Cascadia Scorecard Weblog

Hitting the Sweet Spot

Here's a cool graph from the Puget Sound Regional Council that illustrates the "sweet-spot" for highway speeds.  Apparently, traffic throughput is maximized at about 1,800-2,000 cars per highway lane (the horizontal axis) when vehicles are moving somewhere between 40 and 50 miles per hour (the vertical axis).

As the graph shows, when speeds are lower than that, or higher than that, then highways aren't operating as efficiently as they might.

So it would seem (to me at least) that a key ingredient in reducing demand for new highways is to keep traffic on existing roads flowing at somewhere between 40 and 50 miles an hour, even at times of peak demand.  How to do that?  Metered on-ramps help; so would tolling the most congested highways.

Rage Against the (Hybrid) Machine

Some California drivers are getting all steamed up that they have to share the carpool lanes with single-occupant hybrids, like the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic, under a new state program.  Some of the complaints, of course, should be taken with a grain of salt.  Said one fumer in an online discussion group:  "These [drivers] barely go 65 mph and allow no one to pass them on the right... Talk about road rage!"  It's hard to feel much sympathy for someone whining about not being able to exceed the speed limit.

But I do think there's reason to be concerned that extra hybrids in the HOV lanes may be slowing down carpools & buses.  From the LA Times article:

"There's not enough excess capacity to absorb the hybrids," said James Moore, director of USC's transportation engineering program. "I think the foreseeable outcome here is that the congestion advantage we traditionally attribute to [carpool] lanes will disappear."

Promoting hybrids could help save fuel. But there's plenty of reason to believe that -- looking at overall efficiency of road transport -- filling the HOV lanes with hybrids could do more harm than good.  Seems to me that California was smart in limiting the number of hybrids allowed in the carpool lanes, and studying the effects before proceeding.

Sturgeon's General Warning

Sounds as though salmon aren't the only Columbia River fish in trouble:

A team of researchers that examined 174 sturgeon caught by commercial and tribal fishermen found male and immature females tricked by chemicals into thinking they are full of estrogen, a female hormone with feminizing effects. Male fish tainted with a cocktail of compounds including mercury and a byproduct of the banned pesticide DDT showed depressed testosterone levels, which could keep them from maturing enough to spawn.

A few sturgeon even had bizarre combinations of male and female sexual organs. [Emphasis added.]

All I have to say to that is:  eewww.  If that doesn't serve as a wakeup call about gender-bending pollutants, I'm not sure what will.

Say It Ain't So, Joe

I picked up a copy of the March issue of Seattle Magazine the other day, and happened across an article (print only, I'm afraid) by the estimable Joe Follansbee.  The article claims that Seattle suffers from an inferiority complex:  whenever Seattle residents compare their home town with Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, BC, they always decide that Seattle comes up short. Follansbee argues that Seattle should just learn to love itself just as it is, rather than falling victim to sibling rivalry.

Interesting enough idea.  But there's one thing that sticks in my craw:  in trying to puncture the reputation of neighboring cities, Follansbee claims that Portland has an unusally low number of children, compared with its neighboring metropolises:

Portland's downtown Pearl District, hailed as the embodiment of "smart growth"...had only three more children living there in 2000 than in 1990, according to demographers.  What's "smart" about a city without children?

Do we [i.e., Seattle] want to be like Portland, childless and..."proper"?

Enough already! This factoid--that Portland is devoid of tykes--is simply false. It doesn't even pass the 5 minute Google test; that is, it takes less than five minutes of web searching to see that it doesn't hold water.  And yet, it's a theme I hear again and again in discussions of Portland and smart growth generally.

It's high time to roast this chestnut.

As it turns out, what's true for Portland's Pearl District -- that there aren't many children -- doesn't hold true for the rest of Portland.  Take a look at the Census Bureau's Portland "quick facts." As of the last Census count, 21.1 percent of the city's residents were children under the age of 18, compared with 24.7 for Oregon as a whole. 

So the city does have fewer children than the state as a whole, by 3.6 percentage points.  But take a look at the Seattle "quick facts."  Minors account for just 15.6 percent of the city's population.  In comparison, Portland is teeming with kids -- 40 percent more, measured per capita, than in Seattle.  And the gap between Seattle and the whole of Washington is 10 percentage points -- nearly 3 times wider than the gap between Portland and Oregon.

So it makes absolutely no sense -- none -- to ask whether Seattle wants to be "childless" like Portland.

Admittedly, Portland has fewer kids than many US cities.  But it's pretty much on par with Denver and Minneapolis, has a few more kids per capita than Pittsburgh, and far more than San Francisco (where under-18-year-olds are just 14.5 percent of the population).  In Vancouver, BC -- often held up as an exemplar of family-friendly urbanity -- children under 18 made up only 15.5 16.6 percent of the population in 2001. 

Diving into the Vancouver numbers a bit deeper, it seems that there's no major part of Vancouver -- not downtown, not the west side, not even the semi-suburban south end -- that has a kids-to-population ratio that's as high as in Portland.  And the kid-to-population gap between Vancouver and the whole of BC is wider than for Portland and the whole of Oregon.  Vancouver's denser neighborhoods have a reputation for having lots of kids, and in large part they do -- but only because they have lots of people, period.  As a share of the population, though, Portland has far more kids than "kid-friendly" Vancouver.

I'm sure this post won't put an end to the urban legend of Portland's childlessness (although it may perpetuate the impression that there aren't many kids in the Northwest's other major cities).  But I hope it helps.

On a deeper level, I'm puzzled by all the hand-wringing about childless cities.  As of the last census, families with children comprised less than one in three Northwest households.  And the number of childless households is growing for good reasons.  We're having kids later in life, and fewer of them -- largely because of better educational and job opportunities for women.  Plus we're living longer, so seniors are making up a far larger share of the population than they used to.  For the large and growing number of childless households, urban living has a strong appeal -- they're the ones who appear to be flocking to housing in dense urban centers.  So to the extent that the trends towards "childless cities" is real, it's largely driven by demographic changes that we'd be foolish to want to reverse.

What do the angst-ridden commentators lamenting the lack of children downtown want people to do? Have kids even if they'd prefer not to? Die before they get a chance to down-nest?  Move their families to urban condos in order to save some single-family detached houses for hipsters?  Help me out here, folks.

Parking Paradigm Shift?

Editor’s note: This post was contributed by Todd Litman, author of “Parking Management Best Practices," and founder and executive director of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute. For more information see his free summary report (pdf), Parking Management: Strategies, Evaluation and Planning.

A great example of the maxim “no free lunch” is the common struggle over parking. Motorists often assume that parking should be abundant and free at nearly every destination, and any deviation from this is considered a problem that must be solved by developers (who are forced to construct ever larger parking facilities when building or upgrading buildings) and governments (who are forced to provide subsidized public parking).

But—as noted in these three recent Planetizen op-eds (and previously in this blog), none of this parking is really free. We all pay double through higher rents, higher prices, higher taxes, increased traffic problems and sprawl. These practices are also inequitable since they force non-drivers to subsidize parking costs, reduce travel options for non-drivers, and reduce housing affordability.

The good news is that a fundamental shift in parking planning is gaining momentum. Communities and planners are beginning to adopt the “no free lunch” approach to parking. They’re developing policies and programs—called parking management--that use parking resources more efficiently. And they’re reaping benefits ranging from more-vibrant downtowns to more-affordable housing to a greater variety of transit options.

Here are some examples of successful programs.

Downtown Pasadena Redevelopment: During the 1970s Old Pasadena’s downtown had become run down, with many derelict and abandoned buildings and few customers, in part due to the limited parking available to customers. Curb parking was restricted to two-hour duration but many employees simply parked in the most convenient, on-street spaces and moved their vehicles several times each day. The city proposed pricing on-street parking as a way to increase turnover and make parking available to customers. Many local merchants originally opposed the idea. As a compromise, city officials agreed to dedicate all revenues to public improvements that make the downtown more attractive. A Parking Meter Zone (PMZ) was established within which parking was priced and revenues were invested.

With this proviso, the merchants agreed to the proposal. They began to see parking meters in a new way: as a way to fund the projects and services that directly benefit their customers and businesses. The city formed a PMZ advisory board consisting of business and property owners, which recommended parking policies and set spending priorities for the meter revenues. Investments included new street furniture and trees, more police patrols, better street lighting, more street and sidewalk cleaning, pedestrian improvements, and marketing.

This created a “virtuous cycle” in which parking revenue funded community improvements that attracted more visitors which increased the parking revenue, allowing further improvements. This resulted in extensive redevelopment of buildings, new businesses and residential development. Parking is no longer a problem for customers, who can almost always find a convenient space. Local sales tax revenues have increased far faster than in other shopping districts with lower parking rates, and nearby malls that offer free customer parking. This indicates that charging market rate for parking with revenues dedicated to local improvements can be an effective way to support urban redevelopment.

Tri-Met Parking Management in Portland: The Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District, which manages transportation in the Portland, Oregon area, has implemented various parking management strategies around transit stations to minimize costs and support transit-oriented development.

These include:

• Sharing parking with Park & Ride and other types of land uses, including apartments, churches, movie theaters and government buildings near transit stations.
• Using lower minimum parking requirements around transit stations.
• Allowing Park & Ride capacity near transit stations to be reduced if the land is used for transit-oriented development, thus allowing walking and bike trips to replace car trips.

More Accurate Parking Requirements in Vancouver: Vancouver, British Columbia, is developing a more flexible approach to parking requirements for multi-family dwellings to support efficient transportation, smart growth and housing affordability objectives. The program is loosely based on the LEED TM Green building rating system. Developers receive credits for reducing the number of parking stalls, providing parking spaces for carshare vehicles, and providing annual transit passes to building occupants.

Rich Sorro Commons, San Francisco, California (USEPA, 2006): Rich Sorro Commons is a mixed-use project with 100 affordable units and approximately 10,000 square feet of ground floor retail. Conventional standards would require 130 to 190 parking spaces for such a building, but it was constructed with only 85 parking spaces, due to proximity to high-quality public transit services, the provision of two carshare parking spaces in the building, and the fact that the building provides affordable housing, with tenants who are less likely to own a car.

Reduced parking supply freed up space for a childcare center and more ground-level retail stores. Just 17 avoided spaces allows the project to generate $132,000 in additional annual revenues (300 square feet per space at $25.80 per square foot in rent), making housing more affordable. Two carshare vehicles are available to residents, giving them access to a car without the costs of ownership – a particularly important benefit for low-income households.

Austin Parking Benefit District: Many neighborhoods experience parking spillover problems, including difficulty finding parking for residents and visitors, concerns that public service vehicles cannot pass two lanes of parked vehicles on the street, or that parking on the street reduces neighborhood attractiveness. These problems become an opportunity with the establishment of a Parking Benefit District (PBD) A PBD is created by metering the on-street parking (either with pay stations on the periphery of the neighborhood or with the traditional parking meters) and dedicating the revenue, minus City expenses for maintenance and enforcement, towards improvements in the neighborhood that promote walking, cycling and transit use, such as sidewalks, curb ramps, and bicycle lanes. Charging for parking and promoting alternatives reduces parking in neighborhoods and helps fund neighborhood benefits. The PBD may be used in conjunction with a Residential Permit Parking program to ensure that parking is available for residents and their visitors.

Using Parking Revenue to Support Transit in Boulder: Faced with a shortage of parking for customers, Boulder, Colorado. developed a program to encourage downtown employees to use alternative commute modes. In 1993, Boulder’s City Council mandated restricted downtown parking and appealed for parking demand management for the city’s commuters. The Central Area General Improvement District (CAGID), made up of many of downtown’s 700 businesses, responded to the Boulder City Council’s demands by creating a system using revenue from downtown parking meters to pay for free bus passes. The passes are provided for all of the district’s 7,500 employees, and cost $500,000 each year. The City of Boulder offers deeply discounted Eco-Passes to businesses outside the CAGID, and to residents, and encourages walking and bicycling. The program has changed travel behavior, freeing up valuable customer parking spaces and reducing parking costs, congestion, accidents and pollution emissions.

• Employee carpooling increased from 35% in 1993 to 47% in 1997.
• The district’s employees require 850 fewer parking spaces.
• More available parking has increased retail activity in downtown Boulder.

Although individual parking management strategies often have modest impacts, typically reducing parking requirements by just 5-15%, their effects are cumulative. A cost-effective, integrated parking management program can often reduce parking requirements by 20-40%, while improving user convenience and helping to achieve other planning objectives, such as supporting more compact development, encouraging use of alternative modes, and increasing development affordability. This can increase profits and help address a wide range of transportation and land use problems.

P.S. For more information, see VTPI’s summary report, Parking Management: Strategies, Evaluation and Planning

Sea Sick

As if global warming weren't bad enough: as this Oregonian story points out, rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are not only heating the climate, they're making seawater more acidic -- which in turn "could wreak profound changes on the diversity and productivity of oceans." 

It's an interesting bit of scientific detective work.  Some types of ocean plankton are apparently very sensitive to pH: their shells can't form when the water grows too acidic.  The oceans have been absorbing a lot of the CO2 that's been emitted by fossil fuel burning, and higher levels of dissolved CO2 have raised the ocean's acidity by 30 percent in the last century or so.  The result:  the plankton are getting squeezed out, especially from the cool northern Pacific waters that absorb the most CO2.  Scientists predict that if CO2 levels continue to rise, the higher acidity could eliminate these plankton, along with shelled sea creatures such as the sea urchin, from polar waters sometime in the next century.

This sort of thing is as fascinating as it is disturbing -- and it should serve as a reminder that, in  subtle and often unpredictable ways, our fossil fuel consumption may wind up fraying the earth's ecosystems over the coming century just as much as pollution and habitat loss did in the previous one.

Hybrid Whiplash

What to make of this news from the Eugene, OR Register-Guard?

In a report that's sure to be controversial, CNW Marketing Research of Bandon concludes... that, even though hybrid cars use less fuel, they require more energy - and are therefore worse for the environment - than conventional cars because their design and manufacture are more complex and the costs of disposal or recycling are higher for their batteries, electric motors and other specialized components. [Emphasis added.]

Hybrids use more energy than regular cars? Is this real, or just pro-SUV propaganda?

Now, just to be clear, I haven't reviewed the study myself. But the online materials that's CNW's made publicly available seem serious & fair-minded -- not like a cheap hit-job on hybrids, but rather a sober analysis that reaches some unexpected and counterintuitive conclusions.

That said, I think there's very good reason not to take the study too seriously. Not yet -- and not until the authors can answer some tough questions about what their study implies.

CNW does deserve credit for looking at energy costs over a vehicle's entire life cycle--not just what it consumes on the road, but also what it costs to manufacture, distribute, repair, and dispose of a car. But some of their numbers seem, to put it mildly, a little hard to believe.

According to the study's methods, a Honda Civic (not a hybrid, but a regular model) uses only about 30 percent of its life-cycle energy as gasoline. (See here for the chart.) About 10 percent each go to parts, manufacturing, repair, dissassembly, and replacement; and 20 percent go to other energy costs.

Let's say that's reasonably representative of other models -- that is, gasoline accounts for only about 30 percent or thereabouts of the life-cycle energy costs of owning and operating the average car or light truck. But according to the US Energy Information Administration, gasoline consumption accounts for 17 percent of total energy consumption in the US (see here for total consumption, and here for total gasoline). So that would imply that car manufacture, repair, recycling and other energy costs account about 40 percent of the total US energy supply.

Forty percent? That's just plain wrong. The entire US industrial sector only consumes 33 percent of the nation's energy. So the subset devoted to cars has to consume only a fraction of that.

Just so, it seems downright implausible that cars are responsible for some 57 percent of the nation's total energy use (17 percent for gasoline, 40 percent for manufacture, repair, recycling, etc.). Cars use a lot of energy, to be sure -- but I simply can't believe it's that much.

So that means either: the Honda Civic is a vastly atypical car, and uses substantially more manufacturing energy than most other cars; that I've misread the (limited) available data from CNW; or that the study's authors have some explaining to do if they're going to convince me that I should pay much attention to their results.

One Mile from Home

(Editor's note: See the two other posts in the walkability series, "Carless in Seattle" and "Dead Man Walking.")

Last week, I displayed the wreckage of our 1986 stationwagon; this week, its replacement: our 1996 Burley stroller/bike trailer. (It’s Cascadia-made in Eugene, Oregon.)

The kids have long-since outgrown the thing. But since we decided to experiment in car-less living, we’ve resurrected it to haul groceries, library books, and (recently) a broken vacuum cleaner.

The Burley’s range is only as far as you want to push it. And for my family, that limit seems to be about one mile. Less than a mile is a comfortable walk; more is a burden. (To extend the range, we can fit the Burley to a bicycle—on which, more another day.)

A one-mile perimeter, therefore, defines this car-less family’s pedestrian travel zone—call it our “walkshed.” Fortunately, because we chose to live in a compact community, our walkshed turns out to be well stocked.

We can stroll to scores of shops and services—248 to be precise. I know because I counted. You can, too, in less than 60 seconds. I’ll tell you how in a moment.

Among the establishments in our domain are a bowling alley, a produce stand, a movie theater, and a hardware store, plus public institutions such as our post office, swimming pool, farmers’ market, and skate park (new and very cool!).

We’ve got pairs of independent booksellers, thrift stores (we know them well), and bakeries (ditto). Three pharmacies, three yoga studios, and three video stores offer us medication, meditation, and mesmerization, respectively. Five grocers and six dry cleaners compete for our appetites and our wrinkles. Nine barbers eye our locks. Dozens of specialty shops hawk their curiosities in the range of our Burley: one sells only flags, another only gifts from Norway, a third only old magazines.

True coffee houses number six, only one of them a Starbucks (which, because it's so low, may be the most surprising number in this tally). Restaurants? We’re provisioned with 54! (And there are 151 within two miles: we’ll walk farther for great eating.)

Two neighborhood ice creameries are counteracted by an astonishing 42 dentists (none of them covered by our insurance, sadly). Two local smoke shops are outnumbered by an even more astounding 74 doctors (again, not covered by our insurance). And then there’s our one neighborhood orthodontist: he has straightened or is straightening all three of our kids’ teeth, for which we've paid him enough to buy three used Volvos or most of a new Prius.

I should perhaps note that, despite these large counts, we do not live downtown. Far from it—-in fact, five miles from it. Our neighborhood of Ballard is a typical streetcar community developed largely in the 1920s and replicated in every North American city of similar age.

I should also probably note that our neighborhood is definitely not Mayberry. It's got 44 auto shops, 10 taverns, and a liquor store. Oh, plus two sex-toy shops and two strip clubs. (Or so the signs say -- I’ve never been inside. I swear.)

All of these counts I did in my head or using the yellow pages, and you can do the same for your home if you live in the United States. (4/10 Update: This tool is really only reliable in states where Qwest offers local phone service. Elsewhere, the count is incomplete. Here's a map of their area. Tip of the hat to Joseph W., in comments, for this catch.)

Here’s how:

To get a fairly complete count of businesses (in Qwest's 14 states), go to this Qwest online phone directory, select the business listings, type “all” in the category field, click “near a street address,” type in your address, and choose “1 mile.” (Sorry, Canadians, I have yet to find a .ca that performs this trick.) If you’re lucky and the database gods are smiling on you (the site is temperamental), Qwest will promptly reveal how many businesses there are within a one-mile walk of your front door. Call this your Walkshed Index, your Burley Score.

Ours, as I said, is 248. There are two hundred and forty eight places where my family can do business within a mile of home, not counting public facilities. That number is not remarkably high: the walkshed index at my downtown office address is 6,623. Nor is it remarkably low: one suburban family I know has a score of 0. But it means that living car-free is more viable for us than it would be for many families.

What’s the Burley Score where you live?

P.S. More than one quarter of car trips in the United States are shorter than one mile, as we noted in Seven Wonders. One quarter!

P.P.S. Realtors provide detailed information to prospective home buyers on schools and resale values. They could as easily report the Walkshed Index-—high scores translate into thousands of dollars of potential savings in fuel and car payments.

P.P.P.S. According to one map-making friend, creating walkshed maps and yellow pages would be a relatively simple Google Maps “Mash Up.” Anyone know of such a tool? Anyone volunteer to do this project? I’d love to have a detailed map stowed in the “glove box” of our Burley of all 248 businesses in my home zone. (I can get close with the Qwest online directory, plus the cool mapping tools at Map24, Google Local, and Windows Live Local. But these tools are designed for car drivers, not walkers.) Ideally, I would want a walking map or PDA application that shows me the whereabouts of public restrooms, water fountains, bike racks, curb cuts, bus stops, and benches. Besides, the Qwest tool is clunky and imprecise. (My total score of 248 is inexplicably less than the sum of all the categories of establishments listed above!)

UPDATE: A reader points out (in comments) that Canada411.ca will calculate a metric version of the Burley Score. Leave "category" blank, choose 1 or 2 kilometers, enter your address, and you're set. I calculated a 2-kilometer Walkshed Index of almost 7,000 for  an address in Vancouver's West End.

A Frank Look at Chinook

For those of you following the lamentable state of the Klamath River fisheries, there's a first-rate op-ed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Billy Frank Jr., chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. He writes:

We expect the PFMC to take the only action it can to protect the salmon: reduce harvest. After all, cutting harvest has been the major response to declining salmon runs for the past 20 years. We accept that burden year after year with the hope that some day habitat -- the Big H -- will be addressed with the same conviction that we have shown in reducing harvests.

We are not in this mess because of harvest. Our harvest management process works.

The upshot, as you can probably guess, is that the only way to ensure the salmon will persist in the Northwest is to address the thorny and issues that degrade salmon habitat. Without suitable habitat the salmon runs dry up and fishermen bear the economic brunt of decisions that were made literally and figuratively upstream from them. A fair approach would take a hard look at irrigation, dams, development, and all the other contentious problems that affect salmon habitat--"the big H." Or as Frank puts it:

Salmon recovery begins and ends with the Big H.

California Rolls its Own Kyoto?

I don't know much about this, really, but the headline alone seems pretty auspicious:

Breakthrough plan to cut greenhouse gases
Goal is to reduce carbon dioxide 25% by 2020

Apparently, advisors to Governor Schwarzenegger--with the backing of California legislators--just came out with a 1,300 page report that details more than 50 strategies for reducing the state's climate-warming emissions.  Included among the strategies is a CO2 cap-and-trade system, similar to the European Union's carbon market. 

It's hard to overstate how huge a step that would be:  without a hard cap, any individual steps to reduce emissions might be offset by increases somewhere else in the state.  Plus, tradeable credits help ensure that the least expensive greenhouse gas reductions come first--which is the smartest way to sequence those kinds of investments, since the early steps wind up saving money in short order, which in turn helps finance deeper cuts later on.  Of course, if neighboring states don't follow suit, some major CO2 emissions -- particularly for generating electricity -- may just be pushed into a state with no such caps. Still, it's a start.

This is still just a proposal, obviously -- there's a lot of work left to be done before any of it becomes reality.  But it's definitely good news.