Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Parking Madness, our hunt for the worst parking crater in an American downtown, continues today with two formidable contenders.

In one corner we have Tulsa: Oklahoma’s second largest city, birthplace of the teen sensation Hanson (mmmBOP!), home to nearly 400,000 people. In the other corner, Philadelphia: cradle of democracy, birthplace of the Fresh Prince, and home of the cheesesteak.

Don’t forget to vote at the bottom. Now, without further ado… Show us what you got, Tulsa!

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If it can work on Edgewater Drive in Orlando, it can work anywhere.

Orlando's Edgewater Drive after a road diet: safer and more active. Image: Project for Public Spaces

This road diet — or “street rightsizing” — removed one traffic lane on a four lane road through 1.5 miles of the city’s College Park neighborhood. Since then, traffic collisions are down 34 percent. Pedestrian activity increased 23 percent and cycling rose 30 percent.

Virtually none of the problems opponents predicted have materialized. Immediate property values have held steady with regional trends. Nearby streets haven’t seen a major increase in traffic. And because the project was a simple striping, the road diet cost the city only an additional $50,000 over a basic resurfacing.

So why doesn’t every city in America get busy “rightsizing”? A new guide from Project for Public Spaces seeks to make that possible. PPS’s Rightsizing Streets Guide highlights case studies and best practices from Philadelphia, Seattle, Tampa, Poughkeepsie, and elsewhere to show jurisdictions how they, too, can right-size their streets.

Philadelphia took a unique approach. “The Porch” project outside 30th Street Station removed only parking and replaced it with a wide sidewalk, seating, and public gathering space. This new destination, featured last year on Streetfilms, seats 250 people and is home to regular events like yoga and farmer’s markets, and it is a favorite spot for West Philadelphia workers to eat lunch on nice days.

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Big congrats to the Greater Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition, which had a “pretty cool success” Thursday, in the words of Policy Director Sarah Clark Stuart. The entire Streets and Services Committee of the City Council voted to approve a complete streets bill, advancing what could be one of the strongest municipal complete streets policies in the nation.

A road diet on Allegheny Avenue added bike lanes while imposing order on car traffic. Image: Greater Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition

The bill requires both public and private entities to consider all users when resurfacing or renovating a street or sidewalk. That should bring safer street design and better amenities for people who get around by walking, biking, or riding transit.

These seemingly dry, technical changes to traffic and zoning codes will make Philly’s streets safer for everyone, the Bike Coalition says. The bill has the support of Mayor Michael Nutter, whose top transportation official testified in support of the bill.

“Philadelphians walk, bike and take transit to work more than almost any other city in America,” said Deputy Mayor for Transportation and Utilities Rina Cutler. “An important step in making our streets safe for all travelers is to modernize the code to reflect the changing needs of our city.”

Recommended street treatments and designs — including everything from sidewalk bulb-outs to covered bus shelters to bike corrals — will be included in a “Complete Streets Handbook” [PDF] that combines the recommendations of a slew of different city plans and reports. Before, those ideas did not have the weight of law behind them. With this bill, they’ll be part of Philadelphia code.

“They wanted to be able to have legal authority to say that the handbook needed to be reviewed,” Stuart said. “The thinking of the Streets Department and the Mayor’s Office of Transportation was that by authorizing handbook and having language in there that all projects must be reviewed by it, that that was what was going to drive everyone to consider it as much as possible.”

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During the latest recession, housing prices were more resilient in Philadelphia's walkable neighborhoods. That is a reversal of the pattern that occurred in the previous housing downturn. Image: Congress for the New Urbanism

It’s been a bad few years for homeowners around the country, and those in greater Philadelphia are no different. But people who owned houses in Philadelphia’s center city or suburban areas near a walkable town center fared better than others.

According to a new report from the Congress for the New Urbanism, the homes in greater Philadelphia that suffered the steepest losses of the housing crisis were those in the most car-centric, sprawling neighborhoods. That was exactly the opposite of what occurred in the last housing downturn, when larger, single-family housing in disconnected, far-flung neighborhoods retained more of its value, researchers found:

During the first housing downturn of 1989-1995, housing prices declined the greatest in the urban core center (-33.7% in the center city), second-most in the central city of Philadelphia as a whole (-17.6%) and least in the lower-density areas of the suburban counties (-14.3%). But during the most-recent housing downturn of 2007-2012, home price declines have been the greatest in the low-density suburbs (-32.7%), second-most in Philadelphia County (-26.7%) and the smallest in the urban core of the center city (-20.2%).

The study evaluated the urban character of each zip code in the region, using criteria like housing density, transit accessibility, mix of land uses and other indicators. This method was employed to examine the relationship between urban form and the housing market, instead of using crude measurements like the political boundaries between suburbs and the city.

The authors attribute the new dynamic to rising energy prices, as well as the revitalization of central city Philadelphia and shifting housing preferences, especially among seniors and young people. The findings are consistent with other studies that have found walkable, transit-accessible places have bounced back stronger from this housing downturn than more car-centric areas.

Five city transportation chiefs -- Phildelphia's Rina Cutler, Chicago's Gabe Klein, NYC's Janette Sadik-Khan, San Francisco's Ed Reiskin, and Boston's Tom Tinlin -- shared their perspectives today on how cities have innovated by necessity.

The leaders of the nation’s big city transportation agencies have formed a tight-knit circle, brought together by the National Association of City Transportation Officials to share best practices, and yes, battle scars.

As NACTO’s first ever national conference drew to a close Friday, transportation chiefs from Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Chicago and New York all talked about the progress their cities have made and shared their frustration at the lack of attention to cities and transportation in the state and national political arenas.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg set the tone by blasting the state government in his introductory remarks. “Our economy is dependent on transportation,” he said. “But our state refused to give us money for a new subway line, so we said ‘screw you’ and took city taxpayer money to extend a subway line.”

NYC Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan put it even more starkly. She said that instead of the old New Yorker cartoon, a New Yorker’s view of the world, in which the map falls off dramatically after the Hudson River, “Washington’s view of the world is made up of Iowa, Ohio and lots of highways. And some dollar signs on the map where New York and Los Angeles are.”

Despite the lack of attention from Congress and the presidential contenders, Sadik-Khan explained that transportation innovations at the city level can cumulatively affect the nation’s economy, echoing the previous day’s plenary speaker Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution. “You’ve got two-thirds of Americans living in top 100 metropolitans areas, where three-quarters of US GDP is generated,” Sadik-Khan said. “Yet there is no mention of cities in presidential debates.” Added San Francisco Municipal Transportation Commissioner Ed Reiskin, “There was no mention at all of transportation in any of the debates.”

Given the progress that cities across the country are making on transportation reform, the question arises: How much more can cities do without the active support of Washington and state governments?

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Attacks on transit drivers are not a new problem. But it seems to be getting worse.

A spike in violence has compelled Seattle area buses to carry this PSA. Photo: Oran Viriyincy/Flickr

A bus driver now gets assaulted every three days in the United States, estimates the Amalgated Transit Union. Headlines abound of drivers getting kicked, punched, stabbed and shot, while the lower-profile offenses – spitting and verbal harassment – have almost become part of the job description.

For many transit workers, it’s plain to see how the recession has inflated a trend that already existed. Working alone and dealing with money, drivers have always been vulnerable. Mix in a more frustrated, downtrodden population of passengers with a host of service cuts and fare increases, and you get combustion.

“People who are poorer than they were, … who rely more on transit than they did, who are waiting longer at bus stops for the bus to come because the service has been cut,” said Larry Hanley, president of the ATU. When they board the bus, “the driver’s sitting there in a uniform, representing the government, telling them, you got to pay a higher tax for this service,” he said.

Nationwide statistics are lacking, but many jurisdictions have reported recent increases in driver attacks. The Philadelphia Transport Workers Union local reports that assaults there more than doubled in 2011 compared to 2010. New York City has seen a 30 percent increase in 2012. There’s also not a lot of hard data linking an uptick in assaults to fare increases or service cuts, said Robin Gillespie, program director of safety and health at the Transportation Learning Center. But “people feel that way,” she said.

And attacks occur most commonly during fare collection. “The conflict is over money,” said Hanley. “It’s people who have a pocket full of empty and have to get to a place.”

As the problem gets more prevalent, transit unions are getting more organized in their efforts to deal with it.

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This is the fourth part in Streetsblog’s series profiling 11 officials who are bringing American cities and towns into the 21st century when it comes to transportation and planning policy. Read the earlier profiles in part one, part two, and part three.

Jay Primus

Manager, SFMTA’s SFPark program

Jay Primus is the manager of SFPark, a national innovator in dynamic parking policy. Photo: SFMTA_Flickr

In your average city, parking policy is pretty rigid: The parking meters have their rates, and the rates don’t change, no matter how much cruising and double-parking results from prices that don’t reflect demand for curbside space.

That’s not how things work in San Francisco. For the last few years, the SFMTA has been rolling out a groundbreaking program called SFPark, which recognizes that curbside parking is a scarce good and should be priced in response to demand. Headed up by Jay Primus, SFPark could be the model for parking policy that cities all over the country seek to emulate.

Applying the theories of UCLA professor Donald Shoup, SFPark promises to reduce cruising and double-parking by adjusting prices and distributing information, so that drivers find available spaces quickly instead of searching fruitlessly ad nauseam. It’s called “dynamic parking,” and it adds a whole new level of sophistication and intelligence to parking policy — not to mention a mountain of data.

Overseeing the interpretation of and response to all this data is Primus. Managing the parking data — not to mention the public communications challenge that comes with an overhaul of parking prices — is a big job. Primus has been hard at work at it now for three years.

There have been bumps, and as one would expect, some backlash when the program has expanded into areas that currently don’t have meters. Encouragingly, the rollout has gone smoothly in areas that already have meters. Primus himself has said it is too soon to judge the effect of the program.

But there’s no disputing that Primus is leading San Francisco to a new frontier of parking policy. And the lessons learned from SFPark will prove valuable for cities everywhere.

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In an old supermarket space in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, a diverse community of bicycle aficionados are getting greasy. Young and old, Latino and white, they are truing wheels and replacing cables and adjusting brakes in L.A.’s newest, and completely unplanned, bike co-op.

Volunteers' meeting, Bici Libre. Photo: Jonny Green, LACBC Bike Wrangler

Bici Libre, as it’s called, got its start when the County Cycling Collaborative received a stimulus grant of $200,000 to spruce up “stray” bikes, with the help of volunteers gaining job skills. They rented the vacant grocery store to be just a warehouse to store the old bikes, but it quickly evolved into a hub of bicycle education, advocacy, and community.

But Bici Libre could disappear as quickly as it materialized. The stimulus grant that funds it runs out next March, and the CCC doesn’t know how – or if – it’ll be able to keep the new bike co-op alive.

Bici Libre is just one of many potential casualties of the boom-and-bust stimulus cycle. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act breathed life into countless worthy projects, including many planning and education programs that promote green transportation, but they can’t all last forever. Some, like Bici Libre, are now scrounging for future funding. Others may just close up shop.

In Portland, for example, the Bureau of Transportation expanded its Smart Trips program, where people can order information about transit that runs through their neighborhood, a bike kit, a walking kit, or information about carpooling. A customized packet of information is then delivered to them by bicycle, along with a calendar of events like group rides for seniors or women.

Eight hundred thousand dollars of stimulus money launched a Smart Trips program for new residents and helped augment the programs that worked with schools and businesses. But that money will be spent soon. “Smart Trips to School is probably going to disappear,” said Marni Glick of PBOT. “The New Resident Program will probably disappear. And we will try to find funding for the Smart Trips Business.”

A pot of stimulus money called CPPW (Communities Putting Prevention to Work), distributed through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, aims to reduce obesity through nutrition and physical activity. Another branch of its work focuses on smoking cessation. The money is granted to city and state public health departments, which then partner with local nonprofits to carry out the work.

Several active transportation projects got funded this way, including Philadelphia’s Safe Routes Philly program, which “promotes biking and walking as fun, healthy forms of transportation in Philadelphia Elementary Schools.” The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia joined forces with the school district, the health department and the Food Trust (a local nonprofit working on nutrition issues) to start a campaign for healthier schools, funded at $680,000 over two years, thanks to the stimulus.

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In a press conference today sponsored by the American Public Transportation Association, Obama administration officials affirmed their commitment to transit, especially good maintenance of transit systems. As FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff told reporters:

Decay in the ceiling of Philadelphia's 110-year-old Wayne Junction transit station, which got a $4 million federal grant for repairs after the roof fell in. Photo: SEPTA

We have a challenge in that we want to provide the American public, in a maximum number of communities, with real transit choices, and give them the opportunity to keep more of their paycheck in their wallet, rather than hand it over at the gas pump. But in order to do that, the transit service has to be available; it has to be safe and clean; it has to be reliable and desirable. The only way you get that is by continuing to invest, not just in the expansion of systems, but in the necessary maintenance and major capital reinvestment in systems.

Rogoff said that the largest area of growth in the president’s transportation budget for 2012 is a new formula assistance program for the state of good repair for transit systems. (Indeed, the “Bus and Rail State of Good Repair” budget item is slated for $10.7 billion in 2012 but its allocation shrinks to $3.8 billion in 2013, rising year by year from then.)

Rogoff said it was “spooky” to see how many commuters depend on aging and deteriorating transit systems. He recently facilitated a $4 million federal grant to rehabilitate the 110-year-old SEPTA station at Wayne Junction in North Philadelphia (incidentally, about three miles from where I grew up) where the roof collapsed last year.

Transit agencies and advocates have been saying that high gas prices have led to a spike in transit ridership. In the first quarter of this year, ridership was only up 1.6 percent over the first quarter of last year, but gas prices didn’t really spike until March, so the second quarter results may be more telling. Still, APTA President Bill Millar says it represents the largest quarterly ridership increase in more than two years.

Millar also touted the track record of transportation-related ballot initiatives so far this year. Seven out of eight local initiatives have passed, despite the fact that each one raised taxes or maintained a tax increase.

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In Philadelphia, your water bill used to be based only on your water consumption, as in most cities. Now, under the city’s Green City, Clean Waters initiative, your bill is a more accurate reflection of your water footprint, including the amount it costs the city to manage stormwater runoff from your property. This has been a hard pill to swallow for owners of parking lots and other entities that spread a large swath of asphalt on the city.

Behold, the greening of Philadelphia's streets and roofs. Photo: Philadelphia Water Department

Katherine Gajewski, Philly’s sustainability director, says the change was a shock to the system for some people. “Imagine a car rental shop with acres and acres of impervious pavement,” she said, “but it only has three employees in the office and so they’ve always had a low water bill.” But now, with the city factoring in a company’s larger water footprint, its water bill could go from $400 to $2,500. Meanwhile, a skyscraper’s water bill could go in the opposite direction, with its high consumption mitigated by its slender footprint and a high surface-to-volume ratio.

Like attempts at market rate parking or congestion pricing, the stormwater effort forces people to pay the true costs of their behavior, including environmental impact. And though advocates for transportation options may not think about sewer overflow on their list of environmental hazards caused by the automobile, car-based infrastructure poses one of the biggest threats to sound stormwater management.

Philadelphia’s goal is to capture the first inch of rainfall in any storm event. They aren’t trying necessarily to use the water – Philadelphia doesn’t have a water shortage. The problem is that a big rain will overfill the sewers and flow into the waterways, causing a major water pollution problem. (In Philadelphia, unlike some cities with more modern water systems, stormwater and wastewater go to the same place. Under normal circumstances, that place is the water treatment plant. When the sewers are overwhelmed, it flows out to rivers and creeks.) The problem has knocked Philadelphia out of compliance with the Clean Water Act. For every acre of impervious asphalt “greened,” the city says, they reduce runoff by a million gallons a year.

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