Monthly Archives: July 2009

Burn on, big river. Burn on.

Cleveland’s most infamous image is a tremendously powerful one.  Some might say that it alone helped pushed through the Clean Water Act.   The Cuyahoga River, flanked with many industrial uses for Cleveland’s manufacturing plants, was so polluted it caught fire.

Cuyahoga River Fire. Image from the EPA.

Cuyahoga River Fire. Image from the EPA.

The image alone was a great reminder of everything that’s wrong with the Rust Belt, but it’s also been seared into memory by Randy Newman’s song Burn On (forever ingrained in my mind from the opening credits of Major League).

Cleveland city of light city of magic
Cleveland city of light you’re calling me
Cleveland, even now I can remember
‘Cause the Cuyahoga River
Goes smokin’ through my dreams

Burn on, big river, burn on
Burn on, big river, burn on
Now the Lord can make you tumble
And the Lord can make you turn
And the Lord can make you overflow
But the Lord can’t make you burn

The mythology around the fire almost became more important than the fire itself.  The Cuyahoga symbolized rampant pollution, the decline of industrial America, and neglect for the cities that it called home.

All of these make it remarkable that the Cuyahoga is now the symbol of a completely new struggle of urban pollution.  Aaron Renn (The Urbanophile) notes how the last acts of compliance with the Clean Water Act will hamstring aging cities.

The first is a great New York Times piece on the rebirth of the Cuyahoga River. You may recall that this river famously caught on fire 40 years ago. Today, it is a totally different story.

The first time Gene Roberts fell into the Cuyahoga River, he worried he might die. The year was 1963, and the river was still an open sewer for industrial waste. Walking home, Mr. Roberts smelled so bad that his friends ran to stay upwind of him. Recently, Mr. Roberts returned to the river carrying his fly-fishing rod. In 20 minutes, he caught six smallmouth bass. “It’s a miracle,” said Mr. Roberts, 58. “The river has come back to life.”
….
On Monday, people who have worked for years to clean the Cuyahoga will celebrate at its banks. “It’s just remarkable,” said Steve Tuckerman, the Cuyahoga River specialist for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. “I never thought I would see in my lifetime, let alone in my career, such an amazing comeback of a river.”

America has cleaned up its waters greatly since the Clean Water Act. Still, the turnaround of the Cuyahoga is amazing. Once one of America’s worst polluted industrial rivers, now you can fish there. Contrast that with, say, the Indiana Harbor Canal, which remains unsafe according to every measure the EPA tracks.

Anytime you can go from the burning river pictured above to catching six smallmouth bass in a matter of minutes, you’ve made significant progress.

But this article holds a cautionary note, not just for Cleveland, but for almost every older American city. Despite remarkable progress in creating a river you can fish in, Cleveland is still facing $5 billion in future costs to fully comply with the Clean Water Act. That’s not a mis-print. It really is $5 billion.

Cleveland is far from alone. Indianapolis faces $3.5 billion in costs. Cincinnati in excess of $3 billion. And so it goes. In city after city the largest public works project by far is some sort of sewer remediation project, often involiving so-called “deep tunnels”, to eliminate combined sewer overflows.

This is not constrained to the Midwest, either.  DC has serious combined sewer overflow problems as well.  Pretty much every city of a certain age has to deal with these problems.  They’re serious issues that need to be dealt with, but we quickly run into a problem of unintended consequences.

Renn continues:

This may clean up the water to some extent but will have offsetting environmental harms that could be worse. First, many suburban areas already have separate sanitary sewers and effective stormwater management. Thus they may not have to incur any significant compliance cost in the future. With central cities like Indianapolis forced into tripling or more their already high rates, suburban districts like Carmel, Fishers, and Noblesville look even more attractive financially. Thus, sprawl is encouraged. This leads to more automobile usage and air pollution which is actually a greater danger to human health than CSO overflows, to say nothing of CO2 emissions.

I am a supporter of clean water. I believe in it. I think the Clean Water Act was a good thing and the Cuyahoga River cleanup illustrates why. But the last ten percent is the hardest to get. Looking at the cost/benefit from a purely local point of view, is there any way Cleveland will get $5 billion worth of improved public health, economic, or recreational benefits out of this project? It is extremely unlikely. And what is the opportunity cost? Huge. Think of what you could do with $5 billion. Cleveland could solve its abandoned home problem, renew a huge chunk of its infrastructure, build more transit, invest it back in lower taxes and fees, and much more – all things that could make a huge difference in that city.

Chris Bradford also chimes in on the subject:

Cleveland can’t go anywhere, but its residents can…

Renn suggests that the federal government assume the cost of replacing ancient sewer systems.  That might be the only solution.  The federal government has no incentive to weigh costs and benefits accurately when it can simply issue a mandate.  And the moral hazard risk is smaller than one might think:  the city’s main “crime” is being old enough to need a new sewer system.

Guarding against strategic behavior by a city is tricky anyway since, again, its residents can simply move when things get bad.  Rather than stick central cities with crippling legacy costs, it makes more sense for the federal government to issue reasonable regulations and pick up the tab for unforeseen costs.

Several of Renn’s commenters make great points about sensible regulations cities could enact, as well as ideas they should pursue – such as encouraging green roofs, adding greenery to parks and public space, encouraging rain gardens and bioswales – each of which can be enacted at a scale suitable to a city – rather than a $5 billion deathblow.  The case for Federal help is awfully strong – particularly when noting (as Chris Bradford does) the propensity of the feds for totally ignoring the cost-benefit implications of their regulations.

This isn’t exactly something new.   Unintended consequences are unfortunately all too common.  Discovering Urbanism noted several weeks ago the potential for stormwater regulations to undermine a holistic understanding of what makes for a sustainable community.  All too often, these well-intentioned regulations (seriously, who’s against clean water?) end up leading to some bad decisions because they focus their interests far too narrowly.  Likewise, the remedies to the problems can cripple existing cities with great infill development potential, pushing more development to the suburbs.

Putting these issues into the larger context is a must.  And given the large costs involved, Federal assistance is likely the only realistic option.  That’s not to absolve cities of their responsibility – small scale projects and efforts to reduce runoff and improve infrastructure are vital.  The Feds need partners in these enterprises, not just people grabbing the cash.

Smorgasboard

Lots of open windows in my Firefox browser, so here’s a link dump:

Beeee-autiful. Dr. Gridlock reports that lots of Metro stations will be getting a nice cleaning over the next couple of months.  He also links to a Post story about the process of cleaning a station from March of this year.  The following stations will be spruced up:

Major Enhancements: Dunn Loring, East Falls Church, Eisenhower Avenue, Forest Glen, Medical Center, Potomac Avenue, Twinbrook, Wheaton, White Flint, U Street, Vienna, West Falls Church.

Mini Enhancements: Ballston, Bethesda, Brookland, Court House, Foggy Bottom, Franconia-Springfield, Friendship Heights, Rockville, Shady Grove, Smithsonian, Virginia Square, Woodley Park.

The enhancements really make a huge difference.  The stations seem lighter and more welcoming.

Freakonomics had a nice post with some links to a few old studies noting how closing roads sometimes improves traffic flow.   This particular case is from Vancouver, but this is precisely the logic behind the pedestrianization of Times Square in New York.  In certain situations, this kind of action can be a win-win-win – you improve traffic flow by simplifying the turning movements and signals, you increase pedestrian space and safety, and you maintain the urban design that makes Times Square an actual square.

The New York Times paints a portrait of the infamous Randal O’Toole.  It’s somewhat sympathetic, but does a decent job of letting O’Toole’s constant obfuscation collapse under its own weight.

The Wash Cycle notes of upcoming efforts to add murals to retaining walls and underpasses along the Met Branch trail.  The Union Station rail corridor – both connecting to the Metropolitan Branch towards Silver Spring and the Northeast Corridor towards Baltimore – is a vital rail link, but also an undeniable barrier in the area.  Public art along some of those underpasses can be a great way to make those links more attractive to cyclists and pedestrians.

With the Metropolitan Branch trail, it’s vital to ensure as many vertical circulation access points as possible – make it easy to shift levels between the trail and the street grid.

Nevertheless, this kind of mural is a great example of an easy public art project that can be a huge asset to the area.

Streetsblog’s DC folks try to document the hierarchy of decision making on the transportation bill. Making a law is always like making sausage, but this particular sausage seems far more complicated than most.  The House folks are fighting a two-front war against both the Administration and the Senate.  That’s a tough road.

Electrification

High Voltage - by oskay on Flickr

High Voltage - by oskay on Flickr

The fact that most rail transit systems operate via electric power is usually listed as a net benefit in terms of energy efficiency.  Not only is transit hailed as an inherently more efficient mode (more persons per vehicle, steel wheels on steel rails – as opposed to rubber tires on asphalt, etc), the fact that it’s using electricity is another environmental benefit over gas guzzling cars.  Yonah Freemark says not so fast, however.

Eurostar’s example is a case in point: transportation systems relying on electricity can be dirty or clean, all depending on where the power is coming from. This point is unfortunately lost on most alternative transportation activists, who cite efficiency to support the claimed ecological advantages of using transit instead of automobiles. Yet efficiency means little when the electricity used is being produced by carbon-generating plants.

Now this is undoubtedly true – where the electricity comes from matters.  However, that’s the beauty of electricity and transit systems that use it.  Electricity can be produced in any number of ways, some more sustainable than others.  The key difference, however, is one of scope.  Electricity generation and greenhouse gas emissions are a whole different piece of the pie, dealing with every aspect of energy policy.

Light rail running on electricity may seem clean, because the local point emissions — in the city — are nonexistent, especially as compared to diesel-spewing buses. But if the necessary power is being generated at coal-based plants, the global effect is negative, making some transit systems less environmentally sensitive in terms of per passenger emissions than many automobiles.

Yonah’s referencing the fact that on a pure BTU per passenger basis, rail isn’t that much more efficient than a Prius.  What this measure misses, however, is the secondary effects of transit.  Congestion reduction alone saves tons of fuel from idling traffic, not to mention the savings of switching trips or eliminating them all together.  Additionally, the changes in land use that rail transit enables allows more efficient transportation – walking trips, shorter trips due to neighborhood retail (and improved accessibility), and so on.

Where electrically powered rail transit vehicles have an advantage is in their applicability.  The infrastructure (in most urban rail transit systems) is in place.  The technology is proven.  The same can’t be said of electric cars.  They’ll face the same kind of issues with the cleanliness of the electricity they use, whether they’re plug-in hybrids or pure electric vehicles – and they won’t solve congestion issues or address the new residential demand from cars plugging in while parked in the garage.

Still, these are nitpicking Yonah’s general argument and final conclusion:

The point, then, is that to suggest that transit is ecologically sensitive is more accurate when the source of that transportation’s electricity is carbon-free or at least carbon-reduced. Proponents of transportation alternatives must also be strong advocates of the remaking of our electricity production system.

Transit alone isn’t the silver bullet.  It can only be one part of the puzzle.   Though I think it’s a larger piece of the puzzle than this post would imply, we must remember how that piece fits into the whole energy system.

You can check out any time you like…

A nice hotel. By Erica_Marshall on Flickr

A nice hotel. By Erica_Marshall on Flickr

…but you can never leave!

Our long hotel saga is over. Maybe.  Multiple reports (from DCist, DCmud, Housing Complex, and others) confirm that the DC Council passed a bill to fund the Convention Center hotel.  The initial plan involved a massive use of public funds, understandably drawing criticism from many council members.  The original bill would have pulled money from other stalled projects already promised District funds, effectively axing them before they have a chance to get started.  This bill puts more of the onus on the developer.

From the Business Journal:

D.C. is poised to provide $206 million in public financing for a 1,167-room Marriott Marquis across from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center and $2 million for a related training program, after the D.C. Council passed legislation for the financing Tuesday.

Members of the council say they believe the funding, which will cost the city $272 million in all to finance the debt, will jumpstart the project, which has languished on the market.

City Paper has juicy quotes, too:

At a recent hearing, Evans invoked images of crumbling bureaucracy and decrepit school buildings to describe the value of big money projects to the city.

“I want you to imagine a District of Columbia without a Verizon Center and a convention center,” he stated. “It would probably look like Detroit.”

Plus, Shaw locals came out and said they really wanted some nice restaurants and stuff in their neighborhood.

So there you have it.

Hyperbole for the win!  Having spent a good of time in Detroit, let’s just say DC has a lot more going for it than Motor City.  It’s also worth noting that Detroit has had its fair share of shiny projects – including convention centers, sports facilities, parks, and the like.   These kinds of projects are a piece of a puzzle, but they don’t solve it.

Not too long ago, Next American City had a great article on the Convention Center space race.  Attached hotels like this are one other way in which centers compete against each other in a cutthroat business.

That said, this hotel isn’t necessarily a bad idea in concept.  Next American City notes:

Ultimately, convention centers are an example of the tail wagging the dog: If cities had pleasant, vibrant, appealing neighborhoods — of the sort that create their own economies and draw visitors — they wouldn’t need contrived assembly spaces in the first place. Most convention centers are removed from their communities by virtue of becoming developments that are about drawing people into the city, not about being integrated in the city culture and fabric. “In the end,” says Sanders, “what you’re getting is a box, however nicely done, that is competing in a marketplace crowded with other boxes.”

Economics aside, DC’s convention center’s design at least stands the chance to integrate itself into the community.  Given the vacant lot the hotel stands to occupy, active uses on that site might help draw foot traffic up 7th and 9th streets and offer new retail opportunities in those areas.  DC already draws tourists by the boatload and has plenty of pleasant and vibrant neighborhoods, but losing out on convention business to National Harbor just sticks in too many craws.

The economic deck may be stacked against these kinds of facilities, but there aren’t many options for each individual city.  There’s no choice to but to step up and play – it’s all about making sure you’re playing smart and don’t get taken to the cleaners.

Streetcar vs. bus debate hinges on mobility vs. accessibility

Portland Streetcar. Photo by K_Gradinger.

Portland Streetcar. Photo by K_Gradinger.

Advocates and policymakers constantly debate the virtues of different transit modes. Should we build streetcars or BRT? Commuter rail or heavy rail? Each involves technical and cost tradeoffs, but transit advocates often don’t agree. This debate stems from a difference in how people think about transportation. Is the goal to maximize mobility, or accessibility?

Professionals’ precise definitions vary, but in general, mobility refers to the distance or area a person can cover in a period of time. Accessibility is a more qualitative measure about what you can access, not how much ground you can cover. If a given transportation system allows you to easily access your job, a grocery store, and other local retail services within 20-25 minutes of travel time, that site would have good accessibility, even if that 20-25 minute window of time doesn’t allow you to travel very far. Mobility, on the other hand, is transportation for transportation’s sake. It deals only with distances and speeds, and thus, by extension, area covered.

Choosing which concept to focus on affects how land use fits into the debate. Mobility is a pure measure of distance covered, whereas accessibility is more concerned with the ‘what’ than the ‘how far.’ What’s on the land matters a great deal. Increasing mobility usually also increase accessibility: the more area you can cover in a given amount of time, the more uses you can reach. But we can also increase accessibility without actually increasing mobility. In the United States, we have a legacy of designing transportation policy on mobility alone, while ignoring accessibility.

Jarrett Walker observed,

Streetcars that replace bus lines are not a mobility improvement. If you replace a bus with a streetcar on the same route, nobody will be able to get anywhere any faster than they could before. This makes streetcars quite different from most of the other transit investments being discussed today. …

Where a streetcar is faster or more reliable than the bus route it replaced, this is because other improvements were made at the same time — improvements that could just as well have been made for the bus route. These improvements may have been politically packaged as part of the streetcar project, but they were logically independent, so their benefits are not really benefits of the streetcar as compared to the bus.

New streetcars that replace buses do not change mobility. In theory, a streetcar traveling in mixed traffic will have the same mobility as a bus. Jarrett and other bloggers then grapple with mobility versus accessibility and what to measure. Cap’n Transit asks, “Why do we care about mobility?“

Interestingly, Jarrett uses Walk Score to count the places, meaning that his mobility takes density into account. That makes it more valuable than simply measuring how many route-miles you have available to you. There was some back-and-forth in the comments about whether streetcars could increase mobility by increasing density relative to a similar investment in buses, but I don’t think there was a solid conclusion.

Jarrett’s response acknowledges the intrinsic value of accessibility, but also notes the limitations of that concept:

The argument is that the number of places you can get to doesn’t matter so much. What matters is how far you need to go to do the things you need to do. In a denser and better designed city, your need for mobility should decline because more of your life’s needs are closer to you. That’s unquestionably true, and I suspect anyone who has chosen an urban life knows that in their bones. …

One puzzling thing about the access-not-mobility argument is that it suggests that much of what we travel for is generic and interchangeable. Many things are. I insist on living within 300m of a grocery store, dry cleaner, and several other services because I need them all the time and don’t want those trips to generate much movement. But I go to a gym that’s about 1500m away because I really like it, and don’t like the ones that are closer. And every city worth living in is packed with unique businesses and activities and venues that must draw from the whole city. A lot of us want more of that uniqueness, less interchangability, in our cities. How is that possible if citizens aren’t insisting on the freedom to go where they want?

This cuts to the core of the tension between mobility and accessibility. In one sense, increasing mobility naturally increases access simply by opening up easy travel to new areas. However, accessibility captures a more complete picture by asking what the travel is for, not just to accommodate it. Streetcar systems and other rail based transit tend to have higher ridership than similar bus systems. This is known as rail bias, the tendency of passengers to ride trains more often than projected based solely on the mobility improvements of a transit line. Might this rail bias actually represent an accessibility bias?

Metro’s history shows us some of the tension between these two concepts. The Orange line includes areas focused on accessibility between Rosslyn and Ballston, while the outer reaches of the line travel longer distances at higher speeds, prioritizing mobility. Of course, a subway presents an inherent increase in mobility over a bus or streetcar anyway, thanks to the grade separation of the subway tunnels. Still, the hybrid nature of Metro’s system shows the different conceptions of mobility and accessibility.

In Zachary Schrag’s The Great Society Subway, he concludes with a quote from a now retired WMATA official involved with the planning of Metro. Before choosing technologies, routes, and levels of transit service, you have to ask “what kind of city do you want?” One of the key arguments in favor of streetcars is their ability to attract transit oriented development in ways that buses cannot. If we accept Jarrett Walker’s assertion that streetcars do not offer a mobility improvement over buses, what about an accessibility improvement? Transportation investments can be powerful forces for attracting and shaping development, and thus improving accessibility by shaping the city.

In determining what kind of city we want, we also have to recognize that different modes of transportation offer different improvements to both mobility and accessibility. Transit system can accomplish both goals, but design choices inherently emphasize mobility over accessibility or vice versa. Every fantasy transit system makes value judgments about mobility versus accessibility. When those systems are the work of one individual, they represent the preferences of that individual’s vision for the city. How should the Washington region balance mobility and accessibility in future transit and transportation planning?

Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington.

You can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!

Is Dr. Gridlock actually Dr. Strangelove?  He’s got a post up documenting the hearings going on right now on Capitol Hill, and not the ones dealing with potential Supreme Court justices.  The whole thing is full of colorful Cold War language:

The term entered the common language during the Cold War when Eugene Burdick wrote an arms-race thriller called “Fail-Safe.” The scenario seems dated now: To the stunned surprise of controllers, U.S. nuclear bombers move past the point at which they’re supposed to stop. But it’s still a ripper, because of the well-known principle the 1962 novel illustrated: If something can go wrong, eventually it will. Nothing built by humans is “Fail-Safe.”

The NTSB has already made their hypothesis known – that a glitch in the ATO system allowed the collision, even while operating in automatic mode.   What seems to have happened was a breakdown in the system where there was no redundancy – the failure of one system made it possible for the entire system to fail.

Dr. Gridlock continues with the Cold War imagery:

Metro’s operations control center isn’t as impressive as the Strategic Air Command’s headquarters, with its towering maps and flashing lights, but it’s basically the same function: Redundant protections are supposed to make the train system fail-safe. But ultimately, humans are making sure the equipment is going where it’s supposed to go.

On June 22, a fail-safe system failed to prevent the fatal crash of two Metrorail trains on Washington’s Red Line. And the National Transportation Safety Board told us on Monday that we have no system in place to ensure that this won’t happen again.

On a complete side note, I’ve always envisioned the operations center for Metro or any other large transit system to be like NORAD from WarGames or other Cold War movies.

(NORAD as depicted in WarGames – from PC Museum)

It’s the kind of place where all the super secret information is displayed.  You can’t let outsiders in there because they’ll see the big board!

Given Metro’s stark architecture and generous use of concrete, it’s not hard to envision a Kubrick-esque control room, complete with all the black and white imagery.

Joking aside, the substantive points from Dr. Gridlock’s post are that trains will be operating on manual for the foreseeable future.  The NTSB’s recommendation is the installation of a redundant train control system.  Such an installation would need to be specially designed for Metro, and obviously won’t be coming online in any short timeframe.

He also hits on one vitally important point – Metro is still the safest way to travel in DC.  It’s important not to forget that.

Cities Getting the Shaft

I’ve got a couple of articles I’ve been meaning to write about for a couple of days.

First, the New York Times has a nice piece on how cities are losing out on their fair share of the stimulus money.

“If we’re trying to recover the nation’s economy, we should be focusing where the economy is, which is in these large areas,” said Robert Puentes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, which advocates more targeted spending. “But states take this peanut-butter approach, taking the dollars and spreading them around very thinly, rather than taking the dollars and concentrating them where the most complex transportation problems are.”

The 100 largest metropolitan areas also contribute three-quarters of the nation’s economic activity, and one consequence of that is monumental traffic jams. A study of congestion in urban areas released Wednesday by the Texas Transportation Institute found that traffic jams in 2007 cost urban Americans 2.8 billion gallons of wasted gas and 4.2 billion hours of lost time.

Ryan Avent also chimes in:

It’s absolutely crucial that the new transportation bill do more to focus spending at the metropolitan level. And indeed, this is one of the goals of the Oberstar transportation bill. As that is unlikely to get anywhere in this legislative session, it would be nice if in filling the highway trust fund’s budget gap the Congress tacked on a reform giving states an incentive to use federal money where the people are — for the sake of short and long term economic performance.

I don’t have anything to add other than to emphasize the importance of keeping our cities humming along.  They are the economic engine.  I will again emphasize my thought that we can kill a couple birds with one stone here – given the simultaneous needs to increase transportation funding and reform the way we distribute those funds, as well as the stimulative effects such spending will have.

To Toll or not to Toll, that is the question.

Chris Bradford offers a nice summary of a great back and forth between Yonah Freemark and Ryan Avent on the need and desirability for tolling congested roadways.  Chris summarizes the dispute well, documenting Ryan’s desire to reduce congestion and Yonah’s concern about such charges being regressive.  However, Chris raises several key points:

Second, tolls encourage a number of shifts.  Yes, shifts to transit, which seems to be Yonah’s main concern, at least when the transit system is underdeveloped.  But they encourage other shifts, too.  Shifts to other routes and shifts to other times.   Commuters are the least likely to be nudged to other routes or times.  The most sensitive are those who use congested roads for local trips.  Take the soccer mom who hops in the SUV and enters a congested highway to get to the grocery store a mile down the road.  She imposes enormous costs on others.  Tolls make her internalize those costs and nudge her to use the local streets.

This is a crucial element that’s often overlooked.  Performance pricing, whether for congestion or parking or transit usage, will encourage mode shifts, temporal shifts, and spatial shifts.  It’s vitally important to consider all three potential shifts and plan for them accordingly.

Green Spaces in DC

My friend and colleague Mike Lydon forwarded me a great page from the National Building Museum’s Green Building exhibit.  The site has nice little videos on several DC neighborhoods, emphasizing their green aspects.  The videos include profiles of Dupont Circle, U Street, Columbia Heights, and (soon) Barracks Row.

Don’t Mess with Mother Nature

Freight Train vs. Tornado. I’ve got my money on the tornado.

Congress apparently doesn’t want to mess with the way we’re messing with Mother Nature until September.

Political capital is obviously a finite resource for the politicians on the Hill – but let’s consider the potential complimentary policies:

  • The economy continues to drag, numerous economists are calling for more stimulus;
  • Even without that stimulus,  we’ve got a mountain of unfunded transportation needs – to say nothing of expansions and improvements;
  • The highway trust fund will run out of funds soon, while Congress is just looking to ‘patch’ it and hold off real reform for another 18 months;

and it seems like we’ve got a number of complimentary ideas to pursue.  For what it’s worth, Jim Oberstar isn’t throwing in the towel just yet on the House side, but it remains to be seen if all the moving parts (House, Senate, Administration) can get on the same page.  Given the recent focus on healthcare, it doesn’t seem all that likely.

Trees! Steve Offut has a post up at GGW about improving DC’s tree canopy cover.  Steve proposes to establish a kind of cap and trade system to encourage a better tree canopy in the city:

A portfolio standard is the other side of the same coin as cap and trade, except instead of trying to reduce or limit something, we are trying to increase it. A minimum requirement is set and each entity has to meet or exceed that requirement, either directly or by purchasing enough “credits.” A common use of this concept is a Renewable Portfolio Standard, in which a state or other entity requires that a certain percentage of electricity generated will come from renewable sources.

What makes this concept attractive is that it creates an economic incentive to go above and beyond, because when one does, the extra environmental benefits can be sold to someone else in the market.

This is an interesting concept, but I’ve got some serious reservations about the specifics of such a policy, especially if tied to regulation.  Such a proposal seems ripe for some major unintended consequences, especially coming the day after Daniel Narin’s post warning of narrowly tailored regulations having far reaching unintended consequences.

The simplest way to apply the portfolio standard to the DC urban tree canopy is to require each property to meet the same minimum requirement and ratchet it up slowly over time. Let’s assume that the current canopy is still 21% as it was in 1997. The portfolio requirement could be set at 20% to start. (It’s a good idea to make the initial standard relatively easy to accomplish in order to get the system operating and keep prices low so there is less likelihood of backlash). If my property is 6000 square feet, then I would be required to have 1200 square feet of tree canopy — either actual canopy or “credits” from someone else. Suppose my lot is 50% covered with trees — 3000 square feet. This is good, because I have an extra 1800 square feet of canopy that I can sell.

There are a number of practical concerns.  How do you account for time?  You can’t plant trees that have a ‘full’ canopy right away – that takes time to grow.  What about trees that are planted on one property, but their canopy spreads over another?  What happens if you’ve met the standard thanks to a big old tree that suddenly is destroyed thanks to disease, a storm, or some other unforeseen circumstance?

Philosophically, Ryan Avent points out the bias such a uniform standard would have in favor of lower density development.  This is the exact kind of unintended consequence we want to avoid.  Urban trees are a tremendous asset, but there’s got to be a better way to encourage them – while still recognizing that a more holistic understanding of urban areas requires balancing of various interests – and considering the complex tradeoffs where a dense urban environment doesn’t need the same kind of tree canopy coverage as a residential area to be ‘green.’

Instead, why not offer incentives for private property owners to plant trees – have DC continue to plant trees in public areas, etc.

Miscellanea

Wonder Woman wants streetcars.  Awesome.

Unintended Consequences. Discovering Urbanism (cross posted on GGW) notes how well-intentioned regulations on reducing stormwater runoff can have some seriously counter-productive consequences.

Sometimes genuinely smart and well-intentioned people err by focusing intently on the piece of the puzzle they have been commissioned to solve, thereby missing the larger system within which their problem is embedded. It’s the classic widen-the-freeway-to-reduce-congestion scenario. It may solve the technical problem at hand, but it exacerbates the Real Problem.

It’s Gold, Jerry!  Gold! The Transport Politic notes an interesting conversation about upgrading part of the current Metra Electric line to better integrate with the CTA’s rail facilities.  This line would then be dubbed the “Gold Line,” a not-so-subtle nod to future events in the area,  given the line’s proximity to a number of the planned Olympic facilities for Chicago’s 2016 bid.  Regardless of Olympic facilities, this seems like a great idea – quite frankly, something that should have been done a long time ago.

The Gold Line plan would attempt to solve some of those problems by converting parts of the Metra Electric line, which runs from Millenium Station downtown south along the waterfront, to CTA operation at a cost of $160 million. This would require new faregates, 26 more train cars, and several track and station upgrades. The project would also include the creation of a new station at 35th Street in Bronzeville. While the service would continue to be operated by Metra, customers would ride the trains as if they were CTA-owned, and they would be able to transfer without extra cost to CTA buses and rapid transit.

Most importantly for people living along the lakefront, trains would now run at maximum 10-minute frequencies from 6 am to midnight, ensuring that the system is reliable at most hours. Trains on the Electric Line currently run once an hour during off-peak times, making it hardly an option for people who need to get around the city during the day. The same service options are offered on most of the Metra network.

Those familiar with the Metra Electric line know that it’s already got a more rapid-transit like structure through the south side, with stations spaced much closer together.  This is the perfect case to show what integration of the rider experience across modes could do.  My one question is why limit it to just a portion of the Metra Electric line?  Why not pursue this kind of upgrade to the entirety of the line?

STEEM Powered Streetcars? Alstom has yet another entry into the catenary-free streetcar operations.  Such technology would be great for DC, given DC’s ban on overhead wires.  Still, it’s not easy to be an early adopter of these kinds of things.

If implemented, Alstom’s new STEEM system*, on the other hand, will require less catenary wire and no underground construction; it simply requires the upgrading of existing tram vehicles. Trains will be equipped with large batteries connected to their motors that will be charged each time the vehicle brakes, much like the way a Toyota Prius hybrid refills its battery. In addition, the trams will be able to benefit from charging during 20-second station dwell times, where trains will benefit from a catenary; theoretically, the system wouldn’t require the use of the catenary between stations.

There’s also one big sticking point:

Alstom’s technology is not yet advanced yet to work on fast-moving American light rail systems, which typically have station stops up to a mile apart, likely too far for its battery capacity to handle. Whether the system can handle the incredible wastefulness of air conditioning — something not present in Paris — is a different question. But it could be particularly useful for streetcar networks, such as the one planned in Washington, D.C., where a congressional ban on overhead wires is still in effect — something that could likely be circumvented if the wires were only present at stations. In cities like Portland where light rail stations downtown are just blocks apart, the technology could mean the ability to get rid of overhead wires in central sections of the network.

Yeah, such a system better be able to handle A/C.  I like to keep my transit usage and sauna visits separate.

Parking Shmarking. Richard Layman was in attendance at a recent meeting on keeping 7th St SE near the newly-reopened Eastern Market closed during the weekends.  This is a great idea, only opposed by a few merchants who overvalue the parking spaces in the area – and don’t have a great understanding of the value of a space versus the turnover of that space.   Those parking spaces don’t do your business any good if someone’s car is just sitting in it all day.  That’s not going to get you more customers.

For Sale.  CHEAP. If you can find it.

Political FAIL. The answer is staring us in the face.

BeyondDC  is considering a new career editing articles for clarity and accuracy.

Canopies

(Image by Kyle Walton on Flickr)

Most of Metro’s station entrances these days have canopies to protect patrons and escalators from the elements.  It wasn’t meant to be this way, as Zach Schrag documents in his book The Great Society Subway.  For numerous reasons, however, we have them now.  With that in mind, DC Metrocentric has a recent post up on the elegance of the canopies at Columbia Heights – how they blend in to the surrounding area, fit well with the nearby architecture, etc.

I can’t help but comment on these canopies – because I really dislike the Columbia Heights (and Petworth, for that matter) canopies.   Unlike the other canopies in the system, these ones may look fine from the outside, but they violate a number of the basic design precepts of the entire system.  There’s something to be said for individualized stations and station entrances, but for better or for worse that’s not part of the Metro system.  Instead, Metro is marked by remarkable continuity between stations with common design elements and common materials.

One of those core principles is to maximize volume. This isn’t just for grandeur, either – the voluminous train rooms in Metro’s underground stations provide clear sight lines for patrons to see the mezzanines and easily visualize the circulation routes to get in and out of the stations.  Similarly, Metro designers explicitly wanted to stay away from associations with older, enclosed systems in Philly, Boston, Chicago and New York – that meant fare gates are unobtrusive, unlike their caged cousins in New York.

The Columbia Heights canopies violate a couple of these points.  Though they enclose a lot of space, they sure don’t feel voluminous.  Because the canopies sit rather low on the station’s parapet, the gap between the outside and the escalator shaft feels enclosed.  It doesn’t help that the gap is enclosed with a combination of public art and metal bars.  It feels more like a cage than a canopy.

(Image by dbking on Flickr)

Where older metro entrances have their ‘doors’ and gates used to close the system at the bottom of their escalator wells, these stations have them at the top of the escalators as part of the canopy.  This necessitates the caged feeling, since it functionally is a cage.  Undoubtedly, this is done to eliminate homeless people sleeping at the bottom of the escalators but the effect is detrimental to the overall design.

Finally, these canopies don’t identify which part of the structure is the entrance.  This isn’t a huge critique, because the canopy-less stations have the same problem.  However, given the fact that the canopies do exist, the more common design does a much better job of identifying where to enter the system simply by design.

(Image by dbking on Flickr)

The soaring canopy fits Metro’s design much better.  It provides the necessary shelter for both people and equipment, maintains the openness of the station entrances, clearly indicates where one enters the station, and harmonizes well with the rest of the system’s architecture.   The ‘scooping’ of the canopy clearly indicates which end is the entrance.  The curvature of the canopy, combined with the individual panes of glass evokes a clear parallel to the original coffered vault station design.

For freestanding station entrances, this is the better option.

However, they’re not a cure all.  The U Street Metro’s 13th Street entrance is a great example.

Here, the canopy ‘opens’ to a wall.  Not so good.  Perhaps a better option would have been to integrate the station entrance into the structure itself, as is done quite successfully in several downtown stations.  This also would have been a viable option for the Columbia Heights stations and might be a more functional way to achieve the individuality for each station that DC Metrocentric wants.   Not every entrance should be a grand plaza.  It works in some spaces (like Eastern Market, where the plaza is already there), but in others it can be detrimental.  Potomac Ave is a great example – there’s plenty of open space in the adjacent square that could be far better utilized.  The plaza around the station itself is underutilized.  If the land could be developed and the station accessed via a ‘retail’ storefront kind of entrance, the station area itself would gain density and uses, as well as improvements to the urban deisgn of the area.