Posts about Car Dependence

Gray is unequivocal: More cars are not the future

Mayor Vincent Gray opened his remarks with a clear message: There might be a lot of traffic, but more cars are not the answer. Instead, the District will invest in streetcars, buses, biking, and walking.

Gray cited his sustainability plan which aims to have 75% of trips in the District happen by a mode other than driving. Cars still have a place, surely, but the District has to grow other modes more than driving.

Oh, and he promised the H Street streetcar will be rolling by the end of 2013, and taxis will have credit card readers by summer.

DDOT director Terry Bellamy, DC Councilmember and transportation chair Mary Cheh, and her colleague Tommy Wells all echoed Gray's fundamental theme of multimodalism. Bellamy pointed out that everyone walks for part of their trip, even when they drive, take Metro, or another mode. Wells emphasized equity: the District needs to help all groups of residents reach jobs safely and on time.

When is transportation not really about transportation?

A panel discussion brought together author Christopher Leinberger, Slate economics blogger Matthew Yglesias, and equitable transportation advocate Anita Hairston of PolicyLink.

The panel's title was the "future of transportation" in DC, but the panelists ended up talking quite a lot about broader urban planning issues. Perhaps this is partly because DDOT put two authors of books about buildings rather than transportation on the panel, but also because transportation is often not really about transportation.

Christopher Leinberger said, "a transportation system's goal isn't to move people. It's economic development. The means is by moving people." He argued that many departments of transportation have their mission backwards. They focus on moving vehicles and freight as much as possible. That's wrong; instead, transportation is a means to an end.

The means also directs the end. Build highways, and you fuel "drivable sub-urbanism," to use his term from The Option of Urbanism; build transit, and enable walkable urbanism. In our region and around the country, the market demand now is for more walkable urbanism.

By not having enough walkable urbanism, Yglesias added, what does exist has become very expensive. That fuels a perception that walkable urban places are just for the affluent, but that only arises because we aren't building more walkable urban places fast enough.

DC could fund this transit and associated economic development if it set up a "value capture" system, said Leinberger, to get some of the value the streetcar creates and plow it back into transportation. The right system could even make the streetcar profitable, he said. But there's no time to waste. It's like in Back to the Future, Part 2 where Biff has the sports book listing what will happen in the future. Well, we have the book now, said Leinberger, and yet we aren't preparing.

Meanwhile, he said, DC needs a comprehensive strategy for affordable housing, and lacks one today. Hairston, too, emphasized how important it is to remember equity when making these investments. What about the public health for those who live near new transportation infrastructure, or the unbanked who can't as easily take advantage of programs like Capital Bikeshare?

Hairston noted that today, it's not possible to get to 60% jobs by bus in one hour from east of the Anacostia River. She hopes the District can at least reverse that and make 6 of 10 accessible within an hour.

A public meeting was genuinely fun

I've been to a lot of boring public meetings. The moveDC Ideas Exchange might have been the most entertaining and interesting. It certainly didn't lack for manpower (and womanpower), as almost every DDOT employee was working one of many stations.

At one, people could nominate the street they think is DC's worst. Another let you place color-coded string on a map showing your commute, with the color telling whether it's by bike, bus, Metro, driving, walking, etc. There was even a photo booth.

One table let you design your ideal street cross-section, with sidewalks, medians, bike lanes, bus lanes, or whatever, then take a picture, print it, and post it on a wall. You could draw on a map of proposed CaBi stations or write parking ideas on sticky notes to go on a wall.

Greater Greater Washington contributor Veronica Davis moderated the panel and got some major praise from DDOT director Bellamy as well as plaudits on Twitter for a very interesting session.

Tough customer Alex Baca even tweeted, "I am THE BIGGEST whiner about the utility of the public-input process, but @wemovedc made today's #IdeasMoveDC a really fun time."

Of course, it might be a little easier to make a session fun when there's no proposal half the participants have shown up specifically to fight against, as in the Office of Planning's recent zoning update sessions. It's worth watching to see, first, what kind of plan DDOT devises out of all these stickies and photos and yarn, and second, if all these interactive booths give any kind of serious plan a better shot at becoming reality.

A lot of people are nervous about this proposal, but it really should be a no-brainer. The Office of Planning report said that there are 560 parking spaces available for rent nearby. In just the garage at Cityline at Tenley (the building with the Container Store), there are 110-120 spaces going unused each night, and 50 during the day.

That means that even if almost everyone brought a car and just rented a space, everything would be fine. There's a strange legacy assumption that everyone who parks would need to either park in their own building or on the street, but there are actually a lot of garages in Tenleytown.

Plus, Douglas Development is explicitly planning to market the building to people who don't want to have cars. The Container Store at Cityline only sells containers. That doesn't make it a bad store because it doesn't also sell furniture or clothing. If you want containers, go there. If not, shop somewhere else. Likewise, there's nothing wrong with having a building for people mostly without cars, and other buildings and houses and neighborhoods can serve people with different needs.

Bruce was worried that someone with a car would want to buy a unit from an initial owner (actually, it's an apartment building, not condos, but I forgot to mention that on the segment). Regardless, I pointed out that some apartments in some buildings have decks, or more bathrooms, and others don't. People choose where to live based on the available amenities, and not every apartment, condo or house has to serve every need for every person.

This is a simple economic concept, but it seems to escape many people, like Council­member Jack Evans (ward 2), who was on the show before me. Bruce asked Evans about the proposal. Evans made the odd argument that a building designed for people to ride transit one block from the Tenleytown Metro is a bad idea because there isn't a Metro station in his own neighborhood of Georgetown.

Evans said,

I think it's a major mistake to do that in the District of Columbia. The reason being that the Metro system, the bus system does not work well enough to get people around in the city. I live in Georgetown. There is no Metro. For me to get around I'm taking buses, transferring, it takes me a long time to get anywhere.

This thinking reflects one of the most common cognitive errors we see in policy debates. People extrapolate their own experiences to everyone else. If I need to drive, everyone must. If I need a certain size apartment, everyone must. Therefore, the government must force the market to build those things.

We don't all need the same type of housing. Some people do need, or want, large suburban houses with big yards and 4 bedrooms and 2-car garages. We have a lot of those. Other people would rather save money and time and buy or rent a small unit without parking if it lets them live near the Metro.

Our zoning need not force everything into a single mold. That's what 1960s planners tried to do, and we know it was a failure. With the agreement to withhold residential parking permits to residents of this building, there's no way it can negatively effect anyone else. That means there's no reason to forbid Douglas from constructing the apartments they think the market demands.

Everyone at the meeting was white (in a relic from a more segregated bygone era, predominantly black associations are part of a separate Federation of Civic Associations), and almost all belong to the baby boom generation or older.

The discussion primarily revolved around the chronic flashpoint, parking. The Office of Planning has been encouraging developers not to build more parking than their residents need, and provisions of the zoning update reduce or eliminate many parking minimum requirements, especially around transit.

Tregoning said that when she talks to developers, she often asks them what percentage of residents in their target market own cars. She's yet to have a conversation where the developer knew the answer, but she comes armed with these statistics. She doesn't want to forbid them from building parking, but wants to help them align their project with the actual demand.

O'Connell noted that many buildings along Georgia Avenue in his neighborhood now have little or no underground parking, while earlier buildings had a lot of parking. He speculated that the older buildings built more than necessary, and developers have learned what residents want. Tregoning added that, while the data is not public, she has spoken to several developers who acknowledge that some of their past projects built parking which now goes unused.

O'Connell also wondered about the O Street Market project, which DC is supporting with over $35 million in Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and grant funds. O'Connell said that the last economic development project of this magnitude was DC USA, which ended up with a taxpayer-funded garage which goes largely empty. Will the same happen at O?

The Rhode Island Avenue Home Depot is atop a Metro station, but has an overly car-centric design that isn't what residents wish they had at the site. Since these projects spend many years going through approvals, O'Connell said, what the city needs at the start of the process can often be very different from conditions by the time it gets built.

Audience members, however, mainly wanted planning to anticipate more car-owning households and not really expect any car-free ones. Judy Chesser of the Tenleytown Neighbors Association criticized car2go. She said that the residential permit parking (RPP) system is supposed to "protect residents," but yet car2go cars are able to park on those blocks as well as at meters.

Tregoning noted that they pay high fees for these privileges, not to mention that car2go vehicles do serve the area's residents. Some, she said, do give up cars, either going car-free entirely or reducing the number of cars they own, which makes more room for everyone else and saves money.

Tregoning emphasized the issue of choice. She asked the audience members to raise their hands if they own vinyl records, and then if they own CDs. Members of younger generations, by contrast, rarely own physical media for their music. Instead, they buy songs a la carte on iTunes or, increasingly, subscribe to services which let them listen to music on demand without actually owning the song.

Car ownership is similar, she said. Many residents do not feel the need to own a vehicle which they use only infrequently and which constantly depreciates. Instead, Zipcar, car2go, taxis and other services let them have access to cars when they need them, and they walk, bike, and take transit for many trips where possible.

While this is less common for families with small children, Tregoning pointed out that only 20% of DC households have school-age children. It's very important to serve their needs as well, but the city has a large amount of single-family housing stock, while it had far fewer apartments and condos compared to market demand. More recent development is mainly catching up to the balance we need for the future.

Facing some hostile reactions from the audience to the idea that many people would go car-free, Tregoning asked rhetorically, "do you really want me to plan for a city where 100% of people own cars?" Peter Espenschied of Cleveland Park retorted, "that would be safe."

Another questioner talked about how Georgetown residents kept a Metro station out of their neighborhood (actually, an urban legend). Tenleytown's Chesser piped up to say, "Smart move, in retrospect."

Some participants had more nuanced views. One man, who I didn't identify, preceded a serious and non-confrontational question by saying, "I generally favor higher density." Denis James of the Kalorama Citizens' Association said the group is worried that Jim Graham's move to expand visitor passes to all of Ward 1 has granted about 3,000 7,000 new parking privileges in the neighborhood, and that could bring a lot of new cars.

Most agreed that they wish the Washington Post would cover this issue more thoroughly. While Greater Greater Washington, the Washington City Paper, and others have indeed been writing about this subject, I agree that it's important enough to warrant more attention from the paper of record (as is the Montgomery County zoning rewrite also underway).

Seeing the tweets on the topic, Post reporter Mike DeBonis stopped by the meeting to say that he is working on articles about this issue. Any stories will run after the election which currently occupies all of his and others' time.

To assuage any fears that he might hate cars, bikes, feet or any other conveyance, DeBonis noted that he owns a car and an RPP sticker, bikes to work most days, took the bus that day, rode the Red Line to the meeting, and planned to walk home. Channeling Gilbert and Sullivan, he concluded, "I am the very model of a modern multimodal individual."

First, let's be clear: Driving rates are plateauing and even dropping in developed countries, or what The Economist bluntly calls "the rich world." Developing countries are a few decades behind and are just entering a car acquisition stage. According to a study conducted earlier this year, 20 developed countries show a "saturating trend" on driving.

The results are the same for all three measures of saturation: total distance driven, distance per driver and total trips made. "After decades when each individual was on average travelling farther every year, growth per person has slowed distinctly, and in many cases stopped altogether," the article states.

Is it just the recession? High unemployment? Stubborn gas prices? The Economist, like many analysts before, says the trend goes deeper than those temporary factors. Here's why:

Generational shift. The generation that went cruising around town in tail-finned Chevys is in retirement now. More American retirees have drivers licenses than ever before—and "more than 90 percent of people aged 60-64 can drive, a larger share than for any other cohort," the article states. "New generations of drivers will replace old ones rather than add to the total number." Older people tend to drive shorter distances than younger ones.

Meanwhile, throughout the developed world, young people are less eager to start driving and they're getting their licenses later. Studies show that people who learn to drive later in life continue to drive less. Gordon Stokes of Oxford University found that people in Britain who learn in their late 20s drive 30 percent less than those who learn a decade earlier.

Geography. The growing preference for urban living, fueled in part by a desire to walk more and drive less, also reduces VMT. In wealthy countries, car use is still stable or increasing in rural areas, but that's not where the future is. "The OECD, a rich-country think-tank, expects that by 2050, 86 percent of the rich world's population will live in urban areas, up from 77 percent in 2010."

Nature magazine recently mapped the urbanization trend, noting, "The United Nations predicts that cities will absorb all of the world's population growth—of around 2.3 billion people—in the next four decades." [emphasis mine]

The preference to go car-free in cities has been on the rise since long before the recession or $4.00 gas prices. Better public transit and new car-sharing services like Zipcar help make this a viable preference.

Sprawl. The Economist article points out that "the car has become a victim of its own success." For decades, auto-centric development sprawled outward from cities, as newly-built highways allowed people to commute to the city quickly. But the more people opted to get cars and move out to the hinterlands, the more crowded those highways became.

Given that the maximum time people are willing to take on is generally unmovable at 30 minutes each way, the maximum distance you can live from your job increased with highway expansion and shrunk again with congestion. The Economist calls it a "sprawl wall." It's one of many reasons that more than half of US cities are seeing more growth in the core than the periphery.

Result: Driverless Cars or Better Policies? The Economist takes stock of the growing desperation among automakers about the state of the US market and concludes that they're going to bet on driverless cars to take them into the future: "If buyers are less interested in driving, then cars will require less driving from them."

Driverless cars would bring a host of other factors to bear: They could cut congestion somewhat because they can travel closer together without safety concerns—though if people opt for driverless cars over mass transit they could dramatically increase congestion. And the article says driverless cars could "strain the already weakening link between driving and identity and the sense of driving as an expression of self and skill."

But a far more meaningful outcome of this trend would be for smart governments to revolutionize their transportation policies to accommodate greater transportation options in the future. The Economist notes that "urban planning, in particular, has for half a century focused on cars."

America built 64,000 kilometres (40,000 miles) of interstate highway to get the country moving after the second world war; since 1980 it has built more than 35,000 new lane-kilometres a year. If policymakers are confident that car use is waning they can focus on improving lives and infrastructure in areas already blighted by traffic rather than catering for future growth. That is already happening in London, where cars pay to enter the centre and ever more space is dedicated to buses and cycles. At Canary Wharf, a business district in east London, 100,000 jobs are supported by only 3,000 parking spaces.

By improving alternatives to driving, city authorities can try to lock in the benefits of declining car use. Cars take up more space per person than any other form of transport—one lane of a freeway can transport 2,500 people per hour by car, versus 5,000 in a bus and 50,000 in a train, reckon Peter Newman and Rob Salter of Curtin University in Australia.

The transportation bill that passed a few months ago in this country didn't go nearly far enough in envisioning a future beyond car dependence and endless sprawl. That means the country is preparing for a future that isn't expected to happen. The dip in driving isn't a flash in the pan. Given the significant societal factors that have contributed to it, we should expect it to stick around for a while.

Cross-posted at Streetsblog DC.

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.

And this last fact has huge quality-of-life implications for human beings—not just because driving to a distant strip mall for a gallon of milk is less pleasant than walking to a corner store, but also because for many people driving simply isn't an option.

Some people can't drive because they're not old enough, others because they're too old. Some people are blind. Some people don't know how to drive. Most of all, plenty of people can't afford a car. And it's really, really not fun to be in one of those categories and live in a place where you have to drive to get anything done.

The District government has very belatedly come around to the realization that instead of focusing narrowly on cars, we need to focus more broadly on mobility. Cars will always a big part of that, but one third of DC residents live in households that don't own one, so it can't be the only part.

Some drivers have reacted to that shift with outrage that they're no longer the center of the universe, like only children who have acquired a baby sibling. That's not a mature or reasonable or productive reaction. As DC's population continues to grow, the population of cars can't keep growing at the same rate. Not because cars are bad but simply because we don't have room for them.

So we have to take steps to increase the market share of non-driving modes of transportation. That's not a pro-car policy or an anti-car policy, it's just a sensible response to the way the world is.

What does this have to do with zoning? Well, you don't take "everyone drives" as a starting point or as an end point. As a matter of fact, not everyone can drive; and as a matter of principle, we want people to have other options. So we allow corner stores so people can run simple errands without driving. We allow alley dwellings and garage apartments so a few more people can live in walkable neighborhoods and near metro stops. And we stop forcing developers to build more parking than the market demands. These are very modest but obvious common-sense steps.

Meanwhile, I'm going to keep driving when I need to, and so are you, and that's fine. Nevertheless it's in all of our best interests for DC to make sure that that's not the only choice we have.

I was puzzled by this peculiar incentive and asked the store about the rationale via Twitter. Whole Foods sent this explanation:

Our parking lot is well known for being crazy. Trying to encourage people who drive to use the garage.

I reached out to the management at the Whole Foods store in Clarendon via email for additional comment and explanation, but did not receive a response.

No doubt, Whole Foods is smart to encourage customers to park somewhere other than the store's small and crowded parking lot. The store has a limited supply of a valuable resource, parking spaces, and wants them to turn over as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, this discount policy specifically incentivizes and rewards driving and parking. This type of incentive is out of character for a company that espouses environmental sustainability as one of its values and has a "Green Mission Report" that praises employees who use public transportation and bicycles to get to work.

Besides, if keeping store-owned spaces available is the goal, Whole Foods could accomplish this far more effectively by encouraging people not to drive at all. Once a customer has driven to the store, they may still choose the convenience of the closer lot to the $1 discount and the more cumbersome garage.

If Whole Foods gives people a reason to leave the car behind altogether, these customers are guaranteed not to take up space in the coveted parking lot. What's more, given the cost of subsidizing customers parking in a garage, Whole Foods could probably save a bundle as well.

Clarendon is a textbook example of a walkable, bikeable, and transit-accessible neighborhood. Nonetheless, parking, especially for grocery stores, has historically been a topic that has touched a nerve in the neighborhood.

Whole Foods could charge a small fee to park, thereby encouraging customers to use their parking lot sparingly. This idea is likely a non-starter, as many businesses are terrified of losing customers to stores where they don't have to pay for parking.

Whole Foods could also extend their discount to customers who arrive by any means without a car. This is a logistical challenge, since it's very difficult to prove that a customer walked to the store, or if they use a SmarTrip card to arrive by Metro, rather than having parked on the street or even in the store's own lot. Producing a ticket to prove that they parked across the street, on the other hand, is easy.

Still, Whole Foods could at least level the playing field. When customers come in, Whole Foods could give them two options: a free parking validation or a $1 discount on the Wine:30 price. This approach would require Whole Foods to control access in or out of their own lot, but given the major issues they have, perhaps its time to consider this anyway.

With better controlled access, the store could still provide free parking to any driving customers, encourage people to park in the larger garage, and reward those who don't drive, all at the same time. For instance, at checkout, a customer could choose between a lot validation, a garage validation and a 1% discount, or no parking validation and a 2% discount.

Ultimately, Whole Foods needs to find a better way to decrease congestion in their parking lot without incentivizing driving and parking. For the Clarendon neighborhood, fewer driving customers mean less traffic and a stronger, safer, walkable urban fabric.

The store, meanwhile, would better adhere to Whole Foods' espoused corporate values and become a better community member. In a walkable, transit-rich neighborhood, it's time for Whole Foods to stop paying its customers to drive.

Last year, Brookings found that, on average, 70 percent of jobs in a metropolitan region are inaccessible to a typical resident via transit. Or at least, it would take over 90 minutes each way to get there.

This time around, Brookings looked at how large a pool of potential employees each employer has access to, assuming those employees would use transit to commute to work. And just as only 30 percent of jobs are accessible to most workers, only 27 percent of workers are accessible to most jobs, they found.

In terms of general access to transit, 70 percent of people in metropolitan areas live in neighborhoods that are served by transit and more than 75 percent of jobs are served by transit. Not surprisingly, the big divide is between suburban and urban locations within those metro areas. In cities, 95 percent of jobs are in transit-served neighborhoods, while in suburbs, only 64 percent of employers have transit service.

The Northeast and the West have better-connected job centers, while the Midwest and the South have more job sprawl and less transit access. In the Northeast, almost 100 percent of city-based employers can take advantage of transit. In southern suburbs, that figure falls to 52 percent.

"The suburbanization of jobs obstructs transit's ability to connect workers to opportunity and jobs to local labor pools," the report concludes. "As metro leaders continue to grapple with limited financial resources, it is critical for transit investment decisions to simultaneously address suburban coverage gaps as well as disconnected neighborhoods." The authors elaborate:

For example, consider the cases of San Jose and Richmond. Both metropolitan areas offer transit service to over 97 percent of city jobs. But while San Jose's suburban transit routes extend well beyond the city core, offering service to 84 percent of its suburban jobs, Richmond's suburban routes stop close to the municipal borders, offering service to only 29 percent of suburban jobs. The end result is that San Jose's overall transit coverage rate ranks fourth and Richmond's ranks 94th. And Richmond isn't the only metro that registers this extreme city/suburban dichotomy. Atlanta, Grand Rapids, and McAllen all show near-ubiquitous transit coverage in their primary cities and limited suburban coverage, pushing their overall coverage rates to the bottom quintile.

This report, like the last one, will likely invite observers to wonder whether it's incumbent on transit systems to undo their hub-and-spoke models and sprawl along with jobs using less efficient service patterns—or whether the solution lies with addressing job sprawl itself. After all, why should struggling public transit systems condone and subsidize employers who chose not to locate near their workers?

Brookings provides a reminder that one way or another, there's a problem that needs fixing: Unemployment is stubbornly high, while in some places there's a shortage of skilled and educated workers. Clearly, there needs to be a better way to connect jobs and people.

After all, commutes have grown longer and longer over the years, and a continued dependence on single-occupancy vehicles is simply unsustainable. The report says:

The nation's average distance to work jumped from 9.9 miles in 1983 to 13.3 miles in 2009.6 Meanwhile, as solo drivers topped 74 percent of all commuters, the average number of hours wasted in traffic increased from 14 hours in 1982 to 34 hours in 2010.7 Just as importantly, there is still a sizable portion of Americans that confront longer commuting distances without a vehicle. The costs of owning and operating a vehicle are such that ten percent of American households in the nation's largest metro areas do not have access to a private vehicle.

Transit can be part of the solution to these problems, and can provide employers with a more reliable way to bring their workers in to work on time every day. But whose job is it to make sure more workplaces are on the transit map? Does the transit system have to build a new line every time some company opens up shop in the exurbs?

Brookings suggests that both public and private sector leaders need to take responsibility for enhancing transit accessibility to jobs. They should route transit to where the jobs are, including in the suburbs, and do a better job of collecting and analyzing data so they can make good decisions, the report says.

But those are all tasks for public officials. What responsibility should private employers take in addressing the accessibility crisis? By locating in a city, an employer will have access to an average of 38 percent of available workers. That same job in a suburb will have less than half the labor pool to choose job candidates from via transit—just 17 percent of the population.

That doesn't necessarily mean there's no transit stop near the employer. But if it's so far out in the suburban hinterland that it would take the average resident more than 90 minutes each way to get there, it doesn't count—that's too long a commute to reasonably ask anyone to undertake.

So in addition to its list of recommendations to public officials, Brookings should add one addressing employers: Locate where your labor pool is. Don't make them drive alone for 13.3 miles each way to get to work. You'll suck their souls and waste their money and end up with a less healthy, less reliable workforce that shows up in the morning with a fresh case of road rage (or road fatigue).

Sure, transit agencies need to make sure their expansions are keeping pace with development and that their service is staying relevant. But employers need to realize there are good job candidates out there without cars, and those people won't work at a place that's inaccessible to them.

Cross-posted at Streetsblog Capitol Hill.