Revisiting Transit Integration

Petaluma Transit bus

The powers that control the ebb, flow, and cross-currents of urbanism have apparently decreed that this is my week to ponder the integration of transit systems.

Later today, I’ll participate in a subcommittee meeting of the Petaluma Transit Advisory Committee.  It‘ll be our final work session before an August public vetting and anticipated approval of the updated Short-Range Transit Plan for Petaluma Transit.

Although the SRTP, mandated by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, would have been required this year regardless of other transit issues, this particular update has been dominated by the desire to integrate Petaluma Transit with the SMART rail system that will begin running in months.

Having spotted opportunities for route adjustments to better connect train riders to Petaluma originations and destinations, Transit staff has spent months honing the routes and schedules, along with managing the concerns of citizens, some angry about the possibility of buses running through their neighborhoods and an equal number distressed about not having service.  The Transit Committee has been providing advice on the process, offering ideas and feedback toward the impossible goal of making everyone happy.

Today’s meeting follows a meeting yesterday with the Transit Manager to review the proposed content for the subcommittee meeting.

And then tomorrow, completing the trifecta, I’ve been asked to participate in a meeting between the Friends of SMART, the citizens committee that worked for  years to bring SMART to reality and continues to provide unofficial oversight of SMART’s efforts, and the Marketing Director for SMART.  It was a request that was likely tied to my role with Petaluma Transit.

My particular issue tomorrow will be travel training.  Both Petaluma Transit and SMART have programs to educate first-time riders about the transit experience.  My concern will be how to combine those two efforts to ensure that prospective riders learn how to ride Petaluma Transit to the SMART station and then ride the train to destinations from San Rafael to Santa Rosa.

Given the flood of transit integration efforts, it seemed time to return to a 2015 discussion of the subject.

The story began with the issuance in April 2015 of "Seamless Transit" by SPUR, a highly regarded Bay Area planning organization, calling for improved integration between the impossibly large number of Bay Area transit organizations.

Although consolidation was one of many tools the SPUR authors noted, it was low on the list, with greater emphasis placed on fares, payment systems, schedules, graphics, and transit center design.  The goal wasn’t reduced administration, but a focus on the ridership experience that encouraged transit riders to move willingly between systems.

Greenwich as viewed from the observatory

(I’m reminded of when I took transit to Greenwich, down the Thames River from London and the source of Greenwich Mean Time.  I took the Tube to a transfer point halfway to Greenwich, crossed the platform to a train with a different name on it, rode to my destination, and exited with the same ticket I’d used to enter the Tube station where I began.  It was soon seamless that I didn’t realize until later that I’d changed systems.)

Although SPUR downplayed consolidation, some reviewers gave it greater play, including the San Francisco Business Journal.

The SPUR report came to my attention about that time.  Concerned about consolidation suggestions being made about Petaluma Transit and feeling intuitively that consolidation would be a mistake, I checked with experts in the field, received confirmation of my intuition, and wrote on the how integration needn’t be consolidation.

The question was also put on an agenda for the Petaluma Transit Committee about the same time, with the committee unanimously concurring that the Petaluma community would be best served by Petaluma Transit remaining independent.

Having struck a blow for liberty, I went back to plowing other urbanist fields, which was a mistake because the best was yet to come.

In August, the New York Times took note of “Seamless Transit”, covering much the same ground as earlier San Francisco Business Journal article, but without once mentioning consolidation.

About the same time, Jarrett Walker, one of the experts with whom I spoken months earlier, weighed in with the best analysis yet and the one link that is a truly essential read.

Walker started by noting how a region named not after its principal city but after the body of water that divides the region is virtually guaranteed to have a fractured transit system.  He then continued onward to note how smaller systems tend to be more highly regarded by citizens and to describe what interfaces best facilitate integration between different systems, Walker’s article is an erudite, enlightening, and educational look at transit.  I’ve now read it three times and each time come away with something different, including a need to read Walker’s book.

Lastly, several of my fellow authors at Vibrant Bay considered the question of how the Bay Area transit system might look if it could be designed from scratch to service the current commuting patterns.  It’s an obviously theoretical exercise, but still provides observations that can be helpful in understanding the future of Bay Area transit.

If there is one overall lesson with which I can take away from this renewed look at regional transit, it’s that when Jarrett Walker talks, I need to be listening.

My next post will be the weekly summing up of upcoming opportunities to be an urbanism advocate.

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

Catching a Ballgame with the Car Still in the Driveway

Elizabethton ballpark

Baseball is my game.  Not to play, curve balls were always a mystery to me, but to enjoy, whether in a ballpark or through a boxscore.  I avidly follow the football and basketball fortunes of my alma mater, but I’m more alive in the spring and summer when baseball is being played.

There’s something about the game that grabs hold of one and doesn’t let go.  I agree with Lowell Cohn of the Press Democrat about loving the sights, sounds, and smells of the game.

For years, much of my summer travel has directed toward minor league ball.  I’ve seen four of the top ten ballparks from this list in The Street.  (Although I think the list is too Midwest-centric and misses good ballparks near the three coasts.  The parks in Fresno, California, a jewel in a flawed setting, and Birmingham, Alabama, an urban catalyst in the making, quickly come to mind.)

I expect to visit one of the missing six this summer.  I also have a tentative plan to catch a ballgame of the Toledo Mud Hens, the favorite team of Corporal Maxwell Klinger, and a firmer plan to visit small town ballparks throughout Appalachia. 

Baseball has a complex relationship with urbanism.  On one hand, much of mythology of baseball is rural, with stories of fireballing pitchers like Bob Feller discovered in pastoral settings and farmers mysteriously drawn to lay out diamonds on land that everyone in the town thought needed to be planted in corn.

On the other hand, the game was first codified in New York City and first game of organized ball was played on a bluff above the Hudson River in New Jersey.  And, as the late commissioner of baseball, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was found of noting, the word “paradise” is derived from an Iranian word for walled garden, which is a spot-on description of an enclosed patch of an emerald green outfield in the midst of a city.

I embrace both sides of the divide.  One of my favorite ballparks, and one that I’ll revisit this summer, is in the small Tennessee town of Elizabethton.  The ramshackle park is tucked near the banks of the Watauga River, close to where the first government of European immigrants outside of the original thirteen colonies was established.  (With its 1772 founding date, the Watauga Association predated the first town government of my ancestral home, Marietta, Ohio, by six years.)

Sitting in the third base stands, I watched in 2011 as the Pulaski Mariners battled the Elizabethton Twins.  (For those who follow Major League ball, among the Twins that evening were Miguel Sano, Max Kepler, and Eddie Rosario, all of whom have played for the big league Twins this season.)  As the game played out in front of me, I could hear the quiet burble of the river behind me.  Even better, I could hear the sounds of children riding bikes along the river, enjoying a small town summer.

Greenville ballpark

But I also found the ballpark in Greenville, South Carolina to be striking.  A Fenway Park emulation, in keeping with the affiliation between the Greenville Drive and the Boston Red Sox, set within the downtown grid, and adjoined by office buildings, it has elements of the Giamatti ideal of a walled paradise.

So, with the game and my allegiance split between urban and rural settings, where does the future of the game lay?  I’ll suggest that it lays anywhere that can be conveniently accessed without the environmental and walkability impacts of private-owned vehicles and acres of parking, whether that means electric autonomous vehicles dropping fans at the front gate of rural ballparks before driving on or subway lines exiting at the rotundas of downtown parks.

With that vision in mind, let me share an expectation I have for the summer of 2018.  By then, SMART, the commuter rail system coming to the North Bay, should have opened its extension to Larkspur.

AT&T Park

During that summer,  I should be able to exit my front door, pat the fender of my car as I pass it by, walk a short distance to a bus stop for Petaluma Transit, realigned to better connect with SMART, ride a bus to the SMART station, take the train to Larkspur, with special attention to the lower Petaluma River where the train diverges from the freeway to snake through a setting of farms and tidal marshes, catch a ferry, feeling the salty breeze on the deck, arrive near the right center field corner of AT&T Park, enjoy nine innings in a walled garden, and then reverse the trip home.

What a marvelous outing to envision for the year I turn 65.  What a change to experience over the course of my life.  I only regret that it’s still two years away.

Play ball!

I’ve recently been pondering the complementary, but unevenly embraced, roles of visioning and execution.  I’ll offer insights when I next write.

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

Traveling from Door to Destination without a Car

Transit-accessible theatre in London

When the day comes that costs of living are more accurately assigned, with some of the external costs of sprawling subdivisions and internal combustion engines instead internalized, many people will choose to conduct a portion of their lives without cars.

And some of those of people will go even further, choosing to live completely without a privately-owned automobile, deciding that their lives would be better if the costs of acquiring, maintaining, and storing a car are reallocated to other priorities such as travel, entertainment, or retirement savings.

I’m not arguing that everyone needs to live car-less but, because an accurate assignment of costs supports it, I find it appropriate for people to have the option.  And someday, as I move further into my senior years, I hope it’s a choice that’ll be available to me.

But making a life work without a car isn’t simply walking to the grocery store and riding a bus to the dentist.  A full and rich life has numerous aspects that we’ve customarily accomplished by private automobiles, aspects that will need to be filled either by private enterprise reacting to market opportunities or by public transit evolving to serve a broadening set of needs.

A reader recently sent me a photo of PetBus, a New Zealand business that transports pets around the two islands, allowing pet owners to stay home while puppies are delivered to new owners or to travel by train to vacation spots to which household pets will be delivered.  In a place while gasoline is near $8 per gallon, Pet Bus seems a logical alternative to using an SUV for every pet transport need.

And PetBus require didn’t require government action.  Once the prices for gasoline were set correctly, PetBus was a rational response of the free market.  Long live the free market.

Even more important to many is personal travel in the absence of a car.

I recently had an awakening on this point.  The SMART train will begin running later this year.  In response, Petaluma Transit is considering route adjustments, including adding more hours of service for a route that passes near my home.   I suddenly realized that I may soon be able to toss my car keys in a desk drawer, head out the front door with a suitcase, walk a block to a bus stop, ride to the SMART station, ride SMART to the Santa Rosa Airport, fly to a transit friendly destination, perhaps London, and enjoy a full vacation without any use of privately owned vehicles.

The possibility tickles me.  I’ve had marvelous vacations in cars, most recently cruising around the countryside with old friends catching minor league baseball games.  But there’s always been a bit of guilt in those travels.  A fully door-to-destination-to-door public transportation vacation seems a dream.

In the same vein, a planning friend recently told me about his year of college in England near London.  Eager to fit in with his fellow students, he became a fan of the local soccer club, even traveling to away matches by train.  As my friend describes the outings, the train travel may have been more fun than the game itself, as the hours of rail-borne camaraderie were interrupted by a couple of hours in a stadium where the primary activity was standing and flinging insults at the host fans.

A few days back, the friend sent me the map for the weekend travel recently taken by the fans of his old club.

When Blackburn, an upcoming opponent in the northwest corner of England, was unable to sell-out for a match against my friend’s club, 7,000 tickets were released for sale to the visiting fans.  All 7,000 tickets quickly sold and 7,000 fans boarded trains for a four-hour, 200-mile trip.

Seven-thousand English soccer fans riding 200 miles each way to watch a soccer match.  Compared to the American model, which would be over 2,000 cars making the same trip, I love the English model.  As does the atmosphere, which prefers the emissions of a few trains over the emissions of 2,000 vehicles.  (Plus, the trains are usually closer to being converted to carbon-free energy sources.)

Transporting pets and taking ourselves on vacations are only two aspects of living without privately-owned vehicles.  But the progress being made in those two areas proves that our world can change to accommodate the people who choose to live car-free.  We only need to keep moving ahead, one step at a time, and the world will keep changing to accommodate us.

When I next write, I’ll connect rhetoric from the current presidential campaigns to a topic I briefly touched in my first paragraph above, urbanist thinking on the correct pricing of the costs of living.  I can hopefully convince readers to view some of the more outrageous speechifying through a different lens.

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

Black Friday Parking in the Rearview Mirror

A week ago, I introduced Black Friday Parking, an effort by StrongTowns to document an error within many municipal parking codes.

As StrongTowns notes, many parking codes set minimum parking requirements to ensure that all shoppers on the busiest shopping day of the year can find a parking space.  (I have a philosophical difficulty with that standard, noting, as I did in my earlier post, that it implicitly gives priority to the last arriving shopper on a single day of the year over the daily needs of transit riders who must tromp across expanses of largely vacant asphalt on every day of the year.  But that’s a topic for another post.)

The StrongTowns folks, although they may agree with my philosophical point, make a different argument.  They contend the busiest day standard isn’t set correctly.  They observe that, even on the day that many consider the single busiest day, Black Friday, many lots are far less than full.

To add strength to their observation, they ask StrongTowns members and friends to take parking lot photos on Black Friday and to post them to Twitter with the tag #BlackFridayParking.   I suggest looking through the postings.  They give insight to the uncertain function of parking standards.

Although I think that the StrongTowns’ argument is valid, my personal Black Friday Parking experience was anticlimactic.  Because of family obligations, I couldn’t set aside much time to sightsee in parking lots.  But, in the middle of the afternoon, I found a couple of free minutes to drop by one of the older malls in the northern California town of Chico.  I expected to find what others were reporting, a parking lot that was barely half full.

That’s not what I found.  The lot I visited was functioning much as the code intended, not quite full, but darned closed.  With only a handful of open spaces in the furthest rows, I’m guessing that the lot was at 95 percent capacity.

I can still make the argument that a correctly-sized lot would have been completely full with many folks deferring their shopping to another day, but within the intent of many zoning codes, the mall parking lot was working well.  (When time permits, I’ll use aerial mapping to count the parking places versus the mall retail space to calculate the apparent ratio for comparison with typical zoning code ratios.)

Although my Friday experience didn’t buttress the StrongTowns argument, I had a different parking-related experience over the holiday weekend that was insightful in its own way.

With the drive from the North Bay to Chico scheduled for the day after, my wife and I planned a modest Thanksgiving Day dinner, but there was still shopping to be done.  With the awareness that before-Thanksgiving grocery store crowds would likely rival the post-Thanksgiving gift shopping crowds, we planned an early outing.

The plan was mostly successful.  We returned with groceries in the mid-morning after jostling with only moderate crowds.  Then my wife realized that she’d forgotten the horseradish.  So I found myself heading back into the teeth of the mobs.   I visited a small grocery store near our home with a one-item list just as the last-minute grocery shopping crowds descended.

It’s a fine little store, nicely meeting the needs of its part of town.  It’s perhaps a third the size of a modern full-service grocery store, with a parking lot that is probably less than a sixth the size.

Most days, parking is available, although it can sometimes be close.  But on the day before Thanksgiving, the lot was in full failure mode.  Cars were circling in hopes of spaces opening and other cars were blocking the adjoining streets, awaiting a chance to join the circling cars.

I quickly made the decision to park elsewhere, pulled into the municipal lot across the street, and found a parking space after only one loop.  As I walked back to cross the street to the grocery store, I chatted with another shopper who had made the same decision as me.  And when I returned to my car, I was able to flag down another driver who was circling in frustration and to point him toward my soon-to-vacated space.

Overall, it was a pleasant experience, with the extra time I spent crossing the street probably less than the time I spend waiting in a long line to pay for my little bottle of horseradish.  It was proof that the parking lots can fail without the world ending.

(Although not relevant to parking, the horseradish had one more adventure to go.  On the way home, another driver, perhaps overeager to begin her stuffing, ran a stop sign in front of me.  I braked hard and the horseradish flew off the passenger seat.  By the time I reached home, it had rolled under the seat and was jammed in the slider mechanism.  I spent several minutes kneeling in my driveway, working through the rear door to free the bottle.  Rarely has a one-dollar bottle of horseradish been so hard-won.)

My Wednesday horseradish outing gave me grist for thought during my drive to Chico on Friday.  The question I posed was “If we modify the minimum parking requirements to more closely match the peak day demand or, even better, be 25 percent less that the peak day demand as the grocery store may have been, would should happen to the people with the excess cars?”   There are several answers.

·         They stay home, pushing off shopping to another day.  (This is a workable solution for the Black Friday folks, but not for the day before Thanksgiving grocery folks.)

·         They park in nearby parking lots or in curbside parking, assuming that either exists.

·         They walk, bike, or ride transit to the store, assuming that they live close enough to do one of those and that the sidewalks, bike routes, and/or transit routes exist that will accommodate their travel.

Not surprisingly, the latter two are straight from the urbanist playbook.  Reducing parking lot sizes, or even eliminating parking lots, can be a good urbanist approach.

Parking, especially free parking, can be a canary in the coal mine of good urbanism.  It’s a topic to which I intend to return in 2016.

Before closing, I have several links to offer.

In my earlier post on Black Friday Parking, I puzzled over the origin of Black Friday as applied to the day after Thanksgiving.  Digg.com gives a credible explanation that it was first applied by the Philadelphia Police Department to the traffic jams that occurred on the day. 

Also, StrongTowns founder Chuck Marohn tells the story of his journey to Black Friday Parking.  As a fellow civil engineer, I can appreciate the frustration he felt with the parking provisions of zoning codes that appear unrelated to good town planning. 

Regular StrongTowns contributor Andrew Price writes about Hoboken, which could become an urbanist delight if parking minimums aren’t allowed to undermine its direction.

Lastly, StreetsBlog looks in from the outside and commends StrongTowns for the Black Friday Parking idea.

A trip I eagerly anticipate in 2016 is to Detroit for CNU24, the 24th annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism.  For my holiday reading, I’ll begin a study of the recent history of Detroit.  One of the topics in which I expect to find much to mine is the role of suburbs versus urban cores.  In my next post, I’ll describe some recent thinking on 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)

NFL Called for Intentional Grounding, Penalty is Loss of Credibility

Back in 2012, the NRL was eager to tout the urbanist pleasures of Superbowl XLVI in Indianapolis, where many of Superbowl week venues, including the stadium, were within walkable distance of the host hotels.  Four years later, the NFL keeps stubbing its urbanist toe.

The first urbanist bust was at Superbowl XLVIII.  The NFL failed to account for the increasing use of transit to reach major sporting events and gave New Jersey transportation officials bad estimates of the division between car passengers and transit riders for game day planning.  When far more fans used transit than expected, the results were overcrowded cars and long wait times.

 And now, in the run-up to Superbowl L, the NFL has misread the changing urban realities once again.

Having decided that most Superbowl festivities should be in San Francisco, rather than 45 miles south in Santa Clara where Levi’s Stadium is located, NFL officials have been meeting with representatives of the City of San Francisco to discuss event coordination.  One request recently made of the City was for the temporary removal of the overhead electric bus wires along Market Street.

I understand the motivation behind the request.  The overhead wires are ugly and detract from the vista down Market Street toward the Ferry Building and San Francisco Bay.  I’ll celebrate on the day when evolving technology allows the wires to be removed.

But until then, the overhead wires and the buses fed by them are key links in the San Francisco transit system.  While the NFL reportedly offered to reimburse the City for the estimated $1 million cost to remove and later replace the wires, no acknowledgments were offered to the commuters or businesses who would be inconvenienced by the weeks when the transit system would be compromised.

Luckily for all, the NFL recognized the problems with the request and soon withdrew it.  But having made the request at all shows urban colorblindness in NFL headquarters.

Choosing San Francisco over Santa Clara as the center of Superbowl festivities correctly acknowledged the fundamental role of major cities.  But cities are multi-layered entities with complex internal logic.  To blithely tinker with one element, such as a portion of the transit system, without trying to understand the integrated whole was akin to buying the Mona Lisa because of her enigmatic smile, but with the intention of adding braces.

It’s not that cities can’t be modified.  Indeed, they can be and must be.   But those changes must be carefully proposed and vetted considering all the ramifications, not suggested only to provide better photo opportunities for a week of football tourists.

Hopefully, the NFL will begin to grasp that urban reality before Superbowl LI.

Milestone Note: The first post in this blog was published on the Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend of 2011.  Thus, this post is the end of my fourth year.  When I began, I had no expectation of how long I would continue.  But I kept finding topics about which I wanted to write and somehow the years passed by.

Thanks for coming along, reading, commenting, and being tolerant when I struggled to find my voice.

I have no plans yet to cease my efforts.  Instead, I’ll be back here in couple of days, starting my fifth year.  I hope you’ll be here also.  And if you want to bring a friend, I wouldn’t complain.

Speaking of coming back, my next post will be a look back at Black Friday Parking, with thoughts on my personal interaction with an over-filled parking lot and links to some of the better writing on the subject by others.

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

Delivering Folks at an Awkward Distance from an Incipient Wasteland

I’d like to write that it was the result of putting a high weight on geography when making employment decisions, but the reality is that I was lucky with office locations for much of my career.

For my first five years out of school, I worked near BART in downtown San Francisco.  My office was an older office building that had barely survived the 1906 earthquake.  My coworkers and I looked with consternation at the unrestrained joints during occasional temblors, but enjoyed riding BART to the Mission District for lunchtime burritos.

My next stop was near the top of a 1928 office tower overlooking the Puget Sound and the Pioneer Square historic district of Seattle.   The front door was about a block from a bus stop.

Next, it was onto a small Oregon town where my office was in a building that had begun life as a 1930s auto dealership, had been refurbished into character-filled offices, and was only a block from downtown and directly across from city hall.

Upon my return to California, I found myself in a ramshackle building of little character, since demolished, but close to city hall and downtown.

It was only for the last stop in my career that I failed to have a strong walkable urban flavor in my professional setting.  Instead, I was in the most unfortunate of all U.S. office settings, the business park.  I made the move voluntarily because it allowed me to put down deeper North Bay roots.  Plus, the building adjoined the urban growth boundary, so my office overlooked a pasture on the other side of the boundary.  And it was pleasant to have a lawn on which to have lunchtime barbecues.

But there is still something unnatural about working in a business park, with the disregard shown to pedestrians by inadequate sidewalks and the need to drive for nearly every task.  I wasn’t unhappy to put the business park in my rearview mirror.  And, with the increasing market preference for walkable settings and the environmental need for reduced reliance on cars, it’s likely that the future will similarly put business parks in the rearview mirror.

(To be clear, this comment applies only to business parks, characterized by lots of employees and fields of cubicles.  Industrial parks won’t face the same pressure from walkable alternatives because manufacturing is often unsuited to walkable settings.)

The dubious future of business parks was what Washington Post writer Dan Zak found when he sniffed around the Washington D.C. area.  (The link has been erratic for me.  If it doesn’t work, try this for a Google search with the article at the top of the results.)

Admittedly, Zak probably could have probably found a few vacant buildings at any time during the history of business parks as local economies ebbed and flowed, but the end of the business park now truly seems closer than ever before.  With major players in the economy staking out positions in walkable settings, Twitter in San Francisco, Uber in Oakland, and Amazon in Seattle among others, their presence and the resulting accumulation of talent will attract ever more other businesses downtown.

The transition won’t occur overnight.  Business park owners will adjust prices to ensure that they continue to get income from their investments.  But as the current buildings wear out, it seems likely that the replacement space will come largely in walkable urban settings.

Thus, it seems puzzling that SMART (Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit) seems to be seriously considering the relocation of a station to serve a collection of business parks.

The station location is a topic I’ve often mentioned before, most recently here, so I’ll give only a brief recap today.  Petaluma was targeted to get two stations on the new SMART line, one near the heart of downtown, where new office space in a walkable setting is a likely result, and the other where suburban residents could arrive by car or transit to ride to office locations.

When SMART’s funds became constrained, the second station was deferred.  But recently, SMART has reportedly begun considering an alternative location that could be implemented sooner and with less expense to SMART.  However, the alternative location would be more difficult to access by either transit or car, reducing its value to local residents.  Instead, the only apparent benefit of the alternative location, other than the reduced cost to SMART, is its proximity to a collection of business parks.

Hence, the concern about whether business parks have enough of a future to justify serving Petaluma’s business parks with a train station that would be in use for a long time.

But the question then becomes even more convoluted.  When I wrote that the station would be in proximity to the business parks, I used the word “proximity” loosely.  It appears that over half of the business park workers would have walks of 1,800 feet or more from the station to their offices.  That distance compares poorly to the quarter mile, or 1,300 feet, that is considered the limit of walkability for many.  For comparison, the walk from BART to my long-ago office in San Francisco was 900 feet.

Then the situation gets worse.  In “Walkable City”, author Jeff Speck lists the four elements that must be available for walkability to exist; usefulness, safety, comfort, and interest.  As he describes them, the absence of even one will doom walkability.

For the walks from the possible station location to the business park offices, I’ll agree that safety and usefulness mostly exist and that comfort is somewhat acceptable, although the crossing of a high-speed rural highway, even with the benefit of a traffic signal, isn’t high on the comfort scale.

But the interest standard isn’t met at all.  Long stretches on dismissively curved walks aligned between parking lots and moving traffic with a view of sterile buildings behind the lots are not interesting.  Again for comparison, my walk in San Francisco viewed the front windows of the Palace Hotel, a stationer who took pride in his displays and an often-packed burrito place.

I agree that some folks would ride SMART regardless of the poor walkability, such as new graduates who can’t yet afford a car, young adults who believe in living without a car but who haven’t yet found a job in a walkable setting, and those with a car in the shop.  But all would be looking for a way to drop the train rides and long walks as soon as possible.

I often chat with folks about the SMART station location.  Some believe that SMART has devious reasons for the new station location, whether it’s putting the station closer to their office or unspecified favors in other areas of the SMART system.

It’s likely I’m naïve, but I don’t agree with them.  My philosophy in these situations is “Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.”  So, until shown differently, I won’t believe that the SMART folks are undermining Petaluma’s future with malicious intent.  Instead, I’ll believe that they’ve found a simple solution to their revenue crunch and haven’t yet considered the external costs of the long-term impacts to Petaluma from the poor land-use pattern that would result.

So my job is to highlight those external costs as I’ve tried to do here.  But at the same time, I must note that moving a train station to a location where the primary benefit to the local community is being at the far edge of walkability from a land use with a limited future is well into the category of stupid.

At least, that’s how I see it.

Next time, I touch upon the tribal lands south of Petaluma.  Much of the community has been concerned about a casino or regional shopping center on the site, but I’ll point to another land use that would be far more ominous.

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

Covering the Transit Spectrum

A recent report caused me to ponder the role of transit in small towns, including Petaluma where I live.  And to reject one of the lesser strategies offered by the authors.

The report was prepared under the aegis of SPUR, a San Francisco organization with a long urbanist tradition incorporating both definitions of urbanism, the study of alternative patterns of human settlement and the advocacy for the best solutions. 

Originally founded in 1910 as the San Francisco Housing Association with the goal of addressing lingering housing issues from the 1906 earthquake and fire, the organization went through numerous transitions over the next century.  It eventually became the San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association, now shortened to SPUR.

I’ve long admired the work of SPUR.  I’m not a member, but that’s only because I can’t possibly join all of the urbanist organizations that I admire.  If I ever decide to increase the number of organizations to which I pay dues, SPUR would be on the short list of organizations that I’d consider.

The transit report released under the imprimatur of SPUR was Seamless Transit, a call for improved connectivity between the many transit agencies that serve the Bay Area.  The extensive list of coordination items, including greater fare consistency, better located transfer points, more attention to schedule coordination, and a stronger focus on making the use of multiple transit systems transparent to riders, is well-conceived and comprehensively executed.

For those interested in the future of transit in the Bay Area, I recommend the report.  Its details can seem overwhelming, but the subject matter requires the level of attention provided.

When I first learned of the report, I wasn’t as positive.  I’d been told that the report called for consolidation of the transit agencies in the region, a subject on which I had misgivings.  However, upon reading the report, I found that the authors acknowledge the possibility that limited consolidations could provide benefits, while also suggesting that it would be harmful if the conversation became too focused on mergers.

Overall, they argue that cultural changes are more important that rearranging organizational charts, a point with which I concur.

My concern with consolidation pertains to the different roles that the transit agencies can fill.  The SPUR report focuses on the services that transit can provide for commuters or other travelers such as tourists who make extended trips within the Bay Area, using multiple transit systems.

I acknowledge that long-distance riders are important.  Personally, I remain frustrated that I don’t have a reasonable option to use transit for traveling from Petaluma to the Cal campus in Berkeley for a basketball game.  (And no, I don’t consider BART to San Francisco and a late night ride home on Golden Gate Transit to be a reasonable option.)

But not every transit agency is focused on long-distance riders.  Some agencies have service goals that are more local and are equally important.

Petaluma is served by Petaluma Transit, a division of the City of Petaluma.  (Acknowledgement: One of my community roles is a seat on the City committee that advises Petaluma Transit on long-range strategy, policy decisions, contractual issues, and land-use matters.  However, I’ll acknowledge that virtually all of the successes of Petaluma Transit, which have been considerable in recent years with greatly increased ridership, are due to the work of the staff and the contractors.  The Transit Advisory Committee’s only role is to spurt the occasional drop of oil into a well-tuned machine.)

At present, Petaluma Transit serves relatively few long-distance, multi-transit system riders.  The primary reason is free parking.  Commuters who wish to use Golden Gate Transit or Sonoma County Transit can drive private cars to the vicinity of bus stops where they can park without charge.  Free parking will always affect consumer decision-making in this way.

Instead of those riders, Petaluma Transit largely serves youths who rely on city buses rather than private cars to reach school and other members of the community who don’t drive, but need access to stores and jobs.

Petaluma Transit does a fine job of serving those folks.  Within the context of the available funding and a land-use pattern that doesn’t facilitate effective transit, the community is well-served.

It’s hard to imagine that a more regional transit agency could do a better job of serving the current local ridership than the current staff and contractors who live and work in the community.  Consolidation in the case of Petaluma Transit and other municipal transit agencies that serve communities with well-defined boundaries and a large load of local riders is a poor idea which should be quickly rejected.

(I had the chance to run this thinking past Portland Jarrett Walker at the recent CNU 23.  Walker, who is respected nationally for his acumen on the philosophy of transit, concurred with my position.)

But that doesn’t mean that Petaluma Transit can ignore the Seamless Transit report.  The report still sets forth multiple strategies of which Petaluma Transit should remain aware.  As the land-use patterns of Petaluma become denser, and as more people choose to leave their cars in the garage when they commute or perhaps not to own a car at all, Seamless Transit will provide guidelines for serving those people effectively.

The coming of the SMART train, especially when the system opens with only a single Petaluma station of limited parking, will also make the strategies in Seamless Transit important.

For those reasons, the Transit Advisory Committee met with a representative of SMART at its May meeting and will discuss the Seamless Transit report at our June meeting.  As a committee member, I understand the need for the policies that SPUR sets forth.

Even if I think consolidation would be bad idea.

Next time, I’ll cover several Petaluma subjects, including the long-promised Fairgrounds update.  But all readers are encouraged to check in.  Perhaps the urbanists in Petaluma are implementing ideas that can be exported. 

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

What is Transit?

(Once again, there’s been no progress on the Fairgrounds update.  I remain surprised by the slowness of the process, which right now is fully out of my hands, but I’ll keep pushing.  Perhaps the pieces will be in place for my next post.)

A feature of the annual meetings of the Congress for the New Urbanism is the Open Source sessions.  Any attendee can propose a topic of discussion, organize a circle of chairs, and begin a conversation.  And many of the topics are well worthy of discussion.  My only frustration with the Open Source concept is that too often there are multiple interesting discussions being conducted simultaneously.

At CNU 23, recently concluded in Dallas, the only Open Source in which I was able to participate was organized by transit consultant Jarrett Walker.  He didn’t have a focused topic, but only suggested that those interested gather to chat about transit.  Despite the imprecise subject, a discussion resulted that offered an interesting insight.

A couple of minutes into the discussion, Walker stopped us and asked the question. “What is transit?”

It seemed a question with a simple answer.  Personally, my initial response would have been bus or rail routes operated by a transit agency.  But it would have been a simple-minded answer that was quickly overrun by the discussion.

First someone noted that public ownership wasn’t a necessary attribute, with private buses, jitneys in Brooklyn and collectivos in Mexico City, filling an essential role.

Then someone pointed out that taxis were definitely a component of a transit system.  (It was a point that I’d made in this space over three years ago, so I could hardly disagree.)   And then someone else added that the taxis of the sharing age, Uber and Lyft, had to be included with taxis.  And that shared-ownership cars like ZipCars belonged in the same category.

And someone else, who came from a city where bike sharing was managed by the local transit agency, added that mode to the discussion.

By the time we finished, about the only modes of transportation that we wouldn’t have considered transit were privately owned cars, bicycles, and shoes that were used for the movement of one’s self or one’s family and friends without compensation.

And having pondered the question since returning home from CNU 23, I’ve come to realize that even those “non-transit” modes have blurry edges, such as providing parking at transit stations to facilitate a private transportation/public transit interface, improving sidewalks to bus stops, allowing bikes to ride on buses and trains, facilitating kiss-and-ride drop-offs at train stations, etc.

Human beings like to compartmentalize.  It’s our way of making sense of the world.  But the best insights and solutions come when we find a way to ignore our arbitrary dividing lines.  Mass and energy were considered different concepts until Einstein formulated that E=mc^2, changing the world of physics forever.  And his successors have been chasing ever broader “unified theories” since then.

I think a similar argument can be made about transportation.  It’s easy to think about transportation as private cars versus public transit.  I’ve certainly done so in this space.  But, even if it makes our heads hurt, we’re better off thinking about a unified theory of transportation, where the most efficient, convenient, safe, and environmentally friendly option is available for each trip we take, whether to a neighborhood deli, to a job in a nearby town, or to a faraway destination.

I don’t know where a unified theory of human transportation will lead us, but suggest that it’s a better way to tackle the challenges of transportation, and of urbanism, than the public/private or car/bus silos into which we often retreat.

The next post will hopefully touch upon several Petaluma issues, including the Fairgrounds.  But if that topic still isn’t ripe for discussion, I’ll ruminate on municipal fines, a topic that has a connection to urbanism.

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

Stories from CNU 23: Infrastructure Patterns, Misallocated Fishing Piers, and the Creation of Funk

Nuts.   I still can’t share the update on Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds that I’ve been promising, although progress was made over the last few days.  I’ll continue to push for having something in my next post.

(For non-regular readers, I help organize a local urbanist discussion group.  The members have been assembling an independent land plan for a portion of the downtown Fairgrounds here in Petaluma.  The plan is proposed for implementation after the current lease expires in eight years.  I’ve been promising an announcement about the next step in the planning effort, but the pieces aren’t quite yet in place.)

In the absence of a Fairgrounds update, I’ll continue sharing moments that caught my attention at the recently completed 23rd annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism.   (The photo is from a public park near the host hotel.)  This post will almost, but not quite, empty my notebook of shareable moments, although I’ll return in more depth to the topics addressed at CNU 23 in the coming weeks and months.  (Earlier snippets from CNU 23 are here, here, and here.)

The Persistence of Infrastructure: I’ve previously written that, even more so than buildings that can wear out and be replaced, patterns of infrastructure can persist nearly forever.  Build a bridge connecting two towns and the towns become so intertwined that a bridge must always remain.  Construct a lock to allow river commerce to an upstream town and it may be years before the lock can be abandoned.  Configure a subdivision around an assumption that everyone will drive and the multitude of homes may never allow pedestrian/bicycle/transit-friendly revisions.

Maria Zimmerman of MZ Strategies phrased it succinctly during CNU 23.  ”Infrastructure is a way to make your great-grandchildren live by your values even after you’re gone.”

Even if our periscopes toward the future are often foggy and distorted, we should try to build as timelessly as possible.

The Worldview of Transit Managers: The discussion of transit systems can often seem bloodless.  Fare box recovery, route efficiency, traffic signal priorities, and paratransit optimization are important, but only occasionally do those topics evoke passion.

But transit consultant Jarrett Walker pointed out during CNU 23 that transit managers often get a different perspective.  It’s the transit managers who sit across from tearful mothers who claim that a fare increase won’t allow them to deliver their children to schools, causing Children’s Protective Services to take the children away.

It’s worth remembering that transit systems aren’t strictly balance sheets, but are also lifelines on which real people rely.

Not Everyone Needs a Fishing Pier: Staying with Jarrett Walker, he noted that some cities structure their transit systems around providing an equal share of the transit pie to every district.  As he described it, this approach makes about as much sense as giving a fishing pier to every district regardless of whether the district has a body of water.

Transit should be about serving people, not dividing political spoils.

The World is Different Than When I Finished College: In an updated snapshot of a point about which I’ve often written, Christopher Coes of Smart Growth America reported that 64 percent of all college-educated workers between the ages of 25 and 34 now decide where they want to live and then look for a job in that place.

For those seeking economic growth, the message should be clear.  Build places where the next generation wants to live and employers will follow.  (And yes, the Fairgrounds plan noted above follows that dictum.)

Looking for the Funk:  The Dallas-area firm Ash+Lime Strategies, which was active in the planning of CNU 23, specializes in the field of tactical urbanism.  Tactical urbanism is the use of small urban interventions in the hope of triggering bigger ideas.  Faced with a brick hulk of an abandoned factory, some urbanists begin making plans to raze the building and to build four stories of mixed use.  Others bring in a band and a beer trailer to see what magic happens.  The latter urbanists are tactical urbanists.

Ash+Lime partner,   Amanda Popken, speaking at CNU 23, described their goal as being “Create the funk that makes a place.”

I suspect that most North Bay communities have underused places with funks yet to be exploited.  Here in Petaluma, I’ll point toward the aging industrial area bounded by the Petaluma River, E. Washington Street, and railroad tracks.  So, how do we create the funk that would make those places?

Next time, my goal remains to offer a Fairgrounds update.  Failing that, I’ll riff on a way of thinking about transit that was offered at CNU 23.

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

Tackling the Bigger Transit Questions

I chair the Petaluma Transit Advisory Committee.  It’s a good gig that I enjoy greatly.  I have a fine group of fellow committee members and appreciate the effort that the Transit Manager makes to provide us with comprehensive background information and to respond effectively to our questions so that we can provide meaningful service to the City. 

But I’ll admit that many of the topics we tackle may often seem dull to those on the outside.  The nuances of whether we should order 35-foot or 40-foot buses and how many mechanics we need to maintain the fleet may seem critically important to us, but would likely evoke yawns from others.

(For those wondering, the question about bus length pivots around a downtown intersection that’s challenging to longer buses.  Also, Petaluma Transit has been lucky to survive thus far with a single mechanic plus vacation replacements, but as the fleet and the number of riders grows, we’re looking at adding a second mechanic.)

Perhaps my most surprising moment as the committee chair came when I was sitting in the Council Chambers observing a meeting of another City body.  The 88-year-old woman sitting next to me leaned over and told me that I did a better job of running meetings than the chair we were watching.

I assumed she had mistaken me for someone else, but when I tried to explain that, she responded that she knew exactly who I was and that she organized her schedule around watching the Transit Advisory Committee meetings every month when they air live on the local community access channel.

Given that the average number of members of the general public in the Council Chambers for a Transit meeting is somewhere between 0.5 and 1, I was surprised, but pleased, to learn of the possibility of dedicated home viewers who find interest in what we were doing.

Now that I’ve downplayed many of our agenda topics, I’ll note that sometimes the stars align and we have an agenda item or two that could interest a wider following.  One of those times seems to be upcoming meeting on Thursday, May 7.

First up will be the Greenbelt Alliance wishing to engage us on the subject of an upcoming County ballot measure.   Measure A would impose a five-year, quarter of a cent sales tax for transportation improvements.  Other jurisdictions in the County have indicated a willingness to devote a portion of the Measure A proceeds, if it passes, to transit.  Thus far, the Petaluma City Council has been silent on the subject, perhaps as the result of a reasonable concern about promising more than they can deliver.

But the Greenbelt Alliance still wishes to lobby the Council on the subject, at least to plant an idea for post-election discussions.  And they want to talk with the Transit Committee before approaching the City Council.

It’ll be the first time for the Transit Committee to get this close to politics.  The discussion should be interesting.

Next up will be a discussion that could be complementary to the Greenbelt Alliance topic.

The Transit Advisory Committee is excited about the pending arrival of the SMART train, seeing it as a needed expansion of the transit options for the community.  But, with the beginning of train service only 18 months away, we’re concerned about the status of the coordination on scheduling and on a physical connection between the train and the buses.  We love the idea of the train, but fear that having the trains run nearly empty at first will have long-term repercussions.  We want to ensure that Petaluma is fully ready to support the train.

A SMART representative will appear at the May Committee meeting so we can ensure that the coordination efforts are being given sufficient attention.

If this description makes you interested in attending the May meeting, that’d be great.  We’d like to have a number of folks in the Council Chambers.  Thursday, May 7, 4:00pm at the Petaluma City Hall, 11 English Street.  (We normally finish about 5:45pm because another committee meets at 6:00pm.)  Please come, observe, and/or speak.  Public participation is a fine thing.

Before my next post, I’ll have returned from the most recent annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism.  (But this doesn’t mean that I’ll miss any of my thrice-weekly publishing days.  I wrote several posts in advance, such as this one, that have been running in my absence.  By the time this blog is published, I’ll be nearly home.)

CNU 23 will be held in Dallas.  Much as I did for CNU 22 in Buffalo a year ago, I intend to fill my next post with the most clever, cogent, and impactful bon mots from CNU 23.  And if my fellow urbanists are as eloquent as usual, I may even have enough excerpts for two or three posts.

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