Transit-mobility stuff

1. Placemaking Institute calls our attention to this September article from the Toronto Star about a condo building constructed with no automobile parking for individual units, but including 315 spaces for bicycles and 9 carsharing spots. See "'Car-free' condo: 42 storeys, no parking: University Ave. project with 315 bicycle spots touted as green model."

I suggested something similar for construction on the land that WMATA wants to sell at the Takoma Station--constructing a multiunit apartment or condo building with no parking for individually owned automobiles, only for shared cars like Zipcar, plus structured parking to support the subway station (ugh) and the commercial distict in both DC and Takoma Park, Maryland. Instead the proposal is to build rowhouses with one to two spaces each for automobiles. (See the 2006 testimony in this blog entry, "Comments on Proposed EYA Development at Takoma Metro.")

Maybe we'll start to see developments marketing their access to bicycle trails and routes? Also see the AP story,Realtors peddle homes to bike-happy clients."

2. The Toronto Star map project has updated its maps on commuting behavior. See "Map of the Week: How we commute, redux," with maps of driving, transit, walking, and bicycling trip data, based on the Canadian Census. Of course, walking and transit use is highest in the core of the city, and driving is more typical the further people live from the core of the Toronto region.

3. If such maps were produced for Seattle, they would likely demonstrate why the idea to pull Seattle transit services out of the King County Metro system might make sense, without changes on the part of King County Metro. According to this entry from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Do we need to pull Seattle Transit out of Metro?":

If the King County Council, dominated by eastside and southside conservative members, insists that Seattle take the lion's share of service cuts, even though in-City buses are already stuffed to the gills, the City of Seattle needs to look seriously at pulling its assets out of Metro and re-establishing Seattle Transit to run in-City (non-suburban) transit service.

As the Toronto maps show, the highest incidence of walking, bicycling, and taking transit to work is in the core of the city. In Seattle's case, there is no question that the bulk of riders on the bus system are Seattle residents. So it doesn't make sense to cut bus service in the places where it is most used, in favor of areas with comparatively less use. The King County Council should make the right decision, based on use, not a political decision that misuses limited public resources.

4. Hip city transportation officials and politicians in Seattle led a "Pedestrian safety dance" (from the P-I) to the song "Men Without Hats" to promote pedestrian safety. See the entry for video from the event.

5. Montgomery County Maryland has three very nice bicycling-sustainable transportation maps for White Oak, Silver Spring, and the Medical Center (National Institutes of Health and the Bethesda National Naval Hospital). These maps are models for promoting bicycling and optimal mobility in key destinations.

6. Although the NoMA Business Improvement District in DC is also doing a nice job of promoting bicycling.

7. I did my first presentation on biking and walking and the County's bicycle and pedestrian planning process for my job. I am positioning the study process along the lines of civic identity and quality of life, rather than bicycling and walking per se. Some points from my presentation outline:

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How to Do it/Citizen involvement/A more robust planning process

a. Defining your civic identity and sense of place. Question: What kind of community do you want to live in? Making choices. Fred Kent from PPS: “if you design communities for roads and traffic, you get lots of cars and traffic. If you design communities for people and places, you get people and places.”

b. Focus on Placemaking (Access; Comfort & Image; Uses & Activities; Sociability). [Based on Project for Public Spaces ideas, e.g., "Qualities of Great Streets."}


For this PPS diagram and more information, see Four key qualities of a successful place from the Metropolitan Planning Council of Chicago initiative with PPS, Placemaking Chicago.

c. Triangulation: considering needs from at least three vantage points. Multiple perspectives ensures a more accurate assessment of community needs and helps to make choices and set community priorities. (This is a concept applied by David Barth of Glatting Jackson in best practices park planning. See "Parks System Master Plans: Tools for Sustainable Communities.")

d. Active Citizenship. Civic engagement, building support organizations, and the county commitment to walking and bicycling (and transit and transportation demand management and sustainable transportation) by involving concerned and interested citizens more directly.

e. It is important for citizens to not only improve their own household's mobility behaviors while advocating for neighborhood improvements while at the same time simultaneously supporting and advocating for improvements in the walking and bicycling environment throughout the County, and expansion of a connected regional network of recreational trails/greenways.

f. Necessary for residents, elected and appointed officials, government agencies to be on the same page in terms of focusing on placemaking and the importance of bicycling and walking in terms of extending the quality of life and livability in the community, making the County more attractive to investors, businesses, students, and visitors.
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This is designed to get away from the idea of bicyclists and walkers as "the other" in a County where probably 95% of households have cars, and fewer than 7% of trips to work are made by walking, bicycling, or transit. (In DC, it is over 50%, in Montgomery County, it is.)

(See the past blog entry, "Deja vu all over again: the "other" as trail user" which describes a general problem of perception that I have to deal with in the planning process I am managing in order to achieve the goals that I have set out for myself.)

And it is an opportunity for me to shape the planning and public participation process in ways that I wish similar processes had been conducted in planning studies that I have participated in as a citizen or as a stakeholder in DC, but where I wasn't able to shape substantively the scope of work or organization of the study or process.

8. Interesting article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Freewheelers," about the "Old Spokes" bicycling club made up of residents of the Normandy Farms Estate retirement community in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. I intend to use this when dealing with the "cyclists as criminals" arguments that people raise.

9. And I like what Rails to Trails Conservancy did (they have a contract from DC DOT) to do promotion in association with the Metropolitan Branch Trail in DC. See "Children journey into a new world: With 40 free bikes, Rail-to-Trail Conservancy encourages youths to explore eight-mile path" from the Post about how RTC has distributed bicycles to children in neighborhoods abutting the trail.