Orphan Road

Boston_to_Chicago_5436 by sbamueller

Eric McCaughrin from the East Bay Bicycle Coalition puts together a list of ways that antiquated Federal Railroad Administration rules stack the deck against passenger rail in the US.  US trains need to be almost absurdly heavy to withstand potential freight crashes.  This results in slower, more expensive, harder-to-maintain rolling stock.  Trains must also blow their horns loudly at every intersection, raising the ire of nearby residents.

Easing these rules would seem to be something that the FRA could do without congressional approval.  I know that some rules, like the horn rule, were actually legislated by Congress, but is there room for interpretation on this or other rules?

I assume the reason that these rules haven’t been changed is that the freight companies and their allies in congress are petrified of the potential lawsuits from collisions.  Anyone have any more insights?

Pioneer Square by pasa47

Mark Hinshaw has an interesting piece in Crosscut with the counterintuitive title, “Seattle is killing retail by requiring too much of it.”  I encourage you to read the whole thing.  I find myself nodding in agreement with his diagnosis of the problem: Seattle over-incentivizes street-level retail, and the result is too many storefronts and not enough residents to support them.  I also buy his solution: focus retail on a few commercial thoroughfares, and allow the side streets to remain residential.  He cites New York as an example:

 For decades Manhattan has had a system in which the north-south Avenues serve as the streets of commerce. Larger, taller buildings tend to flank those thoroughfares. By contrast the east-west side streets are more residential with considerably less commercial activity. There may be businesses on the ground floor (or a half-basement). Exceptions to this rule are major crosstown streets such as 8^th and 14^th in the Village or 42nd and 57^th further uptown.

You can actually feel the difference between the major streets and the side streets in a visceral sense. The side streets are quieter. Walk off the big avenue 50 feet and the noise level drops significantly. But even other difference are evident. People walk more slowly. People linger in knots. Kids play on stoops. Street trees abound. Apparently even in New York with its off-the-charts density, people appreciate the virtues of small town living and respite spaces.

One problem with using Manhattan is that the grid is exactly the opposite of, say Belltown’s: New York’s wide, major avenues form the short sides of the grid’s rectangles, whereas in Seattle they form the long sides.  What this means in practice is that there isn’t really much room for a residential row on, say, Lenora St., because it’s so short between Avenues.  Go 50 feet off of 3rd avenue, and you’re… halfway to 4th Avenue.

Secondly, as some in the comments section have noted, Seattle does have several “high streets,” such as NE 45th, California Ave SW, 15th Ave E, Greenwood and Phinney Aves, etc.  The problem with many of these high streets is that they are often (a) limited to single- or double-story buildings and (b) located in neighborhoods that turn immediately into single-family detached housing as soon as you step off the high street.  This limits the potential pedestrian-commercial impact. Exceptions include Broadway in Capitol Hill, University Ave, NW Market St. in Ballard, among others.

I’m not really sure why Hinshaw makes reforms to Pioneer Square the centerpiece of his argument, though.  Clearly he has a soft spot for the neighborhood, but it seems to me that Pioneer Square isn’t really a candidate for the “high street” treatment.  Instead, I’d argue for more density and up-zonings, with the goal of creating a critical mass of residents who can have a seat at the table alongside the sports teams, the night clubs, and the preservationists.

Two Views of M Street: the people entrance and the parking entrance

I appreciate Roger Valdez’s straight-up acknowledgement that yes, there is “social engineering” going on in American cities:

Yes, we are social engineers, but no more so thanRobert Moses and his followers, who built “free” highways and subsidized, auto-dependent single-family communities that ate up land, fuel, and energy for more than half a century. That kind of social engineering has run out of (cheap) gas. The answer is to engineer more wisely, not to return to the Wild West or mimick South American shanty towns.

Shortly after I read this article I found myself walking home past the recently-closed M Street grocery on First Hill.  Though M Street was popular with the locals, it couldn’t make ends meet after the building’s owners doubled the rent on them.  While doubling the rent seems extreme, keep in mind that the property’s new owners, the Ohio Teachers’ Retirement System, bought the development for $75M back in 2006.  Gotta recoup that investment somehow.

The reason I bring up the M Street grocery is that urban living (and suburban living) is all about choices.  The choices we make necessitate other choices.  Developers on First Hill are required to provide parking (this requirement was mercifully reduced to 0.5 spaces/unit, but only after the M Street building was completed), which increases the costs of development, and thus the amount of rent that needs to be collected on the building’s tenants. Furthermore, requiring parking makes it easier for M Street’s residents to own a car, which makes it more likely that they — and their neighbors — will be able to patronize grocery stores further afield.  Especially if those grocery stores, are, say, the nearby QFC or Whole Foods, both of whom offer free customer parking.

Thus, only certain kinds of businesses can afford to stay open in neighborhoods like First Hill — and apparently grocery stores are not one of them.  Which is a problem, but it’s a problem that results directly from car-centric “social engineering.”  We may wish to take a “ducks unlimited” approach to urban planning: “sure, give them parking spots, we’ll offer them such awesome retail that they’ll choose not to use them!”  In reality, however, choices and constraints prevail.  By choosing to have parking minimums, we’re directly limiting the type of retail that can exist at the ground level.  Fortunately, we’re making the right choices in First Hill.  What about your neighborhood?