Last year’s state bailout of Pittsburgh’s transit agency has expired, so PAT has proposed a 25% cut in service hours to fix an $80M operating deficit. Needless to say, “riders are ticked”:http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07023/756042-147.stm.
SEPTA in Philadelphia has “used capital funds to patch its 2007 budget”:http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/nation/16243384.htm — sound familiar?
IDOT has launched “SMS traffic alerts”:http://iltrafficalert.com, which on the surface sound absolutely stupid. (Encouraging people to text while driving?) It’s probably one step along the road to a unified 511 traveler information system, which has potential — but why, oh why, must we continue to wait when voice response technology to get bus times has existed since “ShuttleGirl”:http://www.secondkiss.com/why_shuttlegirl.asp in 2000?
Alan Ehrenhalt’s Assessments column in Governing this month looks bittersweetly at the phenomenon of transit-oriented gentrification. The used bookstore Ehrenhalt’s daughter works at, smack between Minneapolis and St. Paul, will soon front a light rail station. Its owner fears the higher rents and gentrification that he believes inevitably follows.
What, really, is the response here? Sure, the bookstore will gain business from being next to the train; many of the world’s greatest bookstores garner much business from their classic, transit-served urban neighborhoods; indeed, their density and accessibility to broader markets probably make such niche businesses possible. Yet the inevitable transit-oriented development, by realigning an area’s land value and development intensity with its newly expanded transportation capacity, could indeed “force” lower rent, less dense uses out. The usual NU policy prescriptions of “flood the market with TOD; supply and demand will rebalance accordingly” or “give it time; it’ll decay nicely” ring hollow to individuals faced with the considerably less abstract notion of having to move their businesses. (Unlike affordable residences, affordable business space is rarely on any policymakers’ radar.)
Sure, property markets do respond to shifts in supply and demand, but a confounding factor exists: amenities, and with it desirability. The addition of transit (an amenity) increases desirability and thus spurs additional demand. Indeed, adding supply can, through a curious feedback loop (e.g., by introducing high-quality housing or entirely new housing product types), create more demand — first latent demand within the area, and then by drawing in outsiders. Property markets do work, but they do so in very imperfect ways.
Says Patricia Diefenderfer, a new resident of South L.A. (in a well-balanced LA Weekly article by David Zahniser), “The other unfortunate thing is that neighborhoods like South L.A. have… all the right ingredients, and yet somehow, [the amenities] are just not there. And when they get there, the same people will not be there living in it and appreciating it. And I don’t know why that is.”
At CNU XIV, someone mentioned a “yellow kayak club” in Baltimore that works like a paid lending library for kayaks around Baltimore Harbor, allowing people to share a pool of kayaks and row to work. Turns out that this curious little TDM program (uniquely suited for Baltimore, as the center city wraps around a long harbor) is funded by a new urbanist developer:
bq. Canton Kayak Club, a nonprofit organization started by a group of local kayaking devotees/evangelists, including restaurant owner Charlie Gjerde and developer Bill Struever. For our membership fee, we get unlimited summer-long access to the kayaks, paddles, and life vests stationed at four docks around the harbor, and a cursory but adequate bit of training in the basics of kayaking. (Baltimore City Paper)
Three of the kayak launches are at mixed-use waterfront developments; the fourth is at a restaurant. What’s cool about this:
* sharing transportation equipment amortizes high capital costs that would otherwise exclude people
* garnering attention for an underappreciated form of human powered transportation
* developers and others should always be willing to pay for access improvements. Most cities require this in the form of on-site parking; why not allow people to buy out of those onerous requirements in interesting new ways?
CICLE in LA offers more than some “neat woodcut stickers”:http://www.cicle.org/cicle_content/pivot/entry.php?id=396#body and “PDFed propaganda”:http://cicle.org/properganda/properganda.html (although sadly not their splash logo of “We are alternative energy”). The “Start Riding”:http://www.cicle.org/cicle_content/pivot/entry.php?id=469 section includes several basic tutorials and “g-mapped routes”:http://www.cicle.org/cicle_content/pivot/entry.php?id=698 that could conceivably be inputted into a common resource, like “Bikely”:http://www.bikely.com.
bq. “texxi”:http://www.texxi.com/pro/texxi.nsf/pages/What+is+texxi is a Demand Responsive Transit Broker. We use advanced scheduling technology to make the most of existing transport resources at times of peak demand. Use of the scheme extends well beyond club night transportation… Anywhere, anytime there are a lot of people to move from a single location as efficiently and safely as possible, texxi will provide a good solution to a perennial headache.
Essentially, Texxi applies ridesharing to get Liverpool clubgoers home late at night, making optimal use of the cab fleet. The system naturally uses text messaging, which is cheap, can be processed automatically, and ideally suited to “a nightclub audience”:http://dodgeball.com (quiet, unobtrusive, easy to do while drunk). Software takes over the taxi dispatcher’s role, generating lower costs and faster turnaround.
(Found via a GMail ad, no less.)
Otis White’s “latest column”:http://www.governing.com/articles/6assess.htm in Governing magazine gives a few ideas about reviving inner-ring suburbs through incremental investment in residential areas. These areas often still have grids, sidewalks, smaller lots, and bus routes; cutting a few new streets to improve connectivity and redeveloping commercial strips as mixed-use corridors — as is being done in areas like “Columbia Pike in Arlington”:http://www.baconsrebellion.com/Roadtoruin/BRNS_05-08-08.php, where “new transit”:http://www.piketransit.com/ and lenient new “form-based zoning”:http://www.arlingtonva.us/Departments/CPHD/Forums/columbia/CPHDForumsColumbiaColumbiaPikeInitiativeMain.aspx have touched off new development — could be the other steps in a comprehensive program of reurbanization. Many of the fringes of our large cities have similar “gray area” urban fabric, too, with houses ill-suited for today’s households.
bq. Lucy and Phillips found several creative efforts to deal with the small-house problem and the accompanying signs of middle-aged suburban decay. Some of them are modest and simple, such as distributing guidebooks to show homeowners exactly what they need to do to turn a small house into a bigger one. Some local governments offer lists of contractors and lenders willing to take them on. Others have waived the standard permit fees for the house expansions they particularly want to encourage. In the Kansas City area, the metropolitan regional council publishes what it calls the First Suburbs Coalition Idea Book, with design ideas for renovation of almost every common middle-aged suburban house, along with practical lending advice.
Reminds me, somewhat, of those old mansion districts that became rooming-house slums and eventually came back. Incidentally, Jane Jacobs “thought likewise”:http://reason.com/0106/fe.bs.city.shtml :
bq. There’ll come a time when the standard suburbs that you’re talking about — even the wealthiest ones — will change. Look at what has happened to very wealthy areas within cities where great mansions turned into funeral parlors, and so on. It’ll happen. Just when, I don’t know. I’m very suspicious of prophesizing, because life is full of surprises, but I think we are seeing the precursors of the very beginning of the change in the suburbs… “[The suburbs will] evolve into something, but I don’t know what you’ll call them and I don’t know exactly how they’ll resolve. But they’ll thicken up, get denser.
Ted Smalley Bowen in Metropolis Magazine reports on how an EU pilot project has implemented of “e-Commerce Enabled Demand Responsive Urban Logistics” (eDRUL) to manage freight delivery traffic within urban cores. IT has monumentally improved the efficiencies possible in the logistics business, given proper coordination and staging, making this a ripe market. Just imagine if such a system could have been applied by the old Chicago Tunnel Company.
The Megabus USA service launched online today, with a press conference at Navy Pier closely following some bus-stop ads placed recently. (Just noticed one yesterday on Michigan Avenue.) The pricing model, like the company, is imported from the real-time yield management models used by European low cost carriers like Ryanair, EasyJet, BMIbaby, and budget hotels like Thomson; according to the Trib:
“At least three or four seats on each one-way trip are available for a $1 fare. At the upper end, one-way fares will range from $9 to $27.50, depending on the city.”
The real breakeven point is well above $1, but the supercheap fares entice the revenue paying passengers in a bit of bait-and-switch.
I’m not sure why they’re launching in the Midwest, except that Greyhound here has no competition (Chinatown bus, ahem). I don’t know how deep the intercity travel market is here (in any case, not nearly as deep as the much more densely populated East), but lower fares might just bring out an entire new population of day-tripping or weekly-commuting travelers between closer city pairs.
An AP article reports on financial trouble and “restructuring” at the privately financed “Las Vegas Strip monorail”:https://westnorth.com/2005/09/30/its-called-public-transit/ :
bq. Ridership on the monorail in January fell to 18,200 a day from a peak of 33,000 a day in July 2005, prompting Fitch Ratings last month to cut the rating on $451.4 million in first-tier bonds to junk status. Fare revenue for 2005 totaled $30.2 million, just more than half of the forecast when the bonds were sold, Fitch said.
“It’s wonderful to live in the city and ride but isn’t always possible for all.”
Okay, so what can we do about this? In many other cities, I see plenty of old folks on old cruisers, mothers and fathers with children, and regular middle-aged folks riding bicycles. Why not here?
To a certain extent, I’d say that Critical Mass has already accomplished one broadening of the bicycling demographic in Chicago: cycling here isn’t just for college students and Lycra clad racers. On the streets of Wicker Park, I regularly pass bars or parties with bicycles crowded outside — in the past, I’d usually know what or who was going on or at least recognize some of the bikes, but no longer, as our “scene” has grown far too vast. Ongoing education efforts like Bike Winter and “Cycling Sisters, and CBF’s new diversity initiatives, can further help.
Maybe people don’t ride because traffic is dangerous. “Studies have shown [“full text] that pedestrian and bicycle accident rates decrease where there are more bicyclists — because drivers, the #1 hazard to peds and bikes, start looking out for peds and bikes, and indeed are more likely to walk or bike themselves. So, what can you do to help make our streets safer *today*? Get out there and ride! In the long term, let’s think about political changes that will reclaim our streets from speeding, menacing traffic. Our streets belong to the people who live here, not to the people who drive through — but effecting that change will take a lot of work and a lot of talking. Well, we seem to have plenty of people who can talk, but what about people who will work?
Let’s think constructively about how we can improve our city and our bicycling experiences, instead of pointing loudly at the shortcomings.
[also adapted from post to CCM today]
The “Triangle Transit Authority”:http://ridetta.org/Home/News_Events/8-05TTA-Cherokeetalksbegin.htm recently awarded a major contract to guide development around the future TTA rail stations. I’m not quite sure whether this is also a management contract for the station facilities themselves or what, but hopefully having a developer in the playing this early on will ensure that station land is used for development before parking. Oddly enough, the contract winners: PB PlaceMaking, run by CNU long-timer GB Arrington, and Cherokee Investment Partners, run by Tom Darden. I sat next to Tom Darden, Jr. in sixth-grade science class — and in seventh grade orchestra, sat behind now-Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker’s son. Small world.
bq. the Triangle Transit Authority on its transit-oriented sustainable development project. The regional rail system has the potential to help shape the future of this region,” Darden said. “Transit oriented development — a blend of retail, office, housing, entertainment and recreation — is a critical element to mass transit systems nationwide.”
Jack Hagel in “the N&O”:http://www.newsobserver.com/front/story/2752582p-9190305c.html quotes Darden: “We would be looking for development that would be relatively urban, which would support transit infrastructure and benefit from it.”
west north 