Advocacy

guest post: scott johnson on “over-constrained projects”

Posted on March 6, 2011 in Advocacy, Guest Posts, Portland, Rail Transit, Streetcars (Trams)

This is a guest post from EngineerScotty, who blogs at Portland Transport and the Dead Horse Times. It is a follow-up to the recent series of articles on the issue of expertise vs activism, and it further explores the theme of the second article: projects which are over-constrained–those with excessive and sometimes contradictory requirements imposed on them by stakeholders. This post originally appeared at Portland Transport here; the version which appears at Human Transit has been edited and revised for a more global audience. As always, views expressed in guest posts are interesting to me but not necessarily mine.

Jarrett has been investigating the proper role of the transit planner. Is (s)he a dispassionate expert, much like an engineer is expected to be? Or should planners and other professionals serve a more activist role–essentially serving as advocates of the transit-riding public, and defending their interests? Jarrett, who has made numerous remarks about the limits of mixed-traffic streetcar (and has been accused, unfairly in my opinion, of being a "bus fanatic"), noted that his job has elements of both: He does prefer to optimize for mobility outcomes, and streetcar frequently fares poorly as a mobility measure; but when he takes on a project he needs to live within the project's constraints: If a project which hires Jarrett as a consultant is chartered with building streetcars, then he will help the agency design the best streetcar network that they can afford.

But then, an obnoxious commentor (OK, yours truly) threw a wrench into the gears, asking the essential question. What if the project requirements are nonsensical to begin with? Jarrett's answer focused on the role of transit planners in addressing all of this; and I defer to his expertise on such matters. Instead, this article looks at the more fundamental problem: projects with fundamentally conflicting requirements.

Too many cooks

Many public works projects, especially those in a multi-layer democracy like the United States and other countries with federalist systems, have many, many stakeholders. And not all of those stakeholders have the interest of the general public at heart, let's be honest. Politicians love to show up at ribbon-cuttings, and may have ideological axes to grind. Agencies frequently seek to expand their scope, power, and influence. Developers, vendors, unions, and other parties often want to cash in, and frequently aren't shy at trying to influence decision-makers (often in ways which are perfectly legal). NIMBYs frequently show up who want it somewhere else.

Even among those stakeholders who actively support a project's goals, one can frequently find many demands on a project. Institutions can fall into the "golden hammer" trap, where their job involves swinging hammers and thus view every problem as a nail. Professional societies frequently have standards and practices which they view as sacrosanct, regardless of whether appropriate for a given context. Diverse communities of users may impose conflicting requirements. If grants are part of the funding package, the granting agency will often impose conditions of their own. And spools of bureaucratic red tape will surround the project, particularly if the United States government is involved.

All too often, public works projects collect so many differing requirements and constraints, both legitimate and not, that running the project is like squaring the circle. (For the non-mathematically inclined, constructing a square with the same area as a given circle using only straightedge and compass, was proven impossible in the 19th century). And this is without taking into account financial and schedule constraints. Yet projects which attempt to square the circle–which attempt to satisfy simultaneously many conflicting requirements, often dictated by stakeholders with de facto veto power over the project–still happen way too often, often times with disappointing results.

At least two prominent projects in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area — one primarily highway, one exclusively transit — exhibit signs of being over-constrained. One of them is the Columbia River Crossing (CRC), a project to replace the Interstate Bridge crossing the Columbia River, between Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. The other is the Lake Oswego-Portland Transit Project, a project which seeks to build a "rapid streetcar" line connecting the city of Portland with its inner suburb of Lake Oswego, using an abandoned rail right-of-way.

The Swiss Army Bridge

The fundamental goal of the CRC ought to be conceptually simple. Modernize (structurally and functionally) the primary crossing of the Columbia, providing multi-modal crossing support, while eliminating the draw span. Straightening out the shipping channel on the river is a bonus. But what has actually happened has been a mess. The first problem is governance. Given that it's a bi-state effort, there isn't any single entity which is an obvious candidate to run the project. So management was given jointly to the Oregon and Washington State departments of transportation (ODOT, WSDOT), with the participation of the cities of Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington; the counties of Clark and Multnomah; Metro [the Portland regional planning authority]; the Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council; and the two transit agencies, TriMet and C-Tran. ODOT and WSDOT drafted purpose-and-need statements that pretty much excluded any solution other than a new freeway bridge. Throw in a pile of rules from various highway manuals and "poof": rather than simply building a bridge, the project now involves rebuilding about five miles of Interstate 5. On Hayden Island, a small island south of the river's primary channel, a new proposed network of ramps and interchanges cuts a swath through the island, nearly as wide as a football pitch is long.

The city of Portland and Metro have their own requirements for the project. It must contain light rail (an extension of the MAX Yellow Line), and other "green" features. Many in Portland's civic leadership have insisted on an "iconic design" rather than a simple truss bridge. With all of these design elements, the total proposed cost reached US$4 billion.

Financing for such a price tag will require that the bridge be tolled. Residents on the Washington side would allegedly bear the brunt of tolls, because many of them commute to jobs in Oregon. The mayor of Vancouver was recently unseated when his challenger ran on the issue of bridge tolls. Many on the Oregon side have little sympathy for those in Vancouver, whom are accused of wanting the benefits of a large, dynamic city, but of not wanting to contribute to its upkeep. And so on.

The result, at this stage, seems to be a design that nobody really likes, that has a murky funding picture, that has cost eight figures to produce nothing but paper so far, and which has no end date in sight.

Did it have to be this way? That's a hard question. One fundamental issue is that the City of Portland objects to a key design goal of the highway departments on both sides of the river–"modernization" of the freeway (a catchall term which includes widening, ramp reconfiguration, and all sorts of other stuff designed to reduce congestion). While some of Portland's objections spring from ideological or environmental concerns that other stakeholders don't share to the same extent, the city does have a legitimate concern that redesigning the bridge simply will move the existing traffic bottleneck south into Portland's city center. The state departments of transportation, for their part, seem more than willing to hold Portland's transit expansion plans hostage (an ODOT staffer once reportedly suggested that the agency would block any attempt to extend MAX across the Columbia, unless as part of a larger project to widen I-5). And Vancouver doesn't want to be stuck with an ever-escalating bill. Part of the present dynamic seems to involve both sides wishing that someone (Governor Kitzhaber, the feds) would "see the light" and kick the other side to the curb.

The Lake Oswego Quit Calling It Streetcar (At Least For Now) Project

Compared to the CRC, the Lake Oswego transit project (LOTP) is a model of piece and harmony. The "what" of the project was largely fixed: a streetcar line, running from the current south end of the Portland Streetcar, along the old Jefferson Branch line to Lake Oswego. The project goals make sense: Use an existing asset (the rail right-of-way) to leverage federal funds, and build a transit service running in exclusive right-of-way which ought to be faster than local bus service on Highway 43, a frequently-congested 3-5 lane surface route. Demonstrate the potential of "rapid streetcar" as a budget alternative to light rail for shorter corridors. A no-brainer, right? Unlike the CRC, where leadership was distributed among a handful of agencies with contrary goals and a decided lack of trust, the involved government agencies (TriMet, Metro, and the cities of Portland and Lake Oswego) aren't fighting over the project requirements. But the devil, as is often the case, is in the details.

The most fundamental issue is that the project is promoted as rapid transit–as an upgrade over the existing bus service (TriMet's 35 and 36 lines, which the streetcar would replace between Portland and Lake Oswego). But this premise is undermined by the proposed implementation. The project is currently planned to be an extension of the existing Portland Streetcar system, which offers local-stop service along is present route, and which bypasses the main transit corridor downtown (the Portland Transit Mall). Portland Streetcar's current rolling stock (Skoda 10T streetcars and a clone produced by Oregon Iron Works), are optimized for mixed-traffic application, not for rapid transit use. In addition, many local merchants on Highway 43 in the Johns Landing neighborhood want streetcar service at their front door; whereas many condo owners along the existing right-of-way don't want trains past their front door. (Never mind that the rail line has been there far longer than the condos). Thus, the streetcar line is likely to make an expensive detour onto Highway 43–the same highway which is predicted to turn into a parking lot in the near future, justifying the mobility need for the project in the first place.

Unlike the new Milwaukie MAX line directly across the river, which is designed to function well as rapid transit until hitting downtown, the streetcar is not so designed. It's likely to be slower than the existing bus between Lake Oswego and downtown, and that's without considering the need for riders travelling from/to beyond Lake Oswego to transfer. Bus lines 35 and 36 from beyond Lake Oswego, which now flow through Lake Oswego into Portland, will have to be truncated, forcing a connection to the new streetcar. This is necessary both to avoid duplication and to provide operating funds for the streetcar line.

The streetcar does offer modest capacity improvements over the bus, and has the cachet of being rail. (That cachet is a source of debate in transit circles, but will likely have an impact given the demographics along the line). But the mobility improvements of the project are close to nil; and for longer-distance commuters on the 35 and 36, probably a net negative. Perhaps land-use improvements alleged to flow from the project will be worth the local investment, though much of the area along the line is already developed or not suitable for development. Perhaps the ability to get a big check from the US Government for a minimal local cash contribution–given that the federal government is willing to consider the value of the right-of-way in calculating their match–makes the project worth doing. This is a difficult case to make, however, to the transit-riding public, who tend to care more about headways and trip times than they do about property values.

Signs of an over-constrained project

Here at Human Transit, another commenter posed an interesting question: How do you know if a project has requirements or constraints that make it difficult to do a good job? The question was posed in the context of bad-faith requirements (such as developers engaging in rent-seeking), but the answers also apply to good faith attempts to square the circle. My response is here; the answers are also reproduced below, edited for brevity. (In particular, observations about the CRC and Lake Oswego streetcar projects which are redundant with the criticisms above are excised; if you want to see the original answers, click the link).

Overly constrained initial project requirements. It's useful to distinguish here bona-fide requirements from design/implementation details, the latter of which ought to flow from the former. But sometimes, elements which ought to be details are set forth in the requirements without adequate explanation of why this should be so. Sometimes these requirements aren't stated explicitly, but still are constrained enough that only the solution preferred by the powerbroker can meet them. [CRC used as example]
Decision criteria which may not match the stated goals of the project. For example, publicly identifying a project as "rapid transit" but then de-emphasizing speed and reliability, or basing decisions on highly speculative future estimates. [LOTP used as example]
Thee presence of strawman alternatives in the DEIS (Draft Environmental Impact Statement) or equivalent planning/analysis document. By "strawman alternatives", I mean proposed alternatives which are obviously bad, and included only to satisfy process requirements that multiple alternatives be studied in depth. [LOTP "enhanced bus" used as example; in this case, a more robust BRT solution was excluded from analysis early in the project..which lead us to the next item…]
Viable project alternatives rejected early in the planning phase, often due to being "out of scope" (see the first item concerning overly restrictive requirements), or on the basis of vague or overly-picky technical factors. Look for signs that point to "this might work, but we really don't want to (or aren't allowed to) consider it, so we'll dispose of it as quickly as we can". [Many have alleged that the proposed "supplemental bridge" alternative to the CRC is another example].
Projects that appear "out of the blue", rather than the result of organic planning activities, or which are done "out of sequence" compared to their apparent priority. May represent a unique opportunity (such a project eligible for funding that isn't available for other projects) or it may be a sign that someone has his thumb on the scale.
"Economic development" being touted as an advantage is a frequent red flag. This is always touted, of course, but if "economic development" is the main reason for doing a project (and especially if the "development" in question refers mainly to the project's construction effort itself and not to post-project activities the work will enable) a good response is to ask if there are any places to deploy the "economic development" that will have better post-project outcomes. Paying someone to dig ditches and refill them can be considered "economic development" in that it does create jobs, but it's better to pay people to build useful things.
And one other, not in the HT article: The use of unproven or untested designs or methodologies in the project, or anything dubbed "experimental". Until recently, the CRC was considering an experimental bridge design, until cooler heads prevailed.

Of course, not all over-constrained projects are failures. Westside MAX had some annoying constraints placed on it, but is overall a successful project. Still, had ten extraneous stops been sprinkled along the line between Portland and Hillsboro, would the line be as successful?

Dealing with over-constrained projects

What to do about all of this? The hard fact about overconstrained projects is that often, we have to live with them. It's easy to fantasize about driving bad actors out of the process, and about having strong visionary leaders who have the foresight and the clout to sweep conflicting requirements out of the way, without losing support for the project. But such individuals are rare, and in many of these projects — notably the CRC — nobody in the process, not even the governors, are in the position to act unilaterally. Still, a few suggestions come to mind:

Governance matters. It's hard with multiple stakeholders. In the case of the CRC, the first step to fixing the project would be for the stakeholders to jointly hire an outside project leader; one who has no particular ties to either Oregon or Washington, or to the various modal factions, to lead the project. Of course, for such a leader to be effective, the various agencies will need to cede a fair bit of authority to said leader; I'm not sure any of them are willing to do so at this point.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. A transparent process, one where decisions can be easily traced to inputs and planning work products are available for inspection, may help cut down on (or at least expose) some of the pettier forms of backroom dealing. Bad actors don't like being subject to public scrutiny. Transparency also helps good-faith projects avoid accusations of backroom dealing; virtually every large capital project gets accused of being done in order to grease someone's palm; an accusation which is frequently not true.
Be prepared to say no. The City of Portland has won some concessions on the CRC with this tactic, but if a project is really going off the rails, cancellation should always be an option.
Bifurcation and phasing may work. A controversial and difficult project can sometimes be split up into two or more separate projects. Often, though, the political impetus is in the opposite direction, creating more linkages between projects so as to create a package containing something that everyone wants.
Better advocacy for users. One of the unfortunate parts of transit advocacy in the Portland area is a lack of effective organization of transit users. Freight users of the highway system are well-organized, and often asking government for better freight mobility. The auto lobby is likewise strong and forceful. Even the cycling community in Portland is relatively-well organized. Transit users in the city do have some organized advocates, but many of these activists represent subset of the overall transit community (such as lower-income inner city bus riders), not transit users as a whole. Beleaguered transit agencies, especially ones looking to grow their ridership base, can't always represent the interests of their existing ridership.

That said, not all gloom and doom is justified. Over-constrained projects do end up successful, despite warts. This is especially true when the bulk of the constraints come from actual community needs that happen to be in conflict (such as simultaneous demands for access and mobility). Portland's MAX system, overall, threads the access/mobility needle reasonably well, although not perfectly. Some critics of the system complain about too many highway-running segments without development potential; others complain that it's too slow downtown, and uncompetitive for crosstown trips. However, were MAX to offer streetcar-like performance over its entire length, it probably would not attract the ridership that it does (especially the large number of suburban commuters using the system); conversely, were it required to be built to "class A" levels of mobility throughout the system, it probably could not have been built at all. The flip-side of the overconstrained project is one which has too many degrees of freedom–and which may not be taking as many community needs into account as it should–or in the worst cases, such as the destruction wrought by urban freeway-building, result from the neglect of a particular community's concerns altogether.

political motivations, and the consultant’s task

Posted on February 25, 2011 in Advocacy, Consulting

We were having a nice conversation about expertise vs. activism in a beautiful, abstract space, and then Engineer Scotty brought us back to earth:

Unfortunately, in many cases the constraints [on the options being considered in a study] … are not imposed by the decision-maker (especially in political systems where much of the authority is distributed), but imposed by outside actors, who may be engaging in self-aggrandizement or rent-seeking at the expense of transit outcomes, but whose participation is needed for the project to get done.
And in many cases, such folks don't want their fingerprints on the planning documents–you won't ever see an Environmental Impact Statement [EIS] explicitly stating that [bus options weren't] considered for project X because developer Y would withdraw his support for the project causing his ally councilman Z to vote no; or conversely that governor W is a teabagger who considers rail transit to be a Soviet plot and thus BRT [Bus Rapid Transit] was the only rapid transit option to advance out of the [Draft EIS] phase in order to avoid a veto. These sorts of political decisions are made in the backroom, off the record, and then often justified on an ex post facto basis when the stench gets too bad. …
Reputable consultants ought not take work that involves declaring that night is day, in an attempt to paper over a blatantly bad political decision. However, in situations like just described, there is plenty of work for reputable consultants to help transit agencies to make the best of a bad situation–if the political realities of a situation require that agency A implement a transit network using only mixed-traffic streetcar, and that other modes are off the table, a good consultant will help them design the best streetcar system that lies within their budget.
At the risk of misquoting Jarrett …, sometimes this is what "help[ing] you implement your values" really means. Often times the "values" in question aren't the values of the riders, the community, or the sponsoring agency, but those of the powerbrokers who ultimately control the fate of the project in question, and who may have little actual interest in improving mobility.

As a consultant, I really like working in situations where the key players really do want to explore the options and reflect the community's values. Having said that, I don't think there's a experienced transit planning consultant on the planet who hasn't been in situations like the one Scotty describes.

Especially in big, complex urban areas, you work for your client agency, and your client agency answers, sooner or later, to elected officials, and if those elected officials aren't happy, the consultant is likely to be blamed. So yes, in an ideal world, the elected officials are conduits for the aspirations and values of the people. But if the elected officials decide to reflect somebody else's values, well, they still get to decide, so yes, it's about their values.

Some purists decide that whenever someone talks about high ideals such as reflecting the values of the community, but then works in real situations where other objectives are taking precedence, that person's being hypocritical. There's some validity to that. At the same time, we all have to move between idealistic and practical modes of thought. You may feel that what company X is doing is ethically wrong, but while you fight that you still have to live in a world where company X is doing that. It's one of the harder things that humans are asked to do, actually, because we do want, in varying degrees, to feel pure and consistent, so we feel awkward about working inside a situation that we know, in larger terms, is somehow wrong.

I've thought about this a lot, because one common critique of me as a consultant, at least in my errant youth, was that I often talked about ideals at moments when everyone in the room needed a practical focus on the current political situation. In middle age, I'm better at working in whatever situation I'm in, but I still feel the awkwardness, and in fact I value it. So long as I feel uncomfortable about the real-world situation, I know that my adaptation to the situation isn't undermining my ability to hold, and act on, clear ideals. Only if it felt easy would I start worrying.

basics: expertise vs. activism

Posted on February 21, 2011 in Advocacy, Basics, Light Rail, Los Angeles, Meditations, Mobility, Philosophy, Rail Transit, San Francisco, Seattle, Streetcars (Trams), Technophilia, Toronto

The planning professions work in a grey zone between expertise and activism, and managing these competing impulses is one of our hardest tasks.

As a transit planning consultant, I don’t worry much about being perceived as an advocate of transit in general. Experts in any field are expected to believe in its importance. But I do try to keep a little distance between my knowledge about transit and the impulse to say “You should do this.” A good consultant must know how to marry his own knowledge to his client’s values, which may lead him to make different recommendations than he would do as a citizen, expressing his own values. Continue Reading →

quote of the week: beyond “david vs. goliath”

Posted on February 14, 2011 in Advocacy, Journalism

Cap'n Transit on the journalist's temptation to write "David vs Goliath" stories:

Behind an apparent David and Goliath story of Outraged Residents confronting the Heartless Bureaucrats may be a much uglier story. The Outraged Residents may actually be a few wealthy or upper-middle-class people protecting their privilege and convenience at the expense of the convenience – or often the safety and well-being – of much larger numbers of less fortunate people, and the Heartless Bureaucrats may actually be engaged in an emotionally draining struggle to protect these less fortunate people.

I expanded on this difficult issue here. Cap'n Transit frames this specifically as a class issue, but it doesn't have to be. In many cases the Heartless Bureaucrats are just balancing the needs of a number of conflicting parties, who would all rather yell about "the government" than do the hard work of talking and listening to each other.

durable urbanism? durable transport?

Posted on February 4, 2011 in Advocacy, Language

Are you tired of the word "sustainable"? Does it seem to lecture rather than inspire? Does it feel defensive, perhaps even conservative in its suggestion that humans should have no higher ambition than to sustain? Doesn't sustaining sound, at times, like endless, thankless work?

Well, in French the equivalent word is durable. So in an idle moment I wonder: what if we used "durable" in English? Durable urbanism. Durable transportation. Durable energy. Durable lifestyles.

"Durable" shares many virtues with that more popular alternative, "resilient." There's already a Resilient Cities movement, and an excellent book on Resilience Thinking.

What I like about both words is they imply an intrinsic strength. Sustainability implies the endless labor of sustainers, while durability and resilience are just features of the thing itself.

But "durable," in particular, sounds strong, even masculine. It's a quality sought in boots, storm windows and SUVs. Guys want to be durable, and to live in a durable world. They certainly don't want to be sustained. (And let's face it, a lot of the people resisting sustainability are guys.)

Not sure. Something to try, maybe.

watching our words: route or line?

Posted on February 1, 2011 in Advocacy, Language, Marketing

(Another short selection from the draft of the book I'm writing.)

The word for the path followed by a transit vehicle is sometimes route, and sometimes line. Whenever you have two words for the same thing, you should ask why.

Most of the words used in transit discussions also have a more common meaning outside that context. That common meaning often forms a connotation that hangs around the word, often causing confusion, when we use the word to talk about transit. In saying the word, we may intend only the transit meaning, but some people may be hearing the more common meaning. Regardless of our intentions, the commonplace meaning of a word is often still there, as a connotation, when the word’s used in a transit context. The words route and line are a good example.

A route, in its common meaning, is the path traced by some kind of person or vehicle. When a package or message is going through a postal system, we say it’s being routed. The person who delivers newspapers to subscribers in the morning is following a paper route. School buses typically follow routes.

What these meanings of route have in common is that the route isn’t necessarily followed very often. A package going through a delivery system may end up following a specific route that no package has followed before. Paper routes and school bus routes run only once a day, and not at all on some days. These common uses of route imply a place where some kind of transport event happens, but possibly not very often.

The word line, on the other hand, has a clear meaning from geometry: a simple, straight, one-dimensional figure. In common usage we often use line for something curved, like the laugh-lines and worry-lines on a face, and transit lines may be curved as well. But in any case, the word line doesn’t imply an event, as route does. A line is a thing that’s just there, no matter what happens along it.

Lurking inside these two words, in short, is a profound difference in attitude about a transit service. Do you want to think of transit as something that’s always there, that you can count on? If so, call it a line. We never speak of rail routes, always rail lines, and we do that because the rails are always there, suggesting a permanent and reliable thing.

If you’re selling a transportation product, you obviously want people to think they can count on it. So it’s not surprising that in the private sector, the word is usually line: Trucking and shipping companies often call themselves lines, as do most private bus companies and of course, the airlines. This doesn’t mean that all these services are really line-like – some may be quite infrequent – but the company that chose the word wants you to think of it as a thing that’s reliably there, that you can count on.

So in general, when talking about transit, think about the more commonplace meaning of the word you’re choosing. In this case:

Use route to indicate the site of a (possibly very occasional) transportation event. The word route reminds many of us of school transportation, newspaper deliveries, and delivery systems that may operate only infrequently.
Use line when you want to imply something that has a continuous physical presence and availability – for example, a transit line where service is coming so often that you don’t need a schedule.

To put it even more simply, the word route lowers expectations for the frequency and reliability of a service. The word line raises those expectations.

Often, transit agencies themselves will use these words in a way that’s not quite conscious of these connotations. In Australia, for example, bus services are usually routes, but rail services are lines. This usage carries a hint that we should have intrinsically lower expectations of bus service as compared to rail. In many cases, that’s not true: many bus “routes,” for example, run frequently all day while commuter rail “lines” may run only a few times at rush hour.

Of course, these connotations can be a nuisance. Sometimes you don’t want any connotation. Sometimes you just want the meaning.

Unfortunately, words without connotations tend to sound abstract and dull. I could insist on saying “fixed vehicle path” instead of route or line, just as I could say “nonmotorized access” when I mean walking or cycling, but you wouldn’t get through this book if I did. Language that strikes us as evasive or bureaucratic is often the result of word choices that try to avoid all connotation. Such language is precise but uninspiring, and long passages of it are just plain hard to read.

To keep our speech vivid and engaging, we have to use words with connotations, and do our best to choose those connotations consciously. I’ll do that throughout this book, and note where there may be a connotation problem. As for route and line, my broad intention is to raise expectations of transit rather than lower them, so I generally use line. However, when I speak specifically of a service that doesn’t run very frequently, I use route.

disasters can raise your taxes

Posted on January 25, 2011 in Advocacy, US Federal Policy

Australians will be paying higher taxes to pay for the recovery from this disastrous flood season. When you're the relatively small central government of a small country that's prone to big disasters, there are only so many ways you can self-insure against these things.

I think about how this would play out in the US. People would scream about the hardship from the disaster. The governor and president would promise relief, and by and large all those unexpected expenses would simply be piled into the deficit.

That happens, in part, because the US Federal government is so huge and opaque. It deals with such colossal numbers that even its deficits convey a liminal suggestion of boundless capacity. The mysteries of managing the world's reserve currency, for example, just can't be explained by analogy to your family's budget.

Aussies just don't see their government that way. They know how small it is, and they can see that its budgetary choices are like of a household at a larger scale.

This is part of why I'm so obsessed with tools that make big public choices comprehensible, like the Los Angeles Times "balance the California budget yourself" tool, or, in my business, network planning games. It's a reason why I don't mind if the California budget crisis leads to functions being pushed down to the local government level, as long as these functions scale to the local government boundaries and as long those governments can go to their voters for the funding they need. One thing we've seen clearly in Calfornia is that people will vote for taxes for things that are important to them, and that they're more likely to support taxes that are kept close to home and devoted to a specific purpose.

People have got to see the choices. They've got to understand government budgets on analogy to their family's budgets. I don't see another way.

deadly journalism alert: “planners say” tunnels cost money

Posted on January 6, 2011 in Advocacy, Journalism, San Francisco

James Fallows of the Atlantic has been pushing back on the habit of journalists to resist all statements of objective fact:

In today's political environment, when so many simple facts are disputed, journalists can feel abashed about stating plainly what is true. With an anticipatory cringe about the angry letters they will receive or the hostile blog posts that will appear, they instead cover themselves by writing, "according to most scientists, the sun rises in the east, although critics say…."

How does this play out in transit journalism? Very, very often, journalists present a transit expert stating a fact and someone else expressing a desire, as though this were a "he said, she said" disagreement. For example, here's Mike Rosenberg of Bay Area News Group, about the routing of California High Speed Rail through the suburb of Burlingame just south of San Francisco.

Burlingame officials want their entire stretch of planned high-speed rail track buried underground … State rail planners say it would be several hundred million dollars cheaper to build aboveground tracks, which locals fear would tower 30 feet in the air, produce more noise and create a physical divide.

Note the tension of the two stem verbs. "Burlingame officials want" and "state planners say." It's set up to sound like "he said, she said."

But these two sentences don't describe a disagreement at all. Burlingame city officials are stating a desire, to have the line underground, to which state rail planners are responding with information about consequences, namely that undergrounding would be more expensive. That's not a disagreement; that's staff doing its job.

The disagreement is actually about who should pay for the undergounding that Burlingame wants. The state says that if a city wants high speed rail to go underground, it should pay the difference. The article quotes Burlingame mayor Terry Nagel's response:

Nagel said Burlingame could spend the city's entire $33 million annual budget on funding the tracks and barely make a dent in the price tag.
"It's not even a possibility," Nagel said Wednesday.

Note that mayor understands that building the line underground through his city will cost more than building the line on the surface. In fact, he's clear that it will cost massively more, more than his entire city budget. The cost is not in dispute. So why did we need "state planners say" in this sentence?

State rail planners say it would be several hundred million dollars cheaper to build aboveground tracks …

All other things being equal, underground construction is more expensive than surface. This is a fact about the universe, readily found in any transport engineering textbook, so it's misleading to describe it as a claim or allegation.

Even if the journalist were thinking like a divorce lawyer, for whom there may be no verifiable reality outside of the fevered imaginations of the two parties, he still could have said that "all parties agree that undergrounding costs much, much more than surface." The journalist knows this, because he has quoted the Mayor of Burlingame displaying a complete grasp of that fact, even though the fact is inconvenient for his side.

So let's read that whole passage again:

Burlingame officials want their entire stretch of planned high-speed rail track buried underground … State rail planners say it would be several hundred million dollars cheaper to build aboveground tracks, which locals fear would tower 30 feet in the air, produce more noise and create a physical divide.

Look again the three main verbs: want – say – fear. Emotion – alleged fact – emotion. And both emotions are on the same side! It's as predictable as the structure of a pop song. The people of Burlingame get their emotions recorded twice, while in opposition we hear only a fact about cost, presented as though it were the voice of some oppressor, crushing these honest folks who are trying to defend their homes.

Journalists! If you want to help people form coherent views that bear some relation to realty, ask yourself these questions:

What facts are agreed on by all parties to the dispute, and by experts in the field? State those as facts.
If facts are not agreed to by all parties, are they agreed to by people expert in the subject? If so, say "experts generally agree that …" This can still be wimpy, like "experts agree that the sun rises in the east," but even that is vastly more accurate than "state planners say …"
Are there widely shared values motivating both sides? If so, make them visible. You may or may not agree that High Speed Rail is a good policy, but its motivating purpose is not to torture the people of Burlingame. Drop in a standard sentence about the larger economic and environmental purposes High Speed Rail advocates claim the line will serve. We know what values the burghers of Burlingame are defending — "home" — but what values are those on other side defending, and might these also matter to the reader?
Are there strong emotions on both sides? If so, describe them. In this case, don't just quote "state planners," who are professionally compelled to be balanced and judicious. Quote a committed and informed High Speed Rail advocate making a stronger, more vivid statement about the actions of cities like Burlingame, and the cumulative burden they place on getting a line built. In today's world of expert blogs, you don't even need to pick up the phone; just quote Robert Cruikshank off his California High Speed Rail Blog, for example …

[Burlingame expects] the rest of the state to essentially subsidize their property values. I cannot emphasize enough how absurd and out-of-touch that view is. At a time when property values have crashed hard in other parts of the state, why on earth would anyone in Riverside or Stockton or San Diego or East LA believe that Burlingame property owners deserve state aid to maintain their land values?

Bottom line: If your story sounds like passionate people are in conflict with soulless bean-counting bureaucrats, you probably don't understand your story yet. You may in fact have a story about venal, conniving bureaucrats, or about frightened or lazy bureaucrats blowing smoke, but the rules above will help you figure out if that's the case. You may also have a story about expert public servants doing their jobs, and if you want any honest and dedicated experts to be willing to work in those jobs, you owe it to them to consider that possibility.

I would welcome some push-back from professional journalists on this. (Email link is under my photo in the next column to the right.) Please forward a link to any journalists in your life! Me, I'm just a consumer of the product, and often not a very happy one.

email of the week: thinking pedestrian thoughts

Posted on January 6, 2011 in Advocacy, Cycling, Minneapolis – St. Paul, Pedestrians, Philosophy

Is it useful to talk about "pedestrians" as a group the way we often talk about cyclists or transit riders? All these category terms are problematic, as I discussed here. Riordan Frost of Minnesota 2020 asks:

A recent article in a local paper and its connection to one of your previous blog posts has inspired me to write to you. The article is “Thinking Pedestrian Thoughts”, and it covers the recent adoption of a ‘pedestrian plan’ by Edina, which is an inner-ring suburb of the Twin Cities [of Minneapolis and St. Paul]. One of the points made in the article is that people don’t really advocate for themselves as pedestrians. This made me think of a post that you wrote back in October, which was entitled “should I call myself a ‘transit-rider’?” and discussed labels given to people using certain modes of transportation. In the post, you quote Michael Druker, who advocates for switching from ‘cyclist’ to ‘people cycling’ and from ‘pedestrian’ to ‘people walking’.
You agreed with him, but pointed out that these new terms were cumbersome, and you would probably still opt for the shorter terms in your writing. I write blogs and articles for MN2020, and I feel the same way. I understand the importance of what language we choose, and I try to be conscious of it in my writing, but I have a need for brevity and I have an editor. There is a more significant question apart from brevity, however: how do we avoid labels (which may carry negative connotations and/or stereotypes) while advocating for improvements of certain modes? …
Is it possible to cut down on lumping people into categories and still have effective advocacy for certain modes, like better crosswalks or more bike lanes? The cycling community is pretty well established in the blogosphere, which sometimes contributes to their ["cyclist"] label and its connotations, but pedestrians have no blogs or personalities specifically tailored to them – mostly because we are … all pedestrians at some point in the day, and there is nothing terribly distinctive about walking. I n a perfect world, we would just design our environments for all modes of transportation that people use, with people (not cyclists vs. motorists vs. pedestrians) in mind. This doesn’t seem terribly viable, however. What are your thoughts on this?

I think that the potential for organized activism and fellow-feeling is easier among a group of people who all wield the same tool, because tools are such powerful symbols. Think about the role of the hammer and sickle — archetypal tools of manufacturing and agriculture, respectively — in the imagery of Soviet communism, for example.

The possession of the tool, and the knowledge of how to use it, becomes a feature by which a group defines itself and sets itself in opposition to other interests.

If you don't think this still happens, look at all the clubs and forums for people who own and cherish a particular tool — a Linux-powered computer, say, or a certain musical instrument. If you read an online forum about such possessions, you'll see the practical work of exchanging troubleshooting tips also builds a community in which people love hearing each other's stories about life with the cherished tool.

So this is another thing that's going on behind the obsessive attachment to transit technologies. People who love aerial gondolas or whatever can now network worldwide with every city that runs one, compare notes about each other's problems and achievements, and thus form a global community based on love of that particular tool. Psychologically, it's just like a club of guys who all own a particular kind of car, or computer, or electric guitar, or whatever.

Pedestrians don't have that. So I doubt we'll ever see a pedestrians-rights movement that has anything like the shape and force of the cycling movement. Nor do we need to, really, because the best urban planning thought today is all about the primacy of the pedestrian.

Ultimately, the strongest case for "pedestrian rights" is that we are all pedestrians. Even the guy who loves his Porsche has to walk across parking lots, and can thus see the value of having protected paths between rows of cars instead of having to walk in the lot's roadways where a car can back into you. Even he has a sense of what makes a shopping center or major downtown pleasant or unpleasant to walk in. Maybe he's even broken down on the freeway and thus experienced what those places are like when you're out of your car. So it's not hard to make anyone understand a pedestrian issue on analogy to the walking that everyone has to do. That's how you win these arguments, I think.

new year’s resolution: no more coercion

Posted on December 31, 2010 in Advocacy, Mobility, Philosophy, Words, Unhelpful

If you want to find vigorous attacks on urbanism and sustainable transport by car-and-highway advocates, just Google for forms of the verb to coerce. The most recent one you'll find is from the reliable Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard. Called "Coercing people out of their cars," it exploits an unfortunate comment by Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. As Barnes puts it:

Last year, George Will zinged LaHood as the “Secretary of Behavior Modification” for his fervent opposition to cars. LaHood all but pleaded guilty. Steering funds from highways to bike and walking paths and streetcars, he said, “is a way to coerce people out of their cars.” His word, coerce.

Here's the source, reported on conservative blogs but not much elsewhere. CNS News:

On May 21, [2009?] LaHood told reporters at the National Press Club that the “Partnership for Sustainable Communities’ his department had formed with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Housing—sometimes known as the “livability initiative”–was designed to “coerce” people out of their cars.

If LaHood did describe the sustainable transportation project as coercion, even in jest, he should be more careful. Just as one doesn't joke about terrorism at airport security checkpoints, we shouldn't even joke about coercion in urban and transportation policy. The word is a primitive grenade that can blow up any and all parties present.

The idea that urbanists and transit advocates are trying to coerce people to give up cars is one of the most treasured bits of pro-car rhetoric, because it feeds the association of cars with liberty. Because so much urbanist work necessarily happens through government, the image of coercion also helps people think of government as intrinsically an oppressor, always a convenient refuge for the lazier kind of libertarian.

Google assembles a convenient list of definitions of to coerce. Wikipedia's is typical of the range:

Coercion (pronounced /koʊˈɜrʃən/) is the practice of forcing another party to behave in an involuntary manner (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats, intimidation or some other form of pressure or force.

Almost all of the definitions refer to actual or threatened force.

By those definitions, I can't think of anything that I have done, in 20 years in this business, that would qualify as coercion. Certainly, I've never threatened any motorist with force, or advised anyone else to do so. No, Barnes would respond, but I have advised governments to adopt policies that are coercive toward motorists. For example, I advised the City of Minneapolis to restrict traffic on certain streets to create a functional transit mall, which they did in 2009. They even changed the direction of certain lanes. Something that used to be legal is now prohibited. If someone drives his private car through the bus lanes (especially in their pre-2009 direction!) police might show up and, if all else fails, might even shoot at him. Force! Coercion! Rhetorically, the coercion-victim wins. Of course, the vehicle he was driving was also a deadly weapon, so he too was threatening force, but he's already declared victory, paid his citation with an air of martyrdom, written his angry article, and gone home.

In the new year, let us all resolve not to be coerced by the rhetoric of coercion, and never to use the term, even in jest, to describe our own project.

In its impact on motorists, sustainable urbanism is all about accurate pricing. We care about pricing in two separate and non-convertible currencies: money, and the limited road space of our cities.

We experience urban congestion, and parking shortages, when road-space is inaccurately priced. As I explored here, it's as though we were giving out free tickets to a concert; when you do that, you get lots of people waiting in line, spending time to save money. Today's approach to pricing forces everyone to act like those frugal concertgoers, when in fact many could easily afford to spend some money to save time, and would prefer to do so if asked. High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes are one experiment in that direction, while the downtown congestion charges of London, Stockholm, and Singapore are another. On the pricing front, San Francisco's free-market approach, which may finally liberate motorists from endlessly circling the block seeking a space, is another breakthrough.

The absurdity of underpricing scarce urban road space, and thus causing congestion and parking shortages, is simply this: It forces us all to save money, a renewable resource, by wasting time, the least renewable resource of all.

Of course, when a price goes up, some who could afford it now can't, and may blame the government. This happens when the price of anything goes up; it will always happen as long as people hold exaggerated notions about the power of government over the economy. To meet the needs of people who are dissuaded from driving by price, and ensure that they continue participating in the economy, road-pricing and parking-pricing strategies work only in the context of abundant and attractive travel alternatives, including transit. This is part of the free-market justification for transit subsidies, in a big-city context, so long as there continue to be equal or greater subsidies for the motorist.

Reduction of government subsidies is not coercion. Fred Barnes is the socialist in this debate, demanding government subsidy for his own chosen lifestyle but not for that of others. As for those of us who support more accurate pricing — of road space, parking, and all the other incremental costs of transport, including transit fares — we are the libertarians!

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