Category Archives: transit

Crossing the line

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Metro briefs for today. (Whew, am I sick of food trucks, although I appreciate Jef Nickerson for saying what’s on my mind: “I’m not saying Food Trucks should be banned, far from it. What I would like to see is, the city thinking about ways to encourage other forms of street food, be they micro-storefronts, push carts, Food Trucks, or something else.”)

1. Chris Leinberger tries to make nice with Joel Kotkin by pointing out that the latter is stuck in the old city vs. suburb dichotomy, hung up on municipal boundaries. This is still necessary that many years after David Rusk‘s “elastic cities” hypothesis? And for a writer based in the southwest, with its highly elastic cities? I’m more inclined to chalk it up to willful ignorance.

(Since I grew up in an “elastic” city with a regional school district, all of which consisted principally of low-density sprawl that overran and embedded a few country towns, I’ve always thought this distinction was a complete canard. Of course “auto-dependent sprawl” and “walkable urbanism” can both exist in either city, suburb, town, or country. Duh.)

2. Delhi is following Singapore and writing traffic tickets based on photo evidence of infractions posted to Facebook. I typically would support measures to improve the ubiquity of traffic law enforcement, particularly as regards public safety, but this raises serious concerns about due process. I wonder how much supporting evidence would be necessary to verify that such photos haven’t been doctored: untampered EXIF data? GPS tracks showing that the car was at that location?

3. “Chicago taxpayers [will] cry” over the $11 billion that the Morgan Stanley joint venture [JV] will make over the term of the parking meter lease, according to Bloomberg’s Darrell Preston. (The JV also admits that the amount it spent on new meters amounts to a mere $40M.) Interesting that the JV is issuing what amounts to parking-meter revenue bonds — except priced as corporate bonds, not as tax-exempt municipal debt. (I’ve been saying all this time that an easier and more cost-effective way to tap into the future revenue stream would be for the city to jack the rates and issue revenue bonds. The primary reason for not doing this is that it would add debt to the city’s books, thereby lowering its credit rating — and that the proceeds from municipal bonds are subject to greater City Council scrutiny under Illinois law than the proceeds from a PPP. Well, the city got a downgrade anyways.)

Meanwhile, of course, San Francisco — which pioneered parking meter revenue bonds back in 1994 — has just launched SFpark, its municipally run advanced market-pricing scheme. The startup costs are underwritten via a loan from the MPO, interestingly, to be paid back with the enhanced revenues. And guess what else? The city still retains the flexibility to do cool things with its public space, like curbside bike parking. Imagine that!

4. An interesting participation exercise from the Next American City, sponsored by IBM’s Smarter Cities ad campaign: The Next American City Challenge on Tumblr.

5. Speaking of Tumblr, TakeMeWithYou is a WPB Make Believe project that used the “community disposable camera” model of storytelling. This was suggested as one idea for our WPB plan outreach process; glad to see that it came up with some fun results.

6. Great article by Fred Mayer on the Twin Cities (and Madison) bike economy, which he estimates at over $300M in revenues annually. One might think that the bike industry should prove to have a particularly lucrative local multiplier effect: it’s relatively light on capital and heavy on labor, and generates positive local externalities — quite unlike driving, which sucks money out of other sectors of the economy and sends almost all of its capital costs out of the local economy.

7. Park51, or the Cordoba Initiative, is obviously a local zoning matter — and as such, national Republicans have zero say. Perhaps that’s why they’re fast falling into line to “stand against the Ground Zero mosque,” since it’s completely painless: it will undoubtedly happen, and they can look like they’re doing something (paying lip service to the insane base) without actually affecting any real change. Yet watching this is frightening: for government to step in and “stop” Park51 wouldn’t just prohibit the free exercise of religion (1st Amendment) but also deprive the rightful landowners their property (5th Amendment). That this self-described “Don’t Tread on Me” crowd can show off that much contempt for personal freedoms just makes it all the more obvious that such “freedoms” only apply to their selfish selves.

8. Tom Philpott over at Grist notes that even most rural farms, much less urban farms, don’t make money. It frustrates me that so many people are so hopelessly naïve about farming’s poor economics: after the U.S. has spent trillions of dollars paving over farmland because it’s uneconomical, suddenly now farming will be profitable enough to underwrite demolition and infrastructure work to undo it all? This goes double for architects who concoct schemes featuring purpose-built “vertical ag” megastructures for agriculture (the very definition of a “factory farm”), or those positing urban farms as the solution for just about everything urban-decline related.

For instance, last year’s Re-Burbia competition finalists included exactly two approaches that comprehensively evolving suburbs through individual initiative. The rest of the schemes were a collection of inflexible (and therefore inherently unsustainable) megastructures (the sort of megalomaniacal thinking that got us into this mess of cloverleafs, malls, and McMansions), one-off tech gizmo wonder panaceas, or land-use transformations that betray a complete misunderstanding of economics (farms and wetlands are great, but they just don’t pay the rent).

As Alex Steffen (via Allison Arieff in Good) points out (and as SF Streetsblog commenters echo), it’s a folly to think that any vacant land (even in stagnant cities) should automatically be best thought of as agriculture, particularly permanently; in many cases, such land could best enhance regional sustainability (and the regional economy) if used to enhance walkability instead with more housing, retail, or workplaces. The difference between zero and ten food miles is nothing like the difference between ten and 2,000. Eliminating the first 99.5% of the food miles is easy and necessary, so let’s not obsess over the last 0.4%.

(And really, this has nothing to do with the orchard. Honest: that necessarily has to be open space of some kind.)

9. “[C]limatologists have long theorized that in a warming world, the added heat would cause more record highs and fewer record lows. The statistics suggest that is exactly what is happening. In the United States these days, about two record highs are being set for every record low, telltale evidence that amid all the random variation of weather, the trend is toward a warmer climate.” Justin Gillis [NYT]

Less serious:

10. Oh, how I’ve giggled at the now-repaired-again Milshire Ho sign. (Backup photo.) For the longest time, I just assumed it read “Wilshire.”

11. Oh, and while we’re in Logan Square, my friends’ HGTV makeover aired in June. Check this page for when it’ll re-run.

12. Not metro at all, but a recent party joke was about a theme band called “Ayn Rand Sex Scene.” Given her newfound popularity…

Pass go

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Several techniques have been used to address the dual market for transit service to the airport, separating air travelers (time sensitive but price insensitive) from airport employees. In St. Louis, San Francisco, and Newark, cash fares to/from the airport station are high but monthly passes are accepted. In Indianapolis and Hong Kong, completely separate, premium-fare express routes run alongside local routes with standard pricing.

Now Montreal comes by with an added innovation, incorporating the ridership gains associated with selling day passes to visitors: the STM’s new airport express bus will only accept passes. The base cash fare of $7 is the same price as a day pass, and includes a day pass. Even if the pass goes unused, it’s still a bargain for the air traveler — it’s half the cost of the current private-franchise shuttle bus, and 80% cheaper than a cab.

Hearing things

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I spent a good part of Saturday whistling “Somewhere,” a melancholy note for lovely spring day thanks to the R142 subway trains rolling over Queens Boulevard. It turns out that even Tony Kushner enjoys this bit of coincidence, although his mechanical explanation is mistaken: it’s the electrical inverters, not the brakes, that make the sound.

I’d always been told that the distinctive (and rather more triumphal) tune on a certain generation of Montréal Metro cars (which turn up as the opening to “Il Fait Beau Dans le Metro“) were made by the air brakes, but it turns out that they, too, are made by the electrical equipment.

The CTA’s new AC-propulsion trains, although also built (like the R142 series) by Bombardier, don’t have a distinctive sound as they leave the station.

Urbanism gets people out of cars

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New Urban News has recently presented some survey research done comparing greenfield new urbanism with nearby sprawl around Calgary, Montreal, Portland, and Toronto [article on Canada and on Portland]. Among the hypotheses tested is that New Urbanism, by creating places where walking is more possible and more pleasant, can cut driving trips and increase non-motorized mode share. (A common complaint about contrasting travel behaviors for residents of existing places — say, between old urbanism and new suburbs — is that the populations aren’t always comparable, and that selection biases are more likely.) One potential way of proving this would be to compare the walk/bike and transit share for commute vs. recreational trips: transit mode share for commuting is unlikely to differ substantially, since all of the locations are in the suburbs where work destinations are widely dispersed. (As we’ve noted before, most of the difference between European and American cities’ modal splits lies not in an increased share for transit, but in a much higher share for walk/bike trips.)

Sure enough, there’s a big difference in how residents of new urbanist neighborhoods travel within their neighborhoods and a mild difference in how they travel regionally. At Orenco Station west of Portland, residents are 10X more likely to regularly walk to shops than residents of a nearby subdivision; indeed, only 7% of Orenco residents don’t walk to the store, vs. 58% in sprawl. Occasional transit use is 60% higher among Orenco residents, even though both subdivisions studied are a five-minute walk from light rail stations; 65% report using transit more since moving in, vs. 23% in sprawl. Yet transit use for commuting is identical in both neighborhoods.

The Canadian study found a 8-point difference in driving’s mode share between new urbanism and sprawl, resulting in 19% fewer vehicle kilometers traveled. Yet the mode share of transit was the same, at 9%; the difference was solely in walking and cycling. Residents of new urbanism are 2.7X more likely to regularly walk or bike to local stores. (This is a lower factor than at Orenco; not all of the Canadian neighborhoods had town centers as comprehensive as Orenco’s, and the baseline sprawl figure in denser Canada is much higher.) 37% report walking “a lot more” since moving (85% higher than in sprawl), perhaps because 55% said their streets’ designs were “very safe” for walking and biking (49% higher than sprawl).

Some critics of New Urbanism loudly disclaim the physical determinism that some New Urbanists proclaim — often stating that neighborhood design has profound social ramifications. I have generally remained less sanguine about new urbanism’s impacts on social capital, but the impact of urban design on transportation choices seems pretty clear: if you give people safe, pleasant routes to quickly walk/bike to convenient destinations, they will walk and bike more.

The research also shows that New Urbanism is more than just a prettier version of sprawl. When done right, it has real effects on transportation outcomes — and, the surveys indicate, perhaps also social outcomes.

In related research, Robert Cervero at UC finds that even though peak parking demand at TOD apartment projects in the East Bay and PDX were similar to national ITE standards (just 5% lower), “trip generation rates for some projects were well below ITE standards.” This could indicate that TOD residents keep cars in storage due to subsidized parking — a great opportunity for expanded car-sharing services.

The possibility of selection bias still lurks behind all of this research: it could be that a small proportion of people are just predisposed to drive less. Even if that were the case, that choice should be applauded (since driving costs society), and places that allow people to express that preference should be encouraged. Yet this preference apparently isn’t nearly as much of a minority view as it might seem, particularly among younger Americans. A Concord Group survey of Millennial homebuyers, noted in Builder, found that 81% of young people thought living “near alternative modes of transit” to be “very or somewhat important.” A full 67% would pay more for that choice.

In other news about encouraging walking/cycling, this month’s “Mode Shift” includes a history of the Albany Home Zone. Traffic calming on Chicago’s side streets has long used just the blunt-force (and bicycle-unfriendly) tools of stop signs, speed bumps, and one-way restrictions; here’s a great opportunity to test out a wider menu of options.

Findings (23 Nov)

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Oh, all right, this’ll be another miscellany post.

1. I was reading Sunday’s Frank Rich column on Sarah Palin while walking down Lincoln Avenue — the sadly silenced “German Broadway.” The fiercely nativist, “politically incorrect,” anti-intellectual, non-reality-based far right certainly deserves the moniker “New Know Nothings”

Back in 1855, Chicago’s immigrants electorally vanquished the old Know-Nothings after the Lager Beer Riot. With that, the right-wing elite lost power over the city for centuries — over the right to drink beer. Which of today’s wedge issues is a sure loser for today’s right? Bear in mind that nationally, they ended up winning (and then losing) the war over beer.

2. I ran my new address through the magic new TIF Search. Even though the Fullerton/Milwaukee TIF was only authorized in 2000, it already takes over 2/3 of my tax bill. pie chart

3. Monée Fields-White has a cool profile in Crain’s this week about the Bensidoun public-market operation that’s coming to the C&NW concourse.

4. Hint from Tom Vanderbilt:

One recent study conducted by officials at the Paris Metro—which looked at “missed connection” ads placed by urbanites looking for love in the city—found that the Metro “is without doubt the foremost producer of urban tales about falling in love.” The seats closest to the door, it seemed, offered the best opportunities for falling in love with the proper stranger.

5. I keep meaning to finish off an essay on the parking privatization deal. One of these days…

Spaces (13 Nov)

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Coffee bar Originally uploaded by Payton Chung

Star Lounge in Ukrainian Village was built as a bar, but now serves coffee & tea. The bar and counters lining some walls create a nice mix of seating options instead of the usual plethora of half-empty 2-top tables that typify coffee houses; there’s plenty of space for people to work solo or to strike up a conversation. There’s also the communal-table option, but I get a feeling that’ll never really catch on in Chicago. (I do remember one hotel breakfast room in Japan which had communal tables with low dividers — similar to what appears to be called an index table, often seen in library reference areas — which pretty effectively divided the table but not the room.)

Earlier, I’ve posted that walking, cycling, and transit (les modes doux = “sweet modes”) are subject to a positive feedback loop (virtuous circle) as usage grows, while driving creates a negative feedback loop (vicious circle). Now, the quintessential U of C question: but how does it work in theory? David Levinson and Kevin Krizek in Planning for Place and Plexus call these Complementors vs. Competitors. The other pedestrians on the sidewalk are (usually) complementors. The other drivers on the road are competitors. Both of these effects follow from transportation’s network effects, but also result from the peculiar dynamics of automobility vs. other modes — in particular, the very high marginal cost of adding capacity due to the vehicle’s immense demand for space. More compact, space-efficient modes can be scaled up at little cost; and when so scaled they also contribute to the “more is better” positive feedback loop underlying good urbanism.

Smarter shuttles for Silicon Valley

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The rise of Silicon Valley employee shuttles has been much covered by the press — with some finding solace in the fact that they grant an urban, car-light lifestyle option to formerly office-campus-bound techies. Since these are operated by private employers as an employee courtesy, they’re usually comfortable and sometimes have sophisticated IT backends that make them more demand-responsive than public transit options. A few disappointments, though:

1. They’re not quite the IT revolution we were promised, although that could certainly change. Given that all the users are well-wired (erm, well-wirelessed?) and that origins and destinations are relatively closely clustered together, this is one population that could conceivably pilot a fully demand responsive “smart jitney” system. Yet instead, fixed route buses (and all the wasted capacity they entail, especially with each company offering its own service) appear to be what even the savviest of techies are comfortable with.
2. The shuttles add even more layers of complexity to what’s already a mind-bendingly complicated transit network. I’m the sort of guy who loves figuring out puzzles, and again IT can do a lot to help sort out complex equations like “getting from A to B” — but Bay Area 511 already has to keep track of 41 different transit agencies. I remember one afternoon excursion, with two destinations, which sent me on six different agencies’ vehicles — each with different fares, transfer policies, hours of operation, whatever.
3. Their emergence really points up the failure of the last-mile solutions, in SF and particularly in the Valley. Muni is a poor crosstown solution to get to CalTrain, whose corridor is not particularly close to many trip origins. And in the Valley, auto-oriented development patterns make that last mile utterly impossible. It’s telling that (just to choose one example from biotech) Genentech’s South San Francisco facility is hidden in an office park 4000′ from a CalTrain commuter rail station, while its Cambridge University Park facility is a pleasant 1000′ walk from an MBTA rapid transit line.

In short: Silicon Valley needs to grow up at some point. Perhaps nowhere else in America is there a more clearly demonstrated need for transit-oriented development.

quick hits

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Every once in a while, I try to remember that currency is the currency of the internet — and therefore that quick blog posts are just as worthy as detailed thoughts — but I still get hung up on doing justice to good ideas. Anyhow.

1. Good riddance, Olympic mania. A prime example of the worst possible “project planning” (to use Roberta Brandes Gratz‘s term) — for a temporary event, no less. What annoyed me most was that the organizers not only suckered local corporations and foundations out of millions of dollars (which did not, btw, fall from heaven but was ultimately taken from the pockets of other local charities), but that they sold some magical expectation that the Olympics would somehow magically solve the CTA’s woes. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Not only did the Bid Book explicitly state* that no transit improvements were planned (and you can’t get what you don’t ask for!), but even the most optimistic figures about what sort of money could indeed fall from the sky (i.e., the feds) fell far, far short of the region’s eye-popping $50 billion in unfunded transit capital needs. (If the broad outlines of what’s being discussed in Congress for TEA4 happen, we might have a good start on getting that funded — without the hassles of the Olympics.) Besides, if there really is money falling from the skies, let it fall upon Brazil — they need it more than we do.

* the comments on that story are actually pretty on-topic. Too bad that disillusionment didn’t spread as far as the implied lies did.

2. Proposition 13 really is a tax on newcomers and the young, according to research by Dowell Myers. Senior homeowners get an average of $1,000 a year, paid for by homeowners under 45.

3. Daimler’s car2go offers one-way car sharing, which sounds like an intriguing concept. That’s possible for bike sharing systems only due to their ubiquity; is that also the intent here?

4. Phoenix wants to be carbon neutral? “Dementia.”

5. Most of the examples of “circle lines” (circumferential rapid transit lines) that I’ve seen distribute passengers through sprawling downtowns from commuter rail terminals that, due to imperial dictate, have been located outside the CBD. (This is the pattern in Buenos Aires, London, Moscow, Paris, and Tokyo.) As I’ve argued before, the proposed CTA Circle line does not fit this model, and thus becomes “an expensive solution in search of a problem.” Even the Illinois Medical District isn’t that focused an employment center (the Longwood Medical Area packs twice the employees into half the space, and the Boston Urban Ring is projected to be a BRT project. It also won’t work as a Metra connector, since most Metra trains will never stop at the Circle Line — most Metra customers will continue to the downtown terminals. (The line also has limited TOD potential since it runs through many built-out neighborhoods; arguably, the Clinton subway has greater TOD bang for the buck.) The line also wouldn’t serve many circumferential trips well; changing from a single bus-rail transfer (or a single rail-rail transfer one mile down the line) to a double rail-rail-rail transfer wipes out any potential time savings.

One exception I found: in Santiago, L4/L4A (which require a transfer) link the Providencia-Las Condes business district, via a peripheral freeway median line, to the high-density southern suburbs — laden with Pinochet-era public housing. Not a great example.

6. Two impressions that I gathered from a quick look at Dallas:
– Ample illustrations of the problem with putting the right thing in the wrong place. Victory and West Village might have looked fine on the drawing boards, but in practice they’re difficult to reach from anywhere else (except by driving, of course). West Village, in particular, would be exactly the sort of development to place next to DART — not a few blocks away.
– The boom/bust cycle of Texas development results in some interesting half-built stuff. Local developers hitch on to the latest planning fads with great enthusiasm (and the local “BEAN: Build Everything, Anywhere, Now” planning culture encourages it), but the market collapses before anything actually gets completed. With proper phasing, you could have a few good blocks here and there, but no.

7. A scale comparison: HOPE VI spent $6 billion in total. The Livable Communities Act bill introduced by Sen. Dodd authorizes over $4 billion over the next 3-4 years. This could have a significant impact.

8. Filed under “fun endeavors that I wish I’d thought of”: Will Cycle For Charity, creators of events that exercise people and brains, while building goodwill for cycling and raising charitable donations.

Line extensions

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(posted as Transport Politic comment)

Chicago was always a surface-lines town, which served it well when the region was essentially a series of factory towns orbiting around a commercial core. But travel patterns have changed; distances have increased and jobs have aggregated into centers and corridors (although not necessarily in transit-ready patterns).

Extending the principal cross-town rapid transit service (the Red Line) for “the last five miles” — it reaches the city’s north border, but stops well short of its south — should be a high priority. The largely low-income and transit-dependent far south side has lost countless heavy-industry jobs. Having gone there last weekend, it takes a double bus connection or infrequent commuter rail to get anywhere, compounding its distance from the N/NW “favored quarter.” These lines have been on transit plans for 100 years; the Orange Line “extension” proposed was even part of the original proposal but got value engineered out. (In the intervening 20 years, though, the original terminal area has declined economically, and I’m not sure whether it can really come back. The Yellow Line extension is interesting and restores access to a major job center, but pretty small in the grand scheme.)

Given the distances involved (12-16 mi. as the crow flies from downtown), there’s no way for surface transit to serve the same need. That said, there’s no local match money available for anything, anyways.

The Circle Line looks interesting on a map, but it’s an expensive solution in search of a problem. It serves a corridor of middling job/population density and limited growth potential, and offers minimal rider time savings. Other proposals to enhance downtown distribution, or improve crosstown buses, would offer better time savings and TOD potential.

Oh, and BRT? Impossible, since IDOT jealously guards its sacred freeway lanes, and Morgan Stanley is holding our parking meters hostage until our great-grandchildren come around.

(And an addendum on the Circle Line: a finding from a thorough calculation of its merits by Ritesh Warade finds that “the majority of the transit accessibility to households impacts of the Circle Line project have already been achieved after implementation of the Pink Line project… travel time reductions are not sufficient for the Circle Line project to have substantial accessibility impacts above and beyond those of the Pink Line project.” The marginal increase in transit riders’ accessibility to jobs that the Circle Line would achieve is 0.2%.)

In (resort) town without my car

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A good chunk of my vacation was spent in Jasper and Banff National Parks, the jewels of Canada’s Rocky Mountains. It was an interesting trip, partly because it was the first family vacation in a while that didn’t involve any cars — and in a very rural location, to boot. There were certainly troubles, but it turns out that, like Los Angeles (a streetcar metropolis which no longer has streetcars), the entire infrastructure for mass tourism in Banff was set up by and around the railroad. Especially in and around Banff, the Canadian Pacific built an extensive network of railroads, trolleys, hotels, resorts, towns — even a vast network of hiking trails leading uphill to refreshing teahouses. The rails now just carry Chinese container-loads, the trolley lines are now bike-and-bridle trails, and the roads are now crammed with lookalike rental RVs, but the spirit of William Cornelius van Horne’s railroad settlement hangs over the place just the same as Henry Huntington’s spirit permeates Santa Monica.

Our society will need to re-learn these techniques of place-making, not only to respond to a post-car future but also to a growing population that doesn’t want to drive while on vacation — or at least needs an antidote to the mind-numbing stress of the suburban daily grind. The century-old remnants of railroad tourism around Banff, though, are not unusual: many of North America’s resort towns were carved out of the scenery by (not just around!) railroads looking to drum up passengers; CPR’s president was not alone in declaring, “if I can’t export the scenery, I’ll import the tourists.” Many resort towns in the northeast retain their compact, railroad-era fabric: Kennebunkport, Wildwood, Key West, Santa Fe, and Santa Barbara, to name a few. Countless other American resorts grew up entirely in the sprawl era, as well — Daytona, Gatlinburg, Hilton Head Island, Palm Springs, Scottsdale, Branson — and higher gas prices have socked many of them, with Branson attractions (for example) reporting 10% declines.

Ski resort towns are the big exception to the postwar era’s resort sprawl, but possibly only due to basic practicality: the same challenging terrain that skiiers demand makes servicing sprawling development (almost) prohibitively expensive. Similarly, a lot of yesteryear’s resort towns were built on environmentally sensitive lands, and their ability to sprawl has been limited by environmental regulations or land protection. However, the ski towns just might offer us a way out of the mess. I know of at least one new consulting firm started by people who cut their teeth building (immensely profitable) ski towns — and have now moved on to the bigger challenge of building real towns in the suburbs.

Some early initiatives to promote wide-scale car-free travel have appeared in progressive (and scenic) jurisdictions. Quebec recently debuted, to much fanfare, a province-wide Route Verte network of scenic bike routes — complete with a network of certified-bike-friendly B&Bs along the way. Switzerland has gone even farther, incorporating walking and boating routes into a new national route network.

[Adapted from a comment left at TNAC Daily, title is a play on the Car-Free Day {yesterday!} slogan, In Town Without My Car]

In a jam, etc.

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* The new issue of the Chicago Reporter looks at the familiar challenges facing transit around here: $315 million in capital funds diverted to operations, fragmented decision-making leading to duplicitous planning efforts, elected leaders who just don’t care. Two interesting tidbits from the sidebars: Singapore’s 1975 congestion pricing scheme cut congestion 45% — and crashes by 25%, notable since the social cost of crashes might well exceed that of congestion. Also, a work mode split chart evidently derived from the new, annual American Community Survey shows some interesting trends. Drive-to-work shares appears to have declined in many large cities from 2000-2006, while bus ridership is up broadly. And a few cities are seeing pretty broad mode shifts: in DC, transit is up 3% while driving is down 7%; in PDX, bus ridership increased 6% and walk/bike 5% while driving plunged 14%.

* A “Revised Charter and Initial Actions” for Vancouver’s EcoDensity planning initiative have been posted. I’m quite impressed with the action steps — they’re thoughtful, bold, and really show evolution over the course of consultation. The revisions have been improvements in most cases and hedges in only a few cases.

* Went to Paul Goldberger’s “conversation” about preservation on Thursday. Nice quote: “In a city, time becomes visible” – Lewis Mumford. He praised tall & thin buildings, saying that the beauty of 1920s skylines stemmed from their tallness and thinness. Weird coincidence: Penn Station was 52 years old when it was demolished; Crown Hall is 52 years old in 2008.

He also made an analogy about preservation as resonance — I’ll have to think more about that acoustic angle.

* [posted at Overhead Wire] New Urbanism (as I’m sure you’ll recognize from the heated arguments at Congresses) is a forum, not a formula, and New Urbanists have differing ideas on many topics — particularly in how we prioritize the many elements of New Urbanism. Peter Calthorpe, just as equal a co-founder of CNU as Andres Duany, probably coined the phrase “transit oriented development.” I would argue that transit, and transportation choice more generally, sits at the core of New Urbanism; indeed, that commitment is what drew me to it as an urban design movement. That commitment is enshrined not only in the Charter, but in documents like LEED-ND — the first certification scheme advanced by the CNU — which goes so far as to nearly require projects to locate along transit or in low-VMT areas. There was even discussion at CNU XVI of adopting a VMT reduction strategy as a principal goal for the organization.

Observation bias might explain why so many people feel that New Urbanism is “just window dressing.” Many prominent built examples of New Urbanism exists at the Charter’s smaller scales — the neighborhood and block, not the region — since regional changes take much longer, and many more participants, to realize. (Although most built NU today is actually infill, those 20-year-old greenfield projects are still more famous.) Part of the goal in establishing various recognition programs for New Urbanism over the years, like the Charter Awards and LEED-ND (and some other initiatives that are coming soon) is to let people know that NU isn’t just Seaside and Kentlands. Indeed, the number of Charter Award-winning urban infill plans or projects far outnumbers the number that could qualify as “walkable sprawl” — and the resident population of the former dwarfs the population of the latter. Observation bias comes into play again here: “walkable sprawl” stands out amidst its surroundings, whereas walkable urbanism blends in quite nicely. We notice the former, but take the latter for granted — when, in fact, the latter is actually much more difficult to build given our current regulatory climate.

One key fact I’d like to underline for transit advocates: most of the difference in mode split between American and European cities is not in transit trips, but in walking and cycling trips. (With better data collection, I also believe the same differential would also hold for American and wealthy Asian cities.) We focus on transit infrastructure alone at our peril: a mixed human habitat centered around pedestrians creates the kind of urban fabric that supports transit ridership. A transit line alone won’t generate ridership in the absence of a supportive environment.

I personally can’t defend “walkable sprawl,” since I can’t visit it — I’ve never had a driving license. I also am among the school of bike commuters who thinks showers are a nice idea, but hardly crucial; after all, most bike commuters don’t shower at their destinations. And it’s not even like I live in naturally air-conditioned San Francisco.

* [posted at SSC about Dearborn Park’s urban design.] Forgive your forebears, for they knew not what they did. When Dearborn Park was planned in the 1970s, how could anyone have predicted what the South Loop would look like in the late 2000s?

Take some time to read plans and predictions from that era; very little of it had any prescience whatsoever. (And no, even though I work in the planning biz, I’m afraid to say that we probably haven’t gotten much better at crystal-ball-gazing since then.) And even if City Hall actually did write binding, official City Plans, and the Central Area is the only part of town where it even pretends to do so, what were the chances that its ideas would come to fruition? Distributor subway, anyone?

In the 1970s, some people genuinely planned for River City to become an inwardly focused monster complex three times as big as Presidential Towers — or half again as large as Robert Taylor Homes. (Note how wonderfully River City, as built, meets the street. And yes, the original plan would have used a Section 8 mortgage, which could have filled it with public housing tenants.) The demographic trends were perilous: the city’s population dropped over 10% in the 1970s, with a net loss of 300,000 people (the population of Pittsburgh or Tampa!), all while the city’s poverty rate increased 24%.

Hindsight is 20/20.

Quick links

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Every once in a while, I forget to update the blog — I posted all of twice last month. Sorry about that. (However, some inbound links meant that last month was actually a record for page-views — and I do have that annoying habit of rewriting old posts instead of writing new ones. Hey, it’s recycling!) Some bookmarks for future reference:

* Want a preview of the parking-based congestion pricing strategy that’s coming to downtown Chicago? Check out the SFpark Smart Parking Management Program, now being rolled out under the same USDOT Urban Partnership Program. SF MTA also focuses on the benefits to drivers, which (unfortunately) the press here has neglected. DC has also started a “performance parking” program around its new baseball stadium, although they’ve sensibly (per Shoup) taken the revenues and reinvested them locally rather than citywide. DC is also investigating similar ideas for its upcoming zoning rewrite. (h/t: PedShed)

* At first glance, a collapse in SUV demand (“Some desperate car dealers and consumers are willing to lose thousands of dollars just to get rid of their SUVs”) might seem like a boon for safety. And it will be, over the long run, as these monsters will make up a smaller proportion of vehicles on the road. (Engines tuned for efficiency rather than power should also dampen the deadly horsepower race.)

“The SUV craze was a bubble and now it is bursting,” said George Hoffer, an economics professor at Virginia Commonwealth University whose research focuses on the automotive industry. “It’s an irrational vehicle. It’ll never come back.”

As Keith Bradsher pointed out in High & Mighty, though, the bursting of that bubble will put cheap used SUVs into the hands of used-car buyers: a demographic group that is nowhere near as careful with their cars as the new-car buyers are. Millions of SUVs are reason enough to fear the roads; millions of SUVs with failing brakes and transmissions, driven by under/un-insured young drivers? Even worse.

One policy that could simultaneously (and rapidly) reduce gas demand and improve safety? A gas tax used (in part) to buy back and scrap gas guzzlers, as proposed by economist Philip Verleger and mentioned here in 2005. (Globe article via Streetsblog)

* Looking for inspiration in re-imagining ugly urban arterials like Ashland or Western? Take a look at the many “Avenue” corridor plans created throughout Toronto in recent years.

* The Dalai Lama is reputed to have once posed this koan: “What would the world be like if everyone drove a motor car?” Here’s a hint, from a Times article by Jad Mouawad:

William Chandler, an energy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, estimates that if the Chinese were using energy like Americans, global energy use would double overnight and five more Saudi Arabias would be needed just to meet oil demand. India isn’t far behind. By 2030, the two counties will import as much oil as the United States and Japan do today.

New oil “production” (extraction) is growing slowly, and yet demand is booming. Part of the result is skyrocketing prices, which will hopefully dampen demand. But will it dampen demand by the 11 billion of barrels annually we’ll need to restore market equilibrium?

global oil consumption will jump by some 35 percent by the year 2030, according to the International Energy Agency, a leading global energy forecaster for the United States and other developed nations. For producers it will mean somehow finding and pumping an additional 11 billion barrels of oil every year.

And, of course, discouraging words about the US.

What about the United States? The country has shown little willingness to address its energy needs in a rational way. James Schlesinger, the nation’s first energy secretary in the 1970s, once said the United States was capable of only two approaches to its energy policy: “complacency or crisis.”

The United States is the only major industrialized nation to see its oil consumption surge since the oil shocks of the 1970s and 1980s. This can partly be explained by the fact that the United States has some of the lowest gasoline prices in the world, the least fuel-efficient cars on the roads, the lowest energy taxes, and the longest daily commutes of any industrialized nation. The result: about a quarter of the world’s oil goes to the United States every day, and of that, more than half goes to its cars and trucks.

So, basically, America’s cars and trucks consume about as much oil as all of China and India (total population about 2.5 billion, more than eight times’ America’s) do. Now, who’s to blame here?

* Mobilizing the youth vote: “They organized a whole bunch of young kids in bars to vote,” he said. “It hurt, of course it hurt. But I’m over it.” — Burt Natarus [h/t: Trib/Clout Street]

* Newest estimate on SmartBikeDC’s launch is late May, just ahead of my next DC trip. Fingers crossed!

* I seem to get a lot of questions about bike parking. Quick answers: to have racks installed on city sidewalks or in CTA stations, call 311. For recommendations for racks on private property, see this PDF pamphlet from CDOT & CATS.

* More headlines from our warmer future, showing up in today’s papers: record energy prices sending truckers and pilots onto the dole, panicked stockpiling of food in California, food riots worldwide. Funny how more energy bouncing about in the atmosphere does not, perhaps due to entropy (dang it), result in cheaper energy for humans.

* Minneapolis joins the bike station movement next week with the Freewheel Midtown Bike Center, located on the greenway level at the Midtown Exchange.

* Seen in a Shell advertisement (Economist, 26 April), touting its gas-to-liquids and cellulosic ethanol:

More crowded cities means more fumes, more noise and more smog. So what to do?

At Shell, we believe the solution is a combination of cleaner fuels, cleaner engines, better public transport and better urban planning. We are doing our best with fuel improvements.