ATL Urbanist
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Atlanta’s Retro 80s Downtown Finds a Future in Movies
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I though this was a pretty fascinating article in The Atlantic:How 1980s Atlanta Became the Backdrop for the Future: The Southern capital has set the scene for dystopian thrillers such as Divergent and The Walking Dead, most notably via buildings designed by the architect John Portman.John Portman designed many of the buildings of downtown’s Peachtree Center such as the massive Marriott Marquis hotel, the Peachtree Westin, the Hyatt Regency, and several nearby office buildings. These structures make for a marvelous skyline, particularly when viewed from the Jackson Street Bridge (the Portman ones are on the right side of this skyline view):But their blank street-level walls and their focus on interior usage, via malls and elevated ‘gerbil tube’ pedestrian tunnels, create dead spaces on the outside. This style of construction may have been a good match for the suburban car commuters of the 1980s, but it leaves a lot to be desired for believers in more modern ideas of good urbanism. The “Portman Zone,” as I call it, is not something that generates lively sidewalk activity. It’s more of a place that you experience on the inside of the buildings, avoiding sidewalks by way of the many sky bridges. It’s kind of fitting that location scouts would look at this outdated development style and find it to look like a harsh, sterile, dystopian future world in movies like Hunger Games and Divergent. The area has been vexing pedestrians for decades, giving people who expect a vibrant set of streets a set of empty ones instead. As the article notes:Portman has faced choruses of critics over the years, many of whom say his insular structures “turn their backs” on the true vibrancy and community of city life.This zone takes up a large amount of space in Downtown Atlanta. For a modern urbanist like me, they can be hard to love — but I try to embrace them on a retro level. They really do tell a story about the way we though about cities in the 1980s. And I think you could put together a decent pub crawl of hotel bars using the pedestrian sky bridges. Photos by me
Car Dependency and Poverty in Metro Atlanta
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In an AJC editorial, Jay Bookman addresses the Georgia legislature’s continual failure to provide funding for expansion in public transit, while instead focusing solely on car transportation. One of the things that puts the state (and thus the Atlanta region) in a bind when it comes to transportation alternatives is low taxes. Bookman writes: You can’t drive to work on the lowest taxes in the country. It doesn’t do you much good when you wait for three green lights before getting through an intersection. And with the ninth-highest jobless rate in the country, rising poverty rates and declining household income, it doesn’t
appear to have jump-started the economy.You can’t help but wonder if the harm caused by these rising poverty rates could be alleviated by expanded transit — think of the amount of money each low-income household would save if they didn’t have to own a car. As I posted recently, the relatively low cost of housing in the Atlanta region has been found to accompany a high price tag for transportation. This is a situation that affects low-income people in the region the most. Take a look at the graphic above (source). Metro Atlanta and Barcelona have a similar population, but car ownership in sprawling Atlanta is much higher. If Atlanta had
Barcelona’s car ownership levels, it would mean 1.7 million fewer cars
on the road. This would reduce the need for parking by over 5,000,000
spaces (roughly 3 parking spaces per car exist in the U.S). The amount
of land taken up by that many parking spaces is roughly equals the size
of Manhattan. Based on costs of car ownership, maintenance
and fuel, losing those cars would add a up to $13 billion in consumer
spending that could be redirected to other purposes.[Aside: There have been a couple of articles in national publications recently on the possibility of car-free cities in the US. I’m not an advocate for a car-free cities; cars, in their place (meaning ‘as long as they don’t dominate the urban landscape’) can be part of a healthy multi-modal system. Though I’m a MARTA commuter most days, my family does use a car as a piece of our own mobility pie.]What I’m concerned about here is car *dependency* and how that — together the sprawling environments that feed that dependency — costs us as a society and also as individuals. I firmly believe that it’s possible to build places that can accommodate multiple modes of transportation; ones that benefit society on an economic level, while also addressing the disparity in transit access by economic groups in the region as well as the outsized costs paid for transportation by low-income people here.One is those costs comes from simply owning a car in Georgia. A Bankrate.com study of insurance, repair and gasoline costs by state shows that the state is
one of the most expensive places in the US to own a car. The three of
those factors alone add up to an average $2,408 per Georgian (and this is not including purchase price for cars and other external costs such as parking). Additionally, there is data that clearly demonstrates the affordability swindle in Metro Atlanta: low-price housing in a sprawling format accompanies a high transportation cost. Plus, a report last year on the growing level of low-income people in Metro Atlanta’s suburbs found that an increasing number of residents in the region can’t afford a car; they
instead depend on whatever transit and pedestrian infrastructure
exists.The wealthier classes in the Atlanta region are able to absorb these costs of sprawl in their personal finances. But everyone else is paying a considerable price — both directly and indirectly — for our dependency on cars. We need leadership at a state and local level that can address this issue in a bold way. Particularly in the City of Atlanta, which is known to have a massive problem with income inequality, it’s important to think about the way our built environment and its transportation choices affect the neediest people.
The Cost of Our Sprawling Lifestyle in Metro Atlanta
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The Washington Post has a must-read article on the price we pay for sprawl, and Atlanta makes a guest appearance in it: “The steep costs of living so far apart from each other.”It reports on a new analysis from Todd Litman at the Victoria Transport Policy Institute which concludes that sprawl costs the U.S. economy more than $1 trillion every year. That price tag comes from a combination of costlier public services for spread-out home and businesses, plus the various costs of transportation-related energy consumption including air pollution, traffic congestion and more.As the graph below (taken from Litman’s report) shows, Metro Atlanta‘s transportation-related energy consumption is remarkably high. When every move that’s made in our car-centric environments requires a long car trip, it’s no wonder. The report notes that, worldwide, 2.2 billion people are expected to move into urban areas over the next decade. There’s a great need to accommodate those new urban residents in a sustainable way. Metro
Atlanta’s sprawling land use gets used here as an example of the
opposite of sustainability.The optimal density
Litman uses in the report is only about 23 people per hectare. Add those
2.2 billion people to global cities at a density
of about Atlanta, and we’d need the equivalent of all the land in India
to accommodate them.The graph below illustrates where Metro Atlanta’s population density stands in comparison to other urban areas worldwide. Interestingly, the report’s optimal density recommended for sustainability is only about three times that of the Atlanta region’s, which is promising: the implication is that, with appropriate urban infill, the metro area could cut down on sprawl-related costs to a huge degree.Why pick on Metro Atlanta, you may ask? Isn’t the sprawl here just the product of market demand — where people’s housing preferences are successfully being met? Not necessarily. Consumer demand may play a part in the way the metro is built, but policies that encourage and subsidize sprawl are significant drivers as well:"An awful lot of auto travel and sprawl is the
result of market distortions," Litman says. He’s talking about policies
like the home mortgage interest deduction that encourages large, suburban housing, as well as the fact that we don’t charge people for the true costs of using roads.As I’ve written before, the federal government subsidizes sprawl in Metro Atlanta by giving mortgage deductions primarily to homeowners in the
car-centric suburbs and exurbs. Notice how this map of mortgage interest
deductions shows that the outer parts of the region get the biggest subsidy.My hope is that we can start to factor in not only our personal costs for how we choose to build and to live in the Atlanta region, but also the greater costs to the nation as a whole that are exacerbated by our sprawling, car-centric lifestyles and developments.
Infrastructure Bond Projects: What Do They Mean for Walking and Cycling in Atlanta?
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On March 17, 2015, Atlantans will vote on an infrastructure referendum (early voting has already started). If successful, the measure will allow the city to issue bonds for the purpose of funding a list of infrastructure fixes. The list of infrastructure projects is changing regularly. You can see the most current version here: http://www.infrastructuremap.orgEven if the measure is approved, the list will continue to change. There is no guarantee that all of the items now on the list will still be there when construction starts. Important to note: it’s not all transportation-related stuff on the list. Here’s a chart from the above link that shows the breakdown of the $250 million bond’s projects by transportation and facilities (such as a natatorium):I asked both Rebecca Serna, Executive Director of the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, and Sally Flocks, President & CEO of PEDS (Atlanta’s pedestrian-safety advocacy group) for their thoughts on the project list. In regard to the question of how the current list will affect the safety of walking and cycling in Atlanta, here’s what they had to say:Rebecca Serna, Atlanta Bicycle Coalition:“The project list represents a big step forward for safety on Atlanta roads - for everyone, not just people on bikes, because streets that are safe enough to walk and bike have fewer motor vehicle crashes too. The big Complete Streets projects on the list, like DeKalb Avenue and MLK, are important indications of how highly the city prioritizes the safety of people on foot and bike, and could transform corridors that are currently big barriers to biking and walking. That said, we’d like to see some additions, such as Lee Street in SW Atlanta, and the expansion of the DeKalb Ave project to connect to the existing Decatur St bike lanes. Also, bridge projects like Courtland need to become Complete Streets - federal guidelines are very clear on that, and the city’s own Cycle Atlanta plan calls for a two-way protected bike lane on Courtland. Finally, there are several streets on the draft list for repaving that are in the city’s comprehensive transportation plan, Connect Atlanta, as bike connections. We expect these streets will also get bike lanes as city code requires it.”Sally Flocks, PEDS:“The list posted through the end of 2014 included a $40 million lump sum for sidewalk repairs and a $35 million lump sum for curb ramps.The proposed lump sum for sidewalk repairs has since vanished and the lump sum for curb ramps has been cut to $5 million. (The consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department the City had signed in 2009 had already obligated Atlanta to invest that much in curb ramps.)Funds for sidewalk repairs is not down to zero. Bond funding will pay for projects that include sidewalk repairs – but a large share of these will be in locations that are not high priority for pedestrians.A map of sidewalk conditions and road resurfacing projects shows that many road resurfacing projects are on streets where sidewalks are in good condition (or don’t exist) – and many areas where sidewalks are particularly mad are not slated for road resurfacing.The estimated backlog of broken sidewalks in the City is $152 million, which is 15% of the estimated $1 billion infrastructure backlog. Given that, a fair share of the $250 million bonds is $37.5 million.”My referendum stress: pros and cons and cons and more consThose are two very different reactions to the project list. Confused on how to vote? So am I. If you need help in weighing the benefits of the bond, there’s a great review of the pros & cons of it from Creative Loafing. CL scribe Thomas Wheatley’s reservations about the bond are very much aligned with my own. He writes: "taking out a credit card to resolve issues that the city should be tackling every year [isn’t] the proper way to maintain a city…In addition to requiring a sizable amount of cash be set aside for annual maintenance in the city budget, city officials, particularly Reed, need to push the state Legislature for other options, including parking taxes and increasing developer impact fees."I agree with all of that, and I’ll add this: the fact that we have a (hotel) tax that supplies a steady, annual stream of money for things like the Falcons stadium — yet we don’t have a similar revenue stream for annually and *sustainably* funding infrastructure projects — that’s a broken system.It does give me pause to think that, with a “yes” vote, I’m helping to support the bad decisions of a broken system. The city government needs to push hard for an increase in residents, which could help provide the level of tax revenue needed to make infrastructure repair a constant presence in yearly budgets.By voting “yes” am I preventing the city from feeling pressured to make that push? And am I saddling a future generation with payments on infrastructure that may or may not be meeting the needs of the future?While I gnash my teeth with stress over the bond, it’s helpful to get all this input from others. Thanks much to everyone who participated in my little survey! The results show overwhelming support. You can view the full survey data and responses here. Are you planning to vote “Yes” on the Renew Atlanta 2015 Infrastructure Bond?
Stop Excusing Pedestrian Deaths With Crosswalk Proximity
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Something that has cropped up in news stories nationwide — “pedestrian blaming” — is no stranger to Atlanta. The tragedy of the loss of life is bad enough without trying the added insult of someone unnecessarily pinning blame on pedestrian behavior. The worst part: the blame is often completely inaccurate. Recently, a 62 year-old man was killed on Metropolitan Parkway in southwest Atlanta. He was struck, while crossing the road, by a police car in regular traffic (meaning the officer was not in pursuit and no lights or sirens were on). Multiple local news outlets included this quote from the Atlanta police department in their brief stories about the tragedy: “The individual was not in a crosswalk and the officer was just on routine patrol,” said Atlanta police deputy chief Darryl Tolleson.Why point out that the man was not in a crosswalk? To pin the blame on him instead of on the officer? It sounds like an attempt to portray the man’s actions and illegal, as if to justify the death. Let’s take a look at the stretch of road where this occurred and find out how likely it was that the crossing was illegal.The above map shows where, according to the news reports, this tragic event happened. The man was crossing Metropolitan “near Fair Drive” but over 100 feet away from the crosswalk at its intersection with Memorial. On both sides of that sport are two non-signalized intersections.As a handy graphic (below) on the PEDS site shows us that it is legal for a pedestrian to cross a street at any point between a signalized and non-signalized intersection.If this tragedy happened anyplace near the intersection of Metropolitan and Fair, it certainly seems like the crossing was legal and that the mention of the crosswalk was unnecessary (also: witnesses report that the police car was speeding at the time).This reminds me of an AJC news piece from last year. It reported that a mother and child were walking across Durham Park Road in Dekalb County, just east of Atlanta, when they were struck by a truck. The mother was killed while she was walking her child to a school bus stop that was beside the entrance to the Indian Creek MARTA station.A DeKalb County police captain had this to say about the tragedy: AJC news piece about this tragedy.“There is a crosswalk on Durham Park Road further up, but the mother and child did not use it,” Fore said in an email.Which made me bust a blood vessel. Why mention the crosswalk when the crossing is legal? In the midst of this pedestrian blaming, there was no mention of the true culprit: a 45 MPH speed limit on a curvy residential street with bus stops and a train station entrance. That’s a road-engineering failure that is tailor made for tragedy — one like many others in the Atlanta region. Pedestrian blaming seems to goes unnoticed in this car-centric metro. It’s time to notice it and put an end to it.
Recouping Costs at Different Rates Between Transit, Cars in Georgia
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RAISES IN MARTA FARE SINCE 19711979: $0.25 (up from $0.15)1980: $0.501981: $0.601987: $0.751989: $0.851990: $1.001992: $1.251996: $1.502000: $1.752009: $2.002011: $2.50» 11 raisesRAISES IN GEORGIA EXCISE TAX ON GAS SINCE 19711971-2015: 7.5 cents» 0 raisiesThere’s a common misconception that transit users are getting a free ride on the backs of taxpayers while people who only drive cars are paying their way via gas and vehicle taxes. But that’s not true (note: I also generally don’t care for “us vs. them” arguments anyway since many people use multiple modes of transportation in their lives). Consider this: MARTA — which recovers 31.8% of its operating expenses from farebox at last count, with the remainder of its revenue sourced from a tax in Dekalb & Fulton Counties and the City of Atlanta — is in the black as of last year, thanks to sound management. Meanwhile, Georgia has to rely on federal funds in order to pay for roads, because the gas and vehicle taxes aren’t providing enough money. Our roads aren’t paid for by in-state money alone. Take a look at this chart and you’ll see that Georgia is one of the biggest takers of federal money when it comes to funding transportation. The graphic comes from this Pew study. An AJC piece from last year underlines how reliant Georgia is on federal money specifically for roads, because state taxes aren’t bringing in enough revenue to pay for them (emphasis mine):"Federal dollars account for more than half the money in the Georgia Department of Transportation’s total budget. And about two-thirds of the money GDOT spends on capital improvements comes from the federal Highway Trust Fund.”Between the funding of roads and transit in Georgia, the playing field is nowhere near level. The state provides no money for MARTA, yet it is tapped out on money for roads to the point that it borrows heavily from the feds. The car-dependent nature of our sprawling urban areas is the force that produces this broken system. People have had an unrealistic idea for many years about the economics of sprawl versus those of walkable cities, particularly the kind of pedestrian-friendly places that are easy to serve with buses and rail. It’s clear who’s the biggest moocher, in regard to built environments, when you look at the facts.
Bike Share Coming to Atlanta
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The City of Atlanta has just inked a deal that will bring bike sharing here this year, along with a stated goal of doubling bike commuters by 2016.. According to the city website:The city’s premier bicycle sharing program will launch with 500 bicycles and 50 rental stations throughout the city…Users will be able to find and rent bikes through the Web, a mobile application, or using the interface on the bike. As for doubling the number of bike commuters with only 500 bicycles, hmmm…maybe the idea is that the city will seem overall safer and more enticing to everyone, regardless of whether or not they use the sharing program? Whatever the reasoning, this is great news. With bike lanes as a key part of the upcoming
infrastructure referendum, and with cycle tracks being planned for the
center of the city, I think it’s possible that we could see a huge boost
in bike commuting over the next few years. That new infrastructure will
be key, though. Thanks to the Beltline, average Atlantans are already on bikes. But to get those same people to ride on city streets, alongside car commuters? That will require making everyone — particularly ones who are not already a part of the local bike community — feel safe and welcome. Only a connected system of bike infrastructure will do that (slower speeds for cars wouldn’t hurt). Read more about the program here on the Creative Loafing website. Flickr photo of St. Paul bike share by Travis Estell
3 Things to Know About the Plans for Underground Atlanta
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Last week, I attended a meeting in South Downtown about the redevelopment of Underground Atlanta, the financially-ailing mall that the city put up for sale last year. A big group of people who live and work nearby, along with others who are simply interested in the project, showed up to learn and to swap ideas. It was an informative event and I want to share some key things I took away. 1. The plan is preliminary and the property hasn’t sold yet. The developer, WRS, hopes to complete a purchase later this year for their bid price of $26 million. WRS was, in fact, the only company to submit a bid for the property. Renderings have been released (below), but they are very much subject to change.See all the documents on the proposal here. 2. With no mandate for neighborhood input, Atlantans will have to workhard to make our voices heard. Major redevelopments that happen elsewhere in the city have to present plans to neighborhood representatives. But this project is not mandated to have a public-input component. The district around Underground Atlanta has special rules that nix that requirement, which raises concerns about the potential for something at odds with the surrounding area to get built.I asked Kyle Kessler, president of the Atlanta Downtown Neighborhood Association, for some info on how Atlantans can share their thoughts. He replied: “I have not yet gotten a clear statement from the City about how the public can engage in this redevelopment process, but it is always a good idea to contact City Council members and the Mayor.”Additionally, I suspect that we’ll see some petitions and other outlets for unofficial input pop up as time goes on.3. This is an important piece of history for all of Atlanta; no matter whatneighborhood you live in, we are all stakeholders in this. With a proposal that includes a grocery store, additional retail, and residential development, the South Downtown neighborhood will be the entity most directly affected by the failure or success of Underground Atlanta’s redevelopment. But this area also belongs to the entire city, in a big way. At the bottom of the rendering above is the Central Avenue viaduct, which goes over the ground level where train tracks run. Directly underneath Central Avenue at this point is the Zero Mile Post. That post marks the terminus point of two key railroads built in the 1830’s & 40s — it’s where the city began. It also marks the center point from which the city’s growth and limits were originally measured. The lower-level storefronts of Underground Atlanta (above, circa 1927) used to be at the main street level, before the viaducts were built over them. Once filled with thriving stores and offices — see a full collection of photos of them here — the city blocks of South Downtown were a hot spot for commerce in Atlanta for a long time.Despite significant transformations in form over the decades, this area remained important to the city as a meeting place for public protest and celebration. Where did Atlanta celebrate the news of becoming host for the 1996 Olympics? Here in the Underground Atlanta plaza. The historic center of a city has a power that draws us in because it feels like a kind of communal home base. And particularly with the Five Points MARTA station beside it, this is a home base that has incredible promise for good urban use.
Atlanta: Don’t Lose Out on Keeping Families Intown
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Last year, a report from City Observatory titled “Young and Restless" found a fascinating trend in Atlanta. Between 2000 and 2012, there was a huge boost in the number of young, educated adults in the center of the city — an increase of 38.7%. This is significant for a city that has experienced a general population decline since the 1970s.Fostering an urban environment that suits this key demographic is a success worth trumpeting, but I wonder how long these Millennials will stick around. In the long run, what happens when many of those young and educated new residents want to have kids — will they move away from the city to find family-appropriate housing and good schools? How sad it would be to lose this gain in population because of our inability to provide a place for new families.[BTW, Thomas Wheatley at Creative Loafing has an excellent piece on this topic. “Stick around, Millennials" — you should go read it right away]What the Census tells us about families and housing in AtlantaA look at Census data makes the problem clear: though intown neighborhoods might be doing well with young singles, they seem to be in danger of creating child-free zones that are fairly incapable of attracting families with kids. Of the 61 largest cities in the US, Atlanta ranks among the lowest when it comes to our population’s percentage of kids under 18 — 19% of the population of the City of Atlanta is made up of kids under the age of 18, well below the national average of 24%.Also, the number of kids under the age of 5 in the City of Atlanta declined 2000-10 while this same number boomed in the fringes of the metro suburbs.(No doubt, many people living in those child-rich zones on the fringes are commuting long distances to work by car to job centers near the city center, making the lack of family-friendly places intown a contributor to the region’s notorious car congestion.)And though we’re losing when it comes to kids, we’re on top with another count. Atlanta has the highest percentage of single-occupancy dwellings of all large US cities. We’ve become a hot spot for singles, but the outer ‘burbs are still the big draw for families. School quality is no doubt a factor, but housing stock is also an issue.44% of dwellings in the state of Georgia have three bedrooms, while only 25% do in the City of Atlanta. This situation probably suits the needs of young adults and their current lifestyles, but what of their future? Our bedroom deficit puts the city far below average for a basic need when you look at common family sizes. If we want to undo the trend of families choosing suburbs over intown neighborhoods, one of the most important things we’ll need to do is provide places for them to live.Losing out to other cities and suburbsLooking over our shoulder at competing cities is a major pastime of Atlantans. Take a look at this fact: Seattle, Pittsburgh and others are making gains in drawing families to their city centers. Will we lose out to those places when Atlanta Millennials look around for places to raise their kids?When my own family was on a house hunt a few years ago, local real estate agents seemed confused by our search for a condo (worst of all — a gasp rental) for us and our child. They gingerly suggested we look into a suburban house as a better option.Families shouldn’t feel that they have no choice but to live in a cul-de-sac subdivision outside the city.I believe that the quality of a city’s design can be judged by how well it treats its neediest, most vulnerable citizens — and children are included in that group.Housing, livability, and the great diversity of a healthy neighborhoodMaking cities livable for all groups is essential to their success. For true sustainability, cities need to be welcoming to a diversity of income groups, ages and family sizes. If it’s true that a growing number of today’s single urbanites will want to remain in the city center after they have kids, some work needs to be done to make them all welcome. We’ll need more transit-connected housing with multiple bedrooms, better schools and more parks.Walkable, compact urban places are not the exclusive domain of young creative people. They’re great for everyone; singles, couples, families with children, retirees — and all income levels. It’s important to have a good mix of residents from all these groups in a neighborhood because they each bring strengths that benefit not only individual neighborhoods, but overall cities.Good urbanism requires a good mix of residents: renters who allow new developments nearby without shouting “Not in My Back Yard”; owners who keep an eye on long-term livability; singles who are happy to see the new nightlife spots; and families with kids who push for a new park with a playground.With that kind of diversity, you end up with a healthy neighborhood and a healthy city.
That Cheap Atlanta Housing Comes With Big Transpo Costs
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The hidden costs of transportation in car-centric sprawl are considerable. Atlanta draws people to its suburbs by way of home prices that are relatively affordable. BUT… when you factor in transportation costs, studies show that sprawling Atlanta region is one of the least affordable places in the US for moderate-income households (based on Area Median Income).This page on the Atlanta Regional Commission website has more info on the numbers. Here’s a quote:“Moderate-income” households…in metro Atlanta spend 63 percent of their income on transportation and housing costs.The cost of purchasing, maintaining and fueling a car (plus buying insurance for it) can make for an expensive way of life in places like Atlanta — the most sprawling metro in the US.It’s a situation that may not affect the wallets of the most affluent residents of the region too much, but medium and low income Atlantans feel the pinch in a big way. That’s why it’s increasingly important to look at housing and transportation
costs together when measuring the affordability of an area. Below is a map that shows the per-capita vehicle miles driven by people in metro Atlanta (source). The dark orange areas are places where residents drive the most number of miles per day.If you live in the most car-centric outer regions of Atlanta and are thinking to yourself, “but I’m not broke! I can afford my lifestyle” — that may be due to the way that we’re all subsidizing your housing, helping to offset the costs of car ownership and use. The image of north Georgia below, taken from a Pew study, shows where housing is subsidized the most. That dark blue
doughnut shape is the suburbs of Atlanta, all relying on mortgage
interest deductions at a rate that is far higher than the national or
state average. So if you aren’t feeling the pinch of those transportation costs, you’re welcome! It’s because we’re all helping to shoulder your housing costs.
I often hear people from the Atlanta region talk about where they live in terms of how many minutes it takes to drive somewhere. Their home is a “15 minute drive” from a store or some other amenity and only a “30 minute drive” to work. To which the usual kind reply is, “oh, that’s not bad at all!”As a point of reference, the livability of walkable places like my neighborhood (and I realize I risk sounding smug here, though I certainly don’t intend to) can often be measured in terms of how many blocks you are from an amenity or how many minutes it takes to walk to a certain destination. That’s a measurement tool that signifies something good for physical and economic health.
New Numbers Paint a Grim Picture for ATL Streetcar
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Numbers on the Atlanta Streetcar’s costs and ridership, from an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report, show that there is a dire need for an improved return on this transit investment. It turns out that the streetcar will be 50% more costly to operate than expected — which is not a tragedy in itself, but it’s a major problem when you factor in ridership that is 18% lower than projected, even with free service. And it’s entirely possible that ride counts will drop even further when pay service begins soon. The solution is simple: MORE STUFF, LESS PARKING. This transit line arrived a year and a half late; even with that extra amount of time the city was unable to provide adequate incentives for more residents/stores/offices on the route and disincentives for parking lots and abandoned properties. Surface lots and unused properties take up far too much land space alongside the tracks. The photo above, of Auburn Avenue, represents a common sight out the window during a streetcar ride: space for parking cars instead of space for people — this is a land-use problem that needs to be fixed if we want to generate a more appropriate return on this significant transit investment. The image above shows the streetcar’s route through the Fairlie-Poplar district. Even with a $100 million streetcar in the mix, cars are
very much the king here. About half the land space of the district is
devoted entirely to car parking. The parcels here have no destinations or residences for people, and the sidewalks
are constantly interrupted by entrances to parking decks and lots, making pedestrians second class to cars — a ridiculous situation for a streetcar line to compete with. Over this past weekend, Downtown was filled with visitors for a
series of events. As I walked home in the evening both Saturday and
Sunday, the parking lots were packed and the streets were choked with
car traffic. Despite rides being free, there were only a handful of
passengers visible on the streetcar as it passed by me. We can do better and we need to demand that leaders address this low return on investment for a transit line that has great potential to transform the area.
How an Urbanist Interprets News About a Subdivision Proposal
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Big news from the Atlanta Business Chronicle this past week — a new 67-acre, 238-lot subdivision has been proposed in Gwinnett County, just northeast of the City of AtlantaThis is apparently a project that was stalled by the economic recession. The fact that it is now on the boards again will be seen by many, I’m sure, as a welcome sign of continued recovery for the housing industry and and as a positive investment in Gwinnett County.But as an urbanist who advocates for compact, walkable places and a reversal of car-centric sprawl, here’s how I interpreted the news article (including its images):1.) Loss of green space and tree canopy. This housing could have gone into urban-infill locations that would use already-developed land (maybe an abandoned shopping center and its parking lot?). Instead, here’s the unbuilt green space that will be lost. This, in a county that lost 25,000 acres of forests to urbanization from 1992-2001, more than any other county in the southern US during that period. 2.) Car-dependent housing and lack of street connectivity. Here’s the land-use plan for the subdivision. It’s 1977 all over again, with a series of cul-de-sac streets that don’t connect to each other, let alone the main road. This ensures that no pedestrian mobility will happen here, everyone will use cars to get everywhere (why not? The nearest grocery store is 5 miles away), and that all of those destinations will require car parking. The median cost for a single space of surface parking is currently estimated to be $18,038 — cost that gets passed on to all, whether or not they use a car, in the price of goods, services and rent within the places served by that parking. I don’t mean to pick on Gwinnett County specifically or the suburbs in general; I’m a firm believer that good urbanism can happen everywhere. But for advocates like me, this kind of news story is a wake-up call. Unsustainable developments that support car-centric sprawl are still happening in 2015. We can’t let our guard down when it comes to spreading information on better options.