Economic cadence

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Q. In the post-auto age, what will the autoworkers do?

A. “They can make BICYCLES, naturally.” And, in Portland, not only has a local-loop, labor-intensive, high-value-added, craftsman economy coalesced and (re)grown around food, but another has developed around bicycles. One estimate says the number of direct jobs in cycling in Portland has quadrupled. William Yardley reports for the NYT from the thicket o’ hipsters:

[I]n a city often uncomfortable with corporate gloss, what is most distinctive about the emerging cycling industry here is the growing number of smaller businesses, whether bike frame builders or clothing makers, that often extol recycling as much as cycling, sustainability as much as success… [T]he city is nurturing the cycling industry, and there are about 125 bike-related businesses in Portland, including companies that make bike racks, high-end components for racing bikes and aluminum for bikes mass-produced elsewhere…

[City councilor Sam] Adams said he was preparing a budget proposal that would spend $24 million to add 110 miles to the city’s existing 20-mile network of bike boulevards, which are meant to get cyclists away from streets busy with cars. Doing so could “double or triple ridership,” he said…

“I think the biggest thing that’s come from the effort the city has put into this is the vote of confidence,” [frame-builder Sacha] White said, speaking of bike riders and bike makers. “They want us here.”

And, of course, the story’s opening and closing hook? Susan Peithman, who used to work here in Chicago for CBF.

They’re invading, too: I’m curious about the “PDX Lounge” installation I’ve been invited to — a conscious attempt, going even beyond the Canadian products pavilion at Greenbuild Expo, to set up a vision of Portland as an outside-the-[exhibit hall]-box, coordinated, social nexus of sustainable design.

Not really related, but here’s a route map for last week’s Wicker Park Critical Mass. I’m especially proud of the little stretch of Burling (quote: “my, someone’s doing well”) and the winding about in Old Town Triangle (“I love these tiny little streets!”). We even had a few people speaking wistfully about Lincoln Park when it was all over.

Greenbuild is this week, so expect infrequent updates. For conference coverage, see Greenbuild365 (includes keynote videos) and, of course, a blog from Oregonian.

Bad timing

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Man, it’s just like we stepped into a time machine and went back to the 1960s all over again! Cars and trucks are just gliding across acres and acres of shiny new concrete, all around the Chicago area!

“The 12½-mile southern extension of the North-South Tollway (Interstate Highway 355) cuts through prairies, forests, farms and wetlands close to where residential subdivisions, office parks, warehouses and malls are rapidly being developed. The $730 million tollway extension runs three lanes in each direction through more than a dozen communities from Bolingbrook to New Lenox and connects Interstate Highways 55 and 80… Daily traffic projections suggest that about 125,000 vehicles a day will use the I-355 extension when it opens next month, the toll authority said.” — Jon Hilkevitch, Tribune, 22 Oct.

Soon-to-be-bulldozed prairies, forests, farms and wetlands. Yay, progress!

“All lanes on the Dan Ryan Expy. should be open — ending two years of construction on the Chicago area’s busiest expressway, state officials announced Thursday… mainline construction on the $975 million project will be wrapping up a few days ahead of IDOT’s Oct. 31 deadline.” — Monifa Thomas, Sun-Times, 26 Oct.

Huzzah! Oh well, it was $425,000,000 over budget. Whoops. Well, I’m sure the extra money was just sitting in a drawer somewhere. Okay, make that a cash room, the size of a racquetball court,(1) 20′ x 40′ x 20′, filled within 19″ of its brim with dollar bills.(2)

Oh. But wait, there’s this:

Calling Illinois “the poster child for neglect…” “It seems that the state and the governor are walking away from a minimal responsibility to maintain an existing system, let alone dramatically enhance it,” [U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.)] said in response to testimony at the hearing about rusting CTA trains and buses, crumbling viaducts, and miles of streets and dozens of bridges in disrepair in the Chicago area. — Hilkevitch, Trib, today

Oh well. That optimistic, forward-looking, shiny-new-things feeling was nice while it lasted, or maybe it would be nice if I drove. Or maybe lived in Houston — Houston! No zoning! — which at current rates will pass Chicago in population by mid-century, anyways.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority board voted Thursday to use light rail on all five of its next rapid transit lines as required in a 2003 referendum… In 2005, residents and elected officials along the planned North, East End, Southeast and Uptown routes were dismayed to learn that Metro analysis showed the cost would be too high and ridership too low to justify federal funding for rail… [T]he five new lines would increase the number of rail cars needed to about 100 from the present 18. Metro officials hope to have all five of the planned light rail lines completed in late 2012. — Rad Sallee reporting in the Houston Chronicle

Man, it’s sad when you manage to get upstaged by Texas — and by Texas government and Texas voters, no less.

Anyhow, next subject. Let’s look at demonstration of why Fix It First is almost always a good idea: a bit of preventive maintenance cost much less than a lot of comprehensive reconstruction; fixing existing infrastructure leverages prior generations’ wise investments; and it puts money into places where people already live and work — we’ve already shaped our lives around what’s there.

The Block 37 “superstation” is $100, $150M over its $200M budget; it’s just the first part of a project that will cost a billion dollars, serve about 5,000 riders a day,(3) and demolish countless historic neighborhoods along the Blue Line.(4) (And which, by the way, will offer no operational advantages to the existing system — the Blue Line and Red Line are already connected, albeit indirectly.) Let’s say that the 5,000 riders a day served by this earn 50% more than average; at a 13.5 minute time savings, that’s $24,605 in time saved daily.

Just the cost overrun on Block 37 could more than pay for the entire $105.7 million Slow Zone Elimination Project on the Red and Blue lines.(5) Assuming 10 minute travel time savings for 196,269 weekday passengers(6) and a time cost of $14.60 an hour (from TTI), that project will save the region’s economy $477,587 — nearly half a million dollars — in time every day. Plus, it will be done in 2008.

1. A visual aid, courtesy Davina at the University of South Florida: (Flickr)

2. Visualization calculated from here.

3. The 2006 business plan projects 1.68M riders a year in 2010 at $10/ticket. Assuming weekend ridership is 50% of weekday ridership, that works out to 5,385 riders a day.

4. Express trains require passing tracks, in particular at stations, where otherwise the express trains would be stuck behind locals. Where are Blue Line stations located? Many in the Kennedy median, and oh no, we can’t possibly remove any road ROW. Some in subways, which are frightfully expensive to tunnel — and the rest, like my own station at Damen, are elevated above and embedded into lovely, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods. Guess we’ll have to demolish those, then. From the business plan, page 20:

Two 3,000-foot passing tracks would be constructed, one southbound at California/Milwaukee, the other northbound at Damen/Milwaukee. These will allow the express train to pass a stopped Blue Line local train. In addition, the two stations would be reconstructed to accommodate this additional track. At Damen/Milwaukee, the station reconstruction is also planned to eliminate the “jog” in the mainline tracks at North Avenue.

Oh, that pesky Wicker Park. Always in the way.

5. This project is funded, as I understand it, from bonds levied on the assumption that federal funds will be granted, assuming that state matching funds comes through — a double assumption)

6. I’ve already achieved a 10 minute savings, thanks to the completed Milwaukee subway improvements; Kennedy/O’Hare passengers will save nearly 30 minutes apiece, Red Line riders somewhat less.

Last week’s hackneyed analysis was criticized in some quarters for not looking at the particular areas in which service would be cut. I’ve isolated 33 bus routes to be cut which terminate downtown (not counting the impact of cutting connecting services out in the neighborhoods, notably a number of Northwest Side and Evanston routes connecting to the Blue and Purple Lines, respectively); these carried 134,043 passengers on an average September 2006 weekday. Compare that to the 287,000 cars [or 574,000 car trips] entering downtown on an average weekday.

20 of these routes serve either the north lakefront or as downtown circulators — predominantly White, higher-income areas. These routes carried 64,905 passengers on an average weekday. Assume 75% of trips are for work (reasonable, since many run only at rush hours and Sunday boardings are 25% of weekday boardings); that’s 25,962 commuters a day. Add in 60% of the riders on the south/west side (but still downtown-serving; Sunday/weekday ratio 31%) routes to be cut, for 45,081 downtown commuters who are dependent bus routes that will soon expire. Let’s say that 20% of them (9,016) get fed up with the commute and decide to leave the downtown workforce — far lower than the 61% of CTA-riding City Colleges students who will have to end or curtail their classwork due to the cuts.

Assuming the citywide median wage of $36,600, that’s $330 million in payroll gone: nearly $36 million in state and local taxes (assuming 10.8%). And at 220 square feet per employee, that’s negative net absorption of two million square feet of office space — almost enough to vacate AT&T, 311 S. Wacker, or indeed any skyscraper downtown except the Mart, Aon, or Sears.

This would be an initial impact, of course. Over the long run, reducing transportation capacity into the region’s primary job center will make it difficult for employers to justify the significant rent premiums they pay for downtown space — or even to locate in this region. Transit moves half of all people going into downtown, and without those people — or even without a large fraction thereof — countless businesses will see their margins (made on the last few sales, the last few employees) vanish.

Estimates by the Partnership for New York City of the economic development impacts of the Second Avenue Subway say that new jobs and new development capacity — indirect benefits of the project — will amount to 50% more positive economic impact than the already huge direct benefits in transportation productivity (time savings, increased ridership). Applying that figure to the recent Metropolis 2020 study — which showed a 21% return on investment for transit system investments, counting only time savings (increasing to as much as 61% when such investments are leveraged with transit supportive land use) results in ROIs of 53-153%. Not only is this state leaving that huge fortune on the table, but we risk spiraling down a vicious vortex as the process works in reverse: turning time saved into time wasted, job growth and new development into decline and abandonment.

8.7 seconds

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I put together this fake “traffic impact analysis” to amuse the Critical Mass list. Please don’t take it seriously.

Update: according to the Chicago Climate Analysis, CATS figures for the Chicago area give this breakdown of regional VMT: gasoline cars 49%, gas light trucks & SUVs 43%, heavy trucks 8%.

Let’s get this clear: 5% of cars/trucks on the roads are commercial
vehicles. <1% are emergency vehicles. That leaves at least 94% of
vehicles that are neither trucks nor ambulances, and cannot hide
behind the “what about trucks or ambulances?” excuse. Now, perhaps
10% of the 24,800 cars that drive by my front door every day are
carrying pregnant, paraplegic grandmothers to the ER, but even still,
that leaves 20,832 drivers who have some ‘splainin to do —
especially seeing as I’ve six mass transit routes available within
two blocks of here.

Now, about Chicago Critical Mass being a traffic nightmare that
brings Chicago to its knees.

The Texas Transportation Institute* calculates that in 2005, Chicago
area rush hour drivers spent about 46 hours stuck in traffic. That’s
a lot of time — if you had that much time comped from work, you
could take an ten-day vacation. Wow.

Let’s calculate first how much space CCM consumes. Assuming
generously that CCM occupies two lanes of traffic and is one mile
long (i.e., we occupy two lane miles), we occupy 0.016% of the
Chicago region’s 12,900 lane miles of arterial streets. Say that this
pattern causes a one-mile traffic backup behind us and half a mile on
two roads on either side, and that these roads average 2 1/3 lanes.
That adds another seven lane miles of congestion, for a grand total
of nine lane miles of congestion — 0.07% of the region’s arterial
street network, and 0.09% of the region’s congested arterial streets,
assuming congestion is bad across the entire congested network. (63%
of lane miles are congested during peak hours.)

Let’s also subtract out freeway vehicle-miles from those 46 hours in
traffic, since it’s been a very long while since Critical Mass could
be blamed for blocking a freeway. 52.4% of vehicle miles traveled on
busy streets in our region are traveled on freeways (which only
account for 17.4% of the lane miles). Assuming that delay is equally
spread across freeway and arterial travel, that leaves 22 hours a
year of being stuck in arterial traffic.

Now, let’s look at time. Those lane-miles are congested for about
three hours, once a month; however, only two of those hours (6-8 PM)
are within peak periods. Two hours twelve times a year, distributed
over 7.8 hours of “rush hour” on 255 workdays a year (1,989 hours of
“rush hour” a year) = Critical Mass is bringing the world to a halt
during 1.2% of the rush hours in a year.

Let’s put space and time together now. Critical Mass affects 0.09% of
the congested arterial street network for 1.2% of the hours that the
arterials are congested. Therefore, we can blame 0.11% of the total
annual arterial delay on Critical Mass. The other 99.89% of the time
that you’re stuck in traffic, it’s *other cars*, not bicycles, that are
holding you up — you just don’t notice it, since that’s the status quo.
The 0.11% works out to a paralyzing 8.7 seconds of the 46 hours
you, Chicago-area rush-hour driver, will spend stuck in traffic this
year. Put another way, this year, you could have watched 27.6 feature
length movies (half of Hitchcock’s oeuvre! more than a movie every
other week!) while you were stuck in traffic — and we’re a nine-second
explosion scene.

(Incidentally, while we’re talking Hitchcock, nine seconds is about
as long as you see Norman Bates’ shadow through Marion Crane’s shower
curtain. Okay, maybe a bad choice, since those particular nine
seconds feel like eternity. Well, nine seconds is also the attention
span of a goldfish. How about that?)

Please, bang your fist on the dashboard again. It’s really attractive.

* Please note that while the figures I use may have some basis in
reality, this particular methodology has been provided for your
amusement only; really, I’d categorize it as shifty, doubtful, and
utterly unable to withstand peer review. If I really wanted to (and
had a lot of extra cash sitting around, since proper methodology is
not cheap), I could ask a few friends who run computer traffic models
to make a similar point with greater accuracy. And, of course, I know
that Critical Mass delays drivers unequally; a few will be delayed by
a lot while the great majority will not be delayed at all. However,
the point remains that, in the grand scheme of life and the perhaps
even greater scheme of rush-hour traffic, Critical Mass is but an
insignificant speck.
http://mobility.tamu.edu/ums/congestion_data/east_map.stm and

Click to access TimLomax.pdf

“What pissed me off was the futility of it, the lack of consideration
for others, and the myopic Cartmanesque I-do-what-I-want
selfishness on display..”

I can see your point here, since I really get annoyed with
motorcyclists who blast their illegally “loud pipes” by my house
(with zero interference from the police) at all hours for no apparent
reason other than as, well, a masturbatory gesture. (I’ve even seen
some wearing earplugs.)

What’s worse, these idiots say that they do so for safety’s sake;
well, when there’s one of them next to me on the road, I know that I
get so nervous that I feel like seriously endangering their safety.
So yes, I can empathize with your desire to prevent use of public
streets for idle, destructive displays of brazen sociopathy.

That’s one reason why I always strove to keep Mass rides as polite as
possible: frequent turns, tightly massed group, quickly ending
pointless idling and circling within intersections. However, I will
point out that the public way is, and always has been, a venue for
more than just moving and storing vehicles (a “traffic sewer,” a pipe
that moves the smelly things as fast and as far away as possible) —
streets have long served as places of public enjoyment, as social
space. And judging from the sea of smiles on the mass and from many
onlookers, I’d say that Critical Mass does a pretty good job of
freeing up the street as social space even as it inhibits the
street’s use as traffic-sewage conduit. And insofar as Mass is a
conceptual vehicle that helps other people imagine — and then create
— streets which bring more joy and safety to more people, I think
that’s a good thing.

What might seem futile to you can be an inspirational challenge to
others. Any great social movement that challenges the status quo
must seem futile in the face of hegemony; Critical Mass simply
refuses and creates an alternative reality. Gandhi’s “you must be the
change you wish to see” is our challenge to ourselves and to you.

You have been warned

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A couple of car-culture blurbs for Monday. First, a report by Eric Pfanner in the Times:

Quick, what’s more dangerous: automobiles or cigarettes?

The European Parliament proposed last Wednesday that car advertisements in the European Union carry tobacco-style labels, warning of the environmental impact they cause.

Under the plan, 20 percent of the space or time of any auto ad would have to be set aside for information on a car’s fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, cited as a contributor to global climate change.

So, should we prepare for warnings along the lines of, “Driving this car may damage the health of the planet”?

The real goal is, as usual for Brussels, to scare the industry into “voluntary” submission — but also to counteract automakers’ more-is-better message. Perhaps they need some scare, though: Wendelin Wiedeking, the chairman of Porsche, was quoted by Mark Landler in an article covering the Frankfurt Auto Show as saying “We need to be a little realistic. People need transportation; we’re not all going to start riding bicycles.”

* The same Frankfurt Auto Show package of articles includes a ho-hum piece by Keith Schneider on Seattle’s livability initiatives (from the same mayor proposing a 50% widening of the waterfront freeway). “The result is that cleaner, greener, safer cities are attracting legions of new employees and residents. But municipal leaders in Seattle and elsewhere say they are determined not to turn their cities into warehouses for the vehicles that come with all the newcomers. However, there’s also this:

This November, residents of Seattle and other Puget Sound communities will vote on whether to raise the sales and vehicle excise taxes to generate $7.8 billion for road construction and $10 billion to build 50 more miles of light-rail lines and other transit projects.

Contrast that 56.2%-for-transit figure with the “casino capital” bill advanced by the Illinois Senate, as analyzed by Julie Hamos:

Within SB 1110 is funding for “transit capital”, pegged at $425 million in new state funds – only 1/10th the amount included for roads. This is quite a contrast to the last capital bond program in 1999, when roads received twice as much as transit – not 10 times as much!

* Word leaked last week that the administration is investigating privatizing the city’s parking meter operation, which brings in about $22 million in revenue each year. Unlike downtown garages or even the Skyway (which is paralleled closely by the Bishop Ford freeway), parking meters serve other social purposes besides revenue. Apparently, aldermen agree; from Fran Spielman’s story in last Monday’s Sun-Times:

Aldermen were intrigued by the idea. But, they were also concerned about the loss of control — over jobs, benefits and, most of all, parking meter rates.

“We saw that in the Skyway. Fees went up. If we lose control of that, the citizens have nobody to complain to. That’s like complaining to General Motors. They’re not going to listen to John Q. Citizen,” said Transportation Committee Chairman Tom Allen (38th).

Ald. Ricardo Munoz (22nd) called privatization of city assets a “slippery slope.Where do you stop? At what point does a for-profit hospital want to run our clinics?”

Parking meters, unlike the downtown park garages, reach deep into the neighborhoods (where they are often the only pay parking option) and serve (or could serve) policy purposes broader than simply raising revenues for the city. This move would come just as the city, prodded by some neighborhood groups, is embarking on significant and revenue enhancing price-optimization strategies (in fact, San Francisco estimates that it can quintuple revenues through better management) which would be stifled by this action. Worse yet, privatizing before the upside has been milked takes what could easily amount to $50 million in additional annual revenue and puts it in the bankers’ hands.

A private operator won’t have the same incentives to work with neighborhoods — to, for instance, put down free bike parking spaces in lieu of paid car parking (as in Brooklyn or Montreal, which also adds some scooter spaces).

And then, of course, there’s the fact that taking out second mortgages left and right is not exactly a sure sign of an organization’s fiscal health. Contracting out operations or management (writing in new incentives for higher yield — like how energy auditors get paid out of the net energy savings) could achieve the same end, but the net rewards would still accrue to the public instead.

* Fran Spielman also reported last week on Alderman Tom Tunney’s talking-while-driving ticket:

[Ald. Tunney] question[s] why officers in an “understaffed police district” with serious unsolved crimes are “assigned to pull people over solely for cell phone violations.”

Um, well, maybe that’s because cars kill more people in your ward than guns do, Alderman.

* Speaking of cars killing, Alan Durning continues his excellent Bicycle Neglect series of articles with an investigation of bicycle safety, finding naturally that not bicycling kills more people than the alternative. The good news: urban cycling is getting safer, at least one study shows that cycling is 40% safer than driving (using a strange per-hour measurement), and the cardiovascular health benefits of cycling vastly outweighs (by a factor of four) any health risk from crashes. Indeed, every minute spent walking or cycling adds three minutes to an individual’s life. In other words, don’t think of time spent walking; think of time invested walking, since that time will pay back interest later in life. (Quite literally, in fact!)

The bad news: cycling is three (per trip) to ten (per passenger km) times more dangerous than driving — although, to be fair, driving, in turn, is 10 times more dangerous than mass transportation (buses, trains, planes), and walking is three times still more dangerous than cycling per trip.

Still, bicycling could be much safer — and by making it safer, societies stand to gain immensely in terms of health, safety, environment, and energy security, not to mention livability. Indeed, Dutch cyclists are ten times safer per passenger-km; in other words, as safe from harm as American drivers. He also underlines that the key to this isn’t blaming cyclists for not wearing helmets — in other words, personalizing the problem of safety — but in taking collective action: facilities, law enforcement, education, and getting more people [and fewer cars] on the streets (a.k.a. “safety in numbers“).

(A quote from aspiring-Brit Noah Raford that “in numbers” article: “From a public policy standpoint, from a safety standpoint, the message is, if you want safer streets, have more people on them.”)

Reminds me of Tom Friedman last week: “But actually, the greenest thing you can do is this: Choose the right leaders. It is so much more important to change your leaders than change your light bulbs.” Al Gore’s wecansolveit.org echoes the sentiment:

When we solve the climate crisis, it will be because of regular people like you and me. It will be because we, along with our neighbors, co-workers, and friends around the world, took a stand and demanded that our leaders make stopping global warming a top priority.

* Speaking of collective green action, the national Step it Up rally — intended by author Bill McKibben to create a mass movement around climate change — returns on 3 November.

CTA’s bus cuts in perspective

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The 84 bus routes to be cut by CTA carried 308,262 passengers on an average September 2006 weekday. At an average vehicle occupancy (AVO) of 1.2,* that’s equivalent to 256,885 cars a day of capacity. Compare to these local roads’ AADTs (trucks excluded):

I-90 at Fullerton: 244,400
I-290 at Ashland: 189,700
Lake Shore Drive at Diversey: 150,650
Lake Shore Drive at Jackson: 131,700
I-55 at Damen: 131,500
and, just for kicks, let’s look at how many people some other transportation facilities nationwide carry on an average weekday:
Bay Area Rapid Transit: 365,300 (5th largest heavy rail system in country)
Miami-Dade Transit: 347,400
Portland Tri-Met: 325,400
Metra: 310,800 (2nd largest commuter rail system in country)
Seattle’s King County Transit buses: 294,500
Denver RTD: 267,400
San Diego MTS, Trolley, and Transit: 265,200
Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro Transit: 241,700
St. Louis Bi-State Development Agency: 186,200
All Illinois transit services outside Chicago or St. Louis: 58,500
I-35W bridge over Mississippi, Brooklyn Bridge: 140,000 AADT (incl. trucks)
Golden Gate Bridge: 106,400 ADT

If the Kennedy bridge at Fullerton collapsed, or if terrorists took out both I-55 and Lake Shore Drive, or if Metra just up and died, how would this state’s government react? I bet they wouldn’t spend years squabbling, dilly-dallying, grand-standing, and pork-padding. Just because buses aren’t sexy doesn’t mean that they don’t serve the honest purpose of moving people around the transportation network — or that, when they’re cut, that people won’t be as hurt as if other modes experienced similar capacity reductions.

Sure, people will adapt to bus route elimination (reducing trips, taking alternate routes and modes), but they’d adapt to a freeway shutdown, too.

(And to answer some conspiracy theories about which routes were to be cut, even high-ridership routes were cut if they roughly parallel other services. Rush-hour shuttles — regardless of how packed — are not very cost-effective, as they require additional equipment and employees at peak hours when the service is already stretched to its limits. And CTA’s legal mandate doesn’t require it to cover Evanston.)

I might try to dig up some numbers on how much money the “casino capital bill” plans to siphon from Chicago to waste on largely unused Downstate roads — compared to the number of people who will be affected by shutting down transit services. From the Sun-Times’ Wednesday editorial:

Lawmakers have proposed just $425 million for mass transit for the entire state, and that’s dependent on getting casinos. Even under the proposed plan, we’re spending only $1 on transit for every $11 we spend on roads. Three years ago, it was $1 out of every $3.

Somehow Springfield doesn’t grasp that mass transit moves Chicago’s economy, and Chicago’s economy drives the state. Our leaders shouldn’t wait for the buses and trains to stop running before they pay attention.

* A local AVO of 1.2 is suggested by 2001 CATS observations of 1.1 to 1.25 AVO in a study of vehicles entering I-94. ADTs and truck ADTs from IDOT. Metra ridership from 2007 budget book. Other cities’ transit ridership from APTA 2Q 2007 report. Golden Gate Bridge is twice average daily toll counts from 2005, from MTC.

Woebegone budgets, &c.

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A wrap-up of items from my latest week away:

* Paul Merrion in Crain’s points out that “intense opposition to [refinery] expansion plans following BP America Inc.’s scuttled proposal to dump more waste in Lake Michigan… raise the prospect of even higher prices at the pump if pollution-control technology makes refinery expansion unfeasible.” Well, duh (and that’s a good thing, IMO), but I wonder if all those drivers signing petitions against BP’s expansion realized that they, too, are part of the problem. Probably not, of course.

* Greg Hinz pre-emptively rued this week of fiscal crisis:

the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) will unveil a proposed 2008 budget that, unlike prior versions, almost certainly will be the real Doomsday thing… Mayor Richard M. Daley on Wednesday will unveil his own heaping helping of woes: service cuts and tax hikes that insiders have warned may include a stunning $100-million hike in the property tax… the Cook County Board considers an increase of 2% in the county’s sales tax proposed by county President Todd Stroger… as Springfield squabbles over a proposed property-tax hike that threatens to hit city homeowners with what County Assessor Jim Houlihan says would be an average 40% increase on bills due later this year… “It’s an all-out race to see who can raise taxes higher, faster than others in the race,” says Gerald Roper, president and CEO of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce.

My favorite: city water and sewer rates will go up by $65 million. This, in a city that (this never fails to astonish people elsewhere) has no water meters. That’s right, I of the paused showers and ultra-efficient dishwasher (hey, Californian parents will do that to you) pay the same rate as someone who runs the sprinkler 24/7. Maybe the infamously corrupt water department might consider adding meters, and charging people per use — instead of regressively raising rates across the board?

* Sadly, two fascinating trial balloons that went up last week amidst the tax-hike frenzy got shot down really fast. A tax on parking spaces, apparently floated by the governor (and discussed here last year), appears to have disappeared into the muck. A city gas tax hike, and parking-meter increase, disappeared between last week’s rumors and this week’s proposal. Not that Fran Spielman didn’t get a chance to get a great quote about it:

Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) said she’s all for doubling the gas tax, but only if the Chicago Transit Authority gets the money. “I don’t think we’re going to get the help we need from Springfield. (CTA funding is) a critical issue for me, and I don’t see anybody paying attention,” she said.

* Andrea Johnson in LiveScience reports on an aerial survey by Bryan Pijanowski of Purdue University that found three surface parking spaces for each licensed driver around Purdue. Not quite the seven I’ve seen quoted elsewhere (where’d that come from?), but then again this didn’t count residential garages, on-street parking, or structures of any sort. However, the fact that such a survey was possible

* I scribbled this down about Interbike in Las Vegas, over on Flyertalk:

I’m (hardly) old enough to remember CABDA, the last of the regional bicycle trade shows (and right next to the UA hub at ORD!). Eurobike Portland sounded interesting while talk of that lasted, and with the industry’s recent growth perhaps a competitor could’ve survived.

My employer treats our convention as an honor bestowed upon cities that meet our standards, since our attendees expect to learn from the cities they visit. APBP, Thunderhead, and other bike groups do the same. Granted, I see everything through the lens of the built environment, but wouldn’t it be cool if bike dealers could walk out of the convention center and see… people bicycling, thanks to good facilities and a healthy local bike culture? Maybe then they’d start to get excited about the changes possible in the communities outside their own shops — a great way to build overall demand and sales.

* A photo of me by Hayley Graham accompanied this Chicago Journal article about the Pilsen Park(ing) Day action.

* Counterintuitive: facing losses in 2005, CalTrain (which has a unique combination of an hourly pay structure and nearly equally balanced loads) worked its way out of a deficit by expanding service, particularly faster express trains. Fewer stops = more runs with the same crews. A virtuous-cycle, revenue-growth approach to budgeting, rather than the vicious-cycle, cost-cutting approach — they’d be easier if only transit captured more of the value it created, of course.

* NYC’s public-service bike safety ads carry the simplest, stupidest, but most necessary message possible: Look.

* I typically dislike freeway-median transit — it inhibits the potential for pedestrian friendly, transit oriented development, since the stations are necessarily embedded amidst stinky cars — but I could get behind Mark Oberholzer’s idea:

integrating turbines into the barriers between highway lanes that would harness the wind generated by passing cars to create energy. “Opposing streams of traffic create really incredible potential in terms of a guaranteed wind source,” Oberholzer says… “The technical problems of tying into the grid and managing the flow made me think of putting the power to a different use,” he says. “I’m pretty excited about integrating a subway or light-rail train right where the barrier is. I love the idea of siphoning off electricity generated by private transportation to run public transportation.”

World upside down

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Oh, the surprises that await when the world actually does turn upside down.

Now we know who’s in charge of Minneapolis streets. It’s a loosely organized group of serial lawbreakers called Critical Mass. — Katherine Kersten, resident reactionary op-ed-er at the Strib

I think it might be fun to turn this “we, the hegemonic majority, are being oppressed!!! how dare someone challenge my heretofore unquestioned privilege!!!” meme (a common right wing trope, for those unable to see the power underlying their own positions) on its head. After all, my first internet claim to fame was contributing to “Life in Our Anti-Christian America,” a compilation of fictitious ways in which we atheists exert oppressive control over the poor Christian hegemony — e.g., “It’s difficult to find people with good Christian names like John or Paul or Christopher.”

Ah, if only I had as much time now as I did then.

Sweep

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I’ll be away for a week or so (some of it in Toronto, where I’ll get to attend some workshops preceding Walk21), so…

* John McCarron writes in the Trib about a new book by UIC’s John McDonald about the fortunes of American cities:

The good news for Chicagoans is that, while we fell as hard as any of the big cities on McDonald’s list during the ’60s and ’70s, we turned it around during the late 1980s and mounted the most dramatic comeback of all.

But we had a long way to come back. Chicago lost 17 percent of its population between 1970 and 1990. During that time, the poverty rate jumped to 21.6 percent from 14.4 percent. The average annual family income, measured in 2005 dollars, dove to $48,500 from $54,300. The murder rate jumped by 30 percent and the percentage of single-parent households nearly doubled to 41 percent from 22 percent.

Then came the turnaround. “The reversal for Chicago and the region during the ’90s was truly remarkable,” McDonald said in an interview. “Far more so than was the case for New York and the other Northeastern cities.”

Of course, that turnaround cannot be taken for granted; underinvestment in infrastructure, in particular, is a problem. Hence…

* “Illinois Works,” according to the Southtown, will consist mostly of accelerating current IDOT highway plans. The Trib reports:

The legislation approved by the Senate would provide $425 million in capital funding to the Regional Transportation Authority. The CTA would receive 55 percent under the current formula. Brown said the $234 million the CTA would receive — roughly what the agency gets now — is far short of what’s needed. CTA officials said almost $6 billion in maintenance is required to put the bus and train systems in good repair.

Yes, that means just 8% of this massive capital package will fund transit in the Chicago region. The many Chicago senators who voted for this bill should be ashamed.

* The 26 September NYT included a feature on Portland’s food scene, citing its affordability and easy access to farms. Farmland at the urban fringe has value far beyond its aesthetic interest as green space, and the economic value has a multiplier inside the city as well. I’m sure that the Cato Institue doesn’t care, anyways.

* Leadership is about “follow me” not “after you.” — Tom Friedman on U.S. climate policy, responding to the insistent whine of “after you, China.” As I’ve said before, “Until you’ve taken constructive, positive action, you forfeit any right to waste my time with whines and complaints.”

A park in ten minutes

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18:16 Originally uploaded by Payton Chung

Here’s a photo of Pilsen’s newest park, created (for the most part) in just ten minutes on Friday by a small group of local volunteers. More photos I took documenting its rise (and fall) are in this Flickr set.

Meg Gustafson took some great photos of the temporary (but very professional) Bloomingdale Trailhead park, just two blocks from my home, and other Flickr users have uploaded hundreds of photos from around the country of other public spaces temporarily liberated from cars. Props to TPL (like other land trusts, typically a pretty staid group) for embracing this bit of urban direct action. CBF was not so lucky, though.

A bicycling mayor

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On August 25, Donovan Slack reported in the Globe:

Now, the mayor has discovered bicycling.

Menino purchased a silver Trek road bike [the photo shows a Lime cruiser] three weeks ago and has been riding it regularly through his Hyde Park neighborhood. Each weekday at about 5 a.m., the 64-year-old mayor straps on a black cycling helmet and an arm band with red reflector lights and sets off alone on a leisurely, 45-minute pedal. He acknowledges that another public crusade is brewing.

“We’re going to do more in our city with bikes,” Menino decreed upon his return home from a ride yesterday…

“When I get more experienced at this, I’ll be able to ride the whole city,” he said, visibly excited during an interview in the kitchen of his Chesterfield Street home.

Not even a month later, Matt Viser reports…

A newly converted cyclist himself, Menino will announce today the hiring of a bike czar, former Olympic cyclist Nicole Freedman, and a first phase of improvements to include 250 new bike racks across Boston and an online map system. In the next several years, Menino said, he plans to create a network of bike lanes… Paths could also be constructed to connect the Emerald Necklace system of parks, and the mayor is looking at facilities like showers, bike storage areas, and automated bike rental systems that make wheels instantly available to anyone with a credit card.

That was fast. (The photo of Menino on his Lime should go on the cover of Trek’s new 1 World 2 Wheels advocacy materials.) Even compares favorably with San Francisco, where the mayor and seven of eleven supervisors rode in Bike to Work Day this year — where, at the peak of rush hour, inbound traffic on Market Street was 54% bikes, 42% cars, and 4% taxi, bus, or tram.

Passages

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One of the questions that our SSA commission has been wrestling with has been what to do with Mautene Court, a tiny, overlooked plaza just northwest of Milwaukee and Ashland. It was a stub street turned into a failed plaza, but construction all around it led to its recent closure. I’ve found a few examples of interesting precedents for this kind of “passage park”; most connect two streets, and Mautene has the potential to connect through the lot behind it to rapidly growing Division Street.

* Liberties Walk in Philadelphia. [My photos.] “Part of real estate developer Bart Blatstein’s plan to build an upscale artists’ community on his large property holdings in Northern Liberties. Blatstein designed [it] to be a mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented retail and residential corridor that would fit with the neighborhood’s architecture.” [PlanPhilly] A semi-critical article from when the plan was announced: [City Paper]

* Chess Park in Glendale, Calif. [Photos from Flickr] “The park is located in a previously underused passageway which runs between two retail shops in the Brand Boulevard business district, connecting a city parking structure to the bustling streetfront shops, restaurants, and theaters on Brand Boulevard, Glendale’s main thoroughfare.” [ASLA 2006 Awards]. An hour-by-hour photoessay about a day in the park’s life is in the September 2007 issue of Landscape Architecture magazine.

* Fruitvale Transit Village in Oakland, Calif. [My photos.] This one’s a little more problematic, a handsome two-block pedestrian street developed by a local CDC that was a bit too ambitious with the retail. Read more in New Urban News.

* The Distillery District in Toronto [photos] [previous post on business mix] is a historic industrial complex that has been renovated into an immensely popular, pedestrian-only arts and entertainment village, with galleries, shops, restaurants and cafés, performance and creative spaces, and now (after many years of development) high- and mid-rise condos. (Québec also has a number of lively pedestrian malls despite the bitter cold, like art-stall-lined Rue de Petit Champlain in Québec or restaurant-lined Rue Prince-Arthur in Montréal’s Plateau: [photo 1] [photo 2] [photo 3])

* In a more socioeconomically comparable neighborhood, Mozaic in swanky Uptown Minneapolis is a 2.5 acre site being developed as retail, entertainment, condos, and a boutique hotel in mid- to high-rises surrounding a half-acre plaza with “interactive fire and water garden.” [Flashy official site]

Another idea that’s been brewing, in a somewhat similar vein, is the notion of building a public market in the neighborhood — a citywide destination that promotes local entrepreneurs. I’ve always been a fan of a good market, but most of the famous ones are the cavernous, established downtown markets. So, I was surprised to find a 40-stall public market squeezed into about 10,000 sq. ft. in Viroqua, Wis., population 5,000. It’s not incredibly sophisticated, but it’s a great venue for entrepreneurs and a smart reuse of an existing space — an auto dealership with wood-truss vaulted ceilings, opened in 2004. Midtown Global Market is a better-capitalized new public market housing 60 larger vendors within an old Sears in South Minneapolis. Unlike those areas, though, Wicker Park has the added advantage of being termed as one of the higher-income “food deserts” in recent research (see presentation from Mari Gallagher here) — a neighborhood comparatively underserved by grocery stores.

Perhaps most interesting to this neighborhood is the Epicurious Garden [my photos], a stylish new food hall (think linear food court, or tiny and chichi public market), with ten small foodie businesses, recently opened a few doors from Chez Panisse in Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto. Most of the vendors face a short passage and offer takeout; around the edges are a wine bar, a classical tea house, a small garden (which still manages several seating options), and a cooking school.

Deregulation

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CarFree USA links to a video documenting how a busy Dutch intersection functions without any traffic controls:

Ted White explores the “shared space” concept in greater detail in Baltimore’s Urbanite. He points out that both the stop sign and stop light were invented in Detroit — ca. 1915 and 1920, respectively! The entire 1890s bicycle craze had passed by that point, and for decades urban streets had been happily and safely shared by pedestrians, cyclists, horses, and whatnot. Traffic regulations only became necessary once Model As began choking the streets, since cars’ size and speed makes them nearly incapable of civilly sharing the road.

As I’ve argued before, traffic controls were invented to tame automobiles — and requiring pedestrians and cyclists to follow the same rules is like playing a game of foursquare on a polo field. The old rules don’t work when you change the underlying space. Remember, the term “critical mass” comes from another Ted White, describing how cyclists just randomly self-organize at uncontrolled Chinese intersections. (Since China has fewer cars, they also have fewer traffic controls. Funny that.)

Sure, some of this is possible thanks to that weird Dutch libertarian streak, and a little bit more to the much more stringent regulation of driving licenses in the Netherlands, but actually, even here in the U.S. studies have found that decades of over-engineering roads (wide lanes, soft curves, no trees or other visual distractions) have resulted in faster, less attentive driving.

A lot of people won’t believe that it works, but already:
– If you’ve ever driven in, say, Boston and Texas, you’d be sure that Boston has higher car crash and pedestrian fatality rates: Boston drivers are maniacs with death wishes, half the intersections don’t even have street signs, etc., yet the pedestrian death rate in Orlando (with extensive, suburban-style traffic controls everywhere) is three times higher than that in Boston.

– Another example of Dutch deregulation that did successfully translate to the U.S.: the self-checkout lanes in many big-box retailers today were brought to the U.S. by Royal Ahold, a supermarket operator based in the Netherlands. It’s counterintuitive, but self-checkout actually reduced shrinkage (theft): employees steal more than customers, and self-checkout puts fewer people in contact with cash drawers.