Month: September 2011

• Planning for the Stadium District.
• SW Alaska Street to be made more awesome.
• First Hill Streetcar sticking to 10 minute headways, not going deep into Pioneer Square.
• Cost of Columbia River Crossing escalating.
• McGinn still fighting for High Capacity Transit.
• Federal transportation funding limps along another year.
• Tukwila Sounder platform damaged.
• OneBusAway wins PSRC award.
• Community Transit’s blog writes up a roundtable on state transportation funding.
• I think this analysis of renters and new construction is basically correct in the short term, but in the long term this is where your supply of affordable housing comes from.
• A defense of transit subsidies.
• A different kind of government intervention in land use.
• Greg Nickels joins TCC board.

This is an open thread.

It’s been quite entertaining and satisfying to read all the comments here at STB and elsewhere about my satirical take on Monday night’s meeting in Roosevelt. One of my favorites was Wally who asked me whether I was a hypocrite, preaching the density gospel while living in single-family home. No, Wally, I’m not a hypocrite and I really don’t want you to know where I live. But that has been the tone of much of the “density debate” in Roosevelt. Who’d want to live in a cubby hole? And rent? God forbid? Density is so bad in Wally’s estimation, that living in it is like being celibate, taking a vow of chastity and avoiding the joy of single family conjugal bliss.

But out of all that noise comes Janice, a renter and parent who articulates the points some of us have made but more succinctly and beautifully. I hope commenters will refrain from calling her, as some did speakers in favor of the DPD plan, a “fake neighbor.” Here’s Janice:

Janice says:
September 21, 2011 at 11:55 am

As a resident of Roosevelt I was embarrassed to see people booing and yelling at people who were there to give earnest testimony. Sad day for Roosevelt and I was also perplexed that no one in charge of the meeting put a stop to it until a man at the very end had to stop and ask for quiet while he tried to finish. I think many people like me where there to listen because I got an email through our PTA list essentially saying that the City was trying to ruin the neighborhood. Obviously I felt compelled to go and hear what this was all about.

After the presentation by both groups (City DPD v. SLRP) it seemed there was not a whole lot that was different. After listening to the testimony I went home and looked at both proposals. It seems to me that both proposals are pretty darn similar other than WHERE the new housing density and taller buildings will occur. Seems like one proposal puts a small amount east of the station and near the school but most to the west of the station (city). The other proposal by SLRP puts all the density to the west of the station only.

One woman made the point that higher density housing should go close to the school and park because it makes the higher density housing more desirable and livable. That makes a lot sense to me. I live in an apartment with my daughter west of 12th. I would love to be able to live in an apartment closer to the school and park so my daughter could run around on the field or just go a few blocks south and be at Cowen Park. She’ll be in high school before I know it so it would be great to stay in this neighborhood so she could walk to school and I could get to my job at the UW on the train.

It’s just nicer for those of us with kids, living in apartments that don’t have yards to be close to that open space instead of closer to the freeway. I am going to support the city plan for that reason. But what can I do to support that?

Sound Transit is figuring out how to improve car, bike, pedestrian, and transit access to many of its South Sounder stations, and staff will collect feedback on-site from 3:30-7:30pm on the following days:

• Thursday, Sept. 22 at Tacoma Dome Station (South Tacoma Station will also be discussed)
• Tuesday, Sept. 27 at Kent Station
• Tuesday, Oct. 11 at Auburn Station
• Wednesday, Oct. 12 at Sumner Station
• Thursday, Oct. 13 at Puyallup Station
• Tuesday, Oct 18 at Lakewood Station

Face-to-face discussions are usually more productive than internet comments, but there is an option for the latter as well.

Seattle Channel has a video of the rezoning hearing in Roosevelt for anyone who wanted to see the action for themselves.

Unfortunately, we got this alert very late in the game, but it’s always worthwhile to register your support for items like this. Even if they’re well-disposed to high speed rail and your input comes a little late, they like to know that it’s something important to their constituents:

In response to the elimination of high speed and intercity passenger rail (HSIPR) funding in the Senate subcommittee’s fiscal year 2012 bill, Senators Durbin, Lautenberg, Feinstein & Landrieu will offer an amendment today at 3:00 PM in full appropriations committee mark up.  The amendment would provide $100 million for HSIPR and you may find more background on it below.  We encourage you to contact Senate appropriators to express your support for the amendment.  You may find a list of committee members and their contact information by clicking here.  Please contact your Senators as soon as you can prior to and around 3:00 pm [ET] today.

There are talking points here.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the federal process WSDOT received $31m from the Feds for Cascades. Details below the jump.

Continue reading “ACTION ALERT: Call Our Senators for Amtrak Funding”

Many people are studying the connections between housing, density and economic growth. At the heart of Ryan Avent’s short new book (Amazon Single, well worth the $2), The Gated City (alluded to here), is a very compelling argument that restrictive housing policies put a drag on economic growth and overall prosperity by limiting the supply of housing which in turn limits the number of people who are able to participate in the high-growth activities in high-growth locations. Reuters has a brief excerpt of that argument as it pertains to Silicon Valley. While the situation isn’t as acute here as it is in Silicon Valley, we are needlessly limiting housing and often we may not even be fully aware of the reasons or the consequences.

Details below the fold.

Continue reading “Are We Even Having the Right Conversation?”

At this point I don’t have much to add what Roger and Bruce had to say about Monday’s Committee of the Built Environment hearing, but I do want to make an observation. There has been a lot of people using the term “pro-density” or “anti-density” without actually qualifying what kind of density they mean. To some, the Roosevelt neighborhood already is their definition of a dense neighborhood, to others Fremont, Ballard or Capitol Hill are dense, and to yet others Belltown is the only example of actual density in Seattle.

So while people will say they are pro-density, what they actually mean by density is much more important. In addition, what people believe the additional density associated with a new Link station should be, over what that neighborhood should otherwise have, is almost never addressed. These issue are compounded by the fact that by in large part single family zones are off the table when it comes to rezones, focusing and compounding growth into a small area.

Below is a post by Dan at his old home at HugeAssCity on the topic.

Much of the heat in the debate over urban density arises from a lack of understanding of what the metrics correspond to in the real world.  Below is a series of slides presented at a public hearing on HB1490 by a colleague of mine from GGLO, that illustrates a wide range of densities, i.e, Density 101 for Legislators.

The first two slides address the difference between gross density and net density — this has been a source of confusion for HB1490 opponents, as discussed here.

More after the jump. Continue reading “Density, An Ill Defined Term”

Here’s a digital copy.

by B NOURISH

As many of you are doubtless aware, there was a zoning hearing last night, regarding the upzone of the station area surrounding the future Roosevelt Station. I’m not terribly interested in rehashing the tortured history, arguments and intrigue surrounding this rezone and the (officially separate, but practically intertwined) contract rezone near Roosevelt High School. As someone who’s perhaps taken more of an in-depth interest in the matter than most on “my side”, and reached out to people on the “other side” of this debate-cum-brawl, I have some observations that I hope will be useful for the future.

• Stick a fork in it. The Mayor’s modifications to the Roosevelt Neighborhood Association’s proposed rezone are done. Whatever your opinion of the outcome, the last six months have been a tour de force in community organizing by Jim O’Halleran and the RNA. They’re well versed in the minutiae of zoning laws, politically and legally astute, incredibly motivated, well organized, and they vote. The council couldn’t ignore the opinions of this group of people if it tried. If only we could run transit campaigns a tenth as well.
• Let’s not ever do this again. The upzone sideshow has become a nightmarish headache and time sink for the agencies caught in the crossfire. In particular, I think Ron Endlich and his staff have gone above and beyond the call of duty to address the concerns of neighbors in meetings beyond those required by the formal outreach process, deftly addressing the matters that pertain to Sound Transit while not getting caught in the zoning-related crossfire, which legally has nothing to do with ST.
• This isn’t going to happen again at Northgate.  There is already a real effort underway to bring together neighbors, agencies, transit advocates and other stakeholders to talk about the station area rezone at Northgate, a process that is just beginning. I hope to write about this effort more as it unfolds.
•  “DIY Zoning” is perhaps an experiment we should not repeat. When the light rail upzone process started in 2006, the RNA asked DPD if they could devise the plan to meet DPD’s density targets, rather than the normal method of DPD planners crafting the proposal based on community input.

  Years of successful volunteer effort (which met DPD’s density targets) created the not-unreasonable expectation that the RNA’s plan would be adopted wholesale by the city. When transit and density advocates appeared at the 11th hour to demand major changes, those people were — not unreasonably — very upset.

  Can such a process be made to work in a way that balances the competing interests of present and future residents, without offending those current residents who have shouldered the hard work of planning, and who feel a legitimate pride of ownership in their own efforts?

• The legitimacy of neighborhood opinion. Just as RNA members tend to skew toward older, wealthier, property-owning people in the neighborhood, transit and density advocates tend to skew the opposite way in every respect. If we expect them to understand our concerns, we must take be willing to listen to and understand their concerns. If you’d poured $400,000 into a house, you’d be jittery about neighborhood land use changes, too; and to be idly dismissed as a NIMBY by random internet commenters for expressing those sentiments would be hard to bear.
• Most people aren’t anti-density, they’re just worried about how the change will affect them. This doesn’t make them stupid or evil, rather we need to better articulate the benefits of well-planned mixed-use density (which seem transparently obvious to us), and counter the mostly-bad arguments of the very small number of people who really are just intransigently opposed to density or change.
• Engage with people, not the internet. This is something of a cri de coeur and perhaps an odd thing for a blogger to write, but I’m absolutely convinced that if even a small number of transit or density advocates had personally gone out to the neighborhood meetings and just listened and talked to the people there, most of this uncivil mess could have been avoided. A majority of people can usually be swayed either way by someone who takes the time to address their concerns; even those who don’t fully buy your arguments will typically see your perspective and work with you to find common ground; virtually everyone will hear you out and respect you for showing up and listening to them.

That’s all I have to say about that.