Framework of characteristics that support successful community development in association with the development of professional sports facilities

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Also see these related subsequent entries:

-- "You get what you plan for: the multi-use Miami Hard Rock Stadium versus typical football stadiums | Washington Commanders," 2025
-- "Good quote on arenas and stadiums as "performing arts centers" attractions for cities," 2024
-- "Capital One Arena, Wizards and Capitals may move to Alexandria | Why not the RFK campus?," 2023
-- "Revisiting "Framework of characteristics that support successful community development in association with the development of professional sports facilities" and the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team + Phoenix Coyotes hockey," 2022

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Sports stadiums and arenas and public funding is a tough issue.  Generally, based on the economic research, advocates always argue against.  But the reality is that economic interests and elected officials are generally all in.  

So a campaign based on "saying no" is likely to have little impact.

Since the facility is going to get built, with public money, now I argue that we ought to focus on extracting the best possible contract providing the greatest possible community and economic return to the locality, rather than just letting the sports team reap the majority of the benefits.

-- "Baseball World Series in DC as an opportunity for urban planning reflections: #1 | revisiting blog entries from 2005/2006,"
-- "Baseball World Series in DC #2: Eleven urban planning lessons from the Washington Nationals stadium"

Over the years, I've been working on creating an item framework, since my first crack at it in 2014.  The most recent version is from 2019 ("Stadiums and arenas redux: Mayor Bowser still wants the area NFL team to relocate to DC").

But today I am revisiting it, sparked by a community planning effort in Salt Lake City.

The Salt Lake planning process is centered around the Ballpark neighborhood-where a classically designed stadium with great views is home to the Salt Lake Bees minor league baseball team.

But the neighborhood around the park hasn't improved much in the 27 years that the stadium first opened in 1994, and it has light rail transit access to boot.

I think the key problem with the dearth of revitalization benefits is the lack of an overall planning and implementation initiative when the stadium was first constructed, although there are other issues--the railroad tracks support industrial development, there aren't a lot of build out opportunities on the east side of the tracks, closer to the stadium, the area is (not far but still) distant from Downtown, where a stadium may have made more sense from a leveraging revitalization opportunities standpoint, etc.

When the Washington Nationals put a notice on the scoreboard about last trains from the nearest transit station, fans boo the transit agency, when it is the team that has refused to guarantee service for games that go beyond the normal closing time for the system.

Creating a revitalization program for a stadium, arena, or exposition facility that is outside of a downtown or major activity center is tough.  So Salt Lake has a tough row to hoe.

So I decided to take another look at the framework, and I realized that a specific section on neighborhood benefits, if relevant to particular situations, needed to be separated out as an element.  

Note that some of these items are less relevant to smaller communities, and those lacking robust transit networks, and with a sprawl development paradigm.  

There is also a difference of opportunities between "big leagues," minor league teams, and college teams ("Economic impact of college football means season cancellation will crush college town economies reliant on sports visitation," 2020, "American City Business Journals calculates the capacity of North American metropolitan areas to support new/additional professional sports teams," 2015).

And practice facilities, which despite all that is touted by teams, seem to have very little economic impact ("Sport team practice facilities and public subsidy (a practice facility for the Washington Wizards)," 2015).  Arguably, baseball training camps are problematic too, in terms of financial subsidies from local governments.

Community Development oriented planning framework for sports stadiums and arenas

in front of Fenway Park, Boston

Urban Design 

• centrality of location: Downtown/central business district/waterfront versus outlying locations within a city or suburbs.  Negative examples include the Salt Lake Bees stadium outside of Downtown, with limited redevelopment opportunities; how the Atlanta Braves chose a suburban location for their new stadium, counter to the trend of siting in center cities; the debate in Oakland about a waterfront location versus a new stadium in their current location ("A's plan to build a new waterfront stadium at Oakland's Jack London Square takes big step forward," San Francisco Chronicle), and the location of the Real Salt Lake soccer team in the suburbs instead of the center city.  Positive examples include the waterfront stadium for the San Francisco Giants, the Downtown stadium for the Baltimore Orioles, and the relocation of the Washington Wizards basketball team and Capitals Hockey teams from the suburbs to the City of Washington;
• size of the facility and its ability to be integrated into the urban fabric (baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer), bigger stadiums--football stadiums specifically--are harder to integrate in the urban fabric.
• isolation or connection: how well is the facility integrated into the urban fabric beyond the stadium site and does it leverage, build upon, and extend the location and the community around it.  The classic example is Wrigley Field in Chicago versus White Sox Stadium ("Expert offers his dream Sox stadium," Chicago Tribune).  Wrigley Field is embedded in its neighborhood, while White Sox Stadium is disconnected from its.  But also in how Oracle Park in San Francisco leverages its waterfront location.

Oracle Park.  Photo: Ron Niebrugge.

• urban design treatment of the route to the stadium.  Classic examples are Fenway Park in Boston, Wrigley Field, to some extent Camden Yards in Baltimore.  See this discussion ("Sadly, DC won't show so well during the Baseball All-Star Game,") concerning Nationals Stadium.

Stadium/Arena Design

• is the facility a throwback design or decidedly modern?  Arguably, classic designs for stadiums work better for cities (see City Baseball Magic--Plain Talk and Uncommon Sense about Cities and Baseball Parks by Philip Bess).  The foremost example of this is the design for Camden Yards in Baltimore ("Camden Yards, the stadium that changed baseball and Baltimore, turns 20," Baltimore Sun, "Camden Yards paved a retro revolution — and influenced Wrigley Field's renovations," Chicago Tribune).  Interestingly, Smith's Ballpark for the Salt Lake Bees is the pre-eminent example of a classic design in the minor leagues.  By contrast, the Washington Nationals stadium is modern.
• is the external design attractive?  
• design of the facility to accommodate non-sports events without compromise: at the opening of the new arena in Milwaukee, the then architecture critic ("Fiserv Forum's architecture wonderful inside, flawed outside") and the music critic ("The Killers, Violent Femmes rock first Fiserv Forum show, cover 'Laverne & Shirley' song") for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wrote great articles evaluating the success of the arena in interior design for multiple uses
• sustainability: new facilities are being built with net zero objectives, composting, use of re-usable items in concessions, not using natural gas as an energy source, etc.

Ancillary Development

• a publicly produced and robust master plan which isn't a "bag job" produced by sports team interests, with the aim of sparking additional development, leveraging the stadium/arena as a neighborhood and community anchor;
• ownership split concerning ancillary development around the facility: is it all controlled by the team?  Again, the White Sox Stadium is a good example of failures in this dimension.

The Georgetown Hoyas play their games at Capital One Arena, which is also home to the Washington Wizards basketball and Washington Capitals hockey teams, maximizing facility utilization.

Programming

• frequency of events held by the primary tenant--baseball has 82 home games/year, football about 10 including pre-season, basketball and hockey have 41, soccer about 17--so football stadiums are very rarely used (according to the Chicago Sun-Times article "Emanuel mulling 5,000-seat expansion to Soldier Field," the facility holds about 22 events including annually, 12 non-football events);
• how many teams use the facility, maximizing use and utility of the building--for example, Capital One Arena in DC is used by professional men's basketball, hockey, and one college basketball team for more than 100 sports events each year (until recently it also hosted professional women's basketball and Arena football).  Pittsburgh's Heinz Stadium is home not only to the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, but also the University of Pittsburgh's football team, which is one of seven college football teams to share the stadium of a professional team ("Stadiums Shared by NFL and NCAA Teams").
• are events scheduled in a manner that facilitates attendee patronage of off-site businesses--a business isn't an anchor if it aims to not share its customers; the earlier events are scheduled, the harder it is to patronize retailers and restaurants located off-site, at night during the week, there is limited post-game spending as well, on the weekends it's a different story with more opportunity to patronize off-site establishments--teams manipulate scheduling to reduce spending outside of their on-site and 100% controlled facilities;
• use of the facility for non-game events drawing additional patrons--such as concerts and other types of programming; 
• regular economic impact studies of spending by event patrons should be required (one example is a study that was conducted for Barclays Center in Brooklyn in 2013, as discussed in this blog entry from the Atlantic Yards Report, also see "Barclays Center and its economic impact on Brooklyn," Nathan Weiser blog, "The Barclays Effect," Politico), including more fine grained data on the effect on local business and local businesses (for example, the original study on Barclays found differences in patronage before and after events, and during the week versus weekends).

Photo by Mike Kepika of the San Francisco Chronicle. People leaving the streetcars to see a Giants game at PacBell Park (now Oracle Park).

Broader retail is tough.  Note that except for team-related merchandise, increasingly patrons are less interested in retail consumption outside of food and beverage and other entertainment.  This makes it difficult to support straight up retail as part of professional sports team venue-focused revitalization initiatives.  

In It's Hardly Sportin' the authors describe how the Wrigleyville commercial district was "reproduced" towards food and drink and entertainment in response to the Cubs shifting to night games.

Transportation

• how people travel to events: automobiles vs. transit--if automobiles are the primary way people get to events, then large amounts of parking usually in surface lots needs to be provided, making it difficult to foster ancillary development because of lack of land and poor quality of the visual environment, whereas if transit is the primary mode, then more land around a facility can be developed in ways that leverage the proximity of the arena. 
• locating stadiums and arenas in high-capacity transit locations: e.g., Madison Square Garden, Barclays Center, and Capital One Arena are served by multiple transit lines, whereas most stadiums and arenas are sited in locations that have single line transit service.
• transit capacity: subway transit has much greater capacity than light rail, and depending on the schedule, railroad passenger service.  Buses have less capacity too, but depending on the nature of the event, many can be deployed.  Promising high quality service when transit modes lack the throughput and capacity to deliver (e.g., World Cup soccer in Dallas, Super Bowl at Meadowlands Stadium in New Jersey) creates serious problems.
• transportation demand management requirements as part of the contract/certificate of occupancy/use permit: some teams have TDM plan requirements, in particular the Chicago Cubs, most don't. Some teams provide a great deal of information or support for sustainable mobility, most don't.  Some teams pay for transit services.  At least some of the time (the Washington Wizards and Washington Capitals) sports teams may pay toward service extended beyond normal hours when games go late, most don't (Washington Nationals).  More sports facilities in cities are adding bike valets and/or secure bike parking facilities.

Slide from a study on the Barclays Center arena, Brooklyn, 2013

• Free transit with ticket:  Events at the Talking Stick Arena (Phoenix), Chase Center (San Francisco), Climate Pledge Arena (Seattle), and sports events at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City include certain types of free transit access for ticket holders. University of Utah and the Climate Pledge Arena have the most extensive agreements.  Through funding from teams and landowners, the transit station serving Pittsburgh baseball and football stadiums is included in the light rail transit system's "free fare zone," called the North Shore Connector. While it wasn't put into practice, in 2014 in negotiations for a new arena, the transit authority in Sacramento proposed providing Sacramento Kings ticket holders with "free transit" in return for certain subsidies. 
• transportation demand management plans should set targets for each mode, with a focus on trips by sustainable mobility.  This was an element of the contract with the Barclays Center (Brooklyn Nets).
• transportation demand management plans should require annual surveying on how people get to events to measure the success of shifting trips to sustainable modes: do fans arrive on foot; by bike; car--gas or electric; car pool; taxi/ride hailing; bus; light rail; etc. (This is an element of the contract with the Climate Pledge Arena/Seattle Kraken hockey team.)

Commuting statistics collected by a local business in Portland, Oregon

• secure bike parking facilities should be required for in-city sports facilities.
• special marketing initiatives. Some passenger rail lines provide special game day service for sports events and a wide range of marketing programs (Metrolink, Caltrain, New York MTA).  
• parking taxes to support community improvements: years ago a neighborhood association in the Hill District of Pittsburgh suggested creating a parking tax that would go towards funding local community projects as a mitigation program ("A dollar a car for the Hill," Hill District Consensus Group).   A parking tax should be assessed in any case.  (Similarly, the BART system has an add on fee for airport trips.)

New York City's arenas and to some extent some baseball stadiums, the Capital One Arena in DC, Wrigley Field in Chicago, and Oracle Park in San Francisco are particularly noteworthy examples of sports facilities well connected by transit, where a majority of attendees get to and from the facility on transit.

As mentioned, some sports teams (and other groups) have paid towards transit stations serving their facilities.  Newer agreements include the New England Patriots ("Commuter rail service to Foxboro to start in October," Quincy Patriot-Ledger, and the New York Islanders ("Islanders arena project at Belmont Park now includes new LIRR station," Newsday).

City-wide Benefits 

• community benefits agreements that provide additional benefits to the city overall
• fair lease terms rather than agreements where the team pays little or no rent.  For example, the City of Anaheim has made little net revenue--$50,000/year!--from the Anaheim Angels baseball team ("Stadium maintenance, debt eat into Anaheim's revenue from hosting Angels baseball," Orange County Register) which is why admissions and other taxes can be especially important.
• profit percentage paid to the local/state governments upon the sale of the team, in recognition of the importance of government funding for the facility and/or support infrastructure (like what was intended for the Miami Marlins stadium) as well as the reality that the facility is the platform for the success of the entire enterprise
• entrepreneurship and social enterprise opportunities.  Are there programs to support small business operation of concessions and contracting?  Can workforce development and social enterprises be a part of this mix? For example, the West Nest concessions stand in Mercedes-Benz Stadium is operated as a social enterprise by the Westside Works community organization ("At Mercedes-Benz Stadium, West Nest provides a training ground for Westside Works students and grads," Atlanta Magazine).
• public facilities access and use program, such as how the basketball arena in Bilbao includes a recreation center open to the public, including access to the main court when not in use; while not on-site, the Redskins football team did pay towards a community and recreation center in the area of the stadium
• admissions taxes on tickets: Prince George's County would make almost zero off the Washington Redskins if it weren't for an admissions tax on each ticket; but many teams argue against imposing such taxes or that they should be the beneficiaries, e.g., the Washington Wizards used admissions tax receipts to pay for interior improvements, "Verizon Center Ticket Tax to Rise to 10%," Washington Post, 2007.
• as discussed in the previous section, paying towards transit and transportation facilities is another city-wide benefit.
• conditional use permits as opposed to permanent certificates of occupancy.  Providing stadium/arena use permits for a specific period of time, rather than "forever" gives the locality more leverage.  New York City's treatment of Madison Square Garden is somewhat unique in that the facility is permitted through a special use permit  that isn't granted in perpetuity but has to be regularly updated, renegotiated and approved every ten years ("Remember, City Council, Forever Is a Really Long Time," New York Times). 
• Other tax revenues.  For example, with regard to taxes, as a proto-state, DC keeps the sales, income, and property tax revenue streams associated with real estate development and appreciation and the spending and obligations of residents.  On the other hand, unlike other "states," DC is barred from taxing "day of game" income of professional athletes, a revenue stream enjoyed everywhere else. 

West Nest concession stand at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Atlanta

Neighborhood benefits

• development and maintenance of a community plan, focused on neighborhood revitalization in association with the creation of the sports facility.  One example is the plan created for the Aycock neighborhood of Greensboro, North Carolina.  Other examples include plans associated with the development of minor league baseball stadiums in Memphis and Louisville, Kentucky, although these were more focused on downtown revitalization.
• neighborhood focused community benefits agreements.  The Atlanta Falcons football stadium was developed with such an agreement ("Building a Stadium, Rebuilding a Neighborhood," New York Times, Falcons community impact website) which included job training, employment targets, the creation of social enterprises, etc., although there is criticism of the program.
• creation of an implementation organization to guide neighborhood improvements.
• creation of "community safety partnerships" if necessary ("Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 ")
• parking taxes to support community improvements (discussed above): years ago a neighborhood association in the Hill District of Pittsburgh suggested creating a parking tax that would go towards funding local community projects as a mitigation program ("A dollar a car for the Hill," Hill District Consensus Group)
• admissions taxes: (discussed above).  A portion of admissions taxes could be designated for neighborhood improvement programs if stadiums/arenas are located outside of Downtown.
• public facilities access and use program (repeated from above).  One example is how the basketball arena in Bilbao includes a recreation center open to the public, including access to the main court when not in use; while not on-site, the Redskins football team did pay towards a community and recreation center in the area of the stadium.

Note that there are plenty of examples of the construction of stadiums and arenas at the loss of viable neighborhoods, such as Pittsburgh's Hill District and the creation of the arena for the Penguins hockey team in the late 1950s.  

The arena was demolished a few years ago, and a "restorative revitalization" initiative is underway ("Penguins ‘restorative development’ project aims to repair Pittsburgh’s famed Hill District," The Undefeated, "Not over in the Hill: Neighborhood leaders say the Penguins are coming up short," PublicSource).

I guess the San Francisco Bay region needs a German style "transport association" too

The San Francisco Chronicle reports ("Chiu re-introducing bill to integrate Bay Area transit — and create universal Clipper Card") that State Assemblyman David Chiu wants to pass a bill that requires all the transit agencies in Greater SF to create an integrated map of all the transit services, and require that all transit agencies accept the Clipper card.  From the article: 

The Bay Area Seamless and Resilient Transit Act would establish deadlines for the Bay Area’s 27 different transit operators to create an integrated transit map for the region. 

It would also require the region’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission to create a pilot program for a unified fare pass that would allow commuters to travel across different transit operators while paying a fixed fare. Currently, some Bay Area transit agencies don’t rely on the widely used Clipper Card system, including ACE and Capitol Corridor trains.

The funny thing is that the SF Bay area is a leader in terms of transit service integration, and their transit fare media card, Clipper, is used on most services, even Caltrain, the regional commuter railroad, and they publish a bunch of good maps, and work towards service integration, such as their night transit network -- both are national best practices.

But apparently there are gaps.  And probably the gaps are bigger than Assemblyman Chiu realizes.  I'd recommend the creation of a German style transportation association, they are already a long way towards this, despite the gaps. 

I wrote about this a few years ago, in response to SF area advocates grousing about the Clipper card, and I said they weren't thinking big enough.

-- "Chicken and egg transit planning: Greater San Francisco and the Clipper Card upgrade" 

German transport association as a model of transit service integration.  In "The answer is: Create a single multi-state/regional multi-modal transit planning, management, and operations authority association," focused on DC, and "Branding's not all you need for transit," more generally, I discuss how the German transport association model should be adopted in those US metropolitan areas where multiple agencies are responsible for transit delivery, especially across jurisdictional borders.

--"Verkehrsverbund: The evolution and spread of fully integrated regional public transport in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland," Ralph Buehler, John Pucher & Oliver Dümmler, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation (2018)
-- Transport Alliances - – Promoting Cooperation and Integration to offer a more attractive and efficient Public Transport, VDV, the trade association for German transport associations.   

In the VV or Verkehersverbund model, the master transport association is in charge of planning for all modes, with a focus on creating a fully integrated set of services and fares.  (Transit in Greater London and Paris operates similarly.)  

All the operators are part of the association, and can be a mix of government-owned and for profit operators.  Who does what is hidden from the rider--all they see is that everything is connected and one fare media card is required.  

Note that this can be done collaboratively, without a formal mandate, the way that transit agencies in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina have rebuilt their transit system over the past 10-15 years ("Will buses ever be cool? Boston versus the Raleigh-Durham's GoTransit Model").

And it can be difficult to integrate for profit mobility services that are more self focused, like car sharing firms, or bike share, especially if they compete with mass transit and/or government-provided services, like bike share.

Mobility as a service and transit farecards.  The piece on SF from a few years ago, "Chicken and egg transit planning: Greater San Francisco and the Clipper Card upgrade," focuses on how advocates wanted there to be seamless use of Clipper across mobility services including ride hailing and others.  I argue that while that is ideal, it may not really be necessary, and for profit entities aren't always good partners when it comes to this kind of integration.

It is happening more frequently, and in Berlin, the transit agency BVG actually took the initiative to create such a system, called Jelbi, contracting it out to application developer Trafi, which has developed similar apps for ride hailing firms like Lyft ("BVG Jelbi — world’s most extensive MaaS solution in Berlin").

BVG was successful in getting non-transit vendors to participate in the program.

To me,  it seems as if BVG decided to be the first mover in developing an overarching app figuring it was the best way to keep their place at the transit table, remain the top of mind leader in mobility innovation, and to keep their customers in the face of serious competition from private mobility providers less concerned about the viability of mass transit ("Berlin's new transit app Jelbi connects all modes in one place," Fast Company).

Over time, my sense is that transit media cards will be discontinued in favor of smartphone apps, and integration will either be easier or less of an issue.

Advocates to Feds: We Need a New Traffic-Control Manual | My response: Create "the" Manual of Uniform Urban Mobility Control Devices

Streetsblog reports that advocates aren't happy with the new edition of the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, the comprehensive manual for road design because it has remained true to its roots of being focused on motor vehicle traffic, and less focused on sustainable modes like walking, biking and transit, and it fails to differentiate adequately between cities, suburbs, and rural areas in terms of appropriate recommendations.

From the article: 

“The whole document is really oriented toward improving motor-vehicle access and improving motor-vehicle speeds, and not toward the safety and mobility of all road users,” said Jenna Fortunati, a spokesperson for Transportation for America. “Given that it’s written through that lens, it’s kind of hard to make meaningful revisions, especially if you really want to put equity, safety and climate right at the center of these guidelines…We want the changes to be a little more holistic.”

I agree this is a problem.  But not so much for the major cities, who through the organization National Association of City Transportation Officials, have been providing such guidance through manuals available online and/or published by Island Press.  

And they've been getting approvals for more urban appropriate approaches for the last 15 years, pretty consistently.

Interestingly, NACTO was created as a response to the existence of AASHTO, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, who were seen to be more suburban and rural oriented, and less interested in or focused on the needs of cities.

And so many cities and transit agencies have produced superb design guidelines, manuals and plans on pedestrian and bicycle design, urban design, transit facilities, etc.  

Why not create the MUUMCD?: The Manual of Uniform Urban Mobility Control Devices.  The guidance is out there.  It just needs to be compiled. And sometimes you just have to do it yourself, because it's too difficult to get traditional organizations to change without seeing a finished example of what you're trying to do.

I don't see why Transportation For America/Smart Growth America, working with groups like NACTO, Transportation Alternatives (NYC), Feet First (Seattle), and other best practice organizations don't just try to get a grant to create a Manual of Uniform Urban Mobility Control Devices (MUUMCD), as proof of concept.

The issue isn't so much with the cities that understand this, like NYC, SF, Seattle, etc., but the places that rely on MUTCD for guidance, in communities that aren't particularly visionary when it comes to planning beyond the automobile.

Why "Mobility" instead of "Traffic" Control Devices.  It's about mobility, not just traffic, and by using the word mobility instead of traffic you can include "devices" beyond traffic control, but are still very important to mobility networks.  For example, electric charging facilities, bicycle parking ("Another mention of the idea of creating a network of metropolitan scale secure bicycle parking facilities"), and bike air pumps and repair stands, transportation demand management initiatives, mobility hubs, etc.

There is plenty of best practice out there already.  One manual that has significantly shaped my thinking is the Smart Transportation Guidebook.  While it too needs to be updated, it provides a good framework for thinking about how you create and design the mobility network according to land use context and whether or not arterials are regionally or local serving, with a focus on serving all modes, rather than planning for the motor vehicle and bolting on accommodations for other modes afterwards.

Using that kind of framework, everything just kind of flows outward, hierarchically, and is internally consistent. 

For example, this recommended guidance for bicycle facilities is something I produced for the bike and pedestrian plan I did in Baltimore County. It's 10 years old, needs an update, but it shows how guidance flows depending on road type and traffic volume.  

Similarly, I brought up the Cuyahoga Greenways Plan in an e-conversation I had yesterday, so I re-skimmed it, and it has a great set of cross-section diagrams for different types of facilities, which are recommended depended on land use context and other conditions. 

WRT what is appropriate for cities and what isn't, one is speed limits.  The standards approved by states are usually too high for cities, which makes operating speed on residential streets 30-35mph as the default.  

Speed limits in DC were 25mph, but now are 20mph on residential streets.  The "20 is plenty" movement started in Europe, although on the continent it's 30/50 in kph.  Montreal initiated a 30/50 kph program more than 10 years ago ("Bicycling as traffic calming").

Or roundabouts.  I always complain when people suggest roundabouts as a center city street design treatment. I make the point that roundabouts are about facilitating movement of motor vehicle traffic, and conflict with the goal of promoting sustainable mobility -- biking and walking. 

 (Although some treatments on bicycle boulevards use circles and diverters that are similar, but they work because they aren't on main arterials and collectors.)

A roundabout in Carmel, Indiana

Instead of duplication how about integration?  The thing is that sometimes I complain that every jurisdiction wants to create their own plans and manuals, and so there is incredible duplication of work.

This is an area where metropolitan transportation planning organizations could step up, or the states, and create master documents covering multiple jurisdictions.  In fact, that's the root of the Smart Transportation Guidebook, which was created by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.  Based in Philadelphia, DVRPC serves both New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and the Guidebook was supposed to become overarching guidance for both states.

For example street design guides for NYC, Seattle, San Francisco, and Minneapolis are best practice.  Bike and pedestrian planning guidance for Utah, and the Utah Transit Administration's guide for transit station access.  SEPTA's guide for trolley stations, From Here to There: Creative Guide for Making Public Transport the Way to Go from EMBARQ.  The NACTO guides.  WMATA's typology of transit stations in terms of providing bike and pedestrian access.  

So many books, The Pedestrian and Bicycle Planning Design Guide by Velo Quebec, Dutch bicycling best practice books, and plans from all over the world, such as the German national bicycle plan, which calls for a "bicycle traffic system."

From the German Federal Bicycle Plan, 2002-2012

When I was writing a series of articles on culture-based revitalization in EU cities, I came across an out of print set of best practice guides for transit for small to medium sized cities.  At the time, I couldn't find most of them, but now they seem to be online in various places.

-- HiTrans Best Practice Guide 1: Public Transport & Land Use Planning
-- HiTrans Best Practice Guide 2: Public Transport - Planning the Networks
-- HiTrans Best Practice Guide 3: Public Transport & Urban Design
-- HiTrans Best Practice Guide 4: Mode Options & Technical Solutions
-- HiTrans Best Practice Guide 5: Public Transport - Citizens' Requirements

When I was complaining about how the DC master transportation planning process was organized, I suggested that people needed to be introduced to best practice as part of the process, and this was "a brief" list that I compiled.  There is so much out there.  

• San Francisco multiple modes (bus, streetcar/lightrail, heritage streetcar, cable car, heavy rail/BART, Caltrain, Amtrak) + SF is smaller than DC physically with a population more at what DC's shooting for 800,000+, in fact it's probably the best example [Zurich and Melbourne would be equivalents, maybe London]
• Philly and Montreal in terms of how railroad passenger services are more like London and Paris in how railroad and heavy rail service can be complementary, how railroad service in Philadelphia especially serves neighborhoods
• Montreal and biking (extensive network of cycletracks)
• best practice walk promotion organizations like Feet First, WalkBoston, WalkDenver, and Starkville in Motion (Mississippi)
• Washington state's walk/bike to school, Boulder's walk/bike to school, Minneapolis Safe Routes to School citywide plan
• various citywide/regional bikeways plans (+ the Dutch and Danish "cycle superhighways")
• streetcar examples -- heritage (Tampa) + modern (Portland)
• fareless squares (mostly going by the wayside because of funding, but still extant in Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, and Calgary) 
• intra neighborhood bus services (Tempe Orbit)/RideOn as a model to think of providing service within certain spread out areas (Ward 3, Ward 8, Ward 7)
• how the Steelers and a casino are paying for operations for the light rail extension to Northside Pittsburgh so that people can ride it for free
• how other transit systems do marketing (including ties in for sports events--Metrolink, MTA)
• the Center for Neighborhood Technology stuff about the link between Transportation costs and mortgage costs
• double deck buses
• best practice bike facilities (air, counters, high capacity parking, protected parking)
• best practice visitor transportation (Savannah, etc.)
• best practice transportation information provision (Arlington, Seattle, Portland)
• nite owl transit services
• dedicated busways/does any city at its core have a dedicated set of transitways
• Paris addition of light rail (circle line)
• SF Transit First policy
• the equity concepts from Toronto's "Transit City" plan
•  parking wayfinding systems (San Jose, Charlotte, etc.)
• a wee bit of Intelligent Transportation Systems
• WMATA's study of trip capture from development proximate to transit
• Hoboken's (yes, they do a better job than DC) use of car sharing and other methods to reduce demand for car ownership and demand for residential street parking
• concept of bike friendly business districts
• best practice TDM (Whatcom County, Washington)
• shared delivery services (so people don't feel obligated to drive to shop, so that they can take home their purchases)
• transportation information centers including Arlington's Commuter Store
• DC merchants' old "park and shop" program of validated parking
• municipal parking systems
• how much MoCo charges for a monthly parking permit in their garages
• Reno Retrac as a model for reconstructing the surface of the under-roadway tunnels (like North Capitol or around Dupont Circle, "Tunnelized road projects for DC")
• King County, Washington transit service metrics
• Vancouver Translink bicycle facilities planning documents
• time shifting freight deliveries (e.g., how much congestion would be avoided if CVS would shift most of ts deliveries to the overnight hours)
• reconstruction of Thomas Circle/Logan Circle
• SF's parklet program/Livable Streets program
• NYC 20mph neighborhood zone program/Montreal's 30kph-40kph-50kph program/Chevy Chase also has 20mph on residential streets
• Alexandria's HOV2 on Washington Street/Rte. 1 during rush hours
• etc.

Eight years later, there's even more in the mix.  

Healthy Streets Initiative, London

• My "Sustainable Mobility Platform" concept
• My "Signature Streets" Concept
• Transit as a Design Product
• The concepts I laid out for creating a plan for "complementary transit network improvement programs" when building new transit infrastructure, as laid out conceptually in the context of the Maryland Suburban Purple Line light rail program
• and some of the inspirations like the Syracuse Connective Corridor, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, and the Transport for London Healthy Streets Initiative
• pedestrian districts  
• German Transport Associations as a model for integrating the transit network across jurisdictions
• Vision Zero/Towards Zero Deaths initiatives.
• accommodating electric vehicles including bicycles
• congestion zones/low emissions zones
• cities/countries banning gasoline/diesel powered vehicles
• Luxembourg's free transit initiative
• Automated vehicle accommodations.
• Ride hailing
• The explosion of package delivery.
• Road materials as a way to manage vehicle speeds.
• etc.

Note about developing an actual Manual of Uniform Urban Mobility Control Devices.  Consensus versus optimality.  One of the problems with creating documents like the MUTCD is they are developed by committees, with consensus.  It's not that consensus is bad, it's just in the case of transportation manuals and reports, consensus can produce documents that are somewhat "dumbed down" towards the "lowest common denominator" rather than optimal best practice.

That's why I say, "develop our own manual for cities," at least as a draft proof of concept, because then it can start from a more hard core position, than if it were dumbed down by representatives from suburban and exurban places.

It will be a humungous book, set it up as chapters. Also, it probably needs to be set up as multiple stand-alone "chapters" by mode, not unlike how some of the reports are produced within the Transit Cooperative Research Program of the National Academy of Sciences.

Segmentation analysis, willingness to bicycle/cycle | Cuyahoga Greenways Plan

This is from page 10 of the Cuyahoga Greenways Plan.  The concept of bicycle safety/level of stress as produced by infrastructure is based on research by Roger Geller of the Portland Department of Transportation.  Geller found that 12% of people are willing to cycle for transportation without much in the way of special accommodations, and 51% are willing to ride if there is safe, separated cycling infrastructure provided, while 37% are pretty much unwilling to cycle for transportation (also see "Portland's Bicycle Brilliance," The Tyee).

The Cuyahoga Greenways Plan came up in a discussion today, so I did a quick re-skim of it.  I'd mentioned it before because some of the planning presentations included slides on how improving trail access improved access to job centers and other civic assets.

The goals are quite good:

• Developing transportation projects that • Provide more travel options. The Cuyahoga Greenways Plan proposes new non-motorized facilities and actionable projects.
• Promoting reinvestment in underutilized or vacant/abandoned properties. The Cuyahoga Greenways Plan identifies locations where underutilized lands could accommodate greenways and urban trails.
• Supporting economic development. The Cuyahoga Greenways Plan creates additional linkages between residents, jobs centers, and commercial districts.
• Ensuring that the benefits of growth and change are available to all members of a community. The Cuyahoga Greenways Plan utilizes equity factors as a core part of the decision-making process and connects to all municipalities in the county.
• Enhancing regional cohesion. The Cuyahoga Greenways Plan provides a framework for municipalities to coordinate and collaborate on greenway implementation.
• Providing people with safe and reliable transportation choices. The Cuyahoga Greenways Plan adopts an all ages and all abilities approach to non-motorized facility planning.

Besides the focus on the way improving a trail system improves access to parks, civic assets, and job centers, it has some other good stuff.  It prioritizes focusing on prioritizing infrastructure projects that address "critical gaps," "regional connections," and "key supporting routes" within the development of a complete bikeways network.

It has nice schematics, cross-sections, for the different types of facilities, with cost estimates per mile for each type.

Unlike a number of plans, it discusses branding, security (it could be better on this element--trails need better identification systems to work with emergency calling systems, I recommend treating them as "roads" in the system, with mile markers as geographical identification points), maintenance, and wayfinding in interesting ways.

Omissions.  It doesn't mention facilities augmentation--pumps, stands, my idea for a regional secure bike parking system ("Another mention of the idea of creating a network of metropolitan scale secure bicycle parking facilities"), maps, brochures, and other information products, treating transit stations as trailheads, the creation of bicycle or stustainable mobility hubs, including at train stations and airports ("Why not a bicycle hub at National Airport?, focused on capturing worker trips but open to all"), nor systems for increasing cycling take up ("Revisiting assistance programs to get people biking: 18 programs").

I skimmed it quickly, I don't recall seeing a mention of bicycle sharing as a way to add bicycling as an amenity to parks.  Cleveland's Metropark System is a good one.

So the plan's not perfect.  But it still has a lot to offer.

And the Cleveland region already has an annual cycling planning conference, which allows for frequent consideration of how well the plan is working or not, and how it can be improved.

Also see "Bike to Work Day as an opportunity to assess the state of bicycle planning: Part 1, leveraging Bike Month" for elements that should be addressed in bike plans but too frequently are omitted.

A comment on the gun deaths in Boulder, Colorado

10 Dead yesterday, in a shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.

A man held a sign for the victims of the mass shooting on Tuesday.

Credit:  Eliza Earle for The New York Times

Ironically, just last week, courts struck down an attempt by the City of Boulder to limit access to automatic guns ("A judge recently blocked Boulder from enforcing its assault-weapon ban," New York Times).  From the article:

Judge Andrew Hartman ruled that under a state law passed in 2003, cities and counties are barred from adopting restrictions on firearms that are otherwise legal under state and federal law, The Denver Post reported. Gun advocates made that argument when they sued to overturn the Boulder bans shortly after they were adopted. 

The judge rejected the city’s arguments that the home-rule provisions of the state constitution gave it the power to adopt the bans as a matter of local concern, and that they were necessary because the state did not regulate such weapons. As of last week, lawyers for the city had not said whether they planned to appeal. 

Given the number of mass shootings in Colorado, you'd think they could have had a reaction more like Australia's ("How Australia All But Ended Gun Violence," Fortune) or New Zealand's ("New Zealand tightens gun laws further in response to mass shooting," Reuters), where after mass shootings, the countries imposed strict limits on guns. Instead, in the US the reaction is to do nothing.

There is a serious disconnect between governments ensuring "public safety" and how modern interpretations of the Second Amendment have allowed for the wanton ownership of guns, especially high powered guns like assault weapons, which have no real public benefit or purpose outside of waging war.

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Interestingly, while federalism is often touted as supporting innovation by the states, so called "Laboratories of Democracy," with conservative groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council, Club for Growth, other lobbying organizations creating platforms to disseminate and pass conservative legislation ("You elected them to write new laws. They’re letting corporations do it instead," USA Today), and state attorney generals seeing an opportunity to sue the federal government to support political ideology instead of policy ("Republican AGs take blowtorch to Biden agenda," POLITICO), it's difficult for there to be a lot of, let alone any, innovation at the state scale. 

Revisiting community benefits agreements: Part Two | Professor Peter Dreier

Peter Dreier is the Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and Founding Chair (1996-2019), Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College.  In the CBA discussion thread on the pro-urb list, he wrote a couple posts full of resources, . This is reprinted with permission.

From Peter Dreier:

Community benefits agreements and real estate development projects.  I am on the board of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), which pioneered the first Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) in the 1990s. The idea has now spread across the country. 

LAANE is a member of the Partnership for Working Families, a national federation of local coalition groups that bring together labor, community organizing, environmental, and civil rights groups. PWF published this great report, “Unmasking the Hidden Power of Cities,” that identifies various progressive policies that citizen groups can use to leverage local government to bring about more economic, racial, and environmental justice, including CBAs. 

-- Community Benefits Agreements: Making Development Projects Accountable, Partnership for Working Families
-- "Do Community Benefits Agreements Benefit Communities?," Boston Federal Reserve Bank

Some CBAs require that the commercial tenants in developments pay living wages to employees. Some CBAs require developers to provide affordable housing as part of their projects – either within their otherwise market-rate projects (i.e. inclusionary) or to provide funds for the city and nonprofits to build affordable housing off-site. Almost all CBAs require developers to use Project Labor Agreements to guarantee union-level wages to the building trades workers on the project.

Community Reinvestment Act and banks.  CBAs are a close cousin the Community Reinvestment Agreements, which local community organizing and civil rights groups use to get banks to deal with their own redlining and predatory lending practices. 

These groups used the Community Reinvestment Act to pressure banks to sign these agreements, which got banks to agree to open up new full-service branches in communities of color, make more loans for affordable housing projects sponsored by nonprofit groups, hire more people of color in decision-making positions in the banks, etc. There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Community Reinvestment Agreements between community groups and banks since the 1980s. 

 I wrote an article about this back in 1991, "Redlining Cities." Alex Schwartz wrote a report about them for Fannie Mae in 1998, "From Confrontation to Collaboration? Banks, Community Groups, and the Implementation of Community Reinvestment Agreements." The Harvard Joint Center did its own report in 2002, THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT ACT: ACCESS TO CAPITAL IN AN EVOLVING FINANCIAL SERVICES SYSTEM.

Local governments as parties to Community Benefits Agreements.  The difference between Community Reinvestment Agreements and Community Benefit Agreements is that in most CBAs the local government is a party to the agreement, because it is the local government’s leverage over zoning, tax abatements, and permits that make these CBAs possible. 

CBAs are possible and effective when local community/union/enviro groups have enough clout in City Hall to get the local government agencies to require developers to agree to these CBAs as a quid pro quo for getting their projects approved. 

Leverage with Banks.  Community Reinvestment Agreements are made possible by the Community Reinvestment Act, but they only work when banks think that activist/advocacy groups have enough clout that federal bank regulators might reject their applications to buy other banks or expand to new areas if they don’t sign an agreement with these advocacy groups.

[Separately, this is how Cleveland was able to get local banks to provide funds for property rehabilitation loans in the city, when otherwise property owners wouldn't qualify for loans. These are called "depository agreements."  Some cities create community benefits requirements in return for earning city business.]

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WRT Community Reinvestment Act reporting, one of my ideas is that banks should be required to publish CRA data by bank branch, presented as a type of infographic, putting out into the community the information on their compliance in an accessible way.  Right now they produce text-based reports that can be incredibly difficult to digest.

Something like this, but with data organized in terms of the "retail trade area" served by the branch, along with city and/or county data, on projects that transcend individual branches.

Revisiting community benefits agreements: Part One

There is a spirited discussion about Community Benefits Agreements on the pro-urb listserv. Usually the legal trigger for CBAs is a granting of zoning relief, density bonuses, or the provision of some sort of government resource (land, infrastructure investment, etc.), which creates, possibly, an extranormal economic return, thereby justifying some percentage capture of this to go back to the community in terms of some sort of improvement. 

-- "(Over)Focusing on community benefits agreements does not substitute for economic revitalization planning: Atlanta; Chicago," 2017
-- "Community Benefits Agreements (revised)," 2008
-- "Community Benefits Agreements revised again," 2008
-- "Not understanding what triggers a community benefits process," 2010

Basically my points are that you need robust plans and processes in advance of the opportunity for a CBA, that having consensus priorities for a neighborhood set allows you to direct proffers to evident needs and preferences as opposed to an idiosyncratic list, that going through the Councilmember's office to do this is usually a process designed to favor the developer, etc. 

And that there should be a unified process for negotiation--there are separate processes for tax abatements and zoning-related proffers, for presenting those agreements in a publicly accessible database, and a process for ensuring the agreements are met.  In DC, none of those conditions are present  ("Major Adams Morgan Hotel Project Resurrects Concerns About Developer Tax Incentives," Washington City Paper).

In past blog entries, I've argued that the process of negotiating community benefits needs to be tightened up.

1. Create a public planning and budgeting process for capital improvements, sale of civic assets, and alley closings; 

2. Create a public and transparent process for tax abatement and eminent domain requests (see "Make eminent domain fair for all" from the Boston Globe; the recommendations pertain to both issues);

Image from the Clarendon Sector Plan (2006).

One of the best systems I know is Arlington County, Virginia. They aren't CBAs but required proffers. In the late 1960s, as an inner ring suburb, the county was declining in the face of development further out in the suburbs. 

That's why they seized on the opportunity of the Metrorail system, and convinced the planners to shift the routing from the middle of I-66 to the Rosslyn-Wilson Boulevard corridor, bringing 5 stations to the northern core of the county. 

Along the corridor, they didn't change the zoning per se, which was mostly low density commercial and residential. 

They created a Planned Unit Development process, allowing for much more intense density, just for a couple blocks on either side of the corridor, but to get the density, you had to go through an intense review and approval process, triggering proffer requirements. Compared to other jurisdictions in the DC area, they get a lot more "community improvements and public goods" in return. 

OTOH, I argue that every so often Arlington should study the process and the projects and determine structural improvements, getting more in return, etc. They say that if they did this, it would reduce the "predictability" that developers want. And, given the extension of Metrorail to Fairfax and now Loudoun Counties, their commercial real estate market has been devastated by the creation of cheaper real estate further out, but still with Metrorail access, so they are loath to change their system very much. 

CBAs as an element of community kinship systems.  The thing is, and I never really took anthropology in college, that the demand for CBA or "good neighbor" agreements is a kind of element of what we might think of as a more anthropological approach to community as "community kinship systems."  Resident demands for CBAs are what they think of as the cost for outsiders of buying in to become a bona fide member of the community. 

I wrote a piece about this in 2012. At the time I thought it was great. Now I'd say it needs an update and should be split into two different pieces. One on kinship, one on retail in low income places.

-- "In lower income neighborhoods, are businesses supposed to be "community organizations" first?"

This piece, published the year before, makes some similar points.

-- "Whole Foods and community change: Prince George's County vs. Boston"

Active initiative in Edina, Minnesota to preserve affordable single family houses | But why not build triple deckers?

KARE-TV reports ("Edina launches pilot program to save affordable homes from teardown") that Edina, a high demand suburb of Minneapolis, has instituted a program aimed at reducing teardowns, which replace smaller, older, more affordable houses, with what some call "McMansions," which are much larger, more expensive houses, often ersatz when compared to the size and architectural style of houses when the neighborhood was first built.

According to this article, Edina and a neighborhood in Minneapolis are the two hottest markets for teardowns in Greater Minneapolis (in the past in the DC area, Arlington and Chevy Chase in Montgomery County have been particularly hot markets for teardowns).

From the KARE-TV article:

Citywide since 2008, nearly 1,000 Edina homes have been demolished – roughly eight percent of the city’s single-family homes. The average value of Edina's teardowns: $421,420 The average value of the homes built in their place: $1,165,786. That’s an increase of increase of 177%. “It's something just so out of whack,” Ruth says.

There is an opportunity cost involved in two ways, either positive or negative, depending on your perspective.  First, teardowns up-price the housing in a community, reducing affordability.  On the other hand, when a local government is reliant on property tax for the bulk of its operating revenue, this process increases the property tax revenue stream.

In either case, teardowns are a form of "reproduction of space" that leads to significant community changes.

-- Edina Neighbors for Affordable Housing

Edina launched as a pilot a "Housing Preservation Program" focused not on historic preservation per se, but on the preservation of housing affordability (that's what "housing preservation" means in the public and social housing field too, not historic preservation).

Working with the West Hennepin Affordable Housing Land Trust, Edina will use funds generated from developer proffers and community development block grants to buy the houses.

From the article:

The city mailed more than 1,000 post cards asking the question, “Do you want to sell your home but not for a teardown?” The city ... make[s] funds available to buy a limited number of houses for their appraised values to assure those homes remain intact and with families needing more affordable options. “This is not a moratorium at all on teardowns,” Stephanie Hawkinson, Edina’s affordable housing development manager, says. “We are not mandating that anyone sells their home to us. We're just providing them with a choice.”

It will be interesting to see how this works, how much funding they have, and whether or not sellers are willing to sell to the city initiative, instead of extracting a somewhat higher price from the for profit real estate development market. 

Multiple units as an another alternative?  One of the forces "generating" teardowns is large lot size.  The lots appear to be large and can accommodate multiple families just as easily as a large house. Another way to increase housing access would be to allow "multiple unit" housing types on these lots.

I would say duplexes are "too small" given the rise in demand for housing given the constant increase in population.  So build triplexes and larger units ("Massachusetts Triple Deckers as "Missing Middle Housing" -- triplexes").

Minneapolis has changed its "single family zoning" so that duplexes and triplexes are "matter of right" as well ("How Minneapolis Freed Itself From the Stranglehold of Single-Family Homes," POLITICO).  

My criticism is that relying on individual property owners to take the initiative means that it will take decades to see much effect ("A short point about why eliminating single family zoning won't result in a rise in "affordable housing" (any time soon)").

This Boston double triple decker, now four separate units, rather than six, is for sale for $1.4 million.

By contrast, creating an active housing conversion/building program comparable to the Edina program would be a way to generate a greater number of units more quickly.

Although in the short run, it won't yield housing that is newly affordable without subsidy, because it is built at current costs for land, labor, and materials. 

Retail electricity deregulation mostly benefits companies at the expense of consumers

 Just before the recent weather related debacle in Texas ("Talk and lying versus doing: The electricity crisis in Texas is produced by state regulatory failure" and "Cold wave: the Texas power debacle disproportionately impacts the less well off"), I was surprised to read a story about how many low income households in Baltimore were paying extremely high electricity rates as a result of deregulation ("Why the Poor in Baltimore Face Such Crushing ‘Energy Burdens’," Inside Climate News), which I meant to write about.

From the article:

Nationwide, low-income individuals like Jenkins—defined as those making less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $25,760 per year before taxes in 2021—can put anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of their earnings toward energy costs and sometimes far more, according to a recent report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. 

This exceedingly common, but often overlooked, reality can perpetuate cycles of poverty and lead to personal or familial ruin. 

By contrast the average household spends just 3.1 percent of its income on energy, although that ratio ranges widely depending on geographic location and the type of fuel used, the ACEEE study found. Researchers typically consider anything over 6 percent to be an unaffordable energy burden regardless of income. The report also found that energy burdens in Baltimore can be especially heavy, as 25 percent of low-income residents there spent more than 21.7 percent of their 2017 income on energy.

Apparently, through various deceptive marketing programs, and sometimes short term inducements, people end up switching to higher priced providers ("Maryland Thought Deregulating Utilities Would Lower Rates. It’s Cost the State’s Residents Hundreds of Millions of Dollars.," Inside Climate News)

In our household, I'm the person who deals with energy choice, and I was proud of the great rate we got in DC, 7.5 cents/kwH (from a BG&E subsidiary, which happens to be owned by the same company), which is a couple cents cheaper than the standard rate.

I never understood how people could be deceived, so long as they knew the base rate from the utility distributer, in DC's case that is PEPCo, and it usually ran from 8.9 cents to 9.4 cents.  

Now it's even lower, less than 7 cents/kwH, with a slight upcharge during the winter months, according to the comparison information compiled by the DC Public Service Commission, the utility regulator.

Many resellers offer a short term lower rate, but don't commit to the lower rate for the entire contract period.  Therefore, don't pick them.

The reality as a recent WSJ article disclosed ("Deregulation Aimed to Lower Home-Power Bills. For Many, It Didn’t"), is that most consumers pay more for electricity (and natural gas) as a result of deregulation, rather than save money.  We shouldn't be surprised.  Deregulation is mostly for the benefit of business, not consumers.

And like in Baltimore, low information consumers, often minorities, bore the brunt of the higher costs.  From the article:

From 2010 to 2019, retail electricity providers in 13 states and the District of Columbia charged $19.2 billion more than what regulated utilities would have.

A quick review of the DC PSC information finds only one or two companies from more than one dozen that offer rates comparable to PEPCO's base rate.  Although some offer a greater percentage of renewable energy sources, at a higher cost, and some people may be willing to pay a higher rate, because of their concerns about climate change.

There is an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun by former Governor Parris Glendening, saying utility deregulation had been a mistake ("Energy deregulation was a mistake in Maryland").

WRT Texas, interestingly, a Dallas Morning News consumer columnist, Dave Lieber, writing "The Watchdog" feature, had pointed out the serious problems with the way that Texas' electricity market was set up and managed for years, to no avail.

-- "No surprise Texas’ electricity system is a national laughingstock. Only customers cared, until now"

When I first came to DC in the late 1980s, and worked for a consumer group, back then many newspapers had reporters assigned to a "consumer beat," and they covered issues like these regularly.  Now very few newspapers provide this kind of oversight on a regular basis.

Although as Dave Lieber proved, even with attention, many businesses fail to change their practices.

Another example, Warren Buffett's predatory finance operation for mobile homes ("The Mobile-Home Trap," Seattle Times).