Transit service and access to job centers and streetcars in DC specifically

Hiawatha Extension Testing
Originally uploaded by MSPdude

(Flickr photo of the Hiawatha light rail line by MSPdude.)

Commenter rg writes:

This press release, "University of Minnesota study finds Hiawatha light-rail line has significantly improved job access for low-wage workers" about a study that found that the Hiawatha Light Rail Line in Minneapolis significantly improved job access for low-income workers.

I note this because you may recall that DDOT's study found that several corridors identified for streetcars, most notably H Street NE and Benning Road NE and Georgia Avenue NW, suffer from some of the longest transit travel times to employment centers while also having large numbers of car-free households.

I think that point perhaps gets lost in the whole overhead wire debate. And it is an important point. Indeed, it is arguably one of the most important reasons for building the streetcar network, right up there with reduced air and noise pollution.

Transit fares (WMATA and MTA)

Virtually every transit system in the U.S. faces severe economic trials as the recession has reduced their revenues significantly. Most systems are considering both fare raises and service reductions. Because transit is seen mostly not a choice service but as a service of last resort for people who can't afford to own a car, there can be a fair amount of pushback on raising fares because of the negative impact on people of limited economic means.

See "Riders see inequity in higher bus fares" from the Post and "MTA faces legislative calls to raise rail, bus fares" and "Keeping fares fair" from the Baltimore Sun, about the situation in the Baltimore region.

There is a campaign, Fair Share for Metro in the DC region to get the funding jurisdictions (DC, MD, and VA) to pay more into the system to limit the need for fare increases or service cuts, while at the same time other jurisdictions such as New York City are considering a fare of $2.50 (note that NYC doesn't have distance-based fares unlike the Washington area, so fares are a flat price).

While it's important that such a campaign be pursued (when you advocate for the hardcore position, you don't get it but you get a lot more than if you hadn't campaigned in the first place), the likelihood is that most of the jurisdictions won't be able to pony up more money as they all face declining revenues, see "D.C., Md. struggle to boost Metro funding" from the Post, even though the article states that Virginia would be able to increase its proportional share.

Hearings have been and are continuing to be held in the DC region with regard to the proposed increases and service cuts ("Metro schedules public hearings" from the Post) and testimony can be submitted until April 6th at 5pm by e-mail to public-hearing-testimony@wmata.com.

A couple weeks ago, Dr. Gridlock in the Post had a good long feature on the various fare increase and service cut options. Sadly, because this feature is produced by the graphics department, it isn't easily findable through the Post's normal search engine, and I can't find my copy at the moment.

I didn't agree with all his points or all of those offered up by readers, but there was a lot in there.

Basically here is my general position:

1. It's better to charge more for fares than it is to cut service.

2. It's better to cut duplicated services at times when they aren't needed especially (such as running multiple escalators or multiple entrances) than it is to cut unduplicated services.

This matters for example with the "yellow line extension" to Fort Totten at off-peak times. This came about as a result of agitation in Columbia Heights for more service. But is it really needed in financially desperate times when the green line already serves this route? Whenever I ride this line during those times there is limited ridership.

But of course, residents there are agitating to keep the "yellow line extension" operational, and they will be abetted by WMATA Board Member Jim Graham, who represents that area on DC's City Council.

3. Cutting unduplicated service (and not running 8 car subway trains during peak service hours) should be the absolute last choice ever made, after fare increases.

4. It's okay to charge more for bus than currently, because indexed for inflation, the bus fare hasn't been increased since the mid-1980s. What I probably would do is charge a $1.75 peak fare, and a discounted fare at off-peak times.

5. Subway service especially should be seen and priced as a premium service--it certainly is perceived that way, at least it was before the recent massive degradation in service before and after last year's crash [last night I rode from Union Station to Takoma--the train stopped for a long time between Rhode Island and Brookland, and six times(!) each for significant lengths of time between Fort Totten and Takoma so that the train that at Union Station was at least 8-12 minutes behind us caught up to us after Fort Totten and the light of that train was easily visible from our last car], in the neighborhoods that are proximate to subway stations with frequent service.

Subway fares can be adjusted upwards for more periods of the day to raise more revenue. People would rather have more frequent service than less frequent service and they will pay more for it, rather than wait 20 minutes or more for a train.

6. I would keep the longer transfer time for bus rides. Most people who don't ride buses don't understand that often people ride multiple buses to complete a single trip, and this takes longer than one hour. (It really takes longer in Baltimore City and Baltimore County, because service frequency is reduced compared to DC.)

7. While equity is an issue in terms of transit fare pricing, how much does equity matter if you have no service at all? Deal with equity issues by providing other forms of transit subsidy to people who need it, but this shouldn't come at the expense of the transit system having enough money to operate.

What this means is that local jurisdictions ought to come up with a way of providing additional subsidies to people of limited means to ride transit, but this shouldn't be a WMATA responsibility.

8. Relatedly, deal with the skyrocketing costs of paratransit. One of the Dr. Gridlock commenters, Rebekah Sobel ("Dr. Gridlock: How do you solve a problem like Metro? Readers chime in") had a bunch of interesting points, I didn't agree with all the elements but they spark some interesting add-on ideas.

She thinks that WMATA should provide service beyond the 3/4 mile from a transit line (bus or subway) required by federal government regulations.

I say, sure, provide the service outside of the mandated areas, but at market rates. I guarantee that will begin to reduce the demand. In any event, subsidies for this kind of service should be seen as a social and human service function and funds for providing this kind of service should be provided by the local jurisdictions with monies from that financial stream, rather than from transit allocations.

And figure out jitney service and other options to reduce the cost of providing this important and needed service. E.g., yes, offering free fares on regular transit for people eligible for paratransit cab rides makes sense, because the cost of a fare is far less than the uncompensated portion of the cost of a special paratransit trip.

9. While this round of fare increases and service cuts isn't sparking deeper consideration of the need for a regional consensus on transit, its role, and its funding, it ought to. More on that in a later blog entry.

10. With regard to transit fare pricing in the Baltimore region, and read those Sun articles, they are very good, they too need to increase pricing and all the same arguments pertain as those above. Although I need to address the argumentation in a separate entry, as there are a number of misplaced comparisons between transit fares and gasoline tax rates.

First order change vs. second order change and DC politics

I am rueful over the current state of electoral politics in DC. While I argue all the time that it can make a big difference on who gets elected, depending on the level of the office--particularly President of the United States of America and Governor of the various states--at the municipal level in a place with oligopolistic politics, the reality is that who is the Mayor doesn't make all that much difference when it comes down to it, unless a person is really, truly transformational, or really really really really really really bad, e.g., Ray Nagin in New Orleans, Marion Barry for most of his terms as Mayor of DC, etc. It is no coincidence that DC's economic resurgence beginning around 2000 happened after Marion Barry was no longer Mayor.

That's the case in DC right now with the various people jockeying for power, especially for Mayor ("Gray's entry into D.C. mayor's race comes with two caveats" from the Post) but also for City Council Chair now that the current chair, Vince Gray, has opted to run for Mayor.

With one or two exceptions, the candidates or the names touted as possible candidates, are different shades of the same growth machine.

I find it sad and funny that the "Anybody but Fenty" crowd thinks that they won't eventually be disappointed by whomever becomes Mayor, because the tune the elected official dances to is not the tune that the people think they are hearing.

To review (extract from an old blog entry):

I am a fervent proponent of the Growth Machine thesis, first laid out by sociologist Harvey Molotch, in the seminal article, City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place. From the abstract:

A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite. Such an elite is seen to profit through the increasing intensification of the land use of the area in which its members hold a common interest. An elite competes with other land-based elites in an effort to have growth-inducing resources invested within its own area as opposed to that of another. Governmental authority, at the local and nonlocal levels, is utilized to assist in achieving this growth at the expense of competing localities. Conditions of community life are largely a consequence of the social, economic, and political forces embodied in this growth machine.

Political scientist Clarence Stone is the "dean" of the school of the competing thesis, that of the "urban regime." I don't think these theories are competing so much as different sides of the same coin. "Growth Machine" theory explains the motivation of "the land-based elite," and "urban regime" theory explains in detail how the land-based elite operates and functions. ("Growth Machine" proponents are sociologists, while "Urban Regime" proponents are political scientists.)

Professor Stone was kind enough to send me his paper, "Now What? The continuing evolution of Urban Regime analysis," from 2005. He writes:

An urban regime can be preliminarily defined as the informal arrangements through which a locality is governed (Stone 1989). Because governance is about sustained efforts, it is important to think in agenda terms rather than about stand-alone issues. By agenda I mean the set of challenges which policy makers accord priority. A concern with agendas takes us away from focusing on short-term controversies and instead directs attention to continuing efforts and the level of weight they carry in the political life of a community. Rather than treating issues as if they are disconnected, a governance perspective calls for considering how any given issue fits into a flow of decisions and actions. This approach enlarges the scope of what is being analyzed, looking at the forest not a particular tree here or there. (emphasis added, in this paragraph and below)

In discussing Atlanta, Stone writes: "Land use, transportation, and housing formed an interrelated agenda that the city's major economic interests were keen to advance;" and

By looking closely at the policy role of business leaders and how their position in the civic structure of a community enabled that role, he identified connections between Atlanta's governing coalition and the resources it brought to bear, and on to the scheme of cooperation that made this informal system work. In his own way, Hunter had identified the key elements in an urban regime – governing coalition, agenda, resources, and mode of cooperation. These elements could be brought into the next debate about analyzing local politics, a debate about structural determinism.
---------
I came across this book, Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Formation in the late 1970s or early 1980s. The major point is that "change" may not be substantive, which can also be the difference between "reform" and "transformation." The book distinguishes between first order change (moving things around) and substantive, second order change (transformation).

At the local level, often, "change we can believe in" isn't transformation, it's substituting a new cog for an old one, or replacing a burned out 75 watt bulb with another incandescent bulb, but even if you "change" to a CFL light bulb, not much has really changed.

Or in the terms of the Urban Regime thesis, while the individuals change, the governing coalition, agenda, available resources, and mode of cooperation remain the same. And the agenda? Well, that's the Growth Machine thesis in a nutshell: intensification of land use-real estate development.

Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston, SC to deliver lecture on arts and policy

I have heard Mayor Riley speak on urban design issues twice (although it was the same basic lecture, see Riley speech on urban design) and he is fabulous. I am told he is giving a speech different from his "standard" urban design speech, which frankly, is worth hearing more than once.

From Americans for the Arts:

WHAT: Americans for the Arts presents its 23rd Annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy, featuring the Honorable Joseph P. Riley, Jr, mayor of Charleston, SC. This event is a leading national forum for arts policy, intended to stimulate discussion of policy and social issues affecting the arts and the importance of the arts and culture to our nation’s well-being.

WHO: Mayor Joseph P. Riley, Jr. is widely considered one of the most visionary and highly effective governmental leaders in America. First elected mayor of Charleston, SC, in 1975, Mayor Riley is currently serving an unprecedented ninth term. A recipient this year of the prestigious National Medal of Arts by the White House, Mayor Riley has set the national standard for urban revitalization and been a model of civic support for the arts and culture. Under his leadership, Charleston has had a remarkable revitalization of its historic downtown business district, seen the creation and success of Spoleto Festival USA, and experienced unprecedented growth in Charleston’s size and population.

Mayor Riley is a leading national expert in the field of urban design and the creation of livable cities. In 1986, he founded, along with the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mayors’ Institute on City Design. Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the Mayor’s Institute on City Design has brought more than 800 mayors from 600 cities together with architects, urban planners, and developers to help transform their communities through design and engagement of the arts and cultural activities.

Mayor Riley will speak on the future of the arts in community building and a new vision for America’s cities.

Senator Mark Begich (D-AK) will introduce Mayor Riley. And there will be a performance by Washington Performing Arts Society’s Men and Women of the Gospel Choir.

WHEN: Monday, April 12, 2010 at 6:30 pm

WHERE: John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Concert Hall
2700 F Street, NW, Washington, DC

TICKETS: Tickets for the FREE event can be reserved online.

Successful transit oriented development requires successful, valued transit

The reason that it is such a struggle to create successful "transit oriented development" projects in the Baltimore region is that the transit system there isn't highly valued in the same way compared to the Washington region.

In the DC region you have a five line heavy rail system, complemented by local and regional bus transit, plus commuter rail service. The system will be extended by light rail and streetcar service, as plans in the various jurisdictions are realized.

In the Baltimore region, you have a light rail line and a subway line. They are inadequately linked, and even together, they fail to create a fixed rail transit system. These services are complemented by a bus system, and commuter rail service, primarily focused on delivering workers to Washington, DC, is also present.

There are many good resources on the TOD concept. I happen to like this one, produced by DC's Office of Planning about 8 years ago, Trans-Formation: Recreating Transit-Oriented Neighborhood Centers in Washington, DC . But there is the Center for TOD as well, which has many resources, etc.

I don't like to use the TOD term any more because I have found in arguments against either the creation of new transit lines such as the Purple Line in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties in Maryland, or the intensification of land use at transit stations such as in Brookland in DC, that TOD is used as an epithet, and is seen as code for "giveaways" to and extranormal profits for developers.

I prefer to think of TOD as extending the qualities that communities need in order to be successful and thrive. That comes across better in the DC planning document than it does in most of the other publications that I have seen.

It's true that the addition of light rail lines in some communities, such as in Minneapolis, is leading to land use intensification, even though they don't have a fixed rail transit system. Successful intensification is dependent on the perception of the transit service and the location of the line.

Lines serving depressed areas have big hurdles to overcome in order to foster land use intensification. If the transit service isn't seen as a service of choice, it's very difficult for land to become revalued as a result of having the service. Hence, little opportunity for land use intensification.

See the "With development plan approved, the future of White Flint begins‎" from the Washington Post, the White Flint Sector Plan and "Montgomery County OKs White Flint plan" from the Washington Business Journal.


Images from Greater Greater Washington's entry, With White Flint, Montgomery gets another Bethesda."

From the Post article:

Montgomery's plans for the 430 acres, now a jumble of strip shopping centers and car dealerships, are part of a national movement to re-engineer older neighborhoods built around America's love affair with the car. The White Flint project, which could span 20 years or more, would be among the largest redevelopments of post-World War II suburbia in the Washington region. It is aimed at bringing smarter growth to a county with little undeveloped land seeking ways to accommodate a growing population already nearing 1 million, larger than the District.

The White Flint plan is built on novel thinking. Planners and developers think they can persuade at least half of the estimated 50,000 people who eventually would work in White Flint to stop relying on cars. The area, in a section of suburban Montgomery that developers call North Bethesda, is already served by Metrorail and is slated for a new MARC rail station. Eventually, it is to have its own civic green, circulator bus system, bike paths and walkways connecting communities and commercial centers.

Right now, this kind of intensification of land use is practically impossible in Baltimore City or Baltimore County because the transit service quality is so much different compared to Montgomery County. And note that in the White Flint Plan, the area is still served by the same number of transit stations.

But when the overall transit system is robust, this is a workable scenario. That's the difference between White Flint in Montgomery County and Mondawmin Mall in Baltimore City or Security Square Mall in Baltimore County.

Bus transit prioritization and creating a downtown transitway network

I haven't always been a fan of transit malls from an urban design standpoint, because even if they speed bus transit and make the system more legible (you know if you go to the transit mall, somehow you will find the right bus), they can be very hulking semi-desolate places.

But David Alpert in Greater Greater Washington justifiable punctures some of our bicycling hubris, pointing out in "Amid exciting innovations, DDOT neglecting bus priority," that some of the streets proposed for cycle tracks ought instead to have exclusive bus priority lanes.

It's funny now that I think about it that DC hasn't focused in the last 20 years or so on making bus transit work better and more complementary to the subway system. Sure we call attention to this. (I do in my every couple years or so "transportation wish list" which I probably will get to next month finally.) But the subway system has been prioritized to some extent at the expense of improving the quality of the bus system.

It didn't have to be that way.

Transit malls have been created in cities mostly where they don't have fixed rail transit. So they end up focusing on improving the transit they do have. The 16th Street Transit Mall in Denver and the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis do a better job of prioritizing transit and the quality of place than did the Transit Mall in Portland (which I haven't seen since its redesign).

Flickr photo of the Denver Transit Mall by davidwilson1949, who writes: "The 16th St. Transit Mall appears to be an economically and socially thriving place, in contrast to many other similar attempts at the same concept in other cities."


Nicolett Street transit mall, Minneapolis. Note the extra wide sidewalks, which have been created by removing through lanes. During temperate months, there are many restaurant patios which activate the space. Flickr photo by EvinDC.

The great thing about a transit mall with great quality of place is that this promotes transit as well by associating it with placemaking, instead of treating transit as a transportation service of last resort.

But still, the transit mall in Portland was a great leap forward for urban revitalization. It was an essential component of their 1972 Downtown Plan which prioritized investment downtown, and emphasized transit at the expense of automobility and parking. I think its relative success led to the embrace of the leap forward to fixed rail transit--construction of Portland's light rail system began 10 years later.

-------
This blog entry "A summary of my impressions of Portland Oregon" prints the elements of the 1972 Portland plan, including these three:

1. Creating a North-South spine of high density offices served by public transit. The (bus) Transit Malls on SW 5th and 6th Avenues, completed in 1978, provides this spine and supported private office developments.

2. Creation of an East-West retail spine along Morrison Street that would lead the city back to the river. The MAX light rail line and rebuilt streets on Morrison and Yamhill implement that concept. Waterfront Park, which replaced an expressway, provides a riverfront destination.

4. Emphasis on transit and alternative modes for downtown access and limitations on parking. The plan prohibited new parking unless associated with new development and it prohibited the demolition of historic buildings for parking lots.
-----------------

The reason I don't totally love it has to do with when it was built and the urban renewal like designs of the transit shelters--very hulking--some of the buildings along the street--set back significantly from the street--and the lack of other quality placemaking aspects, unlike say in Denver or Minneapolis.

DC's current "priority" bus lanes on 7th and 9th Streets don't work very well because relatively speaking, the lanes are not used very much during the hour as only one or two bus lines use the streets. Also see this paper, "Effective Bus-Only Lanes," about bus priority lanes in San Francisco.

And maybe the bus markings on the street can be better too, to limit the number of incursions. This is an example from Australia. ("Mandatory Give Way to Buses Scheme Extended.")

What I would probably consider is making 9th Street two way and put the priority bus lanes only on 7th Street, making it a mixed traffic transitway. However, property owners would likely go apesh** if you propose eliminating street parking. On the other hand, you could widen the sidewalks a bit which is necessary there given the amount of pedestrian traffic and create a priority bus lane and then have only one other through lane in each direction. In Portland, automobiles were not supposed to use the transit mall.

But the north-south bus lines on H, I, and K Streets would use bus lanes for much of each hour. That is the point of creating the K Street Transitway, but the idea hasn't been extended to include H and I as part of a "Downtown Transitway system." (Note that I do have some issues with the K Street Transitway as it is designed to be a little too exclusive, prioritizing some bus services over others, when I think that all the public transit bus services using this corridor ought to be equally prioritized.)

K Street Transitway image. (Note the public transit bus located outside of the transitway.)

Creating an integrated Transitway System for Downtown DC, including H, I, and K Streets, along with 7th and 14th Streets, ought to be the next step in improving surface based transit downtown.

The likely reason this isn't happening, and why bicycle improvements are being prioritized has to do with how transportation planning is set up in the DC Dept. of Transportation (DDOT).

The Transportation Planning and Policy Administration, which has a strong and visionary director and a slew of committed staffers, aren't responsible for DC's transit planning. Transit planning falls under a separate bureau, the Mass Transit Administration division of DDOT.

SO you can see that since TPPA has a more robust planning capacity and leadership, that they are focusing on bicycle planning, while DC's MTA is not pushing bus priority. Yes, I recognize that the TPPA division still pushes bus priority, but you see how the bike and pedestrian unit at TPPA can be prioritized at the expense of bus, because of how active and far thinking the respective divisions are or are not when it comes to consideration of the various transportation modes under their purview.

(I happen to believe that transit planning should be merged into the Transportation Planning and Policy Adminstration unit of DDOT.)

Making choices on how to use scarce dollars available for public investment in revitalization

In the New York Times, an op-ed by Mitchell Moss of New York University states that "Struggling Towns Must Evolve or Die." From the article:

The entire state cannot survive if we continue to act as if all 62 counties can flourish. Yet that’s how our political and fiscal systems work — as upstate shrinks, it commands a higher and higher per capita chunk of the state budget. New York City taxpayers send billions of dollars upstate for unnecessary shopping malls, transportation projects and prisons, giving new meaning to the phrase “welfare state.” Meanwhile, vital upgrades to transportation and public services essential to accommodate the expanding New York City area are deferred.

While from a rational planning standpoint, it makes sense to focus public resources where the investment can have the most impact, from a political standpoint, making "life or death" decisions about communities is practically impossible.

And yes, that means that the areas with the potential to thrive find achieving success is more difficult, because they are starved for resources as well.

I think it is only when a community is absolutely desperate (i.e., Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Flint, Michigan) can these kinds of decisions be made. At that is at the scale of neighborhoods, not the entire community.

Being up in PA at the moment to go to Olde Good Things (an architectural salvage place), you can see the difficulties in the question when looking at the Pennsylvania communities of York, Lancaster, and Scranton. Of the three, Lancaster is thriving. That's because it has a truly functioning local economy. (I wonder how much the Amish and Mennonites influence the retention of local manufacturing--once with a farmer who sells in a farmers market I used to manage, I stopped by at an Amish farm implement manufacturer...) Scranton doesn't "show well" compared to either, and York's Downtown hasn't revitalized to the same extent as Lancaster's. BUT, York even though it keeps losing companies, is still a relatively strong manufacturing center, which means that it is a good source of jobs.

I haven't been to upstate New York in a long time, but a similar kind of assessment can likely be made there, and ought to be when you have to divvy up a shrinking and always limited source of funds.

In the meantime, casinos and gaming are seen as the savior for such communities (e.g., Bethelem, Pennsyvlvania, post the closing of the Bethlehem Steel Works).

DC Alley Residents Unite!

Adam Clayton Powell III, right, chats with resident Will Fleishell, a.k.a. "the Mayor of Gessford Court." Photo Credit: Elizabeth Festa For The Washington Post.

Today's Washington Post real estate section "neighborhood" article, "DC's Gessford Court is a little alley oasis‎" features the Gessford Court Alley of Capitol Hill, and Will Fleishell, a resident there, who co-founded the group, DC Alley Dwellers Alliance (DADA). Will has helped lead tours of Capitol Hill alleys that I have done for the past few years. (But I might not be doing any alley tours this year. Too much work.) DADA has a yahoo group (alleyresidents) that people can join.

This is the DADA manifesto:

Our aim is to improve the conditions of both owners and renters who live in D.C.'s inhabited alleys. Citizens living in D.C.'s alley areas have suffered from neglect and stigmatization by both the city government and street dwelling neighbors. This shameful history must come to an end. Alleys are now desirable places to live, no longer harbingers or breeding grounds for crime and decay.

Alley inhabitants have struggled for years to bring attention to our attempts to improve the appearance and condition of our homes and properties. The only way to address the official apathy and to encourage a positive and beneficial response to our needs is to band together to fight for our betterment. Citizens of D.C.'s alleys should not have to live the lives of a second class or diminished attention while we pay some of the highest municipal tax rates in the U.S.A.

Alleys should be for people – not just for cars and parking!
Some issues for discussion and consideration with regards to alley and those who inhabit them:

Infrastructure, Mobility, and Quality of Life

• Re-bricking and improvement of alley surfaces/updated utilities
• Traffic Safety – Installation of mirrors, speed limit signs and traffic calming measures for alleys. Belgian block as a paving material to naturally slow speeds.
• Illegal parking in alleys – lack of enforcement by Police and Parking Enforcement
• Encourage pedestrian/alternative transportation for alleys - Why don't we have bike racks for alleys?
• Install better street signage for alleys
• Beautification of alleys with plants or public art
• Social gatherings for alley dwellers. Why is it illegal for alleys to be closed for block celebrations while streets are allowed to close for the same?
• Produce a census/map of occupied alleys of D.C. (OCTO, DOT)

Government Services

• Poor police response because alley locations are not listed correctly in police computers (MPD, Unified Communications Center, OCTO street database)
• Most inhabited alleys NEVER see snow removal (DDOT, DPW)
• No new garbage cans have been provided for alley dwellers (DPW)
• Illegal dumping in alleys. This is a frequent problem. Can we increase fines for dumping in inhabited alleys?
• Illegal parking in alleys – lack of enforcement by MPD and DPW Parking Enforcement
• Pest and Termite abatement (Alley houses suffer greatly from this problem- why not a city sponsored termite/pest control effort? -- DOH)

Alley expansion and residential use

• Residential use has been made illegal in the current zoning code, because of the extremely narrow width of most alleys.
• Adding more residents to alleys will add more people and density in ways that strengthen alley neighborhoods, street-fronting residential areas, and the city at large, by providing more affordable living and work spaces and by putting additional eyes into our alleyways (what Jane Jacobs called “eyes on the street”)
• Therefore, expand residential use and appropriate, tasteful development in alleys.
• Change the zoning rules to allow old alley buildings to be used as residences, and new alley buildings--residential, shops/studios and/or mixed use—to be constructed
• … but without the mandatory parking requirements set forth in the current Zoning codes
• Zoning regulations should be amended so that our street-fronting neighbors and property owners can build apartments or offices above existing garages (and/or on the rear of lots where appropriate).

Great series on electric bicycles

"The Parable of the Electric Bike."

The five articles are by Alan Durning of the Sightline Institute. They discuss whether or not the electric bike will take off, why they are more efficient than electric cars, and whether or not they should be subsidized as electric cars have been (he argues no).

I don't think electric bikes will save the world. I do think that they can make bicycle commuting much more attractive to larger segments of the population. Maybe, over time, it could lead to as much as 10% of work trips by bicycle, or more. And that would be a significant contribution.

Caption: Brynnen Ford, pictured above, illustrates. Brynnen uses her Madsen “as a minivan alternative.” She drives carpool with it, hauling kids to and from elementary school over the steep hills of Seattle’s central area. Before she electrified her cargo bike with an eZee motor and battery from cycle9.com, the hills were too much. “I tried doing it last year without the electric assist and while sometimes I could do it, other times I would opt for the car . . . so I wouldn't die of exhaustion from carrying the kids up the hills. Now, I almost never opt for the car.” From Juice Hawgs" by Alan Durning.

Of course, what still mattters most is proximity of residence to work, adequate infrastructure etc.

Speaking of bikeways, bicycle lanes, and cycle tracks, at the DC DOT presentation on cycle track proposals (written up in Washcycle "It's like someone spilled a bucket of Portland on downtown" and Greater Greater Washington "DDOT shares downtown bicycle facility plans") one of the presentation boards stated that cycle tracks can lead to as much as a 20% increase in the number of people bicycling.

That's quite significant.

Urban orchards

I write about this subject from time to time, and USA Today reports on more projects, in "More urbanites have their pick of fresh fruit," including the Philadelphia Orchard Project. From the article:

That's the plan for some of the fruit in urban orchards in Philadelphia. Since 2007, a group called the Philadelphia Orchard Project has helped establish 17 urban orchards in the city, including four on school property and one at a public park. Other orchards are planted on land owned by non-profit groups. Orchard director Phil Forsyth said volunteers have planted about 200 trees.

"They are all over the city, generally in low-income neighborhoods," he said. "Community food security is part of our mission, so we partner with groups where the orchard will benefit people who would otherwise have limited access to fresh produce."

How do you "reform" a crumbling sewer line? Or raise sponsorship dollars to fund parks?

Nationwide, states are desperate, and closing parks and cutting budgets. The Atlanta Business Journal reports, in "
State may seek sponsors for great outdoors" that the State of Georgia, looking to fund parks in the face of terrible budget pressures, wants to tap corporate sponsors. (Also see "So we could have Anna Ruby Falls, brought to you by super-absorbent Pampers" from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.)

But as corporations continue to merge, and as corporate headquarters relocate out of state, fewer dollars are available, meaning that sponsorship might help in the short run, but can't stave off the inevitable. And that some sites may be valuable marketing opportunities for sponsorship while many won't. And there isn't enough money to go around to every state and every locality and every school district (some school districts have sponsors of athletic fields) that is looking to raise sponsorship dollars.

At the end of the day, budgets will have to be righted. It might even be that taxes have to be higher. If you want parks...

Speaking of higher taxes or fees, I was dumbfounded to read a quote from DC Councilmember Jim Graham in a New York Times story, "Saving U.S. Water and Sewer Systems Would Be Costly."

Most cities built the bulk of their water and sewer infrastructure at the turn of the 20th century. Now, 100 years later, this infrastructure is crumbling and needs to be replaced. Furthermore, today's standards for water quality and environmental protection usually mean increased need for infrastructure as well. For example, much of the city is served by a combined stormwater and sewerage drainage system. When the system overflows, the treatment facility is overburdened and untreated sewage water is released into the Potomac River. That's a bad thing.

From the article:

For decades, these systems — some built around the time of the Civil War — have been ignored by politicians and residents accustomed to paying almost nothing for water delivery and sewage removal. And so each year, hundreds of thousands of ruptures damage streets and homes and cause dangerous pollutants to seep into drinking water supplies.

Mr. Hawkins’s answer to such problems will not please a lot of citizens. Like many of his counterparts in cities like Detroit, Cincinnati, Atlanta and elsewhere, his job is partly to persuade the public to accept higher water rates, so that the utility can replace more antiquated pipes.

But here's what CM Graham has to say about it:

"This rate hike is outrageous,” said Jim Graham, a member of the city council. “Subway systems need repairs, and so do roads, but you don’t see fares or tolls skyrocketing. Providing inexpensive, reliable water is a fundamental obligation of government. If they can’t do that, they need to reform themselves, instead of just charging more.”

Tell me, how do you "reform" a crumbling water pipe? How do you "reform" a combined stormwater and sewer drainage system?

You can only "reform" these problems with new infrastructure, and that costs money. The equipment costs money, the people cost money, tearing up the roads costs money.

Thinking anything else is magical and fantastical and won't accomplish anything.

At least they understand what to do in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, judging by this image I swiped from the website of their Department of Public Works. I hope that we can get our understanding in DC up to their level.

Casinos: economic development or a con job?

It's interesting that articles in the Examiner, "Md. resort warns of failure without slot machines," and the Washington Post, "Arundel Mills entertainment key to casino, developer says," about casino proposals in different parts of Maryland have the same basic theme--that a casino isn't enough in and of itself to right an economy, even though the two articles discuss opposite situations--the western Maryland property is failing, while the Arundel Mills shopping center in Anne Arundel County is very successful.

The situation in Western Maryland is that an "expensive" resort was built in part with state money as a local economic development initiative. But despite the amenity, it wasn't enough, in and of itself to draw significant numbers of customers, so the resort is lagging. (The problem is that there aren't enough other things going on in the area to draw significant numbers of visitors.)

They want to add a casino, but because the profitability would lag compared to locations closer to major metropolitan centers, local officials propose that the state offer better terms than the law allows to a casino group willing to open there.

The Anne Arundel casino proposal is a different story, but no less interesting. There, the proposed operator, the Cornish Company, says that they want to be located next to the Arundel Mills shopping center because it gets so many visitors, and not at the local horse racing track which doesn't--even though making the horse racing industry more successful was the alleged original reasoning behind the passage of legislation allowing casinos in the first place. The horse industry was once much more significant in the state, and still exists, but is withering as other states have more successful racetracks, offering larger purses, in turn drawing better operators.

But the funny thing about the Cornish project is that people who go shop at "the mall" are locals for the most part, out to do their shopping, not to drop hundreds of dollars at slot machines. The likelihood of locals coming to the casino is low, and the desire of casino patrons to go buy something at an adjacent shopping center, when they can find many of the same stores close to home, is also remote. Granted, maybe they want to go to the Lego store or the Bass Pro Shop, stores that are pretty rare, but it's still unlikely.

The article calls attention to how the property will have a steakhouse, two bars, and an entertainment lounge.

Wow!

Seems like a con job to me. Communities (and states) desperate for income will do anything for a buck, even if the money never really comes.

Also see "BALTIMORE OBSERVED: CASHED OUT from Baltimore's Urbanite Magazine. From the article:

John Kindt, a professor of business and legal policy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says gambling sucks money away from the consumer economy and small businesses. Kindt and others estimate that as a slot machine takes in $100,000 per year for casino owners, it eliminates one job elsewhere in the economy, eventually leading to three times that amount in lost consumer spending and taxes paid. Meanwhile, slots force states to absorb more in “social costs,” such as an uptick in gambling addiction. “The taxes charged by Maryland on this amount [of slots income] are miniscule in comparison with what the state will lose,” he says.

More ideas for developing questionnaires and agendas for the candidate election cycle

1. Baltimore County created one of the earliest "urban growth boundaries," in 1967. While the line has been tweaked every so often since then, 90% of the county's 800,000+ residents live in the urban section of the county. The North County Preservation organization of Baltimore County is a watchdog group, focused on preserving the rural landscape.

This is from the latest newsletter:

From the Board
The NCP Board has posed questions to the candidates for County Executive and Council Council for the 3rd district on subjects important to the preservation of the North County. We will post the answers on our web site and in a future newsletter to help our readers decide during this important upcoming election.

We have posed the following questions:

1. URDL
Give us details about your record in maintaining the integrity of the Urban Rural Demarcation Line. Will you commit to continuing the prohibition of any and all residential or commercial development north of the URDL not already grandfathered in?

2. CZMP
Will you maintain the current practices of the Comprehensive Zoning Map Process, including the right of community associations to identify properties for zoning changes with fees at their current level? Will you commit to instructing the appropriate county departments to add all applicable environmental data for the North County to the county public GIS website as soon as practical so citizens can be better informed in their participation?

3. Agriculture
How do you see the future of agriculture in Baltimore County? Considering that for many small family farms in Baltimore County, on-farm processing and marketing are the only ways to make a fair income from their land, do you support regulations that enable these activities for small family farms?

4. Open Space
Government funds for Open Space, just as many other budget categories, have been curtailed at all levels. How does this line item rank in your short term priorities? What is your view on using Open Space funding to build facilities, including buildings and parking lots?

5. Preservation
What policy tools would you use to encourage preservation of private land and historic structures?

6. Environment
What are your priorities to protect the environment of the North County, especially the reservoirs and watersheds which provide drinking water for close to 2 million residents?
-----------
WalkBoston is a pedestrian advocacy group in Boston, Massachusetts. They have a wide variety of programs and advocacy initiatives. Their three-page Pedestrian Walk Agenda for Massachusetts lays out a specific set of actions concerning:

- Leadership
- Policies and plans
- Programs
- Capital investments

The streetcar meeting for tonight has been cancelled

this was mentioned in an earlier entry. One of the presenters is ill.

Smart Growth: Maryland's Smart Growth Experience: Assessing the Impact

While it is "sold out" you can probably manage to sneak into this presentation tomorrow at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. (I have a prior engagement.)
-------
Gerrit Knaap, director of The University of Maryland’s National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, describes the challenge of making Maryland’s innovative smart growth policy a state-wide reality. Mr. Knaap offers insights into why the state's Priority Funding Areas, aimed to concentrate state investment in existing neighborhoods, did not deliver the results that state planners and smart growth advocates had hoped for. He also describes how other states or localities can learn from the Maryland experience and where Maryland goes from here to realize the promise of statewide smart growth.
------

I haven't read the paper yet. But it will be interesting to read. There are many many steps that need to be taken in terms of changing state and local policies in order to have on-the-ground impact with smart growth policies.

Plus, they take decades to see the results. Typical commercial district revitalization programs take from 10-20 years to begin to show results. It took as long as 30 years to see "smart growth-like" impacts from transit oriented development at certain WMATA transit stations, while some stations still haven't experienced significant positive change.

I wonder how carefully the paper elucidates the issues.

Working for a county government at the moment. I see a lot of difficulties, because so many groups:

1. Residents
2. Merchants
3. Government Agencies
4. Government Polices and Regulations
5. Developers and Investors
6. Financiers
7. elected County Councilmembers
8. the elected County Executive

have to be on the same page for anything to happen. Plus, "government agencies" aren't monolithic. Certain agencies may be supportive, others may not. And certain agencies (especially the budget office) have more suasion than others. All the operating agencies end up subservient to the County Executive in terms of policy.

Plus, you need money. And there has to be plenty of money to make it work. At least in a timely fashion.

In DC, TIF or "tax increment financing" based on anticipated future increases in tax revenues against which you can sell bonds to get upfront investment monies, is used all the time--maybe even too much. Plus there are so many property tax abatements (which also can be monetized) given out (without adequate evaluation) that the process deserves as much scrutiny as has been given recently to "earmarks."

In Maryland, apparently TIF has been used only about one dozen times across the entire state, according to this article, "Beechtree development touches off multimillion-dollar debate," from the Baltimore Sun about a proposed-TIF project in Harford County, a project that is getting heat from various sectors on ideological and other grounds. According to the article:

Though TIF has been in use for several decades across the country, Betnun said, it has only been used about 10 times in Maryland - to fund the public infrastructure for Arundel Mills mall, National Business Park near Fort Meade and National Harbor in Prince George's County, among other developments.

This makes it difficult to raise the necessary monies upfront to deal with issues in an accelerated fashion in "Priority Funding Areas."

It happens I've recommended TIF-based funding for a community plan-based project that I am tangentially involved in because parts of their community plan touch on the pedestrian and bicycle access planning process that I am managing. I'm not sure that there are even 3 other examples of the County ever doing such a thing.

(Plus, I recommend a TIF district or "transit value capture district" to be created to fund key transit extensions and route changes that I am hoping can get into the Master Plan. I have my fingers crossed. More, maybe, on that later, if it gets anywhere.)

The Liberty Market response to DCRA

Michael Berman of Diverse Markets Management sends this response, which first appeared in the Mount Vernon Triangle Blog (which I don't normally read and these days for the most part I am focused on transportation planning and am most likely to read only those blogs):

The information provided by DCRA is false and misleading. Diverse Markets has a contract to operate on the Historical Society's property, which was assured to be land under their juristiction. This contract was produced to the police officers (plural, as it included Metropolitan Police as well as Park Police).

This market does include farmers/growers of their own product as well as locally made and specially-sourced natural food products, including fair-traded coffee beans from Honduras, baked breads, natural teas, Provence-imported olive oils and other unique, quality food items. Obviously at this time of the year, there are very few locally harvested fruits or vegetables, thus we do allow our agricultural purveyors to supplement their products with related items, like oranges.

We also welcome products that are focused on a particular cultural need, thus one agricultural purveyor sells sugar cane and plantains. It cannot be grown locally, but it is important to certain communities in the area and not easily or cheaply found.

While there is a place for growers-only markets, for a variety of other reasons (access to food, incomes, improvement to commercial districts, entrepreneurial development, energy use) it makes sense to not be so exclusive.

We believe strongly in providing fresh, nutritious and natural products to the community, rather than a strictly purist "growers-only" market, which can already be found in the neighboring Penn Quarter area. This was intended to be a community market that would sell a variety of products as well as locally grown goods. All participating vendors have their food handling licenses and are legal to do business in DC.

Further, the "organizer", Diverse Markets Management does indeed have a basic business license. The land owner has a Certificate of Occupancy and are in discussions with DCRA to figure out what, if anything, they need to do to comply with regulations for market activity on presumed private land. "Farmers Markets" regulations were created for DDOT for the use of Public Space. It has not been determined that this is public space, as many events has taken place here before without city involvement, nor that it is DDOT's jurisdiction.

I regret DCRA's dispersions that this activity was illegal and further that they have acted in such a crude manner. I welcome the community's ongoing support in what was to be a neighborhood gathering place and a source of wholesome products at reasonable prices.

Thanks to Kaid Benfield

(Thanks to Andrew A. for letting me know about this.)

Kaid is the director of the Smart Growth Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. In the media column in the March issue of Planning Magazine, published by the American Planning Association, Kaid mentioned this blog first as a resource that 'make[s] me think in new ways.' He also said that 'you don't have to be a local reader to learn from his blog.'

That's always been my intent. To focus on processes, systems and "meta-learning" so that best practices can be:

(1) indicated -- figured out in terms of structures, processes, frameworks, etc.
(2) duplicated -- once you figure it out, you repeat the process somewhere else, successfully
(3) replicated -- after the best practice has been evaluated and repeated then it is able to be "diffused" more widely in other places, congruent with the framework, so that best practices work according to the local conditions, which are unique but still comparable across spatial and other conditions elsewhere.

DC is a great place to figure out things. (But so frustrating.)

One because we often do things so half-a**** that if you are good at figuring things out, you can't help but understand gaps in both formulation and execution. Two because DC is a strong market region, but DC is weaker than other jurisdictions in this metropolitan area, but in turn is stronger than other center cities that aren't too far away (Baltimore, Philadelphia, Richmond, Pittsburgh) so it allows for comparisons between strong and weak real estate markets. Third, because of the velocity of change. Things happen fast. My joke is that working on these issues in DC is like working in "dog years"--a dog lives the equivalent of 7 years in one year. Well, if you think and pay attention and are constantly learning and evaluating, you can learn a lot more than one year's worth of revitalization knowledge--if you are paying attention and are good at analysis.

Even in college I used to joke that you can learn more from dysfunctional organizations (then I was referring to student organizations as opposed to the University proper, and especially the student government) than from well-functioning organizations.

One more learning: that practitioners tend to not be very good at generating "meta-learning" and "meta-theory"--figuring out how and why they are successful (or not).

That's why I joke that I am too interested in application to be able to be fully happy in academia, and too interested in applying theory to (and extending) practice to be fully happy out in the field.

A follow up on the Liberty Market closure

--------------
This entry was edited slightly but significantly around 10:15am, in regards to the typology and the difference in goals between market sponsors, market operators, and market participants.
--------------


Michael Rupert from the DC Dept. of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs writes:

The event that was taking place near the corner of 7th & K streets last week was not a farmers' market. Farmers' markets are for farmers selling their own homegrown fresh products from the region and are exempt from licensing requirements for events on public space.

The event that was taking place was a collection of vendors of which very few, to our knowledge, were farmers.

Secondly, the "raid" as described in a release from the event's organizer was actually a single police officer asking for basic information about the products and for documentation giving permission to operate on the private property. The organizers could not produce any documentation. And although DCRA was not present during the event, the organizer told the police officer the food vendors were not farmers.

We have been in contact with the event organizers and have told them exactly what they need to do to continue to operate their market.

Many of the food products being sold were also products we believe were not grown by the region's farmers including Columbian coffee, oranges and other items. In addition to these suspect food items, the event included vendors selling t-shirts, crafts and other items not covered under the farmers' market exemption.

We are huge supporters of farmers' markets and have been lauded by D.C. Hunger Solutions and the D.C. Farmers' Market Collaborative for our efforts to simplify regulations that encourage new farmers' markets and differentiate them in regulations from other events.

We will work closely with them to come into compliance. But based on the products offered at this event, it would not be considered a farmer's market.

I hope this information is helpful and clears up some of the misunderstanding about this market.
-------------------------

My response:

I do understand the need for regulations and protections, and perhaps there are some issues with this market in terms of getting all documents in order, but...

Note that your definition of a market follows the freshfarm market definition, which is overly restrictive. I wrote comments up a couple years ago about the proposed regulations. It happens that my email account stinks in terms of being able to search and find what I wrote though.

Basically the point comes down to recognizing that there are at least eleven reasons to open a market, and while the purposes intersect at times, it means that decisions about what is allowable to sell need to vary according to the purpose of the market. Plus, the goals may vary according to whether you are a sponsor, operator (sponsors and operators are not always the same), or participating vendor.

Potential reasons to have a "farmers" market

1. Provide fresh food that is locally grown, supporting local and regional food security and policy;

2. Provide access to less expensive food

3. Build rural incomes

4. Provide fresh food in an area that otherwise has few stores selling fresh food

5. to promote health and wellness (this is why hospitals and health organizations may get involved such as Kaiser Permanente, which supports markets in the DC region, but is actively engaged in market activities in California, their home base)

6. to aid commercial district and/or neighborhood revitalization by building activities and a reason for people to come out, gather, and resample the place (placemaking)

7. to promote entrepreneurship and local business development (e.g., some businesses, such as the Chateau Animaux pet store on 8th St. SE grew out of Eastern Market)

8. to promote a business and/or add additional revenue streams to a wholesale or retail business (e.g., Atwater's Bakery, based in Baltimore County, with three or four retail stores in the City and County, has a major presence in many markets throughout the Baltimore-DC region; Uptown Bakery, based in Hyattsville, is a wholesale bakery, but they allow their employees to sell products at farmers markets--while I don't know of many instances where they do it, Uptown products are sold at the Waverly Market in Baltimore)

9. to promote economic, environmental, and energy "sustainability"

10. as a property management tool/to generate rental income

11. as a for profit business venture

(10) and (11) might not be considered by some to be "legitimate" reasons for running markets, but the markets in Mt. Pleasant, U Street, and Bloomingdale are run by a for profit operator, which in part is an indicator that the sponsor of the market might have different goals from the operator of the market.

If the DC regulations fail to recognize and support these various purposes, then they are flawed. Note that I wrote "market" not "farmers market." When you are pursuing goals (6) and (7), promoting revitalization and entrepreneurship, it is then acceptable to mix the sales of craft items (items produced by artists, etc.) with the sale of food.

And, if the point is to strengthen commercial districts and promote entrepreneurship, then it is reasonable to sell prepared foods as well to round out the offering, and to help businesses develop, perhaps into storefront-based businesses.

For example, Qualia Coffee, a coffee shop located in the Petworth neighborhood, got its start by selling their fresh roasted coffee at markets in Adams-Morgan and Brookland. With regard to Qualia's presence at the Brookland Farmers Market, we followed the rule of foods having to be "grown" within 100 miles in order for a "farmer" to be able to participate in our market. While we understood that coffee is not grown locally, we decided that roasting coffee locally qualified Joel to sell at the market.

Note also that we let a Southern Maryland farmer producing fruit and vegetables to also sell dairy products produced by a nearby Amish farmer--and speaking of sustainability, since the Amish don't drive motor vehicles, they aren't likely to be representing their products beyond the distance that a horse-drawn wagon can conveniently travel.

But shouldn't the purposes of (3) building rural incomes; (1) promoting locally grown foods; and (9) promoting sustainability mean that we should take steps to allow these goods to be sold in a farmers market in DC?

Note that I came up with this basic idea and a subset of the typology about three years ago at a private conference sponsored by Project for Public Spaces in association with a grant project that they were doing that was funded by the Kellogg Foundation.

The typology is important because it helps decide about the local producer issue, as well as what may be acceptable to offer in terms of the retail mix, i.e., prepared foods. E.g., it's probably acceptable for a market in Anacostia to sell citrus fruit (by definition not produced locally) because of the lack of availability otherwise, if the primary reason for having the market is making fresh food available, "fresh food," but food that is not necessarily "locally-grown". This is in line with purposes (4) making fresh food locally available and (5) promoting health and wellness, but not with (1) promoting locally grown foods--not to mention, ideally, promoting (2) making less expensive food more available. But it wouldn't be acceptable to sell citrus fruit at a market elsewhere in DC, where such goods are readily available in grocery stores--in those places goal (4) making fresh food locally available is already being achieved.

Note that if you are a farmer in a FRESHFarm Market, and your next door neighbor produces cheese, while you grow apples and peaches, instead of the two farmers sharing resources, one selling his apples and the next door farmer's cheese, and vice versa, they are each expected to travel to, cover, and sell at multiple markets.

I think this is a waste of resources, and in terms of the possible goals of "building rural incomes" and "promoting sustainability" this doesn't make sense.

The other problem with the overly restrictive model is that it leads to really expensive food. This violates reason (2) providing access to less expensive fresh produce.

For the most part, I don't shop at FreshFarm Markets because the produce is way too expensive, and while I like to believe I make ethical consumer decisions for the most part, I do not make so much money that I can afford to pay double or triple the cost of fruit and vegetables priced at local supermarkets OR at farmers markets in the Baltimore region (e.g., a very interesting question is why, compared to markets in DC, does fresh food--not bread--cost significantly less at the Waverly Market, Baltimore Farmers Market, or Towson Farmers Market?).

Note too that somehow, because they are on federal property, the farmers markets at the US DOT and the USDA operate differently, and they offer prepared foods, which are not legally offered at farmers markets licensed and regulated by DC.

Some good resources on urbanism

Are available in a number of articles by Dom Nozzi on his website, Walkable Streets. He has also recently launched a blog, Plan B.

When "temporary urbanism" really is temporary

From Michael Berman, Executive Director, Diverse Markets Management:

Liberty Market to Close

WASHINGTON, DC--Liberty Farmers Market, which opened Tuesdays last fall on the grounds of the Historical Society of Washington, DC (HSW) at Mount Vernon Square near the corner of 7th & K Sts. NW, has "been suspended indefinitely" after being raided and closed down by D. C. Government when it reopened for the season Tuesday, March 9.

Michael Berman, president of Diverse Markets Management (DMM), a DC firm contracted by HSW to manage the market, announced the suspension today.

"We're disappointed that the effort to create quality markets at the location has been at least temporarily derailed," said Berman, who noted that the site had housed a market in the 19th Century before the building of the Carnegie Library, which now houses HSW.

He said the raid involved both federal park and local police and the D.C. Department of Regulatory and Consumer Affairs, which cited permitting issues for the closure. "DMM tried to work through the issues this week but ran into a complicated maze of jurisdictional overlap," Berman said.

"Unfortunately the mess will probably also derail plans to open other open-air markets both at HSW and in other city neighborhoods," Berman lamented. "But we know neighborhoods want to start outdoor markets and vendors want additional locations, so we'll continue to try to work with the City."

-----
It's ironic that the city has a "temporary urbanism" initiative when the reality is that it is very very very very very difficult to get licenses and permits to do "temporary urbanism" legally.

From the DC Office of Planning webpage on "Actionomics":

Temporary Urbanism: Transforming vacant spaces into vibrant destinations and animated showcases through recreation, retail, entertainment or arts uses.This work group brought together individuals from the development, arts, community development and public sectors. The group will design and launch a pilot temporary urbanism program to transform a vacant space into an active place.

I guess that the DC Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, Metropolitan Police Department, and US Park Police weren't part of the "Temporary Urbanism" working group at the Actionomics symposium.

Asking for directions to the subway

subway sandwich!
Originally uploaded by CALLAMON

... one of the advisory committee members on the planning study that I am managing told us a story at the last meeting.

One of his company's employees was on a business trip to San Francisco. In the city, she asked for directions to the "subway" and was given directions to the closest location of the Subway sandwich shop chain.

That didn't help her get to the MUNI underground.

It's a good lesson in the reality that lots of people don't ride transit.

(I had a not dissimilar experience in Chicago last year. I knew I was only a couple blocks from the El, but I didn't know which way to go. I asked someone for directions, and he tried to send me many blocks away. I was skeptical and he got somewhat angry. Exclaiming why did I bother to ask him if I wasn't going to listen. I ended up finding the train on my own.)

Piling on earmarks, still missing the point

Earmarks, be they at the level of the national government, or at the level of the local government in DC, are generally a bad thing, because they provide funds in a manner that typically is outside the setting of priorities and without adequate checks and balances.

What is lost in the arguments against earmarks is the point that it isn't bad, in and of itself, to provide funds to nonprofit organizations to do things in the realm of social services, arts, culture, youth services, commercial district and neighborhood improvement, etc., because many times neither the government nor the private sector is set up in a fashion that would direct the kind of attention necessary to address and solve particular and evident needs.

The real issue with earmarks is a failure to have an open transparent system for first setting priorities, and then tendering grant opportunities, and evaluating and funding proposals. Plus, it would be useful for having a training and development system for building the organizational capacity of nonprofit organizations and civil society generally.

People who know me know I have been making this point pretty consistently since around 2003-2004.

A recent piece in Stanford Social Innovation Review, "The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle," discusses the problems that nonprofits have in building capacity, because the basic costs of running and administering an organization are undercounted. From the article:

Our research reveals that a vicious cycle fuels the persistent underfunding of overhead.¹ The first step in the cycle is funders’ unrealistic expectations about how much it costs to run a nonprofit. At the second step, nonprofits feel pressure to conform to funders’ unrealistic expectations. At the third step, nonprofits respond to this pressure in two ways: They spend too little on overhead, and they underreport their expenditures on tax forms and in fundraising materials. This underspending and underreporting in turn perpetuates funders’ unrealistic expectations. Over time, funders expect grantees to do more and more with less and less—a cycle that slowly starves nonprofits.

This is my experience in DC with the Main Street program. Groups never got enough money to be able to develop a sustainable funding stream. Even Barracks Row Main Street, which has received millions of dollars in earmarks (because many Congressmembers live over there) struggles to raise enough money to support fewer than 3 full-time staff. Note that Main Street wasn't an earmark program but a grant program with very difficult and regular reporting requirements, and three sets of benchmarks to be met annually. (I easily spent as much as 1/4 of my time working on reporting-related issues, when I worked as a program manager for the Brookland Main Street program.)

Anyway, yesterday, Washington Post columnist Colbert King piled on the earmark issue, tying it to the issue he writes the most about, the system of controlling, monitoring, and rehabilitating juvenile offenders. It's a system with many problems--that can result in the deaths of offenders released to in-community facilities, as well as murders and other crimes that get committed in the community by offenders who are inadequately monitored after having been placed into community facilities.

The problem with the column, "D.C.'s misdirected money," is that it is a logic failure of major proportions to make the point that the money was within a zero sum game, and that by having money directed to earmarks, money was diverted from dealing with juvenile offender issues. And that this claimed lack of money somehow led to all the problems and deaths within the system.

Note also that a few years ago, Colbert King wrote a similar column about earmarks, "Handouts and Hands Out," but in that case stated that all the money should go to the school system. Again, the issue isn't that there isn't enough money spent on K-12 schooling in DC. It's about how the school system is organized and managed, and the failure for many decades by the community to demand quality outcomes, instead of looking upon the school system as a feeding trough for jobs, patronage, and contracts.

The issue with juvenile offenders is how the city organizes and manages programs and services, including incarceration (albeit in many forms). It's not that there aren't programs. It's not that there isn't plenty of money.

Sadly, Colbert King hasn't taken up the mantle of promoting best practice programs dealing with juvenile offender issues, particularly murder of youth within the system as well as murder by youths "incarcerated" within the system. Why he isn't promoting the program developed in Boston, and featured in the Mother Jones Magazine article, "Straight Outta Boston" is beyond me.

Instead he keeps making the same points over and over again:

- The juvenile justice system is broken;
- Councilmember Wells provides inadequate oversight;
- Vince Schiraldi is too focused on rehabilitation to provide adequate supervision for people in the system who may in fact be very dangerous;
- people in the system die unnecessarily;
- other people in the city die unnecessarily at the hands of people who are supposed to be under the careful management of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services.

While King's coverage likely has resulted in Schiraldi moving on to New York City, it still brings to mind the joke of the definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

It happens that I believe that it is fine to offer criticism without offering solutions (people who offer criticism are in turn usually pilloried for not offering solutions simultaneously) because understanding and being able to analyze problems can be a different skill from developing responsive programs to solve particular problems.

But I am finding the one-note writings somewhat tiresome, because the Post is an incredible platform from which to drive change forward, and the platform is being almost completely wasted by not acknowledging that there are decent solutions to be had and offering up these examples as solutions for our very serious problems in DC.

What the real problem in dealing with youth offender issues in DC comes down to a failure of will.

Not a lack of money.

And conflating the two doesn't move us forward.

Irrespective of problems (big problems) with the earmark system.

Toronto Star ongoing "series" on improving the city of Toronto

From the website:

What kind of city do we want to live in - and how should we get there? To start a dialogue, we've asked dozens of people from across the region to offer ideas on how to make our community more livable, more successful and more just. They are posting suggestions on the Your City, My City blog, but we also want to hear from you. So sign on to [blog] and join the debate to help shape where we live.

Understanding the difficulty of "rails to trails"

Understanding the difficulty of "rails to trails"
Originally uploaded by rllayman

This is part of the existing railbed/tracks for the Catonsville Short Line railroad in Catonsville, Baltimore County, Maryland, which is slated for conversion into a walking and bicycling trail connecting Catonsville to Baltimore City.

Cycle tracks in DC

In bicycle transportation planning, there are three categories of facilities:

- Class I - off street facilities where motorized transportation is not allowed and the facility is located outside of a roadway/right of way.
- Class II - facilities in the right of way, either separated or not separated from motorized traffic. We call these "bicycle lanes." A bicycle lane is marked by painted lines. A cycle track is physically separated from the roadway, but is still in the right of way of the roadside + roadway.
- Class III - markings -- signs and road markings -- denoting on-street mixing of motorized vehicles and bicycle traffic. Think "share the road."

Yesterday's Washington Post story about the coming of separated bicycle lanes within the right of way (Class II bicycle facility), "Pennsylvania Ave. to have dedicated bike lanes," used an image of a Class III bicycle facility to illustrate the article. Note that cover image on the Express yesterday, calling attention to the same article, did feature a Class II facility.

While it's true that "a picture tells 1,000 words" when you are telling the story, it's best to have the right picture! Below, the photo is of a "sharrow" marking, which is the on-road marking equivalent of a "share the road" sign.

Under the plan, the 15th Street NW bike lane between U Street and Massachusetts Avenue would be extended to Pennsylvania Avenue. (Gerald Martineau/the Washington Post)

Harry Sanders, Rest in Peace

Image from Purple Line Now. Harry Sanders is on the left.

Social and organization change is a very difficult process. Progress is very hard to bring about. And it takes a long time, often decades, for an idea to become reality.

But change and vision are built on the backs and efforts of individuals, usually individuals who are outside of government. (Government has money and implements things, but usually the idea and verve has derived from outside of government.)

The Washington Post today carried an obituary for Harry Sanders, "Harry Sanders dies; activist led Purple Line campaign‎." (I didn't know him well, but he was at every ACT meeting that I ever attended. And I didn't know he was ill.)

Harry Sanders was one of the founders of Action Committee for Transit, the pro-transit advocacy group in Montgomery County. Their idea for a streetcar between Bethesda and Silver Spring, using the track that once was used to transport coal to a power plant in Georgetown, DC (the plant has since closed and in part has been converted into a hotel), morphed and expanded into the Purple Line light rail proposal, which in its first phase--hopefully the idea which has since been extended into the idea of a circumferential line tying together all the lines, will be extended beyond the current plan for a line from Bethesda Metro Station to New Carrollton Station.

Without his leadership and perseverance, there might not be a Purple Line. Sure, we don't have a Purple Line yet, but it is likely to be approved--an application awaits judgment by the Federal Transit Administration, but the proposal is likely to be the most successful light rail project of any in the United States.

The Purple Line will be, in part, a gift from Harry Sanders to the people of the Washington region, especially transit users in Montgomery and Prince George's County.

It is on the backs of people like Harry that better communities are created.

More schools

Gosh, I wrote that blog entry the other day about schools and systems, but didn't get to last Sunday's New York Times Magazine until my commuting time on the train yesterday. The cover story, "Building a Better Teacher," is exactly on the topic of how to train teachers to be great teachers.

The article has two different threads, the work of Doug Lemov, now of the school charter organization Uncommon Schools, on identifying the framework of what comprises excellent teaching/classroom management more generally (he has 49 factors, and is publishing a book on his method next month), as well as identifying subject-specific teaching frameworks, such as in math. On the latter, the article features the work of people at the Michigan State University College of Education, as well as a professor at the University of Michigan School of Education.

Interesting newspaper series on tourism and local economic development

One of the reasons that I love newspapers is that in their heyday, they had reach--a lot of potential impact-- and depth--they could devote time and space to important issues. TV is pretty much worthless, they focus on images and shock--the medium doesn't lend itself to deep consideration of anything, except in documentaries, and most people don't have the time to watch a documentary, but most importantly, documentaries or long form television takes a lot more time and money than it does to do the equivalent with words and photos.

It's not available online anymore, but newspapers like the Philadelphia Daily News and the Camden Courier Post ran great series on local redevelopment issues. PDN's series was called "Rethinking Philadelphia" and the Camden paper ran two special sections on future visioning. And in fact, the Youngstown Vindicator was one of the founders of the Youngstown 2010 effort, focused on repositioning and resizing that otherwise shrinking community.

This week, the Vicksburg Post in Mississippi has run a series of stories on tourism, the local economy, and opportunities for improvement, based on a project done by the paper in conjunction with a team of journalism students from Mis. Too bad we aren't getting this kind of enterprise reporting locally (of course, corruption and government failure make for much better copy, and since there is so much of it, the local newspapers don't have time to get to more in depth projects maybe...).

Part 1: If you build it, they will come

Part 2: Military park looks ahead to 150th anniversary

Part 3: Vibrancy for residents might hold key to city future

Part 4: Limited public transit is a driving concern

Part 5: No crystal ball on convention center hotel

Part 6: Nature a great natural resource in area

Part 7: As a draw, music offerings could use real 'juke joint'

Part 8: New recreational parks could equal 'major bucks'

Vicksburg Tourism: 'Immersion' experiences increasingly important