Posts about Black And White Thinking

Transit

Is the Post too negative on Metro?

by David Alpert   •   June 22, 2010 2:07 pm

Today is the first anniversary of the Metro crash, and the Post comes out negative on the year's safety developments. The headline says efforts have "lost momentum" and the lede says there has been "too little progress."

There could certainly have been more progress, and in particular, it would be nice if the NTSB had gotten a report out already. However, there has been measurable progress, like a more effective Tri-State Oversight Committee and a new General Manager. Kytja Weir's article yesterday, by contrast, said that while progress has been slow, "Metro is finally taking steps to become safer."

The bottom line is that there could have been more progress and there could have been less. The Post's coverage, however, seems to follow a pattern of reporting everything bad that happens at Metro and very little else. Meanwhile, if Maryland MTA, PRTC, Ride On, the Circulator, or other transit agencies do something wrong, it doesn't seem to make it into the Post.

There was the June 18th article, "Metro in a rush to put complex fare increases in place," which talked about how much overtime Metro staff were putting in. The Board deserves some criticism for taking until the last possible moment to decide its budget, but this article could also have read, "Metro working heroically to get fare changes done in record time." Is this speed good or bad? Some of both, probably.

Roads

"No more cars" vs. "not more cars"

by David Alpert   •   August 11, 2009 11:53 am

Advocates for more walkable, bikeable, and transit-oriented places often face criticism that we "hate cars." Gary Imhoff assumes that "nothing makes [me] angrier than automobiles." And on yesterday's thread about "green" companies giving away gas and parking, Fritz wrote, "The majority of residents of the DC Metro Area aren't like you. It's perhaps the greatest weakness among the anti-car brigades on this website: the near impossibility of recognizing that not everyone wants to walk or bike as their main mode of transportation."

These responses rest on a logical fallacy. I've advocated for new development to minimize auto dependence. But many take that to mean that everyone ought to travel by train, bus, bike or foot. However, new living patterns need not resemble existing living patterns. New residents won't necessarily interact with communities in the exact same way as existing residents. We don't need to get rid of cars. What we need is to avoid adding many new cars.

Call it "low-traffic growth." Our population is growing, and our region will inevitably grow. The question facing leaders and planners is how and where that growth should take place. In the absence of infill and transit expansion, that growth will happen in Fauquier and Frederick Counties, in West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, and southern Maryland. If people live there, they'll have to drive long distances, which means they will contribute more cars and more traffic.

Or, most new housing could add infill development to areas close to jobs and to transit. We could bring in new residents who don't commute by driving. That will enable the region to have more people, more jobs, and more revenue without more traffic. In DC, Arlington, Alexandria, southern Montgomery County, and other fully built-out areas, there just isn't room for more roads. We can either grow without adding traffic, as Arlington has so successfully done on the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, or see our roadways grow more and more gridlocked, lowering the appeal of jobs in our region.

We are in the middle of a paradigm shift in the design of our communities. The sprawl model of development that predominated for sixty years isn't sustainable and, more importantly, no longer what the market wants. Prices in established walkable neighborhoods are sky-high while nearby walkable neighborhoods are gentrifying rapidly. We have enough single-family homes for the next 20 years; in fact, nationwide, analysts predict we'll have 22 million too many.

There's nothing evil about wanting to live in a house with a yard and a picket fence. Some government policies may unfairly subsidize that form of living with cheap infrastructure, but it's still a totally valid way to live. It's just that there are lots of those houses. Meanwhile, there aren't enough condos and row houses in walkable neighborhoods. Many families want to live in them, but can't. But even without the families, there isn't enough supply.

Between empty nesters living longer and young people waiting longer to have children, the proportion of childless households is rising rapidly. As Christopher Leinberger explains, 50% of households had children in 1950, but only 33% do today. And in the next 20 years, only 12% of the additional households will have children. While there are 22 million too many "large lot" houses for 2025, there are 56 million too few "small lot" and attached (row house and apartment) dwellings for expected demand. If we spent the next generation building nothing but walkable urban development, there would still not be enough of it.

Sure, many singles in studio apartments will get married and move into two-bedroom condos, then have kids and move into single-family detached houses. But empty nesters will move out of houses and into apartments at an equivalent rate to the parents moving in, and new college grads will move here faster than couples with children will go to suburbs. Plus, many of the parents will stay in their walkable communities and raise their families there.

When Fritz wrote, "The majority of residents of the DC metro area aren't like you," he's missing the point. The majority of existing residents do drive to work. That doesn't mean the majority of new residents must as well. When Imhoff writes that "Bicycling and long-distance walks are the preferences of small minorities" to justify car-centric public policy in new development, he's making two unspoken assumptions. First, he's assuming that just because bicycling represents a small percentage of mode share today means that it always will. It's growing extremely rapidly. Second, he assumes that new residents will inevitably live the way he does, and so if he prefers to drive, so will they. But we already know, from the demographic data, that the relative proportions of people who move to the DC area in the next twenty years won't resemble those who moved here in the last twenty or the twenty before that.

Tom Coumaris recently suggested the phrase "no more cars," which I misinterpreted at first to mean "get rid of cars," but which he meant as "no additional cars." In effect, what advocates for livable and walkable communities want is "not more cars"—growth that doesn't bring more cars. Some then misinterpret this as an attempt to ban cars—"no more cars." It's a subtle difference, but an enormous one. Low-traffic growth is good for existing drivers as well. Low-traffic growth means less competition for the roadway space they're already using, and less pollution from people driving through their communities to get to new exurban ones farther out. We should all be able to support policies that allow growth but "not more cars."

Parking

Fun is good

by David Alpert   •   July 28, 2009 12:13 pm

The wind in your hair. The rush of motion. The breathtaking view of the landscape. These are some of the joys of riding in a machine invented right around the turn of the twentieth century. I'm talking about the Ferris wheel.

Riding in Ferris wheels is a lot of fun. Millions of people do it. They've appeared in countless American movies. And that's why, no matter what some "Smart Growth" advocates try to do to restrict Ferris wheels, the DC government should continue structuring its public policy around ensuring free and unlimited Ferris wheel rides.

Fun is watching the brightly colored gondolas spin around and around. Stopping at the top while people get on and off at the bottom may be much derided, but the time alone with your thoughts at the top of the wheel is incredibly relaxing. Ferris wheels may be just a wheel and a motor to some, but to most they provide the childlike joy and feeling of freedom they want. Teacups, Scramblers, and bumper cars may provide brief glimpses of fun, but are never loved like Ferris wheels.

Streets like 15th Street, NW used to have much wider front yards for the houses, but during the twentieth century DC took away much of this "public parking" area to construct Ferris wheels. After decades of designing the city around Ferris wheels, there is one on almost every block, but that's simply not enough. Residents of some denser neighborhoods complain about having to wait as much as a half hour to get on a Ferris wheel when they come home.

That's why we need zoning rules that require all new apartment buildings to construct Ferris wheels on their property. That's also why some Councilmembers have introduced legislation to spend public money on constructing new Ferris wheels, and some people have advocated tearing down buildings like the Reeves Center to put in Ferris wheels.

Some "Smart Growth" advocates suggest instead that we end the current policy of keeping all rides free and letting people ride as many times as they want in a row. They say this is unfair, because some people keep taking up Ferris wheel seats all evening, and propose "performance Ferris riding" to set a market price for rides. But that will hurt poor people. "Smart Growth" advocates may try to make Ferris wheels more inconvenient or more expensive, but people still want to enjoy the rush of riding high atop the city in Ferris wheels. Some residents feel that the Ferris wheels "tower over" their houses and the bright lights late into the night interfere with their sleep, but that's just part of the fun.

Obviously, the above is farcical. Yet it's the very argument Gary Imhoff made on Sunday with his ode to the private automobile. He derided the "Smart Growth" advocates for daring to suggest that cars ought not be king in all circumstances. After all, they're so much fun:

Fun isn't just sports cars and muscle cars going twenty or thirty miles over the speed limit. It's also the toy cars — Volkswagen bugs in the 1960's and smart cars today — that make everybody smile. ... Fun is also the comfy, cushy sedans associated with staid uncles and aunts. ... Fun is the pickups that let their owners feel they can do any job they need to do.

The point Imhoff and others miss is that we don't subsidize most other forms of fun. Just because something is fun doesn't mean our public policy should give that fun priority over other fun, or that we should devote substantial public land to that fun at great taxpayer expense, or require new buildings to spend millions of dollars to accommodate the fun, crowding out other uses. Imhoff's argument appears to boil down to this: either something is good, or bad. If it's good, then any policy that increases it is good, and any advocate for any policy that says otherwise must be trying to destroy the happiness that comes with it.

There's nothing wrong with finding cars to be fun. Of course, other people find walking, bicycling, and taking Metro fun. Imhoff writes, "Subways and buses are the appliances, conveniences that can be appreciated but are never loved." Many Greater Greater Washington readers, I suspect, beg to differ. Many commuters stuck in traffic, meanwhile, don't find cars much fun at all. Why are the desires of those who enjoy walking or bicycling insignificant, while those of the car enthusiast paramount? Nobody's advocating to outlaw auto shows or vintage car parades.

The irony of Imhoff's argument becomes most clear at the end of his love letter, when he writes,

Drive the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River, and if your timing is right you can see a thrilling sight. On the bridge will be cars, bicycles, and pedestrians; on the next two bridges will be a train and a subway car; underneath will be boats on the Potomac; and above will be airplanes coming in for a landing at Reagan National Airport. It's the history of transportation, of the twentieth century, in one spot.

That spot is indeed thrilling. But, as Imhoff noted, your timing has to be perfect to catch a fleeting glimpse of the walkers, bikers, boats, trains and planes on 14th as you speed across the bridge and keep your attention on the road. But there's a much easier way to take in the glory of the bridges over the Potomac: walk or bike there. It's too bad Imhoff doesn't consider that much fun.

Parking

Cars: it's not black and white (except for police cruisers)

by David Alpert   •   July 2, 2009 12:42 pm

Shortly after the parking minimums debate, anti groups started echoing a common theme: The DC government is trying to get rid of cars. At many individual meetings, from Historic Dupont Circle Main Streets to the ANC 2F task force on the ARTS Overlay, some residents have made statements like, "DDOT's declared policy is to get rid of cars," as though this were simply established fact.

That's baloney. Designing public policy to shift our transportation mix slightly away from driving and slightly toward transit use, walking and bicycling isn't a plot to ban cars. When airlines announce that they plan to cut capacity by 10%, people don't roundly declare it a secret plot to eliminate planes entirely. DC also reduced the loan guarantee assistance it provides to help lower income buyers get mortgages, but nobody wrote that this is a "war on homebuying."

Why does much of the rehetoric imply that either everyone must drive, or nobody? In a Capitol Hill email list discussion of David C's Safeway post, one resident argued that we need a lot of parking, saying, "It is naive to think that shopping at Eastern Market by using Metro or our feet, while holding down full-time jobs and raising families should be the norm. I happen to live on a subway line and it is still inconvenient."

And I know many people who do shop at Eastern Market by using Metro or their feet (or their bicycle). I also know people who drive. The beauty of a multi-modal transportation system is that not everyone has to use the same mode. There needn't be only one "norm." Maybe this particular resident does need to drive. She should be free to. But many people very easily fall into the trap of thinking that because a life choice wouldn't work for them, it must be bad. If we followed that thinking, then we'd have outlawed computers years ago, since large segments of the population still find them very confusing.

Similar thinking pollutes CakeLove founder Warren Brown's thinking about parking. He responded to our criticism yesterday, saying that Metro doesn't really work because to get from U Street to National Harbor, he would have to take a lengthy trip by train and bus. Of course, as we know, National Harbor is especially transit-inaccessible. Warren might be the only person in the region who regularly goes between U Street and National Harbor. I have no objection to him driving when he does.

Warren also writes that "driving is a fact of life." Eating salty foods is a fact of life, too, but no government agency hands out free pretzels, and when health advocates suggest we try to cut back on sodium, nobody claims they're trying to stamp out salt from the earth. For some reason, an argument keeps surfacing that because driving is part of life, the government ought to spend billions of dollars to remove whole buildings and replace them with empty spaces for them to put their vehicles. Moreover, nobody should have to pay to use that space. And if the government refuses to build those garages, or expects to recoup its costs by charging a market rate, it must be evidence of a secret plot to wipe out all cars and force everyone to ride a bicycle.

Update: I removed a mention of Tom's comment, as he clarified that he didn't mean it in the way I interpreted it.