Bigger bumpouts aren't always better

The first phase of construction to narrow down the failed Spring Street urban-renewal scheme is just about complete, and for the most part, it's an improvement: the ugly median barrier is gone, there are fewer lanes of traffic, sidewalks are wider, and bike lanes are coming soon.

But even with the improvements, Spring Street still feels like a forlorn, too-wide speedway through empty parking lots. The hope is that some of those parking lots will soon transform into buildings, and then Spring Street might feel more lively. But for the time being, it's still a sad place.

The weirdest part of the new street is probably at the western end of the project, where the 1970s urban renewal project ended. There, the old street quickly bottlenecked down from 4 lanes east of State to two lanes a block to the west. The traffic engineers' plan for eliminating that bottleneck in the new plan has been causing some controversy. Here's a cyclists'-eye view of what it looks like:

Photo by Steven Scharf

 That's Portland's newest, biggest sidewalk bump-out, sitting right in the middle of what clearly used to be the historic path of the old Spring Street.

Now, as much as I like bump-outs, this design is stupid.

On the north (right, in the photo above) side of this corner, there's a clearly-defined street wall defined by the Little Tap House building, mature street trees, and other historic buildings a little further on up the street. And on the south side, there's a city parking lot – a remnant scar of Spring Street's urban renewal demolitions and a prime opportunity for a new building that could activate the corner.

But for some reason, the engineers designed the new Spring Street to avoid the historic corridor. Virtually of the site's contexts – the buildings, the trees, the streetlamps – tell motorists and cyclists to "stay right", but the paint on the pavement says, "swerve left, then right."

This, unsurprisingly, is confusing people. The Press Herald even got photographs of a driver rolling their car right over the new bump-out. To the driver's credit, this is exactly what the street's visual cues suggest you should do. But if you're a traffic engineer looking at a blueprint of the intersection, you don't see those visual cues, or the intersection's historic context.

Portland Press Herald graphic

Here's another problem with the bump-out: the reason it's so huge - two lanes wide! - is because on the eastern side of the intersection, in front of the Portland Museum of Art, the new Spring Street incomprehensibly bloats to 3 lanes, including an idiotic double-right-turn lane. While the rest of Spring Street got a road diet, this particular section senselessly got a widening.

The sudden bloat in turn lanes is obviously confusing to drivers – the driver who got caught cruising over the bump-out is trying to drive straight on Spring from one of the new right-turn-only lanes. The intersection worked just fine when there were only two westbound lanes there, though. Getting rid one of the three westbound lanes there and restoring the former layout would be an easy short-term fix.

And here's my final beef with the bump-out. The city owns a parking lot on the south western side of Spring Street. Greater Portland Landmarks owns the building on the southeastern side of Spring Street. Both of those corners are prime opportunities to activate a new Spring Street with attractive new buildings that match the context of the historic neighborhood and honors the historic street wall.

If we were willing to shrink the bump-out AND sacrifice one of the new right-turn-only lanes, we could actually get more pedestrian space overall, and get a more sensible intersection, and put more city-owned real estate to work to create new housing. How about it, City Hall?

Traffic engineers *still* want to widen Franklin Street

At left: Gorrill-Palmer Engineers' proposal for an 8-lane Franklin Street, blocking the Bayside Trail crossing between Marginal Way and Somerset Street.

This Wednesday, Oct. 1, will be the second public workshop for the Franklin Street redesign study. It starts at 5:30 p.m. in the main library's Rines Auditorium (on the basement level).

There's some good stuff being planned, but the team needs to be challenged – forcefully – on their proposal for the northernmost section near Marginal Way, pictured at left. 

 

Traffic engineers from Gorrill-Palmer – the same guys who proposed turning Franklin into a full-on freeway ten years ago – seem to have missed the long discussions about how this study's purpose was to make Franklin Street safer and friendlier to foot traffic. 

 

Instead, they've sketched out plans to widen Franklin from 6 lanes to 8 lanes north of Somerset Street. 

 

The proposal would make the intersection of Franklin and Marginal Way one of the most massive intersections in the greater Portland region – almost as big as the junction of Route 1 and Gorham Road at the center of sprawl-choked Scarborough.

The traffic engineers claim that extra lanes are needed to accommodate their forecast of 8% more cars by 2030. In other words, motorists will get more space to accellerate to freeway speeds, and pedestrians will get longer crosswalks and more opportunities to get maimed by motorists.

This section of Franklin would be the first section to be reconstructed (in 2016), so it's important to get it right – or at the very least, not make it any worse than it is today.

If you're coming to Wednesday's workshop, a good question to ask might be why we need 33% more lanes built in 2016 in order to accommodate science-fictional traffic that won't exist for another 15 years (if ever)?

Another good question to ask is whether the traffic engineers would be willing to film their children, or elderly parents, spend a weekday rush hour crossing this street on their own.

New St. Lawrence Theater offers to pay for better bus service

The new performance hall for the St. Lawrence Theater on the top of Munjoy Hill is going up for its planning board review this month, and the proposal includes a nice treat for Portland's bus riders: in order to entice more of its audience to ride transit to the facility (which, in an unusually progressive fashion, will be built without any on-site parking), the nonprofit is offering to pay to increase frequency and extend service hours on METRO's Route 1, which runs up and down Congress Street from one end of the peninsula to the other.

Currently, METRO's Route 1 runs roughly every half-hour from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., with a couple of additional runs until 10 p.m.

If the new St. Lawrence Arts venue is approved, the bus would run every 20 minutes, until 11 p.m., six days a week. They're also proposing to rebrand Route 1 as the "Art Line," a reference to its route through the heart of downtown's arts district.

The funding required for the additional service – $70,000 a year – would come from a surcharge in ticket fees at the new venue.  They're also planning other goodies, like abundant bike parking at the front door and discounts for cyclists. You can read the full "transportation demand management plan" here. 

Obviously, the enhanced bus service wouldn't just benefit theater patrons at St. Lawrence Arts. It would also benefit late-night hospital workers at Mercy and Maine Medical Center, on the other end of the line, plus dozens of restaurants and other arts venues downtown.

But no good idea goes unpunished: a group of wealthy neighbors calling themselves "Concerned Citizens of Munjoy Hill" is working hard to sink the proposal, or at least force St. Lawrence Arts to build an exorbitantly expensive parking garage.

So, if you'd rather see more sustainable transportation on Munjoy Hill instead of yet more parking, let the planning board know: email your comments to Nell Donaldson, HCD@portlandmaine.gov.

Bayside development in perspective

Last week the Planning Board approved the rezoning plan for the Federated Companies' ambitious "Midtown" project.

Some neighbors complained about the size of the project. Its first phase will include 196 units of housing, 97,000 square feet of retail space, and 720 parking spots. Sure, I've said before that there's too much parking. But just for some perspective, here's what it would look like if the city cancelled this project and allowed developers to build all that stuff in the suburbs instead of in a central-city neighborhood.

Here's the Falmouth WalMart: it's 92,000 square feet and surrounded by about 600 parking spaces...

...and here are about 150 units of housing in the Pleasant Hill "neighborhood" of Scarborough (there's at least another 300 paved parking spaces scattered in there, but let's gloss over those for now).

The two aerial views above depict roughly a half square-mile of what used to be lovely Maine farmland. The proposed Midtown project proposes to fit a similar amount of human-habitable space inside one large city block, which ought to look something like this:

But hey, if you think that City Councilors should cancel this project and pave the way (quite literally) for more sprawl in the suburbs, by all means you should let them know before they vote on the rezoning proposal at their next meeting.

The House transportation bill could kill Amtrak's Downeaster and most other transit services

The U.S. House of Representatives is today voting on H.R. 7, a 5-year transportation budget that would effectively kill public transportation in the United States in order to fund a Nero-like orgy of freeway construction and oil drilling.

Among the bill's features:

• Elimination of the Mass Transit Account, which Ronald Reagan created in the 1980s to fund transit capital projects and maintenance;
  
  
• Elimination of bike and pedestrian safety programs like Safe Routes to School. These programs comprise a miniscule fraction of federal transportation funding, but they make big impacts with safer crosswalks and more vibrant main streets. These projects use very modest funds to deliver big results to neighborhood safety and economic development. A political party that's fond of frugal government ought to embrace these programs — but a political party that's ruled by Big Oil paymasters might see them as an existential threat.
  
  
• Elimination of Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) rules that would allow state Departments of Transportation to divert funds from transit operations and bike/ped projects to highway expansion.
  
  It's worth noting that the workers at Maine's DOT have a revolving door arrangement with several highway engineering and construction firms, and that the Amtrak Downeaster service relies substantially on CMAQ funding for its day-to-day operations. This change would leave the door wide open for Governor LePage to yank Downeaster funding in order to build a new freeway to Gorham.
  
  
• And a massive expansion in domestic oil and gas drilling for good measure — as though sabotaging our public transit systems wasn't enough to make sure we stay addicted to the oil lobbyists who bought this bill from their Republican Party puppets.

Call your representatives and tell them to VOTE NO on H.R. 7, the House Transportation Bill:

Chellie Pingree: 1-888-862-6500 or email.

Mike Michaud: (202) 225-6306 or email.

New Hampshire 1st district (eastern/southern NH, including the coastal area):

Frank Guinta: (202) 225-5456 or email.

Life in a Red State (It's Not All That Bad)

As you've probably heard, Maine's state government has been taken over by a new Republican majority in a major shift of power (here's the Bangor Daily News report on the statewide election results). So technically, we live in a red state now.

Some of you may be ready to apply for Canadian citizenship. Please don't. The truth is, compared to our local and federal governments, and the support networks of our friends, families, and neighbors, Maine's state government isn't all that important or powerful in most of our day-to-day lives - and a lot of Republicans are interested in making it even less powerful.

Now, this is not to say that state government programs aren't very important to a lot of people - to students, the elderly, the destitute, and the mentally ill, to name a few - but by most measures, the Democrats' government wasn't serving those people all that brilliantly these past few years.

I happen to have lived in a red state before - in Houston, Texas. Some Mainers are inclined to be snobs about Texas, and that's something I'm a bit ashamed of because there's a lot to admire about Houston. It's true there wasn't a good social safety net there. Instead, there were jobs (lots of them), a low cost of living, and abundant opportunities for poor people to earn their way into the middle class - three important, egalitarian quality-of-life measures Maine could definitely improve on. And as a result, Houston is an extremely vibrant, successful city where thousands of new immigrants choose to move, and succeed, every year.

Again, don't mistake me for saying that this is a perfect substitution - I'd like to have both a social safety net for the people who can't make their own living, and good economic opportunities for the rest. And I think that we can have both - but Maine's Democrats were failing to deliver.

In fact, the Democrats have neglected a lot of problems in Augusta for too long, and maybe now we have a chance to fix some of them. To start with, Maine's government agencies are quantifiably too bureaucratic and administratively top-heavy. There are too many clerks and lawyers and not enough teachers and mental health professionals. Democrats haven't been much interested in tackling these problems, but now that Republicans have an upper hand, they'd be wise to work proactively on them instead of digging down to play permanent defense.

And since I write a lot about transportation issues on this blog, I also think that we do have some good opportunities to advance a better transportation agenda in the context of fiscal austerity here at the state level.

Let's start with the Maine Turnpork Authority - now's a great time to paint a bright red bulls-eye on their proposed $35 million tollbooth in York, and save the money for something more productive. Like new ZOOM buses.

This will also be a good time to implement a "fix it first" policy - that is, instead of planning and studying new roads, which are engines for sprawl and increasing property taxes, force Maine's DOT to make a priority of fixing the roads and bridges we already have. Just imagine if every new highway that MDOT proposed had to come with a fiscal note for maintenance and cumulative energy costs...

We should also think about mailing lots of pink slips to the Maine DOT, where there are still way too many pork-barrel highway planners designing fantasy roadways. In Portland, where neighborhood groups are trying to narrow down and reconnect Franklin Street, the cost of a Phase II engineering study has more than doubled, and actual progress has ground to a halt, ever since MDOT took control of the planning process. It looks as though Augusta's planners are trying to secure their own employment for a few more years while other projects dry up around them, but unfortunately their bureaucratic top-heaviness threatens the swamp the enterprise altogether. Portland legislators should be part of a bipartisan agreement that it's better to spend our money on filling potholes than on filing unnecessary paperwork.

We also saw a lot of interest in the past election over energy issues - and while that was mainly focused on the price of electricity, the cost of transportation (particularly fuel costs) is just as, if not more burdensome for most businesses and households here.

So while a lot of hoped-for "green" policies do seem a lot less likely this morning, I do see still see lots of realistic opportunities to make improvements at the state level. Remember - truly sustainable government needs to be financially and economically sustainable as well. Some new people and new ideas in Augusta might just do some good.

Bruce Hyman in the News; Tea Party Reacts By Calling Cyclists "Nazis"

Portland's new bicycle and pedestrian coordinator, a two-year position that's being funded from a federal public health grant, is profiled in today's Portland Press Herald, along with a brief outline of some of the Safe Routes to School projects for which he's been working to find funding.

Bruce Hyman and Sarah Cushman. Photo by John Ewing, Press Herald staff photographer.

There are some precious reader comments at the bottom of the story. There's a lot of whining about Hyman's $46,500 salary, but my favorite is from the wingnut who refers to "bike nazi initiatives".

So take heart, bicycle and pedestrian advocates. Your motorhead political adversaries are too stupid to frame their arguments in reasonable terms. In fact, it's doubtful they even have any arguments. Painting Hitler mustaches on pictures of people with whom they disagree isn't going to do anything to reduce their massive auto maintenance and gasoline bills - but that's their problem, not ours.

How Portland Can Fight the Oil Spill

AP photo by Charlie Riedel, from Boston.com's Big Picture blog

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is the inevitable product of a culture that is disastrously addicted to oil. BP isn't simply a corporate monster; it's our dealer. Anyone who's pays $3 a gallon for their gasoline is complicit with the multi-trillion dollar industry that works to squeeze oil from tens of thousands of wells deep under the waters of the Gulf.

Here's the good news: we're not by any means helpless. We don't need to take our toothbrushes to Louisiana to clean up this mess: we need to stop buying and burning so much oil every day.

Jonathan Hiskes, in a recent post on Grist, has offered up "10 Ways Cities and Towns Can Kick the Offshore-Oil Habit." Here's a sampling, in a shortened format:

• Build complete streets, roads that include sidewalks, and are safe to walk across and bike along;
• Build more development near public transit;
• Let the market lead - consumer demand for walkable, transit-oriented development is on the rise, but Portland needs to do more to make sure that local laws and ordinances don't prohibit such smart-growth development;
• Demand density: along the same lines, locals should fight the "not-in-my-backyard" attitudes that often thwart smart development, and welcome new neighbors in close-in neighborhoods so that more people can enjoy the benefits of car-free living;
  
• Cut parking, which wastes valuable space, invites more traffic congestion, and reduces tax revenues, all in the service of subsidizing gasoline sales;
• Grant free parking for carsharing vehicles - something that Portland has already done on a temporary basis to lure UCar Share.

These are all things that we can absolutely do on the local level, right here in Portland, and in surrounding communities. We even have a great plan in place (the Portland Peninsula Transit Study) to make many of these things happen. The question is, do our City Councilors and planners have the will and the diligence to help our city gain independence from the filthy oil companies?

Or will we continue to export millions of dollars out of our local economy to pay companies like BP?

Eliot Cutler on Roads, Transit, and Reducing Maine's Transportation Costs

Over lunch today I participated in the "live chat" on mainetoday.com with independent gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler. Here's the question I asked him:

Inflation of fuel costs and commute distances means that many Maine households are spending more on their cars than they do on their homes - it's a major threat to our cost of living, not to mention our public finances. Meanwhile, the state Dept. of Transportation seems incapable of building basic sidewalks in our downtown areas, much less improve transit services. How would you hold the DOT accountable to reduce its own costs and Mainers' transportation energy expenditures in general?

His response (you might pardon the typos, since this was a "live" chat, after all):

Boy, is that a good question. It all comes down to strong leadership. Thats how you insure success and change.

First of all, we need to do a good job everywhere in Maine of making sure that the "external" costs of development are borne in some fair measure by those undertaking the development. Sidewalks and other basic improvements need to be incorporated at the outset of projects, not added remedially at a later date, when it is much more expensive to do so.

Second, we need to address some of the hidden taxes that we impose right now on people who depend upon cars to get their kids to school or themselves to their jobs. (Yes, we need to build more compact communities, but we also need to deal with the hand that we've already dealt ourselves.) I already mentioned the vehicle inspection program that costs each of us a bunch of money each year without any measurable impact on safety. The sorry and deteriorating condition of our roads in Maine now imposes a hidden tax of $200-300 a year on every car owner in unnecessary maintenance costs per vehicle. We need to find the money to fix these problems and to remove these burdens on both Maine people and visitors to our state.

Third we need to look at transit solutions that will work in Maine today. My experience tells me that efficient and effective bus service (particularly with electric buses that reduce our use of liquid fossil fuels) will be our best bet.

Would love to explore these issues with you some time at greater length, Christian. Good question!

Overall, a fair response - kudos to Cutler for seemingly acknowledging that the state DOT is imposing big external costs on our communities by failing to plan or build complete projects from the get-go (see Exit 7 in Portland for a classic example) and for talking up buses, the inexpensive workhorses of our transit systems that don't typically get as much political attention as glitzy trains do. And kudos as well for acknowledging that the repair of existing roads and bridges should be a higher priority than planning or building new highways (particularly if we can't afford to maintain the roads we already have).

I'm a bit puzzled at the reference to vehicle inspections (I've heard him mention this before at another event). They might not add appreciably to safety, but they're also only $12.50 a year - pretty small potatoes in the context of the thousands of dollars a typical Maine household spends on cars every year. Getting rid of car inspections is not a sufficient transportation policy, not by a very long shot. But it's probably a populist talking point, so there you have it.

All in all, I'd grade it a solid "B" - he's an intelligent candidate, but he needs to work on bringing that intelligence to bear on this issue where Maine households and governments are bleeding hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Question 3: "Jobs Bond" or Highway Bailout?

A friend asked me today about my opinion on the state's revised bonding proposal, which proposes to borrow, with voters' approval in the June election, about $48 million for transportation projects.

I wrote about this on this blog a few weeks ago, when Augusta Democrats had proposed a much larger, and much more highway-focused bond package. They'd euphemistically called it a "jobs bond," even though highway construction jobs are notoriously low-value and short-lived.

The Bangor Daily News has a good rundown of last-minute negotiations that reduced the size of the borrowing package. The new, scaled-back proposal includes:

• $25 million for highway maintenance and construction statewide.
• $9 million for rail improvements in Lewiston and to restore the Mountain Division rail line between Portland and Fryeburg.
• $7 million (to be paired with another $7 million from the state's General Fund) to bail out the Montreal, Maine, and Atlantic railroad in Aroostook County.
  
• $6.5 million for Ocean Gateway, a deep-water cruise ship berth in Portland that will require an additional $1.5 million in local funds.

This year's bond package will also include these non-transportation items:

• $5 million for development of offshore wind power.
• $5 million for a new dental school and dental care programs in rural Maine.

Here's what I can say about this bond package that's positive: it's smaller than it might have been, and it gives greater weight than usual to non-highway transportation, particularly railroads. The (smaller) investments to the Lewiston and Mountain Division railroads could put those lines in a condition that's one step closer to accommodating commuter trains or Amtrak.

However, most of the rail money will be earmarked for the state to purchase a financially marginal line in far-northern Maine - a railroad that's been put out of business in large part because of the state's long history of subsidizing highways.

The state purchase of the Montreal, Maine, and Atlantic Railroad will also require an additional $7 million from the state's cash-strapped General Fund - the same pot of money that's supposed to finance social services and schools. Even as a rail advocate, I have a hard time swallowing the idea that we should be throwing the mentally ill out on the street in order to bail out a rail line through the North Woods. Even Rep. Josh Tardy, whose district is within striking distance of the line, is questioning the wisdom of this expense.

Unless you count the additional cruise ships that Portland might see, none of these projects will create any new transit services for the people of Maine, even though gas prices are creeping up towards $3/gallon again.

Instead of building the transit infrastructure we actually need, we're only treading water, trying desperately to sustain an obsolete infrastructure that's increasingly unsustainable.

One of the biggest ironies is that state lawmakers are still trying to sell this as a "jobs bond." But if we want to create high-value jobs that last longer than a single construction season, why can't we invest in research and development bonds, or industrial cluster grants, or any of the numerous economic development programs that have been proven to be more effective job-creators?

For the past few years, I've been voting "no" on the transportation bonds - a small protest vote against the Maine Department of Transportation's mismanagement. They haven't registered my protests yet - but maybe if a few thousand of my fellow citizens join me, they'll get the message.

Read more about the bond package:

From MPBN

From BallotPedia

From the Kennebec Journal

Running for Bayside/Parkside

At the urging of some of my neighbors, I have undertaken a bid for Maine's State House, to represent District 119 (the Bayside and Parkside neighborhoods) when Rep. Herb Adams retires this year.

If you read this blog, you're probably familiar with where I stand on a lot of issues. Obviously, making the Maine Dept. of Transportation more considerate and proactive about sustainable modes of transportation is a big goal of mine. But I'm also interested in doing more to cultivaqte small businesses as an economic development strategy, promoting more walkable downtown development in Maine's smaller villages and Main Street areas, and doing more to support immigrant populations in our neighborhood and across the state.

In order to have a fighting chance, I need to collect 60 $5 contributions in one week, in order to qualify for the state's Clean Elections Funding. These contributions all have to come from the Bayside, Parkside, and East Bayside neighborhoods. So if you're my neighbor, PLEASE go to the state's secure website and make a contribution online:

https://www5.informe.org/cgi-bin/online/ethics/cleanelection/home.pl

Even more importantly (because I definitely need help with this), if you know anyone else who lives in Bayside or Parkside, please vouch for me and ask them to chip in five bucks as well.

Thanks, readers!

Portland's arcane parking requirements will tax City Hall $1.2 million AND deny housing for 6

An recent article in the Forecaster outlines plans from Avesta Housing, a non-profit affordable housing development and management company based in Portland, to build 37 new efficiency apartments in downtown Portland, aimed at housing young, middle-class artists and other downtown workers.

The site, at 72 Oak Street, is a five-minute walk from thousands of downtown jobs and retail services, including literally hundreds of small businesses that have popped up along Congress Street's creative economy district. It is also right around the corner from Congress Street, the most transit-served street in Maine, with buses going by every five minutes, on average, sixteen hours a day.

It's a great place to build housing for young, single workers who don't own cars. Avesta intends to build it with $380,000 in City of Portland funds, plus $3.7 million from a statewide affordable housing bond. The rest of the project's $5.9 million price tag would be covered, over time, by rents - between $500 and $750 a month - low enough to be within reach for someone who's working a couple of restaurant jobs at once.

There's only one hitch: Portland's arcane parking requirements, which technically require one parking space for every new apartment built.

Each one of these proposed studio apartments would only be 420 square feet, which isn't much larger than the average parking space. So the city's zoning laws basically say that every resident will be required to make room for a thousand-pound, truck-sized roommate, AND pay extra rent for all the space it takes up - regardless of whether or not the residents actually own or need an automobile.

If the City's planning board actually chooses to enforce the requirement here (they're allowed to make exceptions, mercifully), the project won't happen.

Avesta has proposed a compromise in which they build only 8 parking spaces on the ground level. But even that is too much. Building parking here would wallop the city with a triple tax:

1. A $1.1 million tax on affordable housing: Eight parking spaces would occupy roughly 15% of the proposed building's area, and because structured parking is so expensive, it could eat up as much as 20% of the construction budget. So City Hall is effectively putting a 20% tax on affordable housing. We don't even tax cigarettes that much. Remember, this is a publicly-funded project, so the City's basically taxing itself - or, more accurately, it's taxing our affordable housing fund.
   
   Beyond that, the space that eight parking spaces occupies could be used instead for six more studio apartments instead. So, the city and state are spending 15-20% of their "affordable housing" subsidy for parking instead - that's $600,000-$800,000 - PLUS they're preventing themselves from providing six more affordable apartments, which will cost them about half a million to build elsewhere in a similar project elsewhere. All told, that's about $1.1 million lost for Portland's affordable housing efforts.
   
   
2. A $9,600 annual tax on public parking garages: if you owned a shopping center that already had a shoe store in it, it would be awfully bad business for you to force the grocery store and florist to sell shoes as well. But that's effectively what City Hall is doing here, by simultaneously operating public garages within two blocks of the site, and simultaneously requiring the developer to build more parking. A block west from the proposed project, the City runs the Gateway Garage, one of the more under-utilized garages in the city, and a block south is the city-owned Free Street garage. Even if a tenant here did need a car to commute during the days, they could easily find room for it during nights and weekends in public garages.
   
   Instead, the city is using public money to undermine its own parking business. That is stupid.
   
   It costs $100 a month [note how this is about 1/5th as much as it costs to rent a similarly-sized efficiency apartment - a clear indication that the City is subsidizing car storage far more than it's subsidizing rents for living people], or $1200 a year, to park in a public garage. But if Avesta builds 8 new parking spaces on Oak Street, then the City's garages will lose the opportunity to collect rent from 8 automobiles. That's $9600 a year in lost revenue. Taxpayers will have to make up the difference.
   
   
3. A $6,700 annual tax on METRO: similarly, by requiring car storage on-site, City Hall is also undermining its publicly-subsidized transit operation. METRO buses go past this site every 5 minutes, 16 hours a day, which means that most of this building's tenants will likely be regular transit riders. But if the City requires 8 parking spaces there, then it's mandating 14 fewer transit customers - eight drivers, plus six fewer residents who can't live there because the space that could have been their apartments will be given to automobiles instead. A METRO pass is $40 a month, or $480 a year. That means the 8 parking spaces will cost METRO about $6700 in lost revenue - and again, you and I will take up the slack.

The ten-year net present value of this lost parking and bus fare revenue adds up to over $100,000, which brings the grand total to $1.2 million in wasted or lost public funds.

It goes without saying that eight more parking spaces next to Congress Street will also put eight more cars on downtown's congested streets, and generate eight more cars' worth of air pollution, and give us eight more opportunities to get into accidents.

This is just one small example of how burdensome and wasteful the city's parking requirements can be. Keep in mind that we're just talking about 8 parking spots - just imagine the money we're losing from larger developments.

Ideally, the City should get out of the expensive and pointless business of parking regulation altogether - just the same as the state got out of the business of regulating power plants, or how the federal government got out of the business of regulating airline routes. But if that can't be managed quickly (and it probably can't be), then this particular project deserves a pass.

Build housing, not parking.

It's Not A "Jobs Bond," It's A Highway Builders' Bailout

Yesterday, Augusta Democrats proposed a $100 million borrowing package, the lion's share of which would pay for the Maine Department of Transportation's completely unsustainable highway-building agenda. Here's the breakdown:

• Highway Construction
  $ 47,500,000
• Railroad preservation:, Aroostook & Androscoggin Counties
  $ 25,000,000
• K-12 School and Higher Education Energy Improvements
  $ 20,000,000
• Drinking Water and Waste Water State Revolving Loan Funds
  $5,170,000
• Overboard Discharge, Underground Oil Tanks & Culvert Replacement
  $1,500,000
• TOTAL
  $99,170,000

They're euphemistically calling it a "jobs bond." But if the Legislature is really interested in growing jobs, why waste so much money on highway construction? The same amount of money invested in Maine's research and development programs would generate thousands of more jobs, which would actually last beyond one construction season and generate real value for the state's economy in the longer term.

Do our lawmakers really think that moving around sand and gravel is the future of the Maine economy? Of course they don't. Calling this a "jobs bond" is pure political spin. In reality, it's a bailout for the state's mismanaged and broke Department of Transportation. Legislative Democrats want to give one of the worst-managed agencies in state government another $47.5 million so that they can keep their completely unsustainable highway-building programs on life support for one more year.

But by spending scarce public funds on this - instead of more proven and successful economic development programs - the Democrats are actually destroying a real opportunity for Maine to create new jobs and businesses. No funding for the Maine Technology Institute, the state's high-tech research and development investment fund, means that hundreds of potential jobs in Maine's biotechnology, environmental technology, and other high-tech sectors won't have a chance. No funding for the Communities for Maine's Future program means that numerous Main Street small businesses and landlords will have to wait a little bit longer to implement their growth plans.

It's as though we're spending $47.5 million to keep a decrepit typewriter factory open, while giving the cold shoulder to the mobile application programmers headquartered down the street, simply because the typewriter factory has better lobbyists.

The irony is that the Legislature is also proposing to spend another big chunk of money on energy efficiency grants in Maine school buildings. So we're going to spend $20 million to reduce oil-dependency on one hand, and simultaneously spend $47.5 million to maintain Maine's much larger oil-dependency problems in the transportation sector.

Another irony: $25 million would go to maintain the state's moribund railroad lines, which are at the breaking point after decades of impossible competition from the state's subsidized highways. After decades of pavement expenditures measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars, this is way too little, too late. Even I, a rail supporter and advocate, have my doubts about whether the state can afford to buy a railroad in Aroostook County.

Luckily, the bonding proposal is still just a rough draft at this point. I know there are plenty of Augusta Democrats who have better sense than this, and the highway funding is probably just a bone they're trying to throw to rural lawmakers.

Let's hope better sense prevails, and better investments replace the highway fund bailout.

Budget crisis? Let's stop wasting space.

Our city, like most governments in America these days, is in the middle of a big budget shortfall. They're cutting school programs, raising bus fares, and laying off social workers. The city's main source of revenue is a 1.8% property tax, which is already high by Maine standards - the city can't raise it much further without sending more development and investment into the suburbs, and sending more homeowners into foreclosure.

On the face of it, it looks pretty hopeless. But in fact, City Hall has millions of dollars in costs that, out of pure neglect, it's been hiding off of its balance sheets. They're not in the schools, or in homeless shelters.

They're the opportunity costs of the city's acres of parking lots.

Here's an example - the East End School has a half-acre off-street lot on North Street. It's got gorgeous views of Back Cove and Casco Bay, it's across the street from the community gardens, it's a desirable neighborhood - and we're using this space only 15% of the time, for private vehicle storage during school days. This is self-evidently stupid, isn't it? And yet, there it is.

What if, instead, we made those few drivers park in the abundant on-street spaces on North Street and the Eastern Promenade (or walk, or take the bus), then sold this half-acre on the open market, no strings attached? Even in this economy, such a desirable location would fetch a lot of money - probably at least $400,000, which happens to be roughly 5% of the school system's budget shortfall this year.

And that's not all. If this half-acre of hilltop land goes to the private sector, it's all but certain that some developer will want to build something there. Most likely it would be homes, which is something our city needs more of. Let's assume they build 8 townhomes for $210,000 each. Then the city will collect 1.8% every year in property taxes - or about $30,000 in new revenue total. That's enough to cover the entire East End School's annual supplies budget.

And another thing: if we sell a pointless parking lot on the open market, the East End School will save a few thousand dollars every year in avoided pavement maintenance and plowing costs. It would become somebody else's problem, instead of the taxpayers'.

What do you think would make the teachers at the East End School happier? Having very convenient off-street parking, or having THEIR JOBS and A REASONABLE NUMBER OF STUDENTS IN THEIR CLASSES?

This is just one single parking lot. There's also Reiche School's 1/4 acre parking lot on Brackett Street in the West End, the 1/2 acre of parking at the corner of Stevens and Pleasant Ave (the very center of Deering Center), and the huge 6 acre front lawn of the PATHS school on Allen Avenue. All told, selling this land could recoup 1/3rd of the school budget cuts this year, and start generating new property taxes immediately for future years, and trim the school system's property maintenance costs.

And that's just the school system. Think about the Portland Housing Authority, which is hoarding acres of parking lots in the West End and East Bayside. Selling some of those lots into private ownership wouldn't just help the budget - it would also introduce a measure of stability and new housing opportunities into some of Portland's most depressed, rental-dominated neighborhoods.

But the biggest opportunity is the city's parking management itself. By charging below-market rates for parking on the city's streets and in its garages, the tiny little Parking office might rank as one of the most expensive in City Hall: it's hiding tens of millions of dollars from the city's balance sheets, from unaccounted parking subsidies to lost tax revenues. Our city's parking manager could have worked for Bernie Madoff.

So, I ask you again: what's more important? Solvent schools, a social safety net, and decent public services, funded by the development of new housing opportunities?

Or free parking?

Stop Letting the Gasoline Salesmen Determine Transportation Policy

Published in today's Press Herald by yours truly: "MDOT should not be (mis)managed by gasoline salesmen". A lengthy excerpt:

During the summer of 2008, when gas prices surpassed $4 a gallon, Mainers clamored for better alternatives: better bus and train services, streets with sidewalks -- anything to help unchain our maxed-out credit cards from the gas pumps.

A year later, we have the benefit of hindsight to see how officials at the Maine Department of Transportation responded to that crisis.

They didn't do anything.

After a year of record-breaking gas prices, Maine doesn't have a single new bus route, and Augusta's highway engineers still refuse to include basic sidewalks in road projects.

Even the long-awaited expansion of the Downeaster to Brunswick and Lewiston is still languishing for lack of funds.

MDOT bureaucrats like to blame budget problems for their failure. But if money is really so tight, why are they moving forward with a $4 million widening of Exit 7 at Franklin Arterial, a location where traffic levels have been in decline over the past 20 years?

Why did they recently spend $1 million just to study a short bypass around Skowhegan, when we'll never have the tens of millions of dollars necessary to actually build it?

The problem isn't a lack of funding. The problem is MDOT's self-interested mismanagement.

Augusta's highway engineers know better than anyone that their salaries are paid for from gas tax revenues. They are gasoline salesmen, earning a commission on every gallon sold in this state. They have a direct financial incentive to make us drive more -- no matter what the costs are for us, our economy, or our environment.

As I go on to note in the column, the Maine DOT's financial incentives affect their support of bus services in our state (bus riders don't pay gas taxes, after all) and their neglect of potholed rural roads (which generate fewer taxes per-mile than urban and suburban roads).

Highway lobbyists and MDOT's own employees are now lobbying for an increased gas tax. Others are talking about adding GPS units to cars and taxing vehicle miles travelled - but this change wouldn't affect the underlying incentive towards making people drive more. Instead, lawmakers need to draw the line and hold these guys accountable.

Nor is this problem by any means unique to Maine. State transportation agencies need to be an ally in our fight for energy independence, instead of being an ally of the oil companies and overseas petro-states.

The Difference Four Feet Makes

Over the long summer construction season, 3/4 of a mile of Read Street in Portland's Back Cove neighborhood was torn up and rebuilt as part of the city's sewer upgrades program. The project is nearly finished, and here's a photo of the new Read Street:



It may not look like much, but believe it or not, this represents one of the more significant livable streets victories for Portland this year. That's because the new Read Street is 4 feet narrower than the old Read Street - and while that in itself is a relatively minor change, it could be the start of a big trend across the city and even the entire state.

Obviously, narrowing the street - from 36 feet to 32 feet wide - is going to slow down traffic through the neighborhood. Especially when people start parking their cars on the street, and narrow the effective width of the street to 24' or 16'. That's going to make people safer, and it's why Read Street's neighbors fought hard for the change.

But for City Hall, there was a much more powerful argument for a narrower Read Street: it costs much less to build and maintain. Light duty pavement is about $3 a square foot, so saving 4 feet of width, over the .75 mile length of Read St., would save the city $3*4*.75*5280 [the number of feet in a mile]=$47,520 in construction costs - enough to hire a new teacher for the schools.

And that's just for the short term - the long-term maintenance savings will be even greater, since there will be less roadway to plow, salt, and sand, fewer potholes to fill, etc.

Then there's the fact that this whole project is designed to separate the storm sewers, which carry street runoff, from the sanitary sewers: the combined sewers that are being replaced had a nasty habit of overflowing into Back Cove during rainstorms. The new system will carry sewage from houses and businesses to the treatment plant, but most of the storm runoff from streets is going to be dumped into the Cove, along with whatever garbage might have been in the gutters. So the city is taking a general policy of reducing "impervious surfaces", in order to let as much rain as possible soak into the ground before it goes down storm drains.

Making the street 4 feet narrower gives falling rain less space to flood the street, and more space to soak into the ground. Along the 3/4 mile length of the project, there's going to be a total of 16,000 additional square feet of soil, grass, and tree roots instead of pavement. In a 2-inch rainstorm, that will prevent about 1700 gallons of runoff from polluting Back Cove.

So: the neighborhood gets a safer street. City Hall saves tens of thousands of dollars. Back Cove gets cleaner, and ratepayers pay less on sewer bills. Wins all around.

So how could this not catch on? The state DOT is projecting highway fund shortfalls of up to $380 million a year in the next decade. Spending money on unnecessary pavement ought to be something they'd want to avoid. But then again, the good old boys in Augusta just love pavement SO MUCH, it's hard for them to tear themselves away.

Portland Peninsula Transit Study passes City Council Unanimously

Last night, Portland's City Council voted unanimously to adopt the Peninsula Transit Study into the city's Comprehensive Plan.

The City now has an action plan focused on reducing the need for parking lots and garages downtown and improving our transit, walking, and bicycling infrastructure. Here's a link to the list of priorities (PDF file).

Now that the Study is a part of the Comprehensive Plan, we also have a powerful legal barrier to Augusta's attempts to pave over our city with unneccessary highway lanes. The Study specifically states that Portland will better manage traffic in our city and ultimately reduce the number of cars coming downtown, because we simply can't afford to widen local streets and expand parking garages for more car commuters. Instead, we should be investing more money in better bus service, which is a fraction of the cost of new highway lanes.

This contradicts Augusta's rationale for building new lanes on I-295, Veterans Bridge, and elsewhere. Maine's Sensible Transportation Policy Act states that the Maine DOT's projects must be consistent with local comprehensive plans. Now that the Transit Study and its goals are part of Portland's Comprehensive Plan, we have a very strong legal argument for throwing cold water on Augusta's asphalt fantasies.

Will the Maine DOT, in its financially weakened state, risk an expensive lawsuit that will force it to divert more of its dwindling gas tax revenue towards better regional bus service, at the expense of its close friends in the sand and gravel lobby? I bet they will, and I'm looking forward to it!

Read last night's success story at the Maine League of Young Voters blog. The League was fantastic in orchestrating grassroots support for this, and I'm looking forward to working with them more as we get the Study's recommendations implemented.

The Council also heard the first (of two) reading of several zoning amendments that would reduce parking requirements and promote more walkable development in the city's off-peninsula neighborhood commercial zones, in places like Rosemont, Woodfords and Morrill's Corner, and North Deering. While not strictly a Transit Study recommendation, these changes are certainly in the spirit of the Transit Study, and they deserve to pass when the Council meets again.

More City Hall business

Unfortunately I was unable to attend last night's meeting in South Portland. But from what I hear so far, it was a success: the airport and the state have agreed that an expanded runway and a bike/ped trail can coexist along the edge of Long Creek.

The city of South Portland has hired an engineering firm to draft a preliminary plan for connecting the new trail with the planned bike lanes and shared sidewalk that are slated to be built on the replacement Veterans Bridge. According to the Forecaster's report, that study could be finished in the next three weeks, which would give plenty of time for the designers of the new Veterans Bridge to adjust their plans accordingly.

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In other news, there's going to be another important meeting this evening in Portland's City Hall, when the Planning Board holds a public hearing and a vote on whether to incorporate the new Peninsula Transit Study into the city's Comprehensive Plan.

The Public Hearing starts at 6:45 PM. They have to review prior decisions and one other contentious agenda item before they get to the transit study, probably around 7:30 or so.

Just to be clear, they're only voting tonight on whether to incorporate the study into the Comp Plan. Implementing specific recommendations, like unbundling parking costs from your rent, would come later. This vote just provides the city planning staff a go-ahead to start working on those specific ordinances. Here's an outline of what the study is proposing.

The Board is also going over some amendments to the city's zoning codes that would, among other things, reduce parking requirements in certain off-peninsula mixed-use zones (like the Forest Avenue corridor) to one parking space for every new unit of housing. Currently, new homes built off the peninsula require 2 new parking spaces - a requirement that makes the construction of new middle-class housing unfeasible in most cases. These amendments are the third item on the agenda, and here's a link to a summary of them.

It would be great to get a good turnout to demonstrate public support for the Transit Study and its recommendations, which would lower the cost of living significantly for those of us who don't drive all the time.

If you can't make it, you can send written comments to Barbara Barhydt, Development Review Services Manager: bab@portlandmaine.gov

Previously on Rights of Way:

Transit Study Public Forum (July 2008)
Study Recommendations Being Implemented at Maine Medical Center (July 2008)
How to Turn A Parking Lot into $1 Million: The Economic Opportunities of Parking Deregulation (August 2008)

Vote Tomorrow for Portland's Charter Commission

Tomorrow (Tuesday) the City of Portland will hold an election to convene a new Charter Commission. The Commission will be responsible for reviewing and recommending changes to the city's governance structure - in effect, updating City Hall for the 21st century.

It might sound obscure, but this is an important election. City Hall needs to modernize, to become less bureaucratic and more entrepreneurial in how it gets things done. The city's status quo - taking eighteen months to decide whether or not to paint a few parking spots for scooters downtown, for instance, or four months (and counting) to decide whether or not to approve a new triple-decker on Munjoy Hill - is a burden to our taxpayers and to our economy. If our city is going to adapt to the new, carbon-constrained world, it needs to make these kinds of decisions much more quickly, and be less concerned about abandoning older, failed ways of doing business.

Luckily, this election has attracted some very talented candidates. I'd like to single one of them out for my first-ever blog endorsement: Jim Gooch, who is running for an at-large seat on the Commission.

I've worked with Jim thanks to his employment at the Trust for Public Land, where he's managing a regional open-space planning effort among about a dozen towns in the greater Bangor area. He doesn't have a specific platform or an agenda at this point, beyond creating a government that is more accountable and responsive in general, but is more focused on embracing a public process that considers a broad range of ideas and possibities. He's also a very smart guy, a former attorney with a degree from the Yale Law School, where he studied, among other things, governmental structure.

As for the other candidates, check out the League of Young Voters' election guide. I generally agree with their endorsements but would like to add special consideration for two candidates who didn't receive endorsements: Robert O'Brien (running for the District 2 seat, for the West End and Parkside) and Steven Scharf (running for the District 4 seat in East Deering). O'Brien has been a young and successfuly representative on the City's school committee and has also worked on several other progressive campaigns, including the Opportunity Maine initiative. His understanding of how the School Committee fits into the rest of the city's government would be valuable on the Commission. That said, he's running against another talented candidate, Dan Jenkins, a lifelong Portlander and a recent Muskie School graduate with some really innovative ideas. I haven't yet decided how I'll cast my ballot tomorrow, but I think that Portland would be well-served by either of these guys.

In District 4, I'd like to encourage people to vote for Steve Scharf. Steve has attended more meetings in City Hall than anyone else, and he knows how city government works - and doesn't work - better than almost anyone else in the city, including most City Councilors. He's a Republican with a strong libertarian streak, which will be an important perspective for a City that's trying to reform its government into something that's sleeker and more responsive (sure, I might not agree with his stances on abortion or the state's human welfare budget, but those things are out of bounds for a Charter Commission to deal with). And Steve's been an excellent and devoted defender of bicycle and pedestrian issues as a long-time member of the city's Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, where it's been my pleasure to work with him.

So don't forget to vote in tomorrow's citywide election. Polls will open at 7 am and close at 8 pm.
Click here for a list of polling places.

MDOT's flowchart

I haven't been updating the blog very much recently, due to a number of obligations and involvement in some big transportation projects planned in the Portland area - namely the replacement of Veterans Bridge and a reconstruction of Exit 7 (the Franklin Arterial exit) on Interstate 295.

According to last year's I-295 corridor study, the most effective solution to traffic congestion in both of these locations is to create new bus or rail transit service to connect downtown Portland with communities to our north and south. Augusta's own studies confirmed that buses and trains would do more to reduce traffic, shorten commutes, and minimize parking problems downtown. To clinch the deal, transit would also cost millions of dollars less than highway widenings.

So guess what Augusta is proposing to do? Here's a hint, leaked from the Maine Department of Transportation's traffic engineers:



Actually, it came from Matt Yglesias.

But in Maine's case, it's true: in spite of the proven cost benefits of new transit services (to say nothing of health and air quality benefits), the Maine DOT - our own state employees - are charging ahead with widening plans we can't afford to pay for. And in the case of Exit 7 and the Veterans Bridge replacement, those highway widenings will come at the expense of pedestrian and bicycle access.

In short, they want to spend millions more of our tax dollars to make our commutes more expensive, while destroying mobility for the city's pedestrians and cyclists. Thanks, guys!

We'll take 'em to court if we need to, and we'll win, but damn, its frustrating to have such a rotten bureaucracy siphoning tax dollars away while the rest of the state grapples with a billion-dollar budget shortfall. Why can't we spend these clowns' salaries on teachers or social workers instead?