I promised that
today’s post would be about the murals newly adorning American Alley in
Petaluma. And it will be, but only after
I chat about a transit issue that is even more essential to the future of
Petaluma. It’s a challenge that will be
faced by many North Bay communities in the coming year.
I sit on
Petaluma’s Transit Advisory Committee.
As such, I’ve had a front row seat for the magic that the Petaluma Transit
staff has worked over the past few years.
With less than two-an-a-half full-time employees, transit ridership had
nearly tripled since 2010. Rider
satisfaction is increasing. The bus
maintenance facility was expanded. And
technology such as an automatic vehicle locating system for the buses is being
rolled out. (While the Transit Committee
has made a handful of useful suggestions, most of the credit must go to the staff.)
But the most
significant opportunity yet may now be arriving at the two Petaluma train
stations. Late in 2016, the Sonoma Marin
Area Rail Transit (SMART) will begin running trains between San Rafael and
Santa Rosa. With the Petaluma prospects
for station parking ranging from inadequate to non-existent, with bike routes degraded
by hazardous segments that deter casual riders, and with transit-oriented
development still nothing more than a glimmer on the horizon, there is a
potential deficiency in the delivery of passengers to the train stations. Petaluma Transit may be able to help.
Furthermore,
with the success of the SMART likely to span transit-oriented development and
walkable connections into existing neighborhoods, Petaluma Transit’s ability to
deliver passengers to the train, if it can make the train successful, could be a
critical step toward a more urbanist future.
But Petaluma
Transit is already heavily stretched in meeting its current obligations of serving
the segments of the community that rely on local transit to live their daily
lives.
And there
are few if any resources evident to help Petaluma Transit stretch even further. At one time, it was expected that SMART would
help in funding shuttles between train stations and destinations such as places
of work and residential districts, but the recession and the resulting reduced SMART-funding
sales tax proceeds forced numerous cutbacks, including the length of the
system, several stations, and any hope of train-connecting shuttles.
So the a
large portion of the burden of delivering people to the Petaluma train stations
will fall solely on the Petaluma Transit,
who will try to pull yet another rabbit or two of their hat. (And perhaps the Transit Committee will again
be able to provide a few constructive ideas.)
The Petaluma
Transit planning effort is just getting underway, but there is a way that
readers can help. If you live in
Petaluma and expect to ride the SMART train, even if only occasionally, you can
respond to this poll about the location of your home,
how often you expect to ride the train, and how you hope to reach the
station. Your assistance will be
appreciated. This may even be the
beginning of a long-running dialogue about how to tackle this puzzle.
Okay, now we
can move onward to murals.
I previously
wrote about a proposal to paint eight murals along
American Alley in downtown Petaluma. The
Petaluma Planning Commission saw the opportunity as I had, approving the murals
unanimously after only a short conversation.
The murals were completed over the weekend of November 7 and 8.
I wasn’t
able to visit downtown during the mural painting weekend, but recently walked the
alley, camera in hand, on a weekday afternoon.
It was an
insightful experience. The murals were
much as had been proposed to the City, so it was like seeing old friends to
amble down the alley and to come upon each mural looking both familiar and new. But those who might have expected the murals
to transform the alley would have been disappointed. It was the same old American Alley, still utilitarian
and still slightly dirty and smelly, but now with a hint of promise.
As Chuck
Marohn of StrongTowns explained in a webinar early this week, the best urbanism
is the urbanism that evolves slowly over time, incremental step after
incremental step. Urbanism that is
brought to life fully formed will wear thin uniformly and may not adequately induce
reinvestment thirty years hence. But
urbanism that is built incrementally and ages on a range of schedules will
always be able to justify upkeep and regeneration.
The murals
are one of those incremental steps. They
don’t completely change the alley, but they encourage more people to wander
down a slightly tawdry alley. And some
of those people will visit the handful of shops along the alley. And building owners, noting the increasing pedestrian
activity, will find nooks and crannies for yet more shops. If, ten years from now, American Alley is a
bustling place, the weekend the murals were painted may be seen as a key step
in the history of the alleys.
And, as
recently noted by Sarah Goodyear in CityLab, the murals can
serve to mark the alley as off-limits to the disreputable handful who would
deface it with graffiti.
My favorite
mural is the mosaic. It’s not so much
the design as the material choice. I
like adding one more texture to the range of textures already filling the
alley, from the rough bricks with aging grout to the worn concrete driving
surface to the newer stucco walls. The
mosaic seemed to add a grace note.
I can’t
recommend visiting to downtown Petaluma to see the murals. They’re not that impressive on their
own. But there are enough interesting places
to shop and to eat in downtown Petaluma that I can recommend an outing
there. And as a part of your adventure,
you really should wander over to American Alley to check out the new artwork.
In my next
post, I’ll return to the subject of induced traffic. I recently came across an article that does a
fine job of explaining the concept in layman terms. And I had a conversation with the staff of
the Sonoma County Transportation Agency who gave me a different way to look at
the subject.
As always,
your questions or comments will be appreciated.
Please comment below or email me.
And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)
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