Rail-Volution 2012 -- It's (almost) All About the Bike

Rail-Volution is a national transit -- and by default -- urban livability conference that was conceived in Portland, Oregon during the 1990s. Initially focused on transit and how transit can lead to more compact and sustainable development, Rail-Volution has expanded into what must be one of the most diverse urban livability get-togethers in the nation. And naturally, bicycle transportation is figuring more prominently every year. A cycling enthusiast myself, I seized the opportunity to join two (of at least four or five) mobile workshops centered on bicycle transit, and its current and future prospects in Southern California.

The first tour was in Santa Monica, and featured a taxing ride along the Santa Monica Pier and the beach promenade. Our docents included folks from the city, as well a local bicycle advocacy group -- all who voiced great optimism and support for the integration between bikes and transit both currently and in the future.

Along the Santa Monica beach, the city has built a skills course, pictured above. If you look to the upper right of the image, you can see painted lines, replicating those one would ordinarily find riding on the street, but presented here in safe, car-free environment where beginning cyclists can comfortably practice the skills required to ride in traffic. The skills course, which was several hundred yards long and maybe a dozen wide, also had cones and painted, maze-like lines, where one could test and improve one’s stopping and handling abilities. Our docents told as that the skills course was requested by the community, and has been a huge success with those who have utilized it saying that it gave them the courage to ride in traffic, and ultimately leading to a significant increase in new bike commuters. What a brilliant idea.

The well-organized tour also included other infrastructure enhancements that not only encourage cycling, but achieve other sustainable goals Santa Monica has. Pictured above is what we were told was the world's (well, at least California’s) first living street. Features included a woonerf styled profile, where all uses -- including pedestrians, cars, and bikes, share the same, curb-less plane. Parking was over sand set- porous pavers, and the asphalt itself was porous. The three block, formally crime ridden street was built a few years back, and since its completion has been a centerpiece of the neighborhood's revitalization. A particularly nifty feature were the solar-powered street lamps, shown below surrounded by native, drought tolerant plantings that help treat road run-off using with phytoremediation. Also note the typical street signs whose dignity is raise at least a notch or two by steel frames, painted to match the street lights.

And (I suppose) what would be a sustainability-themed bike tour without a farmer’s market. Indeed. The group enjoyed a great lunch at Santa Monica's, which had bike parking for what seemed to be hundreds of bicycles; a welcoming sign, to be sure.

Our tour concluded at the Santa Monica Bike Center in the heart of downtown. A private enterprise, the Center rents bikes and sells bike schwag. Germane to our tour, the Bike Center also has a subscription-based bicycle storage facility, showers, and locker rooms. In the near future, they plan on also being a bike-share location. A great combination of services as well as a model for other aspiring communities, as the profits from the bike rentals offset the lack of profits from the bike storage and showers, allowing for the assemblage to actually turn a profit and have the proprietors not only consider an expanding, but to open other locations as well. Just look as those sexy Saris double-decker racks in the storage room.

Another day found me on a bike tour of downtown Los Angeles. Contrary to popular opinion (including my own), downtown has a rapidly emerging downtown scene, with an intensity and density that was surprising and sure to match or even exceed my beloved Seattle's in only a short time. And it is not only about the new; in fact, what impressed me most about downtown LA (which is where I stayed for the conference, instead of at the conference hotel in Hollywood), was the legacy of outstanding buildings be they 50, 60, or even 100 years old; so much for the myth of LA being only a post-war, automobile oriented city. Give it a decade or so, and LA will be one of our nation’s hippest down-towns to live in. Please allow me to digress a bit, and share a few images of some pre-war, pre-freeway images of downtown that I had a chance to take prior to the conference, that merely hint at downtown’s urbanity.

Especially rewarding were to explore were the many pre-war office building lobbies, the design and materiality of which speak to Los Angles’ industrial and corporate might during the early 20th century (and to this day). I absolutely love the profile of the chemical plant above the entry doors to the former Standard Oil (Exxon, in today's parlance) lobby, which has been repurposed into the tres hip Standard Hotel.

End of digression -- back to the bike tour. Though nascent, LA's bike program is off to a robust start, and reflects California's entrepreneurial spirit. On Spring Street, pictured below, one can see one of LA's test, green painted bike lanes. Still in the vetting stage, we rode on several surfaces that LADOT is evaluating for performance. Just look at the width of that lane -- a full 6 feet as I recall. And one would never guess, but there was barely and outcry, or so said the docents, when a parking lane was removed for its creation. Although I don't recall from what low, bike commuting has increased 200% in total numbers and 600% among women since the lanes were debuted.

Discussion along the way included the late 2012 launch of LA's bike share program, which will begin downtown and feature bike frames made of 100% recycled aluminum. As we meandered our way on bike lanes, soon to be bike boulevards, and other such inspired bike infrastructure I could not but think how impressed I was with the speed, social acceptance, and political will required to execute such ambitions in a city as large -- and auto-oriented -- as Los Angles. While it is true that the weather is simply superb for cycling, and the terrain a bit more hospitable on the whole than say Seattle's is, if a city such as Los Angeles can vision and implement a bike program with such speed and alacrity it speaks well to the movement as whole.

The Capitol Hill Eco-District

Tuesday night at the Broadway Performance Hall at Seattle Central Community College, and before a crowd of almost 300, Capitol Hill Housing (CHH) rolled-out its Eco-District Vision for Capitol Hill. Prepared by GGLO architects and funded by the Bullitt Foundation, the Eco-District Report (http://capitolhillhousing.org/downloads/Capitol-Hill_EcoDistrict_Report_2012.pdf) outlines a broad agenda for achieving a more sustainable lifestyle on the Hill, and by extension, Seattle and the nation. Setting ambitious -- but achievable -- goals for carbon neutrality by 2050, the Report tracks current consumption of energy and water as well as many other metrics, and sets forth steps needed to hit the 2050 target. Much of what is called for, however, goes beyond tonnage of CO2 and gallons consumption of water. What the Report calls for is really a change in our social constructs and habits. This theme was echoed by the panel discussion that followed the Report's summary presentation. Panelists included (left to right in the below image):

• Llewellyn Wells, President of Living City Block
• Mike McGinn, Seattle's Mayor
• Dennis Hayes, President of the Bullitt Foundation and founder fo Earth Day
• Naomi Cole, Eco-District Program Director, Portland Sustainability Institute
• Rebecca Saldana, Equitable TOD Program Director, Puget Sound Sage
• Ron Simms, former King County Executive and HUD Deputy Secretary (Moderator)

Supportive of the goals of the Eco-District, and presumably of the high-level summary given, the panelists engage in a lively discussion that amounted to a call for a grass-roots effort by Capitol Hill residents to implement the Reports directives. Even the former politicians on the panel noted that the actions needed to achieve a balanced, equitable, and just stewardship of the environment needs to come from the bottom up, and that in fact, politicians need our leadership and guidance to craft policy that will allow implementation of proposals such as those in the Report.

The Report and CHH's roll-out are well timed,  as they came out (supposedly) less than six month's from the date that Sound Transit says they will release the Request for Proposals (RFP) for the Capitol Hill station's TOD development sites. The sites, which figure prominently and are in fact the literal center of the Report's maps, present the best early opportunity for furthering the Report's goals as they will be the largest single assembly of adjacent private development parcels likely to hit the market for the foreseeable future, and are in fact large enough to realize many of the economies of scale required for implementing the Report's strategies. How the Eco-District Report figures into the development TOD parcels are yet to be seen, but there is no doubt that the vision of the Report and the best interests of the community will be served by developers who are responding to the RFP that have both a proposal and track record that testifies to an ability to make the TOD Capitol Hill's first significant contribution to our Eco-district goals.

Create Communities of Opportunity

  On March 23^rd, members of Schemata Workshop attended the Housing Development Consortium (HDC) 4^th Annual Luncheon; HDC is a professional association and advocate for providing affordable housing in King County. Schemata Workshop is a sponsor and member of HDC and we are advocates for their cause. At the luncheon we were fortunate enough to have Angela Glover Blackwell, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of PolicyLink, as the keynote speaker. Her speech was so inspiring that we were compelled to take notes summarizing the key components to create communities of opportunity.

First, Angela described the St. Louis, MO community where she grew up and how the neighborhood children played together in the front yards and streets without fear of danger. A community where her mother anxiously watched, perched out on the front porch, as she made her way to the corner store for the first time. It was an economically diverse community of doctors and lawyers living next to the single parent receiving food stamps. It was a community that fostered opportunity.

However, not all of our society experienced the same upbringing as Angela and members of our society have children that run the risk of not succeeding to their full potential. As Angela said, in these economic times, this is the first time that children are not expected to have the same opportunities as their parents. In addition, she emphasized that one’s housing determines so much more than we think. It determines the type of education and healthcare one can receive; also it determines what types of jobs are available. Those who work on housing and housing policies are indirectly working on health, education and job policies as well.

After painting the picture of an excellent community and emphasizing the need and importance of successful housing, Angela began to identify the key components to create communities of opportunity.

Creating Communities of Opportunities – 5 steps

1. Place matters

• Creating a sense of place contributes to a sense identity for the community

2. Access to reliable transit

• Provides the opportunity to seek better jobs, health care, and education

3. Integrate income levels and promote racial diversity

• Provides richness of life and opportunity

4. Sustainability

• Provide all 3 components of sustainability – environmental, social, economic equity

5. Inclusion

• Integrate yourself in the community to understand their needs

The key components to create communities of opportunity are not new ideas individually, but we often forget that we need to take into account all components to provide successful housing. Angela ended her speech with the statement “Don’t be nostalgic for a time that never was.” However, I think we can use nostalgia to create goals for achieving communities of opportunity.

Livable, Resilient, and Sustainable Communities

[caption id="attachment_3537" align="aligncenter" width="700" caption="Patrick Condon presents the Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities"][/caption]  

Friday was the Congress for New Urbanism’s regional Summit sponsored by the Cascadia chapter.  I was involved with CNU almost a decade ago and it was very much a cult of personalities.  New Urbanism gained much of its notoriety through strong personalities involved with the movement.  So it was refreshing to be in a room full of architects, planners, urban designers who were intently focused on creating complete cities in Cascadia.1

The theme for the day was Envisioning Resilient Communities and featured panel discussions such tools for measuring sustainability, the role of frequent bus service in shaping development patterns, and green infrastructure (namely rainwater management).

The keynote was delivered by Patrick Condon, a professor in Landscape Architecture from University of British Columbia.  He spoke about the Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities – the title of his latest book.  The seven rules are:

1. Restore the [transit]2 city.

2. Design an interconnected street system.

3. Locate commercial services, frequent transit, and schools within a five-minute walk.

4. Locate good jobs close to affordable homes.

5. Provide a diversity of housing types.

6. Create a linked system of natural areas and parks.

7. Invest in lighter, greener, cheaper, and smarter infrastructure.

There were two tours offered- one of Bothell, highlighting the transformation of this suburban community; and the other of the Seattle Waterfront, highlighting the conditions, challenges, and concepts for the new waterfront.

The day concluded with a PechaKucha-style presentation featuring two of Schemata’s own – Joseph Readdy and Grace Kim.  Joseph shared the CNU’s Sustainable Street Network Principles, which he helped author and illustrate.  Grace shared her vision for resilient, diverse, and sustainable neighborhoods – cohousing.

1 Cascadia is a region geographically defined as the land draining to the Pacific Ocean through the greatest temperate rain forests on the planet – primarily Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

2 While he originally wrote “Restore the streetcar city” in his book, Patrick noted at end of panel discussion that the word streetcar caused too much controversy over the particular mode of transport and might be substituted with transit.

Sustainable Street Network Principles

The Congress for the New Urbanism presented the Sustainable Street Network Principles on Monday 23 January at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting. Marcy McInelly (Urbsworks, Inc.) and Joseph Readdy (Schemata Workshop) presented the new compact guide to achieving a human-scale street network that supports social, cultural, and economic exchange.

“We assert that current transportation engineering addresses only limited individual components of the region’s street network. This results in a fragmented and inefficient system that fails to adequately engage the social, environmental, and economic aspirations of communities.”

These principles advocate a human-scaled urbanism, where the act of walking represents the basic unit of design. Instead of having considering the street network as the means to achieve mobility or transportation service, it looks to maximize our investment in infrastructure by choices that are “magnets for business, light industry, jobs, and economic opportunities.”

This project lays out seven principles for creating vital, livable networks of streets, supported by six key characteristics for implementing these principles.

Those points where multiple modes of transportation intersect are the places that have the highest potential for placemaking. Places that thoughtfully coordinate the connections between the pedestrian, bike, transit, and car are the ones that will generate the highest economic value.

These principles matter because despite the $200 billion per year the US spends in transportation infrastructure, the country has higher traffic fatality rates than any developed nation. Engineering has been focused on moving cars and trucks quickly, yet transportation delays per capita has more than doubled since 1982, and the US has the highest vehicle miles traveled per capita globally. Americans spend more time in their cars than anyone on earth.