Orphan Road

Check out the StreetsBlog story about New York's Summer Streets event. They closed down 7 miles of streets and let people live car-free for two Saturdays. The street aerobics class reminds me of ballroom dancing classes on the pedestian streets of Shanghai.

Of course our turn is coming. I just hope we embrace the idea as well as they have.

In a recent Hugeasscity comment, a friend was described that drives 100 miles to work everyday so that they could have a large house in the suburbs. I ran a quick calculation to see what kind of house they could afford in the city with the money they're wasting in the commute. The difference, with less than a 30-year payback, was $400k. This analysis did not take into account the wasted time from the commute.

Let me quickly go over this analysis again, just to let it sink in. At 200 miles a day x 5 days a week x 52 weeks a year, you're putting 52,000 miles a year on your car. Using a lifespan of 200,000 miles for a $20,000 economy car getting 30mpg, that's $7,700 worth of car you're burning through a year. Add $1,400 a year in maintenance (low, I'd say for that many miles), $600 a year for insurance, and $7,000 in $4/gal gas, and you're up to $16,700 a year (I came up with $14,000 in my comment - I think I used a cheaper car?). In 30 years you'd spend $501,000 doing this.

Now I ask, what kind of upgrade of a house can you get in the city for an extra half million? Assuming you don't need a ritzy area (which you don't if we're comparing the suburbs) that's a big house and a big yard. And you don't need to spend 3.5 hours a day (at an average of 55mph = 910 hours/year = 16% of your waking life = 24% of your non-working waking life) driving a car.

Note that this comparison isn't apples-to-apples. First of all, you'd have to get rid of a car when you live in the city to save on all of those insurance and maintenance benefits (though they'd both shrink immensely if you didn't drive much). But then most of the money was in the gas and wear on the car itself - both of which are all but removed in city life. But the real difference in this comparison is that in the exurb case the money you spend is just gone - sent to oil companies and car manufacturers. In the city case, this money still exists in your house. Yes, perhaps half of it will go into the interest in your loan, but you get the rest back when you sell your house (and likely more, if housing prices go up in 30 years).

Of course a working-class commuter probably can't afford a half-million dollar home in the first place. I think the lesson here is that if you can find a city house that you can live with and afford (even with a larger mortgage than you're comfortable with), it's a strongly better deal than anything you can get out in the country.

This is an extreme example. But it's a real-life example, and likely a common one. Also, the lesson applies for shorter distances as well - the numbers get more mild as you approach the suburbs, then drop off once you don't need a car at all.

Which brings me to the tie-in to Seattle transit infrastructure. With rail or bus access within walking distance, we can extend that carless-commute out a ways from the city center. You still waste life (though less of it), but you don't waste close to as much money.

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.

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 Discovery Institute's Cascadia Prospectus blog has an, um, interesting commentary today talking about how much we need to more road capacity, financed by private corporations who will toll us for the privilege.

Apparently the logic goes like this:
1. Gas prices have gone up. Therefore:
2. Driving has decreased. Therefore:
3. Revenue for building more roads is down. Therefore:
4. ??? Therefore:
5. We need to build more roads.

I haven't quite figured out step 4 of the logic, but the rest looks solid. One might guess that less driving should result in needing fewer new roads, but I'm sure step 4 will clear up that misunderstanding.

I'm having less success with another line of logic in the piece. See if you can figure out what I'm missing:
1. We can't afford new roads. Therefore:
2. We can have private companies build new roads. And:
3. They can toll us to make their money back. And:
4. Although this will cost us more, they'll be able to build roads faster.

Maybe the previous step 4 will clear up not only why we need more roads, but also why we need them faster. Oh, and how paying more for them will make them affordable.

(I've asked for clarification on this step in the comments, but "comments are screened for tone" and sarcasm might not make it through the filter)

I've recently travelled to Croatia, and wanted to share the most wonderful part of my travels with Orphan Road: walkable cities. Not all of the cities and towns I visited were walkable, but a large portion had at least a walkable downtown area. This downtown area, without exception, was car-free.

Without exception, these walkable areas were the most enjoyable areas of a city and most of the locals didn't seem to even own cars. Outside of these walkable areas there was much sprawl and traffic, as we experience here. Inside the walkable area were restaurants, small grocery stores, and shops on main roads and very high density housing on minor roads and above the shops. The furthest you'd ever need to walk on a daily basis is around 10 minutes away. Train and ferry stations generally land in or near this part of town, allowing the residents to travel throughout Europe quickly and easily. I sat in the Dubrovnik town square with a few thousand Croatians cheering together for their soccer team, projected on a screen next to an ancient clock tower.

How did the Croatians tackle the tough decisions to make these cities so enjoyable? They didn't. Every one of these areas were built by the Romans. Dubrovnik, Rovinj, Split, Korcula, Hvar, (etc.) started out as Roman palaces, were built out further as medieval castles, and were inherited by modern times as car-free centers simply because cars won't fit in the narrow streets.

Can we re-invent these cities here? Can you imagine Pike's market without the line of cars through the middle? Dense areas with lively streets an easy walk from transit? Maybe even a small dense car-free area at the Beacon Hill Link station? I think it's worth a try.

In my previous post, I argued that:
1. Seattle needs a city-level mass-transit system - not to replace, but to augment the bus system.
2. King County is the wrong agency to build this.

There were several comments about how the branding a Seattle transit agency would be confusing. I'm not sure I agree (many other cities handle this fine), but I'm ok with not having a new agency as a requirement.

Here's my proposed compromise: We build all of the infrastructure, buy the trains, then ask King County to run it. They may need to pay for a few new drivers, but it would certainly be an easier sell than having them come up with all of the initial capital.

Of course, this is exactly what's happening with the streetcars. But I'd argue that streetcars aren't enough. Unless they're completely traffic-seperated, they're just busses with increased ridership (good, but still slow and inefficient). What we need is a monorail-scale plan. We could still use streetcars (though light rail may be better), but elevate them, put them in tunnels, or just make their path completely seperate from cars.

Different problems generally require different solutions. So why does King County only use busses?

At some level of ridership, busses are less efficient than rail. This can be seen by imagining the extremes - say Auburn with it's own light rail system or New York with only a bus system. The first case is far from affordable and the second far from useful.

Our region has decided that long-distance commuting has passed this point - hence the creation of Sound Transit and thereafter Link. This system won't replace busses - just compliment them by providing a traffic-free trunk that will lead to density.

But what about short-distance travel? We can again imagine Manhattan with only busses - the streets would be packed with the things to the point of not being useful. Such a city would quickly break down and lose its density. There must come a point where busses need to be complimented by faster, higher capacity transit.

Back to King County Transit. They do busses - and that's it. That's ok. As I've stated, busses are useful. Just because New York has a subway system doesn't mean they don't need their busses. But I'd argue busses aren't enough.

I think we're well past the point of bus transit limiting our city's density. Watch the crowds at 3rd and Pine at 5pm for some evidence of this. We need a rapid way to get between neighborhoods.

Maybe the solution is to convince King County Metro to try something new and fix Seattle. But it seems out of their scope of interest or charter - after all they get their funding from the whole county, and why would a Kentian want to spend a large sum of money getting Seattlites from Fremont to Capital Hill?

I think the reason we don't have an in-city rapid transit system is because we don't have an in-city transit agency - something that can act on our behalf and let us tax ourselves for our own benefit. I know the Monorail fiasco is still a fresh open wound, and our city failed in its attempt. But just because we've failed to build an in-city rapid transit system (or an effective transit agency) doesn't mean we don't want or need one.

I will ignore all of the other wonderful benefits of traffic-separated transit for this post, and just talk about dollars (using very rough, estimated numbers).

Let's take my morning commute: the #2, #2X, or #13, depending on which one comes first. There seems to be a total of around 12 busses serving these lines*. The end result is having a bus come 16x an hour during peak times. It takes each of these ~20 minutes to get the 2 miles downtown thanks to traffic. The full route is around 45 minutes.

How many busses (or, more realistically, trains) would it take to run this route at an average of 15 mile per hour, which would only be possible with traffic-separated transit? Well, that's more than double the speed, so that would be half the number of trains. So 6.

You'd still get the same frequency of service, but you'd now have 6 less busses and drivers, less maintenance, fewer busses to clean, etc.

Assuming a driver costs on the order of $100k a year**, this is $600,000 saved each year on this one route without even looking at maintenance of the vehicles.

What will it cost us to convert our system for such savings? The deluxe (grade-seperated, think: monorail, or elevated/tunneled light rail) route may be quite expensive, but at a savings of more than $600k per route may pay back quickly. The cheap route (paint on the road reserving a lane for busses, along with signal priority) may create traffic for drivers, but will surely pay back the day you paint the road.

An added cost benefit is that as soon as travel times are cut in half, ridership will immediately go up. Assuming we go for streetcars or light rail instead of busses (and can therefore fit in more riders per vehicle), then we get added farebox income without any additional cost.

*Correct me if I'm wrong - it's my best guess based on time tables.
**I'm sure the average driver makes much less than this, but factoring in benefits, managing this employee, etc. this may even be low.

update:
[Frank]'s comment made me realize I hadn't stated the point of this post strongly enough: One bus moving at 15mph can carry twice the number of (much happier) people the same bus can carry at 6mph. It simply drives the loop twice. Basically, we're paying a whole lot of bus drivers a whole lot of money to sit in traffic with a lot of unnecessary busses.

The concept of having busses travel to recreational locations has been covered elsewhere, so I'll be brief.

I heard about Marymoor's concert in the park series, and found the King County web site. It's a very green-oriented site, encouraging all kinds of carbon-footprint reduction and recycling. There are even compostable beer cups.

But I noticed despite asking us to bike there or drive a hybrid (they'll still charge you $5 for parking, but you can park closer), they didn't encourage me to take the bus or provide any bus information.

I guess that's because the bus doesn't go there. Sure, it'll leave there in the morning on weekdays and return there in the evening. So if you live in the park and work downtown you're ok. But if you live in Seattle and want to visit and not stay the night you're apparently out of luck.