The National Trust has named the hipster coast — Brooklyn’s East River waterfront, along whose shores and uplands live countless hipsters — to this year’s 11 Most Endangered list. Maybe cultural creatives won’t guard the historic urban fabric.
(Photo is of the Panorama, not of the real city.)
Pretty ambitious, too.
The Urban Society of Kansas City promotes excellence in several crucial areas for making a great city: urban design, architecture, effecient government and grassroots economic development…
1. Promote a pedestrian environment throughout Kansas City’s urban core.
2. Achieve within twenty years ubiquitous, convenient and continuously-running public transportation and break the city’s dependence on the automobile.
3. Increase urban core density, especially through a dramatic increase in housing units serving all income categories. Within twenty years, see all vacant lots in the urban core filled in.
4. Through modification of laws and tax policy, create an environment where grassroots efforts of all types flourish.
5. Raise architectural standards and encourage adherence to appropriate urban design principles.
Two local links for today:
* Crain’s has a new Market Facts 2007 online. The interactive skyline view is particularly intriguing.
* Chicago Magazine posted its depressing “How Bucktown Got Boutiqued” timeline (written by Rebecca Little). Since it was published, BCBG signed for the space next to Marc Jacobs. At least they’re not displacing any other retail shops — the space is in a loft which had an elevated first floor, now lowered to ground level in a pretty tasteful way.
The SSA received an encouraging response to its planning RFP, so we might have some good ideas on how to fight back against the chain invasion soon.
A recent Washington Monthly featured a piece by Zachary Roth on how U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan — a Democrat from the moribund parts of northeast Ohio surrounding Akron and Youngstown, and elected to Congress at the tender age of 28 — is attempting to forge a new politics that will speak to the interests of Gen X-ers and Millennials.
Ryan’s one of the “fighting Dems,” another former football star with fiery anti-Bush rhetoric, is reaching for a pro-trade message that acknowledges the fact of globalization, countering it with a renewed focus on education — and selling the message with attention-grabbing political theater.
“In our part of the country, we have a very strong cultural tie to steel,” Ryan told me later. “And whether we like it or not, the world has changed.” The speech, he said, “was a challenge to change your way of thinking.”
This fascinating video from NYC Streets Renaissance demonstrates what must be among the most satisfying jobs I’ve ever seen: a city staffer in Portland whose job is to be a decoy, nabbing drivers who roll through crosswalks. The sometimes maddeningly deferential Northwestern driving culture didn’t just arise out of thin air; it owes at least something to strong enforcement of the existing laws.
NYCSR/Transalt also has this amusing flowchart of the positive feedback loops one can expect with congestion pricing:
WMATA, DC’s regional transit agency, uses a rather impressive array of community outreach tools that increase transparency about the system’s workings and governance. Among them:
– LunchTalk live online chats with system officials
– a Riders Advisory Council that meets monthly
– webcast meetings, not only of the board but also of upper level staff
– a separate Elderly & Disabled advisory committee that meets monthly about paratransit and accessibility
MBTA not only has an independent governing board, but that board sponsors TransitWorks, an independent group (funded by TMAs, it appears) which administers surveys and a “mystery shopper” program.
Out in LA, Global Inheritance — which has carved a niche for itself by supporting environmental initiatives like recycling and ridesharing at youth-oriented music and sports events, recently held a Public Display Of Affection concert and exhibit at Union Station, “to show public transportation in Los Angeles a little love.” Admission? One inbound MTA ticket.
My pal Maureen made a bunch of worm composting bins for us city-dwelling environmentalists. I recently expanded mine into full-fledged Worm Flats, adding a second layer for super-simple worm management. (The worms migrate up to the second “floor,” leaving behind the now-easily emptied lower “floor.”) It’s worked flawlessly so far. Just watch the short video to join in the fun:
…move forward without Chicago, of course. Over $1B in federal funding will be allocated to five cities nationwide to launch or expand congestion pricing projects under the Urban Partnerships Program. One of those five will probably be NYC; Ray Rivera in the Times writes that “Ms. Peters heaped lavish praise on the mayor’s [cordon toll] plan, calling it brave, bold and long overdue.” (The NY Academy of Sciences has a terrific briefing on the London congestion charge and Bloomberg’s proposal.) So yes, the feds are heaping money on cities so that they can access a new/expanded revenue stream of tolls. This is absolutely a no-brainer.
Denver’s proposal would extend I-25’s existing HOT lanes up US36/Boulder Pike and use the revenue to expedite BRT improvements to RTD’s existing B route; this expands on a concept introduced to local commuters with HOT express lanes on I-25.
Of course, the Kennedy Expressway has a nearly identical situation to I-25; simply adding a few I-PASS transponders and cameras would reduce congestion and generate millions of dollars in revenue for Blue Line repairs. (CMAP’s ultimate proposal included $100M in Blue Line repairs [“upgraded to eliminate slow zones caused by deteriorating infrastructure… {it} has experienced a degradation in service in recent years”], but only increases tolls on the ISTHA and Skyway portions of I-90 without adding new tolls on the Kennedy or Dan Ryan despite the existence of significant congestion and barrier separated facilities. Similarly, it references raising Chicago’s existing paid off-street parking tax, but not anything about street parking prices. Buried on the last page is a reference to a $1.6M bike rental station, too; I’ll have to find out more about that.)
“We’re asking cities to try something different, innovative and daring when it comes to fighting traffic,” said Secretary Peters.
“Different, innovative and daring” — nope, not Chicago.
FWIW, other cities’ proposal documents:
The Twin Cities would expand an existing network of HOT lanes using shoulder lanes, significantly accelerate implementation of proposed suburban BRT corridors, and explore parking pricing.
In the Bay Area, several existing HOT pilot schemes, the 511 system, and parking re-pricing in San Francisco and Berkeley.
Someone on FlyerTalk asked about “megalopolis.” An edited reply:
Actually, it was a Frenchman, Jean Gottmann, whose book “Megalopolis” was published in 1961. He originally was referring, of course, to the Eastern Seaboard, but continued metropolitan growth has led to dozens of similar situations worldwide. Gottmann said as much in “Megalopolis Revisited” in 1987.
Personally, I’ve never liked the extra syllable in there; for that matter, maybe neither did Gottman, since he used “megapolitan” instead of “megalopolitan” as the adjective form.
The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy offers a better definition, perhaps, than Wikipedia’s.
In any case, some of these regions strike me more as convenient geographic constructs than as genuine supra-metropolitan units that shape human activities. Chicago is about 400 miles from Pittsburgh, Omaha, and Kansas City; Chicago arguably has similar economic and social ties to the western cities as to Pittsburgh — so why, besides the fact that Ohio is more populous than Iowa, draw the megapolitan boundary east from Chicago? (Maybe one useful and easily obtained measure might be intercity passenger and freight flows.)
On the last possible day… it appears that all posts have moved, that any duplicates can and will be deleted, and that email sent this morning might not have gotten through. Oh well; at least everything’s here. Again, things will look funny due to different text encoding, but deal.
Modified version of Chicagoist comment.
I realize that I’m shouting to the breeze, but man, most of you folks don’t know much about how we pay for transit. Some common themes, and answers:
What? Why do we already pay too much for awful service?
Your fares pay about half the cost of running CTA service. Taxpayers (local sales tax) cover the rest. And the fact is, the cost of operations is increasing three times faster than tax revenue. When your cost of living goes up while your salary stays flat, you gotta make cuts.
Yeah, the trains and buses and slow, unreliable, and dirty. You know why? Because every year that we’ve played this budget crisis game, CTA has ended up spending money allocated for cleaning/repairs on daily operations instead. Basic maintenance has been put off for years, and it’s starting to show, big time.
The trains elsewhere are great, and they make money!
No mass transit agency in the world makes sufficient profit on operations to cover the cost of capital improvements. Those glorious transit systems elsewhere rely on generous tax subsidies: the Parisian transit authority gets FIVE TIMES more in tax subsidies than its equivalent here. Pick up the papers in NYC, LA, SF, DC, Boston, Philly, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Cleveland, Columbus, Atlanta, wherever: those transit agencies are also running out of money. Perhaps not as fast as ours, but nonetheless. (Philly’s SEPTA, in fact, is about to vote on what they also call “the doomsday budget,” unless the state bails them out. However, their governor and mayor have made saving transit their #1 priority, unlike here, where Blago and Richie lust after a vast new welfare state and a literally-colossal construction boondoggle.)
Let’s look at the one fully “privatized” passenger transportation industry in the USA: commercial airlines. Anyone who thinks that the airlines provide exquisite service at reasonable prices, please raise your hands. I thought not. And yet even this marvel of private-sector efficiency can’t turn a profit: in its first century, the airline industry earned $18 billion in profits — when it wasn’t chalking up $32 billion in losses. Airlines are so consistently awash in red ink that no less than Warren Buffett rued, “if I’d been at Kitty Hawk in 1903 when Orville Wright took off, I would have been farsighted enough, and public-spirited enough — I’d owe this to future capitalists — to shoot him down.”
Privatize! Fire the bums! Sell more ads!
We tried private operations of the CTA. Didn’t work; all those companies went bankrupt way back in 1947, which is how we got the CTA in the first place. Oh, and CTA can’t just pull a United Airlines and kill its pensions and benefits; that’s illegal. As for waste and graft, we the taxpayers already paid for a a giant audit of CTA, RTA, Metra, and Pace, courtesy of the state Auditor General. Finding: “the needs are real, the problems are real.” By almost any standard, our transit agencies are managing money pretty well. Yes, pensions in particular need a great big fix, but they’re so underfunded that one can hardly blame them for bankrupting CTA. Oh, and shuttering CTA headquarters tomorrow* wouldn’t even come close to filling this budget hole.
(In fact, I was recently in S.F., where a local newspaper ran a graph showing Chicago’s administrative overhead costs as far lower than LA’s or SF’s — and comparable to NYC, which theoretically would benefit from vast economies of scale.)
* Annual occupancy costs at the new HQ are lower than they were in the rented Mart space; the building was built with federal capital funds — see below — and CTA, as a state-chartered public agency, doesn’t pay property taxes on buildings it owns but does in rented space.
Advertising is not a major revenue source for transit agencies. Even auctioning off naming rights wouldn’t do much; a failed deal to rename a prime downtown station in Boston yielded just $160K a year. At that price, even renaming every Loop station would cover just 2% of CTA’s budget gap.
The Feds/Olympics will make everything better. Why all the fancy new construction?
Yes, the Feds pay half of construction (“capital”) costs for (a few) big new shiny things like Brown Line reconstruction, but they don’t pay anything for daily operations or maintenance. This is kind of like Mom paying for new clothes once Junior’s outgrown them, but refusing to pay to wash or mend the ones Jr. already has. No wonder he’s wearing flashy new shoes over hole-y socks.
You think the Feds will bail us out in 2016? Fat chance. Again, they only pay part of the construction costs; Salt Lake City, Vancouver, and other Olympic cities still had to hike local taxes big time to fund transit operations and construction. Oh, and CTA kind of needs money now, not in nine years — remember, the whole system grinds to a halt in October if no action is taken.
Cut off-peak service, don’t raise rush hour fares!
Bus and train drivers, like most of us, work full-time, eight-hour shifts. Hiring people just for rush hour is nearly impossible — would you work a split shift, 6 AM to 7 PM, without getting paid for 10 AM to 4 PM? Since the drivers are already paid to be there during rush hour, no additional drivers need to be hired for off-peak service. So, off-peak service is cheaper for CTA to provide. (Incidentally, day pass riders ride more off-peak, hence the day pass discount.)
That’s it! I’m gonna get a car!
Yeah, you and a hundred thousand other people, too. You think traffic’s bad, and parking and gas expensive? Just you wait.
Whine, whine, whine, whine, whine. Whine. (Repeat ad nauseam.)
Shut up and do something already. Visit SaveChicagolandTransit.com, read up, and take action. (Note: I am not materially affiliated with that site or with any transit agency.)
The only public transit agency in the world* which makes a steady profit is the MTR in Hong Kong. To get a handle on Hong Kong’s population density, imagine moving the populations of Chicago, Aurora, and Joliet into Naperville — and, oh, cutting a really deep harbor through the middle.
Urbanized area of Hong Kong Island: 16.1 sq. mi.
Urbanized area of Kowloon peninsula: 18.1 sq. mi.
(Note: the above two areas are separated by one of the world’s busiest harbors, with just six fixed crossings, half of which are run by MTR.)
Population of above urbanized areas, 2005 est.: ~3.28 million
Total urbanized area: 34.2 sq. mi.
Population of Chicago, 2005 est.: 2,842,518
Population of Aurora, Naperville, and Joliet, the next three largest cities in the area (2003-2006, est. and Census): 443,176
Combined population of four largest Chicagoland cities: 3.285 million
Area of Naperville: 35.5 sq. mi.
You can either have profitable transit or suburban sprawl; drivers who say “hike the fares” can’t have your sprawl and eat it, too.
Oh, and 63% of MTR’s profits (and thus the funding for its capital costs, although many of its capital costs are also directly paid for by the government; note the financing sources for the line extensions mentioned at SEC EDGAR) come not from operations, but from real estate development — just like the old streetcar empires of yore.
Speaking of real estate values, nice quote in a Crain’s piece by Brandon Glenn:
“Whatever makes it harder for people to get to their jobs is bad for the city,” said Tom Kirschbraun, managing director of the real estate services company Jones Lang LaSalle Inc… Chicago’s hub-and-spoke transit system gives it a competitive advantage over most other U.S. cities, Mr. Kirschbraun said. “If you start dimming its effectiveness bit by bit, that competitive advantage starts to dwindle bit by bit,” he said.
* Tokyo’s privately owned subway systems are also profitable. I’m not sure about the public systems outside Tokyo.
west north 
