Transportation Choices Forum:
Unquestioned answer underscores
gaps in "Smart Growth" smarts
March 30, 2008Much of the information presented by visiting experts during the Transportation Choices Forum on March 28 wasn't especially new to local policy makers and civic leaders. That's good, because it means that some of the key ideas of Smart Growth are well established in local discourse, and to some degree in policy. But the forum also underscored some ideas and insights that have not been widely grasped hereabouts. Maybe now they'll start to gain some traction.
The aim of the forum, organized by transportation consultant Bill Barker, was to show how the coordination of transportation and land-use planning can reduce the need for driving and thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reliance on a finite supply of oil. The forum was co-sponsored by the city of San Antonio, Bexar County, VIA Metropolitan Transit and the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Barker formerly was VIA's transportation planner and point man in its failed bid for voter support of a proposed light-rail system.
The wide sponsorship and the participation of high-level political figures -- County Judge Nelson Wolff, County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson, two San Antonio City Council members, Mayor Chris Riey of sprawlacious Leon Valley and State Rep. David Leibowitz -- indicates wide public understanding that sprawl forces people to drive more, use more gasoline and produce more pollution than compact, walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods that are well served by mass transit.
"Density" and "mixed use" are no longer quite the dirty words they used to be. The city of San Antonio, whose policies since the mid-1960s had been determinedly pro-sprawl, partially repented in 2002 by adopting a development code that at least allowed the creation of walkable, compact, mixed-use neighborhoods. San Antonio has actively promoted central-city infill and reinvestment, most notably in the River North initiative. The suburban city of Windcrest, in collaboration with private developers and the city of San Antonio, has even begun to look at reconfiguring suburban space on urban lines. Our planning is no longer in the Dark Ages.
A tangential aspect of the forum, however, illuminated how unilluminated we remain. Several attendees were opponents of the Texas Department of Transportation's proposal to add toll lanes to eight miles of US 281 north of Loop 1604, and these activists injected the issue into the discussion. That's fine, but it was curious that the talk about US 281 did not advance beyond the question of whether additional lanes should be tolled or free. The missing question: Should they be built at all? Are there ways to reduce the growth in demand for driving on US 281 so that we don't have to increase the supply of roadway, or not increase it so much?
Michael Replogle, transportation director of the Environmental Defense Fund, outlined the "expanding toolbox" of alternatives to road expansions. Some might be applicable to US 281, including bus rapid transit and "real-time traffic operation management and monitoring" to keep existing lanes moving as freely as possible.
Although much of the US 281 corridor has already been built out according to the old sprawl model, pushing traffic onto the highway, there remain some opportunities to insert small retail centers or mixed-use, transit-friendly nodes to capture more trips within the predominantly residential off-highway street networks. There may be opportunities for more street connections between now-insular subdivisions.
One unfortunate byproduct of the zoning code and suburban developer practice has been economic segregation. What does that have to do with traffic on US 281? Maybe quite a lot: Most of the businesses and institutions in the US 281 corridor depend on workers who must commute on US 281 because they can't find affordable housing nearby, with street connections to their jobs. More generally, the absence of affordable housing from most new development in the job-heavy US 281 and I-10 corridors forces many workers to drive long distances on the freeways.
Compact, walkable, mixed-use projects are coming into vogue -- rightly so -- but they aren't the answer to growth in vehicle miles traveled unless affordable housing is included in the mix. Over on the I-10 corridor, the 120-acre éilan, which proclaims itself a "self-sustaining/LEED certified" mixed-use project, is to include 1,400 apartments. The developer has described those units as "so high-end that you can't compare them to regular apartments in the area." How "self-sustaining" can éilan be if its luxury hotel and upscale restaurants are staffed by workers who have to drive from many miles away? Should such a project be eligible for LEED certification?
In that connection, Reid Ewing of the National Center for Smart Growth asked an innocent but incendiary question: "Do you have inclusionary zoning?" That's a type of local ordinance requiring that some percentage of the residences in new projects be affordable to people of low or moderate income. No, we don't have inclusionary zoning (except for a few specific projects on public land), and we won't as long as the myth that mixed incomes depress property values remains unchallenged.
Replogle addressed the toll issue briefly, though not in a way that toll opponents would have liked. Where tolled and free lanes share the same right-of-way, he said, the tolled lanes allow more vehicles to move more quickly than the free lanes do. "Why not put a toll on the existing lanes?" He added a caveat: Toll roads can be beneficial if the toll revenues are used to build transit rather than more roads. That's not likely any time soon in Texas. Forum speaker Lyndon Henry of Austin's Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority was not off the mark when he described the state's toll-road plans as "concessions to those characters who are the new robber-barons."
Mike
Greenberg
