In my last post, I talked about having to give up the idea of being a planner. The lack of experience was the big factor in the down economy.
Proof that I am not quite over it, I am reading one of the books given to me for Christmas. In a book titled Those Guys Have All the Fun, authors James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales chronicle the timeline of ESPN's rise to dominance. In the 1970 and early 1980's, when ESPN was planned and implemented, there was a lot of uncertainty and doubt about whether the idea of an all-sports cable channel would succeed. Many of the things they did were ridiculed by the established media outlets.
Many of the guys ESPN hired early were new guys who had little-to-no experience in running and producing TV. Most of them were hired because they were cheap, but they were also hired because they had a passion to make it work.
Many of the things they did are common place today, but were told back then that people didn't want to do that. The established experience of the established media guys said viewers didn't want studio updates. They said viewers wanted to watch the game they were watching and not be interrupted. They said the camera should only follow the ball, whereas ESPN pioneered the cameraman following a player without the ball who would make an impact on the play.The establishment said viewers weren't concerned with what was going on behind the scenes. ESPN said things like the NFL draft would hold interest to the public.
These young guys were hired by the execs because they were cheap, sure. But there were a lot of guys who were cheap that didn't get on with ESPN. The guys who were hired wanted to prove themselves. The execs gave them freedom to do what they needed, guided them when needed and took a station that experienced folks said were doomed and made it the dominant name in sports media.
My point is, I think the planning industry is doing itself a disservice by not giving inexperienced guys a try. I understand why they value experience, but in the end, using ESPN as an example, does it make the candidate better? I can't answer that for every city/agency/company, but I can say that it isn't necessarily better. Sports fans today take for granted what ESPN pioneered in the early 80's by guys without experience.
I'm not saying I would have revolutionized the planning industry. But I would have brought a similar passion to my job. I would have also brought a similar zeal for success. There are lots of inexperienced guys like me who would do the same. Keep in mind that Dallas/Fort Worth was spared from the worst of the recession. If I had these struggles here, I can't imagine what is going on in the harder hit areas. I just can't imagine what the planning industry will look like without a dearth of young guys coming in.
Showing posts with label planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label planning. Show all posts
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Saturday, September 14, 2013
Social Cause of Arts District Isolation
I commented on the Dallas Morning News' column from the architecture critic, Mark Lamster in the previous post. Today, I want to post a link about another, quite a bit more major, blog's response to Lamster's piece.
In fact everything built since the museum has been based on guaranteeing patrons that they will never have to set foot on a public sidewalk when they come to visit. Hence, when you drive through the arts district on most days now it has a certain dystopian aura, as if somebody set off one of those bombs that incinerates all the people without harming the buildings. Otherwise known as the sun, in Dallas.
So is that about pretentiousness? Don't be silly. It's about avoiding black people. We talked about this in May when I was writing about an attempt by the performing arts center to shut out the one serious black cultural institution in the arts district, the Dallas Black Dance Theater.
I told you the whole arts district was inspired by a so-called consultant's study in 1977 finding that the art museum, then still in Fair Park in black South Dallas, was in "a poor location for a facility whose patrons came primarily from North Dallas."
Ahem. Say what? What could that possibly mean? Oh, gosh we don't know, do we? Well, we wouldn't want to say. In fact, for a big brash ostentatious zhay erra city like that one on TV, the cat's just got our tongue, don't it? We're just all knock-kneed squiggle-toes when it comes to why rich white people don't want to go to South Dallas.
I won't comment on this other than to say Jim Schutze, who wrote the Dallas Observer's response, is a published author on race relations. I generally find him to be well-researched when it comes to his stuff.
I bring this up because it illustrates just how difficult the planning process can be. How do you balance the wants and desires of becoming an urban area, with other, sometimes conflicting issues that have no quantifiable measurement? In this case, the desire of the creators of the Arts District to that of the social concerns of those who plan to use it?
If I ever seem overly critical of Dallas' urbanizing attempts, it is because I come from the ideal of what urban areas should be. In cases like this, it can complicate that ideal. Which one is right is purely a matter of opinion.
In fact everything built since the museum has been based on guaranteeing patrons that they will never have to set foot on a public sidewalk when they come to visit. Hence, when you drive through the arts district on most days now it has a certain dystopian aura, as if somebody set off one of those bombs that incinerates all the people without harming the buildings. Otherwise known as the sun, in Dallas.
So is that about pretentiousness? Don't be silly. It's about avoiding black people. We talked about this in May when I was writing about an attempt by the performing arts center to shut out the one serious black cultural institution in the arts district, the Dallas Black Dance Theater.
I told you the whole arts district was inspired by a so-called consultant's study in 1977 finding that the art museum, then still in Fair Park in black South Dallas, was in "a poor location for a facility whose patrons came primarily from North Dallas."
Ahem. Say what? What could that possibly mean? Oh, gosh we don't know, do we? Well, we wouldn't want to say. In fact, for a big brash ostentatious zhay erra city like that one on TV, the cat's just got our tongue, don't it? We're just all knock-kneed squiggle-toes when it comes to why rich white people don't want to go to South Dallas.
I won't comment on this other than to say Jim Schutze, who wrote the Dallas Observer's response, is a published author on race relations. I generally find him to be well-researched when it comes to his stuff.
I bring this up because it illustrates just how difficult the planning process can be. How do you balance the wants and desires of becoming an urban area, with other, sometimes conflicting issues that have no quantifiable measurement? In this case, the desire of the creators of the Arts District to that of the social concerns of those who plan to use it?
If I ever seem overly critical of Dallas' urbanizing attempts, it is because I come from the ideal of what urban areas should be. In cases like this, it can complicate that ideal. Which one is right is purely a matter of opinion.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
D2 in the DMN
Frequent commentator Ken Duble and I did a dual column for the Viewpoints Section in the Dallas Morning News.
Link here: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/local-voices/headlines/20130308-j-branden-helms-and-ken-duble-where-should-a-second-downtown-dart-rail-line-go.ece
Ken Dublé and J Branden Helms live and work in downtown Dallas. Both have strong opinions about where a second downtown rail line should go. DART and city planners and experts have discussed this for years, and they have a few options (though no funding yet). The map above shows the options they are debating, but you can explore other alternatives on the interactive map at www.DART.org/D2. Some people, like Ken, want the rail system to help support major events, tying the airports, major hotels and the convention center together, creating a large multi-modal hub around Union Station. Others, like Branden, want the system to be affordable and convenient for the greatest number of daily commuters.
Branden: If we want DART to be a true transit system, the focus has to be on riders. Among other North American cities, the ones with the highest ridership are the ones that focus on residents.
There are two options that will give users of the DART system the most destination options: the subway under Commerce Street or the line on Young Street. Commerce Street has the most density and most pedestrian-friendly urban design of all the options to really boost ridership potential.
Ken: Concerning the alternatives you cite, Commerce has the highest ridership, but it would be second only to the convention center hotel route in cost. Young Street is the least costly, and it’s the only route DART believes it could build without outside funding.
Before deciding where to lay a track, you must first decide what you want it to do. Commerce would create a tight circle around one part of downtown, but that area is already developed. We ought to anticipate growth, not chase it. Let’s make the loop as large as possible and let streetcar lines serve the interior.
Branden: Ken, what you say has merit, but my major concern with using development potential as a factor is Dallas has a very poor track record of true transit-oriented development. Due to a lack of development controls, existing transit-oriented development like Victory Park or the Shops at Park Lane are more accurately “transit adjacent.” There is no connectivity. Neither development pumps any significant amount of everyday riders, mostly due to poor design.
Meanwhile, Commerce already has great design and land uses. If a subway were put down, the density of offices, residents and hotels along the route would add riders. The design and density are already done.
Ken: I share your frustration with Dallas’ history of poor land usage around suburban stations, but the issue before us is a route downtown. The entire system now shuts down when there is a problem along the Pacific-Bryan track. Also, providing a second track means DART could double its schedule.
We’ll lay the track someday. The question is where. This could be our last rail line. Given the size of downtown, do we really want to lay a second track three blocks away from the existing one?
Branden: I would say yes, if it moves the most riders. Why would we make folks who work at the large office concentrations like AT&T or nearly every resident downtown walk farther to use the new line or risk losing riders with yet another transfer? Every major city’s transit agency has major lines a block or three away, so this isn’t outside-the-box thinking.
Ken: While Commerce ridership projections look impressive, many now catch the existing line three blocks away, so they wouldn’t represent new ridership. DART currently operates two bus transfer centers along the corridor, including the poorly located East Transfer Center.
The Union Station-convention center option could replace both with a single multi-modal terminal at Union Station, which could someday serve high-speed rail service from Houston. The former Reunion Arena site has a mammoth but underused parking facility in place. To focus on the West End is to bet the 21st century will be much like the 20th. Is this a bet Dallas can afford to lose?
Branden: If the Orange and Green Lines will run on the new track, and the Red and Blue on the existing track, then it doesn’t matter their proximity — they run to different destinations.
Ken, nothing suppresses ridership like lengthy trips and transfers. A Union Station alternative does both. Additionally, there is very little around the station. So anyone who now uses the two routes that would run on the new track will face the choice of a longer trip or a transfer to a streetcar or bus. Many choice riders will choose their cars. I fear that overall ridership could actually dip if Union Station is the chosen alternative.
Ken: It is out of concern for lengthy transfers that I advocate a giant transfer terminal near Union. Many low-income people, who have no choice but to use DART, make two transfers both morning and evening. Some arrive and depart into one transfer center and rely on light rail for transport to catch a bus at the other. They would benefit from closing downtown’s West and East transfer centers in favor of a mega-transfer center at the site of the former Reunion Arena. It could serve high-speed rail, Amtrak, Megabus, Greyhound, bus lines to Mexico, taxis, the streetcar, the Trinity River Express and the light rail trains.
Branden: Union Station is too far removed from the rest of the urban fabric downtown to be a quality transfer point. Transit service works better when it is point-to-point, not a hub-and-spoke model. With little to walk to from Union, transfers will become a must, therefore adding time and reducing ridership potential. The walkable West End Station is by far the most used station in the DART system and should be the central point. Moving it all to Union would be a disaster.
Ken: That West End is the most used station right now is entirely due to the transfer activity you dismiss. The Akard and St. Paul stations are situated in similar points of density. What they lack is the West End-Rosa Parks transfer feed. Were this relocated to the Reunion site, then Union would be the busiest station.
According to a Brookings Institution report released last week, Amtrak boardings at Union grew 482.9 percent from 1997 to 2012. Even without high-speed rail, activity is increasing at Union. The Oak Cliff Streetcar will add even more. We mustn’t allow the present to limit our future vision.
I don't want to speak for Ken, though he did express the same thoughts during the process. The format was restricting: we each got 5 responses, one after the other, at roughly 100 words per response.
There are a few supplementary points I would like to add.
Ken says that the line would parallel the current line. That is true to a point, but the lines aren't the access point, the stations are. Since he advocates for Union being the transfer point of the new line, by proxy, I am advocating that the West End Station/Transfer Center/Rosa Parks be the transfer point for the urban system.
Therefore, you can't say the the West End Station is parallel, since that's the transfer point. Akard Station @ Pacific and Akard Station @ Commerce are three blocks apart. However, since Main and Akard is the center of urban life in Dallas, that is actually a plus. This would become the second busiest station on the Green Line if the Commerce alignment were chosen, after West End.
After that, the stations drift further and further apart. St. Paul Station would be five blocks from a potential Harwood Station. Pearl Station would be over eight blocks away from a potential station on the Young alignment. It would be possible, but I don't think DART is planning a station for the Commerce option.
Second, Commerce isn't all built out. There is lots of potential for development near the West End Station on the north, south and west side.
Akard doesn't have anything immediately available, but there is potential on small parcels to the east and south. That is also why it would be such a highly-used station, because it is built out with pedestrian-focused buildings. Finally, the Harwood Station would have almost the entire southeast to redevelop.
The Young Street option would also have greater. In fact, it would have more than either Union Station alternative, since it runs close to the middle of downtown, unlike the Union options, which are on the very edge until at least Young Street.
However, I really dislike using development-potential as a selling point. Most Transit-Oriented-Development's in this country do not increase ridership in any large way. Modern development, spurred on by development codes and institutional controls, will always accommodate the car first. A look across the country sees this effect. From transit-pioneering Portland, to transit-heavy New York, new development, billed as TOD, is actual not pumping many riders into the system. What is doing that, is larger redevelopment of buildings and neighborhoods built before WWII. This also doesn't account for a lack of TOD guidelines from Dallas, which is why we see so many "TOD's" in Dallas do little for DART's ridership numbers.
So, development could occur all along a Union Station alternative, and very little to moderate, at best, ridership increases would be seen.
Commerce, on the other hand, already has a large collection of pre-WWII buildings, all ready to have a complimentary-transit component built.
Finally, as far as transfers go, I do not dismiss them. Even the 800 lbs. gorillas of transit systems require transfers. The key for them, and what we MUST do, is minimize them as well as their impacts. A West End Station transfer point is much more conducive for urban travel than Union.
I have said why, but I will try to do a better job of explaining. Within three blocks around West End Station is over 3 million square feet of office, 379 residences, two hotels, El Centro College and its 10,000 students, county offices and the retail/restaurant areas of the West End.
If you live, work, visit, eat or shop, you have a reason to be there. Yes, there is a lot of transfer activity, but it isn't the majority of trips. It may seem like it, since people transferring linger longer, but that station attracts a lot of activity.
Compare that to the East Transfer Center, where there is the Sheraton Hotel and a whole lotta nothing. Even the nearest rail station is a block, and a pedestrian-unfriendly one at that.
In many ways, that's what Union Station will be like if it were a transfer point. Yes, one day there could be high-speed rail, but does that mean we inconvenience everyday riders with a longer trip and more transfers.
With the West End, it is a possibility that the area is a final destination for riders. For the super, vast majority, Union won't be. For those where neither station is the destination, the West End provides the quickest route, as it runs through downtown, instead of around.
Simply put, the West End is the quickest, most central point, and if transfers are the focus, then the West End makes sense, if the point is to minimize their adverse impacts.
And yes, Amtrak bookings may have gone up, but the average is still less than 200 a day.
Add that with the murky future of high speed rail in Texas, with funding completely unknown and TxDoT favoring a station at DFW. Did we make DFW a central transfer point in the DART system? No, because it doesn't make sense to do so. It is too far removed and Union is the same way on a micro scale. In essence, Union is to downtown Dallas what DFW is for the region. Yes, there are plans to make a transfer point at DFW on the Cotton Belt route, but it isn't the central point of the entire system.
For me, it always comes down to this: those who use the system multiple times a week should be the focus. As it stands now, Union isn't even the central transfer point of the DART system, by a long shot, not even in the top 5. So why would it be forced to with the new line?
The last bit I have to offer is a case study from other cities. Foreign systems fit, but I will keep it in this country for simplicity's sake.
New York has two major transfer areas. Midtown/Times Square and Lower Manhattan, though they are a misnomer, because just about every station is a transfer to another line. Both of those spots are in the middle of urban bustle, not the edge like Union would be.
Washington D.C. has three major ones, all in the middle of the urban area. Their Union Station, the destination for every commuter and Amtrak rail line (including the only high speed rail line in this country), serves only one out of their five lines. The sixth, the under-construction Silver Line, won't serve Union either.
And in a system very similar to Dallas', with similar veins of thought and time in the planning process, San Francisco's BART system operates a lot like the current DART transit mall now. All of the transfer activity is under Market Street, the heart of the financial/downtown area. It is also where MUNI and the cable cars run. Instead of a transfer point, it creates a transfer corridor.
I have criticized DART for being a commuter system. The Commerce Street option would be a great step in swinging that pendulum a bit toward urban. The Young Street option would, though not as much. None of the other options would. In fact, it might even swing that pendulum more toward commuter.
Now, try putting that into 5 different 100 words bits.
Link here: http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/local-voices/headlines/20130308-j-branden-helms-and-ken-duble-where-should-a-second-downtown-dart-rail-line-go.ece
Ken Dublé and J Branden Helms live and work in downtown Dallas. Both have strong opinions about where a second downtown rail line should go. DART and city planners and experts have discussed this for years, and they have a few options (though no funding yet). The map above shows the options they are debating, but you can explore other alternatives on the interactive map at www.DART.org/D2. Some people, like Ken, want the rail system to help support major events, tying the airports, major hotels and the convention center together, creating a large multi-modal hub around Union Station. Others, like Branden, want the system to be affordable and convenient for the greatest number of daily commuters.
Branden: If we want DART to be a true transit system, the focus has to be on riders. Among other North American cities, the ones with the highest ridership are the ones that focus on residents.
There are two options that will give users of the DART system the most destination options: the subway under Commerce Street or the line on Young Street. Commerce Street has the most density and most pedestrian-friendly urban design of all the options to really boost ridership potential.
Ken: Concerning the alternatives you cite, Commerce has the highest ridership, but it would be second only to the convention center hotel route in cost. Young Street is the least costly, and it’s the only route DART believes it could build without outside funding.
Before deciding where to lay a track, you must first decide what you want it to do. Commerce would create a tight circle around one part of downtown, but that area is already developed. We ought to anticipate growth, not chase it. Let’s make the loop as large as possible and let streetcar lines serve the interior.
Branden: Ken, what you say has merit, but my major concern with using development potential as a factor is Dallas has a very poor track record of true transit-oriented development. Due to a lack of development controls, existing transit-oriented development like Victory Park or the Shops at Park Lane are more accurately “transit adjacent.” There is no connectivity. Neither development pumps any significant amount of everyday riders, mostly due to poor design.
Meanwhile, Commerce already has great design and land uses. If a subway were put down, the density of offices, residents and hotels along the route would add riders. The design and density are already done.
Ken: I share your frustration with Dallas’ history of poor land usage around suburban stations, but the issue before us is a route downtown. The entire system now shuts down when there is a problem along the Pacific-Bryan track. Also, providing a second track means DART could double its schedule.
We’ll lay the track someday. The question is where. This could be our last rail line. Given the size of downtown, do we really want to lay a second track three blocks away from the existing one?
Branden: I would say yes, if it moves the most riders. Why would we make folks who work at the large office concentrations like AT&T or nearly every resident downtown walk farther to use the new line or risk losing riders with yet another transfer? Every major city’s transit agency has major lines a block or three away, so this isn’t outside-the-box thinking.
Ken: While Commerce ridership projections look impressive, many now catch the existing line three blocks away, so they wouldn’t represent new ridership. DART currently operates two bus transfer centers along the corridor, including the poorly located East Transfer Center.
The Union Station-convention center option could replace both with a single multi-modal terminal at Union Station, which could someday serve high-speed rail service from Houston. The former Reunion Arena site has a mammoth but underused parking facility in place. To focus on the West End is to bet the 21st century will be much like the 20th. Is this a bet Dallas can afford to lose?
Branden: If the Orange and Green Lines will run on the new track, and the Red and Blue on the existing track, then it doesn’t matter their proximity — they run to different destinations.
Ken, nothing suppresses ridership like lengthy trips and transfers. A Union Station alternative does both. Additionally, there is very little around the station. So anyone who now uses the two routes that would run on the new track will face the choice of a longer trip or a transfer to a streetcar or bus. Many choice riders will choose their cars. I fear that overall ridership could actually dip if Union Station is the chosen alternative.
Ken: It is out of concern for lengthy transfers that I advocate a giant transfer terminal near Union. Many low-income people, who have no choice but to use DART, make two transfers both morning and evening. Some arrive and depart into one transfer center and rely on light rail for transport to catch a bus at the other. They would benefit from closing downtown’s West and East transfer centers in favor of a mega-transfer center at the site of the former Reunion Arena. It could serve high-speed rail, Amtrak, Megabus, Greyhound, bus lines to Mexico, taxis, the streetcar, the Trinity River Express and the light rail trains.
Branden: Union Station is too far removed from the rest of the urban fabric downtown to be a quality transfer point. Transit service works better when it is point-to-point, not a hub-and-spoke model. With little to walk to from Union, transfers will become a must, therefore adding time and reducing ridership potential. The walkable West End Station is by far the most used station in the DART system and should be the central point. Moving it all to Union would be a disaster.
Ken: That West End is the most used station right now is entirely due to the transfer activity you dismiss. The Akard and St. Paul stations are situated in similar points of density. What they lack is the West End-Rosa Parks transfer feed. Were this relocated to the Reunion site, then Union would be the busiest station.
According to a Brookings Institution report released last week, Amtrak boardings at Union grew 482.9 percent from 1997 to 2012. Even without high-speed rail, activity is increasing at Union. The Oak Cliff Streetcar will add even more. We mustn’t allow the present to limit our future vision.
I don't want to speak for Ken, though he did express the same thoughts during the process. The format was restricting: we each got 5 responses, one after the other, at roughly 100 words per response.
There are a few supplementary points I would like to add.
Ken says that the line would parallel the current line. That is true to a point, but the lines aren't the access point, the stations are. Since he advocates for Union being the transfer point of the new line, by proxy, I am advocating that the West End Station/Transfer Center/Rosa Parks be the transfer point for the urban system.
Therefore, you can't say the the West End Station is parallel, since that's the transfer point. Akard Station @ Pacific and Akard Station @ Commerce are three blocks apart. However, since Main and Akard is the center of urban life in Dallas, that is actually a plus. This would become the second busiest station on the Green Line if the Commerce alignment were chosen, after West End.
After that, the stations drift further and further apart. St. Paul Station would be five blocks from a potential Harwood Station. Pearl Station would be over eight blocks away from a potential station on the Young alignment. It would be possible, but I don't think DART is planning a station for the Commerce option.
Second, Commerce isn't all built out. There is lots of potential for development near the West End Station on the north, south and west side.
Akard doesn't have anything immediately available, but there is potential on small parcels to the east and south. That is also why it would be such a highly-used station, because it is built out with pedestrian-focused buildings. Finally, the Harwood Station would have almost the entire southeast to redevelop.
The Young Street option would also have greater. In fact, it would have more than either Union Station alternative, since it runs close to the middle of downtown, unlike the Union options, which are on the very edge until at least Young Street.
However, I really dislike using development-potential as a selling point. Most Transit-Oriented-Development's in this country do not increase ridership in any large way. Modern development, spurred on by development codes and institutional controls, will always accommodate the car first. A look across the country sees this effect. From transit-pioneering Portland, to transit-heavy New York, new development, billed as TOD, is actual not pumping many riders into the system. What is doing that, is larger redevelopment of buildings and neighborhoods built before WWII. This also doesn't account for a lack of TOD guidelines from Dallas, which is why we see so many "TOD's" in Dallas do little for DART's ridership numbers.
So, development could occur all along a Union Station alternative, and very little to moderate, at best, ridership increases would be seen.
Commerce, on the other hand, already has a large collection of pre-WWII buildings, all ready to have a complimentary-transit component built.
Finally, as far as transfers go, I do not dismiss them. Even the 800 lbs. gorillas of transit systems require transfers. The key for them, and what we MUST do, is minimize them as well as their impacts. A West End Station transfer point is much more conducive for urban travel than Union.
I have said why, but I will try to do a better job of explaining. Within three blocks around West End Station is over 3 million square feet of office, 379 residences, two hotels, El Centro College and its 10,000 students, county offices and the retail/restaurant areas of the West End.
If you live, work, visit, eat or shop, you have a reason to be there. Yes, there is a lot of transfer activity, but it isn't the majority of trips. It may seem like it, since people transferring linger longer, but that station attracts a lot of activity.
Compare that to the East Transfer Center, where there is the Sheraton Hotel and a whole lotta nothing. Even the nearest rail station is a block, and a pedestrian-unfriendly one at that.
In many ways, that's what Union Station will be like if it were a transfer point. Yes, one day there could be high-speed rail, but does that mean we inconvenience everyday riders with a longer trip and more transfers.
With the West End, it is a possibility that the area is a final destination for riders. For the super, vast majority, Union won't be. For those where neither station is the destination, the West End provides the quickest route, as it runs through downtown, instead of around.
Simply put, the West End is the quickest, most central point, and if transfers are the focus, then the West End makes sense, if the point is to minimize their adverse impacts.
And yes, Amtrak bookings may have gone up, but the average is still less than 200 a day.
Add that with the murky future of high speed rail in Texas, with funding completely unknown and TxDoT favoring a station at DFW. Did we make DFW a central transfer point in the DART system? No, because it doesn't make sense to do so. It is too far removed and Union is the same way on a micro scale. In essence, Union is to downtown Dallas what DFW is for the region. Yes, there are plans to make a transfer point at DFW on the Cotton Belt route, but it isn't the central point of the entire system.
For me, it always comes down to this: those who use the system multiple times a week should be the focus. As it stands now, Union isn't even the central transfer point of the DART system, by a long shot, not even in the top 5. So why would it be forced to with the new line?
The last bit I have to offer is a case study from other cities. Foreign systems fit, but I will keep it in this country for simplicity's sake.
New York has two major transfer areas. Midtown/Times Square and Lower Manhattan, though they are a misnomer, because just about every station is a transfer to another line. Both of those spots are in the middle of urban bustle, not the edge like Union would be.
Washington D.C. has three major ones, all in the middle of the urban area. Their Union Station, the destination for every commuter and Amtrak rail line (including the only high speed rail line in this country), serves only one out of their five lines. The sixth, the under-construction Silver Line, won't serve Union either.
And in a system very similar to Dallas', with similar veins of thought and time in the planning process, San Francisco's BART system operates a lot like the current DART transit mall now. All of the transfer activity is under Market Street, the heart of the financial/downtown area. It is also where MUNI and the cable cars run. Instead of a transfer point, it creates a transfer corridor.
I have criticized DART for being a commuter system. The Commerce Street option would be a great step in swinging that pendulum a bit toward urban. The Young Street option would, though not as much. None of the other options would. In fact, it might even swing that pendulum more toward commuter.
Now, try putting that into 5 different 100 words bits.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Biking in Dallas: The Comedy
For any following the City of Dallas quest to become more bike friendly, the Dallas Morning News ran a Metro Section article Tuesday about a tour elected officials took to see the current bike infrastructure on the ground. It is behind the paywall, but I recommend the read.
I know I have promised a post on the new bike lanes downtown, but a brief synopsis is this: I am underwhelmed. The article gives a good felling of why, even from the beginning with the headline. "Tour-by van- looks at bike lanes" says it all. People who don't ride design a system for riders and then are perplexed when riders don't use the system.
Fundamentally, it comes down to a flaw of the planning profession in general. The jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none certainly apply to many-to most planners. Some consult a book, see what other cities or counties have done and apply it without context. The system designed by bikers in Portland, for example, may not work here. Just because they see results, doesn't mean Dallas will.
From the article:
In a white city van, four City Council members and several staff members rode past Fair Park through Deep Ellum and downtown and into Oak Cliff to view the different ways Dallas has installed bike infrastructure.
...
The city's central connection of bike lanes stretches from Victory Park to near Fair Park and leads from the Katy Trail to the Santa Fe Trail.
But it isn't the easiest path to navigate, council members agreed. Because of the inadequate signs and variations in the types of lanes used, bicyclists are often left to figure out where they're supposed to be - while riding in lanes shared with cars.
...
Council members were also concerned about the narrowness of some lanes downtown, particularly along Jackson and Wood streets. In some places, the bike lane runs into the storm sewer.
...
Those touring the lanes saw lots of striping laid down for bicycles. What they didn't see much of were people on bicycles.
Whether it was because of the time of day, the cold weather, a lack of interest of something else, the lanes weren't attracting many users.
Changing that will be the true test of how well the new lanes work.
I won't go into too much detail of the lanes themselves, as I believe that is worth a post on its own. What I want to address is two-fold.
First, Dallas isn't alone, but I know it the best. They put up a mismatch of infrastructure, some convenient to the biker, some for the street layout, some convenient to the cars. This combination can actually nullify the first one and it no longer is convenient to cycle any amount of distance. Then the cyclist, both hard core and recreational, don't use it and what was built for them sits empty.
A lot of times in planning, the phrase "just get something on the ground" is used as a way to put a policy in place with the rationale that the public will see it and opposition will fade as people see it in use. This is a great example of why I don't like that approach as a one-size-fits-all tactic. In this situation, folks who don't want the lanes are going to point here and say "why build it here if no one uses it there."
The final result ends with no new infrastructure added because the initial ones were implemented poorly and no one uses it. This isn't a good outcome for anyone.
Ultimately, the big stumbling block lies with the city staffers and elected officials who are reluctant to take space now used for cars and allocate them to another mode. Somehow, in order to achieve balance, that has to happen. You can't add any meaningful infrastructure while leaving a seven-lane-wide roadway with a median intact for autos to achieve high speeds. Those high speeds make cycling, walking and transit uncomfortable and therefore inconvenient. As a result, only car-use is convenient and the only mode used on a wide basis. Cities, like Dallas, tread water if their starting point is to leave the auto-only roadways alone.
The second point is this. How many times have we heard alternative transportation won't work in Dallas because Dallasites just love their cars? I have maintained people don't love their cars, they love convenience and I still haven't seen anything to contradict this. Cars are still the only thing that is convenient across the region. There are small patches scattered here and yon where a car isn't needed, but nothing wholesale to really put a dent in regional vehicle miles traveled. I have talked a bit about why DART comes up short. Walking is too fragmented, even in walkable areas. In the DMN article linked, the biking infrastructure is noted for being to erratic and mismatched. The only thing that is close to be seamless and convenient is the car.
From coast to coast and even internationally, places that have a legitimate choice and offer convenient alternative transportation options, their citizens choose alternatives. In places that don't, folks don't choose it on any meaningful scale.
Dallas can do it, but I just wonder if there will ever be enough people to hop out of the van to ever get it done.
I know I have promised a post on the new bike lanes downtown, but a brief synopsis is this: I am underwhelmed. The article gives a good felling of why, even from the beginning with the headline. "Tour-by van- looks at bike lanes" says it all. People who don't ride design a system for riders and then are perplexed when riders don't use the system.
Fundamentally, it comes down to a flaw of the planning profession in general. The jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none certainly apply to many-to most planners. Some consult a book, see what other cities or counties have done and apply it without context. The system designed by bikers in Portland, for example, may not work here. Just because they see results, doesn't mean Dallas will.
From the article:
In a white city van, four City Council members and several staff members rode past Fair Park through Deep Ellum and downtown and into Oak Cliff to view the different ways Dallas has installed bike infrastructure.
...
The city's central connection of bike lanes stretches from Victory Park to near Fair Park and leads from the Katy Trail to the Santa Fe Trail.
But it isn't the easiest path to navigate, council members agreed. Because of the inadequate signs and variations in the types of lanes used, bicyclists are often left to figure out where they're supposed to be - while riding in lanes shared with cars.
...
Council members were also concerned about the narrowness of some lanes downtown, particularly along Jackson and Wood streets. In some places, the bike lane runs into the storm sewer.
...
Those touring the lanes saw lots of striping laid down for bicycles. What they didn't see much of were people on bicycles.
Whether it was because of the time of day, the cold weather, a lack of interest of something else, the lanes weren't attracting many users.
Changing that will be the true test of how well the new lanes work.
I won't go into too much detail of the lanes themselves, as I believe that is worth a post on its own. What I want to address is two-fold.
First, Dallas isn't alone, but I know it the best. They put up a mismatch of infrastructure, some convenient to the biker, some for the street layout, some convenient to the cars. This combination can actually nullify the first one and it no longer is convenient to cycle any amount of distance. Then the cyclist, both hard core and recreational, don't use it and what was built for them sits empty.
A lot of times in planning, the phrase "just get something on the ground" is used as a way to put a policy in place with the rationale that the public will see it and opposition will fade as people see it in use. This is a great example of why I don't like that approach as a one-size-fits-all tactic. In this situation, folks who don't want the lanes are going to point here and say "why build it here if no one uses it there."
The final result ends with no new infrastructure added because the initial ones were implemented poorly and no one uses it. This isn't a good outcome for anyone.
Ultimately, the big stumbling block lies with the city staffers and elected officials who are reluctant to take space now used for cars and allocate them to another mode. Somehow, in order to achieve balance, that has to happen. You can't add any meaningful infrastructure while leaving a seven-lane-wide roadway with a median intact for autos to achieve high speeds. Those high speeds make cycling, walking and transit uncomfortable and therefore inconvenient. As a result, only car-use is convenient and the only mode used on a wide basis. Cities, like Dallas, tread water if their starting point is to leave the auto-only roadways alone.
The second point is this. How many times have we heard alternative transportation won't work in Dallas because Dallasites just love their cars? I have maintained people don't love their cars, they love convenience and I still haven't seen anything to contradict this. Cars are still the only thing that is convenient across the region. There are small patches scattered here and yon where a car isn't needed, but nothing wholesale to really put a dent in regional vehicle miles traveled. I have talked a bit about why DART comes up short. Walking is too fragmented, even in walkable areas. In the DMN article linked, the biking infrastructure is noted for being to erratic and mismatched. The only thing that is close to be seamless and convenient is the car.
From coast to coast and even internationally, places that have a legitimate choice and offer convenient alternative transportation options, their citizens choose alternatives. In places that don't, folks don't choose it on any meaningful scale.
Dallas can do it, but I just wonder if there will ever be enough people to hop out of the van to ever get it done.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Why Planning can never be Precise
I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Mine was quite enjoyable.
Prior to the holidays, I was checking e-mail and on the front page was a headline about congestion reduction. When I clicked on it, I initially dismissed the report, but have thought about it since so what happens when I over-think an urban issue? I blog it o' course.
The basis of the article is that if select neighborhoods decided against making car trips, then overall congestion would be reduced dramatically. From the lead:
Canceling some car trips from just a few strategically located neighborhoods could drastically reduce gridlock and traffic jams in cities, a new study suggests.
They go on to list individual cities' neighborhoods and their effects on overall city congestion:
"In the Boston area, we found that canceling 1 percent of trips by select drivers in the Massachusetts municipalities of Everett, Marlborough, Lawrence, Lowell and Waltham would cut all drivers’ additional commuting time caused by traffic congestion by 18 percent," said researcher Marta González, a complex-systems scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "In the San Francisco area, canceling trips by drivers from Dublin, Hayward, San Jose, San Rafael and parts of San Ramon would cut 14 percent from the travel time of other drivers."
The problem with this, as is any hard science when they delve into the soft or social science, is that everything is a mathematical formula, a linear cause and effect. Water boils at a certain temperature, oxygen is composed of two oxygen atoms, the day is 23 hours, 56 minutes long, etc. are all measurable, repeatable things. One person can do it, report it and pass it on to someone who can independently do the same thing.
In social sciences, that is impossible. Human behavior, like nature itself, is chaotic, erratic and unmeasurable. That is where statistics come in. Human behavior can be measured in a bell curve, but it is not precise. Traffic modeling is an example of this measuring of human behavior. There are several different types of mathematical models out there for MPO's to use, but most follow a basic formula, trip generation, trip distribution, mode split and trip assignment.
However, there is a step called calibration. Ever seen a meter strip in the street? That helps calibrate the model. Using the formula, modelers see where the model says trips are coming from and where they are going. They then compare that to real world measurements and repeatedly calibrate the model until it resembles the observed numbers. This model is then forecast out for however long the modeler chooses too extend it, usually 30 years.
The reason calibration is needed is human behavior. New York is different than Dallas for example. The exact same mathematical formula would be highly erroneous.
It, like the study linked above, ignores the human behavior and attempts to quantify it scientifically. I am an alternative transportation advocate. There have been times where I decided to use different modes at different times for the exact same trip. Add in things like Induced Traffic and the flaws become more noticeable.
Individually, there is no way to model behavior. But, using the bell curve, there are ways to measure, but it isn't exact, and that's okay. What isn't okay when folks portray human behavior as a linear function. I don't for a minute, believe that study. Procedurally, it may be sound, the math exact and correct. But it ignores the fact that social sciences aren't neat, compact and unerringly precise. Spouting off precise numbers such as 18 or 14 percent reductions ignores human behavior, and that may cause more problems in a different way.
Prior to the holidays, I was checking e-mail and on the front page was a headline about congestion reduction. When I clicked on it, I initially dismissed the report, but have thought about it since so what happens when I over-think an urban issue? I blog it o' course.
The basis of the article is that if select neighborhoods decided against making car trips, then overall congestion would be reduced dramatically. From the lead:
Canceling some car trips from just a few strategically located neighborhoods could drastically reduce gridlock and traffic jams in cities, a new study suggests.
They go on to list individual cities' neighborhoods and their effects on overall city congestion:
"In the Boston area, we found that canceling 1 percent of trips by select drivers in the Massachusetts municipalities of Everett, Marlborough, Lawrence, Lowell and Waltham would cut all drivers’ additional commuting time caused by traffic congestion by 18 percent," said researcher Marta González, a complex-systems scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "In the San Francisco area, canceling trips by drivers from Dublin, Hayward, San Jose, San Rafael and parts of San Ramon would cut 14 percent from the travel time of other drivers."
The problem with this, as is any hard science when they delve into the soft or social science, is that everything is a mathematical formula, a linear cause and effect. Water boils at a certain temperature, oxygen is composed of two oxygen atoms, the day is 23 hours, 56 minutes long, etc. are all measurable, repeatable things. One person can do it, report it and pass it on to someone who can independently do the same thing.
In social sciences, that is impossible. Human behavior, like nature itself, is chaotic, erratic and unmeasurable. That is where statistics come in. Human behavior can be measured in a bell curve, but it is not precise. Traffic modeling is an example of this measuring of human behavior. There are several different types of mathematical models out there for MPO's to use, but most follow a basic formula, trip generation, trip distribution, mode split and trip assignment.
However, there is a step called calibration. Ever seen a meter strip in the street? That helps calibrate the model. Using the formula, modelers see where the model says trips are coming from and where they are going. They then compare that to real world measurements and repeatedly calibrate the model until it resembles the observed numbers. This model is then forecast out for however long the modeler chooses too extend it, usually 30 years.
The reason calibration is needed is human behavior. New York is different than Dallas for example. The exact same mathematical formula would be highly erroneous.
It, like the study linked above, ignores the human behavior and attempts to quantify it scientifically. I am an alternative transportation advocate. There have been times where I decided to use different modes at different times for the exact same trip. Add in things like Induced Traffic and the flaws become more noticeable.
Individually, there is no way to model behavior. But, using the bell curve, there are ways to measure, but it isn't exact, and that's okay. What isn't okay when folks portray human behavior as a linear function. I don't for a minute, believe that study. Procedurally, it may be sound, the math exact and correct. But it ignores the fact that social sciences aren't neat, compact and unerringly precise. Spouting off precise numbers such as 18 or 14 percent reductions ignores human behavior, and that may cause more problems in a different way.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
DART Expands Again
Sticking with the DART theme, an article ran in the Dallas Morning News the day after the transit agency debuted a new station on the Blue Line and two on the Orange Line last week. I would have liked to put this up earlier, but honestly, the motivation is low for me on this particular news item. I just feel like a broken record and would just like to have a positive review for once.
In some ways, this new service is more of the same. Another commuter terminus to bring workers from the outlying areas into the central core. All are going to be commuter station with huge amount of parking spaces (Belt Line - 597, Rowlett - 750, North Lake - 194). I have hope that Rowlett can leverage something around their downtown and the rail stop, but that parking amount will be a huge buffer to cohesive development. If they can, I and other practicing urbanites may use this station sparingly as there are many other destinations that are bigger, better and/or closer to the true urban spaces in the region. Otherwise, there are three more stations added to a commuter system that are true to the rest of the commuter-based system. Bring in workers from the suburbs to the central core, and change the way captive riders use the system.
This isn't a shocking position to loyal readers who have followed this blog for a while, which is partly why the motivation for publishing this piece is low. But there are some quotes I want to pull from the article that really illustrate what I have been alluding to previously, which is the DART system has been increasing making the system harder to use by focusing on reducing redundancy and increasing transfers.
From the article:
At the opposite end of the platform, Gary Dudek was testing out the new rail line on his day off.
The airport employee's previous DART commute to work took at least 2 1/2 hours each way, he said: a bus, then another bus to one of DFW's remote lots, then a shuttle, then another shuttle.
Even worse, he said, the buses often stopped running before the end of his night shift, forcing him to walk part of the way back.
"Hopefully I don't have to walk nine miles home anymore," he said.
Let's play a quiz game. Is Gary Dudek a choice rider, one who has the option to use another mode of transport, like a car, to get to work, or is he a captive rider, one who has little or no other options to get to work?
Five hour daily commute, a fairly good chance of missing the last bus and multiple transfers. Nothing explicitly says one way or the other, but my intuition tells me he isn't doing that for fun. He's doing that because he has little choice.
Seriously though, as I mentioned in the last post, this is exactly the type of system DART is building. By cutting bus service, routing everything through a rail station and increasing the time between runs, DART is creating a user-unfriendly system.
I do understand, however, that DFW is a sprawling airport and the previous rail link was a true commuter rail with even longer headways than I am complaining about now. I also get that DART is facing a funding shortage.That said, somehow they were able to run the new 500 bus through the airport, with the bus meeting every Orange Line train at Belt Line Station. If they could do it now, they could have done it before the new rail line. A semi-express that began at the North Irving Transfer Station and ran to the airport and on to Centreport Station would have connected it. Obviously, they were able to find the funding for it now, but I wonder if they did it by cutting the inner city bus service, the one that will be used at a greater rate.
This to me is DART's greatest shortcoming in planning. It is almost as if they view the bus as a second option, rather than using it for what it is best tailored for. In a true transit system, each component is chosen because it is best for its service. There is no one size fits all approach. The places that have tried a hybrid commuter-urban system have seem underwhelming results. DART is no different. The troubling thing is that they either haven't noticed or don't seem to care. I know there is some political pressure on the agency, particularly in connecting to the airport. But there has to be some balance between that and serving the riders and right now there isn't. I see only a system that is being designed to get commuters in and then out.
The last quote I bring forth:
"I don't want to complain," said Alex Flores, a waiter at Mattito's Tex Mex. "I'm only going to ride it another week. Then my car gets fixed and I don't have to ride a train anymore."
Alright, captive or choice rider?
Were I in his shoes, I think I would make the same choice. It just isn't convenient. This sentiment is exactly why DART will continue to be one of the least ridden rail systems on a per mile basis in the country. They are currently 21st out of 34 operating systems, which also contain services like Kenosha's 2-mile streetcar, Little Rocks 2.5-mile streetcar and Tampa's 2.3-mile streetcar. Discounting these tourist oriented streetcar systems, Dallas ranks 21st out of 31 light rail systems in passengers per mile.
DART brags about being the largest light rail system in North America. Overall, that's good enough for the seventh most ridden light rail system in the U.S., per the American Public Transportation Association. For example, Boston, with the most ridden light rail system, has three times the riders on 1/3 the tracks miles. Using a peer Sun Belt city, Houston has 1/2 the rail ridership on 1/10th the rail miles. I doubt the addition of the three new stations will add that much to the ridership numbers, but it will add to the miles, further dragging down the per mile boardings.
In fact, DART's highest per mile boardings occured when the starter system was finished and it primarily served the urban area, albeit not perfectly. But since then, the system has been built further and further out, and even when they expanded in the urban area, the Green Line did so sub-optimally. If the City of Dallas gets its way, the second downtown rail line will be more of the same.
Let me leave you with a thought. Read though this again, particularly Gary Dudek and Alex Flores contributions. As a society, do we really love our cars? Or do we, as I continue to contend, love what is convenient?
In some ways, this new service is more of the same. Another commuter terminus to bring workers from the outlying areas into the central core. All are going to be commuter station with huge amount of parking spaces (Belt Line - 597, Rowlett - 750, North Lake - 194). I have hope that Rowlett can leverage something around their downtown and the rail stop, but that parking amount will be a huge buffer to cohesive development. If they can, I and other practicing urbanites may use this station sparingly as there are many other destinations that are bigger, better and/or closer to the true urban spaces in the region. Otherwise, there are three more stations added to a commuter system that are true to the rest of the commuter-based system. Bring in workers from the suburbs to the central core, and change the way captive riders use the system.
This isn't a shocking position to loyal readers who have followed this blog for a while, which is partly why the motivation for publishing this piece is low. But there are some quotes I want to pull from the article that really illustrate what I have been alluding to previously, which is the DART system has been increasing making the system harder to use by focusing on reducing redundancy and increasing transfers.
From the article:
At the opposite end of the platform, Gary Dudek was testing out the new rail line on his day off.
The airport employee's previous DART commute to work took at least 2 1/2 hours each way, he said: a bus, then another bus to one of DFW's remote lots, then a shuttle, then another shuttle.
Even worse, he said, the buses often stopped running before the end of his night shift, forcing him to walk part of the way back.
"Hopefully I don't have to walk nine miles home anymore," he said.
Let's play a quiz game. Is Gary Dudek a choice rider, one who has the option to use another mode of transport, like a car, to get to work, or is he a captive rider, one who has little or no other options to get to work?
Five hour daily commute, a fairly good chance of missing the last bus and multiple transfers. Nothing explicitly says one way or the other, but my intuition tells me he isn't doing that for fun. He's doing that because he has little choice.
Seriously though, as I mentioned in the last post, this is exactly the type of system DART is building. By cutting bus service, routing everything through a rail station and increasing the time between runs, DART is creating a user-unfriendly system.
I do understand, however, that DFW is a sprawling airport and the previous rail link was a true commuter rail with even longer headways than I am complaining about now. I also get that DART is facing a funding shortage.That said, somehow they were able to run the new 500 bus through the airport, with the bus meeting every Orange Line train at Belt Line Station. If they could do it now, they could have done it before the new rail line. A semi-express that began at the North Irving Transfer Station and ran to the airport and on to Centreport Station would have connected it. Obviously, they were able to find the funding for it now, but I wonder if they did it by cutting the inner city bus service, the one that will be used at a greater rate.
This to me is DART's greatest shortcoming in planning. It is almost as if they view the bus as a second option, rather than using it for what it is best tailored for. In a true transit system, each component is chosen because it is best for its service. There is no one size fits all approach. The places that have tried a hybrid commuter-urban system have seem underwhelming results. DART is no different. The troubling thing is that they either haven't noticed or don't seem to care. I know there is some political pressure on the agency, particularly in connecting to the airport. But there has to be some balance between that and serving the riders and right now there isn't. I see only a system that is being designed to get commuters in and then out.
The last quote I bring forth:
"I don't want to complain," said Alex Flores, a waiter at Mattito's Tex Mex. "I'm only going to ride it another week. Then my car gets fixed and I don't have to ride a train anymore."
Alright, captive or choice rider?
Were I in his shoes, I think I would make the same choice. It just isn't convenient. This sentiment is exactly why DART will continue to be one of the least ridden rail systems on a per mile basis in the country. They are currently 21st out of 34 operating systems, which also contain services like Kenosha's 2-mile streetcar, Little Rocks 2.5-mile streetcar and Tampa's 2.3-mile streetcar. Discounting these tourist oriented streetcar systems, Dallas ranks 21st out of 31 light rail systems in passengers per mile.
DART brags about being the largest light rail system in North America. Overall, that's good enough for the seventh most ridden light rail system in the U.S., per the American Public Transportation Association. For example, Boston, with the most ridden light rail system, has three times the riders on 1/3 the tracks miles. Using a peer Sun Belt city, Houston has 1/2 the rail ridership on 1/10th the rail miles. I doubt the addition of the three new stations will add that much to the ridership numbers, but it will add to the miles, further dragging down the per mile boardings.
In fact, DART's highest per mile boardings occured when the starter system was finished and it primarily served the urban area, albeit not perfectly. But since then, the system has been built further and further out, and even when they expanded in the urban area, the Green Line did so sub-optimally. If the City of Dallas gets its way, the second downtown rail line will be more of the same.
Let me leave you with a thought. Read though this again, particularly Gary Dudek and Alex Flores contributions. As a society, do we really love our cars? Or do we, as I continue to contend, love what is convenient?
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
DART's December Service Change
Sorry to disappoint those who were looking forward to the topics I previewed in the last post, but I overlooked one, and this has me steaming.
In this post at the beginning of the year, I mentioned the bus changes DART wanted to implement. I was struck by the fact that they are making the bus service a highly ineffective and inefficient system, especially when the rail system is a commuter-designed system rather than the urban one that serves and carries more riders.
Well, I flipped through the latest service change pamphlet they produce before every change and it appears that every one of the planners recommendations made it to the finish line. Bottomline: Bus cuts are funding the rail system. DART is cutting service from the workhorse that carries the bulk of their riders in favor of a less ridden alternative.
I'm trying to contain myself, but I am just disgusted. DART has a local reputation among the population for user unfriendliness and these cuts do nothing to dispel that notion. Two close-in, urban neighborhoods are no longer connected by one route. To get to a point on Oak Lawn from downtown Dallas will require a transfer to another route or a long walk. Sadly, most of the urban core is now functioning this way.
DART has designed an urban transit system that requires multiple transfers. Transfers kill ridership. They have increased headways. Longer wait times kill ridership. Adding to the appalling news, more and more urban routes require a transfer to the commuter-designed rail system, which then almost always requires another transfer. It is not inconceivable that an urban resident will need to ride 3-5 routes to get where they are going within five miles of their start. DART generally does a good job of minimizing transfer times, but it is near impossible for every route to connect seamlessly with every other route. And even when they do work, and the time is less than five minutes, after a few transfers, the wait time still adds up. If it takes 30-60 minutes by streetcar/rail/bus/bus, or 10 by car, which will be the preferred choice? Add the fact that most trips have a return and the time wasted is amplified.
Results aside, I think the thing that gets me the most is the feeling that the public meetings were a sham. Planners came in with one goal and only one goal, likely dictated from above, and that was to save money. There was nothing else that mattered. At several meetings, groups and groups of riders protested a select few service changes. In the end, every one of them were cut. They did the public meetings in correspondence with federal law, but when your goal is to cut expenses, what happens at these meetings are inconsequential. They are only supposed to take the comments into account, not act upon them.
I get frustrated because to many of the general public, planners are insulated from them. And this is why. In the end, it feels all the time given up for these meetings to make their voice heard was pointless. It feels like a dog and pony show, only to comply with the law, not be heard.
I have always believed that planning is best done from the bottom up. Part of my frustration with this is that this was the exact opposite. And THAT'S why the taste in my mouth is bitter. I firmly believe there was a solution that was reachable where both sides would have agreed, even if they didn't endorse, to a solution. This reeks of my way and only my way.I despise insulated decisions.
Lastly, this is where right-wingers and libertarians share frustrations with the public sector (though no one on the DART Board is elected). Because less than a quarter of DART's revenue is generated by fares, even if they see a huge ridership loss, the budget won't be affected by anything more than a blip.
Here, however, I won't fault DART. Because we choose to fund their operations with a sales tax, which is the most economically cyclical way of all funding, when times get tough, regardless of demand, service has to be cut. Due to the circumstances, these cuts are anti-urban and anti-urban-development. However, given that constraint, there was a better way to cut costs than to ax routes and lower ridership.
For me, Houston would be a better model. Because their rail line and expansions are more cohesive with the urban environment, they would feel less shock from route cuts and transfers into the rail system. The rail system is actually an urban one, and therefore many of the transfers work because the rail line will get them to the rider's final destination or will be the starting point.
Within the next year, a story will appear in the paper that will discuss the further eroding of DART's ridership. In it, DART officials will point to the down economy (fewer jobs mean fewer riders), lower sales tax collections and suburban job growth as reasons. Now on will mention they keep cutting routes and those that remain have fewer buses running on those routes.
Unless more of an effort is put forth, I fear Dallas will always be known as a car city, and it will have little to do with the resident's true transportation preferences.
In this post at the beginning of the year, I mentioned the bus changes DART wanted to implement. I was struck by the fact that they are making the bus service a highly ineffective and inefficient system, especially when the rail system is a commuter-designed system rather than the urban one that serves and carries more riders.
Well, I flipped through the latest service change pamphlet they produce before every change and it appears that every one of the planners recommendations made it to the finish line. Bottomline: Bus cuts are funding the rail system. DART is cutting service from the workhorse that carries the bulk of their riders in favor of a less ridden alternative.
I'm trying to contain myself, but I am just disgusted. DART has a local reputation among the population for user unfriendliness and these cuts do nothing to dispel that notion. Two close-in, urban neighborhoods are no longer connected by one route. To get to a point on Oak Lawn from downtown Dallas will require a transfer to another route or a long walk. Sadly, most of the urban core is now functioning this way.
DART has designed an urban transit system that requires multiple transfers. Transfers kill ridership. They have increased headways. Longer wait times kill ridership. Adding to the appalling news, more and more urban routes require a transfer to the commuter-designed rail system, which then almost always requires another transfer. It is not inconceivable that an urban resident will need to ride 3-5 routes to get where they are going within five miles of their start. DART generally does a good job of minimizing transfer times, but it is near impossible for every route to connect seamlessly with every other route. And even when they do work, and the time is less than five minutes, after a few transfers, the wait time still adds up. If it takes 30-60 minutes by streetcar/rail/bus/bus, or 10 by car, which will be the preferred choice? Add the fact that most trips have a return and the time wasted is amplified.
Results aside, I think the thing that gets me the most is the feeling that the public meetings were a sham. Planners came in with one goal and only one goal, likely dictated from above, and that was to save money. There was nothing else that mattered. At several meetings, groups and groups of riders protested a select few service changes. In the end, every one of them were cut. They did the public meetings in correspondence with federal law, but when your goal is to cut expenses, what happens at these meetings are inconsequential. They are only supposed to take the comments into account, not act upon them.
I get frustrated because to many of the general public, planners are insulated from them. And this is why. In the end, it feels all the time given up for these meetings to make their voice heard was pointless. It feels like a dog and pony show, only to comply with the law, not be heard.
I have always believed that planning is best done from the bottom up. Part of my frustration with this is that this was the exact opposite. And THAT'S why the taste in my mouth is bitter. I firmly believe there was a solution that was reachable where both sides would have agreed, even if they didn't endorse, to a solution. This reeks of my way and only my way.I despise insulated decisions.
Lastly, this is where right-wingers and libertarians share frustrations with the public sector (though no one on the DART Board is elected). Because less than a quarter of DART's revenue is generated by fares, even if they see a huge ridership loss, the budget won't be affected by anything more than a blip.
Here, however, I won't fault DART. Because we choose to fund their operations with a sales tax, which is the most economically cyclical way of all funding, when times get tough, regardless of demand, service has to be cut. Due to the circumstances, these cuts are anti-urban and anti-urban-development. However, given that constraint, there was a better way to cut costs than to ax routes and lower ridership.
For me, Houston would be a better model. Because their rail line and expansions are more cohesive with the urban environment, they would feel less shock from route cuts and transfers into the rail system. The rail system is actually an urban one, and therefore many of the transfers work because the rail line will get them to the rider's final destination or will be the starting point.
Within the next year, a story will appear in the paper that will discuss the further eroding of DART's ridership. In it, DART officials will point to the down economy (fewer jobs mean fewer riders), lower sales tax collections and suburban job growth as reasons. Now on will mention they keep cutting routes and those that remain have fewer buses running on those routes.
Unless more of an effort is put forth, I fear Dallas will always be known as a car city, and it will have little to do with the resident's true transportation preferences.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Why Pro-Alternate Transportation is not Anti-Car
It is generally my philosophy to link and have a discussion on topics that are local in value, for example, the Trinity Tollroad or discuss examples from across the country in relation to the Trinity Tollroad. Today I will make an exception because it is relevant to planning, planners and me personally.
I put it here to give an understanding of my philosophy, and hope that readers will keep this in mind when policies are put forth that may limit the automobile's reach.
Herb Caudill believes that planners are not anti-car and the supposed "war on cars" that planners have been accused of is not true. It is that cars and what they need, from a pure physical infrastructure point, are not an efficient use of resources.
The central fact about cars, from a planner's perspective, is that they take up space. Lots of space. And this matters because space in cities (a.k.a real estate) is scarce and therefore expensive.
Cars take up space when they're moving and they take up space when they're parked, and even though they can't be simultaneously moving and parked, you have to plan for both states and plan for peak demand; so you have to set aside some multiple of the real estate actually occupied by the car at any given time.
That's just a practical observation about the spatial geometry of cities that doesn't bow to my ideology or yours. And it would still remain true even if cars ran on nothing but recycled newspapers and emitted nothing but rainbows and unicorn tears.
In the past, our policy response has been to just set aside more and more space for cars: More freeways, more roads, more lanes on existing roads, more parking garages and surface lots. This approach hasn't worked, and there are two very practical reasons why:
First, you can never build enough. There's a phenomenon called "induced demand" that is very well understood by now. A new lane or a new freeway never reduces congestion in the long run: People respond to new capacity by driving more or by living or working in previously remote places, and you're very quickly back where you started and have to build still more. The same phenomenon applies to increases in the supply of parking. It's a game you can't win.
Second, when you do make more space for cars you quickly start to crowd out any other potential mode of transportation, especially walking. All those parking lots and freeways and roads spread everything else out so that the distances become too great for walking. And the more you optimize any given space for cars the more hostile that space is for pedestrians. Very quickly you get to the point where it becomes impossible—or prohibitively depressing—to get things done on foot.
I agree whole-heartedly about this. While he does say that externalities are excluded for this discussion, I would say that also has a huge effect in my reasoning. DFW as a region is a non-attainment area for ozone. The primary reason for the ozone is the exhaust from cars. To try and solve the ozone issue without addressing cars will never work. Any solution has to incorporate that aspect.
What the "war on cars" boils down to is those that are funded by the road lobby **coughcoughCatoInstitutecough** are working to find a way to keep doing what has always been done in the last 60-70 years. Folks in cars scoff at perceived anti-car policies, for example, tolling of freeways, not because the policy to pay for what you use is bad, but because they have always had free roads.
What planners get flack for is trying to shift the pendulum, which is so far towards cars at this moment, more toward the middle. I have often said, much to disbelieving ears, that I am not anti-car. I am pro-transportation-choice. There have been times where I could have taken something that wasn't a car, but didn't. Sadly, there have also been times where I didn't want to take the car but had no option. That's what we are out to fix.
I put it here to give an understanding of my philosophy, and hope that readers will keep this in mind when policies are put forth that may limit the automobile's reach.
Herb Caudill believes that planners are not anti-car and the supposed "war on cars" that planners have been accused of is not true. It is that cars and what they need, from a pure physical infrastructure point, are not an efficient use of resources.
The central fact about cars, from a planner's perspective, is that they take up space. Lots of space. And this matters because space in cities (a.k.a real estate) is scarce and therefore expensive.
Cars take up space when they're moving and they take up space when they're parked, and even though they can't be simultaneously moving and parked, you have to plan for both states and plan for peak demand; so you have to set aside some multiple of the real estate actually occupied by the car at any given time.
That's just a practical observation about the spatial geometry of cities that doesn't bow to my ideology or yours. And it would still remain true even if cars ran on nothing but recycled newspapers and emitted nothing but rainbows and unicorn tears.
In the past, our policy response has been to just set aside more and more space for cars: More freeways, more roads, more lanes on existing roads, more parking garages and surface lots. This approach hasn't worked, and there are two very practical reasons why:
First, you can never build enough. There's a phenomenon called "induced demand" that is very well understood by now. A new lane or a new freeway never reduces congestion in the long run: People respond to new capacity by driving more or by living or working in previously remote places, and you're very quickly back where you started and have to build still more. The same phenomenon applies to increases in the supply of parking. It's a game you can't win.
Second, when you do make more space for cars you quickly start to crowd out any other potential mode of transportation, especially walking. All those parking lots and freeways and roads spread everything else out so that the distances become too great for walking. And the more you optimize any given space for cars the more hostile that space is for pedestrians. Very quickly you get to the point where it becomes impossible—or prohibitively depressing—to get things done on foot.
I agree whole-heartedly about this. While he does say that externalities are excluded for this discussion, I would say that also has a huge effect in my reasoning. DFW as a region is a non-attainment area for ozone. The primary reason for the ozone is the exhaust from cars. To try and solve the ozone issue without addressing cars will never work. Any solution has to incorporate that aspect.
What the "war on cars" boils down to is those that are funded by the road lobby **coughcoughCatoInstitutecough** are working to find a way to keep doing what has always been done in the last 60-70 years. Folks in cars scoff at perceived anti-car policies, for example, tolling of freeways, not because the policy to pay for what you use is bad, but because they have always had free roads.
What planners get flack for is trying to shift the pendulum, which is so far towards cars at this moment, more toward the middle. I have often said, much to disbelieving ears, that I am not anti-car. I am pro-transportation-choice. There have been times where I could have taken something that wasn't a car, but didn't. Sadly, there have also been times where I didn't want to take the car but had no option. That's what we are out to fix.
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Oil and Water or Parking at Rail Stations
The expanding rail system in Denver is undergoing a fundamental rethink of how it gets it passengers to its rail system as detailed by the Wall Street Journal. There are some very relevant parts for Dallas and DART in there.
Here's the fundamental parts:
After the system opened in 1994, planners built parking lots and garages around many of its stations to cater to commuters. That strategy put parking on land that would have been ideal for stores, apartment buildings and squares catering to riders living adjacent to the stops.
As a result, there has been little of that kind of development around the stations to change the area's car-dependent culture, and riders commute to the stations from up to 20 miles away.
"Once you put in a parking structure, it's difficult to move it," says Bill Sirois, senior planning manager at the Regional Transportation District in Denver.
Denver-transit planners now are becoming more flexible when it comes to how much parking they require near rail stops and where they put it.
In the continuing expansion of the Denver rail system—which will add up to 122 miles of light rail and commuter rail lines to the existing 35 miles within the next 10 years—land adjacent to stations will be earmarked in some cases for village-type developments.
...
Whether to cater primarily to commuters or to residents near rail stops is a pivotal question for mass-transit planners in some cities. Many western cities expanding relatively young rail systems don't have the density or "walkability" that has allowed residents in older, Eastern cities such as New York to eschew cars in favor of mass transit.
Still, some of Denver's peer cities already have embraced this approach. San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, and the TriMet mass-transit system in Portland, Ore., long have favored relegating park-and-ride service to their farthest flung stations in the suburbs. Meanwhile, they encourage dense clusters of apartments, condominiums and offices adjacent to their urban rail stops. The twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., have taken a similar approach recently.
...
Critics ask whether Denver's change in approach on parking will chase some riders away rather than attract them. "So, they're going to make it more difficult to use transit in hopes that the real-estate speculators who use public money to build these things can flourish?" asks Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a think tank in Denver. A former board member of Denver's transit system, Mr. Caldara long has been among its most vocal critics.
This something I have espoused for a long time. Why would any system that wants to redesign the urban landscape surround the instruments that accomplish that feat with pedestrian-deadening surface parking lots and single-use garages? If the goal is to redo our transportation system from a car-based one to one that sees a greater tendency for walking and transit, why does it virtually require a car for its use?
This, I believe, is a reflection of a different generation. The older planning set, as well as almost all of the political spectrum, see cars as either indispensable or inevitable, neither of which is accurate.
I've said it before and it is relevant here. People will do what is convenient. Americans don't have a love affair with the car. They have a forced marriage. Nothing else is convenient. Look at it in this case, parking lots immediately surrounding stations. Any attempt at redesigning the urban environment around it will be blunted because the parking is taking up the space that the urban environment needs to thrive. We made the car more convenient. So if there is a development there, the impact of seperating the rail station from it with parking will lower the everyday use of the rail system from the development, as well as from people outside the area who might travel to the development.
There are other endless examples of this. A few weeks ago, I talked about how signal timing is a virtual impossibility in an urban area. But what is being timed, whether urban, suburban or rural? Autos, at the expense of everything else. Why aren't the signals timed for bikes? Walking? Buses? All of these have a different speed. By picking the car, we are picking our preference.
What happens when a street is widened? Property is taken to account for that space. What was that property. In an urban area, where most property is flush with the property line, it is sidewalks (in outer areas, it can also be private property). What is the message that is sent when we narrow sidewalks to widen space for cars. The autos have priority over pedestrians.
Speaking of sidewalks, how often do neighborhoods, even close-in ones, have sidewalks? Anything less than 100 percent is too low. Can you imagine a neighborhood without roads? Even rural, farming communities have at least dirt ones. What is that message that is sent that the only infrastructure that was built was to accommodate cars? Cars take priority over anything else.
From 1945-1990, virtually every city large and small built at least one freeway and almost always many more. In the meantime, city transit systems languished. Those that were able to continue were almost always a bus, stuck in traffic (and facing signals not timed for them, slowing them down even more). No new investments were made in transit except in isolated cases. It wasn't until the 1990's that there were multiple cities with concrete additions on the ground.
Reverting back to the topic, it is clear that even when our transit systems were being designed, it was with the idea of the car first. In essence, we are investing in a transportation system not designed to be an alternative to the car, but rather shorten the distance cars make on each trip.
And the ironic part, is exactly what Bill Sirois touched on above. Unless we are talking surface lots, once these parking structures are in place, their stay is quite long, reducing not just the tendency to encourage alternative transportation now, but a long time into the future as well.
What Denver is doing in trying to encourage TOD's, what San Francisco did in allocating parking in the outlying areas is exactly what virtually every rail-building-transit agency should do. Why do the rail stations of Mockingbird, Park Lane, Victory (though the parking is not DART's property), Union (alos not DART's property) Market Center, Inwood, Bachman, 8th & Corinth, Illinois, MLK, Lawnview and White Rock Lake all have abundant parking? There are within five miles of Downtown Dallas, the first place that urbanism started in this area. Several are also near urban enclaves of varying degree. Now granted there are some urban stations, but more have parking than don't, even within Loop 12.
What critics like Jon Caldera fail to realize when they say things like without parking, it won't be used is that at some point, for that dynamic to change, there has to be a starting point. At some point, there will have to be a restriction of parking, there will have to a densification of the urban area.
It isn't because planners dislike cars, but rather out of every widespread transportation system there is, personal autos have the greatest amount of negative externalities, both public (pollution, health, cost, and land) and private (sedentary, cost, injury and death). If we know that, then why are cars put first above everything? It isn't because they are the most efficient or the most operable. New York City and the rest of the Alpha World Class Cities are proof of that. In NYC, walking is the most used transportation form, followed by transit. Cars are third. I'm not saying every city has to be the equivalent, but it would be better than what Dallas achieves, an 87 percent single use occupancy.
For DART, it has to achieve better than 32 stations out of 55 that are commuter-based, or 58 percent. If the the Downtown Dallas rail stations are removed, the percentage is raised to almost two-thirds. The Orange Line opens Monday and I don't know its numbers off the top of my head, though I believe only the Las Colinas Station serves the neighborhood, though the University of Dallas Station may too.
Where are the walkable neighborhoods? Where are the bus transfers? Where is the actual ability to live car-free? All these were promised during DART's referendum to form the agency in the 1980's. While there is a lot that the rail system lacks that is outside DART's control, this is something that could help the system that they have direct control over. In the end, they have to ask themselves do they want a transit system that serves the future of Dallas, or one that was built for the 1980's Dallas.
Here's the fundamental parts:
After the system opened in 1994, planners built parking lots and garages around many of its stations to cater to commuters. That strategy put parking on land that would have been ideal for stores, apartment buildings and squares catering to riders living adjacent to the stops.
As a result, there has been little of that kind of development around the stations to change the area's car-dependent culture, and riders commute to the stations from up to 20 miles away.
"Once you put in a parking structure, it's difficult to move it," says Bill Sirois, senior planning manager at the Regional Transportation District in Denver.
Denver-transit planners now are becoming more flexible when it comes to how much parking they require near rail stops and where they put it.
In the continuing expansion of the Denver rail system—which will add up to 122 miles of light rail and commuter rail lines to the existing 35 miles within the next 10 years—land adjacent to stations will be earmarked in some cases for village-type developments.
...
Whether to cater primarily to commuters or to residents near rail stops is a pivotal question for mass-transit planners in some cities. Many western cities expanding relatively young rail systems don't have the density or "walkability" that has allowed residents in older, Eastern cities such as New York to eschew cars in favor of mass transit.
Still, some of Denver's peer cities already have embraced this approach. San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, and the TriMet mass-transit system in Portland, Ore., long have favored relegating park-and-ride service to their farthest flung stations in the suburbs. Meanwhile, they encourage dense clusters of apartments, condominiums and offices adjacent to their urban rail stops. The twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., have taken a similar approach recently.
...
Critics ask whether Denver's change in approach on parking will chase some riders away rather than attract them. "So, they're going to make it more difficult to use transit in hopes that the real-estate speculators who use public money to build these things can flourish?" asks Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a think tank in Denver. A former board member of Denver's transit system, Mr. Caldara long has been among its most vocal critics.
This something I have espoused for a long time. Why would any system that wants to redesign the urban landscape surround the instruments that accomplish that feat with pedestrian-deadening surface parking lots and single-use garages? If the goal is to redo our transportation system from a car-based one to one that sees a greater tendency for walking and transit, why does it virtually require a car for its use?
This, I believe, is a reflection of a different generation. The older planning set, as well as almost all of the political spectrum, see cars as either indispensable or inevitable, neither of which is accurate.
I've said it before and it is relevant here. People will do what is convenient. Americans don't have a love affair with the car. They have a forced marriage. Nothing else is convenient. Look at it in this case, parking lots immediately surrounding stations. Any attempt at redesigning the urban environment around it will be blunted because the parking is taking up the space that the urban environment needs to thrive. We made the car more convenient. So if there is a development there, the impact of seperating the rail station from it with parking will lower the everyday use of the rail system from the development, as well as from people outside the area who might travel to the development.
There are other endless examples of this. A few weeks ago, I talked about how signal timing is a virtual impossibility in an urban area. But what is being timed, whether urban, suburban or rural? Autos, at the expense of everything else. Why aren't the signals timed for bikes? Walking? Buses? All of these have a different speed. By picking the car, we are picking our preference.
What happens when a street is widened? Property is taken to account for that space. What was that property. In an urban area, where most property is flush with the property line, it is sidewalks (in outer areas, it can also be private property). What is the message that is sent when we narrow sidewalks to widen space for cars. The autos have priority over pedestrians.
Speaking of sidewalks, how often do neighborhoods, even close-in ones, have sidewalks? Anything less than 100 percent is too low. Can you imagine a neighborhood without roads? Even rural, farming communities have at least dirt ones. What is that message that is sent that the only infrastructure that was built was to accommodate cars? Cars take priority over anything else.
From 1945-1990, virtually every city large and small built at least one freeway and almost always many more. In the meantime, city transit systems languished. Those that were able to continue were almost always a bus, stuck in traffic (and facing signals not timed for them, slowing them down even more). No new investments were made in transit except in isolated cases. It wasn't until the 1990's that there were multiple cities with concrete additions on the ground.
Reverting back to the topic, it is clear that even when our transit systems were being designed, it was with the idea of the car first. In essence, we are investing in a transportation system not designed to be an alternative to the car, but rather shorten the distance cars make on each trip.
And the ironic part, is exactly what Bill Sirois touched on above. Unless we are talking surface lots, once these parking structures are in place, their stay is quite long, reducing not just the tendency to encourage alternative transportation now, but a long time into the future as well.
What Denver is doing in trying to encourage TOD's, what San Francisco did in allocating parking in the outlying areas is exactly what virtually every rail-building-transit agency should do. Why do the rail stations of Mockingbird, Park Lane, Victory (though the parking is not DART's property), Union (alos not DART's property) Market Center, Inwood, Bachman, 8th & Corinth, Illinois, MLK, Lawnview and White Rock Lake all have abundant parking? There are within five miles of Downtown Dallas, the first place that urbanism started in this area. Several are also near urban enclaves of varying degree. Now granted there are some urban stations, but more have parking than don't, even within Loop 12.
What critics like Jon Caldera fail to realize when they say things like without parking, it won't be used is that at some point, for that dynamic to change, there has to be a starting point. At some point, there will have to be a restriction of parking, there will have to a densification of the urban area.
It isn't because planners dislike cars, but rather out of every widespread transportation system there is, personal autos have the greatest amount of negative externalities, both public (pollution, health, cost, and land) and private (sedentary, cost, injury and death). If we know that, then why are cars put first above everything? It isn't because they are the most efficient or the most operable. New York City and the rest of the Alpha World Class Cities are proof of that. In NYC, walking is the most used transportation form, followed by transit. Cars are third. I'm not saying every city has to be the equivalent, but it would be better than what Dallas achieves, an 87 percent single use occupancy.
For DART, it has to achieve better than 32 stations out of 55 that are commuter-based, or 58 percent. If the the Downtown Dallas rail stations are removed, the percentage is raised to almost two-thirds. The Orange Line opens Monday and I don't know its numbers off the top of my head, though I believe only the Las Colinas Station serves the neighborhood, though the University of Dallas Station may too.
Where are the walkable neighborhoods? Where are the bus transfers? Where is the actual ability to live car-free? All these were promised during DART's referendum to form the agency in the 1980's. While there is a lot that the rail system lacks that is outside DART's control, this is something that could help the system that they have direct control over. In the end, they have to ask themselves do they want a transit system that serves the future of Dallas, or one that was built for the 1980's Dallas.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Opponent vs Enemy: We Can all Get Along
In the previous post, I listed who I thought was responsible for pushing for the Trinity Parkway. I was given some advice that the debate is much better based on fact, rather than the conjecture of creating a Citizens Council vs. everybody topic.
To be clear, I am not about making this an us vs. them or me vs. you. Since planning was first established, a critique has always been that it is a top down, here's what is good for you approach. I firmly believe that best way to create change is to understand the people, neighborhood, community, whatever, that planners are dealing with for their specific project. In this case, understand why some folks are pushing for a project I oppose.
Why do I advocate that? It leads to understanding. I don't think the Citizens Council is a bad group because they support this project that I don't. They are responsible for a lot of what has made Dallas what it is today. For me, that is not always a good thing in the urban vs. suburban setting. My perspective is different than many of theirs, no more or less.
I also believe that is missing in our everyday discourse. We can be on opposite sides of an issue, but at the end of the day be friends. My best friend has some radically different points of view on some issues and we have discussed it repeatedly in the past. He is a libertarian and I am a left of center thinker. In the end, we are still each others best friend.
I want Dallas to be as urban as possible in the center city. From that very perspective, I am against the business community behind the road, who is approaching it from a different angle. Overall, I am neither right or wrong and the same applies to them.
Now certainly there are some things that don't fall neatly into sides. If you are pro-road, but anti-big government projects, then it isn't a clear black or white. How do you balance you desire for more auto-options against very expensive public works?
I often take the City of Dallas to task, because they say one thing, but do another. If you want to encourage a vibrant Downtown, you need to do things that aren't anti-urban, like build freeways and do mor urban-friendly things, like work on transit and biking options. I'd be far less critical if they would say we want Downtown to be more like an office park. Like the urban promotion, they are doing some things that will accomplish the goal, and some that aren't. Of course, in a city the size of Dallas, that really should be no surprise.
If anything, that's what I want this blog do, invoke the critical thinking that urban issues so often don't see. I want some folks of the status quo to see another side. Let me quote something I wrote in my first post.
Disagreements are encouraged, but personal attacks are not. Editorially speaking, I feel this country has taken a step backwards because anyone who disagrees with me must be an idiot (generically speaking). I am of the opinion that any attempts to be made at societal betterment has to come from an understanding of the other side, but more importantly, a middle ground is available and attainable.
To be clear, I am not about making this an us vs. them or me vs. you. Since planning was first established, a critique has always been that it is a top down, here's what is good for you approach. I firmly believe that best way to create change is to understand the people, neighborhood, community, whatever, that planners are dealing with for their specific project. In this case, understand why some folks are pushing for a project I oppose.
Why do I advocate that? It leads to understanding. I don't think the Citizens Council is a bad group because they support this project that I don't. They are responsible for a lot of what has made Dallas what it is today. For me, that is not always a good thing in the urban vs. suburban setting. My perspective is different than many of theirs, no more or less.
I also believe that is missing in our everyday discourse. We can be on opposite sides of an issue, but at the end of the day be friends. My best friend has some radically different points of view on some issues and we have discussed it repeatedly in the past. He is a libertarian and I am a left of center thinker. In the end, we are still each others best friend.
I want Dallas to be as urban as possible in the center city. From that very perspective, I am against the business community behind the road, who is approaching it from a different angle. Overall, I am neither right or wrong and the same applies to them.
Now certainly there are some things that don't fall neatly into sides. If you are pro-road, but anti-big government projects, then it isn't a clear black or white. How do you balance you desire for more auto-options against very expensive public works?
I often take the City of Dallas to task, because they say one thing, but do another. If you want to encourage a vibrant Downtown, you need to do things that aren't anti-urban, like build freeways and do mor urban-friendly things, like work on transit and biking options. I'd be far less critical if they would say we want Downtown to be more like an office park. Like the urban promotion, they are doing some things that will accomplish the goal, and some that aren't. Of course, in a city the size of Dallas, that really should be no surprise.
If anything, that's what I want this blog do, invoke the critical thinking that urban issues so often don't see. I want some folks of the status quo to see another side. Let me quote something I wrote in my first post.
Disagreements are encouraged, but personal attacks are not. Editorially speaking, I feel this country has taken a step backwards because anyone who disagrees with me must be an idiot (generically speaking). I am of the opinion that any attempts to be made at societal betterment has to come from an understanding of the other side, but more importantly, a middle ground is available and attainable.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Downtown and Parking
Though I've been on a parking kick lately, the actual reason I am posting this article from the Tulsa World is that it fits quite neatly with this blog post about the downtown of Midland, Texas. I've said it before many times and it bears repeating again, urban areas function and operate the same regardless of culture, location weather, etc. Tulsa and Midland are similar to Dallas. The only difference is how each city approaches revitalization.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Negative Externalities of the Auto
An article in The Dallas Morning News about particulate matter and the DFW area got me to thinking about a new post for my blog. I won't go into too much detail about the piece, other than more and more studies are showing that particulate matter pollution at lower levels are more harmful to the general public's health than previously thought. The majority of this pollution comes from the tailpipe.
It is articles like this that reinforce my stance that cars need to come further down in use and into a more balanced transportation system as a whole. While I can think of numerous other reasons, I haven't put them into one comprehensive post before. So without further ado, here's some of the reasons I know of car's negatively effecting the general public.
My number one personal reason has and most likely will always be for environmental reasons. Supporting this stances, and said far more eloquently than I ever could, are books similar to Jane Holtz Kay's Asphalt Nation. The North Central Texas Council of Governments tracks the pollution data locally, but the one that everyone has been focused on nationally is ozone. The numbers may be old, but 47% of all smog causing agents came from exhaust in DFW. Compound that with expected increase in auto travel and the ability to fight that regional becomes much harder. Barring lobbying for stricter pollution controls and emission standards, this is out of the reach of any regional or smaller government. That means near half of the emissions are untouchable. Sure there are programs that they can do that will encourage people to buy newer and less polluting cars, but that is minor when spread over a region of six million people.
Now, it appears that particulate matter is next on the list of pollutants that are more harmful than we knew before. How many more health harming pollution issues are going to keep arising? The list from the past is long too. Lead, carbon dioxide, smog, ozone, etc. have all been targeted in the past with varying degrees of success. Each time progress is made, another issue or pollutant becomes apparent.
On top of all that, the above only accounts for direct use. There are pollution and environmental concerns for manufacturing, disposal and maintenance for the vehicles. Fuel, transmission fluid, brake fluid, battery acid and other components also cause environmental degradation. Even when the vehicle in in motion, bits of tires are being sanded off. When you brake, metallic brake dust is being ejected. I consider this a hidden environmental cost of car use. Many people are focused on reducing gas consumption through increased fuel efficiency as the answer. I know several environmentally-minded people who think their hybrid is the answer. However, that doesn't account for what was listed directly above and only marginally reduces overall fuel consumption. In my opinion, the real answer is going to have to come through whole scale changes in the way we build our cities.
Speaking of cities, I mentioned some previous posts about how a car-favored city will always struggle to have a great urban environment on any large scale. The best that can be done are small, quaint downtowns surrounded by surface parking, as seen in cities like Grapevine, Carrollton or even Arlington. Transit can help, but until zoning codes reflect a more urban-style development, it will always struggle. The main reason is the space needed to store cars is tremendous. In the Sunbelt, the number one use of land is for parking (one of my biggest gripes is even this is hidden, as the land is actually categorized by its zoning classification). A number that I have seen floated around (though never with a source) is that the City of Houston has 34 parking spaces per resident. That is more space than their house and workplace combined.
That leads me to...the actual infrastructure, which is extremely inefficient in numerous ways. The first is the amount of land required. Since our roadways are effectively conduits for the car and little more, they are basically car infrastructure. The closer into the old urban core you go, the more likely you are to see transit, pedestrians and cyclists on those streets balancing the transportation system, but they are increasingly the exception. If those car-centric streets are added in with the freeway system and the parking from the previous point, the vast majority of the land in a "modern" American city is dedicated to storing and transporting cars.
Consider this point. One freeway lane can transport 2,000 cars an hour. In peak direction, U.S. 75 can handle 8,000 cars an hour (despite the diminishing returns of adding more lanes, I use that number for easy math). At full capacity, a light rail line can carry roughly 10,000 peak direction, on 1/5th the land. As I have explained in previous entries, cities like Dallas may struggle to reach capacity based on the system design and city layout. But, all things equal, transit is the better choice for moving the most people on the least amount on any distance. The most efficient mode of transport is walking. Sidewalks can carry thousands upon thousands of people in a short time. But, since this is America and very little is walkable or even in walking distance, it is rarely chosen. In places where the design supports it, that is usually the most common choice.
By my rough estimate, there are 23 freeway lanes leading out of downtown. That means roughly 46,000 cars an hour. At an occupancy rate of 1.2 per vehicle, downtown evacuates 55,000 people an hour. Downtown employs 130,000 people. That math doesn't add up. Add in the fact that only 20 percent of the traffic around downtown during rush hour actually comes from downtown and the shortcoming becomes quite apparent.
In a way, the takeover of the street from a multi-modal system to what it is now is another externality. A road built for only the car will see little walking, transit or biking activity. It will also mean less everyday activity, which is another problem.
Health and safety is another big issue for me. I mentioned the pollution, but that is not all. The obesity rate in this country would decline is more people were able to get out and walk to accomplish day-to-day activities. This review of another book I own documents this quite effectively. Bottom line, you know there is a problem when doctor and medical groups are beginning to speak out against current development patterns.
On that same note, it would take 50 years of average Iraq War casualties to equal one year of auto fatalities. A big reason President Barack Obama beat out John McCain for president was the general public's war weariness. Yet cars go on at a much greater rate unnoticed by the general public. Now I will grant that the number of fatalities has decreased over the past two decades, much of it due to safety features of newer cars, but it can be a mixed blessing. Accidents that previously would have killed occupants only severely injure them now. In 2005, there were 42, 636 people killed in car crashes. There were almost 3 million injured. While the deaths are decreasing, the injuries are rising.
I tried to keep this post on the public costs, but there certainly are private concerns for users in picking their transportation mode. My opinion, though, is for each person to be able to have that choice. Sadly, particularly in my neck of the country, there is little choice to be had. That is one of the big reasons I wanted to pursue planning. If we can correct some issues, build in moderation, allow connectivity of the built environment, many of these negatives will be reduced.
It is articles like this that reinforce my stance that cars need to come further down in use and into a more balanced transportation system as a whole. While I can think of numerous other reasons, I haven't put them into one comprehensive post before. So without further ado, here's some of the reasons I know of car's negatively effecting the general public.
My number one personal reason has and most likely will always be for environmental reasons. Supporting this stances, and said far more eloquently than I ever could, are books similar to Jane Holtz Kay's Asphalt Nation. The North Central Texas Council of Governments tracks the pollution data locally, but the one that everyone has been focused on nationally is ozone. The numbers may be old, but 47% of all smog causing agents came from exhaust in DFW. Compound that with expected increase in auto travel and the ability to fight that regional becomes much harder. Barring lobbying for stricter pollution controls and emission standards, this is out of the reach of any regional or smaller government. That means near half of the emissions are untouchable. Sure there are programs that they can do that will encourage people to buy newer and less polluting cars, but that is minor when spread over a region of six million people.
Now, it appears that particulate matter is next on the list of pollutants that are more harmful than we knew before. How many more health harming pollution issues are going to keep arising? The list from the past is long too. Lead, carbon dioxide, smog, ozone, etc. have all been targeted in the past with varying degrees of success. Each time progress is made, another issue or pollutant becomes apparent.
On top of all that, the above only accounts for direct use. There are pollution and environmental concerns for manufacturing, disposal and maintenance for the vehicles. Fuel, transmission fluid, brake fluid, battery acid and other components also cause environmental degradation. Even when the vehicle in in motion, bits of tires are being sanded off. When you brake, metallic brake dust is being ejected. I consider this a hidden environmental cost of car use. Many people are focused on reducing gas consumption through increased fuel efficiency as the answer. I know several environmentally-minded people who think their hybrid is the answer. However, that doesn't account for what was listed directly above and only marginally reduces overall fuel consumption. In my opinion, the real answer is going to have to come through whole scale changes in the way we build our cities.
Speaking of cities, I mentioned some previous posts about how a car-favored city will always struggle to have a great urban environment on any large scale. The best that can be done are small, quaint downtowns surrounded by surface parking, as seen in cities like Grapevine, Carrollton or even Arlington. Transit can help, but until zoning codes reflect a more urban-style development, it will always struggle. The main reason is the space needed to store cars is tremendous. In the Sunbelt, the number one use of land is for parking (one of my biggest gripes is even this is hidden, as the land is actually categorized by its zoning classification). A number that I have seen floated around (though never with a source) is that the City of Houston has 34 parking spaces per resident. That is more space than their house and workplace combined.
That leads me to...the actual infrastructure, which is extremely inefficient in numerous ways. The first is the amount of land required. Since our roadways are effectively conduits for the car and little more, they are basically car infrastructure. The closer into the old urban core you go, the more likely you are to see transit, pedestrians and cyclists on those streets balancing the transportation system, but they are increasingly the exception. If those car-centric streets are added in with the freeway system and the parking from the previous point, the vast majority of the land in a "modern" American city is dedicated to storing and transporting cars.
Consider this point. One freeway lane can transport 2,000 cars an hour. In peak direction, U.S. 75 can handle 8,000 cars an hour (despite the diminishing returns of adding more lanes, I use that number for easy math). At full capacity, a light rail line can carry roughly 10,000 peak direction, on 1/5th the land. As I have explained in previous entries, cities like Dallas may struggle to reach capacity based on the system design and city layout. But, all things equal, transit is the better choice for moving the most people on the least amount on any distance. The most efficient mode of transport is walking. Sidewalks can carry thousands upon thousands of people in a short time. But, since this is America and very little is walkable or even in walking distance, it is rarely chosen. In places where the design supports it, that is usually the most common choice.
By my rough estimate, there are 23 freeway lanes leading out of downtown. That means roughly 46,000 cars an hour. At an occupancy rate of 1.2 per vehicle, downtown evacuates 55,000 people an hour. Downtown employs 130,000 people. That math doesn't add up. Add in the fact that only 20 percent of the traffic around downtown during rush hour actually comes from downtown and the shortcoming becomes quite apparent.
In a way, the takeover of the street from a multi-modal system to what it is now is another externality. A road built for only the car will see little walking, transit or biking activity. It will also mean less everyday activity, which is another problem.
Health and safety is another big issue for me. I mentioned the pollution, but that is not all. The obesity rate in this country would decline is more people were able to get out and walk to accomplish day-to-day activities. This review of another book I own documents this quite effectively. Bottom line, you know there is a problem when doctor and medical groups are beginning to speak out against current development patterns.
On that same note, it would take 50 years of average Iraq War casualties to equal one year of auto fatalities. A big reason President Barack Obama beat out John McCain for president was the general public's war weariness. Yet cars go on at a much greater rate unnoticed by the general public. Now I will grant that the number of fatalities has decreased over the past two decades, much of it due to safety features of newer cars, but it can be a mixed blessing. Accidents that previously would have killed occupants only severely injure them now. In 2005, there were 42, 636 people killed in car crashes. There were almost 3 million injured. While the deaths are decreasing, the injuries are rising.
I tried to keep this post on the public costs, but there certainly are private concerns for users in picking their transportation mode. My opinion, though, is for each person to be able to have that choice. Sadly, particularly in my neck of the country, there is little choice to be had. That is one of the big reasons I wanted to pursue planning. If we can correct some issues, build in moderation, allow connectivity of the built environment, many of these negatives will be reduced.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Downtown Midland: How to Revitalize
Now a heads up from my hometown of Midland, about 5-6 hours west on I-20 from Dallas. My sister directed me to a story in the local paper, The Midland Reporter Telegram, about this effort to revitalize their downtown. She sent it to me several months ago, but I procrastinated discussing it until now.
In many ways, Dallas and Midland are similar. Their downtown's were converted from the center of the city's life to an office park, they have a nearby rival city and a lot of activity has shift to the fringes. Even looking solely at the downtown area of each city reveals similarities. Each have/had vacant office buildings. Each looks great from a distance, but getting inside reveals fake density, similar to what I discussed in this post. Both have out-of-whack parking situations that depend heavily on surface lots and restrict on-street parking. In fact, in a lot of ways, downtown Midland is now where downtown Dallas was 15 years ago. There are even intangible similarities like old money still controls each area and elected officials that do not quite know what is going on in the area or really what is needed to get where they want downtown to go.
Some excerpts from the article that will form the basis of my discussion:
In many ways, Dallas and Midland are similar. Their downtown's were converted from the center of the city's life to an office park, they have a nearby rival city and a lot of activity has shift to the fringes. Even looking solely at the downtown area of each city reveals similarities. Each have/had vacant office buildings. Each looks great from a distance, but getting inside reveals fake density, similar to what I discussed in this post. Both have out-of-whack parking situations that depend heavily on surface lots and restrict on-street parking. In fact, in a lot of ways, downtown Midland is now where downtown Dallas was 15 years ago. There are even intangible similarities like old money still controls each area and elected officials that do not quite know what is going on in the area or really what is needed to get where they want downtown to go.
 |
| This would fit right in if it were in downtown Dallas. |
 |
| Note the cluster of tall buildings, as well as the vast amounts of surface parking. |
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
More Off-Balance Codes
In this December post, I relayed some concerns I had about how well-meaning city codes can have an adverse impact on urban design and health. I ran across a piece that illustrates that point perfectly in Los Angeles.
It blames the flat appearance on the skyline to a fire code passed in 1974 that requires buildings to accommodate a fire helicopter landing pad with adequate buffers.
So again, a well-meaning code (though I have a hard time understanding how a burning building can be helped by having a helicopter land there), that has a limited application effects the everyday, in this case the skyline view usually in a negative light.
The good news, as the entry shows, is that these things can change, as long as there is the political will to do the changing. Sometimes, a lack of awareness can carry on the status quo. In many instances, planners have a hard time raising that awareness and it appears that no one carries that water to public officials.
It blames the flat appearance on the skyline to a fire code passed in 1974 that requires buildings to accommodate a fire helicopter landing pad with adequate buffers.
So again, a well-meaning code (though I have a hard time understanding how a burning building can be helped by having a helicopter land there), that has a limited application effects the everyday, in this case the skyline view usually in a negative light.
The good news, as the entry shows, is that these things can change, as long as there is the political will to do the changing. Sometimes, a lack of awareness can carry on the status quo. In many instances, planners have a hard time raising that awareness and it appears that no one carries that water to public officials.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Measures of Density
Those in the planning profession often come across different measuring units when it comes to various things like development projects or regions. Oftentimes, these get jumbled in the public forum and some folks cherry-pick numbers for their means. I'd like to discuss a few right now, and their implications towards planning vibrant urban areas.
Perhaps the most common to the public is people per square mile (ppsm) or kilometer. This is a great one for measuring a region or a certain area, especially for comparison purposes. New York, for example, has a population of 8,175,133 over 305 square miles (8,175,133 / 305 = 26,804 ppsm). Los Angeles population is 3,792,621 contained in 469 square miles for a ppsm of 8,087. Dallas' ppsm is 3,111 which is the population 1,197,816 divided by a land area of 385 square miles.
This works on a macro scale. Generally speaking, the higher the ppsm, the greater the urbanity. A look at the list of top five densest major cities reveals: 1) New York, 2) San Francisco, 3) Boston, 4) Chicago and 5) Philadelphia. If I were to make a list of most urban places, those five would certainly be in the upper tier.
The main caution in using this measurement is the boundary of the area in question. Some sprawl proponents will point out that L.A. is denser than New York. While that is true from a regional perspective (New York State has done a good job of preserving large portions of its countryside), the city is far more dense, and therefore far more urban than L.A. Transit use alone shows that to be the case (New York carries 12.8 million trips a day, L.A. has less than 1.5). As with any stat, a grain of salt and some perspective must be exercised.
A common measurement amongst developers and their development is the unit per acre. This is generally more suited for suburban, low density developments, like a single-family subdivision. Add the number of houses, divide by the number of acres and you get your number. A small development of ten acres with ten houses yields one. 40 quarter acre lots in the same development yields a four. It is also important to note, that unlike ppsm, units/acre does not consider infrastructure. That is a separate column for planners to deal with in their plans.
It can also work for urban developments, but often developers don't like those numbers to come out because NIMBY's will see it and automatically oppose it. Most downtown buildings would see that number well over the 100's.
This is also the most common measurement that NIMBY's use in opposing projects. They see the higher the number, the higher the externalities. In some instances that may be true. An apartment complex with a relatively high units/acre usually will generate a higher crime rate, traffic trips, pollution, but that is usually in the context of an auto-oriented area. Those cities in the top five densest generally have lower negative externality rates than their suburban designed counterparts per capita and in sime case straight up. Design and use can make a huge difference.
This measurement is in the middle on an area scale. It doesn't effectively apply to regions, but can and mostly is used above the individual property, like master-planned communities.
From an urban design standpoint, one of my favorite if the Floor-to-Area Ratio (FAR). It is also the most property specific. Reference the illustration as I explain this if you are unfamiliar.
Perhaps the most common to the public is people per square mile (ppsm) or kilometer. This is a great one for measuring a region or a certain area, especially for comparison purposes. New York, for example, has a population of 8,175,133 over 305 square miles (8,175,133 / 305 = 26,804 ppsm). Los Angeles population is 3,792,621 contained in 469 square miles for a ppsm of 8,087. Dallas' ppsm is 3,111 which is the population 1,197,816 divided by a land area of 385 square miles.
This works on a macro scale. Generally speaking, the higher the ppsm, the greater the urbanity. A look at the list of top five densest major cities reveals: 1) New York, 2) San Francisco, 3) Boston, 4) Chicago and 5) Philadelphia. If I were to make a list of most urban places, those five would certainly be in the upper tier.
The main caution in using this measurement is the boundary of the area in question. Some sprawl proponents will point out that L.A. is denser than New York. While that is true from a regional perspective (New York State has done a good job of preserving large portions of its countryside), the city is far more dense, and therefore far more urban than L.A. Transit use alone shows that to be the case (New York carries 12.8 million trips a day, L.A. has less than 1.5). As with any stat, a grain of salt and some perspective must be exercised.
A common measurement amongst developers and their development is the unit per acre. This is generally more suited for suburban, low density developments, like a single-family subdivision. Add the number of houses, divide by the number of acres and you get your number. A small development of ten acres with ten houses yields one. 40 quarter acre lots in the same development yields a four. It is also important to note, that unlike ppsm, units/acre does not consider infrastructure. That is a separate column for planners to deal with in their plans.
It can also work for urban developments, but often developers don't like those numbers to come out because NIMBY's will see it and automatically oppose it. Most downtown buildings would see that number well over the 100's.
This is also the most common measurement that NIMBY's use in opposing projects. They see the higher the number, the higher the externalities. In some instances that may be true. An apartment complex with a relatively high units/acre usually will generate a higher crime rate, traffic trips, pollution, but that is usually in the context of an auto-oriented area. Those cities in the top five densest generally have lower negative externality rates than their suburban designed counterparts per capita and in sime case straight up. Design and use can make a huge difference.
This measurement is in the middle on an area scale. It doesn't effectively apply to regions, but can and mostly is used above the individual property, like master-planned communities.
From an urban design standpoint, one of my favorite if the Floor-to-Area Ratio (FAR). It is also the most property specific. Reference the illustration as I explain this if you are unfamiliar.
From the property lines, if a developer builds a one-floor structure across the entire property, it's FAR would be 1.0, as the picture on the left shows. In the middle, the developer built the structure on only 50% on the property, but built two stories. This is also a FAR of 1.0. Now if the developer built three stories, it would be a FAR of 1.5 (.5 x 3 = 1.5).
For an urban area, it is optimal to have a FAR as close as equal to the number of floors as possible. This generally ensures better urban design and limits setbacks, which are a detriment to the street level and pedestrian experience.
Now there are several drawbacks to this measure, as with any other tool. It doesn't ensure that the streetscape will be pedestrian-friendly. It doesn't ensure it will have multiple uses. It doesn't ensure the users will engage in urban activity. The Empire State Building is a great urban building, but its FAR is far smaller than its floors because of the setbacks. Conversely, Harwood Center in Dallas has a near equal ration, yet is a sub-par urban structure.
When I look at downtown Dallas as a whole, I see a lot of buildings with a FAR that is half or less of the number of floors. Bank of America Plaza, Comerica Bank Tower, Chase Tower, Trammell Crow, Thanksgiving Tower and Energy Plaza are all in the top ten in height, but have drastically lower FAR's.
On the flip side, that isn't to say that a setback, and therefore lower FAR compared to floor height, are inherently negative. Lincoln Plaza has a pretty big setback, but at the street level, the space is used for greater sidewalks and pedestrian amenities. Conversely, they wouldn't need to do that if the sidewalks were wide enough and the city hadn't converted some of the space to give to cars for more traffic lanes.
Bottom line, Dallas has a downtown that looks dense from a distance, but when you get there, it seems empty. The big reason is the FAR is nowhere near as close at the heights appear. In essence, it is a false density. When critics say cities like Dallas can't support tall skyscrapers, this is what they mean. In an auto-based city, density doesn't work because cars need too much space for storage when you park. The more space in a building, the more parking you need. Many of those are surface parking lots, which have a FAR of zero, which is also their contribution to a vibrant street scene.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)