Category: Atlanta

Local transportation planner: Outerbelt warning was prescient


My posting Tuesday on the death of long-time Atlanta Regional Commission executive Harry West, “Atlanta’s ‘Mr. Region’ (who warned against our outerbelt) has died” brought this memory from longtime local transportation planner Bill Coxe, Huntersville’s transportation planner who previously the transportation planner for Mecklenburg County, back when there was enough unincorporated county land to make work for a county transportation planner.

Coxe wrote:

Saw your blog on Harry West’s passing. Had the following knee-jerk reaction:

As a transportation planner intimately involved with Charlotte’s outerbelt since its original environmental study in 1979, I vividly remember Mr. West’s comments at that conference. And time has proved him true. This billion-dollar infrastructure project causes the market to distribute land use in its wake. And since it turned land that had been used to row-crop food into land that is used to row-crop homes that are followed by row-cropped retail centers, it in turn demands more infrastructure investment. But the distances involved now make the cost of that provision daunting.

I also recall XX [Coxe named a local planner; I’m checking with that person to make sure Coxe’s memory is accurate] making a presentation on his research that indicated outer loops did not bring more development to a metropolitan region, simply caused it to occur in a different fashion. Don’t know how you could ever prove or disprove this thesis.

Coincidentally, 1998 was also the year of the 2025 Transit/Land Use Plan, which recommended using rapid transit investment as a tool to engender a more compact and economically viable land use pattern.

Atlanta’s ‘Mr. Region’ (who warned against our outerbelt) has died

2009 photo of unfinished I-485 at Old Statesville Road. Photo: Nancy Pierce

Sad news from the Saporta Report in Atlanta: Harry West, longtime (1973-2000) executive director of the 10-county Atlanta Regional Commission, died Monday morning, reports Maria Saporta.

West, writes Saporta, “probably did more than any other person in metro Atlanta to create a regional mindset.” Read more about his role here.

I met West several times over the years, but his most memorable visit to Charlotte, at least in my memory, came in March of 1998. He spoke at a regional conference on the then-unfinished I-485 outerbelt loop. The conference was sponsored by the Centralina Council of Governments, the now defunct regional advocacy group Central Carolinas Choices and – perhaps amazingly – the Charlotte Chamber.

It was a time when some community leaders worried that building the outer loop would create so many miles of low-density sprawling development that Charlotte would go the way of Atlanta.

As I wrote in an April 11, 1998, column for the Charlotte Observer, West described what Atlanta’s Perimeter Highway, I-285, had meant to the city and what Charlotte might learn from Atlanta’s experience.

I-285 was finished in 1969, he recounted, and was intended to maintain a strong center city. Instead it attracted development, and what Atlanta got was sprawling growth “that doesn’t allow you to do anything but use your car,” as West put it.

Then came his advice: “If I thought you would listen to me,” he said, “I’d tell you not to build it.”
He didn’t mean not to build any more streets or roads or highways. He meant not to focus our transportation plans
around a loop highway. As I wrote then:
“He advised a serious focus on land-use planning along I-485, and requiring development that doesn’t force you to drive everywhere. ‘Decide what you want and stick to it,’ he said. ‘Don’t change it, don’t bend to the market forces.’

“Did he realize he was in Charlotte, the ‘Growth Is Good’ center of the universe? Market forces here eat land-use plans for breakfast.”
After the conference the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Commission did a land use study of all the outerbelt interchanges and set “plans” for those that had not been built yet, or that did not already have plans. The plans looked like colored blobs of single-use zoning: office parks in this area, shopping centers over there, single-family subdivisions here and apartment complexes over yonder.
None of those interchange plans, even if they had been followed, would have made any difference in stopping the outward-oozing sprawl. Almost all the the new development was designed so driving is the only way to get around. So much for the cure of congestion. Harry West understood that, and he tried to tell us. But we were not in a mood to listen.

Life along any urban highway. Do highways just induce traffic? Photo: iStock

  

This time, Atlanta gets streetcar bucks

The news emerged last week, and official word came today. Atlanta won a $47 million U.S. DOT grant to help it build a proposed $72 million streetcar line. Here’s a link to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article with details. Salt Lake City also won a streetcar grant, for $26 million, and Los Angeles won $20 million for its Crenshaw/LAX light rail line. Yonah Freemark of The Transport Politic offers an analysis here. He notes that of the $600 million total in these so-called TIGER II grants most went to small-scale projects in small and mid-size cities for street improvements, building transit centers, and rehabilitating freight lines. Here’s a link to the USDOT site where you can find the list of capital project grants and the list of planning grants.

Asheville won an $850,000 planning grant for its East Riverside Sustainable Multimodal Neighborhood plan. The project will “integrate existing master plans and revise codes and regulations (emphasis mine) to create sustainable development.” For a bit more information, see Page 22 of the link for planning grants.

This time, Atlanta gets streetcar bucks

The news emerged last week, and official word came today. Atlanta won a $47 million U.S. DOT grant to help it build a proposed $72 million streetcar line. Here’s a link to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article with details. Salt Lake City also won a streetcar grant, for $26 million, and Los Angeles won $20 million for its Crenshaw/LAX light rail line. Yonah Freemark of The Transport Politic offers an analysis here. He notes that of the $600 million total in these so-called TIGER II grants most went to small-scale projects in small and mid-size cities for street improvements, building transit centers, and rehabilitating freight lines. Here’s a link to the USDOT site where you can find the list of capital project grants and the list of planning grants.

Asheville won an $850,000 planning grant for its East Riverside Sustainable Multimodal Neighborhood plan. The project will “integrate existing master plans and revise codes and regulations (emphasis mine) to create sustainable development.” For a bit more information, see Page 22 of the link for planning grants.

Eeek! Sprawlanta oozes this way!

Yikes! Should Charlotte be worried that Atlanta’s sprawl will ooze over it like a slime mold in the damp woods? Or more to the point, ooze over it the way Charlotte sprawled over Derita, Newell, Thrift, Sharon and other once rural hamlets?

Here’s a clever video about “Sprawlanta” which notes that if you add together all the miles driven in the Atlanta region daily, you could drive to the sun and back. And note the great visuals of some very courageous pedestrians trying to cross sprawl thoroughfares. As the video counts the number of pedestrian deaths in the region, it notes that iconic Atlanta author Margaret Mitchell died when she was struck while crossing the street.

The last section does seem a bit like a commercial for the Glenwood Park development, however lovely and worthwhile that development does look to be. Note developer Charles Brewer’s remarks at the end, pointing out he just wants government to get out of the way so he can develop in a way he believes people want. If you’re thinking this is of interest only to big-government commie pinko types, you might want to rethink that piece of it.

Atlanta vs. Charlotte for ‘King of South’


Atlanta Journal-Constitution weighed in last weekend on the Charlotte-Atlanta rivalry with a piece by former Observer reporter Dan Chapman: Rivalry to be economic King of South heats up.
Read it, then read the comments. Then tell me whether you don’t suspect that a lot of the talk about how well (!!) Charlotte has dealt with growth and transportation comes from Atlanta types hoping to goad their legislature with some jealousy. The story says the Georgia leg won’t let Atlanta or other metro regions impose sales taxes for roads, and won’t even let MARTA use its own money to fill budget holes.

Is Charlotte doing things better than Atlanta? Depends on what you look at. Definitely we’re doing better at tying land use to transit – at requiring transit-oriented development along our light rail line. Atlanta didn’t do that during MARTA’s earliest decades and results show.
Is Charlotte doing any better at controlling sprawl? That’s a tough question. I think some of the counties and smaller towns in the region (Cabarrus County, Davidson, Belmont, etc.) are, indeed, doing better. Further, N.C. annexation laws have left Charlotte in a healthier situation and have allowed the city limits to expand, instead of being hemmed in like the actual city of Atlanta itself.

Yet Charlotte and Mecklenburg have done virtually nothing to preserve farms or any section of the county from suburban-style development, other than a few county parkland purchases. Eventually every square foot of the county will be developed except for those parts purchased for parkland or privately donated to land conservation groups such as the Catawba Lands Conservancy. No serious farmland or forestland protection measures have been taken by local governments other than Davidson.

Atlanta is definitely bigger. Is it better? I think that depends on what you’re looking for and how closely you look.