Future Housing Near Transit Hit Hard

While we've seen housing that exists near transit hold its value and become a hot commodity during the downturn, we also see the flipside, new housing near transit is not getting built because of the lack of demand for housing, people just don't have money. This is true in Seattle and in the East Bay where big plans exist for transit villages around Link and BART. In Seattle:

For-profit developers proposed more than 1,500 condos and apartments within a 10-minute walk of a station. Now, with the trains to carry their first paying passengers in three months, most of those deals are on hold. Project after project has been delayed or derailed, victimized by tight credit and related economic woes.

In the Bay Area on the Freemont line the plans are getting hit the same way:

All along the East Bay’s Interstate 880 corridor, from Oakland to Fremont, cities are putting plans for hundreds of units of market-rate housing on ice. The projects can’t go forward until the credit crisis thaws, allowing developers to obtain loans that they typically used to build.

I wonder how much more could be built though if they didn't have to worry so much about parking, the bane of every TOD's existence.

In Fremont, for example, where the city wants to build 300 condominiums near its BART station, plans originally called for the housing to sit atop a subterranean parking garage. To avoid the added cost of building an underground parking lot, the developers turned to a new scheme that calls for the multi-story housing to wrap around an elevated parking structure.

The Dallas donut (an apartment building wrapped around an internal parking structure) is usually what the market will bear after (edit: was until) transit, if only it were easier.

Oh Noes! Street Parking Havoc!

So says an article in the Virginian Pilot. I had to chuckle when I saw the head line, "Light-rail work creates street-parking havoc in Norfolk". Havoc they say, pandemonium ensues and all is lost!

Machismo Burrito Bar owner Bill Caton worries it will drive him out of business. Like many businesses in densely developed Freemason, his relies on street parking for his customers.

But then we find out just how many spaces will be lost. A whopping 40. Someone at the city of Norfolk should have taken pedestrian counts before, during, and after the light rail construction. Then I checked the Pilot's website and what were the ads around the article? All for autos. Sure its not a direct correlation, but we know who pays for a lot of advertising budget for the news. Parking story? Big News!!!

Bruxelles Finishes Subway Segment

Our friends over at spagblog have an update on the completion of the last part of the circle line in Brussels.

Passengers travelled for free on the 4th of April on the Brussels Metro, on the occasion of opening the last segment of the circle line, connecting Delacroix and Gare de l’Ouest stations. The whole metro network has been reorganized as well: The 2 line leaves and arrives in at Simonis, where every second train continues to Roi Bauduin as line 6; and the remaining 3 branches of the former 1A/B line are served by lines 1 and 5.

Chris Leinberger Says It

I've seen a lot of these quotes recently.

Rail transit drives walkable urban places. I've never seen one dollar of real estate investment invested because of a bus stop. But if you have [rail] transit, it's a different story altogether.

Guerrilla Streetcar Movement

Historians in LA are checking out historic houses along the streetcar lines that used to run all over the region. That got me thinking, we have housing evidence of streetcar lines in the city, but what if there were a guerrilla effort to stripe all the streets that once had streetcars on them. If people could see what had been lost, would they want it back?

Philanthropy Intersecting Transit

I just had a wild and crazy idea. Much of the capital fundraising for philanthropy seems geared towards building new museums and other major pieces of infrastructure. In particular I was thinking about how Gap money man Don "More Parking" Fischer is looking to spend millions of dollars to build a new museum in the Presidio. The approximate $100 million could also be used to build a subway station along a Geary subway line.

But I wouldn't say that we shouldn't build the museum. I think the Museum should be attached to or at least part of the Subway station. In this way, new subway lines would be strings of culture funded in part by the philanthropic minded of the city while also providing a public good in transportation.

While we are always saying that we need to keep land use and transportation in one mindset, it seems that we could be thinking of better ideas of how to keep the large amount of donations that come from philanthropic interests moving towards not only the public good of increasing culture, but the public good of reducing emissions and improving movement and air quality for all citizens of the city. I would donate money to these causes and I believe others would as well for the double benefit that comes from it. I know I'm crazy but sometimes you just gotta throw ideas out there.

People Want Rail, Clean Energy...

but they don't want to pay for it. I'll pay my share. Where do I sign? And where can I pay up for a San Francisco Metro network?

-86% believe that investing in alternative energy will create jobs
-84% support investment in fuel efficient railways
-Solid majorities support policies that transfer wealth to individuals and businesses who invest in clean technology (84% like tax rebates for individuals who reduce energy use, 79% support the same for businesses, 73% support tax rebates on hybrid vehicles, 72% support policies that both reward business that reduce CO2 emissions and penalize those that don’t.)
-68% support investments in energy independence, even if it raises energy costs.
...
While this should come as no surprise, it’s worth noting that in spite of the overwhelming support for good policy, no one really wants to pay for it. From congestion pricing to gas taxes, overwhelming majorities are opposed to those options that—as framed in the survey—suggest that specific economic pain may be imposed on the specific survey responder.

Obama's Rail Envy

Bring me some Budapest or Frankfurt anyday.

Why not start building high-speed rail? One thing that, as an American who is proud as anybody of my country – I am always jealous about European trains. And I said to myself, why can’t we have — (applause) — why can’t we have high-speed rail? And — and so we’re investing in that, as well.

"This City is Supposed to Be Green"

Yes it is. But we have a fake green mayor. So this argument falls on deaf ears at city hall.

"I get that times are tough," Shelley Keith, 19, said as she waited for either a 14-Mission or a 26-Valencia for her trip home to Bernal Heights on Friday afternoon. "What I don't get is why cut public transportation. This is supposed to be a green city."

Transit riders get it. It's San Francisco's leadership that can't get their heads around that idea. Wake up you emerald aristocracy. It's times like these we need transit most. Congestion pricing for carbon cars anyone?

The Mission

If you choose to accept it, is to only build a transit system for people who can't afford to have a car. If you deviate from said mission, you will be endangering the... eh why should we listen to guys like this?

Once again, UTA has demonstrated that it doesn't have a clear idea of its mission. Should UTA provide sensible, economical public transportation to the Wasatch Front, or should it just build things? Should it try to serve the population that cannot use automobiles, or should it spend public funds in an impossible quest to lure wealthy commuters to mass transit?

In fact yes, public transit should provide quality transportation for those who can not use automobiles. But we shouldn't say you're poor so you can't have quality service. Perhaps we should start saying, you're rich, so why should we subsidize that suburban freeway. You can pay for it. There are many reasons to provide great transit service instead of just adequate including the idea that better transit for those who need it most is better transit that can be used by all. Complaining about it just makes it look like the forces of better transit are winning. Cheers to that.