Category Archives: Uncategorized

Nightlife agglomerations & the corner bar

The Corner Bar, Divernon IL - CC image from Randy von Liski

The Corner Bar, Divernon IL - CC image from Randy von Liski

A few booze-related items I thought I’d comment on:

The Hill is Home takes note of ANC 6B‘s seemingly preferred method to avoid “Adams Morganization” – a moratorium on all new liquor licenses.  Nevermind that the trigger for this fear of Adams Morgan is Moby Dick House of Kebob – which makes me think those leveling this barb have neither visited Adams Morgan recently nor dined at Moby Dick.

Matt Yglesias notes that such efforts to control liquor licenses is fighting the natural tendencies urban economics, where things like to cluster.  That’s what cities are, after all – clusters and agglomerations of people, firms, skills, capital, etc.  Yglesias makes a great point about the appropriate scale of governance of these issues.  While small, local groups (such as an ANC) might be affected by a new bar or restaurant, the practice of giving them veto power over things like liquor licenses has some severe implications:

The bigger question here is about levels of governance. Insofar as you empower residents of my building in DC to make the decision, we will attempt to regulate the food service establishments on our block so as to minimize late-night noise. After all, the service sector jobs lost in the process aren’t the jobs that we do while as homeowners we bear the losses of reduced property values on the block. And to simply disempower us, as a block, would be arbitrary and unfair. But empowering each and every block leads to highly inefficient outcomes with the bulk of the pain felt by low-income people and there’s no obvious reason of justice to think this kind of hyper-local empowerment is more legitimate than taking a broader view would be.

Ryan Avent adds on, noting that these kinds of restrictions and inefficiencies lead to poor outcomes for consumers:

That’s largely because it’s very difficult to open new bars. And the result is a pernicious feedback loop. With too few bars around, most good bars are typically crowded. This crowdedness alienates neighbors, and it also has a selecting effect on the types of people who choose to go to bars — those interested in a loud, rowdy environment, who will often tend to be loud and rowdy. This alienates neighbors even more, leading to tighter restrictions still and exacerbating the problem.

Sadly, this is the kind of dynamic that’s very difficult to change. No city council will pass the let-one-thousand-bars-bloom act, and neighbors can legitimately complain of any individual liquor license approval that it may lead to some crowded, noisy nights. It’s interesting how often these multiple equilibrium situations turn up in urban economics. In general, they seem to cry out for institutional innovation.

Avent specifically laments DC’s lack of the ol’ neighborhood corner bar.  Having been born and raised in the boozy midwest, where the small, corner bar is an institution and people drink alcohol the way others drink water, I miss the corner bars, which aren’t as common as they could be in the District.

One of the problems is in the tools used to limit these licenses.  As Avent and Yglesias note, the kinds of tools bandied about by ANCs lead to an inefficient marketplace.  Instead of preventing Adams Morgan, something like a moratorium ends up ensuring a slippery slope towards “Adams Morganization” rather than preventing one.

On the broader issue of retail mix (ANC 6B’s stated reason to oppose new liquor licenses), the December issue of the Hill Rag had two contrasting pieces on the issue of retail on Barrack’s Row.  The first discusses potential options – none of which seem palatable for actually encouraging retail.  Regarding a moratorium, the impact is exactly what Avent describes:

One problem he cites is that it seems to be “too easy to become a bar or pub once you have the license.” So, even if there is a moratorium on new licenses, there is always the chance that existing licenses can morph from restaurants, which most neighborhoods don’t mind, to bars that operate later and attract different customers.

Another suggested tool is a zoning overlay district, but such a tool is a mismatch between the stated problem and solution.  Zoning is best used to regulate the physical form and the use of buildings, broadly defined.  Zoning can separate a retail use from a residential one, or an office use from light industry – but it is not an adept tool to parse out specific kinds of retail, or in differentiating between Moby Dick and Chateau Animeaux. The issue of bars and liquor licenses is more an issue of how those physical spaces are programmed.  Zoning is not a good tool to control these kinds of issues, and these types of regulations often backfire.

Refreshingly, another article in the issue (about parking, no less) from Sharon Bosworth of Barracks Row Main Street gets at the real reason 8th St SE is more favorable to bars and restaurants instead of retail:

By mid 2009, The Wander Group, consultants who make saving America’s historic corridors their specialty, reported back to BRMS: our commercial corridor, specified by none other than Pierre L’Enfant in 1791, is today uniquely suited to businesses requiring small square footage because of the antique proportions of our buildings which are well protected in the Capitol Hill Historic District. Restaurants require small square footage and restaurant owners would always be on the hunt for charming, historic sites. Wander Group predicted more restaurateurs would find us, and so they did. Our tiny buildings are difficult (but not impossible) for most retail footprints, yet they work perfectly for restaurants.

In addition to those challenges, there’s the broader issues facing retail – online competition, fighting against the economies of scale for big box and chain retailers, etc.

Instead, we have an industry that works well in an urban setting and wants to cluster here.  Here’s one vote in favor of more corner bars.

Skylines and Helipads

LA Helipads

One thing that always struck me about LA – whether from browsing Google Maps or from Die Hard – is that there seemed to be a lot of helicopter landing pads on top of high rise buildings.   Was this for movie filming opportunities, or perhaps thinking of helicopters as a means to bypass LA’s traffic?  Curbed LA (via planetizen) has the answer – codes:

Remember “LA Law”’s opening shot, the close-up of an ’80s-era downtown? If the city looks a lot better today, one thing that hasn’t changed about downtown is its flat skyline. The boxy look of the city’s buildings isn’t due to lack of architectural creativity, but the result of a Los Angeles Fire Department code requiring helicopter landing pads on all tall buildings.

Architects and other interested parties are in favor of stripping the requirement in order to give designers more freedom in crafting a dramatic skyline for the city.

The helipad rule, mandated on all buildings 75 feet or higher, was born out of statewide fire codes that emerged in the 1970s, according to Stormes. Long Beach has the same rule, as do parts of Orange County. Los Angeles County also has a similar code. San Diego used to have the helipad rule, but dropped it, to the delight of architects in that city. (“Architecturally, it’s definitely enhanced the skyline,” says San Diego-based architect Joseph Martinez, of having the rule changed. His firm Martinez + Cutri Corporation Architects has put up five high-rises since the requirement was dropped.)

Fire safety experts believes LAFD’s history with the helipad is tied to its long-standing Air Operation division. Since 1962, the LAFD has maintained an aerial division; today, it has six helicopters, a far bigger fleet than most other cities. If the division is constantly busy—rescuing hikers from canyons, or fighting wildfires–the helicopters are rarely used to fight high-rise fires.

But the instances have been dramatic: In 1988, a fire tore through the 62-story First Interstate Bank Building (now the AON Building) downtown. Pilots in LAFD helicopters could see “a man waving frantically from a 50th-floor window,” according to a Los Angeles Times report, and were able to direct firefighters inside the tower to him (the man later died). Helicopters also delivered firefighters to the roof, and evacuated wounded people.

Laments about architectural creativity sound similar to complaints about DC’s height limit.

Part 2 continues here.

A matter of language – defining congestion and sprawl

LA the405

CC - by Atwater Village Newbie

Ahh, the power of creeping bias in language (hat tip to Jarrett Walker):

Everyone at the City should strive to make the transportation systems operate as efficiently as possible. However, we must be careful how we use efficient because that word is frequently confused with the word faster. Typically, efficiency issues are raised when dealing with motor vehicles operating at slow speeds. The assumption is that if changes were made that increase the speeds of the motor vehicles, then efficiency rises. However, this assumption is highly debatable. For example, high motor vehicle speeds lead to urban sprawl, motor vehicle dependence, and high resource use (land, metal, rubber, etc) which reduces efficiency. Motor vehicles burn the least fuel at about 30 miles per hour; speeds above this result in inefficiencies. In urban areas, accelerating and decelerating from stopped conditions to high speeds results in inefficiencies when compared to slow and steady speeds. The there also are efficiency debates about people’s travel time and other issues as well. Therefore, be careful how you use the word efficient at the City. If you really mean faster then say faster. Do not assume that faster is necessarily more efficient. Similarly, if you mean slower, then say slower.

Of course, biased language can be very useful when advocating for a certain point of view.  The real challenge is in sifting through biased language that poses as an objective statement.

Along those lines, Streetsblog notes how various congestion metrics, posing as an unbiased measure of the inadequacy of our transportation infrastructure, are actually misleading in terms of the impacts on our commutes and our land use choices.  They look at a recent report from CEOs for Cities:

The key flaw is a measurement called the Travel Time Index. That’s the ratio of average travel times at peak hours to the average time if roads were freely flowing. In other words, the TTI measures how fast a given trip goes; it doesn’t measure whether that trip is long or short to begin with.

Relying on the TTI suggests that more sprawl and more highways solve congestion, when in fact it just makes commutes longer. Instead, suggests CEOs for Cities, more compact development is often the more effective — and more affordable — solution.

Take the Chicago and Charlotte metro areas. Chicagoland has the second worst TTI in the country, after Los Angeles. Charlotte is about average. But in fact, Chicago-area drivers spend more than 15 minutes less traveling each day, because the average trip is 5.5 miles shorter than in Charlotte. Charlotte only looks better because on average, its drivers travel closer to the hypothetical free-flowing speed.

The Streetsblog Network chimes in, as well:

The problem was, the analysis inevitably concluded — without fail! — that expanding a road would reduce air pollution.

That’s because the formula only accounted for short-term air quality impacts. Any given road project was likely to reduce congestion in the short-term and provide an immediate reduction in vehicle emissions. But the formula ignored long-term impacts of highway expansion — sprawl, longer commutes — which run directly counter to the cause of air quality.

Low impact development near the Navy Yard

Near the soon to be opened and fantastic Park at the Yards, there’s a lot of new low-impact development infrastructure.  These bioretention areas should be a great example of the new kind of both urban and environmentally sustainable infrastructure can be.

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These are not ordinary tree boxes.  Instead of draining into a standard storm sewer, these gutters drain into the tree boxes, where stormwater then naturally drains into the ground instead of into a storm sewer.  This reduces the amount of water entering the combined storm and sanitary sewer, and thus can help reduce the number of combined sewer overflow (CSO) events.  Since the combined sewer system mixes storm water and regular sewage, substantial rainfall will force the system to overflow into area rivers, dumping raw sewage mixed with stormwater directly into the Anacostia and Potomac.

From the street side:

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Storm water will slowly absorb into the ground, aided by the various plants soils that can capture pollutants though the process of biofiltration.  Look at other rain gardens and tree boxes under construction – note the drainage layers of soil and gravel to be added.

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In this completed rain garden/tree box, note the grade of the soil in the box, below the grade of the curb:

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Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington

Parking, lots and lots of parking!

Parking Meter

There’s been a horde of great parking posts in the last few days:

First, Jarrett Walker documents San Francisco’s new adventure in market pricing for on-street spaces:

The goal is to ensure that there’s always a space available, so that people stop endlessly driving in circles looking for parking.  People will be able to check online to find out the current parking cost in the place they intend to visit.  Parking garages will have a better chance of undercutting on-street rates, so that those garages can fill.  If you’ve ever driven in San Francisco, you know that it’s hard to decide to use a garage because, well, if you just drive around the block once more, you might get lucky.  Under SF Park, if you just drive around the block once more, you’ll probably find a space, but it will cost more than a garage, especially if you’ll be there for a while.  So drivers are more likely to fill up the garages.

Jarrett illuminates some of the problems with truly dynamic pricing – ideally, you’d want to have a price set for a given location and time so that a driver knows what they’ll likely have to pay prior to beginning their trip.  This is similar to all sorts of other goods, where the prices are fixed for consumers, even if the actual prices fluctuate more often.

Jarrett also notes the potential for San Francisco to predict and target prices based on the data these meters will collect.  The city has collected lots of useful parking data, the question is now about using that data and infrastructure effectively.  Walker notes:

In a recent post on congestion, I observed that current road-pricing policy requires us to save money, a renewable resource, by expending time, the least renewable resource of all.  If you’ve ever circled a block looking for parking, while missing or being late for something that’s important to you, you know that the same absurdity is true of our on-street parking policy.  SF Park deserves close watching.  And if it doesn’t work well, ask yourself:  “Is it because it doesn’t make sense to charging for parking based on demand, or is it because they were too timid to do it completely?”  The answer will almost certainly be the latter.   The policy itself relies only on free-market principles that already govern many parts of our economies, because they work.

Indeed, market forces do work.  Similarly, Tyler Cowen raised the subject in this weekend’s New York Times. Cowen focused on all aspects of Donald Shoup’s excellent book The High Cost of Free Parking. In addition to market pricing for parking spaces in order to ensure efficient use, Cowen also addresses parking development requirements:

If developers were allowed to face directly the high land costs of providing so much parking, the number of spaces would be a result of a careful economic calculation rather than a matter of satisfying a legal requirement. Parking would be scarcer, and more likely to have a price — or a higher one than it does now — and people would be more careful about when and where they drove.

The subsidies are largely invisible to drivers who park their cars — and thus free or cheap parking spaces feel like natural outcomes of the market, or perhaps even an entitlement. Yet the law is allocating this land rather than letting market prices adjudicate whether we need more parking, and whether that parking should be free. We end up overusing land for cars — and overusing cars too. You don’t have to hate sprawl, or automobiles, to want to stop subsidizing that way of life.

Market Urbanism chimes in specifically about  minimum parking requirements, taking note of New York City’s efforts to change their laws (including references to Streetsblog’s coverage of the issue earlier this year). Many more also chime in, including Cowen’s personal blog – with posts expounding on his NYT article, Arnold Kling’s response, and Cowen’s response to the response – all worth reading.  As usual, Ryan Avent also responds.

In a similar vein to the parking discussion, Ryan Avent also offered this paper up for review, drawing the conclusion that congestion pricing works best in places that have good transit networks – i.e. where there is an effective alternative to driving.  The abstract notes that the two congestion pricing successes had solid transit systems to rely on.  Ryan notes that congestion pricing can be used for improving transit, but it might be politically necessary to front the costs of those transit improvements prior to implementing the congestion charge.

The limited polling prior to the death of New York’s congestion pricing plan also suggested this – dedication of revenues to transit improvements was crucial for garnering public support.  New York, of course, has the advantage of a transit system as an alternative means of transport.  If a city without such infrastructure were to implement such a plan, might some borrowing against future revenues (similar to Los Angeles’ 30/10 plan) be in order?

Frequency Mapping

Last week, Jarrett Walker had a great post illuminating the basic reasons for ‘frequency mapping,’ where a transit agency maps out transit routes that meet some threshold for frequent service (such as buses every 10 minutes, or 15 minutes, etc).

There are many degrees of frequency and span, but in general, most transit agencies’ service can be sorted into three categories of usefulness based on these variables:

  • The Frequent Network runs often enough that you don’t have to plan your trip around a timetable.  That typically means every 15 minutes or better all day, but it needs to be more frequent than that where aiming to serve relatively short trips — as in the case of downtown shuttles for example.  If you aren’t willing to plan your life around a bus schedule, you are interested only in the Frequent Network.
  • Infrequent All-day services are the rest of the service that runs all day.  This network often relies on timed connections.
  • Peak-only service exists only during the peak period.  It mostly takes the form of long commuter-express routes that add lots of complexity to a system map but represent very specialized services for limited markets.

These three categories are useful in such completely different ways that I would argue they are at least as fundamental as the three basic categories of urban road — freeway, arterial, and local — that virtually all street maps clearly distinguish.

We have some great examples of this in DC.  The entirety of the Circulator network is, in essence, a Frequent Network.  The Circulator aims for 10 minute headways, the routes are fairly simple and easy to understand, and thus people can look at the map and understand where the bus is and where it’s going.

WMATA’s bus map for DC, however, doesn’t make this distinction.  While there is a extra color designation for Metro Extra service (meeting the Frequent Network threshold), the other color distinctions merely show which jurisdiction the bus route operates in.

DC Bus Map WMATA crop

The distinction between which services operate only in DC (in red) and those which cross into Maryland (green) isn’t really important for a rider.  Furthermore, the overwhelming use of red for the DC routes makes it hard to follow those routes across the map, seeing where they turn and what streets they travel down.

DC Bus Map WMATA legend

Blue services with dashed lines, however, is indicative of MetroExtra (for some reason, a separate brand from Metro Express), and at least makes a effort at differentiation based on frequency – but that tends to get lost in the visual complexity of the overall map.

There’s a common phenomenon of ‘rail bias,’ (hat tip to The Overhead Wire) where riders will opt for riding a train rather than a bus.  However, rail systems tend to have several key attributes that make them more attractive – the investment in the infrastructure both enables and requires a high frequency of service, and the route structure is almost always simple enough to convey in an easily-understood diagram or map.

The lesson from Jarrett’s post is that simple mapping based on frequency can help address some of the perceived shortcomings of buses.  Even without addressing route structure, this is a relatively simple improvement in communication that helps riders a great deal.

Observations from San Francisco

As a nice respite to DC’s heat, I was able to spend the last week in California – including several days in San Francisco.  Some thoughts and observations from the trip:

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Hills and Grids: Gridded streets have plenty of benefits, to be sure – but the downside is that they do not react to topography.  San Francisco provides the extreme example.  The city has even preserved the right of way where topography makes streets impossible.  My own adventure to the top of Telegraph Hill included ascending the Greenwich Street stairs.

Surely, relaxing the grid would offer opportunities for a more understanding development pattern.  Nevertheless, the spaces along the staircases are certainly interesting, as are some of the extremely steep streets.  Such a pattern would not work in a colder climate that has to deal with ice and snow on a regular basis, however – lest you end up like these poor folks in Portland.

800px-FilbertStreetAndGrantAvenueLookingTowardsCoitTowerAndGarfieldElementarySchool

Trucks and Buses not advised.  Um, yeah.

Trolleybuses: As a direct response to the city’s grade issues, the electric-powered trolley buses are a great solution.  The overhead wires for the buses can be a little obtrusive – but they are not nearly as much of a visual blight as the broader patchwork of utility wires strung from house to house and pole to pole.

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Zero emissions, but the wires (like rails) do act as a visual cue for a newcomer to the city (like myself) to find a bus line when I need one.  That’s a plus.

Signage: Actual signs telling you where you are or what transit line to take, however, are sorely lacking – particularly for Muni and BART.

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We can do better than this – the BART platform at Montgomery station.  The boarding signs for various train lengths is nice, but not all that intuitive – but actually determining which station you’re at when the train arrives is another challenge entirely.  Similarly, on the Muni lines that turn into streetcar routes in the outer neighborhoods, signage at the larger stations is almost non-existent – certainly not useful for a first time rider.

That said – Muni’s route symbology is incredibly easy to understand.  Each line is assigned a name (corresponding to the main street it travels on), a letter (as a single symbol) and a color.  It’s something I think Metro could learn from as its route structure becomes more and more complex.

Wayfinding signage around town, however, was much better.  Kiosks offered maps, highlighted transit routes, and in general provided very useful information – even potential ferry routes, for example:

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My favorite ‘signs’, however, where the ones doing double duty – the public toilets:

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Granted, the actual map here is faded and hard to read, but the presence of a self-cleaning public toilet in a popular tourist area like this is priceless.  Thanks to nature’s urges, I never had a chance to actually use one – but the process seems quite self-explanatory.  If not, there are simple instructions:

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This particular toilet is from JCDecaux, the same outdoor advertising firm that operates Paris’ Velib bikesharing system.

Streetcars: The F Market line’s heritage streetcars are both interesting to see on the street and also an effective part of the transit network.  They’re also quite popular:

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One note about these old PCC cars – when you’re standing (as I was while taking this picture), it’s extremely difficult to see out the small windows of these old rail cars to determine where you are – especially with Muni’s aforementioned lack of quickly visible signage.  The PCC car wiki page talks about “standee windows,” but these weren’t of much help to me.

From the outside, the diverse colors of the various liveries from around the world Muni opts to use are fantastic.

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The liveries include this lovely pastel DC Transit paint job.

More (perhaps) to come later.

Streetcar smackdown watch

Over the last few days, the Washington Post featured a number of streetcar pieces.  First, Lisa Rein laid out the basis for the debate on overhead wires.  The Post’s editorial board then chastised all the players to find a realistic and reasonable solution.

Today’s print edition features two pieces delving deeper into how streetcars fit into the mold of historic preservation, urbanism, and urban untidiness.  The first comes from Adam Irish, a member of the DC Preservation League and a volunteer at the DC Historic Preservation Office.  Irish starts by marking the difference between those who seek to preserve urbanism and those that seek to preserve DC’s monumentality above all else:

This kerfuffle is about more than just ugly wires, however. It gets to the heart of an old and familiar conflict over how Washingtonians and Americans at large envision the city. In its coverage, The Post has referred to opponents of wires as “preservationists,” but I think “D.C. monumentalists” better describes their stance. For the monumentalist, Washington, D.C., the city comes second to Washington, D.C., the sanitized and photogenic capital.

The monumentalist vision of Washington has choked nearly all urban life from the Mall and its environs. It has fashioned large sections of our city into pleasing vistas for tourists but has given the rest of us lifeless wastelands (if you’ve ever stepped foot outside at L’Enfant Plaza, you know what I’m talking about).

Urban life and urban form isn’t always pretty.  In fact, the sometimes-messy complexity is part of what makes cities such interesting places to live in.  Spiro Kostof described it as “energized crowding,” a kind of messiness that’s inherent to creativity and day to day life.  This isn’t to discredit the formalism of Washington’s City Beautiful aesthetic – merely asserting that such monumentalism shouldn’t trump all other facets of urbanism.

Philip Kennicott expands on those themes in his piece, also running in Sunday’s print edition:

If you listen to preservationists, the most ardent of whom oppose any overhead wires in the city, you might think Washington was loaded with great vistas. And it is, but not the awe-inspiring views they’re thinking about, which turn out to be fairly few and often not that impressive. Even down our wide avenues, sightlines tend to terminate in small monuments that are best seen up close.

The great views down the streets of Washington are just coming into their full glory as the leaves of spring return. These aren’t wide-open vistas with monumental buildings in the far distance; they are tunnel-like views of shaded streets, overarched by majestic elms, oaks and maples. These shady tubes of green, which are rare in newer and suburban neighborhoods, are the truly distinctive beauty of Washington. The only reasonable concern about running overhead wires should be the protection of trees that create these glorious canopies.

Nobody in this debate would argue that overhead wires look good, but too often the debate is framed in either/or terms – either the wires are ugly or they are not.  Kennicott addresses this false dichotomy as well:

Arguments against overhead wires rest on two essential assumptions: that the city is filled with streets that have historically significant and aesthetically impressive views; and that wires and poles would be ugly intrusions on these grand vistas. The former is questionable, the latter a matter of opinion.

The point about wires obstructing views that don’t always exist is a good one.  As noted, DC’s canopy of street trees is a legacy worth protecting, yet these same trees (on, say, East Capitol street) make for a wonderful streetscape – but at the cost of forgoing views of the Capitol Dome beyond a few blocks.

East Capitol dome view

Google street view of Capitol Dome (it's in there somewhere) from East Capitol Street, near 4th Street.

This isn’t to say that wires wouldn’t obstruct this view – but the key point is that the streetcar plan does not propose to obstruct these types of views with wires at all.  Kennicott hammers on this point, noting that the current plans do not include major obstructions, both by avoiding major view corridors and considering the fact that wire ‘obstruction’ is relatively minor.  Like the trees that line many of these grand avenues, the positive benefits of the streetcars vastly outweigh the negative costs.

The takeaway message from all of these articles should be that a reasonable compromise – a hybrid of wires and battery power to protect key viewsheds – is both realistic and palatable to most Washingtonians.

Snow day

We got the illest weatherman in the biz on storm watch… – dilated peoples

What remains to be seen is if DC can have as much fun as Madison, WI did in their recent snowstorm:

The giant snowball

Snowball fight, Braveheart style: (you’ll have to excuse the foul mouths of the Badgers…)

More videos from Madison from their alt weekly, the Isthmus.