Posts about Livability

From their writeup:

"Great neighborhoods are not necessarily what we thought they were," Wells says. "We used to think we divided ourselves in sections…you put schools over here, housing over here, stores over here. And what we found was that in order to get anywhere and to do anything, you had to get in your car…And the more that we lived in our cars and in this sort of a sectional, stove-piped community, the more we didn't see each other."

Wells gave a name to the type of lifestyle for which he advocates: "Five-minute living." Being able to walk, bike or take public transit to one's destination as opposed to driving further away offers innumerable benefits to the community, Wells says. It makes for healthier lifestyles, keeps money in the local economy and supports the growth of strong traditional neighborhoods.

In Ward 6, Wells has spent much of his time emphasizing the need to break down barriers to change and to better connect sections of the city.

Being able to walk to shops, restaurants, school, and home is good for the economy, too. Ilana Preuss of Smart Growth America says the Barnes & Noble in downtown Bethesda makes 20% more revenue per square foot than the store in a Rockville strip mall. According to Christopher Leinberger of the Brookings Institution, the easiest way to reduce your carbon footprint (by as much as 80%) is to move to a walkable community.

Who wants to be walkable?

"Millennials," that's who. Young adults have been "scarred by recession," said Manuel Pastor, Director of USC's Program for Environmental and Regional Equity. He said they no longer see home buying as a good investment, but still want to live close to where they work and play.

Pastor had a warning for government officials and planners: the only way members of Generation Y will stay in walkable communities after they have children is if they also have access to good schools.

Words matter

To tell the story of what makes a community great, you have to choose your words wisely, with your audience in mind. "No wonk terminology!" cautioned Preuss, whose group has recently done some catchphrase polling. Words that frequently garner negative or confused reactions include: mixed-use, density, transit, and infrastructure. Only 36% of those surveyed like the phrase "compact neighborhoods," while 80% are fond of "walkable" even though the two terms refer to an identical concept.

Additionally, to get folks to listen, speak truthfully and in terms they care about, i.e. the economy and family. People love hearing that government will "use the money it has more effectively" and that "making great places is the key to turning around the economy." Busy parents will listen if you tell them that by driving less, they'll have more time with their children.

New tricks to consider

Work on making the SmarTrip card smarter. A number of presenters talked about including bike share, car share, bus and rail fare, and even car parking on one card. The idea, says Rob Inerfeld of Eugene, Oregon, is "for seamless bike, ped and transit links."

Visualize data for instant understanding. Examples from the Portland metro area and i-SUSTAIN in Seattle are aesthetically stunning. As Inerfeld says, good use of technology "de-risks the planning process." By feeding government data into a visualization program such as Google Earth Pro, planning is more likely to happen according to facts rather than hunches or politics. Powerful, slick social media tools such as the MindMixer virtual town hall display opinion data using simple, colorful icons.

Become a "New Rail~Volutionary." The Rail~Volution Filmfest featured a video about one municipal transit system which held a mobile concert as a way to entice new riders. That's just one creative tactic of the New Rail~Volutionaries, a national network of professionals and advocates passionate about creating livable communities. We need to get on board here in the DC region.

It all starts with you

Finally, readers of Greater Greater Washington got props from assistant editor Matthew Johnson during a panel on the power of blogs to influence policy: "Our comment threads are often more informative than the posts in which they appear." By joining in on, and often driving (pun intended) the regional conversation, you are an integral part of making the Washington, DC region even greater.

Some residents of Crystal City are concerned about greater density and worsening traffic. Arlington County has created the Crystal City Citizen Review Council to work with residents to ensure the county adheres to the comprehensive plan.

County planners hope to reshape Crystal City, which is filled with superblocks of bland office buildings and hotels. There are few inviting streetscapes or pedestrian-friendly facilities. The plan also hopes to create a coherent grid of streets.

Scribner's first criticism is that not enough money is going to cars, the mode he wants to put above all. He writes, "When TIGER II grants were announced, only a third of funding went to road projects. 'Livability,' you see, really means, 'go to hell, drivers!'"

If getting one third of transportation money is being told to go to hell, cyclists would love to be asked to go there.

While he is correct that roads only got 29% of the money, what he doesn't mention is that it got more than any other mode, which hardly sounds like the anti-car agenda he makes it out to be. Roads received 29 percent of TIGER II funding, while 26 percent went to transit, 20 percent to rail, 16 percent to ports, four percent to bicycle and pedestrian projects, and five percent for planning grants.

In TIGER I, the three largest projects were freight rail projects. Perhaps Scibner thinks moving freight more efficiently is "anti-mobility."

And some projects that aren't labelled as "road" projects will actually improve driving. For example, the CREATE project in Chicago, which received money in TIGER I, lists "reducing motorist delay due to rail conflict at grade crossings" as one of their top goals.

Thus, it's laughable to state that roads and drivers are being ignored, but for Scribner getting anything less than 100% of the money is to be ignored. State and local DOTs see it differently. In the first round of TIGER funding, only 57% of the money applied for was for roads.

Scribner makes much of the fact that some modes of transportation are used by a small group. Only 5.5% of commuters in Salt Lake City, which won money for a streetcar, use transit. Only 0.3% of commuters bike commute in Fayettville, AR, which won a grant for a 36-mile bike trail.

But this only proves that we've done a lousy job of creating choices. We built entire regions of our country around driving, built roads designed to maximize driver speed, didn't bother with sidewalks or creating roads that invited cyclists, created a fractured and slow transit system and look, now no one takes transit or walks or bikes. That no one uses a non-existent option is not evidence that the option shouldn't exist.

Scribner's other criticism is that the process uses livability as a standard for making grants. In his usual self-contradictory style, he frequently refers to "livability" as vague and meaningless, while simultaneously linking to a USDOT definition of the term.

"We want to base our decisions on how much transit helps the environment, how much it improves development opportunities and how it makes our communities better places to live."

(That same link is tied to the words "all sorts of silly investments" even though the author at the link only worries that it will cause silly investments. There is no evidence of such investments. One person's worries hardly constitutes fact.)

USDOT even has a detailed website that more clearly defines what livability means.

And there's a technical reason why livability matters for these grants. In TIGER II, HUD kicked in $40 million to encourage transit-oriented development (one part of livability according to DOT's definition).

Scribner refers to the Razorback Greenway and Salt Lake City Streetcar as "duds" which, considering that neither has finished construction yet, is a bit premature. To Scribner, even if both projects meet or exceed the goals outlined in their TIGER grant applications they'll be duds because they don't meet his goals. It's like calling the Apollo program a dud because it didn't cure cancer.

But $15 million for a 36 mile transportation project compares pretty favorably to something like the 18-mile, $2.566 billion Intercounty Connector. The Greenway will only need 321 users per day to match the user/dollar ratio of the ICC.

Luckily, USDOT is moving away from the windshield perspective of Marc Scribner, and TIGER III has the potential to be a real success, as long as you don't define success only in terms of moving cars.

When I arrived in Montgomery County in 2008, the White Flint property owners and members of my staff tried to divert $50 million in funding for the Montrose Parkway underpass, the first phase to reconstruct Rockville Pike, to study a future transit line along the Pike. Our efforts were unsuccessful. While I am sure many love to drive through the underpass, think of the missed opportunity.

I have driven the underpass on several occasions. Frankly, it is not that great. Connectivity is expedited in one direction—east-west—but getting off the road to head north or south is a pain. A regular at-grade intersection with turn lanes, appropriate signaling, pedestrian infrastructure and plantings would have been wonderful and much more effective for the broader public.

You can forget the pedestrian environment on the overpass. I watched a bike commuter ride across and was struck by how brave he was. With new condos just south of Montrose and major mixed-use development plans on the way in White Flint, the whole Montrose project works against what the new master plan is trying to create.

People do not walk over overpasses, they walk where there is something at the edge of the sidewalk that enlivens the space. Current and future residents will have to drive to the shopping north of Montrose if, as White Flint develops, they go north of Montrose at all.

The graphic at right illustrates the point about the Montrose underpass. It shows the I-270/I-370 interchange overlaid on top of Bethesda's Woodmont Triangle.

The Rockville Pike/Montrose Parkway interchange sterilized huge tracts of land that could have been used to create a vibrant urban intersection with buildings framing the street, people on the sidewalks interacting along the street edge, traffic moving at effective speeds and with room for future surface public transportation.

Not doable, some say? I pass along the best example of a street designed effectively for both high motor vehicle traffic and high pedestrian activity: the Champs-Elysées. Think about it. This street has some of the most expensive shopping in the world. Cars stop along the curb to drop or pick up Europe's elite to patronize those shops.

There is a sidewalk that can best be described as too big, tourist numbers beyond comprehension, views that astound, trees galore, yet the road itself carries more cars per hour than many interstate highways. You can cross the Champs on foot at numerous signalized intersections, yet the traffic still moves, except of course on the last day of the Tour de France.

I am not saying the Montrose underpass should have been the Champs-Elysées, but it could have been an at-grade intersection that offered a terrific urban pedestrian experience. That would have also opened up land for development that has been consumed by roadways and created the urban experience White Flint needs while generating a heck of a lot more property tax for the county.

In Montgomery County, we are fortunate that both County and the State leaders are looking in a different direction.

Consider all the initiatives underway:

• The growth policy the Planning Department advocated and that the County Council adopted calls for a part of impact fees assessed on developers to be dedicated to transit.
  
• Zoning that assigns increased density for places close to basic services like groceries and dry cleaners.
  
• Master plans like White Flint, the Purple Line plans for Takoma Langley Crossroads, Long Branch and Chevy Chase Lake, and the soon-to-be-released Wheaton and Kensington Sector Plans.
  
• The state has their "ag print" and "green print" initiatives that are leading into the emerging Plan Maryland program which we hope will result in a rethink of the priority funding areas (areas of growth for each county).
  
• Maryland DOT's leadership in funding infrastructure through smart growth is a national model.

In participating at the FHWA session, it became obvious that here in Maryland we are leading the nation in not only thinking about change, but in preparing for the future as well. It is a great time to be planning here in MoCo.

The Planning Department, the County Council and the state Departments of Planning and Transportation are in sync at many levels. Together we can shift the thinking from one of moving cars, to moving people.

Crossposted at The Director's Blog.

DDOT chose the six corridors to increase connectivity, accessibility, mode choice and build upon existing plans. These are the corridors:

1. Good Hope Road and Naylor Road between Minnesota and Southern Avenues
   
2. Branch Avenue between Southern and Pennsylvania Avenues
   
3. Naylor Road between Southern and Fairlawn Avenues
   
4. Alabama Avenue between Pennsylvania and Branch Avenues
   
5. Minnesota Avenue between Good Hope Road and Massachusetts Avenue
   
6. Southern Avenue between Pennsylvania and Branch Avenues. Additionally, the study looks at extending the street to Naylor Road.

The proposed improvements ranged from new streetscape and sidewalks to creation of new bike lanes.

DDOT presented typical sections along Good Hope Road and Naylor Road for both commercial areas and residential areas. The agency also recommended implementing Safe Routes to School improvements west of Minnesota Avenue where there are a cluster of public and charter schools.

During the feedback session, members of the community brought up a number of concerns:

• Extend the Alabama Ave study to Naylor Road: The section between Branch Ave SE and Naylor Road SE was the site of two pedestrian crashes this summer. Part of the problem is that Alabama Ave widens to two lanes in each direction. The stretch of roadway between Branch Ave SE and 29th Street SE is unsignalized, which leads to speeding in this section. There are crosswalks, but it is a difficult road to cross.

• Include bus routes in the analysis: The community wants to make sure that residents have sidewalks to be able to access the bus routes. For example, there are bus stops along Branch Ave SE where there are no sidewalks. People step off the bus into the grass.

• Find streets where bike lanes makes sense: Residents who do not have a preference for bike lanes expressed concern that DDOT wants to add bike lanes when most residents use public transportation and/or walk. They were very clear that they did not want to sacrifice on-street parking for bike lanes.

  Bike lane supporters stated there are people in the Ward 7 community that rely on bicycle as the primary mode of transportation, so bike infrastructure such as lanes and racks are needed. Both sides were able to agree that major roadways, such as Good Hope Road SE, may not appropriate for bike lanes, however. They recommended DDOT find alternative routes and solutions.

• Add access through the parks: One solution proposed by a resident was creating more access through the parks owned by the National Park Service. There is currently an underutilized hiker-bike trail running through these parks. Residents suggested considering a paved path and lighting to provide a higher level of comfort and security which can encourage travel through the park.

• Enforcement is part of livability: Several residents spoke of pedestrians along Good Hope Road SE who do not obey traffic signals. This summer there were incidents where pedestrians were hit. While there are some unsignalized intersections, many pedestrians cross against the light at signalized intersections.

• Find new routes for commuter buses from Maryland: Good Hope Road SE is a main corridor for commuter motor coaches from Maryland. DDOT is exploring alternative routes like Suitland Parkway.

Much of the discussion at the meeting covered topics from the numerous previous studies already conducted in some of the neighborhoods. For example, Branch Ave between Pennsylvania Avenue and the District line was studied in 2003. The community is still waiting for DDOT to implement some of the recommendations from that report.

At the next meeting in late January, DDOT will present the draft report to the community.

Cross-posted at Life in the Village.