The abuse, misuse and absence of motor vehicle regulation and the problem of politics

It's been a bit over a week since Anita Kurmann was killed in a crash with a turning truck that then drove off without stopping. Few details are available but there are two things that we can be certain about: first that it is a terrible tragedy, and second that little to nothing will be done to prevent such tragedies in the future. There are possible alleviating measures that exist and could be required by proper regulation, including truck side-guards, or restrictions on the size, weight, number of axles, and length of trucks that are allowed on certain city streets. Our public street rights-of-way were laid out long before the concept of a 5-axle, 40 ton, 53-foot long truck was ever conceived. And it is difficult to imagine how a human-friendly environment could ever be compatible with such behemoths.

Although technically receiving more oversight than the personal car, the trucking industry is remarkably regulation-free compared to other transportation sectors. No other form of transportation allows size, weight and maneuverability concerns to be so radically dismissed in the same way. Air traffic control would never allow an oversized jumbo jet to land at a tiny airport. Railroad companies would never tolerate oversized freight cars that slammed into bridge abutments. Yet, for some reason, when it comes to the road, we simply shrug when oversized trucks cause death and destruction on a daily basis. It is curiously ironic that city planners have spent the past century meticulously separating people's homes away from industry, but still continue to design extremely dangerous, high-speed roads carrying heavy industrial truck traffic right next to those very same homes.

When it comes to regulation of motor vehicles, all the furor seems to focus around taxicabs vs Uber, where the regulations have no safety purpose, but are just one piece of a tug-of-war between the few dirty 1970s-style dirtbags who run the taxicab business and the slick B-school douchebags who run Uber. And when it's not about profits, it's about traffic speeds, because the only thing, besides money, that seems matter to people in power is convenience for suburban drivers. Such regulation has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with privileging the powerful. Meanwhile, some drivers manage to keep their license long enough to score four OUI offenses and kill someone. Or even when the police determine that a driver is an "immediate threat" the antiquated system cannot process the paperwork in time to prevent him from killing. Those are some real examples of problems that could be fixed with proper rules, procedures and regulations. I wonder if it will ever happen.

The trouble is, of course, that regulations are not created solely based upon merit in achieving objective goals such as safety. Regulations are a product of politics, a swirling morass of money, culture, personal vendettas, and tribalism. 149 people were killed by motor vehicle crashes in the first 6 months of this year. But no politician is going to be held accountable for that carnage. Few voters even spend much time thinking about it. So the perverse story doesn't change from year to year. I won't pretend to have an answer, but I will note that if the problem is politics, then the solution has to be too.

The subversion of fair housing law by pernicious zoning ordinances, part 2

[continued from part 1]

Massachusetts has, in the past, attempted to address the problem of snobbish, exclusionary zoning. The section of law known as Chapter 40B was passed in 1969:

This law was seen as one of the earliest recognitions of the racial and economic segregation often imposed by exclusionary zoning practices such as minimum lot sizes and bans on multi-family housing. The purpose of the law is to “address the shortage of low and moderate income housing in Massachusetts and to reduce regulatory barriers that impede the development of such housing.” 

Often referred to as the “Anti-Snob Zoning Law,” the “Comprehensive Permit Law” and the “Massachusetts Affordable Housing Law,” Chapter 40B is seen as a “one-stop” permitting process for developers proposing low and moderate-income housing projects. Rather than applying to many local boards, the developer applies for a “comprehensive permit” to one local authority—the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA). 

Chapter 40B is significant in that it was one of the first instances in which a state exerted authority over local control in land use zoning.4 Therein also lays its controversy. Under 40B, a developer has the right to appeal to the state Housing Appeals Committee (HAC) if it is denied a comprehensive permit for a qualified project, or if it is granted one with conditions making the project uneconomic. Under 40B, ZBAs are able to approve projects with higher density than current zoning allows, making it more economically feasible to develop affordable housing.

Chapter 40B only applies to municipalities that have less than 10% of their housing stock designated as 'affordable', and it does not apply to Boston at all (due to the Boston Redevelopment Authority). It's success has been limited: 48,000 units were created from 1969 through 2008, of which 26,000 were designated as affordable. That's an average of 1,230 units per year, or 666 affordable per year -- far lower than the demand. And only 55 municipalities (of 350) had met the 10% requirement after nearly 40 years of the law.

The law happened to go into effect not long prior to Boston's school busing crisis, an era that exacerbated the divide between city and suburb, as 'white flight' brought many new residents to the suburban towns, eager to shut the door behind them as they arrived. From Common Ground:

Indeed, barely a month after Garrity’s ruling on the constitutional violation, the Supreme Court effectively cut off one possible avenue of remedy. In Milliken v. Bradley, it over-ruled a district court which had required cross-busing between Detroit and its surrounding suburbs. Since the lower court had found de jure segregation only within the city and not in the suburbs, the Supreme Court held that a metropolitan-wide order “would impose on the outlying districts, not shown to have committed any constitutional violation, a wholly impermissible remedy.” Milliken marked an important turning point in the Court’s approach to school segregation. Albeit by the narrowest margin (5–4) in any major school case yet, the Court halted the advance of school desegregation at the city line. Although many students of the matter believed a clear pattern of “state action” could be detected in the suburbs—notably in government housing loans and highway construction policies which operated to keep them predominantly white—the increasingly conservative Court majority declined to push its broadened doctrine of de jure segregation that far.

The anti-busing protesters could no longer maintain segregated schools in the city; instead, they moved to the surrounding towns where they could promote segregation through the use of regulatory tools such as zoning codes. The borders of municipalities acted as effectively as segregated neighborhood boundaries had before. Since then, a common complaint of town NIMBYs opposed to residential development is that it might bring 'too many' students to the public school system, thereby 'overwhelming' it. Such 'pseudo-engineering' of the school system by laypeople -- as if they were engineers designing a waterworks -- is more likely to be a cover story for their true motivation: the exclusion of people unlike themselves. And this effect may partially explain why the Chapter 40B requirements have not been met by the majority of towns in the Commonwealth, even after nearly half a century has passed.

The subversion of fair housing law by pernicious zoning ordinances, part 1

I'm not a religious person but I think there is genuine evil in this world. And one of those evils is the persistence of segregation fifty years after the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

2010 Census Block Data showing distribution of population by race in Boston (source)

One of the more important Supreme Court decisions of the year was handed down last month. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. ruled that 'disparate-impact' claims are valid under the Fair Housing Act of 1968. This ruling ensures that an important tool in the fair housing toolbox continues to be usable: the notion of 'disparate-impact', or that government policies can have an unstated yet implicit racially-biased effect.

The Inclusive Communities Project brought suit over how the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs distributes tax credits for low-income housing. The Department’s policy, the group claimed, causes almost all affordable units to be built in racially segregated low-income areas, providing minorities with few opportunities to move to integrated or wealthier areas. Though the creators of the tax credit policy had no racial intent, according to the Inclusive Communities Project the results of the policy confined minorities to segregated areas.

From the opinion:

Recognition of disparate-impact claims is consistent with the FHA’s central purpose. See Smith, supra, at 235 (plurality opinion); Griggs, 401 U. S., at 432. The FHA, like Title VII and the ADEA, was enacted to eradicate discriminatory practices within a sector of our Nation’s economy. See 42 U. S.  C. §3601 (“It is the policy of the United States to provide, within constitutional limitations, for fair housing throughout the United States”); H.  R.  Rep., at 15 (explaining the FHA “provides a clear national policy against discrimination in housing”).  These unlawful practices include zoning laws and other housing restrictions that function unfairly to exclude minorities from certain neighborhoods without any sufficient justification. Suits targeting such practices reside at the heartland of disparate-impact liability. See, e.g., Huntington, 488 U. S., at 16–18 (invalidating zoning law preventing construction of multifamily rental units); Black Jack, 508 F. 2d, at 1182–1188 (invalidating ordinance prohibiting construction of new multifamily dwellings); Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center v. St.  Bernard Parish, 641 F.  Supp. 2d 563, 569, 577–578 (ED La. 2009) (invalidating post-Hurricane Katrina ordinance restricting the rental of housing units to only “‘blood relative[s]’” in an area of the city that was 88.3% white and 7.6% black); see also Tr. of Oral Arg. 52–53 (discussing these cases). The availability of disparate-impact liability, furthermore, has allowed private developers to vindicate the FHA’s objectives and to protect their property rights by stopping municipalities from enforcing arbitrary and, in practice, discriminatory ordinances barring the construction of certain types of housing units. See, e.g., Huntington, supra, at 18. Recognition of disparate impact liability under the FHA also plays a role in uncovering discriminatory intent: It permits plaintiffs to counteract unconscious prejudices and disguised animus that escape easy classification as disparate treatment. In this way disparate-impact liability may prevent segregated housing patterns that might otherwise result from covert and illicit stereotyping.

This is an important ruling if and only if the Federal government backs it up by strengthening and enforcing the regulations based on the Fair Housing Act. Unfortunately, over the past four decades, successive administrations including the current one have largely done nothing or acted to undercut the law. That might change now, with the Supreme Court's fresh ruling.

This is significant if it is used to reverse some of the most pernicious and widespread zoning code techniques that effectively cause economic and racial segregation through disparate-impact. Zoning has long been about exclusion, even continuing after explicitly racial zoning was struck down by the courts. From Dead End, a book about the history and effect of sprawl, by Benjamin Ross:

[Euclid v Ambler, 1926] moved quickly beyond the specifics of Ambler’s property; from the beginning, the principle of zoning was at stake. And the main principle was the exclusion of people, the people who lived in apartment houses. “In the last analysis,” Judge Westenhaver wrote perceptively in his opinion, “the result to be accomplished is to classify the population and to segregate them according to their income or situation in life.” The Supreme Court saw the issue similarly. The village’s power to keep out factories was not really in doubt, it observed: “The serious question in the case arises over the provisions of the ordinance excluding from residential districts apartment houses, business houses, retail stores and shops, and other like establishments.”

And The Racial Origins of Zoning in American Cities:

"What began as a means of improving the blighted physical environment in which people lived and worked," writes Yale Rabin, became "a mechanism for protecting property values and excluding the undesirables." The two interest groups that were regarded as the undesirables were immigrants and African Americans.

While instances of explicit racial exclusion through zoning and restrictive covenants are generally overturned by the courts, that has not been the primary mechanism through which segregation is created and maintained. Instead, the racially biased effect is engineered through neutral-seeming zoning codes that provide an aura of plausible deniability. For example, a zoning code might mandate a minimum lot size, such as a quarter-acre, for construction of housing, while forbidding anything larger than a single-family home to be built. None of the language used has any explicit mention of race or class, but the net effect is to restrict residency on that property for only a single family capable of affording a quarter-acre of land. In any reasonably attractive neighborhood, the price of that 10,860 square feet of land is beyond the reach of low- or middle-income families, thus effectively excluding all but the wealthy.

That is not the only type of regulation that is used to make land and housing unaffordable. For example, onerous requirements for front yard, back yard, and side yard ensure that only those people wealthy enough to afford 'conspicuous waste' can live there. Minimum parking quotas force residents to pay for parking spaces whether they use them or not. And, most infamously, the prohibition against apartments or multi-family housing in many zones makes it impossible to divide the cost among several families. Generally, the net effect of these regulations is either implicitly or explicitly intended to lower density. One glance at the population distribution map above should confirm that there is more than a passing correlation between 'low density' and 'overwhelmingly white'. That is disparate-impact at work: it is subtle in the wording of zoning codes, but the net effect over time is clear. The question now is: will the government begin to tackle the inequities created by local zoning codes? And how?

[continued in part 2]

False pretexts: motorists only pretend to care about ambulances when doing so happens to be convenient

Two bits of news hit recently that may seem unrelated, at first: Lawmakers seek crackdown on highway protests:

Rep. Colleen Garry, a Democrat from Dracut, proposed making it a felony to block highways. She told the Lowell Sun she was furious about the Thursday morning protests that blocked two sections of the heavily traveled highway through Boston, one north of the city and one south.

"I'm just outraged that people would be that reckless," Garry said. "Everyone has a right to protest, but to do that kind of thing in a highway or a roadway?" [...]

Nearly 30 protesters were arrested and arraigned on charges including trespassing, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and willfully obstructing an emergency vehicle.

State police said an ambulance transporting a seriously injured car crash victim to a Boston hospital was forced to divert to a hospital outside the city that did not have a trauma unit. The man survived. 

State Sen. Richard Ross, a Wrentham Republican, filed legislation that would impose a minimum $5,000 fine and allow a jail sentence of up to six months for willfully trespassing on state highways. Current law allows for a maximum $50 fine and a jail term of no more than three months.

And the same week, State to propose opening S. Boston Bypass Road to all drivers:

State transportation officials will file a notice in February with Massachusetts environmental regulators to allow cars coming into South Boston to use the Bypass Road, which is currently restricted to trucks and other commercial vehicles. The pilot program would last six months and could begin as soon as March. [...] 

The 1.1-mile road was built to accommodate trucks during the construction of the Central Artery, and when the tunnels were done, the road remained restricted. But as traffic becomes heavier in the fast-growing Seaport District, there has been pressure to open up the road to everyone. [...]

As part of its filing, the state will also propose letting all drivers use the high-occupancy vehicle lanes outside of South Station and the South End.

These two pieces of news are, in fact, related: because together they illustrate the hypocrisy and insincerity of our Commonwealth's transportation policy with regard to emergency vehicles. If our elected officials truly cared about emergency vehicle response time -- which they should -- then they would put a quick end to this proposal that will destroy the efficacy of both the South Boston Bypass Road as well as the HOV lanes outside of the South End. If not, then it is quite clear that these politicians, Rick Ross and Colleen Garry, are merely posturing and mouthing platitudes, all while silently sticking it to emergency responders. By far the most common obstacle for emergency vehicles on our roads is not protesters: on a daily basis, emergency vehicles are obstructed by other motorists and the traffic jams created by motor vehicles.

First, a little background: it is quite common for ordinary motorists to believe that the exact same facilities that enable their own travel at high speeds are also beneficial to emergency vehicles. A related objection to certain traffic-calming measures is that they will slow emergency response. However, in reality, the truth is much more complex and requires context-specific analysis. More car capacity might help emergency vehicle response time, under some circumstances. In other scenarios, additional car capacity might harm emergency vehicle response time. An additional, open, free-flowing lane can help emergency vehicles -- but if that same lane jams up with private automobiles then that lane just becomes an obstacle: an overall detriment to response times. In that scenario, removal of a jammed travel lane -- a reduction in car capacity -- can give emergency vehicles the maneuvering room they need in order to avoid the obstacle created by other motorists.

BU Bridge under renovation (source)

The BU Bridge renovation project gives a prime example of how removal of a lane can help emergency vehicles. The engineers behind this project understood that the prior existing condition of having four substandard travel lanes (with no shoulders) was unsafe and liable to create immovable jams at a crucial choke-point for emergency vehicles traveling between Boston and Cambridge. Therefore, they chose to eliminate a lane and reallocated its space into a pair of 5-foot shoulders on either side of the motorway. These shoulders are not intended for motor vehicle travel but they do provide a space for other vehicles to pull over while yielding to an emergency vehicle. In addition, they provide breakdown space to help recover from crashes or other incidents. They also serve as a continuation of the bike lanes coming from Boston. All-in-all, a fairly solid engineering compromise, considering that the intersections on both sides of the river need substantial renovation and rethinking.

But none of those safety issues were important to motorists such as Stanley Spiegel, who was quoted in the Boston Globe, in February of 2009, making this threat:

"There's going to be road rage," predicted Stanley Spiegel, who lives across the bridge in Brookline. "If you're going to spend public money to go for an improvement, you don't predictably make things worse.

This kind of attitude shows zero concern for the safety of anyone else, but it is sadly all too common among entitled motorists of Mr. Spiegel's ilk. Whenever safety or emergency response goals conflict with increased car capacity, we can see quite clearly where motorists like him stand. Thankfully, in the case of the BU Bridge thus far, MassDOT has not capitulated to the bullies who would remove the shoulder space and turn it back into a fourth congested travel lane.

The South Boston Bypass Road (source)

The South Boston Bypass Road was assembled out of a narrow right-of-way for the purpose of helping the industries along the waterfront thrive during the Big Dig. It also keeps a bunch of heavy trucks off of the regular city streets, and it provides a clear lane of travel for emergency vehicles operating between the South Boston Waterfront and South Bay. As you can see from this picture, the shoulders are fairly small: they seem to vary from 2-4 feet. It's not a road designed for high volumes of traveling vehicles. As a result, heavy traffic induced on this road could result in jam-ups that would be impassable for emergency vehicles.

For a number of years, pundits such as Shirley Leung have been campaigning to allow private cars on it. She has quoted old-school 'highwaymen', such as Frank DePaola (who coincidentally is the interim Secretary of Transportation right now), with statements like this: "If you have traffic, and you want to relieve it, you have to find road capacity." As a result of this kind of short-sighted thinking, the South Boston Bypass Road will be jammed up with private cars and will not be able to serve its former purposes any longer. And it goes to show, that when the political push comes to shove, concerns about emergency vehicles suddenly disappear, in favor of a temporary band-aid covering up much deeper, systemic problems with South Boston transportation.

HOV lanes are also a popular target of attack by privileged motorists. It's so common that it's even got a name: the "Empty Lanes Attack", so called because drivers will often claim that the HOV lanes are "mostly empty" or not being used, and therefore should be given over to single-occupancy vehicles. What they (intentionally) fail to realize is that the relative emptiness is what gives the HOV lane its value: it is passable. If it were congested, then it would not be useful. Too bad, then, that even our Boston MPO doesn't seem to understand that most basic of concepts. And because such lanes are designed not to be congested, they are also useful for emergency vehicles that need to bypass major traffic congestion. Thus, the proposal to 'open' the HOV lanes outside of South Station to general traffic will result in degradation of emergency response times.

Where is the outrage? Why, of course there is none: because motorists only pretend to care about ambulances when doing so happens to be convenient. The "Empty Lanes Attack" trumps their false concern about emergency vehicles: the allure of additional single-occupancy vehicle road capacity takes precedence over safety principles.

If officials really cared about emergency response times, then I-93 would have full-width shoulders and/or HOV facilities/zipper lanes extended all the way from end-to-end: taking existing lane space where necessary. It's the only responsible way. But, in fact, the current configuration of the highway that excludes such safety features from much of its length, especially where most constrained. This shows where the true priorities lie: always pushing for 8 lanes of general travel no matter what the consequences are to emergency vehicles or highway safety. Convenience for drivers of single-occupancy vehicles is more important than safety, to our decision-makers.

The fact is that it's easy for officials to claim that they care about emergency vehicle response times when doing so also means more capacity for drivers. But real courage would be shown by officials who show that they care about emergency response even when it's not politically convenient to do so. That means support for restricted lanes such as HOV or bus lanes. That means supporting safety features within the existing right-of-way of roads, without requiring costly expansion. And that means not playing these insincere political games in which 'concern' for safety only arises when it is useful for pursuing another agenda; when that same 'concern' suddenly vanishes the moment it is no longer useful.

Thoughts on Question 1 and transportation funding in general

It's been a few weeks since the November elections, so I'm chiming in a bit late, but there's no real hurry. There weren't really any surprises with the state-wide office elections, and I don't know how that will all shake out in the new year when the new officials take office. But the success of Question 1 was a bit of a surprise to me. Part of that is the almost complete unreliability of polling on such questions. But also because Question 1 was so obviously a "Tea Party temper tantrum" that I figured Massachusetts voters would see through it.

In the past year, the legislature had finally taken some responsibility for transportation funding -- after twenty years of denial. They raised the gasoline excise tax by 3 cents, not enough to make up for the value lost through inflation, but something. And more importantly, they arranged an "indexing mechanism" that would ensure that we would not suffer through another twenty year period of fiscal farce. The "indexing mechanism" would keep the value of the excise tax steady over the years, ensuring that the regular effect of inflation would not become a source of de facto tax cuts.

Question 1 repealed the "indexing mechanism", thereby spurning the fiscally responsible step taken by the state legislature. Therefore, the gasoline tax will, in effect, receive an automatic tax cut every year going forward, again. Voters here have rejected irresponsible tax cuts in the past, so it's a bit of a head-scratcher, but hopefully not a trend-setter. In any case, if you are ever in conversation with a voter who claims to be "fiscally responsible" ask them if they voted for Question 1: if so, you can safely call them a hypocrite.

So what happens now? Well, the legislature is going to have to scramble a bit to find funding for some things. There are still plenty of failing bridges, potholes aren't going away, the T has 45-year-old subway cars that can't go without replacement, and buses have to be replaced on a regular schedule. It appears that the latter two are not in danger, and neither is the important Green Line Extension project through Somerville. But funding for everything else is questionable. That includes part of the cost of the Allston Interchange project that will replace the failing riverfront viaduct of the Mass Pike and reshape the area, fixing many of the problems that the existing highway afflicts on the neighborhood. There's the River Street and Western Ave bridges, which are crumbling. And several hundred other overpass and bridge repair or replacement projects that I could scarcely begin to enumerate. Roads ain't free, despite the feverishly held beliefs of the mostly suburban, mostly automobile-dependent voters who forced Question 1 on us.

Meanwhile, MBTA bus and train fares are virtually guaranteed to go up by about 5% every two years. Somehow, once again, public transit riders have been left holding the short straw, while drivers continue to reap steadily increasing subsidies in the form of inflation-driven gas tax cuts. Funny how that always seems to happen.

Paul McMorrow has suggested that we should adopt the idea of regionally-based taxes to pay for transportation projects. Ballot questions enacting regional sales or payroll taxes are popular in many western states. But it's not constitutional in Massachusetts, so this would require some fancy footwork or a change. And there's a bigger problem: we will end up with a system where transit projects are funded via additional regional taxes, while highway builders get to keep helping themselves from the general fund. Not a good dynamic. If Boston is forced to tax itself just to keep the MBTA running, then why should Boston subsidize highways in central and western Massachusetts? Either all transportation projects should be considered regionally, or none at all -- because we're all in this together.

For a few ideas to consider, check out the report last month from the Urban Institute about how the various states are handling the gas tax. Some have indexed the price in various ways to the going wholesale price of gasoline, which is one way to simulate a percentage-based tax like sales taxes. Oregon and Virginia are piloting a major reform that replaces gas taxes with vehicle-miles-traveled taxes. This is thought to better represent the cost to society of operating a vehicle on the public ways. The Federal government has also floated the idea of allowing tolling to be used on interstate highways (where it was not grandfathered). Tolling would be a fair way to obtain funding for highways, the counterpart of paying a fare to ride a train or bus. Used properly, it would also have the benefit of actually reducing congestion: with automated electronic tolling it's hassle-free, and part of the proceeds can be used to fund really good public transportation for people who don't or can't drive.

Here's a reform package I've been thinking about:

• Apply sales tax to gasoline. Right now, gas is exempt from the sales tax, which is a hugely regressive subsidy to drivers at the expense of lower-income families. If we were to instead apply the sales tax to gasoline, then the overall rate could be lowered, so that other goods and products that everyone buys would not be subsidizing gasoline (at least, not as much). This could be designed in such a way that any increase in cost for gasoline would be made up for by decreased cost in everything else.
• Change the purpose of the gasoline excise tax: instead of funding transportation, an excise tax on gasoline should fund clean-up of the pollution caused by gasoline usage, and also public health efforts to mitigate the damage to human health caused by gasoline usage. The rate of the gas tax would be set at the level needed to achieve these public health goals, which include the Healthy Transportation Directive and the Mode Shift Goal.
• Other excise taxes should go into the general fund.
• Transportation should be funded out of the general fund based on the merits and cost-effectiveness of each project in question. Such projects should have to compete with other worthy projects in other departments, such as schools, housing assistance, health care, and yes, even tax cuts.
• Ridiculously bad boondoggles such as South Coast Rail, which is expected to cost the state over $500,000 per projected rider, should be discarded until somebody finds a way to get the costs under control.
• All congested highways should be outfitted with variable, automated, electronic tolling. The tolls would vary from free (when there is little demand) up to whatever amount is required to clear out congestion at that time of day. The precise formula would have to be carefully designed in order to avoid surprising people. The revenue from the tolls can be used in several ways, and there is a reasonable argument that some of it should be used to ease the regressive effect of the tolls. Part can go to boosting public transportation capacity and frequency along the corridor, making it a real, serious option for many more people. This has the nice side effect of bringing the benefit of the transportation infrastructure to the many people who cannot drive, for whatever reason. Another part can go towards income tax relief for the low-income users of the highway who still need to drive. The rest should go into the general fund.
• End all parking subsidies. That includes the minimum parking quotas found poisoning most zoning codes. The authority to impose such quotas, which are an intrusion on private property rights, comes from enabling legislation in the General laws, so it should be possible to retract that authority at the state level. Minimum parking quotas waste land, destroy healthy environments, raise housing prices, and, in general, these kinds of subsidies help cause traffic congestion. It's hard to imagine a more self-destructive set of regulations.

Does this package have a chance of ever passing? I doubt it. There's too much powerful, vested interest in the status quo. As we saw with Question 1, people don't like it when you end their subsidies, even if they are really harmful, self-destructive subsidies that cost the rest of us dearly.

I'd be interested to hear other people's ideas about transportation funding reform.

What does the election of Marty Walsh mean for walking in Boston?

The most significant local Boston election of my adult lifetime, to date, has come and gone. The new mayor will be Marty Walsh. So let's take a look at some of the things he said in forums and questionnaires gone by:

With one exception, I thought that his response to the Transportation Forum questionnaire was pretty good:

To me, livability means the ability to leave your house and have things to do outside. In my neighborhood in Savin Hill, I can go out and walk down my street feeling safe knowing that a few minutes away I have a park or coffee shop to go to or a T station that can take me into town. Livability means access to things that make life enjoyable, like amenities, recreation and transportation, among others. This city has so much to offer and we need to make all of those offerings accessible to everyone.

Simple and clear. And something that he has lived. Boston will have a mayor who lives in a walkable neighborhood, within 5 minutes of a rapid transit station.

[...] "Walk audits" performed by advocates are a good mechanism for getting concrete details about the safety, spacing, and timing of our street intersections and traffic signals, among other details. Boston's transportation planning should not only incorporate, but actively solicit this level of feedback. In addition to holding regular community meetings around planning, and scheduled walks, we can market and develop the city's digital tools to ensure that transportation input is easy, detailed, documented, and sufficient. Boston's next mayor can build a safer city where residents feel comfortable in their own communities. Meeting the needs of walkers throughout all areas of the city is important for many reasons. We need to make sure pedestrians are safe everywhere. Boston's Complete Streets is doing great work around making the streets safe for everyone.

[...] I think a Boston Walks Director is a good idea. However, that person will need to focus on the whole city and not just Downtown. It is a big task but I believe pedestrians will have a much easier time under my Administration.

If he follows through on this idea of "walk audits" and continues to support the Boston Complete Streets effort, then I think we are in pretty good shape. And he is right that a Boston Walks Director should focus on the entire city.

I would work with the MBTA to explore dedicated bus lanes on high-density, underserved routes and work to implement an Urban Ring service. I would also work to reach out, listen to, and incorporate the ideas of Bostonians in all transportation planning. This can be accomplished through annual neighborhood meetings with the Mayor and regular communication with residents through Little City Halls. I would also add targeted outreach to non-English speakers and communities of color to make sure all Bostonians are being heard. I would also make it easy for people to comment on transit problems through platforms like Citizen's Connect, mobile apps, and other technological means. Things get done when people's voices are heard, and as mayor I will make sure the MBTA runs as efficiently as possible.

The mayor does not have direct control over the T, as Marty has pointed out on other occasions, but he does have control over the streets. So creating dedicated bus lanes would be one way the city could improve bus service directly. Admittedly, he just talks about "exploring" it, not really a commitment of any sort. For what it's worth, his responses to this questionnaire do match up with his campaign platform.

The one exception, if you are still wondering, is his stated support for the Casey Overpass. However, this position was walked back in a later interview. I think he genuinely does care about process, and bridge-favoring activists may have led him to believe that it was insufficient in this case, a misconception that was later cleared up.

From the Boston Globe's questionnaire:

I am a strong proponent of expanded late ­night T service, and, as mayor, would coordinate with the MBTA and MassDOT and work with businesses (24­ hour businesses, restaurants/bars) and colleges and universities to assess demand. The most realistic funding approach is probably a mix of state aid and creative public­ private partnerships here in the city. Having represented Boston for 16 years on Beacon Hill, I am the candidate best positioned to win the necessary support from the Legislature. Beyond that, I would work with private institutions, especially universities whose students are likely to be major users, to fully fund the extended service.

Okay, sounds reasonable. More on this in the future.

Different policies should apply to different areas of the city depending on local parking situations. Minimum off­-street parking requirements should be required for new residential development in neighborhoods where parking is at a premium. Incentives could be provided for those developers to promote transit ­oriented development which would require less parking.

Not the greatest answer, but not terrible either. As long as transit oriented development means parking quotas are significantly lowered or eliminated, then it will work out. I find the hint of "incentives" to promote transit oriented development intriguing, though it should be unnecessary.

An ideal “cycle track” is safe and allows easy access for bikers to get through the city quickly. “Cycle tracks” can only be implemented where there is adequate right­-of­-way. There are many additional factors involved in choosing appropriate locations, such as parking and connections to other bike lanes and/or facilities.

I know this isn't quite about walking, but I find this a fairly uninspiring answer to a question about cycle-tracks, which is disappointing because he has given decent answers in other places, such as the Boston Cyclists Union questionnaire:

Yes. Biking is becoming more popular in Boston and we are not keeping up with the need for proper infrastructure that will keep our bikers safe. As Mayor, I will work to bring more cycle tracks and bike lanes to Boston, especially in busy areas where accidents are common. Bikers need to feel safe on our streets, and that means more bike infrastructure, more cycle tracks and bike lanes, and better transportation planning throughout the city. A Walsh Administration will make biking a priority because it is a safety issue, and all Bostonians deserve to feel safe in our city.

Now, from an interview about housing development from the Globe:

Ideally, increasing the overall supply of housing should help to meet demand and moderate rent increases. The demand is so strong, however, that even as new apartments are built, rents continue to increase. As a result, the city is increasingly unaffordable for many of its residents.

I'm glad to see that he understands the basic structure of the problem. Some self-styled "progressives" mistakenly think that building more housing results in higher prices, because they get confused when the strong demand outstrips the small increase in supply.

We must proceed with caution with relation to reducing parking in our residential neighborhoods because we must take into account the many young families with children who need access to a car as well as residents in our southwest corridor neighborhoods who don’t work downtown. I support policies that make it easier for people to get around Boston without a car. I want to make sure every resident of Boston lives no more than a five minute walk from an accessible form of alternate transportation, by extending HubWay and Zipcar into our neighborhoods, installing new car charging stations for electric cares out in the neighborhoods and modernizing the MBTA system.

An answer that's trying to have it all ways, and one that obfuscates the question, which did not ask about reducing parking, but rather, about reducing parking quotas. At some point, there will be an unavoidable conflict between livable, walkable neighborhoods vs minimum parking quotas. To which side his policies will lean towards is still an open question.

Marty wasn't my first choice, but I did ultimately end up voting for him. Both of the remaining candidates after the preliminary election had plenty of nice things to say about improving walkability, bicycling conditions, public transit, development of housing, jobs, and a host of other important issues. But that's just words, and campaign promises are cheap. I didn't have anything more solid to base my vote upon, so I had to go with my gut. I felt that Walsh would be more likely to follow through, so he got my vote. In the coming months, it'll be important to continue to advocate and make sure that the good parts of the Menino era are continued, such as Boston Complete Streets and Boston Bikes. There's been a lot of hard-won progress in the last few years. I don't think we're going to regress, but it's always important to keep pushing and reminding politicians of the value of walkable neighborhoods.

Why I am voting for Mike Ross

Normally I try to stay out of explicit politics on this blog, but there's a huge election coming up on Tuesday: the preliminary election for Mayor and City Council, and it's the biggest one of my generation. With Mayor Menino retiring, there's 12 candidates competing to be the next mayor. There's also 19 City Council at-Large candidates. The preliminary election will narrow the field of mayor from 12 down to 2, and it will narrow the City Council at-Large candidates from 19 to 8.

It's one thing to work on general activism for walkability and public transportation. But the actual policy gets made by elected officials. So it's important to engage with them. And during election season, that means talking to them about issues that are important to you. And finding candidates that agree with you, and helping them to get elected. All the great ideas in the world are not going to help anyone unless you can get elected, or get someone elected who believes in those ideas.

I collected a series of notes earlier about housing issues, but yesterday was the Transportation Forum, and I'm going to refer people to that because there is video and a great questionnaire that goes along with it. Also the Boston Globe published their transportation questionnaire. We're lucky that there's been a lot of focus on transportation and livability issues this cycle. That means that many of the candidates have had to speak about their plans, and at least give lip service to the ideas of promoting walking, biking, public transit, housing development, economic diversity and the like. Maybe it even means that whoever wins will follow through on those promises. With some of them, we can only hope they won't go back on their words.

There is one candidate that I know will be good on these issues and that is why I am voting for Mike Ross in the preliminary election. I don't know if he will be one of the two candidates to pass the threshold next week. There's far too much uncertainty in the race to make any sort of prediction. However Tuesday turns out, I have chosen to support him because I believe he represents the best choice on the issues that I find most important, on the themes that I often cover in this blog.

Experience

Mike lives in Mission Hill and represents District 8: including Mission Hill, the Fenway, the Back Bay and Beacon Hill. Of all the candidates, he lives closest to Boston proper. He's represented that district for over 13 years including 2 years as City Council President. Given the choice, I would prefer that Boston not continue to be ruled as a colony of its outer suburbs.

His district includes densely populated residential areas, bustling commercial and mixed use areas, big institutions, major parks, much of the Central Subway and it borders a stretch of the Southwest Corridor. In other words, he has a lot of experience dealing with urban issues.

He lives on a street with a big hospital along one end, and many student-occupied houses adjacent. He has to deal personally with the kind of issues that would be more abstract to someone who lives far away in, say, West Roxbury or Hyde Park, but all too real to someone who lives in Mission Hill, Allston or Roxbury. I think that kind of lived experience is important to have in the mayor of a city like Boston.

Community Organizing

In the past decade, he's helped bring about the revitalization of the West Fens. A stretch of Boylston Street near Fenway Park used to look like a slice of New Jersey: parking lots and fast food chains. Now it's under intense development as a whole new urban corridor, with high-rises and mixed-uses. It's bringing life to an area that's close to downtown but was largely ignored as a Red Sox fiefdom for decades.

At the same time, he's managed to do it in a way that has community buy-in. In other parts of the city, the community bitterly fights any attempt to bring development and life into the area. In the Fenway, he brought together many parties to sit down and plan the development, and as a result, people are happy and welcome the changes coming.

For a nice change of pace, the plan actually includes parking maximums set at 0.75 / unit as well as language and design plans talking about the importance of making a walkable place that is not overwhelmed by cars. Yes, that's right: plans developed through community process that call for fewer parking spaces and more urbanity. I find that very impressive.

Housing

I would say that one of the first aspects of his stump speech that stood out to me is his emphasis on the need to build more housing. And not just a little trickle, but large amounts that will help relieve the enormous pressure being put on the neighborhoods. Like in the Fenway, he emphasizes the importance of bringing the community together and planning for the housing expansion, so that it will be done fairly and predictably. But he also emphasizes the need for more than just housing: there are also the amenities which make living in the city feasible and desirable. Markets where you can buy fresh produce and other food. Restaurants where you can go out and socialize. A diversity of retail to bring jobs and life to neighborhoods. And all within walking distance, to make a place that you don't feel forced to drive away from, but rather feel welcome to stay and live in. His answer to the first question of the Transportation forum questionnaire encapsulates this, what he speaks about while on the campaign trail:

I am fortunate enough to live in an extremely livable community, Mission Hill, one that helps to identify for me what the definition of that word truly is. I have access to numerous forms of public transportation like a bike share hub at the bottom of my street, the Green Line on Huntington Avenue, the Orange Line at the other end of Tremont Street next to Columbus Avenue, the bus; the options for getting around the city are limitless. There are community staples--a community health center, a grocery store that provides fresh and healthy food options as well as affordable restaurants are all within walking distance. This is a community that is thriving due in a large part to it's livability and every neighborhood deserves to have this equal access and opportunity.

I hope that you can see why I judge the importance of living in an urban neighborhood of the city so highly. There's a lot more in his housing plan as well, worth a read.

Transportation

More than any other candidate, Mike Ross has made public transportation a centerpiece of his campaign. To publicize the release of his Transportation plan, he opted to campaign for three days without a car -- a difficult task given the MBTA in its current decrepit state. The Boston Globe called it a "gimmick," but it was more than any other candidate dared to do, and I think that shows just how out of touch the Globe is. For some of us, going car-free is not a "gimmick" but our everyday lives.

Mike has worked on transit issues in the past. The Night Owl was an attempt to provide late night MBTA service from 2001 to 2005 that Mike pushed for back when he first arrived on the City Council. It wasn't able to be made sustainable at the time, but it looks like the time is ripe for it again, and he has pledged to bring it back as mayor.

He believes in the importance of transit oriented development:

Transit-oriented development (TOD) has the potential to spark investment in parts of our city that need it most. Mixed-use housing and commercial development in close proximity to T stops supports MBTA ridership, sustainable development, and creates greater connections for neighborhoods.

[...] As Mayor, I will improve and modernize zoning and permitting processes in order to facilitate more transit-oriented development in Boston to promote greater transit ridership and create more sustainable and livable communities. A successful public transit system is dependent on riders' access to transit stops. Promoting mixed-use housing and commercial development in close proximity to T stops and transit hubs makes taking the T an easy option for residents. It's also a sustainable way to develop our neighborhoods and jumpstart business districts near T stops.

And he is also supportive of reducing the destructive parking quotas which have been plaguing our city since the 1950s. Furthermore, when asked about parking around the city, he responded by talking about the possibilities of "parking benefit districts" (see also this PDF) which is absolutely stunning to be hearing from a potential mayor. This is the kind of thinking which lives up to the slogan "Boston Smarter."

Although I'm not personally much of a bicycling activist, I do support it, and his Transportation Plan pledges to make Boston the #1 city in America for cyclists, and lists a number of ways he intends to go about it. That includes hiring a transportation director with a strong cycling background, building more cycle tracks, and adding more bike lanes elsewhere.

Also, if you haven't read his response to the Transportation Forum questionnaire yet, I recommend it.

Other issues

Mike worked to bring food trucks to Boston and pushed back against entrenched bureaucracy that didn't want to be bothered dealing with it.

He was willing to bring in ideas from other cities to improve our public spaces. Such as in the Common, which now has a new sandwich shop. That replaced a decrepit structure that was blighting the vicinity, and the idea came from NYC's Central Park.

When he first took office, the Red Sox were prepared to scrap Fenway Park -- in his district -- and demand a large subsidy from the city to replace it. Instead he worked to convince the owners to renovate the park, not replace it. Personally, I like baseball, and I like Fenway Park. But even if you don't care for baseball, thanks in part to his efforts, the city wasn't weaseled out of a half-billion of taxpayer dollars or worse to build a new stadium. I think that's a win for good government.

In 2008, at the depth of the recession, the firefighters union demanded a huge raise that would have cost the city an extra $45 million it didn't have. Libraries were going to be closed, including one in my area. Mike was able to negotiate with the union leadership and save that money, save the libraries, and do it without alienating the union. I believe in the importance of unions, and yet, also believe that they are just one side of the balance that needs to be maintained, with the needs of the public represented strongly by elected officials.

The topic of schools is admittedly out of my element, but, I am happy with his plans: more availability of vocational schooling at the upper end, early pre-K at the lower end, and a longer school day for arts. I know he also worked to get an elementary school opened in the North End (actually in the old Romney HQ) which is the first one in the area since the 1970s. That's pretty cool, and will help families stay in the city.

Conclusion

I think that housing and transportation policies have many side effects on a wide variety of city issues, ranging from safety, parks and public health, to education, as well. That's why I focus on those two. It's important to have a diversity of housing options to suit a diversity of people and their economic means. Otherwise you end up with a segregated society. And it's important to have neighborhoods where people feel safe and welcome when walking. Our streets are our largest public space, and if they become depopulated, they become unsafe. If parents don't feel safe, then they won't let their kids walk, and then those kids will lose out on the main advantage of being in a city: having a place to grow up which is bigger, more engaging, and more diverse than your own backyard. Not all learning occurs at school. If children are being shuttled around between controlled locations exclusively by private vehicles, then what's the difference between that and being in a sprawling suburb?

As you may have noticed, I've spent a long time thinking about this. Probably too long. I may not change anyone's mind, but I'm hoping that this discussion may help someone looking for help with deciding. These are the issues that I find important, and these are the reasons why I am voting for Mike Ross for mayor.

Cargo cult suburbanism

It seems that every time there's a proposal for a multiple unit apartment or condo building, some voices will pop up and whine, "why can't they just build some affordable single (or two-) family detached houses?!?!" Some will even go on to make the wild claim that multi-unit buildings "cause" single family detached house prices to rise.

This thought process is completely backwards: like blaming your runny nose for causing your cold. Instead, it is the rising prices on existing homes which attracts developers to build more homes, and eventually multi-unit buildings.

The reason the prices on single family homes are going up is because that kind of structure is an inefficient use of an increasingly valuable and limited resource: land.

It has nothing to do with the presence of multi-unit housing. In general, if land prices go up, then home prices will go up. If you want to reduce home prices on the open market, either: (a) find a way to reduce land prices, or (b) subdivide the land more efficiently.

Seeing this misunderstanding perpetuated, I get the feeling that some people in Boston believe in a fairy tale, what I've started to call: "cargo cult suburbanism."

In essence: the followers of this cargo cult remember a time in the past when giant single family homes were affordable, and even seemed to be the only option for families.

Therefore, they try to force everyone to build 1950s-style single family homes in the hopes of attracting families at reasonable prices. Followers of this cult have infiltrated city hall to the point where in most neighborhoods, the only development allowed by-right is this kind of suburbanism, even in areas of the city which have many apartment buildings.

The cultists believe that the ritual of forcing the development of such single family detached houses will magically, somehow, make them affordable to average families. There's no actual economic reason for that to work. It's an imitation of a form that sometimes works elsewhere under much different conditions, but is unsuitable for much of the city. That's why I'm calling it "cargo cult" thinking.

What's worse, not only does "cargo cult suburbanism" create unaffordable and unrealistic housing, the stock that remains ends up in slumlord hands, as they are the only ones with enough money to buy such large units. Then, the demand to live here is so strong, and the supply of homes is so weak, that some people feel that they have no choice but to fall into the hands of unscrupulous slumlords. The giant, detached single family homes, favored by the "cargo cultists," are easily subdivided into many illegal units. Some have been found to have twenty people living in them, such as the house which burned down this summer and claimed the life of a student.

Nobody wants to live in such conditions. We desperately need more legal, clean units to be created here. But the elected officials have failed their constituents. The zoning laws, barely changed from the 1950s, are completely out of touch with reality. The slumlords are the direct beneficiary of this screwed up situation. And who knows what kind of money changes hands behind closed doors to keep it this way.

The "cargo cultists" will claim that they just want to provide housing for families. I agree with the goal of finding ways to provide reasonably priced housing for families, but I don't buy into cargo cults. There's no reason why a diversity of housing options cannot serve families, or anyone else, just as well as (or better than) the stereotypical 1950s-style single-family detached house.

When land starts to become more expensive, it has to be used more efficiently, or else people of modest means will not be able to afford to live here anymore. Subsidized housing is a poor substitute. Some of that may be unavoidable, but for the majority of people, they ought to be able to find housing on the normal market. We need to put an end to the ridiculously bad zoning laws and arbitrary process which has defined Boston development for over two generations. The city got away with its dysfunction in the past during a time of decline and when the population was forced to sprawl. And people seemed to accept that fate. But that's no longer the case anymore. The population of the city is growing. This will be the challenge for the next mayor: to increase and provide a diversity of housing options for people of all different means and backgrounds. And to find a way to break the self-perpetuating cycle of corruption and NIMBYism which drags us down.

The upcoming municipal election: housing

Based on the sources from the previous post, I've collected some notes about each of the candidates based on their public statements. Apologies for the rawness. I've tried to put quotation marks around text which is directly quoted and the rest is paraphrased. Candidates appear in alphabetical order, by last name, and I've included everyone who has raised at least $100,000 according to the OCPF.

Felix Arroyo

• “One, we must increase the supply of housing. We should make sure that people who want to build housing have the opportunity to do that. It’s simple economics: supply and demand. But I don’t believe that that is the final answer.” 
• “There are some things that government has to invest in: public schools, public streets, public safety, and affordable housing.” 
• His parents lived in subsidized housing in the South End when he was born. 
• “We must invest in affordable housing.” 
• “We need to look at our zoning code to make sure that we are not by zoning code restricting the creation of different types of housing that could lead to affordability.” 
• Transparent and predictable processes for development. 
• “We need all types of housing & to encourage mixed use development of market, moderate rate & affordable housing “ 
• Split the BRA into separate planning and development agencies.

John Barros

• Worked in Boston for 13 years as executive director of Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative.
• Sponsored 800 units of both market-rate and affordable housing during my time.
• “We can create different incentives for developers to build next to transit nodes.”
• “It’s still not easy enough to develop in Boston, the process is obscure, it’s unclear, we need to streamline it when developers are trying to do the right thing.”
• “Transit nodes: we can drop the parking ratio, we can increase density, we shouldn’t be afraid of going high. These are kinds of things we can do to increase affordability in Boston.”
• More realistic planning and zoning to incentivize development
• Tax abatements, TIPS and density bonuses for parts of Boston that are not developed. “We’ve got land, too much of it, let’s take it off the city rolls and put it in production.”
• Need to invest in transit that allows for developers to build and increase density.

Dan Conley

• “Housing development is critical to the economic success of our city.”
• Many entrepreneurs starting businesses here in Boston can’t afford to live here even though they want to. Need to expand workforce housing.
• Embrace Menino’s “2020 vision” of 30,000 new units by 2020, and do even more.
• “We need to rethink density. Density does not need to be a bad word when talking about housing policy. Look at Paris: it’s about the size of Boston geographically and has three times as many residents and is thought to be one of the great cities of the world.”
• “Micro-units need also to be looked at, it’s not for everyone, but it’s a good opportunity for young professionals to get a foothold in the housing market.”
• Increase the number of three-bedroom "Family Friendly" homes by making city-owned lots available for that purpose.
• Consider density and transit oriented development.
• Housing is also a regional problem and needs to be coordinated regionally.
• Some kind of financial incentive for renovation of housing.
• "Scrutiny" of off-site affordable housing.
• Provide a "proper mix of services, entertainment and recreation options to support and sustain a community."
• “I don't want to solve overcrowding by pricing all but the wealthiest Bostonians out of our city.”

John Connolly

• More transparency at the BRA.
• Term limits for BRA board members.
• “We do too much zoning-by-variance.”
• “Building more 3 bedroom units for young families”
• “Increasing the supply of microlofts to create affordable options for recent graduates, young artists, and young professionals”
• “Expanding programs that increase home ownership among our city workers.”
• “Getting already-foreclosed properties into the hands of Community Development Corporations who can remarket units to eligible families.”

Rob Consalvo

• We need to make funding a priority for programs like “Leading the Way”
• We need to invest in workforce housing relating to TOD, we see that now with the Fairmount line.
• Think about linking workforce housing in places other than Innovation District, out on a different ring, in places such as Allston/Brighton, Roslindale, Readville and Hyde Park that has quick and easy access via new transportation systems to downtown.
• Meet and exceed Menino’s “2020 Vision”.
• Not just jamming it all downtown, or in hot spots, but moving it out to the neighborhoods of the city, where there’s real opportunity to grow more housing.
• The zoning code should be regularly updated.
• “We can solve overcrowding by providing more market rate and affordable housing and expanding public transportation into Boston.”
• “With better public transportation we can connect ALL our neighborhoods to downtown and the universities – opening up new housing options citywide.”
• “As mayor, I'll work with schools to develop more on-campus housing”
• Increase transparency at the BRA.

Charlotte Golar Richie

• Led DND for 8 years and served with Menino as Chief of Housing.
• “You can’t just go to a landlord and say I want your units to be affordable, please do it out of the goodness of your heart.”
• “As mayor I absolutely will advocate and lead the charge to get the funds that we need to buy the affordability so we have affordable units for our workforce.”
• Build more on-campus housing for students.
• “Will work to increase the supply of rental housing for neighborhood residents.”
• “The BRA has important powers like eminent domain which I do not want the city to lose.”
• Must increase transparency and predictability at the BRA.
• “I will define more clearly the agency's planning functions and ensure that planning precedes development in a clear, predictable, and transparent manner.”

Mike Ross

• “To create more affordable housing, we need to build more housing.”
• “We’re not building fast enough for the graduating college kids, for the empty nesters, for the life-long residents, and for the citizens of the world who want to move here.”
• “We need to build more, not just in the downtown core, but in all of our neighborhoods.”
• “When I first started the Fenway was a gas station, parking lot, fast food strip along Boylston Street.”
• Got together, planned, and over the past ten years we built the Fenway community.
• We can do that while we build affordable housing on-site.
• “If inclusionary zoning and affordable housing is a principle of our city then it should not be the first thing we negotiate away.”
• “If micro-units work in some places then they should be allowed to be built in those places.”
• “We need great education opportunities in our neighborhoods, but we also need amenities that and places to gather and go that draw people throughout the year and throughout the day.”
• For example, worked to bring a supermarket, banks, restaurants to Mission Hill through planning.
• Transit-oriented development, similar to what we did with restaurants and other development around the Ashmont T stop in Dorchester
• Resilient, sustainable design principles to ensure that our buildings, infrastructure and people are prepared for climate change
• Fast-track permitting for neighborhood-friendly housing
• Resources for elders to remain in their homes
• “We also need to work with our colleges and universities to build more dorms, so students can stay on campus and aren't putting more pressure on the strained housing market.”

Bill Walczak

• “I think the first problem is that affordable housing is just not affordable -- it costs way too much to develop.”
• “We need to construct more affordable housing throughout every neighborhood in Boston.”
• “I favor transit oriented development -- I favor building large, dense projects closer to our subway stations, bus stations, commuter rail stations, because that’s what we need to do. The density will allow for lower cost.”
• Convene business community, developers, construction companies, architects, to figure out why it costs so much to develop our housing in Boston.
• Figure out ways to develop good, sound quality housing at lower cost.
• Need to expedite processes through master planning.
• Audit the BRA and then redesign the agency.
• The new BRA needs transparency as its goal
• “Planning needs to be equal in function to development”

Marty Walsh

• Reform the BRA:
• Need quantitative metrics for evaluating the BRA
• Bifurcated system of permitting to separate small projects from larger projects for better efficiency.
• A permits tracking system.
• A system of receiving feedback and providing information to residents.
• As a State Rep: Helped pass transit-oriented mixed-use “smart growth district” legislation
• Has been a strong supporter of infrastructure and zoning improvements

The upcoming municipal election

September 24th is the date of the preliminary election, when the field of 12 mayoral candidates and many more city councilor candidates are pared down to the top front-runners in preparation for the general election on November 5th. This will be the most significant local election in thirty years. The mayor of Boston, in particular, has a large amount of power in setting the policy and path of the city, for better or for worse. There are many areas which must be covered well: housing, jobs, transportation, schools, policing, parks, among others.

The questions I will be investigating in particular are: how will the next mayor calm rising housing prices, foster livable communities, improve walking conditions, encourage bicycling, and push for a better MBTA?

This is not to disparage the other issues, and many of them are connected to housing and transportation. Business owners will be interested in creating jobs in strong neighborhoods near where people live, if allowed. Parents would like to have neighborhood schools to which their kids can safely walk. Families need housing that they can afford and communities they can feel part of. Controlling crime is not just a question of policing but also of urban geography and neighborhood structure.

So with this in mind, here are some links to get started:

• How would you ease apartment overcrowding?
• How would you improve late-night transportation?
• Make cycling safer
• MassINC Vision for the City forum: [can't find part 1] part 2 part 3.
• Boston Society of Architects forum
• Candidate responses to Ward 21 questionnaires

The Senate transportation bill

The version of the transportation financing bill passed yesterday by the State Senate is an improvement on the House version. The key features are an immediate increase in the gasoline excise tax by 3 cents, the annual indexing of the tax to inflation (by CPI), an increase in cigarette taxes, an investigation into the sale of naming rights to stations, a commitment to obtain revenue from utility easements on public rights-of-way, and a cap on fare hikes of no more than 5% every 2 years. There are also some other interesting aspects that have not been discussed as widely.

• A "value capture commission" to study the best practices of other jurisdictions regarding how to obtain benefits from public investment in transportation, then to submit a report with recommendations. This was also present in the House version, although I missed it before writing my critique a few days ago. The usefulness of this provision will depend on how well it is implemented; it seems pretty weak, though, and I don't think it really addresses my concern about land use. But it is something.
• Explicit identification of the Green Line Extension and South Coast Rail as priorities.
• The creation of a report discovering and describing fare evasion statistics, as well as methods to address the problem.
• Language allowing for a "high occupancy toll lane" facility to be developed.
• A study of taxicab markets and needs in the Commonwealth.
• A premium parking pilot program in select MBTA parking garages; this allows users to pay a higher fee for a guaranteed, convenient parking space.
• Calls for the MBTA to issue a request for proposals from business, civic, and non-profit entities to enter into sponsorship agreements for providing late night transportation services.
• Allows for tolling facilities to be constructed on the various highways as they cross over into Massachusetts from neighboring states.
• The Underground Storage tank fee would also be indexed to inflation annually (by CPI).

We will have to wait and see what the conference committee comes up with and whether that is acceptable to Governor Patrick.

This week in transportation funding

This week is big for transportation funding in the Commonwealth. The state senate and the state house will be discussing the legislature's proposal for funding that was offered in opposition to the Governor's plan, "The Way Forward." Presumably they will be coming up with a plan going forward to close the operating deficits of both the highway and transit divisions of MassDOT, as well as finding funds for some capital improvement projects; although the details of those projects may be determined later.

Plenty has already been written about the competing plans, and there's even a Walk/Bike Summit at the State House tomorrow. Obviously, I support fixes to the broken state of MBTA funding, and improvements to walking, bicycling and transit state-wide. So I'm largely in favor of the Governor's plan, although with the notable exception of South Coast Rail. Also, I have a problem with the way Chapter 90 road funds are handed out, because it favors rural parts of the state disproportionately. And I do like the legislative plan to index the gas tax to inflation.

I just wanted to bring up the fact that throughout this discussion, there's been pretty much no attention paid towards land use planning in conjunction with transportation planning. There's been separate initiatives, like Menino's Housing Boston 2020, but for some reason there's a disconnect between that and transit planning. This is not to say that there aren't people out there thinking about them in conjunction; there are, such as MAPC and MA-SmartGrowth. But the connection doesn't seem to have made the leap to the legislature.

I'll give an example: the Green Line extension is a legally-mandated Big Dig mitigation project. The current proposal before the legislature endangers the Federal funding support, which would double the cost that the Commonwealth has to bear. This is exceptionally short-sighted. But it's even more short-sighted when you realize that the Green Line extension, in combination with McGrath Highway grounding, will completely revitalize and regenerate a whole section of Somerville that is currently in bad shape. That's a whole lot of benefits -- housing, business, quality of life, revenue -- which are simply not being considered by the legislature when making tunnel-vision decisions about transportation alone.

Now it's true that legislators probably do have some of this in their head while working on the bill. At least, I hope so. And Somerville has their SomerVision plan which lays out their intentions. But it should be part of the bill. We the taxpayers, the citizens of the Commonwealth, are going to invest in transportation improvements for certain areas (not just Somerville, of course). In return, we want something for that investment. We want more housing units, more jobs, more opportunities, in some combination and form, all of which leverages this transportation investment we are making.

I say this because we've seen large transportation projects completed in the past which did not see complementary development, and thus wasted their potential.

Across the street from Roxbury Crossing MBTA station

The Southwest Corridor is one of the most egregious examples. A large swathe of Roxbury was destroyed to clear a path for the never-built Inner Belt and Southwest Expressways. And then, instead, the Orange Line was relocated to that path. But then, for the past few decades, so much of the land has remained vacant and empty.

There's also the long stretches of Commonwealth Avenue which are devoted to low intensity uses like automobile body shops and parking lots, despite being Green Line adjacent. Or the empty vistas immediately adjacent to Maverick Square station, apparently owned by MassPort but lying fallow. Or the billions of dollars spent on Commuter Rail expansion which ultimately ended up being a glorified parking lot shuttle. The Big Dig remains a large question mark; will we ultimately see development along the former corridor, or will it remain the world's most expensive median strip?

So I hope that funding levels will be higher than the current legislative proposal. But I also hope that when it comes time to evaluate the different projects, that the disbursement of the funds will be contingent on local land use and zoning reforms which will make it worthwhile.

The decline and fall of an idealist

As I mentioned before the holidays, I stumbled across The Power Broker in the library and was intrigued enough to pick it up after paging through it. It is an intimidatingly long book, but I discovered that Robert Caro is a master of assembling the historical details into a smoothly flowing narrative, with developing characters and a plot. Each chapter has a theme, often drawn directly from a quote or description contained within the text. The book is not simply a biography of Robert Moses, but also features extensive information about the other New York politicos of the time, including Al Smith and Franklin Roosevelt as well as numerous less prominent figures. The backgrounds of Tammany Hall, the system of patronage, and the various "Good Government" movements opposed to that patronage, are also covered.

I'm only midway through Part IV, and I can only touch on a tiny fraction of the material so far in this space. Let's begin after the description of Moses' childhood and education at Yale and Oxford, when the year is 1913, and Caro starts part II with the chapter "Burning":

It must have seemed like a great time to be young and a reformer in New York. In all American history, in fact, it would have been hard to find a better time. The young idealist entered public service in the very year in which there came to crest a movement---Progressivism---that was based [...] on an idealistic belief in man's capacity to better himself through the democratic process. 

[...] 

In searching for the causes of these problems [sweatshops, child labor, poverty of the slums], Progressives settled on the most easily identifiable---the giant corporations and corrupt political bosses who they felt had stolen mythical America away from its people. To exorcise these demons---to force a return to the political democracy and economic individualism that Americans were fond of believing had once existed in their country---they advocated reforms equally simplistic, so simplistic, in fact, that they proved primarily that the old American impulse to do good was still intact. And they were reforms that a young man who wanted to do good, a young man like Bob Moses, could advocate with all his heart.

In just a few lines, Caro mocks the sentimentality and naïvety of American political movements but also praises them and sets the stage for Moses as a newly minted Ph.D. in the field of Civil Service reform.

Moses managed to obtain a position at the Bureau of Municipal Research's new Training School for Public Service through---ominously---nepotism but was too impatient and managed to get himself moved into the Bureau itself shortly. But that too was not enough. The Bureau had made its name by sniffing out graft in construction contracts, and the man appointed to conduct the investigation was John Purroy Mitchel. He successfully ran for mayor in November 1913 and appointed a Civil Service Commission to reform the system. And Moses was placed in charge of this commission, and he began work on proposal based on the British Civil Service he had studied at Oxford, a system of "open competition" and promotion based upon examinations and merit.

Each job could be scientifically analyzed to show its "functions" and "responsibilities." Each function and responsibility---and there were dozens of them for most jobs---could be given a precise mathematical weight corresponding to its importance in the over-all job.

[...]

It was the proposal of a fanatic. John Calvin specifying permissible arrangements for women's hair in sixteenth-century Geneva was not more thorough than Bob Moses enumerating the "functions" and "responsibilities" of New York's civil servants. No aspect of conduct on the job was too small to be graded. Even personality must be reduced to number.

Of course the system would mean the downgrading or elimination of tens of thousands of jobs held by Tammany Hall loyalists. And they rallied at public meetings. Moses even ventured to speak, believing in his system so confidently, but quickly became a figure of derision. Men plead for exemptions, and were granted them by Tammany judges. And in the end, John "Red Mike" Hylan used the system as a campaign issue against Mayor Mitchel in 1917, and won decisively.

The net result of his work was nothing. [...] Convinced he was right, he had refused to soil the white suit of idealism with compromise. He had really believed that if his system was right---scientific, logical, fair---and if it got a hearing, the system would be adopted. In free and open encounter would not Truth prevail? And he had gotten the hearing. But Moses had failed in his calculations to give certain factors due weight. He had not sufficiently taken into account greed. He had not sufficiently taken into account self-interest. And, most of all, he had not sufficiently taken into account the need for power.

He was out of work when he received a job offer from Belle Moskowitz, the reform-minded yet canny political adviser to Governor-elect Al Smith. She had helped Smith win the election and had secured his undying loyalty. To him, most reformers were wild-eyed, impractical "crackpots" but Belle was a different breed. Although Smith was a creature of Tammany, he was interested in real, practical reform and had the eloquence and standing within the machine to be effective. Moskowitz knew this when she signed up to help Smith, and when she hired Moses to be her chief of staff, she began to teach him the same sort of practical politics that had served the new Governor and her successfully.

The lessons started almost immediately. When Moses submitted a preliminary outline of suggested commission goals, he included a phrase straight out of the reform textbooks and his Municipal Civil Service Commission days: "Elimination of unnecessary . . . personnel." Mrs. Moskowitz struck the phrase out. Personnel, she said, were voted. You didn't antagonize voters.

It would take awhile, and although Moses would work on better reform proposals, they would have to wait because Smith lost re-election in 1920 and would not be re-elected until 1922. In the meantime, somehow, Moses became fast friends with Smith, a bond that would last until death. When Smith became Governor again, he brought Moses with him. And when Moses convinced Smith to focus on a parks program, Smith offered him the presidency of the planned Parks Commission.

Moses had learned how to draft crafty bills, a skill gained from Smith and Moskowitz. In the Parks Commission legislation, Moses inserted

a clause buried deep within the act empowered the Long Island State Park Commission to acquire land by condemnation and appropriation "in the manner provided by section fifty-nine of the conservation law."

[...] In 1924, "appropriation" had only one meaning in a legislative context: an allocation of funds by the Legislature.

[...] In 1884, the Legislature passed an act empowering the state to "appropriate" forest lands and defining "appropriation" as a procedure in which a state official could take possession of the land simply by walking on it and telling the owner he no longer owned it.

In other words, he exploited multiple meanings of a legal term in a way that only the most savvy of legislators would detect. His friend Al Smith was likely the only one who would know. By writing this language into the bill he gave himself, in effect, almost unlimited power to take private property. That was not all: he made it virtually impossible to be removed as president of the Commission, to be audited by an outside party, or to be questioned by any of the subordinate departments he controlled.

He would use this power almost immediately to begin seizing land for parks in Long Island. He used it to break the robber baron stranglehold on Long Island, who had long conspired to keep the "rabble" from New York City away from their estates. But he also used it to immiserate poor working farmers who happened to own land in the path of one of his planned "parkways." And more often than not, he was willing to make accommodations for the rich and powerful, while rolling over those who were not "elite" enough.

Under Belle Moskowitz's tutelage, Bob Moses had changed from an uncompromising idealist to a man willing to deal with practical considerations; now the alteration had become more drastic. Under her tutelage, he had been learning the politicians' way; now he almost seemed to have joined their ranks.

More, he was openly scornful of men who hadn't, of men who still worried about the Truth when what counted was votes. He was openly scornful of reformers whose first concern was accuracy, who were willing to devote their lives to fighting for principle and who wanted to make that fight without compromise or surrender of any part of the ideals with which they had started it.

Bob Moses was scornful, in short, of what he had been.

He created new parks, he restored old ones beautifully, he did a lot of nice things for the people of New York. But he also did a lot of terrible things to many individuals, and while he was happy to create amenities for "the people," he seemed to have a complete disregard for actual people---particularly minorities, the poor, or anyone who dared disagree with him.

"He doesn't love the people," [Frances Perkins] was to say. "It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people . . . He'd denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. `I'll get them! I'll teach them!' . . . He loves the public but not as people. The public is just the public. It's a great amorphous mass to him; it needs to be bathed, it needs to be aired, it needs recreation, but not for personal reasons---just to make it a better public."

There's so much more---funny, sad and fascinating---and I'm only partway through the book myself. I'm definitely glad I picked it up.