BIKE: Timeout

[Patrick Goetz]

Although I kind of enjoy duking it out with long time rail curmudgeons 
Lyndon and David, I suspect that list readers are not only tired of this 
dialog, but have, in fact stopped reading it.  Exchanges such as the 
recent one in which Lyndon points to Frankfurt as a city with at-grade 
LRT as its primary rail system, to which I respond that it's largely a 
subway, to which Lyndon responds it's not a subway, it's LRT running in 
a tunnel! are simply not terribly useful or constructive.  You know 
there's a problem when Bluejay feels compelled to announce his IQ to the 
list before making a point.

I'm fairly certain that -- as transportation bicycling advocates -- most 
subscribers to this list share a common vision of what kind of 
transportation system we'd like to see Central Texas moving towards.  It 
seems odd, then, that so much time and energy is devoted to fighting 
amongst ourselves while advocates of ever more roads and the highway 
construction lobbyists who grease their palms appear to be on the verge 
of truly running amok; not only soaking up most available transportation 
monies to create even more unseemly sprawl, but -- in the light of 
potentially decreasing oil supplies -- potentially creating a true 
economic and social catastrophe for Central Texas.

To this end, I'd like to try and get away from time-wasting tit-for-tat 
squabbling and spend this time instead on figuring out how to move 
towards implementing the vision of a better modal mix in transportation.

With regard to rail, my approach is quite simple:  we should determine 
the functional parameters that we'd like a central rail system to meet, 
and then decide on a technology based on these parameters.  This is the 
logical approach; this is the engineer's approach; this is the only 
approach which makes sense:  determine what problem it is that you're 
trying to solve, and then figure out what the best way to solve this 
problem is.  If it turns out that all of our goals and requirements can 
be met with a simple, at-grade LRT system and this is the cheapest 
solution, then by all means let's build at-grade LRT.  It it turns out 
that we really need something more sophisticated (monorail, mini-metro, 
elevated rail), then it doesn't make sense to do anything other than 
implement one of these systems REGARDLESS OF COST.

The folks who disagree with the preceding statement have one and only 
one argument:  cost.  They claim over and over again that cost should be 
the primary consideration and that we simply can't afford to build 
anything that costs a "significant" amount of money.  In 2000, a 1.9 
billion dollar LRT plan failed by around 800 votes.  Now in 2004, with 
congestion much worse than it was even 4 years ago, we're being told 
that "the public" won't tolerate a rail system which costs more than 
60-100 million dollars.  I strongly disagree.  I claim that we can't 
afford *not* to build a rail system which meets a minimum set of 
functionality criteria regardless of whether it costs 2 billion or even 
4 billion dollars and that making this clear to the public is simply a 
matter of education.  Here is the argument (and thanks to Roger Baker 
for consistently supplying the data necessary to make this argument):

----
The CAMPO 2030 plan calls for 14.1 billion dollars in expenditures for 
new an expanded roadways in the CAMPO planning area.  Let's not even 
bother to talk about environmental impact, the negative affects of 
sprawl, or the disasterous prospect of the end of cheap energy.  This 
argument is based entirely on minimizing the cost of the overall 
tranportation network.

To this end, I ask readers to engage in the following 
Gedankenexperiment:  Suppose that the population of the CAMPO planning 
area were to remain fixed at EXACTLY the current population, never to 
ever increase again by even one person.  Then it should be clear that 
absolutely no new or expanded roadways are necessary.  Proof:  at this 
moment, everyone is getting to where they want to go using existing 
roads.  Sure, there is terrible congestion, but this congestion can 
easily be reduced by processes that are already in motion.  For example, 
SH130 is already under construction.  Congestion on IH35 could be 
greatly reduced by requiring all through truck traffic to use SH130 
rather than I-35.  Furthermore, the city is already in the process of 
implementing land use planning measures that should result in a 
considerable amount of trip reduction, hence less congestion.  The UNO 
overlay for West campus, for example, means that eventually most 
students will live within walking distance of campus.  By simply 
re-arranging land use a bit we can greatly reduce the number of car 
trips many people make, and these steps are currently being taken 
through allowing mixed use development, implementing form-based building 
codes, and so on.  Bottom line:  if the population doesn't increase, we 
don't need ANY new roads.

This is not another Patrick, dangerous radical, point of view.  CAMPO, 
for example, would have to agree.  Every proposal for new roads is 
prefaced by an appeal to the population forecast for the planning area 
(http://www.campotexas.org/pdfs/WhitePaper.pdf).  Over and over again, 
we are told that Travis, Williamson, and Hayes county will add 1.5 
million new residents in the next 25 years, more than doubling the 
current population.  Make careful note of this:  the "worse case" 
projected increase in population is 1.5 million people.

Very Interesting.  For the last 3 years, I've proposed a 20-mile 
North-South Metro rail system with an average of one station per mile. 
I'm fairly certain that the same company which did the engineering for 
the LVM (Carter-Burgess) would be willing to bid such a project at 80 
million dollars per mile, for a total cost of 1.6 billion dollars. 
Based on current bids in other places, I am entirely confident that the 
final price would be no more than 2 billion dollars (and of course 
should be much less -- the Copenhagen subway is being built for less 
than 38M/mile).

OK, thought experiment #2:  I'm in the process of trying to build a very 
modest, small, urban infill multi-family housing project;  in part, to 
put my money where my mouth is in terms of advocating liveable compact 
city development, but also because I'm sick of the crap that passes for 
human habitat in these parts.  In particular, the location is within 
easy biking distance of most parts of Austin; I know this because I 
currently live a block away and bike everywhere myself.  It's also close 
to existing public transit service, namely the #1 bus.  This project is 
surrounded by SF-3 residential (i.e. single family homes) and has 
already been approved by the neighborhood; i.e. it got the approval of 
my neighbors and can be built within existing zoning guidelines, more or 
less.  It has full parking, garden and private outdoor space for each 
unit, 65% impervious cover, on-site stormwater retention and is a mix of 
2 and 3-story buildings.  This all by way of saying this is not a super 
high density downtown Manhatten kind of deal.  It does, however, result 
in a density of 32.25 residential units per acre.

Let's suppose that for 1/2 mile out from each of the proposed rail 
stations, we build out to this density.  This isn't terribly 
unreasonable.  Planners like to use the figure of 1/4 mile as the 
maximum distance people are willing to walk to catch public transit, but 
that's not the way density works.  There are plenty of people willing to 
walk or bike 1/2 mile, and the market responds accordingly.  So I'm 
talking about a square, centered at each rail station, whose sides are 
1/2 mile from the station from the center of the side.

Question:  How much additional population would such TOD land use allow 
for in Central Austin?

Answer:  836,352

(assuming 2 residents per residential unit)

Of course there are already people living in these 1 square mile TOD 
zones, so this number is somewhat smaller, but think of this as an order 
of magnitude argument.

Now let's make the argument a bit more realistic, using actual TOD data 
from another place.  A good rail system will support considerably more 
density than this.  At the ECT TOD seminar last month, a California new 
urbanist architect named Polyzoides reported on a TOD project he is 
working on in ultra-NIMBY (according to him) Pasadena, CA, a project 
which is directly across the street from single family homes and 
directly next to a train line.  This project has a density of 100 
residential units per acre.

OK, so now let's make the more realistic supposition that our TOD zones 
around the 20 train stations have a density of 100 residential units per 
acre directly next to the station and that that this density linearly 
decreases to the previous example of 32 residential units per acre at 
the edge of the zone.

Question:  How much additional population would such TOD land use allow 
for in Central Austin?

Answer:  1,689,600

(i.e. 1.6 million people; again, assuming 2 residents per unit).

What I've just proven is that the implementation of a  2 billion dollar 
monorail, subway, or elevated rail system COMPLETELY cancels the need 
for 14.1 billion dollars in new roads!  The only fiscally responsible 
option is abundantly clear.  Any environmental benefits, reduced 
reliance on foreign oil, massive increase in regional economic 
viability, or quality of life improvements are strictly incidental!!

Of course the situation is more complicated than this, but I invite list 
readers to argue through some of the issues in your own head before 
posting blather to the list.  For example, certainly not everyone will 
want to live in a denser urban core; I argue that the young, old, and 
childless, however will (as evidenced by the high dollar value of other 
urban centers).  According to the last census, "traditional" families 
only account for around 17% of the US population nowadays (don't quote 
me on this, this number is from memory).  And of course, in the final 
analysis we will end up with at least some new roads and hopefully not 
just one rail line.  The point of this argument is to make it abundantly 
clear that a 2 or even 4 billion dollar rail system is completely 
affordable; knucklehead pontification from both the left and the right 
notwithstanding.