Revisiting assistance programs to get people biking: 1826 programs

I have always been big on differentiation in analyzing places and programs, but lately I've become aware that I may not be as thorough as I could be.

I've written hundreds of blog entries about bicycling and how to promote it as a real form of transportation, focused on but not limited to DC, which is a perfect city for it.

A big point I make with bicycling is that given the automobile dependency that's been fostered on the US given the predominate land use and transportation development paradigm, is that people have to be assisted in making the shift from driving to mostly bicycling.

Building infrastructure isn't enough.  Even great infrastructure can be empty much of the time.  If anything, that's an indicator that people need help to make the change.

Granted for "biking most of the time" a lot of conditions have to be congruent including distance from origin to destination, topography, weather.

I have a piece, "Revisiting assistance programs to get people biking: 18 programs," and speaking of differentiation what I realize it that it should be organized in terms of mass/district/place based supports versus what we might call individualized and personal biking.

An example might be living in Capitol Hill, DC and riding around on various errands, trips to work, for recreation etc., within your neighborhood, versus living 4.5 miles direct to the University of Maryland.  

Similarly, Capitol Hill has dozens of bike sharing stations, while the route from Takoma Park to University of Maryland does not.  In Manor Park, there are few bike sharing stations, so having your own bike makes the most sense.

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That entry updates "Revisiting assistance programs to get people biking: 18 programs," with the addition of more programs, which I have included below, marked by an asterisk, but without adding much in the way of additional text.

This post is written in advance of the next post.

Mass/Place/District

1. Creating "sustainable mobility stores." Relatedly providing support and subsidies to bicycle shops.

3.  Cycling training

9.  Bike sharing programs ought to be an obvious opportunity for promoting cycling take up.

10.  Discounted bike sharing memberships on a means-tested basis.

12.  Campus specific bike share programs.  

Ciclavia in December 2014.  Los Angeles Times photo.

19.** Open Streets Programs/Community Cycling Promotion programs at the neighborhood and community scale, including promotion of biking through affinity groups.  I've written about both a lot but somehow neglected to include this item in this entry.  

Neighborhood and district rides at one scale, whole community rides at the others.  I am always amazed to see photos of such events and say "where did all the bikes come from?"

20.**  Electric bike discount programs.  This has the advantage of "expanding" the size of a district a person is willing to bike it.  Plus may shift people in significant ways from cars.

21.**  Free bicycle share trips to extend transit trips to reaching your final destination.  Columbia SC (bus) transit does this, as does Bogota.

23.**  Bike bus programs.  Most used in conjunction with "bike to school programs" ("I Started a Bike Bus, and You Can Too," Wired, 8 routes for the Montclair Bike Bus in New Jersey, "A cool way to get kids to school -- the bike bus" Boston Globe, ""‘It’s a bit of freedom’: traffic-stopping tech helps Glasgow school’s bike bus on its way"," Guardian).

Bike bus in Brooklyn.  Video at Reddit.

25.** Expansion and Improvement of Trails. I didn't realize until I rode a trail for some distance while mostly being a street rider, how much mental energy is spent while street riding on safety measures and defensive cycling.  Separation from cars encourages more people to bike.  And it lets you "loosen" the mental load.

26.** Bike (sustainable mobility) Festivals.  I've written about college bike weeks and the Bike Rodeo that used to be sponsored by Utah Transit Authority.  Sometimes an Open Streets program includes many of these features.  Obviously it's a way to get people consider sustainable mobility.

More recently, Washington Area Bicyclists Association has sponsored such events for seniors specifically ("Older adult transportation block party").

Individually-focused

1. Creating "sustainable mobility stores".  Relatedly providing support and subsidies to bicycle shops.

2.  Cycle Borrowing programs.

3.  Cycling training

4.  Bike safety training for children AND YOUTH.

5.  Integrating cycling promotion programs into public recreation centers.  

6.  Other demographic focused cycling initiatives.

7.  Senior cycling promotion programs.

8.  Bikes as tools for improving access to jobs.

11.  Cycle access programs on college campuses and by large employers.

13.  Employer and college-assisted buying programs.

14.  Credit union loans to buy bikes.

15.  Bike donations for children.

16.  Bike bundling programs in public housing.

17.  Donating abandoned and unclaimed bikes to programs serving low income populations.

18.  Short term on-site bicycle provision.

19.** Open Streets Programs/Community Cycling Promotion programs at the neighborhood and community scale, including promotion of biking through affinity groups.  I've written about both a lot but somehow neglected to include this item in this entry.   

Neighborhood and district rides at one scale, whole community rides at the others.  I am always amazed to see photos of such events and say "where did all the bikes come from?"  This item is listed in this section more for affinity groups and community rides.

20.**  Electric bike discount programs.  This has the advantage of "expanding" the size of a district a person is willing to bike it.  Plus may shift people in significant ways from cars.

22.** Secure bicycle parking systems at the city and metropolitan scale ("Another mention of the idea of creating a network of metropolitan scale secure bicycle parking facilities").  Again something I write about a lot that should be integrated into this list.

24.**  Provision of bike lockers and showers in destination districts.  Zoning requirements to build them in office buildings and campuses of a certain size.

25.** Expansion and Improvement of Trails. I didn't realize until I rode a trail for a distance, how much mental energy is spent while street riding on safety measures and defensive cycling.  Separation from cars encourages more people to bike.

26.** Bike (sustainable mobility) Festivals.  I've written about college bike weeks and the Bike Rodeo that used to be sponsored by Utah Transit Authority.  Sometimes an Open Streets program includes many of these features.  Obviously it's a way to get people consider sustainable mobility.

More recently, Washington Area Bicyclists Association has sponsored such events for seniors specifically ("Older adult transportation block party").

New library/community space + 100% affordable housing mixed use building in New York City

The building uses brick and is kind of two buildings, with one set back.  There are 175 AH units, from studios to three bedrooms.

It's in NYC, so of course it's larger than the project in other cities ("Inwood development with public library and 100% affordable housing opens," 6sqft).

In "Opposition to affordable housing in Chevy Chase, DC," last year I wrote about a proposal to rebuild the Chevy Chase Community Center to include affordable housing.

The big example nationally is the Hollywood Library in Portland, Oregon.  It has a library and cafe on the ground floor and 40+ AH units on three floors above.  

This building shows that kind of mixed use is possible, and that the architecture can be reasonably decent.

As the blog entry points out, there have been many attempts to do something similar in DC, but mostly they fail.

In the comments, charlie points out this isn't so cheap and that the West End Library mixed use project--I think it has problems--worked because it is luxury housing.  

An anonymous commenter makes a great point that maybe the best thing this new building could do is to help reformulate the street experience on the East Side, which is pretty much disjoint compared to the West Side.

Both mixed use library projects in New York City prove the point that it's about "transformational projects action planning" ("A wrinkle in thinking about the Transformational Projects Action Planning approach: Great public buildings aren't just about design, but what they do," 2022)focused on the building program and quality architecture rather than a focus on startling "design," and the building not connecting to the community around it, managerial capacity and vision, for which DC had a shortage.  It's full of high quality amenities:

Measuring 20,000 square feet, the library retains its previously offered services, including literacy programs and story times. The library’s open and flexible floor plan makes space for computer classes, a community room, co-working spaces, and quiet reading spaces.

Amenities at The Eliza include bike storage lockers, a shared laundry room, a children’s playroom, a recreation room, a gym, rooftop gardens, an outdoor lounge and terrace with views of the Hudson River, and an on-site resident manager. 

All residences feature energy-efficient appliances. Residents will also have direct access to the renovated library facility and a 10,000-square-foot Activities, Culture, and Training Center (ACTS) for job training. The ACTS Center features a cutting-edge STEM Robotics learning hub, a teaching kitchen, a performance space, a sensory room, and classrooms designed to meet the needs of youth and their families.

The NYC building is the second of its kind.  The Sunset Library and Apartments rebuild was first ("NYC’s first 100% affordable housing development with new public library opens in Sunset Park" 6sqft).  

This project was done by the Brooklyn Public Library, which is a separate organization from the NYPL.

By doing the project as mixed use, BPL stated that the cost of creating the library was half the cost of a stand alone, single use library project.

21 years later H Street NE commercial district is still dirty

I've been amazed at how much cleaner Salt Lake City tends to be compared to DC.  

For example, a few years ago, I walked from Manor Park to Columbia Heights and back, and picked up and disposed of over 500 recyclables...

This is a query on Reddit DC, looking for people to help clean up H Street NE.  

As chair of the H Street Main Street Promotions Committee back in 2003 this is something we did too.  I wrote about it in a couple entries:

-- "Every Litter Bit Hurts," 2005
-- "Community cleanups (and other activities) as community building and civic engagement activities," 2011

I would say it gave me a much better ground-based appreciation about the nature of the trash.  In DC commercial districts, it's pretty typical for trash to flow into the first residential block on either side of the street.

So clean up programs should include the abutting residential areas where appropriate.

It also illustrates that commercial district revitalization is a never ending effort.  Perceptions of public safety are shaped by cleanliness, the presence of graffiti, etc.

-- "Updating the post The "soft side" of commercial district revitalization," 2006/2016

Decades ago, DC used to pay people to clean the streets of commercial districts, but that program ended when the city was in bankruptcy.

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This article is interesting.  Back when I did Main Street commercial district revitalization work, I used to make the point that small cities and big cities often missed the point when approaching their work.  A big city wasn't all downtown.  The neighborhood commercial districts are more akin to smaller town commercial districts.  Therefore small towns can learn from neighborhood commercial districts in cities and vice versa.

This article about commercial district revitalization in smaller towns across Minnesota illustrates the point ("From Owatonna to Red Wing, Minnesota's small downtowns see resurgence," Minneapolis Star Tribune, archive.ph copy).

National office space market is very bad (reprint from Bloomberg)

Salt Lake Downtown Skyline at night

This isn't news, more of a reiteration.  This affects cities both in terms of urban, especially downtown, vibrance, but especially local government revenue streams, which tend to be dependent on commercial property taxes, especially in major cities.

There's lots of talk about office to residential conversion, but that will take a couple decades to have significant impact (Myths about converting offices into housing—and what can really revitalize downtowns, Brookings).  From Bloomberg:

Not long from now, almost one-quarter of all US office space may be vacant. And if work-from-home—the key culprit—persists, commercial-property values will be further decimated by up to $250 billion, Moody’s warns. When combined with the impact of lower rents and lease turnovers, the vicious post-pandemic cycle will reduce revenue for office landlords by as much as $10 billion. That in turn could translate into a quarter-trillion dollars of “property value destruction,” Moody’s officials said. The figures illustrate the gloomy prospects faced by property owners and lenders as employers continue to jettison square footage or shift from multiyear leases to shorter-term and more flexible co-working arrangements. A full 85% of North American organizations polled by brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle have implemented hybrid work, and occupancy across offices in major US cities is stuck at about 50% of pre-pandemic levels. Wavering demand and increased borrowing costs have slammed office valuations, especially among older buildings. “The argument for maintaining or even increasing remote work practices remains compelling for many businesses,” Moody’s said. “If productivity remains stable and costs can be reduced by forgoing physical office spaces, the rationale for mandating in-office attendance diminishes.”

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Small downtowns may have an advantage because the cities are less unbalanced ("From Owatonna to Red Wing, Minnesota's small downtowns see resurgence," Minneapolis Star Tribune, archive.ph copy).  Also see "Revamping Nicollet Mall as a 24-hour district is one idea for downtown Minneapolis," MST, archive.ph link).

-- Downtown Next Report, Minneapolis Foundation

Need for social marketing initiatives around installation of neighborhood traffic calming initiatives: Salt Lake City

Gosh, years ago I wrote about an approach to planning I called "action planning," focused on implementation, and to be successful included elements of social marketing and branding and identity.

My thinking about planning and how it should be performed has moved from action planning ("Social Marketing the Arlington (and Tower Hamlets and Baltimore) way," 2008, "All the talk of e-government, digital government, and open source government is really about employing the design method," 2012), to best practice revitalization planning ("Why can't the "Bilbao Effect" be reproduced? | Bilbao as an example of Transformational Projects Action Planning," 2017) to transformational projects action planning ("Updating the best practice elements of revitalization to include elements 7 and 8 | Transformational Projects Action Planning at a large scale," 2024, "A wrinkle in thinking about the Transformational Projects Action Planning approach: Great public buildings aren't just about design, but what they do," 2022), with stops for destination marketing, cities as brand management, and risk management as areas that elected officials should be very much concerned.

Traffic calming has been a revolutionary treatment in sustainable mobility focused transportation for the last 20+ years.  Most people probably think of it as speed bumps, but there are many different treatments.

But it's not widely understood, especially in places that are dominated by the car, like Salt Lake City.  Like many cities, Salt Lake is a leader in trying to balance the modes with a renewed focus on sustainable modes--walking, biking, and transit.  It's doing some great bike infrastructure, some of which we will be trying to get for the perimeter of Sugar House Park.

A traffic lane was removed and an in-ROW bicycle lane was installed on 900 East adjacent to Fairmont Park.

The Livable Streets Plan is an implementation focused plan aiming to bring that about ("In Salt Lake City, here’s what kind of ‘traffic-calming’ projects could be coming to your street," Salt Lake Tribune).  The city has been investing in such efforts for awhile, and the CIP process prioritizes monies for this action item.

My one criticism of the approach would be a lot of the residential streets in Salt Lake are "naturally traffic calmed" already based on their design, width, etc., and often people don't understand when treatments are implemented, often with little community involvement.  

(Many DC residential streets are similarly set up.  And I've argued that a bike boulevard program is really a traffic calming program irrespective of the bikes.)

That being said here and there are exceptionally wide neighborhood streets too, and traffic calming is a lot cheaper that reconstruction to make the street narrower.

So far, using the concepts of "Tactical Urbanism," many of the projects are either prototypes or done simply, but IMO there can be seriously negative aesthetic effects.

-- Tactical Urbanism Manual, volume 1
-- Tactical Urbanism Manual, volume 2
-- Tactical Urbanists Guide to Materials and Design

"Temporary" can be a long time.  Years.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mayor Erin Mendenhall and council member Dan Dugan swap out a 25 mph speed limit sign for a new 20 mph sign in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, July 27, 2022.

In 2022, the city reduced the street mph to 20mph for most neighborhood streets, which in a car oriented city, is at times controversial ("Salt Lake City Council lowers speed limit to 20 mph on 70% of city streets in unanimous vote," "Salt Lake City swaps first 20 mph speed limit sign in initiative for safer streets," Salt Lake Tribune).  (There is a local walking and transit advocacy group called Sweet Streets, that helped promote this change.)

I live on a street that's pretty wide--so cars speed quite a bit, even though it's only one block long, between two households with children, a weird intersection confluence, and about 20 children in close by houses, many of whom come to play next door (the house is more popular with kids than the one with the pool...).

The parents have been hyper about speeding cars, and the neighborhood and our District 6 Councilmember is more concerned about traffic safety these days because a nearby elementary school had a traffic fatality last year ("Yard sign, Person running for District Six Council in Salt Lake using traffic safety as a campaign issue," 2023).  

So about six weeks ago, that helped some of my neighbors get a temporary roundabout placed in the weird intersection.  Anecdotally, I think it's contributed to speed reduction, but I don't think they did of study of prevailing speeds beforehand.

It's not fancy.  It's temporary.

Sometimes kids play in it, but with supervision.  That scandalizes my MIL, but I'm not about to get into a debate with her about how the car companies and their allies changed the definition of street to be car centric instead of people centered.  See Fighting Traffic:The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.

Road Witch was a campaign in England 20+ years ago, focusing on rebalancing the use to streets toward residents, not automobiles.

But there has been opposition, both in Nextdoor, the neighborhood e-list, and through flyers distributed to nearby houses (I'm next door to the roundabout, and obviously with my sustainable mobility proclivities am supportive.)

I think that the real problem has been lack of neighborhood communication and education, heightened by the reality of car centricity, which automobile dependent residents aren't inclined to question--they just take it for granted.

The roundabout just popped up with no notice.  It's cheap looking.  There have been no explanatory materials placed in the roundabout or on people's doorknobs--both about why this has been installed and what temporary means in terms of the plastic poles.

At the Long Beach Beach Streets event, they prototyped sustainable road treatments, but with explanation.  A signboard like that needs to be made for SLC traffic calming treatments, including roundabouts.

There should have been a "block party" to introduce it (the same goes for other traffic calming treatments elsewhere in the city).

Community pop up event showing what a greenway could look like in their neighborhood.  Minneapolis Star-Tribune photo.

People hanging out in a parklet.  Parklets convert street parking spaces to alternative uses.

Salt Lake City Transportation Department pop up booth at Poplar Grove Park.  

They have the capacity for community communication.

WRT temporary, I imagine it could become something more like the roundabout at Hollywood Avenue and 1000 East, but again, no two way communication.  This is a photo not of that roundabout.  It's pretty, not cheap.

Ironically, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, community communication is part of the planning process:

Quick-action pilot projects could start as soon as this fall, but an overhaul may not begin until late 2024. “There’ll be outreach and engagement and development of the plan and the design neighborhood by neighborhood, followed by bidding it out and finding contractors that can build it for us — often, that process takes two years,” Jon Larsen, the city’s director of transportation, said . 

Across the board, implementation is dependent on future funding, which Larsen said was requested in this year’s capital improvement budget. Once the program has its team on board, they’ll begin prioritizing roadways to start on with guidance from the city council. “I know that sounds like a really long time to people; we’re hoping to find ways to speed up that process, and especially having more staff, I feel confident we will be able to,” Larsen said.

I think this and other traffic calming projects in the city show that the community communication element is an afterthought.

I do believe the people in my neighborhood would be more supportive if they knew the reasons why it was installed.  It has full walking infrastructure even though most people drive, although there are plenty of dog and child walkers.

And this need for community communication should be lesson for transportation departments more generally.  Explanatory signage is a must.

Megabus bankruptcy: merge inter-city bus services with Amtrak

 Mass transit that is privately run has been on a downward spiral for decades.  In the 1970s, railroads gave up their passenger services to Amtrak.  Privately owned bus systems, primarily Greyhound and Trailways, shrunk their systems, increased prices, and lost ridership.

In the 1990s, on the East Coast inter-city bus services grew because of "Chinatown buses," buses that ran between Chinatowns in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, DC, and to some extent Richmond.

The for profit carriers saw this and created new services, such as Bolt Bus and Megabus to provide service in high transit corridors like DC-Boston.  Then some of the companies branched out, created multistate regional hub services such as out of Chicago.

The Philadelphia Streets Department just moved the city's main Megabus stop from Arch Street to the newly reconstructed Schuylkill Avenue, a block south of 30th Street Station. But riders still wait on a sidewalk with no amenities. Inga Saffron / Staff

There's been a bunch of private equity activity, I haven't kept up.  

The last major switchover involved private equity selling off the real estate--terminals--leaving the riders and services to fend for themselves.  This has been covered some by the media ("Regional and multi-state inter city bus transportation. Thanksgiving is a time of big travel.," 2023). Especially by the Philadephia Inquirer ("Philly’s failure to improve conditions for intercity bus riders is an equity issue," "It’s time for Philly to build a proper bus station. Here are six possible locations.").

From the second PI article:

That’s good to hear because Philadelphia, like many American cities, has long undervalued the importance of its intercity buses. While SEPTA, Amtrak, Philadelphia International Airport, and the area interstates all receive government funding, long-distance bus service is privately run and operates with virtually no public subsidies, even though it serves a much poorer population. I never ceased to be amazed at the extreme contrast between the dismal, bunker-like space at Greyhound’s rented Filbert Street terminal and Amtrak’s soaring waiting room at Gray 30th Street Station. 

After the federal government deregulated the bus industry in 1982, some carriers stopped using the bus station and began picking up customers at sidewalk stops. The general lack of respect for this low-cost bus service may explain why the Streets Department thought it could dump Greyhound’s operation on Market Street with no amenities for travelers. 

Carroll and Mondlak told me that the city now sees intercity buses as a crucial part of Philadelphia’s transportation network, as important as trains, planes and highways. Besides ensuring that residents have access to an affordable form of long-distance transportation, they believe that intercity bus service also supports Philadelphia’s vital hospitality industry.

Cities and states should step in to ensure there is adequate shelter-terminal service provided to riders, in part as a transportation demand management effort.

Joseph Schweiterman, a professor at DePaul's Chaddick Institute, is one of the only professors who focuses on intercity bus.

Like how many states are investing in passenger rail expansion, Colorado is probably the most active state in developing an inter-city bus network at the state scale.  Bustang is the normal ineration, with winter service focused on skiing separately branded as Snowstand.

Because the US doesn't have a national transit plan, we don't have a plan for inter-city bus service.  

National Greyhound map/ad, 1941

I argued a few years ago, when Greyhound was for sale, that Amtrak should buy it.

-- "Two train/regional transit ideas: Part 1 | Amtrak should acquire Greyhound," 1921

Granted these are services of last resort, and the federal government is so far from being able to work in a bipartisanship way to ensure national transit service (thank you Republicans), but as far as national transit planning and equity is concerned it seems the way to go.

Especially since Megabus, owned by Coach USA, and Coach USA declared bankruptcy ("'A great alternative’: Riders fret over the future of low-cost Megabus after bankruptcy," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), "sBus Carrier Coach USA Goes Bankrupt After Ridership Drops," Bloomberg).  From the PPG:

The bankruptcy comes just two years after Megabus added 22 new destinations from Pittsburgh to Central Pennsylvania and southern New York through a partnership with Fullington Trailways, a motor coach carrier based in Clearfield. 

The new service added routes to Indiana, Punxsutawney, State College and Bradford in Pennsylvania and Olean and Buffalo in New York, among other locations. The agreement also expanded Megabus service from Philadelphia (11 new cities), Harrisburg (9), State College (18) and New York City (14). 

 The low-cost bus service was a immediate hit with Pittsburghers when it arrived in the city in 2011. According to the Megabus website, a one-way ticket to New York City now costs $50, while a ticket across the state to Philadelphia is just $25. Reducing routes and facilities would bring less accessibility to riders, said Lexie Ditchkus, 27, of Scranton.

Coach USA is subdivided into 25 distinct businesses, and has entered purchase agreements with affiliates of The Renco Group, Inc. and AVALON Transportation, LLC for 16 of them, according to the company’s news release. The sales should “ensure uninterrupted passenger transportation,” according to court documents. 

Megabus is in the process of being sold, but no company has officially pursued purchase agreements. It will operate on an “ordinary course” pending the court’s decision. If a transaction does not occur, routes may be limited, according to the court document.

It's not like we don't know how this story goes.  Because of relatively short distances in Europe and less car ownership, private bus systems (which bought many of the companies in the US) are more economically viable.

Inter-city bus service should be combined with Amtrak, and a national transit system should be maintained and improved.

WMATA's latest bus improvement program

is discussed by WTOP, "Metro’s future of bus service could bring new routes and end some familiar stops."  

When I first saw coverage I thought, "what about the 2017" initiative, although granted it was before covid.  And when thinking about writing about it, I remembered a bus initiative back in 2006 too.  But of course, conditions have changed greatly since then.

WRT bus service improvement see:

-- "Making bus service sexy and more equitable," 2012
-- "Will buses ever be cool? Boston versus the Raleigh-Durham's GoTransit Model," 2017
-- "Route 7 BRT proposal communicates the reality that the DC area doesn't adequately conduct transportation planning at the metropolitan-scale," 2016
-- "Reviving DC area bus service: and a counterpoint to the recent Washington City Paper article," 2019

From the article:

With additional funding, Webster said the new bus network could bring 30-minute frequency for most routes, 30 new routes that would increase connections with Metrorail stations and a regionwide 24-hour bus network, which would provide overnight connections to the region’s airports.

San Francisco Bay overnight transit map.

And with that I had to laugh.  I've been suggesting that for at least 12 years.

-- "Overnight transit service," 2012
-- "Night moves: the need for more night time (and weekend) transit service, especially when the subway is closed," 2013
-- "Night and weekend transit/subway service," 2016
-- "Overnight transit service: San Francisco," 2016

The 2013 entry states that bus service should be provided to airports when Metrorail is closed.  Also see:

-- "To and from origin stations can be difficult: More on the Silver Line and intra-neighborhood transit (tertiary network)," 2022
-- "More on airport-related transit/transit for visitors," 2013
-- "To get people who have mobility choices to choose transit, they have to know it exists," 2007

The points in this entry, although ostensibly about light rail, are really about the value of a transit network, and by extension the value of the transit network as a 24 hour service.

-- "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

Related is the blog entry "Branding's NOT all you need for transit" (2018) which discusses transit as a "design product"

ensuring that each and every element within the system of providing transit and mobility services is designed to be effective, efficient, successful, powerful and connected.

DC has a long way to go for that, which is why I suggest a German style "transport association" be created to integrate the services.

-- "WMATA and MWCOG announce new joint transit initiative | Could a regional "transport association" be on the horizon, or just a transit bailout?," 2024

At some point, I wrote that it would be easy to provide transit service to National Airport overnight by extending the bus service on 14th Street.  And that a late night bus network needs to include Union Station in DC as a primary node.

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FWIW, in the Purple Line series ("Setting the stage for the Purple Line light rail line to be an overwhelming success: Part 2 | proposed parallel improvements across the transit network," 2017), I made a bunch of recommendations wrt bus service, although I'm glad some of the improvements will happen before 2028, when the Purple Line opens.

9.  Provide integrated bus arrival and departure information screens at Metrorail, Light Rail, and MARC stations.

10.  Bus service in certain corridors between DC and Maryland should be extended and/or frequency increased to better link these areas to the new light rail service.

Many of the area's bus services terminate at the city-state line, although there are some exceptions. DC and Maryland should commit to bus service improvements in advance of the PL launch.

11.  Montgomery County bus system improvements with the launch of the Purple Line and bi-directional service on the MARC Brunswick Line should include launch of planned Bus Rapid Transit services.   

12.  Rearticulate, rebrand, and reposition-extend the Prince George's County TheBus bus transit service. Change the name of the service and the graphic design of the bus livery.

They have the same opportunity for rearticulation with their complementary local transit system. Currently, TheBus system is the least well developed of the suburban transit agencies ("By choosing coverage over frequency, Prince George’s caps what its buses can accomplish," GGW).

But they are now working on improving the system, with a Transit Transformation initiative they launched last fall.

13.  Consider a redesign and rebranding of the the metropolitan area's bus systems into an integrated framework, comparable to that of GoTransit in the Raleigh-Durham area.

This has been discussed in depth here, "Will buses ever be cool? Boston versus the Raleigh-Durham's GoTransit Model."  This gives a  deadline for launch.

From the presentation ("The Sign Design Society Event: Defining a City," designworkplan) by Ivan Bennett, Design Manger for London Buses:

One reason other systems have failed is the lack of continuity. London bus stops extend beyond central areas and cover all routes in Greater London. Ivan indicated that passengers do not just want information about where they are travelling from, but when they get there, they need the same consistently presented information. People need information near their homes and local areas, not just in the centre of the city.

15.  Set the opening of the Purple Line as the deadline for the implementation of a full-fledged integrated Night Owl bus network for the DC metropolitan area.

19.  WMATA should upgrade its Metrorail station bus shelters.

Another aspect of the balkanized transit system in the DC area is that every jurisdiction has a different program for bus shelters--what Ivan Bennett, product design manager for the London bus program, calls "a lack of continuity."

Metrobus isn't responsible for shelters in the various jurisdictions, although WMATA does have bus shelters on the grounds of many Metrorail stations outside the core. 
Bus shelters at the Medical Center Metrorail Station. 

Unfortunately, the Metrorail station shelters are dowdy, don't incorporate real-time arrival and departure information, could include advertising as a revenue stream, etc.

Why not use the launch date of the Purple Line as an inducement and deadline for an overhaul of the Metrorail bus shelters across the station network?

 ... although this doesn't address the fact that in an integrated bus service branding system across the jurisdictions, ideally, there would be a common set of transit shelters and amenities across the transit network.

-- Transit Waiting Environments, for the Greater Cleveland Rapid Transit Authority
-- From Here to There: A creative guide for making public transport the way to go, EMBARQ
-- Rethinking the Suburban Bus Stop, Airport Corridor Transportation Association, Pittsburgh
-- First/Last Mile Strategies Study, Utah Transit Authority

The Kansas City Streetcar Smart City "City Post" digital kiosks include a real-time tracker application for the streetcar service ("No need to wonder where streetcar is: Kiosks now offer tracker maps," Kansas City Business Journal). Photo: Andrew Grumke. 

Vision Zero initiatives on the decline: Cache County Utah shows another way

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports, "Mayor Parker’s budget slashes funding for Vision Zero, a program designed to end traffic deaths," that the mayor has cut funding for Vision Zero programs, which are designed to reduce traffic fatalities.  Other cities have had mixed to negative results from similar initiatives.

Past writings:

-- "Revisiting Vision Zero in DC and NYC," 2021

-- "A more radical approach to Vision Zero," 2019
-- "A reminder about how the entitlement of automobility is embedded into law and democratizes death by accident," 2014
-- "A "Vision Zero" agenda for DC," 2014
-- "DC and Vision Zero Revisited," 2015
-- "Updating Vision Zero approaches," 2016
-- First global benchmark for road safety in cities published by International Transport Forum," 2018
-- "Traffic safety," 2022
-- "It's a mistake to remove "Enforcement" from the "E's framework" of bicycle and pedestrian planning," 2022
-- "D.C. cuts speed limit to 20 mph to curb pedestrian deaths: a step forward but not enough | New thoughts on a comprehensive Vision Zero agenda," 2020
-- "Pedestrian fatalities and street design," 2019

To my way of thinking, it's because a lot of the crashes are due to negligence or deliberate behavior, which isn't addressable by design.

-- "The Road Not Taken | a response to a letter to the editor in the Washington Post about DC, traffic deaths and traffic safety," 2024
-- "Social marketing and aberrant driving," 2020
--  "When the car lobby encourages law breaking," 2012
-- but only recently after some high profile deaths is DC addressing this ("Reckless drivers in spotlight as D.C. hits 16-year high on traffic deaths," Washington Post

And because we don't provide actionable information and the structures to address the problem.  

For example, in a blog entry in 2016, I suggested that such information be provided at the Council District scale and that ward-focused committees address traffic safety and sustainable mobility in concerted ways.

The Cache Valley Daily reports, "Local stakeholders to host transportation safety summit at Logan Library," that the MPO there is holding a traffic safety conference next week, to support its plan to reduce crashes and deaths.  

From the article:

Cache Valley residents are being invited to attend a transportation safety summit at the Logan Library on Thursday, May 16.

That gathering is being called by safety stakeholders, including representatives of the Cache Metropolitan Planning Organization, the Utah Department of Transportation, emergency responders, Crash Data and Safety experts as well as local interest groups.

CMPO’s 2024 Safety Summit will be held from 9 to 11:30 a.m. in the Community Room of the Logan Library on May 16.  

The planning documents, Safe Streets for All Action Plan and Safety Data Analysis in particular, have a lot of great graphics communicating information in various ways about where crashes occur, demographics, etc., exactly the kind of information you need to be able to address in real terms, crash reduction.

Arbor Day: Street Trees of Seattle by Taha Ebrahimi | Trees as Cultural Landscape (at the community scale)

Arbor Day was Friday and this is Monday. I'm late.  Although many places don't necessary celebrate Arbor Day on the last Friday of April...

Street Trees of Seattle is an interesting book.  During the pandemic Ms. Ebrahimi went for long walks, began re-connecting and re-looking at the natural world, and began documenting street trees at the neighborhood scale.  

She chose to do this by drawing, and for the purposes of the book, she organized the content by neighborhood, focused on the primary type of tree "dominating" that particular neighborhood, although each section does list other significant trees that are also present.

I am fascinated by the way the book is organized because a book organized in this way could be done for most big cities, although not necessarily focusing on one type of tree within a neighborhood, as a way to help reconnect people to the "natural world" within their community.  

It's also a great way to organize walking tours, like WalkArlington's community walks or Jane's Walks the first weekend of May, exploring communities in honor of Jane Jacobs, or neighborhood history walks, etc.  

Instead of most of these kinds of tours focusing on the built environment, we can do this with trees and other elements of flora.  Obviously, arboreta do this quite a bit within their grounds, e.g., "Garden Highlights Tour" at the Morris Arboretum and Gardens at University of Pennsylvania.

Ebrahimi points out that many of our trees--especially in Seattle where 95% of the original tree cover was milled for wood soon after the founding of the city--are planted by residents--so the "natural world" is in fact not so natural, and that people bring trees from where they were before.

Images from the Ballard Neighborhood section of Street Trees of Seattle

Cherry trees in Ballard.  Photo: Joel Rogers Photography

It means that most of the trees planted in Seattle aren't native to the Pacific Northwest, which presents interesting questions, not only about appropriateness in terms of "natives," but stories about how some of these trees, like the Pacific Sequoia, thrive there, but are failing in their native habitats in response to climate change.  

Trees as place, trees as stories.  She mentioned an article in the New Yorker about apples, "Crunch: Building a Better Apple," and I was reminded of a story I read in a Toronto newspaper about an Italian immigrant who kept a fig tree going in his backyard for decades.  (If you do an Internet search it turns out Italians did this all over North America, planting fig trees as they emigrated.)

For me, I am interested in trees but more formulaically.  I think we need great tree cover in cities.  I like trees for their shade and beauty.  I like fruit trees because they help feed us.  

But from a tree leaf identification standpoint, I can identify just a few trees, maple, oak, willow oak, even though "I have been around trees forever."  I can identify more trees than that but not necessarily by leaf.

When I was a kid, my brother and I planted some maple trees from seedlings we found in our yard or others (the best one, had a "good trunk", I absconded from a neighbor's planting bed--it might have been five inches tall).  Some died and we nursed the others.

That was in the mid 1970s, and now the trees are maybe 50 feet tall--this photo is from 2018, and the trees in question are behind the garage.

But this is a "private tree" in a yard, not a "street tree" which is defined as being in the planting strip between street and sidewalk, and ostensibly is the responsibility of the local government,  

In DC, "proper tree species" are specified for each block in the city, and residents aren't supposed to plant trees in the planting strip, but they do and they aren't necessarily the authorized tree.

Trees as cultural landscape.  It is that kind of story that interests Taha.  Unlike me, she is interested in the story of the tree and its place in the landscape, who planted it and "why".  For example, one tree she learned about was planted as a barter between a family that helped a poorer one heat their house in a particularly cold winter.  The helped family planted a special tree in the neighbor's planting strip.

I realized that what she was talking about is what we might call "Trees as Cultural Landscape" at the neighborhood, district, and/or city-wide scale.  Not just the trees, or trees as objects or elements of the cultural landscape, but the stories behind them. Their historicity.  Also see "In Los Angeles, a Tree With Stories to Tell," The New York Times., which describes a community trying to save a noteworthy tree from being torn down by a developer.

The last piece in my series of articles on gaps in parks master planning is about applying the cultural landscape lens to parks planning ("Gaps in Parks Master Planning: Part Nine | Second stage planning for parks using the cultural landscape framework").  No reason to not extend this concept to street tree planning.  

Still, even though I say I have a formulaic approach to trees, this article in the Washington Post, "Everyone should have a favorite tree. Here’s mine," makes me realize that all of us probably have favorite trees.  

The maple tree is in the back of this photo.  The willow oak was already gone.

E.g., I like flowering trees like DC's crepe myrtles or the redbuds here in Utah, and we were attracted to our DC house, because of two towering trees in our backyard, a maple and a willow oak, whose canopy combined to create a kind of outdoor room that even worked well in the rain.  

Unfortunately now both trees are gone--although I did let willow oaks reseed so we'll see what happens.

Streets/street trees as linear parks.  I first heard this concept expressed by David Barth at a presentation in 2004.

North Columbus Avenue, Galion, Ohio, c. 1920s

Most cities have urban forestry units.  Most cities, at least the big cities, address street tree planning very seriously.  DC does.  And it has the nonprofit Casey Trees planting trees throughout the city, in public spaces and in conjunction with property owners and utility companies, on private property.   And the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments just set a goal of 50% tree cover for the region ("New tree canopy goal for D.C. area calls on Arlington to get greener," Arlington Now).  

But a city or county tree plan--like the point I made about parks plans and architecture--is formulaic too.  It doesn't get into the stories of how and why of what trees are where and how they contribute to place and the stories of how they became to be planted.

Tree planting initiatives as entry points into greater community involvement.  In Utah, TreeUtah operates similarly to Casey Trees, but they tend to be more focused on planting trees in association with park systems, not just Sugar House Park for which I am on the board, but in city parks like Fairmont--in fact participating in a TreeUtah event there for Earth Day a couple years ago is how I got involved with Friends of Fairmont Park.

Separately, Wasatch Community Gardens is creating an urban orchard in Salt Lake City's westside.

Although one criticism of tree planting initiatives is that it is perhaps even more important to take care of the trees and forests we already have, a point made in today's Los Angeles Times, "Is planting trees on Arbor Day one way we can all fight climate change? Not so much."

Still, I think tree planting initiatives are an important way to get people involved, and has the potential to move them from planting to tree to advocating for forests, for their city to declare their tree cover "a community arboretum" (see below).  To get people beyond the single event of planting a tree, it has to be built into the programming--greening beyond Earth Day.

US Forest Service community involvement and educational publications. Less so now, the US Forest Service had a massive publication program, including items focused on K-12 education and adult learning.

I mention from time to time that I collect ephemera related to urban planning and what I am involved in.  

Earlier this year I acquired an amazing set of materials, developed in the 1950s, although this set was from 1960, promoting advocacy and conservation, produced by the US Forest Service.

Trees can work for the beauty and security of your neighborhood, state, and nation, 

Page 2, Page 3, Page 4

At that time, when women mostly didn't work, the Forest Service had an active communications program with women's and garden clubs that at the time were active across the country.

Page 1, Pages 2-3. Pages 4-5, Pages 6-7, Pages 8-9, Pages 10-11

The NPS History website does have a collection of scans of USFS publications.  But generally not the ones before 1960, which can be pretty cool.  Some of the older ones are findable online.  A good source is the University of Pennsylvania, such as for Forestry Activities: A guide for youth group leaders.

Community/municipal arboreta.  Perhaps the largest city participating as a "community/municipal arboretum" is Newport, Rhode Island ("As city’s first generation of exotic trees die out, Newport Tree Conservancy works to replace them," Newport Daily News).  The program is run by the ArbNet accreditation program, sponsored by Morton Arboretum in Illinois.

Yalecrest, Salt Lake City.

I think more cities should do this as a way to set higher expectations and standards in how they address their tree cover.  Apparently, Bexley, Ohio was the first ("Bexley could be first U.S. city to be declared arboretum," Columbus Dispatch).  A municipal arboretum only includes trees in public spaces.

What about accredited neighborhood arboreta?  I also think it would be neat for neighborhoods, especially in big cities, to consider getting designated as a "neighborhood arboretum," because it is less likely to happen at the scale of the whole city.  

This came up when I was on a walking tour In Salt Lake's  Yalecrest neighborhood a couple years ago.  The guy was talking about the tree cover and he said "you know, we live in a forest,. "  And I started talking to him about the already designated a historic district, would be a great candidate.  

Unlike a community arboretum, depending on the interest of property owners, a neighborhood arboretum could include both public and private trees.

An idea to expand tree identification markers in arboreta.  Street Trees of Seattle has a nice set of references.  But something I haven't seen before is a separate set of references by tree.

It would be neat to include those kinds of references in a QR code as part of the signage markers for individual trees.

Conclusion: Street Trees of Seattle.  For me the key concepts are:

• a great book if you live in Seattle, a great way to learn about the city and its neighborhoods in a new way
• the concept of the cultural landscape -- a (tree and trees) not just as an object, but an element of place, with historicity--a story to tell
• Fascinating way to organize the content by neighborhood
• as a book its extendable to other cities, especially organized by neighborhood
• the neighborhood focus is a good way to organize tours to better expose people to flora in the "natural world" of their communities
• organizing references by tree is a step forward too, and could be incorporated by arboreta into tree identification markers through QR codes