Author: marynewsom

Historic streetcar – an expose of sorts

Historic streetcar rail exposed on North Tryon Street. Photos by Mary Newsom

This posting is an excuse to share some photos that history enthusiasts and rail-lovers might enjoy. Pavement flaws in North Tryon Street uptown have exposed the reality that the city’s old streetcar tracks are still down there. Here’s a hat tip to Les Epperson of the city’s Special Services division, which cares for some key parts of uptown. When I was interviewing him about sidewalks and snow removal (see last Saturday’s op-ed, “City walkability goal hits an icy patch”), he mentioned that streetcar rails were visible where the pavement was worn, in the 500 block of North Tryon. I took a walk last week and sure enough, in front of the First United Methodist Church, I spotted them.
The rails aren’t in very good condition – not surprising for metal that’s been paved over multiple times. Epperson said not all the rails remain; some have been removed for various street projects.

For the record, Charlotte’s last streetcar was put out to pasture in 1938. Streetcar No. 85 was the centerpiece of a “Good-bye To Trolleys” celebration at The Square on March 14, 1938. That car ended up being found in a Huntersville pasture in the 1980s, restored and then it ran for about 10 years, operated by the nonprofit Charlotte Trolley, on what are now the light rail tracks down South Boulevard. It was put out to pasture again – this time to the CATS light rail barn – and awaits its next mission.
Charlotte, like many other U.S. cities, hopes to bring back streetcar service, but its plans don’t include North Tryon Street. Still, I like to imagine someone jackhammering up the asphalt on North Tryon and Car 85 running on those old rails again. In reality, of course, the condition of the rail (see close-ups below) and the missing rails make that impossible.

Threats to historic buildings – from the government

The owner of the landmark P&N Railway Depot (above) wants to demolish it rather than meet city’s code demands.

You may have read the op-ed I did in November (“City may seek landmark demolition”), pointing to an unintended consequence of the city’s new non-residential building code – several demolition orders going out to designated historic landmarks that weren’t in good repair.

Or maybe you caught the WFAE report last week on the Davis General Merchandise store, a century old historic landmark which has been ordered to make repairs, and whose aging outbuildings were ordered demolished if repairs weren’t made.

Yes, this is yet another example of your city government and city elected officials being oblivious to the value of old buildings and historic buildings – and not just landmarks – when they adopt city policy. They’re not necessarily hostile, just oblivious to the issue. Witness the happy ease with which planners and council members adopted zoning standards for transit-station areas that allow buildings so tall they’ll alter the property value landscape, making smaller older buildings in places such as NoDa worth so little compared to the land they’re on that owners won’t even blink before razing them for towers.

As today’s Observer editorial (“Historic landmarks? City turns blind eye”) points out, City Council members say they didn’t even discuss, when talking about the proposed ordinance last spring, what its effect might be on historic buildings. That’s telling.

Walter Abernethy, the city’s code enforcement director, says the issue did come up during stakeholder meetings before the ordinance was proposed. But the ordinance has little in it to protect landmark buildings.

Ted Alexander, with Preservation North Carolina, points out that PNC has covenants on the Davis store to protect it – though whether that could prevent demolition is, for now, an open question. (I’ve asked Ted but haven’t heard back yet.) And it’s important to remember that the city hasn’t ordered demolition of the store and isn’t pushing for it. It just wants repairs, which owner Silas Davis would have to pay for. Davis, when I talked to him Friday, was irate about the whole situation and said he didn’t have the money for the repairs.

But as the editorial points out, it’s the historic old Thrift depot that faces the more immediate threat. Its owner, CSX railway, would prefer not to spend what it would require to bring the building up to code. It’s asking for a demolition permit. Because it’s a landmark, the county historic landmarks commission can delay the demo for up to a year, but can’t prevent demolition.

A few N.C. municipalities have gotten special legislation to let them absolutely forbid demolition in some selected cases. New Bern, for instance, can forbid demolition in its historic districts, although there are some procedural hoops everyone has to jump through.

Is the city’s oblivion toward historic landmarks due in part to the governmental organization that has the landmarks commission lodged as part of the county government? Possibly. But notice that the Historic District Commission (not the same as the landmarks commission but with some similarities), is part of the city’s planning department.

Parking lots as polluters

We know driving creates pollution: ozone, other toxic tailpipe emissions such as particulates, contaminated water that runs off streets, the heat island effect of the asphalted street and highway network, etc. etc. But until now, few people had studied the polluting effect of parking lots.

But Eric Jaffe, in The Infrastructurist, writes about new work from researchers at University of California at Berkeley that looks at energy and emissions related to America’s vast parking infrastructure. The researchers write,

“The environmental effects of parking are not just from encouraging the use of the automobile over public transit or walking and biking (thus favoring the often more energy-intensive and polluting mode), but also from the material and process requirements in direct, indirect, and supply chain activities related to building and maintaining the infrastructure.”

There’s no national inventory of how many parking spaces, lots, decks are out there – one academic who’s studied parking compares it to the “dark matter” in the universe – but the researchers point to such things as the heat island effect, where pavement raises summer temperatures which requires more energy for air-conditioning, etc. They calculated that when parking spots are taken into account, an average car’s per-mile carbon emissions go up as much as 10 percent.

And as long as we’re trashing parking places (which even die-hard environmentalists probably wish they could find as they circle, circle, circle the lot on the Saturday before Christmas) check out “Six Reasons Free Parking Is the Dumbest Thing You Didn’t Know You Were Subsidizing,” by Christopher Mims in grist.org. The point is not that we shouldn’t have parking, but that we should all be a lot more aware of the costs of building and providing it. Maybe we’d be more conservative in how we spend that money – if we realized we were spending it.

And for a parking-related footnote, here’s a way Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools might bring in a bit more revenue so CMS won’t have to cut a whopping $100 million from the budget and lay off 1,500 people including hundreds of teachers:

Charge high school students more money to park their cars. If CMS provides buses to the schools (which it does, except to magnet high schools) then families that opt to let kids drive can pay for the privilege. Wake County Schools charge $170 and they’re raising the fee. CMS charges $25. Ahem.

Each parking space adds $2,500 to the cost of a high school, a CMS architect told me a few years ago. Yes, staffers need parking spaces, and some students probably do, too. But a lot of that money could be better spent.

HOT proposal for Indy Blvd should spark some heat


Forget putting light rail transit down the middle of Independence Boulevard, and instead put bus rapid transit on high-occupancy-vehicle lanes already planned. Send a streetcar down Monroe Road. And convince the state to move its Regional Farmers Market to some of the vacant properties on Independence.

Yep, I think the recommendations this morning from a panel from the nonprofit Urban Land Institute will prompt some talk.

“My eyes lit up at the options,” was the reaction from Carolyn Flowers, chief of the Charlotte Area Transit System. Even before the panel presentation had wound down, she was emailing to see if a presentation could be made to the Metropolitan Transit Commission, CATS’ governing body, next month.

Her eyes lit up because the transit recommendation for Independence would, in essence, mean the state builds that Indy Boulevard transit line, and all cash-strapped CATS would have to find is money to buy buses and other equipment and to pay drivers. The ULI panel recommendation would even mean cost savings for the N.C. Department of Transportation for its long-planned Independence Boulevard widening project.

That’s because the current plans to widen Indy Boulevard – a project for which there is at present no money in the state’s five-year plan, but which is likely to get funded at some point later – call for a 52-foot center section to be reserved for a future CATS transit project – maybe light rail (LRT), maybe bus rapid transit (BRT); the MTC still has to decide. If you eliminate that 52-foot section but still build the planned HOT/HOV lanes, you could run BRT or express buses in the HOT lanes (and remember T=toll=revenue stream), and still need a narrower overall corridor, i.e. less money needed to buy right-of-way.

NCDOT secretary Gene Conti was part of the panel, so I’m assuming he’d have scotched recommendations that were thoroughly unworkable from NCDOT’s point of view.

But …..

East Charlotte residents have spent years pushing for light rail transit, not bus, along Independence. They know LRT in general attracts more development than bus transit, because the rail means the route won’t get switched, unlike a less permanent bus route. How will this new idea go over with them? Will the suggested addition of a streetcar along Monroe Road be enough of an inducement?

Several ULI panel members, from cities such as Houston, Denver and New York, all sang variations on this theme: Putting light rail along a limited-access, high-speed and high-volume highway like Independence won’t attract much development. That’s been a lesson from Denver’s light rail, which runs next to a freeway, they said. “Nodes [neighborhood centers] on high-speed corridors do not work,” said Carlton Brown, an economic development expert with Full Spectrum, a development firm in New York and Jackson, Miss.

So, they say, plan to put rail along the smaller commercial corridors where it does have a chance to attract transit-oriented redevelopment: Central Avenue and Monroe Road. Of course, no one had concrete proposals for how to find revenue to build even the Central Avenue streetcar, much less adding another. Their suggestions: Get creative. Build in phases. Find a benefactor, like Bill Gates helping the Seattle-to-Tacoma line. That led to a quip from an elected official in the audience – whom I’ll not name, and so this person owes me one – about the “Leon and Sandra Levine Line.” After all, the Family Dollar headquarters is right on Monroe …

I was sitting next to East Charlotte activist Susan Lindsay. Her immediate reaction was that she wanted to know more before coming to a conclusion about whether to support or oppose the suggestions. But since the MTC lacks money for any transit of any form down Independence – or for any streetcars, any West Charlotte transit, or even enough money to extend the one light rail line past UNC Charlotte – a proposal that might allow rapid transit there in our lifetimes could just win some support.

Note: The ULI panel’s recommendations are simply that – ideas from a group of experts from around the country. They don’t supersede any existing plans or change any priorities.

Photo: Streetcar in Portland, Ore.

Seeking solutions to suburban problems

As cities and counties across North Carolina and the nation scour budgets for ways to trim spending and – at least one hopes – make more economically prudent decisions for the future, they should look hard at what last 50 years of spread-out, low-density, auto-focused development has cost them. And how to change those costly ways.

After all, it costs a municipality (and rate-payers) more to spread sewer lines across subdivisions with 2- or 3-houses per acre than across blocks with 20 or 30 dwellings per acre. It costs more to serve cul-de-sac neighborhoods with adequate fire and emergency services, because in order to meet acceptable arrive-by times in areas with disconnected streets, you need more stations and personnel. (Here’s what I wrote in February 2009 about that point – “Sprawl’s dipping into your pocketbook,” and a Charlotte city study that illustrates that point.)

Large expanses of highway right-of-way mean large expanses of property off the tax rolls. Big surface parking lots are not the best way to get high-value property onto the tax rolls. And so on.

But we’ve built our suburban style, single-use neighborhoods with streets that don’t connect and shopping centers you have to drive to. What do we do now?

That’s the topic of an upcoming conference at N.C. State University in Raleigh on Feb. 12: “Sustainable Suburbs: Re-Imagining the Inner Ring.” (Disclosure: I’ll be moderating the conference.)

Here’s my quick two-cents on the overall topic:

Cent No. 1: “Inner-ring suburbs” means different things to different people. Does it mean the first municipalities beyond the city limits of a major city, such as Mint Hill, Matthews, Pineville, etc., regardless of when they were formed and how they were built? Or does it mean neighborhoods built on a suburban template, even those within the limits of the major city, such as Charlotte’s Merry Oaks, Chantilly, Sherwood Forest, even Myers Park? I hope we can define the terms before we end up talking at cross-purposes.

Cent No. 2: Many planners, designers and even transportation officials understand the need for connected, walkable streets, higher-density buildings, mixed uses and access to transit – things lacking in many neighborhoods built after World War II. . But in many instances that form of development still isn’t happening (and wasn’t, when the financial crisis put a stop to almost all development in these parts.) So it would seem that the major stumbling blocks aren’t in planners’ minds, but in other areas: policies and laws, financing practices, existing ordinances, politics, and even in Americans’ cultural expectations. Can those stumbling blocks be overcome?

Conference registration closes Feb. 7. Among the speakers will be:

• William Hudnut III, ex-congressman, ex-16-term mayor of Indianapolis, author, Urban Land Institute fellow emeritus, clergyman and all-around knowledgeable fellow. Among his books: “Halfway to Everywhere: A portrait of America’s first tier suburbs.”

• Ellen Dunham-Jones, co-author of the award-winning “Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs.” She’ll talk about the problem of dead malls, vacant commercial strips, aging office parks and apartment complexes. Her book offers several dozen examples of suburban retrofit projects.

• Patrick Phillips, CEO of the nonprofit Urban Land Institute, who’ll talk about what the financial crisis may mean for the prospect of building a more sustainable suburbia.

If you’ve read this far, you’ll almost certainly be interested also in this early February Charlotte conference. The New Partners for Smart Growth conference, “Building Safe, Healthy and Livable Communities,” will draw planners, designers, transportation and public health professionals, and others to the Westin Feb. 3-5. The website says scholarships are available, but deadline to apply is Jan. 14. It’s sponsored by the Local Government Commission, a Sacramento-based nonprofit (and not the N.C. governmental agency).

High growth city = poorer city?

I came across an intriguing new study, courtesy of the HoustonTomorrow website, which headlined it, “Fast metro growth =lower incomes: Study links poverty, growth.” The study itself, “Relationship between Growth and Prosperity in 100 Largest U.S. Metropolitan Areas,” by consulting firm Fodor & Associates, looked at the fastest-growing and slowest-growing U.S. metro areas 2000-2009, and looked at per capita income, unemployment rate, and poverty rate. It found that faster growth rates were associated with lower incomes, greater income declines, and higher poverty rates.

Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord and Raleigh-Cary were among the fastest-growing metros the study looked at – no surprise. The report’s writers say it throws some cold water on the often-stated belief on the part of many elected and business officials that growing fast is an automatic route to prosperity.

One caveat: In a quick skim of the report I didn’t see enough data to tell me whether it had taken into account the fact that many of the fastest-growing cities in the South and the West were poorer to start with, and the slower-growing cities in the North and Midwest were places with higher pay (manufacturing, unions, etc.) but less economic growth, hence less population growth. In other words, does the study show causality or just correlation? If any academics or others have time to pore through the report and offer an analysis, it would be welcome.

Sidewalks: Fines? Red China? Remove fences?

A commenter to my previous post, who read the Sunday editorial “Urban streets will need urban sidewalks” correctly nailed it with his/her suspicion, based on the Runnymede Lane photo that ran with it, at left, that I was its author. (I’m among the four people at the Observer who write the unsigned editorials on behalf of the editorial board.) And he/she raises one of the trickiest issues that city transportation officials are going to have to confront: If you want to encourage people to walk, how can you ensure that sidewalks are kept clear? Read the comment in full, at the end of this.

Currently, property owners are expected to keep sidewalks clear. But the city’s ordinances are murky about what the city can/can’t order property owners to and it’s generally silent on what punishment is allowed.

The commenter raises the specter of Red China and its cultural education camps. But rather than having an “education czar” (oops, those czars were in Russia, not China), he/she suggests the city should remove the fence shown in the photo. Er, wouldn’t that be taking private property?

The commenter asks if I’ve ever called CDOT (Charlotte Department of Transportation) for enforcement. As a matter of fact I have called them about that messy stretch of sidewalk off and on for 10 years. After I wrote a June article about sidewalks (“Walk this way. If you can”) with photos and called CDOT officials for information, the Runnymede sidewalk was finally cleared. I’m not sure whether CDOT contacted property owners or the publicity alerted them. But in the six months since then, the sidewalk has clogged again with leaves.

If you don’t want an education czar, do you want to spend city taxpayer money on a fleet of clean-sidewalk enforcers? Hire people to monitor telephone or email complaints, dispatch inspectors and – if warranted – cite or otherwise notify property owners? And if you really want walkable sidewalks, should you wait for complaints or be pro-active in keeping them clear?

Currently, CDOT says it responds when people complain, but in my experience, my complaints haven’t seemed to get much attention unless I put something in the newspaper with photos. I can’t imagine they are hopping to it when people without access to printing presses or editorial pages complain.

But the underlying question is: Should the city beef up its attempts to keep sidewalks clear? And if the answer is “yes,” (which is how I’d answer) what’s the best way? Cite and fine property owners? Use city staff to clean sidewalks?

Here’s the comment about sidewalks from the previous post :
I read the editorial in today’s (Jan. 2) Observer about urban sidewalks, to which Mary obviously contributed. (The photo of that leaf-cluttered Runnymede Lane sidewalk, which Mary has long bemoaned, gave it away). Frankly Mary, I agree with much of that editorial. I’m a retiree, live in a densely populated part of South Charlotte, and make good use of sidewalks as both pedestrian and bicyclist. My current sidewalk travel has been primarily for exercise, but given the ever-escalating cost of gasoline, I recently bought a small cart in which to haul groceries and other purchases behind my bike. I appreciate that our city provides an alternative that will keep me trim, save me some money, and help reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. But a sentence in that editorial has me puzzled. In mentioning that sidewalks outside of center city are often impassable, you or another editorialist ask “How can property owners be taught to keep them clean?” What!? Have the Red Chinese finally overrun this city? Will local government be expanded to add an education czar with the authority to haul affluent Runnymede residents off to a remote training camp in the mountains where they’ll be taught a lesson on how to rake leaves? I don’t think the Powell Bill, which helps fund sidewalk maintenance in Charlotte via taxed motor fuel, allows for that. In the case of Runnymede Lane, a better solution may be for the city to remove that tall, solid-wood fence shown in the editorial photo. It appears to be suspiciously close to the sidewalk, probably encroaching on city right-of-way. Have you ever called CDOT for enforcement? Fence removal will eliminate the “out-of-sight out-of-mind” strategy of the usually neat but sidewalk-hating Runnymedians. They – or their lawn service – will be out there with a leaf blower in a flash. Unfortunately, you can’t force folks to be thoughtful and responsible – unless you are part of the Red Chinese bureaucracy. In Charlotte, you have to hit them where they feel it – in their pocketbooks. Just call 311. And if the city doesn’t take care of the problem, the Observer should ask why we are paying bloated salaries and retirement benefits to government officials and not getting anything in return.

Holiday reading, til Dec. 27

I’ll be on vacation until Monday Dec. 27, so you’ll have to make do. To keep you busy ’til then, here are a few links to interesting stories:

• Greensboro’s Kristen Jeffers writes in Grist.org about the distressing lack of black, female “urbanists.” “When I look around,” she writes, “I mostly see only one type of person associated with the urbanist label: young, white, and male. … The word ‘urban,’ when it’s associated with African-Americans, is often synonymous with housing projects, poverty, and the poisoned legacy of urban renewal. ” She’s an MPA student at UNC Greensboro concentrating in community and economic development. (Here’s her blog, The Black Urbanist.)

• The state of Oregon is considering a measure to ban single-use plastic checkout bags.

• Fort Worth’s City Council has pulled the plug on further study of a downtown streetcar. This appears to mean the city won’t accept a $25 million federal grant. (Hey, wonder if any of that now-available streetcar money might float Charlotte’s way?)

• A study at University of California-Berkeley finds that at any given moment there are at least 500 million EMPTY parking spaces in the U.S. Says Donald Shoup, a UCLA urban planning professor and author of the book “The High Cost of Free Parking.” “[Parking] is the single biggest land use in any city. It’s kind of like dark matter in the universe, we know it’s there, but we don’t have any idea how much there is.”

• CNN puts Charlotte on the map. Literally. In a piece, “Can streetcars save America’s cities?

• Utah mom cited for neglect for letting her kid walk to school by himself. Note: The school system, in budget cuts, took away his school bus. Coming soon to a CMS school near you?

Walmart goes urban? Mayors rule? And buses return

While I was eating Thanksgiving turkey and then fighting (and losing) a cold/cough, the interesting links have stacked up in my inbox as thick as shoppers at the Apple store last weekend.

1. Here’s a piece about Walmart’s plans to – hold onto your reindeer antler-hat – build an urban-style store in Washington. It’ll have five floors, with small-format retail lining the H Street sidewalk, Walmart behind, parking underground, and 315 apartments on the upper floors. The behemoth retailer plans several other DC stores, none as urban as that one.

I’ll pause here to let SouthEnders brag about the Lowe’s on South Boulevard, which wraps the back end of the big-box in condos, has small-scale retail on the street, and has rooftop parking. But that project, though hailed nationally, still has some weirdness, such as that very odd, one-story building at Iverson Way and South Boulevard. It appears to be empty. Is it a store? If so, for whom? And the big ole surface parking lot is still a big-ole surface parking lot, though a bit smaller than it would be without the rooftop parking. But even with those quibbles it’s about a zillion times more urban than anything Walmart has done here.

2. Here’s a look, pegged to the climate talks now under way in Cancun, at the role mayors expect to play in the fight against global climate change: “But as nations dither, hundreds of cities are pledging to rein in emissions, slash energy usage, and turn to renewable energy sources. Mayors say they see greater urgency than national leaders do.” Which only makes sense. Mayors are the ones who have to deal most directly with so many problems that have little to do with partisan politics: how to fill potholes, cope with traffic, build/maintain parklands, etc. (And if you’re among the declining number of climate-change deniers, you might ask yourself why you’re choosing to disbelieve the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists and instead prefer to believe partisan politicians, right-wing pundits and think-tanks underwritten by fossil-fuel companies. I mean, you’re free to believe those sources. But, um, why?)

3. While most eyes have been focusing on either road-building, high-speed rail plans or urban mass transit proposals, the N.C. Department of Transportation has quietly expanded intercity bus service. In October it began running daily two routes connecting Charlotte (the uptown Greyhound station on West Trade) with Boone and with Fayetteville. The Mountaineer North/South leaves Appalachian State University at 9:15 a.m. daily, arrives in Charlotte at 12:50 p.m., stopping in Lenoir, Hickory, Lincolnton and Gastonia. The return bus leaves Charlotte at 6 p.m. The Fayetteville route (Queen City Connector) stops in Laurinburg, Rockingham, Wadesboro and Monroe. The return leaves Charlotte at 6 p.m.

Coach America operates the buses with NCDOT funds. Tickets are $8 to $20, depending. And yes, the buses have WiFi, NCDOT tells us. For ticket information, click here.

Buses aren’t as beloved as trains, but they serve an important role in transportation. Just ask a college kid who’s counting pennies, or an elderly grandparent who wants to come to Charlotte but doesn’t want to drive in the big-city traffic.

What’s ahead for uptown? A sneak peek

Here’s a quick and non-specific glimpse of what’ll be recommended in 2020 Plan for Charlotte’s center city. Details will be fleshed out at a 5:30 p.m. public workshop today at the Charlotte Convention Center. All is part of the updating of Charlotte’s uptown plan – the last big update was the 2010 Plan, so it’s clearly time. Charlotte Center City Partners and the City of Charlotte planning department are shepherding the Center City 2020 Vision Plan.

With the help of some sources I’ve gotten some sense of what’s to be unveiled tonight. Examples:
1. More higher education presence uptown. The consultants previously had talked about better links among UNC Charlotte, which has a new uptown building under construction; Johnson C. Smith University; Johnson & Wales University; Central Piedmont Community College; and various other higher ed institutions with operations in or near the center of the city. Blue-sky ideas mentioned previously: Maybe a joint student union for all the students? Beefed-up education opportunities in center city?
2. Solve the shopping problem. Just about everyone in the workshops wanted more shopping downtown. This is tricky for many, many reasons. I look forward to hearing more specifics from the consultants, because if this were easily solved it would have been solved by now.
3. A network of parks and green spaces. This was another popular item in public workshops. And it isn’t just as easy as buying up an old parking lot somewhere, ripping out the concrete, planting grass and waiting (and waiting and waiting) for people to use it. Finding the public money, civic will and – crucial – the good design and strategic locations to create well-designed and sited green spaces will be harder than it sounds. And don’t forget the “network” part. Again, I’ll be eager to hear details.

Look for other strategies on cultural venues, the nexus of research-jobs-innovation, and closer attention to building neighborhood centers.

Disclosure: Observer publisher Ann Caulkins is a co-chair of the CCCP uptown plan effort. She doesn’t know I’m writing this and hasn’t told me what I should or shouldn’t write, or even whether to write anything. You’re getting my own thoughts on this topic.