Ads on transit promoting cars

GGW has a piece, "Arlington credit union mocks bus riding," on this topic.

This is another example. The ad from the Navy Federal Credit Union is at the First Street entryway to the Union Station subway station.

Bring back the Oklahoma Avenue Metro Station: infill transit stations as augurs of revitalization

In the development of the initial plan for the WMATA transit system, only one station was "successfully" taken off the plans, a station at Oklahoma Avenue, between the Stadium-Armory Station at RFK Stadium and the Minnesota Avenue Station.

According to Scrag's The Great Society Subway:

Local residents objected to a proposed 1,000-car commuter parking lot at that station and the traffic that it would generate in the neighborhood. In reaction to their lobbying, the DC government insisted that the station be removed and that the tunnel for the line be extended through the neighborhood.

In some respects, at that time, you can understand why the residents would have been against this, given that it has taken 34 years for the Rhode Island Metro Station to be reconfigured from car-commuter serving to a more urban setup, because the Oklahoma Station was intended to serve commuters.

In 2003, when I was involved in H St. Main Street, after exhibiting at the one and only City Living Expo, I wrote an internal communication laying out the justification for creating a housing policy for the organization, one focused on the Greater Trade Area that could be potentially served by H Street, because the more residents, and especially the more residents with higher disposable income, the more successful the H St. commercial district could be.

------------Extract from 11/2003 email--------------------

First, people kept asking about condominiums. I explained that this is coming but we are working on some zoning changes to make this happen. We need to work with the property owners on the 200 and 300 blocks of H Street to make sure this happens. It should also shape the development of the BP site. The land that we have available is too precious to waste. And as everyone knows we need more residents to strengthen the neighborhood ane more customers for the commercial district.

Second, it means that over the long term we (HSMS) really need to work on some of these broader housing issues as they relate to revitalization of the greater neighborhood and the strengthening of the H Street retail trade area.

We need to develop a position statement on housing issues in the broader neighborhood. We need to monitor developments that are in our trade area, developments that we might not ordinarily monitor, because they are in Wards 5 or 7. This should be linked to the encouragement of transit-oriented development associated with the proposed light rail developments along H Street/Benning Road and Florida Avenue.

(We probably need to develop a position statement about light rail as well. Personally I think it should be encouraged, and on an accelerated timetable. The paper on the www.apta.com website called "Bring Back the Streetcars" indicates that a 4-6 year timetable is not out of the question. It makes sense to coordinate this with the streetscape improvement program. Fixed-rail transit investments generate great economic returns. It will vastly benefit the H Street commercial district. It should be no surprise that the H Street commercial district began declining once streetcars were removed from the corridor...)

It means that we need to weigh in on projects such as the Clark Realty development on Bladensburg on the old Sears site. Maybe they need more density. It means we need to advocate for housing above Hechinger Mall (like Kevin and I have been saying for years.) It means we need to look at the northern parking lots of RFK (problematic because they are owned by the federal government? which are wasted. Condominiums could be developed here, along with maintaining quality public space so that the Open Air Farmers Market would not be displaced. Etc.

We also need to work on inclusionary zoning and related incentives to ensure that affordable housing is required, as well as to ensure quality design. (WRT design, don't think it doesn't matter. The Pritzker condominums at 300 Mass Ave. NW are much more attractive than the condos at 4th and Massachusetts by Paradigm, and that is because the latter development used office building style window glass instead of the residential style windows of the former. Similarly, the new apartment building on the 1000 block of New Jersey Avenue NW is pretty utilitarian. Incentives should have been provided to get them to include balconies and other design features that would have softwened the facade and made the building look more inviting.)

(Note that the newest housing in the greater neighborhood -- 800 block of 10th St., Wylie Court, and the development across from Hechinger Mall -- is all pretty utilitarian and cheap looking and really denigrates the overall aesthetic of the neighborhood's architectural style and sense of place.)
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Just as the infill "New York Avenue" metro station (it's really at 2nd and M Streets NE and at Florida Avenue NE) has driven the "creation" of the NoMA district on the west side of the Union Station Railyard between the railyard and North Capitol Street, imagine redeveloping the northern parking lots of RFK with mixed housing types, based on the rowhouse configuration, but as 5-6 buildings (plexes), and various sized multiunit housing buildings.

(Note that I also ascribe the creation of this station as one of the key steps to the revitalization of H Street as the presence of a subway station north of H Street led to a significant revaluing of the location because of transit access, increasing demand for housing there, and therefore prices, significantly.)

Plus, around 2003-2004 there was a new urbanist influenced proposal for revitalizing the Spingarn school campus ("Hill Campus"), done by the Urban Design Studio at the University of Michigan.

And eventually Hechinger Mall is likely to be redeveloped with housing added.

Add the streetcar to the mix, and doesn't it make sense to consider an "infill" station (like the New York Avenue station on the red line, and what is proposed for Potomac Yard in Alexandria) to serve this area, and further strengthen the Greater H Street neighborhood?

Although today I would suggest that the station be located at Benning Road. And this would have to be done as part of a wider ranging multifaceted revitalization program for this area.

For another take on routing, see "2003 WMATA Expansion Map" from Greater Greater Washington.

Union Station bus terminal, DC

At Toronto's Union Station, schedule displays list arrivals and departures of both trains and buses. Flickr photo by firequall.

In today's Post, Dr. Gridlock tells us ("Union Station to become intercity bus center") that tomorrow it will be announced that intercity bus services are going to be fully integrated into Union Station via the bus garage. (I don't know what that means for Megabus, which has the doubledeck buses and I don't know if they are too tall.)

Of course I think that's a good idea, and one that's been discussed here before.

The only thing that I don't know about is if they are actually going to do a good integration rather than just more of the medium debacle it is presently. Basically, it's less chaotic than lining up for a "Chinese" bus, but it's still chaotic. (Plus it is outdoors and will be cold in the winter obviously.)

At decent intercity bus terminals, there are:

(1) integrated information displays listing arrival and departure information for all services (no different than how it is set up at airports and railroad terminals including Union Station for Amtrak, MARC, and VRE);

(2) display signs at each gate;

(3) and at the gate it is clear that people should line up and how they should do it; and

(4) there is space enough in the concourse for lining up.

Since the Union Station garage is set up as a garage, it doesn't focus on providing space for anything other than automobiles. Clearly some reconfiguration for staging needs to occur ought to occur to make the customer experience more than just bare bones.

This photo doesn't show much in the way of chaos. I shot it as I was coming from the parking rental deck. But I have been there taking a bus to New York City and I thought it was pretty dis-organized.

This photo shows a gate sign at the intercity bus terminal in Montreal, which is also connected to the main subway station (Berri-UQAM). While it's an intercity bus terminal, the STM busline that goes to the airport (the 747) starts and ends here as well.

At DC's Union Station, it won't be possible probably to integrate buses and trains into one common display system because the train schedule system is controlled by Amtrak. But longer term, in the way that DC DOT has created an integrated transit display application, it could be done.

DDOT Multimodal transit information display. Flickr photo by Erik Weber.

But Union Station's wayfinding and customer experience overall needs to be better planned and coordinated between the various transit services anyway. DDOT needs to work with Union Station and the various service providers on a plan, with customer service standards, and a panoply of improvements.

Not just for snow removal ("A 'maintenance of way' agenda for the walking and transit city"), and cultural interpretation, but for getting around generally, as a visitor gateway into the city, and for explaining how to use transit ("Union Station intermodal transportation meeting").

I am gathering information for a post on visitor information services, which I will write about sometime in the next couple weeks.

For whom the price tolls

Of course, from the standpoint of economically sound decisions, tolls on roads make sense. And hard core conservatives like the idea of toll roads, especially privately constructed "HOT" (high occupancy toll) lanes. See "What's HOT?: HOT lanes, coming soon" from the Fredericksburg Freelance-Star.

But just like how it is almost impossible for biking and transit to compete with the automobile because there are so many subsidies (price of gasoline, freeways, free parking), it's hard for toll roads to compete more generally because most roads do not have tolls.

Maryland

Maryland is going through the process to raise tolls right now, and there is a lot of pushback. See "Board mulls changes to toll-increase plan" and "State won't back off on Susquehanna bridges tolls, Harford legislator says" from the Baltimore Sun.

One bridge over the Susquehanna River has a special $10 per year pricing for locals (not unlike virtually free on street parking for DC residents, who pay $15/year for a parking permit) and that program is being dropped. Plus Eastern Shore residents claim that they will be economically disadvantaged by toll increases for the Bay Bridge.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the Inter County Connector, and whether or not the revenues will be high enough to pay for the cost of constructing the road.

Northern Virginia

Probably the real reason why people are all hot and bothered about the cost of the Silver Line Metro ("Airports authority endorses aboveground Dulles rail station" from the Post) is because of how much of the funding comes from the Dulles Toll Road. An op-ed in tomorrow's Post makes that clear in this piece, "The Dulles Metro station isn’t the problem. The Toll Road increases are."

From the article:

Under the current funding plan, almost 100 percent of the cost of Phase 2 of the Dulles Metrorail project is to be paid from local sources: one-fourth from Fairfax and Loudoun counties and the airports authority, and three-fourths from Dulles Toll Road revenue. There is no state grant assistance. There is no federal grant assistance.

No other transit megaproject in the United States is 100 percent locally funded. In fact, most have combined state and federal assistance of at least one-third of costs.

It should hardly be a shock, then, that the tolls needed to support Dulles Metrorail will be eye-popping. To be sure, the secretary’s process, by reducing Phase 2 costs (and shifting $400 million of costs to Fairfax and Loudoun), will have some mitigating effect on tolls. But even at the $2.8 billion cost the secretary has found acceptable, today’s $2 toll is projected to be $13 in 20 years, $17 in 30 years.

Texas

According to the Austin American-Statesman in "Central Texas Toll Roads Need More State Subsidies," Texas toll roads aren't self-funded through tolls. From the article:

Tolls and other revenue have fallen more than $100 million short of covering debt and operating costs of the state's three-road Central Texas Turnpike System since the highways opened about four years ago. Texas Department of Transportation subsidies almost 70 percent more than originally predicted have made up the difference.

Those subsidies, covered primarily by state gasoline taxes that otherwise would be available for other road spending, should average about $38 million a year over the next decade and total about $750 million by 2042 , according to TxDOT documents. The system's first profitable year is not estimated to occur until 2030 , with some years in the red even after that because of major road rehabilitation expenses.

California

The Los Angeles Times reports in "San Diego County regional government to buy bankrupt toll road" about how the local government in San Diego County is buying a toll road because it's not able to pay its way. From the article:

Opened in November 2007, the 10-mile toll road in southern San Diego County was described initially as an example for Los Angeles and other traffic-beset regions on how a private-public partnership could build new roads and ease congestion.

Instead it became a cautionary tale about risky assumptions, and the stubborn opposition of motorists to paying tolls. In March 2010 the road's operator filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, noting that traffic counts were less than 50% of projections.

Interestingly, the success of Orange County, California's State Route 91 toll road is what has driven the idea nationally that toll roads can be successful.

Changing times for local governments

Frederick County, Maryland

I find it very interesting that the Washington Post hasn't covered Frederick County's recent consideration of massive privatization of local government functions, which has been extensively covered in the Gazette, (lettesr to the editor, "Paul Gordon: Outsourcing report was an expensive waste of money" and "Privatization report is superficial" and articles "Frederick County residents angry about privatization") but also in the Baltimore Sun ("Frederick County struggles over whether to privatize local services: Proposal to outsource many government functions creates uproar" and "Frederick Co. decides not to move forward with privatization").

A consultant, who led the privatization of government in Sandy Springs, Georgia was retained to do an "evaluation" of Frederick County and said that millions of dollars in savings would result through privatization. A response by a professor at UMD commissioned by the League of Women Voters found that many of the claims were not documented.

Frederick, at this point, has decided not to go forward with a privatization initiative.

Toronto, Ontario

Toronto has been roiled by the ascension of a pretty conservative Mayor, Rob Ford, whose campaign included many claims about waste in government spending. The city spent $3 million on a series of evaluative reports by KPMG in various areas of the government, which considered all programs from the standpoint of whether or not the government was legally required to perform the duties, ranging from heritage conservation to day care to dog licensing. There have been many articles about this in the Toronto Star (group coverage), Globe & Mail, and the National Post (group coverage) with coverage of each new report. From "Arts initiatives, heritage properties next on KPMG hitlist" in the National Post:

Toronto should consider eliminating public arts programs, streetscape investments and heritage property incentives, according to KPMG consultants.

Christopher Hume of the Star, one of the best urban design journalists in North America, wrote this "Ford's way sending Toronto on a downward spiral." From the article:

As the Core Services Sideshow grinds to its foregone conclusion, it’s clear Mayor Rob Ford is less interested in slashing costs than slashing government.

Now in its second week, the spectacle unfolding at City Hall is almost entirely divorced from reality at this point. The script, carefully prepared by the efficiency experts, offers alternatives, not recommendations. This is just Act One.

Though even the bean counters have found waste hard to come by, Ford himself continues to see it everywhere he turns: As recently as last week he was telling a radio talk-show host that “There’s tons of gravy.”

Monday’s session explored the possibility of eliminate licences for everything from small businesses to cats and dogs. These actually make the city a bit of cash, but they, too, are on the table.

A couple days ago there was a 22 hour !!!! Council hearing where 168 citizens spoke out about the proposals. See "I love the smell of democracy in the morning" from the Grid Blog. From the entry:

Don’t cut libraries, they said. Don’t cut grants, they said. Don’t outsource parks maintenance or TTC service or school breakfast programs, they said. Raise our taxes, they repeated again and again to outright derision from Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti. Look harder at the budget, they said, you’ll find more revenue.

At the beginning of the meeting, Rob Ford had said that the Core Service Review was about looking at what things in the city are “need to haves” and what things are “nice to haves”—because, he said, pointing to the budget gap of $744 million, this is why we can’t have nice things. To which one deputant said, “What everyone here has been saying is that the ‘nice to haves’ are the things that make the city worth living in.”

Of the fifteen dozen or so speakers, only three did not outright reject the idea of making serious program cuts: one of those was an anarchist who wanted grant programs slashed and replaced with 144 independent elected neighbourhood councils who would deliver programs, another forcefully demanded deep cuts to the police budget. There was only one genuinely Ford-friendly speaker in the bunch, who thought a donation system and user fees for libraries was the only option for them, and that the size of council should be cut in half.

Jefferson County, Alabama (Birmingham, Alabama is located there)

The Associated Press reports in "Alabama county readies for record bankruptcy: More than $3 billion in debt linked to corruption scandal," that Jefferson County, Alabama is looking to declare bankruptcy, rather than to increase the price of water and sewerage services to pay bank loans taken out to pay for new piping systems, money which was also misused by elected officials and contractors. From the article:

A court-appointed official last month recommended a 25 percent rate hike for sewer customers, whose average residential bill would increase from $37.74 a month to $46.88, calling it a necessary step toward financial viability. Commissioner Sandra Little Brown said the 25 percent increase is too high, and she prefers filing bankruptcy since cost increases could be limited to the single digits.

The county’s problems result from a mix of outdated sewer pipes, the rough economy, court rulings and public corruption.

Just based on the article, I'd say probably a bankruptcy judge wouldn't accede to the county's arguments, that they have the ability to collect the money in higher rates, and the bond holders aren't responsible for the graft.

Service consolidation amongst multiple jurisdictions

In Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Michigan, over the past few years there have been many examples of smaller governments consolidating what had been separately run agencies, such as fire departments, to get economies of scale. This likely will increase in occurrence.

Pension and other union issues

The City of Vallejo in California declared bankruptcy a few years ago, in order to be able to change the terms of pension agreements, which were bankrupting the city. Dealing with pension liabilities has been an issue that has taken center stage across the country including in Wisconsin, New Jersey, even Massachusetts, and for many cities. See "The Pension-Reform Imperative" and "Pension Reform: Hits and Misses"from Governing Magazine.

In some respects, I consider this a continuation and escalation of the arguments laid out in the book The Future Once Happened Here, which in the section on Philadelphia, discussed how large numbers of vacation days and high wage and pension costs were driving the city towards bankruptcy and Mayor Rendell's response (see "Won't Get Screwed Again" a 1996 article from the Philadelphia City Paper).

And in Montgomery County, Maryland, various laws are being changed from overly favoring unions in management-union matters, to favoring the county (e.g., "Montgomery County Council rolls back police union bargaining rights" from the Post).

Conclusion

Issues concerning taxes, what programs to offer, wage and pension matters, service consolidation, privatization, even bankruptcy are likely to be of issue for more and more local governments, as property tax receipts drop due to rebalancing of housing prices and costs continue to climb.

Arizona Republic argues that deconcentrated transit system in Greater Phoenix costs money in adminstration that could be better spent on service

See the article, "Phoenix-area bus, light-rail cuts avoidable, analysis shows," and the editorial, "Opinion: Southeast Valley should lead transit unification talks."

From the article:

When the Valley's economy was unraveling in 2008, transit service was an early casualty.

Three years of cuts ensued. Dozens of bus lines were eliminated, rerouted or truncated. Wait times grew, and fares shot up on buses and light rail.

Some of those transit cuts, and the resulting hardship for many riders, might have been averted if the Valley's transit network were run by a single unified agency, an Arizona Republic analysis indicates. Unified transit systems are common among fast-growing Western cities.

As it is, in Maricopa County, 11 local transit agencies provide bus and rail service, creating redundant costs in administrative personnel and contracted services such as bus operations and security.

At $70 million a year, administrative costs make up nearly a quarter of the system's total operating costs, making the Valley the third most top-heavy region in the country, according to data from federal and local agencies. Some local leaders believe those costs can be cut and are talking favorably of an eventual merger of transit agencies.

--------
The transit web
The Valley's transit system is dizzingly complex. The 109 bus and rail routes and Dial-A-Ride areas are operated under 14 different contracts, each with one or more funding agencies, mainly cities; an operator, and a contracting entity. Funding agencies aren't shown below, but an example of the pattern is Veolia Tempe's contract to run 19 routes. Some routes are funded by Tempe, Arizona State University or the Regional Public Transportation Authority, and others by various combinations of Tempe, RPTA, Phoenix, Chandler, Gilbert, Scottsdale, Mesa and the Gila River Indian Community.

Contracting bodies/Operators/Routes or areas El Mirage El Mirage 1
Glendale Glendale 3
Metro LRT Metro LRT 1
Peoria Peoria 1
Phoenix First Transit 14
Phoenix MV Transportation 2
Phoenix Veolia Phoenix 31
RPTA Ajo Transportation 1
RPTA Valu Trans 7
RPTA Veolia RPTA 24
Scottsdale Dunn Transportation 3
Surprise Surprise 1
Tempe Veolia Tempe 19
Tolleson Tolleson 1

Source: Regional Public Transportation Authority, Arizona Republic research

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The DC area has two types of service, "regional" bus and subway service provided by WMATA and paid by various jurisdictions, and local bus service provided by various jurisdictions and usually contracted out to non-union organizations. Probably the communities don't spend as much on administration compared to Phoenix area jurisdictions.

Revitalization in stages: Anacostia

The Post has another story on Anacostia, "Black professionals leading the charge of gentrification across Anacostia." With regard to the thesis as expressed in the headline, again I think it's important to think about "gentrification" in a more nuanced fashion than what typically occurs. From the article:

“I used to think it was about race — when white people moved into a black neighborhood,” said lawyer Charles Wilson, 35, president of the Historic Anacostia Block Association. (Wilson ran against Marion S. Barry Jr. in the 2008 Ward 8 City Council race.) “Then, I looked up the word. It’s when a middle-class person moves into a poor neighborhood, and I realized, I am a gentrifier. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t like that word. It makes so many people uncomfortable. The g-word.”

Of course gentrification is about money, not race, it's just that in the U.S., too many people think that people of color are usually poor and that's not the way it is.

When the article about the Uniontown Bar and Grill ran a few months ago ("Food, ambiance and a symbol of potential in Anacostia" from the Post), I was really struck by these paragraphs:

Dasher and the community's other entrepreneurs are not without their critics. Anthony Muhammad, an Advisory Neighborhood Commission member who is Muslim, was concerned that Uniontown would be serving alcohol and challenged Dasher's liquor license, delaying the restaurant's opening by several months.

In an interview, Muhammad raised concerns that Dasher, who signed a 10-year lease, and some of the younger professionals who are moving into the area were not sufficiently committed to the area.

"We've seen people come and go before," Muhammad said. "I just would like to know how long she will be in this community . . . and whether this is the type of business, one that serves alcohol and is surrounded by four churches and a school, we need to embrace."

In a blog entry, I wrote this:

People do come and go.

Part of it has to do with the attainment of critical mass and the ability of a group of people to overcome the inertia and force of disinvestment. People leave when they don't feel these forces can be overcome. (The article discusses factors that have contributed to the development of critical mass, without using that term.) But not understanding what contributes to this ebb and flow [of change] is a failure in part of the leadership capacities of people like Mr. Muhammad.
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That point, about the attainment of critical mass of a group of people able to change a community, can be extended and sliced and diced by demographic. It needs to be further extended.

The attraction of nonmajority populations to "gentrifying" neighborhoods is a function of critical mass, comfort, and relative safety. Neighborhoods around Capitol Hill were attractive to new residents (north of Stanton Park, north of H Street, lower Trinidad in later stages, Lincoln Park, Hill East, etc.) even if apparently seemingly unsafe, because Capitol Hill was a relative stable community on which to build and extend outwards.

(E.g., the old stories about Union Station--"don't live east of 4th Street, it's not safe," then the boundary moved to 6th St., then to 8th St., then to 11th Street, etc. illustrate this process.)

For many years I've joked that I wished that I had Elijah Anderson's Code of the Street to read as a primer before I moved to Washington in 1987, because moving to a neighborhood (north of H Street NE) at a time when only a handful of whiteys lived there ended up being traumatic. I got my clock cleaned in many ways in terms of crime. When you are that much different you are a target, not unlike how the process is described by Anderson.

(Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City was published in 2000. It was outlined in The Atlantic in 1994, "Code of the Streets." Anderson published Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community in 1992.)

As the white population in the city increases, I predict that in later stages of black "middle class" in-migration to Anacostia, that a critical point will be reached when non-African American residents of choice start moving in in significant numbers as their concerns about safety are assuaged. That's at least 10 years away probably, a little faster maybe, if plans for Poplar Point come to fruition.

Although there aren't the same level of concerns about safety although plenty of concerns do exist, this is what's happening in Ward 4, in neighborhoods like Petworth, Brightwood, and Manor Park, where more white and Hispanics are moving in, exceeding the number of African-Americans moving out of the Ward.

I was talking with a PhD student last week, and she told me about Derek Hyra of the Virginia Tech Alexandria campus, and his thesis about the Shaw neighborhood being resistant to "gentrification." (Race and Redevelopment in our Nation’s Capital: Life in the Shaw/U-Street Neighborhood".)

I countered that it isn't resistant, merely this reflects a lag in time, of willingness to live there, to feel safe, driven by transit access and the fact that of all the city's subway lines, a fully operative and complete Green Line didn't open until 2001. Of course, I get an out until I get a chance to read his book, which is yet to be published.

Now, with new investment and development of condominiums on 14th Street and U Street, the neighborhood is definitely changing and it offers a long term example that is likely relevant to Anacostia, especially as transit connections there improve and the package of amenities expands, and as public safety improves as well.

So probably is "the brownstoning of Brooklyn" another example of how these processes work out in cycles over time. Harlem too--there is lots of complaint about white in-migration to Harlem (see "White and Hispanic people moving to NYC Harlem are a threat to the “indigenous” people" from the EU Times.)

GWU professor Suleiman Osman has published a book, The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York on this phenomenon, which I haven't read yet either.

According to "Brownstone Brooklyn" from Dwell, "the book takes a look at the wave of "brownstoners" who moved into what was then known as "South Brooklyn" (you might now know it as Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, Clinton HIll and other neighborhoods) in search of cheap real estate, a sense of neighborhoody history, and an antidote to suburban living."

There are a variety of methods to reposition neighborhoods. The issue is that the process of "ecological succession" outlined by E.W. Burgess in 1925 needs to be updated to take into account more intangible use values of place and the attractiveness of use values to people with choices. The ecological succession model is based on the idea that people with choice will always move outward, away from the core of the center city. Times are changing, at least like cities like DC and New York (at least for Manhattan and Brooklyn) where the tipping point or place of critical mass has been reached.

Quote of the day: buy a car and quit using transit

User-generated crosswalk.

There is a thread in "progressive planning" about how the best way to deal with social inequity is to give people cars, so that they can better participate in the local economy, because increasingly lower income people live in places where jobs and other amenities are rarer. E.g., see "Auto-Mobility" from Washington Monthly.

In the CBS TV/Associated Press story about the Raquel Nelson case, "Mom gets probation in son's jaywalking death," the article ends with this paragraph:

"It's really cruel and a big waste of taxpayer money," said Sally Flocks, founder of PEDS, an Atlanta pedestrian advocacy group. "What is anybody going to learn from this? Raquel lost her precious son. The lesson she learned already is quit using transit and buy a car to get around. It's too dangerous to cross the streets here."

Her point is apt. Not unlike the idea expressed by GM car dealers in an ad in Vancouver, BC. I hope that transit and transportation agencies will look more closely at this issue--not by eliminating bus stops, but by creating more crosswalks and improved crossing environments as needed.

Roadsworth street art, Montreal. See "Roadsworth: Street art painted on actual streets" from Funnywebplanet.

Stadium subsidy issues, Los Angeles and beyond

LA Neighbors United ran a full-page ad in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times saying: "The odds are high that the proposed downtown stadium will produce zero lasting benefits for the people of Los Angeles." The community group's founder, Cary Brazeman, said that's because most of the tax revenue generated by the deal would go not to the city but rather back into stadium management, operations and infrastructure—"a misappropriation of our tax dollars and an unlawful gift to the facilities operator." AEG said the plan is still being negotiated but independent reports to be released on Wednesday predict more than $40 million in new tax revenue for the city, state and county. The mayor's office didn't comment. (text from the Wall Street Journal)

It's not just because the same person who owns the Washington Examiner is a big player in Los Angeles entertainment venues that I am interested in this issue, it's because it's about big money and big subsidies and involves many actors, and raises key questions about local funding priorities, dealing, and the Growth Machine. (Although I do love the hypocrisy of the Washington Examiner editorializing at the drop of a dime against taxpayer subsidies of various things, while the owner of the paper has his hand out big time.)

For example, does the fact that Rupert Murdoch's FoxSports interests are involved in the Los Angeles Dodgers have anything to do with the fact that the Wall Street Journal ran a good piece on stadium subsidies, "Stadium's Costly Legacy Throws Taxpayers for a Loss" which was used to call attention to the Anshutz Entertainment Group's proposal for football stadium in Los Angeles asking for $200 million in local bonds ("Los Angeles Slows Down Football Stadium Deal" from the WSJ)?

Meanwhile, a competitor against AEG in Texas has lobbied the California State Legislature for restrictions on AEG's plans in Los Angeles ("Longtime Anschutz rival challenges plans for a Los Angeles stadium" from the Los Angeles Times). And the San Diego Union-Tribune reports, in "What it might cost for Chargers to play in L.A." that a Los Angeles football team may derive by relocating the San Diego Chargers.

There's interesting stuff in the various reports about how income from an LA stadium would be greater because of the use of the facility for other events. Generally, the municipal funders of stadiums don't benefit from such revenue streams.

Wall Street Journal graphic.

Campus transportation planning revisited

Routing for the streetcar in Portland, after a recent extension of the line, now goes through the campus of Portland State University. Image from the Planologie blog.

I have written before about how systematic transportation demand management planning can be hit or miss for college campuses. It appears to be dependent on how strong are local or state laws directing that colleges and universities do comprehensive transportation planning.

In Maryland, the state requirements for updating college campus master plans every 5 years are somewhat quiet about transportation generally and for coordinating with local jurisdictions. So some universities, like Towson State University, are doing a great job--driven more by concerns and commitments to sustainability rather than great transportation planning, and others like University of Maryland Baltimore County, are still focused on being commuter-driven and focused on the car. (I only know about these campuses because when I was doing the Western Baltimore County Pedestrian and Bicycle Access Plan, and had to deal with these institutions which were either within or bordering the plan area.)

University of Maryland College Park was weak in this area too, although more recently they did a great bike plan (see "Commuting at UM" from Spokes Magazine), have finally committed to routing the proposed Purple Line light rail more directly within the campus ("University of Maryland drops opposition to central campus route for the Purple Line" from the Post), and are in the midst of doing a broader transportation plan for the campus.

Most of the DC universities are somewhat weak as it relates to transportation, although many have active shuttle systems, especially Georgetown University and American University. GWU and Catholic University benefit from having subway stops on or immediately abutting their campuses.

NotionsCapital calls our attention to George Mason University, which on their Arlington campus has a transportation and logistics master's program, although that doesn't seem to have influenced the main campus' decision to engage more actively with local jurisdictions to coordinate transportation planning. From "A Road Through the County" from the Inside Higher Education newsletter:

George Mason began to include the surrounding areas in its transportation planning process and how that effort paid off -- to the tune of an additional $15 million in state support to build a new campus road, as well as better relations between the university and community.

Unlike businesses that are subject to the control of the county or city in which they reside, GMU is an autonomous state institution, meaning that it doesn’t have to answer to the surrounding community when it wants to expand enrollment or do anything within its property. And historically it has made its decisions with little input from the community.

Entries in Greater Greater Washington about the campus planning processes in DC at GU and AU demonstrate that DC could do a better job of guiding the campus planning process generally and the transportation demand management element specifically. Efforts at GMU and UMD College Park (and Towson University) show a better way forward.

With regard to refocusing universities around transit connections, Portland State University is the best in terms of leveraging streetcar access. Oregon Health Sciences University actually runs the tram from one side of the Willamette River to their campus. And Arizona State University has been very supportive of Phoenix's light rail system, although the station serving the campus is located just across the street from the campus, rather than on it. See "ASU students carry U-Pass for Metro Light Rail" from the RailLife blog.

Many transit systems have discount passes available for college students, including Baltimore's MTA. Some campus bus systems allow nonstudents to ride, such as at Central Washington State University in Ellensburg, WA, and, with restrictions, the UMD College Park system does too, including from the Metro station to the campus. Better coordination of campus shuttle systems (although they have issues in terms of "common carrier" laws) could assist many communities in extending transit service in a cost-effective manner.

The Baltimore Collegetown Network runs a shuttle bus between campuses too. And there is the beginnings of a bicycle route network connecting the colleges as well, starting with campuses in the vicinity of Johns Hopkins University. (I proposed extensions up to Towson State and Goucher College, and south to the University of Maryland Health Campus and southwest to UMBC.)

I've written about aspects of this in the past in "Bicycling, time, and transportation demand management" (2009) and "How DC universities ought to be integrating bicycling into transportation demand management" (2011). Plus, my proposal for the "University Line" streetcar routing serving many of the universities in DC as well as College Park in"Will streetcars really return to the Capital City" from 2009.

Map of the proposed University (Crosstown) Streetcar Line for Washington DC (with service to University of Maryland in Prince Georges County).

I did a couple presentations at Towson in 2010 (at the Sustainability conference and for a class) but I don't have them online. I do need to reformulate the presentation to be a bit more general rather than being more specifically about Baltimore County.

Rethinking community planning around maintaining neighborhood civic assets and anchors

One way to go green is to refocus planning on viable, healthy, sustainable neighborhoods where people can conduct many of their day-to-day activities on foot, by bike, or on public transit. (Image: Go Green Forever stamps, produced by the US Postal Service in 2011.)

I have written about refocusing land use planning around maintenance of key civic assets within neighborhoods recently in the context of schools planning ("One way in which community planning is completely backwards" and "Missing the most important point about Clifton School closure in Fairfax County") where I argue that:

Schools are fundamental anchors which build and maintain quality neighborhoods and communities. Therefore to maintain communities we need to maintain the schools located within them.

This comes up again with schools, as according to the Examiner, "Montgomery schools officials reconsider site selection." From the article:

"The process is broken," said Shannon Hamm, a 27-year county resident. "Citizens in the area need to be included in the selection process, not just afterward, because neighbors care about what happens in their neighborhood." Planning board Chairwoman Francoise Carrie said she was "very distressed to learn second- or third-hand that the school system had identified one of our parks as a new school site." ...

Song and colleagues explained that the selection committee considers environmental impacts, utilities, car and pedestrian access, acquisition costs, and more when choosing sites. The joint taskforce between the schools and the parks department will discuss solutions at a committee meeting in the fall, then present to the full school board in the early winter.

How is it that the Planning Board and other planning bodies other than the School System aren't involved in this process from the beginning? When your choices are constrained and your options limited, the only way to make hard choices (sometimes you do have to choose between a park and a school) with some modicum of civility is through public participation.

It's also an issue with other civic assets such as post offices as well, considering that the US Postal Service yesterday announced plans to close as many as 3,653 locations. See "Post office closures: What happens if a town has no post office?" and "Post office cuts: Is your post office on the list?" from the Christian Science Monitor.

-- List of proposed post office closures

Granted, most of the proposed closures in DC are in federal buildings--although in my neighborhood two additional post offices are recommended for closure, including where I got my passport.

The issue involved here, from a planning perspective, is the maintenance of community institutions as building blocks for neighborhoods and sustainable transportation systems.

My point is that maintaining healthy neighborhoods is too important a task to have only the school system be responsible for schools planning. And therefore I make the point that if the costs for running a neighborhood school are greater than the system average, then it is reasonable to "subsidize" the school's costs from non-school funding sources.

The same goes for post offices. Arguably, the USPS shouldn't have to bear the full costs of running a "community" post office, and the possibility of providing support from other funding streams should be available. To reduce costs, co-location in other civic space ought to be an option available to the USPS.

Seattle is one of many municipalities that has an active co-location policy, where district court offices, public utility payment counters, neighborhood liaison offices, and libraries are often combined into one facility. From the City of Seattle 2004-2009 Adopted Capital Improvement Program:

Project Identification: Potential development projects were identified after a professional assessment of service and facilities deficiencies, considerable community dialogue, and staff input. Criteria used include: the ability of
existing facilities to handle current and projected use; citizen input; conformance with basic library standards; geographic equity; compatibility with neighborhood planning; and opportunities for co-location with other agencies.

(Note the point on geographic equity.)

Because the USPS is subject to so much federal oversight and involvement in their operations (in good and usually bad ways in terms of cost-effectiveness), the ability to be innovative in terms of this question isn't really an option, because it is too difficult to raise the question, especially in the current political and economic environment, where local and state budgets are particularly hard pressed.

In any case, refocusing how we do urban-community-neighborhood-schools planning towards maintaining community quality and value of place is clearly necessary.

And that includes biking and walking plans, which should discuss this issue and frequently do not. I guess the only plan that comes to mind with this kind of idea (although there are many amazing Ped. Plans out there, such as Minneapolis') is the Toronto Walking Strategy. From the plan:

The aim of the Walking Strategy is to build a physical and cultural environment that supports and encourages walking, including vibrant streets, parks, public squares and neighbourhoods where people will choose to walk more often. By envisioning a city where high-quality walking environments are seamlessly integrated with public transit, cycling and other sustainable modes of travel, the Strategy sets out a plan that will produce tangible environmental, health and social benefits for residents and visitors to Toronto.

Another good example is the Feet First advocacy group in Seattle. I only know of them through their online materials, which I think are amazing, but if you look at their approach, it is about maintaining and extending the qualities of strong neighborhoods through the promotion of sustainable transportation, particularly walking.

The Toronto Walking Strategy, Feet First's pro-walking-pro-neighborhood agenda, and Seattle's co-location strategy for civic assets are the kinds of examples that support community planning from the standpoint of placemaking and quality of life and the maintenance of particular types of civic assets as anchoring institutions within such a broad strategy.

That's the kind of approach that needs to be built more directly and overtly into our planning documents and government operation practices overall.

H Street yet again

Starting in 1987, I lived in the H Street NE neighborhood of DC for about 17 years and while I had been interested in its issues (and cities generally) for a long time, it wasn't til about 1999/2000 that I decided to get involved, because I felt like the neighborhood's commercial district would continue to languish unless people like myself started trying to do something.

It was trying to figure out why all the things that the city had done to try to improve the corridor--mostly projects that were suggested in the post riot H Street Urban Renewal Plan were all constructed (bridge over the Union Station railyard, office buildings on the 600 block of H Street, newly constructed rowhouses on various blocks, a strip shopping center, Hechinger Mall, a garden apartment complex, two senior housing apartment buildings, etc.)--and the corridor still was failing that ended up converting me into "a planner," first focusing on commercial district revitalization.

Today's Post article on H Street, "H Street corridor: a work in progress," doesn't really offer very much to comment on because the same kind of article has been written so many times before, including this 2005 Washington Post article on H Street by Dana Hedgpeth, "Long-Awaited Revival for H Street Corridor." Note that there is a photo gallery with the online article and there are some nice photos to check out.

Because newspapers are "the first draft of history" I guess we can't always blame journalists for not doing a better story, because that's the fault, in part, of the editors, who are the ones who assign the approach for the story.

1. The basic problem with the story is that it just focuses on H Street, and doesn't acknowledge the existence of revitalization strategies generally, nor does it make comparisons to other commercial districts. That would help people place the story of the commercial district in context, and help them to better understand what's going on.

2. And the article, because it just focuses on this particular moment in time doesn't adequately express the reality that commercial district revitalization is a process, taking 20 years or more.

Ironically, the Washington Post syndicates, but for at least 10-15 years hasn't published in the local paper the columns of Neal Peirce, who writes on state and local issues. In 2003 I think, he wrote a column, "Main Street Niches In A Mass Sales World," that discusses the ebb and flow of the commercial district revitalization process, focusing on Plymouth, NH. From the article:

Successful Main Street programs, Rand notes, take years to mature -- four or five years to change attitudes and build initial confidence, five to 10 or more years for owners to start reinvesting seriously, 15 or 20 for the full recovery and new growth to take solid root.

3. Nightlife establishments are the first wave--they get people to resample a place and start to patronize it. This is the basis of my post "Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Driven Revitalization" which discusses this generally.

Joe Englert's entry into the corridor is a perfect illustration of the thesis, although he takes it into new directions by developing concepts (like the H Street Country Club) that are "drinkertainment," establishments that make themselves into destinations by creating and delivering "experiences" applying the arguments laid out in the book, The Experience Economy.

4. Retailers aren't going to open in a place until it's already successful, otherwise they are throwing their money away. Retail improves in a commercial district in stages, over long periods of time.

5. However, successful retail on H Street, especially boutique retail which is more likely to open in early stages of revitalization unlike chain retailers (except for American Apparel and maybe Design within Reach) who wait until a district is very much (re)proven, will always be a problem in the modern retail environment in Washington DC, because the building spaces are valued "too high" relative to their ability to generate sales/square foot.

(I have written about this extensively, see for example "More on commercial property tax assessment policies" which is probably the shortest piece and includes a letter to the editor that I did in response to a different Post article.)

Rents in successful and comparable "neighborhood" commercial districts in other mid-Atlantic center cities like South Street in Philadelphia, Hampden in Baltimore, or Carytown in Richmond are in the range of $20-$25/s.f., while on H Street--with fewer customers and less demonstrated success--asking prices for rents are in the mid $30s to the mid $40s/square foot.

6. Rents will only go up because of the streetcar--the city will raise property assessments and therefore taxes will go up and therefore rents--and because of the entry of chain stores like Giant Supermarket.

This came up earlier this year in a piece in the Washington City Paper, "H Street Waiting Game: How a commercial corridor's bright future holds back its present." The article discusses the general problem of holding back real estate for higher rents and how this makes present-day improvements much more difficult. One of the examples in the story is of how the asking price for a small space a block from the future Giant is $45/s.f., which is far too high for a non-chain retailer (but when the Giant opens, other chain retailers are more likely to want to open nearby).

7. This does make boutique retailer driven renaissance less likely on H Street compared to South Street, Hampden, and Carytown.

We'll see what transpires over the next 5-10 years.

(There was one error in the story. It said H Street was the number one retail district in DC after the Sears opened in 1929. That wasn't true. Downtown was still far and away the number one retail district in the city, and home to at least 5 department stores and many large movie theaters.)

Area health care planning

1. The debacle in Prince George's County over the cost of providing care to the uninsured is finally being addressed as the University of Maryland Medical System has agreed to take over the county hospital facilities and build a new teaching hospital located where it can also get patients (and revenues) from other counties in Southern Maryland. See "Pr. George's to get teaching hospital" from the Post.

Flickr photo by tedytan. Bread for the City is an innovative nonprofit (almost an oxymoron in DC) that does a lot of interesting things, focused on providing "vulnerable residents of Washington, DC, with comprehensive services, including food, clothing, medical care, and legal and social services."

2. The Associated Press reports, "‘Medical home’ health care model, focusing on prevention, shows results and cuts costs," on a concept that it happens that the DC Department of Health is already doing at a national best practice level. From the article:

Patient-centered medical homes focus on keeping patients healthy, which saves money by reducing hospital visits, especially for chronic conditions such as diabetes. ... Under the medical home approach, doctors use electronic records to track patients between visits and act as the central point of communication between specialists, nutritionists and others. They monitor blood pressure, blood sugar and other tests and whether patients are exercising and taking their medication. They also exchange emails with patients.

Instead of simply telling someone to exercise or stop smoking, a doctor or member of the patient’s care team might devise a plan with the patient and then check to see that he sticks to it.

The system in DC refashions health clinics targeting low income populations, and repositions clinics as primary care facilities for people who might otherwise rely on emergency rooms for care or avoid receiving medical care at all because of cost.

I have been meaning to write about this but AP has beat me to it. (I toured Bread for the City a couple weeks ago, and one of the these days I plan on seeing the new Mary's Center facility on Georgia Avenue NW.)

Instead of pissing about Tobacco Settlement monies like other states, the DC DOH has been using these monies to invest in the medical home project in the city.

3. The United Medical Center in DC needs a solution comparable to what is happening in Prince George's County. See "D.C. taps RSM McGladrey to look over United Medical Center" from the Washington Business Journal, which states:

Gray said an "action plan" will be developed based on recommendations from the review. Gray said he would not guess what those steps are. "We'll wait for the study to be completed," he said during his weekly media briefing.

"United Medical Center is an anchor in Ward 8 and the ward's largest employer," Gray said in an earlier news release. "My administration is fully aware of its importance in providing much-needed services to the residents of the District and in particular, Ward 8. I am fully confident that the Department of Health Care Finance did its due diligence in selecting this firm, which will conduct an objective sustainability review of the United Medical Center."

For years I have made the point that DC and Prince George's County's health care provision issues are linked. But jurisdictional boundaries prevent the creation of regional and innovative solutions.

4. Duane Read pharmacy (now owned by Walgreens) has opened an amazing store on Wall Street, with a doctor on the premises--no appointment required, along with juice and sushi bars, and hair, nail, and shoe shine salons. The doctor piece is an extension of the "minute clinic" type operations that supermarkets, big boxes, and pharmacies have been integrating into their operations. See "Duane Read opens big on Wall Street" from Chain Store Age.

The next step for DC's "medical homes" would be to make them more retail-like in operation, as I suggested years ago, in "Disruptive innovation (once again)" and "Bods/Cuerpos."

5. While some health care facilities in DC and Prince George's County languish, Montgomery County has faced a battle between Holy Cross Hospital and Washington Adventist Center over opening facilities in Upper Montgomery County, to better position their systems to get higher income patients. Holy Cross has pretty much won the battle. Although, in any case, Washington Adventist Center is relocating from Takoma Park to White Oak to better position their facility to be able to reach more patients than the residential, physically constrained, and practically in DC location in Takoma Park. See "Washington Adventist hospital would boost east county" from the Gazette.

(The aforementioned Mary's Center will be operating a clinic on the Takoma Park Adventist campus after the Hospital relocates.)

Bad design kills

The Huffington Post reports, "Grieving Mother Faces 36 Months In Jail For Jaywalking After Son Is Killed By Hit-And-Run Driver," about a tragic story in Marietta, Georgia, about how a mother (Raquel Nelson) whose child was hit by a car and died while crossing the street after getting off a bus is being charged with jaywalking and could serve more time in jail than the possibly drunk driver who committed the hit and run and who later spent months in jail for the death.

From the article:

Nelson had taken her children with her to shop for groceries and supplies for her upcoming birthday party. The working mother and college student regularly took public transportation, but she and her kids missed their intended bus that night, putting them an hour behind schedule. The bus they caught pulled up to their stop after nightfall, and Nelson stepped off, clutching her kids' hands through the shopping bags wrapped around her wrists. Nelson's apartment complex sits across the street from the bus stop, but the nearest crosswalk is three-tenths of a mile away. So Nelson did what everyone who uses that bus stop does, and what the other disembarking passengers all did that night: She crossed one side of the divided highway to the median, where she waited for a break in the traffic.

Three tenths of a mile is 1,584 feet. In DC that would be a little less than four blocks in distance. The round trip then from the bus stop to the intersection and back to the apartment complex would be 8 blocks. Imagine making that trip with young children, when you're tired, etc.

The problem here is in large part one of design, that the bus doesn't stop at a crosswalk, or that a mid-block crosswalk hasn't been put in a location of high demand.

As it says in the State of Maryland Bike and Ped Design Guidelines section on roadway crossing design:

The locations of bus stops and marked crosswalks should be coordinated. ... Convenience: Crosswalks should be located to provide the most direct connection between destinations.

A couple of years ago, when discussing a similar kind of death in Florida, when a teenager was running across traffic in order to reach the bus before it left, the then director of the Baltimore County Office of Planning made the point that given often infrequent bus service, people will take risks to get to the bus, in order to not have to wait. He was a lot more empathetic than I expected him to be, but these are the kinds of issues that ought to be addressed in considering these problems.

As said on the SF Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission website:

Pedestrians are unlikely to walk to an intersection if it is a block or more away from the bus stop. Therefore, it is important to provide pedestrian crossings at bus stops, especially if there are pedestrian generators across the street.

Raquel Nelson could well be going to jail because of design failures committed by the local transit system and local and state highway departments.

But given that the Georgia DOT refers to sidewalks as "accident recovery zones" where drivers of out of control cars have the space to get their bearings, this shouldn't be seen as a surprise.

Why Amish buggies should be banned

Frequently bicycle trails are opposed because people believe that improved bicycle access abets crime, even though automobiles are used to facilitate crimes far more often, and even with regard to bicycle trails, crime is higher in abutting residential neighborhoods and commercial districts (see "Sidewalks and Shared-Use Paths: Safety, Security, and Maintenance" from the University of Delaware Institute for Public Administration), recent problems in DC notwithstanding (see "Another bicyclist is robbed on popular Metropolitan Branch Trail" from the Washington Post).

My line about this is when crimes happen with automobiles, why don't people pipe up and call for banning automobiles, closing the road network and/or banning new road construction, since that is the course they recommend with regard to bikes.

The Associated Press reports, in "Amish teen with beer in buggy spurs police chase" about the use of a horse and buggy to attempt to evade police. Based on the idea of "one and done" obviously we need to ban such vehicles because their use may abet crime.

Feeling hopeful about the next generation in local placemaking efforts

Photo of a pedestrian bridge in Denver by David Garber, a DC ANC commissioner and producer of the And Now, Anacostia blog.

The website TBD has a piece, "Idea of the day: A pedestrian bridge across the Anacostia River," on David Garber, a "new" resident and activist in the Anacostia neighborhood, and one of his ideas, to build a pedestrian bridge over the Anacostia River, after seeing an example in Denver.

It's good to see that there are creative ideas in the next generation of local advocates. (I'm part of an in-between group, later stage urban pioneers from the 1980s and 1990s--not old, not young.)

And that people with new energy are committed to looking for best practice examples from all over, not merely being satisfied to look at what is or isn't happening in DC.

Fallout over the DC progressive coalition

I have been meaning to write about the fallout about the "progressive coalition" in DC based on how Councilmember Tommy Wells was "deposed" as the chair of the DC Council Transportation Committee, and how the Council went along meekly on a 12-1 vote. This was discussed in articles in the media and in the blogosphere, especially in entries from Greater Greater Washington.

The problems in DC politics are not unlike the problems of progressive politics in student government at the University of Michigan in the early 1980s, when I was involved in student government.

There was seemingly a "progressive" coalition between African-Americans and left/progressive whites that "ran" student government for a time. But it turned out that this coalition was misleading. African-Americans joined in with the left because progressives had an affirmative action agenda. But when the concept of "hate speech" codes came to the fore, the progressives, committed to free speech, were abandoned by the African-American members of the coalition, because they wanted strictures on speech if it meant restrictions and penalties for racist/hate speech.

This is not unlike the division of interests present in DC today, and discussed in Howard Gillette's Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning and the Failure of Urban Policy in DC, which distinguishes two different agendas, one committed to social justice and the other focused on quality of life, placemaking, and "beauty" in the built environment.

While Gillette attributes the focus on built environment to the federal interest and control of the city, I think this dichotomy of agendas can be extended as a way to understand the local political and economic agenda as opposed to the relationship of the local government to the federal government.

This split over placemaking versus social justice is mirrored in the City Council, in part because there isn't an all encompassing vision of what the city should be. And I think it was captured very well in two paragraphs from the piece "The Selling of Walmart: How the world's biggest retailer won over D.C." in the Washington City Paper:

Looked at one way, Walmart’s cakewalk is an illustration of D.C.’s southern nature: Trusting of big business, grateful for investment, deeply skeptical of unions. Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr., often a big labor backer, has been Walmart’s biggest cheerleader. And in Ward 4, Councilmember Muriel Bowser doesn’t think organized labor should get any special deference. “Dues-paying members are concerned that Walmart will drive down wages, and they won’t be able to negotiate for as much,” she says. “So that’s as self-interested an argument as any.” It may be true. But setting up consumers and workers as two different interests is classic anti-union boilerplate, and not the sort of argument Walmart’s cadres usually hear in northern cities.

Looked at in another way, however, it’s just more evidence of D.C.’s division along the lines of race and class. Tracy Sefl, a Democratic strategist who helped found Walmart Watch, notes that the people most disposed to think about Walmart’s global labor practices are less inclined to get involved at the city level. “The sort of cognoscenti that would have been and is engaged in this Walmart opposition intellectually as liberal activists hasn’t translated here in the same way, because Walmart hasn’t said we’re going to put the stores in Spring Valley,” Sefl says, referring to the rich, leafy Ward 3 neighborhood. “Walmart would say, this was purely economics, and they’re siting their stores where it makes sense to be. It still means they bypass that often white opposition.”

I found it very interesting that in the New York Times piece "Washington, D.C., Loses Black Majority," that small business people on H Street criticized a new resident/white agenda in favor of streetcars as anti-black anti-small business, but didn't criticize the city's leading politicians, all African-American, for their hardcore embrace of Walmart entering the city, even though the greatest negative impact is likely to be felt by small businesses.

When it comes to local politics in DC, it's not unlike what happened at UM. The coalition is fine when one side does most of the "compromising" and breaks apart when people stop being willing to compromise on what become key issues, be they transit or ethics.

The recognition that the "coalition" has been built more on the foundation of one side acquiescing to the demands of the other was alluded to in a quote by Marshall Brown, father of City Council Chairman Kwame Brown, during the recent special election campaign, as reported in "Pondering meaning of changing D.C. demographics" from the Washington Post:

Marshall Brown, a longtime D.C. campaign strategist whose son Kwame is the council chairman, worries that the shift in population will result in a racially polarized electorate. “The longtime white population, the people who got involved in statehood, civil rights and environmental causes, thought of this as a black city,” said Brown, who is black. “But the new white voters aren’t involved like that. They want doggie parks and bike lanes. The result is a lot of tension.

“The new people believe more in their dogs than they do in people. They go into their little cafes, go out and throw their snowballs. This is not the District I knew. There’s no relationship with the black community; they don’t connect at church, they don’t go to the same cafes, they don’t volunteer in the neighborhood school, and a lot of longtime black residents feel threatened.”

The problem is further accentuated because the "progressive coalition" is split within itself, comprised of long time residents who believe in good government, and newer residents more concerned about quality of life and urban living. The problem is that the younger and older generations don't have the same beliefs about what constitutes "progressive" in terms of quality of life.

I have argued that partly this is because older residents, once hip young urban pioneers, came to the fore when the city was shrinking in population, when people and businesses with choices preferred to live or locate their businesses in the suburbs. In response, neighborhood activists focused on stabilizing their neighborhoods, with historic preservation being one of the primary tools assisting them in this quest.

But because most people in the US are imprinted with an understanding of a land use planning paradigm that is suburban--single use districts, separated by great distances, connected by a mobility network focused on enabling the automobile, and automobiles being necessary to get around--it's fair to say that at least a preponderance of the city's older activists are more comfortable with suburban rather than urban land use planning paradigms, even if they argue otherwise. Although, since many proposals for new development are flawed, seemingly opposition is over other issues.

(One of the better elucidations of what makes "urban" development urban is the discussion in Trans-Formation: Recreating Transit-Oriented Neighborhood Centers in DC: Design Handbook, a now out-of-print publication from the DC Office of Planning, first published in 2002.)

Meanwhile, even if at times misguided, younger activists are more comfortable with and in favor of more decidedly urban land use paradigms, focused on sustainable transportation (walking, biking, and transit), mixed use development, etc.

It is a fact that the winner of the DC City Council special election was outpolled by "progressive" candidates, it's just that there were so many candidates in the election that the vote was split. As the demographics of the city continue to change, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

But clearly what is needed is a good definition of what a "progressive urban political agenda" means, in all its dimensions.

Park service land and planning woes: local vs. federal

In DC, the National Park Service controls a lot of land and landmarks. Because the federal government isn't subject to local control, land use, culture, and transportation planning goals of the Park Service, may (and at times fully justifiably) be out of sorts compared to local objectives.

One of the problems with regard to DC transportation planning concerns transit service, and biking policy and services.

One of the problems faced by the Park Service is major budget problems, because they don't receive enough money to provide the necessary services. This is why concession income ends up being so important to the Park Service, because most of the concession money raised in park installations augments the budget of the particular park.

So in DC this means that the Tourmobile bus service, not to mention food concessionaires with existing contracts, have priority over other objectives, be they adding bike sharing service to NPS parks in the city, or having "pedicabs" get fares on Park Service lands.

E.g., last weekend a pedicab driver (arguably he was resisting arrest) was tased by Park Police. See "Pedicab driver tased by Park Police on National Mall" from WJLA TV. (Also see this earlier WAMU radio story, Pedicab operators say they're being harassed by police.")

Increased enforcement against pedicabs is inconsistent unless motor vehicle taxicabs are also banned from picking up fares on Constitution Avenue and other NPS-controlled locations. One could argue that this is a Constitutional Law violation (14th amendment, equal protection under the law).

NPS is supposed to be embarking on a process to create a multi-modal long range transportation plan for all of the parks in the National Capital Region. Hopefully these types of issues will be addressed in that process (although I won't hold my breath).

I argue that DC's transportation and parks master plans should address federal installations whether or not we have the legal authority to direct their policies. If local concerns and preferences are not articulated in a substantive fashion, you can be assured that the issues will never be addressed.

Note that the NCPC-NPS-Office of Planning "Capital Space" joint planning effort isn't very pathbreaking with one or two exceptions.

Other resources

-- NPS Concessions Management Advisory Board
-- How to Value Commercial Improvements in a National Park
-- Discussion about the creation of a master long range transportation plan for the NPS National Capital Region

-- Park Service says no bike sharing on National Mall from Greater Greater Washington (based on a story from Spokes Magazine, and first reported on in Washcycle).

Two more examples of the need for a National "Master Transportation Plan"

Most readers of the blog (except for those from Arlington County probably) are tired of how I go on about how great the Arlington County Master Transportation Plan is.

I have written here and elsewhere that the nation needs a comparable document, so that transportation planning isn't overwhelmed by a focus on particular modes. For the most part, road policy is separate from transit policy which is separate from airport policy and is divorced from freight transportation policy, etc.

One example of this is today's report in the New York Times, "24 Towns May lose air service," that Delta will be ceasing airplane service to various small town airports, because it is uneconomic, even with big subsidies. From the article:

Delta’s announcement was especially acute because the airline operates in most of the small airports that receive a total of almost $200 million in federal subsidies to maintain air service under the Essential Air Service program. The subsidies are scheduled to expire in 2013 unless revived by Congress. Delta acquired many of those small-city markets in the Midwest when it merged with Northwest Airlines.

Airlines say that simple economics are driving them out of small-town America. With fuel prices high, carriers have been reducing domestic routes and seating capacity to focus on the flights that bring in the most revenue per plane — typically those in larger cities, especially major hubs. At the same time, airlines are removing less fuel-efficient aircraft from their fleets, including the 50-seat regional jets that have been the backbone of air service in small- and midsize markets.

“We just don’t have airplanes that can serve small communities economically anymore,” said Michael Boyd, the president of the air-service consulting firm Boyd Group International. “And unless somebody wants to pay a whole lot of money to carry a few people out of the airport at Thief River Falls, it just ain’t going to happen anymore for a lot of those places.”

In all likelihood, these places would be better served by train service, maybe not high speed rail, but higher speed than is currently available... But because we don't have a national transportation plan, making these kinds of focused choices between modes, based on cost and benefit, isn't really done.

2. Today the US PIRG has released a report, High-Speed Rail: Public Private or Both? Assessing the Prospects, Promise and Pitfalls of Public-Private Partnerships, which looks at how how high-speed railroad service should be funded in an objective, rather than ideological, fashion. According to the press release:

“The report shows that private financing can be a supplement but not a substitute for public support of high-speed rail,” said Phineas Baxandall at U.S. PIRG. “In other nations the majority of support comes from the public sector. The rail companies overseas often have public ownership and the public on their board like a public utility or Amtrak.”

The report cautions that public-private partnerships in other countries have a mixed record. When private financing has been a short cut around public investment, taxpayers often end up paying dearly. Partnerships must have the highest levels of transparency, clear rules of accountability, and strong public capacity for monitoring and enforcing agreements, says the report.

President Obama has put forth the goal of linking 80 percent of the U.S. population via high-speed rail by 2035. Compared to the United States, other industrialized nations around the globe tend to be far ahead of the United States in developing high-speed rail and invest a far greater portion of Gross Domestic Product on infrastructure.

“While many in Congress are having trouble finding money to invest in high-speed rail, they need to consider the costs of not moving forward,” said Baxandall. “Without high-speed rail, we will be more dependent on oil and will pay dearly to build more airport runways and ever-wider highways.”

World-wide, most transportation infrastructure is funded in some way, in whole or in part, by local, state, and national governments. In the US the focus on privatization can be an ideology rather than a careful consideration. I fear that this is the case with proposals for railroad passenger service expansion.

Instead, with a truly objective, not ideological, national transportation plan, we could better deal with these questions.

To dream...