Streetsblog Los Angeles

Walkable, mixed-use development provides far more return for Raleigh than Walmart, on a per acre basis. Image: Smart Growth America

Smart growth could increase Fresno’s tax revenue by 45 percent per acre. In Champaign, Illinois, it could save 23 percent per year on city services. Study after study has demonstrated: Walkable, mixed-use development is a much better deal for municipalities than car-oriented suburban development.

Smart Growth America recently conducted an analysis of research examining the impact of efficient development patterns on municipal bottom lines. The authors looked at 17 case studies, from California to Maryland, and, taken together, they say the findings clearly illustrate how walkable development leads to healthier city budgets than drivable sprawl.

For starters, smart growth is cheaper to build. On average, municipalities save about 38 percent on infrastructure costs like roads and sewers when serving compact development instead of large-lot subdivisions. Furthermore, SGA researchers say, “this figure is conservative, and many communities could save even more.” In the case studies, these upfront cost savings ranged from 20 percent to 50 percent.

The public savings don’t stop once projects get built. Mixed-use projects also reduce ongoing costs to municipalities for services like police, fire and trash. Smart Growth America estimates the average savings at almost 10 percent.

“Many services — fire, police, school buses, snow plowing — all require vehicles,” said William Fulton, vice president of policy development and implementation at Smart Growth America. “The fewer miles those vehicles have to travel, the lower the costs will be. If you apply smart growth across the board, you can also reduce the amount of cars and trucks that you need.”

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Poverty is no longer a predominantly urban problem — and the suburbs are no longer the refuge of the upper classes. There are now almost 3 million more poor people living in suburbs than in cities, according to a new book, “Confronting Suburban Poverty in America,” by Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution. While cities still have a much higher poverty rate, poverty in the suburbs is growing twice as fast: Between 2000 and 2011, the suburban poor population grew by 64 percent, compared to 29 percent in cities.

That means more people living without cars in places designed exclusively for cars. In the suburbs, destinations are farther apart and getting to many places involves traveling on wide, high-speed roads where walking or biking is especially dangerous. Transit access is spotty and infrequent, where it exists at all. And providing transportation services to the poor in spread-out areas is less efficient and more expensive than in compact cities.

“Overall, in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas, 700,000 households do not have a vehicle and are not served by public transit of any kind, and 95 percent of those households are suburban,” the authors write.

Kneebone and Berube tell the story of Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, which used to be a middle-class bedroom community for workers at the Westinghouse Electric Company and other thriving businesses in the Pittsburgh area. Diminished employment opportunities have reduced the population by more than a quarter and increased the poverty rate from 8 to 11 percent:

Low-income residents of Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, often can't afford to buy or maintain cars -- and the community lacks effective transit service. Photo: City-data

Among the more pressing problems facing the growing low-income population in Penn Hills is access to transportation. The suburb covers nineteen square miles, has more than twenty distinct neighborhoods, and is traversed by an interstate highway, a few major state roads, and a series of local roads with only a few sidewalks that wind their way up and down the hilly terrain. Infrastructure in some parts of the township resembles that of a rural community more than a major metropolitan suburb. More often now, residents must navigate these byways without a car. By 2008–10, almost one in ten (about 1,700) Penn Hills households lacked access to a vehicle, notably more than three decades earlier, when the local population was much larger.

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The CBO's projection of the HTF transit account's tumble into insolvency, from February 2013. Image: CBO

President Obama’s transportation budget proposal can give you a contact high if you stand too close. The prospect of budget surpluses — in the near-term, at least — is intoxicating. And the source of those surpluses — from Overseas Contingency Operations — is a hallucination.

The Congressional Budget Office, in its invaluable “just-the-facts” way, released its analysis Friday of the implications of the president’s budget proposal for transportation [PDF]. The long and the short of it is this:

• The fund gets a long-awaited name change to Transportation Trust Fund.
• Instead of falling into insolvency in fiscal year 2015, the highway account would go broke in 2021. The transit account stays solvent under Obama’s proposal through at least 2023 — the last year the CBO contemplates.
• A rail account is added to the trust fund for the first time, bringing Amtrak into the fold of the surface transportation program.

Under the president’s proposal, both highway and transit spending would decline after 2021, when the surplus money runs out.

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On the face of things, it’s hard to understand why would anyone oppose bicycling. It’s cheap, it’s healthy, it’s good for the environment.

Ronald Reagan on a bicycle, what could be more American? Image: Twin City Sidewalks

Somehow, though, cycling has become politicized, and it’s the party of personal responsibility, austerity, and small government that tends to carry the anti-bicycling banner.

That’s odd, writes Bill Lindeke at Network blog Twin City Sidewalks, because bicycling aligns so well with core conservative principles. Lindeke, in his latest blog post, lists seven reasons to love cycling from a conservative standpoint. We’ll share just a few:

Bicycle infrastructure is a great way for the government to save money. Conservatives are always talking about “wasteful government spending,” but for some reason don’t view freeway and road infrastructure as part of the problem. A single stoplight costs more than $3,000 per year to maintain and operate. (And huge projects like the unnecessary $600M+ bridge to rural Wisconsin being built right now in Michele Bachmann’s district should make fiscal conservatives cringe.) Bike lanes and trails are extremely cheap and last a long time, one of the best values for government spending you’ll find.

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If it seems like we’ve been singling out Governor Scott Walker and Wisconsin DOT a lot lately, that’s because WisDOT is such an excellent example of what a highly dysfunctional state transportation agency looks like. The latest foolishness: a billion-dollar proposal to double-deck part of a Milwaukee freeway.

Milwaukee is a city that lost 0.4 percent of its population between 2000 and 2010. Over that time, the larger five-county region it anchors grew 3.5 percent, or at about a third the rate of the national average.

Wisconsin's proposal for a double-decker freeway. Image: Milwaukee Rising

And yet, bizarrely enough, WisDOT wants to stack highways on top of highways, reports Gretchen Schuldt of Milwaukee Rising:

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation is expected to pursue an I-94 east-west freeway expansion project that would cost up to $1.2 billion and include six additional lanes of concrete in many places; double-decking through west side cemeteries; additional elevated, overlapping lanes east and west of the double-decked section; and absolutely no transit.

The double-deck proposal will raise freeway lanes 40 to 45 feet in the air through cemeteries just west of Miller Park. Estimated project costs are $950 million to $1.2 billion, the elected officials said; proposals for less expensive projects that would replace the freeway in its current configuration or include spot improvements are not favored by WisDOT.

All this is taking place, keep in mind, as WisDOT faces a civil rights lawsuit stemming from claims that the agency is starving all other modes of transportation to pursue outlandishly expensive highway projects, Schuldt reports:

WisDOT’s expansion options will come on the heels of a federal judge’s ruling that the Zoo Interchange reconstruction plans probably discriminates against minorities because they do not include transit improvements. Ald. Robert Bauman said WisDOT should immediately suspend the I-94 environmental review process and cancel next week’s public meetings so that the impact of Judge Lynn Adelman’s decision can be fully assessed.

Gov. Scott Walker is seeking delays in some of the Zoo Interchange work because of a lack of available funding.

Elsewhere on the Network today: The Green Lane Project explains the importance of Walk Score’s city and neighborhood bikeability rankings. I Bike TO shares a new study that finds helmet laws can actually reduce public safety. And the Metropolitan Planning Council gives an overview of DC’s performance parking policies on its Connector blog.

At some point over the past few years, a lot of my friends started moving to Silver Spring and Takoma Park and Falls Church. These inner-ring, transit-connected suburbs of DC are still far less compact and walkable than the neighborhoods my friends moved from. So they bought cars.

Many young people still opt for urban living in walkable, compact neighborhoods -- even once they have kids. Photo: Let's Save Michigan

Why did they do this? They’re entering peak driving age, which is historically between 35 and 54. They have more money than they did in their early 20s. But mostly, they had kids. Of all my friends, I now have exactly one that is still proudly car-free with kids.

In light of the new U.S. PIRG and Frontier Group report on changing driving habits, led by young people, we have to ask: Won’t those young people also drive more as they get older?

Reports of diminished interest in driving focus on two groups: baby boomers, the generation that came of age with the automobile and settled in car-dependent suburbs, who are now retiring and driving less; and millennials, the oldest of whom are 30 now and the youngest of whom aren’t even old enough to drive.

Millennials’ shift away from automobile travel is well documented, especially in last year’s report, “Transportation and the New Generation,” by U.S. PIRG and the Frontier Group. That report found that between 2001 and 2009, annual driving by the 16-to-34 age cohort decreased 23 percent, from 10,300 miles to 7,900 miles per capita. That age group also took 24 percent more trips by bike and 40 percent more trips by public transit over those eight years.

With more and more people starting families later in life, the vast majority of millennials haven’t had babies yet. They also haven’t hit their prime earning years, which tend to be prime driving years.

That’s right, said Phineas Baxandall of U.S. PIRG, co-author of the transformative new report, “A New Direction,” which outlines three possible scenarios for driving trends in the coming years, all of which would mean far less driving than government models predict.

“Our scenarios all assume that millenials will drive more when they get older,” Baxandall told Streetsblog. “The real question isn’t, ‘Will millennials drive more as they get older?’ It’s, ‘Will they drive more than their parents as they get older?’”

There are persuasive reasons to think they won’t.
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There’s a line of reasoning advanced by the media, angry motorists and, sometimes, cyclists, that goes something like: Since some cyclists don’t follow the rules, cyclists don’t deserve respect.

There is a double standard when cyclists are expected to "earn" their right to the road, while motorist misbehavior is accepted as the norm. Image: Likecool.com

A version of this axiom was repeated yesterday by Sarah Goodyear at Atlantic Cities, in an article titled “Cyclists Aren’t ‘Special,’ and They Shouldn’t Play by Their Own Rules.” Goodyear argues that cyclists need to clean up their behavior in order to legitimize themselves in the eyes of others. A crackdown on rule breakers is needed, she says, to advance the cause of cycling.

Blogger David C. at Greater Greater Washington says that’s baloney:

Goodyear is asking cyclists to become footdroppers and thinks that more enforcement of cycling laws is what is needed for cycling to “get to the next level.” I disagree which is easy to do since Goodyear offers no evidence, no data and no defense of her position. It appears to be 100% emotion-based opinion.

When I look at great cycling cities in Europe it doesn’t appear to me that there is some point where increased enforcement is needed to keep growth going. Growth is fueled by better designed streets, laws that protect cyclists, and increasing the costs of driving. If anything, what I’ve read about Amsterdam and Copenhagen is that they don’t tolerate the kinds of bad driving that are considered normal here. I don’t read about ticketing blitzes.

She makes the point that many cyclists are rude or ride dangerously and that she’d like to see such behavior ticketed. I have no problem with ticketing dangerous behavior — though if we’re really going to focus on the MOST dangerous behavior, that will rarely mean ticketing cyclists. And if law enforcement were to blitz cyclists, it would likely not be for their most dangerous behavior (riding at night without lights or too fast on the sidewalk or against traffic) but rather not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign during a charity ride or at some out-of-the way intersection.

Bike lawyer Brendan Kevenides wrote in Urban Velo last year that “the way you ride is probably a crime,” saying that in many cases cyclists have logical reasons for breaking the rules, often for their own safety. He wrote that lawmaking bodies across the country are starting to recognize ways in which cyclists behave differently from motorists, and are making appropriate accommodations. In other words, lawmaking bodies are recognizing that cyclists are special, in that they are not the same as cars, and that they should have their own rules.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Kansas City’s gudthoughts blog considers whether crowd-funding is a viable way to improve that region’s transit infrastructure. Systemic Failure says Amtrak’s strict “no pets” policy is unnecessary and puts the quasi-public transportation provider at a competitive disadvantage with other modes. And People for Bikes asks cyclists to send pro-bike letters to their local newspapers in honor of Bike to Work Week.

For decades, cyclists bickered amongst themselves about the efficacy and safety of bike infrastructure. With the proliferation of protected bike lanes in recent years, however, everyone can see that predictions about bike lanes making streets more dangerous for cycling simply didn’t come to pass. Network blogger Elly Blue at Taking the Lane says the debate has been settled.

The evidence from New York and other cities is clear: Bike infrastructure works. Photo of Eighth Avenue bike lane in Manhattan: Stephen Miller

The evidence that protected bike lanes improve safety and retail performance has demolished the arguments against bike infrastructure, Blue writes. And cities around the country have New York to thank for that:

In 2007, New York City added protected bike lanes, also known as “cycle tracks” to two previously car-centric one-way arterials in Manhattan, 8th and 9th Avenues. (This short movie explains more.) These lanes—basically, regular bike lanes with a physical barrier (often parked cars) and special signals at intersections in order to separate people on bikes from people driving and walking—were controversial before and after construction, with lots of dithering and yammering about how they would hurt business and freight, cause crashes, hold up traffic, and waste time and money.

The city’s transportation department released a study last October, however (I’ve been busy and just got in on the game this week), that puts much of that criticism to rest, with a zing. (Read about the study here or download the PDF here.)

First, on safety: True to form, this bike infrastructure did more than make cycling safer: The study found a 35% decrease in traffic crash related injuries to all street users on the 8th Ave path, and a whopping 58% on its 9th Ave counterpart.

Meanwhile, retail sales income in locally-based businesses along the 9th Ave lane went up as much as 50%. Yep, half again what they were before 2007. And this was during a recession. In the same period, borough-wide retail sales only increased 3%.

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Alon Levy at Pedestrian Observations ran a thought-provoking post today about the level of democratic involvement that goes into major American transportation projects.

California High-Speed Rail would be a better project if the public had been given more information before voting on it, says Alon Levy. Image: Dilemma-x.com

The problem in the United States, he writes, is that most big transportation spending decisions are made by a handful of powerful interests who believe that keeping the public in the dark is to their advantage. That’s helped produce a lot of bad projects and made good projects worse, Levy says:

When there is democracy – by which I mean not just periodic elections offering two parties to choose from, but a referendum process, transparency, and community consultations – people have an incentive to be informed. It’s possible to sway many people in one’s community and have a positive effect on local state services. Local politicians who are informed on the subject will be able to lead spending and planning efforts and can count on the support of informed voters. In contrast, when there is democratic deficit, being informed is far less useful, because decisions are made independently of what people think unless they are power brokers, or perhaps wealthy, power-brokering communities.

Transit advocates also need to be advocates for transparency and an informed public, writes Levy:

Throughout the transit activist community, including nearly every blogger and commenter but also the main activists on the ground, there’s a tendency to view any community opposition to a project as NIMBYism and to ask for changes that make it easier for the government to get its projects done, as in the Robert Moses era. Social democrats and neo-liberals are equally complicit in the march for not just centralization, which can be done with democratic checks, but also concentration of power in the hands of state officials.

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As New York readers know, bike-share stations are hitting the streets after the program encountered a few snags last year. When members start taking the first rides on Citi Bike later this month, it will be the nation’s largest bike-share system, launching with 6,000 bikes.

Photo: @KyleGiunta

Right now the sight of those new bike stations is generating all sorts of reactions, and plenty of people outside New York are also watching to see the results. Network blog Boston Streets offers some friendly advice from a city that’s been through the experience of launching an unfamiliar form of public transportation, and watched it exceed expectations:

Dear New York:

We here in Boston wanted to be the first to welcome you to the bikesharing club. It’s an exciting time for you, we know. We were curiously watching these “bicycle stations” get deployed around our city just two years ago. Like you, we didn’t know exactly what to expect. We had heard about their success in Europe, but that didn’t mean much to us. Those of us who were familiar with DC’s experience were excited and optimistic we’d see the same success they had.

It turns out we did. Hubway ridership continually eclipses projections. When the stations closed last fall for winter, we had complaints as people were forced to get around the city the boring way: walking, driving, or taking the T. There is discussion of keeping some stations open next winter, and we can’t wait!

We know, it hasn’t gone smoothly so far. You’ve had some fits and starts. But trust us, it will be worth it…

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