Transit Tensions: Development Enhancer, or Mobility Tool?

I hope my professors will let me submit light rail prospectus analysis in multimedia:



An excellent series of accompanying blog posts at Transport Michigan gets to the heart of the issue:

Over the past decade, developers and city officials across the U.S. have taken an interest in downtown streetcar systems as a development tool. The model was the Portland Streetcar, opened in 2001 as a 2.4-mile loop connecting downtown Portland to a former industrial area just to the north. Rechristened the "Pearl District," that area boomed with new luxury lofts drawing Portland's growing professional population. Ironically, just as housing developers extended streetcar lines out to posh new residential districts a century ago (Woodbridge in Detroit is one such "streetcar suburb"), streetcars now offer cities and developers a potentially lucrative tool for facilitating the return of well-heeled residents back into the inner city. Transit advocates have long sought transit-oriented development to increase ridership, but streetcar advocates flip the phrase, proudly calling streetcars "development-oriented transit," although some Portlanders complain the district has grown too "hoity-toity" for their taste.

...

On a more fundamental level, though, when we lack regional rapid transit, and tens of thousands of transit-dependent Detroiters have to rely on unreliable, infrequent buses to get around, is it really appropriate for us to put real estate development that primarily serves newly arrived professionals before meeting the transit needs of the entire region, and especially those of the less privileged? This author's status as a twenty-something white guy from an affluent, educated background makes him a strong candidate for being one of those professionals, and I'm all for more housing in Cass/Midtown (though I think it's vital for it to be mixed-income), but I still think regional transit has got to be first.  [bold mine]

Mobility is part of equity. Planning for streetcars with local stops designed to spur development and boost property values without a pre-existing regional transit network smacks of boutique transit. Transit can have positive externalities, but only when it helps people get from point A to point B.

The issues of privilege, gentrification, and which needs transit serves are certainly at issue here, but equity concerns are not the only ones. A streetcar with an overly local focus, in the absence of good regional services, runs counter to the forces that generate lively and diverse city blocks: letting people move freely about the city. Cities are great because they have a wealth of different activities housed cheek and jowl: opera, sports franchises, boutiques, professional services, offices, residences. Attempts to cluster these into zones usually leads to a breakdown of the very diversity that generated the foot traffic that generated the diversity, you dig?

Human Transit recently weighed in on the importance of mobility vs. local place-making. The two elements should balance each other in any self-respecting city: the former about passing through, the latter encouraging staying around.

The trick is the dialog: keeping that pendulum balanced between transit that encourages people to, say, take the streetcar for all their local errands, and transit encouraging mobility. These are not mutually exclusive functions, but recognizing the different motives behind transit projects helps avoid imbalances. Too far to the local, and isolation/stagnation can ensue. Too far to the mobile, and you have a land of no-places (see auto-dependent freeway suburbs with replicated chain stores surrounding parking lots off 6 lane median-less arterials for what maximum mobility looks like).

The late 20th Century car-centered model led to the massive conversion of land area from placehood functions to mobility functions.  Transit's great virtue is that it provides a lot of mobility using relatively little space, so that more area can be devoted to places, both public and private.  ...

There is a strong current in New Urbanism, not without detractors, that does seem interested in abolishing mobility.  Patrick Condon's idea for Vancouver, for example, would cancel a single proposed subway line and instead replace all of the city's electric trolleybuses with streetcars that go the same speed as the buses do.  He would cancel a mobility-improving project and instead spend money in way that that may do great urban things but doesn't increase mobility at all.  Once his network was complete, nobody could get anywhere any faster than they can now. 

This makes sense only in a context where going places (even under renewable elecric power) is an objective evil.  Streetcars, in this vision, supposedly cause greater urban density to be built at livable neighborhood scales, so that people meet more of their needs close to home.  People spend most of their time in their own "villages" and others nearby.  They simply do not travel far across the city, and had better not be in a hurry when they do.

It's understandable that "urban village" is a winning concept right now.  We do need to increase the self-reliance of each part of a city, so that travel demand for many of life's needs can met closer to home.  The pendulum swung far the other way in the late 20th century, toward surrendering placehood to movement.  I support and eagerly participate in efforts to help it swing back.

But I think we can see what it might look like to swing too far in the new direction.  We stay close to home, and thus evolve transport systems that are useful for going short distances and useless for going long ones.  And the obvious retort to this is:  In that case, why live in a city?  Why not just live in a country village, or in a small city?

Bike Advocacy in LA

The Los Angeles County Bike Coalition City of Lights program is spearheading bike education, safety, and advocacy projects on behalf of immigrants in Los Angeles--a largely car-free population. De-gentrifying the bike with outreach

Allison Mannos nails it--halfway thru the vid:

Transforming a City

If you have 25 minutes, this PBS documentary about the work and legacy of Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogatá, is well worth a watch.

Transportation investments under his watch have improved the quality of life and reduced the crime rate for a city that used to be synonymous with danger and drug cartels.

Watch the full episode. See more e2.

Before the video starts there are 2 short ads ... do not lose heart! Plus, Brad Pitt narrates.

Effort vs. Inequity in New Orleans

Exhibit A: Selection from an excellent profile of New Orleans community organizer/pillar of strength, Jenga Mwendo (via Grist).

Capsule summary:

The Lower Ninth Ward was the hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina, with floodwaters surging over the nearby Industrial Canal. Jenga Mwendo calls the Lower Ninth a "community of survivors." Only an estimated 25 percent of residents have returned. As a result, a sort of stand-off has occurred: businesses won't come until the population increases, but the population won't increase without even basic amenities. There is currently only one school and not a single produce-stocked grocery store there.

Mwendo, 32, was living in New York City and working in computer animation when Katrina struck in 2005. She moved back to rebuild her house, and then started on the neighborhood. In the past few years, she's revitalized and built two community gardens, launched the Backyard Gardeners Network, and facilitated the planting of 175 fruit trees for homeowners throughout the Holy Cross historic district in the Lower Ninth. She's also launched a vegan catering business.

Exhibit B: Selected entries from Harper's Index.

From the 12/2010 issue:

Value of economic-recovery bonds the State of Louisiana has sold since Hurricane Katrina: $5,900,000,000

Percentage of the revenue that has been spent on projects in New Orleans: 1

Percentage spent on the Lower Ninth Ward: 0

To paraphrase Huck Finn, it's enough to make a body feel real mean low-down and ornery. The raging inequity! On the one hand, the story of an individual meeting a challenge and filling a void that might not otherwise be filled is inspiring. A real be-the-change-you-want-to-see-in-the-world moment. On the other hand, the glaring absence of state (and federal, for that matter) support is unacceptable. What gets me is that sinking impression of "if she weren't doing something, would anyone?" (Yes, but ...) Because elected officials aren't picking up any slack, or spearheading any (re)investment.

In an ideal world, Ms. Mwendo would be doing her outstanding work amid a crowd of other state-funded initiatives, and would hopefully receive a portion of that funding to scale up her work.

NB Harper's Index archives are (practically) infinite and searchable.

Food, Planning, Capitalism

Two great things I want to bring to your attention, dear reader.

Factory Farms, Mapped

Food and Water Watch have created a Factory Farms map. It shows concentrations of animal production facilities across the United States, sortable by animal type. The sheer density of these facilities is staggering, as one might expect:

Cattle

 Pigs

Chicken

Check out the website for more granular animal demographics. It tracks how animal population has increased or decreased (generally increased) per production site, and as a population stock in each given county. The maps of factory farms is a useful, visual reminder of how the negative burden of our food infrastructure is born by the few for the convenience of national consumption patterns. Production is hidden from the consumer, and concentrated in places that are subsequently reconstituted as specialized parts of a corporate supply chain. With pollution!


Urban Food Deserts and Transportation

In other reports from the nexus between the spatial logic of capitalism and the food supply, we have The City Fix's post, "Studies Show the Connection Between Travel Times to Food Stores and Public Health." I'll quote it at length, it's great stuff:

Generally, in the United States larger grocery store chains supply a variety of fresh food at lower costs, while independent grocers, bodegas and smaller stores have less selection and higher operating costs and prices.  Such stores tend to have a smaller margin of profit and slower turnover in sales, making it harder for them to purchase a variety of fresh vegetables.  Detroit, a city of nearly one million people and 143 square miles, lacks a single grocery store chain. In many cities, suburban and rural areas of the U.S., large chains and grocery stores can be inaccessible to large portions of the population.  Extensive studies have documented food deserts and related public health concerns, linking inaccessibility of fresh food to geographic areas with concentrated poverty, low-income or minority populations.

These communities typically have low rates of car ownership and stores that are difficult to reach via public transportation or walking.  Most of the studies we reviewed considered a store poorly accessible if residents had to walk more than a half mile or ride a bus line that comes at limited times.  Shopping becomes burdensome, costly, time-consuming and less likely to happen on a regular basis if access is difficult. A lack of grocery stores is one reason low-income people and people of color are more likely to have diet-related diseases. A report called “The Grocery Gap” cited a multi-state study that found that people with access to supermarkets or grocery stores have the lowest rates of obesity and overweight and those without access to supermarkets have the highest rates of such diet-related diseases.

Carla Kaiser, senior manager of Community Partnerships at the hunger organization City Harvest has been working on food access in low-income communities for about six years. ”The barriers to healthy food are not just about price,” she says. “A common theme is transportation. Since healthy, affordable food is not commonly available in every community, people need to travel outside of their neighborhood just to get basic food to feed their family. For many, this means two buses and a taxi ride back with groceries. Just getting to the food people want is costly in terms of time and money.”

 ...

Detroit: A New Vision for Food System Solutions

But the issue with food deserts is not about identifying and documenting the problems and reinforcing the connections between race, disease and poverty, it’s about empowering people within these communities and cities to make comprehensive changes.  Detroit has few quality grocery stores that sell fresh foods – the vast majority are convenience stores, bakeries and gas stations – yet the city has become a model for a self-reliant, community-based food systems. The city is building a network of farmers’ markets, and adjusting its zoning for more community gardens and urban farms.  Many community members are taking charge of the issue themselves by establishing, for example, the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, which aims to bring improve residents’ access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food through urban agriculture and policy work.

 ”The barriers to healthy food are not just about price,” she says. “A common theme is transportation."

These issues arouse both the aspiring urban planner (find practical remedies!) and the armchair cultural theorist (capitalism's creation of its own inscrutable networks, chains, hierarchies, deserts, and densities). Still reeling, trying to absorb the excesses and contradictions from the juxtaposition of the factory farm and the food desert.

Redevelopment vs. Preservation in SF

Writing SoMa history | San Francisco Examiner

Interesting snapshot of the investment that may/will unfold with the arrival of HSR and the Transbay Terminal. Proponents of HSR argue that areas adjacent to planned stations will receive this attention up and down the state-long route, and with it come concerns about preserving the character of the existing space. Preservation is a tricky beast to tame, and a glance at the comments will tell you why:

Planning tends to do a really mixed-up choc-a-bloc pastiche when they get into this micr0 management mode. It the Mission they arbitrarily took whole blocks that had been mixed use, and locked them down under "industrial preservation." Now many of those buildings sit empty because the "industry" has long since moved out and there is no flexibility to re-purpose the buildings.

Meanwhile individual neighbors are jammed up against industrial space that is neglected.

And:

Sixth Street Lodging District?!?!? Are you f-ing kidding me? Let's make sure we preserve the homeless and criminals that do with it and that live in these "historical" buildings. Better yet, in order to preserve the true character of the neighborhood, let's dress all the homeless like 1930 bums and call is Skid Row again. We can sell tickets!

Preservation can be a powerful tool to prevent slash and burn redevelopment that makes every place look like noplace, and whether these commenters are right or wrong, it can also hamstring economic growth, and result in arbitrarily preserved eyesores. It is also selectively wielded, and though Examiner reporter Kamala Kelkar doesn't come right out and say it, bias is implied. SoMa and the Mission have been targeted for preservation against overzealous developers, while (the last historically black neighborhood left) Hunters Point was not. Nor, in decades past, was the Fillmore area, known as "The Harlem of the West."

I've given my snapshot of California Redevelopment Laws in an earlier post, and it is safe to say that the system favors the monied and powerful in their quest to remain monied and powerful. It accomplishes this by creating powerful incentives to replace underperforming/poor areas with uses that generate more impressive revenues: luxury condos and big box regional retail being perhaps the foremost. Preservation needs a place at the table, as I think it's usually best to regard redevelopment skeptically until proven otherwise.

Building Coalitions for Better Streets, One School at a Time

Spaces that need improvements for bicycle and pedestrian users face a number of obstacles.

First: the land use patterns that make walking and biking more difficult than driving. This is the foundation, and it both politely and actively discourages users from reimagining the space as anything but autocentric.

Second: the lack of a visible group of beneficiaries. In the suburbs, people see cars, trucks, and more cars--why divert precious funds from what is clearly the dominant mode? Thus, projects for bikes and peds catch flak for wasting taxpayer dollars on frivolous expenditures. See anti Measure O arguments, short-sighted local business owners, and recent shift toward Republican leadership.

Third, is the lack of an organized group of beneficiaries. In most communities, stakeholders with significant buy-in to status quo arrangements--auto commuters in traffic, businesses with limited parking--will be the most vocal in calling for remedies. Conservative Taxpayer groups, business associations, and people fed up with commutes exert pressure on elected and appointed officials to keep expanding and improving roads and parking. There's a mobilized constituency for officials to work with. Outside of San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and a handful of other places, Bike Coalitions are small players, and organizations angling for ped improvements are usually regional, national, or of the observational nature, like this blog. (This is from my limited experience, i.e., Complete Streets, Streetsblog, etc). In other words, they are less effective at building local constituencies.

In order to create demand for improved bike and ped infrastructure, one would need a constituency that cuts across economic and social class, is present in communities across the nation, and is intensely concerned about how local transportation networks serve pedestrians and bicyclists. A tall order--but the constituency exists: elementary and middle school students, their parents, and their teachers.

The Safe Routes to School (SRTS) initiative first popped up on the radar in the 1970s in the US and in the Netherlands. It only gathered momentum after 1997, when a local project in the Bronx gave rise to two nationally funded pilot programs. In 2005 and 2006, SAFETEA-LU, the massive federal transportation omnibus, appropriated $600 million to create the National Safe Routes to School Program, which has an excellent online guide for bringing a SRTS program to your school.

Since then, some 10,000 schools have received SRTS funding to improve the safety and convenience of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. The comprehensive online guide facilitates grass roots organizing by outlining sequential best practices for SRTS success--everything from how to build a coalition, to how to look for funding, to what a bump out and a chicane are, to how to improve street connectivity with retrofitted pedestrian access paths.

Suburban culs de-sac create inefficiencies and concentrate traffic on arterials

Now, I'm not suggesting that folks like myself pose as concerned parents and infiltrate PTAs to set up SRTS coalitions--though that would be fun--but there are organizations doing excellent work to organize communities of parents and educators, and link them with the funding and impetus to invest in reclaiming streets for school children. One of these is TransForm, based in Oakland. In 2008, it partnered with the Alameda County Transportation Improvement Authority to bring $1 million in SRTS funding to four Oakland schools:

This project is designed to remedy concerns frequently raised by parents, principals and students that speeding traffic poses safety issues and discourages walking and bicycling.  The project will include ADA-compliant pedestrian “bulb-outs” and ramps, crosswalks, pushbuttons and countdown signals, closes gaps and widens sidewalks at identified locations. Bicycling safety will be improved by adding new bike lanes on Alcatraz Avenue from Dover Street to College Avenue. The project also realigns traffic lanes on Hopkins Place to improve safety for vehicular traffic, as well as students walking or bicycling to school. Hopkins Place connects MacArthur Boulevard bicycle lanes with the front of Bret Harte Middle School.

The byproduct of mobilized school communities is a better infrastructure for the entire city, and ingrained good habits in its youth. Just like the Americans with Disabilities Act mandated curb cuts that are more frequently used by parents pushing strollers, or seniors pulling groceries, SRTS infrastructure improvements will all users to move around their environment in more ways, more safely and conveiently. I don't have the space here to elaborate on the multitudinous benefits of biking and walking to school (or anywhere else) from a social justice standpoint, so I'll just say that any reduction of automobile dependence anywhere will save money and lives. And that can only be a good thing.

Links:

SRTS projects in CA that received funding in the '10-11 funding year
TransForm info sheet for SRTS services they coordinate
SRTS program brief for 2010 (pdf)
More detailed ways to improve the school zone, the school route, street crossings, and traffic conditions.

CA Redevelopment Law: Can a Powerful Tool be Repurposed?

Caveat Emptor: this is a wonkier post, so read at own peril.

Earlier this month, I had the privilege of attending the Berkeley Dept of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) open house, where I sat in on a class titled "Sustainable Redevelopment." Professor Cecilia Estolano, the recent former Executive Director of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA/LA), taught the class.

The class outlined the system of redevelopment in California. Briefly, and hopefully without too many mischaracterizations, let me set the three main redevelopment tools in CA law: 1) Community Redevelopment Agencies, which have authority to buy and assemble land, 2) Tax increment financing, which provides the strong profit motive for the CRAs, and 3) eminent domain, which among other things, also keeps costs down for redevelopers.

CRAs

California state law provides for the existence of locally derived Community Redevelopment Agencies. They are not centrally administered, and though there is a central body, the federalist structure retains significant independence for each CRA. According to Estolano, a lot of cities that are too small for a city council and a CRA will fuse the two bodies, such that a copy of the meeting minutes might read "Move to close City Council meeting. Motion appoved. Motion to Open CRA meeting. Motion approved" or something similar. The decentralization can also create a situation where smaller CRAs lack legal, real estate, and economic expertise sufficient to combat pressure from external developers. But onward:

CRAs were originally tasked with reducing blight. The definition of blight, however, was/is problematic: to be blighted, an area had to show physical and economic blight. Criteria included overcrowding, unsafe, unhealthy, or poorly maintained building stock, low property values, even irregular lots with under multiple ownership. (Picture Boston's North End, which thankfully weathered a redevelopment storm of its own, or any other district with "European" narrow/angular street patterns and residential/retail mixed use.) Redevelopment Agencies had to establish a relationship wherein blight caused a lack of utilization, that without public-private redevelopment, would lead to further stagnation.

Such a liberal definition of blight gave Redevelopment Agencies (in my notes as RDAs, not sure if these are technically identical to, or different from CRAs) the authority to declare a project site "blighted." Sidenote: not sure what the accountability structure is here, ie, who or what evaluates RDA blight designations. In practice, the law gave redevelopers the ability to take control of low-income areas for the purposes of redevelopment.

Tax Increment Financing (TIF)

With the land assembled, CRAs needed funds to fuel the projects intended to better utilize the blighted zones. Enter TIF, which allows the CRA to accumulate funding by leveraging future increases in property values in the project sight as collateral. The first step is to assess existing property values in the project area--these revenues, pursuant to state law, are divvied up among local bodies like the schools, libraries, etc. But above this baseline, all growth in tax revenue accrues to the CRA. Needless to say, this arrangement creates incentives for projects that will boost property values the fastest: skyscrapers, big box stores, and luxury this's and thats's. Any regard for previous residents of the project site is notably absent, as is any eye for social justice, social services, or even any doubt that boosted property values are one and the same as economic development. A subsequent law required that increases in tax revenue be subject to the same redistribution formulas as the baseline tax revenue, but the incentives are the same regardless of whether local institutions do or do not get to share the windfall.

Because the CRA is a public agency, it can get sweet rates on the bonds it purchases. And it can only use the money inside the project zone, giving rise to disparities of community investment. And CRAs are chartered for 45 years, which allows them to reap the TIF driven money tree for a substantial amount of time.

Eminent Domain

Enough has been said about this already without me needing to add much. The ability to requisition property from private owners for a larger project, be it a highway or a stadium. Eminent domainers have been historically required to pay only fair market value for the property, which, because it is frequently in a designated blighted area, is frequently inconveniently low for the property owner.


Overall, a powerful framework for redevelopment. Needless to say, incentives are aligned in favor of the monied few, and against the non-monied multitude, but the essential question to be asking is what provisions can be added or subtracted from this framework to create redevelopment projects that value context, value social and environmental justice, and value reduced carbon footprints?

Decentralizing Povery, Jobs

From the WashPo: Suburbs take hit as US poverty climbs in downturn

The article draws its findings from this report by the Brookings Institute.

Increases in suburban poverty increase the need to improve the suburbs by allowing for greater diversity of uses. And because I just took a practice math GRE, I'm in a quantitative mood, so lemme spell (ha) it out:

(People) + (auto-dependent environments) + (poverty) + (Lack of diversity in housing stock) + (Aging/decaying housing stock) = (People) - (mobility) - (quality housing) + (poverty)

= increasingly deep morasses for impoverished folks to climb out of. Le suck.

The data:

The article acknowledges one way in which the suburban built environment poses obstacles to the poor that the city does not: the lack of density makes obtaining social services difficult.

Suburban nonprofit groups were often spread across multiple counties, cities or townships. That made it difficult to coordinate services across sprawling areas or obtain funding, compared to cities where poverty was more concentrated. 

Other than this finding, the article chalks up most of the suburban poverty shift to the recession. The recession, while it may explain why there are more poor people, cannot alone explain why being poor in the suburbs may be worse than being poor in the city. One would need to take the built environment into account--transportation networks, housing stock, and location/availability of social services.

A different report by Brookings suggests that the decentralization of employment opportunities--jobs moving from city centers to edge and edgeless cities--may be driving the suburbanization of poverty (see also here). The poor follow the jobs: the 07-08 housing/easy credit boom must have facilitated the following of said jobs, and/or provided its own independent decentralizing pressure. The report also notes that poor minority groups are less likely to settle in suburbs with good access to jobs. It's a sobering summation, and an effective conclusion for this post:

Together, these findings strongly suggest that employment decentralization is helping to drive the suburbanization of poverty. However, the responsiveness of the poor to job sprawl is not as strong as it is for the population as a whole. Furthermore, when the poor reach the suburbs, they are more likely to live in jobs-poor areas that are frequently lower income and more disadvantaged—and potentially indistinguishable from disadvantaged central city areas. These patterns are sharpest for the black and Latino poor, and they are consistent with prior research documenting that racial and ethnic minorities have driven population growth in lower-income suburban areas characterized by weaker employment growth and lower access to good-paying jobs.

Clipper Card Update

From the SF Chronicle, news that the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has given the Clipper card an official Chinese subtitle: Lu Lu Tong. Translations vary, but revolve around "the go-anywhere card."

Official subtitles in Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese are forthcoming, they say.

Clipper Card Woes

From KALW @ SFgate.com comes a report about the uneven transition from paper passes to the new Clipper Card.

The Clipper Card is the Bay Area's attempt at an all-in-one transit pass solution. The sales pitch writes itself: why have different paper passes for each transit system when you could have 1 card for all of them? No more transfers, no more quarters for Muni, etc. Convenience, ease of use, automatic transfers.

If only it were that simple. I've been following the issues, now it's time to sum them:

• Presently, Clipper cards are free when you add $2. In the future, a card will cost a flat $5. 

This is baseless supposition here, but I suspect the extra expense comes from the administrative overhead/electronic wiring system required to coordinate fees and transfers so that 1 card can work between BART, Caltrains, Muni, AC Transit, Golden Gate Ferries and Transit. More agencies are lined up for the future. New card-tappable readers need to be added at all entry and egress points. My point of reference is Boston, where the MBTA handles everything for the entire Boston metro area, and then some. This and the established infrastructure might explain why their bus drivers give out Charlie Cards like candy.

• The new Clipper-compatible Muni faregates have, for now, an operationsfail.

• Topping up.

Not all BART stations have kiosks yet. Not all Muni stations have them either. I'm unclear whether you would be able to top-up while boarding Muni from a street stop. Downtown SF Muni stations have Clipper kiosks, and I know that SF Walgreens locations sell Clipper Cards and can add value. And you can do it online, though I have heard that it takes 1-2 days for the monies to be applied to the card.

What if you don't have internet access? What if the clerks at Walgreens don't speak Cantonese, let alone Spanish? What if you didn't even know your paper monthly pass would no longer be accepted?

• Lackluster communications roll-out = disadvantages for young, old, poor, and non-English speakers

Watching the SFMTA's outreach has driven home two points: a) mobility and transportation are universal needs, and b) mobility and transportation are therefore social justice issues. It seems that point has not been taken quite seriously enough. Streetsblog has noted the lack of outreach to community groups, especially Chinatown residents.

According to the Chinatown Community Development Center, there has been little direct outreach to the Chinatown community about the Clipper timeline and almost none of that has been in Chinese.

(MTA Rep) Goodwin admitted the Clipper customer service center didn't have a regular Chinese speaker, and said when a caller spoke Cantonese or Mandarin, they had to utilize an AT&T translation service.

Another concern raised by CCDC was the digital divide for seniors who don't have access to computers and the current lack of physical Clipper vending machines in Chinatown. Even when the Powell Street Muni Metro Station vending machines come online this month, the walk for many Chinatown seniors there would be over a mile, something Chan said was unreasonable.

And now comes the news from KALW that the youth passes needed to get to and from school are Clipper or ... Clipper. AC Transit stopped accepting the old paper passes in August. Right before the school year. In retrospect, that might not have been the best idea. The article does an excellent job detailing the logistical challenges faced by administrators and teachers in low-income, high ESL schools.

KIRK: Lots of Oakland does not pay attention to print media. So if it's not happening on TV and it's not being bombarded on billboards and things like that, they're not getting the message. There are also a lot of people who have very low incomes and rely on something like a student bus pass to get around. So they need it, but they don't get the word until they need it.

With 20/20 hindsight, the SFMTA should have invested more time in coordinated communication. It's hard to believe they did not flood different neighborhoods with pictograph-laden pamphlets in Cantonese and Mandarin, Mam, Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Urdu and Hindi, Thai, etc, etc. Corner stores, anywhere people previously bought passes. Bus stops. And phasing out the old youth passes right before the school year? What a trick! Installing kiosks takes time and money before a convenient network of places to top up is established--totally. But communication got lost in the mix. The young, the old, the poor get inconvenienced ... the usual suspects, sadly.

The Bay Area needs Clipper, nonetheless--it's a big step overall toward better transit, and better inter-agency coordination. I hope these are just one-time transition issues.

Segregation and cities

One area of urban planning that I have both read a lot about, in the sense that it exists, but have not read anything about, in the sense of what a planner can/should do about it, is segregation.

h/t to Ms. AK from Seattle for the link to these illuminating population maps. Just goes to show how far a good visual can go. I've posted three, but a few more are here.

Red/pinkish dots = white people, blue dots = black, green dots = asian (presumably east asian, judging by the Chinatown clusters, unknown how much of Asia is included though), and yellow = hispanic/latino.

San Francisco - lots of white people in north and central SF. Interesting integration in what looks to be either downtown Oakland or Berkeley, can't quite tell. It's one of the few places on any map where all colors can be seen mixed together.

Detroit - the 8 mile road is like the Berlin Wall. Wow. Inner city is black, outer ring, white.

New York City - the famous neighborhoods. Little thises and thatses, and boy are they concentrated. Notable that Central Park and Prospect Park, the two best known (and used) parks, are pretty much surrounded by white people. Assuming I've noted the correct location for Prospect. I guess that shouldn't really come as much of a surprise.

These maps = me looking forward to learning GIS.

Why Suburban Retrofits Matter

Not just because it's a "fashionable/elitist/patchouli-munching lifestyle choice" as some would deride it. Check out this post over at Smart Growth America. Highlights:

In a new study, the American Lung Association in California has thrown its support behind that state’s plans for more smart growth communities because of the striking positive health implications.

The study conservatively estimates that if the state of California realizes Vision California goals to decrease driving and create more walkable, mixed-use communities by 2035, the state will avoid:

• $1.66 billion (yes, with a “b”) in pollution-related heath costs
• 140 premature deaths
• 260 heart attacks
• 215 acute bronchitis incidents
• 95 cases of chronic bronchitis
• 2,370 asthma attacks
• 101,960 other respiratory symptoms
• 205 respiratory ER trips and hospitalizations
• 16,550 lost work days
• 132,190 tons of criteria pollutants

And those are just the physical health benefits. Streetsblog leads with an article about driving related stressors, and the mental leaps and assumptions through which we turn cars and their automated mobility into expectations. And get all bent out of shape when reality gets in the way of our self-involved worldview. I wrote here about how cars facilitate me-first kind of thinking.

On the CCCTA and the CCCC

The Contra Costa County Connection is the multi-syllabic bus service for Contra Costa County and its accompanying transit authority (CCCTA). It has 11 jurisdictions: the cities of Clayton, Concord, Lafayette, Martinez, Orinda, Pleasant Hill, San Ramon, Walnut Creek; the towns of Danville and Moraga; and the unincorporated areas of central Contra Costa County

Here's some more quantitative info from their website:

CCCTA DEMOGRAPHIC SNAPSHOT

• 77% OF CCCTA RIDERS ARE TRANSIT DEPENDENT
• 60% OF CCCTA RIDERS ARE MINORITIES
• 48% OF CCCTA RIDERSHIP IS OF LOW INCOME EARNING $25,000 OR LESS
• SERVICE AREA: 200 SQUARE MILES
• SERVICE AREA POPULATION: 482,400
• PROPOSED OPERATING BUDGET FY2010: FIXED ROUTE - $25,575,341 PARATRANSIT - $5,150,751
• ANNUAL RIDERSHIP: 5 MILLION (FIXED-ROUTE AND PARATRANSIT)
• FLEET SIZE: 131 FULLY ACCESSIBLE BUSES 63 PASSENGER VANS (PARATRANSIT) 

The CCCTA likes it some emphatic capslock.

The above CCCTA figures are interesting, but don't really communicate the entire context in which the Authority operates. To demonstrate this in a quick and dirty way, I averaged the median household income and per capita income data from the 2000 Census for Clayton, Concord, Lafayette, Martinez, Orinda, Pleasant Hill, Walnut Creek, Danville and Moraga (San Ramon didn't have any data on wikipedia, shame). I also tossed in some similarly quickndirty ridership tallies:

48 percent of CCCTA riders earn less this amount: $25,000
Average per capita income for cities in service area: $44,000
Average median household income for cities in service area: $101,943
Percent of CCCTA riders that are minorities: 60
Average percent of total population for cities in service area that are minorities: 18.2*
Annual CCCTA ridership: 5 million
Averaged daily ridership: 13,698 (commuters probably spike this tally higher on weekdays and lower on weekends)
Annual Average Daily Traffic on I-680 @ CA 24: 219,000 vehicles
Averaged daily CCCTA ridership as a percent of service area total population: 2.83%

*includes San Ramon

I'm no statistician, so maybe averaging averages and averaging medians is a big no-no, but you get the gist. A wealthy area, where the wealthy never see the poor because the mode share self-sorts by income. A wealthy area, where small numbers of low-income people of color are served in high numbers by bus service. CCCTA isn't the only agency in this position, nor is Contra Costa the only county or region with such disparities.

One of the bottom lines here is that providing quality transit is a social justice issue. More on this anon.