This post on why Chicago doesn’t need more lane-miles got what I consider high praise on SkyscraperCity: _not a normal post._

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If widening highways to reduce congestion is like loosening your belt to reduce obesity, then widening highways just to say that “my number on some obscure lane-miles per capita computation is bigger than yours” is like, um, well, I won’t go there. Since when was the amount of pavement per capita indicative of high quality of life?

Point 1: St. Louis has *seven times* more freeway lane-miles per capita than Vancouver: 3’6″ vs. 0’6″ (and declining every day). Which city is the envy of the world?
(Thanks to Patrick Condon for the comparison: http://www.planetizen.com/node/132)

Point 2: Merely pouring money into suburban transit (a nice way to drive air around the suburbs) won’t fix anything. Land use and transportation changes must occur simultaneously. Note that the “nice” and “acceptable” parts of suburbia are those which grew up around rail: back then, before Big Government decided to engineer two cars into every garage, the two mutually reinforced one another. Now, not so much.

Point 3: Prior policy decisions shape today’s attitudes. The “overwhelming preference” for suburban living and/or for driving came about only because of decades of, yes, social engineering. So, what’s a little more in the other direction?

Point 4: Sure, we can rationalize existing road capacity better. Closing more ramps downtown will help, and will provide opportunities for decking over the freeway. A congestion charge might get more passing-through truckers to use the two bypasses, which is what they were built for. The latest trick is the High Occupancy/Toll (HOT) lane: reserving express lanes for carpools and toll-payers. We have the infrastructure — segregated express lanes, I-Pass, and a network of enforcement cameras — but not the political will. Think of traffic as a supply and demand problem: if demand exceeds supply, maybe it’s time to raise the price and reduce demand, particularly if the demand is for a good with negative social costs. Rationing road priority based on queue (whoever got there first), just like bread in a Soviet grocery, makes no sense whatsoever.

Point 5: Widening roads DOES materially injure those of us who don’t drive. All those cars need to go somewhere once they exit the freeway: onto the local streets and into parking lots that deaden the city. All those cars also belch toxic fumes, making my bike commute that much more unpleasant and unhealthful, and all of them abrade tires and the road surface, resulting in that nasty 2mm pile of black soot on my windowsills, just weeks after I cleaned them.

Point 6: Why do cagers always choose the most extreme examples for their trips? 24,800 cars a day drive in front of my apartment. Don’t tell me that all 24,800 drivers are taking their pregnant, paraplegic grandmothers to the ER. _Of course_ there are trips where driving makes much more sense than other modes, but for many people the number of such trips is vastly exaggerated.

Chicago Wilderness has a section called Into the Wild: “preserves and wild places we have profiled in [the magazine], with narratives, trail maps, and directions.” Provided, of course, that you can get there: few of the directions relate to “transit or cycling”:http://www.carfreechicago.com.

Inside the dark, smoky room today, Cook County’s Democratic committeemen voted (surprise) to slot Stroger Jr. into Stroger Sr.’s ballot slot. Most of the votes for Danny Davis came from the West Side and the near-west towns, in or around Davis’ Congressional district. Only two (15th and 16th wards) came from the South Side, heart of the Stroger machine. A few votes came from the north lakefront and north suburbs, according to an anonymous spy posting at The Capitol Fax Blog.

Recent noises from Madigan’s office have pointed the way towards an even steeper CTA funding crisis this fall. A “Trib editorial”:http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0607030175jul03,1,1899216.story?coll=chi-opinionfront-hed sums it up:

bq. The CTA created the problem by financing operations with money that should have gone to pensions. That avoided a shutdown of mass transit, but only deepened the agency’s financial problems. The CTA won’t get out of this mess just by pinching pennies. That $200 million is an annual obligation nearly four times as big as the 2006 deficit that caused the CTA to threaten doomsday cuts. It represents about 20 percent of the CTA’s $1.04 billion operating budget for this year.

The proximate causes of CTA’s funding problems are higher labor costs, in the form of the distinctly un-sexy pension and health care budgets. The pension crisis isn’t unique by any means to CTA or even to “Illinois”:http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=17026, which has only managed to balance its past few budgets by raiding its own pension funds. Public pension funds across the country “are foundering”:http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_24/b3937081.htm. If new reporting requirements that give a fuller (or perhaps unnecessarily dire) view of liabilities are correct, the total obligations that state/local taxpayers owe to public sector retirees could dwarf the much better publicized crisis in Social Security. Meanwhile, health care costs (particularly for retirees) are hamstringing not just governments, but Corporate America as well; hence Obama’s idea of “a federal bailout of the Big Three’s retiree health plans”:http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/2/8/1392/77402 in return for stricter environmental standards. In short, the problem isn’t unique to CTA or even to transit; these are systemic problems endemic to America’s half-baked social welfare system. It’s just that this time, they affect a public utility necessary to the region’s economic life.

Last year, Livable City in San Francisco brainstormed “a list of potential funding mechanisms”:http://livablecity.org/campaigns/munifunding.html that could be used to close Muni’s operating budget deficit. Muni benefits from being a part of the SF City/County government, so many of Livable City’s strategies center around increasing parking rates. Others, however, note local governments’ statutory abilities to raise vehicle registration fees and gas taxes.

In Boston last month, the MBTA was distributing “a booklet”:http://www.mbta.com/traveling_t/fare_increase_information.asp outlining a steep fare hike in the works for T riders. Ever since I last lived in Boston, the T has been on a downward spiral of fare hikes and funding cuts, precipitated by “a reform of its funding formula”:http://www.pihp.com/pihp/archives/2006/05/forward_funding.php that amounted to a steep cut in state subsidies. What seems to be different in Boston, though, is that the level of cynicism, animosity, and distrust among the media and the community toward the transit authority seems much lower than in Chicago; even “Boston Magazine”:http://bostonmagazine.com/articles/boston_magazine_fare_and_balanced (like most city magazines, read mostly in the prosperous suburbs) carried a satirical op-ed suggesting that fares for “urban commuters who’ve been watching, with something approaching horror, their beloved public transit system fall apart before their eyes” remain static while jacking suburbanites’ commuter rail fares 80%. The suburbanites would be “pacified with free crap… baubles, shiny things, whatever.” Maybe it’s because their tolerance of taxes is higher, or because the T has a more open process, or something.

Looks like the cluster of Olympic venues planned to ring McCormick Place would make a good case for reinventing the Metra Electric as rapid transit. Some call it the Gray Line; I prefer Aqua.

Thomas Corfman in Crain’s Chicago Business reports on a rumored new art house cinema in the West Loop:

bq. Sundance Cinemas LLC is close to signing a letter of intent to open a six- to eight-screen theater in a 266,000-square-foot, multistory development proposed… at 1137 W. Jackson Blvd… Called Metro Center 290, to play up the location along Interstate 290, plans for the project also include a specialty grocery store and a health club.

Not necessarily any closer to me than the Music Box or Landmark’s Century Centre, but at least on the Blue Line (a block from Racine/Congress). Yet… why not at Block 37?

Two neat sites that uncover what should be common knowledge:
* Crain’s put up a “Market Facts”:http://www.chicagobusiness.com/marketFacts.html page to complement this week’s issue, featuring interactive maps of Chicago community areas devised by CNT using ESRI data. Several show 2000-2006 (est.) changes in population, race/ethnicity, and income, although the usual caveats about midyear estimates apply. One shows how much money each CA spends on gas in the aggregate (pretty shocking to think that my neighborhood spends $70M on gas a year — that could buy one hella lot of single-speed bikes); another, MP3 player ownership. I can probably personally attest that far more than 1,905 West Town-ners own MP3 players, judging from the rush-hour crowds boarding the Blue Line.

* Austin has an exemplary “downtown redevelopment”:http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/downtown/ info portal, with printable posters highlighting what’s under construction, the standard GIS viewer, a monthly newsletter, PDF downloads of major planning reports, tourist maps, and building permit data. The city’s collection of “demographic maps”:http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/census/maps.htm also answer plenty of unusual (but good) questions, like where McMansions or apartments are being built, who voted how on municipal propositions, how fast taxes are rising, and where immigrants, single mothers, voters, and the educated live.

[posted to pro-urb, about inclusionary density bonuses]

“isn’t it the case that pro formas often start to look a whole lot sweeter when one can find ways to add units to the project?”

Not necessarily. As I understand it (having talked pretty extensively with developers as part of a process examining inclusionary requirements here), the increased economies of scale gained from higher density fall apart once you approach/cross certain thresholds — the incremental increase in housing units may not result in a sufficient increment in profit.

One developer claimed that on one project, a doubling of FAR was still insufficient to offset a 20% inclusionary requirement. The neighborhood had a strict height limit, and packing additional bulk below that line was neither possible nor desirable. Other de facto limits occur elsewhere: single family houses are indeed more profitable than townhouses; high-rises run into various engineering problems as they cross certain heights.

Additionally, construction costs per unit are much higher at higher densities, so the “free land” granted by the density bonus is worth less as a percentage of the total unit cost; and the usual trick of building smaller, uglier “affordable” houses doesn’t work when the “market” houses are 400 sq. ft. studio apartments.

That same developer, though, thought that relief from parking requirements *would* be an effective way of mitigating the cost of high-density inclusionary units. Meanwhile, a payment in lieu fee has proven quite popular with high-rise developers, which might indicate that it’s underpriced.

Other blogs give you movie reviews. This one reviews zoning codes every once in a while; here, Chicago (“synopsis”:http://egov.cityofchicago.org/webportal/COCWebPortal/COC_ATTACH/zoningcode_highlights.html | “full text”:http://w14.cityofchicago.org:8080/zoning/default.jsp), as posted to pro-urb.

1. Urbanism: good. Nothing groundbreaking, but even the 1957 ordinance wasn’t bad. The new, finer grain of residential districts, required rear open space, contextual (averaged) front setbacks, new building envelope specifications, and Pedestrian Street designation have all worked very well. Some difficult sites (like acute-angle “flatirons”) are now once again developable.

However, nothing can stop cut-rate construction con artists from making a buck off a housing bubble; enforcement of building and zoning codes alike has been a problem, including brazen violation of height limits, shearing off of promised ornament, and parking garage bloat. Law enforcement, as you might have heard, has never been among Chicago’s strengths.

(Question: how well have urban pattern books fared, given today’s shoddy standards? I liked the “Norfolk pattern book”:http://www.norfolk.gov/Planning/comehome/Norfolk_Pattern_Book/residents.html, and I’m aware of the Prince’s Foundation work in teaching craftsmen, but even our prized, design-guidelined historic districts get the same schlock as anywhere else. I can’t imagine that a mere pattern book would’ve stopped the developers of “this”:http://flickr.com/photos/tags/ugliestbuildingever.)

2. Simplicity: fair. Not having to deal with those endless pages of uses makes a difference, as do the illustrations, but honestly the old code was pretty straightforward. Several new practices were introduced that create some basic level of design review, including “type 1 rezonings” (attach a site plan) and the lower PUD thresholds.

3. Process: poor. The alderman still zones however’s best for his campaign fund (e.g., pro-developer or pro-NIMBY), context and best practices be damned. Of course, the code could not have changed this. We also have absolutely no tradition of forward planning here; stuff just happens, and as a result transit routes traverse dying industrial and overpriced single-family areas while developers go wild with high-rises a mile away.

Having some rather intransigent aldermen on the drafting committee did not help [the principal authors’] job any. Farr & Associates wrote the pedestrian streets language and contributed elsewhere.

bq. _Dennis McClendon_: The bonus for green roofs must be particularly cost-effective, because every developer now claims it. Personally I’m dubious about the effectiveness of these little squares of chia pet

My favorite still remains the acre of sod atop a west-side home-improvement big box, adjacent to the 10-acre asphalt slab. Yep, that’ll show ’em.

The necessary corollary to Don Shoup’s Parking Benefit District is such a district that works where there’s already metered parking and a BID/SSA in place: the “Parking Increment Finance” district.

How might this work for the new Wicker Park-Bucktown SSA ? (Assumptions below.) Currently, several blocks near “the crotch” at Milwaukee, North, and Damen are metered 8AM – 9PM, six days a week, at a piddling 25¢ per hour. (Valet services find willing customers at $9 + tip.) First of all, raise rates to 50¢ an hour; no one will even notice, and revenues will double — give that to the city in return for new meters, more meter maids (police presence!), whatever. Extend existing Monday-Saturday meters from 9PM to midnight (at a “premium,” but still cheap rate of $1 an hour) and add Sundays; result: just the _two blocks_ nearest “the crotch” would capture an astonishing $486,720. (Edit: That doesn’t even count the incremental revenue from extending meters from _one_ block out to two, which should be done posthaste.)

Adding one new mile of parking meters at a modest price of 50¢ an hour would yield $578,160 in a year. Combined, the two proposals would raise over $1 million a year from just the most congested area, dwarfing the $664,496 budget that the SSA will raise from taxing over six miles of streets.

To prevent spillover, permit parking would have to be extended to more side streets. Evening-only (6 PM – 6 AM) permitted parking should provide plenty of parking for residents and for daytime businesses like offices and lunchtime restaurants. The SSA could even broker the resale of side-street permits from residents to businesses, who could use them for employee parking — thus keeping drunk customers off side streets, and providing an incentive for car-free or car-light residents. All of this would require amending the ordinance, but the potential revenues make it well worthwhile — especially once PBD pilots (potentially in Hyde Park and Logan Square) get underway.

(Speaking of parking permits, why are they only $25 a year? That’s renting prime [by definition!] city land — in many of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, and to drivers, who are wealthier than the city average — for 27.7¢ per square foot per year, half a cent a week. By comparison, take Lake View, where parking spots go for $30 _per game_ [$660 just for three weeks of night games a year!] and retail rents right next to that permitted parking for $40 a foot, triple net; in Rogers Park, where Loyola charges $446 a year for resident parking; and in Hyde Park, where the University of Chicago rents spaces for $360+ a year. Off-street outdoor parking here in Bucktown goes for $75/month, or $900/year. Looks like parking rates could go up tenfold and still substantially undercut the market price.)

My lowball assumptions: 30 x 15′ parking spaces per 660′ block face plus three parking spaces available around each side street corner (on side street, but just off main streets and within SSA property boundaries), totaling 33 spaces per block face or 528 per mile. Each full day for new meters assumes six occupied hours (out of 16 metered hours, a mere 37.5% occupancy rate) at an average of 50¢ per hour, or $1,095 a year. For increment on existing meters: assuming 50% occupancy, $1 per hour for Monday-Saturday night parking (of course, the higher rate could be charged at 6PM, not 9PM) and 50¢ per hour for Sunday, for an increment of $676 a year. This also assumes that spaces blocked for valets will also contribute to the fund at the usual rate. By comparison, in 2001 Old Town Pasadena raised $2,096 per meter; 18% went to collection overhead, including ubiquitous meter maids at all hours.

The sheer number of valet operations in the area makes consolidating their operations into satellite lots quite easy and lucrative. Several big box stores at the fringes (K Mart, Aldi, Kohl’s) and some church facilities (St. Mary’s, Holy Family, St. Mary’s and St. Elizabeth’s hospitals) have enormous lots that are empty during the dinner rush, just perfect for storing valet-ed cars.

Good to see that the Metropolitan Planning Council has weighed in on Pilsen’s “odd downzoning initiative”:https://westnorth.com/2006/03/27/building-on-the-election, since usually aldermen hear little to counter the neighborhood NIMBYs.

Also, a word on the pace: some days, I sit down and finish a bunch of half- or three-fourths-formed posts. Today’s one of those, apparently. Happy Solstice!

On my way down to the University of Chicago campus recently to give a tour, I realized that the tremendous socioeconomic change that has taken place on the mid-South Side could really open up Hyde Park to the rest of the city. From an “artist colony in Bridgeport”:http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/travel/19surface.html (written up in the NY Times!) to the rapid infill of formerly bombed-out “Bronzeville”:http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/photos/chi-060205kenwood2-story,1,460184.story?coll=chi-photos-utl, Hyde Park is no longer the island it once was. Sure enough, brochures on campus touted “Arts & Culture in Hyde Park”:http://arts.uchicago.edu to tourists, and placards on trains throughout the city trumpeted the new Hyde Park Arts Center. Scores of people, mostly Chicagoans, showed up at the tours — many more than I was expecting, even with the lovely weather.

Perhaps most interestingly, the university has started a Experience Chicago site which _recommends_ that students use the Garfield bus and Red Line to get across town, and even lists gay bars in South Shore. Big, big difference.

To wit, I recently got a party invitation set for a gallery space near 41st & State, once probably the epicenter of South Side decay. Now that the Taylor Homes are gone, it’s wide open!