Tag Archives: Links

More links: iPhones and airports

CC image from caribb

Following up on yesterday’s link post regarding airports, air freight, supply chains, and manufacturing jobs: two posts from Ryan Avent at The Economist.

First, on industrial agglomerations, the impacts on jobs, and how we got to this point:

Unquestionably, Asian governments aggressively pursued manufacturing and subsidised it heavily, both directly and through advantageous exchange rates. As the story points out, Asia has capitalised on other advantages, as well. Cheap labour is one. More flexible land-use, labour, and environmental rules are another; China can erect a massive operation in no time at all, staffed with compliant labour and with little concern about the impact of the factory on watersheds, air quality, and traffic. Skill supply seems to matter as well. China is churning out engineers with basic technical competence (but less, it appears, than a bachelor’s degree) by the hundreds of thousands. It would be incorrect to point to any one of these characteristics as the driving force behind the global shift. Rather, these are self-reinforcing factors within a global economy that has multiple stable equilibria. After some level of Asian development and integration, it became more attractive for manufacturers to locate there as more manufacturers located there.

Clearly, this manufacturing agglomeration is an impressive part of the global trade network.  But it’s not the only agglomeration involved in the creation of the iPhone – the design, software, and other high-value elements of the product come from Silicon Valley.  More Avent:

What actually seems to have occurred is a bit more interesting. Supply chains have indeed continued fracturing, but distance has reasserted itself in two important ways. First, in the advanced world, agglomerations of the talented individuals who design these products have become increasingly important. And secondly, information technology, which allows for better coordination of production processes, has once again made proximity a relevant concern in manufacturing. It’s possible to coordinate a supply chain that’s draped across an archpelago of Asian economies. To maximise the return to this chain, however, it’s still necessary to keep plants reasonably close together. A plant located in America is too distant from Asia to make much economic sense; transit time to the rest of the supply chain in Asia is sufficiently long, in most cases, as to erode the gains to just-in-time production, or unexpected changes in designs or orders. Changing transportation and communication technologies facilitated a shift in manufacturing to Asia, then reinforced its presence there.

“Agglomerations of the talented individuals” are cities, more or less. At least, they are cities at the labor market level. As to employment, the different parts of the manufacture of the iPhone involve different value propositions, and require different levels of labor to scale up production:

Apple, it’s worth pointing out, continues to capture most of the value added in its products. The most valuable aspects of an iPhone, for instance, are its initial design and engineering, which are done in America. Now, one problem with this dynamic is that as one scales up production of Apple products, there are vastly different employment needs across the supply chain. So, it doesn’t take lots more designers and programmers to sell 50m iPhones than it does to sell 10m. You have roughly the same number of brains involved, and much more profit per brain. On the manufacturing side, by contrast, employment soars as scale grows. So as the iPhone becomes more popular, you get huge returns to the ideas produced in Cupertino, and small returns but hundreds of thousands of jobs in China.

Second, Avent looks at trade and the value of time.  Distance still matters, and time is precious, as seen in the increasing usage of air cargo for shipping high value goods. Avent concludes:

The lesson, I think, is simply that there is a limit to which one can or should want to raise manufacturing employment. Having lots of well-paid manufacturing workers isn’t the way one grows rich; replacing lots of those workers with massively productivity enhancing machines is.

This is more or less the same conclusion that Greg Lindsay notes in Aerotropolis – that this agglomeration, while impressive, still isn’t the true engine of creativity and value.  Nevertheless, each is an example of agglomeration shaping urban form and urban economies.

 

Links: iPhones and airports

CC image from Yutaka Tsutano

Rail to Dulles: MWAA Board member Robert Brown suggests eliminating the Dulles Airport rail station and replacing it with a people mover to connect to the Route 28 station as a means to save costs.  Yonah Freemark finds the concept intriguing, offering some operational considerations that could make it work.

However, the notion that building an entirely new landside people mover system will save money is ludicrous (IAD’s AeroTrain just clocked in at $1.4 billion). Likewise, while the concept would be an interesting solution to connecting an existing airport to an existing rail link (such as between BWI and the BWI rail station), the fact that the rail line has not yet built is a perfect opportunity to ensure that the airport itself is ‘on the way,’ to borrow Jarrett Walker’s terminology.

Freemark notes that one benefit of this concept would be to reduce travel time to the core and/or Tysons, but several other concepts considered by Metro would probably provide more utility to larger areas of service.

Meanwhile, Dulles offers a connection to the world via it’s ‘accidental aerotropolis.’

iPhones and agglomerations:  When I last touched on the Aerotropolis, I noted Aaron Renn’s observation that the book isn’t so much about airports and cities as it is about globalization.  One such element is the extensive description of the extraordinary agglomeration of manufacturing infrastructure and firms in Shenzhen.

This weekend’s New York Times contains a lengthy article on why the iPhone and other similar devices are not manufactured in the United States.  In his blog, Paul Krugman sums up that article in one word: agglomeration. Some key snippets from the article:

But by 2004, Apple had largely turned to foreign manufacturing. Guiding that decision was Apple’s operations expert, Timothy D. Cook, who replaced Mr. Jobs as chief executive last August, six weeks before Mr. Jobs’s death. Most other American electronics companies had already gone abroad, and Apple, which at the time was struggling, felt it had to grasp every advantage.

In part, Asia was attractive because the semiskilled workers there were cheaper. But that wasn’t driving Apple. For technology companies, the cost of labor is minimal compared with the expense of buying parts and managing supply chains that bring together components and services from hundreds of companies.

For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said.

Since we’re talking about iPhones and not cheap Christmas ornaments, the availability of materials and the skill of the labor is more important than the cost of that labor – all benefits of the large agglomeration of technology firms in Shenzhen.

For years, cellphone makers had avoided using glass because it required precision in cutting and grinding that was extremely difficult to achieve. Apple had already selected an American company, Corning Inc., to manufacture large panes of strengthened glass. But figuring out how to cut those panes into millions of iPhone screens required finding an empty cutting plant, hundreds of pieces of glass to use in experiments and an army of midlevel engineers. It would cost a fortune simply to prepare.

Then a bid for the work arrived from a Chinese factory.

When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. “This is in case you give us the contract,” the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.

The Chinese plant got the job.

“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”

More thoughts on iPhones, agglomerations, and jobs from Matt Yglesias and Tyler Cowen.

Likewise, an interesting set of charts looking at market share for various computing platforms – starting from more traditional personal computers, but eventually adding in smartphones and tablets.  While smartphones and tablets aren’t yet substitutes for a personal computer, they’re getting closer.

Station Domination: via Tyler Cowen, an interesting post from Matt Glassman on the cost of Metro station advertising and the linkages between national politics and the local transit system.

In need of a good decongestant:  Housing Complex takes a look at slight optimism from COG staffers on de-congestion pricing, and makes note of a lengthy Washingtonian piece on the subject.

Links: end of the pipe

Time to dump some tabs that I’ve accumulated in the browser over the past few weeks:

You can never go down the drain:

This week’s City Paper cover story is a short piece on DC Water’s Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Facility (arrange your own tour here!).  The accompanying photographs show the infrastructural landscape in all of its glory.

For an incredibly in-depth tour of the facility (without the smell), check out this mammoth post from September, showing the entire process in excruciating detail.  Mammoth notes the fundamental process of cleaning the water mimics the existing natural processes that rivers use, albeit concentrated and accelerated.

The two basic tracks are to separate liquids and solids, while making the liquids more liquid and the solids more solid at each step in the process.  The end result of one process is water back into the Potomac (cleaner than the river it enters); and the other result is ‘concentrated biosolid’, also known as the concentrated crap of Washington, DC.

The biosolid is sold as fertilizer for agricultural applications for non-human consumption. Waste nothing.  For an in-depth tour of how such a facility works, I can’t recommend the mammoth piece enough.

On the water delivery side (as opposed to the sewage disposal side), Atlantic Cities has a piece on why your water bill must go up to help finance the replacement of the infrastructure we’ve taken for granted. Both the delivery and disposal networks are in need of investment.

JD Land has a set of photos from the new Yards Park-Diamond Teague bridge, including one of the historic pump house that sends sewage from the District south to Blue Plains. Another shot shows the bridge’s informational signage from DC Water, documenting the agency’s own long-term control plan for management of DC’s combined sewer system.

It’s all about jobs:

The remarkable takeaway from the Blue Plains phototours is the role of natural processes in the system (minimizing pumping in favor of gravity, for example) to maximize efficiency via infrastructure.  Thus, it was curious to see the Washington Post writing about the expansion data centers in old manufacturing towns to serve as the physical location of cloud computing servers, but noting that such infrastructure doesn’t provide many long term jobs.

Granted, jobs are the narrative of the Great Recession, but using the data center seems like an odd place to focus.  Using a similar infrastructure investment like Blue Plains as an example, a better comparison would be to the economic activity enabled by clean water and sewage disposal – just as the data centers should look at the indirect effects of internet connectivity and activity, not direct employment via the infrastructure that sustains the internet.

Mammoth has a few thoughts on IT infrastructure, aesthetics, and the return of light industry to mixed use urban environments.

Here comes the sun:

Some solar powered notes – the cost of PV cells is coming down.  Some thoughts on the implications for the climate (Joe Romm), for the economy (Paul Krugman) and for DC (Lydia DePillis).

Is transportation too expensive?

David Levinson proffers a few hypotheses as to why transportation investments are so expensive.  Many are interesting, (thin markets and insufficient economies of scale trigger thoughts of rolling stock protectionism; project scoping and organizational structure are similarly compelling) though I’d take issue with a few of them.

One is #5, discussing incorrect scope.  David mentions big buses serving few passengers, but as Jarret Walker notes, the real cost is in operations; the real cost is the driver.

The idea of standards run amok is intriguing, but I think a more relevant point is asking if standards make sense.

Nitpicks aside, the idea is a great one – this is a conversation that needs to happen.

Innovative re-use along the low road

Screencap from Bundled, Buried, and Behind Closed Doors

Assorted (and tangentially related) links:

1. Stephen Smith also digs into Eric Colbert (see my previous post here):

I’m not sure I agree with her parenthetical about DC’s “historic fabric” being “so strong already” – in fact, I’m hard-pressed to think of a newer city on the Northeast Corridor than Washington – but she’s definitely right that that’s what Washingtonians, even the not-so-native ones, think of their city. Of-right development – that is, building within the zoning code in a way that does not trigger a subjective review – is on the wane everywhere in America, but in DC it’s even rarer, and therefore personal relationships like the ones Eric Colbert has (“an ANC 2B commissioner, who had worked with Colbert on previous projects, introduced him with affection”) are even more important than usual when compared to good design.

A few points. A) I’m not sure why Stephen associates the strength of a city’s fabric with age – DC’s fabric has the advantage of being largely intact.  B) Stephen more explicitly states the same thesis – that Colbert’s architecture is ‘boring,’ and boring is, by association, bad design.  I would disagree that fabric is boring – on the contrary, fabric is essential. C) It’s a mistake to conflate the countable and objective measures of development (square footage, height, density, etc) with more subjective measures like ‘good design.’  Stephen conflates two key elements here – development by right, and design by right. The regulatory structures and processes that govern both are quite different.

2. Cities are all about context. Atlantic Cities discusses a review of San Francisco by John King, from iconic buildings to more mundane (boring?) elements of the urban fabric.

3. Mammoth links to another Atlantic piece, discussing “Low Road” buildings and their importance in urban economics, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

The startup lore says that many companies were founded in garages, attics, and warehouses. Once word got around, companies started copying the formula. They stuck stylized cube farms into faux warehouses and figured that would work. The coolness of these operations would help them look cool and retain employees. Keep scaling that idea up and you get Apple’s ultrahip mega headquarters, which is part spaceship and part Apple Store.

But as Stewart Brand argued in his pathbreaking essay, “‘Nobody Cares What You Do in There’: The Low Road,” it’s not hip buildings that foster creativity but crappy ones.

“Low Road buildings are low-visibility, low-rent, no-style, high-turnover,” Brand wrote. “Most of the world’s work is done in Low Road buildings, and even in rich societies the most inventive creativity, especially youthful creativity, will be found in Low Road buildings taking full advantage of the license to try things.”

Being on the low road isn’t exactly the same as being a part of the fabric – the price point and the prominence don’t always correlate – but the concept is somewhat similar.  These spaces are easy to adapt and reuse. Not just easy, but cheap.

4. Where Stewart Brand discusses the space of innovation, Ryan Avent has another (follow-up) piece on the geography of innovation:

I think that the authors have basically gotten the state of innovation right: we are approaching a critical point at which impressive progress in information technology becomes explosive progress. And I think that the authors are right that the extent to which we are able to take advantage of these technological developments will hinge on how successful America’s tinkerers are at experimenting with new business models and turning them into new businesses. But I also think that there is a critical geographic component to that process of experimentation and entrepreneurship and, as I wrote in my book, I think we are systematically constraining the operation of that component.

High housing costs constitute a substantial regulatory tax burden on residence in many high productivity areas. These are the places where the tinkerers are having their ongoing innovative conversation. But if the tinkerers are driven away, the conversation loses depth and breadth, and we lose many of the combinations that might go on to be the next big company — the next big employer. That, to me, is a very worrying idea.

5. When considering both the versatility of space as well as the institutional and infrastructural momentum (as well as touching on the importance of information technology), Mammoth also links to a short documentary of the infrastructure of the internet: Bundled, Buried, and Behind Closed Doors:

 

Generational regulation and institutions

Two somewhat linked thoughts from the feed reader in the last week.

Neil Flanagan, on the generational shifts amongst environmentalists from the literal to the abstract:

My (undeveloped) conjecture is: the older generation sees environmental problems from an intuitive (fishkills & pesticide) perspective, whereas the later generations see the issue in terms of abstractions (%CO2 over 10,000 years). I think I can say that ecology is based on systems thinking. “Ecosystem,” after all, precisely refers to an interrelated organization. That complex activity can only be understood through abstractions that make consequences more intuitively threatening.

But the older generation seems to approach an environmental issue as perceptible, in that anyone can readily see the links and the loops and understand their consequences. You cut down a tree, and this directly harms the environment and limits one’s access to it. A particular, standing in for the general, is irrevocably lost. Building where there once was a grassy patch is paving over paradise, and a building that brings any cars to the neighborhood is causing pollution.

The primary enemies of the 1960s were intensely graphic horrors such as the burning Cuyahoga, broken bird eggs, and the disfiguration wrought by thalidomide. The problems were so obvious, you could see them with your eyes, and that his how we noticed in the first place. For the generation brought up during an era of global warming, the agents are more nefarious. How does one picture a rise of water over decades? How do you draw the cancer cluster caused by dioxins in an aquifer? You have to rely on the numbers.

This kind of paradigm shift obviously impacts the way we regulate our environments.  We, as a society, structure our response (often via regulation) to how we’ve defined the problem.

Alon Levy on highways and cost control, and the role of a particular moment of time in shaping our regulations and institutions:

Second, it reminds us that many of the rules that are currently associated with government dysfunction were passed with opposite intent and effect back in the Progressive Era. Lowest-bid contracts were an effort to stamp out corruption; civil service exams were an effort to reduce patronage; teacher tenure was meant to make teachers politically independent; the initiative process was intended to give people more control over government. All of those efforts succeeded at the time, and took decades of social learning among the corrupt and incompetent to get around. Although programs built under these rules often turned out badly, such as the Interstate network, with its severe cost and schedule overruns, this was not due to the contractor collusion seen in the 1910s or today.

Combine the effects of unintended consequences, changing paradigms and a shifting understanding of the issues at hand, institutional momentum, and you can end up with the kind of slog we have.

There are questions of rigidity and enforceability to ensure that regulations have ‘teeth,’ but adaptability is also key.  Defining the scope of the regulation is also a critical element.  Frankly, aside from constant review and reevaluation, I’m not sure there’s any way to future proof these kinds of institutions.

Global transit logistics

Matt Johnson at GGW has a short post with a wonderful video documenting the logistical process of delivering a new dual-mode Bombardier locomotive to NJ Transit after manufacture in Germany.  The video raises several interesting issues:

Logistics – the ALP-46, being built for North American rails, is too heavy to use existing rails for transport from the manufacturing plant in Kassel to the port in Hamburg.  As a result, a coordinated ballet of precise movements is needed to get the locomotive to the dock.

The coordination is fascinating to watch.  I’m reminded of some of mammoth’s recent posts on the global logistics supply chain, ranging from the world’s new largest vessel, the shape of infrastructure without architects as exemplified by a rail and container yard in Illinois, and commentary on the concept of the aerotropolis (breaking down the BLDGBLOG interview with Aerotropolis author Greg Lindsay).

The precision involved in moving cargo like this is always fascinating.  The connection/competition between seaports and airports (obviously, you’re not going to fly a locomotive like this for delivery) is also interesting, particularly in the vein of the role of just-in-time delivery and potential disruptions of supply chains from Japan’s recent earthquake/tsunami.

Manufacturing – The fact that such a journey for an American commuter railroad locomotive is even necessary is puzzling.  The vehicle is manufactured in Germany by Bombardier, a Canadian company.  It reminds me of the somewhat perverse consequences of Buy America provisions for US Transit systems, as well as the general lack of investment in transit.

Market Urbanism has commented on the impacts of these types of regulations, citing frequent commenter Alon Levy:

What happened in the 1970s was that the rolling stock market shrank, leaving American transit agencies with just a few US vendors. St. Louis and Pullman were fully protected by Buy American. As such, New York City Transit had no choice but to buy trains from them; the trains turned out to be defective, leading to breach of contract lawsuits that bankrupted both companies. Since then, NYCT has bought from foreign companies, following Buy America to the letter but not to the spirit. The first order after the St. Louis and Pullman disasters was imported from Kobe, as Reagan cut all federal funding, and went without a hitch. Subsequent orders required the vendors to establish US plants, but often only the final assembly is done in the US. In the most recent order, the car shells were made in Brazil.

Buy America does the opposite of leveling the playing field for foreign firms. It favors big players, which can land big contracts and establish US plants. The same is true for the regulatory structure: the various globally unique [Federal Railroad Administration] rules benefit companies that are big enough to be able to modify trains for the American market. Just recently, Caltrain’s request for an FRA waiver involved consultation with just the largest companies in the industry. There are a lot of smaller manufacturers that are shut out of the US market; they don’t have the capital to establish new overseas factories or pay lobbyists to write rules in their favor. Those include Switzerland’s Stadler, Spain’s CAF, the Czech Republic’s Skoda, all Chinese firms, and all Japanese firms other than Kawasaki. Those can occasionally land a US contract, but are usually unable to compete with Kawasaki, Alstom, Siemens, and Bombardier, whose US market shares far exceed their global market shares.

Transportation – As noted in the video, these locomotives are far too heavy to travel on German rails.  The fact that they can do so on American rails is a testament to the strength of our robust freight network, but it is also indicative of the unnecessary ‘tank’ mentality of US rail vehicles.  This kind of excessive weight (and the regulatory perspective that requires it) is biased towards heavy freight and detrimental to passenger rail of all kinds in the United States.

Agglomeration, continued

Nike Agglomeration crop

More items of note on agglomeration:

From City Journal, the “Seven Pillars of Agglomeration.”

  1. Economies of scale in production
  2. Economies of scale in trade and transportation
  3. Falling transportation and communication costs
  4. Proximity with other firms in the same industry
  5. Advantages of diversity
  6. The quest for the center (of the industry)
  7. Buzz and bright lights

And, from The New Republic‘s Avenue blog, a visualization of those principles in action, looking at the athletic and outerwear industry in Portland, OR – from Pendleton (1889) to Nike (1978).

But the A&O cluster is also an interesting case study in cluster morphology and dynamics. Check out this cool genealogy map developed by sometime Metro Program author Heike Mayer of the University of Bern, for example. Meyer’s info-graphic shows well how the A&O cluster has grown over time and now epitomizes the frequent structure of highly dynamic clusters, which often find a small number of large foundation firms (in this case Nike, Adidas, and Columbia Sportswear) surrounded by a cloud of scores of smaller, more entrepreneurial firms. In Portland, hundreds of these small and sometimes tiny firms are now proliferating–driving growth, developing their own niches, and providing services to the bigs and larger new firms.

The accompanying infographic (full size image – PDF file) shows this phenomenon in action, and through time.  As noted, building on these existing clusters, taking advantage of these agglomerations is the smart approach to economic development:

All together, it’s a great example of how the best sort of economic development eschews chasing after firm relocations and other silver bullets and instead concentrates on “organic” growth that arises from local distinctiveness.

Agglomeration is about letting cities be cities.

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.

Enjoy the journey

Metro-North Bar Car

The New York Times has a couple interesting pieces on transportation, one dealing with volcanoes and the other with booze.

First, the obligatory volcano story: Seth Stevenson thinks the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull and the subsequent shutdown of air travel across the continent offers an opportunity to really enjoy travel, rather than just flying over the landscape (and all the interesting stuff) at 35,000 feet.

In the five decades or so since jets became the dominant means of long-haul travel, the world has benefited immeasurably from the speed and convenience of air travel. But as Orson Welles intoned in “The Magnificent Ambersons,” “The faster we’re carried, the less time we have to spare.” Indeed, airplanes’ accelerated pace has infected nearly every corner of our lives. Our truncated vacation days and our crammed work schedules are predicated on the assumption that everyone will fly wherever they’re going, that anyone can go great distances and back in a very short period of time.

So we are condemned to keep riding on airplanes. Which is not really traveling. Airplanes are a means of ignoring the spaces in between your point of origin and your destination. By contrast, a surface journey allows you to look out on those spaces — at eye level and on a human scale, not peering down through breaks in the clouds from 35,000 feet above — from the observation car of a rolling train or the deck of a gently bobbing ship. Surface transport can be contemplative, picturesque and even enchanting in a way that air travel never will be.

Stevenson is so dedicated to this idea that he and his girlfriend successfully circumnavigated the globe without leaving the surface of the earth.

Stevenson’s admonishment of the jet age also stands in contrast to a piece in Sunday’s Washington Post, instructing us to ignore nostalgia for the golden years of airline travel.  Brett Snyder defends airline deregulation and the seemingly inevitable fees for carry on luggage as a further step into the purity of free markets.

I have a copy of TWA’s flight schedule from June 1, 1959. The first jets were being introduced into the fleet, but the vast majority of flights were still on propeller-driven aircraft. There’s an ad in the timetable for TWA’s low coast-to-coast “excursion fares.” Los Angeles to New York was only $168.40 roundtrip, if you traveled Monday through Thursday in Sky Club Coach class. That bargain is roughly equivalent to $1,225 today, before tax.

These fares weren’t valid on the fastest aircraft, so you had only two options, neither of which went nonstop. There was the 10:10 a.m. departure from Los Angeles that arrived in New York at 11:41 p.m. that night or the 7:55 p.m. departure that arrived at 10:56 a.m. the next day — more than 12 hours in the air. This was on a Lockheed Constellation, which, while beautiful, bounced you around in the weather at about 20,000 feet, far below the 35,000 to 40,000 feet you’d cruise at today. Even when the weather was good, that trademark prop vibration left you feeling like you were sitting on a washing machine for hours after you landed.

It is curious that Snyder chose to contrast today’s deregulated jet age with the age of turboprops – he could have easily picked a schedule from 1973 instead of 1959 – flying on a brand-new Boeing 747, rather than a dusty old Constellation – and at least been comparing jet-age apples to apples.

Still, the contrast between Stevenson’s nostalgia and Snyder’s rejection of is interesting, even if both are speaking toward different ends. Snyder writes about the benefits of market efficiency and competition for passengers, while Stevenson writes of enjoying the journey.

Perhaps there’s no greater way to enjoy the journey than to enjoy happy hour at the same time.  With that in mind, the New York Times writes about the endangered bar cars on Metro-North trains from Grand Central to Connecticut.

A new fleet of cars will soon replace the 1970s-era models now used by commuters on the Metro-North Railroad line heading to Connecticut. But with money tight, railroad officials said they could not yet commit themselves to a fresh set of bar cars, citing higher costs for the cars’ custom design.

“They’re being contemplated,” said Joseph F. Marie, Connecticut’s commissioner of transportation. “But we have not made any final decisions.”

Defenders of the boozy commute say it helps raise revenue: After expenses, bar cars and platform vendors made $1.5 million last year, up from $1.3 million in 2008. (Officials would not say if a bar car makes more money than a car with the normal number of seats.)

The Times note that fellow bar cars in Chicago, New Jersey, Westchester County, and the Long Island Railroad have all gone the way of the Dodo – though LIRR trains still occasionally have bar carts that make it on trains.

Modeled after the private club cars of the early 20th century, the Grand Central bar car sought to bring a perk of high society to the everyday commuting class. Still, the car’s current incarnation is more bar-around-the-corner than Tavern on the Green.

The cars tend to break down, air-conditioning is creaky, and commuters have been known to sneak duct tape aboard for impromptu repairs.

The article’s accompanying slide show has great historical images of the bar cars in action.

Columbus Weekend Links

I really like these Federal holidays when I actually get them off…

On airport transit service:

GGW had a point/counterpoint on how best to serve Dulles International Airport.  Spencer Lepler argued for using commuter rail along the Washington and Old Dominion right of way, while Matt Johnson argued in favor of the current plan, noting the greatly improved benefits, including access to Tysons Corner and other development along the toll road.   Johnson also noted the technical hurdles to reusing the old railroad right of way.

The entire idea of offering faster service between the airport and downtown DC motivates these discussions, and this isn’t limited only to DC.  Yonah Freemark notes the perils of Chicago’s Block 37 and the express airport service that doesn’t really exist.

In the end, express service to and from Dulles shouldn’t be a top priority.  The existing infrastructure certainly doesn’t make it easy to do so.

So what about the W&OD?  Matt’s post on the challenges to re-use the right of way also raise some potential uses – perhaps using the corridor, in addition to the Silver Line, as a light rail/interurban corridor might be a good use.  This allows at-grade operations in congested areas, as well as simplifying the terminal connection in Alexandria, either as a loop into Crystal City or as a connection to the new Potomac Ave infill Metro station.

With or without the Silver Line, however, I’ll still be looking first and foremost at DCA for flights.

First, convince the Bankers…

The Salt Lake City Tribune has a great article noting the biggest hurdle to transit-oriented development – the banks.

Transit-oriented development isn’t stymied by outdated zoning, unwilling developers or a lack of space. It turns out, banks, wedded to old-fashioned lending standards that stress parking, may pose the biggest blockade by denying financing.

The reason: Lenders operate from a tried-and-true principle that maintains more parking means less risk and a higher return on their investment. But ditching cars is the whole point of urban developers looking to create 24-hour live, work and play environments that hug light-rail hubs.

Take the capital’s gateway district, which soon could be further revived by a North Temple TRAX train, a new viaduct and millions in streetscape upgrades. City leaders envision a walkable, vibrant mix of housing, retail, restaurants and offices that one day will bridge the FrontRunner hub and a new North Temple transit station along downtown’s western rim.

But commercial investors, including one with a $100 million blueprint, complain banks cannot grasp the concept and instead slam their doors.

The first paragraph might be a little over the top, as outdated zoning, unwilling developers, and a lack of space are still huge hurdles, though I might change their language a bit.

Last week, there was plenty of discussion (BDC, RPUS, GGW) of the Post‘s article on DC USA’s woefully underutilized parking garage.  Valerie Santos, Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, noted the parking was necessary to convince any number of parties to build the thing – tenants, landlords, financiers:

The District has lost nearly $2 million — or $100,000 a month — since the garage opened in March 2008, numbers that make Valerie Santos groan when she considers the city’s decision to build the structure.

“I don’t want to say it’s a quote, unquote, mistake. At the time the District did what it had to do to attract a retailer it sorely wanted,” said Santos, deputy mayor for planning and economic development. “Am I happy about the operating deficit? Of course not.”

Obviously, there are lots of moving parts in any urban development equation, but overall education of all parties involved is a crucial element.

When speaking of performance parking, Dr. Shoup likes to advocate for removing parking restrictions from zoning ordinances and letting the market decide.  The challenge, however, is that this particular market is not acting with perfect information.  Rectifying that information gap is a huge challenge.  DC USA might have some use as an example of what not to do in the future, but that’s an awfully expensive lesson to learn.

Miscellany:

Some of the ugliest buildings in the world?

So says this list.  (h/t Yglesias)

Amtrak ridership is down…

…but still up over the longer tiemframe (Housing Complex)

Exit, stage left

DC Metrocentric takes a look inside the new Arena Stage.

The data wants to be free

Rob Goodspeed looks at municipal data sharing programs, and wonders what differences they make.