The new climate reality shapes weather

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(Let’s see how I fare doing more and shorter blog posts, built around quotes. It’s the only way I’ll get anything done this month, since I’m taking “architecture boot camp” through the first of August. It’s going well, but it does include the requisite all-nighters in studio.)

Year-to-date, nearly 25,000 record highs have been set or matched compared to just 2,500 record lows.

— Jason Samenow of the Capital Weather Gang reporting on NOAA’s new “State of the Climate.” In another post, he also quotes the same report: “In analyzing these two very different events, UK scientists uncovered interesting changes in the odds. Cold Decembers are now half as likely to occur now versus fifty years ago, whereas warm Novembers are now 62 times more likely.”

If you got heads on 10 out of 11 coin flips, that could be random chance. But 25,000 out of 27,500? Something’s definitely wrong.

Far from home

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far from home Originally uploaded by Payton Chung

Hi all! Didn’t want to make this a blog-post-free month — so I am briefly chiming in from Vancouver, where I’ve been attending the Velo-City 2012 conference. There’s always so much to blog about, but I need to start setting aside blocks of time to regularly update everyone.

Romney schedules the long-promised “bathtub drowning”

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[actually, three political shorts, but bear with me]

Mitt Romney has scheduled Grover Norquist’s long-planned “drown government in the bathtub” party!

Per AEI’s Norman Ornstein, writing in TNR:

The Ryan budget says that it will reduce all discretionary spending, domestic and defense, to 3.75 percent of GDP by 2050, less than half of what it is today; but Romney has also pledged to put an ironclad 4 percent of GDP floor under defense spending alone. Taken together, then, a Romney administration would be committed to abandoning the entirety of non-military government. No air traffic control, no Coast Guard, no transportation, energy program, NIH, CDC, Customs, FBI, NASA, and so on. None.

Well, someone finally had to specify those “unspecified budget cuts” at some point in time. The answer, as Sarah Palin would say, is “Um, all of them” — well, he has specified them. The entire federal government would be shut down, and then some, an outcome which some (who might know about the matter) have deemed not very Christ-like.

I suppose once government disappears once and for all, we won’t have to fight over things like this anymore: a Republican SuperPAC TV ad attacks the Obama administration for stimulus spending that went to “traffic lights… in China.” Even putting aside the Gravitron of spin needed to generate that headline from the underlying story — that Chinese-assembled LED components were placed into energy-efficient traffic signals installed in U.S. cities — it’s absurd to find fault with a program that saves the public 80% on energy and maintenance while improving safety with brighter, longer-lasting signals.

Besides, only the diodes were made in China; as “teardown reports” of iDevices have shown, the cost of assembly in China is a tiny slice of the final cost of a finished electronic product in the U.S. — much less one sold with an installation and maintenance contract, as traffic lights are.

Which brings me to the closer from Dick Lugar’s concession speech:

I don’t remember a time when so many topics have become politically unmentionable in one party or the other. Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate change. Republican members are now expected to take pledges against any tax increases. For two consecutive Presidential nomination cycles, GOP candidates competed with one another to express the most strident anti-immigration view, even at the risk of alienating a huge voting bloc. Similarly, most Democrats are constrained when talking about such issues as entitlement cuts, tort reform, and trade agreements. Our political system is losing its ability to even explore alternatives. If fealty to these pledges continues to expand, legislators may pledge their way into irrelevance. Voters will be electing a slate of inflexible positions rather than a leader.

I hope that as a nation we aspire to more than that. I hope we will demand judgment from our leaders. I continue to believe that Hoosiers value constructive leadership. I would not have run for office if I did not believe that.

Um, actually, I might remind Mr Lugar that the ACA cut into Medicare, which Republicans used to whip up seniors’ opposition (and Obama’s opening, $4 trillion offer on deficit reduction last April included vast additional Medicare cost cuts, before assenting to even larger cuts in debt-ceiling talks that failed when the House Republicans walked out) and that Obama has signed into law the largest trade agreements since, oh, Bill Clinton introduced NAFTA. Meanwhile, no Republican “leader” dares to speak truth to power on climate change, because they’re then quickly drummed out of the party.

Quick shorts: cats, CaBi health, climate

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Sorry for the light schedule, but I’m in the midst of finals. Oh, and still fundraising for the Climate Ride, of course, which you totally should sponsor me for.

I’ve been working on several other posts for a while, and even will have some posts inspired by things I wrote about as final papers (does that make them Quality Research instead of the usual bloggy ramblings?), but for now here are some nuggets that I’ve found whilst toiling away at various libraries and other randomly found study spaces:

1. A recent cover story by Kathleen McAuliffe in the Atlantic covered the novel hypothesis that implicates toxoplasmosis, and the “Fatal Feline Attraction” that it causes in mice, to human mental disorders. Suddenly, I think we have an answer for Why The Web Loves [lol]Cats.

(Incidentally, I first read about the theory in 2000 in Lingua Franca, courtesy Stephen Mihm. At that time, it was new even to friends who were doing Ph.Ds in psychiatry.)

2. A friend was recently photographed for the NPR Shots blog, unfortunately for an article reporting on a journal article critical of the low rate of helmet use on bike share. Neither article mentioned that requiring helmet use, and/or focusing relentlessly on helmets as the be-all-end-all of bicycle safety, can actually harm public health by discouraging bicycling — a very healthful activity which plays an important role in fighting heart disease (which kills 5X more Americans than accidents). Research into helmet laws and bicycle sharing programs have indicated that the heart-health benefit outweighs the increased exposure to accident risk.

To put it more succinctly:
0.001% of bike share trips result in a crash; over ~2M CaBi rides, 0 resulted in major head injuries
100.0% of bike share trips result in exercise and transportation

I think that’s a pretty good health and safety record.

3. A recent Tom Friedman column about “global weirding” mentioned that the entire country of Yemen is running out of water. (True, according to a Monitor report.) What’s weird about the desert drying out? Well, elsewhere along the Indian Ocean, other entire countries are now about to disappear under the rising tides.

Encouragingly, Science Friday last week covered the release of a new poll from GMU and Yale which found that only 10% of Americans are truly dismissive about global warming. So why does the media echo chamber even pay attention to this loud minority? That seems akin to requiring an irate vegan to “cover the controversy” every time a report even mentioned meat, since 2-8% of Americans are vegetarian. (I’d use a religion/atheism analogy, but the science on why vegetarianism is better for the environment is pretty well settled — and I write as an omnivore.)

Even more surprisingly, by a 3:1 ratio voters were “more likely to vote” for a candidate who favored a revenue-neutral tax shift — including 2:1 support among Republicans. Such a tax shift plan didn’t work out so well for Canada’s Liberals, but which has occurred in jurisdictions like British Columbia and Germany.

On ways to confront global warming: years ago I remember reading about what I thought to be a fair solution for both controlling pollution and encouraging fair development, and finally looked up what its proper wonky name should be: C&C, for Contraction & Convergence. Each human owns an identical share of the sky, and those of us who use more than our share should pay the others for that ability.

Transit shorts: Sustainable DC, CaBi, Beltway as urban edge, more!

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Weekday walk trip % Originally uploaded by Payton Chung

Hi there! Seven (!) transportation-ish shorts; they might be a few days late, but I kind of have breaking news for , since these figures haven’t yet made the paper:

1. The new Sustainable DC Vision includes (unlike some other plans I’ve seen) some really great performance goals for the next 20 years, including:
– 75% of trips starting within city will be on foot, bike, or transit
– Zero waste
– 50% cut in greenhouse gas emissions (3/4 of which come from buildings)
– 100% swimmable, fishable waterways
– Tripling the number of small businesses
– 25% of food supply from within 100 miles (which implies farmland conservation in the suburbs)
– 50% less obesity (already lowest rate in USA)
– 50% less unemployment
– 10X greater exports of goods & services

Several notable strategies are called out, including “citywide performance parking districts” (their term for market-rate parking meters). There’s also an interesting emphasis in the text on how local food, zero waste, etc. will keep more funds within DC.

I was walking behind Mayor Gray across the new Anacostia Riverwalk wetlands bridge that connects Hill East to the Capitol Riverfront; check back to see if those photos make it into the paper.

2. More on performance parking: ‘Even though he works for a personal rapid transport company [ULTRa], [Steve] Raney said, “If you’re doing to do one thing, do the paid parking. Don’t go and build a personal rapid transit system.” [Bill Fulton, CP-DR]

3. BicycleBug recently undertook a CaBiChallenge, similar to the Tour de [Denver] B-Cycle. Apparently, he couldn’t check into some stations due to being dock-blocked. Two ways around that:
– use two credit cards. Arrive at a full station with bike, use CC#2 to check out a bike, return bike paid for with CC#1 into newly empty dock.
– or, to just verify a station visit, you could just ride your own bike around and print off an unlock code from each station. (I guess that wouldn’t work if the printer’s down, though.)

4. The graph here comes from the MWCOG’s 2011 TPB Geographically-Focused Household Travel Survey initial report. (Logan Circle’s outlier-in-a-good-way results merited some press, e.g., in the Examiner.) If we define sprawl as “where nobody walks” and “where everybody drives alone,” it’s pretty clear that sprawl begins right outside the 257 square miles circumscribed by the 10-mile-ring Beltway. (Incidentally, the city of Chicago would fill 92% of the Beltway.)

There are exceptions that stem from good planning, though: Largo, with access to the Blue Line, had 63% more transit commuting trips than more-distant Reston, but better-planned Reston has 67% more walk trips — and 31% more total weekday walk/transit trips.

Another surprising fact hidden in the presentation: mobile-only households ranged from 12% around Largo to an astonishing 57% around Logan Circle (the very picture of a neighborhood of techy transients). I see that they’ll be doing my neighborhood later this year — hope I get selected!

5. More on escaping the Beltway: it turns out that just outside the Beltway is Cherry Hill Park, a bona fide campground (the sort of land use you don’t see in an urban area) — which you can take a city bus to! (Via Em Hall’s Metro Ventures, via a segment on WAMU Metro Connection)

6. I love public stairs. Chalk it up to too many years stalking broad, flat Chicago streets.

7. Last week, Streetsblog mentioned a curious list compiled by Patrick Kennedy from Walkable DFW that contrasted U.S. cities with many and few highway lane miles. It was just a simple illustration — the many-lane-miles cities aren’t what come to mind as thriving, lively cities, unlike the few-lane-miles cities — and there are a lot of factors that enter into the equation. (I noticed that the lists are dominated by certain states, like Texas, Florida, and California, which might be over- or under-investing in highways.)

Still, though, it reminded me of this cute paper (again, not really an analytical work) by Patrick Condon, contrasting how the urban health of Vancouver to St. Louis really has nothing to do with the presence — or absence — of highways.

Shorts: Austin + Madison, McLean, the South

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1. No, it’s not another post about trendy baby names of the Aughts… Bike Snob NYC visits two cities that have also recently hosted the Congress for the New Urbanism, and once again I feel validated:

Austin:

If you enjoy shirtless motorcycling, being drunk in revealing clothing, or just plain shouting “Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” like a Fred who’s just hit 46mph, then Austin is your kind of town. If, on the other hand, you prefer more refined pleasures such as quiet cocktails, polite conversation, and maintaining your dignity, you might be more at home elsewhere.

Madison:

As it turns out, Madison is more than just “bike friendly,” and it’s actually so affectionate towards cyclists that it sometimes gropes you in a way that makes you feel slightly uncomfortable… I daresay that Minneapolis and Madison may be even more rideable than “The Artisanal ‘P’.” In particular, riding in Madison was like riding a cotton candy bicycle while being tickled with buttercups…

2. Speaking of fabled places, I would never have guessed that this line by Bobbi Bowman would have been filed from the Beltway’s Republican redoubt:

That battle was basically a clash of visions of downtown McLean. The vision of JBG and its partner, a townhouse developer, was townhouses, a garage on Elm Street with the first floor of restaurants and retail space, a tot lot, and improved storm-water management. The Planning Committee, McLean’s citizen-planners, envisioned apartments, higher density and no garage. [emphasis mine]

3. One of the strange-at-first-glance statistics in a recent Pew report on intermarriage is that the South, which led the opposition to mixed marriages, has a higher incidence of intermarriage than the Midwest or Northeast, although lower than the West. That ranking appears to be an artifact of two factors:
– exposure appears to lower rates of out-marriage in the Midwest; more homogenous states just don’t give their residents much opportunity to out-marry
– Florida and Texas are part of the Census Bureau’s definition of the South, and both share with the West a Hispanic heritage — which, by long-standing Census definition, is already a mix.

Cycle tracks just as popular as trails

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cycletrack Originally uploaded by Payton Chung

Last week, one of my classes presented a proposal for new bicycle facilities in Old Town Alexandria, including some protected facilities. The city expects that expanding Capital Bikeshare to the neighborhood, which they plan to do later this year, will result in an increase in novice cyclists on their streets and want to create facilities that they might be more comfortable with. (Currently, there are several streets marked with sharrows.) The plan that our class developed includes a few one-way cycle tracks (like this one in Vienna), along with buffered bike lanes, contraflow bike lanes, conventional bike lanes, and more sharrows.

Will new, more protected facilities appeal to a broad population of cyclists? A 2006 UBC survey of Vancouver bicyclists — ranging from those who cycle at least once a week to those who cycle less than once a year, almost one-third of adults — says yes. In fact, the cyclists rated cycle tracks almost as highly as they rated trails, long considered the gold standard in attracting a broad range of bicyclists.

On a scale of -1 to +1, the bicyclists ranked…
0.5 paved off-street paths (trails)
0.4 unpaved trails
0.4 cycle tracks on major streets with barriers
0.4 bicycle boulevard, minor street

These, and minor streets marked as bike routes, were strongly preferred over all other road types (mostly those with no facilities, rural or urban). In particular, “Regular cyclists were willing to cycle on many of the 16 route types, but those who cycle less often, including women and people with children, did not feel comfortable cycling on major city streets, even with bike lanes, but did like the [cycle track] option.”

I’ll see if I can find more detailed data in one of the academic articles; it would be interesting to look deeper into which facilities are most popular by transect zone & cycling experience level — i.e., which facilities exist in T4 areas, and which are most likely to appeal to different kinds of cyclists.

Inadvertently opting out of gentrification in Toronto

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I’ve found some validation for my earlier hypothesis that neighborhoods which opt out of the broader housing market will also opt out of speculative consequences including gentrification. From Alan Walks and Martine August, “The Factors Inhibiting Gentrification In Areas With Little Non-Market Housing: Policy Lessons From The Toronto Experience” [Urban Studies, 45(12), November 2008, downloadable from neighbourhoodchange.ca]:

“Perhaps the most important reason why the embeddedness of the Portuguese and Chinese communities factors large in inhibiting gentrification is their control over a significant proportion of the housing stock and dominance in the local real estate sector. In both cases, houses purchased within the community tended to stay in the community and were often converted for multifamily use using their own or bartered labour. In most cases, tenants were sought from within the community, as proficiency in English remained marginal at best (Teixeira, 1998, 2000; Chan, 2006)…

“As already noted, many immigrant communities, like the Portuguese in Brockton and the Chinese in South Riverdale, finance their housing purchases through family connections and their renovations via sweat equity (Murdie, 1986, 1991). This meant that the ethnic communities were able to raise capital during a period in which inner-city housing as a whole, and these neighbourhoods in particular, were devalued (and/or considered too risky to insure) by institutionalised finance capital. The influx of ethnic capital, and the conversion of many properties to multifamily use, had the positive effect of limiting devaluation and thus the rent gap in the face of de facto redlining, therefore reducing incentives for demolition and redevelopment (Smith, 1996). Much of the increase in rental in both neighbourhoods can be attributed to the conversion of properties to multifamily by ethnic owners and much of this housing was rented to tenants from within the community as many were uncomfortable having to deal with tenants in English (Teixeira, 2007; Chan, 2006). Likewise, ethnic contacts are often sought out first when properties are put up for sale (Murdie, 1991) and, considering that demand for housing from within both the ethnic communities remained strong well into the 1990s, this would have meant that a significant portion of the housing stock was effectively removed from the capitalist property market available to gentrifiers (although it would still have been available to ethnic speculators)…

“In both cases, the reliance on ethnic sources of housing finance capital and labour appears to have played a distinct role in maintaining a measure of ethnic control over a section of the housing stock, which acted as a complementary stabilising force for the community at a key time in its evolution. Thus, a third policy recommendation would be to support the usage of ethnic and/or non-market or non-profit sources of housing finance and/or non-market programmes that can match vacant properties to new residents, thus largely bypassing the traditional housing market and in turn reducing, if not preventing, speculative real estate activity and gentrifiers’ access to key properties. Such a policy need not be targeted at ethnic communities—embattled working-class communities could also benefit from such a system… Of course, the extent of the phenomenon (of ethnic housing finance) and its precise effects in obstructing gentrification in our two case studies remains somewhat of an unknown. This is an area that clearly warrants further empirical exploration by gentrification researchers.”

Similarly, City Council actions to inhibit speculation and move housing off the marketplace helped: “in South Riverdale the city council specifically adopted policies to prevent ‘white-painting’ in the neighbourhood and protect affordable housing. While short-lived (from 1974 until 1977), a municipal ‘speculation tax’ was implemented across the city and the City’s non-profit housing corporation (City Home) was instructed to acquire selected apartment units and houses as a complement to its stock of projects and limited equity co-operatives (City of Toronto Planning Board, 1977, pp. 22, 50). Although the number of houses acquired in this way in South Riverdale was small (55 units), it was a disproportionately high share compared with the rest of the inner city and sent an important signal to the development industry that the city intended to protect low-income housing in the area.”

Other factors that may have contributed include tackiness, with the appropriate “historic preservation” response from The Powers That Be: “Perhaps even more important was the way that a significant proportion of the housing stock was renovated by the incoming southern European communities in west-central Toronto… The extent of dislike for such mediterraneanised facades is revealed by gentrifiers’ attempts to ban the use of ‘angel brick’ under the rubric of heritage preservation (Caulfield, 1994, pp. 204–207).”

They also discuss how delayed deindustrialization allowed the neighborhoods to maintain their working-class character longer — after all, industrial activity (a) creates housing demand by the working class and (b) has environmental externalities that the gentrifying classes dislike/avoid.

The basin isn’t always so placid

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Blossomania! Originally uploaded by Payton Chung

Sure, living by the water has its highlights — like being able to walk out your front door to views like these — but I can’t help but worry about the impact of sea level rise on my neighborhood. Luckily, I suppose, I live a few meters above sea level; Washington’s park-lined waterfront allows a substantial buffer against the encroaching high tides.

The EPA’s Rising Sea site offers state-by-state reports on adaptation plans for sea level rise. For the District, the reports indicate that there is a high likelihood of further shore protection for already armored shorelines, like the ones nearest me. A hybrid approach may be taken for currently natural shorelines, like those along the Anacostia River.

Ultimately, the answer may be akin to the tidal gates that have kept the Tidal Basin relatively clean for over a century: a tidal barrier akin to the Thames Barrier, the IHNC under construction outside New Orleans, or one contemplated for New York Harbor. I found a 1963 Army Corps publication on hurricane preparedness (pp. 16-17 of this PDF) that modeled the 15-foot storm surge protection that could be afforded by a mechanical tidal barrier. Their proposed location for the barrier was between Marshall Hall, Maryland and Mason Neck, Virginia. Incidentally, the Marshall and Washington families used to run a little ferry across the river there — but protecting the city named after Mr. Washington might ultimately trump his lifelong dream of improving the Potomac’s navigability.

[2017 update: a Bisnow article mentions proposals for storm surge barriers in Boston, Houston, and New York harbors.]

Auto age deathwatch (update)

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As reported here before the Great Recession, the formerly inexorable decline in driving came to a sudden halt, and slipped into reverse, a few years ago. A few recent NY Times articles also pinpoint the date of this inflection point to the mid-2000s, when more teenagers began to forego drivers’ licenses:

“[O]ne of the most vexing problems facing the car industry: many young consumers today just do not care that much about cars… In 2008, 46.3 percent of potential drivers 19 years old and younger had drivers’ licenses, compared with 64.4 percent in 1998, according to the Federal Highway Administration, and drivers ages 21 to 30 drove 12 percent fewer miles in 2009 than they did in 1995. Forty-six percent of drivers aged 18 to 24 said they would choose Internet access over owning a car, according to the research firm Gartner.” [Amy Chozick]

Todd & Victoria Buchholz mention a longer-term decline in driving, all the way back to the start of the Millennial generation: an op-ed on declining mobility “in the early 1980s, 80 percent of 18-year-olds proudly strutted out of the D.M.V. with newly minted licenses, according to a study by researchers at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. By 2008 — even before the Great Recession — that number had dropped to 65 percent.”

If anything, the Great Recession and related mass youth unemployment has accelerated this long-term trend: “55 percent of Millennials surveyed have actively made an effort to drive less, up 10 percentage points from 45 percent in 2010, highlighting the growing trend of consciously reducing road time.” (Zipcar via TreeHugger)

Crystal City Diamond Derby

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On a whim last weekend, I registered for the Crystal City Diamond Derby, the first race I’ve done in a while. (Placed 7th!) The race’s combination of scavenger hunt elements and its underground setting reminded me of a few other race ideas I’ve thought of in the past. A lot of the riders seemed unclear on the concept; I watched them fly past the bonus-point checkpoints, which were where I got probably 3/4 of my points.

I did find one photo (Andy Zalan) and one video (by Mark Blacknell, see about 1:00 – 1:40) of me riding.

quick quotes

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“The federal budget for nonsecurity discretionary outlays — categories like highways and rail, education, job training, research and development, the judiciary, NASA, environmental protection, energy, the I.R.S. and more — was cut from more than 5 percent of gross domestic product at the end of the 1970s to around half of that today. With the budget caps enacted in the August agreement, domestic discretionary spending would decline to less than 2 percent of G.D.P. by the end of the decade, according to the White House. Government would die by fiscal asphyxiation.” — Jeffrey Sachs

“For a BJ’s customer, you may think that is absolutely ridiculous. We never expected people to use mass transit to shop at a wholesale club.” — Patrick Smith, VP real estate of BJ’s Wholesale Club. [Not actually that unusual; Vancouver has a Costco with direct access to Skytrain.]

“It used to be that Republicans understood that transportation investment was necessary to spur economic growth and create jobs. Now, I guess they think if we give the rich enough tax breaks they will get off the golf course, get in a bulldozer, and start building roads.” — Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), chair of the Senate Banking subcommittee with jurisdiction over public transportation

“Sometime during the past ten years or so food preparation officially surpassed filmmaking as the loftiest form of creative expression for the liberal arts demographic.  Furthermore, it’s essential that this food be prepared and served from some sort of vehicle (preferably a truck or a bicycle) instead of from an actual restaurant.  Part of the reason for this is of course that it’s cheaper that way, but it’s also because gentrification moves so quickly now that you need to be able to descend upon a new neighborhood within hours of reading a Tweet about it so you can provide all those young “pioneers” with the food products to which their refined palates have grown accustomed.   In any case, I have no doubt that if Darren Aronofsky were getting started today he’d never have made the movie “Pi;” instead, he’d be selling actual pies from a bakfiets.” — BSNYC weighing in on food trucks

A while ago, there was a pile-up on a Japanese highway of incredibly expensive sports cars. In the world’s second-largest car-making nation, this was a response typical of the social disapproval such showy vehicles receive: “It was a gathering of narcissists” — Mitsuyoshi Isejima of the Yamaguchi prefecture expressway traffic unit told Bloomberg.