Rainier Connector: What are the Urbanist Alternatives?

My last two posts have been about the Rainier Connector, a long-planned but still controversial arterial in the northwest quadrant of Petaluma.  Although the Connector is specific to Petaluma, it offers insights that have universal application.

I’d truly planned for today to be my last post, at least for awhile, on the Rainier Connector.  But, as is often the case, I found too many angles of the story that fascinated me, grew verbose, and still have one more aspect of the situation to explore.  I’ll touch upon that final perspective in my next post and then truly let this subject rest for awhile.

In my last two posts, I’ve written about the upcoming hearing in front of the Petaluma City Council on the Final Environment Impact Report (FEIR) for the Connector, grumbling that a yes/no decision didn’t capture the complexities of either the environmental review process or the roadway alternatives.  And then I wrote about why, although I think the Rainier Connector has a place in Petaluma’s future, I don’t believe that the time for its construction has yet come.

While I’ve been chewing on the roadway project, the City Council certified the FEIR on a vote of 5-2.  Of the five in the majority, all noted the traffic relief benefits.  One of those on the other side acknowledged the traffic relief, but argued that the benefits failed to outweigh the costs.  The other argued that the extent of the traffic benefits would be uncertain until Caltrans makes a decision about whether to build a new interchange to serve the Connector and that he couldn’t support the project with that uncertainty hanging over it.

Not one Councilmember noted that the traffic relief, if that term is understood to mean reduced traffic congestion, would be fleeting and soon consumed by induced traffic.  The omission was particularly notable because updated standards based on that point have been approved by the State Legislature and are currently in the rule-making process.  Nor did any Councilmember note the greenhouse gas emission impacts of new roads, which will also be incorporated in the new state standards.

I could have been disheartened that the entire Council of my town is lagging behind the State Legislature in understanding the new realities of traffic.  But I don’t think that would have been fair.  I suspect that some of the Councilmembers have an inkling of the evolving understanding of traffic, but judged that this wasn’t the time to take a stand.  And I believe that the others are bright, intelligent people for whom the penny will soon drop.  So, I’ll maintain a positive attitude and keep plugging away.

For today, that means looking at what urbanism can offer in place of new arterials.

There was an interesting moment during the hearing when the mayor asked what other traffic relief options could have instead been pursued with the $90 million estimated project cost.  Planning staff was quick to respond, correctly so, that their charge had been the Rainier Connector, not the broader range of options to which the mayor alluded.  But the question still opened a door to insightful ruminations.

I suspect the mayor was thinking of alternative road projects, but I’ll open the field of consideration even further.

A few years back, I was involved in a pair of North Bay urban mixed-use projects.  The projects would have brought 300 residential units downtown.  But the city required construction of a broad boulevard as an element of the projects.  While the boulevard would have served the projects, it would also have met larger city goals of beautification and function.  And those larger goals, which carried a price tag of perhaps $4 million, were crushing the projects, both of which eventually failed.

At the time, one of the developers at the time argued that a city contribution of $2 million toward the boulevard costs would have been sufficient to get the projects underway.  But to be conservative, let’s assume that the city would have needed to carry the full cost of $4 million for the projects to proceed.  Doing the division, that would have been a cost of approximately $13,000 per unit for new residential units to be built downtown rather than in drivable settings.

Using that same unit cost for the entire $90 million cost of the Rainier Connector would bring downtown the next 6,750 residential units to be built in Petaluma.  If we make the assumption that average daily trips per home in a richly urbanized downtown is reduced from ten trips per day, the typical value used for estimating traffic, to six trips per day, which is achievable, the total of daily trips that would be removed from city streets would have been 27,000.  That’s a significant number.

Barring a lot more study, I don’t know whether removing 27,000 trips from Petaluma streets would have the same traffic impacts as building the Rainier Connector.  But as the reduced trips are permanent, and not subject to being consumed by induced traffic, I suspect that the 27,000 would have a greater impact on improving traffic.  And that’s before considering the reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, this quick analysis doesn’t consider a number of other factors, including whether there are places for 6,750 downtown residences in Petaluma and whether funding $13,000 of infrastructure per unit is sufficient to incentivize a private investment of perhaps $200,000 per unit.  But as a simple overview, it points toward areas of further study.

Some many even argue that cities shouldn’t be spending public funds to incentivize private developers, but after 70 years of subsidizing the cost of gasoline and roads to facilitate drivable suburbia, it’s a rather baseless argument.

Of course, all of this speculation is about a long-term vision of what urbanism can offer.  It’s the perspective that should be most important in formulating our cities, but I understand that many will ask for more immediate benefits.  I also have some thoughts on that subject, which I’ll offer in my next post.  After which I promise to leave the Rainier Connector alone for awhile.

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

Rainier Connector: Why Not Now?

In my last post, I wrote about a topic that was to come before the Petaluma City Council on the evening of August 3.  The Council will decide whether the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) for the Rainier Connector, a proposed arterial that would augment the traffic grid in the northwestern quadrant of town, meets the standards for environmental studies under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

In the post, I explained that I was frustrated by two aspects of the decision.  First, I was disappointed that the traffic section of the FEIR relied on older standards that will soon be replaced by legislatively-mandated regulations that will better reflect current thinking on traffic generation and climate change.  While I understood the need to complete the FEIR on the current schedule, it was still frustrating to see Petaluma disregard the best available approach, particularly on climate change.

Second, I thought that the Connector wasn’t yet ripe for construction.  While there is an argument for soon building a small segment of the Connector, the underpass beneath Highway 101 that can be constructed more efficiently if done simultaneously with upcoming freeway widening, my urbanist thinking says that the remainder of the road isn’t needed for years.  However, the inclusion of the entire Connector in the FEIR, and the process that requires the Council to vote the entire FEIR either up or down, precluded that level of nuance in the decision.

I remain comfortable with both of my conclusions.  And yet I judged that, despite my reservations, I would probably vote for the FEIR if I were on the Council, primarily to keep the underpass moving ahead.

However, from comments received, I also understand that I could have also dug deeper into the subject.  It’s a problem which I often encountered in writing this blog.  To my eyes, urbanism is a glorious multi-dimensional quilt with the various elements connecting in weird and wonderful ways, many of which I’m still working to fully grasp.

In a blog post, I focus on a tiny patch of the quilt, trying to explain the pattern to the readers while also sometimes adding a stitch or two of my own.  But at the same time I need to explain how the patch fits into the nearby areas and into the entire pattern.  And I need to do so without consuming the entire length of the post or exhausting the attention span of readers.

It’s a challenge for which my writing skills are often inadequate.  Hence, the occasional need to go back and fill in more detail to what I’ve already written.   This post, and the next one, will be in that mode.

Today, I’ll tackle the question of why building the Connector now would be premature.  It’s a subject on which I’ve written in the past, but I understand that many readers aren’t interested in returning to long ago posts, so I’ll provide an update here.

There are two principal reasons why building the Rainier Connector now would be a mistake.  One is induced traffic.  The other is maintenance.

The theory of induced traffic argues that roads create trips.  I know this seems absurd at first blush, but it really does appear to be true.  Let me ask a pair of questions.  Have you ever thought that you’d like to travel to the other side of your town, but didn’t want to drive in traffic, so deferred your trip until later?  If there was less congestion, perhaps because a new route had just opened, might you change your mind and take the trip now?  I expect that most of us would answer yes to both questions.  Congratulations, that makes all of us participants in induced traffic.

Research has shown that up to half of all new traffic capacity is consumed on the day the ribbon is cut.  And that much of the remaining capacity of consumed over the next decade, even in the absence of new development.

The implication is that congestion relief won’t happen.  Instead congestion will return to current levels over the next decade.  More people may travel between the east and west sides of town before congestion occurs, but that is about the only real benefit for the $90 million project cost.  If the primary motivation for building the Rainier Connector is congestion relief, then it shouldn’t be built.

Furthermore, as congestion reasserts itself, there would be opposition to new development on the grounds of traffic congestion, even though that new development is projected to help pay the debt from the Rainier construction.  It would become a Gordian knot.

And really, the story is even worse than that.  Let me use Friedman’s as an example.  (For those not in the North Bay, Friedman’s is a regional chain analogous to Home Depot or Lowe’s, but better.)

I love the fact that Friedman’s has returned to Petaluma.  Indeed, of the two recently opened Petaluma shopping centers, Friedman’s is the only business that I truly welcomed.

But I also love Rex Hardware in downtown Petaluma, relatively convenient to my home.  Rex is a cozy 90-year-old business that still sells individual screws, my personal measure of a good hardware store.  For most purchases, especially the smaller ones, I go to Rex.  (I’ve already visited there once today.)  Yes, I pay a little more, but I save time and travel costs.  I also have access to folks who give great advice.

 But imagine if the Rainier Connector was built, creating a few years in which congestion might be less.  More folks would likely trek across town to Friedman’s, looking to save a few dollars compared to Rex.  Seeing the business loss, Rex might decide to finally close their doors, leaving as the only option a drive across town to Friedman’s, creating yet more traffic as congestion reasserts itself.

And Friedman’s/Rex is only the hardware element of local retail.  Consider all the other retail segments that make up a community and imagine all the additional car trips that would created as the retail options lessen.

Managing congestion means encouraging neighborhood businesses that require few or no driving miles, not building streets that allow people to more easily bypass those businesses.

 The maintenance issue relies on a more intuitive argument.  From the day roads are built, they need maintenance.  Upkeep is essential is get good service over the life of the road.  I don’t have a good estimate of the maintenance costs for the Rainier Connector, but at least $100,000 per year seems a reasonable low-end guess.  Petaluma doesn’t have the funds to maintain its current roads.  How does adding $100,000 to a failed bottom line make sense?

I still believe that someday Petaluma will need the Rainier Connector.  The coherency of the traffic grid requires it.  But that someday should be when the town has many more people and the Connector is needed to give those folks logical routes of travel.  Someday isn’t today.

In my next post, I’ll write about what urbanism offers as an alternative to building new arterials.  I’ll offer both a view of the big urbanist picture that applies everywhere and a series of thoughts that apply specifically to the Rainier Connector.

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

Rainier Connector: When Neither Yes nor No Meets the Need

If memory serves, I was nine years old when my father introduced me to the possibility of questions having implicit but flawed propositions.  The example he used was “Have you stopped beating your wife?”  Because our brains perceive a simple yes/no answer as acceptance of the proposition, questions like this put the responder in a quandary, unsure how to disavow the incorrect premise.

(As a necessary digression, I’ve reported my father’s example question solely as a matter of historical accuracy.  It truly was the example he used.  But I’ll acknowledge that the question clanks on 21st century ears.  I don’t know what has changed since 1962, whether it’s our sense of humor, our sense of irony, or our acceptance of violence, but I still find it odd that my quiet, reserved father, who saved his ire almost exclusively for home improvement projects gone awry, used that particular example.  I can only assume that he was tone-deaf when he heard someone else use the example.

I’ll also note that other questions can illustrate the point equally well.  “Have you quit beating your husband?”, “Have you quit teasing the family dog?”, “Have you quit fudging your workout log?”, and “Have you quit cheating on your taxes?” are all examples.  In recognition of one element of the ongoing financial crisis in Greece, I’ll use the last for the remainder of this post.)

I mention this peculiar intersection between grammatical form and human cognition because a question with elements of “Have you quit cheating on your taxes?” will soon come before the Petaluma City Council.

I’ve written before about the Rainier Connector, a proposed Petaluma arterial that, although short in length, would be long in cost.  In its length of under a mile, it would pass beneath Highway 101 and over both the Petaluma River and the railroad mainline, all of which adds greatly to its estimated bottom line.  The estimated cost varies depending on assumptions about design and cost sharing, but $90 million is a commonly used number. 

Although a funding source for the Rainier Connector remains unknown, with voters having recently rejected two separate sales tax measures that would have provided at least partial funding for the project, the Petaluma Planning Department has been proceeding with the environmental impact process.  This work has been undertaken because of a need to align with an upcoming freeway design effort.

With the public vetting of the environmental studies now nearly complete, the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) is scheduled for consideration by the City Council on Monday, August 3.  The question that is implicit in the consideration is whether the FEIR adequately addresses the environmental impacts of the roadway project consistent with the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

This is the question that I find has much in common with “Have you quit cheating on your taxes?”  Neither yes nor no seems to meet the need because the question contains implicit propositions that I desperately want to disavow.

In my comments, I’ll write solely about the traffic impacts of the Connector.  It’s the aspect of the project with which I’m most familiar and about which I’ve often written, including here, here, and here, when I offered an urbanist perspective on the traffic issues around the project.

I know there are other important environmental issues, such as the impact of the river crossing on potential flooding, the effects on flora and fauna within the floodplain, the potential for erosion, construction noise, and many others.  All of those issues undoubtedly will be considered by the Council, but traffic is where I’ll focus today.

The traffic analysis in the FEIR shows traffic improvement at most intersections, with the only exceptions being the intersections approaching the Rainier Connector.  The improvements are more minor than many may have expected, but that’s largely the result of baseline traffic being expected to continue increasing between now and 2020, when the new roadway might be completed.

So far, so good.  But here’s the problem.  The traffic analysis was done using intersection level-of-service, an approach that has been used for decades, but is now increasingly perceived as being more about moving cars across town than people and is being steadily replaced in environmental studies by vehicle miles traveled, an approach that incorporates both greenhouse gas emissions and induced traffic.

Among the agencies that have adopted the new approach is the State of California, which sets the CEQA standards.  However, at last report, the state was still working on the rules to implement the new traffic study method.  Until that task is complete, cities such as Petaluma may continue using the soon-to-be-supplanted level-of-service standard.

Other California cities, notably Pasadena, eager to embrace the new model and to begin managing traffic growth with an eye toward climate change, have adopted their own rules in advance of the state.  But Petaluma chose not to follow that path, clinging to the old rules and publicly expressing skepticism about the new rules.

And so this is where we start entering the anomalous world of “Have you quit cheating on your taxes?”  Is the FEIR consistent with CEQA?  Probably, at least with regards to traffic.  But the CEQA rules are outdated and soon to be replaced.  And it’s hard to feel good about being consistent with obsolete rules, especially when the impact of following the old rules is increased risk of climate change.

Indeed, it’s likely that the roadway would fail the new vehicle miles traveled standard because the Rainier Connector will increase the number of vehicle miles traveled.  But the yes/no dichotomy being presented to the City Council doesn’t allow for exploring that possibility.

(Time for another digression.  Petaluma holds an anomalous role in the world of urbanist planning.  Among the first places, along with the State of Oregon, to adopt Urban Growth Boundaries as a planning tool and the very first to implement the cutting-edge SmartCode to direct urban development, Petaluma is sometimes perceived as a progressive planning community.

But that perspective ignores the rest of the history.  The single-family housing sprawl that continued even after the first Urban Growth Boundary was adopted.  The flawed drafting of several key provisions of the SmartCode that hamstrung urban developers, missteps that have only recently been corrected.

Petaluma’s planning history is known by many for its bold steps into the future and by others for its bumbling follow-up to those steps.

Planning for a $90 million roadway using traffic criteria that have already been disowned by much of the world, including the State of California, seems to align with the bumbling side of the Petaluma equation.)

Further complicating the yes/no calculus is the reason that the FEIR is coming forth at this time, far in advance of construction funding.  Without an approved FEIR, Caltrans can’t accommodate the Rainier underpass in the design of the widening Highway 101 that could perhaps occur in the next few years.

And, in my opinion, Petaluma truly does need the Rainier Connector.  It doesn’t need the new road today, but I suspect that the Rainier Connector may well be an essential element of the local transportation grid someday, perhaps in 2075 when the local population is 125,000.  By then, the roadway could be a vital path to provide efficient routes for city buses, to strengthen the bicycle network, and to connect people living in homes that haven’t yet been built to businesses that don’t yet exist.

But in 2075, it may be prohibitively expensive to build an underpass beneath an existing freeway.  So it’s reasonable to build the underpass today, making it available for the future time when it’s truly needed.

Pushed to make my own decision, and with my only choices being yes and no, I’d probably vote in favor of approving the FEIR.  But the vote would come with a strong caveat that I’d have no interest in building the Rainier Connector at this time, except for the freeway underpass.

I suspect that an alternative FEIR, one that addresses the question of building the underpass in the next decade, but not building the remainder of the road until a date that may be a half-century away, would meet even the coming CEQA traffic standards.  And I would expect it to be a FEIR that I could support whole-heartedly.  But that’s not the question before the City Council.

Nor am I alone in finding myself conflicted by the decision as now presented.  When the FEIR was reviewed by the Petaluma Planning Commission, it failed to win approval on a 3-3 tie vote.  Since that evening, I’ve had the opportunity to chat with a couple of the Commissioners who voted against approval after long and difficult consideration.  I’m proud to have fellow community members who worked so hard on the issue and voted the way that their heads and their hearts told them was right.

Does it make sense to laud Planning Commissioners who reached a different decision that I suspect I would have?  Not really.  But that’s what happens when we pose yes/no questions with flawed propositions.

I expect an interesting City Council meeting on the 3rd.

Meanwhile, yes, I’ve quit cheating on my taxes.  … I mean no, I haven’t quit cheating on my taxes.  …  No, no, no, what I mean is … Well, nuts.

In my next post, I’ll add one last detail to my thoughts on the Rainier Connector, an example of how flawed decision-making inevitably builds upon itself.

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