"Drill, baby, drill"

Just as media commenters are making the point that the charges against Goldman Sachs and their spirited almost vituperative response is making financial regulatory reform happen, I wonder if people understand that our "addiction to oil" has significant and serious consequences also.

The recent Obama Administration decision to allow offshore drilling of oil in more places could be countered by the oil platform failure in the Gulf of Mexico and the massive oil slick that has resulted, which threatens the ecosystem of the states along the Gulf.

A satellite image taken on April 26, 2010, shows clean up vessels near the oil slick resulting from the explosion of the Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil rig, in the Gulf of Mexico. The massive oil slick from a blown-out well is expected to reach a Louisiana wildlife reserve on April 29, 2010 as it threatens an environmental disaster across four southern U.S. states. REUTERS/DigitalGlobe/Handout

RFPs aren't plans, neither are piecemeal responses

Today's Post reports, in "DC moves to control failing hospital in SE‎," about the city government takeover of the United Medical Center, a hospital in Southeast DC formerly called Greater Southeast Hospital, because of financial distress.

This has been a pretty common occurrence over the past 10 years in many cities (e.g., Atlanta, Los Angeles, Nashville) and in Prince George's County, Maryland with regard to the county owned hospital there. Meanwhile, desires for hospital organizations to win new customers in the suburbs continue apace. In the DC region, Suburban Hospital and the Washington Adventist Hospital vie for the privilege of building a hospital in North Montgomery County, while the Fairfax-Prince William hospital market is controlled by INOVA, which works diligently to keep out competitors.

When the PG County issue was more significantly in the news, along with Howard University's bid to get the city to build it a new hospital in Greater Capitol Hill, I argued that problems with hospital care and financing in PG County were derived from the same circumstances faced by DC, and that a regional solution would likely be in order.

See:

- How to Solve the Hospital Crisis
- The focus on hospitals vs. issues of health
- Muddled thinking by Steven Pearlstein (Post business columnist)
- An opportunity for rethinking health and wellness care in the District of Columbia
- Health Planning vs. Hospital Planning redux
- Piling on the hospital issue

I still believe that a regional solution is in order. We don't have have a health care and wellness plan for the city or the region.

It's the same issue with "national health care" or "national health insurance" requirements and the national debate and opprobrium ("Obamacare") over creating a national health type program in the U.S.

Health insurance isn't the same thing as health and wellness care. The health insurance system was created during the Great Depression more as a tool to regularize income for hospitals than it was to create a system of care for people. That's why the health insurance system is structured in the way that it is, and it doesn't focus on helping people be healthy in the first place, so that they don't need medical care so much (obviously people get sick and need help but many diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, etc., are in part driven by health behavior choices).

So many health problems are based ultimately on behavior (diet and other choices regarding such choices as drinking, smoking, and the care people take while driving and in other activities where accidents with catastrophic effect can and do happen), and only by addressing that can the health care "system" drive costs down.

I wrote about one way to do this in the city in "Disruptive innovation (once again) and "Bods/Cuerpos" but it turns out that Christopher Alexander expressed the same idea about 30 years ago in the book Pattern Language.

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WRT "RFPs" one of my lines is that "Requests for Proposals aren't plans."

What price for gasoline is the magic number to reduce automobile dominance?

A woman fills up her vehicle in a file photo. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas.

The London Daily Telegraph reports, in "Britons turning back on car ownership as cost of motoring soars," that car ownership is down significantly in Britain. From the article:

The most dramatic drop was in the number of new cars registered which fell by 6.8 per cent in 2009 compared with the previous year.

This was despite the Government's "cash for bangers" scheme, which saw anyone trading in a 10-year old car receiving a £2,000 grant towards a new model.

Instead thousands of motorists, who have given up their own vehicle, have joined "car clubs", with the number of members nearly doubling from 64,679 to 112,928 over the past 12 months.

Those who did venture into the market to buy new cars also traded down, with average engine size falling by 3.6% to 1,692cc last year.

Concern over pump prices saw the number of electric and hybrid cars on Britain's road increase from 48,000 in 2008 to 62,000 last year.

The price of gas there is about $6/gallon. Maybe that's the magic price point. But in the U.S., it would be a wrenching process of transition. Not a problem for people who live in more urbanized, connected areas, but a major problem for everyone else.

These days I am working in a suburban county as a bicycle and pedestrian planner. The county is 640 square miles, and the distance between town centers can be quite significant, 10-20 miles or more depending on where you are and where you want or have to go. The options for doing that by transit are quite limited at present, and even so, transit works best for short trips (5-7 miles) or point-to-point trips of longer distances but with a relatively limited number of stops.

Of course, there's the bike, and I think electric bikes might be a good way for people to agree to bicycle longer distances than they would ordinarily consider.

But the bike as a mode of transport isn't ready to replace tens of thousands of daily trips.

In Baltimore County, Maryland, the average day sees more than 22 million miles of vehicle travel within the county...

Historic Preservation 101/201 Program, free to DC ANC commissioners

Line drawing of a rowhouse
Originally uploaded by rllayman

From email:

DC Preservation League invites you to attend our Historic Preservation 101/201 training to be held Friday morning, May 7, at the Kellogg Conference Center on the campus of Gallaudet University.

With the support of the Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs this is our third year of providing a program that introduces the background, opportunities and protections of historic preservation in Washington DC. Most of you represent neighborhoods that include older building that if not designated historic, may have the potential to be. This is a great opportunity to join us to review the programs and processes that can affect historic properties throughout our city. We are pleased to waive the $60 tuition for you as an ANC commissioner if you register by May 5. We look forward to seeing you.

Historic Preservation 101/201
Friday, May 7th
9:00am to 12:00pm
Gallaudet University
Kellogg Conference Center
800 Florida Avenue, NE

Join DCPL and speakers from the DC Historic Preservation Office and the L’Enfant Trust for educational sessions that overview historic preservation in Washington.

Historic Preservation 101 provides a brief history of the DC historic preservation movement, advice on how to navigate historic district requirements, and tips on historic preservation funding, and the value of façade easements.

This year, DCPL is pleased to offer a new session, Historic Preservation 201. This program delves deeper into the process of designating historic landmarks and districts, renovation of a historic property, the historic preservation review process and integrating historic resources with new construction.

The pedestrian and bicycle planning project I'm working on...

Is written up in this community newspaper (Catonsville Times, Arbutus Times) article, "Input sought on safer bicycle, walking paths in western county: Planner says he would like to see residents make walking, bicycling a 'way of life'."

This photo is digitally doctored (the word walking was substituted for parking), but otherwise the photo is accurate. (It's on Warren Road in Cockeysville.)

Branding and identity systems as part of program delivery in urban revitalization programs

Branding and identity systems as part of program delivery in urban revitalization programs
Originally uploaded by rllayman

Takoma Park, Maryland has created this logo as part of their effort focused on the revitalization of New Hampshire Avenue. I think it's a great branding example. While I don't know if they follow my five tenets of what I am calling Action Planning:

1. Design Method over Rational Planning
2. Social Marketing
3. Integrated Program Delivery System
4. Packaged through Branding & Identity Systems
5. Civic Engagement & Democracy at the foundation = citizen at the center.

In any event, of all the municipalities in the region, other than Arlington County examples such as with WalkArlington and BikeArlington, it's literally one of the only good examples of developing a professional brand identity by a municipality.

Design methodology.

What to do about urban freeways?

There is an article in Access, the transportation publication of the University of California Transportation Center, about why urban freeways are so anti-urban, "Paved with Good Intentions: Fiscal Politics, Freeways and the 20th Century American City," by Jeffrey A. Brown, Eric A. Morris, and Brian D. Taylor. PDF

In Syracuse, there is a project, the I-81 Challenge, that is considering the role of freeways in the city, as the roads specifically are reaching the end of their natural life and will have to be rebuilt, or not.

There are a number of recent examples of freeway removal and change projects, and one of the documents of the study provides case studies of a number of urban freeway projects covering a wide variety of options that they could consider in Syracuse.

It's a useful compilation that is valuable for anyone, anywhere...

(Thanks to Nigel for calling our attention to this project.)

School improvement program presentations in DC

Across the U.S., all levels of government including most local governments, don't do improvement ("reform"), especially of large institutions such as school systems, and harvesting of best practices very well.

Last week, I did a presentation at Towson University, and so I was poking around the college bookstore afterwards, and I came across a couple tomes on what really works in K-12 education, when it comes to significant improvements in classroom instruction and student outcomes. Of course, I can't imagine anyone in the DC Public Schools administration has ever read these or similar books. Instead they seize on whatever magic bullet-koolaid that they believe in, be it getting rid of the current teachers and hiring young new teachers, or charter schools, or whatever.

So I am intrigued (but won't be able to go) by this parent presentation next week:

The Capitol Hill Public School Parent Organization will present a proposal for improving middle schools on Capitol Hill at the May 4 NLPNA meeting, 7:30 p.m. at Lane Memorial CME, corner of 14th and C streets NE. All are welcome!

I am curious as to what they have to say, if they take a best practices approach, etc.

(While I have no idea what the future holds for me as a bicycle and pedestrian planner in Baltimore County as I am on a term appointment, one of the ideas in the plan is to develop best practice pedestrian and bicycle education programming for both middle schools and high schools. Last weekend, I did a workshop for parents interested in walk to school programs in their neighborhood, for their local middle school, and I was idly thinking of how it could be one of the demonstration sites...)

Of course, if you do believe that school improvement is possible with the current regime, you might be interested in this presentation tonight.

From email:

Invitation to Parents
What Does Good Teaching and Learning Look Like?

This fall, DCPS introduced a new Teaching and Learning Framework to clearly outline what the District believes solid instruction looks like. Join DCPS leadership, classroom teachers and other staff to learn and talk about effective teaching and learning. DCPS’ new Teaching and Learning Framework is based on research, best practices, and input from more than 500 DCPS teachers—and it provides clear values and plain language so that principals, teachers, and parents can have a common understanding about what should be happening in every DCPS classroom.

Learn about the framework, how it affects your child, and its relationship to IMPACT, our new teacher evaluation system at the Ward 5 meeting on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 from 6:30-8 p.m. at McKinley High School (151 T St. NE).

Diagram from the cover, DCPS Teaching and Learning Framework document.

Public art, civic engagement and civic opprobrium

Proposed sculpture in Adams Morgan, artist's rendering (via Washington City Paper).

The City Paper reports that a public sculpture project in Adams-Morgan was scuttled due to public opposition, in "How Listserv Fury, and a Rat, Helped Adams Morgan Lose a $250000 Arts Grant."

Frankly, I don't blame the opposition. The sculpture concept didn't impress me, as it was pretty cartoony, not much different than the fiberglass sculpture "public art" campaigns of cows, donkeys, etc., which many artists complain aren't really art, but a cartoonish idea of what art is.

Federal Reservation at 8th, K, and West Virginia Ave. NE.

Flickr photo by Kaptain Krispy Kreme.

Ironically, one of the very first civic projects I was involved in, back in 2001, was about bringing public art to a little sliver of triangle at the intersection of 8th Street NE, K Street NE, and West Virginia Avenue. While the community was engaged in the project, an obstreperous ANC commissioner, who saw the project as the vanguard of gentrification I guess, got the project scuttled over the need for a public space permit, and the piece of land still languishes today.

However, I have to say that given the artist project that the DC Commission on Arts and the Humanities picked for the site, some kind of sculpture not dissimilar from Soviet heroic realism, I wasn't totally upset that this project, that I worked hard on, didn't go forward. Meanwhile, a different public art project resulting from the same program, was installed at Maury Elementary School.

These kinds of reactions demonstrate that the DCCAH needs to do a much better job, both with the "art" side of such projects as well as the civic engagement side.

DCCAH Public Art webpage

It happens that there is an interesting workshop on public art and tourism, that might have some relevance to this topic, although it's in Leeds in the UK, so I am not likely to go...

From email:

The Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change is pleased to announce the following forthcoming one-day Workshop that might be of interest to you:

art.public.tourism.
21 May 2010
Old School Board, Boardroom
Calverley Street, LS1 3ED, Leeds

Artwork is now often used in place marketing, but does public art attract tourists? Do artists share a language with destination managers? How can artists, art managers, destination managers and tourism promoters work together? Is what is good for art also good for tourism? And what kind of publics do art and tourism produce?

There are questions to be asked about the role of art as utilitarian objects or live events: should art be useful? What is use in relation to art? What makes art public? And how do we articulate the importance of the extra-ordinary in our experience of public spaces? Should tourism be a concern for artists, or should art be a concern for tourism? In a time of tighter public spending, how should tourism managers be thinking about and working with publics, artists and art?

The Workshop will be of interest to professionals working in arts management and regional development; destination managers at local and regional level; tourism development organisation and consultant; owners and managers of tourism sites as well as artists.

The questions that the workshop will consider, especially these two:

- Is what is good for art also good for tourism?

- what kind of publics do art and tourism produce?

seem to be important ones.

In the case of the DCCAH public art program and civic engagement in DC, I'd revise the questions some:

- are public art projects good for art?

- what kind of publics do public art projects produce?

- what kind of public art projects work best in "neighborhood settings"? ... in neighborhood settings that are also consumed by publics other than residents, e.g., Adams-Morgan is experienced-consumed-"oversampled" by visitors to the region, and other segments of the in-region population such as the Hispanic population?

- how do we engage citizens in the public process for public art projects?

Oh, in Takoma, there is a mural project for the Metro station. It was a public process too, that seems to have been relatively smooth. (I am pretty much unable to directly participate in much of anything anymore, so I didn't get involved.) See the press release on the project that was decided.

Rendering, Sam Gilliam mural, Takoma Metro Station

Book talk and signing: Washington at Home

From H-DC via email:

1 p.m. Saturday, May 1
Politics & Prose Bookstore
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington, DC
Information:202-364-1919

Kathy Smith, the historian, the founding executive director of Cultural Tourism DC and a past president of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., discusses the newly-updated " Washington at Home: An Illustrated History of Neighborhoods in the Nation's Capital."

car / bus / bicycle

car / bus / bicycle
Originally uploaded by Natasha Lloyd

I've run this image before, but this is a nicer copy.

Bus stop on New Hampshire Avenue in Takoma Park, Maryland

Bus stop on New Hampshire Avenue in Takoma Park, Maryland
Originally uploaded by rllayman

DC Zoning Update: Planned Unit Developments and Community Benefits

The DC Zoning Update process allows for improvements of particularly weak areas of current practice.

One such area is the monetization and realization of "community benefits" as part of the process of awarding developers zoning changes, density increases, and variances and exceptions ("relief") which increase the value of a project.

This is covered under the "Planned Unit Development" topic, which is now under review in the process. The issue group started meeting, and will meet every couple weeks through May.

In my experience, the process is very weakly defined, and much of the time it doesn't generate much in the way of significant long term improvements. I think this is deliberate, a part of how the Growth Machine focuses on creating a pro-development environment. The less the system is defined, the easier it is for developers to get out of paying much into it. Note that there are community minded developers who do good for the community as part of their projects. Sure it's done in part because it makes a project more successful and valuable, but that's ok.

I have written a policy paper on the subject, which gets revised from time to time. The most current version is here: Community Benefits Agreements (revised, 2009). The piece "The Agony of Defeat" (2005) recounted a particular example of the unseemliness of the process which I experienced dealing with one such project, and how they greased the system.

A couple of other resources include this paper by the New York City Bar Association, "THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY BENEFIT AGREEMENTS IN NEW YORK CITY’S LAND USE PROCESS" (Thanks to Dan for bringing this resource to my attention) and writings by Amy Lavine, a staff attorney at the University of Albany Law School. She has a law review article on the topic, as well as a blog, Community Benefits Agreements--the blog's goal is to link good jobs, social justice and livable neighborhoods to development projects.

Note that the issue of how to monetize the value to the community of zoning bonuses and relief, as well as sweetheart development deals, tax abatements, gifts of property and/or buildings, and questions surrounding eminent domain all involve similar questions, and should be evaluated and addressed in a similar fashion.

Bicycle sharing kiosk at Denver's Union Station

20100407 bcycle-union-station
Originally uploaded by Jym Dyer

Very direct. And having the location named and stated is good too.

Project for Public Spaces does Cause-related marketing with Urban Outfitters

From Project for Public Spaces via email:

Urban Outfitters Announces Earth Week Fundraiser to Benefit PPS

We're excited to announce that PPS has been chosen as a beneficiary of a week-long Earth Day fundraiser at Urban Outfitters, a store which carries clothing, accessories, books, and apartment wares for young women and men. Starting today, April 19, through Sunday, April 25, in all 140 participating stores throughout the country, Urban Outfitters will make a small donation to PPS for every person who declines to take a shopping bag with their purchase.

We plan to use this donation to support research on how to create multi-use destinations. These busy, vibrant squares, streets, markets, and waterfronts cluster uses together and reduce our dependency on transportation, opening the way to a greener future. Understanding why these places work (and what makes them fail) is the first step towards making cities everywhere more sustainable.

Image from Blogging with Besen Retail.

Action Committee for Transit questionnaire for candidates for Montgomery County Planning Board chair

(While I would have reordered this list, it's a good start.) From Action Coalition for Transit via email:

Dear Candidate for Planning Board Chair,

As you know, one of the Planning Board's core responsibilities is to plan for good transportation and for land use that will make good transportation possible. In recent years, the county has made great forward strides in this area, exemplified by the rejuvenation of downtown Bethesda and Silver Spring and the recently adopted White Flint master plan. Yet the basic structure of our planning and zoning rules continues to rest on the failed concepts that created the present transportation mess.

The next chair of the Planning Board will have the opportunity to reshape the future of our county by bringing our system of land-use regulation into the 21st century. The Action Committee for Transit hopes that the County Council will choose the candidate best qualified to meet that challenge. To assist in that process, we have developed a short questionnaire. We request your response by May 4. All responses received by that date will be posted on our website and made available to the Council.

Thank you for your willingness to serve the county in this demanding position and thank you in advance for taking the time to respond to these questions.

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1) Do you support the Locally Preferred Alternative selected by Gov. O'Malley for the Purple Line, including an at-grade light rail line with a trail alongside it on the Georgetown Branch right of way between Bethesda and Silver Spring?

2) Would you support further study of alternatives to the Locally Preferred Alternative, such as heavy rail or single-tracking, which might delay the building of the Purple Line?

3) Do you support the current growth policy which ties development to the movement of motor vehicles, or would you replace the "PAMR" and "LATR" tests with a growth policy that gives transit, pedestrian, and bicycle travel equal weight with automobiles?

4) Are minimum parking requirements, which make transit riders, pedestrians, and bicyclists pay for parking they don't use and thereby subsidize drivers, wise policy in places with good transit service?

5) The Parks Department's current policy is to clear snow only from roadways used by motor vehicles and not from roadways used exclusively by bicycles and pedestrians, even when the roadway used by bicycles and pedestrians carries far more people. Will you reverse this policy?

6) Will you end the Planning Department's use of biased language that treats only automobile travel as the norm, such as referring to an intersection widening that worsens pedestrian travel conditions as an "improvement" and describing non-automobile travel as "alternative" transportation?

More proof of the downtown real estate market being a national/global market

Over the years I have written quite a bit about the commercial property tax system in DC and how the value of much of the commercial property in the city, even in marginal areas such as Georgia Avenue, H Street NE, Brookland, and elsewhere, gets revalued upwards as a result. In the case of small spaces for retail, it makes the asking price for rents higher than the true market value of the property based on square footage and the likely sales/square foot--which of course is dependent on the customer base/retail trade zone for the store.

Generally, a retail business should pay no more than 4% to 10% of their gross revenue on rent. What happens is that retailers are asked to pay about 25% of their gross revenue on rent. Since most businesses net at best about 15% after taxes, there ends up being no profit...

This is why there isn't much of a thriving independent retail sector in DC.

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported on how Brookfield Properties, based in and Toronto with a large presence in DC, is looking to acquire the portfolio of CarrAmerica, which is mired in debt and now owned by Tishman Speyer of NYC. (Tishman Speyer has lost a bunch of properties over the past year, as they paid top dollar at the height of the property boom, only to crash hard.) Brookfield has acquired a significant amount of the outstanding debt, giving them a superior negotiating position. See "Brookfield Swoops In on Washington Buildings."

(Brookfield by the way is attempting to do something similar with regard to General Growth Properties, a major retail shopping center company. GGP is particularly active in the Baltimore metropolitan area, as the company acquired the Rouse Company, which was one of the region's leading developers, including malls, Baltimore's Harbor Place, and Columbia Town Center.)

Urban Regeneration and Renewal - journal article compendium

This four volume set in the series "Critical Concepts in Urban Studies," published by Routledge, is intended for libraries and university libraries at that. The cost is over $1,000. It's a compiation of best practice journal articles and chapters. So those of us who can't afford the book can find many of the articles in other ways, through the online table of contents.

Biking becomes an election issue in Toronto

See "Bike lanes divide mayoral candidates: Conflicting views emblematic of divide between right and left" from the Toronto Star. One candidate is against bike lanes, another proposes to charge a registration fee to bicyclists. From the article:

"Cycling should be a non-ideological, dare I say common-sense, issue that spans the political spectrum. It should transcend left-right ideological divides. But in reality, it doesn't," said Myer Siemiatycki, a politics professor at Ryerson University.

"Some of it has to do with if your mindset is locked into the idea that the city is a place of business and efficiency," he said. A right-wing point of view, municipally, means "putting the needs of business and development and growth first," he said. "The left seems to have more concern, generically, for quality of life, the recognition of diverse and different needs and lifestyles."

Ironically, if the "needs of business and development and growth" were considered in a more nuanced fashion and optimal mobility was prioritized, sustainable transportation--walking, biking, and transit--would have to take center stage in mobility policy.

Also see these Star blog entries for further discussion, "The Goods: Tax the bike?" and "Blog: It's not just about finding room for bikes."

Tax Court of Canada rules that free parking at work is a taxable benefit

See "No free parking — not even for parking lot employees" from the Toronto Star.

This is the holding.

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Applying this line of reasoning in the U.S. would make the issue of parking subsidy as one of the many subsidies of automobility much clearer.

Union-sponsored transit rider forums in Toronto generate a lot of heat

See "Louder crowd, a call for Giambrone's head at TTC town hall" from the Toronto Star.

The Washington Post comes out for streetcars

In the writings about the "Growth Machine," the role of local media is discussed in detail. Because local media is by definition place-based, it is dependent on the overall economic success of the region in order to remain viable and successful. The Washington Post needs DC to be economically viable in order to remain viable itself. Hence, the general pro-development tone it takes in editorial and news coverage.

Today's Post has an op-ed ("Why streetcars are 'preservationist'") and an article by the architecture writer, "The debate over D.C. streetcars is coming down to the wires," about why adding streetcars to DC's transit mix is a good thing. A week or so ago, the Post editorialized in favor of streetcars as well, "Let's get rolling: The District and streetcar foes need a quick compromise."

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Check out this gallery from the Post, "On the rails? D.C. and streetcars" and these galleries from Dave's Railpix for great photos of DC's previous streetcar system.
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Both pieces focus on the fact that concern about the viewshed prioritizes the monumental core of the city at the expense of the rest of the city. Kennicott's piece in the style section makes the same points that I have been making for quite some time. From the article:

Arguments against overhead wires rest on two essential assumptions: that the city is filled with streets that have historically significant and aesthetically impressive views; and that wires and poles would be ugly intrusions on these grand vistas. The former is questionable, the latter a matter of opinion.

But the deeper issue is Washington's relation to the nation. Do we want to preserve the early 20th-century sense of ourselves as a grand, imperial city that overawes tourists? Or do we want to be a model city for the 21st century, a place where visitors from across the country and around the world can be inspired by innovative experiments in sustainable urban life?

I have argued that the preservation movement in DC came to the fore during the many decades that the city was declining and shrinking in population. In my opinion, historic preservationists saved the city, by helping to stabilize neighborhoods that were attractive but otherwise were made significantly less valuable by trends that favored suburban living.

But this approach is focused on the shrinking city, and doesn't work too well when the city has the opportunity to grow, to be relevant again in the 21st Century, in a time when urban living and commerce is seen as increasingly important and valuable.

In fact with regard to Kennicott's question:

... do we want to be a model city for the 21st century, a place where visitors from across the country and around the world can be inspired by innovative experiments in sustainable urban life?

A bit more than 4 years ago I wrote "Adding cultural heritage dimensions and expanded service capabilities within commercial districts to DC Streetcar planning" and said, among other things:

When streetcars for the city were first proposed (and I wasn't producing a blog) I wrote in a couple venues that the "cultural heritage" dimension needed to be developed in concert with the system for a couple reasons: (1) it would add value to the local history experience in Washington; and (2) it would encourage people to ride-sample the system and take back the experience to their hometowns (if they aren't from Europe) creating new advocates for transit across the county.

The Market Street Railway in San Francisco does this. The line features streetcars from around the world, dressed in the paint scheme and "branding" of the cars hometowns.
A promotional poster for the Market Street Railway.

At the same time, commercial districts like H Street in Northeast Washington DC, could add historic streetcars (or replicas) to complement the service provided by the longer line, which in the case of H Street NE will start at the Minnesota Avenue Metro station, to provide for additional service and more stops within the commercial district (intra-commercial district service as opposed to the more inter-DC service of the longer line).

For example, the budding entertainment district at the east end of the H Street corridor might want to have additional service on weekends, and Thursday through Saturday nights. This will increase the likelihood of customers, add to the fun aspects of a night on the town, and would reduce significantly the stress on an already limited inventory of parking spaces.

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I think that Kennicott's question should be thought of also as a challenge to historic preservationists, that preservation needs to figure out how to be relevant in the 21st century as a primary component and complement to vital, thriving, sustainable cities, just as preservation was essential in the last half of the 20th Century for keeping cities alive and able to prosper in another day, when most every policy and trend was stacked against cities vis-a-vis the suburbs.

The streetcar issue is not the first issue where figuring out how to work with the 21st century comes up. Another is preservation vs. new development more generally. (There are often no good solutions for this.) And a key upcoming battle, which skirmishing is already underway, has to do with rewriting DC's zoning code to be more focused on the quality of form rather than the traditional method of height, mass, and use.

Giving cities the tools and technologies they need to thrive for the next 100 years ought to be the primary priority for preservationists and everyone else concerned with keeping cities viable in the 21st Century.

Co-operative artists gallery on H Street

See the write up in the entry "A new cooperative gallery on the H Street corridor NE,"from Daily Campello Art News blog about the City Gallery at 804 H Street NE, on the second floor.

There are a couple of other galleries in the area, Studio H, at 408 H Street NE, and Conner Contemporary Art (also see this article from the Post, "Leigh Conner, the driving force behind Conner Contemporary Art") and G Fine Art at 1308 Florida Avenue NE (see "Galleries: Jessica Dawson reviews A.B. Miner show at new G Fine Art" from the Post).

Interestingly enough, when I was part of H Street Main Street in 2003-4, we discussed the idea of extending the idea of an "arts district" on H Street to beyond the corridor specifically, both in the schools and on Florida Avenue--in part Florida Avenue is attractive because in the 1300 block there are some appropriate buildings, which have since been recaptured for use as galleries.

The advantage of this area for artists is that relatively speaking the rents are less than they are in the core of the city either downtown ("Zenith Gallery Is Shutting Its Doors" from the Post) or 14th Street NW ("Other 14th Street NW Galleries Could Close in Wake of G Fine Art" from the Post).

But that doesn't change the real problem in DC as it relates to arts production... the city doesn't have a strong market for the purchase of artist-produced goods. DC is more about "consuming the arts experience" at institutions such as the Smithsonian Museums or the National Gallery of Art.

There are some best practices initiatives in promoting acquisition of art, especially by Arts Council England, see Market Matters: the dynamics of the contemporary art market, Cultivate - Developing the visual arts market in the West Midlands, and How to buy art.

Developing comparable initiatives here are in order if the DC region is going to have a community of arts workers in addition to large, nationally oriented arts institutions.

The recent discussion about expanding the number of allowable restaurants and taverns in the "U Street Arts District" is relevant to this ("Should a restaurant or bar or coffee shop be considered an arts-related business as a matter of course?").

I neglected to mention that there is a difference between an entertainment district and an arts district. An arts district ought to be about art and artists, not just drinking and eating.

See:

Montgomery, J. “Cultural Quarters as Mechanisms for Urban Regeneration. Part 1: Conceptualising Cultural Quarters.” Planning, Practice & Research, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 293–306, November 2003

Not to mention, the planning report that undergirds the U Street Arts Overlay district, DUKE: Development Framework for a Cultural Destination District Within Washington, DC's Greater Shaw/U Street from the DC Office of Planning.

Best practice bicycle planning for suburban settings using the "action planning" method

One of the frustrations I've had since I took on the job/project in Baltimore County is that there isn't a whole lot of what I would consider to be documents about best practices for promoting bicycling and walking and transit in the suburbs. Most of the writings and publicity about bicycling best practices are from the cities.

Velib bicycling at the Eiffel Tower, Paris. AP photo.

Casey Anderson, a Montgomery County bicycling advocate, suggested in February that my stint doing bicycle and pedestrian planning in the suburban context (Baltimore County) could result in some important insights.

At first, I responded in a blog entry that this was "Too much pressure" although that entry went on to outline the key issues:

1. Institutional/elected official commitment;
2. Agency commitment;
3. Financial commitment;
4. Having an extant "inventory" of space that can be made over into sidewalks and/or bicycle facilities;
5. Overall land use practices and spatial organization of the county to this point, which either support or do not support sustainable transportation;
6. Developing and providing encouragement systems to assist people in their adoption of walking and bicycling as a means of transportation;
7. Support, interest, and willingness not to mention advocacy for walking and bicycling improvements on the part of citizens.

Casey then invited me to join him on a panel to discuss suburban bicycle planning as part of the Rethink Montgomery lecture series, sponsored by the Planning Department of the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission.

And having to come up with a presentation forced me to answer the question as best as I could. The presentation I made summarizes my sense of where suburban bicycle planning needs to focus in order to get "take up" of bicycling for transportation in significant numbers.

It extends my interpretation of best practice transformational planning, which I had previously discussed in this entry, "Social Marketing the Arlington (and Tower Hamlets and Baltimore) way," into an integrated framework that I am now calling "Action Planning."

Action planning takes the ideas of advocacy planning and marries to it the concept of action research to transform planning more towards being concerned about implementation and making things happen.

In a slide in the presentation (below) entitled "Action Planning as systems integration" I argue that Action Planning is a framework with five inter-connected components:

1. Design Method rather than Rational Planning
2. Social Marketing
3. Integrated Program Delivery System
4. Packaged through Branding & Identity Systems
5. Civic Engagement & Democracy at the foundation = citizen at the center

Three examples of government/government related programs that exemplify the approach are the transportation demand management programs in Arlington County, Virginia, as exemplified by their organization of the "WalkArlington," "Bike Arlington," and "FitArlington" programs, the repositioning of libraries in the Tower Hamlets borough of London as "Idea Stores," and the Live Baltimore resident attraction program in Baltimore City.

I argue that bicycle (and pedestrian and transit) planning more generally--whether or not in the suburbs as I made the same points about the city in my now three year old paper "Making Cycling Irresistible in DC"--needs to take this approach. Places like Arlington County and Portland, Oregon are executing this approach. Whether or not they call it "action planning," it's the approach that they are using.

Now I have to admit that the presentation below is edited after the fact. I added a couple slides and did a bunch of editing in response to having some reflection time after having initially "finished" making the presentation, the reaction, and the questions that came up afterwards.

Part of the problem with promoting bicycling as transportation, right now is that from the standpoint of innovation diffusion, bicycling in the United States is still at the very earliest stages of the innovation adoption curve, and the people who are the strongest proponents (a/k/a zealots) are often more focused on the purity of who and how people are involved and committed to bicycling, rather than being focused on how to get the 60% of the population that is willing to bicycle for transportation--but currently isn't bicycling--out from their cars and onto bicycles.

I argue that changing the bicycling (and walking and transit) paradigm requires four integrated steps:

1. Making the necessary Local (and state) Government policy, regulatory and organizational framework changes;
2. Complete route network and facilities;
3. Providing programming and support to help people take up bicycling (and walking and transit);
4. developing an implementation strategy and structure.

That's what the presentation is about.

One problem in my presentations is that I tend to link theory and practice into model frameworks, and most people aren't interested in the theory and overall framework, they just want to see results. But I argue that without a clear framework and theory, it's hard to be effective.

Comments on the presentation would be appreciated.Best practice bicycle planning for the suburbs

Should a restaurant or bar or coffee shop be considered an arts-related business as a matter of course?

Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times. ON DISPLAY Gabriel Boivin at Grouchy Gabe’s Grill, his deli and seat-of-the-pants art gallery. See "Curator? No, the Deli Man" from the New York Times.

Mike Licht of the NotionsCapital blog writes:

When did "restaurants, bars, diners, and coffees shops" become Arts institutions? I must have missed that. I will check this with the National Endowment for the Arts immediately.

If the Councilman favors the change described below, let him have the honesty to propose changing the zone's name to the "Restaurant, Bar, Diner, and Coffee Shop Overlay District."

In response to this press release from Councilman Evans' office:

Evans Supports Residents on ‘Arts Overlay’ Zoning Issue
Change in Law Needed to Promote Continued Economic Development

Washington, DC – Councilmember Evans announced today his support for an amendment to existing District zoning law to allow for continued economic development in what is known as the “Uptown Arts Overlay District.”

“We have heard from the neighborhood on this issue and it is clear that we must increase the percentage of allowable restaurants, bars, diners, and coffees shops in this area from 25% to 50% on a block-by-block basis,” said Evans. “ANC 2F, ANC 2B, Logan Circle Community Association, the Mid-City Business Association, and residents throughout the Ward strongly support this change and so do I.”

Under current zoning law, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) is not permitted to issue additional building permits or certificates of occupancy to potential business owners in the Arts District.

“We must ensure that this corridor remains lively and a destination for residents around the city,” Evans said. “In this economy, we must do all we can to support and promote local business and neighborhood development. We have already lost several small businesses in this area and we must act now.”

The “Uptown Arts Overlay District” includes the commercial corridors of 14th Street , U Street , and Florida Avenue .
---------
Mike's right of course. The reality is that it isn't an arts district.

For the most part, prevailing rents are too high to support arts uses. Unless a restaurant or coffee shop builds in an arts-theme or process (i.e., see this article from today's Baltimore Sun about adding technology as arts to Artscape, "BmoreSmart wants to add tech component to Artscape") changing the mix of businesses in an "arts district" ought to be more widely discussed.

The reality is calling something an arts district a la the Gateway District in PG County (see "The State of the Arts District? So-So." from the Post) isn't enough to create an arts district. You need more.

Note that while I have a paper on arts consumption vs. arts production ("Art, culture districts, and revitalization") the categories ought to be expanded to include "arts participation." "Arts participation" often is more about community building than it is about arts-based revitalization.

DC Surface Transit Announces Streetcar Technology Seminar May 6

Streetcar From Monorail
Originally uploaded by MSPdude

Inekon/Skoda streetcar in Seattle Flickr image by MSPdude. Note the overhead wire infrastructure is not too noticeable.

--------------
From email:

DC Surface Transit (DCST) is conducting a seminar on streetcar propulsion technology on Thursday, May 6, 2010, 5-7PM, at the Renaissance Hotel, 999 9th Street, NW, in Downtown DC. The seminar is free and open to the public.

Rich Bradley, President of DCST and Executive Director of the Downtown Business Improvement District, will moderate a panel of transit and urban design experts. A question and answer period will follow the panel presentations.

"Streetcar lines are an important investment in the District’s future, a durable commitment by the city to improving neighborhoods and fostering economic development, " explained Mr. Bradley. He noted that this seminar was in keeping with DCST's mission to promote convenient and affordable surface transit in the District of Columbia. DCST organized a public seminar on DC's Transit Future in 2008.

The seminar will address the current legal and environmental framework for modern streetcar systems. Martin Schroeder, Chief Engineer for the American Public Transit Association, will review existing and developing streetcar technologies. Greg Baldwin, a Principal with Zimmer Gunsel Frasca, will present strategies for integrating streetcar infrastructure into urban streetscapes.

--------------
Today the Washington Post editorialized that streetcar activists and proponents espousing design and viewshed reasons for opposing streetcars ought to come to a meeting of the minds. See "D.C. and streetcar foes need to get on the same track."

From the article:

Wire opponents are pushing technology that wouldn't require overhead lines, but city officials say it's costly and unreliable. No one wants to see the city's glorious views marred in any way, but city officials make a good case that aesthetics must be weighed against the advantages of better mass transit. D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) is right to argue that the degradation to the environment is worse from cars on the road than from some unobtrusive overhead wires.

The city has only itself to blame for not initiating a better discussion and planning process earlier. Still, it is right to have a sense of urgency in providing transportation alternatives as congestion grows. The two sides need to come to an understanding. A good place to start is with the reasonable suggestion by Gabe Klein, the city's transportation chief, to use a hybrid system that allows overhead wires in some areas but still respects the city's capital views.

The other thing I said that didn't make it into the article...

In today's Examiner, "Governments squeeze drivers to fill budget gaps," I am quoted in this article, saying:

"I wish that our friends at the AAA would be advocating for increases in these fines every year regardless of these budget issues because the average motorist breaks a law every day," said Richard Layman, a local bike and pedestrian planner. "The real problem is the roads are designed to allow high speeds all the time regardless of context."

But in response to the grandstanding from the AAA:

"They're using motorists as their ATM machines," said John Townsend, AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman. "It's patently wrong."

I said something else, which wasn't used in the article.

What I said is that the AAA should know that about 50% of the cost of roads is not paid for by registration fees, gasoline taxes, and tolls--the other 50% of the cost of roads comes from general funds.

So that it's inherently reasonable to assess drivers more for the costs that their driving--especially bad driving--imposes on others. (See this research report by Martin Wachs, Improving Efficiency and Equity in Transportation Finance published by the Brookings Institution.) And that AAA ought to be advocating that drivers pay their way, not that they be constantly subsidized.

The other point I made is that the Better World Club is an automobile club that also advocates for bicyclists and pedestrians, not just drivers. They have a bicycle option which I have (it also provides membership in the League of American Bicyclists and a subscription to Bicycling Magazine).

That I do drive--Zipcar and rental cars--but that I am a member of BWC to promote a more equal and balanced approached to mobility advocacy.

The great thing about living in a college town

and DC qualifies, is that for the universities that allow public access to their libraries (CUA, American University, Georgetown), those of us with a scholarly bent can use their journal databases and get access to what are otherwise "obscure" publications such as the Journal of Planning Literature, Urban Studies Journal, Journal of Planning Education and Research, etc.

While these journals may be available at the Library of Congress in hard copy, they can still be difficult to obtain.

It's great.

Bike and pedestrian planning in the suburbs

Washcycle points to findings in two polls (Transportation for America, American Highway Users Alliance) that show that likely voters don't prioritize bicycling facilities in the context of the most desired transportation improvements:

The same thing has come up in the context of the citizen workshops that we have been holding for the Western Baltimore County Pedestrian and Bicycle Access Plan that I am the project manager for, in Baltimore County, Maryland.

Now I know that the next two meetings are likely to have far more bicycling advocates in attendance, because those meetings are in places where there are some significant bicycle facilities present (the North Central Railroad Trail in northern Baltimore County in District 3, and in District 1 the various trails of the Catonsville Rails to Trails group and in the Patapsco Valley State Park, not to mention nearby trails BWI and the Baltimore & Annapolis).

Still, I am constantly taking in and interpreting and synthesizing and reformulating the information, the interactions I encounter during the process.

What I think we will end up proposing is (1) responding to people's desires for sidewalk improvements; (2) but at the same time prioritizing the development of 1-2 off-road multi-user trails in each district; (3) as well as the development of a focused set (critical mass) of bicycle facilities improvements. Together (2) and (3) can be grown outward and can connect to other districts across the county and other jurisdictions in the region, and lay the path for the development of a more complete bicycle facilities infrastructure in Baltimore County.

It so happens that in the Rethink Montgomery speaker series, sponsored by the Montgomery County, Maryland planning department, this Thursday night, Casey Anderson and I will be speaking on the topic on promoting bicycling as transportation in the suburban context.

One of the things that I find somewhat frustrating about all the publicity these days that is being afforded to bicycle planning and infrastructure expansion is that it is focused on the cities.

In general, cities have it a lot easier than the suburbs in terms of building the foundation and facilities for bicycling--the road network, in particular a grid street network with parallel routes, and the relatively short distances between activity centers/destinations--make the job of a bike and pedestrian planner in the city much easier.

Part of the reason that the polls don't favor bicycle facilities improvements is that the typical resident--suburban or urban--isn't familiar with bicycling anymore and doesn't know many people who do it. So of course they aren't going to prioritize biking improvements as a matter of course.

The public will for doing so has to be constructed.

And we need best practices codification with regard to promoting walking and biking (and transit) in the suburban context too.

Although I argue that the learning is pretty much the same across the board, although there are some differences. A big part is soft infrastructure -- programs that support bicycling and walking and help people make the transition. It's not enough to "build it and they will come." Some people will come as infrastructure is constructed, but most people will remain comfortable with their current ways of mobility, even if they aren't optimal from a number of perspectives: cost; health; environment; community.

But, how the argument has to be constructed and put forth is different, because in the suburbs especially walking and biking is seen as something you do special, for weekend recreation, and public transit (and biking for transportation) is seen as a service of last resort for poor people, generally people of color, who can't afford to buy a car--see "Men on Bicycle" and "In the Land of Four Wheels, Immigrants Walk in Peril" from the New York Times.

(I know that this billboard is about a city. But the majority of visitors to this city are from suburbs and part of their reason for visiting is the ability to walk in a congenial and attractive setting.)

Obstacles for walking and biking, District 4, Baltimore County

Obstacles for walking and biking, District 4, Baltimore County
Originally uploaded by rllayman

from a citizen workshop earlier in the week.

Co-location of the Senior Center and Library in Pikesville, Baltimore County

Co-location of the Senior Center and Library in Pikesville, Baltimore County
Originally uploaded by rllayman

For years I have advocated co-location of public facilities, to reduce and to share resources. In this particular case, a lot is still separated, but you have one entrance and one parking lot, and a better use of land -- a two story building with separate functions on different floors but on the same building footprint and same piece of land is far better than two separate buildings on separate pieces of land.

Many municipalities are beginning to embrace this concept.

DC is not.

Seattle creates international high school

From the Big Blog of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson on Thursday named Chief Sealth High School the district's first international high school.

Last year, Concord Elementary and Denny Middle schools, both in the same West Seattle attendance areas as Sealth, were named international schools. The addition of Sealth means that West Seattle students can attend international schools through the grades.

International schools provide immersion in foreign languages. The district says they also integrate "global perspectives into daily learning, with an emphasis on multicultural literature, world economics, global health and arts, music, dance and drama from around the world.
"Students will also learn about a variety of cultures and countries using an international social studies curriculum that explores current challenges and issues facing the world community. The mission of the international education program is to educate and prepare all students with the cultural competence and skills to achieve in a global community and economy."

-----
My idea of about 6-7 years ago, of creating an arts cluster of schools in the H Street neighborhood of NE DC had an element of this. One of the "arts" emphases was to be international language and culture--along with English language as well as media--so that each of the elementary schools in the cluster would focus on a different language, as well as programs in the visual and performingarts.

"Biking" on the National Mall

Heigh Ho
Originally uploaded by M.V. Jantzen

Flickr photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Future of Cities (Financial Times special section)

Today's Financial Times has a special magazine supplement focused on cities, with a bunch of interesting articles. "The heart of the city" by Professor Ricky Burdett makes important points about cities and innovation, particularly transportation. From (most of) the article:

The way cities are planned, managed and inhabited can make a dramatic difference to their social and economic wellbeing. Cities can, and do, perform in very different ways.

When it comes to energy consumption, the sheer size of a city’s footprint – how sprawling it is – determines the distances people have to travel and how they commute to work.

In spite of its relative poverty, the ever-expanding Mexico City, for example, has one of the highest rates of car ownership in the world – 360 cars per 1,000 people, more than London and twice as much as the dense and more compact New York.

But cities can be designed, or retrofitted, to work. Owing to a century-old programme of investment in public transport in London and New York, only a third of New Yorkers and 40 per cent of Londoners travel by car to work, with more than 95 per cent of the latter’s richest people using public transport on their daily commute into the City of London.

These patterns have a significant impact on the energy budget of a city, suggesting that a more compact, less sprawling urban environment – supported by a robust public transport system – is not only more efficient (it takes up less land) but also more effective at moving large numbers of people at less environmental cost.

Cities are, in the end, about people and not about systems. The design of the urban infrastructure – its housing, streets, squares and public places – strongly affects the potential for social inclusion and integration. This is critical to the way urban societies accommodate rather than exacerbate differences between social groups of diverse social, ethnic and economic backgrounds.

Like human bodies, over time, cities concentrate problems – congestion, consumption, pollution, violence and inequality. But because they bring people together, they have the resources and capacity to innovate and adapt.

In the past decade alone, cities in Latin America, Asia, the US and Europe have shown exceptional resilience, coming up with creative solutions that have made them cleaner, safer and more equitable.

Bogotá introduced cycle paths and a bus rapid transit system to reduce congestion, and placed public spaces and well-designed schools at the heart of its exploding slums; New Delhi replaced belching, diesel vehicles with natural-gas-powered bus systems and auto-rickshaws, dramatically lowering pollution levels; and Copenhagen and Seattle have brought people back to live in their city centres, thus promoting green transport and lifestyles.

Without exception, these initiatives have been the result of a powerful mayor – the new city doctor – who has understood his city’s DNA, identified its problems and come up with a “cure” to turn them around. Cities, it turns out, can be healed as long as the diagnosis and the treatment are correct.

Pets in the city

I am a fan of dog parks, even though I am not a dog person, because walking dogs ends up being an activity that helps to keep urban places active, adding "eyes on the street" and natural surveillance. While not always the case, dog walkers can help to organize park reclamation activities.

Although some people find dog parks an unwelcome sign of neighborhood change (aka "gentrification") and they don't like the signals that they perceive as a result, that it's good for people with choices and money to live in the neighborhood, because they see things as a zero sum game, that people of lesser means will eventually be displaced.

Still there is plenty of negative dog owner behavior out there. There is an Associated Press story, "Pets and the city: Even when there's no backyard, animals need love and exercise," about a new book, City Puppy: Finding, Training and Loving your Urban Dog. And while looking up that story, I discovered another book, Urban Dog: The Ultimate Street Smarts Training Manual--half the book is about how to make urban dog ownership work in high density places.

Erickson Communities misuse of nonprofit status, lack of arms length transactions, etc.

Condominium by John McDonald, book cover
Originally uploaded by rllayman

In college, I came across the Travis McGee series of mystery novels by John McDonald. McDonald wrote many other books, including Condomium, which was about the "wild wild west" of real estate development in Florida, how developers controlled local politics, zoning approvals, often built substandard buildings, and shaped the process of creating condominium associations in ways that encouraged self-dealing and extranormal profits.

The book was published in 1977. I probably read it in 1983. I suppose it prepared me for understanding the reality of the Growth Machine in Washington, DC, even before I read Dream City (see this review).

The description in the Washington Post on Sunday ("Charities boosted profits of Erickson retirement communities") of how Erickson Communities used nonprofit organizations for self-dealing purposes sounds right out of McDonald's novel.

Who says we can't learn from the humanities?

Looking at planning from both sides now

The lyrics from the Joni Mitchell song "Both sides now" don't really capture my experiences working now as a planner in a suburban county in the Baltimore metropolitan area. Her lyrics are sad and focus on the negatives. I could do that, but it wouldn't accomplish much in the way of bringing about change and improvement.

As much as I write in a hard core fashion, in person, I am very much focused on connections, linkages, integration, and synthesis--figuring out how things are (not) working, the current structure, and then within that structure, trying to figure out how to create and move forward a different path, to yield different and more desirable outcomes.

(Still, I will occasionally get in peoples' faces when their hypocrisy is so evident that I can't stand it. That has to be about 70%--one of the last times I spoke out vociferously was when Scott Bolden, the lawyer for the most ethically challenged of the well connected Growth Machine elite in DC, was speaking at a neighborhood association when he was running for office, about how he could help communities deal with developers. I said, yep, your tenure as the chair of the DC Chamber of Commerce and all your legal dealings really prepared you for that...)

Last night was the first citizen workshop, and we had close to 40 people on a night with great weather, and because of the accelerated nature of the entire planning process, we didn't really do as much advance publicity as I would wished. (You can never do too much.)

So at the end, two older women were talking to me, and they were lamenting how a few years ago, the County had a number of "walkable community" workshops in various parts of the county, but that "nothing had resulted" from the effort. They asked me why this process would be any different.

I countered about looking at the issue on a much longer time frame. That Baltimore County is suburban and very much automobile-centric, and while those previous walkable community charrettes maybe didn't result in actual changes afterwards, in my opinion they were key on laying the foundation of beginning to think differently about mobility within the County, that walking especially and biking somewhat is in fact important and needs to be addressed--and that's at many levels, not just a matter of the choices by elected officials and agencies--citizens also need to recognize that the way they consider the car to be primary and exalted also shapes the broader environment for walking, bicycling, and transit.

In the county, there is an increasing recognition of the importance of walking definitely (biking less so, transit maybe even less), and that to work to get elected officials and government agencies to change their way of thinking, what they do, what is funded, the programs that are created takes a long long time.

(I would argue that change/improvement can be accelerated, it doesn't have to take forever, but that doesn't mean that the process is easy, and it does take a change-advocacy oriented approach in order to bring it about. Such an approach is atypical for government agencies.)

Anyway, one of the women commented how when I started the Powerpoint she was prepared for the presentation to be "just like all the others", boring, etc., but that it was a great presentation.

I laughed.

I said that I got my start sitting in the audience, just like her, and I sat in the audience bored too (I still have that problem at many conferences), saying "I would do the project like this..." were I in the position to be able to run the project.

Well, now I am in the position to run the project, and while I am not the greatest Powerpoint producer in the world (and the presentations get vetted by my boss and changed after internal presentations where we focus on making the message clear and succinct [for me], but without a lot of visual geegaws--in any case, it's not just me creating the presentation), I do know what the important points are, how to convey ideas and present, how to deal with the public, and how to focus on what really matters.

(Now if I could just get citizens to stop lecturing me about the importance of sustainability and sustainable transportation...)

I get tired of the op-eds by Barbara Hollingsworth of the Examiner

today's piece, "Mayor Fenty's April Fools Day budget," like many of the other pieces she writes, discusses what she believes is out of control government, tax incentive payments to developers as a form of graft, etc.

Hey, I don't like tax incentives either, but mostly I wish that there was an open transparent process for asking and receiving them. But...

The Examiner is owned by Philip Anschutz, who is conservative and very very rich.

He also owns the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), which has its fingers in many pies, including the Staples Center in Los Angeles, home to the Los Angeles Lakers and other sports teams.

The Staples Center received:

public financing in the form of a loan, tax incentives and fee waivers worth $300 million

according to the Los Angeles Business Journal.

I'd like to see her write a column about that.

Looking backwards vs. looking forwards, tradeoffs, constraints and urban revitalization in the 21st century city

In response to today's Post article, "D.C. streetcar project may get hung up on overhead wires" about the possibilities of implementing streetcars in DC versus restrictions on overhead wires in the "L'Enfant City", I offer the following. Although as rg says, it's a somewhat biased article, where opponents get the first and last word.

Just like T. Boone Pickens wants to convert cars from gasoline to natural gas to make money but to use "technology" as a solution to declining oil supplies but without changing wasteful and uneconomic transportation and land use paradigms, people in the city who are against streetcars aren't against the streetcar per se, but are against overhead wires, and advocate for a technological solution--underground wires--which at the present time doesn't exist in a practical way.

Yes, there is some limited use of underground powering in Bordeaux, but it doesn't work for very long distances, less than one mile it works very well. And battery power doesn't last for long distances either, right now less than a couple miles. Now, ultracapicitors could do quick recharging, but I will leave that to the physicists to explain. And Bombardier is testing an underground powering system, but it doesn't exist yet.

There are a couple issues with the opposition to streetcars, and I have written before that it comes down to the difference between thinking about the future of the city in a time when trends favor urban living and the city can add population vs. the time when trends didn't favor urban living, the city was shrinking, and the main priority of activists, especially historic preservation activists, was stabilizing neighborhoods within a declining city.

These activists were very successful. Many of the city's neighborhoods were saved, and it is unfortunate that many of the benefits of their hard work are now reaped by people who have no appreciation for the difficult struggle endured by the preservationists, who these days are often derided for their positions, and who have been for the most part, disenfranchised by the political elites--few people on City Council nor the Mayor nor the Deputy Mayor or City Administrator are committed to historic preservation, even though for the most part it saved the city.

What my criticism has been of what we might call "legacy preservationists" is that they are backwards looking, focused on maintaining a shrinking city, when the city has the opportunity to grow.

At the same time, they are still very much (for the most part) committed to an automobile-centric mobility paradigm, even though most of the city was designed at a time when cars did not exist and so the spatial form of the city was designed to optimize walking, and in turn the urban design favored bicycling and transit.

They would deny that they are pro-car but it is hard to argue differently, in terms of the reality of their position on the ground.

The future of the city is in limiting automobile traffic, including parking(!!) and prioritizing and constantly improving and extending transit.

That's where streetcars come in.

DC streetcar in Ostrava. DDOT photo.

I am not trying to belittle the concern over overhead wires and impacting the viewshed.

But the reality is that the viewshed won't be negatively impacted in a significant way, because the wires aren't easily seen, especially from long distances. Plus, automobile traffic is a significantly negative impact on the environment also.

MARK HARRISON / THE SEATTLE TIMES. Portland's streetcar runs through downtown, from Nob Hill to the Willamette River at RiverPlace, on a loop of track that shares the street with cars and people


Flickr photo of the Girard line SEPTA streetcar on Schuylkill river bridge by LHOON.

Don't think that I think that DC's streetcar planning is super-great. It's not. I think it's very parochial and limited, focused on "serving residents" without focusing on how streetcars and other surface based fixed rail transit (light rail) can interdict (reduce) regional traffic ino the city on major regionally-serving arterials such as Rhode Island Avenue, Georgia Avenue, Connecticut Avenue, and Wisconsin Avenue.

Instead, the services are crippled, and the alignments that are now being offered allow for limited inter-regional traffic reduction, which I think is a benefit to residents, were it to occur.

For example, a north serving route shouldn't be ending at Takoma, even though such a line is great for me personally, and will likely lead to an increase the value of my house, instead it ought to go to Silver Spring, along Georgia Avenue thereby improving the quality of service on one of the city's highest in demand bus routes, and through the service improvements, providing more reasons for people to not to drive in the city.

SOURCE: DDOT Nathaniel Vaughn Kelso/The Washington Post - April 6, 2010

In any case, I don't think that this dilemma is going to be resolved anytime soon.

For years, I have offered a "solution."

DC people are very much change-averse. (Witness the debacle over putting a streetcar in Anacostia. It's happening, but Council's desires to promote transit there and equity was almost trumped by fears of change there as well.)

Rather than worry about changing the law and getting Congress and the National Park Service and the National Capital Planning Commission on board now:

• JUST BUILD A DEMONSTRATON LINE
• IN A HIGHLY VISIBLE PLACE
• WHERE IT WILL EXPERIENCE HIGH RIDERSHIP AND SUCCESS
• IN A PLACE WHERE THE LEGAL RESTRICTION ON OVERHEAD WIRES DOESN'T PERTAIN.

To me, that's the line between Woodley Park and Brookland, although this line, which I call the University Line, should be extended at both ends.

(During the original DC Alternatives Analysis process I suggested a Rhode Island line that could go deep into Prince George's, and that the Crosstown line, instead of terminating at Brookland, could go up Michigan Avenue, Queens Chapel Road, and Adelphi Road to the University of Maryland. See this blog entry, "Will streetcars really return to the Capital City" for a discussion of the "University Line" proposal, and this one, "A different opinion on BRT," for a mention of the Rhode Island proposal.)

In a fast tracked project, it can take 5-10 years for a transportation project to be realized.

And that's without the opposition of grandstanding Congresspeople, lifelong federal government bureaucrats, and hard core but aging zealots who are fighting streetcars perhaps as their last hurrah.

So many legal and political changes have to occur to get the streetcars in place in the L'Enfant City that instead I would go for what the military calls an asymmetric strategy.

Let people see the streetcar work. Let people see the success. Then they will be demanding streetcar expansion and service to their own neighborhoods.

Until then people are going to be arguing with no resolution. And the change averse groups will have the upper hand.

From Wikipedia:

Asymmetric warfare is war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy or tactics differ significantly.

"Asymmetric warfare" can describe a conflict in which the resources of two belligerents differ in essence and in the struggle, interact and attempt to exploit each other's characteristic weaknesses. Such struggles often involve strategies and tactics of unconventional warfare, the "weaker" combatants attempting to use strategy to offset deficiencies in quantity or quality.[1] Such strategies may not necessarily be militarized.[2] This is in contrast to symmetric warfare, where two powers have similar military power and resources and rely on tactics that are similar overall, differing only in details and execution.