Basement Office

Anatomy of a to-do

In a brilliant act of sustained provocation, the Post-Gazette has kept the back-and-forth between bicyclists and drivers alive for three weeks running. Since the August 12 story about the appointment of a city bicycle “czar”, it has been nearly impossible to go a day without witnessing an exchange.

Following the publication of this story, the letters to the editors on August 13, 16, and 17 had at least one bicyclist or driver opining on the awfulness of the other.

Sensing blood, the P-G collected anecdotes from frustrated drivers, wrapped some weak reporting around it, and threw it on the front page on August 18 under the headline “When bicyclists break the safety chain, driver complaints mount.”

Predictably, this set off another round of furious letter-writing, some of which were published on August 20, 21, 23, and 25. The paper’s normally conservative page 2 columnist also spent a column supporting the bicyclists’ cause.

There has been ample debate on the topic on the paper’s own discussion form as well as on at least one local blog, which has racked up an impressive 100+ comment count on a post that was just trolling for abuse.

I have little to add to this noise, except to say that I think that both sides are yelling past each other, and that no amount of increased law enforcement, or painted bike lanes, or bicycle licensing fees will change how cars and bikes interact on the city’s streets, in their current state.

That’s not to say things can’t get better. What I would like to see is a fundamental rethinking of the function of the city street.

This story of Hans Monderman, a Dutch traffic engineer is a wonderful study in counter-intuitive approaches to better moderate the role of the automobile in the city.

While redesigning a major thoroughfare in a Dutch village after two children were fatally stuck, Monderman employed psychological tricks, not signs and speed bumps, to calm traffic:

Signs were removed, curbs torn out, and the asphalt replaced with red paving brick, with two gray “gutters” on either side that were slightly curved but usable by cars. As Monderman noted, the road looked only five meters wide, “but had all the possibilities of six.”

The results were striking. Without bumps or flashing warning signs, drivers slowed, so much so that Monderman’s radar gun couldn’t even register their speeds. Rather than clarity and segregation, he had created confusion and ambiguity. Unsure of what space belonged to them, drivers became more accommodating. Rather than give drivers a simple behavioral mandate — say, a speed limit sign or a speed bump — he had, through the new road design, subtly suggested the proper course of action.

Of his approach, Monderman says:

“I don’t want traffic behavior, I want social behavior.”

Better social behavior is something we should all strive to practice. Perhaps as the oil era cedes center stage, we can once again reclaim our urban spaces and infuse them with a humanity that has been missing for far too long.

Killer essay

This commentary hits just about every nail on the head. I couldn’t agree more with the following paragraph:

There are three things that keep me up nights: the threat of climate change, peak oil and the mountaintop removal strip mining that is destroying Appalachia. And I have reached the conclusion that, here in the United States, there are three major causes of these problems: Our homes are too big, our food travels too far, and our entire economy is built around the automobile. American homes are twice as big as they were 30 years ago, though fewer people actually live in them. The average item on a supermarket shelf has logged 1,500 miles to get there. And the homogenous suburb has ensured that we must drive everywhere, destroying at once the traditional, walkable city and the surrounding rural landscapes. Thus we have created a consumer culture that much of the developing world — most ominously, China — wants to emulate. But the problem is that this culture is based entirely on carbon-emitting fossil fuels, and it is therefore a culture that has no future.

Gas and taxes

Lately, there’s been a lot of things worth mention, but here are two of particular note:

Ethanol: Now it’s personal

This love affair we’re having with ethanol has got to stop. Among the many shortcomings that are noted in a recent New York Times blog post, “Ethanol and the Tortilla Tax,” comes this gem:

So far, Americans havent really caught on to what is happening to the price of products such as soybean or corn-based foodstuffs. But that may change if and when this rush to all fuels allegedly more environmentally friendly affects the price of beer.

It could happen; Heineken, the brewery giant, said beer prices might have to be raised because so many crops are being planted and diverted to bio-fuel production that the supply of barley and hops is being reduced.

Over-reliance on a crop that is chemically dependent and facilitates erosion, being disingenuous about the energy required to produce the stuff (and its purported “green” image), and shortchanging the world’s food supply in favor of keeping our country’s fleet of S.U.V’s in motion is one thing. But fuck with our beer supply? It just won’t fly.

Encouraging bad behavior

Representative Zack Space of Ohio has a solution for the twin “problems” of foreclosures and “high” gas prices:

…families who lose their homes to foreclosure frequently are hit with a massive tax bill. They lose their home and are hit with a “foreclosure tax” by the IRS, adding insult to injury. […] This “foreclosure tax” is simply unfair and needless injury. That’s why I will be introducing legislation to help alleviate this problem.

I also don’t have to tell you what gasoline prices have done to our families’ budgets. Earlier this summer, prices climbed to $3.25 per gallon and higher. For most of us who live in rural areas, we have no choice but to pay those prices if we want to continue to get to work and pick up our kids from school.

That is why I announced my plan to introduce the Rural Commuters Tax Relief Act of 2007. This legislation could not be simpler: If your household makes less than the national median income, you drive more than 30 miles to work and you work at least four days per week, then you receive a $100 tax credit for each month that the average price of gas is more than $3 per gallon.

So, if I read this right, he’d like to set up programs that only serve to reinforce the behavior that caused the problems in the first place? That’s poor governance.

To wit:

Why are more people suddenly facing foreclosure on their $300,000 home? It’s got a lot to do with the recent subprime lending boom and the popularity of adjustable rate mortgages, which allow for the easy acquisition of a McMansion in the ‘burbs. Speculation in a real-estate market that is teetering on the edge of collapse is not, historically, something that Joe Middle Class usually engaged in. Why not direct this “relief” into something more productive, such as borrower education that encourages potential homeowners to realign their expectations with economic reality?

Representative Space’s district lies amidst a lot of Rust Belt cities that could use an infusion of fresh blood. Incentives to repopulate these empty urban centers would serve to increase the economic health of his state more so than the current cycle of suburban development, which does nothing but keep the fast food chains, big box stores, and highway construction contractors happy. True, it may keep his district from becoming a haven for the Bed, Bath and Beyond set, but we should be concerned with preserving, not developing, our rural communities.

Promoting this type of behavior would also serve to eliminate the need to “help” people who “drive more than 30 miles to work.” The best help for these kind of people is the kind that encourages them to move closer to where they work. In Representative Space’s district, that would probably include cities like Columbus, Akron, and Canton. None of which are weathering the current suburban exodus all that well.

Go where the money is

Lucky us. We seem to have moved into the nexus of the grocery store universe. The forthcoming opening of a Trader Joe’s brings the number of grocery stores to which we can easily walk or bike to four. Baked goods, a deli, produce (organic and conventional), a coffee bar, and even free Wi-Fi. We’re surrounded by choices.

Meanwhile, one of the city’s neighborhoods most in need of help is reduced to looking forward to a sorry excuse for a real store or relying on the promises of a gambling operation looking to brown-nose their way into the city and take over land from the same disadvantaged population.

Some choice.

At a crossroads

Checking in with the local paper of Fargo-Moorhead, I was pleasantly surprised to see two articles dealing with important issues of urban planning. I have made it known before that I find the place devoid of anything resembling a unique identity, and I fear the worst for it.

One article discussed a report detailing the projected urban sprawl that the city will face by 2030. The other article covered a plan by the Moorhead city council to design a student community, a la Dinkytown in Minneapolis, that would service the adjacent Concordia College and Minnesota State University, Moorhead, campuses.

The importance of these issues should not be overlooked. Fargo-Moorhead is starting to grow up, and what they do now in the next five to ten years will shape the city in irreversible ways.

The campus city proposal is a great idea. It’s ridiculous that students are living in Fargo and West Fargo in crummy cookie-cutter apartments far removed from school. That’s not the way to promote a healthy college environment. By developing land between the universities and encouraging development of mixed-use housing and commercial neighborhoods, the city of Moorhead stands to gain a lot of students who do appreciate college for something more than a place to spend a couple hours a day in class.

Some council members and neighborhood residents feel that parking will pose problems that will eventually “destroy the neighborhood.” Nonsense. Build a neighborhood designed for the pedestrian and the car problem will take care of itself. And what will be left is a more attractive, quieter, and ultimately more satisfying place.

Designing for the pedestrian should also be a mantra that the individuals responsible for the growth of the area as a whole should take to heart. The claims that urban sprawl “could be a big problem 25 years from now” fall short by about 30 or 35 years. It has already begun and has been going on for some time now.

As Fargo and Moorhead spread out over the flat prairie like spilled milk on a table, what is being constructed is nothing less than an atrocity in city planning. Housing developments with sinuous, dead-end streets empty out on to 4 or 6 lane arteries, habitable only by automobiles and the flotsam and jetsam of modern life: strip malls, fast-food joints, and parking lots as far as the eye can see. Just because there is prairie as far as the eye can see does not mean one should consume it in a greedy, wasteful manner.

Taking a larger world view, the situation faced by Fargo has parallels in countless other cities and countries that the first industrial revolution passed by. Caught up in the second commercial revolution, that of technology and mass consumerism, it is only prudent to learn from the mistakes made the first time around, not repeat them.

To this end, China scares the hell out of me. With its unbelievable population and a more capitalistic-minded government, it is poised to become the next big world power. And they’re going into it having learned very little from the attempts of those that have gone before them. Coal power is the dominant source of energy and private automobiles are starting to drive other more traditional forms of urban transportation off of the road.

I heard a story on the radio that bike lanes in major cities are being converted to automobile lanes because the Chinese government feels they give off the impression of a backwards country. How ironic that European cities, after several thousand years of development, are actually encouraging such a thing. One can only hope the Fargo’s and China’s of the world can look beyond themselves and find the right way.