Seattle will soon close part of three streets for a few hours, for exactly one day per street this summer. This is not a big deal for many cities, and the town where I went to college would do this once a month on their main street throughout the summer. But can this be the beginning of a positive change?
I’ve long thought that a great idea for a city of any size is to have a few car-free streets. If you build narrow streets this allows for Europe-style density, and if you leave them wide then you have potential for public meeting areas. Noise is dramatically reduced, safety is increased, and the neighborhood becomes much more walkable.
Car-free streets generally have tables set up for outside dining, served by nearby restaurants. You’ll see children playing, and people promenading – window shopping, people watching, eating ice cream. The street becomes a destination, not something in your way to a destination.
But how does car-fixated Seattle react to this small step toward something beautiful? Well, read the comments yourself.
It’s been argued that rail is a “19th century technology” out of place in 21st century cities. While I find this argument absurd on its face (walking and bicycling are also “old technologies,” but still quite useful), it may not even make sense on its own absurd terms.
Consider this article in The New Republic on how big American cities like Chicago are looking more and more like 19th century Paris and Vienna:
What would a post-inversion American city look like? In the most extreme scenario, it would look like many of the European capitals of the 1890s. Take Vienna, for example. In the mid-nineteenth century, the medieval wall that had surrounded the city’s central core for hundreds of years was torn down. In its place there appeared the Ringstrasse, the circle of fashionable boulevards where opera was sung and plays performed, where rich merchants and minor noblemen lived in spacious apartments, where gentlemen and ladies promenaded in the evening under the gaslights, where Freud, Mahler, and their friends held long conversations about death over coffee and pastry in sidewalk cafes. By contrast, if you were part of the servant class, odds were you lived far beyond the center, in a neighborhood called Ottakring, a concentration of more than 30, 000 cramped one- and two-bedroom apartments, whose residents–largely immigrant Czechs, Slovaks, and Slovenes–endured a long horse-car ride to get to work in the heart of the city.
I do believe that, in a large sense, many people who are leaving Seattle’s “inner city” (i.e. the Central District and the Rainier Valley) to move out to, say, Renton, Tukwila, or Federal Way are moving up, and doing so intentionally and in search of a better life.
By way of comparison, 100 years ago, Seattle’s Jewish community was centered around 14th and Yesler (IIRC, the Langston Hughes Arts Center at 17th and Yesler was originally built as a synagogue). Over time, that community left the Central District and moved South and East towards Seward Park and Mercer Island. Today’s Vietnamese and African-American communities are treading much the same path.
But, of course, the big difference here is $4/gallon gas. “Moving on out” doesn’t have quite the same appeal. So, we have to be creative about giving people the opportunity to live the American dream, while at the same time making sure no one gets “stranded in suburbia.”
After work the other day I walked over to the SLU trolley to meet family at the Center for Wooden Boats. If you know how to sail, I highly recommend renting a boat for an hour on a sunny day. The streetcar was just about to leave as I made it to the stop, so I hopped on expecting to pay onboard.
I knew I only had $1 in my wallet, and also knew that they only take credit cards at the kiosk outside the streetcar. However, I have $1.75 tickets in my wallet that I keep for use on the bus. Also I remembered that their website lists a good dozen forms of payment you can use on the streetcar*, so I wasn’t worried.
But… apparently Metro cash tickets aren’t on the list. This means that I owe the streetcar $1.75, and that I will have to start carrying a pocket full of quarters (6 for a round trip) if I ever want to ride it again. Man do I wish they’d start the Orca pass.
* “The following forms of payment are also accepted to ride the Seattle Streetcar; Metro Pass, Puget Pass, Flexpass, GO Pass, U-Pass, Visitor Pass, Regional Reduced Fare Permit (with monthly or annual sticker), and active Metro bus transfer slips.”
The recent problem with the Critical Mass ride points to some deeper problems with our “love affair” with the car. First and foremost would be the bias shown by the police and mainstream journalism. Initial reports described a driver terrified by an unprovoked attack that broke his windows, causing him to flee and “accidentally” hit some cyclists.
Those of us who have read the interviews, including those with the driver, now know this story was completely false- but there’s been no prominent retraction. The police quite obviously are trying to “take down” Critical Mass and using a credulous press as one tool to do so.
This is a big mistake. At the core of Critical Mass is an anarchist (and by “anarchist” I mean “intensely self-disciplined”) spirit that revels in revolution. They will love a challenge, and it’s hard to scare people who are accustomed to riding bikes in American traffic.
The Cascade Bicycle Club has weighed in with disapprobation for Critical Mass- according to Cascade, drivers should be gently encouraged to tolerate cyclists. One big problem with this theory- the driver of the car was formerly a bicycle commuter.
Any such discussion will include the guy who hates cyclists because they “run red lights- the laws are for everyone” and blah blah blah. But if the talk turned to cameras to ticket drivers who run red lights, the guy is against it, and, wouldn’t you know, has studies to prove that strict enforcement causes more accidents.
What we’re left to deal with is an institutional bias in favor of cars, and the fact that, behind the wheel, we do things we wouldn’t otherwise do, and sometimes profoundly regret. None of this, of course, would matter if the oilfields of Texas were infinite, and the laws of physics suspended so that global warming would not occur.
But in the real world, our “love affair” has turned into an ugly situation in which our mistress, the car, seems likely to ruin our marriage to civilization. Some years ago, possibly before you were born, Jean-Luc Godard took one look at this problem with a film called Weekend. It’s not as though we weren’t warned.
Clark Williams-Derry notes that total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is declining nationwide. The US DOT frets that this will be the end of the highway trust fund, but I say, fear not! After all, WSDOT thinks that fuel economy will inexplicably rise starting next year. Maybe they should loan some of their analysts to the other Washington.
(yes, yes, per-capita VMT is not the same as total VMT.)
The Switchback looks at the current effort to build Bus Rapid Transit in Boston:
“If the Silver Line were a rail project – as basically every public-transit using citizen would prefer it – the MBTA could simply reactivate the rail tunnel leading from Boylston Station down Tremont to the Church of All Nations, and build a portal at Eliot Norton Park. There are already platforms for it at Boylston Station. That would make most of the tunnel work unnecessary.
The current plan calls for the state to spend several hundred million dollars of taxpayer money to dig a new tunnel down Boylston, then down Charles to the Church of All Nations site at Eliot Norton Park.”
And at Seattle Transit Blog a commenter looks at fast buses in Seattle:
“During the campaign, it was emphasized that buses could be brought online in terms of months, not years (a dig at light rail construction times). So, the measure passes, and we find out that RapidRide wont see the light of day in Ballard or on Aurora until 2013. Thats seven years out from 2006.”
What do these items have in common? That’s right- BRT is neither cheaper nor faster to build. No matter what you might say about a mixed system or buses needed as feeders or matching the traffic requirements with the market, at the end of the day, BRT is most likely to be a fraud.
I’ll let other people be “reasonable” and concede that, if you grant a lot of things that never will happen, BRT “might” work. When I look around at all these existing BRT implementations and find delay, financial ruin, and angry riders, I’ve had enough. BRT is a fraud.
State Treasurer Mike Murphy has said both the 520 and I-90 bridges should be tolled in order to keep financing viable for a new 520 Bridge, but one transportation activist predicted a backlash if tolls are charged for both bridges and imposed before the new 520 Bridge is completed as some propose.
“I just think the public reaction to that is going to be very bad,” said Jim Horn, former state senator and president of the Eastside Transportation Association, a pro-highway and bus group.
If the ETA is indeed a “pro-bus group,” it should be thrilled about charging tolls on both bridges and before the new 520 span is completed. After all, tolls are the only plausible way to keep buses moving during rush hour. Especially on the existing 520, where there’s no dedicated HOV lane.
But, of course, ETA just says it’s “pro-bus” and we’re supposed to take them at their word.
Okay, so I guess we’re a go for a 2008 vote. Ben’s done a great liveblog of the ST board meeting.
Meanwhile Erica Barnett is demanding apologies, which seems ridiculously premature. Let’s wait until this fall’s ballot passes, shall we? I personally supported last year’s Prop. 1 because I thought it was a compromise that stood a good chance of passing. I’m cautiously optimistic about this new proposition, but it’s far from a sure thing. We can’t count on Obama voters alone — tens of thousands of whom will probably split the ticket and vote for Rossi — to save us.
I’m glad that the STB dudes are meeting to talk about how to pass the new ST ballot measture that’s coming this November. I can’t make the meeting, but I thought I’d share a thought or two.
Sound Transit can’t actually campaign. So we need other groups to form — like last fall’s “Yes on Roads and Transit” — to do the legwork. That campaign was relentlessly positive, and I think that was a perfectly reasonable tactic to use.
However, while I was away, I caught a few radio and TV ads promoting Honolulu’s proposed light rail system. And I thought they were very effective. Here’s one:
The radio ads are even more aggressive. They basically call out the anti-rail folks for being full of it. They’re made by a 501(c)4 called “Support Rail Transit.”
Of course, negative ads are risky. They repeat the negative. Why give the anti-rail zealots a platform for their arguments? That’s why negative ads are generally accepted as a sign of weakness (c.f. Microsoft’s new anti-Apple ads, or any of John McCain’s recent anti-Obama ads).
But maybe it’s time to get more aggressive. Mayor Nickels’ recent op-ed is effective because it openly mocks the anti-transit folks’ arguments as absurd on their face. The Honolulu ads use a similar tactic.
With all the misinformation floating around in the public about what Sound Transit is and isn’t planning, it might be time to shoot down some of these arguments publicly. Our major local media outlets have generally been loathe to call B.S. on these guys, maybe someone else needs to.
Erica Barnett is right that I-985′s opponents are fighting the initiative the best way possible, by highlighting the programs that will have to be cut from the state’s general fund. If it’s a transportation and public-art issue, Eyman wins. If it’s about cuts to services and education, he probably loses.
If I had my way, every tax-cutting initiative would have to spell out in detail which services the initiative would cut. Maybe even provide a nice list of which actual kids would lose their health insurance or go hungry, with names and faces, if possible.
Short of that, though, this is the best way to go.
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