Can We at Least Try to Connect the Dots?

A bike share station in Detroit

I have a short tale today, to be followed by administrative notes.

This story has been rattling around inside my head since before my long break from this space.   I hope putting it into words will set it free.

More than a year ago, a proposed apartment project came before the city council of a North Bay community.  It was a tolerably acceptable project.  Slightly fewer than a hundred new apartments in a market that needed new housing even before the wildfires.   A site that, although beyond walkable range for most daily needs, was surrounded by developed parcels.

It didn’t check off many of the walkable urbanism boxes, but it was perhaps best that could be done with a non-urban site.

But there was still controversy, a dispute over a proposed condition of approval.  The site adjoined a major route of the city’s bicycle master plan.  City staff and several city committees had proposed that the applicant construct a 2,000-foot segment of bicycle path near the project.  Although of limited usefulness immediately, the segment would eventually connect residential, recreational, shopping, and transit opportunities, including a since-opened downtown train station

The applicant was asking for the condition to be removed, arguing that the cost of the path segment would undermine project finances, perhaps enough that the project couldn’t be built.  As the land had been vacant for fifteen years, possibly demonstrating the tenuous finances of the site, the argument might have been valid.  Nonetheless, I sided with those who argued that the bicycle path segment was a reasonable and appropriate condition.

(I’ve written before that land-use entitlement can be akin to a poker game.  Cities and the public can't know if a developer is serious about the potential of a project finances falling apart or if he’s bluffing.  Similarly, a developer is looking for tells in a city’s approach to conditions of approval.)

On the night of the council meeting, after a number of folks had spoken in favor of the bicycle path, a prominent member of the community took her place at the podium.

I hadn't heard her speak previously to the Council on any land-use issue, so was unaware what to expect.  I was immediately impressed. She talked about how cities of the future must thrive by providing settings in which millennials can live physically active lifestyles, with easy access to work and to gathering places without a need for cars.  As she described it, if young talented people are attracted to the lifestyle of a community, businesses will follow with the hope of hiring them.

It was an argument directly out of the creative class theories of Richard Florida.   I was pleased that the ideas were being put forth in a public setting.

And then the speaker got to her conclusion. As the goal of the city was to attract these vibrant people by providing places for active living, it was unreasonable to ask a developer to put in a bike path for fear that the project funding would collapse and the city wouldn't have housing for the new arrivals.

Huh?

The conclusion was fully inconsistent with her earlier arguments.   The city must provide a setting for physically active lives therefore it should approve housing without bicycle paths?

Today, more than a year later, I remain flummoxed by how a successful individual can provide public testimony with such complete illogic.  It grieves me to think that logical thinking is no longer a condition of public debate.

The council had no such qualms, voting 4-3 to remove the condition.  Oh well.

Onto administrative details:

When I rebooted this blog, I didn't have a particular publication schedule in mind.  I decided not to tie myself to the Monday-Wednesday-Friday routine of my earlier efforts, but instead to write when the spirit moved me.  However, I now find that I’ve gone two weeks since my last post.   That’s not acceptable.  I’ll work to be more frequent than I've begun.

As I’ll be aperiodic in my publication schedule, I remain willing to send emails to anyone who would like to know when I post something new.  If you want to be added to my list, email me at the address below.

Talking of email lists, there are two other lists that may be of interest to those in or near my town of Petaluma.  First, I write weekly emails on the day-to-day activities of Petaluma Urban Chat, such as upcoming Council meetings of interest, Urban Chat gatherings, and other community events.  Also, Know Before You Grow has an email list to be kept abreast of their forums on local land-use planning.   To be added to either or both lists, you can again email me at the address below.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Dave Alden is a Registered Civil Engineer. A University of California graduate, he has worked on energy and land-use projects in California, Oregon, and Washington. He was also the president of a minor league baseball team for two seasons. He lives on the west side of Petaluma with his wife and two dogs. He can also be followed on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Sometimes the Best Path between Two Points is a Straight Line

There can be wonderful uses of curved lines in land use.  The curve of a gently bending street that provides constantly changing vistas to draw pedestrians onward.  The welcoming curve of a ceremonial arch.  Even the curve of an outfield fence.

And there can be curves that are horribly ill-conceived

Twice in the last few weeks, I’ve seen alignments for non-vehicular routes that wandered back and forth like drunken sailors.  One was the proposed alignment of a sidewalk.  The other was the constructed alignment of a bike path.  Both times, I gritted my teeth.

Curved paths for non-vehicular paths send terrible messages.

Have you ever been heading somewhere on foot in a hurry, only to have to follow some capricious wandering alignment that was designed by someone who was never going to use the path?  How did it make you feel?  I’ve had the experience and it made me feel trivialized.  It sent me the message that my needs as a pedestrian were frivolous.  That my travel was less important that the travel of motorists heading to the same destination.  That my need for timely arrival was secondary to someone else’s subjective judgment of beauty.

And that’s a horrible message to be sending, particularly to the young.  With climate change perhaps the defining challenge of the next generation, we should be encouraging people to get out of their cars.  Instead, with curvy paths that don’t respect a desire of non-motorists to travel efficiently and quickly, we send the message that their non-car transportation is cute and not really all that important.  What a wrong-headed message to be sending.

Imagine you’re a fourteen-year-old soccer player riding your bike to a championship match.  Now imagine that, as you near the pitch, you’re forced to slow on your bike so you can follow some tight curves that were laid out for no reason other than aesthetics.  What’s the message?  To me, the message is that next time you should ask your mother to drive you because the path designer didn’t care about your need for timely arrival via bicycle.

And have your ever looked at the wear pattern on the edge of a heavily traveled curvy sidewalk?   You’ll almost always find worn and bare areas on the inside of the curves as the pedestrians try to follow a straight line on a curvy path.  It’s a message to which we should be listening.

If we want more people to get out of their cars, we need to respect them as pedestrians and as bicyclists.  And respect means allowing them to arrive quickly, not to detour them along some silly wiggly path that only a self-centered landscape architect would love.

And you know the worst part?  The wiggly path doesn’t even look that good on the ground.  It only looks good on paper.  But, of course, paper is where it gets reviewed and approved.  So for ten minutes of a review body’s approval, we disregard fifty years of bicyclists and/or pedestrians.

Harrumph.

One of my community roles is a seat on the Petaluma Transit Advisory Committee.  Many of our meetings are awfully dull except to transit geeks.  It’s hard to get excited about the procurement schedules for new buses or contracts to clean bus stops.  But sometimes more interesting stuff comes our way.  And a couple of those topics will be on the agenda for our Thursday, May 7 meeting.  I’ll write more in my next post.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)