News from NARP and TTI

You may be aware of NARP, the National Association of Rail Passengers, and MARP, its Michigan sister; you may even be a member. If you're not, you may want to take a look at NARP's latest newsletter on-line. In addition to news, there's some interesting analysis. I'll hit the high points here.

Politics

Do Republicans always oppose public transit and rail spending? No. It's pretty well known that outgoing California Governer Arnold Schwartzenegger actively encouraged California's high speed rail initiative, branded "Fly California", as well as many other environmentally conscious policies. NARP's newsletter details the efforts of Virginia's Republican governor Bob McDonnell to increase rail service in his state. The results are a model for working cooperatively with the freight railroads that own the tracks, increasing frequency, and investing state funds in projects that benefit both freight and passenger traffic. As a business-savvy politician, McDonnell knows that "investment" is more than a nice word for government boondoggles. His state budget has called for deep cuts, but not in transportation infrastructure, in which he plans to invest $4 billion. An interesting funding source for infrastructure is Virginia's 10% tax on car rentals, of which 30% is used for rail and conventional transit.

Further south, in Florida, Republican Governor Rick Scott has yet either to support or block the Tampa-Orlando high speed line. But the project is pretty hard to object to: most of the capital cost is covered by Federal funds, while the operating costs and risks will be covered by private companies, of which seven are bidding to operate the line. What's more, Associated Industries of Florida, a business lobbying group, is strongly in support of the project. Perhaps the only negative factor is the association between high speed rail and President Barak Obama, and the fear some politicians have of being linked to anything the opposing party favors.

Analysis

Some very interesting facts emerge in a white paper by NARP Communications Director Sean Jeans-Gail. He puts together figures from several sources that show the costs and benefits of rail transportation and compares them with the costs and benefits of highway funding. Here are some of the most significant:

• Amtrak recovers around 75% of its operating costs from generated revenues;
• U.S. commuter rail, on average, nationwide, covers 53% of it’s operating costs through the fare box;
• Gas taxes, road tolls, and vehicle registration fees covered 51% of the cost of America's highways in 2008;
• The average US household spends 15% of its resources on transportation, of which 94% goes to supporting its automobiles;
• Families that use public transportation as an alternative to an additional auto save about $9000 each year (a figure I've often brought to your attention!).

Do Americans actually use rail as a meaningful transportation option? Between 1995 and 2008:

• US population grew 15%
• Highway use rose by 21%
• Commuter rail ridership grew 28%
• Public transit ridership went up 31%
• Amtrak ridership grew 32%

Another source of information and analysis - perhaps better known to many of you - is the Texas Transportaiton Institute. These researchers have for many years been the primary non-governmental source of information on traffic nation-wide. Their primary focus is on roads and highways, and they do a great job with it. Their annual report came out last week - a feast for those who like to dive into the numbers and fish out their own conclusions. Congestion is one of their main focuses, and the amount of time and money lost to congestion is truly staggering. For each commuter in a major metropolitan area...

• Average time lost to congestion: 50 hours each year, reaching as high as 70 hours in the worst areas, Chicago and Washington DC;
• Gallons of gas wasted: 39 on average, 57 in Washington DC;
• Money wasted: $1,166, and as high as $1,738 in Chicagoland.

The trend has been steadily upward: in 1982, the average commuter lost only 18 hours each year to congestion.

City-by-city numbers are available, so I looked at the numbers for the Detroit metro area. The good news: congestion is decreasing around here...but of course, we know why: the population is shrinking. So we're back to where we (Wake up Washtenaw) started: how do we make our region more attractive to people and businesses?

I think the figures here might give us a clue.

To read more:

• NARP News, January 2011: http://www.narprail.org/cms/images/uploads/1101web.htm
• NARP's "Transportation Infrastructure Investment - White Paper & Fact Sheet" www.bit.ly/travchoice
• Texas Transportation Institute Urban Mobility Information: http://mobility.tamu.edu/

Green or Brown?

The Great Lakes Echo had an interesting article last Thursday: "Detroit businessman proposes large scale commercial farming to struggling city". It's about John Hantz's plan to take Detroit's urban agriculture to new heights - or at least, to a far more ambitious stage. Hantz is a Detroit-area financier and entrepreneur with experience in real estate and banking, together with apparently deep pockets. His idea is to use Detroit's hundreds of acres of abandoned property to grow food, not simply on a family-by-family or soup-kitchen basis, but for profit, using the best techniques MSU's agricultural scientists can provide.

Now, why would that be of interest to transit-advocacy people or to Wake Up Washtenaw? Well, because what's really behind Wake Up Washtenaw is more than transit, it's sustainability.

If you've been following this blog for a while, you may recall the "White Paper" that appeared in sections here a couple of years ago. In January 2009, I put up the section outlining my concept of a new-built sustainable community based on a totally fresh start - a "town" with connections to the earth as well as other communities around it. This community would be able to sustain itself in food and energy, and take care of its own waste, while connecting its residents to the outside world - all without requiring them to own an automobile.

I have long believed that the only practical way to achieve these goals is to start with a large, empty tract of land and build from the ground up. In other words, to use "greenfield" development techniques. Many of my fellow environmental advocates have disagreed with me on principle, believing that we have enough "brownfield" areas to make greenfield development unnecessary. Current environmental thinking holds that the unused and underused parts of our cities and towns provide ample space for sustainable development, without sacrificing precious open space for human habitation. And this argument is especially telling in Michigan, the only state in the US to lose population over the last ten years.

Mr.. Hantz's large-scale urban agriculture plans seem to underscore the availability of thousands of acres within our Michigan cities and towns for profitably growing food. It's a wonderful revelation in one way, but is it the last nail in the coffin for greenfield development in Michigan?

I firmly believe there are good reasons to keep thinking about "green greenfield" development. I'd like to know what you think. Seriously. But here are my reasons for not abandoning the idea of sustainable greenfield development: With it, we can...

• Use sustainable building practices from the ground up, rather than retrofitting old buildings and infrastructure to sustainable levels, which can be prohibitively expensive. We can start with LEED principles from the get-go, and build structures that can house many people comfortably with a low energy budget and the possibility of, for example, enclosed roof-top gardens the enable the air to be refreshed naturally during the winter.
• Shape the community for sustainability. Rather than living with existing street and traffic patterns, we plan "outside the box" street layouts, transportation, and shopping for sustainability, while respecting and celebrating the natural features of the land.
• Build energy production into agriculture and waste-management. Bio-waste from both agriculture and the residential waste stream can be used to produce energy, but it is difficult to do economically if energy, agriculture, and waste management are not planned as mutually interactive systems from the beginning.

Beyond these practical details lies the specter of Michigan's population loss. But study after study has concluded that the way to reverse this trend is to make Michigan the kind of place creative young people want to live in. They are the most likely to be able to revive Michigan's 20th-century economy by injections of 21st century creativity. And that's precisely where a totally new kind of sustainable community can really help. It frees the imagination from the mistakes of the past, the shape-restrictions of old buildings, and the constraints auto-oriented urban design. It allows creativity to work from the tabula raza, the natural state.

A sustainable greenfield development can incorporate existing natural features into the design, features which were long ago erased from the grid of city streets. It holds the promise of taking a section of cornfield and woodlots and actually increasing its agricultural productivity through intensive organic growing techniques, while at the same time greatly increasing its population and reducing the amount of carbon, waste heat, trash, and bio-waste. It allows science, engineering, architecture, and urban design to interact creatively and imaginatively.

So...what do you think?

To read more:

• Great Lakes Echo (http://www.greatlakesecho.org/)
• John Hantz's plan (http://greatlakesecho.org/2010/12/30/detroit-businessman-proposes-large-scale-commercial-farming-to-struggling-city/)
• Wake Up Washtenaw blog entry on greenfield development (http://washtenawtod.blogspot.com/2009/01/5.html)
• Wake Up Washtenaw White Paper (http://home.comcast.net/~krieg254/whitepaper1-0.htm)

Getting Back On Track

Yesterday we got some interesting information from Smart Growth America (SGA) and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) about how each the fifty states is preparing for "smart growth" and greenhouse gas reduction.

Before opening it, my very first question was, How badly did Michigan do? The answer - when I finally found it - was, Better than I thought!

The report, titled "Getting Back On Track: Aligning State Transportation Policy with Climate Change Goals," used lots of publicly available data sources to rate each state in several categories. One key point is that transportation decisions are made mainly at the state level. The Federal government can offer incentives and cash, but the states have the final say as to what they're going to do. Several good examples came up in the last few of months, as governors and governors-elect of New Jersey, Ohio, and Wisconsin threatened or vetoed federal transportation funding because it was tied to rail projects which, for whatever reason, were considered a waste of funds. Even powerful, local governments are stopped by their states, as in the case of New York City's 2007 congestion mitigation plan which the state legislature killed simply by blocking it from coming to a floor vote.

"Getting Back On Track" looks at three main types of criteria: Infrastructure Policies, Transportation Investment Decisions, and Touchstone Policies. The last refers to general state policies that impact - directly or indirectly - the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation sources. A point score in each category, based on multiple indicators, gives a sort of "percentage grade" for each state. States were then ranked in each category to see how they compare. Here's how Michigan scored in each category:

	Infrastructure Policy	Transportation Investment Decisions	Touchstone Policies
Michigan's Rank	26	9	17
Michigan's Score	36%	51%	5 of 15 points

Our infrastructure policy seems to rank about average, but we ranked better in "touchstone" policies, and pretty well in actual investment decisions. That's good if we're being graded "on the curve". If you look at our actual scores, we're flunking in all categories. I don't suppose the laws of physics "grade on the curve", so when greenhouse gas emissions take effect in the environment, it's the score that counts - not the rank.

The scores from each category were combined to calculate an overall score for each state. Here are a few states that might be of interest to us in Michigan:

State	Rank	Score	Notes
California	1	80%	California tops the list. Interesting that the state which began the "freeway life style" is also the first to react to its limitations.
Minnesota	10	59%	Best in the Midwest
Illinois	13	53%	Second among near neighbors
Wisconsin	14	51%	Third in the Midwest
Michigan	17	48%	Fourth in the Midwest
Ohio	34	28%	Surprisingly low given its relatively high population and industrial base
Indiana	45	20%	Last in the Midwest, but it ranks with other states whose population density is low
Arkansas	50	2%	Arkansas may be HQ for the tops among the world's retailers, but it's dead last in green transportation.

The top states on the list are all coastal states with large, densely-populated areas: California, Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington, Oregon, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. The states at the bottom are all rural, low-density areas: Montana (41^st on the list), followed by Alabama, South Dakota, Wyoming, Indiana, Nebraska, North Dakota, West Virginia, Mississippi, and of course Arkansas in last place.

One way to look at this distribution is to speculate that high-ranking states have congestion problems that can't be ignored - but also, they have more abundant resources to deal with their whatever problems. So why is New York number 21? On the other hand, states at the bottom of the list have scantier resources to solve whatever problems they do have. Alabama, Indiana, and Nebraska each has at least one large metropolitan area which undoubtedly suffers from some degree of congestion and pollution.

Michigan falls somewhere in the middle, and of course we have our unique issues. We have areas of density, but there is a sense that we lack the economic resources to deal with the congestion and pollution. Then there's the fact that Michigan - and especially Detroit, its densest and most congested area - is losing population. Some people have the attitude that if we just wait long enough, Detroit will go away. That's a non-starter, for sure!

What next?

Because states have such an important role in setting transportation policy and practice, I'm going to pass along the study's recommendations for state action. Which of these are we already doing well in Michigan...and which can we do better?

• Balance state transportation investments by:
  • using state and federal resources to support robust public transportation service
  • prioritize highway repair and safety over new capacity
  • support non-motorized transportation, and
  • ensure state fuel taxes can support all transportation modes.
• Manage traffic through congestion pricing tools and incentivize low-carbon transportation options through comprehensive commuter programs.
• Link transportation and land use in transportation plans, implement smart growth and growth management policies, and promote transit oriented development.
• Set a course to reduce emissions by setting per capita transportation greenhouse gas or vehicle-miles traveled reduction targets.

What do you think? Which areas do we need to improve on, and how?

Get the full report here.

It's About Diversity

Everyone in Michigan's transit community was tickled by the October 20 announcement of $150M for Wolverine rail corridor improvement under TIGER II, part of ARRA. This amount - trivial by highway standards - is truly significant for rail.

Congressman John Dingell was given the honor of announcing the grant, and I'm sure it's as significant for him as for us. But let it be noted that these funds were awarded based on US DOT's merit-based formula, not on earmarks from the Congressman. I'm proud that Michigan earned the money fair and square, rather than by whining to our legislators.

As a competitive program, TIGER II is able to fund the best projects from around the country. Using merit-based evaluation criteria allows the Department of Transportation to address some of the nation’s most critical challenges like sustainability and economic competitiveness. (http://www.dot.gov/affairs/2010/dot18810.html)

BTW - there was lot of negative campaign noise about Dingell 's age and long service in Congress. In the words of one blog comment/flame, "He’s a washed up old geezer…. Move on old dude and let some new blood and new ideas into office". I find it interesting that a congressman who was in office when the Interstate highway system was legislated (and I have to believe he supported it!) is now such a staunch advocate of high(er) speed rail. I wonder what "new ideas" our flaming friend was thinking of (if any)?

Many negative commentators seem to fear that transit investment will "take away" our cars. Of course, no transit advocate has ever suggested that seriously. But the critics seem quite happy to keep others from having further options. As one commenter jokingly put it, "We don’t need a railway. Rich people have cars and poor people can just walk."

It's a well-accepted maxim that there's strength in diversity. Michigan's economic woes stem in large part from lack of diversity. Over-reliance on manufacturing (primarily of automobiles) brought Michigan down further and faster in this recession than most other states.

It's the same in transportation. Cities with high-capacity electric rail don't quake in fear of OPEC as much as cities that depend on oil for mobility. They have a backup system. Families with transportation options over and above the automobile can spend their money on more diverse things. They have a backup system. We're still seeing a savings of about $9000/year for families that can use transit rather than owning and operating a second auto.

Transit makes it possible for a more diverse group of people to live in an area - including senior citizens and mobility-challenged folks, as well as immigrants from countries that don't depend on privately owned vehicles for mobility. Remember, Michigan Future found that the nation's most successful metropolitan regions are all more welcoming to diverse populations, including immigrants, than is Michigan.

Diversity and mobility options are hardly new ideas, but they have a powerful, positive effect on society. I appreciate John Dingell's support of those ideas, whether they're new or old. I'm glad he will be back in Washington come January.

Election Results: Where We Stand

After Tuesday's midterm elections, a lot has changed. For those of us watching transportation policy and sustainable development, the results offer a mixed bag of good and bad news. Let's start at home and work our way up...

Local: Washtenaw County

The Ypsilanti City transit tax initiative was approved. According to the national Center for Transportation Excellence,

City of Ypsilanti voters were asked to approve a charter amendment to levy an additional 0.9789 mills specifically for public transit, restoring the original 20 mills that had been reduced. With the amendment in place, Ypsilanti would secure an additional $281,429 in revenue in 2011 for bus transportation through the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority.

The measure passed by a very comfortable 72%, indicating that even in hard times, Ypsilanti residents consider public transportation a high priority.

Ypsi residents often come to City Council meetings and protest cuts to AATA service, but being willing to pay for it is often another matter. Good job, Ypsi, for putting your money where your mouth is. Now, how about Ypsi Township...?

State Representative-Elect David Rutledge took an Internet class from me many years ago, before serving as Trustee at Washtenaw Community College. I found him to be thoughtful, curious, quick-witted, and eager to learn. Though I've disagreed with him over the proposed WCC parking structure (Blog: December 8, 2009) I'm very positive about his ability to bring about effective policy in Lansing.

State: Michigan

Governor-Elect Rick Snyder appears to understand the need for mass transit and the benefits it can bring - including attracting talented young people to our state and providing a life-line for people who don't have access to automobiles for one reason or another. His results-oriented investment budgeting philosophy is encouraging, since in state after state, investment in rail transit has brought spectacular dividends. I recommend the on-line video interview by the Detroit Free Press in which Snyder talks about Lansing's culture, his budgeting strategy, and specifically about transportation (at 4:20 in the 5:50 minute video).

Michigan citizens across the state voted overwhelmingly for improved transit options. According to the Center for Transportation Excellence, five transportation-related property tax issues were on local November 2 ballots around the state. Only in Eaton County did an issue fail. I mentioned Ypsilanti's victory for transportation ; in addition, there were victories in Bennington Township (by 66%), Caro (by 62%), and Spring Lake (by 80%). Looking back to the election of August 3, 2010, a lot of property tax mileages for transit were passed or renewed in Michigan: Bay County (64%), Branch County (70%), Clare County (61%) Genesee County (63%), Ingham County (67% and 63% on two issues), Lapeer County (67%), Ludington and Scottsville (figures not available), Saginaw (65%), Shiawassee County (figures not available), St. Joseph County (61%), Van Buren (68%), Wexford County (61%), and the SMART renewal in the counties of Wayne (74%), Oakland (78%), and Macomb (72%). Not a single issue got less than 60% support, except a failed proposal in Eaton County (lost by 45% in August).

And look who gave the highest percentage approval for transit in August: arch-conservative Oakland County, with 78%! Who says good transit is just a liberal issue?

Regional: the Midwest

The Big Bad News in the Midwest is two governors-elect, those of Ohio and Wisconsin, vowing to kill their state's high speed rail projects. This is especially disappointing for Wisconsin, which had contracted with Spanish railroad equipment builder Talgo to construct trainsets in a disused Milwaukee-area factory. For a governor to kill a project that was providing jobs is unusual. Wisconsin's high speed line was to run from Chicago through Milwaukee to Madison. The governor's reason for killing the project was its ongoing cost to the state (apparently ignorant of the ongoing economic benefits of passenger rail). He would rather put the money into the state's "crumbling roads and bridges".

Ohio's governor-elect apparently opposes rail for the same reason. Their brand-new passenger service would run from Cleveland through Columbus and Dayton to Cincinnati. In both Ohio and Wisconsin, supporters of rail haven't given up on legal remedies, though they admit their situation is grave.

On the positive side, Illinois continues to be solidly rail-supportive. As the rail hub of the Midwest, we need Illinois's continuing support.

National

Nationwide, the Center for Transportation Excellence tells us, "On November 2, voters approved 23 of 31 transportation ballot measures for a 74% sucess rate. When added to the 21 out of 26 measures approved earlier in the year, voter support for transportation ballot measures remains strong with 77% approved in 2010. This is well above the 10-year average of 70%."

According to Transportation for America (T4A, of which Wake Up Washtenaw is a partner) the general outlook for transportation reform is not bad at the Federal level. Although fiscal conservatives will be in charge of the House, and the Minority Leader of the Senate has vowed not to compromise, many of the new leaders understand the value of transportation diversity in general, and rail in particular. John Mica (R-FL) will chair the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, replacing James Oberstar. Although Mica has strongly criticized Amtrak in the past, he is a supporter of rail, of walking, and of biking. (You don't have to dislike rail to be a critic of Amtrak...)

As you probably know, the Surface Transportation Authorization Act (STAA) was introduced, but tabled during the last Congress, and the previous legislation extended. Congress will have to address transportation early in its new session. T4A expects that, compared to what the bill looked like when it was introduced during the 111th Congress, this will be:

• Smaller
• Involve more creative financing;
• Have fewer programs;
• Encourage quicker starts by reducing the environmental review process;
• Focus on repair, maintenance, and safety;
• Support performance measures; and
• Encourage "smarter" transportation investments.

Though we can't expect the level of investment we saw during the last Congress, we can expect a shift that will encourage transportation diversity. Could be worse for transportation reform. Could be a lot worse.

When Transit Oriented Development Disappoints

Rail~Volution 2010 was great. I'm very thankful to have been able to go to Portland this year. We expect great transit in large cities like Boston (which hosted Rail~Volution last year), but it's more refreshing to see a mid-size metro area that has invested in transit for that last 25 years.

There are so many great lessons to be learned when a thousand transit-oriented development folks gather in one place. What I'd like to focus on is when TOD doesn't work, or when it looks different from what we might expect or prefer.

The highlights of the week for me were the two field trips to TOD sites. The first was east to Gresham, the second west to Beaverton and Hillsboro.

East Side

In 1986, Gresham was a working-class town that became the eastern terminus of Portland's first light rail service, the Blue Line. It's still a working-class town with very little "gentrification" evident. Transit-oriented development appears confined to a few new buildings near stations, and a shopping center.

The TOD does follow the new urbanist principles of mixed use, residential over commercial. In the shopping center, the parking will eventually be located underground or beneath commercial-residential buildings. Otherwise, there's little to distinguish it from other recent developments. Well, perhaps the fact that it's recent development is a distinguishing feature in itself, since very little development has taken place recently.

Most of the eastern Blue Line runs in the middle of a wide boulevard. It wasn't a boulevard until the light rail was built, though - and lots of engineering work had to be done to mitigate the widening and leveling of the original two-lane roadway. The cost of building the line included re-doing hundreds of driveways, lawns, fences, and retaining walls. And though the neighborhoods don't look well-to-do, they certainly don't look run-down or impoverished except in one or two old warehouse districts where the loft/office refurbishing trend hasn't quite taken off.

A couple of things were disappointing. One was the new county office building whose front is turned away from the Gresham Central Transit Center, as if to ignore its presence. Another is the new station at Civic Drive being built within 30 yards of a new mixed-use development, with no architectural connection to it. In many parts of the world, developers and mall owners are eager to attach their space as closely as possible to rail stations. In most Japanese cities and towns, the railway station is the central shopping center, crowded not only with travelers and commuters, but with shoppers. There seems no physical reason why electric rail vehicles can't run through the middle of a shopping center here in the US, too. Federal transit legislation for years has encouraged public-private partnership in the construction of transit stations. So why aren't we doing it? In this case, the answer was, "Hmmm, well, we had this Federal grant to built the station, so we just did it." It has a (very nice) outdoor platform covered with a (very nice) glass roof, but is basically an outdoor space. What a shame the concept of integrating transportation and shopping just isn't part of most planners' thinking here in the US.

So on Portland's east side, light rail appears to provide a foundation to keep property values steady without overly inflating them. TOD has been modestly successful, and there is likely to be more as the economy recovers.

West Side

Beaverton and Hillsboro are in the opposite direction from Gresham on the Blue Line, both geographically and socially. Where Gresham is mainly working class, the west side is predominantly middle class and high-tech. In fact, Beaverton and Hillsboro were small towns up through the 1960s. Change came in the late 1960s when the Sunset Highway became a freeway, built to speed access to downtown Portland across the Tualatin Mountains from the west. Light rail didn't arrive until 1998, because it required a 3.1-mile tunnel bored through the mountains. But both towns have been sites of high-tech industry since the 1960s, starting with instrument-maker Tectronix in Beaverton, followed by Intel, which now operates four large campuses for research, development, and chip fabrication in the Hillsboro area. If there is a place where TOD should work, this is it.

Has it? Yes, and no.

The Beaverton Round is such an exciting project, and such a disappointing failure. Conceived by visionary developers Selwyn Bingham and Sylvia Cleaver, it was to include condos, shopping, and office space built, literally, around the light rail station and a park. What could have gone wrong?

For one thing, construction problems. The site is apparently over a disused sewage treatment plant, with all the remediation and uncertainty such a place can bring. Then there was use of shoddy materials and construction techniques, resulting in multiple law suits and requiring expensive replacement of windows and facing. (The sad details are here if you really want to know.) Continually plagued with financing problems, only part of the planned development has been built, and even less occupied.

Orenco Station's development fared much better. Longer in the planning, it involved more community input and balanced practicality with idealism. No compromise was made in new urbanist principles. The big disappointment to me is the location of the town's center: at a busy intersection, not at the rail station. In fact, it's a good quarter mile through (currently) empty space from station to center. Traffic in the center is heavy, and our group was warned that when the walk-light came on, we must hurry across the road because it was a short light. I hate to see a town center where pedestrians are chivvied and it's too noisy to hold a conversation. But as the developer pointed out, they couldn't have made it work without the traffic passing by to lure customers to the town's businesses.

And centering the town on the highway has worked financially. Businesses have leased most of the available space, and residents have bought most of the available housing. Once away from the highway, the open spaces and built environment are very inviting and peaceful.

This is a well-studied project, and one finding from the developer's study was what most attracted people to this TOD. No, it wasn't the transit (shucks!). Transit was seen as a good amenity, but what really drew people was the architecture and design.

Pac Trust, the developer, went in with little if any experience building residential communities - they had specialized in commercial and industrial. Not knowing what buyers would prefer, they had a number of styles illustrated by photos and drawings, and showed them to people. What folks kept saying "Wow" about was a design based on Boston's classic townhouses, so that's what they built for the town center. Free-standing houses are built in an English cottage style, with lots of quaint detailing. And it sold beautifully (though of course it doesn't hurt to be surrounded by large Intel facilities). What about shopping? Yes, there is a Starbucks on the main corner ;-) and one of the best Indian restaurants in the Portland area (Intel influence again). More important, they attracted New Seasons, Oregon's biggest regional natural foods grocery chain, to anchor the shopping district, along with a number of small, trendy shops. There's still a lot of undeveloped land in the TOD, but what there is has been developed very densely: 9.9 houses per acre, and far more units per acre in the townhouse and rental spaces. Washington County had no zoning that would allow that much density, so planned unit development standards were crafted and implemented for the new urbanist model.

The article cited has lots of discussion on whether there's decreased auto use due to proximity of work and shopping options, and that's clearly a win-win for any development. There has also been support in Todd Litman's blog of the notion that the biggest advantage of TOD is that people walk more. Looks like this is a case in point.

So what to take away? First and foremost, TOD has to be done well, and the financing has to be as solid as any other type of development - even if financing TOD has to be creative. But also, we may have to sacrifice some of our ideals to make it work, at least while the automobile is still in the ascendant. We can't expect TOD to create instant transit riders out of everyone, but if we can get them to walk and ride their bikes for the short trips, we've really done our job.

Moving You Forward

In case you hadn't heard, AATA is working on a 30-year Transit Master Plan for the county. They would really like to engage you! The process involves public meetings all over the county, many of which have already taken place. (My apologies for not bringing this to your attention earlier - family stuff has been happening...) Here are the ones scheduled for the future:

Monday, Oct. 18	Manchester Village Offices	11 am-1 pm
Monday, Oct. 18	SPARK East	3-5 pm
Tuesday, Oct. 19	Milan Senior Center	11 am- 1 pm
Wednesday, Oct. 20	Dexter Creekside Intermediate School Cafeteria	6:30-8:30 pm
Thursday, Oct. 21 Public Forum	Ann Arbor District Library Main Branch Conference Room	5:30-6:30 pm
Monday, Oct. 25	Saline City Hall	6-8 pm
Tuesday, Oct. 26	Ann Arbor District Library Pittsfield Branch	11 am-1 pm
Tuesday, Oct. 26	Ann Arbor District Library Malletts Creek Branch	6-8 pm
Wednesday, Oct. 27	EMU Student Center	11 am- 1 pm
Wednesday, Oct. 27	Dexter Township Hall	6-8 pm
Thursday, Oct. 28	Manchester Village Offices	6-8 pm
Wed, Nov. 3	Milan Senior Center	6-8 pm

AATA has developed a great internal team to coordinate the effort, and a broad group of leaders and technically-involved people to guide the direction of the plan. Special kudos to Michael Benham, Project Coordinator, and Mary Stasiak, Community Relations Manager! These two have been tireless in moving the process along, yet they've managed to remain cheerful and outgoing in spite of their long hours and the high pressure. BTW - if you ride AATA, you've heard Mary - she does all the recorded announcements. :-) Go, Mike! Go, Mary!

Now, the best place to get involved is the Moving You Forward Web site. Check the list of meetings for up-to-date details. And play the Transit Plan Game!