Some comments on the WAMPO MTP 2035 list

As I posted last week, WAMPO has arrived at a final list of transportation projects eligible for federal funds from 2010-2035. Here is that list (bike/pedestrian projects lead it off); and here is a map showing the locations of the projects.

First, a quick reminder of what WAMPO does, because that will have a bearing on some of the comments that follow. The Wichita Area Metropolitan Planning Organization is comprised of municipality and county officials, as well as other groups of various sorts who are interested in/affected by transportation and its infrastructure. WAMPO looks at proposals for transportation projects from Sedgwick County and the municipalities therein, plus Andover, and through a combination of consultations of federal funding priorities and guidelines, public meetings in the area and surveys of citizens, it determines which of those projects a) are eligible for federal funds and b) have broad-based support for their funding. (If you're truly obsessed about this sort of thing, you won't want to miss these long posts on WAMPO meetings back in January, here and here.)

NB: Just because projects made the final list does not guarantee that they will be built. Municipalities and the county will build these, or not, based on interest the public shows in them. The NW By-pass, for example, has appeared in several of these project lists but has yet to be built. WAMPO's next public meeting will be Monday, June 28 (here is the agenda); the official acceptance of the project list will be in July; what lies ahead now will be WAMPO's functioning in an advisory capacity from here until 2035 and, in a few years, beginning work on the new master plan for the area.

So. What do we have in the MTP 2035? Well: from the standpoint of cycling/walking infrastructure a mixed bag to be sure, but one that is beginning to reflect a positive shift in prioritizing bike/ped facilities. Some of that shift is due to the change of administration in Washington, but some is due to local attitudinal shifts among the public and in several municipalities in the area. Also, as I've noted in a couple of older posts on WAMPO, it officially is a neutral arbitrator regarding a project's eligibility for funds, but because it also compiles the various lists of projects from which the final one is drawn up, it too can determine, in a passive-aggressive way, those projects that would have greater value in reducing traffic (and thus pollution). As just one example, in the middle stage of the selection process for these projects, there were four lists prioritizing a different traffic consideration, such as bridge repair, reducing congestion, etc. Each of those four lists contained all the eligible bike/ped projects and funding to allow Wichita Transit to expand bus service in the area. Also, a little reading between the lines of this overview document--in particular p. 4, which addresses land use and environmental issues--suggests (to me, anyway), that WAMPO would like to see municipalities address the issue of sprawl. Thoughtful land use, such as high-density, mixed-use development, makes for easier decision-making when it comes to transportation infrastructure. In short, in this MTP are some quiet but clear suggestions to the Powers That Be regarding future planning.

All that said, one could still wish that more (and/or other) bike/ped projects had been proposed besides the ones here. The primary objective with the bike/ped projects is to create some connectivity among already-existing paths to make them more useful as genuine travel routes for cyclists. Thus, on the list there's the path that will connect the southern terminus of the Arkansas River path with the Gypsum Creek path's Planeview Park terminus, and the path that will run from McAdams Park (the north end of the Canal path) to Grove Park (the north end of the K-96 path). Both these paths should encourage bike-commuting from outlying areas on the east side of town into the downtown area. There's also the conversion of the abandoned railroad right-of-way from the 8th/9th street and I-135 exit to 17th and Oliver, a much-needed in-town east-west route which should also encourage bike-commuting into the urban core. These are all important projects, and we should be glad that they are there. But, once again, the west side of Wichita (by which I mean everything west of downtown) will see no bike/ped projects; nor is there one east-west route that is anything like the length of the Canal path and the Ark River path. The first omission remains a mystery to me; the second would easily (and cheaply) be remedied by a simple re-striping of a street like Douglas. Re-striping, though, is not yet eligible for federal funding, as I found out at a WAMPO meeting back in January. That sort of thing is for the city to decide--and for us to encourage the city to decide it. Something else to keep an eye on: a total of almost $10.4 million not earmarked for any one project but to be used for bike/ped projects over the course of the 25 years covered by this MTP. That kind of money can build lots of bike paths . . . or, if Complete Streets legislation passes Congress, re-design and/or re-stripe a lot of streets.

I should note that in addition to the stand-alone bike/ped projects, several of the road and bridge projects also incorporate bike/ped-friendly improvements. These will be mostly unsexy things like new sidewalks and pedestrian crossings at intersections. Still, anything that can contribute to lowering our disproportionate share of Kansas' bike/ped fatalities is more than welcome. It's also very gratifying to see funds for expansion of Wichita Transit into a grid-route system with commuter routes to outlying towns.

So, in short, MTP 2035 doesn't do everything we should want to see a diversified transportation plan do; on the other hand, though, if we squint at it in the right way, it serves as a template for where we should want to go. But infrastructure is in its essence reactive rather than proactive: it goes where the people are and reflects their priorities regarding land use and their preferred means of getting around. The government entities WAMPO serves are the ones who can be--who should be--proactive.

Wichita's not-so-visible cyclists--beginning the conversation

[UPDATE: Welcome to folks visiting here from Biking in L.A. I hope you'll not be too disappointed that you found your way here.]

This picture is from a neighborhood in Queens, New York, but such a scene is not at all uncommon north of downtown in Wichita, either. Image found here.

One of the hardest jobs cycle-advocacy people have ahead of them in most places, but especially in a city like Wichita, is to re-frame the case for on-street, in-town cycling infrastructure so that can be seen as filling a genuine need. That need, moreover, is best described as "economic," and in exactly the same sense that many road projects are described as filling economic needs: shorter/safer travel times. That re-framing needs to happen not just for non-cyclists, who tend to think of cycling primarily in recreational terms, but also for themselves, for whom cycling is a choice and not a necessity that circumstance has forced on them.

Streetsblog recently had an article that serves as a good place to begin that re-framing. The writer, Sarah Goodyear, uses a post from the North Carolina blog Honking in Traffic as its starting point; the following passage comes from that blog:

The Latino immigrant bike commuting out of necessity is a rare sight out on the country roads. But it’s not so rare in cities and towns across this country. According to the Alliance for Biking & Walking report [which I made reference to yesterday], while Hispanics now make up 15 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 22 percent of total bike trips. If this data is accurate, then that population is overrepresented among bicyclists, while perhaps underrepresented in the popular media image of who bicyclists are[.]

I don't claim any special righteousness on this matter; it is true, though, that the daily sight of working-class and street people on bicycles in the neighborhoods immediately north of downtown was what initially moved me to consider cycling as a regular mode of transportation. It's for these folks' reasons as well that I've applauded the Midtown Bike Path as providing the very practical services of a safe route to school for kids in the neighborhood and a safe, off-street commute route into the urban core.

But more can and should be done along these lines. With regard to NOMAR and the revitalization of 21st Street, for example, unless I've just not seen it, I've seen nothing in those plans that accommodates cyclists, and nothing that serves further to link that part of town with the urban core (the midtown path, after all, is over on the northwest side of downtown). Yet, doing so, via a couple of well-chosen re-striping projects running north-south, would be a practical--and inexpensive--no-brainer. The current bike projects emphasize connectivity between already-existing bike infrastructure, and those are of course important. But equally--more, I would claim--important is the providing of space for safe, on-street cycling in those parts of town where people ride not for fun but out of need and where riding on poorly-maintained sidewalks is hazardous. I hope to encourage a dialogue among those who may be reading this who live north of downtown and those of us not part of this underserved neighborhood, that together we can re-frame cycling's image to include its serving a practical economic need for a large number of fellow citizens.

A couple of weeks ago, I noted Councilman Paul Gray's dismissive attitude toward the needs of cyclists--in particular, his statement that he didn't know anyone who biked to work. I said by way of response that "there are lots of people you don't know--and many of them would ride bikes to work if the city would spend a few tens of thousands of dollars and re-stripe a few streets." I'd like to amend that statement a bit: There are lots of people who already do bike to work--and, if you'd literally just look out your office window or the doors of City Hall, you'd see them. Every. Single. Day.

Maybe you should meet some of them.

Should we negotiate with the automobile? Or would that be appeasement?

Via the weekly WAMPO update comes a link to a recent study that I had seen a couple of weeks ago and had wanted to link to and then, as I am wont to do, forgot about it. Now that it's appeared again, I'd like to link to it and make a connection between it and the recent story in the Eagle that I mentioned in Sunday's post.

The Alliance for Biking and Walking has just completed a benchmarking report (the Quick Facts Sheet is here) that shows that, nationwide, 9.6% of all trips in this country are made either on foot or by bike (those numbers are of course higher in urban areas), yet transportation funding for bike/ped infrastructure accounts for only 1.2% of federal funding--and it may just be that that funding disparity partly explains why cyclists and pedestrians account for 13.1% of all traffic fatalities in the U.S. The fact that WAMPO sees fit to forward this along is, I think, further confirmation that it sees such things as important and seeks to encourage the area's municipalities to give some thought to these issues.

Randal O'Toole's recent visit to town and critique of Wichita's apparent direction in favor of making downtown more walkable is worth taking another look at, especially his comment that (quoting from the article here) "'pedestrian-friendly' development — a cornerstone of Wichita's downtown effort, usually means car-hostile." This of course begs a question: That there is something to be gained in keeping downtown "pedestrian-hostile," some greater good that is worth continued occasional-yet-increasing cyclist and pedestrian deaths, seeing as the numbers of cyclists and pedestrians increased by 42% between 2000 and 2007 and will only continue to increase--whether or not cities and states plan accordingly for those increases.

O'Toole frames the issue in adversarial terms: cars vs. pedestrians and cyclists; the latter two, being the weaker entities, must perforce surrender space to the stronger. It's as though, in fact, that in such a framing autos are assumed to be feral creatures to be accommodated at all costs by us weaker mortals and so, if we appease them by providing them (and then stay out of) nice, wide lanes and plenty of (preferably free or at least cheap) Sudetenland-like parking lots, we will have peace in our time with them.

My analogy is, of course, absurd (I hope no one takes offense at it); but too often it is indeed true that it is the existence of cars, over and above what is better or at least preferable for making a place more livable, that has shaped the cities we live in--and, of course, our decisions about infrastructure priorities. That Mr. O'Toole apparently feels we are compelled to lie prostrate before the automobile and its needs would seem to me a surrender of liberty that, as I said in yesterday's post, I'd think he'd want to resist mightily as the good libertarian that (I assume) he is.

To frame this discussion in Us vs. Them terms is not helpful, in other words. With careful, thoughtful planning, we can easily create urban cores whose streets can accommodate both cars and people afoot and on bikes and whose land-use laws can lead to less need for cars (and lest anyone misunderstand me, not needing a car is not the same thing as being hostile toward them). Those who read the comments section for the Eagle article will find what follows familiar, for a couple of folks there already pointed this out: Complete Streets designs result in streets that can bear the same or greater amount of car traffic as conventional streets and, at the same time, apportion space for cyclists buses and pedestrians--all the while making those streets safer for everyone. The Douglas Design District sees the wisdom in executing a Complete Streets design on one of the very busiest streets in the city, as I noted last month.

Such a reasonable accommodation makes the street, again, a truly public space, and a safer one as well. If this is appeasement, then sign me up.

Some food for thought for the WDDC, the Delano District, etc., etc.

No time to comment on this (I shouldn't even have been reading what I'm about to link to--Finals Week, you know), but via Matthew Yglesias this morning comes this post from the excellent urbanist blog Greater Greater Washington, DC, on results of the steps that city took in the '80s and '90s to revitalize a formerly-moribund part of their urban core.

A couple of paragraphs:

DC created the DD in 1991 to shape the revitalization of DC's downtown. The office center of gravity had moved to K Street and the Golden Triangle, but as that area filled up, developers began looking back at DC's historic downtown. Planners wanted to avoid reproducing the Golden Triangle's monoculture of law firm offices, low level of ground floor retail, inactive sidewalks, numerous garage entrances and repetition of boring boxes. What to do?

The 1981 "A Living Downtown" plan recommended retail on F, G, and 7th Streets; hotels around the Convention Center, Thomas Circle and "Downtown East" near Union Station; residential development in the Penn Quarter and Mount Vernon Square, and offices around Franklin Square and Judiciary Square. In 1991, DC implemented zoning rules requiring residential units and arts or retail in various areas throughout downtown. The zoning also required transparent glass over a majority of the ground floors on certain streets, with entrances no more than 40-50 feet apart and no garage entrances.

To create an incentive for desired development, the DD created a Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) program. Any residential, arts and retail, or historic preservation exceeding the requirements generated TDR "credits" that developers could sell to projects in various "receiving zones," including parts of downtown, NoMa, the western half of the Golden Triangle, the Southwest Federal Center, and what's now the Capitol Riverfront (ballpark) area. Buying those credits would allow new buildings in those areas to reach the maximum allowable heights, creating an economic incentive for more housing, arts, retail and historic preservation downtown.

[snip]

The DD was a great success. Counting buildings currently under development, there will be 12,580 residential units, especially in the Penn Quarter and Mount Vernon Triangle, exceeding the goal of 12,410. Museums and theaters comprise 1,218,000 square feet downtown, concentrated around Gallery Place, beating the goal of 900,000. There are 1,600,000 square feet of retail plus another 400,000 in the pipeline. That falls short of the DD's initial 5,600,000 goal, but planners now believe that goal was probably unreasonable. And many historic buildings remain downtown.

Once the dust settles from Finals Week, I plan to come back to this in combination with some comments over at Momentum, the WDDC's blog--where, by the way, more people need to visit and comment.

More catching up . . .

The poster-art for Art of the Bicycle, to be held this year on July 31. Image found here.

Some links of possible interest, some cycling-related, some not:

Cycling in Wichita has now joined the Streetsblog network of blogs. Streetsblog is part of the Livable Streets Initiative, a grassroots movement comprised of bloggers interested in urban transportation and infrastructure issues. I think what joining means practically for this blog is that they'll link to the occasional post here. So, like, cool.

Sunday's Eagle had a nice story by Denise Neil on Wichita's one-man local-blog aggregator (and very good friend of this blog and my other blog), Bobby Rozzell of Douglas and Main. Go and read, and note the passing reference to a blog kept by "a passionate cyclist." Given my long hiatus, I confess to cringing a bit when i read that . . .

That same article also makes reference to "a pack of opinionated Delano residents." The leader of that particular pack would be Karen of Delano Wichita: the place to go for news about the Delano and discussions of Delano-specific issues. The big news from her blog is that she and others have plans to begin a Farmers' Market in the neighborhood with a tentative opening date of the first Tuesday in June. If you're in the area and would like to express your interest in participating as a vendor or a shopper, visit Delano Wichita and/or write Jill Houtz at "jill DOT houtz AT gmail DOT com"

Here are two great new-to-me resources for loftier discussions of urbanism and community. Via Cordelia over at The Phenomenal Field comes Where's "Introducing Urbanism: Top Books for Curious Novices". The titles are accompanied by paragraph-length assessments of their respective merits. Meanwhile, via my friend and local blogger Russell Arben Fox of In Medias Res comes news of Front Porch Republic, a group blog where really, really smart people (Russell among them) write out of the common assumption that "scale, place, self-government, sustainability, limits, and variety are key terms with which any fruitful debate about our corporate future must contend." A good place to start, and certainly a set of ideas this blog has come to take as givens.

Over at Carbon Trace, Andrew interviews two Springfield, Missouri, bicycle patrolmen. Pictures and Fun Facts, including--who knew?--the fact that Cannondale builds a bike they sell exclusively to police departments. They like their gig:

“Officers on bicycles, from a public perception angle, are far more approachable than an officer in a car,” [Carl] Schwartze says. The public even approaches bicycle patrolmen more readily than officers on foot. There’s something about a bicycle that makes them seem all warm and fuzzy, I guess.

Unless you’re a criminal, that is. Their attitude shifts in an interesting direction.

“There’s nothing more fun than a foot pursuit on a bicycle,” Schwartze says, grinning broadly.

Heh.

Finally, just a quick note to thank you for reading. I was gratified to see visits here jump dramatically when I resumed posting--indeed, and curiously, the jump actually occurred the day before I started up again. But all that has less to do with me than it does with the fact that this town's cycling community has grown just in the brief span of time this blog has existed. The vast majority of visitors here come from either Douglas & Main (thanks again, Bobby) or Google searches for, well, blogs about cycling in Wichita. This little blog, haphazard and inadequate, is where they land. Here's hoping that it'll become more worthy of their visits here.

Some books on transportation and urban policy

At various times I've linked to posts by Matthew Yglesias that address the issues of city planning and mass transit. Today, he happens to have up a post with a short list of basic texts on these issues. I have this pipe dream that in my copious spare time I will pick up a copy of The Option of Urbanism and read it so that, when I write stuff on this subject, I won't feel as though I've had to, ahem, raise myself from my chair so as to extract what I've written. We'll see. But the price is certainly right.

While I'm at it: If anyone visiting here is interested in serious discussions of this topic, I have a short list of websites over in the right gutter under the heading of "Urbanism and Urban Policy." I've not begun a concerted search for sites in this field; as I've run across them, though, I add them to the list. Consider this an invitation to you to let me know in comments if you can recommend link-worthy sites, too.

I believe I've made this point before--well, okay: Yglesias has made it; I've just repeated it here--but it bears repeating yet again: While it's true that urban planning is a field dominated by politically-moderate and -liberal types, there's no inherent reason why conservatives should feel excluded from or disinterested in discussions in that field. Livable, more efficient cities are healthier, more economically-vibrant--that is, desirable--places to live: something all citizens of a city should be willing to work toward.

An uneducated argument for a smart(er) gas tax

Image found here.

An anonymous commenter at this post left this comment, which I'll go ahead and post in full:

While I definitely agree with your musings on our consumerism and short attention spans, I do quibble with you on one point.

Are you serious? Put a higher tax on gasoline? I do believe the govt taxes us enough, thank you! And just what exactly would they do with that money? Misappropriation of funds is already at an all-time high. Let the people keep their money! Instead of a 7 whatever billion/trillion dollar bailout, why not give each person who filed a tax return get $500,000? It would have cost much less, and talk about stimulating the economy instead of giving it to banks who mismanaged it in the first place?

Anon., thanks, first of all, for dropping by and commenting.

The usual caveats: I'm by no means an expert on tax policy; although I'm inclined to believe that government on the whole makes our lives better than they would be otherwise, I, like everyone, have my own list of things government spends money on that, shall we say, could be better spent (and monitored)/shouldn't be spent. Recent bailouts included.

Given this blog's focus, though, I'd like to say a few words about the issue of a gas tax and the possible uses a higher--and smartly-applied tax--could be put to. Gas taxes are one of those quid pro quo taxes that, though we'd just as soon not pay them, we can see the purpose of: They usually go toward paying for building and maintaining streets and highways, helping to keep our taxes on income a little lower by taxing, instead, our consumption of something. It's perfectly reasonable to my mind, then, that those of us who drive should contribute a bit, every time we buy gas, toward offsetting the wear and tear our vehicles cause the roads.

But let's face it: owning and driving a car is a relative luxury even in the best of times, which our gasoline prices (dirt-cheap even with the taxes currently levied on it) have, up till this past summer, disguised just how good we have had it here in this country. But more urgently, our collective accommodation of that luxury has enormous costs. Maintaining all those roads is so expensive that much regular maintenance has been deferred (and deferred and . . . ). Providing parking spaces for cars is, frankly, a waste of space that--especially in urban areas--could be put to better use via the providing of more (and more affordable) housing, more (and more diverse) kinds of businesses; meanwhile, broad expanses of pavement increase run-off pollution and the potential for flooding via overtaxed manmade and natural drainage. (Aside: encouraging denser development has the added advantage of increasing tax revenues as well without raising rates of taxation, through increased property and sales tax revenues.) Cheap gas has also historically been a boon for food production (via farm mechanization and transportation); this summer's much-higher gas, though, gave those of us who bought food then a brief glimpse of how illusorily low our food costs are, too. Finally, the burning of carbon fuels is not good for us or for our environment, even if you don't think global warming is a problem. Not only are carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide not good to inhale, we've all gotten pretty flabby in large measure because our first thought when we need to go somewhere, no matter the distance, is to hop in the car rather than walk or ride a bike or, for longer distances, take a bus or carpool.

My commenter decries mindless and/or short-sighted consumerism, and s/he is right to do so. So why not levy a higher tax on this particular form of consumption? And, even better: why not direct the revenues generated toward the funding of mass transit, safer, more accommodating streets, the granting of seed money for manufacturers of cars that use alternate energy sources, for researchers looking for those alternate sources, for bicycle-renting programs, etc., etc., etc. The idea is analogous to how some cigarette-tax monies are used: Use that money to fund programs that ostensibly seek to counterbalance the effects of your consumption choice . . . and if, at some point, you decide that the cost of that consumption becomes higher than you're willing/able to pay, then good for you--and for all of us.

It's a strange thing: some become so fixated in their opposition to taxes that, quite apart from the issue of how is government going to do what we expect/need it to do without revenues, they can miss the point that in some instances, increased taxation--that is, the uses to which that increased revenue are put--can end up benefiting us far more than they cost us. Fewer people are smoking now than when I was growing up (I'm old enough to remember seeing cigarette ads on television); and we all benefit as a result, even if only indirectly: cleaner air, a reduced burden on our public health care system via the better health of those not smoking, etc. In a similar way, if higher gas taxes encouraged more people either not to drive or to drive less often, all of us--even those who keep driving--would benefit: less-congested streets and parking lots, cleaner air (again), better overall public health (again), etc. And, there'd be that much more gas available, and at lower prices, for those services which really will require gas for the foreseeable future: transportation and food and energy production.

As a consumer-oriented people who no longer have the means we once did to generate real wealth through manufacturing, our literal and figurative bills for living the way we have are coming due, or they soon will, and it will be harder to pay them as a result of that reduced means. A higher gas tax whose revenues are smartly spent with an eye toward reducing our consumption of gas would be an excellent step in the direction of making those literal and figurative bills a little easier to deal with.

President-Elect Obama *hearts* bicycles--and urban policy

Readers may remember that last month I encouraged visitors here to vote for Barack Obama on the strength of his approach to urban and transportation issues. It is a sign of the high priority he has given these matters that he has recently announced the establishing of a White House Office of Urban Policy that will coordinate the activities of such offices as HUD, Health and Human Services, and Transportation. Various commenters on this news note that it has been many, many years since a presidential candidate has emerged from--and spoken to his experiences derived from--a large-city background, and all this bodes well for cities addressing pressing urban planning and transportation issues in a near-future of at-best uncertain state and local revenues.

More good news along these lines: Via Austin Bike Blog comes this Transportation for America post which reprints a response from Mr. Obama to an e-mail petition asking him, should he be elected President, to address urban planning, alternate transportation, and infrastructure issues.

As you know, [investments in infrastructure, green technologies, and high-speed freight and passenger rail] will have significant environmental and metropolitan planning advantages and help diversify our nation’s transportation infrastructure. Everyone benefits if we can leave our cars, walk, bicycle and access other transportation alternatives. I agree that we can stop wasteful spending and save Americans money, and as president, I will re- evaluate the transportation funding process to ensure that smart growth considerations are taken into account.

I will build upon my efforts in the Senate to ensure that more Metropolitan Planning Organizations create policies to incentivize greater bicycle and pedestrian usage of roads and sidewalks. And as president, I will work to provide states and local governments with the resources they need to address sprawl and create more livable communities.

No matter one's politics, what's not to like? It's neither a liberal or conservative position to say that over 80% of our people live in urban areas and that the needs of those areas and their inhabitants have to be addressed through effective planning, no matter who is in the White House or in Congress. As Matthew Yglesias recently put it,

[T]o my way of thinking an enormous amount of good could be done if conservatives were more interested in applying really basic free market principles to transportation policy. For example, why not allow developers to build as much or as little parking as they want to build when they launch a new development? Why not charge market rates for curbside parking on public streets? How about fewer restrictions on the permitted density of development? Why not reduce congestion on the most-trafficked roads through market pricing of access? It happens to be the case that most of the people who are interested in these issues have liberal views on unrelated political issues, but the specific set of views at hand don’t draw on any deep ideological principles, it’s just application of basic economic thinking to the issues and, as such, is something that should be completely accessible to conservative politicians looking to show that conservative ideas can be relevant to the concerns (environmental concerns, quality of life concerns, economic growth concerns) of a set of people who are disinclined to think of themselves as conservatives.

As I've said elsewhere, such proposals, along with others that enhance public and alternate transportation, are not in the end anti-car but end up enhancing everyone's quality of life through quieter and less-congested roadways, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, cleaner air, healthier people, and increased revenues for local governments. It's my hope that Wichita and its new city manager are listening.