What City Observatory did this week
What are they hiding?Ā Ā Oregon and Washington are being asked to spend $7.5 billion on a giant bridge:Ā Why wonāt anyone show pictures of what it would look like?Ā Ā The Oregon and Washington highway departments are using an old Robert Moses trick to make their oversized bridge appear smaller than it really is.Ā The bridge will blot out much of the reviving waterfront and downtown in Vancouver, and put Hayden Island in the shadow of a half-mile long viaduct.
The IBR has distributed misleading and inaccurate images of the proposed bridge, attempting to make it look smaller.Ā The agency is spending $1.5 million to create a ādigital twinā computer model of the IBR, but is keeping it secret to avoid public scrutiny of its design.Ā Computer visualizations, complete with human-scale animations, are cheap and common for construction projects, such as Vancouverās proposed waterfront public marketābut ODOT and WSDOT have steadfastly refused to provide such visualizations for the IBR.
The Color of Money:Ā How ODOT is using flexible federal funds to bail out the state highway fund, and permanently cut funding for transportation alternatives.Ā In Oregon, there are two colors of transportation money:Ā state highway funds that thanks to an arcane (and misinterpreted) constitutional provision supposedly can only be used to build and repair road, and federal funds, which are highly flexible and can be used for transit, biking and walking.Ā ODOT has hit on a gimmick to divert a billion dollars of those flexible funds to pay off a liability of the State Highway Fund (bringing roads into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The ramps and sidewalks needed to comply with ADA can and should be paid for with state highway funds, but ODOT will instead use flexible federal dollars, and will borrow $600 million and commit future federal funds (plus hundreds of millions in interest payments) to paying back the debt, permanently precluding future decisions to use those funds for transportation alternatives.
Must Read
Writing at Vox.dot, Harvard’s David Zipper contemplates what it will take to avoid a transit doom loop.Ā The big decline in transit ridership during the pandemic, the contraction of the office market in the face of continuing work-at-home trends and the likely disappearance of the pandemic related bail out funds seem to be posing an existential challenge for transit agencies.Ā Zipper acknowledges the challenge and offers some suggestions.Ā First, he suggest, this may not be the time to be thinking about eliminating faresāwhile this might have some apparent equity benefits, the costs, in terms of reduced service would cause far greater harms, especially now.Ā We probably should be spending more on transit, but “free” transit that doesn’t serve people or destinations, or doesn’t come often enough isn’t equitable.Ā Instead, Zipper argues, transit agencies should be focusing on maintaining, and where possible improving service, especially frequency.
Service improvements like these are indispensable, but some of the other priorities transit agencies are currently balancing are not. For instance, with ridership still depressed, now seems like a good time toĀ deprioritize expensive capital projectsĀ like vehicle purchases and rail expansions, and reallocate the money toward maintenance that makes service more reliable and frequent.
The planet isn’t on track to meet its climate goals–and growing transportation emissions are the major culprit.Ā The Internationa Energy Agency (IEA) tracks carbon emissions by major sector of the global economy.Ā In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, transportation greenhouse gas emissions have rebounded sharply.
The IEA’s summary makes it clear that transport is actually growing again, and that we have a long way to go to get on the path to net zero emissions.Ā They write:
In 2021 global CO2Ā emissions from the transport sector rebounded, growing by 8% to nearly 7.7Ā GtĀ CO2, up from 7.1Ā GtĀ CO2Ā in 2020, as pandemic restrictions were lifted and passenger and goods movements began to pick up following their unprecedented decline in 2020. Even with anticipated growth in transport demand, following the Net Zero Scenario requires transport sector emissions to fall by about 20% to less than 6Ā Gt by 2030.
While the IEA calls for vehicle electrification to put a dent in carbon emissions, its report also highlights the importance of urbanism in reducing car travel, and calls for more transit-oriented development.
New Knowledge
Parking:Ā Lots.Ā Between a tenth and a third of every major downtown area in the United States is given over to car storage.Ā A new study published by the Parking Reform Network has detailed maps showing the amount and location of parking in the core of nation’s largest cities.Ā The maps are the brainchild of Chris Carpenito, who harnessed data from Open Street Maps to identify the land area given over to surface parking in the 50 largest cities.
Here’s a typical map showing downtown Portland, Oregon.Ā Red areas are dedicated to parking.Ā About 11 percent of Portland central city is dedicated to parking.
The studies findings are summarized in a “Parking Score,” which really grades on a curve.Ā Larger more populous cities are expected to be denser and have less land dedicated to parking.Ā Smaller cities tend to have more land dedicated to parking.Ā Here are the downtowns of the largest US cities with the lowest parking scores (meaning least land area given over to surface parking).
For full details, see the maps of the 50 downtown areas, and the city parking score rankings at the Parking Reform Network.Ā The project’s methodology is described here.Ā This is extremely useful information that provides a new perspective on the way parking affects the urban landscape.
In the News
Clark County Today republished our article, “What are they hiding?” about the Oregon and Washington highway department’s efforts to conceal the height and bulk of the freeway widening project they’re planning between Portland and Vancouver.