A sinking Detroit lifts all cities

Gee whiz, it's the Detroit auto show this week! So what's the industry planning for our future? Here's some good news from Nissan executive Tom Lane, an American who runs Product Strategy and Product Planning from his office in Tokyo (source: Fortune magazine):

[Lane] notes that consumers in Japan are losing their mojo when it comes to cars. The population is aging, and younger drivers would rather spend their money on new cellphones and Internet access.

"Japan is increasingly not interested in new cars," he says.

The population in Europe is aging too, and Lane sees similar ennui spreading there. As car ownership becomes more expensive and cities increasingly impose congestion pricing on car usage in center cities, he sees car owners switching to mass transit for their daily commute, and then renting cars for longer trips.

"The U.S. is headed that way," he says. "The challenge for us, going forward, is a more interesting offer. Doing a better Sentra or an Altima isn't going to do it."

So if even auto industry executives are anticipating a future in which people drive less, why are MDOT and the Turnpork Authority planning to spend a quarter billion dollars on freeway expansions in greater Portland?

Christ, even buying stock in General Motors would be a better investment of public money.

The Turnpike Authority needs to put up or shut down.

The Downeaster, the popular and growing train route between Portland and Boston, may be forced to shut down in 2009 thanks to the spendthrift incompetence of the Maine Turnpike Authority.

As you probably know, Maine's transportation infrastructure is in the middle of a funding crisis. Gas tax revenues can't afford to maintain the existing network of roads and bridges. Gas is over $3 a gallon and independent truckers are in revolt. What little transit options we have are being paid for through the straining general fund (which faces a $100 million shortfall this year) and through municipal property taxes (which are already too high for most towns to bear).

And yet, in the midst of all these hardships, the Turnpike Authority is spending our money like it's going out of style: they're blasting away a rocky hilltop in Portland to build an expensive new headquarters office building (with acres of socialized parking), they're building palatial new food-court rest stops throughout the state, and they're planning to raise tolls to spend over $150 million (that's half again as much as the entire state's budget shortfall) to widen just 9 miles of the road west of Portland.

The money required for that last project - adding one lane in each direction between Scarborough and Falmouth - could pay for about two decades of Downeaster service.

Incidentally, a lot of people think that the Turnpike Authority's filthy lucre should pay for rail transit. After all, the train follows the same Portland-to-Boston path as the Turnpike, and on peak summer weekends, when tourists are sweltering in their cars behind toll-plaza traffic jams, the train does the Turnpike an invaluable service by taking traffic off the road and giving travelers a separate, faster option.

The train also pollutes less (the Turnpike produces more air pollution than all of Maine's power plants combined), its tracks costs less to maintain, and its rails could carry as many people as sixteen lanes of pavement. By any measure, if the Turnpike Authority is actually interested in moving people and freight, the railroad would provide the best bang for their buck.

Unfortunately, the Turnpike Authority refuses to share their toll revenue with anyone outside the sand and gravel industries. The legislature has been meeting over the past year to try to determine how to pay for the Downeaster's current budget shortfall. But in these meetings, Turnpike goons have threatened any lawmakers who have dared consider using their toll revenues to pay for anything other than pavement.

But more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the Turnpike isn't as interested in moving people and freight as it is in preserving its high-pay, low-work bureaucracy and in securing lucrative construction contracts for its cronies. As roads, bridges, and transit in other parts of the state continue to deteriorate, it's going to be awfully hard for Legislators to continue to entrust such a large portion of public funds as the Turnpike's toll revenues to the backwards bureaucracy that runs the Authority.

But perhaps those bureaucrats are just misunderstood. Maybe they're getting ready to ask the Legislature to allocate a healthy percentage of Turnpike revenue to pay for the Downeaster and other regional transit services in the Turnpike's corridor. That certainly would prove what good public servants they really are. How about it, guys - give us some hard evidence.

All it takes.

From the NY Times, January 6:

FOR eight years, Brenda J. Murtha, a pension consultant with Aetna, drove 50 miles round-trip from her home in Colchester, Conn., to her job in downtown Hartford. But when Aetna recently announced that employees would be charged to park, she decided to try CT Transit’s Marlborough-Colchester Express bus.

Two months later, Ms. Murtha is still enjoying the ride. She says she saves about $300 a month in gas by leaving her Ford Explorer in Colchester, and with Aetna’s monthly mass-transit incentive jumping to $50 this month, she will be spending just $15 a month to commute.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that this makes sense,” said Ms. Murtha, 47. “I’m all for saving money — it’s better in my pocket than in the pocket of some oil company.”

It doesn't take a rocket scientist. But it does require the end of parking socialism.

Bring Renys to Portland

Now that both the Whole Grocer and Wild Oats lie fallow in the strip malls of Marginal Way, the Bayside neighborhood has two large retail spaces that are both within walking distance of most of downtown Portland's neighborhoods and without tenants.

Wouldn't either of these places be a good place for a good, Maine-based, general merchandise retailer like Renys? Renys is a chain store, which means that precious Old Port shoppeowners might turn up their noses at the idea, but I, for one, would love to have a place downtown where I could buy a toaster, or diversify my wardrobe beyond last year's rejects from L.L. Bean.

Renys also believes in locating their stores in or near downtowns (their Main Street Gardiner store is pictured), and they're expanding, with a newly-opened store in Saco. Either of the former grocery store spaces would also give them the chance to attract foot traffic from the planned Bayside trail. If you're a peninsula resident or a downtown worker who would like to give Renys some of your business, let them know: feedback@renys.com

Where the News comes from

We have two newspapers in Portland. You probably know about the Press Herald, the big daily with a staff of hundreds. But the Press Herald's local coverage is rivaled by a much smaller weekly, the Forecaster. In spite of its small staff, the Forecaster frequently writes about interesting news stories - like the one about Second Wind Farm on Chebeague Island - several weeks before the Press Herald prints their own features on the same topics.

So what do these two newspapers have to do with streets and public spaces in Portland, Maine? Well, for one thing, the Forecaster has meticulous coverage of local development stories - including an article last week on our success in funding a new streetscape plan for Franklin Arterial.

But the differences in these two newspapers are also indicative of their cultural and physical geographies. Last night, I learned from a friend of mine who used to write for the Forecaster that their offices are located in the suburban slum strip along Route One in Falmouth - a neighborhood almost indistinguishable from those found along the frontage roads of Houston's freeways. The Press Herald's offices, on the other hand, are located smack in the middle of downtown Portland, across the street from City Hall.

So how can a newspaper whose offices are so isolated compete in local news coverage with a newspaper whose offices are in the middle of everything? I think that it's because where you live, and who you know, is more important than where you work. Many of the Forecaster's writers are young journalists at the beginning of their career, and many of them live in or near downtown Portland. Even if they spend their 9 to 5 days in no-man's land, they spend their evenings and weekends hanging out here. So they hear gripes about neighborhood issues or gossip about a new restaurant long before it's in any newspaper. Once an idea for a new story germinates, it matters less if the desk where it gets written, edited, and fact-checked has a view of the ass-end of Wal-Mart.

The Press Herald, on the other hand, generally has an older, more suburban staff (with some exceptions). Unless there's a formal public meeting, they leave Portland at 5 pm most evenings and generally don't hang out with any of the entrepreneurs or neighborhood activists that I know of. Stories that spring from chance encounters seem relatively rare.

I suspect that the Forecaster, with a much smaller staff and 1/7th of the editions, can compete with the Press Herald because their writers spend more time in Portland's public spaces and are more integrated with Portland's social capital. Chance encounters on the sidewalk, in the coffee shop, or at weekend house parties are more important than a downtown office. Although it's telling that a third newspaper - MaineBiz, a monthly - has both a young, urban staff and a downtown office, and blows all of Maine's newspapers out of the water for statewide business coverage.

This implication isn't just true for journalists, either. All sorts of information-age businesses thrive from the informal networking that walkable cities with a healthy public realm can provide, from design consultancies to investment banks.

Here's my prescription for better Portland journalism: the Press Herald could improve itself quickly by hiring a young journalist or two with civic ties to downtown Portland to cover city and neighborhood news stories. The Forecaster should distribute its offices to smaller spaces located closer to the downtown communities they cover. The Forecaster should also update its 1995-vintage website - a Wordpress database is a free and easy-to-use framework that would also make the Forecaster Maine's first newspaper to syndicate its stories via RSS. Come on, Forecaster editors: I dare you.

Both Futures Were Possible

Years ago, elected officials and transportation bureaucrats drafted a plan. They titled it, perhaps not very imaginatively, A Time of Change: Portland Transportation Plan. But don't let the boring title fool you. This was one visionary transportation plan, certainly more visionary than the auto-centric Peninsula Traffic Study that came out several years later.

One thing that caught my attention in this plan was that the authors imagined two different futures for the city of Portland and its region. One was a transit-oriented utopia, the other a gridlocked and sprawling autotopia.

In the utopia, it is 15 years in the future and the fictional protagonists Mark and Barbara wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in a world where their kids can either bike or walk to school, the adults have multiple commuting options, including commuter rail to Portsmouth, and local neighborhoods are packed to the gills with convenient amenities. Life is so good, they plan to take the kids out for ice cream after dinner, then sit on the front porch and catch up on neighborhood gossip until the sun goes down.

Meanwhile, the autotopia is also 15 years in the future and Mark and Barbara are still waking up. Only this time the both of them are groggy and cranky because the traffic on their street wouldn't let them get any sleep. Letting the kids make their way to school by themselves is out of the question in such conditions, so the adults negotiate who will drop them off and who will pick them up and take them to their respective after-school appointments, which are of course on opposite ends of town. The traffic may be a nightmare but at least parking at the mall is free. Mark and Barbara can't even crack open a window lest they be sickened by clouds of exhaust. The situation is so untenable that our protagonists are considering buying a house on a quite three acre lot way the hell out in Parsonsfield. It may be farther from the Maine Mall as the crow flies, but time-wise it's all a wash as far as the traffic is concerned.

The study concludes both scenarios with these words:

Both futures are possible. The first will come about only with some shifts in public policy and lifestyles. The second is a simple extrapolation of present policies and lifestyles. The choice is ours.

By the way, I neglected to mention when these cute attempts at speculative fiction by local politicians and bureaucrats first made its debut.

1993.

Fifteen years in 1993's future would be ... 2008. So where the hell is that commuter rail line to Portsmouth and other locales in the region? Oh yeah, I forgot - the transit oriented utopia never came to pass. We live in the autotopia. The choice was indeed ours and the status quo prevailed. Somehow, we failed to ignore our way out of a mess that was already blindingly obvious to the pre-Information Superhighway-era cavemen 1993. What was it the cavemen knew then that the neanderthals at the PACTS and MDOT apparently haven't a clue about today?

The cavemen of 1993 knew from experience that the already decades-old trend of more and more single occupancy vehicles crowding other modes of transit off of over-capacity traffic arteries was unsustainable. They were worried about global warming. They still remembered the energy crises of the 1970's. They deplored sprawl and suburbanized public buildings. They were well aware of the pitfalls of prioritizing the swift movement and easy storage of cars at the expense of walkers, bikers, and transit riders. They knew zoning laws that preclude density were well past their prime.

So instead of doing something daft like widening the Franklin Arterial to nine lanes or building yet another parking garage, the cavemen realized there had to be another way. The goals of these wise cro-magnons included such seemingly modern "fads" as sustainability and energy efficiency, inter-modal transit and plenty of transit choices, zoning reform, performance targets (such as returning to transport use ratios last seen in 1970), and high standards of design. They called for financial incentives that would push toward these goals, more comprehensive planning, compact and diverse development that would reduce the need for cars, regional transportation centers, local transit districts and centers with convenient amenities close at hand, aggressive funding for bike lanes and mass transit, commuter rail, comprehensive transportation planning, and real regional planning. These prehistoric ancestors of ours further declared that these changes needed to happen at neighborhood, city, and regional levels. What a glorious future it could have been.

Alas, the cavemen were ignored by the neanderthals who have staffed transportation bureaucracies since time immemorial. The neanderthals took one look at A Time of Change, grunted, and went on to draft the business-as-usual peninsula traffic study a decade later. Thankfully, just like the real neanderthals of the real stone age, they and their way of life is doomed to extinction. The same problems that prompted cavemen like Alan Caron and cavewomen like Anne Pringle to realize the need for real change still face us today, and they are more acute than ever. Yes, the looming budget crisis in Maine means funding for expanded mass transit is in dire straights, but highway projects are in the same boat. Time to throw that sand and gravel mentality overboard.

We also have fresh transit-friendly blood on the Portland City Council - including Kevin Donoghue, slayer of the Dread Peninsula Traffic Study. In it's place will rise a new transit study that will be more in line with the Spirit of '93. The members of that new transit study committee (including Christian McNeil of this very blog) will surely be kept busy these next few months, but they can be thankful that A Time of Change is one hell of a blueprint.

Perestroika for MDOT & the Turnpike Authority

Congratulations to Christian on penning an editorial in today's Press Herald. Surely its theme of late Brezhnevian-style rot in our state's transportation bureaucracies is a familiar one for the readers of this blog, but it's nice to see the message dispersed to a slightly wider audience. Blurb here:

But in MDOT's view, the only problem with I-295 is that it needs more traffic. Their engineers admit that the expensive new lanes will quickly fill up with more cars and dump out more congestion, accidents and air pollution onto local streets in Portland, Falmouth and Freeport -- but they've been widening roads for 80 years, and are incapable of implementing more innovative or effective solutions. The failures of MDOT and the turnpike authority affect all of Maine.

Link to the rest of the editorial can be found here.