Author: Mary Newsom

N.C. a gas-tax donor state? No more

N.C policymakers for years complained justly that this is a net donor state when it comes to federal transportation taxes paid versus federal transportation money spent in the state.

A new analysis by the General Accounting Office of 2005-09, reported by Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, in “Can highway spending ever be fair?”  finds that, when looking at how much federal highway money each state gets, per dollar of gas-tax revenue that the state’s motorists pay, it turns out every state gets more federal highway aid than it is paying. Here’s a link to the GAO report.
“There’s not a state in the union where federally funded highways ‘pay for themselves,’ ” Klein writes.

I’ve reproduced a map here (via a screenshot) from the GAO report and Klein’s piece. If my count is correct, compared with other states North Carolina remains at a big disadvantage, although it gets $1.09 back for every $1 paid in.  Only five states (Texas $1.03, Arizona, $1.07, Indiana $1.07, South Carolina and New Jersey, both at $1.08) get less. Two other states (Maryland and Colorado) also get $1.09.

Klein muses on whether highway spending can ever be “fair,” in part because what’s “fair” can be construed in different ways. And his commenters point out one of many reasons that’s true: Northern states where hard freezes and salting damage the pavement will need more repair and maintenance money. (Tell that to New Jersey and Indiana.) But even if perfect fairness will always be elusive, for a state that is both geographically large as well as in the Top 10 most populous, it does seem that North Carolina has been on the losing end for too long.

Carroll Gray to leave N.Meck transportation group

DavidsonNews.net tells us former Charlotte Chamber CEO Carroll Gray has told the Lake Norman Transportation Commission he’ll leave the commission’s executive director job at the end of this year. Gray, 71, of Cornelius helped launch and lead the regional lobbying group over the past three years. He told DavidsonNews.net he has mixed emotions about the decision, “but I think it’s time to move on.”
The LNTC has been effective in getting the long-planned and long-sidetracked proposal for commuter rail service from uptown Charlotte to Davidson (and possibly Mooresville) back into the mix for the Metropolitan Transit Commission, the group that oversees the Charlotte Area Transit System.

See my earlier posts on changes afoot in the strategy for funding the Red Line:
“Charlotte transit plans due for a makeover?”
and
“New strategy for transit to North Meck”

What’s that P in APA? Hint: Not ‘process’

Journalists and planners share many interests – community wellbeing, policymaking and government, for instance – but here’s one thing they don’t share: A fascination with process. Most journalists I know get twitchy whenever people start talking about “the process” or about “creating a framework.”

Maybe we shouldn’t, because after all, the democratic process is just that. But truth is, process is tedious and all too often, an excuse for avoiding difficult or controversial decisions. Plus, it makes for boring coverage.

So it was music to the ears today to hear the national president of the American Planning Association, Raleigh’s Planning Director Mitchell Silver, tell the state planning conference of the N.C. chapter of the APA that the P in APA should not stand for Process. “Very often people find comfort in process, not planning,” he said.

His Friday morning talk, “The value of planning in the 21st century,” was a rousing pep talk aimed at inspiring planners to start planning with a capital P, using plans to express their vision and values. “Sustainability,” as a term, he said, has a shelf life, but its intent to support the economy, the environment and equity will live on because they’ve always been at the heart of the goals of planning. But planning evolves.

Fall back in love with planning, he urged the group. “This is the most exciting time to be in this profession.”

I covered his talk via Twitter. (Silver is on Twitter as well, at @Mitchell_Silver.) So rather than blather on, I’ll just offer up my Tweeting stream:

– APA Prez + RA Planning Director Mitchell Silver: The P in APA should not stand for Process.

– @Mitchell_Silver To NC planners: Fall back in love with planning. Take your comp plan out for a romantic dinner.

– This one I didn’t Tweet because I got behind. But I would have said: People who say no to density are saying we don’t want creative workers.

– China is graduating 20K planners a year.

– By 2030 NC will see 124% increase in people over 65.

– By 2015 in US 15.5 million 15.5 percent of those 65+ will live in poor transit  areas. (Corrected, via later information from Silver.)

– By 2030 US will have 22M excess single-family homes. (I.e. built but no buyers.)

– Do we still want to build “Polaroid” communities (suburban subdivisions) for a digital generation?

– If you want Gens Y and Z at your public meetings, gotta use social media.

– Wachovia Center in dntwn Raleigh = 90 times the tax value/acre of the average suburban subdivision.

Huntersville mayor’s a winner

Huntersville Mayor Jill Swain won an award Thursday from the N.C. chapter of the American Planning Association for distinguished leadership by an elected official. The group held its annual statewide planning conference in Charlotte, Wednesday-Friday. Other awards for agencies in the greater Charlotte region:

Outstanding planning award for implementation (small community): Town of Davidson for its “Circles at 30” development at Exit 30 of Interstate 77.
Outstanding Planning Award for Implementation (large community): Iredell County for its land development code.
2011 Special Theme Award for community development: Town of Davidson for its affordable housing ordinance.
2011 Special Theme Award for sustainable community planning: City of Conover, for Conover Station, and the cities of Gastonia, Belmont and Bessemer City and the Gaston Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (a.k.a. GUAMPO), for “Creating Opportunities for Active Living: An Action Plan to Promote Physical Activities in the Built Environment for Gastonia-Belmont-Bessemer City.”
The Town of Davidson won honorable mention for the Outstanding Planning Award for Comprehensive Planning (small community).
Not from this region, but the statewide winners for Outstanding Planning (large community) were the City of Raleigh’s 2030 Comprehensive Plan and the City of High Point for its University Area Plan.

Charlotte pedestrians – still waiting for that plan

Wilson has one. Durham has one. Charlotte doesn’t. Yet.

Those other N.C. cities have eclipsed the state’s largest metro in this way, at least: They’ve adopted pedestrian p.lans, both in 2006, to shape the way their communities plan for people on foot as well as planning for cars.  Charlotte’s proposed pedestrian plan has lagged for years, awaiting the city’s adoption of its Urban Street Design Guidelines – which took more than eight years to adopt as policy and then to codify in city ordinances – and then the re-adoption of its updated Transportation Action Plan.
To some extent that’s a reflection of the Charlotte Department of Transportation leaders’ deciding to focus on the USDG – which faced strong opposition from a few influential developers of suburban-style projects – and to back-burner the ped plan.
Charlotte’s pedestrian advocate, Malisa Mccreedy, was one of the presenters Thursday afternoon at the state conference of the N.C. Chapter of the American Planning Association, taking place Wednesday-Friday in Charlotte. Mccreedy says the new goal is to get a Pedestrian Plan adopted by the end of 2012. And it’s worth noting that even without a pedestrian plan, the city of Charlotte has pushed ahead with stronger programs to try to ensure that pedestrians’ needs are considered along with those of motorists.
Planners from Durham and Wilson both described working with the UNC Highway Safety Research Center to analyze pedestrian-auto collisions. After the analysis, both cities made a top priority of reducing child pedestrian accidents. Durham’s Dale McKeel said his city has the highest rate of child pedestrian accidents per capita in the state.
Both also made the No. 2 priority to raise drivers’ awareness of pedestrians and drivers’ compliance with traffic laws.  In other words, both education and enforcement of the laws are significant.

Charlotte’s transit plans due for a make-over?

It appears some basic assumptions about Charlotte’s transit lines may be about to change.

One: The North Corridor transit line (formerly the Purple Line but now the Red Line) will be commuter rail on a little-used Norfolk Southern rail right-of-way leading from uptown to Mooresville in Iredell County.

Two: The Southeast Corridor (a.k.a. the Silver Line) will run down the center of Independence Boulevard from uptown to the Levine Campus of Central Piedmont Community College in Matthews. It’s going to be bus rapid transit. Or maybe rail. In 2006 the Metropolitan Transit Commission agreed that BRT was the preferred alternative but it would wait at least five years to see if light rail made more sense by then.

But the governing body for transit in Mecklenburg County, the Metropolitan Transit Commission, heard two reports Wednesday night that contemplate changing both those assumptions. (My posting on the Red Line proposal. And my posting on the Silver Line proposal.) The MTC hasn’t voted yet on either, but the discussion and questions didn’t point to huge disagreements – at least not openly.

The problems, of course, stem from the MTC’s diminished expectations for money. It can’t afford to build and operate all five transit lines first envisioned in the mid-1990s.

The problem is especially acute for the Red Line, which has beaucoup ardent supporters in the north Mecklenburg towns of Huntersville, Cornelius and Davidson, who point out that the line is pretty much shovel-ready. Except for that pesky money thing. The new idea is borne of a strong push from the North Meck towns, who pooled their money and created the Lake Norman Transportation Commission, with former Charlotte Chamber CEO Carroll Gray as director. They’ve been strategically pushing political buttons and have succeeded in getting the attention of the N.C. Department of Transportation, among others.

Basically, they’re looking for a strategy that will help find funding to make up for the lack of federal funding, which originally had been expected to pay 25 percent of the costs.

The new strategy: Position the rail line as “economic development,” not just “carrying passengers.” Be open to partnering with freight operations, which opens up new potential lending and other strategies. It’s not “commuter rail,” per se, but “rail.”  You’ve heard of TOD – transit-oriented development? Wednesday night there was talk of FOD – freight-oriented development.

For the Silver Line, the problem is also funding. This Southeast Corridor has been contentious. The vocal and organized neighborhood groups in East Charlotte have not been keen on the concept of any form of bus transit. Bus routes haven’t been shown to perk up development the way rail does, although BRT supporters note that a fixed bus way is different from a changeable bus route on city streets. Hence the maybe-bus-maybe-rail position of the MTC.

But, as I and others have written, expecting any form of transit along Independence Boulevard to spark much pedestrian-friendly, close-knit transit-oriented development means closing your eyes to the reality of Independence. It’s a freeway that barrels through miles of highway-oriented, suburban strip development.  Unless someone plans to bulldoze miles of buildings and rebuild from the dirt up – which no one does, due to expense and the sheer impracticality of that notion – it’s not going to be in the same universe as “walkable” for many generations to come.

A group from the nonprofit Urban Land Institute studied Indy Boulevard last year and recommended scrapping, for good, the idea of light rail down its median.  You wouldn’t get much development anyway, the ULI panel said.  Instead, focus on the proposed Central Avenue streetcar and add a streetcar down Monroe Road as well. Since that proposal, a task force has been meeting and it’s recommending similarly.  It suggests being a tad vaguer about that Monroe Road streetcar in case some form of light rail down the CSX rail line to Matthews emerges as a possibility.

But it is suggesting the MTC “rescind the provision that reserves space in the center of the [Independence] highway.” Use that space, now a high-occupancy-vehicle lane used only by buses, for a high-occupancy-toll lane to be used by buses and motorists willing to pay a toll to escape the regular Indy Boulevard congestion.

It was inevitable, of course, that the original five-corridor plans for Charlotte’s transit system would evolve. In the next few months, look for some significant evolutions to take place.

Whatever do we do with Independence Boulevard?

Charlotte’s “hell highway” is never referred to by that term at public meetings. But that’s what it is. Tonight, the Metropolitan Transit Commission is chewing over some recommendations from a group of officials and citizens over what, really, needs to happen to the now-vintage plans for light rail down Independence.

(Here’s UNCC Professor David Walters’ recent essay on the same topic.)

A panel from the nonprofit Urban Land Institute last winter recommended rethinking the earlier idea to put a light rail line down the median of Indy Blvd.  The ULI panel pointed out the obvious: Putting a transit station in the middle of a huge multilane freeway would be about as pedestrian-unfriendly as you could be, and other cities have found you don’t get much transit-oriented development at light rail stops along freeways. Turn the median into a high-occupancy-toll lane for buses and cars, and put the rail transit along Central Avenue (as in the planned streetcar) and along Monroe Road.

For the past six months a task force of transit, transportation and East Charlotte representatives has been meeting to see what, if any, of the ULI recommendations should be pursued. Tonight, the MTC heard its recommendations. In a nutshell: Do what the ULI said, only be more flexible in where, exactly, the rail transit along Monroe Road should go.

“The Metropolitan Transit Commission should rescind the special provision in the 2006 Transit System Plan that calls for preserving the ability to construct light rail transit or bus rapid transit in the center of Independence Boulevard,” the task force says in a letter to Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, who chairs the MTC.

MTC discussion was lively and enthusiastic – more so, really, than for the Red Line task force report earlier. Matthews Mayor Jim Taylor noted that “Union County [just southeast of Charlotte] seems to be the most interested I’ve ever seen them to be in the past 10 years.” Getting tax-averse Union County interested in anything involving light rail transit would be a sea change in the local transit landscape.

And one tidbit: The state highway project to turn Indy Boulevard into a freeway has been nicknamed a “one mile per decade” project.

New strategy for transit to North Meck

The Charlotte transit project getting the most attention the past four years has been extending the Lynx Blue Line from uptown to UNC Charlotte. But in recent months plenty of behind-the-curtains work has been focusing on the planned commuter rail line to north Mecklenburg. Tonight, the transit governing body heard about a significant shift in strategy for the Red Line.  The idea is to change the focus from “commuter rail” to “rail.”

Charlotte Area Transit System rendering of Red Line car

Quick background: The proposed commuter rail is a different form of transit from light rail. In many ways it’s more like intercity passenger rail than the electric-overhead-wire, plenty-of-stops Lynx. The rules for federal money for commuter rail and the cost-benefit analyses the feds require are structured so as to make the proposed 25-mile Red Line from uptown to Mooresville ineligible for federal money. That left a huge gap – 50 percent of the total – in the proposed funding plans, estimated at $373 million total for both phases of the project.

In addition, the countywide half-cent sales tax revenues tanked in 2008 and haven’t revived to the earlier estimated levels.  The Charlotte Area Transit System has been stumped over the problem of finding local money for the Red Line to cover the gap left by the lack of federal money, not to mention how to operate the existing bus system and Lynx, plus pay the local share for the $900-million-some Lynx Blue Line Extension.

Back to tonight’s meeting of the Metropolitan Transit Commission, which oversees CATS: The Red Line Task Force subcommittee that’s been meeting for about a year has agreed on recommending a new approach. Led by Paul Morris – formerly a consultant and starting this month,  the N.C. Department of Transportation’s deputy secretary for transit – the group wants to pitch a strategy Morris says will be nationally unique.  Use the rail line as an economic development strategy for both passenger rail and freight rail.  And form a formal partnership among Huntersville, Cornelius and Davidson so they can share tax revenues from new development, via a Joint Powers Authority.

But where would the money come from? Morris said the JPA would have no taxing authority. Whether it could issue bonds might depend on how any financing package is structured.  The Red Line Task Force is, for now, looking at four potential “value capture” ideas (warning, tax-policy-geekdom coming up): tax increment financing, special assessment districts, partnering agreements with private developers, or jointly developing property with a private owner. Which of those ideas, if any, would come to fruition can’t be known at the moment.

For most of the past 15 years, the strategic thinking about the north corridor’s Red Line was to use it to shape residential development. The area was booming, and the three towns adopted zoning ordinances to encourage transit-oriented development at the proposed station areas. The fact that the rail line’s owner, Norfolk Southern, was still running freight trains on it was generally mentioned only in passing.

Now, residential and commercial development are, if not dead, certainly no longer booming. So the strategy being proposed is to use that freight line as a selling tool for industrial development while using the prospect of passenger rail on the same right of way as a selling point for residential and retail development.

Will it fly with the rest of the MTC?  Tonight’s discussion might make that more clear. No MTC vote comes until next month.

Here’s a link to the PowerPoint presentation Morris gave to the Red Line Task Force in August.

How voice mail and email fall short

All across America, offices have been carelessly casting one of the most valuable resources they have, and an irreplaceable service for their customers: employees like Joe Sovacool.
 Joe hadn’t been cast aside by his office – The Charlotte Observer – although like most workplaces I know of, it too has greatly reduced the pool of workers who do what Joe did so well for something like 30 years until his death Thursday night, from cancer, at age 53.
 In “The real Weather Guy,” Observer blogger and weather geek Steve Lyttle nailed it in describing Joe’s value to the newsroom, just as Tommy Tomlinson, in “Observer, Sovacool,”  nailed the description of Joe’s determinedly quirky personality.
Joe Sovacool, like many other unheralded-outside-the-newsroom staffers – too many to name here – was smart, informed and discreetly nosy enough to know when to shield writers and editors from calls, when to send calls through and when to just listen politely to a raving nutjob caller and say, “I’ll be sure to deliver your message.” Which he would, though sometimes with a sardonic quip or a droll expression.
 Voice mail does not shield America’s workers from nutjob callers nor can it cut through the ramblings of a disturbed reader who does, indeed, have a useful news tip. Those annoying voice mail menus that so many businesses have adopted do not know that, after a bit of gentle inquiry, a caller who thinks he wants Reporter X will be better served by Editor Y.
Nor does a voicemail menu know that when you leave a message for Reporter Z, said reporter won’t get it for three weeks because she is on a honeymoon and the message is too important to languish. Yeah, yeah, we’re all supposed to change our voicemail greetings but here in the reality-based community an alert receptionist is far more dependable (and hence, cost-effective to the organization) than depending on dozens of reporters and editors remembering to change voicemail and out-of-office assistance settings.
The U.S. workplace of today seems not to understand that people can do things machines can’t and will, over time, more than make up the difference between the cost of buying and servicing a machine (and the attendant need for IT support) and a paycheck and benefits. People know things that make the place hum and that avert errors. They are things as different as knowing the difference between Iredell,  the county, and Airedale, the terrier (around here, a lot of folks pronounce them the same) and knowing how to change toner cartridges and where to get them. They are things like how to sweet-talk a mulish copy machine and whom you call when the machine wheezes its last, and who else in the newsroom needs to know the machine is on strike, and the most efficient way to get that word out.
They are things like recognizing when a caller is volcanically peeved at being transferred all over kingdom come, and understanding the caller needs to talk to a competent human being who’ll deal with whatever the problem is, even if the problem involves a wet newspaper or a screwed-up ad and you’re not in the part of the company that delivers papers or composes ads.
They are things like knowing who’s who in town, so when you spot a significant name on the daily list of obituaries you can tell an editor. If Joe were working today, he’d have been sure to tell an editor that one of the names on that list had worked for 30 years at The Observer and had a lot of friends, and maybe needs a headed obit.
And he’d have been right.

The fantasy land of transportation planning

The N.C. Department of Transportation is seeking people’s opinions to help guide them in putting together a 2040 plan. They’ve launched an online survey, which you can weigh in on at this link.

I encourage you to take the survey, but if you do, you’ll notice most of the questions require only one answer where several answers are needed. Example: For the question: “Which of the following is the most important to address the transportation needs of our changing population?” your choices are:
  •    Invest additional resources in public transportation (rail and buses).
  •    Expand roadways in North Carolina’s major cities.
  •    Encourage development with higher numbers of people per acre.
  •    Better coordinate transportation and land development.
  •    Other (please specify)
 You can choose only one. Which seems, to me, a bogus choice. Transportation and land use have to be coordinated or they are all but worthless. Additional resources must be invested in public transportation. And we all need to encourage development where more people live closer together – the only way to make public transportation work. No one of those is more important than another.

Land use planning and transportation planning are as linked as conjoined twins. The state likes to say it doesn’t do land use planning but that’s a fig leaf of an excuse that doesn’t hide the truth: Every time NCDOT makes a transportation decision, that decision affects land uses.

Accept that reality. Then accept the related reality that planning and transportation, to have validity, should be undertaken at a metro region level. Merge all the state-sanctioned transportation planning agencies in each of North Carolina’s metro regions. Charlotte has four to seven, depending on what you count. (You gotta love their names, too: The MPOs are MUMPO, GUAMPO, CRMPO, GHMPO and RFATS. Lest you think that’s not surreal enough, we also have two rural planning organizations, named LNRPO and the snarly sounding RRRPO.) We need just one, region-wide MPO.

If you’re looking for true sanity, then (as I have often written before) merge all those metropolitan planning organizations (a.k.a. MPOs, which despite the name do only transportation planning) with the regional Councils of Government, which attempt a regional approach to land use planning – although of course they aren’t allowed to adopt zoning ordinances and thus have little clout. Has all this made Salvador Dali seem reasoned and predictable by comparison?

So have your say on the NCDOT survey.  But recognize that efforts at serious urban region planning are fantasy, until the state adopts a more realistic approach linking land use and transportation.