Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

The "Enhanced Lighting" Trojan Horse and the folly of funding the Drexel Interchange: Part 1

 

 

TOP PHOTO: Abandoned restaurant on 27th street directly across the street from the Northwestern Mutual corporate campus, 2006. ABOVE: Same abandoned restaurant, 30 minutes ago.

An interesting debate is occurring in neighboring Oak Creek and Franklin regarding a proposed Interchange on Drexel Avenue.

Let's get this out of the way right now: This interchange will be built. Promises have been made, money has changed hands. The question is whether Franklin will be suckered into paying for an interchange we don't need.

The proposed interchange is in Oak Creek, directly adjacent to their growing Howell Avenue commercial corridor, a strip-mall-clogged, drive-thru abomination that nonetheless provides some level of sales tax and property tax revenue to the city, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

The citizens of Oak Creek -- which is an otherwise beautiful suburban community, don't get me wrong -- probably don’t point to this particular strip with civic pride (but, hey, there’s a Sonic Drive-In there!). On the other hand, a huge plot of land containing an abandoned manufacturing plant is ripe for just the kind of development that direct proximity to an interchange can bring; a new interchange would almost certainly put that parcel into play. Oak Creek has much to gain from what is to Franklin a superfluous interchange.

The length of Drexel Avenue between the proposed interchange and 27th Street, which is supposed to be marketed and developed as an Oak Creek/Franklin partnership, is laughably under-engineered. Though the road is ostensibly part of the Oak Leaf Bike Trail, it has no shoulder to speak of and is a virtual death-trap for any biker brave enough to traverse it.

The State Department of Transportation, which requires a 50% local-money commitment to new interchanges, has set a May 1st deadline for Franklin and Oak Creek to collaborate on funding their "shares."

Northwestern Mutual, whose campus in on the Franklin side of 27th Street, has offered to contributes $1.6 million to the interchange project. So their employees can get to work 90 seconds quicker from the south? No -- they own the empty land on the Oak Creek side of 27th Street, where an urban village has been envisioned.

Now it gets complicated, and I’ll paraphrase at this point. As part of the Oak Creek/Franklin 27th Street partnership, both cities committed to a half million dollars each for “enhanced lighting” on 27th Street.

“Enhanced lighting?”

Anyway, long story short: The State DOT said, in effect, we’ll pay for the “enhanced lighting” (“enhanced lighting”?), if Oak Creek and Franklin toss their funds originally earmarked for “enhanced lighting” (“enhanced lighting”?!?!) into the “build an Interchange” pot.

So, instead of paying for what could be considered an improvement for the potential 27th Street Corridor -- of benefit to Franklin AND Oak Creek -- Franklin taxpayers will be tricked into paying a half million dollars for an Oak Creek interchange of no real benefit to Franklin, a city which is bracketed nicely by the Rawson and Ryan Interchanges.

Last night, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The Franklin Common Council deadlocked on a proposal made by Ald. Steve Olson. Olson proposed that Franklin pay for $500,000 in lighting improvements on S. 27th St. that normally would be the obligation of the DOT if the DOT built the Drexel interchange and required no money from Franklin for the interchange.

You don't even have to read between the lines to see the folly of such a move! The Trojan Horse was stopped at the door. For now.

Funny thing is: Oak Creek also took no action regarding the Drexel Interchange.

They are turning out to be much better poker players than the Franklin side of the road.

Part 2 to come, in which we discuss bad poker, new priorities and opportunities, and the effects of cognitive dissonance on 27th Street Steering Committee members  ...

Like a bug on the bumper

via tv.gawker.com

The Predictable Outcome of Raising Fares and Cutting Services: Lower Ridership for Milwaukee County Transit

The Milwaukee journal Sentinel reports that county transit ridership has fallen 9%. This is a surprise?

From "Left on the Lake":

While the usual suburban suspects on right wing talk radio will no doubt giggle with glee over the numbers, the fact is that a strong mass transit system is critical to any metropolitan area just as it has been for the last 100 years.

So what makes Milwaukee unique in this area when other mass transit systems are seeing increased usage because of the recession? It’s simple, we’re cutting routes and raising fares. That’s a damaging combination to any service provider.

Read more at Left on the Lake.

UPDATE: The Party of NO: Thanks to Republican Senator Jim Bunning, We Have NO More Federal Transportation Law, and That’s Bad

 

3/3/10 Update: Sanity prevails - Senate extends Highway Trust Fund; DOT employees back on the job Wednesday

From INFRASTRUCTURIST.

Here’s a rundown of what happened: Late last week, Republican Sen. Jim Bunning filibustered a bill to extend federal unemployment benefits, arguing that the government needed to add a provision stipulating how it would pay the $10 billion tab. As a result, the Transportation Department has announced it’s going to furlough 2,000 employees (though it could be double that) without pay — including people like federal inspectors that keep state construction projects going. The job cuts will come from the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Research and Innovative Technology Administration.

What else does this all mean? We’ll likely see a total shutdown of federal funding for road, bridge, bike-ped, and transit projects, since a short-term extension of the Highway Trust Fund was attached to the dead bill. The government will also halt the processing of funds for stimulus construction work, which means the remainder of the ARRA money will sit gathering dust. And to top it all off, the federal spigot will be dry for state-based road safety groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

Pedestrians should not have to apologize to drivers for walking in residential areas

A close call this morning. After dropping off my daughter at school, I turned left on the narrow, shoulder-less roads surrounding Pleasant View Elementary and went into a slow-but-scary slide as a man walking his dog appeared dead-center in front of me.

He was screened from my view by a van stopped at the intersection; had I been traveling the tiniest bit faster (I was creeping along due to the ice), my vehicle surely would have, at the very least, made contact with the man and/or his dog. As it was, we stopped with space to spare, but I still jumped out to apologize. The gentleman could not have been more congenial, and actually apologized to me because, he said, "I should learn to walk closer to the edge of the road."

An attitude change is needed in this city. Pedestrians with no safe shoulder or sidewalk on which to walk should not have to apologize for their presence.

Now, imagine if I'd been in the habit of texting while driving, and did so while taking that turn this morning ...

"Tax revolt" fans, meet the piper. Pay up.

I attended a Council of the Whole meeting a few nights back where my city's Common Council discussed funding for the annual 4th of July celebration. Because of a tight city budget, the mayor asked for cuts. Here's what he got:

 
The 4th of July celebration is NOT self-funding; revenue coming in does not match expenditures, and the city generally has to kick in (yet, I think beer is a mere fifty cents at this ostensibly family-oriented event - but that's a topic for another blog Beer is $3 per cup - tickets for beer are fifty cents each.). So, visitors to this year's celebration may well have to go without childrens games, flags and bleachers for the parade. (Update: flags are back).

One more community amenity on its last legs due to budget shortfalls.

There is no shortage of local pandering to tax revolt fantasies in suburban America. In communities where precious few public amenities exist to begin with, the mathematically challenged (is it really so hard to look up the definition of "median"?) rail against what they view as an egregious property tax bill.

These are the same people, of course, who celebrate the 1979 "taxpayer revolt" passage of California's Proposition 13, the result of a campaign funded by eccentric millionaires. It's effects have rippled out across the country, eviscerating communities while perhaps saving homeowners fifty or sixty bucks a year on their property tax bill. 

Why do strip malls and speedway collector roads dominate the landscape where we once enjoyed prosperous downtowns, safe streets, parks, open-all-week libraries, and actual sidewalks? You can trace the genesis of our current "geography of nowhere" to tax freeze enthusiasm whipped up by well-heeled interests. 

Troy Senik in National Affairs:

The two-thirds requirement for tax increases, for instance, is a result of 1978's Proposition 13 ballot initiative, which also capped the state's property taxes at 1% of assessed value and ensured that the assessed value can't increase by more than 2% per year. In the three decades since Prop. 13 passed, it has saved California taxpayers more than half a trillion dollars. But its limitations on property-tax revenues have also led the state to rely far more on income and sales taxes. And with the state's steeply progressive tax code leaving it heavily dependent on the capital gains of California's wealthiest citizens, bear markets inevitably lead to disproportionately sharp downturns in state revenue. The legislature then finds itself unable to stanch the financial bleeding through tax policy, since it is constrained by the two-thirds rule.

Victory for the "tax revolt." Meanwhile, California - its education system and public sector the envy of the nation in the sixties - sinks into ruin.

Read below about another tax revolt victory in Colorado Springs. Facing property tax increases to make ends meet, politically fearful municipal "leaders" bent to threats by "anti-big government" sentiment.

Welcome to the concept of consequences.

COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won't pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

"I guess we're going to find out what the tolerance level is for people," said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. "It's a new day."

Read the rest at:Colorado Springs cuts into services considered basic by many - The Denver Post.

And MORE piper-paying: LA City Council slated to consider 1,000 job cuts

Further reading: Paradise Lost: California's Experience, America's Future by Peter Schrag

"Engineers have an obsession with making neighborhood streets wider, flatter and straighter."

If you've attended any Franklin city meetings regarding road and street construction, you know the title of this blog entry to be very, very true.

Here's a typical street/speedway in a Franklin residential subdivision. 

It's not for nothing that Franklin is nicknamed "the drive-thru city."

We don't mess around with contrivances like right-angle corners that might slow your vehicle down, either. Here's a typical high speed turn in another Franklin residential area:

It gets worse: Look closely at the photo above and you'll see a small paved walkway emptying onto the road. Yes - a walking/biking path that leads to a park, ball field and volleyball court terminates right at the business end of a high-speed curve.

Furthermore, there is an incline on the walk/bike path just before it meets this high-speed curve, which prompts kids on bikes to pedal harder and accelerate just as they meet the street. Note as well that the city has planted trees that will eventually further obscure the view of this path.

This is a road - among many, many in Franklin and other suburbs - designed and built without any sense of context. (This summer I'll be posting video clips of traffic from streets like this and you'll see just how fast drivers zip through our subdivisions. And, no, I won't be blurring license plate numbers.)

From the Strong Towns Blog comes an excellent related entry made all the more persuasive by the fact that it's author, Charles Marohn, is himself a licensed civil engineer and describes himself as a right-leaning Republican. (Frankly, I don't think party affiliation should make a difference, but, for reasons I still cannot fathom, certain right wing columnists insist that the issue of standards in suburban design is a partisan issue.)

Mr. Marohn writes:

Engineers have an obsession with making neighborhood streets wider, flatter and straighter. It is not that they love such streets - they are human too (you'll have to trust me on that) and will often have the same reaction (yuck) that the rest of us have to these misapplied streets. Actually, it is funny how many engineers I have seen protest engineering projects that widen, flatten and straighten the street in front of their own home.

When engineers recommend wider, flatter and straighter streets, what they are doing is misapplying ROAD standards to STREETS. Roads are designed to move autos at high speeds from location to location. There are few intersections (aka: crash inducement sites) and and so wider lanes, excess shoulder recovery area and turn lanes all make sense.

Streets are more complex. With many intersections, we need traffic to drive slower. Slower traffic means narrower lanes and no need for wide, sweeping highway geometries.

We started this week talking about financial imbalances with a local street project. One of the recommendations we made had to do with the way in which we design streets. From our Monday posting:

Evaluate the City’s road standards to see if they can be transformed into sections that are more affordable to construct and maintain. Most small towns have road standards that are derivations of state-aid highway standards. Not only are these standards a poor fit for the context of the neighborhood, they place extra financial burden than what is warranted by the traffic volumes.

The following are two different road sections that run through single-family residential neighborhoods. The first is in the City of Walker, MN, but could be in just about any town that has given their neighborhood design over to their engineer (aka: nearly every town in the country). The second photo we took on our recent trip to Celebration, Florida.

I love this street (above) in Celebration, which is actually typical of most of the streets there. Most other engineers would go crazy with this street. Not only do you have on-street parking, but the parking creates a situation where two cars actually could not meet traveling in opposite directions. The remaining street width is not wide enough.

Ostensibly, if the engineer is to be believed, cars will drive down the street and, due to this unsafe design, crash head first into each other. Of course, when we see this street we know this will not happen. When two cars meet (a rare occurrence), they simply slow down, pull over a little and let each other pass. There might even be (brace yourself) eye contact between the two drivers.

Let me add to the obvious here. The Celebration street is beautiful. Give any of us the choice between living on one of these two streets, we all choose the narrow street. We'll sacrifice the three seconds we save driving to the store to live someplace that is beautiful.

One final obvious point: the Celebration street costs less.

Demand that your engineer build a safe street that will not only look beautiful and enhance the neighborhood but actually cost you less money. Demand a Strong Town.

(Via Strong Towns Blog.)

[See also my entries on roads that make you drive faster in places you should drive slow, roads as sewers, and the possibility of encouraging Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND) in Franklin.]

Pouring interchange asphalt - for a once-every-5-years golf event?

Freeway-building lunacy reaches new heights. Question is: Are they reconsidering now that Tiger Woods is damaged goods?

Road work for golfing events spurs suit - JSOnline.

As long as it pays a fair price, the government can seize your property to build projects such as a new road, school or police station. 

But should that power, known as eminent domain, extend to buying land for a freeway interchange that's used for only one week, every five years or so, to serve traffic going to a major golf tournament?

That question is central to a battle pitting two Sheboygan County families against the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, and Kohler Co., owner of Whistling Straits golf course - which next August hosts the PGA Championship, one of golf's biggest events.

"For whose benefit is this being built?" asks Alan Marcuvitz, a Milwaukee attorney for one of the families suing the department to stop their land from being taken. Marcuvitz says Kohler Co. should negotiate to buy the land for the interchange, instead of having the state use eminent domain to force a sale.

The I-43 interchange, which is getting half of its $1.5 million cost paid by Kohler Co., will benefit the public despite its very limited use, DOT officials say.

"The purpose of the project, from an engineering standpoint, is the safety of I-43," said Mike Berg, the department's northeast Wisconsin regional director. "We have to deal with traffic generated by events at Whistling Straits."

Columnist warns of forced porch-sitting, with possible mandatory neighbor interaction

[Sorry for the odd typography and text color - I'm trying to use the Google Chrome browser, and it isn't playing nice with Typepad]

Let's take a few moments and discuss the many and varied reasons that Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel conserva-columnist Patrick McIlheran cannot be taken seriously when he attempts to address suburban sprawl issues.

Reason one: Mr. McIlheran, from what I gather, lives in a traditional urban-type neighborhood and spends the balance of his day in a city-based office (at least for now; newspapering is a tough business lately) at the Journal-Sentinel building. He also has written frequently about how he's availed himself to the city of Milwaukee's (increasingly meager) bus transit system.

One wonders how this daily experience gives him any insight whatsoever into the habits and lifestyles created and enforced by suburban subdivisions.

How about this: Plant Mr. McIlheran and family in a Franklin or Oak Creek subdivision - one of the curvy-road, avoid-the-neighbors, park-in-my-backyard, strictly-zoned types that he loves - for a period of one year. And make him work at the Franklin Northwestern Mutual Insurance campus.

Reason two: Despite his obvious dependence on the many well-funded arms of Sprawl Inc. (Reason Foundation, American Dream Coalition [be sure to download their inspiring and not-at-all-funded-by-oil-and-auto-companies "white papers" in their website's "Automobility" section], Randal O'Toole on speed-dial, etc.), he cannot (as per usual, I'm afraid) muster a "fact" that doesn't make you laugh. 

For example: McIlheran has chosen for special mention designer Rick Harrison, who has come up with something that he calls "Prefurbia" (this zany appellation, interestingly, is not mentioned in McIlheran's column, perhaps to accommodate the clumsy headline: "Suburbia that keeps its prefix"). On the plus side, Harrison's "coving" design sets out to eliminate cul-de-sacs, increase connectivity, and decrease paved area. On the minus side, Harrison is oddly drawn to the "speedway" curved road plan that makes so many suburbs deathtraps for bikes and pedestrians. The illustration below is from Harrison's site and depicts a development called "Edgewood" in southeastern Wisconsin:

I've seen worse, but there not much to get excited about here. Unless you're Patrick McIlheran:

And between the angles, setbacks and serpentine streets, the subdivisions use much less pavement - usually 25% less for a given acreage, says Harrison.

"Much less pavement." "Usually 25% less for a given acreage." Less than.... what? Did they stop using editors over at the Milwaukee JS?

Perhaps McIlheran derived his nugget from an old 1998 New York Times profile of Harrison:

In a typical subdivision, streets account for 20 to 30 percent of the land, say builders. At [Harrison-designed] Eagle Pass, however, that figure is 17 percent.

So Harrison's "coving" uses less asphalt than a "typical subdivision"? Not entirely inspiring; the curving roads in Harrison's designs are built for speed, and getting rid of "typical subdivision" cul-de-sacs accounts for a huge amount of asphalt without having to do much else, design-wise.

Heroic? No.

Reason three: McIlheran loves him some drive-thru design.

Built-for-speed roads are worth touting:

His roads are snaky, with few intersections (and, so, few stops).

Excellent - because we gotta get through that residential area at top speed! Hooray - "FEW STOPS"!

Reason four: Like others who lobby for Sprawl, Inc., McIlheran conveys the ludicrous notion that - in a region overrun with non-planned, non-sustainable suburbs that have grown at the whims of developers and their desire for increased and quicker profit (a condition that has created the need for cuts in services while property taxes continue to climb) - creating provisions for New Urbanist or Traditional Neighborhood Development subdivisions somehow limits our choices rather than increasing them by adding another flavor to the mix.

You see, in McIlheran's worldview, the appearance of a non-standard choice in some way magically eliminates countless existing subdivisions - and their ready-to-buy vacancies. So, he uses ludicrous language like the following:

Porches are nice to relax on. Not that you should have to.

People are busy, after all, [quoting Harrison] "and maybe they don't want to know their neighbors that well."

Harrison does not like the dominant planning idea of recent years, New Urbanism, which mandates porches and narrow houses on narrow lots...

So, when they built the wildly successful Middleton Hills subdivision in Middleton, Wisconsin, did residents of the surrounding subdivisions receive orders to get out on their porches? Were they told they'd better learn the names of their neighbor's pets? Did the Middleton Hills "mandate" of "narrow houses on narrow lots" result in letters being sent to nearby Manor of the Lake McMansion subdivision that they'd better start building infill immediately?

Ludicrous.

But, for those with the patience to read to the end of McIlheran's column, all becomes clear, and we have reason five that Patrick McIlheran should not write about planning issues:

And this guy's made money for himself and for developers with such an accommodating attitude. Hallelujah. Ain't America cool?

At least he's fairly transparent in his quest for additional partisan speaking gigs - perhaps at next year's National Association of Home Builder's convention.

Because, goodness knows that "developers making money" is what creates successful communities, and any attempt to enforce standards would be "bossy" ....

[See related: The Conservative Case for Walking and Biking]

Cul-de-sacs: Eating your property taxes while eliminating connectivity

If you live on the typical suburban cul-de-sac, as I do (that's mine in the photo above), snow events like the one we experienced today drive home another expensive consequence of suburban non-planning: The intricate, time-and-fuel-consuming snowplow ballet that is required in order to clear the huge circle of non-permeable surface created by cul-de-sacs.

It's a tedious job, to say the least. Trucks designed and engineered to generally go forward have their gears mashed back and forth as the driver struggles to push piles of snow off a skating rink-sized area. In the time it takes for a plow to clear a single cul-de-sac street, the same crew or driver could have finished six streets of the traditional pattern.

If you've looked closely at the City of Franklin's 2010 budget -- and have followed deliberations as the common council struggles to keep municipal services reasonably effective without significantly raising property taxes -- you are aware that fuel, vehicle and crew expenditures for snow removal are already necessarily cut to the bone.

These are cuts you may have already noticed in the past couple of years as your street didn't seem to get cleared as quickly. Or, as in my case, your mailbox may have been clipped as drivers hurry to cover more ground with fewer resources.

 
No one bats 1.000.

So - want to venture a guess as to exactly how many cul-de-sacs the city of Franklin's Highway/Parks Department is responsible for clearing, salting and de-icing each and every time it snows?

A couple dozen - 22?

Maybe fifty?

One hundred?

Nope.

DOUBLE that last guess. And add another 11.

211 cul-de-sacs.

That's 211 times that city trucks and city crews have to do a job that takes six times as long as it would take in a traditional, grid neighborhood.

Six times as much fuel.

Six times as many man-hours.

Six times as much mechanical wear-and-tear (in reality, much, much more as the trucks must shift into reverse repeatedly on each and every cul-de-sac).

Multiplied by 211.

In 2009 the city budgeted for $40,000 in overtime funds. Expenditures as of 7/30/09 were already $53,973.14, with $70,100 estimated as the year-end total. The 2010 budget requests $58,262.

The Highway Department notes that they face a 42% increase in the cost of road salt for 2010 as well.

Cross your fingers.

Still think sprawl and poor design doesn't cost you money?

See also: The Cul-de-sac Safety Myth