State of Utah Long Term Risks report

I was struck by the book The Fifth Risk, in its discussion about the Energy Department during the Obama Administration, and their emphasis on identifying and managing risk.  From the ReadyRoom blog entry "Risk Management Book Club #2: The Fifth Risk":

The book's title comes from MacWilliams's assessment of the risks faced by the country at the time of this transition: nuclear accidents; nuclear attacks from North Korea and Iran; an attack on the electrical grid; and project management, "the fifth risk." MacWilliams, a professional risk manager, believed the seamless transition of responsibility at DOE was key to its ability to protect the country.

In a post, I argue that a city's elected officials and stakeholders should see themselves as risk managers ("Town-city management: "We are all asset managers now"," "Learning the wrong lessons from risk management: GFC, Boeing (+ deregulation)"), and how like with large settlements because of police department misconduct, that's an indicator of a failure to manage risk ("Killing people is seen as a routine outcome, not as an indicator of the need for change: Orange County Sheriff's Department versus Fullerton Police Department," "Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?").

So the fact that the State of Utah Legislature's Auditor General has produced a report on the long term risks faced by the state, High-Risk List" Identifying and Mitigating Critical Vulnerabilities in Utah – 2025, is quite interesting. (The report is modeled after one produced by the Government Accountability Office at the start of each new Congress.) The top ten risks are:

1. Meeting Utah's water needs 
2. Aging water infrastructure 
3. Education pathways to in-demand professions
4. Insufficient behavioral health capacity 
5. Planning effective transportation 
6. Public workforce shortages 
7. Improving housing affordability 
8. Utah's energy policy 
9. Threats to cybersecurity and data privacy 
10. Federal revenue diversification

In fall 2022, the Great Salt Lake hit its lowest water level since record keeping began. The lake’s elevation sank to nearly six meters below the long-term average. Photo: C. Yamane

I'm surprised the possible dissipation of the Great Salt Lake is not listed separately ("‘Last nail in the coffin’: Utah’s Great Salt Lake on verge of collapse," Guardian, "The Great Salt Lake Is Drying. Can Utah Save It?," New York Times, "The Great Salt Lake is shrinking. What can we do to stop it?," Science News).

Nor the impact of Climate Change and the Environment--a state that emphasizes outdoor tourism in particular skiing ought to be thinking about the long term effects of less snowfall, especially with the possibility of Utah being the permanent site of the Winter Olympics ("What will it take to save the Great Salt Lake by the 2034 Winter Olympics? It depends on whom you ask.," Salt Lake Tribune). 

And air quality, especially in the winter--I'm amazed that the EPA gives the Salt Lake Valley a pass on this ("Booming Utah’s Weak Link: Surging Air Pollution," "‘We Can’t Let the Kids Go Outdoors’: Our New Reality on the West Coast," NYT).  

I hope "agricultural priorities" is an element of water needs. Air quality ("Booming Utah’s Weak Link: Surging Air Pollution," "‘We Can’t Let the Kids Go Outdoors’: Our New Reality on the West Coast," NYT)  The face is 80% of water use is for agriculture, and half that goes to alfalfa production which is mostly shipped overseas for cattle feeding.  So China basically is getting Utah's water for cheap.  From the NYT:

While climate change has contributed to extensive water shortages in the Southwest, the Great Salt Lake’s decline is mostly human-caused. Agriculture uses 71 percent of the water that would otherwise flow to the lake, and cities use around 17 percent, according to research compiled by the Great Salt Lake Strike Team, a group of climate scientists, policy analysts and state regulators.

Climate change also poses risks to households ("Climate change makes "ordinary living" a lot more risky," "Planning for heat/climate change | Public health," and "Climate change is already here in many US communities | "Heat Officers" versus Climate Change Officers"). Also see "The New American Inequality: The Cooled vs. the Cooked, and "Homeless and Burning in Phoenix, America's Hottest City," New York Times.

I don't see how Utah's energy policy is deserving of a call out and the more general issue of Climate Change and the Environment is not.

Chevron refinery at night.

Utah as a petro state.  I haven't fully read the report, but for a few years I've argued that Utah is a petro state, that the concept of nations as petro states ("The Petro States of America," Bloomberg) can be thought of sub-nationally.  

There are five refineries in Salt Lake and North Salt Lake, refining oil from Utah and Wyoming. Much of it is sold to markets outside the state.  And the state is getting approval for a railroad on federal lands to ship out crude oil for refining overseas.

Except for California, policy in petro states in the US and Canada favors fossil fuels, although Utah is gambling on nuclear energy ("Utah unveils plans to bring nuclear hub to Brigham City," Salt Lake Tribune).  

Another element of a petro state is its place within the automobile economy.  Utah doesn't have any auto manufacturing plants, but two of the ten largest car dealership groups are based in the state, adding their voice too fossil fuel supremacy.  

And road building, more than transit extension, is the top priority of the Utah Department of Transportation.  

The State Legislature even goes to the extent of trying to prevent "traffic calming" initiatives in Salt Lake City ("Bill giving UDOT veto power over some SLC street projects moves to governor’s desk," Salt Lake Tribune).

Technically, Utah is more of an extractive resources economy.  25% of the state budget comes from taxes on copper mining--but the state is second to Minnesota for copper production.  The oil thing is just a chaser.  Coal is an element that's up there too ("Mining is big business in Utah — to the tune of billions of dollars per year," Salt Lake Deseret News).

No takers.  An EV charging station in Moab, Utah.

Yet from the air quality and Olympics angle, were I state leaders, I'd push for the concept of EV only sales of automobiles by 2035 ("US Senate votes to block California 2035 electric vehicle rules," Reuters), the year after the Olympics, as a way to shift away from fossil fuels and to improve air quality and limit the impact of higher temperatures brought on by climate change.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) New home construction in Saratoga Springs on Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020.

I'd say sprawl/urban development form--the Salt Lake Valley is the epitome of the sprawl, despite all you read about Utah being ahead of the pack in environmental planning ("The Utah Model: Lessons for Regional Planning," Brookings)--is also a risk in terms of water use, energy use, air quality, climate change and the environment, etc. ("More suburban sprawl won’t fix Utah’s housing affordability problem," "Utah launches all-out push to build thousands of new ‘starter homes’ that you might be able to afford," "Many Utahns ‘stuck’ with hourlong commutes amid housing crisis," Salt Lake Tribune).

I'd also add the risks of continual tax reduction and political homogeneity.  The state prides itself on growth--expecting to add 2 million more residents by 2065.  The legislators constantly cut taxes, saying "we need to share the benefits of growth" when the fact is, growing places need to spend more on creating new infrastructure and replacing aging infrastructure*, not less.  A city and county risk is frequent interference and law preemption by the State Legislature.

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Flickr photo by Steven Vance.  It's a nice park....

* One example is the park I'm on the board of--one building in dire need of replacement is 61 years old.

We have tens of millions of dollars in unfunded capital improvement projects.  One source of funds we'd normally rely on, won't happen until 2029, because it needs to go on next year's ballot, and after a ballot failure last year, the County Mayor is postponing it to the next cycle.

Budget cutbacks mean a bunch of projects we intended to start in 2027 won't be funded, as the County looks to increase property tax by 20%--the first property tax increase in 6 years--and of course, people are up in arms ("Salt Lake County mayor proposes nearly 20% property tax increase," KUTV).  And our park is but one site in an array of hundreds that have serious capital needs.

GGW suggestion on making 90 bus line primary on its streets: bus on top, tunnel below?

While I haven't written for awhile, I have been thinking about things at a bigger scale, which will come out in some of the next entries.

As I get older, I become a little less doctrinaire, and given that in the US 92% of all trips are by car, I've resigned myself to having to accommodate them.  This is less the case in DC than SLC--which is the epitome of sprawl--but it's still an issue in DC.

Even though in DC on the major routes, bus riders make up a significant amount of the total people "throughput" on the street--e.g. on H Street NE, at least pre-covid, 40% of people throughput was by bus, via 300 bus trips, it's tough to corral automobiles, especially because most of the city, except the core is shaped by the automobility paradigm ("DC as a suburban agenda dominated city," 2013).

BeyondDC suggests in a GGW post, "One change to transform DC travel: Make the 90 bus truly awesome," that because the 90 bus line is the only major crosstown route, its uniqueness means that it should get priority on its streets.  

This is a problem because at many points the street is super narrow for an arterial

While it's unique as a crosstown route for buses, the same goes for the route in terms of motor vehicle traffic. 

And while I think the proposal is meritable, it's probably too controversial to ever get approved.

Not that my counter proposal is any easier....

In "Tunnelized road projects for DC and the Carmel Tunnel, Haifa, Israel example--tolls" (2011) and "DC and "city repair" of the urban grid," (2020) I suggest that a series of DC streets be "tunnelized and tolled" to separate commuter traffic from local traffic.  

It would facilitate faster travel for commuters--helping to maintain the relevance of Downtown as a regionally significant commercial district--it would also reduce the negative effect of commuter traffic on residents and neighborhoods.

Flickr photo by Elyse Horvath.

The 90s busline roadway could be brought into that proposed underground road network.  

It could get great urban design treatment on the surface where the bus would still run, because of frequent stops, while the tunnel would focus on satisfying longer trips.

With the tunnel, the surface street could become a kind of transit/sustainable mobility mall, at least in certain sections, using my Signature Streets model, the My Figueroa project in LA, etc..  

And you could run articulated buses to increase capacity.

Spitalerstraßße transit mall, Hamburg, Germany.  

Bi-articulated buses (3 sections) are allowed on the street

Image by BeyondDC.  50 foot road right of way with bus service in the middle of the street

Florida Avenue NE Streetscape Improvement (2nd Street NE to H Street NE)

A Look At The Final Designs For DC's 11th Street Bridge Park

From DC Urban Turf.

I was on the design review committee for this initiative back in 2014--10 years ago!.  

I go back and forth with what I think about it.

-- "DC's 11th Street Bridge Park project," 2022

Obviously I'm into the High Line, the Bentway, 606, and the Promenade Plantée in Paris which predates the High Line by decades, parks that take advantage of infrastructure that's otherwise abandoned.   

OTOH, the old bridge couldn't be reused, even the abutments if I remember correctly.  So it's an over $125 million project.

There's lots of talk about how it will connect the two sides of the Anacostia, the black Anacostia neighborhood East of the River, and the white communities west of the river.  But I don't think so.  It's just not well positioned where people are.  People will have to make a special trip to go there.  Many will, but it won't connect the city.

Now I think better value could be had spending the money on other civic investments.

FWIW, I did write a bunch of great pieces thinking about the River as a network, and potential revitalization initiatives.

-- "The Anacostia River and considering the bridges as a unit and as a premier element of public art and civic architecture," 2014
-- "DC has a big "Garden Festival" opportunity in the Anacostia River"," 2014
-- "A world class water/environmental education center at Poplar Point as another opportunity for Anacostia River programming (+ move the Anacostia Community Museum next door)," 2014
-- "Saving the South Capitol Bridge as an exclusive pedestrian and and bicycle bridge," 2014

This entry predated my involvement in the review committee:

 -- "Wanted: A comprehensive plan for the "Anacostia River East" corridor," 2012

But after the design selection process was over, I was no longer involved 

-- "11th Street Bridge Park finalists," 2014

===

To be fair, I have a big hairy audacious concept too, which would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.  Next to Sugar House Park in Salt Lake City is I-80.  It happens that the freeway section abutting the park--which was part of the park before the freeway was built is about 40 acres.  So it could be a huge addition.  It would also eliminate the noise problem the freeway causes on the south side of the park.

Philadelphia project.

There are freeway deck parks in Dallas, Seattle and other cities. Boston's Big Dig undergrounding of I-95 is topped with the Rose Kennedy Greenway, which is 17 acres, but narrow, with a 1.5 mile length.

One is being built now in Philadelphia ("Philly’s other big I-95 project to start: A cap with an 11.5-acre waterfront park, South St. pedestrian bridge," Philadelphia Inquirer).  

But they are much smaller than 40 acres, which would (restore)/increase the size of the park by not quite 40%.

Salt Lake City Weekly Gift Guide 2023 includes "community/government wishes"

 -- "City Weekly's year-end guide to getting through the holidays and closing out those Christmas lists. GIFT GUIDE 2023"

They list:

• Ranked choice voting -- the state allows this for local elections
• Mid-block crossings on State Street -- not allowed, even in Downtown Salt Lake, because it is a state road, controlled by the Utah Department of Transportation
• the rote election of Celeste Maloy to replace Congressional Representative Chris Stewart, who resigned.  The Utah Legislature super gerrymanders Salt Lake County, dividing it into all four Congressional districts, so no Democrat can be elected to represent the center of the state
• getting the signal for the 2034 Winter Olympic Games, which could force the state to reinvest in infrastructure, e.g., the light rail system was built to support the 2002 Olympics.

With regard to the last point, it's something I will be writing about.  11 years is enough time to be able to construct significant infrastructure.

Incrementalism as a concept of iterative improvement in government project development no longer a legitimate public administration theory

As an advocate, my experience with trying to do "new things" in government, is that you only get one chance to do it right.  That there isn't enough social, organizational, community, and financial capital to take up the issue again--to expand it, improve it, etc.

DC streetcar advocates are holding a community event to advocate for expansion of the streetcar to Ward 7, which DC Council recently defunded.  

A perfect example is the DC streetcar.  It took 13 years to make it operational after planning first started--by contrast it took Seattle four years, and they've since expanded.  

And for the most part, DC City Councilmembers aren't interested in putting out the money to expand it to make it more useful.  Ironically, originally there were supposed to be multiple lines.  

Even though transit usage is much reduced in DC post-covid, I don't think DC elected officials understand how central transit is to the city's competitive advantage and identity.  That even so, transit (and sustainable mobility) is what distinguishes DC from the suburbs and that you need more of it to continue to differentiate DC as a place to choose to live and conduct business.

Or the Norfolk light rail.  It was supposed to go to Virginia Beach, but with opposition they cut that part from the project, expecting that once the system started operating, there'd be a clamoring to expand ("As light rail nears in Norfolk, Virginia Beach begins to reconsider previous decisions to not participate," 2009).  Nope, in 2015, plans to move forward were scuttled, seemingly forever ("Virginia Beach was right to reject light rail extension," Norfolk Virginian-Pilot).  And as a result, the Norfolk light rail is pretty much a failure, with ridership less than a DC bus line.

I remember arguing with a past director of the DC Historic Preservation Office, who was trying to get the city to approve the concept of "conservation districts" as opposed to historic districts.  Historic districts have a lot more protection, CDs, minimal.  She argued that a CD could transition to an HD.  I said communities don't have the energy (various types of "capital") to go through such a process twice. Let alone the city the energy to approve the concept.  She didn't last long.  Etc.

There are many such examples in government.

Another one is the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, which doesn't include Bergen County.  It was conceptualized as a waterfront adjacent line connecting Hudson and Bergen Counties in New Jersey.

It opened in 2001 and was completed in 2011, serving Hudson County only, and a recent proposal to finally extend it to Bergen has been further delayed ("Three decades later, the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail line still has no Bergen spur. How come?," North Jersey Herald).  

So for 12 years, and now longer, no Bergen County section.

Incrementalism is a public administration theory proposed in the 1950s by Charles Lindblom.  I think though that I'm arguing something slightly different.  

He said that incremental project development is much more likely than the creation and implementation of big projects based on a formal rational decision making process.  From Encyclopedia Brittanica:

Incrementalism was first developed in the 1950s by the American political scientist Charles E. Lindblom in response to the then-prevalent conception of policy making as a process of rational analysis culminating in a value-maximizing decision. Incrementalism emphasizes the plurality of actors involved in the policy-making process and predicts that policy makers will build on past policies, focusing on incremental rather than wholesale changes. Incrementalism has been fruitfully applied to explain domestic policy making, foreign policy making, and public budgeting. 

Lindblom regarded rational decision making as an unattainable ideal. To function properly, rational-comprehensive decision making must satisfy two conditions that are unlikely to be met for most issues: agreement on objectives and a knowledge base sufficient to permit accurate prediction of consequences associated with available alternatives.

From that standpoint he's right. Incremental versus a beautiful, complete, big concept.  That hasn't changed.

What I'm arguing that the concept of incrementalism in government as iterative improvement is flawed because in reality you don't get second chances to improve or extend projects.  They take so long anyway.  Therefore, try to do it right and "the best" from the outset.  The likelihood of your getting the opportunity to fix, improve, extend is minimal.

Another example is the Suburban Maryland Purple Line light rail.  I first read about the concept in a cover story in the Washington City Paper in 1987!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It will open a section, finally, in 2027.  40 YEARS LATER!!!!

The section of the Purple Line that will open in 2027 is from Bethesda to New Carrollton.

But there is zero planning, zero planning, on extending it further, either west to Tysons in Virginia on the north, or further west in Maryland and to Alexandria, Virginia on the south.

And another failure in planning is failure to leverage such additions to the transit network to further improve and extend the existing network.

-- "Codifying the complementary transit network improvements and planning initiatives recommended in the Purple Line writings," 2022

And Maryland just announced a massive plan to rebuild the American Legion Bridge, connecting Maryland and Virginia, with zero plans for transit! ("Maryland pursues publicly funding Beltway relief project," Washington Post, "American Legion Bridge would be even more congested without transit, study says," Fairfax Now).

Wow.

So examples when what I call "Transformational Projects Action Planning" actually happen, such as in Bilbao ("Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning," 2017), are beyond remarkable.

Brutal performance art criticism of Toronto's Mayor, John Tory, and his "austerity" agenda

Shari Kasman.

Three performance art campaigns in Toronto, AusterityTO, #JohnTory’sToronto, and independent artist Shari Kasman's alternative flyer campaign focused on changes to TTC bus service, call attention to municipal action failures ("Artists Parody Toronto’s Failing Infrastructure With Museum Labels," Hyperallergic). 

Kasman's campaign has been covered by the Toronto Sun.

AusterityTO treats broken facilities as infrastructure as art works, and appends museum style labels to "the work." 

The example below is a broken water fountain, which the label likens to Marcel Duchamp's famous Urinal.

#JohnTory’sToronto sticks labels on failed facilities.  The stickers have a QR code linking to their Twitter feed and calling on people to vote.

DC's 11th Street Bridge Park project

 Is written up in the Washington Post ("D.C.'s first elevated park will link neighborhoods divided by river") as it nears moving towards construction within the next couple years.

When it was first proposed, I was skeptical--I think as an idea it's cool, but it's in an inhospitable location and isn't near residential areas so there isn't a lot of opportunity for adjacent revitalization, which is what you want from an infrastructure investment of more than $100 million ("Flashy one-offs vs. a program: the proposal for an 11th Street bridge linear park and the rest of the city," 2013; "DC and streetcars #4: from the standpoint of stoking real estate development, the line is incredibly successful and it isn't even in service yet, and now that development is extending eastward past 15th Street," 2015).  

 

Then I was invited to serve as a Ward 6 representative on the Design Advisory Committee when they were picking a design for the project.

It led me to write a bunch of great entries about river-based revitalization, planning, East of the River revitalization, parks, etc.

-- "The Anacostia River and considering the bridges as a unit and as a premier element of public art and civic architecture," 2014
-- "DC has a big "Garden Festival" opportunity in the Anacostia River"," 2014
-- "A world class water/environmental education center at Poplar Point as another opportunity for Anacostia River programming (+ move the Anacostia Community Museum next door)," 2014
-- "Saving the South Capitol Bridge as an exclusive pedestrian and and bicycle bridge," 2014

This predated my involvement in that:

 -- "Wanted: A comprehensive plan for the "Anacostia River East" corridor," 2012

But after the design selection process was over, I was no longer involved ("11th Street Bridge Park finalists," 2014).

 The Bridges now.

What's proposed, rendering with the park in place. 

 "New 11th Street Bridge Park design aims for better trail connections," Washcycle

While I remain impressed with the organizing effort, how the group exhibits at festivals and are focused continually on outreach, and have organized many millions in funding to ward off the gentrification and displacement they expect to happen because of the addition of a high quality park to the area, I am back to my position that it's cool but not the best use of resources.

For one, unlike various analogous park infrastructure projects like:

• the original Promenade Plantée/Coulée Verte in Paris ("Paris' Elevated Park Predates NYC's High Line by Nearly 20 Years (and It's Prettier, Too), TreeHugger)
• High Line
• 606 ("A Tale of Two Trails," South Side Weekly)
  
• Bentway ("Under freeway ice skating track opens in Toronto," 2018)
  

the Bridge Park won't be well located, in the midst of residential areas and otherwise vibrant (or potentially vibrant) places.  It's next to a freeway.  While being over the river is cool, you'll have to make an effort to get to the Park. 

It's more comparable to how Roosevelt Island National Monument is in DC but can only be reached from Virginia ("Revisiting: Access to Theodore Roosevelt Island, a national park in Washington, DC") or how you have to take a ferry to Governor's Island in New York City. 

From a resource standpoint and the success of raising over $100 million, I can't but help but think that those resources would have far greater effect being invested in existing and under-invested parks, recreation facilities, cultural resources, and other civic and community assets in Wards 7 and 8.

-- "Five examples of the failure to do parks and public space master planning in DC," 2021 
-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021
-- ""Utility" infrastructure as an opportunity for co-locating urban design and placemaking improvements," 2020
-- "Planning for place/urban design/neighborhoods versus planning for transportation modes: new 17th Street NW bike lanes | Walkable community planning versus "pedestrian" planning," 2021

-- "Extending the "Signature Streets" concept to "Signature Streets and Spaces"," 2020
-- "From more space to socially distance to a systematic program for pedestrian districts (Park City (Utah) Main Street Car Free on Sundays)," 2020
-- "Why doesn't every big city in North America have its own Las Ramblas?," 2020
-- "Diversity Plaza, Queens, a pedestrian exclusive block," 2020

For example, the city refuses to fully fund the reconstruction of the Fort Dupont Ice Arena ("Fort Dupont Ice Rink supporters accuse District of mishandling plans for new arena," "This is shameful: In a wealthy hockey town, D.C. kids have nowhere decent to play," Washington Post).

And something I missed some time ago, and have never written up as a dedicated entry, but should be a priority, would be undergrounding DC-295 and I-295 in the vicinity of the Anacostia River.  

I have discussed undergrounding/decking for North Capitol Street, the Southeast-Southwest Freeway, and parts of Connecticut Avenue in the core.

-- "DC and "city repair" of the urban grid," 2020

Freeway undergrounding and removal is a trendy move in urban planning these days ("Can Removing Highways Fix America's Cities?," New York Times).  And these days the US Secretary of Transportation is pushing this as an environmental justice measure ("Pete Buttigieg launches $1B pilot to build racial equity in America's roads," NPR).  DC should get on the bandwagon.

(I also argued that DC should work with Prince George's County to create a "Trail Towns" initiative along the Anacostia River, modeled after the initiative in Pennsylvania along the Great Allegheny Passage.)

SO much needs to be done East of the River that the Bridge Park seems really frivolous.

-- "Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning," 2017
-- "Downtown Edmonton cultural facilities development as an example of "Transformational Projects Action Planning" ," 2018

Free transit for Salt Lake Airport Users as a marketing promotion | Transit validation systems

Billboard promoting the UTA free transit to the airport promotion

1300 South at West Temple Street, near the Ballpark TRAX station

The Salt Lake Airport has been undergoing expansion and redevelopment.  A new terminal opened in the Spring, although the relocated transit station didn't open until earlier this month ("Will new TRAX station fix unprecedented problem for Salt Lake airport?," KSL-TV).

I've written about the airport twice.  One in response to a Manhattan Institute report that transit connections to airports aren't worth it.  I disagree because a transit system to be a system needs to connect to major destinations within a metropolitan area and the breadth of the network more generally is what encourages people to use transit.

-- "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," 2020

The other piece was about a financial dispute between the Airport and a car sharing service.  The latter didn't want to pay the same rates as "car rental services" because the business model is different, and so they were forbidden access to the Airport.  

-- "Transportation demand management gaps, Salt Lake City International Airport and car sharing," 2021

Although the firm eventually capitulated.  The fact is that parking and car rental concessions are significant revenue streams, so Airports don't want to do anything that upsets that flow, especially as ride hailing has had a significantly negative impact on parking revenues.

Some of the reporting on the new airport has focused on how they haven't implemented an interior transit system/moving walkways because they are still expanding, and depending on the gate, people may have to walk at least one quarter mile to Concourse B ("Opinion: The terrible, horrible, no good, very bad walk from SLC’s Concourse B," Salt Lake Deseret News), which is especially inconvenient with children or if you're disabled..

And the Airport has already stated that often the parking structures and lots are full, and they have 30,000 spaces ("Why you might have problems parking for your flight at the SLC Airport," KJZZ-TV).

So "transportation demand management" aimed at ensuring adequate capacity at the parking structures is a good idea.

Transit validation: free transit with event tickets. Transit validation is the term for how your event ticket also includes free transit use.  I wrote about this recently concerning the new Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, where attendees of sporting and concert events can use their ticket (via an e-app) to ride local transit for free ("Seattle Kraken expansion hockey team sets new standard for transit benefits in transportation demand management: free transit with ticket").

While the arenas for the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco and the Phoenix Coyotes do a version of this, the Seattle example is the most expansive, with access to light rail, bus, and Monorail.

While I have written quite a bit about airport transportation issues:

-- "Airport transportation demand management in flux"
-- "Transportation demand management, transit: Los Angeles Airport (LAX) and Logan Airport, Boston," 2019
-- "London's Stansted Airport provides digital information on transit options," 2019
-- "A brief comment on ground transportation at National Airport vis a vis VRE rail service," 2016
-- "Revisiting stories: ground transportation at airports (DCA/Logan)," 2017
-- "Airports and public transit access: O'Hare Airport and the proposed fast connection from Downtown Chicago," 2018
-- "Why not a bicycle hub at National Airport?: focused on capturing worker trips but open to all," 2017

I have never heard of free transit to and from the airport, which is what Salt Lake Airport and the Utah Transit Authority are doing through January 31st, 2022, when people show their boarding pass dated on the date of travel.

Photo: Miles in Transit.

Although, the Boston Silver Line bus is free from Logan Airport and has been since 2012 ("MBTA to give free rides from airport: No Silver Line fare in test to cut Logan’s congestion," Boston Globe).

But the Salt Lake Airport promotion is for all forms of transit: bus; streetcar; light rail; and commuter train.

While the UTA/Salt Lake Airport is the first example I know of of free transit to and from the airport, albeit for a brief period, obviously, adopting this type of practice more broadly would increase transit use in association with air travel, were it to be adopted more widely and permanently.

Tulsa Vision 2025 sales tax initiatives for economic development projects

I just found out that Tulsa has a sales tax add on program, modeled after Oklahoma City's pathbreaking Metropolitan Area Projects program, which has funded a variety of placemaking, economic development, and infrastructure projects over the past 25 years ("Change isn't usually that simple: The repatterning of Oklahoma City's Downtown Streetscape").  

It took a couple of tries before the referendum was finally passed, which is not a surprise.  Early iterations called for funding specific tax incentive projects, like to retain an American Airlines maintenance facility. But later phases included funding improvements to universities and schools, and parks.

But it's not nearly as visionary as MAPS. But the most recent vote in 2016 made the funding stream permanent. And it's possible that over time, the vision component can grow.

-- Tulsa Vision 2025

The current slate of projects are more focused on creating civic assets with long term value ("Invested in downtown': Tulsa Arts District improvements among $816M in new projects," Tulsa World) such as the Oklahoma Museum of Popular Culture and the Greenwood Rising History Center, which recounts the sad history of the Tulsa white riot eradicating the Greenwood neighborhood in 1919.

In turn these investments are sparking private investment in housing, mixed use, and office projects, helped surely, by Tulsa's position in the fossil fuels economy.

Tulsa Remote Worker Recruitment Program.  Something I haven't written about but have been meaning to for a couple years is Tulsa's worker recruitment program ("Do you work remotely? This program could pay you $10,000 to do so from Tulsa," CNN, "The Great Tulsa Mobile Worker Experiment," Bloomberg), which was started before the pandemic. 

Not unlike the artist recruitment program in Paducah, Kentucky ("In Paducah, Artists Create Something From Nothing," NPR), the idea was to recruit workers who didn't have to work onsite, who might be attracted by Tulsa's lower cost of living, especially of housing.  Since then more communities have created similar programs.

Called Tulsa Remote, and funded by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, a locally-focused foundation with funds derived from oil and banking, it provides a $10,000 "move in" bonus, and a variety of support programs aimed at easing the transition, promoting new business development, etc.

While The Atlantic writes that such programs aren't particularly successful ("Moving Incentives Are Overhyped"), I'd argue that it doesn't cost much and it's always good to recruit people with talent to your community.  Of course, one challenge is then to be able to be open to their ideas and be willing to reshape the revitalization agenda accordingly ("Downtown Tulsa resident campaigns for food co-op," 2News Tulsa).

But it's true that not every place has the right conditions to support this.  People look at what Paducah did and say "people can work from anywhere."  But that's the wrong lesson.  Paducah focused on attracting artists who sell the bulk of their work at summer art fairs.  And Paducah is well located in the midwest, with great freeway connections within a day or two of many major fairs such as in Louisville, Ann Arbor, and Suburban Chicago.

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Best practice flooding mitigation. I have written about Tulsa's proactive response to its last major flood in 1984, resulting in 14 deaths--the city is centered upon the Arkansas River.  

They created an active disaster mitigation and resilience program, including buying out housing and other buildings located on flood plains ("Some innovative disaster planning initiatives in Tulsa, Santa Fe, San Francisco, and Davenport Iowa").  

Flood waters cover the parking area of River Spirit Casino Resort on the Arkansas River on Friday, May 24, 2019. TOM GILBERT/Tulsa World

Since then they haven't avoided flooding, after all the effects of climate change seem particularly pronounced compared to 1984, but the impact has been significantly reduced because of their previous active steps in disaster planning and management.  

Certainly, no deaths (cf. "2 dead, 20 missing after severe flooding in North Carolina," USA Today).

Change isn't usually that simple: The repatterning of Oklahoma City's Downtown Streetscape

One of Oklahoma City's infrastructure projects is a streetcar route serving the downtown.  Photo: Doug Hoke, Daily Oklahoman.

The Congress for the New Urban's conference next year is in Oklahoma City, and in advance of this, the CNU's newsletter is running stories about various aspects of OKC's urbanism.

The most recent story, very good, is about how the city was sparked to act after a national survey said the Oklahoma City isn't particularly walkable and they used the construction of a new skyscraper as the fulcrum to drive through improvements to 50 blocks of Downtown ("How downtown Oklahoma City did a 180"). Also see "Oklahoma City showed how to transition to two-way streets downtown," Palm Beach Post.

It's a great accomplishment, no doubt.  

But I don't think it's an easy example that advocates in other cities can export to try to bring about similar changes in their own communities.  

In planning I joke about "Why can't we be like Portland?" when a citizen comes up to you at a meeting, talks/harangues about something in particular, and then at the end laments that our community isn't like Portland, Oregon.

But what they don't realize is that "Portland" isn't what they think it is, that the great initiatives that they've undertaken are the result of decades of hard, thoughtful, and visionary decision making that accretes -- it builds on and extends previous decisions and programs in a manner where the total is greater than the sum of the parts.

There are six cities in the US that consistently do multiple pretty amazing initiatives when it comes to urbanism:

• Charleston, South Carolina; where former Mayor Riley was one of the nation's leading proponents of urban design improvements (Riley speech on urban design)
• Hennepin County/Minneapolis; when the county realized they needed to invest in Minneapolis to staunch population outmigration to protect the county's revenue stream from property taxes.  Later Minneapolis developed complementary programs, and light rail was added  ("A County and Its Cities: the Impact of Hennepin Community Works," Journal of Urban Affairs 30:3, 2008).
• Oklahoma City
• Portland, Oregon; which starting with the decision to tear down a waterfront freeway in the late 1960s has taken many visionary steps and continues to be a pathbreaker ("A summary of my impressions of Portland, Oregon and planning," 2005; "Universities as elements of urban/downtown revitalization: the Portland State story and more," 2014).
• San Francisco ("Transit First Policy")
• Seattle (" 10 ways Seattle has blown past Portland in transportation moxie," Portland Oregonian)

Transformational Projects Action Planning.  But basically, they've adopted an approach that I now call "Transformational Projects Action Planning," that I wrote about first in terms of European cities like Bilbao, Dublin's Temple Bar district, Helsinki, and Liverpool, along with the German revitalization initiatives organized around the International Building Exposition (IBA) and the International Garden Festival.

-- "Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning," 2017
-- "Economic restructuring success and failure: Detroit compared to Bilbao, Liverpool, and Pittsburgh," 2014
-- "European Garden Festivals as a model urban planning initiative for Detroit and other US cities," 2014
-- "There has to be a better way to spend $1.85 billion on "revitalization" just to demolish buildings: The US needs its own version of Germany's International Building Exhibition, let's start with Detroit," 2014

Social urbanism is a comparable approach.  Another example of this kind of approach is "social urbanism" in Medellin, Colombia:

-- "Experiments in Social Urbanism"
-- "'Social urbanism' experiment breathes new life into Colombia's Medellin Toronto Globe & Mail
-- "Medellín's 'social urbanism' a model for city transformation," Mail & Guardian
-- "Medellín slum gets giant outdoor escalator," Telegraph
-- "Medellín, Colombia offers an unlikely model for urban renaissance," Toronto Star

-- ""Utility" infrastructure as an opportunity for co-locating urban design and placemaking improvements," 2020

Other places do great things too.  Maybe New York City could be included.  They did a lot of amazing things under Mayor Bloomberg, and Mayor De Blasio left most of the initiatives in place and operating, but I wouldn't say the city has furthered the vision.

And there are smaller city examples too, some I've written about like Spokane, Greenville, South Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina, Holland, Michigan, Edmonton and the arts.  Charlie often points out initiatives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Etc.

Plus, the city that helped to trigger the idea of TPAS is Toronto.  See "(Big Hairy) Projects Action Plan(s) as an element of Comprehensive/Master Plans," 2017.

Each has a back story that undergirds their jump from ordinary to extraordinary.  None are perfect.  Some are more visionary than others.  And the cities may have other problems like anarchism in Portland and terrible homelessness issues in San Francisco and Seattle.

The six components of a successful broad ranging revitalization program.  In writing about the various efforts, I concluded that successful revitalization programs, especially in those cities that were working to overturn serious disadvantages, were comprised of these elements:

• A commitment to the development and production of a broad, comprehensive, visionary, and detailed revitalization plan/s (Bilbao, Hamburg, Liverpool);
• the creation of innovative and successful implementation organizations, with representatives from the public sector and private firms, to carry out the program.  Typically, the organizations have some distance from the local government so that the plan and program aren't subject to the vicissitudes of changing political administrations, parties and representatives (Bilbao, Hamburg, Liverpool, Helsinki);
• strong accountability mechanisms that ensure that the critical distance provided by semi-independent implementation organizations isn't taken advantage of in terms of deleterious actions (for example Dublin's Temple Bar Cultural Trust was amazingly successful but over time became somewhat disconnected from local government and spent money somewhat injudiciously, even though they generated their own revenues--this came to a head during the economic downturn and the organization was widely criticized; in response the City Council decided to fold the TBCT and incorporate it into the city government structure, which may have negative ramifications for continued program effectiveness as its revenues get siphoned off and political priorities of elected officials shift elsewhere);
• funding to realize the plan, usually a combination of local, regional, state, and national sources, and in Europe, "structural adjustment" and other programmatic funding from the European Regional Development Fund and related programs is also available (Hamburg, as a city-state, has extra-normal access to funds beyond what may normally be available to the average city);
• integrated branding and marketing programs to support the realization of the plan (Hamburg, Vienna, Liverpool, Bilbao, Dublin);
• flexibility and a willingness to take advantage of serendipitous events and opportunities and integrate new projects into the overall planning and implementation framework (examples include Bilbao's "acquisition" of a branch of the Guggenheim Museum and the creation of a light rail system to complement its new subway system, Liverpool City Council's agreement with a developer to create the Liverpool One mixed use retail, office, and residential development in parallel to the regeneration plan and the hosting of the Capital of Culture program in 2008, and how multifaceted arts centers were developed in otherwise vacated properties rented out cheaply by their owners in Dublin, Helsinki, and Marseille).

Oklahoma City: Metropolitan Area Projects as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning.  As discussed in the book Next American City by former mayor Mick Corbett, the city developed a recurring program of visionary public investment--they've since undertaken four different cycles--after initially being rejected by United Airlines in 1987, as the location for a large maintenance facility, which the city worked hard to land.

The then mayor kept badgering United Airlines to tell them why OKC wasn't picked.  Eventually they revealed that they sent a bunch of executives to OKC for the weekend, and they came back saying "we'd never want to live here, there's nothing attractive about the city."

From that point, it took them five years to come up with the idea of MAP/Metropolitan Area Projects, an infrastructure program funded by sales tax, monitored by a citizen oversight committee, with a detailed list of projects that had to be completed within a certain time period, focused on making substantive physical improvements to the community all focused on improving quality of life, such as an arena used to land an NBA basketball team, improvements to the Oklahoma River, the Bricktown Canal, and the city's waterfronts, refurbishment of every school in the Oklahoma City School District, a streetcar, etc.

They are in the final stages of MAP's fourth cycle (MAP4), and through this program, cycles, and projects, they've built a track record of "doing" -and accomplishing big projects.  

The Downtown Streetscape project as an example of serendipity.  Oklahoma City has created a program that incorporates what I call the "six components of a successful broad ranging revitalization program."

And the Downtown streetscape project is likely just one example of the sixth characteristic, the element of serendipity, the ability to do other visionary things in a complementary way, incorporating such projects into the existing planning framework.  

From the CNU article:

Oklahoma City, which ranked dead last in Prevention Magazine’s 2008 assessment of sizable American cities for walkability, soon after commissioned a report on how to improve conditions for pedestrians downtown. An initial analysis by Speck & Associates found that Oklahoma City’s streets were wide enough to handle two to three times the volume of traffic they carried. Downtown streets were largely one-way speedways, and Speck’s plan showed that the city could better use the space to support pedestrians, bicyclists, businesses, and urban life.

 

The city launched Project 180, an effort to rebuild all 50 blocks of streets in their downtown core, funded by tax-increment financing from a major skyscraper development. The name came from a $180 million investment in the 180-acre core area, generating a 180-degree turn in how downtown was conceived. “By right-sizing streets to meet real demand, we were able to calm traffic, double the amount of on-street parking, add a ton of trees and great a robust cycling network. Ten years later this is the project that I am most proud of,” Speck said to a meeting of the US Conference of Mayors. At the same time, the plan converted one-way streets to two-way, rebuilt three parks and most underground utilities, and installed new architecturally designed fixtures and street furniture.

The tax increment financing district financing mechanism is separate from the MAP program and financing system, but fully complementary.

Devon Energy Building, Oklahoma City.  Photo by Holly Baumann photography.

The "Transformational Projects Action Planning" approach makes multiple big projects possible.  I don't think Oklahoma City would have done this project if it would have been their first urban design project and on such a scale, had they not already laid the ground work for "transformational projects action planning" and the undertaking of big infrastructure projects.

The bad assessment they received on walkability was 16 years after the city passed the referendum to fund MAP, and 21 years after they were rejected by United Airlines.  

In the intervening years, taking the rejection by United Airlines as a community-wide call to action, they had implemented a large  number of projects already.  And some, like making the Oklahoma River a national destination for water sports like kayaking ("Revival of a River Alters a City’s Course in Sports," New York Times); "Oklahoma River's success has Oklahoma City bubbling with enthusiasm, pride" and "Development on the Oklahoma River continues with whitewater center," Daily Oklahoman), were serendipitous, not planned as part of MAP, but they developed as a consequence of MAP.

Oklahoma River.  From "RAPIDS: THE OLYMPIC STORY ON THE OKLAHOMA RIVER GROWS," Velocity.

With the Downtown streetscape program, they had the catalyst of a new large construction project downtown to leverage.

People saw the results of community investment in infrastructure, urban design, and quality of life, so even though they are a car-dominated community, improving the Downtown streetscape made sense.

Trying to get a community to undertake a project of this nature and scale is almost impossible when doing it on a one-off basis.