Month: February 2009

NYC banning traffic on Broadway

(Photos show Herald Square before and after, courtesy of www.nyc.gov)

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced this week he’ll bar auto traffic from several blocks of Broadway. It’s a way to try to reduce congestion in the Times Square and Herald Square areas. While it may sound like a crackpot idea, there’s some counterintuitive evidence that, in other cities where streets were barred to traffic, the overall traffic did, in fact, diminish. Newsweek has a rather in-depth article on the proposal and the underlying thinking.

The New York Times web site has a kind of pro-con debate among urban observers such as architect/planner Alex Garvin and the Cato Institute’s Randal O’Toole.

Conventional wisdom in the U.S. has been that pedestrian malls didn’t work – cities that tried them gave them up. Even our own Rock Hill, which turned its downtown into a covered-roof shopping mall, eventually had to pop the top and revert to a more traditional downtown, complete with sky, clouds, rain and sun.

But, as the Newsweek article points out, New York is unique among U.S. cities, due to its population density, rigid street grid, high proportion of residents without cars and excellent public transit services. It’s certainly an idea worth watching. That said, Charlotte doesn’t have density, a grid or extensive transit, so anything learned from the NYC experiment isn’t likely to be applicable here, regardless.

Perdue: N.C. DOT office stays in Stanly

In one of those Relics From Another Era kind of situations, the N.C. DOT’s regional office in the Charlotte area is not in the city of 670,000 but in the lovely Piedmont city of Albemarle, population 15,000, in bucolic Stanly County.
Charlotte officials aren’t the only ones who think that’s a little nuts. The District 10 office covers Mecklenburg, Stanly, Union, Anson and Cabarrus counties. All, of course, have legitimate DOT needs and issues. But come on.
But WCNC reports, Gov. Bev Perdue isn’t thinking of moving that office to Charlotte. “Right now, I’m just thankful to not be closing offices down,” Perdue said when asked about the Department of Transportation’s office for the Charlotte region.
And why, you may ask, Stanly County? Old-timers say it’s because, in an earlier era, the road department offices were put in counties with state prisons, so they could more easily use prisoners to work on the road gangs.

CATS to join Google Transit

Google has a transit-finding component to Google Maps, and starting soon, the Charlotte Area Transit System (a.k.a. CATS) will be a part of the service.
You’ll be able to look online, click on where you are on the map, click on where you want to go, and you can get transit directions. Just like driving directions.

CATS chief Keith Parker says the program uses CATS routes and and schedules, so it will tell you when the bus or Lynx is supposed to arrive, but won’t be able to say, for example, Bus 20 is running 20 minutes late.

CATS isn’t spending money on this, he said. Google does it.

If you go to the link above, or try transit.google.com, right now, you’ll see a big map of the U.S., with no transit options offered in North and South Carolina. Hmm, you’d think Amtrak might want to at least load its passenger service into this.

This news came via a tip from Harry Johnson. Check out his Carolina Transit blog.

An addendum: In giving it a test run, I checked for directions from our house to the Dowd Y on Morehead St. No transit directions (yet), but there is an option for walking directions. I got the walking directions, but also a caution note popped: “Use caution – This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.” So very Charlotte.

Bits: Trails, transportation, go-go-suburbia

A few quick links of interest:

The Carolina Thread Trail project recently got its 100th Resolution of Support — from the Town of Wingate in Union County. That represents at least one entity from every county within the 15-county footprint. The Thread Trail is a proposed regional network of trails, including greenways, riverside trails and conservation corridors. Local communities plan and build their own portions.

Derrick Jackson of the Boston Globe writes about The Transformation of Transportation — big increases in transit ridership all over the country, and opines that it makes more sense to put federal dollars into transit systems than to prop up auto companies that are eliminating jobs.

NationalJournal.com talks with new Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. LaHood says high-speed rail between cities is, if not No. 1 on President Obama’s priority list, then near the top. He predicted a substantial effort (read, “money”) in coming years in five or six regions of the country, beyond the $8 billion in the stimulus package that just passed Congress.

David Brooks’ recent N.Y. Times piece, “I Dream of Denver,” (it ran last Thursday in The Observer) provoked tons of discussion. Interestingly, in Brooks’ speech in Raleigh on Feb. 10 he challenged the viability of the suburbs. “The era of go-go suburbia — it’s obviously over now,” he said. People wanted the big house, the big yard, but found out there weren’t enough social bonds, he said. Suburbia, he says, “ignored key parts of human nature.”

But his column took a differnt tack. Here are a couple of responses, one from “Joe Urban,” A.K.A. Sam Newberg in Minneapolis, one from Ben Fried on streetsblog.
Here’s a link to the Pew Center report Brooks cites.

Helicopter guy rebuffed on rezoning

Quick update on the council action, regarding the proposed solar-energy building on Park Road, whose developer would be the fellow in the much-loved “rogue helicopter” video.

The council members set a new land speed record in turning it down 12-0. Because there was a protest petition in force by adjoining property owners, even the mayor got to help vote it down.

See the post below, or click here, for more information and the video.

But will solar palace have a helicopter pad?

Will the helicopter guy appear again before City Council? Tonight, the council is supposed to decide on a rezoning that’s been getting a lot of, well, snickering in private. What people are saying, all off the record of course, is: “Watch the helicopters video.” If you do a YouTube search on the petitioner’s name, David Thompson, and “helicopters” you’ll get a video of a City Council public hearing from Jan. 28, 2002.

I hear it’s one of the “greatest hits” around City Hall.

(4:48 PM addendum: It’s come to my attention that longtime devotees of this video might like to read the actual minutes from the council meeting where the helicopter guy appeared. Here’s a link. Check Page 11. I also hear some Charlotte folks have memorized the guy’s speech and recite it at parties.)

Here’s a link to a story when the project was first proposed last summer. And here’s a link to an artist’s rendering of the finished project. The idea is for a 12-unit multifamily building that would maximize solar energy principles. The proposal “is consistent with adopted land use plans and policies,” the planning staff analysis says. But they’re recommending against an OK, because of “the 60-foot height and the architecture associated with the project.”

It does bring up an interesting issue: If a project is consistent with the plans, should the council vote it down because it’s ugly or because of any questions about the developer? I asked assistant city attorney Bob Hagemann, who said rezoning decisions are considered “legislative” and in such a decision they can “exercise their legislative judgment and discretion.”
(One more thing, in this update. Some commenters think this posting is about solar energy or area plans. Um, folks, just watch the video. MN)

Here is the YouTube video. Note: The title isn’t mine. It’s from the video on YouTube.com:

Sprawl’s dipping into your pocketbook

People just don’t realize how much extra tax money must be spent because of the sprawling development patterns, not just in Charlotte and North Carolina, but around the country. Consider connected streets, and their role in easing expenditures for roads and for emergency services.
It’s clear that connecting streets – whether with a rigid grid or more curving street patterns such as Charlotte’s John Nolen-designed Myers Park neighborhood – relieves thoroughfares of some portion of their traffic. Yes, each neighborhood street gets a bit more traffic. But if they’re well-designed, narrow enough to discourage speeding, have adequate sidewalks, bike lanes and/or on-street parking (or all of the above) traffic moves slowly and poses little burden for residents.
Meanwhile, thoroughfares need not carry as much traffic (or be widened or resurfaced as often). When there’s an accident or other problem on a thoroughfare, motorists have plenty of options for alternate routes.
Yes, it costs developers a bit more to build a street grid than a cul-de-sac subdivision, and the extra streets reduce the number of lots and buildings a developer can squeeze onto the land. But for taxpayers, it ought to be a no-brainer.
But connecting streets can have some other, unexpected benefits for municipal coffers. Here’s an intriguing study from Charlotte’s transportation and fire department staff that finds fire station costs sharply lower in parts of town where streets connect.
The study analyzed eight stations and found those in connected neighborhoods can serve more square miles because they can reach more homes within acceptable response times. The Dilworth station can serve 14 square miles. The station in the cul-de-sac-laden Highland Creek area can cover only 8 square miles.
The study found the annualized per-household life cycle cost of the Dilworth station to be $159. The equivalent cost for the station in the Highland Creek area was $740 – almost five times more.
Charlotte Department of Transportation staff who worked on the study included Matt Magnasco, Steven Castongia and Katie Templeton. Fire Department staff included Benny Warwick and Rachel Pillar. Magnasco tells me it hasn’t yet been published or peer-reviewed, but they’re working to get it into shape for that. The PowerPoint presentation linked to above was for a Congress for the New Urbanism transportation conference in Charlotte last last year.

Obama’s urban affairs guy

President Obama has finally chosen his long-promised director of urban affairs, a guy from the Bronx named Adolfo Carrión. Carrión is Bronx Borough president, has a master’s in urban planning from Hunter College and was a minister and public school teacher before going to grad school. Born in Manhattan of Puerto Rican descent, he’s president of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials. (Wonder if he knows Dan Ramirez, the ex-Mecklenburg County commissioner?)

This Washington Post story has Carrión saying what his focus will be: He wants cities to become economic centers that can pull the country out of a recession and improve American competitiveness in a global market, according to the Post.
Here’s a quote, from a 2007 speech, reported in the New York Times Dec. 3, 2008:
• “We can’t keep throwing money at a housing policy that concentrates poor families in massive housing projects and hopes for the best. We can’t keep wishing kids into success by simply declaring that no child will be left behind. We must stop treating the poor as laboratory subjects that we tinker with in our pricey think tanks and universities.”

Another New Yorker, Derek Douglas, was named special assistant to the president for urban affairs. Douglas was N.Y. Gov. David Paterson’s counsel in Washington and director of his Washington office, overseeing federal policy development and advocacy on domestic, economic and urban policy issues for New York.
Good for Obama for recognizing that cities are — shock! — important to the health of the nation and that cities probably need some champions in high places. But why does it look as though Obama thinks New York is the only city that can provide that expertise? What about Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Miami, et al?

Got vacancies? Try artists

It’s a continuing problem in Charlotte: Neighborhood gentrification (e.g. NoDa), combined with relentless and wasteful demolition of old buildings shrinks the spaces for artists, even while the city’s arts community is trying to grow. And while the role of the arts in redeveloping ailing neighborhoods gets much lip service, the city and its major NGOs (non-governmental organizations, for the non-wonks reading) haven’t succeeded in doing much to help provide housing.

Here’s a piece about a program run through the Boston Redevelopment Authority, that uses the affordable-housing requirement for large projects (and note that it’s a REQUIREMENT) as well other city-offered incentives. (Interesting factoid: The BRA director is John Palmieri, who from 2002 to 2004 was the City of Charlotte’s director of economic development.)

Note this line in the linked-to piece above: “Boston already requires that at least 15 percent of units in large new residential buildings be priced based on income limits.”

Hmmm. The recently released “Housing Charlotte 2007 Implementation Committee” had a subcommittee to look at that kind of idea, called “inclusionary zoning,” but the name of the subcommittee was “Incentive-Based Inclusionary Housing Policies.” A mole on the committee tells me anytime anyone mentioned anything about “mandatory” they were reprimanded and told the recommendation would be for only “incentive-based” techniques (i.e. voluntary).

Kiosk sales at malls — too aggressive?

In the category of not-earth-shaking but sorta interesting is this, which I learned while looking up other things:

You know those Dead Sea Salt kiosks at SouthPark (and probably other malls around here) where the young women practically tackle you to get you to try their lotion or whatever it is?
It seems they’re controversial in the shopping mall biz, because A) they really tick off a lot of customers, but B) make lots of sales which makes landlords happy.
The Natick Collection outside Boston is one of several upscale shopping malls that have cracked down. Wish they’d do so here, as well.