Posts about Sprawl

The fact that large majorities of people don't want new highways and are closely split on widening existing ones shows the effect of our region's decades of debate on these issues. Residents realize that new roads actually don't make their lives better, since new vehicle trips just fill up the new capacity within a few years, and the existing driver faces the same traffic as before.

About two thirds of residents thought new bridges across the Potomac River were a good idea, though it's less clear what those bridges would connect to, since many of the same respondents apparently don't want to increase road capacity on each end.

Also not surprisingly, people don't want to pay for any transportation projects. They oppose both tolls and higher gas taxes.

Given this, it's sad that Governor McDonnell keeps pushing the Outer Beltway, and Maryland continues to put the $3 billion I-270 widening ahead of the Purple Line in its priority list for how to spend future federal funds. That's because 82% of respondents "agree with the strategy of locating growth around existing employment centers," while large numbers (about half of respondents regionwide) oppose growth in rural areas. Yet the big-ticket transportation priorities of both states would push rural growth over strengthening today's job centers.

Smart growth is what the region wants. We should focus on transit, expanding walkable neighborhoods and building more, and putting new housing and jobs in existing dense areas and near underutilized transit stations. That's the only way to add more people to the region and help everyone get to and from work without the massive highway expansions which many people don't want and very few want to pay for.

Correction: I listed some of the numbers as reflecting public support for widening existing highways that are actually the levels of support for new highways. The post has been updated.

Many drivable-fringe house prices are now below replacement value, meaning the land under the house has no value and the sticks and bricks are worth less than they would cost to replace. This means there is no financial incentive to maintain the house; the next dollar invested will not be recouped upon resale. Many of these houses will be converted to rentals, which are rarely as well maintained as owner-occupied housing. Add the fact that the houses were built with cheap materials and methods to begin with, and you see why many fringe suburbs are turning into slums, with abandoned housing and rising crime.

Leinberger goes on and cites several examples of urban neighborhoods that have transformed from slum to hip in recent history: Capitol Hill in Seattle; Virginia Highland in Atlanta; German Village in Columbus, Ohio; and Logan Circle in Washington.

I don't know much about Capitol Hill or Virginia Highland, but I do know something about Logan Circle and German Village. One very important (and I think non-trivial) quality that they share is that they both have a high quality, durable housing stock that has held up very well, given its age, all things considered.

When I think about what made cookie cutter houses in suburbs appealing to people, in addition to the square footage and the yards and the school systems, I really suspect that one of the things that people were drawn to was the absolute "newness" of everything. People love having new stuff—new appliances, new counter tops, new floors. When stuff is brand new, it's almost guaranteed to be in style. When it's brand new, it's not in need of immediate repair. There's a lot to like about brand new.

The problem though, as Leinberger notes, is that fringe suburbs were literally built on the cheap. They may have looked nice initially, but the drywall they used to throw up houses in Prince William County is not the same as the brick they used to build rowhouses in Dupont Circle. At the time, the appliances they put into new suburban homes might have been nicer than what was in old urban houses, but appliances can easily be replaced, structures can't.

Around DC, a lot of old rowhouses have gone through the process of renovation—some have gone through many renovations since originally being built. The interiors have been gutted, redesigned and rebuilt, but the physical structure is generally the same. These houses were built to last, I can only imagine what a cookie-cutter house on the suburban fringe might look like in 100 years. The rowhouses in DC that have been re-built look beautiful, easily as nice as what got built in the suburbs during the boom.

At one point, the suburbs looked so much "nicer" because that's where the building was—that's where stuff was brand new. That's not necessarily true anymore. Now, some of the newest, shiniest stuff is right in the heart of the city.

I was reminded of this when I saw this article in the Plain Dealer last month. The author makes the case that there's more demand for housing in downtown Cleveland than the market can keep up with. A lot of folks will use this as evidence of a downtown renaissance, I think it says that people are no longer afraid to live downtown (something that was true in Cleveland for many years) but I also suspect it has something to do with the quality of downtown housing.

While it seems true that downtown Cleveland is doing well, many other urban Cleveland neighborhoods are not doing well at all. The apartments and condos popping up downtown are all brand new, beautifully renovated spaces. The houses in Cleveland's urban neighborhoods, on the other hand, are much lower quality. Compared to Washington's rowhouses, they're downright terrible. I suspect that many of Cleveland's houses are also below replacement value. The only hope is to knock them down, and that's exactly what's happening.

When I studied home prices in Cleveland a few years ago (pdf), I found that while downtown was in fact the neighborhood in the city with the highest prices, there was nevertheless a positive relationship between home price and the distance from the city center. In other words, the farther from downtown you went, the higher the price of homes. It was "drive til you qualify" in reverse.

I think the future of suburbs as Leinberger imagines them is going to look like some of Cleveland's neighborhoods today - Hough, Mount Pleasant, Cudell—places with generally poor housing stock that isn't worth fixing up. Places where crime is frustratingly high, where most of the housing that isn't vacant is renter-occupied, and where few are willing to make any investment.

Is it true to say that millennials and baby boomers have a taste for urban living? I think there is good evidence to support that theory, but it's clearly the case that they don't want to live just anywhere in the city. Nobody wants to live in a slum, and the type of homes that people want has to meet at least a certain threshold of quality.

In high-cost cities, like DC, that's not so hard to pull off. A $200,000 rowhouse rehab might be well worth the cost when you can turn around and sell the house for half a million or more. A similar job simply doesn't make any financial sense in a city like Cleveland. In fact, the Plain Dealer article above specifically says that developers aren't building in downtown Cleveland without government incentives because the rents are too low to support the kind of investment they need to make.

I think the more realistic assessment of suburbs and cities is that some suburbs will see a precipitous decline, some urban neighborhoods will experience a renaissance, and the degree to which each happens will be highly dependent on local market conditions. In other words, it will happen, but it won't be as clear cut as the magazine articles might lead you to believe.

Crossposted on Extraordinary Observations.

The connectivity standards reformed a key mistake in suburban development: building neighborhoods composed primarily of cul-de-sacs. In many neighborhoods, there's just one way in and out for any homeowner, to one or maybe two major arterial roads.

While this gives many homeowners the ability to live on a quiet street, it creates problems for everyone. With few entry and exit points, all the traffic gets focused on single intersections at the arterials, causing significant congestion. Kids can't walk or bike to school or even friends' houses when the only route involves going out to the busiest part of the neighborhood and along a wide road designed for high-speed traffic.

And it costs taxpayers. These neighborhoods are very expansive to plow for snow and time-consuming to navigate for ambulances and fire trucks. Subdivisions in Virginia had to wait days or weeks for plowing during the major snows last year because of the way the plows had to constantly backtrack, and people couldn't get out of their neighborhoods without any alternate routes.

Older suburban areas still primarily comprise single-family houses while providing a grid that spreads traffic around and offers many safe routes for non-motorized users. Areas like Columbia, Greenbelt and Reston win constant plaudits for designing suburban areas that lack these shortcomings, with paths to walk and bike that also build community.

The connectivity rules revolved around a simple premise: Once a developer builds a subdivision, VDOT (except in a few counties) then takes over responsibility for maintaining and plowing the roads. Therefore, they should be able to require certain standards to avoid developers pushing all the costs off onto the taxpayer. The General Assembly in 2007 authorized a change, and Virginia briefly jumped far ahead of most states with this progressive policy.

Last week, however, the Commonwealth Transportation Board, a policymaking body appointed by the Governor, voted to drop the old standards, especially the "Connectivity Index" which created a score based on the degree to which a street network was connected or isolated.

Instead, they set some rules for the number of connections out of a subdivision and onto main streets. A development of 200 homes needs 2 connections, though 1 can be a "stub end" road which connects to an as-yet-undeveloped area. Each additional 200 homes will only require one additional connection. It's better than nothing, but still means a new 200-house development can have just 1 way in and out.

Also, a subdivision can add a "collector road" which gives double credit if that road is part of a county transportation plan. So a developer could build 400 houses, all on cul-de-sacs off one major road through the center, and connect that road only at 2 points to major arterials. A typical suburban house can generate about 10 car trips per day, so there will be 4,000 turning movements onto and off of those 2 arterials every day. It's a recipe for major traffic that will harm every other resident who uses those roads.

While Virginia is weakening rules to create better road networks in new suburbs, it's neglecting established areas in favor of greenfield development and traffic-inducing megaprojects. Governor McDonnell and Transportation Secretary Sean Connaughton have made it clear they don't want to contribute to the Silver Line Phase II, even if the federal government, Fairfax, and Loudon all put in more money.

Meanwhile, but McDonnell and Connaughton are eagerly borrowing money to build large freeways like the damaging bypass around Charlottesville or to push an Outer Beltway. Much of the region's future growth will happen in Tysons Corner, but it's not getting transportation improvements it needs. And transit along the Route 1/Richmond Highway corridor is nowhere on the agenda.

Virginia could get far more bang for its precious transportation buck by focusing on local street connections, and most of all repairing crumbling roads and bridges. Instead, the McDonnell administration seems bent on repeating the mistakes of the 1950s: building unsustainable transportation networks at the periphery while letting a more central economic engine sputter. Then, it was center cities across America; now, it's Arlington, Alexandria and Tysons Corner which state officials are looking past instead of toward.

Tonight is an important meeting where Virginia residents can speak up about priorities. VDOT is having a public meeting to hear input on its 6-year priorities tonight, at the VDOT Northern Virginia District Office, 4975 Alliance Drive in Fairfax. Sadly, VDOT doesn't seem to think it's a priority to locate a meeting near Metro. An open house format starts at 6, and presentations by local officials at 6:30 followed by public testimony.

Bob Chase's Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, a group funded by greenfield developers in Virginia to lobby for roads that would feed suburban development on their land, has been pushing its members to attend and push for an Outer Beltway. Chase even argued, with an apparent straight face, that new highway lanes were more important than repairing crumbling bridges during a round of news stories last week concerning the dire condition of the nation's infrastructure.

It's important to get more residents who support good road connectivity, local street improvements, repairing crumbling infrastructure, pedestrian and bicycle projects, and local transit improvements to counter the sprawl lobbyists. If you can't attend, you can also send in written testimony at this Coalition for Smarter Growth page.

It's especially maddening because of the way school boundaries are drawn. The most overcrowded schools happen to also cover most of Gaithersburg's smart growth receiving areas, including its most walkable and transit-connected downtown and new urbanist districts.

For the most part it isn't the smart growth developments that are overcrowding the schools (they tend to attract smaller families), but because they're within the same school boundary as other neighborhoods that do produce a lot of kids, residential development is outlawed in precisely the areas where it's most appropriate.

And the really bad news is that the moratorium isn't effective at saving schools. Because Gaitheresburg is a geographically small jurisdiction within a larger, growing region, the school capacity test merely pushes growth out to other jurisdictions that have even less capacity, and less ability to plan.

In fact, the moratorium is doubly damaging because of the type of growth it is pushing away. By including these smart growth receiving zones in the moratorium, Gaithersburg is pushing out high-density urban developments that don't produce many students, but are very effective at reducing sprawl and growth in congestion.

The school capacity test makes sense in a vacuum, but not when all the issues of urban development are considered together. It's counterproductive, and should be changed.

The good news is that the Gaithersburg City Council, which does seem to sincerely want to do the right thing, realizes there's a problem and is considering corrective measures. According to a Patch article, the council is looking to add flexibility and leniency to the ordinance. Proposed modifications could allow the council to grant exceptions in certain circumstances, or could allow neighboring schools to share capacity if one is over its limit but another nearby school is not. These are good suggestions.

The city might also consider designating official smart growth receiving zones that are automatically exempted from the ordinance altogether. That would allow the right sort of growth to take place in the right places, while still controlling the sort of growth that is a problem for school capacity.

Gaithersburg deserves credit for acknowledging a difficult problem and moving to solve it. Other jurisdictions with similar ordinances should follow Gaithersburg's example and carefully consider whether or not their growth controls are accomplishing the right goals.

Currently, the financially strapped and poorly managed Prince George's Hospital Center (PGHC) in Cheverly is the only trauma center serving southern Maryland, including Prince George's, Calvert, Charles, and St. Mary's Counties.

The partnership, which involves the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) and Dimensions Healthcare, seeks to develop and implement a strategy that will bring a new state-of-the art regional medical center to central Prince George's County.

The new hospital will be supported by a comprehensive ambulatory care network, including the existing PGHC facility in Cheverly. An initial study by UMMS estimates that it will cost $600 million to implement this new strategy.

Barry Rascovar, a communications consultant and state legislative columnist, correctly notes in a recent Gazette op-ed that this partnership agreement is only a first step, albeit an important one, to realizing the goal of a new regional healthcare center. However, one assumption that he makes is rather alarming for those of us who value the ideas of TOD, environmental sustainability, urban revitalization and sprawl avoidance.

Rascovar posits that the success of the new facility "assumes 100 acres of land can be found in the central part of the county, preferably near the Capital Beltway and US Route 50." One hundred acres? Really?

It is unclear upon what authority Rascovar is basing his assumption. The 100-acre requirement does not appear in the partnership agreement, and I could not find any statement from UMMS, the state, or the county imposing such a requirement. Forcing the hospital to be located on such vast acreage would almost guarantee that it could not be placed near an existing Metro station in central Prince George's County.

Fortunately, there are countless examples of urban regional medical centers being built on substantially fewer than 100 acres, and near rapid transit stations. New York City's Columbia University Medical Center, for example, is located on 20 acres in uptown Manhattan, immediately adjacent to the 168th Street subway station. The George Washington University Hospital, located next to the Foggy Bottom Metro Station in northwest DC, is on substantially less than 20 acres. GW's entire downtown campus, including the hospital, occupies less than 45 acres.

Instead of trying to find 100 acres of nonexistent land next to the Beltway and US-50 for this new regional medical center, why not locate it at the Morgan Boulevard Metro station, on the Blue Line? Aside from Redskins games and other FedEx Field events, the station gets very little use. WMATA actually proposed closing the station on weekends in 2010 due to very low daily ridership.

As you can see from the above map, the Morgan Boulevard station sits virtually undeveloped on 56 acres, at the corner of two existing major arterial roads—Central Avenue (MD-214) and Garrett A. Morgan Boulevard / Ritchie Road. It is also within one mile of the Capital Beltway, and within central Prince George's County. As such, it meets all the major location criteria that state and local officials have articulated for the new regional hospital facility.

The site is fully accessible to cars and would require no expensive new roadways and interchanges, thus making it a more economical option. There is space enough to build hospital facilities more than twice the size of the Columbia University Medical Center.

Moreover, the hospital would be convenient to patients, visitors, and staff who don't own and/or can't afford automobiles. This is fully consistent with the mission of the partnership agreement to provide high-quality, affordable, and accessible healthcare to the region's residents.

Over time, the influx of skilled professionals coming daily to Morgan Boulevard will create increased demand for quality housing and retail amenities throughout the Central Avenue corridor, and particularly at the nearby Addison Road and Largo Town Center stations.

In short, locating the new Prince George's regional medical center near existing rapid transit at Morgan Boulevard will prove to be both an economic boon to the county and a better service to the region's residents. Who could argue with that?

The Wall Street Journal recounts one example of a crazy EAS subsidy: service from Hagerstown, Maryland to Baltimore. The $59 flight, which costs $191 in subsidy per passenger, lets people fly for 40 minutes instead of driving for 80 minutes.

The Journal quotes one visitor who liked the service because it let him avoid taking a bus, "and I'm not into buses," he said. That's not a great reason to subsidize a flight. And the airport director says he doubts losing the flight would really affect Hagerstown all that much.

Nevertheless, Senator Barbara Mikulski is fighting to keep the flight, saying it would hurt the economy and cost jobs. That may be true, but keeping it also creates a drain on the economy and costs jobs elsewhere. Republican Senators have fought for similar exemptions in the past, too.

But there's a larger problem. Democrats and Republicans alike generally operate on a belief that people should be able to live where they want yet face no consequences for their choices, with the exception of housing prices.

We subsidize rural air service, build expensive roads and power lines to accommodate more housing in far-flung areas, tax telecommunications to pay for rural broadband, and maintain a flat rate to mail a letter anywhere in the nation. When people live in areas with high risk of natural disaster, states step in to provide insurance if private companies are unwilling.

Land is cheaper in areas more distant from jobs because the land is more distant from jobs. That makes housing cheaper (and some government subsidies make it cheaper still). But infrastructure costs much more to provide, creating huge long-term burdens for states which find they can barely afford to keep up all the roads and other kinds of infrastructure they have, let alone build more.

That means government is mostly letting the market dictate the cost of housing, but not letting it dictate the cost of providing various services to that housing. This distorts the incentives.

When government officials look for cuts, like many families, they often focus most on the immediate real estate costs instead of the infrastructure impacts. The Department of Defense did that with BRAC, moving jobs to cheaper locations in Fort Meade and Fort Belvoir while imposing enormous infrastructure burdens on Maryland and Virginia. Congress and the administration might push for something similar for civilian workers, choosing locations where there's cheaper land instead of maximizing public infrastructure.

The Post Office is looking to close 3,700 post offices around the nation. Some are small rural ones that see very little usage, and could be replaced by a single clerk working out of the town's library or a store. That makes a lot of sense. But some are charging that the list targets more urban offices than suburban ones. They're closing one in downtown Silver Spring and leaving one a bit farther away, for instance. Yet urban residents are more likely to be walking or taking transit to post offices, and at least in my experience, lines are already longer in urban locations than their suburban counterparts.

The Post Office hasn't released details of their calculations, other than saying that they're evaluating each location based on its revenue, the number of hours workers spend there, and its distance from other post offices. If it's picking urban post offices to close just because they're geographically close to others, that's just downright foolish since urban areas have more people. If they're picking urban ones because land costs are higher, that ignores the infrastructure impacts of their choice by forcing more driving, saving money for the Post Office but dumping added costs onto localities.

With pressure from Congressional Republicans to find budget cuts, Democrats could point to the many programs that bias settlement patterns in ways that cost more in the long run and hurt our metropolitan areas. Instead, many instead are just digging in to preserve those programs. That's because voters in those areas don't want the government money to stop flowing to exurbs and rural areas.

That will only stop when voters in the more populous cities and inner suburbs insist on an end to the silly public policy that the price of land should be set by the market, but the price of most other services somehow has to be equal for everyone, no matter where they live and what the cost.