Fragmentary Evidence

I was flabbergasted when a commenter on one of my Flickr photos back in April told me about an elementary school in San Jose which had (at the behest of the SJPD) instructed parents that bicycles “are not allowed as a means of transportation to or from school,” apparently because traffic patterns around the school were considered too dangerous. And I was flabbergasted again today when I read a post at Streetsblog about a family in Saratoga Springs who were confronted by school officials (and a state trooper who happened to be on the scene) when they defied a ban on students walking or biking to a local middle school.

I don’t have too much to add to the Streetsblog post, so I won’t go on a lengthy rant, but these stories are symptomatic of how schizophrenic our culture is right now when it comes to transportation. On the one hand, we hear a lot from politicians up the entire food chain from city councilmembers to President Obama about encouraging people to walk and bike in order to be more healthy, burn less petroleum, and pollute less. And sometimes they even put our money where their mouths are, installing bike lanes, improving streetscapes to be more pedestrian-friendly, funding new mass transit lines, and so on.

On the other hand, we have a culture that has been built around the assumption that everyone will always drive cars everywhere. That culture is reflected both in the physical design of our towns and cities, and in the mindset of the vast majority of policymakers, including many of those who pay lip service to “green” issues. People making these decisions in school districts from California to New York are presumably worried—with good reason—about the prospect of a kid getting hit by a car on the way to school, but instead of taking steps to make routes to school safer for people on bikes, their solution is simply to ban bikes. This is like dealing with violent crime by banning citizens from leaving their homes, while doing nothing to stop the people who are committing the violence.

Not only is the solution backwards, but it also contributes to a terrible public health problem. The CDC reports that childhood obesity rates more than doubled among kids aged 6-11 in just 20 years, and more than tripled among kids aged 12 to 19. Lack of adequate physical activity is one of the major causes of this increase, and childhood obesity can lead to any number of medical problems. In the face of this public health crisis, it is literally a sign of deep sickness in our culture that schools are discouraging kids from walking and biking to school, instead of doing whatever they can to encourage kids to bike to school (traffic mitigation, separated bike paths, school-sponsored “bikepools” and “walkpools” that would get kids to travel to school with other nearby kids in order to keep them safer, and so on).

I’m not totally naive, and I know that most parents will still want to drive their kids to school, either out of convenience or out of a fear of traffic or abduction. But a change in culture and mindset on these issues doesn’t require that everyone, or even most people, start sending their kids to school on foot or on a bike. All it requires, at least as a first step that could be taken immediately, is that we start making it easier for parents who want to do this, instead of treating them as pariahs or criminals who should be reported to Child Protective Services.

They came on foot, on scooters and on skateboards. They came on scraper bikes and fixies and longtails. They came in strollers and buses and, yes, some of them came in cars. However they got there, a lot of people came out to enjoy the Lakefest held on Oakland’s Lakeshore Avenue on Saturday and Sunday:

I wouldn’t normally post anything about a street festival that was mostly indistinguishable from all the other street festivals which are held on summer weekends across the country (a closed street, booths with crafts or T-shirts or massages or information about local organizations, food vendors, outdoor tables and chairs in front of the local restaurants and cafes, music stages, inflatable bouncy houses and slides for children—you know the routine). What most interested me about this festival, however, was the counterpoint it provided to an event that had happened two days before and a block away.

The owner of the Grand Lake Theater, Allen Michaan, who is still fuming about the changes to parking meter rates and hours that I wrote about two weeks ago, held a meeting at the theater to discuss how businesses should respond to the increases. He proposes a local business closure all day on Thursday (Aug. 6th) in order to protest the new meter rules. He is also gathering signatures for a petition to recall City Councilmembers unless they rescind the higher rates and hours.

I couldn’t help but be struck by the difference between these two events. In one case, you had a festival that closed a busy street to car traffic and reduced the amount of parking in the neighborhood (because the many parking spots on Lakeshore Ave were rendered unavailable), yet people showed up in droves nonetheless, to hang out, to eat, to drink, to buy, to watch and to listen. In the other case, you had some local business owners who are raising so much hell about the “parking crisis” that they may end up losing even more customers.

How might their behavior cause them to lose customers? Three possible ways that I can see: First, residents who might have been willing to pay a bit more for parking are now basically being told by Michaan and a few other vocal merchants that it makes more economic sense to drive to a distant suburb to see a movie or visit a restaurant, because they will save a few dollars on parking (a dubious proposition, in my opinion, once you factor in the “value” of one’s time and the cost of fuel). I can’t help but wonder if any people have avoided coming to the area because they have seen Michaan or another business owner on TV talking about how the city of Oakland is going to “mug” and “extort” them if they try to park in this neighborhood. Second, organizing the business closure on Thursday will bring attention to the issue as they hope, but it will probably also piss off a lot of customers, who may well blame the business owners instead of the City Council if they come here to do some shopping and discover that their favorite stores have voluntarily closed for the day. This reminds me of a kid on a schoolyard who gets upset and takes his ball and goes home—he might succeed in punishing the other kids, but he also punishes himself. Third, turning this issue into World War III garners support from those who agree with them, but it also alienates the Oakland residents who disagree with them on the issue, or who at the very least think that their tactics are misguided and divisive (some commenters on local blogs are already saying they will start avoiding the businesses that are leading this campaign).

I won’t get too much into the merits of the debate, since I pretty much said everything I have to say in my earlier post. (I didn’t expect to write a second post about parking in as many weeks, especially since I don’t even own a car myself.) My personal opinion is that whatever pocketbook pain drivers experience now is literally small change compared to how expensive driving will soon become (the chief economist of the International Energy Agency is now warning that we will soon face oil shortages which will put our economy and way of life in even greater peril than they are now, a view of peak oil that was widely dismissed as a fringe theory just a few years ago). For better or worse, many people will have to start driving less because it will become so expensive, and it will probably be a difficult transition, but my general feeling is that the process will be much less painful in the long run if we start encouraging a change in behavior now instead of waiting for external circumstances to force the issue.

Given that likely future, combined with Oakland’s desperate need for more revenue in the present, I am inclined to support meter rates which will raise revenue, will reduce the amount of time drivers spend circling the block looking for a spot, and will encourage people to start walking, biking, and riding the bus for more of their routine trips. That said, if the effect on our neighborhood’s businesses is as dramatic as the merchants claim, then I am not necessarily opposed to changing the current meter rules. Maybe a compromise of $1.75 instead of the new $2 or the old $1.50? Maybe a return to $1.50, but keeping the extended hours? Maybe allowing cars to stay in spots for more than 2 hours at a time? Maybe different prices at peak times versus offpeak times? I don’t know, but whatever the right balance is, it should be guided by statistics and rational debate, not anecdotes, counterproductive media campaigns, and recall threats.

In other words, even if it’s true that local business has fallen by more than 30% due to the meter changes, and even if it’s true that the City Council should rescind or alter the new meter rules, I still don’t think that the combative reaction of Michaan and others is a productive approach to this particular issue. It has certainly succeeded in getting attention to the issue: the Tribune and the Chronicle have published several articles each on the subject, and the issue has been all over TV and the internet too. The crowds at Lakefest suggest to me, however, that angry business owners would have been better off brainstorming about creative ways to entice people to our neighborhood and building an even stronger sense of community, rather than banding together to accuse elected officials of “municipal muggings” and “extortion.” Do these people look like they are being mugged or extorted?

Positive efforts to draw people to the Grand Lake area wouldn’t preclude also making an effort to change the meter rules, but rants, threats, closing of businesses, and demonization of councilmembers don’t seem like constructive ways to encourage people to come to our neighborhood. (One also wonders where these local business owners were when it was being debated by the City Council several months ago—one blog post on the topic attracted 47 comments back in early June, so it’s not as if some people weren’t aware of the possible changes to come. Perhaps if these business owners were more engaged with the local decision-making process, we wouldn’t be in such a fiscal mess to begin with.)

This neighborhood has a lot going for it, and I think most people in Oakland appreciate the advantages that a neighborhood like Grand Lake has over a mall with free parking in Walnut Creek or Pleasant Hill (two cities cited by Michaan as being “successful” because they have free parking). How about a campaign to remind people of the unique character and businesses in this neighborhood, and more special events to draw people to the area, instead of a divisive feud with the City Council and a publicity campaign that may serve to drive away even more customers? Has Allen Michaan pointed out even once in his media interviews that, as the Grand Lake Theater’s own website advertises, there is a free city-owned parking lot across the street from his theater where people can park for 4 hours at a stretch, or that his theater is one of the few in the Bay Area where an adult ticket still costs less than $10, at least a buck less per ticket than most theaters in neighboring communities? That is the kind of information that he should be spreading far and wide in the media, in order to encourage people to come enjoy his beautiful theater and other nearby businesses, but instead he seems so absorbed in his own righteous indignation that he cannot do anything except focus on the negative and lash out at the City Council—actions that seem likely to exacerbate whatever ill effects the new meter rules are having on his business.

The Grand Lake Theater here in Oakland is well known for its political advocacy, from messages on the marquee calling for the prosecution of people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to anti-war events featuring Barbara Lee and Sean Penn. Normally the issues the theater focuses on are national, at a safe remove from the day to day lives of local residents—heaven forbid you should make your liberal bay area customers feel uncomfortable about their own lifestyles, when it’s so much easier to reassure them that they are right-thinking and right-acting, unlike those nefarious folks in Washington.

The management of the Grand Lake have recently found a local issue that is worthy of their attention: increases in parking meter hours and fees. To the barricades, drivers!

Judging from media reports and the reactions of some residents of my neighborhood, the theater’s stance is squarely in the mainstream of local opinion. The San Francisco Chronicle published an article about how the increased meter hours, increased fees and increased enforcement are “inspiring a revolt.” CBS5 had a story a few days ago featuring indignant drivers and business owners on Grand Avenue, which concluded by saying that people plan to “storm the city council meeting next week.”

Even though I don’t own an automobile and think that most of our cities are far too car-centric, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to the plight of these drivers or merchants. Obviously I don’t want commerce to move away from local stores and neighborhoods and toward malls in the suburbs, and I can also understand how infuriating it is when a mismanaged government or institution (BART comes to mind) punishes the poor and middle class with increased fees in order to make up for shortfalls in its budget. (Increased fees of various kinds, whether they be parking meter fees in Oakland or tuition fees at state universities, are a predictable consequence of a dysfunctional government and a population which has been persuaded by pandering politicians that governments can somehow keep spending more and more money without raising taxes.)

As sympathetic as I might be, however, there are benefits to extended meter hours and increased fees that deserve to be spelled out. Anyone who has driven to (for example) Grand Lake or Chinatown for dinner after 6:00 when the parking used to be free has probably spent some time circling the block looking for a parking space. When people drive in circles looking for scarce open spots, the costs of parking have not disappeared, they have just been transferred elsewhere: instead of paying for a meter, one is paying in wasted time, and paying in agitation, and paying in extra gasoline use, and paying in toxic emissions, and paying in increased traffic volume as other cars circle looking for parking as well.

Donald Shoup, a UCLA professor who has become an unlikely guru among many urbanists, has spent years trying to persuade people that parking should cost more money, and that failure to apply market pricing to public parking has been terribly detrimental to our cities (his best-known work is titled The High Cost of Free Parking). His basic rule of thumb for curbside parking is that meters should cost the lowest possible price which will render about 15 percent of spaces vacant at any given time, and that the money earned from meters should be used in that same neighborhood for local improvements (streetscaping, sidewalk cleaning, security, whatever), so that local residents and business owners feel invested in the meters instead of oppressed by them.

Setting meter prices high enough so that there are always some vacancies eliminates the Yogi Berra problem (“nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded”) and encourages more turnover, so that you have more shoppers making more visits to a particular street, instead of a smaller number of visitors occupying spaces for longer periods of time. And if higher meter costs encourage some people to walk, bike, or use mass transit instead of driving—well, so much the better. An alternative “solution” to parking shortages has always been to build more and more parking, but that has some unfortunate repercussions: it ruins public spaces with unsightly parking lots, and it just gives people an incentive to drive even more, which in turn increases the demand for parking even more, leading to the construction of yet more parking lots. Some people might think that more car traffic and more parking lots would be good for Oakland’s most walkable shopping districts in the long run, but I’m not one of them.

Shoup argues, based on real-world examples such as Old Town Pasadena, that while merchants and residents typically resist increased parking fees at first, they often become supporters after they get used to the change, because they see the benefits that can accrue from increased revenue and increased consumer turnover, especially when money is used directly for neighborhood improvements that make the area more welcoming to shoppers, such as nicer sidewalks, less grime, less crime, etc. San Francisco is experimenting with a demand-based pricing system in certain neighborhoods which causes prices to fluctuate dramatically from less than a buck an hour to over ten dollars an hour for the same parking spot, depending on when it is being used. (The gist of Shoup’s arguments are outlined well in this Streetfilms video and this Toronto Star article, and in many other articles and interviews linked to from his UCLA website.)

I’ve gone on at some length in the past about some of the unexpected benefits of getting out of one’s car (or losing it altogether) and biking and walking places instead. Yes, it often takes a bit longer, but there are quality of life benefits that far outweigh the drawbacks, as far as I’m concerned. (For an example of the stress and anxiety that can come from driving a car everywhere, see the gentleman featured in the CBS5 report I mentioned above—some people complain about how shrill and entitled we bicyclists are, and I won’t argue with that, but I’d say we can’t hold a candle to the average American driver when it comes to entitlement and righteous indignation. Even the CBS5 reporter, who seems generally sympathetic to their point of view, describes people as “ranting and raving.”) As I mentioned in my post about how much nicer it is to get around by bike instead of by car, it wasn’t until I was forced by circumstance (a totaled car and not enough money for a new one) to start riding a bike everywhere that I realized that I actually preferred it for most local trips. I think human beings are often remarkably bad at knowing what will actually bring them satisfaction.

Given how hard it is for people (all of us, not just automobile drivers) to imagine that a change in lifestyle might actually improve our lives, I can’t help but wonder how many of the people who are outraged about having to pay more for parking in Oakland live within walking distance of the destinations that they currently drive to, and whether they might discover that spending 20 minutes strolling to the Grand Lake Theatre for a movie, or to Arizmendi for coffee and pastry, or to Walden Pond Books for a used paperback is actually a much more pleasurable experience than driving there and looking for parking (even free parking). I agree that it would be a shame if people start driving to malls in the suburbs instead of driving to Oakland neighborhoods for dinner or a movie, but if some significant number of people start walking and biking to those Oakland neighborhoods instead of driving because they don’t want to pay $2/hour for a meter, or because they fear getting a parking ticket from an overzealous parking enforcement officer, then I would consider that a feature, not a bug.

I often walk my dog over to a neighborhood called Haddon Hill, which looms over Lake Merritt from the East. It’s a nice neighborhood, with a lot of pretty streets, well-kept properties, and a bit of local history (Henry J. Kaiser, for example, had a large home built for himself which still stands at the corner of Haddon and Hillgirt). It took me a while to notice that there’s another reason why the neighborhood is good for walking: there are no telephone poles or overhead wires. In an area of about 8 or 10 square blocks, all that infrastructure which often clutters our urban and suburban skies are submerged, except for the occasional streetlight. Here is a shot looking one direction from the “dividing line”:

And here is a photo shot from the same location facing the other way:

The neighboring streets, which have wires criss-crossing them every few dozen feet, are still very nice, but once you notice the visual clutter, it starts to seem more offensive. A bit closer to my apartment, here’s a view toward the palm trees of 9th Avenue, which used to form an allee on John “Borax” Smith’s estate. It could be a nice view of a hillside and some trees, if it weren’t for all the obstructions:

I wonder whether anyone has ever studied possible correlations between visual pollution like that, and home values, or crime rates, or residents’ peace of mind. Remarkable research done by a group at the University of Illinois has shown that the presence of greenery in public housing projects is correlated with lower crime, stronger communities, and reduced stress. Could the same be true for all the poles and wires breaking up our views of the skies? When telephone poles were being erected around the country in 1880′s, some locals would cut them down. In 1889 The New York Times ran an article with the headline “War on Telephone Poles,” a title which was borrowed for a recent Harper’s article on the subject (unfortunately, I cannot read it since my subscription to Harper’s lapsed years ago). We laugh at those NIMBYs and luddites now, but were the late-nineteenth century technophobes onto something?

Of all the offensive things that have been done to the American landscape, urban telephone poles and the wires sprouting from them are surely among the least awful, but we’ve become so inured to the depredation of public space that we hardly even notice its features anymore. One of my commenters recently remarked about the dramatic contrast in Los Angeles between its impoverished public sphere and the sumptuous private spaces there. LA is worse than a lot of cities in that regard, but the disconnect exists all over, and blocking our sightlines with a tangle of wires probably doesn’t help.

More of this, please:

It’s been a while since I waxed rhapsodic about riding a bike, and now that summer is upon us, this is probably as good a time as ever to sing the praises of the two-wheeled commute. We cycling evangelists are sometimes considered strident and holier-than-thou about our choice of transportation. I suppose that’s unavoidable, since it’s self-evident that we are morally and ethically superior to our fellow human beings in every way. Whatever the merits of our self-righteousness, however, lecturing and scolding can be counterproductive when one is trying to spread the good word to benighted souls, and our emphasis on the environmental, financial and geopolitical benefits of burning up less petroleum can give the impression that riding a bike is a difficult sacrifice, a hardship that must be endured for altruistic reasons.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth, so I want to dwell a bit on another benefit of getting around by bicycle which is sometimes given short shrift: the psychological benefit. I’ve thought about this in the past, but it was clarified for me during last month’s Bike to Work day. I usually don’t observe Bike to Work Day in any special way, since I bike to work every day anyway, but for some reason I got into the spirit of it this year, so I woke up early to join a loose peleton (which included my city council rep) from the Grand Lake Theater to City Hall, where they were serving a free pancake breakfast to bike commuters in the plaza out front. I then picked up a free Arizmendi scone at an “energizer station” next to Lake Merritt, then a free cup of coffee at Fruitvale BART station, and by the time I got to work I was as happy as a clam.

Now, I’m a real sucker for free food and drink, but it wasn’t only the free stuff that put me in a good mood. It was also noticing that all the other people riding their bikes to work that day, some of them presumably for the first time, had smiles on their faces. How often do you see car drivers smiling as they commute to work? Almost never! Instead you see a lot of stressed-out grimaces and furrowed brows. It occurred to me that people on bikes tend to look pretty happy as they cruise around town, and will often give a friendly wave to each other as they pass. People in cars, on the other hand, generally look tense and anxious in the gnarl and snarl of rush hour traffic. Sure, some of the friendliness among cyclists is probably just the camaraderie that comes with encountering a kindred spirit, but I am convinced that the cheerfulness of many bike commuters can also be attributed to the salutary psychological effects of riding a bike instead of driving by car.

As I thought about it, I realized that I’ve always tended to be in a better mood upon arrival to work after getting there by bike. When I used to drive a car most of the time, I would occasionally ride to work if my car was in the shop, and while I’d be annoyed about have to leave the house earlier, I would arrive feeling refreshed and chipper. Thinking back to when I lived in New York, I remember when I started riding my bike from Brooklyn to Times Square sometimes, instead of taking the subway every day. The trip took the same amount of time, but when I rode the bike, I would be more alert and cheerful when I arrived, whereas I would still be groggy and grumpy on the days when I took the subway. What’s amazing is that even though I was aware of the correlation between biking to work and feeling good once I got there, I still used to drive my car, because it was “more convenient” and would “save time” (as if time can actually be saved, rather than just spent in more or less rewarding ways). What folly! It wasn’t until my car was totaled that I was able to fully recognize that it was more a curse than a convenience.

So I can sympathize with the stressed-out commuters in their cars, because I used to be one of them. My usual route to work now takes me over and alongside Interstate 880, but in the past I used to join the unhappy masses on 880, and the experiences couldn’t be more different. I used to be just another agitated driver strapped down to my seat, tailgating slower drivers out of frustration (to the point where I once rear-ended a Camry that stopped short in front of me), and changing lanes obsessively in hopes of gaining a few seconds’ advantage. I now quite literally rise above all that, and every time I glance down at the people in their cars, I remember how miserable I used to be driving down that same stretch of road.

Nowadays I pass over that unsightly ribbon of stress and ride along the waterfront instead, which is why I end up taking so many pictures from that area. Instead of having to stare at bumpers, asphalt and concrete, I get to look at boats, buildings, parks, water and the occasional piece of art. Instead of being subject to the vagaries of traffic, I can ride happily along at whatever pace I choose, enjoying the scenery, breathing in the relatively fresh air coming off the water, and probably feeling the effects of exercise-produced endorphins.

Another reason that riding a bike improves one’s sense of well-being is that one feels far more connected to the places one is passing through. (In this, it resembles evolution’s ideal innovation in human transportation—that is, walking.) Even if one avoids the freeways in a car, the physical separation between a driver and his surroundings means that one often doesn’t care, or even notice, whether the streetscape is pretty or ugly, or whether a neighborhood is alive or dead. The effects of that alienation from the surrounding environment may be hard to measure, but I believe that it has real consequences for one’s state of mind. Even a description of my route to work conjures a comforting sense of place: instead of getting to work via “Interstate 880,” I now get there via Brooklyn Basin, Embarcadero Cove, Union Point, and Jingletown. Have any freeways ever had such evocative names? Not all of my ride to work is beautiful, but none of it is dull.

Even the decaying vestiges of the area’s industrial glory days are fairly picturesque:

What’s most remarkable to me when I compare riding to work and driving to work is how driving a car can dramatically change one’s relationship with other people. You can take a generally calm and easygoing person—for example, me—and put him behind the wheel of a car, and he is suddenly transformed into a kind of sociopathic monster, who sees other drivers as the enemy, sees pedestrians and bicyclists as irritating obstructions, and is willing to put lives—his own and others’—at risk by running a red light, or swerving around a blind corner, or cutting off someone else on the gamble that you won’t both pull a reckless move at precisely the same moment. And for what? To shave a couple of minutes from one’s commute? Agitation and anxiety are a high price to pay for that small amount of “saved” time.

I don’t know precisely what psychological mechanism is at work, but there really seems to be something about being inside a metal box, separated from the rest of humanity by a barrier of glass and steel, which encourages anti-social behavior. I can still feel the change in mindset occur on the rare occasions when I get behind the wheel of a car, and I need to remind myself to breathe deep and relax—and to stop for those bothersome pedestrians at crosswalks. We like to think that some people are nice and some people are assholes, but the truth is that most people can be both at different times; context, circumstance, and the expectations of others can have a huge impact on one’s behavior. I really think there’s something about getting behind the wheel that can often make normal people act like psychopaths.

Of course some bicyclists also ride recklessly and selfishly, and I can attest from personal experience that being on a bike doesn’t make one immune to road rage. Just as a lot of car drivers are very responsible and considerate, a lot of bike riders are jerks (it’s worth noting, however, that a jerk on a bike is extremely unlikely to maim or kill anyone). And riding a bike does have its drawbacks, such as arriving to one’s destination sweaty, and the danger inherent in sharing roads with heavy metal objects moving at high speeds. (That last issue is why it’s so important to design streets that feel safe to ride a bicycle on—there are a lot of people who would enjoy getting around by bike, but who are reluctant to do it because they simply don’t feel safe riding in traffic.)

When it comes to fostering peace of mind and mental health, I doubt any mode of transportation will ever beat walking, but when getting someplace by two feet is impractical, the two wheels of a bicycle are the next best thing. Exercise, fresh air, independence, and none of the stress that comes with stop and go traffic, or waiting for a late bus, or crowding into a subway car: what’s not to love?

As I feared and warned about just two weeks ago, BART’s profligate board of directors just voted to raise fares six months earlier than planned, citing budget deficits. See, it’s okay to waste money, because you can always get transit-dependent citizens (along with BART employees) to pay for it. Never mind that those citizens are also suffering in this lousy economy, and that the reason many of them use public transportation is because they can’t afford to own cars, and that for environmental reasons we should be doing everything we can encourage, not discourage, use of public transit. Here is CBS5′s early story on the vote:

Bay Area Rapid Transit riders can expect to start paying more to ride and park this summer as the transit agency tries to close a $250 million deficit projected over the next four years.

BART directors voted Thursday to adopt three fare hikes that will go into effect on July 1.

At the end of a lengthy discussion, BART directors voted to raise basic train fares by 6.1 percent and to add 25 cents to the minimum fare for short trips. They also voted to charge an extra $2 surcharge for all trips to the San Francisco International Airport.

The 25-cent increase in the minimum fare will increase the base fare from $1.50 to $1.75.

BART directors also voted to begin charging a $1 parking fee at eight additional stations. Parking fees are already in place at some BART stations.

BART had not been slated to increase its fares until Jan. 1, but directors voted to move up the fare increases by six months because of BART’s large budget deficit.

Union contracts expire on June 30 and BART is also likely to ask for significant concessions from employees to help make up for the budget shortfall.

I haven’t heard yet whether Lynette Sweet, the BART director who recently said that raising fares to SFO would be “hard to swallow” and a “hardship,” voted for the fare hike.

It was pretty clear that something like this was coming, but I thought that the BART directors would wait a while, for fear that it would appear unseemly to raise fares two weeks after deciding to waste half a billion dollars on a train-in-the-sky to Oakland Airport. Apparently they had no such qualms, however.

If you’ve ever taken AirBART from the Coliseum BART Station to the Oakland airport, then you know the service is pretty slow and unimpressive, especially considering the $3 fare each way. So you might think that public transit advocates in and around Oakland would be delighted by BART’s proposal to build a faster connection between the BART station and the airport terminals. Under the plan, the AirBART bus service would be replaced by an elevated people mover that would whisk passengers at a rapid clip from the BART station to the airport. Sounds great, right?

Wrong! The fact that local transportation activists and bloggers seem to be unanimous in their condemnation of BART’s proposal for the Oakland Airport Connector is an indication of how problematic the plan is. To start with, BART would have to borrow $150 million to fund the $522 million project. Yes, this is the same BART that is scheduled to raise fares by over 5% next year, and is threatening that it may have to raise them even more to make up for shortfalls in their budget. So while the citizens of the Bay Area who rely on BART to get around day in and day out are being asked to shell out even more for fares, BART’s directors want the system to go deeper into debt to fund their longtime dream of a people mover that will soar above an East Oakland neighborhood. (Gotta protect those air travellers from the Oakland riffraff!)

You might ask: Well, won’t the train at least provide a top-notch service to passengers, taking them from BART to the terminal quickly and easily? No! While the proposed connector will get from the BART station to the airport much more quickly than AirBART, the $522 million budget will only pay for a single stop at the airport, between the two existing terminals, and on the far side of all the car and bus dropoff lanes. So while passengers will get to the airport quickly, they will end up farther away from the terminals than they currently do with AirBART, which stops at each terminal, and which only requires passengers to cross a couple of lanes of traffic to get to the gate. If they build a third terminal at OAK, as there is talk of doing, then passengers will have to walk even farther from the train to reach it.

On top of those issues, what seems worst about BART’s proposal to me is that they expect to charge passengers $6 each way for the airport connection (that’s on top of the BART fare that they have already paid). That high cost might be defensible if there was no better option as a replacement for AirBART, but in this case, there is another option. In a matter of a few weeks, the local transportation advocacy group TransForm put together a Rapid Bus proposal that would cost a tenth of BART’s proposal, would require no new debt, would be quicker to implement, would serve more people, would be almost as speedy, could pick up passengers near the hotels and businesses on Hegenberger Road if desired, could stop directly in front of each terminal, and best of all, could be absolutely free for passengers, because the money saved by not building an elevated people mover would allow BART to fund operational costs into perpetuity.

It’s frankly pretty sad that a group of activists seem to have put together a more appealing plan in a few weeks than BART was able to put together in decades of planning (an airport connector has been in the works forever; in 2000, Alameda County voters passed a measure to fund a $130 million connector, which has morphed into today’s proposal, which provides worse service than the original proposal at $400 million higher cost—and has lower ridership estimates to boot).

I hope the BART directors don’t underestimate the appeal of a free shuttle from BART to the Airport. $6 might not seem like much in comparison to the cost of a plane ticket, but I think the psychological difference between a free shuttle and a $6 people mover is enormous, especially for the price-sensitive people who are presumably likeliest to use BART to get to the airport in the first place.

I’m notoriously frugal, to the point where I once rode my bike 10 miles to the airport in the pre-dawn darkness, and locked it there for several days, all because BART doesn’t run all night and I was too cheap to pay for a cab or a shuttle. Another time, after returning from a trip, I walked from the airport to work in San Leandro because I didn’t want to wait for a bus, then dish out $1.75 for a ride of only a couple of miles (also, I just like to walk). So I might not be a typical case, but when you charge riders $6 for a 3-mile shuttle, on top of the roughly $2-$6 that they have already paid for bus and BART fare to get to Coliseum BART, you are giving people a pretty big incentive to just skip BART altogether and take a cab or a door-to-door shuttle.

At the last meeting of the BART board in late April, they reluctantly agreed to table the airport connector proposal until tomorrow, in order to study other options more closely (imagine that: studying other options closely before going $150 million deeper into debt). That’s when TransForm leapt into action and produced their counterproposal. If BART opts for the $6 elevated tramway instead of the free high-speed shuttle buses, I suspect it will not be on the merits, but rather because they have had their sights set on a sexy high-speed people mover for decades, and are too blinded by that long dream to weigh the pros and cons of the various options.

Like a lot of other people, I prefer trains to buses for vague, possibly irrational reasons (I basically never take the bus; if I’m crossing the bay, I will take BART, and if I’m staying in the East Bay, then I will usually either walk or ride a bike). So I understand the urge to build a train instead of replacing AirBART with an improved rapid bus service. In this case, however, the activists and bloggers have persuaded me that the costs (both to BART and to its passengers) of building the train in the sky are way too high to justify, especially given the limitations of the service that it would provide. I won’t be able to attend tomorrow’s BART board meeting where they will be deciding whether to go ahead with their grandiose plans, but local transit activists promise to be there in force, and I hope the BART directors are able to set aside their longterm fantasies and pursue a less flashy, but more practical, option instead.

I think I may have tried that exact line with an ex-girlfriend once. If I had known at the time that dumping was illegal, maybe I could have been more persuasive.

More seriously, I think that Broken Windows Theory 101 would dictate that if you are trying to discourage people from treating your semi-vacant lot on Park Boulevard in Oakland as a dumping ground, then it would be prudent to make sure that your “Be Nice Don’t Dump” notice does not itself resemble blight. It would have been only slightly more trouble to make the request look more orderly, and I suspect that if the lot looked more as if anyone actually cared about it, then it would be treated with a bit more respect by potential dumpers.

So there I was yesterday, riding my bike home through some neighborhoods that I have rarely, if ever, visited before. The ride itself was routine: one eye on the cars to my right, alert for the sudden opening of a door, the other eye monitoring my left flank, where cars were passing with an uncomfortably small margin or error. With both of my eyes thus occupied, you might not think that I would be able to see anything in front of me, but our brains are miraculous sensory processing machines, sorting, filtering and combining vast amounts of data into a surprisingly reliable guide to our immediate environment.

So I saw her well before I actually reached her: her graceful curves, her open, welcoming mien, her smooth, unblemished face. I was so overwhelmed by her beauty that I literally stopped short, too awed at first to approach. As I stood there agape, my left foot still on its pedal and my right foot grounded, as if to steady my fluttering heart, I sensed—no, I knew, knew to the very core of my mitochondrial DNA—that she was waiting for me. Indeed, I’m not normally one to spew a lot of new age nonsense about kismet and cosmic master plans, but I could tell immediately that the universe had placed her there in anticipation of my arrival, and that she was eager to take me in her embrace, to have me and to hold me, to selflessly help me attain my goals.

And so, after regaining my composure, I rode forth once more, shorn of hesitation and robbed of all fear, and when I finally touched her, she was everything I had ever dared to dream of: (more…)

The evidence of tough economic times is abundant, and most of us could probably cite numerous statistics or events as examples: An official unemployment rate that is over 8 percent (double digits here in California—we’ve always been trendsetters!); enormous companies entering bankruptcy or limping along with subsidies (sorry, make that “capital injections”) from taxpayers; tent cities forming on vacant land; friends or family members who have lost work or been subject to mandatory unpaid days off; commercial districts in cities and exurbs alike becoming ghost towns; irreplaceable local institutions like the Parkway Theater closing forever.

In addition to those much-noted signs of recession, I’ve been wondering recently how our economic troubles will manifest themselves in less obvious ways: in our public spaces, in our daily habits and routines, in our civic engagement. I’ve long been intrigued by the look and feel of cities, and in the ways that small, seemingly insignificant aspects of the urban fabric can have big consequences, but my specific interest in the visual symptoms of economic collapse was prompted by a discussion in the comments to a previous post.

A commenter wondered what I was seeing with my own eyes that “reflected the country’s current ailments,” and I realized that I didn’t have a very clear notion of what I would expect a deepening recession to look like in a city such as Oakland. I see more empty storefronts around, and more signs in front of foreclosed homes (although I feel as if I see fewer than I did six months or a year ago), and perhaps more people out and about during the traditional working hours.

I realized, however, that in a city which has always had more than its fair share of blight, poverty, and unemployment, the signs of a worsening economic situation are probably less glaringly obvious than they are in, for example, exurban developments in the central valley or the Mojave Desert that have gone from boomtowns to ghosttowns in just a few years. Ever since that discussion, I’ve had the question in the back of my mind, and I’ve been taking note of small local indicators of economic trouble that might not show up in a statistic or a news article.

Since I’m trying to be attuned to these symptoms as I roam the streets (i.e. walk the dog, bike to work, etc.), and since I still have a very limited mental image of what a deeper, prolonged downturn might look like in the modern world (will we see more “Hoovervilles” and bread lines, or will our age have its own different, less obvious manifestations of hardship?), I would be interested in hearing any other thoughts readers might have about subtle ways that the recession is affecting the look and feel of our cities.

Assuming that things continue to get worse before they get better, might we see a strengthening of neighborhood ties as people becoming increasingly concerned about property crimes? Or will people in fact become more isolated, because they will be more fearful of crime in the streets, and will have less money to spend in local restaurants and the like? Will the physical environment deteriorate dramatically, as public services and private investment continue to dwindle?

I don’t have any well-formed answers to these sorts of questions, and obviously much depends on just how bad things get, and for how long, but I’m curious — and more than a little nervous — about how further economic collapse might show itself in our streets, parks and sidewalks.

I finally got around to reading this Boston Globe article about the selective implementation of the “broken windows” theory of crime in Lowell, Mass. A partnership between some academics and the police department identified 34 crime “hot spots,” then in half of the places they took proactive steps to clean up blight, provide social services, or do more to combat misdemeanors and loitering. In the other half of the high-crime locations, they continued with traditional police techniques (basically doing normal patrols and responding to 911 calls, but nothing preventive or proactive).

The Globe article summarizes the conclusions of the researchers as such:

The results, just now circulating in law enforcement circles, are striking: A 20 percent plunge in calls to police from the parts of town that received extra attention. It is seen as strong scientific evidence that the long-debated “broken windows” theory really works – that disorderly conditions breed bad behavior, and that fixing them can help prevent crime.

Without knowing the details of the study, I’m not so convinced that this “plunge” is so “striking.” While a 20% decline is substantial, it seems predictable that any kind of extra attention given to a crime hot spot will be likely to reduce crime in that particular location — you could assign a few officers to stand at a certain location 24 hours a day, and crime at that spot would “plunge” by close to 100%, but so what? The more important question is which kinds of extra attention accomplish the most good in the most efficient way.

Thankfully, the researchers must have taken steps to isolate certain kinds of “extra attention” from others, and that’s where the more interesting information is. According to the Globe, “the Lowell experiment offers guidance on what seems to work best. Cleaning up the physical environment was very effective; misdemeanor arrests less so, and boosting social services had no apparent impact.” The correlation between the quality of the physical environment and the likelihood of people to commit crimes has also been established by some fascinating experiments in the Netherlands.

Assuming that these findings are valid, they could be very useful for people (and governments) in high-crime areas. Social services, however much they may help in other ways, are probably not an efficient way to reduce crime (sorry, bleeding heart, thug-coddling liberal hippies); zero tolerance for misdemeanors is also probably not a very efficient way to reduce crime (sorry, tough on crime, lock-’em-all-up conservative fascists). If you want bang for your buck, the way to reduce crime the most is to make the place you spend your life prettier — sounds like a win-win situation to me!

Since I live in a medium-crime part of a high-crime city, and since I’m interested in the effects of the urban physical environment for unrelated reasons, I find these studies to be pretty heartening news.

Unlike providing social services or cracking down on misdemeanor crimes, the aesthetics of the physical environment is something that residents of a neighborhood can easily improve without requiring the aid of the police department or city hall. Oakland’s police department is chronically understaffed, plagued by repeated scandals, and led by incompetents or worse, so it is a relief to know that there are ways to combat crime that don’t involve a responsive and accountable police force. Most of Oakland’s elected officials are too busy bickering over parking spaces at City Hall or trying to drive business away from the city to actually get anything useful done, so it is a relief to know that there are ways to combat crime that don’t involve a responsive and fiscally healthy municipal government.

That’s not to say that it’s easy to combat blight in our neighborhoods (it’s hard to get residents to care about anything beyond their own walls, and the collapsing economy is obviously not helpful), but small things such as picking up litter, turning an unsightly patch of dirt into a flower or vegetable garden (whether it be one’s front yard or an abandoned lot down the block), or painting over graffiti on one’s front stoop are not very hard to do, and are probably more effective than trying to get someone from downtown to do something productive in a timely manner.