Local blog round-up (Super Sunday edition)

An antique bike in New Orleans' French Quarter. Image found here.

In the spirit of Super Sunday, here at the top of this week's Local Blog Round-up you'll find some links to some prominent New Orleans cycling blogs. But Colts fans shouldn't despair; at the bottom of this post you'll find an equal number of Indianapolis cycling blogs.

N'awlins blogs: NolaCycle Bike Map Project, What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today [UPDATE, Feb.8: have a look at What I Saw's chronicling of "mass high fivery" in the Quarter after the game], On the Rivet with Randy.



Hmm: "Local" and "blog" in the title are a bit troublesome, as they were last week. Ah, well. Things do happen elsewhere than the area cycling blogosphere that seem, to your correspondent, to be of interest or in some way pertain to that which we're about here at this site. So, like, Deal. And for my part, I'll come up with some permanent title for this feature that is more inclusive.

Friday's Eagle had this story about a talk given here in town by Randal O'Toole of the Cato Institute. According to the article, O'Toole's talk wasn't especially Wichita-centric; it was more of a general critique of recent tendencies in urban design to create a more walkable urban core, as well as the usual methods of encouraging businesses to build downtown and the financing of such projects. Cato's reputation as a libertarian think tank precedes it, so O'Toole's observations should have come as no surprise to his audience. Personally, I'm puzzled by O'Toole's implicit support of a car-centric infrastructure; that infrastructure is expensive to build and maintain and so requires lots of (taxpayer) money, not to mention government regulation: two things that good Libertarians would resist. I'd think that the bicycle would be an excellent choice for Official Vehicle of the Libertarian Party. But I do admit I was glad to see this bit in the article:

O'Toole encountered some pushback from members of the audience who said there are a lot of Wichitans who want more walkways and bike paths.

"I don't think it's a fad like you're saying," said resident Janice Bradley.

Even better is the give-and-take in the comments section. Those supportive of a more walkable downtown acquit themselves quite well there; they respond to O'Toole's defenders there with actual, well, arguments in favor of walkability.

Keep in mind that at a certain level, the comments are worth only what they are worth. Who knows, really, the extent to which the ideals of bike-friendliness, walkability, and all the rest are becoming more prominent ideas here in town. The fact remains, though, that people are making arguments on their behalf in public fora, and that is very much to the good.

I don't think Kansas City has a Cycle Chic blog yet, but via Kansas Cyclist comes an announcement of something that not even all Cycle Chic cities can claim: a Tweed Ride, to be held on April 3rd at Loose Park. As Randy notes, Tweed Rides are popping up in lots of places with fairly well-established cycling communities; the idea is to evoke something of the elegance of cycling from a century before and have a good time while doing so (and I also think I detect a humorous hitching onto of the Steampunk movement). The KC riders' organizers are pretty self-aware (pay very close attention to the prize categories, for example), but their larger purpose is, I think, the same as that of promoters of Cycle Chic and, thus, a serious one: Not only do you not need to be an athlete to ride a bike, you don't need to dress like one, either.

On to the blogs, now:

Two bloggers went out in last weekend's snow and brought back pics. Over at Adventure Monkey, Eric went for a Sunday ride in the snow. Here's what he saw. Meanwhile, Robert of River City Cyclist went out with a friend along the Arkansas River path and later posted these pictures.

From Bike Topeka come two items of interest. First is another very nice write-up, this one in the Washburn Review, about Topeka's new Community Cycle Project. The other is that Topeka is participating in a pilot project, sponsored by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, called the Capital City Wellness Project; part of that project is called the Bikes for Wellness Program. Cyclists who have a program sticker on their helmets can show this sticker at participating businesses and receive discounts for their goods. I would think that something like this would be easy and inexpensive to implement here in Wichita--and not necessarily through government agencies, either . . .

Speaking of bicycle collectives, Wichita's own version of that enterprise extends an invitation to Riders of Rohan's two-year anniversary celebration on February 26th.

And--as promised . . .

A scene from Indianapolis's burgeoning bike culture. Image found here.

Indy bike blogs are very hard to come by--surprising, given the national reputation of The Indy Cog. I gathered via my bumping around that Indy cycling culture is about as nascent as Wichita's is. Having said that, though, if folks from Indy happen to find their way here and know of some good cycling blogs, by all means be sure to let me know in comments. Urban Indy is not, strictly speaking, a bike blog, but one interested in livability issues; meanwhile, there's Indy Bikehiker, the blog of a self-described "theological jackalope" (a Wesleyan-oriented advocate of peace-and-justice issues) who also happens to be an avid cyclist.

That's all for this week. Enjoy the game!

The WDDC's Goody Clancy presentation: Some comments

This presetation took place back on the 13th. I wasn't in attendance, but today through the wonders of e-mail I received links to both what was shown to those who were there and a survey of audience responses to what was said.

Here is a link to the presentation made to the audience. It's full of familiar topics--and full of familiar ways of talking about making downtown "livable": the demographics of the city according to ages, sizes of households and incomes; what sort of housing people would like and can afford; what downtown would need to offer in the way of housing, shopping, dining and entertainment (note those latter three items--I'll come back to them later) to attract people to downtown; and, as I mentioned a while back, the theme of making downtown more walkable and bike-able. These are, of course, very good things to see being said, for all the reasons that all of you reading this blog probably know by heart.

Here, meanwhile, is a survey or audience responses to the presentation. I'd like to highlight some of the findings that I think are in some way attention-getting.

In response to the question "What is the most significant challenge for downtown housing, the largest number of people (42% of 131 surveys completed) said, "Building new housing at a price the market can afford." This is good to see. My sense of other cities' attempts to make their downtowns more livable is that housing costs and rents there effectively price people out of the market who would would otherwise be good fits for the urban core. The rent ranges that the research suggests the market will support seemed surprisingly reasonable, in fact. Now: whether builders and other investors will actually want to sell or rent at affordable rates is another matter.

For the question "What is the most significant opportunity for downtown retail?" the largest number of respondents (31%) said, "Satisfy unmet demand in the Wichita region for retail options in walkable settings." Again, good to see, and matches the results of the responses to the question, "What is the most significant opportunity for a more walkable downtown?": The two highest responses were, "Satisfy unmet demand in the Wichita region for living, working and/or shopping options in walkable settings" (36%) and "Make downtown streets more interesting and vibrant" [whatever that means] (35%). And finally, when respondents were asked to select from a list of items the three streetscape improvements that would most effectively improve walkability and transportation options in downtown, "Street amenities" received the highest number of responses (89), but in second and third place were "On-street bicycle lanes/cycle tracks" (55) and "Pedestrian wayfinding" (48).

The respondents, whoever they were, have the right ideas, it seems. I do wonder, though, whether anyone said anything about the need for a few small but full-service grovery stores for the 3,000 or so people the consultants say they think would like to live downtown. Perhaps they would be included in the category "retail"? (I won't go into the vagueness of a lot of the language in the presentation and survey questions.) I'm asking this because, as long-time readers of this blog know, I think that such places contribute significantly to a neighborhood's livability by not just selling food for residents but also providing them with places to meet and come to know each other as they visit there a couple or three times a week (the stores are close enough to walk, so there'd be no need either to drive or make one big trip per week). They contribute to building a sense of place, in other words. To encourage people to live downtown but not provide places to shop for food just turns downtown into another suburb, in terms of traffic patterns: traffic doesn't get reduced; those nice wide sidewalks don't get used as much as they could or should. Shopping, dining and entertainment are all well and good; but if people are genuinely living downtown, as opposed to, basically, just sleeping there, they'll need stuff other than places to amuse themselves. Stuff like, you know, food.

Central Wichita is already underserved by full-service grocery stores; to add yet more people here yet otherwise not plan for something so basic as places to buy food would be a mistake, I think. I'll spare you more ranting about this tonight and instead remind myself (and you) that perhaps the best place to rant further would be at next month's charrette at the Wichita Art Museum, as I noted here.

In addition to the survey, there's an attached article about the presentation that appeared in the Eagle. Curiously, it dwells at considerable length on something that the survey doesn't mention: the glaring need for hotel space downtown. While over 70% of business travelers to Wichita conduct business downtown, that area has only 12% of the town's hotel rooms. Another need, one the survey and the article both address, is the need for more office space downtown that's suitable for the technology that businesses require these days. The upshot of all that is that several large buildings, some of them multi-use, will be recommended in the urban core. Assuming the same people who work in those buildings will also be living in them or within a few blocks of them, then daytime automobile traffic should be much less than it would otherwise be.

As I think about WDDC, I keep going back to something we were told in the WAMPO meeting on Tuesday: That whether all or none of the projects under consideration were built, congestion and drive times would remain the same under any course of action. While I understand that it's a transportation board's job to build transportation stuff, it seems to me that it'd be a wiser course of action for municipalities to reduce the need for future road capacity by adopting policies that positively encourage people not to drive so much. Zoning that encourages high-density, mixed-use development in already-built areas--such as what will be happening downtown--is one of those ways. So is the development and expansion of public transit and alternate transportation. The idea is to provide infrastructure and options to get people to consider changing their behavior, rather than enabling the behavior and at the same time kind of hoping they'll see the light and not engage in the behavior being enabled. WDDC, it seems, is, or wants, to be headed in a positive direction. If they're not, they certainly talk a good game.

WAMPO meetings and WDDC doings

First, the WAMPO meetings: The next two will be on Tuesday, January 19th, at 1:00 pm., and Monday, January 25, at 1:30 p.m. Both will be held in the Large Conference Room on the 10th floor of City Hall. The initial list of projects to be discussed at these meetings is here (.pdf file). (Bike and pedestrian projects are on the first two pages; some of the bridge and road projects include bike and pedestrian accommodations as well, so be sure to look through the whole document.) I cannot say with certainty that all these are still being considered, but some of them are.

I will make the meeting on the 19th, but duties call on the 25th; I hope those of you with work schedules that permit such things will be able to attend. It's my understanding that warm bodies, there, being warm on behalf of these projects, count for a great deal. I would just make the quick observation that, yes, many of the road projects designed to expand capacity for cars will include 10-foot-wide multi-use paths, but it seems that the Powers That Be would save a great deal of money by building narrower sidewalks and making narrower lanes for cars that would then permit the addition of bike lanes on these streets. Assuming the same number of lanes for motorists and a modest amount of bike traffic, you'd actually increase the roads' capacity and save on construction costs as well. But maybe in these days of budget shortfalls, I'm deluded into thinking that more efficient use of transportation monies is a better idea than it in fact is. In any case, I plan to speak up on behalf of some bike lanes on the 19th, and I hope those of you in attendance will as well.

Now on to Wichita's downtown development. The overview for the downtown master plan--really more like a statement of principles and the justification for them--is here: as you can see in the presentation, the consultants the city has hired value walkability, which is, in the abstract, good news for us livable-city types. The next big public events will be on Thursday, February 25th from 5:30-8:30 p.m. at the Scottish Rite Temple, at which Jim Cloar will talk about the movement from planning to reality; and a charrette all day on Saturday, February 27th at the Wichita Art Museum. The gathering on the 27th sounds like it could be really fun. Thursday's, not so much, admittedly, but it's the people planting themselves in hard plastic chairs that get heard at these things. I'll actually be able to attend both of these, so I hope some of you will be there, too.

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.