Applying the civic tourism approach to low income urban areas as an economic development strategy: Albany; Anacostia/DC; Baltimore; etc.

On an e-list we were discussing Albany, New York, which you would think would be a successful place, since it's a state capital.  It's not.  

An impoverished section of Albany, New York. Photo: Denis Tangney, Jr. / Getty Images.  From "Why Justice in Design Is Critical to Repairing America," Architectural Digest.

One of the elements I mentioned is the architectural richness of historic residential building stock in the core that ought to be an incredible asset, but isn't.  

Someone else blamed its state on the fact that it is mostly home to low income households.  

Instead of being critical it got me thinking about mutual aid and community economic development and entrepreneurship approaches that could help the community rebuild its economic well being.

Based on a whole bunch of examples, it occurred to me that one way to help improve the microeconomies of such neighborhood would be to apply "new" models for tourism, integrating them into one initiative.  

I was also influenced by a recenet NHK episode in the series "Connecting People in the Pandemic", featuring Minami Shintaro, the operator of a guest house in Seto City, Aichi Prefecture in Japan, and how he works to connect visitors to businesses in the local community, especially to craft producers, like of ceramics, for which the city is known.

Although the idea isn't necessarily new such as the 2006 Washington Post article on the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, "Los Angeles's Black Pride" (place details).

Airbnb type rentals are a way to generate revenues for houseowners, revenues that can be used to improve properties.  More visitors to the neighborhood can in turn support local businesses, from coffee shops to tour guides ("For Black tour guides in Savannah, the historical is personal," Washington Post).

Gentrification?  People may complain this is "gentrification" but the problem these neighborhoods have is lack of demand, and often hundreds of vacant properties.  Displacement isn't the issue.  Lack of economic demand and a need to generate economic activity at the scale of the neighborhood and individual households is the issue. 

However, it's important to note that the way I conceive of this, it's a ground up initiative, supporting local residents and business owners, with the assistance of government, philanthropic and community organizations.  

It's not about economically well off businesses and people parachuting in, claiming they're "helping" and capturing the majority of the benefit, such as what happened in the Boyle Heights community of Los Angeles ("Good-Bye to All That: Boyle Heights, Hotbed of Gentrification Protests, Sees Galleries Depart," ARTnews, "Gentrification Protesters in Los Angeles Target Art Galleries," New York Times).

The Leimert Park initiative was a venture of community organizations and businesses.

And there has been complaints about Airbnb properties in low income neighborhoods, including DC ("Airbnb Has Made Housing More Expensive In Some Parts Of D.C., New Research Paper Finds," WAMU-FM/NPR).  Again, I am proposing a ground up initiative focused on community economic development and self help, not on programs benefiting nonresidents.

Resources.  A great tool that has been supplanted by newer editions, but I think is great, is the Tourism Destination Assessment Workbook produced for Nova Scotian communities and the Downtown and Business District Economic Development from the University of Wisconsin Extension's Center for Community and Economic Development.  

The out of print Tourism Development Handbook is excellent and worth tracking down.

Civic Tourism.  In 2005 I was introduced to the concept of Civic Tourism, as discussed in the book by Dan Shilling.  I even went to a conference on it in Prescott, Arizona.  

The idea is to refocus tourism from the big spectacle focused places (Disney, etc.) towards smaller place-based tourism, heritage tourism (historic buildings and sites) and communities.

Bike tourism/Route Verte and Pennsylvania Trail Towns.  Many rural communities promote bike-related tourism.  If not races, they create tour routes, publish maps and brochures, and pay for a wee bit of marketing in cycling publications.

Route Verte is a provincial-wide trail system in Quebec, and the complementary program VeloHospitality supports bicyclists along the route, with lodging, restaurants and services, so that cyclists can participate without having to use an automobile.

The Great Allegheny Passage Trail which connects to the C&O Canal Trail, links Washington, DC to Pittsburgh.  The Trail Towns program supports bike-related tourism and hospitality services along the route, stoking economic development in small places that have few options.

Urban bike tourism.  Speaking of urban areas, I've thought that DC and Maryland should do something similar with communities, including DC's Anacostia, neighborhood, Hyattsville, etc., along the Anacostia River Trail Network, which extends from Southeast DC to Greenbelt, Maryland, with extends with connections north towards Baltimore and west into Montgomery County.

Related to urban bike tourism, Velo Quebec, the provincial bike advocacy group, has an office fronting a major public park in Montreal, with a cafe and travel operation.  Add a repair shop and it would be a great hub for urban bike tourism support.

Food Tourism.  Promoting local food systems and ventures is another way to promote micro local economic development.  

A couple good books on the subject are The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food and Food Town, USA Seven Unlikely Cities That are Changing the Way We Eat, published by Island Press.

-- "Can Food Bring Back Struggling U.S. Cities?," US News & World Report

In the city, there are ways to do informal food presentations too, not unlike how in Havana, people have restaurants in their houses, called paladares ("sTHE UNTOLD STORY OF HAVANA’S CLANDESTINE RESTAURANTS" Parts Unknown TV Show).  

Cottage food operations are being legalized in more US cities, there are the special event "restaurant events" in people's homes, like this at one time in Los Angeles ("Prodigy," New Yorker Magazine).  

There was a place in DC that did this, only open in the evenings some nights a week, in a storefront on 7th Street NW, I think it was called Seasonal Table.  We went once, and it was cool.  I've encouraged my old next door neighbor to do this, as he is a maestro of Brazilian churrascaria.

The City of Helsinki agreed to sanction an idea of advocates called Restaurant Day, where on one day, anyone can do pop up food activities ("On Restaurant Day in Helsinki, Anyone Can Open an Eatery, Anywhere," Atlas Obscura) even if they are unlicensed.  From the article:

Restaurant Day began as a civic protest. In 2011, Helsinki resident Timo Santala wanted to start a mobile bicycle bar, selling drinks and tapas. Frustrated by red tape in a city where everything is highly regulated, he imagined a day where a restaurant could open with no licenses and no limitations. He and his friends came up with Restaurant Day, a food carnival where anyone can open a restaurant, anywhere they want, for a single day. 

In 2012, this Cuban restaurant popped up in downtown Helsinki. 

ROY BÄCKSTRÖM/RESTAURANT DAY 

Helsinki could have turned it into a cash grab, fining hundreds for operating a restaurant without a license. “In the beginning, the authorities and the owners of regular restaurants vocally opposed Restaurant Day,” said Weijo. “However, it attracted such a wide range of participants that opposition was almost impossible.” 

In fact, the city actually came on board. Grasping the appeal of Restaurant Day, Helsinki’s tourism website now features it as an attraction. Which is a pretty extraordinary achievement for an event that deliberately side-steps the law. (It helps that there have been no known instances of food poisoning stemming from Restaurant Day, according to Elisabeth Rundlöf, a marketing manager for the City of Helsinki.)

The idea has spread to many other countries ("Participants’ freedom made Restaurant Day the world's largest food carnival," Aalto University).  

Here, I am saying add this as an element of a community tourism initiative focused on lower income center city communities with  heritage, civic, and food elements, aimed to support the development of microenterprise.

A variant of food tourism is agritourim, falthough that is rural-focused on farms, wineries and such.

An aerial shot of the Wynwood Walls.  Photo by Will Graham. Image courtesy of Wynwood Walls.

Public Art. Wynnwood in Miami is known for its development of murals as an outdoor art gallery, called Wynnwood Walls ("How the Wynwood Walls Have Shaped Miami's Art Scene," Architectural Digest).

Public art could be an element of this kind of ground up neighborhood revitalization and community economic and microenterprise development initiative.

But it would be a decision that the neighborhood would have to support.

South Florida, Tulsa, and Santa Fe as examples of regulatory success and Texas as an example of regulatory failure

A bill from Griddy for a few days last week. 

Given the debacle in Texas last week, with more than 4 million out of electricity, wrecked water systems, four day electricity bills of as much as $16,000, 30+ dead people, and billions of dollars of damage to houses and businesses, it's clear that the State of Texas government--legislative, executive, and regulatory--built an electricity system for most of the state that accentuated risk, rather than reduced it.

-- "Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure"

In a comment on an article someone likened it to Florida and hurricanes, always looking for FEMA and the federal government for disaster relief afterwards.

South Florida.  I didn't think that was fair, because, I guess given the increasing examples of government failure, shockingly, after Hurricane Andrew devastated so many South Florida communities in 1992, recognizing poor building practices accentuated damage and destruction, they fortified South Florida's building regulations to provide better protection against hurricanes ("After Andrew, Florida Changed Its Approach to Hurricanes," New York Times).

Not only did they improve regulations on paper, they built the inspection and regulatory regime to ensure that buildings were actually constructed to be stronger ("Fla. Building Codes, Revamped Since Andrew, Still Being Worked," Insurance Journal, 2007).

Today though, with climate change, Florida is discovering that stronger requirements need to be extended across the state, whereas before they believed the worst storm effects would be concentrated in South Florida.  

And some firms are building beyond minimum requirements out of a recognition that codes are behind the reality of climate change and ever worsening and extreme weather ("Lessons of Resilience From Hurricane Michael," Engineering News-Record).

Now, while we think of Florida as being Republican, the fact is the stronger building codes were enacted during a period of Democratic leadership.  

It's more likely that strengthening of the codes in the face of worse storms, such as demonstrated by Hurricane Michael in 2018, which severely impacted North Florida, won't be happening going forward, because anti-science Republicans control the state government ("South Florida’s Hurricane Building Code is Strong—And North Florida’s Could Be Stronger," Weather Underground, "Toughen Florida's Building Codes," Tampa Bay Times, "Florida’s building code is tough, but Michael was tougher. Is it time for a rewrite?," Miami Herald).

Because it was built far stronger than required by the building codes, this elevated house that its owners call the Sand Palace, on 36th Street in Mexico Beach, came through Hurricane Michael almost unscathed. [Johnny Milano for the New York Times]

Tulsa.  Historically, Tulsa was prone to bad flooding, resulting in deaths and hundreds of millions of dollars of property damage. While the city had been engaging in floodwater management initiatives since the 1970s, in 1984, after flooding which resulted in 14 deaths, the city created a Department of Stormwater Management and developed a Citywide Flood and Stormwater Management Plan, which provides for specific improvements across the city ("In Tulsa, a National Blueprint for Managing Floods as Cities Grow and Climate Changes," NPR). 

-- From Roof Top to River: Tulsa's Approach to Floodplain and Stormwater Management, City of Tulsa

 The primary focus of the plan is removing buildings from the flood plain and converting these spaces to greenways and parks as a way to absorb flooding while minimizing damage. The plan has been frequently updated--the latest iteration was approved in 2017--and since 1990, no structure built before 1987 has been damaged by flooding.

Unlike Florida today or Texas, this process occurred under Republican Administrations.  

Santa Fe, New Mexico. The watershed of Santa Fe's source of drinking water is particularly susceptible to wildfire. 

After nearby Los Alamos experienced millions of dollars of wildfire-related damage to their water resources, Santa Fe figured it would make sense to be proactive ("For a Warming World, A New Strategy for Protecting Watersheds," Yale, "Fire and Rain: The One-Two Punch of Flooding After Blazes," National Geographic). 

-- Municipal Watershed Management Program, City of Santa Fe

They created a watershed fire protection plan and a water fund to pay for various land protection initiatives. Originally, private and philanthropic donations paid for the program, now it's funded through dedicated taxes.

Conclusion.  It's possible for governments to react to disaster in ways that strengthen resiliency going forward.  (There are other positive and negative examples I could have included, from hardening buildings from earthquakes to ignoring coastal water rise and flooding.)

But Texas had two chances, in 1989 and 2011.  Now in 2021 there are 30+ deaths and $40 billion of damage which for the most part, could have been avoided had they responded like Florida after Hurricane Andrew, Tulsa after deathly floods in 1984, or Santa Fe, which acted proactively, after witnessing the devastating effects from fire on water resources in nearby Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Note that the US Government is taking a stronger position against construction in flood plains ("Climate Threats Could Mean Big Jumps in Insurance Costs This Year," New York Times), which has taken decades to come about, mostly as a result of legislative pushback.

Gimbels Passageway to Penn Station versus the Socony-Vacuum Passageway to Grand Central Station

This is relevant to past entries making the point that horizontal and vertical connections to, from, and around transit stations need to be better planned as part of station development projects and station area planning.

-- "Public improvement districts ought to be created as part of transit station development process: the east side of NoMA station as an example," 2016
-- "Revisiting creating Public Improvement Districts in transit station catchment areas," 2020
-- Urban Design Manhattan, 1969, Regional Plan Association

Gimbels Passageway and Penn Station, New York City.  When writing the previous piece which referenced the PATH transit system serving Lower Manhattan and New Jersey, I came across a mention of the Gimbels Passageway, which had provided a direct underground connection between Penn Station, the 34th Street-Herald Square subway station and the 33rd Street PATH Station, via a sub basement in the Gimbels Department Store.

Gimbels went out of business and eventually the building was redeveloped into the Manhattan Mall, with a food court on the bottom where the passageway was.

The passageway was closed in 1986 when the city was in decline.  Partly the dispute was over who should pay for improvement and maintenance, and who owned the property, MTA or the real estate developer, now Vornado.  

In any case, the passageway has been shuttered ever since, although in 2010 the owner, Vornado, claimed they would reopen it someday as part of an office project ("Remembering the Gimbels Tunnel," New York Post).

Missed connections between Penn Station, the Herald Square subway station and the 33rd Street PATH Station

From the Eric TB website

Map of the PATH transit system

Lost opportunity with the Moynihan Station project.  I find it shocking that as part of the expansion of the Penn Station complex with the addition of the Moynihan Station train hall, that the opportunity to revive the passageway didn't come about, especially since Vornado is part of the consortium that created the Moynihan Station.  (Also see "PATH to Penn Station: Restoring an Underground Passage to Streamline NYC Transit," Stewart Mader.)

The station had its grand opening in January which opened in January, 

-- "New York’s new Moynihan Train Hall is dazzling but flawed. Philly should do better," Philadelphia Inquirer
-- "Moynihan Train Hall: It’s Stunning. And, a First Step.<" New York times

One Vanderbilt and Grand Central Station.  By contrast, the development of the One Vanderbilt Avenue project adjacent to Grand Central Station has resulted in a slew of improvements, including the restoration and reopening of the old underground passageway between the old Socony-Vacuum Building and Grand Central Station.

While I understand New York City subway's underground passageways tend to be simple in design, there is an opportunity for public art in some of these tunnels, such as the underground passageway light exhibit connecting to Essen Germany's main train station.

Photo credit

To get approval of the controversial One Vanderbilt project, the developer SL Green committed to funding and/or constructing $220 million worth of transit and mobility improvements, including the underground passageway ("Behind the rise of the 77-story One Vanderbilt," New York Post).

Biden Administration eliminates FAA regulation disallowing airport payments towards transit service from non-airport transit networks

Sadly, for a few decades, the FAA forbade airports from using monies collected as part of airport access charges from being used to pay towards transit connections from existing transit networks.  Vice reports, "U.S. Airports No Longer Have to Build Their Own Terrible Trains," that the Biden Administration has removed this regulation from the books.

From the article:

“In 1990, Congress passed the Aviation Safety and Capacity Expansion Act of 1990 which allowed airports, with the FAA's permission, to charge a small Passenger Facility Fee (PFC)—initially a maximum of $3 per ticket, later upped to $4.50 and, like the federal gas tax, not increased in the 20 years since despite losing much of its value to inflation—for airport improvements. The statute allows the revenue to be used for specific types of internal airport improvements only, such as people movers that stay within airport grounds. And in 2004 the FAA clarified that only rail lines which exclusively serve airports are eligible for PFCs.

It's kind of too late for the change to have maximum positive effect.  

Airports can be distant from city centers.  Utility is complicated by the fact that increasingly, airports are located at a distance from city centers, making the transit trip long, especially by light rail, which is slower than heavy rail (subway) and railroad service.  Although close-in airports, such as Salt Lake City can be pretty convenient even by slower light rail service.

City	Distance to Downtown	mode	Time
Atlanta	12 miles	heavy	22 minutes
Baltimore to Baltimore	11 miles	light	30 minutes
Baltimore to Baltimore	12 miles	railroad	10 minutes
Baltimore to DC	33 miles	railroad	35 minutes
Chicago Midway	11 miles	heavy	29 minutes
Chicago O'Hare	12 miles	heavy	45 minutes
Cleveland	14 miles	heavy	50 minutes
Dallas	25 miles	light	50 minutes
DC National Airport	5 miles	heavy	15 minutes
DC Dulles	27 miles	heavy	52 minutes*
Philadelphia	12 miles	railroad	24 minutes
Phoenix	3 miles	light	29 minutes
Portland, Oregon	9 miles	light	62 minutes
Salt Lake City	7 miles	light	20 minutes
San Francisco	15 miles	heavy	30 minutes
Seattle	15 miles	light	40 minutes

Note these times don't include the time to get from the transit station to the airport terminal.  This can be significant, depending on the distance to the terminal(s) and the quality of ground transportation integration.

* The Silver Line extension to Washington Dulles Airport will open in 2022.

The previous regulation resulted in airports not getting connections from the local transit system, or those transit systems making and funding their own connections, usually many years after the building of the core system.  And often making less good connections because of the need to reduce costs.

I wrote about this recently in terms of Salt Lake City ("Manhattan Institute misses the point about the value of light rail transit connections to airports | Utility and the network effect: the transit network as a platform").  The piece has a lot of broad discussion and links to past entries about the general issue of local transit system connections to airports.

The basic point is that as a "platform" a metropolitan transit network needs to provide connections to major destinations and the airport is a key destination that needs to be part of the platform to encourage use.

JFK Airtrain, Queens, New York City.  For example, that's why there is the separate Airtrain light rail connecting to JFK Airport from the Howard Beach Station of the A Line Subway Line in one loop and through another loop from the Jamaica Station/Sutphin Boulevard-Archer Avenue Subway Station, rather than continuing the subway lines to and around the JFK Airport, the way that the Piccadilly London Underground Line provides direct service to three different terminals at Heathrow Airport.

When it comes to airport connections, a problem with the London Underground though is the lack of many elevators throughout the system or wider treads for the escalator.  Because carrying heavy luggage to get to and around the subway--transfers are usually required to get to the Piccadilly Line, e.g., I used the Victoria Line to connect)--is a pain.

LAX.  Los Angeles is developing its own "airport campus" transit system comparable to JFK's Airtrain, because of the previous FAA restriction.  

-- "Transportation demand management, transit: Los Angeles Airport (LAX) and Logan Airport, Boston," 2019

LaGuardia in Queens, New York City.  And more recently Governor Cuomo has pushed Airlink proposals for LaGuardia Airport because of the previous FAA regulation.  But the proposed routing isn't particularly efficient ("The LaGuardia AirTrain Makes Even Less Sense After COVID," Streetsblog, "AirTrain to LaGuardia could open by 2025, but travelers will have to catch it from Willets Point," Airpoints Guy).

In my opinion it makes more sense to extend the existing N/W elevated, but that was never on the table because of the previous regulation.  The Astoria-Ditmars Boulevard Station endpoint of the line is 2 miles from LaGuardia Airport.  

Although that's great from Manhattan and the west, and a different solution would be required from the east, although you could just extend the N/W from LaGuardia to the 7 Line.  Although yes, it's easy to draw lines on a map.

Washington Silver Line to Dulles Airport.  Could have had a closer in station if they didn't have to economically satisfice planning, when the FAA would not allow commingling funds ("Dulles Metro controversy puts Silver Line extension at risk," Washington Post, 2011).  Although the Post was fine with cutting costs at the expense of a more convenient connection to the airport.

Boston Logan Airport.  In the past there had been consideration of adding a moving sidewalk connection from the Blue Line Airport Station T to the international terminal, a distance of 1/2 mile.  

More recently, the airport moved beyond that proposal to a campus specific people mover, comparable to other airports.  By connecting to the T, they could also eliminate the intra-airport bus-based shuttle system.    It's probably more cost effective to do a multi-terminal people mover than extending a branch of the Blue Line onto the airport campus.

Tijuana International Airport Cross Border Xpress.  Obviously, the Tijuana Airport in Mexico is not subject to FAA regulations, but many US residents use it.  To facilitate access and "transportation demand management," a pedestrian bridge crossing the US-Mexican border was built by the private sector, integrated into customs and border protocols.  It costs $30.  It's a great example of broader transportation demand management approaches.

Newark International Airport and an opportunity to use the change in FAA policy as a way to shift funds to enable the creation of an infill station in Newark's Dayton neighborhood.  Is interesting because it already has railroad connections (Amtrak and NJ Transit) and a separate Airtrain connection from the railroad station to the airport campus.  (It's airtrain because the Airport, like JFK and LaGuardia is controlled by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.  

Separately, the Port Authority is extending the separate PATH commuter railroad (although it functions like heavy rail, it's a railroad) to the Airport as well (" The $1.7B PATH extension to Newark airport: A timeline," Newark Star-Ledger).  The plan was to finish by 2026.  

Those plans didn't necessarily include a desired infill station in Newark's economically depressed Dayton/Weequahic Park neighborhoods (Rutgers Graduate Student Studio, "Officials Upset PATH Extension No Longer Includes South Ward Station," NJ Spotlight News).  Adding transit connections there would improve economic access for area residents.  

By being able to use airport fees toward the extension, it would be more possible economically to include a station in the Dayton neighborhood in Newark's South Ward, thereby making the transit system more useful and improve equity outcomes.

Note that an infill Metrorail Station in DC's NoMA neighborhood has had tremendous positive economic impact on the NoMA district, and the nearby Union Market district and H Street neighborhood on the east side of the station, although access was inadequately planned to the east side of the area, as part of the original project ("Public improvement districts ought to be created as part of transit station development process: the east side of NoMA station as an example").

(It would also behoove PATH and MTA to restore a long since shuttered underground walkway between the Penn Station PATH Station and the actual Penn Station, "Remembering the Gimbels tunnel." New York Post.)

The advantage of PATH is it's priced as a subway trip, $2.75, versus a NJ Transit railroad fare, which is $15.25 one way between New York Penn Station and the airport station.

-------------------

In a report on railroad system failures on the Southern Railway system in Greater London, a point was made that the Airport was more motivated to have better connections and service, and so maybe the Airport should take the station over ("Gibb report into improving Southern performance published," Railway Gazette).

Similarly, connections between the BWI Amtrak/MARC Railroad station and the Airport improved significantly when BWI extended its campus airport bus shuttle system to the station, and took responsibility for ensuring quality transit connections between the nearby (but still between two and three miles away railroad station.

I used that as an example for National Airport and the nearby Crystal City Amtrak and Virginia Railway Express station ("A brief comment on ground transportation at National Airport vis a vis VRE rail service").

Another example of an RFP isn't a plan: Santa Fe, New Mexico versus Denver, Colorado

Early on when I got involved in urban revitalization, I learned about the McMenamin Brothers, a hospitality group based in Portland that first bought theaters and kept them operating by installing food service operations like brewpubs alongside movies.  

One of the early signature projects is the Baghdad Theater in the Hollywood district of the city.

Because of the McMenamins, Portland still has a lot of cinemas operating at the neighborhood level, whereas most other cities do not ("Portland movie theater renovations reviewed: Bagdad Theater, Cinema 21 and OMSI's changes all for the better," Portland Oregonian).

By contrast, many "developers" look at theaters as a wasted asset, and historic preservation as a hindrance.

Granted, with the Internet, television, streaming, smartphones and everything else, it's hard to make movie theaters work in the contemporary business environment.  But the McMenamins have figured out how to do so and it's not likely that Portland is so unique that the business model isn't adaptable elsewhere.

Good development is more likely when it derives from good planning.  McMenamins moved on to more complicated projects, mostly still involving historic buildings, but different types like schools and a power plant.  One of the earliest was the Kennedy School Bed and Breakfast, the conversion of a vacant school building.  

An outdoor wedding at the Kennedy School site.

But in looking into that project more deeply, I learned that the City of Portland planning department created a community-based planning process to figure out what to do with the school, coming up with recommendations and preferred outcomes, embodied in the Kennedy School Master Plan, before the building was sold to the McMenamins.

(I always thought Kennedy School's redevelopment was a good model for the redevelopment of institutional buildings in the Greater Brookland neighborhood of DC, which has a preponderance of institutional buildings that are being deaccessioned.)

An RFP isn't a plan.  Too frequently, cities release RFPs/RFEIs: requests for proposals; requests for expressions of interest; where a developer is expected to respond with an outline of what to do, without much in the way of guidance from the city, a minimal list of preferred outcomes and public benefits, etc.

But if the local jurisdiction produced a plan for the site ahead of time, likely the outcomes would be better and so would the benefits.

Santa Fe didn't make a plan.  Santa Fe has a campus from a college that went out of business.  

I wrote about it in 2017, as an example of why community cultural plans should have a "higher education" element, to provide guidance for the city wrt these assets ("Revisiting stories: community culture master plans should include an element on higher education institutions"), especially for independent art colleges facing the threat of closure as institutional survival of smaller higher educational institutions becomes fraught ("Master planning and scenario planning in the face of economic problems in higher education," 2019).

The Santa Fe site is in the news because development plans have fallen through ("Santa Fe City Council hears development options for midtown campus," "When they kicked the tires on midtown, everything went flat," Santa Fe New Mexican)..

I argue that they should have created a redevelopment plan first, and then aimed to hire/select a master developer.  But that's not what they did.

Denver made a plan.  By contrast, when Regis University in Denver sold off its Loretto Heights campus, that had been home to another college which later merged into Regis, the city created an area plan for the site ("Redevelopment of Loretto Heights could transform southwest Denver, this month City Council will weigh a plan that lays out that vision," Denver Post, "Loretto Heights: What's Next?," Historic Denver).

Postcard

From the small area plan

Now it's being executed ("What’s new at Loretto Heights? Potentially a crucial vote on when to start the project.," Denverite), most recently, with the announcement that a dorm building is going to be converted into units of affordable housing.

Conclusion.  Desired development and better outcomes generally result more quickly when you start with a plan.  

Both Denver and Santa Fe started around the same time wrt redevelopment planning.  The site in Santa Fe is owned by the city, which gives them even more power, theoretically, in the development relationship.  By contrast, the Loretto Heights site was owned by Regis University, which sold it off, but subject to master planning by the City of Denver.  

But redevelopment is underway in Denver and it is stalled in Santa Fe.

Another example of a failure to plan: clearing snow in Texas

We have to cut Texas some slack on snow removal, because it doesn't snow there very often, definitely not in large amounts.  Plenty of places that get a fair amount of snow plan inadequately when it comes to "maintenance of way" in the winter.

-- "Snow, winter, and the Sustainable Mobility City," 2019 (includes links to past entries)

But why does Texarkana, Arkansas have the capacity to remove snow and Texarkana, Texas does not?

The Texas side of State Line Avenue in Texarkana is unplowed.@CharlesPeekWX via Twitter

The road has since been cleared.  But apparently Texas has only 700 major snow plows for the entire state.

Note that while DC's Eastern, Western and Southern Avenues lie fully within DC even as they border Maryland and you'd think the boundary is in the middle of the road, I have seen similar results.  For example, even though "it's in DC," the Town of Mount Rainer, Maryland does snow removal on its side of Eastern Avenue, usually many hours before DC gets around to it.

Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure

In 2019, Texas ran an advertising campaign in California, aimed at businesses upset by summer electricity blackouts, claiming they offered more reliable electricity sources. 

Texas is in the news this week, because extreme cold in the state has led to significant failures of the state-specific electricity generation and transmission system--75% of the state is powered through a state-exclusive grid not connected to the national electricity transmission system.

More than 40 people have died, at the peak more than 4 million households did not have electricity, and utility companies were forced to impose rolling blackouts to prevent the system from completely crashing ("Texas was "seconds and minutes" away from catastrophic monthslong blackouts, officials say," Texas Tribune). 

Photo: ABC13, Houston.

Water systems are failing both because of lack of electricity and frozen pipes. 

Residential and commercial property owners are experiencing many tens of thousands of dollars of building damage because of frozen and burst pipes.  All told the losses could total in the billions.

A failure of sustainable energy sources? At the outset, conservatives took the opportunity to blame the rolling blackouts on wind turbines, making out to be ridiculous sustainable energy policies and the proposed Green New Deal ("No, the Green New Deal Did Not Cause the Texas Power Outage," New York Magazine, "Texas shows that when you cannot govern, you lie. A lot," Washington Post).

Wind turbines function in extremely cold climates, such as Greenland, Manitoba and across the Northern United States, so long as they're weatherized.

Cold temperature weather map of the Continental United States, Tuesday February 16th, 2021.

New York Times.

No, a failure of conventional energy sources.  The reality is that the failures are primarily that of generating plants and systems using natural gas (and to some extent coal and nuclear energy).  This is because during winter, ERCOT, the electricity production and distribution coordinating authority for Texas, plans for reduced production of wind energy anyway.  More than 60% of the state's electricity in winter comes from natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy.

But ultimately the failure is due to a failure to be proactive and weatherize the Texas electricity system to be able to deal with extreme cold. The saddest thing that has come out is that similar problems, but much less worse, in 1989 and 2011 led to recommendations in studies of the electricity failures, by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to better weatherize their electricity production and delivery systems for extreme weather events ("The Texas grid got crushed because its operators didn’t see the need to prepare for cold weather," Post).

An extreme example of state regulatory failure. The Texas electricity failures are a regulatory failure, one that was easily preventable, had the right regulatory framework been developed ("The Texas Power Outage Started With Bad Policy," Texas Public Policy Institute).  

Not being under federal regulation wouldn't necessarily lead to any problems, if Texas had developed a strong regulatory framework to oversee electricity production.  But they failed to do so ("Don't blame Texas energy players for blackout, blame the electricity grid's irresponsible game," Houston Chronicle).

It's similar to what happened in Michigan with dam failures last summer ("Displacing a problem doesn't solve it: an example of how restrained regulation can cost millions of dollars | Flooding in Mid-Michigan from a dam break," 2020) or the lead poisoning of the Flint water system ("Don't use the local water: Parkersburg, WV and Flint, MI," 2016).

But failure to weatherize wasn't the only regulatory failure.  They built a regulatory framework that heightens rather than reduces risk.  It works when conditions are normal, but not when they aren't.  From the Houston Chronicle:

The state grants monopolies to companies to maintain the transmission lines. CenterPoint has the contract for the Houston area. 

Centerpoint is forbidden from owning generating assets or even batteries to store power along their wires. Electricity retailers manage customers and then buy, sell or trade electricity contracts. Some generators own retail operations, such as NRG Energy, which owns Reliant and other retail brands. 

The exceptions are rural cooperatives and municipally-owned utilities such as San Antonio’s CPS. They can do it all, powerplants, transmission and retail sales.

(1) In Texas, they set up a regulatory framework that prioritizes low electricity prices.  

(2) They prioritized low prices while also disincentivizing reliability.  They failed to require and incentivize weatherization for extreme cold or heat 

Kaiden Antoine, 3, stands by the stove, his family's only source of heat since their power has been out since yesterday, Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021, at Cuney Homes in Houston. Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer.

This week, 185 Texas electricity generation plants shut down because of weather-related issues, this was about 40% of the state's generation capacity.

(3) Nor did they require firms to have standing power in reserve (buffer/redundancy).  As demand has increased, supply hasn't kept up, putting the system at risk.  

Although in this week's case, a buffer couldn't have made up for the loss of 1/3 or more of the overall power generation capacity of the system.

(4) Even worse, they created a wholesale market for electricity prices focused on one or two days in advance, rather than locking in pricing for longer periods.  This works well enough in normal operating conditions, but gyrates wildly in extranormal circumstances, which can drive utility firms or individual customers out of business.

Griddy.  For example, the firm Griddy, which charges people $10/mo. plus a charge per kilowatt hour based on the usually low wholesale prices, was charging more than $20 per kilowatt hour earlier this week, leading to daily charges for some customers of $1,000 or more, when normally the price would be about $30/month.  

I don't know how much Griddy is able to hedge prices with longer term supply contracts ("Texas freeze squeezes Macquarie-backed Griddy," Financial Review).  They say that 96.9% of the time they offer super cheap prices.  But that 3.1% of the time! can be a killer.  

I guess enough, because they haven't been forced into bankruptcy, which was what happened with the DC area firm Clean Currents, in 2014, when a single cold snap resulted in volatile wholesale prices, and they ceased operations  ("Cold and unhedged: How the polar vortex drove Clean Currents out of business ," Washington Business Journal).  From the article:

A majority of Clean Currents' on- and off-peak wind power purchases were hedged, Skulnik said, but enough were unhedged to sink the company as wholesale energy prices spiked. 

“It’s not like prices went up 20 percent, or even 50 percent,” he said. “We saw prices that went up 500 percent. We were hedged, but we were not hedged enough. We didn’t have the resources to cover the spot market prices we were being hit by.” 

 One of the region’s fastest growing companies as recently as two years ago, Clean Currents was a business that area governments were eager to host.

Even if Griddy hedges wholesale prices, they don't extend that protection to customers, pricing electricity to customers by the day and hour, based on the wholesale price ("Texas power retailer Griddy to customers in face of freeze: Please, leave us," Bloomberg). 

The Texas electricity system as a whole is set up like the Griddy business model.  Griddy customers are completely exposed, all the benefit from low prices, but also all the risk from high prices.

The same thing goes for customers in the Texas grid,  They benefit from low prices most of the time, at the expense of reliability, and occasionally experience extreme loss of power for multiple days, at great expense.  From the Houston Chronicle:

Electricity generators compete to meet the state’s power needs with the cheapest sources, whether coal, nuclear, wind, natural gas, or solar. ERCOT forecasts the expected demand weeks in advance, companies bid to provide the cheapest power, and ERCOT contracts for what it needs the day before. 

No prediction is perfect, though, so ERCOT builds in a reserve. The price paid to generators is based on the actual consumption, though, which means Texans do not pay for power they do not use. Other states pay generators to standby if needed, but not ERCOT. 

The typical price for ERCOT electricity is about $25 for a megawatt hour. But ERCOT can pay as much as $9,000 to get power providers to generate enough electricity to meet the state’s needs.

El Paso Electric Rio Grande generation plant, located in Sunland, New Mexico.

El Paso shows a different way.  By contrast, El Paso, being on the extreme western edge of Texas, is part of the Western transmission grid that the rest of Texas is not connected to.  

Plus, after the 2011 FERC recommendations, they began to more assiduously invest in winter weatherization ("Not being connected to rest of Texas helped El Paso in cold wave," El Paso Times).  From the article:

EPE spent $4.5 million to repair and better winterize its old Newman, Rio Grande and Copper power plants, EPE officials said. It also resulted in EPE’s Montana power plant and a Rio Grande plant generator, added after the 2011 freeze, to be designed to withstand below-freezing temperatures, Buraczyk said.

Unlike the rest of Texas, and granted their temperatures weren't quite as cold, El Paso Electric had no problems with providing electricity 

Climate change is making this worse, by making weather more extreme, not just during the summer months, but throughout the year, including winter.  Extreme can be more snow and cold, or less snow and cold.

Disconnected from the grid can make bad problems worse.  The Texas electricity failure this week was accentuated by its "go it alone" approach to electricity regulation and production.  Even though the loss in electricity production was a self-own, had they been connected to eastern and western grids they could have imported electricity from outside the state, making up for their regulatory failures.

But Texas isn't connected to the nationwide electricity grid.  

The state is so big it is a market unto itself, and by choosing to be disconnected from transmission interconnection systems that cross state lines, they are able to evade federal regulation.  But when for whatever reason they have need for a greater amount of electricity than they can generate, they have no ability to bring electricity in from outside the state.

Is the Texas power failure a result from a failure to "invest in infrastructure"?  Yes and no.  Yes, because the State of Texas built a regulatory framework for electricity generation and transmission that accentuated risky operation in times of extreme conditions.  And because elected officials don't focus much on long term investment in infrastructure.

No, because nothing forced them to develop a risky electricity system.  They had the means to develop a different kind of system, which would have only cost a little bit more, and it would have avoided the kinds of catastrophic risks and costs that have occurred this week.

They chose not to do so.  Even after twice being told that their system was at risk to extreme cold.  And knowing that climate change is leading to extreme weather events--rain, flooding, hurricanes, cold--that impact power systems.

Do I think Texas deserves "federal funds" to deal with the disaster?  No, I don't  It wasn't a "natural disaster."  It was a disaster created by a failure to act proactively ("Texas, the go-it-alone state, is rattled by the failure to keep the lights on," Post, "Texas electric grid is an easy fix, if lawmakers will admit their error," Houston Chronicle).  From the Chronicle article:

Most people know the lowest bidder does not always provide the most reliable product. 

Making sure a vendor can actually deliver the product also seems like common sense. 

ERCOT, the Texas electric grid manager, though, does neither of those things because Republican politicians who have controlled state regulations for two decades have failed to heed 13 years of dire warnings. Instead, they believed free-market advocates who argued financial incentives would encourage responsible planning. ... 

The solutions are easy and obvious. The present situation was first anticipated in a report in the Texas House Select Committee on Electric Generation Capacity and Environmental Effects Report published Jan. 12, 2009. ... 

Texas has the only American electricity grid with no rules for resiliency. Instead, the GOP majority argued that a system that pays higher prices when demand goes up would incentivize generators to make sure their systems work during extreme weather. ... 

Consumers need to watch closely as Texas authorities begin debating reforms. Lobbyists see an opportunity to gain subsidies for their industries. 

The reforms we need, though, are simple. 

First, connect to the rest of the country via the national grid and accept federal regulation so we can import electricity when we run out. 

Texas should also require generators to prove they are prepared for the weather events climate change will bring before they can offer their power to the wholesale market. That would reduce the risk of failure and force generators to weatherize. 

Power prices will rise, ever so slightly, but it will reduce the risk of another Texas Blackout. The Texas Blackouts prove them wrong. 

Now our political leaders are giving us misleading scapegoating, political gamesmanship and another front in the culture wars.

Why should they benefit, yet again--e.g., Texas cut funds for fighting wildfires, then asked for federal funding ("Texas wildfires: Is Rick Perry being hypocritical asking for federal aid?," Christian Science Monitor)-- from a failure to plan and operate according to best practice advice?

If the failures had their causes in federal inaction or failure, like the pandemic, the levee breaks in New Orleans, or the dam break and flooding in Midland, Michigan, and to some extent the lead in the water problem in Flint*, I'd say they had a justifiable case for federal disaster funding.

Idaho Stop sort of under consideration in Virginia

The Idaho Stop is a pro-bike vehicular policy that is followed by many bicyclists, but is only legal in the State of Idaho. It allows bicyclists to treat stop signs as yields and traffic signals as stop signs--provided there is no oncoming traffic or significant breaks in traffic.

-- Nice Vimeo video on the Idaho Stop

I've written about why the Idaho Stop makes sense for cyclists, as part of a transportation policy that truly prioritizes sustainable mobility, instead of saying "sustainable mobility is important" but then making few changes in transportation policy in line with sustainable mobility.

In a system that privileges automobility, it's very difficult to move legislation forward that prioritizes other forms of mobility.  I wrote this in 2011:

The biggest problem overall is that most of the legislators are asking the wrong question(s) about bicycle and pedestrian safety, because they are mostly responding in reaction to complaints by drivers, rather than considering (1) the overall question of safety of all users of the street and sidewalk network, (2) how the system of laws, policies, regulations, and rules is structured to manage movement of the different classes of users, (3) whether or not the system is working, (4) what are best practices elsewhere, (5) and what could and should be done here, (6) in the context of the fact that the center city mobility system and spatial pattern was designed to optimize walking, transit, and bicycling, not the movement of automobiles.

One of my points about the Idaho Stop is that cities like Washington, if they really believe they mean it when they say that they favor sustainable mobility, ought to step forward and legalize it ("Failure to pass the Idaho Stop as an indicator of lack of commitment to DC's Sustainability Plan by DC's elected officials (Updated)," 2016).

The Post reports that Virginia is sort of considering Idaho Stop, punting it to a study ("Virginia considering letting bicyclists roll through stop signs, no stop required").

Utah.  I had thought that Utah had legalized the Idaho Stop already, but hasn't--now I know why that police officer admonished me months ago when I ran a red light, but on a Sunday, on a street with zero automobile traffic otherwise.  Actually, Utah's law allows a bicyclist to proceed through a red light after 90 seconds.  Pretty useless for any type of cyclist let alone a transportational cyclist.

This article, "Idaho Stop? Here's why cyclists in Utah may soon be able to roll through stop signs, legally," from the (St. George Utah) Spectrum says that once again, it's being considered in Utah, and does a nice job explaining the Idaho Stop, the other jurisdictions in the US + Paris since 2015 ("Paris follows the path of Idaho, and lets bicycles run red lights," Public Radio International) that already have it, references some research -- why does Virginia have to reinvent the wheel -- etc.  From the article:

Variants of the "Idaho Stop" have recently been incorporated into law in Delaware (2017), Colorado (2018), Arkansas (2019), Oregon (2020) and Washington (2020). Similar bills will be up for consideration in 2021 in New York and California. The city of Paris, France has allowed cyclists to turn right on red without stopping or to roll through an intersection with no street to the right since 2012. 

 In many of these places, studies have found that the change reduced cyclist-motorist collisions and had no measurable negative effects. One such study, completed in 2020 out of the Berkeley Public School of Health, determined that cyclist injuries decreased 14.5% in Idaho in the year after the "Idaho Stop" practice was legalized. A comparison of data from the Delaware State Police over a 60-month period found that reported injury crashes involving bicycles at stop-sign controlled intersections were 23% lower in the 30-months after the "Bicycle Friendly Delaware Act" was signed into law compared to the previous 30-months. This analysis also revealed an increase in the number of fatal crashes involving cyclists after the law was enacted, but the fatality numbers in both time periods were low, so the comparison might have little statistical meaning.

Chicago.  While there isn't much of an initiative to legalize the Idaho Stop in Chicago, it happens that the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul produced a report analyzing opportunities for improving bicycling policy to get more more people cycling for transportation.  (The Institute does a lot of great work on areas of transportation policy that are otherwise ignored, such as intercity bus and car sharing.)

-- POLICIES FOR PEDALING Managing the Tradeoff between Speed & Safety for Biking in Chicago

They recommended that as part of the set of policy changes, Chicago legalize the Idaho Stop.  

The Chicago Tribune editorialized against it, "Slam the brakes on 'Idaho stop': Chicago's 6 cycling deaths in 2016 are 6 too many," saying it would increase bicycle-related deaths.

I like what the Chaddick Institute did.  It's the kind of stuff I try to do within the limitations of what I can do as an individual.  But my Vision Zero agenda is an example.

-- "Updating Vision Zero Approaches," 2016

It also illustrates why I am right to be disappointed in the research support by DC DOT, and the related research initiative at Howard University.  It doesn't seem to accomplish very much.

South Cook County Fair Transit Pilot for railroad as local transit

Advocates in Boston ("More trains mean equity for Fairmount Line," Boston Globe), New York City ("Relief for New York City’s Transit Deserts? Commuter Trains Might Help," New York Times), and Chicago ("Instead of extending the Red Line, some see promise in the Metra Electric," Chicago Reporter) have argued for an integrated transit system linking railroad passenger services with heavy rail, because there are many train stations within those cities in areas where subway service isn't prevalent.  They argue for allowing train to subway transfer and making city train fares comparable to subway fares. 

The model is how train and subway service works in London, between the London Overground and the Underground ("One big idea: Getting MARC and Metrorail to integrate fares, stations, and marketing systems, using London Overground as an example," 2015), Paris, and the integrated transit systems in German systems where the S-Bahn -- "suburban commuter rail" -- is tied tightly to other transit services, including an integrated fare system, and pricing that is comparable to regular transit fares, not the more typically higher priced railroad train fares.

(In the DC-Baltimore region, there are opportunities to add in-city railroad stations in Baltimore and DC.  See "A "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for a statewide passenger railroad program in Maryland."  In Baltimore it could make a real difference, while in Washington the effect wouldn't be as significant, but could add stations in the New York Avenue corridor which lacks Metrorail service.)

Cook County takes a leap forward.  With the lead of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, they will be trying this out with Metra, the commuter rail system, in South Chicago, lowering the fares and increasing the frequency of train service ("Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s South Cook Fair Transit pilot to slash certain Metra fares gets final green light without CTA participation," Chicago Tribune).  Although for loss of revenue reasons, the City of Chicago, which runs the heavy rail system, the CTA, isn't participating, which reduces the efficacy of the program.

-- South Cook Fair Transit initiative

From the article:

Starting in January, the three-year program will slash fares on Metra Electric, which runs through Chicago’s South Side and south suburbs, and Rock Island Line, which serves areas of the Southwest Side and southwest suburbs, by 50%. It also boosts the hours and frequency of the Pace 352-Halsted bus route that runs from the CTA 95th/Dan Ryan station to the Pace Chicago Heights Terminal. 

 “Parts of the county (are) underserved by public transit and, as a result, hampered in their economic development because good public transit is the foundation of economic development,” Preckwinkle said in a call with reporters, outlining a vision of correcting those “transit deserts” that exist in southern Cook County.

Preckwinkle unveiled the idea last year to bring “equity investments” to those areas that lack public transportation access compared with the rest of the county despite households there spending a disproportionate amount of income on transportation. The goal is to boost ridership on southern Cook public transportation by offering more affordable fares and service improvements for the thousands who rely on Metra and Pace in the region. The county is funding the program with about $35 million, some of which will offset the fare reductions. 

 Originally, the plan was to also bring CTA on board for coordination purposes such as Ventra cards eventually being used for free transfers with Metra ("With Cook County’s help, South Siders could see lower fares on Metra," CT), and the county offered to subsidize revenue losses that would happen. But Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot balked at the initiative, saying last fall that it would have a “dramatic effect” on CTA revenue ("Citing ‘dramatic effect’ on CTA ridership, Mayor Lori Lightfoot opposes reduced Metra fares backed by County Board President Toni Preckwinkle," CT).

Boston Fairmount Line.  It happens that Boston is doing something similar, but not as ambitious, adding service to the Fairmount Line which is entirely within the city.  Trips on this train line have been included within the daily, weekly, and monthly passes, priced at the same fare as a subway or bus ride.

-- Fairmount Line Weekday Service Pilot

What they are doing is increasing frequency on the line, making it more useful as an in-city transit service, and adding the ability to pay with the stored value CharlieCard, transit farecard.  For people without a pass, using the CharlieCard provides free transfers to other modes in certain cases, or a reduced total fare.

Making metropolitan transit more integrated as an element of federal infrastructure initiatives.  In discussion about a Biden infrastructure initiative and urban transit, besides talk about funding transit in the face of pandemic-induced deficits, high speed rail ("Latest high-speed rail plan would put tunnel under Long Island Sound," Hartford Courant), necessary improvements like the Gateway Tunnels for Penn Station, etc., there should also be some basic discussion on how to reconfigure transit and rail passenger service more generally at the metropolitan and regional scale.

According to a brochure published by the MVV, the transport association serving Greater Munich in the German State of Bavaria, the association:

carries out key tasks which include creating a joint tariffs and fares structure, distributing revenues, planning, controlling tenders and contracts with regard to regional bus transportation, system marketing as well as market research, providing customer information across various transport companies, in particular web-based timetable information across the association, conceptual transport planning as well as traffic and transportation research. In addition, the transport association passes on its expertise to third parties on a consultant basis.

Some guidance is offered in "Branding's not all you need for transit," which suggests three elements for better transit: (1) creating integrated transport associations at the metropolitan/regional scale; (2) treating transit as a "design product"; and (3) branding.

While not stated directly, treating transit as a "design product" means integrating lines and services.

Basically, like what the Regional Plan Association ("Combine three commuter rail systems into one network,") and many independent advocates and stakeholders have proposed for the New York region, merging NJ Transit and Metro-North and Long Island Railroad (and PATH?), adding subway service from New York City to NJ, adding transit service to Staten Island from New Jersey, etc.

National, Multi-State, State, Regional, Metropolitan Railroad planning.  While I am to write a series of pieces about this, I haven't done so yet.  

One of the basics should be to reconfigure urban transit around the German "Verkehrsverbund" or "transport association" model, where bus, subway, and rail passenger services are tightly integrated at the metropolitan scale, and including ferry and tram services if offered. (The way that transit works in London is comparable.)  

So in places like New York and New Jersey, Philadelphia, Chicago, DC and Baltimore, etc., a Biden Administration infrastructure initiative should include these kinds of transformations ("A high-impact transit agenda: building alternative models of best practice," 2019).

Logo for the transit system in Munich.  

Speaking of branding and treating transit as a "design product." An interesting element of transit service in Germany is that they use the same symbols for types of transit across the country.  U for subway, S for commuter rail, etc.  Regardless of where you are.  

Although the U and S logos are standardized, variations exist for Tram--most cities don't have them, and regional rail services, which the Munich MVV brands as R.

By contrast, in the US, you have the T in Boston, BART in Greater San Francisco, MUNI in San Francisco, the M is used in various places, in different designs in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, DC, etc.

Similarly, Transport for London has extended the use of the "roundel" brand for the London Underground, to all of its mobility services, using different colors to denote different services.  

The Overground, which was the integration and rebranding of local railroad services that had not been run by Transport for London into a railroad service, above ground, and complementary to the Underground, has been a rousing success.

"London Overground – A success story: Transforming neglected urban railway infrastructure to meet capacity and connectivity demands"
-- "London Overground - A Success Story," presentation)
-- "London Overground offers model for UK rail overhaul," Financial Times