DC makes yet another bad decision about streetcars: will replace the one line with a so called "fancy" bus | The Vision Thing

I got an email from a pr person about a conference in September about good ideas for urban revitalization, aimed at grassroots and neighborhood types.  I will write about it but I responded saying the problem isn't lack of ideas, it's how to get them implemented, amidst all the barriers that exist to hamper change as well as the long times to deliver a finished project.

I bring this up because DC Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that the city is going to replace the streetcar with the next generation streetcar--A BUS!!!!!! ("Bowser to replace D.C. Streetcar with ‘next generation streetcar.’ It’s a bus.," Washington Post).

Funding for the streetcar ends after two more years in Bowser’s budget plan. City Administrator Kevin Donahue said at the announcement that the new streetcar would be “essentially buses that utilize” the streetcar system’s existing cables for power. It would make it possible “to more nimbly and quickly expand the streetcar line out beyond where we currently are,” he said.

Flickr photo by BeyondDC.

Local leaders have been pushing buses as the future of the city and regional transportation network, a lower-cost and more flexible alternative to rail in a time of federal cuts that limit transit funding. The single D.C. Streetcar line, which runs from Union Station to the edge of the RFK Stadium site, took far longer to build than planned and cost $200 million. A lack of separation from car traffic means double-parkers can block the tracks, making bus service more reliable. The streetcar carries a fraction of the number of riders of the express buses that travel the same route. Planned as the beginning of a 40-mile network, it was the only two miles built.

Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell pose with a Commanders helmet at a news conference on April 10. (John McDonnell/for The Washington Post) 

JFC.  It illustrates the point that Mayor Bowser has no vision ("Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021), other than maybe a football stadium ("Questions on the Commanders stadium deal," Washington Post).

OTOH this is but one administration's failure after the failure of two others (Fenty and Gray).  I joke that DC and Seattle started streetcar planning the same year, but Seattle's first leg opened in 2007, and DC's in 2014.  

DC's failure led Arlington County to drop their streetcar planning even though Fairfax County was all in ("Arlington officials halt efforts on streetcars for Columbia Pike, Crystal City," "Arlington streetcar demise sends message to poorer residents: Keep riding the bus," Washington Post, 2014).

I used to say that were I to have pursued a PhD in planning my dissertation would have been on best (and worst) practices in civic engagement, since land issues "outside of schools, are the issues that that are most likely to get the average citizen involved and participating in local civic affairs."

Now--especially given the relative success of the area's Metrorail heavy rail system (problems there too, since 2009, but initially it was wildly successful)--I think it'd have to be transit planning failures in DC:  But that's way more topics than you can fit into a single dissertation!  

• WMATA's operation and financial issues
• Purple Line planning and construction failures, leading to a 40+ year period from when I first read about the idea in a Washington City Paper cover story in 1987, to operation in 2027.
• DC Streetcar planning within the city ("Velocity of change, streetcars, and H Street," 2011)
• and its effects on streetcar planning elsewhere, not just in nearby Arlington, but it other cities where transit opponents used it as a reason to rail against transit proposals.

Note: FWIW, Seattle has messed up with streetcar planning, expansion and operation too, but for different reasons.  Its primary supporter, Paul Allen of Microsoft fame was the major developer of the SoDo district, wanted it  as an activation device to push development, even with minimal ridership projections ("Seattle’s South Lake Union streetcar is an empty monument to money," Seattle Times).

Seattle streetcar lines active, and proposed (Mark Nowlin, Fiona Martin / The Seattle Times)

From a ridership perspective, the major problem with the streetcar is that they never built it beyond a short segment of the proposed H Street-Benning Road line, when it was supposed to be part of a network ("Irony of ironies: District Might Fast Track Georgia Avenue Streetcar to Walter Reed," 2011).  It's frequency isn't all that and the route is duplicated by the less upscale X2 bus line.

Map of proposed DC streetcar lines and bus rapid transit routes.  Washington Post graphic.

Many people complain/ed about how the line isn't grade separated, sharing right of way with motor vehicles, so the trips are slow.  But I argued those critics missed the point, that the streetcar is about intra-district transportation, not longer point to point trips, like from H Street to Union Station or to Downtown or Downtown to Georgetown, etc. ("Making the case for intra-city versus inter-city transit planning,," 2011, "STREETCARS ARE ABOUT TRANSIT, just in a different way from how most people are accustomed to thinking about it," 2014).

From a induced demand real estate development perspective, DC Streetcar has been a wild success, generating about $1 billion in development that likely wouldn't have occurred without the streetcar as a new anchor and development inducement.("Update/revision of H Street transit oriented real estate development table," 2016).  H Street NE has the highest density of any part of the city without a Metrorail station (it has stations on the edge, but not directly within the corridor).

That learning should have been applied to streetcar planning for other parts of the city:

• Georgia Avenue
• Kennedy Street/Riggs Road (not a planned line)
• Rhode Island Avenue from Laurel to Dupont Circle (much more truncated in planning)
• East of the River, etc.

Just on the basis of the likelihood of significant induced real estate generated economic development.

Plus the National Mall and South Capitol Street ("A National Mall-focused heritage (replica) streetcar service to serve visitors is a way bigger idea than a parking garage under the Mall," ).

Buses don't have the same ability to generate extranormal and successful economic development compared to fixed rail transit done right (The New Real Estate Mantra, APTA, "NoMa: The Neighborhood That Transit Built," Urban Land Magazine).

Conclusion.  A streetcar network in DC is a way better economic development inducement than a minimally used football stadium ("Arguments in defense of a stadium at RFK fall short of a first down," Greater Greater Washington).

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1.  When I first got involved in urban revitalization in DC, I thought that that the city economic planners were really smart.  It was merely a stitch in time.  At the time I didn't know much about economic development and they did.  With each year of involvement my knowledge base grew while theirs remained static.

2.  And I don't understand the opposition to other fixed rail transit modes in the DC area given the relative success of Metrorail.  It's as if Metrorail never existed.

3.  The Vision Thing was a quote by George H.W. Bush.  There's also a Sisters of Mercy song.

4.  One of my longest posts during the Gray Administration was my critique of the city sustainability plan.  I made the point that adopting practices not as good as the various best practice cities was not a way to be a national leader.  If you achieved those results you were still behind.  The same goes here, with streetcars.

Maybe the Williams Administration was the last one with some vision.

Operation Progress, Los Angeles

In the Rolling Stone article about the Community Safety Partnership, they mention an unrelated initiative by one of the police officers who finally tired of his "warrior policing" approach, and focused on developing relationships with promising students, and mentoring them and providing scholarships and then support for the students while they're in college. 

That cop was John Coughlin, and his program, Operation Progress ("Transforming lives in Watts," "‘Operation Progress’ finds unlikely success matching LAPD mentors with students," Angelus), would change almost everyone it touched, including Tionne. It plucked kids by the hundreds from the projects in Watts, granted them tuition-paid, private educations, then sent them to top-tier colleges around the country on full-ride scholarships. It would surround those kids with tutors and mentors, lavish them with shopping sprees and paid internships. It would partner with billionaires and nonprofits to lift tweens and their younger siblings out of squalor, and slowly but surely begin to empty the pond of future Bloods and Crips.

I've written about my ideas about a place-based CSP approach to public safety and revitalization in DC's poor neighborhoods here, "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," (2021).

This would be a good added piece to the neighborhood-based place-focused investment program..  One of the problems potentially achieving students have is peer group pressure to not put effort into school.   Having dozens of graduates of a program like Operation Progress spread throughout a community would provide counter-pressure to peer group efforts to denigrate schooling and achievement.

This could create a critical mass of residents focused on improvement and breaking the cycle of poverty.

Redefining what public safety means: Community Safety Partnership, Los Angeles

Defund the police versus... My big disappointment over the reaction to the death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer was not the demonstrations, except when violent or used by thieves as an opportunity to commit crimes, was the slogan "Defund the Police" ("Is it too late to change the messaging on "Defund the Police"? How about "Reconstruct Policing"?"," 2020).

Redefining public safety.  The slogan certainly hasn't helped the Democrats, who've been wrong-footed on public safety ever since.  Most importantly, it obscured the real need, to redefine what public safety means and how to deliver it.

A multi-faceted public safety response, including police, at least initially costs more to deliver than the current system.  Although maybe not once savings are counted.

What is public safety? Is it to just arrest people after they commit a crime, is to provide the mental health care services that when not provided lead to people's problems being defined as criminal, is it to create lasting structural change with a number of moving parts, police--because face it, some people need to be "policed", mental health services and crews, programs to break the generational cycle of crime in low income neighborhoods. Etc.

Alex Vitale's End of Policing has some provocative suggestions about how to decriminalize many social problems, which have been criminalized because the lack of alternatives to police.

It's not "bad apple" police officers, the system is the "bad apple." It's unfortunate that the concept of "broken windows" policing ("Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety," Atlantic Magazine, 1982) got translated into practice as "zero tolerance" policing, with a focus on citing or arresting people for the most minor of violations.  

I often think that the New York City Transit Police--under William Bratton before he became overall Police Commissioner and the Transit Police were merged into NYPD--is the only place where true "broken windows" policing, with a focus on addressing disorder in terms of both people and place, was implemented.

-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 1, theory and practice," 2016
-- "The state of "broken windows" versus "problem oriented policing" strategies in 2016: Part 2, what to do," 2016
-- "Broken windows/collective efficacy: Baltimore; Newark; Grand Junction, Colorado; Pittsburgh; Albany," 2019
-- "Transit safety and security: Broken Windows theory and reality | and the state of transit safety today," 2023
-- "Proof of Broken Windows theory in Philadelphia and New York City," 2024

Failures repeat and few officers face repercussions for their illegal acts.  The blog entry "The opportunity to rearticulate public safety delivery keeps being presented: Rochester New York" (2021) and the comments section discusses a broader paradigm for providing public safety focusing on continued problems in Rochester New York, when police respond to people with mental health issues.

Just last week, three Memphis police officers were exonerated for the killing of a man they cornered in a traffic stop ("3 former Memphis police officers found not guilty in the death of Tyre Nichols," NPR).  To me, these cases and those resulting in large payouts--e.g., Chicago spends millions of dollars per year on settlements over police misconduct--ought to be indicators of a need for a structural approach to change ("Where is the risk management approach to police misconduct and regularized killings of citizens?," 2020).

Spending billions to maintain a community's level of crime and poverty/equity planning.  After my grand jury service in 2013, I was left with the thought that DC spends a couple billion dollars per year just to keep the low income parts of the system the same, at a negative equilibrium.  In Los Angeles a similar estimate is many many billions of dollars per year.

That led me to write about equity planning and social urbanism.

-- "An outline for integrated equity planning: concepts and programs," 2017
-- "Equity planning: an update," 2020
-- "Black community, economic and social capital: the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago/Chicago," 2021

Community Safety Partnership, Los Angeles.  Besides NYC subways, Los Angeles probably has one of the most significant "public safety" initiatives built on broken windows windows principles in the US, the "Community Safety Partnership" ("How Watts and the LAPD make peace," Los Angeles Times).

I first wrote about the CSP in "Los Angeles police department "Community Safety Partnership"" (2014) after seeing it featured on the old Bryant Gumbel HBO TV show on sports.

In 2020, I wrote a follow up speculative piece applying it to different kinds of neighborhoods not dealing with gang problems like LA, but the problems resulting from drug use ("Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)."

The heart of the program is building a new relationship between the community and the police department ("American Police Must Own Their Racial Injustices," American Prospect)

New article on the CSP.  Last week, Rolling Stone Magazine published an up to date article on the program, "Inside the Battle for the Soul of the LAPD."

... the most salient thing Coughlin did in 2011 was say yes to Emada Tingirides. Tingirides, a Black sergeant and unstoppable rock star in the LAPD, had been tasked with setting up four new squads to undertake the impossible in Watts: to make peace with its residents, build faith with its leaders, and break the gangs’ stranglehold on its corners. Those new units, to be known as the Community Safety Partnership (CSP), were the brainchild of a pair of ex-combatants: the newly named police chief, Charlie Beck, and a firebrand opponent of gang cops and chiefs, the social-justice titan Connie Rice. After years of warfare in open court — Rice, an attorney and civil rights activist, had spent decades suing men like Beck for their “blue grip” suppression of the poor — they’d come to a hard-won truth: Shock-and-awe policing didn’t work. Far from making Los Angeles safe, it wreaked war without end between cops and gangs, and turned Watts and Compton into domestic kill zones, forever blighting the lives of the kids raised there.

It was no one’s intent to invent the future of policing when CSP was launched in 2011. But that is precisely what its founders have done: built a new breed of cop and retooled the social contract between a community and the officers who protect it. It’s premised in the notion that safety is a covenant between two parties: the cops who patrol the riskiest streets, and residents who trust and respect those cops enough to help them keep the peace. That is where CSP comes in. It deploys its cops less as foot patrolmen than as problem-­solvers. They get streetlights fixed, abandoned cars towed, and gang graffiti scrubbed. They find jobs for strapped parents, treatment for first offenders, and vocational education for at-risk teens. They sit gang leaders down and strike a pact: They’ll ignore petty drug deals and public drinking on weekends in exchange for those men leaving their weapons at home. Above all, they recruit every kid they can find for CSP rec teams and youth clubs. Volunteer-based outfits like the Police Athletic League have been around for decades, offering after-school programs, tutoring, and camps in major cities across the country, but L.A. is actually paying CSP cops to run cheer squads and reading groups. 

... He walks me through the protocols CSP established before it sent its officers into Watts. Stop the stop-and-frisk — a tactic Bratton endorsed — replace it with stop-and-chat, and get to know everyone on your beat. Focus less on crime than the problems that create it, especially with respect to school-age kids. Become their Pee Wee coach or their reading tutor. Take them out to Popeyes for heart-to-hearts. And when violent crimes occur, go arrest the doer, then return and ask his folks what they need: cash or food assistance, a job-training slot, an after-school program.

Despite the success, it's a constant battle to keep the CSP program in LA going, because it is so different from how police departments mostly operate on the principles of "warrior policing," "zero tolerance policing," "shock and awe" policing, mass incarceration, and focusing on car-based response to 911 calls rather than place-based policing.  It's another example that the problems of policing are structural, not the fault of a bad apple or two.

For example, a pilot CSP was created in the MacArthur Park area of LA.  But it never became part of the program, wasn't continued, and the gains have all been lost ("Community safety partnership for MacArthur Park in Los Angeles?").  And the program hasn't expanded to abutting neighborhoods that have similar problems.

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Exemplary public safety programs, that are mostly one-offs

• the above-mentioned Community Safety Partnership
• true broken windows policing
• Fullerton, California police department reorganized after officers beat a homeless man to death ("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," 2022)
• CAHOOTS (Eugene, Oregon) and other mental health response units here and there across the country--nevertheless most cities don't have enough teams to provide round the clock service and killings at the hands of police still occur
• Domestic violence response unit, High Point, NC and Appleton, Wisconsin  (""How High Point, N.C., Solved Its Domestic Violence Problem," Governing Magazine, "11 questions that could save a woman's life," Appleton Post-Crescent)
• Operation Ceasefire, gang intervention program, Boston ("Straight Outta Boston," Mother Jones)

May is National Bike Month

I've been dealing with my health issues, so not so motivated to write.  I got stuck making commitments to writing a few articles on Bike Month as well as Preservation Month, which require reading books or conducting interviews.  I hope to catch up.

One of the things I advocate for Bike Month is for jurisdictions to plan and construct in a manner that they can have major bicycle improvement projects with grand openings during May, to leverage media coverage and attention.

Philadelphia has done that with an extension, “Christian to Crescent” of the Schuylkill Banks Trail ("New $48M pedestrian bridge connects Schuylkill Banks in Center City to Grays Ferry," Philadelphia Inquirer).

The new Christian to Crescent segment of the Schuylkill Banks trail features a 650-foot cable-stay bridge. The trail officially opens on May 17. It’s part of the larger Schuylkill River Trail. 

Photo: Monica Herndon / Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Connector cost $48 million, for a length of about one half mile.  The big expense was the bridge.

It happens that Greater Philadelphia has one of the most extensive programs for building a trail network across multiple counties.

-- Circuit Trails

New York City has opened a pedestrian and bicycle path on the South Outer Roadway of the Queensboro Bridge ("Cyclists and pedestrians will now have separate paths on Queensboro Bridge," AMNY, "Queensboro Bridge to open long-awaited pedestrian and bike lanes on May 18," QNS).  The bridge connects Queens and Manhattan.

South Outer Roadway Bicycle and Pedestrian Path, Queensboro Bridge.  

Photo: Cindy Ord, Getty Images.

Judging from this photo, of the already extant North Outer Roadway Path, there would be significant conflicts between bicyclists and pedestrians, especially with e-bikes used for delivering goods. So the creation of a separate pedestrian path on the south side is a good thing.

At the same time you can see by this photo, that in peak use periods the lane will have people throughput equal to or greater than a lane of motor vehicle traffic.

-- Reddit video

-- Reddit video

Another celebration combines the Bridge pedestrian path with the 31st Avenue bicycle lane in Astoria, Queens.

Costly failures in the mental health system | Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times has a six part series of article on structural failure in the provision of mental health care in Illinois, which often has dire consequences:

To try to understand the reasons behind a spate of shocking crimes in downtown Chicago between 2021 and 2024, the Chicago Sun-Times examined four unprovoked killings and two nonfatal attacks, including a bizarre assault on a flight attendant from Mexico. Most of the attacks happened during the day. The victims: people who were just going about their lives. I 

n each case, the people charged — three who’ve been convicted — had a history of serious mental illness or delusional behavior and had drifted in and out of jails and hospitals, sometimes for decades, their conditions never regularly treated. 

Reporters pored over thousands of pages of police reports and court records, went to court hearings for a year for those who were charged, and interviewed family members, mental health experts, law enforcement authorities and government officials. 

What emerged most clearly from this reporting is that there is no system in Chicago to identify — let alone to help — the small percentage of severely mentally ill and violent people who commit these crimes. In each of these cases, it was only when they have been accused of murder or some other terrible crime that they were put on regular mental health medication — a finding that experts say is troubling but not surprising.

I realize in my series of articles on a more ideal health and wellness care system, there needs to be a separate article on mental health care, which is both a health and wellness care issue, as well as one of public safety.

-- "Ordinary versus Extraordinary Planning around the rebuilding of the United Medical Center in Southeast Washington DC | Part One: Rearticulating the system of health and wellness care East of the River." (2018)
-- "Part Two: Creating a graduate health and biotechnology research initiative on the St. Elizabeths campus," (2018)
-- "Part three: the potential for donations around an expanded program," (2018)
-- "Revisiting East of the River medical care: United Medical Center," (2018)
-- "Update on DC's plans to build a new United Medical Center," (2018)

-- "A glaring illustration of the need for comprehensive health and wellness planning in DC: Providence Hospital," (2018)

-- "Community Health Improvement Planning," (2019)

-- "Big omission in blog series on advance hospital/health and wellness planning, public health planning: addiction services," (2024)

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"Failure to treat, failure to project," main homepage, Chicago Sun-Times series on mental health care issues

-- "For accused mentally ill killers and their victims, help comes too little too late"

-- "Family still grieves for grad student prosecutors say was killed by a man 'terrorizing downtown' Chicago"

-- "A killer’s brother and mother: Fix mental health system so others don’t die"

-- "Cheerful day on North Michigan Avenue turns into a ‘nightmare’ for young flight attendant"

-- "How can Illinois prevent violent outcomes with better mental health treatment?"

-- "Released from the hospital and left on a sidewalk: ‘He literally fell through the cracks’"

From article 5:

• There’s no single entity overseeing the mental health care system in Chicago. That means, for instance, that homeless patients discharged from private hospitals might be given a bottle of medication and told to follow up at a clinic without what experts say should be a “warm handoff” to a treatment provider.
• Even though people experiencing homelessness and severe mental illness are more likely to become victims than perpetrators of crime, a small but visible number of them repeatedly cycles through the criminal legal system.
• With only about 1,200 state psychiatric beds in Illinois, he says more funding for community mental health would allow people who don’t need 24/7 hospitalization to leave state mental hospitals — meaning hospital spots could go to people in even greater need.
• But replacing long stays at state mental hospitals like the one in Elgin with comprehensive outpatient treatment would require a radical shift in thinking — away from retribution and toward treatment aimed at reducing suffering.
• It also would require supporting mechanisms that largely don’t exist, like providing housing for homeless people who have severe mental illness so they can be reached by medical and social service providers.
• “If the person who doesn’t get decent services commits a crime, now we have a crime victim, and that’s a cost,” he says. “And we have the cost of prosecuting her or him, and that’s a cost. And who’s paying for that?”
• Illinois spent an average of $49,271 on each person in prison in 2024, far more expensive than the cost of so-called wraparound services to keep people in treatment. The two biggest Chicago social service providers pegged these intensive services at $15,000 to $35,000 per client per year, depending on the person’s needs — which is as much as 70% less expensive than incarceration.
• Ideally, Antholt says, when mentally ill people are arrested, they’d get help before their release with housing, employment, disability services and mental health treatment, which currently exist in “very siloed” systems.
• ... He says the “magic bullet” for solving the problem is a “very good use of resources up front instead of very expensive institutionalization” because “the cost of prison and jails and hospitals and ERs is very expensive, and we can’t afford this in the long run.”
• ... She says that, when she went to the Elgin hospital to ask about her missing brother, she was told, “ ‘Oh, we’re not responsible. Once he’s released, our responsibility is just to drop them off. We don’t have to walk them into the actual shelter.’ ”

Some exemplary programs 

Nonprofit providers say they’re doing their best to keep people healthy and out of the criminal legal system. 

Some, including the largest in Chicago, Thresholds, run “Assertive Community Treatment,” or ACT, teams, providing intensive wraparound services to people with severe mental illness. The teams meet people as they’re being discharged from hospitals and take them home, get their prescriptions filled, make sure they have food, connect them with psychiatrists and work out immediate transportation needs.

West Canfield Historic District, Detroit, and the West Garfield Park neighborhood in Chicago: Opportunities for demonstration projects on wide-scale neighborhood improvement and quality infill architecture | May is National Historic Preservation Month

-- "63 things to do during National Historic Preservation Month"

-- "May is National Historic Preservation Month: The future of historic preservation"

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West Canfield Historic District, Detroit.  A Reddit thread showed photos of houses in the West Canfield Historic District in Detroit.  The impetus for the district was an antiques dealer, Beulah Groehn, "How One Woman Gave Rise to Detroit's Historic Preservation Movement" NTHP

[In 1965,] an antiques collector and retired executive secretary named Beulah Groehn drove into the city from Franklin to shop at an estate sale. The house, at 627 Canfield, was a beautiful but decrepit Victorian in the gritty Cass Corridor. The neighborhood was built for well-heeled Detroiters of the late 19th-century, but over the course of 90-some years, the mansions of Canfield Street had become boarding houses, bohemian crash-pads, and drug dens. There was no newness on West Canfield. But Beulah Groehn had discovered something she loved. Instead of buying antiques at that estate sale, she bought the house.

For the rest of her life, at a time when many of Detroit's planners and politicians felt that the city's past stood in the way of urban progress, Beulah fought to save places like West Canfield -- not simply because they were old, but because she believed that saving old places would attract residents, create jobs, and make neighborhoods safer, stronger, and more beautiful. Her legacy includes not only stately, brick-paved West Canfield Street -- today one of Detroit's most desirable blocks -- the city's local historic preservation ordinance, and along with it, the Historic Designation Advisory Board and Historic District Commission, the legal mechanisms and governing bodies that help make saving Detroit's old places possible.

West Garfield, Chicago. An article caught my attention awhile back, "This homebuilder wants to revitalize his West Garfield Park neighborhood. He just had his first sale," in Crain's Chicago Business about the development and sale of decidedly modern rowhouses in the West Garfield district of Chicago.  

West Garfield is a neighborhood that's seen better days.  It has a lot of historic building stock in various states of repair, including both healthy and distressed, and it has a number of infill buildings, like these rowhouses that represent modern design.  It has clusters of high performing physical assets that can be built upon once again.

3806 W Washington Boulevard, West Garfield Park, Chicago.

I was thinking that the West Garfield neighborhood would be a great place to do a test on a massive scale, not unlike Germany's IBA, a wide ranging revitalization initiative operating at the scale of multi-districts, that does a bunch of projects, and about ten years shows them, with others still in the pipeline.  

-- IBA - Hamburg

Or again, Germany's International Garden Festival ("DC has a big "Garden Festival" opportunity in the Anacostia River," 2014), which works similarly.  Historic equivalent architecture or new stuff.

Although I guess the neighborhood isn't the safest according to the Chicago Sun-Times, "Voices from Chicago's most violent neighborhood."

-- West Garfield Park, Encyclopedia of Chicago

Too bad I'm not in Chicago because there is a foundation that would fund something like this, albeit they'd need a lot of money and have to work with others.  The Knight Foundation is built on the profits from various newspapers owned by two brothers (Once upon a time I delivered the Detroit Free Press).

The Foundation pretty much only invests in places where they had a newspaper.  Chicago Daily News was their paper in Chicago--even though they sold the paper to Marshall Field, they still make grants in Chicago.

And the Foundation funded a short term preservation initiative called the Preservation Development Initiative, which applied Main Street and other historic preservation approaches to cities and neighborhoods in a bunch of cities in the early 2000s.  One impressive example was working with Mercer University in Macon, Georgia ("Beall’s Hill Neighborhood Revitalization Project," MU, Neighborhood Revitalization Guide, Historic Macon Foundation, "Historic Macon Foundation will expand revitalization efforts in Macon’s Beall’s Hill neighborhood with $3 million from Knight Foundation," Knight Foundation).

-- Investing In Revitalization Efforts: Case Studies from Knight Cities, Knight Foundation

Revitalization lessons from the Knight grants:

Local Context 

• Think beyond the central business district: 
• Build broad coalitions to ensure longevity: 
• Proactively mitigate displacement risk:

Accelerators of Impact

• Cluster investments: 
• Support multiple organizations working toward shared goals: In communities with an array of fiscally healthy and high-capacity organizations, 
• Cultivate relationships with educational anchors

Concentration of investment

• Embrace flexibility and innovation: 
• Achieve long-term impacts by investing in programming, arts, the public realm and infrastructure: 
• Investing in multiple avenues to revitalization:  

One of the neighborhood's assets is the Garfield Conservancy.  

Pair a PDI like initiative with a community safety partnership approach ("Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisances: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)") and it could be quite successful ("Chicago needs a homebuilding revolution," Crain's Chicago Business).

In fact, it'd be a good place to test my concept of an ideal neighborhood revitalization program.

-- "The need for a "national" neighborhood stabilization program comparable to the Main Street program for commercial districts: Part I (Overall)"
-- "To be successful, local neighborhood stabilization programs need a packaged set of robust remedies: Part 2"
-- "Creating 'community safety partnership neighborhood management programs as a management and mitigation strategy for public nuisance programs: Part 3 (like homeless shelters)"
-- "A case in Gloucester, Massachusetts as an illustration of the need for systematic neighborhood monitoring and stabilization initiatives: Part 4 (the Curcuru Family)"
-- "Local neighborhood stabilization programs: Part 5 | Adding energy conservation programs, with the PUSH Buffalo Green Development Zone as a model," 2021

Although a specific point on deep crime would probably need to be added.

63 things to do during National Historic Preservation Month

Over the years, originally inspired by a "what you can do" list by Preservation Action Council of San Jose, I've developed a four-part series on what people can do to "celebrate" National Preservation Month.  There are 60 items across the posts, ranging from visiting a historic district to watching a film in a historic theater.

Rather than reprint them in full--recognize that some of the links in previous pieces may be out of date--here are the entries.

-- "May is Historic Preservation Month: 60 ways to celebrate | Part 1: Cultural Heritage Tourism (1-19)," (2019)

1.  Resources for Cultural Heritage Tourism Travel. Magazines like Southern Living, Yankee and Sunset.  Bookstores.  Visitor Centers.  Historic preservation organizations.  Local chapters of the American Institute of Architects, and sometimes the American Society of Landscape Architects.  When traveling, library special collections.

2. Stay at a historic hotel in the city or a bed and breakfast located in a historic district. For example, the Tabard Inn in the Dupont Circle Historic District is one of the most romantic places in the city to have weekend brunch--out on the patio, during the spring, summer, and fall.

3.  When you visit other places, check out how they deal with historic preservation matters, and share that learning when you come back. For example, every fall, Pasadena Heritage sponsors Craftsman Weekend, in honor of its bungalow heritage.

4. Don't forget to check out traditional commercial districts, antique shops, other stores, cinemas, theaters, concert halls, restaurants, historic cemeteries, etc. as a regular part of your travel itinerary.

5. Check out a historic library building/Central Library.  Another great place to learn about a community when you're traveling is the main library.  Some of the buildings are historic, others more recently are majestic new construction buildings very much worth visiting.  .

6. Visit historic sites.  Many people visit historic sites when traveling.  Across the United States, ("The shortest route to America's 49603 historic sites," Washington Post) there are almost 90,000 places listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

7. Go see a museum exhibit relevant to urban history, even if it's on a seemingly broader topic. When people travel, and "consume" locally available museums, usually people's trips start and end with the local arts museum.

8.  Walking and building tours.  Many communities have organized walking tours for historic areas. Some print booklets for self-guided tours, many places have smartphone tour apps, and cities often have historic marker and trails programs.

9. Bicycle touring.  Bikes are a great way to cover a lot of ground more quickly.  And it's less tiring to bike than it is to walk.  Many cities have bike rental operations (there is a loosely affiliated group called "Bike and Roll" operating in many cities).  And some hotels and B&Bs make bicycles available to their guests.  (There are even apps for renting bikes directly from individuals, like Spinlister, which can be cheaper than the bike rental places.)

10.  Transit as a way to get around.  While not many cities in the US do this, many European cities set up or promote specific transit services as a way to tour parts of the city, usually a set of tourist-oriented attractions in the core ("Travel around the city by tram," Visit Helsinki).

If you're already familiar with how to use transit, it usually isn't hard to figure out how to use another transit system.  If you don't regularly ride transit, likely people will be happy to help you.

11.  When we travel, we like to visit house museums.  For example, the Woodford Mansion in Philadelphia is really cool, and Savannah has many different house museums that you can visit, the most notorious being the Mercer-Williams House.  Most cities have at least one.  Los Angeles has just reopened the Hollyhock House.

12. Arguably, "antiquing" which for me includes ephemera, can be a form of historical/historic preservation-related research and is deserving of a separate entry.

While traveling, you may wish to check out reclaimed building materials stores too.  You'll probably have to do some digging to find such organizations, but offhand I know there are such places in New York City, DC (Suburban Maryland), Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Detroit, York and Scranton, Pennsylvania, etc., plus the various Re:stores run by local affiliates of Habitat for Humanity.

13.  Visit a historic railroad station, bus terminal and/or a transportation museum.   There are many fabulous extant railroad stations, many no longer in use, in so many cities.2013 was the 100th anniversary of Grand Central Station in New York City, and in Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles new master planning and/or construction improvement projects for stations in those cities are underway.

14. Visit a streetcar museum.   Many communities have streetcar/transit museums such as the Baltimore Streetcar Museum and the National Capital Trolley Museum  in Montgomery County, Maryland in this area.  So try to ride a historic streetcar as well.

15.  Ride a streetcar system in active service. Some places run heritage streetcars in active service.  Everyone knows about the streetcars in New Orleans (and that system continues to expand in bits and pieces).

16. Tour a historic trail, road, railroad, canal, park network, or parkway/greenway.

17.  Garden Tourism. Garden tourism has two different strands.

18. Ride a passenger rail train.  Ride a passenger railroad (commuter) train.  In the DC region, that means MARC or VRE.  In Greater New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia (SEPTA), Chicago, and Boston (as well as Toronto and Montreal), Southern California, Northern California and elsewhere commuter railroads provide passenger rail services once provided by private railroad companies.

19. Visit a national or state park. DC, for obvious reasons, has many nationally owned parks, the system of Fort Circle Parks works to preserve the forts built during the Civil War to protect the city from Confederate invasion. Fort Stevens, hidden behind a church on Georgia Avenue, around Quackenbos Street NW, was attacked by Confederate forces, and President Lincoln was up there and watched. Up Georgia Avenue a bit, close to Walter Reed Hospital, is a somewhat forlorn and neglected battlefield cemetery and monument honoring soldiers who died at the battle at Fort Stevens.

20. Take a boat trip on a local river.  Many cities have water-based tours or smaller scale water taxi systems.  Boston, Seattle, New York City, and San Francisco have working passenger ferry systems. The Staten Island Ferry is working transit that's free.

-- "May is Historic Preservation Month: 60 ways to celebrate | Part 2: Explore your community (20-36)," (2019)

21. Explore an older area of your community that you don't know. Go on a neighborhood or building tour. Check out a talk (not all of them cost money) at the National Building Museum.

Or just walk around a neighborhood with housing built before 1930.  Walking here and there around the core of Takoma Park, Maryland, we always come across attractive and unique houses.

22.  Many preservation groups sponsor neighborhood house tours.  On the first Sunday of May, Historic Takoma Park (DC and Maryland) has their annual house tour.

23.  Follow the path of a Heritage Trail such as one of the many "produced" by CulturalTourismDC in DC.

24. Shop at stores in commercial districts that are historically designated: i.e., Cleveland Park; Georgetown; Capitol Hill; Dupont Circle in DC, but there are so many across the country.

25. Eat in a restaurant in a historic building/historic district. Now 60+ years old, Ben's Chili Bowl is one of the few remaining restaurants in the city that is many decades old.  .. Readers have pointed out that Martin's Tavern in Georgetown and Cafe Mozart, a German restaurant downtown, are much older.

26. See a movie in a historic cinema building. There aren't many historic cinemas in DC proper any more, but the Uptown Theater in Cleveland Park is one.

27.  See a production in a "legitimate" historic theatre or concert hall.  You have many choices in the DC area such as the Warner, the National, the Studio Theatre, the Lincoln Theatre, the Shakespeare Theatre at the Landsburgh, the Atlas Performing Arts Center (which utilized federal historic preservation tax credits to pay for a portion of the building's rehabilitation), or the DAR Concert Hall.

28.  Even if you're an atheist, it can be fun to visit a historic church building, including checking out their stained glass windows (I am a big fan of stained glass).

29. Shop at a historic public food market. Eastern Market is DC's last remaining public food market building, built in 1873.  (Union Market is privately owned, and was constructed in the 1970s.)

30. Visit a historic cemetery. In DC, we have the Congressional Cemetery or the Rock Creek Church Cemetery at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, among others.  Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetery is a standout.  Some cemeteries offer tours.

31. Check out an exhibit at a local history museum or historic site, such as at the Anacostia Community Museum or the Historical Society of Washington or one of the other house museums and historic sites in the city and region.

32. Walk the historic grounds of a local college or university.  In DC, Catholic University, Trinity, Georgetown, Howard, and Gallaudet have beautiful grounds and buildings.  Kendall Green at Gallaudet was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.

33. Check out a monument or memorial in your community and learn more about it. We can't preserve what we don't understand or appreciate.

34. Visit a historic railroad or bus station, such as DC's Union Station. Designed by Daniel Burnham, it's an incredible example of the City Beautiful architectural movement. Check out chapters from Bill Wright's dissertation on Union Station. He's a great writer!

Railroad stations tend to be grand while older bus stations tend to be gnarly, which is an interesting commentary on the place of these respective modes in transportation history and practice.

35. Check out a historic library building.  Many cities have great library buildings that now qualify as historic.  A number of DC's libraries were built with support from the Carnegie Foundation (Northeast, Southeast, the old Carnegie Library downtown, Takoma, and Mount Pleasant, which is particularly gorgeous) as were more than 2,000 other libraries elsewhere in the US.

36. Take a boat trip on a local river.  The pontoon boat tours of the Anacostia River leaving from the Bladensburg Waterfront Park (in Prince George's County) dip into DC.  Many cities have water-based tours or smaller scale water taxi systems as well.

37. Explore historic preservation matters in your region, beyond the borders of your community.

-- "May is Historic Preservation Month: 60 ways to celebrate | Part 3: Learn and Get Involved (37-52)," (2019)

38. Learn about the history of your community. For example, for DC, read Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C., 1964 -1994 and Between Justice and Beauty, and more.

39. Become a member of your citywide/countywide/regional preservation organizations such as the DC Preservation League, the Municipal Arts Society in New York City, Baltimore Preservation, Historic Districts Council in New York City, Cleveland Restoration Society, Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans, Landmark Society of Western New York (which serves Rochester, among other places), etc.  I am a big fan of the Chicago Bungalow Association.

40.  Before you get too involved, you might want to take the time to read your city, county, or state historic preservation plan.  This will educate you about preservation issues in your area.  (Although generally such plans are pretty positive, and don't go into enough detail about the "threats" nor do they outline ways to address "opportunities" in a process design approach.)

41. Learn about why historic preservation is important, in and of itself, as well as a urban revitalization strategy. The reason I am a strong supporter of preservation is that I have come to believe that it is the only approach to economically sustainable neighborhood and commercial district revitalization that works for the long haul.


42. Join a neighborhood/local preservation group, such as in DC the Capitol Hill Restoration Society, Historic Takoma, or Historic Mount Pleasant).

43.  Nationally, you can join the National Trust for Historic Preservation while you're at it. If you join, you can visit NT owned sites and affiliate organization museums at a discount/free, get discounts at Historic Hotels, and discounts on products you purchase.

44.  Preservation Action is a 501(c)4 advocacy group that advocates for specific legislation and is also a membership group.  Their "Preservation Advocacy Week" is held in March, where members lobby Members of Congress for legislation favorable to preservation.

45.  At the state level, most states have statewide preservation organizations.  In the DC-VA-MD area, that means Preservation Maryland and Preservation Virginia/Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, as well as the DC Preservation League.  Many sponsor annual or bi-annual conferences, journals, and other provide other resources.

46. Volunteer/1. Get involved in a preservation issue in your neighborhood or the city-county at large, which could include attending meetings of your local historic district/preservation commission, which in DC is the Historic Preservation Review Board, or working on a particular project affecting your neighborhood or city.

47. Volunteer/2, in a traditional commercial district revitalization initiative, at a history museum, or for a historic site.  A "division of the preservation movement" is the Main Street commercial district revitalization program, which links economic development with historic preservation focused on the revival of local commercial districts and downtowns in smaller communities.

48.  Volunteer/3, at a history museum, a historic park or at a historic site.  Museums and historic sites are always looking for volunteers, as our most park systems, including the National Park Service.  Many docents at sites and museums are volunteers.

-- Volunteer in Parks program, National Park Service

49. Work to preserve historic schools as schools.  The DC Public School system has an archives and museum that is also a meeting center, Sumner School, at 17th and M Streets NW.

50. Another way to learn a lot but very quickly is to attend a preservation conference such as the annual meeting of the National Trust for Historic Preservation (this year it's in Denver starting October 10th) and the National Main Street conference, which was held in Seattle in March, some sessions materials are available).

51. Check out the history resources at your local library or a specialized collection such as in DC at the Washingtoniana Collection at the Martin Luther King Central Library or the Peabody collection at the Georgetown Branch, the Kiplinger Library at the Historical Society of Washington, the Jewish Historical Society, or the Moorland-Spingarn Collection at Howard University.  Many city libraries have history collections.

52. Read a historic district brochure (or historic building or district nomination form).  In DC, they are available online or in hard copy at the Historic Preservation Office.  Many communities produce and publish these kinds of publications.  Two of the best I've ever read is one on Jefferson County Indiana including Madison (One of the first Main Street communities) and Hanover, and the other on the Kansas City public market, called City Market.  Both lay out their respective histories chronologically but thematically.

53.  I am a big fan of reading the design guidelines publications produced for cities or neighborhood historic districts, which describe local historic districts, such as those from Montgomery County Maryland, Richmond, Virginia, Roanoke, Virginia, and the Philadelphia Rowhouse Manual.  The Roanoke Virginia Residential Pattern Book is a stand out!

54.  Listen to a preservation focused podcast.  Podcasts--"radio shows" are a new addition to preservation-based media.  Preservation Maryland produces a great series, PreserveCast, which is worth checking out.

-- "May is Historic Preservation Month: 60 ways to celebrate | Part 4: Preservation At Home (53-60)," (2019)

55. If you own "an old house," and want to learn more about historically sympathetic renovation, why not subscribe to relevant magazines such as Old House Journal, Old House Interiors, American Bungalow, This Old House, Fine Homebuilding, etc.

56.  Publications on maintenance of historic houses.  

57.  Books to guide renovation.  

58.  Parts and appliance resources.  There are companies that specialize in "historic" parts.  For example, DEA Bathroom Machineries specialize in bathrooms, especially historic sinks.

59.  Most big cities have architectural salvage stores, for example in the DC area, it's Community Forklift.  In Baltimore, Loading Dock is a non-profit while Second Chance is a for profit.

60.  Workshops and expos.  It would be logical to have "Preservation Expos" during Preservation Month but it doesn't seem to be the case.  Historic Chicago Bungalow Association holds workshops most months, and has building expos too, from time to time.

61.  Activities for and with children.  If you have children in your life, how about doing an activity with them that is architecture-preservation related?

62. Television programming.  There are some HGTV/DIY network shows that are sympathetic to historic preservation, although the bulk of the shows are not.  Even the heralded "Fixer Upper," even if they renovate vacant houses, tends to homogenize the interior of a house into a gargantuan "open concept" house with a massive kitchen. 

But shows like "Rehab Attic," to some extent "Stone House Revival," and "American Rehab: Charleston" generally are pretty empathetic on historic preservation and can be a great source of ideas.  Lately I've been enamored by "Restored," featuring Brett Waterman working on houses in Riverside County, California.

Obviously, "This Old House," on PBS is the grand-daddy of all shows.  In my opinion, it's great for historic architecture and detailing, but the program tends to be more about supersizing houses, but doing a great job while you're doing so.  And they seem to let it slide when homeowners make decisions that somewhat cavalierly rip out historic elements in favor of modernization.

63.  Researching the history of your house.  There are people who will research this for you, but many city libraries have usable information and even may offer seminars on how to go about this.  Census records are one place, but more current records aren't accessible.

-- How to Research the History of Your House | This Old House
-- Internet Public Library: Research the History of Your House
-- Houses - The National Archives

Ride Public Transit For Free: San Francisco Bay, on All Aboard Bay Area Transit Day (May 6)

This is marketed with too short a time frame, but transit agencies should schedule a couple free transit days each year as a way to introduce people to and market the hell out of transit.  Such days can be used to launch coordinated improvements as well.

From the website:

Bay Area transit agencies in partnership with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Bay Area Air District are encouraging residents to ride transit on Tuesday, May 6, for All Aboard Bay Area Transit Day, coinciding with the start of Spare the Air summer smog season. 

All Aboard Transit Day encourages people to get out and ride transit – or perhaps try it for the first time – as more people return to the office and as transit ridership grows. On May 6, transit agencies will offer free stickers and other swag items to riders throughout the day to thank them for riding, while also soliciting their feedback.

Chicago Community Policing Study

Civic groups in Chicago joined in to commission a study, Operationalizing Community Policing Within the Chicago Police Department: A Summary of Current and Promising National Practices, to help the Chicago Police Department realize its goal to become an agency committed to "community oriented policing."

21CP’s study – which involved interviews with personnel and community stakeholders with direct knowledge of community policing practices in 17 jurisdictions nationally as well as a review of relevant literature –identified a number of elements that CPD’s community policing approach should reflect and incorporate going forward, including:  

• Community policing must be an express, defined overall philosophy. In many, but not all, of the departments studied, community policing is specifically identified as an overall philosophy of policing and an overarching way that the department does its work – and not a specialized program with its own label, name, or personnel
• Community engagement must be understood as part of, but not the same as, overall community policing. Because community policing involves dynamic partnership with community to co-produce public safety, it necessarily requires police personnel to foster relationships with community stakeholders. However, operationalizing “community policing” likely benefits from police departments systematically describing how that community engagement factors into a wider “community policing” philosophy or approach.
• Community policing likely benefits from formally codifying and tracking community problems, assets, and events – and from other types of centralized, department-wide coordination or administration. Even as community policing can and must happen at the level of individual officers, problem-solving efforts, community assets, and opportunities for community engagement must be inventoried, codified, and tracked so that progress can be made and measured. That is, it appears that departments benefit from maintaining some structures and processes to ensure that individual personnel are appropriately “plugged into” the department or a geographic area’s community policing concerns.
• Police agencies must articulate specific, granular performance expectations for personnel across all ranks (i.e., including supervisors) and roles on community policing responsibilities and provide training on such expectations. This may include: (1) Specific guidance on how to use unstructured community engagement time (2) Specific guidance on how to incorporate community policing principles into call response and enforcement activity (3) Specific guidance or instructions on promoting visibility (4) Designating specific expectations about the amount of time that officers should spend on community and problem-oriented policing activities; and (5) Providing personnel with responsibility for a defined geographic area
• Community policing programs benefit from mechanisms for gathering, analyzing, and using performance data and metrics. For a police agency to gauge whether its personnel are in fact conducting the types of activities that community policing requires, it will necessarily benefit from collecting and analyzing information from the field about officer performance. Although some departments have established mechanisms for gauging performance and outcomes, several departments with whom 21CP engaged said that data and metrics regarding community policing is an area that they are actively trying to address – recognizing that the absence of concrete information makes it more difficult for the department to gauge its level of success and share positive outcomes with community and external stakeholders.
• Many departments benefit from having some centralized, department-wide coordination or administration of community policing. Although departments must ensure that the existence of some individuals to oversee community policing is not seen by others as making community policing someone else’s role or responsibility, they can benefit from personnel ensuring that the department, as a whole, is aligning its activities with the community policing objective.

Also see the blog entry:

-- "The opportunity to rearticulate public safety delivery keeps being presented: Rochester New York," 

Impact of proposed transit cuts at SEPTA/Philadelphia presented in graphically compelling ways

With WFH and the ending of special grant programs from the Biden Administration ("Public transit agencies eye service cuts as pandemic aid runs out," Marketplace/NPR), coupled with the Trump Administration's pro-car bias, virtually every transit agency is facing financial exigency in future  budget cycles ("Metra, CTA and Pace warn of possible 40% service cuts starting in 2027," NBC Chicago, "What to know about possible PRT cuts and how to make your voice heard," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) , often with pleas like in Philadelphia ("No more excuses — Harrisburg Republicans must find a way to fully fund SEPTA," Philadelphia Inquirer) and the SF Bay, for state bailouts.

Process for considering transit service cuts in Pittsburgh

WFH has totally messed up transit agency budgets, shifting the most use from morning and evening commute to primary business districts, to use spread out during the day, across the system, further increasing costs alongside revenue decreases.  DC for example has lost about 250,000 train riders from pre-covid highs.

The Reddit Philadelphia has included entries on what budget cuts would to do to SEPTA's, the regional transit agency for Philadelphia, service network, and I thought they've had some good graphics to illustrate the changes.

-- SEPTA budget cut fact sheet

  Proposed cuts to the current rail system ("SEPTA prepares for major service cuts," Trains Magazine).

Current ail transit system

The Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission ("Regional planners calculated the impact on traffic if SEPTA cuts happen. It’s really bad," Inquirer) did a study of the impact the proposed cuts will have on motor vehicle traffic congestion.

From the article:

SEPTA is facing a $213 million annual structural deficit due in part to pandemic-related ridership reductions and inflationary pressure on labor and materials costs. (Fare evasion doesn’t help matters, costing from $30 million to $68 million yearly, according to SEPTA projections.)

The transit agency released a $1.65 million operating budget on April 10 that included a doomsday scenario of service cuts, along with an average fare increase of 21.5% across the board. In all, up to 55 bus routes would be eliminated, five Regional Rail lines shut down, and 66 stations closed. Other routes and lines would see reduced frequency of buses and trains.

At least one of the SEPTA trolley routes serve the suburbs.  This is in Media, Pennsylvania. 

Flickr photo by James Scales. 

Those cuts would occur in two phases, this fall and on Jan. 1, without new state subsidies, the transit agency says. If the full menu were enacted, all rail services would stop at 9 p.m. across the SEPTA network early next year.

From the standpoint of "those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, some Pennsylvania Republicans are recommending privatization ("Idea to privatize SEPTA floats around the State House amid funding crisis," Fox29).  The proposal focuses on bus services, not the entire system.

There's a reason that with few exceptions, privately run transit systems were acquired by local and state governments to maintain service.  They were unprofitable from a fare standpoint, especially in that many of the "spillover benefits" of transit aren't captured by the transit operator.

Note that plenty of public transit agencies outsource operations of some or all of their transit services to the private sector.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  Since the operator isn't responsible for investments in transit infrastructure, that's often skipped over.  Privatization is no panacea.

Impact on property values.  Another report ("SEPTA cuts could lead to drop in property values around Regional Rail lines," WHYY/NPR, Economic Impact Analysis: SEPTA Service Cut Proposal Due to Lack of Funding) points out that property values will drop in areas that get less service at a cost of .  This is another example of a "spillover benefit," improved property values, just one of multiple positive economic development impacts not being captured by a transit agency.

Impact on special event population.  SEPTA promotes transit service to sports events like Eagle football games and concerts ("Taylor Swift's Eras Tour helps boost Philadelphia's economy," ABC6).  Philadelphia will host ceremonies commemorating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and World Cup soccer.  

Severe cuts to transit will significantly impact the ability of visitors to move around the city ("Philly mostly ready for 2026 … except for that little SEPTA problem," WHYY/NPR).

Streetcar service to ATT Park in San Francisco. SF Chronicle photo.

Impact of graphic design in government communications.  Note that the presentation of these issues with great graphics is an illustration of the power of good graphic design and the use of the design method by government agencies.

-- "All the talk of e-government, digital government, and open source government is really about employing the design method," (2012)
-- "PL #7: Using the Purple Line to rebrand Montgomery and Prince George's Counties as Design Forward," (2017)
-- "Design as city branding: transit edition," (2012)
-- "City (and university) branding: brand deposits; brand withdrawals; brand destruction," (2012)
-- "Georgetown: A subtle but important difference between branding and identity-positioning," (2010)
-- "Identity ≠ branding or Authenticity is the basis of identity," (2007)
-- "The taxi livery debacle as a lead in to a broader discussion of the importance of "design" to DC's "brand promise," (2012)
-- "Illustration of government and design thinking: Boston's City Hall to Go truck," (2013)
-- "(DC) Neighborhoods and commercial districts as brands," (2012)