tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1928622184607631910.post4558544752315596428..comments2023-10-22T01:56:21.243-07:00Comments on Where Do We Go from Here?: Urbanist Thinking on the Rainier Avenue Connector Dave Aldenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04365271229524041881noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1928622184607631910.post-83055306900747719312014-10-14T10:46:37.105-07:002014-10-14T10:46:37.105-07:00I'll bite: Cost is a huge factor, as is geogra...I'll bite: Cost is a huge factor, as is geography: That bridge either needs to be a lift/swing bridge (with all of the associated issues we see with D-street), or something like 70' high, which is a difficult height to get based on the location of Petaluma Blvd S. relative to the river.<br /><br />Also, there isn't a whole lot of demand: Southern Petaluma is largely residential, so there's not a lot of point to increasing flows between the east and west sides there. Delivering more people on to Lakeville Highway from the Boulevard South rather than D Street doesn't do much to reduce the congestion on Washington, and it's unlikely that people will get up to the shopping centers at Washington and McDowell (and north on McDowell) via McDowell from Lakeville rather than hopping on the freeway.<br /><br />And when looking at the costs of congestion... I think the average occupancy for cars runs between 1.2 (commuters) and 1.6. If you figure the average value of those people's time is $30 bucks an hour (just ballparking, passengers in those cars are often kids), that's $.50/minute/car of economic value saved. Tax recovery of that value in transportation dollars is a lot less; if you tax that as sales tax you get about 10%, and then about 10% of that goes to transportation, so about 1%.<br /><br />So if you have a rush-hour morning and evening during which those drivers can save 5 minutes, you have $9k worth of economic value per day, which seems like a lot of money, but if money costs about $6k/month per million dollars, and we're only recovering 1% of that value in transportation taxes, that means we're only covering half a million dollars in infrastructure improvements.<br /><br />If we assume that we can recoup that value from income taxes, say the 40% level, and we're getting 10% of that for transportation, that still give us a little under eleven grand a month, but that pays for less than $2M in infrastructure.<br /><br />And these numbers ignore induced demand. It's unlikely that increasing the number of vehicle trips (keeping trip time flat) between two residential areas will result in a large amount of recoup-able economic value.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1928622184607631910.post-49385632416836799442014-10-01T10:02:36.472-07:002014-10-01T10:02:36.472-07:00This is all really interesting stuff Dave, but as ...This is all really interesting stuff Dave, but as you touched on in your other post re: this issue, why is there not more emphasis on pushing for a bridge at the end of Caulfied over to Petaluma south? It doesn't address the North east traffic pattern , but it would be another connector, and presumably take some pressure of E. Washington & D st. Is cost the main objection there ?A.K.Andrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15327919267470509253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1928622184607631910.post-56511108239350496812013-09-27T10:45:40.932-07:002013-09-27T10:45:40.932-07:00Dan, thanks for the comments. Your analyses are g...Dan, thanks for the comments. Your analyses are generally good and probably a bit optimistic. To get good road life, periodic maintenance is required during the thirty-year life. That's a cost you haven't included. And City revenue from property tax is well less than 1 percent. So the picture is worse than you estimate.<br /><br />But not every project must be justified by new development or other economic activity. Sometimes, a city can decide that a new amenity is required for the livability of the current community, with the taxpayers willing to tax themselves for the cost. For the Rainier connector, I calculate that the cost per household would be about $300 per year, including an allowance for ongoing maintenance. Even in the unlikely event that the taxpayers are willing to fund a cost like this, I'd argue that there are far better places to spend the funds.<br /><br />Lastly, we also have the mechanism by which too much infrastructure is built, transfer payments from Sacramento or Washington, D.C. Let's say that the federal government was willing to pay for Rainier as a stimulus measure during a future recession. If that happened, the local community would likely celebrate the new road and the construction jobs, leaving our unborn grandchildren with the problem of funding maintenance and replacement.<br /><br />No matter how you look at the situation, there are no good perspectives.<br /><br />I still think that Rainier, as a roadway, could be a part of an effectively urban Petaluma. But as a cost to be borne, it just doesn't work.Dave Aldenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04365271229524041881noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1928622184607631910.post-86010176928966346902013-09-27T09:39:48.157-07:002013-09-27T09:39:48.157-07:00Two additions:
This Petaluma 360 article about qu...Two additions:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.petaluma360.com/article/20130927/COMMUNITY/130929608/1362/community?Title=Questions-raised-on-Rainier-process" rel="nofollow">This Petaluma 360 article about questions on the Ranier process</a> suggests that it isn't $90M, but $115M that we're talking about. Which would bring that 6.5 billion in necessary new value up to 8.3.<br /><br />It also suggests that the costs will indeed be paid back from development fees. My brain isn't quite up to trying to figure out how to visualize what adding six and a half billion dollars in property values really means. If we just look at that in terms of new houses, the Quarry Heights homes are "Priced from $604,911 - $663,000", so let's call it $650k, that's ten thousand new homes. Except that we're talking additional value, so we have to discount current land values, but that's a reasonable order of magnitude and way to think about what the Ranier overcrossing will need to bring us.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1928622184607631910.post-27936333363057707802013-09-26T11:20:56.046-07:002013-09-26T11:20:56.046-07:00Okay, try #3. Stupid OpenID...
Anyway, I'm tr...Okay, try #3. Stupid OpenID...<br /><br />Anyway, I'm trying to figure out the numbers behind this. A reasonable ballpark for the cost of money is $600/month per hundred grand. That's about what a 30 year fixed mortgage costs, maybe you can get municipal bonds for less, we can talk about opportunity costs, but it's a good back-of-the-envelope. And 30 years is a reasonable time to depreciate infrastructure over, it'll need major maintenance after that time.<br /><br />So for a $90 million project, that means $540k/month, or just under $6.5 million a year that the city has to gain for this project to make sense.<br /><br />If we call sales tax 10%, that means that this bridge has to lead to $65 million dollars a year in additional sales. If we call property tax 1%, that means that this bridge has to lead to three quarters of a billion dollars in additional property value...<br /><br />...*EXCEPT* that all of that has to be directed back to that one project. So a quick Googling, I'm writing this off-the-cuff and don't want to spend too many hours digging in right now, suggests that the city budget is between thirty and thirty five million a year, and road stuff is about ten percent of that.<br /><br />So we can multiply those numbers by ten. And if the Ranier overcrossing really brings another six and a half billion dollars to property values, you'd expect that developers and landowners would be clamoring to pay higher development fees. Or an additional ten thousand dollars a year per Petaluma resident (and $650M is about the annual hospitality and tourism GDP for Sonoma County, and nearly half of the county's retail sector), from a town which can't really be a big-box store destination because of geographical transportation limitations.<br /><br />Someone tell me where I'm wrong, because I sure can't see how this makes any sort of sense at all.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1928622184607631910.post-75623133156587542272013-09-26T07:29:12.873-07:002013-09-26T07:29:12.873-07:00Steve, thanks for writing. We seem to have points...Steve, thanks for writing. We seem to have points of both agreement and disagreement.<br /><br />In the most significant immediate point, we agree that Petaluma's priorities should be elsewhere.<br /><br />And we seem to agree that the continued posturing on Rainier is a meaningless kerfuffle.<br /><br />On floodplain development, I'm puzzled by the community comments on this point. As an engineer, I've bumped against Petaluma floodplain standards and found them rigorously enforced, even to the point of absurdity. (Calculating the volume of a fence post in a floodplain is putting way too much faith in the inexact science of flood volume calculation.) I never saw any sign of City laxity on that point. Perhaps people think that the FEMA flood maps are too liberal, but there were few, if any, comments of that sort when the new FEMA maps were recently adopted by the city.<br /><br />On the interchange separation standards, I don't see that as an argument against Rainier. One of the more expensive Rainier options addresses the standard by linking the Washington and Rainier interchanges. Or Rainier could be built without an interchange without affecting the urbanist argument.<br /><br />Ultimately, I think the difference is in long-term vision. I see the possibility of a Petaluma future in which pockets of walkable density along Petaluma Boulevard North and McDowell Boulevard justify a linkage other than E. Washington and Corona. And it'd be great if it was a transit-heavy linkage. It's not a near-term vision, but it could happen this century. Indeed, I hope it does. I'd be happy if Rainier was part of a 2075 vision for Petaluma. But we have other, far more pressing issues today.Dave Aldenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04365271229524041881noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1928622184607631910.post-37953545222196936092013-09-25T22:10:58.227-07:002013-09-25T22:10:58.227-07:00I almost always fully agree with your thoughts and...I almost always fully agree with your thoughts and positions, but on the Rainier overpass issue I don't. To my mind, a Rainier connector would be a major mistake. It's a massive construct of concrete and asphalt through the floodplain that would inevitably bring more floodplain development. The State requires 1.1 miles between freeway connectors. This would be well under a mile from E Washington. $90+ million is way beyond where Petaluma's priorities should concentrate its precious dollars. Improve the nearby pedestrian/bike pathway for a pittance instead. Fortunately, I think Rainier is more political posturing than a likely reality, but the never-ending push from the vested interests could turn this folly into an unfortunate reality one day. To my mind, it can't be justified from an urbanist perspective. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11855146597495584590noreply@blogger.com