Author: marynewsom

Do ‘uptown leaders’ still rule the roost?

Vacation over. No more outerbelt opinions — at least for a while. Onward to other things.

Is the Saturday Observer so slightly read that a huge package on the future of Charlotte — one suggesting that the city’s “business leaders” weren’t the leaders anymore — got only two comments? Maybe everyone was busy dying Easter eggs or playing in the sunshine. Even a column from UNC Charlotte’s Jeff Michael attracted little reader attention online. He writes that based on planning textbook factors, Charlotte shouldn’t have been an urban success at all.

So take a look. Do you agree that the local oligarchy of business leaders is gone? If so, who should take their place, and how should that process happen?

I wrote, “I keep hearing people asking who Charlotte’s next leaders will be – as though some king-maker somewhere gets out the royal staff and taps a few CEOs, who become The New Leaders. I think Charlotte is too big and too diverse for that old pattern of oligarchy to work, even if we wanted it to.”

Put your comments here, or on the article, if you care to comment. Reactions (those that are civil and have some thought informing them) will help shape comments at a series of forums around the region next week, with 2008 Citistates Report writers Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson and local elected officials, business leaders, environmentalists and others.

The forums are free and open to all. To Register: www.ui.uncc.edu.
They’ll be:
Tuesday, April 21, Gaston County: 2-4:30 p.m. at Gaston Citizen’s Resource Center, U.S. 321 North, Dallas.
Wednesday, April 22, York County: 1-3:30 p.m. at Rock Hill City Hall, 155 Johnston St., Rock Hill.
Thursday, April 23, Cabarrus County: 1-3:30 p.m., Cabarrus Arena and Events Center, 4751 N.C. 49 North, Concord.

I’m moderating the panels on Tuesday and Wednesday. I hope I’ll see some of you there.

No, DON’T make 485 top priority

I’m going out on an opinion limb here, but I’ve been trying to figure out why just about every elected official around here seems to take it on faith that finishing that final leg of the outerbelt should be at the top of all local transportation spending lists. It shouldn’t. There are better and more useful ways to spend that estimated $220 million.

Putting a lot more of it into Charlotte’s transit system and better — faster and more frequent — rail service between North Carolinas cities would be a good place to start. Yes, it’s expensive. But it would solve a lot more congestion than any urban loop road ever would. Yes, the money’s in different legal “buckets.” So change the law, already.

Meanwhile, we should get smarter in using state and federal transportation money restricted for streets and roads. There are plenty of legitimate projects in Mecklenburg County that are sorely needed, as development has overtaken old farm-to-market roads. But instead of building the typical NCDOT-style four-lane country highways, build four-lane boulevards. This is, after all, a city.

And this is the most important part of this piece: Build plenty of streets that connect. The more connections, the less the load on any one road. And can we stop calling them “roads”? They’re streets. Streets are what you have in cities. Roads are what you have in the country.
Did I mention that this is, after all, a city?

On those interconnected streets, build (or require others to build) sidewalks and bike lanes. If key thoroughfares need connecting, buy the houses that stand in the way, and connect where needed.

Note what the state of Virginia has done. The state recently decided it will no longer maintain (or even plow) state-owned streets in new subdivisions that don’t meet state requirements for connectivity and sidewalks. Here’s a link to a WashPost story. The reasoning is sound: State taxpayers are funding road widenings that wouldn’t be necessary if subdivisions and other developments were required to connect with each other. And disconnected neighborhoods pose a serious problem for emergency services.

That’s true in North Carolina as well. Your tax dollars will pay for a Shelby bypass to bypass the current Shelby bypass, because Shelby and Cleveland County welcomed all that sprawling development along the U.S. 74 Bypass (while sort of pretending it also was supporting its downtown. Come on.)

Ditto Monroe, although are planned to help pay some of the planned Monroe bypass. Supposedly. (And anyway, it’s looking as if the “Finish The Outerbelt” forces will use up that Monroe bypass money for a few years.) Ditto widening Providence Road, a state highway needlessly carrying thousands more vehicles than it would if developers had been required to connect their developments with a street network. But the developers didn’t want to do that, because customers like to live on cul-de-sacs, so local rule-makers didn’t make them.

Sure, that little gap atop 485 looks weird. But in terms of solving traffic congestion, it’s a nonstarter. Loop roads have no history of solving congestion in any city. They generally clog shortly after they open, because local elected officials happily OK just about any development proposed anywhere along the route — thus packing the outerbelt with what is, essentially, local traffic. That’s one important reason I-485’s southern leg is so congested. Mecklenburg County commissioners, plus municipal officials in Charlotte, Pineville and Matthews, pretty much let any developer who wanted to build anything do so.

What we need, instead of widening 485, is about 10 more connector streets besides 485, N.C. 51 and the handful of others.

Indeed, old-timers remember when the outerbelt was first proposed back in the 1960s, its rationale was more openly stated in those innocent times. It was “to open land for development.” Transportation rationalizations came much later, after developers had already snapped up the land along the route.

Hardly any local transportation professionals believed the outerbelt was necessary, longtime local transportation planner Bill Coxe told me more than a decade ago. But knowing the powers pushing it, they didn’t openly oppose it. “That bulldozer was way too big for anybody to get down in front of,” Coxe told me.

I remember in 1998, hearing Harry West, the longtime director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, who had seen how Atlanta’s Perimeter Highway pushed that city’s sprawl. Speaking about I-485, he told a Charlotte conference sponsored by, among other groups, the Charlotte Chamber: “If I thought you would listen to me, I’d tell you not to build it.”

Obviously, we didn’t listen to him. And we still aren’t.

USDOT a Ponzi scheme?

This just in: U.S. Transportation System is a giant Ponzi scheme.

OK, it’s an April Fool’s joke (sort of) by the clever folks at the Project for Public Spaces. The “Faking Places” newsletter today has these other headlines:

— How football stadiums can be transformed into vital community places.
— Get your kicks on I-95: USDOT announces “Roads with Character” initiative.
And my favorite:
— Ice rink tops list of amenities proposed by residents of Hell.

McCrory’s next project?

I hate to interrupt the great comment thread going on at “Developers bend city official’s ear” but here goes:

Hizzoner Pat McCrory stopped by the paper today to talk about what he plans to do with his remaining eight months in office. Headlines: Economic development [recruit more companies to bring more jobs], city spending [try to cut what needs to be cut in the city budget], public safety [he’s against crime and supports the police chief]. Motherhood and apple pie were probably on the list too.

But near the end of the conversation he talked about having recently gone to Atlanta for an event sponsored by Georgia Tech, to look at mega-regions. There’s a lot of theorizing going on among people who study city and metro region growth that county and state lines are all but irrelevant if you look at how economies work. It’s essentially the “Citistates” theory of folks such as Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson. Now folks are talking about mega-regions. One mega-region, dubbed “CharLanta,” is the urbanized crescent running from Atlanta through Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., Charlotte, the N.C. Triad and on to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle area.

McCrory said he and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin agreed to try to get a project going, possibly with Georgia Tech and UNC Charlotte, to look at “the bigger picture vision thing.”

Now I’ve not always agreed with McCrory, but in transportation, he’s usually on target or pretty darn close, in terms of what’s needed. And he’s right about the need to look long-term and big picture.

One major need in the CharLanta corridor: Better passenger rail service. A significant attribute that sets apart the DC-to-Boston corridor is its clearly superior rail service. The whole Southeast region ought to get together and make the world’s best pitch, to anyone in D.C. who will listen, that it’s our turn for some of those rail dollars. After all, North Carolina got shafted in the federal transit-stimulus-divvying formula.

I don’t know how McCrory plans to spend his time post-mayorship, but working to put a mega-region coalition together might well be a project in need of a champion.

Developers bend city official’s ear

I wish I could tell you what was discussed at 7:45 a.m. today, when the Charlotte Chamber’s Land Use committee (a committee of real estate, development and related business people) met with Deputy City Manager Ron Kimble. But I was told I wasn’t welcome.

On the agenda, according to an e-mail last week from Natalie English, the Chamber’s senior vice president for business and education advocacy: “Collin Brown [a lawyer] with K&L Gates will present specific examples of the cumulative impacts of the Post Construction Control Ordinance, the Urban Street Design Guidelines policy and the Proposed Amendment to the Tree Ordinance. Please plan to attend to participate in the discussion with Ron Kimble about how we might affect the impact these ordinances have on economic development, affordable housing and development in our community.”

The post-construction controls ordinance is a water-quality protection measure. The urban street design guidelines (policy, but not embedded into ordinances yet) aim to make city streets walkable and would require more streets and more street trees, among other things. The proposed change to the tree ordinance would strengthen tree-save requirements for commercial property developers.

The Chamber, English told me last week — when she was, in a very friendly and polite way telling me I couldn’t come this morning — is concerned that the proposed tree ordinance changes, on top of the post-construction controls ordinance and the street design guidelines, would “drastically impact the ability to grow the economy.”

The Land Use committee chair, Karla Knotts, is also interim executive director of the Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition (REBIC). REBIC and some members of the Land Use committee had asked the Chamber to oppose the proposed tree ordinance changes.

Clearly, putting more requirements on developers will increase the costs of development and construction. That means what gets built would A) Cost more to buyers, OR B) Mean developers wouldn’t offer as much money to buy land to start with. Both results have been known to occur, depending on the location, the market, etc. But regardless, the marginal difference in building cost isn’t the villain in today’s horrific real estate and building slowdown.

Nor would the real estate market here miraculously revive if only developers could offer product a bit more cheaply, with narrow sidewalks and no street trees, its runoff still allowed to pollute local creeks, and just as many trees being cut down as is allowed today.

Here’s the painful reality, painful to everyone in this area, because none of us likes to see businesses hurting: The developers’ potential customers are losing their jobs, health insurance, and even their homes to foreclosure, or they can’t sell their existing homes. Financing agencies, including banks, are struggling to offer credit because the finance system is full of toxic loans. That’s the problem developers are facing. It isn’t the tree ordinance.

Pols brave danger to walk down sidewalk

(CDOT staffers negotiate narrow, debris-filled sidewalk during Monday tour)

We all survived the walk down Woodlawn Road in mid-afternoon. We even managed to cross Woodlawn in safety after waiting several minutes for a gap in traffic. But … there was an incident. More later.
Council members Anthony Foxx, Michael Barnes, Susan Burgess, Patsy Kinsey and Nancy Carter (all but Kinsey members of the Transportation Committee) went for a tour by the city’s DOT staff to show some pedestrian issues. It’s part of the Pedestrian Plan, which CDOT planners are drafting and hope to give to council for approval in the next few months.
A big issue is uncomfortable, uninviting back-of-curb sidewalks along major thoroughfares. So we all walked about a quarter mile up Woodlawn.
Here’s a report on the “incident”: Shortly after we start, near Preston Townhomes at Woodlawn and Scaleybark, a black Jeep Cherokee zips past (speed limit is 35 mph, but most drivers appear to be ignoring that) and someone inside chunks a drink cup out the window. It hits Foxx and splashes Kinsey. No harm done, though it was rattling.
Only Barnes, Kinsey and CDOT planner Dan Gallagher dashed across Woodlawn at Bayberry Drive in order to see the much nicer sidewalk built at the townhouse-style Oak Leaf development across the street. The rest of us had to wait to cross until a couple of school buses set a pick for us, essentially stopping the oncoming traffic so we could safely get to the other side.
The point CDOT was making was that developments such as Oak Leaf, which needed a rezoning, don’t get that OK unless they fix the bad, back-of-curb sidewalks. Plus, many of the newer zoning categories require better sidewalks. But so-called “by-right” development — in which the land already carries the zoning needed for the development — doesn’t have to do anything about sidewalks.
CDOT is offering for consideration the idea of changing local ordinances, so developments such as Preston Flats and Preston Townhomes would have to update bad sidewalks, the way Oak Leaf did. After all, as CDOT pedestrian advocate Vivian Coleman pointed out, Preston Flats had to do significant grading of the site, for the construction. Pouring a new sidewalk would not have been onerous. As it is, though, any sidewalk improvement would come out of city coffers.
Want more pedestrian info? See the CDOT page of links to pedestrian organizations, ordinances, etc.

Politicians risking lives? Stay tuned

At 3 p.m. today a bunch of Charlotte City Council members and assorted others (including yours truly) will possibly risk their lives by walking on one of those cruddy back-of-curb sidewalks along Woodlawn Road, where traffic whizzes by at 50 mph, inches from your body. And then we’ll be invited — try not to gasp in horror — to cross the street. Note: Woodlawn has no lights or crosswalks between Scaleybark and South Boulevard, almost a full mile. So if you need to get to the other side, you just dash.

The purpose: Show the politicians how pedestrian-UN-friendly some of today’s existing development standards are.

Let us all hope no elected officials get squashed like bugs on the street. As we have seen in recent months, filling seats of elected officials (e.g., county sheriff, school board) can be messy and ugly. We would just as soon not be put through that again this year.

Why do the sidewalks tour? CDOT is working on a Pedestrian Plan which it hopes to put to council for a vote later this year. The plan (in its current draft) would recommend studying changes to ordinances in order to require back-of-curb sidewalks be improved if there’s a substantial development on a site, and that infill/teardown development be required to install sidewalks. There’s probably going to be opposition from the developers’ lobby. This is a way to help present the other side of the issue to the council members.

Small note: Technically the sidewalks on Woodlawn are not all back-of-curb. There’s a minuscule planting strip of perhaps 12 inches weedy grass-like foliage.

I’ll be taking photos. If anyone is turned into a grease spot on the pavement, don’t say you weren’t warned.

‘First Garden’ to sprout at White House

Alice Waters and other sustainable food advocates must have been persuasive. The Obamas are planning a veggie garden on the White House lawn, says the Washington Post.

Yes, it will include arugula. No, it isn’t the first such garden. President John Adams, the first president to live in the White House, planted a garden. Eleanor Roosevelt planted a Victory Garden during World War II. The last true farmer in the White House, Jimmy Carter, wouldn’t plant a vegetable garden – not even a peanut patch.
The New York Times even shows a schematic of what will be planted in what patch in the garden.
But will we see the First Family out digging up wild onions and Bermuda grass or shoo-ing the First Squirrels away from the First Tomatoes? We await further developments.

Lester Maddox lives on, in MARTA woes

(The late Lester Maddox, above)

The ghost of Lester Maddox — the ax-handle-toting, proudly segregationist Georgia politician — is with us still, in the form of a provision that’s hamstringing MARTA’s efforts to deal with the downturn in sales tax receipts due to the recession. (The photo above is Maddox in 2001.)

It seems that way back when MARTA was being formed, then-Lt. Gov. Maddox ensured that a provision in state law would prevent the subway-transit system from using more than 50 percent of its revenues for operations. MARTA wants the legislature to remove those restrictions.
Charlotte’s transit system is in no way perfect, but we in the Queen City should thank our lucky stars the city didn’t have to try to placate politicians who were quite as antediluvian as Lester Maddox. (Though to be fair to Georgia I could, of course, name some Charlotte names of folks who lacked only for ax handles …)

Assessing Charlotte’s transportation

(The city adopted a bicycle plan last year to help riders such as this)
This is for transportation policy wonks, among others. The city of Charlotte’s transportation department has issued its yearly report on how the city is doing on its Transportation Action Plan. Here’s a link, if you’d like to read it in full.
The good stuff: The city adopted a Bicycle Plan, and the light rail ridership substantially outstripped its projections.
But there’s cause for concern: Despite new city policies, more attention to pedestrians and requirements for building more sidewalks, the percentage of city residents who live within a quarter mile of schools, parks and transit is lower now than in 2004. Of course, that may have as much to do with the lack of neighborhood parks and with school-siting decisions than with whether sidewalks are adequate.
Here are some “issues and challenges” identified in the report (their wording, not mine):
– The percentage of population within ¼ mile of schools, parks and transit is lower today than in 2004, making access by walking, bicycling, and short vehicle trips less viable.
– The percentage of multifamily units being approved in the wedges [not near the transit or major business corridors] is higher than the land use targets called for in the Centers, Corridors and Wedges growth framework.
– NCDOT’s project designs typically do not reflect Charlotte’s urban needs (for example Mallard Creek Extension).
– Gas tax revenues at the federal and state levels continue to decline, reducing the funds available for building and maintaining roads.
– ½-cent sales tax revenues for transit are lower than anticipated.
– Without a local dedicated transportation funding source, at levels consistent with the TAP, Charlotte will struggle to keep pace with continued growth and increased travel demand.
Here are some of the accomplishments the plan notes (again, their wording):
– Charlotte residents passed $160M+ in transportation bonds during 2008.
– Key road and intersection projects were advanced as depicted in Map 1.
– LYNX Blue Line averaged over 15,000 daily riders in its first year of service.
– The Committee of 21 [a local group] and the 21st Century Transportation Committee [a state group] convened and identified transportation revenue options to address transportation needs at the state and local levels.
– Both the Federal Highway Administration and the North Carolina American Planning Association honored the TAP as a model plan.
– Council adopted the City of Charlotte Bicycle Plan.