Day tripping

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I’ve lately found some same-day cheap airfares to various U.S. cities, so I’ve experimented with doing day trips by air. (They’re not strict mileage runs since I actually leave the airport, unlike a true MRer.)

So, a few cities where getting from the airport to an interesting part of town doesn’t take a car, more than $2, or more than half an hour:

* Austin: A cheap ride direct to downtown and campus, although I didn’t think it very walkable once off the bus.
* Boston: We’ll see how this goes next week, but I’m going to try the Silver Line instead of the Blue + shuttle, and maybe see how the North End and/or South Boston Piers have changed since the Dig.
* Chicago: From Midway, try the South Loop; from O’Hare, try Wicker Park.
* Los Angeles: A fairly frequent LAX shuttle bus runs to the LAX Transit Center, but don’t bother with LA; instead, explore nearby Venice and Santa Monica with the Big Blue Bus. (The FlyAway to Union Station works well enough, but could take a while.)
* Minneapolis: The train runs to either downtown or the megamall (and Ikea!). To get to Uptown, transfer to a westbound 21 bus at Lake or go downtown (passing the new riverfront area) and take a #6 bus headed down Hennepin, which also swings by Loring Park and the Walker.
* Portland: MAX runs directly to the eminently walkable downtown.
* Queens: The Q33 is a short ride into Jackson Heights from LGA, and from there the #7 goes to Flushing.
* Washington: Perhaps the easiest anywhere: fast and efficient Metrorail stops right at National.
* Two I haven’t tried, but which have rail to the airport: Cleveland and St. Louis.

A sidebar: one-day ski trips on transit. I only know of three ski slopes with 7-day public transit access from a major city, although I’d certainly love to know about others:
* Eldora Mountain near Boulder, Colo.: RTD bus N from the Boulder bus station
* Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver, B.C.: Coast Mountain bus 236 [pdf] from Lonsdale Quay
* Snowbird/Alta, along UTA’s Route 998 out of Salt Lake City. Only two buses a day, though.
* Special mentions go to the Winter Park Ski Train, Amtrak’s Vermonter, and the proposed Québec-Le Massif train although these aren’t transit buses. Many other resorts run private motorcoaches within town or to nearby airports or cities.

Additional special mentions go to Santa Barbara Car-Free, which promotes car-free trips to Santa Barbara, Calif., and CATCO’s Going to the Mountains from Calgary. CATCO’s slogan, courtesy Bill Ford: ‘If you live in a city, you don’t need to own a car.’

Blago’s budget on transit

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The relevant passage:

bq. *Continued support for northeastern Illinois mass transportation*. Through the Department of Transportation, the state will continue to provide significant funding for mass transportation in the northeastern Illinois region. The governor’s fiscal year 2008 budget recommendation includes $419.9 million in total appropriations that include funding at the statutory maximum for the Strategic Capital Improvement Plans (SCIP I and SCIP II), 25 percent state match on all Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) Sales Tax revenue collected in the six-county, Chicago-area region, reimbursement of reduced fare subsidies for students, the elderly and the disabled, and paratransit services provided in the region.

So, no new operating (beyond paratransit, which was new last year) and some new bonds.

Elections: woah!

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updated after midnight:
Burt Natarus and Darcel Beavers are headed to defeat! Oh, and Arenda “we be ho’s” Troutman, but we knew that.

A lot of runoffs (higher vote total first, *incumbent):
2nd: Fioretti vs. Haithcock*
3rd: Tillman* vs. Dowell
15th: Foulkes vs. Simmons-Stoval (open seat)
16th: Thompson vs. Coleman*
18th: Lane* vs. Stewart
21st: Brookins* vs. Jones
24th: Chandler* vs. Dixon
_32nd_: Matlak* vs. Waguespack
_35th_: Colon* vs. Colom
43rd: Daley* vs. Smith
49th: Moore* vs. Gordon
50th: Stone* vs. Dolar

_ward_ = a sure thing, with 100% of precincts reporting

Adding tolls

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I wrote earlier about how the Kennedy and Dan Ryan are perfect opportunities to introduce congestion pricing — with separate express lane infrastructure, parallel transit, and I-Pass already in place.

Yet right now we’re moving the other way. A Crosstown truck route would only funnel away through-traveling trucks that should be on I-294 (Tri-State Tollway) anyways, and if it were a tollway (as Madigan suggests, to raise the tens of billions necessary) it wouldn’t do anything to keep the freeloaders off 90-94. Meanwhile, Chicago wants to use $117 million in PFC charges [ticket taxes] to widen I-190 to O’Hare — charging everyone, including connecting passengers and those of us who take the [achingly slow, 15-mph, in need of $54 million to replace faulty, disintegrating ties] train, to speed drivers off the Northwest Tollway. Huh?

If freeloading trucks are a problem, then stop the freeloading: toll 90-94. If I-190 needs $100,000,000 to unsnarl traffic, then make the drivers along that route pay: simply move the toll barriers half a mile and add I-190 to the tollway network. Airport-goers are a remarkably price-insensitive bunch, anyhow.

update 26 Feb: one week after revealing the I-190 plans, Jon Hilkevitch writes that fixing up the Blue Line (now up to 22% in slow zones) will cost… $100 million, which, of course, CTA doesn’t have in the absence of an Illinois FIRST successor. It took 70 minutes to get from O’Hare to Monroe this morning, a full 55% longer than the “scheduled 45 minutes” that Mr. Friendly Announcer used to promise to passengers boarding at O’Hare and which signs inside the terminal walkways still proclaim.

Also, Dennis Byrne writes of the Crosstown in a Trib op: “As if Daley doesn’t have enough concrete to pour to keep him and his contracting buddies content for the rest of his lifetime reign. Maybe the city should buy up a bunch of vacant lots that he can pave over just to keep him and his pals happy. It certainly would be a better use of the money.”

UPDATE: comments closed due to spam

Urban lesson plan

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Otis White is wrapping up his run of Governing’s “Urban Notebook”:http://governing.com/notebook.htm, among the first (and still among the best) urban blogs — it seems to have predated blogging software, in fact. He leaves with seven lessons:

Lesson 1: Innovate, save money, throw the bums out and use good sense.
Lesson 2: Protect the order of public spaces.
Lesson 3: Get dense: It’s how you make residents and housing affordable.
Lesson 4: Save the property tax.
Lesson 5: Tie transportation to land use.
Lesson 6: Don’t act helpless: why local leadership is important.
Lesson 7: Have fun: Cities are funny, funny places.

For further explanation, see his concise “Best of Urban Notebook”:http://governing.com/notebest.htm roundup.

His final print column includes this:

bq. Suburbs are looking more like cities did 30 years ago: commercial, crowded, ethnically diverse, hectic, poverty-pocked and unsafe in places. Suburbs are no longer the refuges we once considered them. Meanwhile, cities are getting safer, turning into gentrified magnets for empty-nesters and young singles… [H]ere’s the vision that might help metro areas […]: the complete community. Cities that have neighborhoods with suburban [bourgeois?] sensibilities, suburbs with areas of hipness, density and transit, and places in both for all income levels.

This focus on regionalism is a refreshing change from the tired city vs. suburban tirades that certain libertarian writers keep falling into. In cities all over the country, I see exciting New Urbanism being built in both city and suburb.

Chris Swope, their best (and dishiest) writer on city governance, takes over for Otis next month.

Paradise

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Derailment

Originally uploaded by paytonc.

Graffitists in Santa Monica wistfully pine after the Red Cars of yore — an interesting sight, given that the Red Cars stopped in 1961. It’s a sad tale, and one which exerts a strangely tragic pull over Angelenos to this day. (It’s worth mentioning here that, like nearly all transit [and most passenger transportation systems], the Red Car was only ever marginally profitable — land speculation along the ROWs paid for Henry Huntington’s empire.)

Meanwhile, the Chicago machine is suddenly wistfully looking back on the days when it could bulldoze entire neighborhoods. Too bad the freight railroads are actually using that land for something useful, like, um, moving freight; that CREATE remains woefully unfunded; and that there are already two (well, 1.75, but soon to be two) toll beltways around the city’s south and west flanks. Hmm.

Thank you

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On the back of a ticket stub: “[Denver Art Museum] programs are funded in large part by the citizens who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District.” It’s nice to make these sometimes obscure special taxing districts a little more visible — and the cute little logo doesn’t hurt, either.

Bridges for sale

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The LA Times ran an article on Tuesday about governor-led (and Bush-backed) plans in California to grant more toll road franchises. A “letter in response”:http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-le-thursday15.2feb15,1,6430864.story?ctrack=1&cset=true:

bq. Privately financed toll roads provide state and local politicians with upfront money to make themselves look good, but captive commuters will be paying tolls for generations to largely foreign landlords. The public-private partnerships utilize tax-exempt financing and government loan guarantees — and merely outsource difficult decisions that strike fear in our politicians — such as raising gas taxes. — _Jack Eidt, Los Angeles_

Chris Swope’s article in last month’s “Governing”:http://governing.com/articles/1roads.htm mentions that investors expect the Indiana Toll Road to throw off a 12% cap rate (i.e., return). _Emerging Trends_ reports that commercial real estate investors are looking for 5.5-7.5% cap rates in the USA. Why not let these enterprises throw off proceeds for government, instead of shareholders elsewhere? If better, more aggressive management is what’s needed, that can be done completely separately from refinancing the whole asset.

Speaking of road revenue, Gary Washburn in “the Trib”:http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-0702060132feb06,1,3381332.story reports that City Council’s transportation committee advanced the PBD resolution — they’re now being called “transportation enhancement districts (TEDs)” and are planned for 53rd Street in Hyde Park, along a stretch of Broadway in Edgewater and in the Logan Square neighborhood. Meanwhile, police commander Robert Evans said that “I think we are doing a great job” about moving violations — even though the average officer writes _fewer than three_ stop-sign running tickets a year.

NYC lagging on public space

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Robert Sullivan got a prime op-ed page placement for this paean to PPS’s principles. The irony is perhaps that his research was funded by Saturn, the GM division, and written up for Dwell magazine. Hmm.

The simple and elegant cure for the loss of New York’s inner pedestrian is to open up car-clogged streets and public spaces. Another of Mr. Schaller’s surveys, sponsored by the citizens’ group Transportation Alternatives, showed that 89 percent of people questioned on Prince Street in SoHo got there by subway, bus, foot or bicycle, and that the majority would gladly give up parking for more pedestrian space.

With a million more New Yorkers scheduled to arrive by 2030, true sustainability requires the city — or at least its residents — to make a bold move. Some neighborhoods are already working on it. The Ninth Avenue Renaissance Project, sponsored by a coalition of residents and businesses, has held community workshops on converting Ninth Avenue from Lincoln Tunnel access ramp to boulevard.

The now chic Meatpacking District plans to bring back a space that, since the area was a Native American village, has been a natural gathering place for people without combustion engines: wider sidewalks, public seating and a piazza in the restaurant-surrounded open field of paving stones could be more like Campo dei Fiori in Rome and less a spot for crazed U-turns. In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the city’s Department of Transportation has replaced parking spaces near a subway station with rows of bike racks.

But these are tiny steps. Boston’s mayor has endorsed converting Hanover Street in the city’s North End into a car-free pedestrian mall. Why don’t we do the same in part or even all of SoHo? In Los Angeles, some traffic lights are programmed to change for approaching buses (a signal in the bus alerts the light). Why can’t the same happen on 14th Street?

Pittsburgh revolts against transit cuts

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Last year’s state bailout of Pittsburgh’s transit agency has expired, so PAT has proposed a 25% cut in service hours to fix an $80M operating deficit. Needless to say, “riders are ticked”:http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07023/756042-147.stm.

SEPTA in Philadelphia has “used capital funds to patch its 2007 budget”:http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/nation/16243384.htm — sound familiar?

Demographics killed the suburban star

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Virginia Tech researcher Arthur C. Nelson argues in a JAPA article that, shockingly, the end of suburbia (by the mid-21st century) will not necessarily be foretold by Peak Oil — but by the momentum of America’s current monumental (if somewhat under the radar) demographic shift towards smaller households living closer together.

To get from where Americans live today — 54% in larger-lot single family houses, 21% in townhouses and small-lot singles, and 25% in attached housing — to where they’d prefer to be living (assuming an increase in 34 million housing units by 2025), will result in net demand for 53 million attached houses, 52 million townhouses, and negative 22 million single family houses. Yes, negative. By some accounts, many cities are already oversupplied with single-family houses on larger lots.

This transformation of Americans’ cities by 2025 will cost our nation $30 trillion. The result:

[O]ver half of all development on the ground in 2025 will not have existed in 2000, even more important is that by 2025 much of society will have been spatially rearranged. An increasing number of empty-nesters, young professionals, and others will choose the city and first-tier suburban locations over outer suburban ones. According to Fishman (2005), they will drive up housing prices beyond the reach of many existing residents who may then be pushed to the suburban fringe and exurbs. Rising energy prices and declining demand for suburban homes on large lots may reduce the value of these homes, yielding important implications for the future.

Larry Frank’s SMARTRAQ research in Atlanta, examining one of the poster children of 20th century sprawl, finds that “about a third of metro Atlantans living in conventional suburban development would have preferred a more walkable environment.” Re-housing one-third of suburban residents would get us a long way towards the built environment that Nelson foresees a generation from now.