Tag: Chicago Page 3 of 4

Updates

On May 31, 2012

It has been a while since my last post and there has been a lot going on. I’ll be brief but I expect to be writing on the following topics in the next couple of weeks.

Beer

You may be wondering what kind of connection beer has to transportation and land use. I’ve been wondering the same thing and I’ll have some information up soon. As an avid home brewer, I am very much interested in the burgeoning craft beer scene in Chicago and I intend on examining why. As in, does urban form have any affect on the location decisions of craft brewery start-ups? Are there any agglomeration effects? Does public transit play a role? We’ll see.

Transport Chicago

I have been involved with the Metropolitan Conference on Public Transportation Research (aka Transport Chicago) for the past four years in various leadership and committee posts on the steering committee. The conference is tomorrow, so please, sign up if interested. This year, I will be moderating a session on transportation safety in the context of pedestrians, bicyclists and vehicular users. Someone you may know, Steve Vance from Grid Chicago, will be presenting. Post conference, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on my session and the rest of the conference.

Travels

I’ve been traveling lately. Last week to Wisconsin. Next week to Florida. I’ve got some ideas on both…to be shared soon!

Zoning

We’ll see about this one, but I think it’s worth mentioning the effects zoning has on land use and transportation decisions. I’ve been realizing that some of what I have been talking about on the blog may be obscure to some of my readers and some basic definitions are involved. Zoning is a critical planning tool in land use development and this might be a good jumping off point into discussions of broader land use and transportation policy. Look for additional posts on transit-oriented development, public transit and other land use and transportation related policy briefs.

Dumb Deals Follow Up

By Ryan Richter

On May 24, 2012

In Parking, Transportation Policy

Source: theexpiredmeter.com

It’s timely, isn’t it? I just wrote about the Chicago parking meter lease and how bad it is for urban policy and next thing I know, the City is getting hit with a $22 million bill to cover a year’s worth of free parking. Even worse, it’s part of a total $50 million the City owes.

So, why the bill? Isn’t Chicago Parking Meters, the company set up to administer the City’s parking meters is surely raking it in, to the tune of $108 million in gross revenues in 2011. It turns out that the City’s parking policies are in conflict with terms of the lease. When the City let’s disabled persons park for free (as is the law in Illinois), when the City closes streets for neighborhood festivals, when the City is reconstructing streets, these are all in violation of the lease terms.

This is a serious problem because it restricts the City’s ability to set parking policy, a fundamental urban planning tool that is now off-limits if it conflicts with the lease. Whereas the general public sees higher parking fees explicitly, it is now becoming clear that neighborhood festivals and construction projects now will cost a lot more money for the taxpayers of Chicago.

Speed Cameras and Complete Streets

By Ryan Richter

On April 22, 2012

In Complete Streets, Urban Design

I’d like to add a little more to the comments I posted on Grid Chicago regarding the speed cameras ordinance passed by the City of Chicago earlier this week.

As usual, the guys at Grid Chicago did an excellent job of reporting on the legislation and what it will (or won’t) do and I don’t intend on covering that. What I do think is important to highlight is the fact that too many streets in Chicago are built so wide as to encourage speeding. In my northwest side neighborhood of Jefferson Park, Milwaukee Avenue gets so wide north of the UP Northwest Line bridge that it is virtually impossible to travel the speed limit (30 MPH) without getting run off the road.

[mappress mapid=”1″]

This type of road cross-section is what Charles Marohn calls a “complete road.” And it is designed for the 45 MPH world that is an engineering, fiscal, and urban design failure.

This is the problem with Milwaukee Avenue and for many of the major four lane arterial streets in Chicago. They are designed for quick movement of cars. Thus, a 30 MPH speed limit, which is the speed limit in Chicago where not posted otherwise, is a joke for cars. And it is dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Seattle: N. 130th St. - Before Source: Complete Streets @ flickr

Seattle: N. 130th St. - After Source: Complete Streets @ flickr

If we’re really concerned about safety and about reducing pedestrian, bicycle and auto injuries and fatalities in this city, speed cameras are not the answer. Better design is. This is what I would recommend:

Reduce the width of the lanes to 10′ widths, perhaps even dropping a lane. Most of Milwaukee Ave. south of the UP-NW line into downtown is two lanes. This frees up room for the bike lane. In addition, there will be room for a median with protected pedestrian crossings. According to the National Complete Streets Coalition:

Complete streets reduce crashes through comprehensive safety improvements. A Federal Highway Administration review of the effectiveness of a wide variety of measures to improve pedestrian safety found that simply painting crosswalks on wide high-speed roads does not reduce pedestrian crashes. But measures that design the street with pedestrians in mind – sidewalks, raised medians, better bus stop placement, traffic-calming measures, and treatments for disabled travelers – all improve pedestrian safety. Some features, such as medians, improve safety for all users: they enable pedestrians to cross busy roads in two stages, and reduce left-turning motorist crashes to zero, a type of crash that also endangers bicyclists.

One study found that designing for pedestrian travel by installing raised medians and redesigning intersections and sidewalks reduced pedestrian risk by 28 percent. Speed reduction has a dramatic impact on pedestrian fatalities. Eighty percent of pedestrians struck by a car going 40 mph will die; at 30 mph the likelihood of death is 40 percent. At 20 mph, the fatality rate drops to just 5 percent. Roadway design and engineering approaches commonly found in complete streets create long-lasting speed reduction. Such methods include enlarging sidewalks, installing medians, and adding bike lanes. All road users – motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists – benefit from slower speeds

Complete streets encourage safer bicycling behavior. Sidewalk bicycle riding, especially against the flow of adjacent traffic, is more dangerous than riding in the road due to unexpected conflicts at driveways and intersections. A recent review of bicyclist safety studies found that the addition of well-designed bicycle-specific infrastructure tends to reduce injury and crash risk. On-road bicycle lanes reduced these rates by about 50%.

Supply and Demand in Downtown Residential Parking

By Ryan Richter

On March 26, 2012

In Parking

Downtown Chicago Building Roundup: North (Photo credit: Gravitywave)

I’d like to delve a little bit further into the pernicious effect of parking minimums, particularly as it distorts the market tenets of supply and demand. Seeing an article over the weekend in Crain’s Chicago Business about the decline in parking demand in downtown Chicago residential buildings, I could not avoid beating my favorite drum about the high cost of parking and its negative externalities. Here is the problem, according to Crain’s:

Demand for parking is dropping in downtown apartment buildings. At Lakeshore East, a development of mixed use high rise apartment and condo buildings just north of Millennium Park, south of the Chicago River and east of Michigan Ave., around 40% of renters lease a parking space, down from the developers projection of 55%. This would be fine in a true free market where the developer would assume the risk of overbuilding on parking. However, the City’s zoning code, in its infinite wisdom, requires parking in new residential developments at ratios of 0.55 to 1 space per unit. Thus, the developers initial projection for parking is at the lowest end of the parking ratio in the zoning code and is still over market demand.

Of course, I agree with Matt Yglesias in that the “problem with this regulatory minimum is that it makes it harder for existing buildings to recoup the losses previously incurred through overbuilding of parking.” Because the zoning code won’t allow for pooled or shared parking between buildings, each building must have its own allocated parking. The costs of this parking, of course, get passed onto the occupants of the building indirectly, regardless of whether the occupants have a need for a car.

Because of the over supply of residential parking downtown as mandated by zoning, parking is artificially cheaper than it should be. This, of course, encourages greater auto use in the densest part of the city, the part in which public transportation of various modes operate at a very high frequency practically around the clock. It also encourages the catering of urban design towards the car and away from alternate transportation modes, despite the fact that the alternate transportation modes may make up a larger share of trips in this area.

Ideally what I would like to see in this circumstance is free market pricing for residential parking, or if the zoning will continue to manipulate the market, parking maximums (for all types of parking). This will allow for shared parking at closer to the true cost of providing that parking. It will also allow the free market to decide what the best use of property is under right and can reduce the cost of development and occupation of residential and other space. Most importantly, removing the parking minimums and over-supply of parking will be supportive of the existing public transportation infrastructure in place downtown, as it is the dominant mode of travel within the area and its externalities are significantly better than the car.

Transport Nexus in the Polish Triangle

By Ryan Richter

On March 20, 2012

In Transit-Oriented Development, Urban Design

Looking southwest from the Polish Triangle

Of great interest to this site is the connection, or nexus, between transportation and land use. One prominent example of this failure of this nexus is at the southwest corner of Ashland Ave., Division St. and Milwaukee Ave., historically known as the Polish Triangle. Now part of the East (Ukrainian) Village neighborhood, this site is commonly known as the “Pizza Hut” site.

Needless to say, it is an abomination that this site was designed (allowed) in such a way as to maximize the use of the automobile when you have the following conditions present:

Access to the CTA Blue Line at Division St.
The #70 Division bus (running east-west) stop literally next to the property
The #56 Milwaukee bus (running NW-SE) and #8 Halsted bus (running north-south) stops across the street.
Designated, striped bike lanes on Division St. and Milwaukee Avenue.
Rare pedestrian space in the plaza like setting of the Polish Triangle.

Thankfully, this egregious market failure will be rectified.

It seems that after years of waiting, East Village residents will get what they have always wanted:

In early 2007, immediately after the Pizza Hut was shuttered, a coalition of community organizations lead by the East Village Association set forth four policies for redevelopment of the property. They called for a significant building that was mixed-use, high density and transit oriented.

This is, of course, despite the fact that the site faced significant development pressure for a Walgreens and various drive-thru bank facilities. Instead, the community got this:

11 story mixed use building.

The building is an 11-story mixed use facility with ground level retail, second floor office and apartments above. Reportedly, a coffee shop and bank are among the tenants thus far. 117 apartment units are provided with 35 parking spaces provided, 15 on site. One concession: a drive-thru for the bank using an existing curb cut. Interestingly enough, the 20 off-site parking spaces are in a parking lot adjacent to the property, home to an auto-oriented Wendy’s. The parking will not be available to residents, only for visitors, customers, and car sharing. This seems right.

What I find most interesting is that the developers acknowledge that the apartments are primarily for people who do not own cars. It is a tacit admission that not everyone needs a car, that the site will take advantage of its nexus to so many other transportation options that a car can be just one option among many, rather than catered to and coddled into the site. When you have this many transportation options and an urban environment designed for pedestrians, this concept had to fit within and respect those parameters. Kudos to the East Village community and developers Rob Buono and Paul Utigard. If more people thought like this we would have more Strong Towns.