Transit and Prosperity

Bacon's Rebellion, in the entry "How Biased Numbers Could Kill Mass Transit in Richmond" (with many loooooong reader comments) calls our attention to this op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "ON THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION IN VIRGINIA . . . Mass Transit Represents Investment in Prosperity."

It's funny because I have been involved in an email thread on transit and rail as the uber-solution and I have been disappointed with the level of the discourse.

In terms of the commenters (and probably some of the writers) BR is a blog that represents the fervor of the anti-tax, pay your own way philosophy that we all think of when we think Virginia. So there are similar kinds of things written, "that transit must pay its own way," etc., that don't fully reflect reality either, because roads are heavily subsidized too.

Here's what I think and believe:

Polycentricity isn't "affordable" but of course we can't put the genie back in the bottle. Steve Belmont's Cities in Full is all about the necessity of a kind of recentralization. And published in 1997, it didn't even address questions raised by peak oil. The suburbanized American Dream is fully dependent on cheap oil. You can't go everywhere by car--which you have to do, because destinations are not agglomerated--without cheap oil.

Each form of transt type (bus, streetcar, light rail, heavy rail, railroad) has to be looked at in very specific ways in terms of place/location, population density, and destinations.

Because destinations, especially work, are so deconcentrated in most areas, transit can never work like it did back in the day of the Walking and Transit City eras. That's why transit planning must be combined with accessibility planning, linking specific types of uses to specific places in terms of making optimal choices about and utilization of the transportation supply, demand, and infrastructure. And yes, this is easier to do in already denser places.

My frustration in these discussions is the one size fits all responses.

But DC is hardly perfect. We don't do accessibility planning, and so I rail quite a bit against what I term "intra-city sprawl" when the city government itself moves operations away from proximity to other city agencies (disagglomeration) to different parts of the city with far more limited transportation options, creating situations where the number of total transit trips to the destination will drop by 200% to 300% when compared to the old site.

They make these decisions just like the federal government did over BRAC, looking at very specific questions (lease cost, ownership opportunity, as a revitalization opportunity in a distressed area) but without considering the necessity of linkage, including transit, to fully realize the potential of the move.

BRAC will seemingly save the military money, but will cost billions in new infrastructure, and will develop new suburban and exurban locations at the expense of already developed areas. Overall, looking at the costs imposed on other government agencies at the local, state, and federal levels, how much are the savings to the military really costing? Sure DoD may save some money, but it is not inconceivable that the total cost to society is greater than if the moves weren't made.

In DC, the city helped a local CDC build two office buildings a block away from where I used to live. Figure $20MM in loans and grants (in late 1980s) and then leased the buildings for 20 years. They were just sold for a profit of $17MM. That's fine. (Plus all the profits during the years of the lease.) Maybe 600 people worked in the buildings (remember the numbers -- an office worker supports 2 s.f. of retail and 5 s.f. of restaurants).

In that 20 year time frame, the only spinoff development that was consistent was a single hot dog vending cart. In 20 years! One! Hot dog vending cart! (There were two at first but there wasn't enough business.) Just like how most of the blocks immediately adjacent to Reeves Center _on 14th Street_ have marginal businesses despite the creation of that building more than 20 years ago, the vacancy rate for commecial property adjacent to this project on H Street didn't budge, ebbing and flowing but never improving, for the 20 year period.

It was trying to figure out why, after the City and HUD invested upwards of $100MM in urban renewal projects on H Street NE in DC, and the neighborhood continued to languish, despite proximity to Capitol Hill (10 blocks), Union Station (adjacent), and downtown (12 blocks), that propelled me into this field as a career.

(Short answer: that a "if you build it they will come" strategy doesn't work. The point is that you have to rebuild the attractiveness of the neighborhood so that people will stay and invest, and that new investment--residential and commercial--will follow. But you need to be attractive to people with choices, people who have money. Which requires change. And change is contentious.)

The other thing I have learned is central to neighborhood revitalization in center cities is transit--dense and efficient service.

Despite the convenient location and proximity to much of the city (and a subway station, just over the bridge on the western edge of the neighborhood), H Street languished, until an infill transit station was constructed in the northern part of the neighborhood.

This revalued the neighborhood both in perceptions and fact, resulting in a tripling, roughly of housing prices north of H Street in a process that began once the station was announced and continued after and in conjuction with parallel improvements. New investments came about because improved transit accessibility revalued the location of the neighborhod. Additional transit investments (streetcar service) will further this process of revaluation, as well as make the neighborhood even more accessible and mobile through transt.

Similarly, the investment in streetscape improvements on 8th Street SE is another example, but slightly different. While the commercial district was at best emerging, the residential portion of the neighborhood--Capitol Hill--was and is thriving. E.g., this is a bad real estate market now, right? Within the last two weeks a recently listed house sold at 4th and Independence SE for $950,000. Location still matters. There are increasing returns from transit investment in neighborhoods that are already healthy. The process takes much longer in emerging and transitioning neighborhoods.

Public and private investment in revitalization in DC occurs in the context of billions of dollars already spent on creating the WMATA subway system.

Interestingly, most of the early research on the economic development aspects of WMATA (and BART) did not find a direct association. That's because this process takes a lot of time and it must be done in very particular ways to achieve increasing returns.

Arlington County, by focusing development much more intensively along the subway service corridor is an example of how to do this. (Even if what is built isn't always very pretty.)

So is DC, which at the core of the city, has 29 stations in a 15 square mile area including both business districts and neighborhoods. At the core of the subway system within DC it operates monocentrically, intensifying development in that core.

Subway stations at the core of the city of Washington.

But it's dependent on a predictable investment environment. As long as the local political structure and the provision of municipal services were dysfunctional, investment was made only in the areas that were a sure thing (Downtown, Dupont Circle, Georgetown), which was why even close-in but distressed areas (H Street, Shaw) didn't see much private investment. Positive changes began with the election of Anthony Williams as mayor, and the process of improvement continues within local government today.

It is hard to believe in 2008, but into 2003 many of us did not expect to see significant improvements in neighborhoods like H Street NE without very focused assistance such as via a Main Street commercial district revitalization program. (The new subway station opened in November 2004.)

But as most of the best opportunities were realized, developers have been forced out of their comfort zone to seek opportunities north, east, and south of the central business district and east of Rock Creek Park, in order to keep projects in their pipelines. (You can't be a developer if you don't keep developing.)