Towards TOCs (Transit Oriented Cities)

TOD or Transit Oriented Development is a term that gets thrown around a lot in urban planning. It basically means arranging people and the places they like to visit along mass transit lines so they can get to the various places they need to by bus or rail.

But, does it really foster transit oriented lifestyles? Or, is really only convenient for commuting to and from work and an occasional third destination (restaurants, parks, museums etc.), leaving the car to fill in the gaps? If cities are ever going to get beyond viewing mass transit as primarily for commuter traffic and for giving the car-free slightly better mobility than, say, a bicycle, they must change their attitude towards transit.

So, here is my list of ways mass transit must change to bring about TOCs

1. Make the system run smoothly. Favor stations over stops, use dedicated right-of-ways at all times, use station platforms with ramps to enter and exit the transit vehicle at its level, allow transit vehicles to preempt traffic lights (like emergency vehicles do). These things take much of the hassle and unpredictability out of transit systems.

2. Add more wheels to that old hub and spoke system. In a previous post, TC Needs a New Steel Belt, I put forth the idea that routes focused on going to and from major cities are inadequate and lateral routes must be added.

3. Simplify the routes. It is hard, confusing, and off-putting to figure out how to get where you are going when every route looks like a child scribbled it. Zigzagging in and out of neighborhoods and having route names delineated by letters, like the 24A and the 24D, mean you have to be careful or the bus may not stop anywhere near where you need to go and you might not even know it unless you are familiar with the neighborhood. Routes should instead follow major roads and highways and divert only when the road itself ends. This would lower the barrier for new riders to enter and make the system a lot easier for everyone involved.

4. Larger storage areas separate from passengers. Now we come to the points where transit moves beyond an alternative commute. People need to buy and transport things that are not allowed on buses or rail. Things like building materials, large amounts of groceries, pets, large tools like shovels and rakes, TVs, etc. If mass transit is to accommodate these needs as well as the car can, it needs to provide separate space, such as a cargo car behind a streetcar or light rail or space set aside at the back of a bus. Cyclists would also benefit from this space and avoid the annoyed looks from passengers on crowded rail lines. To do this quickly and efficiently, it would seem necessary to employ a porter to handle the safe entrance and exit of these items. They could then perform a secondary role of ticket checker when the vehicle is moving. With this change, the old argument of “I still need my car for XYZ, so I might as well just use it” begins to diminish.

5. Consider allowing access to public rail lines or bus right-of-ways by private companies to allow them to ship goods to neighborhoods without the use of trucks that are poor at maneuvering city streets and add to congestion.

6. Why not start with a car-free neighborhood? (for an idea for what this might look like take a look at my post What to do with the Dome) Surely this would be met with tremendous push-back as motorists sense even the slightest loosening of the car’s iron grip. But, once you allow for emergency vehicle access and work out alternate means of transporting goods to the core of the neighborhood and with enough support it could happen. And, I predict, once people actually see whit it’s like to live without the constant danger, noise, and pollution of cars, they won’t look back with regret.

7. Go everywhere. This means connecting with intercity mass transit and maybe even including a station or two in nearby exurbs, like the streetcar suburbs of old. Rather than increase sprawl, I think this would concentrate density around the stations. This also means stopping at more of those so called “third places” where people go for recreation. Why should car owners be the only ones with access to parks and other out of the way attractions?

8. Get rid of car favoring policies. Requiring businesses to allot so much space for parking per so much square footage of office/retail space just ensures that cars will be favored. Also, few policies encourage driving more than free parking, so eliminate that where possible.

9. Take a stand. Without getting support behind you, these ideas will never happen. It takes a strong leader or group to clearly lay out what needs to happen and declare that mass transit will be the favored form of transportation for their metro area and that cars, while still serving a role, will not be catered to above all else.

Before I close, a couple of prebuttles to likely criticism of this concept.

“This is the government imposing its will and eliminating the right to choose what form of transportation to use!” This sort of city cannot emerge without a strong partnership between private citizens and government decision makers. If there is the political will to reign in the car in a given city, the government should make it happen, that is how democracy is supposed to work. If, on the other hand, there was no public support and the government was, in fact, just imposing its will, everyone would just move to more car-friendly places.

As for the choice part of the argument that is so often leveled against any government intervention, for millions of Americans there is no choice currently; it’s drive a car or loose access to jobs, friends and relatives, and even food. A TOC, by contrast, makes a completely car-free lifestyle possible for many more people, without throwing the car out completely.

“This will make driving a car so oppressive, everyone will be forced to give up their car!”

On the contrary, by making transit a truly viable and even attractive alternative, those that continue to drive will experience much less traffic congestion, far fewer run-ins with drunk drivers and others that have lost the ability to drive safely, lower gas prices (because of lower demand), less obligation to drive friends and relatives that cannot drive themselves and they will always have a reliable backup option in transit, for when their car breaks down.

Well, that’s all for now. As always, I welcome your feedback.

So until next time, dream on!

-The Daydreamer

Open Zone

Community and Wilderness Preservation Through Zoning

There is a constant conversation that has been taking place between the country and the city about how to balance the needs and rewards of the two. After World War II developers sought to strike this balance by promoting suburban development as having the best of both worlds; the fresh air, open space, and natural beauty of the country while being within easy reach of the amenities and culture of the city.

However, this form of development proved to be quite consumptive of land. More land per person than urban areas meant that suburbs became more spread out, which made the car the most viable form of transportation. The car is also quite consumptive of land as ever widening roads and ever larger parking lots at each commercial area space things apart further. Add to that cheap cars and gas prices that don’t even rise at the rate of inflation and suburbia was ripe to vomit out onto the countryside in all directions from every major US city.

But, in its mania to build as cheaply and quickly as possible, much was lost. Wetlands were drained, creeks paved over, and beautiful natural features despoiled or effectively privatized. It is rather ironic that the single-use building code and minimum lot size requirements came out of suburban development as a way to keep the country flavor of the suburbs. These codes meant things spread out even further into actual pristine wilderness that was trying, and failing, to be reconstructed in the suburbs.

It seems, suburbanites by and large both love and hate their huge yards. On the one hand they want the large open space to let the kids and pets run around safely and to grill and so forth. But, on the other hand, they seem to loathe yard work and especially maintaining the number and variety of plants that would even come close to resembling a healthy, functioning ecosystem. And so, instead of getting the wilderness of the country, suburbia has become a sterile caricature of nature.

As if that weren’t bad enough, suburbia also tends to lack the community vibrancy of the city. This is clearly evident in its parks. Instead of many public parks to serve the recreational needs of the local populace, the large backyard has become favored as a kind of private park, separate, clean, and safe from outsiders. Sure, public parks still exist in suburbs, but they are most often a far cry from the vibrant, multi-use, community spaces that urban parks are. It is not uncommon to see a suburban park completely empty at any given time of the day.

So what can be done?

I think a good tool for open space preservation, especially habitat preservation, would be adding new zoning types, some before development is even considered. Now I know the critics say government intervention caused many of the ills of suburbia, so it shouldn’t intervene further. To that I say: have you ever had a great idea that, in practice, had terrible unintended consequences? If so, did you then decide to stop using your brain because it caused the mess? I still believe government intervention based on learning from past mistakes is the best solution. The “Free Market” may produce the illusion of choice, but since it is hard to put a dollar value on things such as community vitality, access to amenities such as parks and wilderness vs. more private land, etc., it is doubtful that waiting for the Free Market to create living arrangements that give equal access to these things is the right way to go. Indeed, the Free Market is largely responsible for the haphazard, car-dominated, characterless development that pervades the suburbs. New and better zoning would help more to preserve, enhance, and give access to open space.

I propose at least four open space zoning types (which could be applied in urban settings as well):

1. Wilderness Preservation. This could be applied in the entire area a city has jurisdiction over, to identify and set aside vulnerable space such as critical animal breeding grounds, wetlands, river banks/seashores, places of great natural beauty, and connecting corridors between so it can be protected ahead of time from the destructive aspects of development. This would keep ecosystems better in tact and prevent the fragmentation that so often occurs, limiting the negative interactions between humans and animals.

2. Park Land. This would happen along with development and ensure that those little patches of community vitality wouldn’t easily fall to a future developer that only sees dollar signs.

3. Plaza/Town Square. Similar to Park Land, but for the purpose of creating space around which to assemble important civic buildings to entice people to gather and participate in their community and facilitate the normal interactions of a healthy, vibrant city.

4. Community Garden. This use of urban/suburban land is constantly under threat and treated as a transient use by planners and developers, it would be nice to make this more of permanent space because it serves such a critical role for community vitality and hands on learning about nature and food.

With these new zoning types, the critical, yet vulnerable, amenities that make a city a quality place to live can be better preserved. These zoning types would be no means solve all of suburbia’s ills, but they would be a start. They would leave guardianship of these places in the hands of the local government, and by extension, the people that elect them, instead of leaving it to the whims of the market.

That’s all for now. I welcome your comments. Until next time,

Dream on!

-The Daydreamer

Unfair Fare

Why Congestion Pricing Makes No Sense for Mass Transit

Congestion pricing is a term most often used to mean charging people more for using their car during peak times. This may take the form of allowing single occupancy vehicles (one person in the car) to buy their way into high occupancy vehicle lanes (for cars with multiple people), as is the case in the Twin Cities, or it may even go as far as charging a fee to enter a downtown during rush-hour, as is the case in London and Stockholm, where the scheme seems to have worked. However, this also seems to be a model that mass transit networks follow; charging more for rush hour fares and express service. But does this make sense? To find out, lets consider the arguments for congestion pricing and determine if they should apply to mass transit.

• Supply and Demand: when many people want a service at the same time, they should be charged more for it.

While this makes sense on its face, when the main roles of mass transit, this argument loses its strength. One of the main boons of mass transit is its ability to move many times more people per hour than a given road or highway and at a lower cost to the user. But by charging more at peak demand times, mass transit is disincentivised and reaching peak capacity is less likely,and it also makes the daily cost of owning a car (gas) comperable that of taking mass transit. This diminishes its ability to perform well against the car

• A sub-argument of supply/demand, when applied to car traffic, is that it shifts demand to off-peak times and alternative forms of transportation.

  The time argument seems rather silly because people need to get where they need to get when they need to get there; work starts at a set time, there is only so much time for shopping or leisure, etc. Leaving hours earlier or latter seems impractical, especially in the Twin Cities, where a mass transit trip can already take up to 5 times longer than driving, as in the case of my daily commute which is 20 minutes by car, 1 hour 45 minutes by bus. And again, if the goal is to shift people away from congestion-causing cars, to congestion easing mass transit, charging more disincentivises that switch.

• Peak demand pricing subsidies off-peak routes.

  This argument is clearly evident to anyone who has taken an express bus route at rush hour. The demeanor of the driver, the cushiness of the seats, the smoothness of the ride, the frequency of the routes, etc. are clearly intended to be attractive to the wealthier business class, while local, cheaper routes are most often the exact opposite. I found a recent article that calls for making this argument as a way of avoiding the colder supply and demand one. I could go into the unfairness of providing different levels of government service to different classes, but there is a larger issue at work here: the idea that mass transit needs to pay for itself.

Roads receive huge subsidies to be built and maintained and the funding from fuel tax diminishes as vehicles become more fuel efficient. Even with toll roads, I seriously doubt there’s a single example in this country of a profitable road. And yet, when it comes to mass transit, people act like unless every bus and rail car is packed at all times and unless the fares pay for the full operation, it is at worst a complete waste of taxpayer money and at best a barely tolerable subsidy for the poor that users should grateful to have at all.

But reality does not bear out this way of thinking. By increasing mass transit even when it seems inefficient, peoples’ transportation options are increased, especially for people who, through choice or necessity, don’t have a car. This increases people’s freedom and ability to get jobs that might otherwise be out of reach. With increased job access, there is less need for social safety net programs, providing savings to the taxpayer. Furthermore, rail transit is the ONLY form of transportation that has been demonstrated to increase property values near access points. Plus, because mass transit reduces congestion, those that still drive spend less on gas, there are fewer accidents and trips to the emergency room, and so forth. Added together, the savings to tax payers surely outweigh the cost of the systems. And so, mass transit pricing would be better set at a nominal usury fee to help defray costs, not to fund the whole thing.

And here’s another problem with peak pricing: it makes taking mass transit that much more complicated. As you can see from the Metro Transit site, even if you get an all you can ride one month pass, there are three tiers of pricing, and if it turns out you ride at other times more often than you anticipate, you may be overpaying or need to pay more, which has to come in the form of extra stored money on your card ahead of time. So, to get maximum value, you need to know ahead of time what of the three fare rates you will be paying most often.

Does that make sense? Does it make you want to ride mass transit more? Likely: NO! It is a very convoluted system that caters to people that make the exact same trips day after day. The message seems to be that mass transit should be considered for commuting, but for other needs, why not just take the car?

So in this case, a flat fare is a fair fare, as long as it doesn’t make mass transit cost prohibitive to anyone and it is not expected to shoulder the whole cost of the system.

I welcome your comments.

Until next time, dream on!

-The Daydreamer

What to do with the Dome

UPDATE 5/13/12: Well, it appears the Vikings will get a new stadium in the same spot. However, the ideas I present here would work at any mass transit node such as another stations along the line.

With all the recent talk about Vikings stadium proposals, one thing seems clear: the possibility that the current Metrodome gets torn down for a newer stadium on the same location is unlikely. The highest praise for the idea I have heard is that it’s “workable.” There is a distinct lack of parking capacity and the Vikings are not excited about the prospect of playing in the U of M’s TCF Stadium while the Dome is redone.

So, assuming the Vikings find another site to play at that will leave a huge question hanging in the air: “what will the fate of the Metrodome be?” All the monster truck rallies and stadium concerts it can hold would likely not make up for the revenue lost form the Vikings. I predict that if the Vikes go, the Dome goes as well.

This might seem like a sad thing; all the lost memories and the demolition of an iconic, for better or worse, landmark of Minneapolis. But hidden in this is a golden opportunity that could revolutionize the city and perhaps the way we build and rebuild cities in the future.

What I propose to replace the Metrodome with is Minneapolis’ first car-free neighborhood. Because this spot already has a light rail stop at it and will be the connection point to the Central Corridor line to St. Paul, and because it is also served by bus lines, it is uniquely positioned to serve the transportation needs of potential residents and visitors to the neighborhood without yielding to the noise, pollution, and spacial needs of cars. In a metro area severely under served by mass-transit, this spot stands out as adequate, even well-served. I would call it: The Humphrey Neighborhood, to continue to honor the man who was one of Minnesota’s greatest politicians.

The Dome as it is

My proposal for the “Humphrey Neighborhood”

To better understand this color-coded neighborhood, lets take a walk through it. Put on your imagination helmets, here we go! You can refer back to the above picture as a map and frame of reference as we go on our virtual tour. I have created a soundtrack to set the mood (the videos are inconsequential, it’s just the easiest way to link to music.)

The Light Rail

Starting at your departure from the light rail station, you will walk out onto Kirby Puckett Place, a large plaza. The sports sculptures have been left as a tribute to what was and street vendors and performers now frequent this space to take advantage of the constant stream of people coming and going between the neighborhood and light rail. Mixed-use commercial/multi-family housing (brown buildings) line the plaza. Lets walk now into the neighborhood. The first thing you will notice is the gateway arch (at the Northwest end of the two blue rectangles) welcoming you to the Humphrey neighborhood. It’s made from reclaimed steel from the old Metrodome, yet it has an elegant, artistic look, something that future generations will look at and still feel good about it.

Gateway Road

Lets move into the neighborhood. You are immediately  struck by the meaning of car-free. No cars, trucks, motorcycles, or other motorized vehicles traverse the road.In there place are a multitude of bicyclists, pedestrians, and the occasional horse-drawn cart bringing goods in and out that are too heavy or bulky to be moved by hand. The road is wide enough for emergency vehicles to get through, should the need arise. You can see in the distance a gently rising hill crowned by a large fountain and this monument entices you to continue on towards it. The street is lined by attractive store fronts inhabited by a wide array of merchants (blue buildings). Above the shops are stately row houses, the only single-family residential buildings in the neighborhood. Many of the houses, as well as many of the buildings throughout the neighborhood, have greenhouses on top of them. Reclaimed steel beams from the old Metrodome, used in the construction of the buildings make the roofs strong enough for rooftop gardens and even aquaponics operations and the greenhouses provide year-round use. There are so many rooftop gardens in the neighborhood that an aerial view would look on mostly vegetation, with hardly any asphalt, roof tops, or any other impervious surfaces visible.

This is the most upscale part of the neighborhood. The welcoming shops urge visitors to venture further into the neighborhood and the people with the greatest ability to weather economic hardship act as neighborhood ambassadors for decades, helping to keep residents, visitors, and business people invested in the area. You notice that the landscaping is different than in other parts of the city. Raingardens take the place of normally flat boulevards and edible fruit and nut trees are planted alongside shrubs and ground cover in guilds. This makes the landscaping multi functional, including providing food and it is practiced throughout the neighborhood. Comfortable, wrought iron benches are abundant here as they are throughout the city and many people are taking advantage of them. Instead of tall, looming street lights, the road is lined with decorative lamp posts.

An example of nice row houses above commercial space

The Food Forest

You reach the end of the road and are standing across from a large central park. You make your way up the pathway (in red) to the fountain. It’s a nice sunny afternoon and the gentle rise of the hill makes for a perfect space for the many picnickers enjoying the weather. The fountain is wide, with many tiers of cascading water, which produces a calming noise that adds to the ambiance. To the Southwest is a lush forest (dark green). A sign reads, “Welcome to the Humphrey Food Forest. Feel free to explore and even partake in the bounty we have created here.” You stroll along the paths, pausing to admire the plants and wildlife and to read the placards that describe what a food forest is and other educational information. You learn that it is maintained my volunteers but free for everyone to share in the bounty of food, beauty, medicine, wood, and other resources. It is amazing how serene and quiet the food forest is, aside from the chattering birds. If you didn’t know better it would be hard to tell you were in the middle of Downtown Minneapolis.

The end of the path takes you back to where you entered and you decide to head in the other direction through the open field (light green). You can see from your vantage point that the whole park is lined by mixed use buildings (yellowish green) with commercial and light industrial shops on the ground level and apartment buildings above. A quick scan of the shops tells you that there is wide variety of enterprises that reside here; common commercial operations like restaurants, grocery stores, cafes, book stores, a movie theater, a shoe store, and clothing stores, but also a glass blowing operation, a tailor, a dentist, a furniture maker, and even a brewery. The buildings are nicely adorned in classic architectural styles and are between three and seven stories.

What mixed use apartments and commercial can look like

Farmers Market

You head towards a large building at the Northeast end of the park (yellow building). There is a large sign that reads “Four Seasons Farmers Market and Artisans Bazaar.” There are a plethora of farm stands arranged on the lawn in front of the market. You notice that there is a distinct lack of common fruits and vegetables for sale, like bananas, oranges, and the like. A vendor informs you that that is because the market focuses on food produced locally, which here means that the farmer can get it, on the same morning, from the farm to the market by opening time and that the stand is managed by the same people that pick and transport the food. You buy a bag of some of the most delicious cherries you have ever had and a couple of strange vegetables you are told are called romanesco. The vendor swears you will love it and even gives you a recipe for free, but you guess you will have to wait until you get home to see.

The Market/Bazaar

The music and smells of cooked food tempt you into the market/bazaar building. You walk past the railings that ring in the patio seating for restaurants that reside within the building. The market/bazaar is buzzing with activity. Jewelry and handbag makers, artists and clothing sellers are making their sales pitches, street musicians and jugglers are entertaining the crowd, the mood is decidedly energetic and upbeat. It is near dinner time so you look for some food to eat. The falafel kebab stand looks good so you get that and make your way to the tables and chairs that ring a large open space where musicians are playing and singing and colorfully costumed performers are doing a dance you haven’t seen before. The kebab is so good that you go back and ask the manager if there is another store located near your neighborhood. She laughs and tells you that his stand, and almost all the stands in the market/bazaar are one of a kinds; they exist nowhere else.

You exit near the Northern corner of the building and look across the road towards one of the two other gateways of the neighborhood (red areas). You decide to turn right and head Southeast down the road. The light rail runs right through this part of the neighborhood. You look to your left at the multistory apartment buildings (orange) and admire the architecture. These are nothing like the cheap looking wooden mega structures they slap together in the suburbs. Instead they are stone and brick and separate buildings, though they are built right up against each other.

What apartments can be

The Community Garden

You come near the end of the street and pause to admire the triangular community garden (plain green). A friendly gardener named Jerry tells you that this and other community gardens give access to growing space to apartment dwellers that otherwise would have trouble finding it and that it serves as a community meeting place, too. You ask about the architecture and why there are so many buildings all pushed together instead of large singular structures. Jerry explains that, “the idea is that this ensures that the buildings can have many more owners than if they were massive, monolithic structures, so if one building is mismanaged, there is less likelihood they all will be affected. The reason they are built with no space in between is to conserve heat and space that is generally wasted in detached structures.”

Jerry directs your attention to the set of buildings to the Southwest (gray). He tells you, “these are single-use condominiums, and the buildings to the Northwest are mixed-use commercial and apartments (yellowish green), and the ones across the street are single-use apartments (orange). The reason they are all mixed together instead of all one type of use or another is to keep the neighborhood diverse and therefore resilient. There are a full range of prices for the units, both renters and owners, and a wide array of ages and backgrounds of people that live in the neighborhood. This method of planning means that no one type dominates, so it neither becomes totally gentrified nor slides toward slums. Everybody has to deal with everybody every day, especially without cars to hide from one another in, so tolerance and an earnest willingness to learn about those different form you are prerequisite for getting by here.”

You thank him for his chat but before you can be on your way he stops you and says, “oh, wait. I have way more shallots than I know what to do with. Here,” he says as he deposits a bag in your arms. You try to explain that he should give them to someone who lives around here and you don’t even know what a shallot is or what to do with it but he dismisses your concerns and says, “they’re like onions and I have plenty for my neighbors, too. All of us around here are happy to share what we are proud of. Oh, and you should head over to the park, the music should be starting soon and you don’t want to miss that. Hope to see you around again! Bye!”

Feeling a bit confused you head right at the corner and start towards the park. You are about halfway there when something peculiar catches your eye. It appears that the alleys behind the backs of the buildings are enclosed in glass windows. The double doors at the entrance open and a horse steps out, pulling a cart behind it. The cart has a number of bins in it that look like trash cans as well as a pile of what looks like weeds and compost. You ask the cart driver what she is doing and she says, “well, without the use of trucks, we have decided to haul our garbage by horse cart. Someone had the forethought to put greenhouse roofs over all the alleys as well as wall off the ends in glass. This allows residents to compost their food waste year-round and makes the alley a lot nicer than traditional ones. We call them ‘Green Alleys.’ Why don’t you see for yourself, they’re open to the public”

You thank the cart driver and make your way into the alley. Indeed it is a much more pleasant place to be than a normal alley. Dirt strips line the walls of the buildings and bushes, flowers, and other plants are growing in them. There is pleasant lighting that is just coming on as the sun sets. Most of the trashcans have compost bins next to them (for more on Green Alleys, see my previous post).

 The Concert

After exiting the alley, you turn once again toward the park. As you approach the fountain you can hear the music of the band Jerry mentioned. Indeed, a few hundred people are gathered in the park, sprawled out on blankets or playing on the lawn as the band plays a lively tune. The farm stands have been taken down for the day and in there place is the stage with the band and a large screen behind it. You sit down to enjoy the music as the sun slips slowly behind the skyscrapers of downtown Minneapolis. You are shocked to realize that this is the first time you have noticed them since coming to the Humphrey Neighborhood.

 The Movie

The band winds down and you are about leave until you realize no one else is. You notice that what appears to be a movie projector has been wheeled out to the middle of the field and faces the screen behind the stage. A movie from the 40s, a comedy you have never heard of, begins to play. You laugh along with the crowd as you snack on the remainder of your cherries from the market.

Reflecting on the day

After the movie you make your way leisurely back to the light rail. As the train pulls away you think back on the day. You glance out the window and are surprised to notice just how many parking lots you pass, even in prime business locations. The car traffic you pass seems a little more irritating than before, even a little menacing. You realize that the Humphrey Neighborhood is one of the densest neighborhoods you’ve been in. Without the need for parking lots at every store and residence, and with the narrower thoroughfares and with the buildings built up against each other, there sure was a lot more room for other things. But, strangely, the neighborhood never felt cramped or over crowded. The buildings never seemed cold, imposing, or unfeeling. Instead they seemed warm and inviting and like they belonged where they were and they were at a scale that was large enough to feel enclosed and safe, but not so large that they felt intimidating. Your realize that you must have walked a couple miles at least, but you don’t feel tired. Maybe it was all the things to look at and experience along the way that made it seem easier. And what vibrancy! With all the food and music and friendly people, it is easy to see why people choose to live there. But you are left with one big question hanging in the air, “why aren’t all neighborhoods designed this way?”

OK imagination helmets off. I hope you stayed with me through that and have a much better understanding of what could be. But before I go, a few reality checks:

1. For this type of neighborhood to work, the residents must be committed, otherwise it will suffer a long, slow erosion to the whims of the car, as has happened with places like the U of M Twin Cities campuses.
2. There is the possibility that the Vikings will end up staying at the Dome site or that even if they leave that the Dome could be retained for other events. Even if this happens, it doesn’t make the overall idea of a car-free neighborhood or even city a lost cause. Though the Dome site is at the mass transit nexus of the Twin Cities, any stop along any of the routes would be suitable for this kind of ambitious experiment.
3. Even the most committed, true-believer residents of the neighborhood would at some time likely need a car. However, they still don’t need to own a car and there are plenty of suitable parking lots nearby that could be turned into an Hour Car type operation.
4. Goods must come in and out of the neighborhood and at some point will likely need motorized vehicle transport. To solve this I invite you to view the neighborhood as a kind of island. Transport trucks could dock at the edge and their wares could be unloaded onto horse carts or bikes for the rest of the journey and goods leaving the neighborhood could be loaded onto trucks at the same spot. This may seem like a sneaky work around to avoid the hazards of motorized vehicles while reaping their rewards, but I think not. If all the cities neighborhoods were like this there could still be surface streets around the perimeters for mainly commercial traffic. And because people would use private cars much less, traffic would be greatly reduced and safer, not to mention less costly to maintain.
5. People who like cars may want to visit the neighborhood, where do they park? For the answer to this I direct you again to the ocean of parking lots in the surrounding area. If the need arises a parking deck will be built (car owners have a way of getting what they feel they need)

Even if this vision is never realized, we as a metro area need to seriously rethink the space and deference we give to the motor vehicle. Don’t believe me? Just take a virtual tour via Google Maps to any major business area of the Metro. Look at the amount of space devoted to parking lots and freeways and ever wider local roads, forcing the sad urban smile of gap-toothed development which further hinders business, pedestrians, and mass-transit users. The sad irony is that the more capacity we give to the car, the further apart things must be, and then the more space we need for the car, and so on. If the land unquestioningly given-over to this highly expensive, polluting, resource consuming, dangerous, addicting form of transportation is not the epitome of selfish, short-sighted, insanity, then I don’t know what is.

On that note, I welcome your feedback.

Until next time,

Dream on!

-The Daydreamer

Green Up Your Alley!

The alley: much maligned urban form; associated with homelessness, drug deals, violence and all the other dirtiness of the city better left out of view. It is only narrowly tolerated as a better option for the housing of utility boxes and dumpsters than the street front. But what if we could turn that dark, dingy little secret of the city into a warm . . . even comforting place to be?

 

I believe the answer starts with a greenhouse, or, more precisely, a greenhouse roof. The difficult think about most greenhouses is that they take a lot of money to make them high enough to accommodate any but the smallest of trees. But, if we take something that is already tall and skinny enough to be easily spanned, like an alley between two medium height buildings, then the task of enclosure becomes much more cost effective. The vertical space at the ends of the alley would also need glass walls, but again it would require a lot less than a traditional greenhouse. One benefit of enclosing this space is immediately evident in winter: instead of frigid winds howling through the artificial canyon, the temperature is moderated, even without additional heat, and this also means less heat loss for the adjoining buildings.

 

Now that we have a much more habitable space, the options really open up and we can make this into a “Green Alley.” First, there is now the option to grow plants year-round, bringing air cleansing, food production, and everything else they can offer. However, most alleys are wall-to-wall pavement, so we will have to tear up at least the edges that abut the buildings and add soil to accommodate our new companions. With these new green spaces come more options for improvement. Americans waste, on average, 25% of their food, but with this new Green Alley there is space to compost year round without dealing with frozen compost piles or indoor smells. We can also use detritavores such as red wiggler worms and black soldier flies year round without fear of them dying. As long as we have black soldier flies and habitat for them in the new vegetation, why not install the composting toilets I discussed in my last post? We can also add chickens to eat the black soldier fly larvae, add fertilizer to the vegetation, and give us eggs and/or meat.

 

Our Green Alley is really starting to shape up, but there are two more factors to consider. Now that the space is much more hospitable, we can add a few low-energy LED lights to make the space safer and even more inviting (if we can justify illuminating empty stretches of highway all night, this should be no problem). With all this vegetation, animals, and other uses (not to mention that combustion engines and enclosed spaces don’t mix) there is little ability for the traditional denizens of the alley, the garbage trucks, to operate. But garbage, despite our new ability to compost much of our waste, will still accrue and must still be collected, so what should be done?

 

I think the best solution would be to re-introduce an old system that was itself replaced by mechanization. Carts drawn by beasts of burden could be re-employed to haul refuse in these Green Alleys. When the cart reaches the end of an alley its cargo could be transferred to mechanized vehicle to bring it on the longer haul to the dump. True, these animals would need feed and produce waste. But at least some of their food could now be produced in the green alleys themselves and as long as we are proceeding food waste and human waste there, why not add animal waste, too?

 

So now our Green Alley is complete; a warm, inviting space that is safer and produces useful things. And that is the main difference between the current mechanical solution that alleys offer, and the biological solution I offer. The mechanical view sees alleys as producing only problems that need to be dealt with using mechanical solutions, which produce their own set of problems. The biological view sees alleys as having the potential to not only help us deal with problems, but be nice, productive places that people not only tolerate, but maybe even like.

Let me know what you think!

Until next time, dream on!

-The Daydreamer

 

Occupy the Bathroom!

WARNING! This post has a certain “ick” factor. If you are squeamish about fecal matters or have a bug phobia, this may not be for you.

The toilet, and accompanying sewer system, is a triumph of the modern age. It has been a huge factor in increasing health and sanitation, especially in highly populated areas. But it has not come without cost. It takes a lot of water, which takes energy to pump and purify and a vast infrastructure of metal and PVC pipes to deliver. The resulting “waste” product then takes another network of pipes and energy to again remove pathogens and solids before it is dumped into waterways. Because much of the nutrients get through the treatment plants, they contribute to the dead-zone phenomena by feeding huge algae blooms which die enmasse in oceans and are decomposed my organisms that use up oxygen in water, creating areas with oxygen levels too low for most organizms, forcing them to relocate or die.

But, the possibly more critical issue is that when these algae die, their bodies precipitate to the ocean floor, taking with them a critical element: phosphorus. Phosphorus is a key factor in soil fertility and, unlike carbon and nitrogen, is not available in the air. In industrial farming phosphorus it is taken from mines, mostly in Africa.

The point is that the simple act of human waste removal, as solved technologically, is highly dependent on vast networks of finite resources such as metal, fresh water, and plastic, and is aiding in the loss of the critical soil element, phosphorus.

But there are biological solutions that require far less infrastructure, use the self-renewing and self-organizing properties of nature, and turn what is deemed “waste” into an asset. One of those solutions uses a constructed wetland of plants, animals, and microbes to break down the waste. This is great when you have the space, but likely could not accommodate a city’s needs.

Another biological solution is the composting toilet. These vary from simple collection pots that are taken to another site to compost, to more complex ones that collect the methane from the waste and burn it for heat or electricity. This actually turns waste into an asset, but it requires a fair amount of space and complex systems.

I think we can do even better. The main problem with composting human waste for use in agriculture is that it takes years to compost it to a form where there is no longer a human health threat. But, this process can be greatly sped up with the use of an incredible organism: the black soldier fly. I will not go into lengthy detail about it, but the important facts are:

• The adult “fly” form does not eat, it just finds a mate, reproduces, and dies, so there is no “pest” factor
• The larval stage breaks down waste very quickly and destroys human pathogens
• The larval stage is “self-harvesting” meaning it will travel to a separate container for easy collection
• The larval stage is a clean, high in fat, and high in protein, making it good feed for chickens, fish, etc.
• Black soldier flies secrete hormones that actually repel house flies

The system could be an outhouse attached to the outside of the building it serves and with the entrance from within the building. This would make it so no flies would even need to be seen. Below the outhouse would be a concrete pit rimed with ramps for the mature larvae to climb up and into a collection container, attached to the outside of the outhouse, or to the ground to pupate and emerge as the next generation of adults. Because the system relies on flies that can’t take freezing weather, it would be best to enclose the outhouse in a greenhouse. This would also serve as the home to whatever fish or chickens the larvae were being fed to. This would also provide space to plant the bushes the adult flies use for habitat when finding a mate. To prevent adult flies from flying up the toilet opening a trap door type system would be used so after you do your business you would pull a lever and it would fall into the pit, then the door would close.

So there you go, a solution to human waste that:

• Has very few moving parts
• Uses no water and very little piping
• Keeps vital elements in the local ecosystem
• Provides food for animals which in turn provide food to people
• Has a small physical footprint and so could be used in most buildings
• Could be built and maintained for little or no money and with few resources
• Provides an all weather greenhouse space

The only thing left is to build and test it and hopefully that’s where you come in, readers! If anyone actually gives this a go, I would love to see the outcome.

One more thing: how this ties to the whole Occupy movement is that it allows us to be far less dependent on the economic system as we know it, and with less dependence comes more power to fight!

That’s all for now, so until next time dream on!

-The Daydreamer

T.C. Needs a New Steel Belt

 
I drive a lot. I don't just mean I have a long commute or run errands a lot by car, though 
those things are somewhat true, I drive for a living. Eight hours and about 200 miles a 
weekday plus another 40 miles round trip commute, to be more precise. And when I'm 
driving I often think about how I shouldn't have to; how my job makes very little sense 
in the grand scheme of things.

Why can't my clients, most of whom can't drive because of their disabilities, just take mass
transit? After all, most of them live walking distance to major roads and many of them are 
high functioning enough to ride mass transit alone or at least with assistance from a PCA.

But alas, the piss-poor excuse for a mass transit system that's been foisted upon the Metro 
can barely serve my clients, if at all. For example: a client that lives a short ten minute drive 
from the day center would need to take four different buses and spend over an hour to 
travel the same distance.

Now, I am not just trying to complain, but rather to look critically at the cause of this woefully 
inefficient system of transporting people without cars. 

To begin to see this puzzle clearly, look at a transit map of the Twin Cities. All those little 
lines snaking in towards the centers of Minneapolis and St. Paul kind of resemble a spider 
web, but something is missing. Without the circular strands connecting the radial strands 
together, a spider web would be far less unstable and likely fall apart in the wind. 

And I think that's about where we are at. Mass transit it fine if you are going to or from the 
down town areas, but nearly impossible to use for places in any other direction. What is 
needed is those circular strands.

What better place to start than the wide path that's already been laid out in the form of the 
494/694 beltway? This freeway is three lanes in either direction (though inexplicably drops 
to one at a busy merge) and has ample room, pretty much throughout, to widen the road to 
accommodate rail lines. 
Rail lines would be better than bus-ways for many reasons.
1. Because rail is a fundamentally different type of transit-way than roads, there would be little 
threat of a dedicated (separate from cars) lane to eventually be opened to cars, which would 
destroy the advantage of never yielding to car traffic.
2. Rails are more durable than road and would thusly need maintenance far less, saving 
money and materials.
3. Rails are safer because there is less chance of operator error, i.e. trains may be able to 
crash into other trains on the same track, but cannot steer into walls.

These rail lines could be put in the middle of the freeway (see picture below) so they would 
never have to cross on/off ramps, as buses do now when they use the shoulder at rush 
hour.

Trains would ride in the middle of the highway, though at ground level in my proposal

Many metro areas seem to think that railways should be elevated, but this is not necessary 
and very expensive, not least of which because it would put all the rails at odds with every 
overpass, forcing either a complete reconfiguration the overpasses, or the rail line to be 
elevated even higher at these crossings. Rails at ground level, quite literally, bypass these 
problems. 

Stops could be at the same roads where on/off ramps are now. This would be the most 
expensive and tricky part because it would be best to move from one center-of-the-road 
system to another. That means spaces in the middle of overpasses would need to be made 
to accommodate transit platforms and the stairs that join them. Where two highways 
intersect there could be transfer only platforms from one line to the other. It would look a lot 
like the bus stations in the middle of 35W, only they would come up through the middle of 
the overpass instead of the sides (and hopefully wouldn't cost $5 million per station, as the
35W stations cost).

A transfer platform between the 35W BRT and an overpass

After the 494/694 loop is completed, other lines along the other major highways could 
follow, then lines along the arterial roads (think Hennepin Ave. or Grand Ave.) that the 
highway lines link up with, and so on. The arterial lines would also be best in the center of 
streets because it would give the street cars the ability to turn right (think about how large 
trucks need to swing left, then right to make the turn, something rails could not 
accommodate). Parking or a lane would need to be sacrificed in both directions, but, since 
a street car can accommodate many more people per lane than cars can, the overall effect 
would be less traffic. Here's a good article that gives the basics on that point, though it is a 
few years old, I think the statistics still hold true: 
http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_lrt010.htm 

A streetcar line on an arterial road

Stops would be located every quarter mile, which is about at far as the average person is 
willing to walk to transportation, and there would also be stops at major destinations like 
libraries, community centers, etc. and stops when streetcar lines intersect. Stops would be 
raised platforms accessed by ramps, so that everyone, including people in wheelchairs, 
can enter and exit the bus without the need for stairs, reducing time spent at each stop.

Passengers would enter straight onto the streetcar

The most important aspect of the arterial road system would be dedicated right-of-ways 
(cars couldn't drive on the tracks) and pre-emption of traffic lights, meaning the streetcar 
conductor presses a button and the lights turn red for cars in all directions so the streetcar 
can pass without car interference. This feature would mean that, no matter the time of day, 
the streetcar would travel the length of the system at basically the same rate, making it the 
premiere way to get through traffic at rush-hour.

Just think of how much better this proposed system would be to the current one. Instead of 
having most transit lines go to and from the downtowns, the suburban cities would be 
linked much more efficiently. Instead of puzzling over the current routes that zigzag from road to road 
in an unintuitive way, routes would be straightforward and follow the same logic that 
roadway planning follows, meaning that if you can figure out how to get to a destination by 
car, you can figure out how to get there by streetcar.
One of the best things about an efficient, well planned mass transit system is that everyone 
benefits, even those that never use it and drive every day. If the system means that less 
people drive, then there will be: 

1. Fewer and shorter traffic jams
2. Less road work because of less wear on the roads, saving money, time, and even the 
lives of some road workers
3. Fewer dangerous drivers on the road like drunk or tired drivers and those whose vision, 
reaction time, or mental alertness is not good enough to keep driving.
4. A backup in case your car breaks down.
5. A safe way for disabled relatives to get around.
6. Better air quality.

Many of the ideas I am proposing may be hard to visualize, even with the photos I included. 
So I invite you to try and invision the things I am talking about next time you are driving or 
riding in a car; imagine a commuter train moving along down the center of the highway, 
a station's stairway coming up through the middle of an overpass, a streetcar line running 
along an arterial road, and, most importantly, imagine a mass transit system that's good 
enough that the average person actually wants to use it as much or mar than a car.

So until next time, dream on!
-The Daydreamer

 

3 Sisters for the New Millennium

Many Native North Americans used a system of farming that is commonly know as the 3 Sisters. It uses 3 important food plants together, corn, pole beans, and squash, to support each other and produce more food than each would on their own. The tall, strong corn stalk provides support for the twining pole bean, the pole bean fixes nitrogen in the soil that can be used by the other two plants, and the squash provides ground cover to keep moisture in the soil and keep weeds out.

So, with the final threat of frost past here in the North lands and the planting season upon us, my idea this time is a new version of the 3 Sisters. I have never had success growing corn. At best I’ve gotten a few puny ears that, while still tasty, were nothing to make me consider a future as a corn farmer. My luck with sunchokes however, has been quite the opposite. I have increased the yield year after year while still having plenty to harvest.

I should pause here a minute to explain what exactly a sunchoke is, since they are not very common American cuisine. The sunchoke (also called sunroot, or most commonly Jerusalem artichoke) is a native North American member of the same plant family as sunflowers, that produces a large potato like tuber that resembles a ginger root in size, shape, and color. The tubers can be eaten raw or cooked any way a potato can and taste much like potatoes.

The idea for the new 3 Sisters came to me while staking tomatoes. I love growing tomatoes, but they require a lot of time and energy to stake up each branch because the large fruits can often become too heavy and snap off the branches before they ripen. So I thought, “what if I could get nature to do this job for me?” I looked over to my tall, robust stand of sunchokes with pole beans twining up them. It seemed like a natural next step to use all three plants together.

To do this system first plant some sunchokes in a sunny spot. They will come up year after year even if you harvest all the tubers you can find, because any little bit of tuber will re-sprout the next year and they produce so many new tubers each year that you will never find them all. As an example of this: I planted four sunchoke tubers in a new spot last Spring and when I dug them up this Spring I found no less than 30! Anyway, back to the system.

Next, when the sunchokes start sprout, plant some tomato starts or seeds a few inches from the emerging plants. When the tomatoes flower, plant pole bean seeds on the side of the tomatoes opposite from the sunchokes. As they grow, they will first twine around the tomatoes and then around the taller sunchoke stalks and viola! an automatic tomato staking system provided by Mother Nature!

So in this system, the sunchokes serve as the support for the beans and, by extension, support for the tomatoes but, unlike corn or sunflowers, they are perennial and will grow back year after year in the same place, so no more setting stakes or planting seed each year. The beans again fertilize the soil in this system, but also hold the tomatoes up and, unlike twine or other fasteners, have some give to them and will not damage the tomato plant by rubbing the stems or breaking branches. The tomatoes provide shade for the roots of the other two plants and are much more sought after than squash.

So there you have it; my 3 Sisters for the new millennium! This system might be further enhanced by planting other companion crops for tomatoes nearby, like basil, marigold, mint, onion, or garlic.

I am sure there are many more systems like this that could be developed and I will certainly keep experimenting. If anyone that reads this tries my system, let me know how it turns out and if you have any questions.

That’s it for now, hopefully you are inspired to get out and plant something, there are few more rewarding experiences.

So until next time, dream on!

-The Daydreamer

No More Standing in the Street!

OK so I meant to have posted a long idea about a month ago about farming, but since I haven’t managed to assemble the right visual aids yet, and in the interest of not loosing all my writing momentum, I will instead give you a quick idea in the theme of my last post.

Pass virtually any bus stop with more than one person waiting and you will likely notice someone standing out in the street in front of stop, craning their neck and looking intently down the road. If you have pondered this curious behavior, ponder no more. Riding the bus can be frustrating for many reasons, and a big one is that buses, in general, are not what you would call a totally reliable form of transportation. They can come early, late, or not at all, and this uncertainty, combined with the frustration of not being able to do anything about it, causes many to get, well, antsy. And, in a desperate attempt to gain any shred of control over the situation, in the form of slightly sooner knowledge that the bus is in fact coming, many people stray out into the street and fixate on the farthest point they can see, as if they can will the bus to them.

But maybe there is something that can be done, something that might also save us from leaving too early the comfort of the warm building we are waiting in by the bus stop, or worse, leaving too late and resorting to the arm-flailing, desperate-yelling, transit rider’s dance of futility, as the bus lumbers by apathetically.

What is needed is a smartphone app, for both Android and iPhone, that shows from a map or satellite view exactly where the bus is. And not just the bus you are waiting for, but every bus, light rail car, etc. in the system, in real time, using the GPS trackers on each. It would be kind of like watching an ant farm, with little dots representing each bus or rail car scurrying along the transit corridors. And, going even further, each dot could be clicked on to get more info, such as if bus or rail car is broken down, an ETA of when it will arrive at its next stop or at you, a colored path of its entire route, etc.

With such an app we could minimize our time spent actually at the transit stop, arriving always just as the bus does. This app would give us the information the people standing in the street only dream of; information we can actually do something with.

I have an feeling this app may already be in the works, somewhere in the world on some app developer’s computer. I think this because there are precursors to it, at least for the iPhone. For the lucky denizens of San Francisco and Boston, there is an app that uses the GPS trackers on buses to estimate arrival times. Sadly, for iPhone users in other cities and Android users everywhere, it seems the best that can be done right now is an app that displays mass transit schedules, effectively no better than a bookmarked webpage. And though the average mass transit rider probable still doesn’t yet have a smart phone or the ability to buy one, the same was true of cell phones in general not 15 years ago.

So get crackin’ app developers! The easier and more stress-free riding mass transit is, the more people that will ride it.

So until next time, dream on!

-The Daydreamer

Massive Transit Needed

Mass transit in the Twin Cities sucks. It is awkwardly focused on entering and exiting Minneapolis and St. Paul, while ignoring potential high traffic routes that don’t include those two cities. And that’s just the beginning.

Anyone who’s ridden the bus system regularly has experienced at least three of the following things: tired bus drivers mumbling incoherent street names as they pass, buses that come half an hour late or worse, way too early, falling or bumping into other passengers as the driver slams on the breaks at every stop or swings wildly into traffic, routes that run once an hour if you’re lucky, buses that don’t stop where they are supposed to, routes that change often and without notice, being able to get out to a place with no easy way to get back, getting on route XXb when you really needed route XXc, unfriendly and unhelpful route planning operators, really the list goes on and on. Bottom line: riding a bus in the metro is an unpleasant experience.

But why is it this way? We used to have an excellent mass transit system in the metro in the form of the street car lines. But when they were scrapped and the buses foisted on us as a “modern” system, the experience of using mass transit went downhill and has been ever since and I have a few ideas why.

While at thanksgiving dinner this year I was talking with my uncle’s brother and the topic of mass transit came up. He mentioned that people tend to have no problem subsidizing the building and maintenance of ever lengthening and widening roads, none of which ever turn a profit or even pay for themselves, but when it comes to mass transit the systems are expected to pay for themselves through fare collection. But there’s no inherent need for mass transit to be profitable. It like roads, pays for itself in intangible ways; through getting people to the jobs that pay their taxes and give them money and the means to get to stores to buy the things they need, generating more taxes that help pay for the system.

This idea that mass transit shouldn’t have to entirely pay for itself was revelatory to me because it speaks to what is at the root of the problems with mass transit in the metro. I think the only explanation for the attitude my uncle’s brother described is that the car driving world, by and large, looks down on mass transit as a kind of “luxury for the poor.” That those that cannot or choose not to drive should feel lucky to have any system at all, let alone one that comes close to the ease and comfort of driving. So, by that logic, mass transit infrastructure should be limited to the bare minimum and cost the riders as much as is necessary to keep it from being all out welfare for the poor.

To illustrate this point, I used Metro Transit’s trip planner http://www.metrotransit.org/TripPlanner/Default.aspx to plan a trip from my house in Brooklyn Park to the Arbor Lakes shopping center in Maple Grove, the next city over. I planed my trip for morning rush hour and said I was willing to walk a mile to or from a bus stop, the maximum distance the program allows. To my surprise, Metro Transit said this trip, which I can easily drive on local roads in 20 minutes, was impossible. So I tried planing a trip to a coffee shop in St. Anthony, what would be maybe a 10 minute drive. Metro Transit thought two hours and sending me downtown first, seemed more reasonable. The distance I would cover would be more than double if I drove. And this is the general setup of our mass transit system. If you are in a suburb and you want to go down town during rush hour, no problem, anywhere or anytime else, you should plan for a two-hour trip or maybe just try biking instead.

This is a system, but is this right, or even just? I say no. Taxes pay for roads that for the most part are literally empty probably 80-90 percent of the time, yet mass transit riders are forced to pay upfront for a system that will often not get them where they need to go or get there in a timely manner.

But enough complaining about what’s wrong with the system. If you still don’t think our mass transit system is in dire need of an overhaul, just ride the bus to some place other than Minneapolis or St. Paul at off-peak hours, if your desired route is even possible, that is.

So now, lets move on to potential solutions to this mess. I’ll start with the small ideas and move to the more complex and far-reaching.

End peak and express fare rates.

Seriously, it makes absolutely no sense to entice people to use mass transit to commute only to charge them more for that option. Bus rates should be flat for all times and types, that alone would encourage more ridership, thereby easing congestion for those who still choose to drive.

Make mass transit a pleasant experience.

It doesn’t have to be a harrowing experience to ride the bus or rail system. The contrast right now between the express bus experience and the local bus experience is sharp. Express buses have comfortable seats, the drivers are friendly, helpful, and don’t slam on the brakes or jerk forward from a stop, nor do they swing violently in and out of traffic, it feels like your ridership is appreciated, too. Local drivers, all to often, are uncommunicative or only speak to yell at riders to stop one thing or another, they slam on the brakes and gas, swing in and out of traffic with little warning (which also sucks to drive behind), and in general more often than not your ridership seems like a burden on them. With a new customer service and PR campaign and better pay for drivers, I would think that the experience of riding mass transit could be as good as or even better than driving.

Consider a rail revival.

And not just light rail, which serves commuters well, but is impractical for local routes. Though streetcar lines are more expensive up front, they are cheaper to maintain because rail needs replacing far less often than road. They can more easily be made fully electric and, with rubberized wheels, can be made to be quieter than buses. The fixed nature of the routes may seem like a drawback, but they too have advantages. Because they are not as likely to be rerouted as buses, commercial enterprises can feel more secure in locating by their stops, knowing riders will be coming by for many years to come. They also stop right where they are in the lane, instead of swinging over like buses have to do, which can often lead to them partially blocking a lane of traffic and make it dangerous for drivers, as well as when they swing back into traffic. Using technology developed for personal rapid transit, as shown in the next picture, rail lines can be made electric without obtrusive  overhead wires.

As this illustration shows, the wheels of the streetcar could make contact with the rail below the surface of the road, which would be at the top of the enclosure. This would make it able to access the electricity without danger of exposure to people and would make it better able to handle conditions such as heavy snow.

Use transit platforms for every stop.

Pioneered by the city of Curitiba, Brazil, transit platforms speed the exiting and entering of buses/streetcars by having riders wait on elevated platforms at the grade of the bus/streetcar. When the bus/streetcar arrives, they walk straight on or off without having to climb stairs. Transit cards could be automatically vended in the platforms, like in light rail stations, for even more speed of use. Here are a couple of pictures to show what I’m talking about.

Though this would be a huge upfront cost in infrastructure, those seconds per stop saved not climbing stairs add up and not having to wait outside in the heat or cold would all entice more to ride and the cost would eventually be made up. I would also change the stairs to a ramp, to make it more wheelchair accessible.

Break the hub and spoke system.

It is good that many routes go from the suburbs to Minneapolis/St. Paul, but the other cities should be served well, too. Highways, too, mostly focus on the Twin Cities, but innumerable local arterial roads link neighboring suburbs, too. I have made a google map with potential routes for streetcar lines. This is just a small sampling of what’s possible for routes and transit hubs, which I will discuss later. I invite you to follow along even one of the longer routes and take note of how your sense of interconnectedness between the parts of the metro might change if streetcar routes physically connected them. I apologize that the map is on two pages, I can’t for the life of me figure how to make them overlay.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=214248013548505685973.000496d9bb62a1f170425

So the streetcar routes would be basically along local arterial roads, with commuter rail lines along the highways. This would create local and express routes along the same routes that cars use for each purpose.

My final idea, which could make mass transit the most attractive option, is use mixed-use transit hubs.

Instead of having just a few standalone transit centers scattered randomly throughout the metro, they would be located, whenever possible, at the intersection of any two transit lines. Commercial space would be built on the ground level with apartments above, situated around opposite street corners. Transit platforms would be located in the boulevards next to the buildings. Many of the natural places these hubs would be are currently inhabited by dying strip malls or gas stations. Putting in these hubs in their place would be great way to reclaim these current or soon to be brownfields and redevelop them into something that is an asset to the local communities. Since most of the spaces these hubs would be on are mostly parking lot, buildings would not often need to be torn down. And as long as the spaces are being excavated for foundations, parking could be below ground, creating inviting park and ride scenarios, sheltered parking for building residents and customers, and saving above ground space for things like parks, which could even be enclosed in greenhouses for year-round use as gardens/farms/parks.

To better show what I mean, I have drawn a few pictures. The first three are overlays of what would go in place of existing structures, the last is a perspective drawing of a transit hub (please excuse my MS Paint skills, the squiggles are supposed to be snow banks and the holes in each end of the building are supposed to be the entrance and exit for below ground parking).

These hubs would make transit-oriented development possible whether buses or streetcars are used. The built-in clientele of the apartments would make businesses more likely to locate there and, along with the investment in transit platforms, would make it more likely that mass transit lines would intersect at the hubs for the foreseeable future. This decentralization of retail and other commercial space would serve suburban communities in ways strip malls never could.

If mass transit is to be a serious, viable option in the Twin Cities metro and not just a conciliatory bone thrown to the poor and eco-conscious, a substantial investment must be made in its physical and social infrastructure. Transportation in this day and age is a basic human right. The poor and otherwise car-less deserve the same access to parks, entertainment, jobs, and everything else, as is enjoyed by those fortunate enough to own a car.

And now I invite your feedback. Tell me what didn’t make sense, what you would change, or what made you laugh/think/cry/fume with rage. I promise I’ll respond.

So until next time,

Dream on!,

The Daydreamer