Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Gas is almost $4 a gallon - - and Complete Streets come to Franklin

Some excellent news to report.

I gave a couple of presentations on the benefits of Complete Streets to the City of Franklin Plan Commission as well as the Common Council. Consequently, by unanimous Common Council vote, the Franklin Trails Committee will become the Franklin Complete Streets and Connectivity Advisory Board. (See FranklinNow story here.)

The stated goal of the Board is creation of a Complete Streets ordinance which will give proper priority to non-vehicular traffic and provide guidelines for new development and street repair in terms of facilities for pedestrians and bikes. We'll also be working toward creating a more connectivity-minded street grid. 

I'll post much, much more information in the days to come. In the meantime, here is a silent and, for now, low res version of the presentation I gave on 3/6/12. Once we get a Franklin Complete Streets website launched, this information will be posted in much, much more detail.

Road Widening: Contemporary Blood-Letting

 

ABOVE: Rawson Avenue - non-vehicles beware. Subdivisons full of children who attend a nearby elementary school face this barrier.

 

After decades of catering to cars and the people able to drive them at the expense of people who cannot or chose not to drive (Rawson Avenue in Franklin, WI is a living monument to that vision), city planners and transportation officials are finally (slowly) starting to see the value in making communities accessable to all. However, it isn't going to be easy to convince the public at large that we needn't provide the means to travel at 60 mph through residential areas:

We have been so thorough in making cars happy for the past several decades that much of our world is designed in such a way that it is impossible to travel without a car.

Tragically, convenient, easy car travel we have bankrupted ourselves in creating is not conducive to creating safe, lovable, human-oriented, sustainable, enjoyable places that induce civic pride (indeed, it is utterly destructive of a better place to live). Those of us who have discovered this, then, are stuck with the enormous task of trying to point out that the path to a better community – to a better future – lies in doing something that at least initially, seems harmful to our happiness: inconveniencing car travel and car parking (and making car use more costly)

Read the rest at: Road Widening: Contemporary Blood-Letting | Dom’s Plan B Blog

January 24, 6-8pm: Make your voice heard on Franklin's Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan

 

ABOVE: From a previous post on SPRAWLED OUT: An example of a trail that is certainly "recreational," but A) does not connect any destinations (it merely loops through a park), and B) empties into a blind curve on a suburban speedway, further shielded by trees and shrubs (indicated with green boxes).

 

The City of Franklin has been working for some time on a new Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan, and is now inviting public input.

I encourage people to come to the open house and make their concerns about CONNECTIVITY in the city of Franklin heard. As a member of the city's Trails Committee, I am sorry to report that there is precious little interaction between us and the city's Parks Commission. In fact, there has been considerable tension in Trails Committee meetings when I or any other member made requests for information on the ongoing Recreation plan.

A member or the Parks Commission who also sits on the Trails Committee has made it clear that he considers the trails proposed by the Parks Commission as completely separate and unrelated to the sidewalk and trail network we on the Trails Committee are trying to create. He has repeatedly spoken in "us vs. you" terms when the subject of funding comes up.

The problem is this: Trails are, indeed, recreational. However, it's time to look at trails as part of the city's overall connectivity plan. Trails (and sidewalks) are infrastructure, and it's important that we provide a way to get from place to place in Franklin without a car.

The Parks Commission, unfortunately, does NOT plan trails with usefulness or connectivity in mind. To the Parks Commission, trails are mere recreational playthings. Take a look at our current trail system (and some of the insanely dangerous junctures with blind curves on roads) and you'll agree,

This will not be my last post on the subject (nor is it the first), but please mark your calendar for January 24th, 6-8pm, and plan to attend the open house so you can voice your concerns regarding making Franklin travel-friendly for children, the elderly, and differently abled persons.

I've pasted some material from the city's press release below, and linked to fellow Trails Committee member Greg Kowalski's Scribed-posted PDF:

This update is set forth in a draft document entitled Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan: 2025 for the City of Franklin, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. This Plan is being prepared to maintain the City’s eligibility to participate in many cost-sharing programs for the acquisition and development of its park, open space, and outdoor recreation system. When completed, the updated Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan will look 15 years into the future at the City’s anticipated park, open space, and outdoor recreation needs.

Before the draft is completed, the Planning Department staff of the City of Franklin would like to provide an opportunity for the public to ask questions and to provide additional comments about this draft Plan. Therefore, an Open House has been scheduled for January 24, 2011, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm in the Community Room at the City of Franklin City Hall, 9229 W. Loomis Road.

Copies of maps and other select information from the draft Plan will be on display at the Open House. The entire draft Plan will be available for viewing on the City website and at the offices of the Planning Department approximately one week before the Open House.

It is envisioned that the public comments provided at the Open House will be summarized and provided to the City of Franklin Parks Commission for their review and consideration immediately after the Open House or as soon thereafter as the Parks Commission may determine.

If you have any questions, or need additional information, please feel free to contact the Planning Department at 414-425-4024, or visit the City of Franklin website at www.franklinwi.gov.

 

Parks Plan Open House

Glutton for punishment: My alderman announces re-election bid

ABOVE: Alderman Kristen Wilhelm at this summer's Walking Workshop

Elections this coming April in Franklin will put on the ballot aldermen from districts 3, 4, and 6 as well as office of the mayor. My district's alderman, Kristen Wilhelm, has decided to run again for the seat.

This is good news: As a resident of the 3rd District -- as well as a volunteer on various city committees and commissions -- I can say without hesitation that her energy and efforts have resulted in positive change for Franklin. And, as an attendee at various common council meetings, I can also say that she has changed for the better the character of what was once an insular "old boys club."

Perhaps the best endorsement for Ms. Wilhelm is the fact that, at the beginning of her term,  a few of the "old guard"  aldermen had been observed expressing frustration that she'd "slowed" certain meetings by asking questions and seeking clear explanations. You only have to see that once to realize that her presence has required complacent members to step up their  game -- AND made them put away the rubber stamp.

On a personal note, Alderman Wilhelm worked with me to write a successful Safe Routes to School grant for the city, was instrumental in getting the grant that made the sidewalk on 51st Street possible, and helped make our Walking Workshop a huge success. She makes sure the residents of the 3rd District are the most well-informed in the city via regular email updates and notices.

Let me put this in bold, because I mean this emphatically: Kristen Wilhelm's hard work, creativity, attention to detail, preparation and accessibility has, without a doubt, raised the bar for the entire common council. We are lucky to have her working on behalf of the city, and fortunate that she is a glutton for punishment and has decided to continue.

So, yes, this is an endorsement.

I've pasted below her candidacy announcement.

 

December 22, 2010

Dear Neighbors,

I am officially announcing my candidacy for 3rd District Alderman this spring.  It has been a privilege to represent you and serve the city of Franklin. 

Since 2008, I have worked hard to represent you and be responsive to your needs in a timely manner. By informing and connecting people to city government, a stronger voice on city decisions has been achieved and this has strengthened our sense of community. On that topic, I’ve endeavored to support local businesses and make you aware of issues and events as often as possible.

It is not easy making progress given the pace of government. There is more to accomplish, including finishing several tasks requested by constituents that are in process. I fully intend to continue my tenacity to bring the results you expect and that best serve our city. 

Looking to the future, I’ll continue to provide Real Representation, maintain Effective Communication, create more Process Transparency, and remain Accountable to you!

This means: 
•    Continuing to engage in meaningful dialogue.
•    Being available to hear your concerns. 
•    Following through on issues that matter to you. 
•    Getting the word out to as many of you as possible in these busy and trying times.

I ask for your support so that I may continue representing you as your Alderman in this great community!


Best Wishes for the Holidays!
Kristen Wilhelm 

NOTE: 
Please add wilhelm4district3@gmail.com to your address book to be sure future emails are recognized by your email allowed list.
I am required to separate campaign items from city business. This gmail address is to be used for all campaign related business.


Authorized by Kristen Wilhelm, Delene Hanson Treasurer

City engineering by "gut": "Let's live on the edge and BUILD THE FOUR-LANER!"

This post is a comment in response to an item at a Franklin blog, Fred Keller's BATTLE JOINED -- please excuse a bit of localese as well as cut-and-paste linkage, as this was done quickly:

 

Fred: Your "Let's widen College Avenue" argument doesn't make a lot of sense, frankly, unless you are merely looking for a cudgel with which to hammer the mayor. And, any cudgel will do, right?

You ask: Why would the mayor and city officials argue for Contest Sensitive Design when a road is being built through our community?

Really?

The idea that road congestion will increase at a steady rate is just FALSE, reinforced by a road-building industry anxious to lay more asphalt. (A mile of freeway costs three to four times the annual operating expense to the state of a rail line connecting us to Madison and Chicago -- has that not occurred to you?)

"But we need to build capacity," you might say. (Actually, what you said was: "Let's live on the edge and BUILD THE FOUR-LANER!")

But - what's that? Traffic can DECREASE? Guess what - the engineers don't account for that in their forecasts. They are all about BUILDING IT UP. If traffic rates go up +.05 in a year, they tend to keep adding the same increase every year.

Let's apply engineer-style traffic analysis: My daughter grew 1.5 inches in the past year. At this rate, she'll be over 9 feet tall by the time she's my age.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/08dectvt/index.cfm (2008)

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tvtw/09dectvt/ (2009)

Your stance sees to be "gut instinct" against years of traffic studies NOT DONE BY ROAD BUILDERS that show widening roads actually INCREASES traffic and congestion (it's called "induced traffic"); and that creating alternative travel options (bike and ped) DECREASES traffic and congestion.

The Federal Highway Administration found in a study in Milwaukee that induced traffic accounted for 11-22 percent of the area's increased traffic from 1963 to 1991. ("Widening roads to ease traffic congestion is ineffective and expensive at the same time," said Roy Kienitz, Executive Director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project. "It's like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt.")

I have no time to get fancy (a pillar of your argument: "waste time digging up stats for me!"), so I'm quoting here directly from another web site: A road diet on San Francisco’s Valencia Street reduced automobile through lanes from four to two, adding a center turn lane and two bike lanes. Following this change, collisions involving pedestrians declined 36%, accompanied by an increase in pedestrian traffic and a whopping 140% increase in bicycle riders – all without significantly altering automobile traffic capacity. (http://www.completestreets.org/complete-streets-fundamentals/factsheets/ease-congestion/)

Also: "When travel demand requires three moving lanes in each direction and/or double left turn and right turn lanes, the roadway impact on the adjacent community can become severe. From on urban planning standpoint, volumes of these magnitudes usually indicate too few arterial streets serving that particular corridor or a lack of freeway capacity for the longer trips that should not be on the arterial street system to begin with. Although it is recognized that geographic and urban development constraints may require these six-lane arterials in some situations, these conditions should be dealt with early in the planning process for new or developing suburbs, and some compromises and special design measures may be needed in existing corridors where other alternatives exist." (http://www.urbanstreet.info/3rd_symp_proceedings/Retrofitting%20Urban%20Arterials%20into%20Complete%20Streets.pdf)

"The phenomenon of induced traffic works in reverse as well. When New York's West Side Highway collapsed in 1973, an NYDOT study showed that 93 percent of the car trips lost did not reappear elsewhere; people simply stopped driving. A similar result accompanied the destruction of San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway in the 1989 earthquake. Citizens voted to remove the freeway entirely despite the apocalyptic warnings of traffic engineers. Surprisingly, a recent British study found that downtown road removals tend to boost local economies, while new roads lead to higher urban unemployment. So much for road-building as a way to spur the economy." (From the book SUBURBAN NATION)

You also proceed from a FORTUNATE standpoint: You and your kids perhaps can (or will) drive. How about a bit of empathy for those of us who want to create an environment of moderate independent travel for the elderly of differently-abled? I can tell you for CERTAIN that I will not live in a community where my son cannot walk a few blocks to get on a bus or visit a friend. 

Interesting statistic: Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for 15- to 20- year-olds. Franklin's 16-to-20 year-olds have NO OPTION but to drive.

Do you know that a pedestrian or bikers chance of death jumps from 45% to 85% when the speed limit jumps from a sane, residential 30 MPH to the Franklin-standard (and enforced by engineering) 40 MPH?

A 27th street public transit hub (i.e. better than the spotty bus service currently available) is a logical next step. The average American who lives in an area that's walkable and has transit spends only 9% of their income on transportation, while a person living in an area that requires driving spends more than 25%. College Ave. can feed bikes and pedestrians to a public transit hub IF ACCOMMODATIONS ARE MADE FOR THEM NOW. 

Of pedestrians killed in 2007 and 2008, more than 50% died on arterial roadways, typically designed to be wide and fast (ala College Ave).  Roads like these are built to move cars and too often do not have meet the needs of pedestrian or bicyclist safety. 

You can dismiss safety, induced congestion, and mobility for the differently-abled and elderly. But how about ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT?

http://www.ceosforcities.org/files/WalkingTheWalk_CEOsforCities1.pdf (WALKING THE WALK: How Walkability Raises Home Values in U.S. Cities, by CEOs for Cities)

http://www.walk21.com/papers/Litman(1).pdf (
Economic Value of Walkability)

Want to rely on something more reality-based than your "gut instinct"? Dig into these studies:

http://www.hsisinfo.org//pdf/10-053.pdf (Evaluation of Lane Reduction “Road Diet” Measures on Crashes)

http://www.completestreets.org/webdocs/resources/lanewidth-safety.pdf (Relationship of Lane Width to Safety for Urban and Suburban Arterials)

http://www.vtpi.org/cong_relief.pdf (Smart Congestion Reductions: Reevaluating The Role Of Highway Expansion For Improving Urban Transportation)

http://www.urbanstreet.info/3rd_symp_proceedings/Retrofitting%20Urban%20Arterials%20into%20Complete%20Streets.pdf (RETROFITTING URBAN ARTERIALS INTO COMPLETE STREETS)

 

Changing Travel Demands: Implications for Planning | Planetizen

The graph above shows the most recent USDOT vehicle-travel data covering the last 25 years. Although vehicle-miles of travel (VMT) grew steadily during most of the twentieth century, in recent years the growth rate stopped and even declined a little. It is now about 10% below where it would have been had past trends continued.

Yet another argument against business-as-usual (read: ASPHALT as usual):

The Twentieth Century was the period of automobile ascendency, during which personal motor vehicles grew from virtually nothing to becoming the dominant travel mode in most developed countries. During this period it made sense to invest in automobile-oriented infrastructure: paved roads, highways and parking facilities. However, demographic and economic trends are changing travel demands. Aging population, rising fuel prices, increasing urbanization, increasing traffic congestion, improvements in alternative modes, changing consumer preferences, and increased health and environmental concerns are all reducing demand for automobile travel and increasing demands for travel by other modes. Although automobile travel will not disappear, it will not grow as it did in the past, and in many developed countries motor vehicle travel will be flat or negative in the future.

Read the rest at: Changing Travel Demands: Implications for Planning | Planetizen

Suburban Renewal: Key to economic recovery

[Map Sources: Map by Zara Matheson of the Martin Prosperity Institute. Data from Christopher Leinberger.]

Renewing our suburbs is part and parcel of broader economic recovery. The very act of restoring them—of retrofitting them for the new ways of living and working that our emerging new economic order requires–will help bring back prosperity overall.

- Richard Florida

Some selected excerpts from the article that I would surely bring up at an Economic Development Commission Meeting --- if we bothered to have economic Development Commission meetings: 

• MCMANSIONS ARE OUT: According to an eye-opening 2009 survey commissioned by Buildermagazine, home buyers are no longer willing to drive to the furthest edges of developments to buy the biggest house they can afford. In fact those are precisely the kinds of homes that are not selling.  Real estate development expert Arthur C. Nelson predicts that we will have a surplus of as many as 22 million large-lot homes by the year 2025.
  
  
• COMMUNITY IS IN: Today’s buyers—surprising numbers of them single women— are looking for smaller houses closer-in, with access to parks and cultural amenities. There is a rapidly growing market for super-energy efficient homes under 1,300 square feet – quite a departure from the 5,000-6,000 square foot McMansions of just a few years past. “We are entering a new era of home building, where buyers look for spiritual satisfaction rather than material gain,” the Builder study concludes. Not the kind of language we’re used to hearing from the construction industry.
  
  
• WALKABILITY = HIGHER HOME VALUES: Walkable suburbs are some of America’s best places to live; they provide a model for renewal for their sprawling, spread-out siblings. Relatively dense commercial districts, with shops, restaurants, and movie theaters, as well as a wide variety of housing types, have always been a feature of the older suburbs that grew up along the streetcar lines of big metro areas.... These are the places where Americans are clamoring to live, where housing prices have held up even in the face of one of the greatest real estate collapses in modern memory, as Leinberger documents in his book, The Option of Urbanism. The desire for walkability can be measured in dollars and cents. Houses in walkable neighborhoods command higher prices than houses in more distant, less dense locations. A recent study by urbanist Joe Cortright for CEOs for Cities analyzed the sales of 90,000 homes in 15 major metros. In 12 out of 15 of them, walkability commanded a premium—sometimes of hundreds of thousands of dollars in places like the D.C. suburbs.

• WALKABILITY = ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT SUCCESS: We found that metros with walkable suburbs had greater economic output, higher incomes, and higher housing prices; higher levels of human capital, higher membership in the creative class; higher levels of patented innovations and of high-tech industries and employees; not to mention higher levels of happiness.
  
  
• MALLS ARE ZOMBIES: A 2001 PricewaterhouseCoopers study found that one in five malls were dead or dying – 7 percent were effectively dead and another 12 percent were vulnerable and likely to fail in the near future. But these troubled malls have become the sites of a wave of renewal. Outside of St. Paul, the parking lot that surrounded a dead shopping center built on land fill was turned back into wetlands—which in turn attracted new “lakefront” townhome development. In Lakewood, a suburb of Denver, Colorado, a dead mall on a single 103-acre superblock is being transformed into Belmar—22 urban blocks with parks, bus lines, restaurants, stores, and 1,300 new households—the downtown that Lakewood never had. Eight of the 13 regional malls in the Denver area are now planning or have completed makeovers. 

Longer, unedited version of Mr. Florida's column in the 10/9/10 Wall Street Journal:

Remaking our sprawling suburbs, with their enormous footprints, shoddy construction, hastily put up infrastructure, and dying malls, is shaping up to be the biggest urban revitalization challenge of modern times—far larger in scale, scope and cost than the revitalization of our inner cities.

What a dramatic shift. Just a couple of decades ago, the suburbs were the locus of the American Dream. More than their sprawling, large-lot homes and big wide lawns, their shopping malls, industrial parks, and office campuses accounted for a growing percentage of the nation’s economic output.  A good many of them formed into Edge Cities—satellite centers where people could live, work, and shop without ever having to set foot in the center city.

With millions of homes underwater or in foreclosure, our suburbs and exurbs have taken some of the most visible hits from the great recession. In a stunning reversal, big cities like New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle have become talent magnets at the same time, drawing ambitious people, empty-nesters, young-families, and even a growing number of offices back to their downtown cores. As inner city neighborhoods are being gentrified, blight and intransigent poverty are moving out to the suburbs, where one third of the nation’s poor now reside—1.5 million more than in cities, according to a Brookings study. And suburban poverty populations are growing at five times the rate of those in cities.

......

Perhaps the biggest retrofit of all is happening in Tysons Corner, Va., the virtual archetype of an auto-dependent, sprawling edge city. Located near the junctions of three major highways, it boasts 25 million square feet of office space and four million square feet of retail space. Decades ago developers hailed it as the wave of the future—one of hundreds of new satellite centers that would render our old downtown commercial centers obsolete. But Tysons Corner has lately been losing out. Its perpetual traffic gridlock and its lack of human energy have caused home-buyers to choose other places. Some companies that were headquartered there have even moved back into the District of Columbia.

Now developers and landowners are seeking to make it more walkable, with a more integrated mix of uses. In June, the county's Board of Supervisors adopted a comprehensive plan that would transform Tysons Corner into a "24-hour urban center where people live, work and play." Its hallmarks will be green construction, access to public transportation and abundant public amenities, like parks and bicycle trails—something that sounds very much like a real city.

There are countless other opportunities for reclamation, all across America, as Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson document in their 2008 book, "Retrofitting Suburbia." Under-used golf courses can be transformed into parks and nature sanctuaries; abandoned car dealerships can be landscaped and developed as new, mixed-use neighborhoods. Developers can cut streets through formerly walled-off corporate campuses and add restaurants, stores and public spaces.

Historically, America's economic growth has hinged on its ability to create new development patterns—economic landscapes that simultaneously expand space and intensify our use of it. The rebound after the panic and long depression of 1873 was based on the transition to an urban-industrial economy organized around great cities and their early streetcar suburbs. Our recovery from the Great Depression saw the rise of massive metropolitan complexes of cities and suburbs. Today the challenge is to remake our suburbs, to turn them into more vibrant, livable, people-friendly communities and, in doing so, to make them engines of innovation and productivity. 

Read the rest at: Creative Class » Blog Archive » Suburban Renewal - Creative Class

More bike riders create "safety in numbers"

Another non-intuitive fact about non-vehicular travel and safety:

As ridership goes up, crash rates stay flat. It's happening in Portland (see page 11 of this report[PDF]). It's happening in New York City.

The phenomenon, dubbed "safety in numbers," was first identified in 2003, in an academic paper by public health researcher Peter Jacobsen [PDF]. After being asked by officials in Pasadena, Calif., if their city "was a dangerous place to bicycle," Jacobsen began looking at crash data from various communities where bicycle ridership had fluctuated over time.

What he found surprised him: The number of crashes involving bikes correlated with the number of riders in a community. As ridership fluctuated, so did the crash rate. More riders, fewer crashes; fewer riders, more crashes.

Read the rest at: TheWashCycle: Still more evidence of the network effect in bicycle safety

Excellent news: Franklin has won a Safe Routes to School Grant

I just found out today that a grant I wrote with my alderman, Kristen Wilhelm, resulted in Franklin being selected as one of 34 Wisconsin communities receiving Safe Routes to School funds!

Now the real work begins. Stay tuned ...

51st Street sidewalk - at long last

P1090471, originally uploaded by John Michlig.

Cement was poured and smoothed today to complete the portion of the 51st Street sidewalk located in front of the high school. Click on the photo to see a set of shots on Flickr.