December, New Jersey Transit decided to take a much more proactive stance to their Facebook and Twitter pages, and it’s allowed them gauge rider opinions as well as provide updates to users. Social media is also being used as a means of promoting California’s extensive but struggling state park system. A new app, called CaliParks, pulls images from Instagram and Flickr to allow users to get a dynamic and appealing view of over 12,000 green spaces in California.

Technology has proved to be a disruptive force in planning, and many of the innovations it brings forth forces us to upgrade some of our archaic and inefficient practices, as well as rethink some of the incorrect perceptions we based our planning decisions on.

Talking Headways Podcast: Discussing Atlanta, Denver and Seoul

This week on Talking Headways, UrbanCincy's Randy Simes joins me to talk about his current home in South Korea and his previous home in Atlanta.

We chat about transit, infrastructure including wood pipes, and feeder roads in Texas.  What a strange concept.

We also celebrate the Denver Fastracks vote 10th Anniversary.

Check it out below.

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The Only Thing That Will Fix a Housing Shortage Is More Housing

A shortage of affordable housing has been a huge problem for urban areas, and a recent pair of charts from Trulia’s chief economist really highlights a big issue with housing development in the US. For the past few years, housing development has grown the most in suburbs and less in urban areas, but the price of housing in urban areas is rising the fastest. Basically, the housing supply in urban areas is not growing quickly enough to meet demand.

This problem has been illustrated perfectly in San Francisco. The city’s population has grown rapidly, but the growth in its housing stock has lagged behind. Since 2010, the population of San Francisco has increased by 45,000 people, but the housing stock has only increased by 7,500 units. With that kind of population growth and the relatively meager amount of housing development, it’s really no surprise that housing prices in the city have skyrocketed.

A similar phenomenon is happening in San Diego, which was recently named America’s least affordable city by Realtor.com. San Diego is slated to have 590,000 more people by 2050, and the only way to accommodate all these new residents is to increase the city’s density and develop more housing.

Developing more housing is what Austin did in response to its growing population, and it’s had some promising results so far. Though the cost of housing in Austin rose for the past several years, the addition of 10,000 new units to the area last year seems to have somewhat stabilized rents. The occupancy rate in the Austin area dropped by 4% down to 94% last year, the lowest it has been since 2012. While we have to see how the housing stock will hold up over the years, it’s no question that some cities, like San Francisco, would probably benefit from an increase in housing development.

The Many Reasons for the Decline In Car Culture

Car culture seems to be declining worldwide, and urbanization and technology may play a big part in that. Millennials are more willing to live in cities and stay there rather than move to suburbs, unlike the previous generation. This means that they’re less likely to own cars and more likely to take public transit, walk, or use private taxis like Uber. Not only that, social media allows people to stay in touch without ever leaving their home, and e-commerce makes it possible for people to purchase things online, decreasing the overall number of trips that people need to make. The number of cars per driver in the US has fallen from 1.2 in 2007 to 1.15 this year.

This trend is global. For instance, in London, cycling levels have risen rapidly over the last couple years, to the point where cycling now makes up one-sixth of all traffic in central London. This is a record-breaking level of cycling in the city, and part of it is due to the increased availability of bike share docks and bicycles. In San Francisco, the majority of trips are made without private cars, and it’s been that way for several years. In addition, the prevalence of shared-use structures like pedestrian and bike bridges has grown all over, and we’re only going to see an increase in infrastructure dedicated to car-free transit in the coming years.

Another major reason for the decline in car culture is that automobiles are simply not sustainable. Global leaders, such as Al Gore and former Mexican president Felipe Calderon, have proposed a radical idea: why don’t we spend the $90 Trillion that will be invested in infrastructure over the next 15 years toward developing cities that aren’t car-centric?

Some will argue we'll never get there, but the times, they are changing.

Right now is a crucial time in shaping the future of urban transportation. 75% of the infrastructure that will exist in 2050 hasn’t been built yet, so the decisions that we make about the direction of our cities’ transportation systems over the next few years will be critical. Let's not take them for granted

When You Can Put a Face to Hardship

I always marvel at the generosity of people when it comes to strangers.  But especially to strangers who are shown to have a hardship on television or in the news.  So it came as no surprise this week that a Detroit man, James Robertson, who travels almost a marathon every day gets the attention of folks who really want to help.

I would however love to see the demographics and opinions of those generous people.  Perhaps the biggest thing I would ask is...

"Do you support paying more in taxes for a better transit network?"


The reason I would ask this questions is because while in urbanist circles we understand the connection between housing and transportation costs and supply and demand for affordable housing (apparently though in SF we still don't get it) I wonder how much people actually do understand. 

There's always so much push back to giving "those people" access but when there is a face put to the masses, they are more charitable with their money and time.

And people put up over $260K for a car for James, but that money would probably fund a few bus routes for more than just one person. 

I think Ben Adler at Grist puts it best when he says:

Only in America would we assume that Robertson’s 46-mile commute is the natural order of things and the problem is that some people don’t have cars. Robertson’s situation demonstrates that low-income residents of Detroit and other cities around the U.S. need two things: mass transit and affordable housing near jobs.

So what do we need to do to educate people about this? How do we explain the concept of economic competitiveness and access?

There was a great City Metric piece recently on this issue.  They explain how much transit means to EU economies.  It's pretty huge.

In fact, the sector accounts for €130-150bn of the EU’s GDP each year, as well as providing 1.2m jobs and indirectly creating the conditions for an estimated 2-2.5m more.

But not just that, it's about access, just like in James' case.

That’s why, in London, one of the major advocates for the soon-to-be completed Crossrail project was the business sector: it realised that investment in public transport is key to matching employers with appropriately skilled employees, and retailers with customers. 

Check out the piece, it makes a compelling case for other co-benefits as well. And if you want a US case, just check out New York.

The more jobs you can reasonably commute to within an hour, the more job opportunities you'll have, and the higher your wage will be.

...

In New York, mass transit is the path to economic mobility, not education, It’s far more important to have a MetroCard than a college degree.

And sure, we can connect people with cars.  But there's a tax on that.  There's roads to build, parking to provide and upkeep to the car for each individual.  And if you're sitting in traffic, your time is a tax.

James couldn't keep his car running because it cost too much.  But he and others wouldn't have to worry about that if they are paying into a larger system.  One where everyone benefits, not just those who happen to have a car.

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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.

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.

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

 

And where they work...

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.

   

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%

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.

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.

The Debate Over Whether Gentrification Exists

Editors Note: Kelly Wong has been collecting articles from The Direct Transfer that tell the story of different urban issues.  Her posts from the Direct Transfer Blog will also appear on the Overhead Wire.  If you wish to subscribe to The Direct Transfer Daily Email, a project of the Overhead Wire please visit here.  To see Kelly's previous posts, you can find them here.

Gentrification is most commonly debated about in the sense that people disagree on how to counter its negative effects. However, there are also some who debate whether gentrification is actually harmful at all. Some people think it’s is one of the biggest urban issues in the developed world, some acknowledge that it’s not good but feel that there are bigger problems to worry about, and others deny that the negative effects of gentrification are nearly as abundant as the media make them out to be.

 A recent Slate article argues that for the most part, the negative effects of gentrification are hugely exaggerated, to the point where gentrification is more of a myth than an established urban phenomenon. After all, gentrification in which a previously poor neighborhood becomes overtaken by upper and middle class residents is extremely rare, and the article argues there is little proof that displacement happens in gentrifying neighborhoods any more than it happens in non-gentrifying neighborhoods. Socioeconomic status of most neighborhoods is quite stable over time, and neighborhoods that have had rises in average income actually reap some benefits from it.

 Others vehemently disagree. Looking at New York, which is one of the most illustrative cases of gentrification, we can see a definite and dramatic change in racial and income demographics over the last couple decades. The black population in many neighborhoods decreased while the white population increased, along with an increase in income. Subsidized affordable rentals are far more likely to convert to market rate in gentrified neighborhoods, driving out lower income residents who will no longer be able to afford the cost of housing.

 This City Limits survey shows that while some people think that gentrification is a good thing, the majority of readers feel that gentrification is problematic, though they vastly disagree about how to counter it or whether it can even be remedied. If there’s one thing the debate over gentrification shows, it’s that the issue is complex and nuanced, and that no easy answers will be appearing anytime soon.