How Bikes Can Save Us

Via Brooklyn Cruiser

Hooray! A New Bike Boulevard!

I'm a big fan of bike boulevards and I recently mourned the fact that moving into a new house meant that I spent less time traveling this way. In my old apartment, being on the bike boulevard six or eight times a week was not unusual. As I said at the time, location is:

 "...the crux of the problem with such limited networks for bike travel. A mile or so of dedicated roadway is wonderful, until you have to go someplace else in town."

Imagine my surprise then when a city notice arrived at our house. Not only are they proposing to extend the current bike boulevard all the way to Stephens Lake Park (offering a safe and direct connection from downtown, through campus, and into the park) but they're also proposing turning our street into a second bike boulevard.

It makes perfect sense--the MKT Trail entrance is just a mile south of us and aside from having to cross a couple busy streets and climb the worst hill in the city, it's a straight shot. Heading in the other direction, it's also a nice connector to all the neighborhoods to the north looking for a safe route to the trail. Non-residential vehicular traffic will be directed to more appropriate thoroughfares, keeping the bike boulevard safer for two-wheeled traffic.

Portland's Bike Boulevards Become Neighborhood Greenways from Streetfilms on Vimeo.

Portland--no surprise--has added some great amenities to their bike boulevards that not only make it safer for cyclists, but will benefit the neighborhood as a whole:

• Speed bumps to slow traffic
• Concrete medians with cuts for bikes and pedestrians
• Stop signs oriented to give preference to cyclists
• Signage highlighting distance and time to key destinations
• Landscaping doubling as stormwater retention basins
• Mini-parks in neighborhoods with limited public space
• Integration into their version of a Walking School Bus program

These aren't just niceties, they are all elements that will ensure the success of this type of program. It's not a done deal yet here in our city but the public process is starting and I will definitely be there in support.

Keep Away From Our Fancy Houses

When the state began a rails-to-trails program to transform the KATY railroad line into a bike trail, the City of Columbia had the foresight to transform their own spur line as well. Now, the MKT Trail connects directly into the KATY Trail, bringing cyclists from all over Missouri right into Columbia.

The MKT isn't just for tourists--it's become part playground, part transportation hub for so many Columbians. Whether it's an afternoon walk with the family, a short cut for those biking to work, or a safe place for neighborhood kids to bike, the appeal of the MKT is unmistakable.

What it does depend on for its success is neighborhood access points. Formal or informal, public or private, these access points are how people discover the trail. Every time I've moved, one of my first objectives is to figure out how to get to the MKT from my new home.

There's one access point that I've used on a regular basis for the last 10 years--a path about 15 yards long located in a neighborhood that backs right up to the trail. When I lived in this section of town, I used it almost daily.

Imagine my surprise then, when I noticed that a "No Trespassing" sign had been erected at the entrance to the trail.

I don't know the rationale behind this change but at some point, the surrounding residents must have decided that allowing public access to the trail from their neighborhood was somehow detrimental. In my experience though, this path was free of any sort of problems. No one was getting mugged. No unsavory characters were hanging out. There weren't even many well-meaning families plopping down on people's yards to rest. In fact, homes bordering trails have lower rates of burglary and vandalism than the national average.

One interesting factor here is that the half million dollars homes in this neighborhood were actually built after the MKT Trail was constructed. There was never any misunderstanding that they would be living adjacent to a city trail.

This appears to be part of a larger desire among some to keep the public away. We've seen it before in other cities--protesting against new transit stops, for instance--and it's truly a method of closing down a neighborhood to outside interlopers. Transportation--be it a bus, a subway or a bike--is a great leveler. Not only does it allow people to travel into any section of a city, it also brings highly diverse people together.

This move shuts down a critical access point for the trail. It's a safe way to enter the MKT from a local elementary school and from other nearby neighborhoods and it allows everyone to avoid biking down a busy thoroughfare to the next access point about a mile away. Besides, it's such an unfriendly sign.

Imagine if the residents had instead decided instead to install a sign that said, "Welcome to our neighborhood. We hope you enjoy your time on the beautiful MKT Trail."

Bike Boulevards

I spent a lot of time last summer on our city's bike boulevard. It's a short, bike-friendly stretch of road designed to better connect our downtown with a college and a popular neighborhood to the east. I enjoyed winding my way past the community gardens and through campus into our arts district. And although they've faded somewhat, I loved the murals painted at the intersections.

Photo courtesy of comogardens.org

Photo courtesy of GearInches.com

I'd estimate I averaged between 6 and 8 trips a week down this boulevard, both during the day and at night, and I always felt safer than on other, more car-oriented streets.

I wasn't the only one. According to the Columbia Daily Tribune:

"Traffic counts the city conducted in spring 2010, when the boulevard was established, and this spring showed that motorized traffic reduced from 942 vehicles per day to 522 — a 45 percent reduction — and that bicycle traffic measured during peak times more than doubled, from 33 to 71.

The city also measured lower speeds for motorized traffic on the boulevard, with average speeds decreasing from 26 miles per hour in spring 2010 to 24 mph this spring. And residents living near the bike boulevard report liking what they have seen: A city survey revealed overwhelming support for the idea, and an overwhelming majority of respondents agreed the boulevard improves the image of the neighborhood."

I'm an avid cyclist--I have a trail bike and a commuter bike--and a bike is often my preferred choice of transportation when I'm heading to work, to the market, or even out on a Saturday night.

Imagine my surprise, then, when it dawned on me I hadn't been on the bike boulevard once this summer.

Why? Because I moved.

Last summer, I literally lived at one end of the bike boulevard and my boyfriend lived at the other. It was our own personal route between each other's homes. Now that we've moved into a house on the other side of downtown, we no longer have easy access to the bike boulevard and, more importantly, it doesn't go where we need it to.

And that's the crux of the problem with such limited networks for bike travel. A mile or so of dedicated roadway is wonderful, until you have to go someplace else in town.

Fortunately, the city already has fairly good trail system and is working on creating connections between existing trails. They're also looking at extending the current bike boulevard--but, unfortunately, not to the extent that it would be useful to everyone in town. In fact, going back and trying to establish a larger network of roads dedicated to bike travel by severely limiting current car traffic seems like it would be both a planning and a public relations nightmare.

So maybe our little bike boulevard can continue to exist for those who live along its route and prefer a bike over a car on a nice summer day. And maybe it can serve as a reminder that there are other models for building roads that include multiple forms of transportation. And maybe it will inspire us, as a city, to do more  to build these connections between well-traveled bike routes and popular destinations.

I've become much more accustomed to sharing the road with cars now so I only miss the bike boulevard occasionally. And on Saturday nights we're still cycling--only this time, we're on our tandem.

When public transportation is a little too public.

Josh Stephens of Next American City has another great example of the phenomenon in which a neighborhood protests against a project by throwing up myriad reasons why the project is simply unsuitable for their part of town.

The residents of Beverly Hills are fighting to prevent the construction of a Metro line through their neighborhood. This new line would connect Beverly Hills to, shall we say, some of the less affluent sections of the city.

The concern of the residents?

"That the subway’s planned passage through a tunnel under Beverly Hills High School will make the swank public school a destination for terrorists, or potentially, a tinderbox prone to deadly explosion.

In short, the city that inspired a million Tudor-style McMansions is blocking the transit authority’s plans with a demand that it reroute the subway extension to avoid running below the high school that inspired everyone’s favorite bit of 1990s high school television greatness."

Although public meetings were held on this proposed extension beginning in 2006, residents of Beverly Hills didn't become engaged in the issue until 2010. In addition to the concern that construction may uncover yet-to-be-discovered oil wells or methane pockets, opponents also raised the possibility that terrorists might want to make an example out of the public high school and, rather than simply driving a truck up to the front door, they would instead choose to take the subway there.

The students at Beverly Hills High, in contrast, seem unconcerned about these potential problems--a Facebook poll of students showed that they have very different perceptions on this issue than do their parents.

“I feel as though hysterics have been a factor here,” said a junior class president..."Subways run under all over metropolitan areas. They go under commercial buildings…they go under other public buildings....the likelihood of a fatal automobile crash is very real, despite the safety precautions and airbag regulations designed to protect us. However, we drive anyway. To fight the subway is to drive away modernization.”

Restoring the Downtown Street Grid

Sometime in the next year, Austin will be adding nine new streets to their downtown, restoring the street grid and fixing what is called a "transportation dead zone." According to the Austin American Statesman:

(Director of the Downtown Austin Alliance Charlie) Betts noted that adding streets reverses what has been a sporadic trend of the downtown grid losing pieces of streets over the past several decades, including Colorado Street in front of the Governor's Mansion, East Ninth Street between Trinity Street and San Jacinto Boulevard at a federal office complex, and San Antonio Street at the Travis County Courthouse and just east of what will be the new federal courthouse. 

"The expansion of the grid has high value to the community," Betts said. "It gives some additional options for people to come into and exit from the central business district."

We have a similar problem here in Columbia where the traditional downtown street grid has been slowly deconstructed, usually for development projects that seem worthy at the time. Or, put differently, for projects that make sense only within the confines of the property line.

This is especially true on the northern side of downtown. A rail line running into downtown effectively shuts off the northeast quadrant from the surrounding neighborhoods. A large-scale federal housing project shut down more streets to the north under the mistaken belief that the residential neighborhood would be better off without people passing through to reach the city's central core. A later development project closed an entire city block to create a public square. The few streets that are still open dead end at a college. Now, people exiting downtown to the north must travel down a narrow, one-way road through a residential block.

A narrow, one-way residential street serves as one of the few
northern exits from downtown.

And this is not the only example. People exiting to the east--many of them students from the university--must also take a narrow, one-way road out, this time one that passes by a busy elementary school.

Even with this logistical nightmare, two other plans to close off streets connecting to the north side of downtown were proposed by government officials--one to create another public square and another to build a large parking garage. Thankfully, plans for the first were abandoned and city officials were persuaded to build a parking garage that spanned the street in the case of the second.

Unfortunately, it's easier to identify problems with the street grid than to fix them. Austin is building the new streets through land occupied by a newly decommissioned power plant and water treatment facility, solving the sticky problem of land acquisition. Still, the construction itself will hit nearly $25 million.

That said, I'm still fairly convinced that restoring our street grid starts with major downtown institutions gaining a larger understanding of the fabric of downtown, and an understanding of how people actually travel into and across our central city. All too often, large institutions--government, university and even private property owners--create plans that end at the property line, failing to understand that a single piece of property is a merely link in a much larger chain.

Tea Party v. Smart Growth

I just read an absolutely fascinating article by Anthony Flint in The Atlantic Cities about how Tea Party Activists, in the name of aggressively smaller government, are working to undermine long held smart growth principles.

Flint describes the scene:

Across the country, Tea Party activists have been storming planning meetings of all kinds, opposing various plans by local and regional government having anything to do with density, smart growth, sustainability or urbanism.

In California,Tea Partiers collected enough signatures to place a repeal of the state's baseline environmental regulations on the ballot. Activists in Florida successfully upended the state's growth management legislation. In Virginia, they're are working against a much needed, 5-year comprehensive plan.

He continues:

What’s prompting the ire is anything from a proposed master plan to a new water treatment plant, rules governing septic tanks, or a bike-sharing program. What’s driving the rebellion is a view that government should have no role in planning or shaping the built environment that in any way interferes with private property rights.

According to the Gainesville Tea Party:

 Radical environmentalists, local business groups, and the ever-present Not in My Backyard crowd have been trying for decades to reshape American communities to conform to their preferred “smart growth” policies. These advocates work to impose land use regulations that would force Americans into denser living arrangements, curtail freedom of choice in housing, discriminate against lower-income Americans, and compel people to pay more for their houses and give up their cars in favor of subways, trolleys, buses, and bicycles.

I find it fascinating that the things I think are pre-requisites for strong downtowns--high density housing, public transportation, and even bike lanes--are viewed, not just with derision, but as some sort of communist plot against suburbia.

Marketing Your Parking

A photo of the inside of a parking garage goes up on the screen.  It's well-built, well-lit and clean.

"This is not a good parking garage."

What?  I would kill to have our city's garages look that nice.

Jeff Fluhr of the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation, Todd Pierce of Pictoform and Allison Billings of  Charlotte Center City Partners all contributed to a fantastic seminar at the recent IDA Conference in Fort Worth.

But back to the garage.  An engineers dream maybe, but how did appeal to the customer?  Where was the signage?  Where was the color? For that matter, where was the brand?  The overarching theme was that parking--just like your downtown--needs a brand and a strong marketing campaign to be successful.

Pierce outlined 5 keys to brand success when it comes to parking:

1. Memorable
2. Affordable
3. Convenient
4. Clean & Safe
5. Easy

Takeaways:

• Have all parking signs and collateral material reflect your brand. 
• Keep an eye on the first 30 ft--keep it well-lit and clean and take out the trash cans.
• Paint the wall around the pay station a bright color so people can find it.
• Have signs at the entrance highlighting parking fees.
• Try to standardize parking fees, at lease the first hour, to make it easier for the customer.