I think Roger Valdez’s piece in Crosscut about the importance of schools to a density agenda makes some good observations but ultimately misses some important points.
One issue is the demographic trend towards more childless households in the future, so there’s plenty of room for growth in dense, multifamily housing without any more families with kids moving into the city. Indeed, as a family gets larger the economics of hauling them around in a car instead of transit shift in favor of the car. So I’m not sure, from a strict carbon-accounting perspective, that luring families into the city needs to be a high policy priority.
Everyone is for “good schools.” The problem is, no one can agree how to get there. More funding would probably help, but then spending per student in itself has never been a particularly good indicator of academic success, and skeptics could be forgiven for believing that additional funding wouldn’t lead towards concrete improvements in performance.
People can’t even agree what “good schools” are. The obvious thing to use is standardized test scores, but then there are people who dispute the value of these tests. Is a “good school” one that does really well given the socioeconomic inputs it has, or one that performs well in absolute terms? If you’re administrator trying to figure out which principals are doing a good job, it’s a different answer than if you’re a parent trying to make sure your kid is in a good academic environment.
“One issue is the demographic trend towards more childless households in the future, so there’s plenty of room for growth in dense, multifamily housing without any more families with kids moving into the city.”
Is this true for Seattle? I thought the trend was for MORE children here.
http://daily.sightline.org/2010/11/10/seattle-is-becoming-more-kid-friendly/
I’m not addressing the split between city and suburb, more the overall national trend.
I’m not talking about the split either, I’m just saying that in Seattle at least the city is attracting MORE families with children than in the past, so saying demographics will help the school problem take care of itself isn’t accurate for our area.
If the cities are becoming more attractive for families, then the school issue is a non-issue from an urbanist perspective. The point I was making that even if schools deter families from living in the city, there is still plenty of scope to reach our urban population growth objectives.
Just b/c some families are willing to move back to the city, doesn’t mean more wouldn’t if we had better schools, nor that we shouldn’t work to make schools better.
I posted the information about families with children growing in Seattle as a percentage of population not to argue that all was well, but to correct your assertion that demographics would in many ways help the situation take care of itself.
In Seattle at least, this isn’t the case. And if the plan to lure more people and families in from the suburbs is successful the situation from that angle will only get worse.
I would argue that even with an aging national population, attracting families with kids to the city is a key goal. I don’t think Roger really gets the issues involved either, but he’s trying to get to the point.
I’d say that as much as I love San Francisco, I don’t want Seattle to be SF. And that means we need kids in the city.
I also think Martin’s missing a key point – while Anc is right that we have more kids right now in Seattle, there are key determining points at kindergarten and again at middle school. Also note that due to high private school percentages in Seattle, SPS population is not a good proxy for number of kids citywide. Having a better SPS would also make the city far more attractive for parents, who otherwise have to consider both more expensive housing AND private school costs.
The demographic “sweet-spot” (if you will) for transit always has been the student/young adult one. Anytime you start talking about kids mass transit becomes a non-issue. Nobody runs to Costco for diapers, to pediatricians’ offices, to elementary schools, etc. on light rail OR commuter rail like Sounder. That’s why talking about schools and transit in the same breath is meaningless – they serve different constituencies, and they have different support groups/PAC’s. That’s why Roger’s piece was such a jarring read; the concerns are apples and oranges.
Why would I take a bus to Costco for diapers when there is a perfectly good convenience store two minutes walk from my apartment, open from 5 AM to 1 AM? Of course, I might well go to a discount store to stock up in bulk but I can Zipcar that, or have it delivered.
Transit enables urban living, which doesn’t need to mean downtown with the attendant high prices. It can be the dense, tall terraced houses with corner shops where I spent part of my youth.
“Transit enables urban living”
Wrong.
Kyle, why do you disagree?
Indeed, I’m dying to hear this rebuttal.
I disagree because as a decades-long Seattle resident I know very few of my neighbors rely on transit on any type of a regular basis. Then again, I don’t live in a “condo-city” part of town. Moreover, the Valdez piece spoke of putting schools in new TOD near rail stations, and rail transit most certainly does not “enable urban living” – rail transit exists for the most part to get business commuters from outside an urban area into and then out of downtowns on a daily basis.
I don’t consider neighborhoods that are mostly single-family homes to be “urban living”. Virtually all detached houses come with a garage or at least street parking. When parking is thus “free” a major incentive to use transit is gone, and the long walk to transit that typically results from low densities further penalizes transit use for most people who live there.
Your claim about rail simply isn’t true. Rail systems — like bus systems — do whatever they’re designed for. Commuter systems move people from the suburbs, streetcars and traditional light rail like SF Muni mostly move people around the city. Suburban bus service like that provided by Sound Transit and most of Metro’s peak-only network moves commuters in from the ‘burbs.
Link is a hybrid system that tries to do both. The section from Downtown to Northgate will emphatically not be commuter-centric: that’s a huge full-time demand corridor between urban centers. Outside of that it is or will be more commuter-centric, although of course, that addresses a legitimate need too.
I should be clear that I don’t think much of this particular Valdez piece. I don’t know what the fix for Seattle schools but I think that density advocates shouldn’t fall into the trap of suggesting more mixed-use development as a solution for absolutely everything.
Kyle D., you are extremely short-sighted if you don’t believe that rail transit can be and is an integral technology in moving people around within cities. New York, London, Tokyo, Paris… their rail networks are not peak-only commuter railroads. In fact, NYC’s subway runs 24 hours because it is the backbone of moving individuals around town for every purpose.
If you want to serve commuters, light rail is the wrong technology to use. We could serve that market with commuter rail and express busses.
Link is a hybrid system with some aspects of commuter rail and some aspects of a metro. As such, it succeeds in a combination of those things and fails at other aspects. The areas it lacks will have to be filled by other transit options.
The largest number of transit passengers is peak-hour and people commuting to work. That’s the same for both rail and buses. That can mean two things: (1) transit mostly serves commuters, or (2) transit has failed to serve the non-commuter market (thus there’s a latent unmet demand).
Link in particular serves/will serve shoppers going to Northgate, people attending ballgames, people attending events at the UW, people going to Capitol Hill nightclubs, people going to church, tourists going between major tourist sites (downtown, UW, airport, Seattle Center (via the Monorail), and secondarily Capitol Hill), etc. And as you get further out (to Snohomish, Pierce, and Federal Way), the more people say that what they want transit for is direct access to these places.
Re: Diapers at Costco. Try Amazon Moms. Buy kids stuff like diapers and you get free shipping on everything. The only store trips you need then are the trips you can’t plan ahead for, and your corner store should have those items.
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A ton of people already do live within walking distance of the future Northgate – Downtown section, and that number is going to climb steeply. That corridor is already a blockbuster demand corridor that exceeds, on a near-daily basis, Metro’s ability to move people around the city in a timely fashion.
The fact that Link is funded with a regressive sales tax is indeed unfortunate but it happens to be the only (major) funding mechanism that the state legislature, in its wisdom, has chosen to give us. I would rather it were different, but it’s far better that we have Link than for TVs and clothes to cost 0.5% less.
” It’s like you guys think it’s free, as it was to the people of the Twin Cities, Portland, etc. who don’t get hit with hundreds of dollars of regressive taxes each year.”
You really think light rail in Portland and Minneapolis was free?
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I agree that kids = cars: the only Seattle residents I know who don’t own cars are either students/recent graduates or too old to drive (grandma, for example). None are caring for children. In fact, I only know one 1-car family – most have 2-4 vehicles, even when only one parent is working. SAHPs seem to not want to be “trapped” at home while the working parent has the car.
The other factor that we need to remember is that Seattle’s median income is relatively high, allowing more families to afford private school, which usually means more car trips.
Well, I’ll trade anecdotes with you then. In our neighborhood I know three other families with kids that do not own cars besides ours. All of us use zipcar occasionally, but walk or use transit most of the time. For each of us it’s been a conscious choice to avoid the hassle of car ownership while maintaining most of the benefit via zipcar (like stocking up before a party at the grocery store or a daytrip out to hike). One other family we know has a car only for work. The key point is probably that zipcar is a pretty powerful tool but it’s only available in sufficient numbers is a few neighborhoods, mostly urban centers.
(Oh, and of course there’s BusChick too…)
Not only does kids=cars, but often when that kid reaches driving age +1 car
Transit, as a mode, is a way to walk further, faster. If my family lives close to school, the pediatrician’s office, and a grocery store that will sell us diapers, then we don’t need transit for the things Reality-Based mentions. We might still use transit to visit relatives, go to work, and generally do things outside our natural walking area.
Good schools and car-free living absolutely go hand-in-hand in some urban areas. Unfortunately, the combination is so desirable and so rare that it’s unaffordable to the middle class. (Tribeca/Upper West Side/Upper East Side in Manhattan, North Side of Chicago, etc.) Seattle is the kind of place where it could be affordable, though, if the schools can improve.
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I have friends with kids and without cars who seem to be making it just fine.
I agree that it’s probably a bit optimistic to expect to be within walking distance of all those things, but that is what transit, taxis, Zipcars and bikes are for — to bridge that gap to things you can’t walk to. That is what I meant when I said that transit enables urban living.
“Nobody’s family in Seattle lives within walking distance of all those things”.
Um, I do–family of 4 in South Lake Union, we live right by Cascade Playground. Elementary school at Lowell would be a long walk but of course they provide bus transit! Ped in Belltown, groceries at Whole Foods or Lower Queen Anne or Capitol Hill QFC or Safeway or Madison Market.
And, we used to live in the U-District which also has all those things. So does Capitol Hill, Belltown, etc. You may see a pattern, these are all urban centers.
bubble-burster is right that most people do choose to live where they cannot walk to things and need (or “need”) a car as a result. But that doesn’t mean that everyone does (witness all the opposing anecdotes on this thread), nor that Seattle has no interest in making it more possible/affordable for people to make that decision.
The issue in this post is whether poor schools (or the perception of poor schools) in the city cause families to choose suburbs. As noted elsewhere, many families do choose the city. But for those who don’t, it seems reasonable there could be a number of factors at work: a preference for low density and car-orientation could easily be one (and is something Seattle can’t do anything about). But it seems very likely that perceived school quality is a factor as well, so schools do need to be on the agenda for people looking to keep families in cities. (Though as Martin notes, keeping families is not necessary to meet growth targets.)
I’ll echo Matt on Amazon or other websites for diapers, and disagree that “Anytime you start talking about kids mass transit becomes a non-issue.” Kids absolutely do ride transit to schools–typically in Seattle you hear about high schoolers but in larger cities in many countries (Japan, UK, Germany) it’s common for junior high or even elementary students to take a train to school. Their educations systems are structured very differently than the US, which tends to focus on neighborhood/district with some exceptions like APP. Also boarding schools are rare here.
Once they’re teenagers, kids are also likely to need to do a good bit of “commuting,” whether to part-time jobs or events or to get together with friends. Having access to transit (vs parents shuttling them around) is a game changer for that age.
When I visited Munich last year, I was riding a tram early one Monday morning when several 7- or 8-year-olds got on with their backpacks, punching their streifenkarten in the validator. For them, sharing their ride to school with businessmen going to work and a silly American tourist was the most natural thing in the world.
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“So lets see “Bruce” and “Zed” produce some more accurate estimates than those.”
An asteroid will destroy the Earth in 2038.
Who says nobody runs to Costco for diapers on light rail or commuter rail? If I had it close to me I would. I’m about to run to the store to pick up dinner on the bus. If service is frequent enough why wouldn’t I use it? If someone is only calculating the price of gas then a short trip on the bus is expensive but if you want to do a real cost of ownership on having a car and doing a lot of short trips to get diapers then the car doesn’t come out so well.
Also if we’re choosing where to live based on transit needs (which a lot of us do) then going to the store on transit is part of that decision.
If there were a Costco right next to a light rail line then it’d be really easy. Load up one of those “granny” shopping carts and roll on.
The maglev train in Shanghai doesn’t go all the way to the city – it ends in the suburbs at the very end of the metro line, and you transfer. The other thing at the end of the metro line is a massive suburban big box store called (confusingly) The Metro. On the actual metro you’ll see plenty of Chinese with big bags of groceries. Big box suburban shopping for the urban dweller, with high frequency service – it sure beats driving and parking (I admit you need more trips if you don’t have a SUV’s trunk, though smaller purchases generally mean fresher food).
Yet SPS has already started putting high school and middle school students on to Metro. I see tons and tons of kids most mornings on the bus. I took Metro to O’Dea for four years as well, as did the majority of my classmates, on-site parking notwithstanding. So while I think Roger’s piece wasn’t entirely useful, I think apples and oranges is a vast overstatement as well.
Nobody middle class or up goes out to buy diapers on transit, but plenty of poor folks do. I see them on the 358 all the time juggling a squirmy toddler and a bag of groceries. Those families don’t buy the diapers at the convenience store because they cost twice as much at the convenience store. So they buy them at the farther-away grocery store while they’re out buying their groceries.
Sometimes I think we spend too much time designing transit trying to get educated middle-class people to use it, forgetting that it’s a vital lifeline for poor folks too.
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A well-functioning city needs to accommodate people in all stages of life. But we as transit advocates can’t spread ourselves too thin delving into the compexities of schools, private schools, and getting kids to school. If we do our jobs right and successfully promote transit and walkability, it’ll be easier for parents to take kids to school or for kids to take themselves to school without cars — whether public or private schools. The issue of getting from Phinney Ridge to Capitol Hill (Bertschi or Northwest School) is the same for both parents and non-parents. Parents have said that what they most need in high-density districts is more amenities, grocery stores, and 3 BR apartments/condos.
“as a family gets larger the economics of hauling them around in a car instead of transit shift in favor of the car” Strongly disagree. Convenience, certainly. But I think transportation with kids in the suburbs is a huge economic draw. Between the ages of 12 and 16, if you live in the city your kid can take a bus everywhere. In the suburbs you become a chauffeur, eating up your time and a huge amount of transportation money. After 16, if you’re lucky your urban child won’t even want/need a car. But your suburban teenager will skyrocket your insurance costs, and you’ll either have to buy them a car, have all of their first paychecks all go toward their own transportation, or continue your role as chauffeur.
But I think the flipside of that is why some parents avoid the city and transit: Between the ages of 12 and 16, if you live in the city your kid can take a bus everywhere!
It may not even register as a problem to the readers of this board, but among the cul-de-sac loving set the knowledge that your 15 year old is safe at home and not galavanting about town is a feature not a bug. See the Seattle Times comment pages to find what imaginary dangers the city holds for those naive children with a bus pass and no sense for where the “bad” parts of town are.
(make that “economic drain” at the end of the 3rd sentence)
Between ages 6-12, though, paying for gas and parking pencils out pretty well compared to 4 or 5 fares.
Assuming you own the car in the first place.
The other aspect that everyone forgets is the risk carried by the car owner. Unless you fork out a lot of money for very low deductible car insurance with replacement rental coverage, someone who’s car dependent is on the hook to cough up a lot of money on short notice if they or someone else screws up.
And forget about comprehensive coverage for teenagers…
“Assuming you own the car in the first place.” And how did you buy the car in the first place? Isn’t that part of your costs and if you didn’t have those costs paying $250 a month for bus passes for your whole family isn’t that much.
For better or worse, most costs involved in driving are fixed costs. Once you’ve taken the plunge, by buying a car, getting insurance, etc., then your per-mile costs only get lower the more you drive.
If driving less (rather than none) was actually a way to save money, then I believe many more people would choose that option. There are two ways this can happen. There are services like Zipcar, which allow you to ditch car ownership (and the accompanying fixed costs) in favor of paying only for what you use. On the other end, there are programs like Getaround, which allow you to rent your car out to other people, and pilot programs for mileage-based insurance.
I agree. One of my coworkers is always saying, “I don’t see how you’ll be able to get your kids around without a car when they start being in clubs and going to soccer and stuff like that.” And I just say, “It’s called a bus pass.” She lives in the suburbs where you HAVE to drive to get anywhere. I live in a city where you can take buses where you need to go. When I was in middle school, I took Metro to my music lessons every Tuesday. That wouldn’t be an option in the suburb where she lives.
I also agree about some parents being afraid to let their kids take transit. That same coworker threw out the 8-year-old murdered in NYC as a reason not to let your kids take transit by themselves. My response was, “Millions of kids walked home from school today and didn’t get murdered. I like my kid’s chances.”
Also let me disagree that we don’t need “any more families with kids moving into the city.” That sounds like capping the total number though you probably mean trying to boost the percentage. Seattle already has high density of kids (measured in total population under 18 per acre instead of just a percentage).
Note that there are actually a lot of kids in some very dense census tracts such as Capitol Hill near I-5 which are mostly small units:
http://joshuadf.blogspot.com/2011/04/kid-density-as-geek-initial-release-of.html
The lesson is that families with kids (or “kid”–and of course sometimes it’s a single parent as well) can and do live in dense, multifamily housing.
The most dangerous place (besides on the edge of an unattended swimming pool or on a roof) a kid typically is is in the back seat of a car.
You are also forgetting that the best time to start making something a life-style habit is during childhood and adolescence. My boy absolutely loves riding the bus and riding a bike. I am doing my damndest to give him the independence he needs to, when older, not rely on me to be his chauffer. ;)
Seattle schools are, in some areas, absolutely bursting at the seams right now. We need to vastly improve capacity and quality to keep this trend going, and make sure are the parents open to enlightenment out there realize that the city is the place to raise safe, happy, well-educated and well-adjusted kids.
+1 biliruben, and that trend is only getting worse. Although the district’s ability to forecast enrollment is historically unreliable, their own numbers show the majority of middle schools and high schools well over 120% within the next 3-5 years.
A good school is one where kids are not routinely abused, bullied, tortured, assaulted, stolen from, or otherwise violently mistreated; and where teachers do not outright lie to their students or force them to repeat lies on tests; and where teachers make some effort to actually teach.
These may sound like low standards, but the middle school and high school I went to has had years when they failed those standards. And some people called them “good schools”.
On a similar note, I think one of the biggest lies parents tell themselves is that the suburbs are “safer” for kids. In the suburb where I grew up, the local newspaper reported that about 75% of the town’s high-schoolers drank. The numbers for smoking and drug use were pretty high as well.
Protecting kids from evils will not make them safer, any more than protecting them from sadness will make them happy. It’s about the carrot, not the stick. Surround them with interesting things to do, and they’ll make the most of it. But in the suburbs, intoxication starts to look like a good option.
I wish that we spent more time focusing on facts like these. Suburban schools are not nearly as safe and clean as we think they are; it’s just an image problem.