How might rail shape Charlottesville?

When Amtrak introduced new rail service between Washington DC and Lynchburg last fall, they hoped to meet an annual ridership projection of 51,000. Virginia DRPT was ready to start investing in intercity passenger rail, and this was the initial pilot project. Supporters were hopeful, but the less than ideal schedule for the daily train made some nervous. 

Now, actual ridership has blown these projections out of the water. Halfway through the year, the service had already exceeded both revenue and ridership goals for the whole year. As more people become aware of the new transportation option, monthly ridership growth is set to accelerate. March was the best month yet.


This exciting news prompts me to speculate about where this trend may be leading. So I'd like to engage in a little futurism here, some hypothetical storytelling. If I turn out to be right, I can point to this timestamped post and claim prophetic powers, and if I'm wrong this all will just float off into blogging oblivion where it belongs. So here goes ...

After the three-year pilot project is complete, DRPT decides to implement another daily trip leaving Charlottesville around 8:30 in the morning, as the Piedmont Rail Coalition is now recommending. Fares can be lowered on both services, because the high ridership levels easily offset the fixed fuel and labor costs of operation. With the help of expanded federal funding in the next Transportation Reauthorization bill, rail alignments are updated throughout the corridor, allowing for increased speed and reliability. All of these improvements together kick off a virtuous cycle of substantial growth in ridership and more options.

Charlottesville is able to tap into new economic possibilities just pushed over the tipping point. AMTRAK installs Wi-Fi on all services, allowing workers to be productive during the trip back and forth. Firms from DC decide to open a smaller office in downtown Charlottesville, where they can tap into the labor market and establish a connection with the University. Some consulting firms base themselves out of Charlottesville completely.  Many employees work remotely from Charlottesville, traveling to the main offices in DC a couple times a week, and businesses like OpenSpace thrive by catering to them. Tourism grows, as urban residents in DC realize they can get away to Charlottesville for a weekend without needing a car. The Landmark hotel gets built. At the same time, stronger connections are made between the downtowns of Charlottesville and Lynchburg.

A major debate arises over what to do with the existing train station. One side says the old station on West Main is no longer large enough to meet demand for parking, and a new station needs to be built in Albemarle County north of town. This would serve as a park-and-ride for automobile commuters throughout the region. The other side insists on expanding the facilities in place. They advocate building a parking garage and greatly bolstering local transit options to grant more access to the station without a car. This goes on for many years, and in the meantime the market responds by spurring a large amount of building activity right around the station. City planners carefully zone the area to encourage attractive transit-oriented development. Before long, many people start walking to the station anyway, and AMTRAK decides to keep it in the center of town.

The Charlottesville metro area, which had started as a rail town and then became a highway town, is gradually transformed into a rail-highway hybrid town. New tracks a laid between Richmond and Staunton, allowing additional east-west connections. Motorcars are still used to access much of the existing uses outside of urban areas and concentrated corridors, but a robust regional network of transit is also built that spreads out from the core train station. Walkable hubs are grown around stations throughout the US-29 corridor up to Hollymead/Airport and Ruckersville, and westward to Crozet. All of the new compact development relieves pressure on growth in the rural areas, thus the primary political challenge shifts from stopping sprawl to maintaining adequate affordable housing in the growth areas.

Pedestrian Survival Techniques

For the last few months, I've left my bike at home and made my way throughout town mostly on my own two feet. During this time, I've observed a clever strategy, used by countless walkers, for crossing two or three-lane streets. It's especially common among the regulars - the truckers of the pedestrian world - who have optimized their safety and efficiency by repeating the same trip over and over again. It's quite possibly the perfectly rational cross.

The way it works is simple: As you're walking toward your destination, you remain constantly aware of the vehicular traffic coming from either direction. Once a clear break appears, you cross at that moment. There's no wait time, because you continue walking while you watch for the opening. It's highly safe, or at least you have maximum control over your own safety. Before "jaywalking" was stigmatized and banned through a campaign by automobile lobbyists, this was a perfectly acceptable way to approach a typical dilemma.

Walkers are now supposed to wait until they reach the intersection before crossing, but for obvious reasons they do not want to do this.

1. Vehicles could be approaching from a number of directions and its impossible to simultaneously monitor all of these possibilities.
   
2. Turning lanes increase the total distance that must be crossed.
3. Stoplights encourage a certain number of drivers to speed to try and beat the red light. The severity of a hit would be much higher.

The only three times I felt my safety compromised over this period was while legally crossing. On one occasion, watching the walk signal I almost stepped out in front of a truck careening through the red light. On two other occasions, right-turning cars were not paying attention to the crosswalk and had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting me. None of these were near-death experiences, but they underscore the tension pedestrians feel between trusting in official protection and using their own safety intuition.

When walkers must cross at intersections, pedestrian buttons can make things more problematic. In Charlottesville and many other towns, a walk signal will not be displayed unless the button is pressed. This means that if you push the button one second after your cycle begins, you will need to wait for another entire cycle before your signal is given. Research shows that only half of pedestrians press buttons at all, and most folks who do press will not wait unnecessarily. They attempt to cross anyway, only deprived of information about how much time remains in the cycle. Unless the button is "hot" and adjusts signal timing or activates lighting, there's no reason to have it at all.

Pedestrians should be empowered by engineering solutions to follow their own safety intuitions. They have a huge incentive to protect their life, and the truly reckless (or inebriated) will ignore signals or legalities anyway. FHWA sponsored major studies of various pedestrian safety devices in high-crash intersections and last year released a treasure trove of information about what techniques proved effective. In many cases, focusing on modifying driving yield behavior and speeds was more effective than attempting to herd pedestrians.

Engineering is incredibly important, but the best engineers will tell you that they offer sets of trade-offs not absolute solutions. The relative values between pedestrians' right to life, motorists' right to convenience, and costs of implementation cannot be calculated but must be provided subjectively by the ones who make the final decision. Hopefully in a democracy, that's you and me.

Public space doesn't matter until it matters

From the Greek Agora to the New England town hall, the public square has always been the place where urban society hashes out its politics and culture. Over the last several decades, the physical public spaces have gradually been chipped away and privatized. The quintessential Main Street has largely been replaced by the indoor mall, and then the lifestyle center. Panera bread and Starbucks have become the primary gathering places of community. The streets are no longer the place to hear and be heard.

There's nothing wrong with Starbucks or commercial establishments in general, but what happens to the activities that get in the way of commerce - the political expression, art and music, religious proclamation, soapbox speeches, private solicitations - all of the messy diversity inherent to democracy? As public as our new third places may feel, they still maintain the legal right to exclusion.

Two unrelated controversies from the Charlottesville area highlight the abiding need for enough truly public spaces in our communities.

The first case is a clash between the ideals of free speech and private property. The congressional representative for Virginia's 5th district, democrat Tom Perriello, has an office near the downtown of Charlottesville. On several occasions, large groups of protesters (yes, tea party) have stood outside his office to make themselves heard. However, since the parking lot is technically private property, and nearby businesses have been impacted by the crowds, the protesters are being required by the landowner to stand 100 feet from the office on the public sidewalk. They have been threatened with a trespassing violation.

The Rutherford Institute, a national civil liberties advocacy group, has publicly asked Perriello to move to a place where he can be petitioned more easily. Founder John W. Whitehead wrote in a letter:

"Unfortunately, it is your choice of office location that has hindered the ability of citizens to effectively communicate concerning issues of the utmost importance to you, Congress and the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia."

Local conservative talk show host Rob Schilling asks for the same thing:

"will the Congressman relocate his office to a “public” site so as not to abridge his constituents’ access to him and his staff?"

But where might this "public" place be?

The second story is less thorny legally, but still important. As we all know, the Salvation Army has a tradition of soliciting for the poor during the holiday season outside of shopping centers. What we tend to forget is that this all happens under the good graces of the property owners of the shopping centers. A few stores in the Charlottesville area have begun to bar the bell-ringers from their property, under the grounds that it disturbs their customers. The space along the walkways that has appeared public all along suddenly becomes obviously not. The local Salvation Army has claimed to take a $22,000 hit as a result.

Charlottesville actually fares better than most places in it's vital public spaces. The car-free downtown mall hosts every variety of speech or musical talent year round and even reserves a special wall to encourage political expression. And, health care debates aside, this era in our country does not happen to be one of extraordinary political tumult. If some people in contemporary Charlottesville are even struggling to be heard, what does it mean for those towns and cities that have long since sold off and moved away from their only public squares.

A piece of Lawrence Halprin's legacy

The landscape architect Lawrence Halprin died on Sunday, leaving behind some of the best-loved public places in America. This news has prompted me to think about the Charlottesville Downtown Mall, a public space that Halprin designed in 1976.

I feel like I live in a luxurious house, because the downtown mall is my living room. The fact that I share the room with thousands of other people only makes it a better place to live. This picture was taken this morning on my walk to work, when the place is relatively quiet. A few patrons sit outside with cups of coffee to read the morning news before work, and a homeless man finds a seat under the trees. Some people seem to just be out on morning walks. Then the mall becomes an entirely different place in the evening, when the hundreds of cafe seats are filled with friends having a drink or a meal. It's the high school hang out and a place for their grandparents to walk around and take in all of the excitement at the same time, not any easy thing to accomplish.

It would be wrong to say that the mall was simply the creation of a master designer. It had to be grown and nurtured by a community, city planners, businesses and developers. It has taken steady reinvestment and the perseverance through a period of stagnation, when it could have been just another failed experiment in urban design. Instead, the design has grown into itself just as the trees have grown and reached out over the buildings. Yet nothing gets started without a vision, and Lawrence Halprin laid the groundwork for a truly remarkable place.

Remembering Urban Renewal

Almost every community has their own stories from the urban renewal of the 1960's and 1970's, when a combination of federal policies and local action lead to clearing whole neighborhoods of urban fabric in order make room for the modern, motorized city. Charlottesville has Vinegar Hill, which still conjures up deep memories of racial divisions. In this case, not only were hundreds of residents displaced and moved into public housing, but the area chosen for demolition happened to be the heart of the black community.

A couple of researchers have put together a website that explores this history: Vinegar Hill, memoryscape. For this project, a timeline of aerial photos is narrated by newspaper clippings, which give an explanation of the step-by-step process and aftermath of the change. We see how much of the land that was expected to be redeveloped actually sat vacant for over a decade, with only a brand new high-volume roadway cutting straight through. Even today, the majority of the land serves as surface parking lots, something the grand schemes of urban renewal often conveniently left out.

One thing that would be a great addition to these maps and pictures would be audio recordings of stories people have told from living in Vinegar Hill and seeing their community being renewed. I know an archived recording was made in the early 1980's, but I don't know if it's still around anywhere.

Adapting between the sacred and secular

I stumbled across two images this evening, one right after the other, that create a fascinating contrast.

First, Inhabitat featured this beautiful Dominican church from Maastrict, the Netherlands, adapted into a bookstore:


Then, I found photos of an old railway car adapted into an Orthodox church in Russia on the web site English Russia. (Apparently, there's a whole tradition of turning railway cars into churches in Russia. Who knew.)


These images provoked some thoughts ...

The question of differentiating sacred and secular space generates little discussion in urbanist circles, which is slightly odd because the consecration of some spaces as more sacred than others actually created the first ancient cities. The Priestly class among semi-nomadic people groups fixed themselves in a particular location and built a temple. Pilgrims would visit the temple to pay their dues and seek divine assistance, and it would eventually grow to become the political and economic epicenter of a city.

These pictures tell a different story; not of space intrinsically imbued with divine presence but of the adaptation of different spaces for spiritual or secular purposes according to activities of the community using them. This major shift in the West is actually not the product of modern secularization, but, at least within the Christian church, can be traced right back to Jesus' words in the gospel of John.

"The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth."

This was for Christianity the unmooring of religion from geography - in my opinion, one of the most pivotal statements in Western history, whether you consider yourself a "worshiper" or not.

This is why, as a Christian myself, I'm perfectly content to see wonderful historic church buildings in the center of cities reused as, say, a bookstore or a service center for the homeless. While younger churches are breathing new life into industrial warehouses or burned-out strip malls. From the very first words of Genesis, the Spirit of God wasn't staying in place but was "hovering over the face of the waters." Cities are similarly dynamic.

Parking space / public space

Cities and towns around the world today adapted parking spaces into places for people. The following is a one-minute video montage of Charlottesville's participation in Parking Day 2009.

Great Place for a Bike Box

Probably the most important bottleneck in Charlottesville for cyclists is the intersection between McIntire Rd. and West Main St. This point is the gateway to downtown from the west and a critical transportation link between the University of Virginia and the downtown mall. 45% of cycling accidents happen at intersections, and high-volume signalized intersections are the most dangerous. It seems reasonable that a spot like this should be the primary focus of any safety improvement effort in the city.

McIntire/Main adds an extra level of unpredictability, because it is a five-way intersection. Consider the case of a cyclist traveling east on Main into the intersection (a very common occurrence) and stopping at a red alongside motor vehicles. As soon as the light turns green, automobiles may go straight or veer right onto South St. There is no way for the cyclist to gauge this in advance, and it's difficult for motorists to communicate their intentions. The X marks a potential contact point between a turning vehicle and a cyclist going straight.

Bike boxes, technically called an Advanced Stop Line, would set back the line for motor vehicles by a certain distance (recommended 5 meters) and allow cyclists to get a head start on green. Once the cyclist is in full view of motorists, especially larger trucks that have a blind spot for close-up objects beneath them, the chances of a collision are minimized.

The bike box pictured here is from Portland, Oregon.

Stormwater Management should work with, not against, Smart Growth

Raining downtown, and that's just fine. flickr:bobtravis

Virginia is in the process of updating statewide Stormwater Regulations. A draft has been written, and it's open for public comment until August 21, 2009. Some people are concerned that the stricter caps on nutrient loads, as they are currently written, will promote low-density development and ultimately hurt the water quality and quantity of runoff in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

I believe there is merit to this case ...

Here’s a simple and, I think, realistic hypothetical scenario. Developer A wants to develop 100 dwelling units on 1000 acres of land, and developer B wants to develop 100 dwelling units on 10 acres of land. Developer A will only need to cover 10% of her large site with impervious surface, while developer B will need to cover 70% of her small site with impervious surface. Developer A assumes that 100% of residents will use an automobile for transportation, while Developer B assumes 50% will primarily walk or use transit. Therefore, Developer A’s project will require twice as many parking spaces and approximately twice as much road width in the region, but most of this will be accommodated for off-site.

Under the stormwater regulations being proposed, Developer A will likely score an A+ with a pass to move forward, while developer B will fail. This is because the standards are determined, site-by-site, on a per acre basis and not a per unit basis. Developer B may have the option of purchasing off-site water quality improvements or implementing a set of BMPs to offset the damage she is incurring, but she takes a hard look at her balance sheet and decides to join developer A as a business partner. What benefited the individual acres of the sites in question clearly was an overall loss for the watershed as a whole.

And considering opportunity costs makes the situation even dicier. What if these developers bypass infill redevelopment of an industrial site for a more compliant and cheaper greenfield development? (Stormwater controls will generally be more expensive for redevelopment than new development). Now you have impervious surfaces in two places, instead of one. Super.

The economic market analysis, conducted for the Department of Conservation and Recreation by a Virginia Tech professor, bears this out in more detail.

"Based on this site-by-site method, low density developments would produce less estimated phosphorus runoff than medium or high density areas. Very low density developments (1 dwelling unit per 3 to 5 acres) would unlikely face any water quality control requirements. Yet, on a watershed basis, low-density ("sprawl") development increases dependence on auto transport (thus increasing emissions and roadway impervious surfaces). Highly impervious areas accompanied by dense population settlement can produce net water quality improvements, independent of whether stormwater controls are implemented ... Higher phosphorous control costs in high density developments create financial disincentives that may work at cross purposes with larger watershed objectives." [my italics]

Now I'm no hydrologist. Not at all. Most of the science and bureaucratic mechanisms behind this policy are pretty bewildering to me, and I don't really have the time to try to figure them out. Furthermore, I thought it might be safe to assume that as glaring a potential problem as this is, somebody in the state offices must be working to sort it out. Then I read this comment from a member of the Technical Advisory Committee that helped craft the policy, and I changed my mind.

“Stormwater management seeks to replicate the water quality and quantity benefits that are provided by a natural, undeveloped landscape. Development that contains more natural landscape (e.g. rural dev.) will consequently find it less costly to comply. This is not a fault of the stormwater management regulation; it is a natural consequence of the hydrologic cycle.”

In other words: That's life. Deal with it. He went on,

"Stormwater codes should be judged on how well they manage runoff quantity and quality, not how well they do or don't control growth ... Smart growth codes should be judged by how well they control sprawl."

This is where the trouble lies.

Sometimes genuinely smart and well-intentioned people err by focusing intently on the piece of the puzzle they have been commissioned to solve, thereby missing the larger system within which their problem is embedded. It's the classic widen-the-freeway-to-reduce-congestion scenario. It may solve the technical problem at hand, but it exacerbates the Real Problem.

The fact is that Stormwater Management and Smart Growth have everything to do with each other. Treating them separately and pitting one against the other is a losing game for both water quality and growth of development.

This was demonstrated pretty convincingly by a 2006 EPA report. Here are the three scenarios proposed by the study:

From Protecting Water Resources with Higher-Density Development

They put this model to empirical tests and mined numerous other studies to back up their conclusions. Once again, the crux of difference,

"The results indicate when runoff is measured by the acre, limiting density does produce less stormwater runoff when compared to the higher-density scenarios. However, when measured by the house, higher densities produce less stormwater runoff."

They show that this is the lapse in logic that lead so many regulatory agencies to assume that sprawl is good for controlling stormwater runoff,

"Many communities assume that low-density development automatically protects water resources. This study has shown that this assumption is flawed and that pursuit of low-density development can in fact be counterproductive, contributing to high rates of land conversion and stormwater runoff and missing opportunities to preserve valuable land within watersheds."

And I should add that this report focuses exclusively on quantity of water runoff. If you look at the issue of quality and factor in the introduction of pollutants such as motor fuels, de-icing chemicals, vehicular exhaust, lawn fertilizers and pesticides, faulty septic systems, etc. into the water supply the case against promoting low-density development grows and grows.

Let's not strike out on this one.

Crossposted at Greater Greater Washington

When is an urban forest large enough?

Forested Canopy in Shenandoah National Park

In the 2007 Comprehensive Plan, the City of Charlottesville set for itself the ambitious goal of creating a 40% tree canopy. At least it seemed ambitious at the time. After performing an analysis of aerial photos this year, city officials realized that 46% of the area is actually already covered by trees. In response, a new Urban Forest Management Plan has been drafted that calls for yet more trees. City Council has reviewed the plan, and everyone who spoke wholeheartedly endorsed making this a reality.

The plan recommends several methods for increasing the scale of natural forest land within city limits, including protecting forested parkland and/or forested private lawns in perpetuity with conservation easements, increasing the tree planting requirements for all new development, and acquiring more public land to be converted into green space. To clarify, we're talking specifically about the 10 square miles within the limits of the City of Charlottesville.

I should stop here and make it clear that I love trees. I've spent two summers living in a national park, getting out into the mountains and forests as often as the opportunity allowed. Deforestation has been a major global problem for many years now, contributing to the rising levels of GhG in the earth's atmosphere due to loss in carbon sequestration potential. Street trees are a wonderful accoutrement to the urban fabric, enhancing the aesthetic value of streets, soaking up particulate matter, and providing energy-efficient shade. Trees are great.

From 2009 aerial-photo study (Enlarged Picture)

But ... and it's pretty obvious where this is going ... there are important differences between urban areas, rural areas, and wilderness areas. They each have their own ecological and economic function, form, and aesthetic properties. As enticing as it is may be to have the best of both worlds, with wilderness/rural/urban all mixed together across the landscape, this strategy of suburbanization has resulted in a number of unintended consequences throughout the 20th century. What was idealized as a rainbow of land types coexisting often turned out, in reality, to become a beige mush of none of the above. And acres of parking lots as a bonus.

Charlottesville happens to be an urban area, at least that's how it's conceived of by many of its residents. The current map of the urban tree canopy is pretty clearly an inverse of the population density map for the city, with the downtown the least treed and the more low-density residential districts showing more trees. Makes sense. More trees appear to mean less people. More forest would seem to mean less city.

So what's the right amount of trees for an urban area? There is a spectrum of options. Brooklyn, New York, recognized by many for it's tree-lined streets, has a 12% canopy coverage. So does Frederick, Maryland. On the other coast, The City of Vancouver has about 20% coverage throughout its jurisdiction. Portland, Oregon clocks in at 26%, mostly on account of its forested hillside parks west of downtown. As the Charlottesville plan notes, American Forests, a national forest advocacy group, recommends for towns and cities east of the Mississippi a 50% canopy coverage for suburban residential areas, 25% coverage for urban residential, and 15% coverage for the downtown.

This seems to me like a reasonable ideal to set. The more suburban a city would like to become, the closer to 50% tree coverage the better. The more urban a city would like to become, the closer to 15-25% tree coverage the better. But perpetual growth of the tree canopy with no limits would not seem to be a prudent way to plan for a city's future.

Why Cherry Avenue isn't happening

I'd like to indulge in one hyper-local post - it's about my neighborhood of Fifeville - but I think it does touch on some broader urban design themes. In fact, I'd love it if someone out there with more knowledge of good streetscape design weighed in to let me know if I'm on the right track or not. Beyond a quick skim of Allan Jacob's Great Streets, I only have my personal experience to work with here. I have a hunch for why Charlottesville's plan to redevelop the Cherry Avenue corridor, which runs through the heart of Fifeville, after eight years has not had any success.

As part of the 2001 comprehensive plan, The city conducted several corridor studies and made some pretty visionary recommendations. Cherry Avenue was envisioned to become a mixed-use corridor with ground-floor retail and residential or office space above. The whole streetscape was to be reoriented around pedestrian access and attractiveness. The buildings were to be pushed up to the sidewalk, and parking would be put behind. These have all become best practices in urban design, but in 2001 this was fairly innovative. Two years later, a rezoning was passed that put some regulatory force behind the plan.

But then nothing happened on Cherry. No developers bought in. By 2006, a Fifeville neighborhood plan declared, "Cherry Ave commercial district should be the center, but is now woefully underutilized." A year later, the 2007 Comprehensive plan also acknowledged that the mixed-use corridor just wasn't happening. Today, although there are now some developments planned on the edges of the corridor, the main drag of Cherry still has vacant lots, underused parking lots, and abandoned stores scattered throughout.

Sure, there are always many factors involved, but I think the street itself may be what is holding things up. The section of Cherry Avenue within the corridor is a three-lane road with no shoulder at all. The speed limit is 35 mph, which is higher than the other corridors in town (with the exception of Preston). I don't think it's realistic to expect a mixed-use corridor to sprout up around this kind of street.

Here it is on Streetview:


View Larger Map

What if the street were repainted to turn it back into a two-lane street with on-street parking?

The parking would automatically create a traffic calming effect, making the street more hospitable to pedestrians. Businesses would not have to meet all of their parking needs with expensive off-street spaces, and parking would most likely be more convenient for customers. The City Parks and Recreation department thinks the popular Tonsler Park lacks enough parking. This would solve that problem as well without having to pave over more greenspace or remove a basketball court.

I know the center lane is supposed to enhance traffic flow by allowing easy turns onto the side streets, but from what I've seen it's not used much at all. With the exception of the major intersection between Cherry and Ridge, all of the turns are for small side streets or parking lots. For most of the stretch, this is really a wasted lane. The extra space of pavement only encourages drivers to speed.

So what about this? Easy low-cost solution or a meaningless tweak to a hopeless corridor plan?

Urban Places, Rural Spaces

Photo credit: Robert Llewellyn

I stopped by the Urban places, Rural Spaces exhibit at the Charlottesville Community Design Center on the Downtown Mall. Very nice.

The exhibit demonstrates how creating vibrant urban areas and protecting beautiful and productive rural areas are hardly mutually exclusive goals. This is a great message that, for all its simplicity, I think is not understood very well.

I noticed that Albemarle County planners are leading a discussion as part of the exhibit on the evening of May 14th. Wouldn't it be cool if this was joint led by City and County planners? That would be a tangible representation of the city-county cooperation that is truly necessary to work toward enhancing both of these very different living environments.

A century of growth in Charlottesville-Albemarle

I thought this U.S. Census data of all of the counties in the Thomas Jefferson Planning District tell and interesting story of the last century. I've matched the growth trends up with certain events that may help put the population characteristics into historical context.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, other than noting the obvious nexus in 1970. It looks like the pre-1970 centripetal force switched to a centrifugal force right around this time.

Update: I should have pointed out that the 2007 numbers are estimates the Census Bureau made based on sampling certain metrics. Daily Progress reports today that Charlottesville is gearing up for the 2010 census. Better numbers are on their way ...

Transportation in Virginia is on the the right track

There have been some very good decisions coming out of Richmond lately, and it's worth stopping to give some credit where credit is due.

From: flickr user Roger Carr

First, the Washington Post reported today that Virginia's Commonwealth Transportation Board has just agreed to fund intercity rail for the first time ever. There will be a daily line from Washington to Lynchburg (stopping in Charlottesville!) and another from Washington to Richmond. Getting this legislation passed has been a long saga, and it looked pretty harrowing at one time. Governor Tim Kaine speaks as if this move is part of a larger philosophy,

"We've been in a situation with some conflict between Congress and the future of rail, but I think that has changed," he said. "This administration is a real believer in passenger rail."

Why is rail so good for cities? It's mostly about the stations. A rail passenger can be transported directly into the heart of the city. Once she arrives she can walk to many of the locations that naturally cluster around the transportation hub, or she can connect to an auxiliary transit system and access the rest of the city. Airports, on the other hand, by necessity drop passengers off miles away from the city, requiring a cab or rental car to get anywhere. They repel, even forbid, development from coming too close.

Secondly, the Washington Post also reports that VDOT's new requirements for street connectivity have passed, and I know that state agents have started meeting with local officials to give some implementation guidance. The state will no longer allow public money to be used for semi-private roads, such as cul-de-sacs and otherwise disconnected suburban subdivisions. I've written on this more thoroughly here, and with more bluster here. This is a subtle, but powerful change.

The Congress for New Urbanism has been working hard to pass something like this at the federal level. This really great graphic from the CNU site explains it well:

From: CNU

Streetsblog recently spoke with John Norquist, the long-time mayor of Milwaukee who went on to become president of CNU. Norquist sees of the need for a metric for road connectivity to ensure that any codes would be understandable and enforceable.

"The metrics would be intersection density, block size -- you would reward intersection density. And the feds can do that, they can say that states could draw federal money and add to the density of a street network, creating more mobility that way. And the metric we use is 150 intersections per square mile."

From Commonwealth Transportation Board

VDOT has decided to use the term link-to-node ratio which is pretty elegant. A node is an intersection or a dead end, and a link is any segment of roadway between nodes. The lower the ratio of links to nodes (1 is a prefect grid), the more connected the street is. The state has set up a three-tiered system of separate requirements for rural, suburban, and urban roads.

Of course, these are for new roads only, but it will be interesting to see how these rules change the shape of our landscape. Maybe Virginia could be a model for the rest of the country.

Scottsville holding strong

When Albemarle county released their property value assessments for 2009, few people were surprised to see drops in value across the boards. All six districts are down, but the one exception to the losses is the incorporated Town of Scottsville, which is up by 1.7%. This little factoid particularly piqued my interest, because the area just outside the town limits saw the steepest drops in the whole county. What's going on here?

As far as transportation access goes, Scottsville is about as isolated as any section of Albemarle, and I don't imagine that the town itself is a huge engine for job growth. They are certainly still within the economic orbit of Charlottesville. The only factor I can think of that distinguishes it from other parts of the county is the fact that Scottsville truly is a small town with some walkable options to retail, churches, small parks, library, schools, and so on. It looks a little like what New Urbanist architects aspire to, except that it was built in 1744.

I decided to visit Scottsville to see for myself the small town that is weathering the storm hitting the rest of the county.

A Renovation project is underway on this house on the north end of Valley Street, the main road through town. Scaffolds don other buildings around town, proving that construction work is still happening. Scottsville is on the National Register of Historic Places, and preservation seems to be a high priority for citizens here.

The railroad station is closed to passenger travel entirely. In 1915 the Scottsville station used to service four trains per day to Richmond. The last train left the station in 1956, the year Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act. While walking around town, I imagined how life in Scottsville would be different if passenger rail were to be reinstated.

Bruce park, established in 2003, is a nice pocket park right behind Valley Street. The town has another larger park with a play area, a levee walk with views of the James River, and another public theater area - all within an easy walk around town.

The historic downtown contains several viable and useful businesses, but there is a good amount of potential vacant storefronts available. Some of the upstairs residential units are being rehabbed as lofts and rented out.

I love this. A little community pride goes a long way. (Click on picture for a close-up)

Lynchburg-D.C. train in jeopardy

Virginia residents from Lynchburg to the D.C. area were given the exciting news last November that a new rail line was being proposed between these two cities. We were told it could be up and running as early as next Fall. The Piedmont Rail Coalition had worked tirelessly to gather support for this proposal from 21 separate jurisdictions throughout the area. It looked as if thousands of citizens would have one more transportation option, and that the US 29 corridor would finally see some needed relief.

But things are now tenuous ...

Senator William Wampler has introduced to the Senate Finance Committee an all-or-nothing budget for the proposed new lines,

"It is the intent of the General Assembly that no Commonwealth Transportation Funds shall be allocated for funding the construction of any segment of the TransDominion Express, or like project, until such time as funding for all sections of the corridor from Bristol to Washington D.C/Richmond is included within the Statewide Rail Plan."

Meredith Richards, of the Piedmont Rail Coalition, parses this legislation in no uncertain terms,

"If this amendment passes it WILL kill our new service and jeopardize new passenger rail service across the state."

Lynchburg is up in arms about this. "Pernicious," says the Chair of their Chamber of Commerce. I imagine that many citizens concerned with either regional economic development or, on a broader scale, environmental sustainability are feeling much the same way. An investment of $17 million a year will cover BOTH this line and another to Richmond. This is small change in the world of transportation funding.

Cities are safest

Sometimes when I tell friends that I live in a particular neighborhood in the city, I get questions about whether I feel safe living there. These concerns are from well-meaning people who have generated a conception of the "inner city" (even inner-city Charlottesville!) from some combination of movies, rap videos, and occasional news items. I assure them that my neighborhood is friendly, and that having so many people walking around and sitting on front porches in the summer makes it quite safe. Almost all of the violence that does occur is internal to gangs or drug networks. It does not generally have an impact on law-abiding citizens.

And sometimes I wish I would continue on ... even the most affluent suburbs and exurbs are more dangerous. Driving is the only means of transportation in these places, and most accidents happen relatively close to home. Although automobile fatalities and injuries receive much less media attention, they certainly substantially outnumber homicide cases. At least, that's my common sense take on it.

Now, thanks to a new University of Virginia study by Bill Lucy, I actually have some State-wide evidence to back up this hunch.

"During the five-year study period, annual traffic deaths ranged from a low of 922 in 2004 to a high of 1,026 in 2007. Traffic injuries were about 50 times the death rate, ranging from 49,138 in 2007 to 52,083 in 2006.

For homicides, the low was 390 in 2004 and the high was 416 in 2003. Cities that often are considered dangerous, like Richmond and Norfolk, ranked 19th and 30th in the number of traffic and homicide-by-stranger deaths among the 49 metropolitan-area jurisdictions included in the ranking.

The 10 safest jurisdictions were eight cities — Manassas Park, Falls Church, Alexandria, Manassas, Charlottesville, Lynchburg, Virginia Beach and Colonial Heights — and two counties, Arlington and Fairfax.

The 10 most dangerous jurisdictions were low-population-density counties: in order, Charles City, Clarke, New Kent, Dinwiddie, Greene, Goochland, Fauquier, Fluvanna, Prince George and Campbell."

Parking my bicycle (or trying to)

I stopped by Bodos Bagels on Preston Street for lunch yesterday and had a hard time finding a place to lock my bike. Almost no commercial establishments in Charlottesville have bike racks, but usually I can find a fence or post to wrap my chain around. In this case, it was a struggle. Poking around the dumpster area, I found a pleasant employee who guided me to this old drive-through sign that I could use as a bike rack. I suppose it worked, but I just hoped a second bicyclist didn't show up.

In line for my (delicious) bagel sandwich, I mentioned to the employee that they ought to consider putting in a bike rack out front. There is a dirt patch protruding from the parking lot that would be perfect. He must have confused my I'm-being-polite smile for an I'm-joking-with-you smile, because his answer was, "that would be hilarious." Not exactly what I was going for.

At home, I probed through the city ordinances to see what it had to say about provisions for bicycle parking. Annotations are mine:

"Sec. 34-881. Bicycle storage facilities.

Adequate bicycle storage facilities may be required for sororities, fraternities, dormitories, boarding houses and similar uses, multi-family dwelling structures with five (5) or more units, and all nonresidential uses utilized by the public, where such facilities are deemed by the director of neighborhood development services or the planning commission to be in the public interest [not commercial, office, industrial]. No such facilities may be required in excess of the following standards [maximums no minimums]:

(1) Sororities, fraternities, dormitories, etc.: One (1) bicycle space per five hundred (500) square feet of bedroom area.
(2) Multifamily dwellings: One (1) bicycle space for every two (2) dwelling units.
(3) Nonresidential uses: One (1) bicycle space for every one thousand (1,000) square feet of public space."

The language is vague, left up to subjectivity, and not very comprehensive. The Planning Commission doesn't even see any by-right developments, except under special circumstances. Off-street automobile parking is given pages and pages of explicit attention with absolute requirements, but this is it for bicycle parking.

I contrasted this with the ordinances from my previous community of Missoula, Montana. Bicycle parking there "shall be provided" for a variety of development types with very specific proportions, definitions, and quantities laid out in the code itself. Come to think of it, I never really had a problem finding somewhere to put my bike in Missoula.

The Victoria Transport Policy Institute provides a sample bicycle parking ordinance, culled from Best Practices around North America. It offers specific minimum requirements for everything from hotels to churches (1 spot for every 50 members), along with several design guidelines to ensure the the parking will actually be useful.

One of the points:

"Bicycle racks and lockers must be well anchored to the ground to avoid vandalism and theft."

That reminds me. Right after lunch, I rode over to the Albemarle County building. They did happen to have a bike rack tucked away to the side, but it was just sitting untethered on a patch of grass. By myself, I could pick the whole thing up with a bike and carry it away if I wanted to. And I'm really not that strong. I decided to stick with my usual strategy of locking my bike to the fence.

Two small places I like

Large developments and landmarks receive all of the attention, but the real character of a city is flavored by the hundreds of small places scattered around. Jane Jacobs had little positive to say about Central Park in her own New York City, but she reveled in the many "pocket parks" tucked away in neighborhoods across the city. In fact, her entire vision for neighborhoods of diverse uses counts on the shops, homes, even industry being small enough to fit together without overwhelming the adjacent properties with what she called a "border vacuum." Similarly, William H. Whyte's classic study, aptly titled Social life of small urban spaces, insisted that public space needs to be small enough to generate the energy of human interaction. Perhaps, in the words of another 70's iconic figure, "small is beautiful."

That's why I'd like to highlight two places in Charlottesville that I feel add significant value to the city, beyond their small size.

McGuffey park sits on a little hill two blocks north of downtown. Weighing in at only about an acre (the size of a largish suburban lawn), the park packs enough in to attract children of various ages and their parents. A walking path welcomes visitors to pace around, and gives a great opportunity for disabled residents to use the park. Benches and seats are supplied generously, welcoming people to simply linger for a while.

The park's location on a small hill creates the perfect balance between seclusion and participation with street life. This can be a difficult challenge for park design. Users want to feel safely removed from traffic, but barriers such as walls and fences create their own safety issues and a sense of claustrophobia. Being a few feet above street level solves this problem and opens up the view to the wonderful Episcopal church building next door.

While McGuffey is a new park, Timberlake Drug store has been in business for almost 120 years. I believe it is one of two places in downtown Charlottesville, where one can still purchase toothpaste (although there are rumors of a new grocery store). What I love about this store is that it has all of the charm and the prime location on the downtown mall to transform itself into a tourist-oriented souvenir shop, yet it remains the sundries store I imagine it has been all along, selling different drugs of course. A cafe in the back of the store is always packed with people year-round. I get the feeling this is one of those places that characterizes a living history of Charlottesville - a place that honors it's past without preserving it in ember.

There is no doubt that both the public face and the social or economic function of these places add to the community as a whole.

Friday's bicycle extravaganza

This Friday, Alliance for Community Choice in Transportation (ACCT) is hosting their 1st annual Bike Extravaganza at Cityspace on the downtown mall between 6 -9 PM. Expect bicycles, expect extravagance, expect lots of fun people.

The Daily Progress wrote up an article this weekend on the planned event. It's nice that they are paying attention to this, but I do have to quibble with this sentiment:

"Like motorcycle riders, bicyclists have their own subculture. They dress oddly. They dodge cars. They like to toss parties and talk of two wheels."

Dress oddly? Recreational cyclists may don the spandex from time to time, but bike commuters usually just wear what they are wearing to work. There may be more brightly colored jackets, but that's less of a fashion statement than a method for not getting run over. The whole subculture label is something that, I think, ACCT is trying to counteract. For everyone from adolescents to grandparents, bike commuting is simply a mode of transportation with a variety of positive benefits. It's not a subculture. At least that's how I see it.

ACCT even produced this great video to promote this Friday's event: