Sunday reading 19 July 2015

Yonah Freemark, “For rail services, downtown sometimes isn’t the right place for a terminus“, The Transport Politic:

There’s a romantic notion of the downtown rail terminal in the American popular culture, often expressed in movies and books. It’s a scene that is easy to conjure up in one’s mind: The steaming locomotive comes slowly to a halt at the end of a track, passengers stream out into a giant waiting room, and from there they exit into the bustling metropolis. The railroad terminal is the physical manifestation of the end of a journey and the exciting moment of arrival…

But what if this orientation towards rail terminals is actually reducing the effectiveness of our rail system? What if we eliminated terminals downtown altogether and just replaced them with regular old stops on the line, leaving terminals for outer suburban places?

European cities from Basel to Brussels have done just that, replacing commuter rail services ending at central depots with through-running operations where trains stop at several places in the city rather than one thanks to new rail tunnels. They’re expensive investments, but they may make commuting a faster and more enjoyable experience…

Leipzig’s investment in its new urban rail tunnel has brought new vitality to its center city but it is in some ways late to the game. In fact, many of its European peers have built similar center-city rail lines over the past few decades in order to provide through-running rail service stopping at many downtown destinations…

Each of these cities has identified the benefits of combining frequent and fast regional rail networks with through-running train services under their centers. The benefits are clear: More destinations for riders; more accessibility to locations downtown; and the ability to get from one side of a region to another without transferring between trains. They’ve also saved their rail operators considerable expense by allowing them to turn their trains around somewhere other than downtown, which is the most difficult place to do so.

Eric Jaffe, “The clearest explanation yet for why millennials are driving less“, Citylab:

The ongoing discussion about Millennial driving trends is not about whether they’re declining, but why. It’s clear to all that young people are driving less today than they did in the past. But the reasons for these shifts in car use are what remain locked in seemingly endless debate.

Two theories lead the charge. The first is that demographic or economic factors are primarily to blame. Since so many Millennials are out of work or delaying the start of family life, they have less daily need to drive. That certainly makes sense. The second idea suggests that young people fundamentally have a different attitude toward cars than previous generations did at that age, instead preferring to live in the city longer and travel by multiple alternative modes. That’s also a logical conclusion, if a bit harder to quantify.

The truth might be a little of this, a little of that, and even some of the other. That’s the takeaway from a new analysis of Millennial driving habits from transport scholar Noreen McDonald of the University of North Carolina. Writing in the Journal of the American Planning Association, McDonald attributes 10 to 25 percent of the driving decline to changing demographics, 35 to 50 percent to attitudes, and another 40 percent to the general downward shift in U.S. driving habits.

Natalie Angier, “The bicycle and the ride to modern America“, NY Times. A fascinating history of the development and mass manufacture of the bicycle:

“I have a deep question about the bicycle,” said Andy Ruina, a professor of mechanical engineering at Cornell University who studies bicycle dynamics. “Was the bicycle invented or discovered? It’s such a pure concept, it seems like it existed in the universe even before people thought of it, like the wheel itself, or a prime number.”

The bicycle certainly is among the purest means of transportation. It’s roughly 50 times more energy-efficient than driving and four times more efficient than walking.

Bicycles also seem to have minds of their own. Though often mistakenly considered inherently unstable, bikes can balance themselves. “It’s called ghost riding,” Dr. Ruina said. “We don’t really understand why, but all bicycles are close to stable.”

If you push one on level ground at a fast enough clip, it will just keep going, balancing itself en route just as a bike rider does. When it starts to fall to the left, it automatically steers to the left; when it leans right, it self-corrects by turning right.

Learning to ride a bicycle, then, may be less a matter of taking charge than of letting go, of suppressing the impulse to overcorrect the bicycle’s inherently stable momentum.

Eric Jaffe, “Iowa makes a bold admission: We need fewer roads“, Citylab:

Iowa DOT chief Paul Trombino recently took that logical conclusion one step further. During an Urban Land Institute talk, Trombino told the audience he expects the state’s overbuilt and unsustainable road network to “shrink,” according to Charles Marohn of Strong Towns. Iowans should figure out which roads “we really want to keep” and let the others “deteriorate and go away.”

[…]

Trombino might be more candid about the problem than most officials, but others have recognized it. Last year the Washington State DOT made a severe adjustment to its vehicle mileage outlook in the coming decades based on a recognition that driving trends weren’t growing as they had in the past. Instead of expected continued gradual growth, WashDOT instead called for 0.4 percent growth through 2019 then a 0.4 percent decline through 2043.

The Economist, “Reinvention in the Rust Belt: Do former industrial cities in the Midwest have a future?”

Bruce Katz at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, says that industrial cities must reinvent themselves to survive. His suggestions are not new, but almost a return to fundamentals: they have to use their geographical advantages (meaning, these days, tourism and logistics rather than geology) and build as much as possible on “anchor” institutions such as universities and hospitals. What they must not do is distract themselves by constructing an enormous stadium or a theme park that may turn into a white elephant. It is a very rare city that has helped itself by hosting international sports.

Eric Frykberg, “NZ’s climate change target condemned“, Radio New Zealand:

A international group of scientists based in Europe says New Zealand is not doing its fair share to combat climate change.

The comments follow the Government’s pledge last week to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent below the level of 2005 by the year 2030.

The Government says this is a significant increase on current targets but it is still only 11 percent below 1990 levels, which is a more commonly used date for calibration.

[…]

Climate Analytics CEO and senior scientist Bill Hare said New Zealand’s commitment needed to be greater, to be on a par with the US or the European Union.

“New Zealand’s climate target shows it’s far from doing its ‘fair share’, and is anything but ambitious,” he said.

“While most other governments intend cutting emissions, New Zealand appears to be increasing emissions, and hiding this through creative accounting. It may not have to take any action at all to meet either its 2020 or 2030 targets.”

Andreas Fuster and Basit Zafar, “How sensitive is housing demand to down payment requirements and mortgage rates“, Liberty Street Economics:

When a household is looking to buy a home, financial considerations are usually very important. In particular, in deciding “how much house to buy,” a household must ponder how large a down payment it can make at the time of purchase, and also how much it can afford to pay each month. The minimum required down payment and the interest rate on available mortgages (which determines the monthly payment) are key elements in the decision. When these variables change, this likely affects the price a household is willing and able to pay for a home, and thus the housing market overall. However, measuring the strength of these effects is notoriously difficult. In this post, which is based on a recent staff report, we describe a novel approach to measure these effects. We find that a change in down payment requirements tends to have a large effect on housing demand—households’ willingness to pay for a given home—especially for current renters, whereas the effects of a change in the mortgage rate are modest.

Glen Koorey, “What can Christchurch learn from the Netherlands?“, Cycling in Christchurch:

Having had a month ranging far and wide around The Netherlands (and a month since to reflect), I think I’m starting to see some common trends emerging in terms of what makes the Dutch get on their bikes so much more than us (or indeed, almost anyone on the world). After showing you the sights of various interesting places like Utrecht, Groningen, Enschede and Houten (not to mention all the other cities I visited but didn’t write a post about, like Apeldoorn, Delft or The Hague), let’s put all that together to see what bubbles to the surface.

I had a few colleagues in The Netherlands ask me my thoughts on how different Dutch cities differ between each other. And yes, they often have different little ways of doing things in terms of the markings used, or calming features, or certain traffic signals. But actually what I noticed after a while was the consistency from one city to the next at a higher level in simply providing for cycling. Basically it seemed to boil down to these same aspects time and time again:

• Good mixed-use higher-density land use planning: As I alluded to with Houten, if you don’t get this right to start with there will always be a limit to how many trips can be made by cycling – because all the other trips are too far (although public transport can fill some of that gap; see below). I didn’t actually pick this up initially but, on reviewing my Netherlands photos later, much of the building stock that I was looking at comprised 3-4 storey structures – contrast that with the typical 1-2 storey buildings you see around New Zealand. Not surprising really when you have to fit 16 million people into something a quarter of the size of the South Island, but it still provides a very human scale to communities. And those buildings might be a mixture of shops and offices down below, with apartments above. The net effect is that often it is easy to live quite close to where you work, shop, go to school, catch a train, etc; distances that are easily cycleable. The entire city of Enschede, for example, fits within a circle less than about 6km in diameter – have a look at what kind of distances would encompass urban Christchurch…

John McCrone, “How much is the government really spending to fix Christchurch?” The Press:

How much has the Government actually been spending on Christchurch once you examine its books? Indeed with the insurance flowing though the city, will it earn about as much as it ultimately spends because of the tax take on the resulting construction boom? Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee frequently mentions the headline figure of a $16.5 billion Crown contribution to Canterbury, although half of that is insurance payouts from the Earthquake Commission (EQC). And with the Government now playing hardball over the cost of fixing Christchurch’s horizontal infrastructure and the timelines on its central city anchor projects are stretching out, a closer look is being taken at precisely what it has ended up committing to the rebuild.

One recovery critic, Cam Preston – a chartered accountant who after the earthquakes had contract jobs with both the EQC and Housing New Zealand – says he was surprised when he started to comb the Treasury figures. Boil it down, says Preston, and the Government is provisioning to spend a total of $6.7b on “core Crown” contributions like the anchor projects, the fixing of roads and sewers, the repairs to (mainly insured) Crown-owned schools and hospitals. Which no doubt is a fair sum of money to be promising. But what his accountant’s eye has noticed is the fact that the Government’s accounts up to 2014 show only $2b of this $6.7b has been cash actually spent –operational expenditure.

And as any accountant knows, it is dollars out the door rather than provisions on balance sheets that give the true picture. “You just need to take a walk around the CBD or cycle around the suburbs to witness the reality of this low Government cash investment in Canterbury to date. There’s lots of talk, but not much cash. Perhaps not much more than it would spend on schools, roads and hospitals in any normal year,” Preston says.

Alan Davies, “Can apartment residents be trusted to make their own decisions?“, Crikey:

Victoria’s Planning Minister, Richard Wynne, released a further report last week on improved design of apartments, Better apartments: Minister’s forum context report…

The new report provides a lot (but by no means all) of the contextual information that unfortunately was missing from the earlier discussion paper.

For example, it explains that apartment residents are mostly young and see their sojourn as temporary. It explains that the minimum internal floor area in NSW is 50 sq m for a new-build one bedroom apartment and 70 sq m for a two bedroom apartment.

But it really hits the mark – although perhaps not quite in the way the Minister intended – with some key numbers on apartment size. It draws on data from a sample of 10,373 apartments across 110 projects currently being marketed or under construction in metropolitan Melbourne.

As the exhibit shows, around 80% of one bedroom apartments have an internal area that is less than the 50 sq m minimum in NSW. The smaller ones tend to be in the city centre where the median size is 45 sq m.

What do these extraordinary numbers tell Victorians? One reaction might be to cringe with embarrassment that so many “dogboxes” are being built in Melbourne compared to Sydney and NSW generally.

A more logical conclusion, though, is that the vast majority of buyers and renters in Melbourne are happy with the trade-off between space/amenity on the one hand, and the price they’re paying – whether in purchase price or weekly rent – on the other.

They’re sentient beings who know they can’t have everything. Given what they have to pay in order to live in an accessible location like the city centre, they’re overwhelmingly choosing apartments that are smaller than the minimum the law allows in NSW.

I don’t doubt almost all of them would prefer to live somewhere bigger, but they either can’t afford to or, more likely, they’re choosing to live in a smaller apartment so they have more money for other things, like enjoying all that activity on their doorstep.

If they really thought a sub 50/70 sq m apartment is as unliveable as the Minister contends then they could have chosen to live elsewhere.

For example, they could’ve chosen a larger apartment in the city centre; but that would cost more! Or they could’ve chosen a terrace, town house or detached dwelling; but that would’ve been in a less accessible/exciting location and might’ve required sharing.

And finally, this isn’t really about transport or urban policies, and nor is it new. But it is amusing:

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