Assigning the Traffic Costs for Alternative Schooling Choices

I know a young couple with two young sons who moved to the North Bay a few years back.  Coming from a snowy clime, they were excited by the walkability opportunities in the more clement North Bay, particularly the possibility of the older son walking to school.  So when they looked for a home, being within walkable distance of a good school was near the top of their list.

They soon found a home they liked, a little less than a half-mile from a well-regarded school.  The walk would be through a safe neighborhood and would pass by a park offering the possibility of post-school play.  The fit seemed fine.  They moved in, eager to begin their new lives.

As the new school year approached, they tried to register the son at the school.  For the first time, they learned that the school was designated a magnet school and that not all students, even those within walkable distance, were accepted for enrollment.  They were told that children from within the neighborhood were given preference, but that individual decisions were made about every student.

Even more confounding, the administrators who would make the decision about this young man were on vacation and wouldn’t return until shortly before the start of school.

With 24 hours to go before the school year started, the first day clothes were laid out and ready to be donned, the young man was eager to begin his new educational adventure, and the parents still didn’t know whether they could walk him to school the following morning or if the next day would be the first day of a year-long routine of driving him to and from a more distant school.

I’m not an educational expert.  Personally, I did fine with attending the schools nearest to the homes in which I grew up.  But I remember sharing classrooms with students who, in retrospect, might have fared better under alternative schooling approaches.  So I won’t suggest that the proliferation of magnet and charter schools is a bad idea.

But I will suggest that encouraging that proliferation without accounting for the resulting traffic is an unacceptable oversight.  Admittedly, it’s an oversight that is typical of much American thought about traffic, but it’s an oversight regardless.

To be fair, I’ll acknowledge that I often received rides to school when I was a student.  Playing the baritone horn led to that result.  But from first grade through high school, my total days of walking, biking, or riding the bus far outnumbered the parental rides.  Too few students can make the same statement today.

I remember the first time I became aware of the growing trend of parental rides to schools.  I was working with the Facilities Manager for the school district in a small Oregon town.  We were scoping site improvements at an existing elementary school.

The Facilities Manager noted the need for a separate bus route to the school, a route that would leave the public street nearly a block away and wind past the playground.  I was puzzled by the idea.  He suggested that I visit the site at the end of the school day.  I did.  He was right.  Cars were backed up a block away, with buses stuck in their midst, busting bus schedules for the entire district.  I was shocked.  It was a scene I’d never seen in my youth.

And, because the school wasn’t sited in a particularly walkable setting, many of the parents were likely from within the boundaries for the school.  The traffic problem is only exacerbated when the parents begin using arterials and freeways to reach alternative schools.

What is the cost of these miles?  In my last post, I suggested that a vehicle mileage tax (VMT) of ten cents per mile and a gas cost of $10 per gallon were first cuts at the charges that would accurately move the costs of driving from governmental general funds to the drivers.  If we assume a three-mile drive each way twice per day to an alternative school, the annual cost of driving would about $1,000.

Today, the cost would be about $300 in gas costs only.  We do a fine job of reimbursing the oil companies for the gasoline they provide, but we’re leaving about $700 to picked up the general funds of local government (road wear and tear), state government (addressing climate change), and federal government (managing the geopolitical implications of a petroleum-dependent world).

There is an equity issue that raises its head in the middle of this train of thought.  If we begin assigning costs of $1,000 per year for attendance at alternative schools, aren’t affluent parents more capable of covering those costs, resulting in the children of affluent families being more effectively educated and thereby perpetuating income inequality?

It’s a legitimate concern that I share.  Even though I largely view the world from the perspective of land use, the issues of income inequality are still evident to me.  And I believe that a solution is required.

But the challenge to lower income parents to pay the accurate cost of transporting their children to alternative schools is a downstream effect of inequality.  Good solutions should address causes, not effects.  In a world where we charge per unit for water, milk, and electricity, to not charge for road usage and its impacts isn’t a cohesive strategy, it’s a scattershot.

Before closing, I should also make it clear that I’m not criticizing parents who have put their children into alternative schools.  Parents who have made the extra effort to find the right educational setting and resources for their child to succeed should be praised.  But if we don’t accurately assign the costs of those decisions then we perpetuate a distorted world in which flawed decisions follow. 

Instead, those parents should look for ways to deliver their children to school by bike, on foot, through transit, or in carpools.  Living in urban settings where those options are more available and where the routes are less likely to include arterials that are more dangerous to walkers and bike riders is also a good idea.

If you’re wondering about the young man about whom I began this post, he was accepted, at the last minute, into his neighborhood school.  He’s thriving there.  His parents are now focused on ensuring that his younger brother has the same walkable experience.

Having touched upon the vehicle mileage tax in my last two posts, I’ll dig a little deeper into a high-tech approach to VMTs in my next post.  It’s an idea that has remarkable upsides.  And scary downsides.

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: What Can Urbanism Offer in the Short-Term?

Like a persistent dog, today I’ll give one more good chew to the bone that is Petaluma’s Rainier Connector and then bury it for awhile.  I’ll surely return to the bone again in the future.  After all, the public notices on the Rainier Connector, a proposed arterial in the northwest quadrant of town, have been a fifty-year skein of birth announcements and obituary notices; I don’t see that pattern changing any time soon.  But after today, I’ll let the bone age for awhile.

This will be the fourth in the current series of posts on the Rainier Connector.   I began by bemoaning the yes/no question recently posed to the City Council on the Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR) for the Connector.  I argued that the binary decision failed to capture the nuances of either the process or the project alternatives.  Next, I presented the urbanist argument why Rainier might be a good project for the future of Petaluma, but not yet.  Then, I suggested an idea for what urbanism could instead offer  for the $90 million cost of the roadway project.

Today, I’ll button up with a look at what urbanism can offer in the shorter-term.  Too much of Petaluma is configured in the drivable suburban mold for extensive urbanism to have a place anytime soon.  But perhaps there are urbanist strategies that can be implemented to alleviate some the pains of drivable suburbia.

As an example, I’ll resurrect a topic on which I’ve written before, a new sports complex on the east side of Petaluma.  (The complex, unnamed when I last wrote about it, is now the Petaluma Community Sports Fields.)

When I last wrote about the sports fields, I was castigating myself, as a member of the Petaluma Park and Rec Commission, for failing to more quickly call out the drivable suburban mindset behind siting a six-field athletic complex where many users would reach the site by passing through the busiest intersection in Petaluma.

I acknowledged that I had as much chance of changing the siting decision as of stopping a locomotive with a flyswatter, but still thought I should have been quicker to note the looming traffic issues.  I even predicted that some would soon call for a traffic fix to alleviate the difficulties in reaching the sports fields.

Sure enough, one of the pro-Rainier arguments tossed about during the run-up to the City Council hearing on the FEIR was the need to provide better access to the sports fields.  Never mind that building a $90 million roadway to improve access to a $6 million sports complex is roughly akin to buying a $500 carpet shampooer to remove a stain from a $30 rug or to buying a $10 grabber to retrieve a quarter from under a car seat, induced traffic would have undermined the traffic relief anyway.

Grandparents who had previously skipped sporting events because of the expected congestion enroute to the sports fields would begin making the trip, soon returning congestion to its former level.  Perhaps the new constraint on driving could have been parking at the sports complex.  During a recent visit, I noted that there are already signs posted directing drivers to overflow parking on the far side of the fronting arterial, an arterial without crosswalks.  But I expect that ideas for more parking would soon have begun floating, perhaps suggesting elimination of one of the future fields in favor of a parking lot.

That path is obviously going in an unacceptable direction, so let’s look to urbanism for different ideas.  The possible urbanist strategies fall into two categories, facilities located closer to users and encouragement of non-automobile access options.

In a chat with a fellow Park and Rec Commissioner, I noted that the community might have been served, from a traffic congestion perspective, by building fields at multiple locations rather than clustering them.  He responded, reasonably enough, that the multi-field complex allows weekend tournaments for out-of-towners, which benefits the local economy.

I’m happy to have others enjoy Petaluma, although I wonder how many years of sales and transient occupancy taxes will be required to pay for the sports fields.  Or for the Rainier Connector.  Unless that number is reasonable, the argument is only another example of using public dollars to create private revenue.

But I’m willing to stipulate that having a multi-field sports complex is a good thing for a community as long as that stipulation doesn’t preclude parallel provision for fields that require less driving.  And there is some hope on that front.

All three Petaluma high schools have or will soon have turf fields and have expressed a tentative willingness to allow community use of those fields when not in conflict with school activities.  Having no current involvement in youth sports, I don’t know to what extent youth leagues can be jiggered to have more play at fields to which non-automotive access, or at least shorter drives, is possible, but these are topics which I’ll push in my role on the Park and Rec Commission.

But there is another sports field where an opportunity was missed.  The River Front project will be in a central location, readily accessible to much of the community by transit.  The proposed development will have a sports field, but the developer’s plan calls for grass, not the turf that would better support intensive use for community sports.

The community interest in a turf field became evident during the entitlement process when there was an effort to make the turf a further, and in my opinion unreasonable, exaction from the developer.  The debate became mired in the question of how much a developer should fund in order to receive entitlements and a pro-developer perspective on the City Council quickly quashed the idea of turf.  My belief that the community should have funded the incremental cost between the grass and turf field wasn’t raised.  It was a missed opportunity.  

And that brings us to the question of non-automobile access to the Petaluma Community Sports Fields.  There’s also some good news on that front, with a bicycle/pedestrian path currently under construction.  However, the path won’t be ready for use until about six months after play began on the sports fields, six months during which access habits, such as relying on parental transport, were formed.

I know there were easement issues to be resolved before the path construction could be commenced and that staff made a good faith effort to resolve those issues quickly.  But let me ask a pair of questions.  Does anyone know of a park that opened with the route of car access still pending?  Or is a bicycle/pedestrian path somehow considered less worthy of a timely solution?

The question of transit to the site is also interesting.  There is currently little use of transit to access any sports fields in Petaluma.  However, Petaluma Transit and the Transit Advisory Committee, on which I sit, are trying to increase that use.

Accordingly, the Committee reviewed the construction plans for the Petaluma Community Sports Fields, identified a possible transit turnaround and suggested a change that would allow the turnaround at a later date.  To be clear, we weren’t asking for the turnaround, which would have been premature, but only for a change to accommodate the turnaround at a future date.  And the change would have actually reduced the sports fields construction cost.

The suggested change was conveyed to the team managing the construction, which readily agreed to the revision.  And then forgot to implement it.

I don’t think there was any ill will in the forgetfulness.  I expect the change was simply overlooked in the fog of construction.  Plus, as someone recently noted to me, we’re still dealing with a generation of engineers who have been forced to think about bicycle and pedestrian issues, but for whom transit is still not automatic to them.

Plus, the oversight may have been partially the result of the Transit Committee still not having, despite well over two years of requesting, the official power to comment on land use matters.  (I’ve recently been advised that this issue may again be moving ahead.)

The turnaround remains a future possibility, but demolition of recently installed improvements may be necessary to accommodate it, which would be unfortunate for all.

The overall report card on the efforts to incorporate urbanist strategies to improve access to the Petaluma Community Sports Fields, without spending $90 million on the Rainier Connector, is a mixed but mostly disappointing bag.  If I squint really hard, I can see giving a C to the bicycle/pedestrian path.  But otherwise I see only Ds and Incompletes.  As always, urbanism is whispering good solutions in our ears and we’re not listening.

And now, it’s truly time to move along and to bury the Rainier Connector bone for awhile.  There’s nothing further to be seen here.

A recent vacation took me to a part of the country that was largely new to me.  As I crossed into each new state, I crossed out another line on my mental tally of states still unvisited.  In this record keeping, I suspect I was like many travelers.  But then it dawned on me that maintaining a log of states visited was a silly task for an urbanist.  I’ll explain why 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)

Arriving at the Revolution Forty-Five Years Late

My wife and I live two blocks from a high school.  The principal believes in being a good neighbor, so hosts occasional meetings where nearby residents can express concerns about the school, such as noisy bells, weekend construction, or student littering.

The most recent meeting was a few days ago.  I couldn’t attend but participated in an on-line discussion about the topics the neighbors wished addressed.

The exchange began with complaints about students speeding through the adjoining neighborhood.  Living on one of the primary streets serving the school, I understood the reasons for the unease.  A range of solutions from speed bumps to enforcement were offered.

It was a discussion that could have happened in thousands of American communities.  Some of the ideas put forth were fine, other were flawed.  I’ll provide my take on the discussion, but not until my next post.

Today, I want to explore the direction taken by the conversation after the traffic issue was mostly exhausted.  Several neighbors suggested that the campus be closed so students couldn’t leave at lunchtime.  Others pushed for a stricter dress code.  Still others encouraged a crackdown on public displays of affection.  The latter two were apparently offered in the hope that stricter boundaries in some aspects of school life would carry over into improved behavior in other aspects such as driving.

I don’t have strong opinions on closed campuses, dress codes, or public displays of affection.  I suspect they wouldn’t provide the benefits for which the neighbors are hoping, but am otherwise content to rely on the professional judgment of the school administrators.  But I was astonished that my neighbors, many of whom are my contemporaries, would express strong opinions in favor of reducing the freedoms of students.

My high school years spanned the transition from the 60s to the 70s.  It was the high school students of that generation who, taking their lead from the Vietnam War protests and a broad discontent with the status quo on college campuses, argued, often successfully, for open campuses, relaxed dress codes, and other softened rules.

At my high school, many of those battles were won during my junior and senior years.

My senior year was the first year of an open campus, with students allowed to drive to the nearby McDonalds for lunch rather than partaking of cafeteria fare.

During my junior year, the rule on skirt length was that the hem could be no more than two inches from the floor when the girl was kneeling on the floor.  I remember an aging Spanish teacher looming over a kneeling student, lecturing the class on the need for modest attire as she waved the yardstick with which she intended to check for the two inches.  By my senior year, that disturbing picture was in the past.

During my junior year, I remember the vice principal roaming the halls, looking for hand holding which he could break up.  By my senior year, hand holding was rampant, along with perhaps a bit more in the quiet corners away from the ebb and flow of school hallways.

It was a time of change, change that still affects our world.

None of this is intended to imply that I was a ringleader for social change.  Instead, I was more of a bewildered observer.  I was surprised when a girl who I considered quiet and generally unremarkable unexpectedly treated me with disdain for not agreeing that school be cancelled because of Janis Joplin’s death.

I assumed another student, who I found a meek wallflower and only knew because we had adjoining seats in a Health and Safety class, had disappeared from my life forever when her family moved away after our freshman year.  But she resurfaced a half-dozen years during my time at Cal.  She was the leader of the Young Spartacus League on campus, disrupting the classes of professors she found insufficiently supportive of communist doctrine.

My only use of the open campus rule was to drive to the nearby junior college to take an Introductory Calculus class.

Perhaps the only social change in which I had any role was the opening of the central lawn at the high school.  Throughout the history of the school, the grass had been Senior Lawn, with only seniors allowed to loll on the grass during lunch or to cut through on their way to class.

It was my class of seniors who voluntarily dropped the barrier, allowing all classes to use the lawn.  It was a change that I supported, although only from the back row.  And even then, my motives weren’t entirely altruistic.  I was a member of a social group with a number of attractive sophomore and junior girls.  It seemed appealing to spend my senior year hanging out on the grass with some of those young ladies.  (Acknowledgment: I’m now married to one of the sophomores.)

Even though I wasn’t much of a participant, I recognize the value of those times.  Not every effected social change was necessary or meaningful, but some were.  And we have greater freedoms today because of those times.

Having experienced that era of student activism, it was strange to see the calls for rolling back some of those freedoms coming from folks who are of my generation.  I would have expected that being young in the 60s and 70s would have imparted a lifelong bias in favor of hard-won freedoms.  But I seem have been wrong.  (A cousin, to whom I had described my wonderment, said that having children, which I don’t, changes perspectives in a hurry.  He’s probably right, but I still find the changes sad.)

Looking back, I can also see that my urbanism may be a distant reflection of the 60s and 70s.  With its tweaking of the nose of authority by challenging the shibboleths of suburbia, by pushing for an independent plan of the Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds, by advocating for block parties, and by many more acts questioning the status quo, urbanism is my way of finally arriving at the barricades, forty-five years late.

I’m okay with my tardiness.  With all due respect to those who argued for open campuses or for honoring Janis Joplin forty-years ago, I think urbanism, with its focus on climate change, water conservation, and fiscal sustainability, is the more important issue.  I may have been late, but it was only because I was awaiting the right cause.

Although if someone knows of another Senior Lawn that should be opened to all, I could be coerced into taking part.

 Next time, I’ll tackle the traffic safety issues raised by my neighbors.

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