Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

FLICKR set of Charlette, NC transit photos

PA130097, originally uploaded by davereid2.

Thanks to Dave Reid at UrbanMilwaukee.com for the great shots.

The Plan Commission shuffle

Thanks to a tip from Greg Kowalski, I note that the Common Council agenda for tomorrow night includes "Appointments: Kevin Haley - Plan Commission."

Haley was unceremoniously removed from the Plan Commission by Mayor Taylor in the middle of May. Evidently, the mayor has reconsidered. If so, kudos for a smart reversal of what for all intents and purposes looked like a case of commission-rigging.

Other potential good news on the same agenda: Don Dorsan, who had the right idea all along on what the quarry should have provided in terms of a useful bike and walking trail on 51st street, is appointed to the Parks Commission.

Precarious

Precarious, originally uploaded by johnruexp.

I observe daily this death-defying trek to the mailbox by an elderly gentleman on Franklin's pedestrian-averse 51st Street.

This is where the nearby quarry promised to build a useful pedestrian path before they apparently diverted their funding to the scenic (and much-used-by-me) - but none-too-useful - Oak Leaf Trail connector path, which was going to be funded by a federal grant and the local group, JOLT, anyway. 

You know the path I'm talking about: It's the one that requires a parking lot in order to be accessed. I kid you not.

Former Alderman Don Dorsan pushed hard for the quarry to make good on their promise to create a useful, community-building 51st street pedestrian and bike path. This path would have created a safe passage for Franklin High School students and residents interested in traveling sans car to, for instance, Sendik's and whatever else Fountains of Franklin has up their sleeves.

No dice. Short-sighted political manuevering won out. The quarry is off the hook.

So, I personally get a great running and biking path that serves me just fine (though I have to drive my daughter and her bike to it if she wants to use it). Meanwhile, this gentleman hopes to survive another trip to the newspaper tube across the street.

Karma strikes the county exec

Our tragically shortsighted (in service to his personal ambition) county executive attempts to further shine his apple for gullible "tax freeze" fetishists - - but Karma strikes.

Meanwhile - how's that $4+ per gallon gas working for you?

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Express bus idea leaves some behind

By LARRY SANDLER
lsandler@journalsentinel.com

It was a classic political photo opportunity: a shiny new bus for politicians to ride while talking about the merits of express bus service.

But when the bus left the Milwaukee County Courthouse on Tuesday, some city officials weren't on board - literally or figuratively.

In a metaphor for the disagreements that have permeated the public transit debate for nearly 17 years, a communications mix-up left several top city administrators standing outside Milwaukee City Hall, waiting for a bus that never showed up.

North American Bus Industries Inc., an Alabama-based transit bus manufacturer, brought a hybrid diesel-electric bus to demonstrate the kind of vehicle that is at the heart of a debate over how to use $91.5 million in long-idle federal funds.

County Executive Scott Walker wants to use all of that money for express buses, also known as bus rapid transit. Mayor Tom Barrett wants to divide the money between express buses and modern streetcars. The cash is all that's left of $289 million first appropriated in 1991 for a public transit project, but state and local officials never have been able to agree on what that project should be.

After a news conference, Walker - who hasn't yet decided which type of express bus he prefers - rode the diesel-electric bus from the courthouse to Miller Park and back, along with several county, city and Milwaukee County Transit System officials and journalists.

But some city officials had been told that the bus would stop at City Hall. Cecilia Gilbert, spokeswoman for the city Department of Public Works, said she waited in vain with Public Works Commissioner Jeff Mantes and City Engineer Jeff Polenske after receiving an e-mail from a transit system manager.

Walker spokeswoman Fran McLaughlin said the county executive's office had sent invitations to city officials, but only Ald. Jim Bohl said he was coming. Bohl was told of the route change, and the bus picked him up at the Marquette University campus.

Transit system spokeswoman Jacqueline Janz said the trip was arranged on short notice, and the Miller Park route was picked to provide a smooth and easy ride.

But the ride was neither smooth nor easy for the broader transit issues, as Walker and Barrett continued to snipe at each other in separate interviews.

Walker said the streetcar loop, which he derided as a "tourist trolley," would take money away from the financially ailing transit system by competing for limited state and federal aid.

Barrett said county officials had "put the bus system into its current death spiral" by relying on a different pot of federal money to pay for transit operations instead of using it to buy buses.

Separate reports by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission and the Public Policy Forum have warned that after that money is used up, by 2010, the bus system will be forced to cut service by 35%. Those reports say that likely would end all Freeway Flyer routes and nearly all suburban, night and weekend service - unless new state or local funding is found.

State and local officials have yet to agree on a funding plan.

The 60-foot hybrid bus demonstrated Tuesday costs about $900,000, carries 63 passengers and gets 7.5 miles per gallon on the freeway and 4.5 mpg in the city, the manufacturer says.

By comparison, the transit system's current 40-foot diesel buses each cost about $350,000, carry 40 passengers and average 4.4 mpg between city and freeway use, county and transit system officials say.

Stranded in Suburbia - New York Times

A difficult pill to swallow for suburbanites - the culture of "happy motoring" and routine 45-minute daily commutes, one person to a car, is coming to an end. And we're stranded in suburbia without sane mass transit options. Heaven help us when we get too old to drive.

Stranded in Suburbia - New York Times:   
May 19, 2008

By PAUL KRUGMAN
BERLIN

I have seen the future, and it works.

O.K., I know that these days you’re supposed to see the future in China or India, not in the heart of “old Europe.”

But we’re living in a world in which oil prices keep setting records, in which the idea that global oil production will soon peak is rapidly moving from fringe belief to mainstream assumption. And Europeans who have achieved a high standard of living in spite of very high energy prices — gas in Germany costs more than $8 a gallon — have a lot to teach us about how to deal with that world.

If Europe’s example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don’t drive them too much.

Notice that I said that cars should be fuel-efficient — not that people should do without cars altogether. In Germany, as in the United States, the vast majority of families own cars (although German households are less likely than their U.S. counterparts to be multiple-car owners).

But the average German car uses about a quarter less gas per mile than the average American car. By and large, the Germans don’t drive itsy-bitsy toy cars, but they do drive modest-sized passenger vehicles rather than S.U.V.’s and pickup trucks.

In the near future I expect we’ll see Americans moving down the same path. We’ve already done it once: over the course of the 1970s and 1980s, the average mileage of U.S. passenger vehicles rose about 50 percent, as Americans switched to smaller, lighter cars.

This improvement stalled with the rise of S.U.V.’s during the cheap-gas 1990s. But now that gas costs more than ever before, even after adjusting for inflation, we can expect to see mileage rise again.

Admittedly, the next few years will be rough for families who bought big vehicles when gas was cheap, and now find themselves the owners of white elephants with little trade-in value. But raising fuel efficiency is something we can and will do.

Can we also drive less? Yes — but getting there will be a lot harder.

There have been many news stories in recent weeks about Americans who are changing their behavior in response to expensive gasoline — they’re trying to shop locally, they’re canceling vacations that involve a lot of driving, and they’re switching to public transit.

But none of it amounts to much. For example, some major public transit systems are excited about ridership gains of 5 or 10 percent. But fewer than 5 percent of Americans take public transit to work, so this surge of riders takes only a relative handful of drivers off the road.

Any serious reduction in American driving will require more than this — it will mean changing how and where many of us live.

To see what I’m talking about, consider where I am at the moment: in a pleasant, middle-class neighborhood consisting mainly of four- or five-story apartment buildings, with easy access to public transit and plenty of local shopping.

It’s the kind of neighborhood in which people don’t have to drive a lot, but it’s also a kind of neighborhood that barely exists in America, even in big metropolitan areas. Greater Atlanta has roughly the same population as Greater Berlin — but Berlin is a city of trains, buses and bikes, while Atlanta is a city of cars, cars and cars.

And in the face of rising oil prices, which have left many Americans stranded in suburbia — utterly dependent on their cars, yet having a hard time affording gas — it’s starting to look as if Berlin had the better idea.

Changing the geography of American metropolitan areas will be hard. For one thing, houses last a lot longer than cars. Long after today’s S.U.V.’s have become antique collectors’ items, millions of people will still be living in subdivisions built when gas was $1.50 or less a gallon.

Infrastructure is another problem. Public transit, in particular, faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it’s hard to justify transit systems unless there’s sufficient population density, yet it’s hard to persuade people to live in denser neighborhoods unless they come with the advantage of transit access.

And there are, as always in America, the issues of race and class. Despite the gentrification that has taken place in some inner cities, and the plunge in national crime rates to levels not seen in decades, it will be hard to shake the longstanding American association of higher-density living with poverty and personal danger.

Still, if we’re heading for a prolonged era of scarce, expensive oil, Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living like Europeans — maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives.

JS Online: Pedaling proves profitable

Photo/Rick Wood Ken Leinbach (left), executive director of the Urban Ecology Center, joins other riders along the Oak Leaf Trail on his way to work last week. Some local businesses are working to become bike-friendly. Bike to Work week runs from today through Friday.

It's interesting that this Journal Sentinel story focuses on Northwestern Mutual in Franklin. While the intent is wonderful, actually biking to the NMI "campus" from home requires traversing some very, very unfriendly territory that does not resemble the bucolic picture above. More often, you face a tightrope situation like the one below:

Franklin is not quite ready for prime time when it comes to bike-friendly streets and roads.

See also The Bike Lane Dilemma.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Bike to Work Week highlights rewards for eco-friendly, healthy workers

By TOM HELD theld@journalsentinel.com
Posted: May 11, 2008

Bike-to-work inducements aren't all that different from the basics of day-to-day happiness: security, hot showers, clean clothes and a little extra cash.

Those are the very things that Milwaukee-area employers use to encourage their workers to bike, walk or bus to work, long after Bike to Work Week - which starts today - and its free coffee and festivities have ended.

Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. provides an in-house cycling club, a secured bike parking area and two locker rooms for men and women at its downtown and Franklin offices, for its workers who arrive in Spandex and work in suits.

Eppstein Uhen Architects has the locker room facilities and the bike storage area, and last year added a company bike, which its workers in the Third Ward can pedal to nearby meetings and lunches.

It's the environmentally focused nonprofits, though, that put cold, hard cash into the equation. Both the Urban Ecology Center and the Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers pad their employee paychecks by $1, after taxes, for every day they bike, walk, or take a bus to their job.

"That little bit of motivation seemed to be enough," said Ken Leinbach, the executive director of the Urban Ecology Center. "Everybody became engaged, and it became a camaraderie and a friendly competition."

Leinbach figures at least a dozen of the center's 18 full-time employees either bike or bus to work on a daily basis, and he counts himself in that group, whether he's on a bike or in-line skates. He also adds that daily $1 to his paycheck, using the same honor system as the rest of the employees.

The ecology center's eco-bucks concept has spread to other businesses around the country and close to home. Lynn Broaddus, executive director of the Friends of Milwaukee's Rivers, copied the program Leinbach started in 2003.

"People compensate employees in a lot of different ways," Broaddus said. "This is a way for us to show that we appreciate when staff are doing the right thing."

Keeping employees happy

Eco-bucks seems like a natural fit for the green-oriented businesses with relatively small payrolls, but variations can be found on slightly bigger scales. Diablos Rojos Inc., a Milwaukee-based restaurant group with more than 100 workers, offers extra vacation time for cycling managers and in-house credits for food, drinks and clothing for its hourly workers.

"We reward our staff to be environmentally friendly," said Gordon Goggin, director of operations for the company, which owns Trocadero and Café Hollander.

It's not entirely altruistic.

Staff turnover can be one of the biggest expenses in the restaurant business, and Goggin sees some savings in retaining staff and keeping them happy.

It's reasonable to wonder how those eco-credit incentives, or locker room and other infrastructure investments, would transfer from smaller businesses into larger, more institutional manufacturing or financial concerns.

Mark Mone, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor who teaches strategic management, said managers will look for a return on investment and find it through reduced health care costs, better productivity and attendance.

Encouraging cycling should be part of an overall wellness effort that maximizes a company's investment in its workers, its most important resource, Mone said.

Sustainability trend

Rich Tennessen, the executive vice president of Eppstein Uhen Architects, has noticed that more businesses are incorporating bicycle storage areas and employee locker rooms into their building or expansion plans. It's part of the trend toward sustainability, in building design and corporate mission, he said.

Eppstein Uhen, with 135 employees split between offices in Milwaukee and Madison, also has used incentives to encourage workers to take part in Bike to Work Week activities.

Last year, the firm put $1 into a fund for every mile its workers biked or walked during the annual May event. That money was used to buy the company bike, now available for employee use.

Even with the trends that Tennessen and Mone have identified, cycling remains a minuscule part of Milwaukee's overall commuter mass. The 2000 census found that cycling accounted for roughly one-third of 1% of all trips to work in Milwaukee, just below the national average of 0.4%, according to the League of American Cyclists.

Those numbers are likely to be bolstered by the rapid rise in gas prices, which have pushed motoring commuters to look for alternatives, according to news accounts across the country.

Saving money on gas appears to be its own eco-bucks incentive, leaving the parking and the showers up to the employers.

Buy a link here

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Civic pride: Franklin provides example of terrible street design for national organization

The folks at Smart Growth America didn't have to look far when searching for an example of terrible, hostile-to-pedestrian street design to illustrate their article on Complete Streets bills now before the House and Senate - - they grabbed my photo of the gauntlet-like entrance to Franklin's Pleasant View Elementary School (see screen shot above).

Congratulations, Franklin - - national recognition!

UPDATE: The Smart Growth America people were nice enough to update the photo caption on their site; now the whole world is aware that it's indeed Franklin, Wisconsin that makes its most vulnerable citizens walk a ditch and brush against traffic on the way to their daily destination.

See also:
Complete the Streets: The upcoming Drexel-Shoppes test, and
Complete the Streets pt 2: Saner streets for Franklin?

Here it comes: $10-per-gallon gas

... And, thanks to obstinate leaders at the state (Scott Walker) and national level (the Bush petro-gang), we will be far from ready to deal with the consequences.

Who needs sane mass transit when we can all drive?

From The New York Sun:

Gasoline May Soon Cost a Sawbuck -
Big New Shock at the Pump Forecast by Two Analysts

BY DAN DORFMAN - Special to the Sun
April 28, 2008

Get ready for another economic shock of major proportions — a virtual doubling of prices at the gas pump to as much as $10 a gallon.

That's the message from a couple of analytical energy industry trackers, both of whom, based on the surging oil prices, see considerably more pain at the pump than most drivers realize.

Gasoline nationally is in an accelerated upswing, having jumped to $3.58 a gallon from $3.50 in just the past week. In some parts of the country, including New York City and the West Coast, gas is already sporting a price tag above $4 a gallon. There was a pray-in at a Chevron station in San Francisco on Friday led by a minister asking God for cheaper gas, and an Arco gas station in San Mateo, Calif., has already raised its price to a sky-high $4.62.

In Manhattan, at a Mobil gas station at York Avenue and East 61st Street, premium gas is now $4.03 a gallon. Two days ago, it was $3.96. Why such a high price? "Blame the people at STOPEC (he meant OPEC) and the oil companies," an attendant there told me.

These increases are taking place before the all-important summer driving season, signaling even higher prices ahead.

That's also the outlook of the Automobile Association of America. "As long as the price of crude oil stays above $100 a barrel, drivers will be forced to pay more and more at the gas pump," a AAA spokesman, Troy Green, said.

Oil recently hit an all-time high of nearly $120 a barrel, more than double its early 2007 price of about $50 a barrel. It closed Friday at $118.52.

The forecasts calling for a jump to between $7 and $10 a gallon are based on the view that the price of crude is on its way to $200 in two to three years.

Translating this price into dollars and cents at the gas pump, one of our forecasters, the chairman of Houston-based Dune Energy, Alan Gaines, sees gas rising to $7-$8 a gallon. The other, a commodities tracker at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Fla., Sean Brodrick, projects a range of $8 to $10 a gallon.

While $7-$10 a gallon would be ground-breaking in America, these prices would not be trendsetting internationally. For example, European drivers are already shelling out $9 a gallon (which includes a $2-a-gallon tax).

Canadians are also being hit with rising gas prices. They are paying the American-dollar equivalent of $4.92 a gallon, and they're being told to brace themselves for prices above $5.65 a gallon this summer.

Early last year, with a barrel of oil trading in the low $50s and gasoline nationally selling in a range of $2.30 to $2.50 a gallon, Mr. Gaines — in an impressive display of crystal ball gazing — accurately predicted oil was $100-bound and that gasoline would follow suit by reaching $4 a gallon.

His latest prediction of $200 oil is open to question, since it would undoubtedly create considerable global economic distress. Further, just about every energy expert I talk to cautions me to expect a sizable pullback in oil prices, maybe to between $50 and $70 a barrel, especially if there's a global economic slowdown.

While Mr. Gaines thinks there could be a temporary decline in the oil price, he's convinced an overall uptrend is unstoppable. In fact, he thinks his $200 forecast could be conservative, and that perhaps $250 could be reached. His reasoning: a combination of shrinking supply and increasing demand, especially from China, India, and America.

Mr. Brodrick's $200 oil forecast is largely predicated on a combination of pretty flat supply and rip-roaring demand. Other key catalysts include surging demand in China and India, where auto sales are booming, and major supply disruptions in Nigeria and also in Mexico, our second-largest source of oil imports, where oil production has fallen off a cliff.

More factors include the ever-present danger of additional supply disruptions from volatile countries in the Middle East that are not our allies, and the unwillingness of SUV-loving Americans to trim their unquenchable thirst for foreign oil. Likewise, for the first time, emerging markets this year will use more oil than America.

To Mr. Brodrick, it all adds up to an ongoing energy bull market. His favorite plays are the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund ; United States Natural Gas Fund LP; Apache Corp.; Occidental Petroleum; Anadarko Petroleum, and Schlumberger.

Dandordan@aol.com

Kunstler: Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?

In BusinessWeek, our hero warns of rough sailing ahead for a car-dependent society. Artificially low (yes, I said low) gas prices will not last forever and we're doing nothing to prepare (and, of course, some people just don't get it).

Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?:

The suburban landscape has been marred by foreclosures and half-built communities abandoned in the subprime aftermath. But James Howard Kunstler, author of a dozen books, including The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, thinks there's a bigger threat to those far-flung neighborhoods: the scarcity of oil. As Kunstler sees it, oil wells are running dry and the era of cheap fuel is over. Given the supply constraints, he says the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive era. Kunstler, 59, predicts a return to towns and cities centered around a retail hub—not unlike his hometown of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. But the shift to this new paradigm, he says, will be painful. (Kunstler could be off the mark; he predicted technological Armageddon after Y2K.) BusinessWeek writer Mara Der Hovanesian spoke with Kunstler about suburbia, which he calls "the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known."

Why has suburban life flourished?
The suburbs were largely products of industrialism. We had a huge supply of oil and cheap undeveloped land, and we decided to become a happy, motoring utopia. It had many practical benefits. The trouble is after a while it became a cartoon of country living.

Why is suburbia now threatened?
Cheap oil is what made suburbia possible. But we'll run into problems with spot shortages. As we get into trouble with these supplies, our economy will suffer. Major instabilities in the system will present themselves much sooner than we are led to believe. And by that I mean the way we produce food, the way we conduct commerce, and the way we move around.

When will all that happen?
The rise and fall of oil production is asymmetrical. In other words, it'll be a steeper, rockier tumble down than the steady increase going up. My own sense of things is that we will be in very serious trouble inside of five years.

Won't it help to cut back on gas?
I get people who come up to the podium after a speaking engagement to tell me they've just gotten a Prius, expecting brownie points. It's not that we're driving the wrong cars. It's that we're driving cars of any size, incessantly.

What about biofuels?
We will use all of them, probably. But we will be greatly disappointed by what they can do for us. We certainly aren't going to run Wal-Mart (WMT), Disney World (DIS), and the highway system on any combination of solar, wind, nuclear, ethanol, biodiesel, or used french-fry oil.

Isn't it a bit radical to declare game over for Wal-Mart?
It is part and parcel of the suburban predicament. How long can they maintain their warehouse-on-wheels as the price of motor fuels goes up?

How will the U.S. have to adapt?
Virtually anything organized on a grand scale is liable to fall into trouble—government, finance, corporate enterprise, agribusiness, schools. Our gigantic metroplex cities will prove to be inconsistent with the energy diet of our future. I think our smaller cities and towns will be reactivated. We are going to be a far less affluent society.

Does your lifestyle reflect all this?
I live in a classic Main Street town. I've always had a garden. It certainly doesn't provide for all my needs, but for all of my salad and salsa fresca needs, in season. I'm not a survival nut. I'm not squirreling away wheat berries in plastic tubs in the basement. I don't have an arsenal of firearms. I lead a pretty normal American small-town life. Of course, I'm a self-employed author and don't have to commute to work.

 

Der  Hovanesian is Banking editor for BusinessWeek in New York .

Why site design matters (and why "landscaping ratio" does not)

The world of strip malls. A nice, 68-degree day; behold the treacherous route between buying an audio adapter plug at the 27th Street Radio Shack and walking(!) to a Jimmy John's subway shop that's a mere 120 yards away.

Ah - but there are PATCHES OF GRASS, so the site is probably well within "minimum landscaping ratio" requirements.

A community built for vehicles.

UPDATE:

Contrast the pedestrian-killing scene above with the walker-friendly (though grass-free) crossing below: