Category: Urban Street Design Guidelines

The inequities of NCDOT board

Dear Gov. Perdue, House Speaker Hackney, Senate President Pro Tem (corrected, with apologies) Basnight:

Your state Board of Transportation is ridiculous. Got your attention? Good. Here’s why I say that:

I just received an e-mailed press release from my friends at the N.C. Department of Transportation, about committee assignments for that august body, the N.C. Board of Transportation. I had lost track of who my local representatives on the board are, so I decided to check it out. I popped up the online roster for the state transportation board, a body that has major sway in allocating state transportation money. Guess what I see. Charlotte – by far the state’s largest city and largest urban area – has only one member: Developer John Collett.

Of the 14 divisions, we in Division 10 (Mecklenburg, Anson, Stanly, Cabarrus and Union counties – population 1,374,357) have exactly the same number of NCDOT board members as Division 14 – Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Polk, Swain and Transylvania counties – population 338,405. Notice how that’s a little more than a third of the population of Mecklenburg alone (913,639).

Now obviously Division 14 needs representation, too. I’m not saying it doesn’t. Rural areas shouldn’t be overlooked just because they’re small. But that doesn’t make it right, or smart, to overlook urban areas just because they’re big.

So let’s take a look at the at-large members of the board, who are supposed to represent various interests. Let’s see, there’s an at-large member for State Ports and Aviation Issues. So it makes sense for that rep to be Leigh McNairy (again, corrected, with apologies) from Kinston, right? Sure, Kinston has no port, but at least it’s on the Neuse River, isn’t it? Only thing is, the state’s ports are in City and Wilmington, neither of which has a rep on the DOT board.

Is it because of Kinston’s vast airport – the state’s busiest, and US Airways’ largest hub and all that? Oops, I forgot! That would be Charlotte. There’s even a Ports Authority Inland Terminal in Charlotte, ahem.

(If you give up on that Kinston mystery, here’s a clue. The state-funded Global TransPark – a yet-to-bear-fruit effort that attempted to revive all of Eastern North Carolina by building a big airfield – is in Kinston. Well, now there’s a parts factory there, too. Whew. I was starting to get worried that that Kinston appointment didn’t make any sense.)

There’s an at-large member for “rural issues.” The position appears to be unfilled. Hmm, I wonder who’s the at-large member for “urban issues.” Guess what. There isn’t one. But don’t cities have urban-style issues in much the way rural areas have rural-style issues? Don’t they deserve some attention too? Gov. Perdue, please hop on this.

There’s an at-large member for environmental issues. Good! That’s forward thinking. That member is from Raleigh, Nina Szlosberg-Landis. So the cities in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) get two board slots, because the District 5 member, Chuck Watts, is from Durham.

There’s an at-large member for government-related finance and accounting issues (huh?). He’s Ronnie Wall from Burlington.

Aha. Here’s an at-large member for mass transit. Since Charlotte has the only light rail transit system in the state, and is the only city with funding to build the state’s only streetcar system, and has the largest bus system and the only dedicated sales tax for transit in the state, it makes all kinds of sense that the at-large member for transit is – Andrew Perkins, from Greensboro?

And that gives the cities in the Triad (Greenboro, Winston-Salem and High Point) two board members as well, since the District 9 member is Ralph Womble from Winston-Salem.

Throwing aside the ridiculous way in which the DOT districts are configured (dating to where the state prisons were located, and I am not making that up), it’s fair for all sections of the state to have voices on the board. But it isn’t fair for people in cities to be disproportionately voiceless.

Charlotte and the state’s other cities are the economic engines of North Carolina. When they sink, the state’s economy sinks. That should be reflected in all state policies, not just transportation. It simply makes no sense that they get disproportionately tiny attention when it comes to transportation representation, or any other forms of representation.

I’m guessing the legislature can change those silly DOT districts. But when it comes time to make appointments, Gov. Perdue, Rep. Hackney and Sen. Basnight, could you please notice that your largest city – you know, the one with the busiest airport, the biggest traffic problems, the biggest mass transit system – might need a little more representation on your state transportation board?

Streetcar, more tree protection before City Council today

City Council members today get to deal with some controversial stuff. At tonight’s 6:30 p.m. meeting they’re to vote on whether to accept the $25 million federal grant to start building a streetcar line. At their 5 p.m. dinner meeting they’ll hear a briefing on the controversial tree ordinance revisions, five years in the making. And at a 3:30 p.m. committee meeting, the panel will hear about the controversial urban street design guidelines, which have been in the works for eight years. (Memo to government staff: If you have the temerity to propose something developers don’t like, be prepared to spend many, many years on it.)

For all you local government aficionados, here’s a link to what the council will be asked to vote on for the streetcar. And here’s a link to two pro-con pieces that ran Saturday on the Observer’s op-ed page, from council members Edwin Peacock III (he’s voting no, he says) and David Howard (why he’ll vote yes). And here’s what the Observer’s editorial board said about the streetcar on July 18, in “Streetcar is sound strategy, not silly frill.”

Tree ordinance: At its 5 p.m. dinner meeting the council’s to be briefed on the proposed strengthening of the city’s tree ordinance – the part of the ordinance that applies to commercial development, including multifamily housing, but not the part for single-family subdivisions. Just to show you how things work, here’s a list of the members of the stakeholder committee that has been hashing out the tree ordinance for FIVE YEARS.

I’ve put in red the members who represent developers or businesses whose major clients are developers. (Granted, just because you get paid by developers, or are one, it doesn’t mean you’re not sometimes environmentally minded. But I’m just saying.) I’m not sure how to categorize Henry Wallace from Duke Power, a utility company. It’s a subsidiary of Duke Energy, which also co-owns Crescent Resources, which was a major developer around here until it had to file for bankruptcy.

I’ve put in blue the members who are government staff, and therefore are expected to be responsive to ALL members of the public, i.e. not say things that may tick off developers.

In green are the stakeholder members who aren’t affiliated with the real estate and development industry and aren’t local government staff.

Don McSween (City Arborist), Mary Stauble (Mecklenburg County Solid Waste), Lisa Hagood (ESP Associates, Designer), Lee McLaren (DPR Associates, Subdivision Steering Committee), Henry Wallace (Duke Power, Utilities), Tim Morgan/Andy Munn (REBIC, Home Builders Association), Bob Miller (Camas Associates, Architect), John Porter (Charter Properties, Developer/ Charlotte Apartment Association), Chris Buchanan (Moore & Van Allen, Tree Advisory Committee), Rick Roti (Sierra Club), Christa Rodgers (Parks and Recreation).

Even more revealing is to check out the cost-benefit analysis subgroup, whose mission was to apply the proposed changes to some development sites to see how much they might add to the cost of development. (It’s amazing anyone was left at the Crosland or Childress Klein offices while this group was meeting):

Jon Morris (Beacon Partners), Clifton Coble(Bissell Development), Chris Kirby (Carlson Real Estate), Tom Lannin(Chestnut Consulting), Tricia Noble (Childress Klein), Sue Freyler(Cole Jenest & Stone), Bill Daleure (Crosland), Mike Wiggins(Crosland),Scott Henson (Crosland), Steve Mauldin(Crosland), Ju-Ian Shen (Design Resource Group), Al Harris (LSG), Debra Glennon (LSG), Jay Banks(Kimley-Horn), Ed Schweitzer (Land Design), Jeff Orsborn (OSG), Kavita Gupta (Perkins and Will) ,Brandon Plunkett(The John R. McAdams Co), Brian Crutchfield (Timmons Group), Terry Brennan (Trinity Partners), Paul Devine (Childress Klein), Landon Wyatt (Childress Klein), David Haggart (Childress Klein),Chris Daly (Childress Klein),
Trey Dempsey (Lincoln Harris).

Does it make sense to have plenty of site-plan, run-the-numbers expertise on a cost-benefit analysis group? Of course. But if you’ve ever wondered why run-of-the-mill Charlotteans think the city’s government processes are dominated by developers, that’s why.

Street designs: At 3:30 p.m. today the council’s Transportation and Planning Committee (David Howard, Patsy Kinsey, Warren Cooksey and Michael Barnes) hears presentations on the Urban Street Design Guidelines, and the Centers Corridors & Wedges Growth Framework. The committee is being asked to make a recommendation to the full council on the CC&W Framework. If you haven’t heard much about it, you’re not alone. It’s not been getting many headlines. Probably because it doesn’t really change things very much. Or if it does, I haven’t been able to find that section in it.

The street design guidelines have been controversial. Developers (who’ll have to pay to put more streets and sidewalks into their developments, which takes away from developable land) contend the street requirement will raise costs. They’ve also acquired a sudden concern for storm water runoff (a concern they didn’t seem to feel very powerfully when the city and county were trying to adopt watershed protections and floodplain regulations in the 1990s) and they’re noting that all those sidewalks and extra streets will create more impervious surfaces. As if all the rooftops and driveways and surface parking lots they’re building don’t.

Short block lengths are a huge help to people trying to get around the city on foot. The city’s attempt to shrink the allowable block lengths in its new development is admirable. Further, the USDG policy that was adopted in 2007 already compromised the transportation experts’ earlier proposal, after developers complained. Here’s hoping the City Council, as it deals with the staff’s current project to codify the policy into the local ordinances, doesn’t force yet another “compromise” of the already compromised guidelines.

Here’s a link to the PowerPoint presentations that show the Centers Corridors & Wedges Growth Framework, and to the Urban Street Design Guidelines.

Winston-Salem gets artsy on its interstate

Cheers to our fellow N.C. cities, Wintson-Salem and Greensboro. Each won a six-figure grant from the Mayor’s Institute on City Design.

The most exciting project is the one in Winston-Salem, which received $200,000. The Arts Council of Winston-Salem created a coalition among the N.C. Department of Transportation, the city, and the Chamber of Commerce to make sure urban designers and artists have a role in the NCDOT replacement of 11 bridges along Business I-40. The goal: Assemble artists and urban designers to create a master plan that provides guidelines for design, lighting, sound walls, and bridge abutments, as well as water features, public art, and festival space adjacent to the rights-of-way.

It would be great if Charlotte’s Center City 2020 Vision Plan came up with a similar coalition, and went after similar money.

Greensboro’s $100,000 grant to this project. The grant foes to Action Greensboro, a not-for-profit organization in the N.C. Piedmont that coordinates citizen initiatives on enhancing the Greensboro. Action Greensboro is funding public art for a renovation of an abandoned railroad. The art will include 12 decorative iron , through which will be seen two 60-foot graphic panels depicting parts of Greensboro’s history.

The greenway encircling downtown Greensboro sounds like some Charlotte plans (remember the uptown loop greenway from the 2010 Uptown Plan, or the John Nolen greenway plan from early in the 20th century?) – as yet unfinished. Note the photo with the Greensboro plan, shows work by artist Jim Gallucci. Want to see some of his work in Charlotte? Visit the bridge over Briar Creek on Central Avenue.

‘Tryon Bridge Towers’ artist did WWII Memorial

What ARE those things on South Tryon Street? The two metallic structures erected just past the Big O building at the bridge over I-277, are not, as you might have thought, witches-hat-derived homage to the show “Wicked.” They are a gift from the Queens Table, a group of anonymous – and apparently wealthy and influential – public art donors who have brought us the Socialist-realist monuments at The Square.

Update 3:30 PM – The artist is Friedrich St.Florian, an architect based in Providence, R.I. He designed the World War II Memorial in Washington. Here’s a link to a series of photos of the works being installed. The current name appears to be “Tryon Bridge Towers.”

Here’s a link (courtesy of the folks at CLTblog) to a presentation to the City Council in April 2009. It explains the Queens Table: “A small group of anonymous donors established the Queen’s Table Fund in 1991 to celebrate Charlotte by quietly finding and filling needs that are not otherwise being met to enhance aesthetics and quality of life in the City.” (May I suggest that art teachers for CMS could be an unfilled need for the next decade?)

Among their prior gifts, in addition to the four statues at The Square, are the Queen Charlotte at the airport (often described as “going into the lane for the layup”) and “Aspire,” the bronze on Kings Drive outside the Temple of Karnak-sized new Central Piedmont Community College building. I have come to love the airport statue, I confess. “Aspire” will have to grow on me. The things at The Square are an embarrassment, art as envisioned by aging CFOs, perhaps. (No I don’t know who really selected them.)

I am checking in with Jean Greer, Vice President of Public Art at the Arts & Science Council to see what she knows. (Update: Jean tells me the project didn’t go through the ASC Public Art Commission although she knew about it through Charlotte Center City Partners. It sits on N.C. DOT property, she says. The N.C. DOT is in the process of crafting an art policy for state rights-of-way.)

Jean is one of the lucky souls who gets to stand up at occasional City Council dinner meetings and give presentations on current public art projects and endure silly jokes from council member Andy Dulin and – for the 14 years he was mayor – Pat McCrory. McCrory buttonholed me last week at the James Jack statue unveiling to say he requires two things of public art for him to like it: You don’t have to be high to “get it” and it shouldn’t be something a 5th-grader could do. He approved of Chas Fagan’s James Jack statue.

I don’t know about this new work. At first, as I went past for several weeks I kept thinking it was some odd NCDOT construction equipment abandoned to the weeds. Then it became clear it was “art.”

Pardon me for sounding like McCrory but this one reminds me of robotic equipment, as portrayed on “The Jetsons,” or possibly a depiction of the trash compactors on Darth Vader’s Death Star. It does not make my heart soar. If anything, it destroys any soaring my heart might have been inclined to do. (Not that a soaring heart is likely as you walk across the bleak, Sahara-like I-277 bridge.)

Annual cost to the city, for maintenance, such as mowing, planting, electricity: $ 8,450.

New diet coming to Selwyn Avenue

Here’s a tidbit from the city council’s Friday memo. A section of Selwyn Avenue is on the schedule to join some other in-town streets in a “road diet.” As with East Boulevard and with several blocks of South Tryon Street, the city Transportation Department is going to shrink a chunk of Selwyn from four lanes to three.

The idea is that where you don’t need the lane capacity, having fewer lanes can A) encourage bicyclists by adding bike lanes or extra pavement width, and pedestrians and B) work to subtly slow traffic. After all, the biggest contributor to traffic accidents in a city is – not trees, not telephone poles, not bicyclists – speed.

Here’s the section from the memo. Warning, CDOT jargon ahead:

Selwyn Avenue Street Conversion
Staff Resource: Johanna Quinn, CDOT, 704-336-5606, jquinn@ci.charlotte.nc.us

Each year CDOT staff identifies streets scheduled for resurfacing that could be candidates for
conversions. Typically, these are streets where the curb to curb space can be reallocated from four travel lanes, to 3 travel lanes and bicycle lanes. CDOT staff evaluates operating conditions at intersections and street segments, analyzes connectivity and multi-modal travel factors, prepares a technical recommendation, and informs the public. CDOT moves forward with road conversions that provide benefits to bicyclists, pedestrians, and neighborhood residents, while continuing satisfactory traffic operations.

Selwyn Avenue is on the 2010 resurfacing list. Staff has determined that the four-lane segment between Queens Road West and Colony Road should be converted from four lanes to three lanes with a 3.5 ft. wide outside shoulder. The new three-lane configuration will have one through lane in each direction and a two-way center left turn lane with dedicated left-turn lanes at side streets. The installation of a dedicated left-turn lane at Colony Road will require removal of the peak two-hour turn restriction from southbound Selwyn onto Colony Road.

Area residents are aware of this conversion and have had the opportunity to provide feedback at a public meeting, online surveys, and through the Myers Park Homeowners Association. A postcard mailer was distributed May 14, 2010 to notify residents that the changes will be
implemented this summer.

Staff considered a street conversion for the last remaining four-lane segment of Selwyn Avenue between Queens Road West and Westfield Road, but decided against it. A conversion would have to be asymmetrical and would take away some lane width, which would affect cyclists who regularly use this road segment as part of the “booty loop”. Staff took this proposal to the Bicycle Advocacy Committee which decided that cyclists and motorists have settled into a travel pattern that functions well for all users in this area.

Resurfacing Selwyn Avenue is scheduled for June. This will allow resurfacing to take place during Queens University’s summer break and enough time for all resurfacing debris to be cleared before 24 Hours of Booty at the end of July.

Suburb slums? (Shhhh, don’t tell Ballantyne)

I caught an intriguing “Urban Vs. Suburban” discussion on WFAE’s Charlotte Talks this morning, interviewing Christopher Leinberger, author of the March 2008 article in The Atlantic magazine, “The Next Slum?”

His article opened with an anecdote from the Windy Ridge subdivision in northwest Charlotte. (A Charlotte Observer article later, in January 2009, reported that half the homes in Windy Ridge had been through foreclosure. And six months after, in July 2009, another Observer article said it’s one of the neighborhoods hit so badly by foreclosures that Habitat for Humanity is buying the houses, now costing less than what Habitat would spend building a new one, and will rehab them and sell them to Habitat-worthy families.)

Also on the show was Jen Pilla Taylor, who wrote a piece for the January edition of Charlotte magazine, “Tale of Two Cities” in which she writes about the growing divide between urban and suburban parts of Charlotte.

“Much of the time, the two worlds are largely indifferent toward one another,” she wrote. “Much of the suburban set is apathetic about the city, with many suburbanites rarely if ever visiting uptown unless they work there. Urban dwellers see the ‘burbs as too far away, too rural, too cookie-cutter. But tensions bubble up in public spats fought primarily by activists and elected officials.”

But Leinberger, a planning professor at the University of Michigan as well as a real estate developer, talked about the market forces and trends that, he has predicted, will bludgeon property values for suburban and ex-urban houses – due to oversupply and to a growing preference for “walkable” neighborhoods. He said on WFAE that the federal bailout of suburban housing has been much larger than the bank or auto industry bailouts. Interesting way to look at it. (This may buttress his point: A November 2008 Observer story reported, “Because it has such a high concentration of foreclosures and subprime mortgages, Charlotte is in line to get $5.4 million [in federal money] to help stabilize its neighborhoods.)

More recently, MSN Real Estate took on the same topic, “Is your suburb the next slum?” a sort of “Leinberger Lite” that quoted Leinberger and some of the same data.

All the articles make clear that not all suburban neighborhoods are the same and that many are thriving and will continue to. Nor do they present every urban neighborhood as nirvana.

But the data show that the more walkable areas with neighborhood centers of stores and workplaces are more likely to do better in the future real estate market than those made up only of auto-oriented single-family housing.

I guess we won’t know whose predictions are coming to pass until the local real estate market revives.

Revamp of transportation planning? (Or, toss the dwarfs?)

TRYON, N.C. – During council discussion about transportation, Mayor Anthony Foxx mentioned a key issue: Among the many challenges to finding federal funding for Charlotte-area transportation projects – streets, roads and mass transit alike – is that the feds are looking closely at how well a region is supporting regional transportation planning.

And the Charlotte region plans its transportation regionally about as well as I can dunk a basketball. Is there any other large metro region with more different “metropolitan planning organizations” – aka, the state-established way to plan transportation? Charlotte region transportation is split among 4 or 5 MPOs and two Rural Planning Organizations. Just one small example of the ridiculousity: The Lake Norman area is considered a Rural Planning Organization and not part of the Charlotte metro transportaton planning.

I’ve ranted about this previously. Small hope in the offing? At least the mayor and other transportation officials are talking about it. And MPOs must be reconstituted after every census. And NCDOT chief Gene Conti is actually paying attention to Charlotte. NCDOT now has a staffer with an office on the 8th floor of the Char-Meck Govt Center.

If you’d like to know a bit more about the unbelievable insanity of transportation planning in the greater Charlotte region, read this piece from early January – you have to go to the very end to read about what “sounds like a bizarre camaraderie of dwarfs: MUMPO, GUAMPO, CRMPO, GHMPO and RFATS (in the Disney version he’d be the chubby, clumsy one). Let us not forget LNRPO and RRRPO (the small but snarling pirate dwarf?).”

‘Differences of opinion’ on transit plans

TRYON, N.C. – After the lunch break at the City Council retreat (great blackberry cobbler! – and yes, the Observer journalists pay for their own lunch) talk has turned to transportation.

Hard to blog and take notes and listen simultaneously, but lotta talk about concern in North Meck and on the MTC about whether the North transit line should have been built ahead of the NE line and the streetcar. Of course, no MTC money is being used to build the city’s streetcar project, but, as City Manager Curt Walton said, at the recent Metropolitan Transit Commission meeting, city officials showed CATS data to prove that no CATS/MTC money going to the streetcar, “But they didn’t believe it.” He also cited what he said was “a legitimate difference of opinion” about whether the Northeast line or the North line should be moving forward next.

What Walton didn’t say, but that savvy transit officials would, is that the Bush administration’s rules on how to rate transit projects’ cost-efficiency meant the North corridor did not qualify for any federal money, and the NE corridor just squeaked in by the skin of its teeth. If someone is to be bludgeoned about why the North corridor is not being built, folks might want to be looking toward the Federal Transit Administration and the previous administration. ( Note: The Obama administration has announced that it’s changing those rules on how to rate transit projects.)

And CDOT director Danny Pleasant just now made that point, as I was typing the above. Neither the North Corridor nor the streetcar qualified for fed transit funds under the old rules. But things are changing.

Live, it’s pols in Tryon (NC, not Street)

I checked in about 8:15 to the Charlotte City Council retreat in Tryon, N.C., where a “winter storm event” is scheduled to hit about midnight. So far, no word that the honorables plan anything other than to gut it out and then slide home on U.S. 74 and I-85 tomorrow afternoon.

This morning they’re hashing out the “council/staff operating agreement” which, if you pay attention to issues as they move through the process, is actually rather significant. Maybe. Depends on whether they abide by what they come up with. It repeats the words “mutual respect” several times. As if, perhaps, staff has been feeling beat up on by some elected officials in the past? AND as if, perhaps, elected officials have felt as if staff was treating them like children in the past? (Those are my observations only. Nothing that direct has been said here.)

The issue of whether to include the word “risk” in the document vs. adding the word “creative” came up. CDOT head Danny Pleasant suggested that the document should pair creativity with “risk tolerance.” I.e., creativity means you take some risks.

MORE to come, on the role of special interest groups.

EPA video spotlights Charlotte, Dilworth

New video posted on the EPA’s Web site lauds the city’s Urban Street Design Guidelines and the East Boulevard Road Diet, which illustrates the city’s transportation design goals. Check it out. Mayor Anthony Foxx, ex-Mayor Pat McCrory, council member Susan Burgess, ex-council member and current city department head Patrick Mumford and others talk about how great the Urban Street Design Guidelines are.

It stems from the city’s National Award for Smart Growth Achievement, announced in December, in the “Policies and Regulations” category for the USDG.

Yet the developers’ lobby, the local Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition, as well as influential, long-time real estate magnate John Crosland Jr., are still urging the city to dial back – or un-adopt, or never actually codify into ordinances, or otherwise eviscerate – those same USDG. They don’t like the requirements for modestly shorter blocks, or the width of the planting strips (wide enough so street trees will survive) or the general policy to build more streets and sidewalks in new developments. It’ll add cost, they say. And yep, it will.

But what’s the cost of congestion? What’s the cost of not being able to ride a bicycle or walk anywhere? What’s the cost of street trees that die? What’s the cost of having to retrofit streets and build sidewalks into already built neighborhoods – at taxpayer expense. The costs exist. It’s just a question of where you inject them into the growth process: at the start, or later on and spread among a wider group of payers, i.e. us taxpayers.