Transportation Archives - Carolina Planning Journal (2024)

In Defense of Lake Merritt’s Paid Parking Plan

ByRyan Ford

It is time to realize our parks are not free and Oakland residents already pay for them in one form or another. Lake Merritt is no exception. In 2020, the city spent $25,000 week of taxpayer money to maintain Lake Merritt (Devries 2021). It turns out littering has a cost and residents are already picking up the tab. Understandably, there was strong public resistance to installing paid parking along the eastern side of Lake Merritt. No one likes paying for what used to be free. Even though 70% of respondents disapproved of the policy, it is the best compromise for Oakland.

With the current cost of maintaining Lake Merritt at over $1 million annually, the potential value of existing free parking spaces along the lake is too high an opportunity cost. Under the new policy, parking prices will match demand. Weekends will be more expensive to park than weekdays. In the first year, projected revenue from the meters will provide nearly $1.5 million. Paying for parking is an apparent cost for drivers, but the cost of free parking is more nuanced and important to spell out.

Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA, has been railing against the high cost of free parking for decades. Essentially, Shoup points out, cities are arbitrarily giving away valuable real estate in the form of parking with traffic and congestion as a return on investment (Steiner 2013). Since we live in a car-dominated society, Oakland residents see free parking as a mobility right rather than wasted opportunity. Opposition to paid parking is understandable, but the revenue is necessary to use the already scarce parking in a more effective manner.

The Lake Merritt Parking Management plan will change transportation behavior through the framework of Travel Demand Management (TDM). TDM is a set of policies designed to expand the functionality of existing transportation infrastructure rather than relying on increasing the supply of infrastructure to meet changing needs of the community. Multiple commercial centers surrounding Lake Merritt draw large amounts of travel, so it is incredibly ineffective to have a single car carrying a single person occupy a spot for hours on end. For residents wary of the new parking policy, they only need look across the bay at San Francisco for a success story.

In 2017, San Francisco used federal funding to pilot SFpark. The program proved the efficacy of the same variable demand-based parking Oakland recently implemented. In some cases, the cost of parking decreased, and more importantly, parking availability increased (SFMTA). San Francisco is not known for its affordability, so the results are encouraging.

I recommend that Oakland take additional measures for protection against gentrification. For low-income residents, there should be a permitting process to guarantee a discounted parking cost. Additionally, residents with existing parking permits local to Lake Merritt should receive free-parking one weekend per month during the first year of the policy.

Despite the practicality of the policy, not everyone is happy with the results. A comment from a months-long community engagement campaign reads: “To put meters around the lakeshore side of the lake would be a direct act against working class people like myself who would be unable to continue to enjoy our beautiful lake if it meant paying every time that I wanted to walk or hang out there.” (Attachment B: Lake Merritt Parking Management Plan May 17, 2022) This resident has a right to be concerned. A prohibitively high cost for parking limits access to the lake and parking priced too low also limits access by not encouraging enough turnover. Market-based pricing is critical to reach enough turnover so one or two spots are open for each block.

So, it is important to reiterate the new parking policy will increase access to Lake Merritt in the long-term rather than be a barrier. It is also worth noting that there is already an extensive network of paid parking surrounding the lake. Driving is not the only option. Lake Merritt is transit-rich with bus and train stops connecting the park to surrounding neighborhoods. And even walking is an option.

I do think residents are right to hold Oakland accountable. There city needs to be transparent about how it spends revenue from the new parking meters. Oakland should create an easily accessible digital dashboard to show how each dollar is spent. The dashboard would also show the cost of maintenance for Lake Merritt and hopefully dissuade residents from littering. Making spending data public will create a sense of trust in the community. Even though this parking policy is the best compromise for Oakland, there is an inherent cost of political good will for moving ahead with a publicly unpopular policy.

At the end of the day, the maintenance costs of Lake Merritt alone justify the new parking policy. Though the benefits will be indirect, residents will also appreciate less time spent circling the block looking for a spot. Instead, they can pull up and enjoy Lake Merritt.

Works Cited

Joe DeVries. Agenda Report: Lake Merritt Working Group. City of Oakland Memorandum. Mar 11, 2021.

Oakland Department of Transportation. Attachment B: Lake Merritt Parking Management Plan May 17, 2022. p. 9.

Ruth L. Steiner (2013) A Review of “The High Cost of Free Parking, Updated Edition”, Journal of the American Planning Association, 79:2, 174-175, DOI: 10.1080/01944363.2013.772038

SFMTA. SFpark Pilot Project Evaluation Summary. Project Evaluation, June 2014, p. 11.

Ryan Ford is a Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UNC Chapel Hill. He is interested in the intersection of urban design and transportation, specifically around active mobility. Outside of classes, you can find Ryan playing tennis or catching a movie at Varsity Theater.

Edited by Kathryn Cunningham

Featured image courtesy ofCreative Commons

Finding Pan

ByIan Concannon

This spring, I traveled to southwest Florida where my namesake hurricane had made its explosive landfall the previous October. In June, I navigated life along with millions of others under the heavy haze of forest fire smoke blown over New England from Canada. Most recently, violent floods washed through several towns in southern Vermont, where I’ve lived for several months cumulatively since graduating from college in 2018. I am now training as a climate planner in graduate school, where my work seeks to develop resilience at a public transit agency. Yet even treading repeatedly within the direct footprint of climate change, I cannot shake a nagging sense of incompleteness—that I have somehow come no closer to comprehending the full forces at play.

Extreme weather may serve as evidence of climate change, but it is only a snapshot of a larger process. Climate change is as much an undermining of the way we make sense of the world as it is a self-contained object as such—more epoch than event. Climate change is a sunburn, an acid ocean, an expanse of algae, a burn scar, a mutated pathogen. It is the afterlife of acts committed generations ago and it never seems to arrive. Its essence can never be grasped directly. Strange weather is only the shadow cast by this phantom.

Attempting to squeeze a treatment of climate change into the bounds of ordinary discussion only obscures its true nature. Instead, I suggest we dim the lights and dream…

Pan has always been an old god, even when the ancient Greeks learned of him from the Arcadian mountain tribes. Secluded from view, he preferred to roam the woodland hills, tending livestock and hunting game. Unlike his more refined relatives Artemis or Hermes, Pan presented a distinctly bestial figure, pursuing his favored nymphs and sowing panic in foes. Offensive and alluring, powerful and marginalized, he brought together associations of fertility, replenishment, music, vengeance, chaos, violation, and mortality. Pan continues to embody these painful contradictions of the natural world.

Much as Pan could multiply into a swarm, his image has taken many forms in different settings since antiquity. A quick survey includes the Wiccan horned god as well as the faun from Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, leering at the borderlands of the underworld. In Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke, a deer god with a human face silently patrols the forest depths, taking and restoring life in equal measure with each stride. Pan’s offspring remain a penetrating reminder of a tangled rift lurking beyond the scope of civilized life.

One feature separating Pan from the rest of the Greek Pantheon is his mortality, documented first under the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius following the birth of Christ. More recent authors associate Pan’s death with the triumph of modernity:

Then keep the tomb of Helice,
Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold,
And what remains to us of thee?

Though many an unsung elegy
Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Ah, what remains to us of thee?

–Oscar Wilde[1]

My contribution here is to suggest that the terror and humility we know as a result of the turmoil of climate change reveal the continued presence of larger-than-life demigods. When we spot wayward migrations, upend our routines, abandon our homes, or savor an unseasonably warm winter evening: this is Pan’s work. To know this is to restore the generative agency of natural forces that were thought to be extinguished long ago. This time, though, Pan is back in ghost form—an existence denied by most, unimpressed by our attempts to appease. The question becomes: what would it mean to organize ourselves in space holding closely to this understanding?

One answer comes to us from ecological systems theory. As introduced by ecologists C.S. Holling and Lance Gunderson, Panarchy is a concept that invokes both an antidote to hierarchy and a nod to Pan’s power, in which the cycles of a system are tied together across spatial and temporal scales to describe the system’s response to stimuli. This approach honors the changes that naturally occur across such assemblages while suggesting interventions that uphold beneficial forms of resilience.

It may be worth grounding this theory in the case of a lake. Over the course of a year, this lake’s surface area, depth, temperature, nutrient composition and biomass content will all vary. However, these relatively rapid cycles, such as freeze dates in the winter, higher flow rates in the spring, or phytoplankton blooms in the summer, occur in such a way as to maintain the water body’s capacity for certain essential functions. This lake also depends on larger resource flows, such as tributary inflow volumes and the spread of species from other sources. These are in turn governed by even larger economic and climatic processes, like mass fertilizer application, anthropogenic demand for water, and planetary temperature trends. While periods of expansion, stability, collapse, and renewal are to be expected, Panarchy theory suggests that a resilient system will trend back towards its “domain of attraction” until conditions dictate otherwise; a lake will remain a lake, rather than an anoxic puddle or golf course.[2]

Given these constant exchanges, resilience is not equivalent to stability. Instead, resilience implies that local adaptive cycles are able to integrate information from the slower cycles surrounding them. When conditions change abruptly, ecosystem functions will initially degrade before adapting in such a way that the external changes become internalized. A lake may dry up entirely if enough feedback pushes it in that direction, but it may still retain its status as a productive system, albeit in a new state. What matters is that larger grounding conditions do not shift so fast as to undermine the ability of smaller, more local systems to maintain their adaptive capacity.

With Ghost Pan running loose, this is exactly what we see. Supercharged with two hundred years of fossil fuel energy and the global connectivity of capitalism, changes that might otherwise have taken thousands or millions of years can now proliferate in a matter of decades, if not faster. Circulating at such speed and altitude, these shifts fail to impart a coherent message on the systems they contain. Our lake, industry, or city of cannot meet these new demands by surrounding their existing structure in new fortifications. Their internal logic must move from preservation to pliability.

In my efforts to embed climate resilience across a large urban transportation system, this clash of priorities is readily apparent. After decades of divestment, public transit remains an economic lifeline for tens of millions in North America and is understood as increasingly crucial to weaning cities of their dependence on fossil fuels. Simultaneously, its operations tend to be welded in place by predetermined land use and governance regimes. More specific challenges to the climate resilience of transit include:

• Limited oversight of land, often along narrow Rights-of-Way. In the Northeastern United States, these Rights-of-Way are commonly laid in former streambeds or reclaimed wetlands.
• Dependence on volatile supply chains for specialized equipment.
• Few formal coordination avenues to plan with surrounding landowners and policymakers, like municipalities or residents.
• Specialized labor practices that delay responses to emergent needs, such as maintaining drainage infrastructure vs. clearing roads or repairing transit vehicles.
  • Unionized labor may be paired with short-term private contracts in which institutional knowledge is lost from year to year.
• Project management processes that prioritize condition or political expedience over climate vulnerability.
• Nested networks of aging communications, electrical, and mechanical infrastructure in which small disruptions set off cascading effects across the rest of the system.
• Lagging federal and state requirements that promote but do not require climate resilience standards.

Transit authorities have few examples to guide how to successfully climate-proof tens of billions of dollars of assets. Adaptation strategies mostly involve selective elevation, installing flood walls, substituting rapid transit for buses, and reducing service during high-risk weather events. Even pursued to their fullest extent, these resilience measures correspond to a vision of the future in which people continue to use transit infrastructure much as they do now, albeit with critical elements elevated or clad in corrosion-resistant materials.

A “panarchic” approach to this issue recognizes the inseparability of transportation from its larger setting. Even as transit moves to meet the inevitability of direct climate change exposures such as extreme heat or stormwater flooding, the surrounding city will also be transforming. Economic changes may induce new demand away from traditional commuting destinations, while new residential patterns may bolster or undercut the existing labor force. Newly widespread forms of data will likely make climate modeling more accurate, even as the weather itself becomes more erratic. Longstanding political assumptions baked into the American planning context may begin to unravel, opening or foreclosing instruments by which local government rises to meet the challenges of environmental change.

Far from spaces of disembodied circulation, transit exerts a visceral influence on its physical surroundings. The pressures of climate change reconfigure the ways in which these spaces are demarcated, contested, and made ready for new uses. As planners, we occupy a unique position that both bears witness to the continued influence of historical actors and formulates new models by which future generations may carry out their own lives. Pan’s presence signals a warning to that tradition of planners who understand themselves as technicians erecting monumental cities in defiance of the surrounding environment. Let’s hope we are able to listen.

[1] Oscar Wilde, “Pan,” in Poems by Oscar Wilde, edited by Robert Ross. Retrieved at Project Gutenberg, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1057/1057-h/1057-h.htm.

[2] Holling, Crawford Stanley, and Lance H. Gunderson. Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002.

About the Author:  Ian Concannon is an aspiring climate planner and master’s student at Tufts University’s Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, with a B.A. in History from Williams College. His recent projects have involved performing outreach in support of disaster preparedness, evaluating road network resilience for an environmental engineering firm, and assessing public transit performance when exposed to coastal storms. He is especially interested in finding ways to coordinate across local policymaking bodies in support of resilient systems change. When he’s not tinkering with maps, Ian can be found on trail runs or backpacking loops throughout New England.

.

Featured image courtesy ofIan Concannon

How Raleigh Should Earn the “E” in their ETOD

ByAmy Grace Watkins

What is Transit-Oriented Development?

In urban planning, what does TOD stand for? It depends on who you ask! It could be Transit-Oriented Development, Design, or Displacement. In the 1990s, Peter Calthrope popularized the term as Transit-Oriented Development and the planning framework quickly spread across the world. The goal of TOD is to invest in transit centers to increase transit access, reduce the need for cars, and spur economic growth by bringing development to the area.

In Raleigh, the planning team has recently added to the mix of TOD definitions by adding an “E” to make ETOD or Equitable Transit-Oriented Development. Their policies and plans aim to combat the possible gentrification and displacement that has been associated with TOD projects in other cities (Chapple & Loukaitou-Sideris 2022). But based on Raleigh’s Equitable Transit-Oriented Guidebook, I argue that Raleigh has not yet earned the E of ETOD due to their weak policies around affordable housing and unclear public engagement efforts.

To create TOD that is not just for the wealthy and well-connected, Raleigh put forth a “policy toolkit” in the ETOD Guidebook. The main policy with teeth in this guidebook is zoning for TOD Overlay Districts to build upon current Transit-Overlay Districts. Updated into the Unified Development Ordinance (UDO) in October of 2021 by Raleigh’s City Council, TOD Districts are the “core zoning mechanism to achieve goals addressed in this plan” (City of Raleigh 2022). These districts will encourage development by offering bonuses for increased density, mixed-use, and affordable housing. This also means that money will quickly rush into these TOD Overlay Districts to capture these development opportunities. As they are, the policies may not be enough to combat the risk of gentrification and displacement in rapidly developing areas.

In the book “Transit-Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends?,” planning academics Karen Chapple and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris (2022) find that there is a strong correlation between gentrification and TODs in the Bay Area. The root cause of gentrification and displacement, however, is notoriously difficult to define because of the many factors involved from individual choice to state-level politics. In short, Chapple and Loukaitou-Sideris find that upscaling and upzoning areas often results in the displacement of vulnerable communities, which can be accelerated by transit system construction (2022, 8). In order to protect vulnerable communities, Chapple and Loukaitou suggest that density bonuses for affordable housing should be required in TODs, and most importantly, vulnerable communities should be consulted through public engagement about the location of TODs (2022, 272). By doing so, the authors believe that done correctly, TODs can be an answer to the increasing housing crisis in California. A crisis that the Triangle region also knows well.

Raleigh’s ETOD

The good news is that Raleigh’s Equitable Transit-Oriented Development (ETOD) does take density bonuses seriously and aims policies at building more affordable units in the TOD Overlay Districts. Density bonuses encourage developers to include affordable housing by allowing them to build larger buildings. The affordable units, however, have a short lifespan. The plan states, “Within the program, affordability terms would be set at 50% AMI for 30 years based on the City of Raleigh’s desire to provide long-term affordable housing options in the corridors” (City of Raleigh 2020, 89).

In this context, AMI stands for Area Median Income, which describes themidpoint oftheincome distribution in a given area. In a rapidly growing area like Raleigh, the 30-year time span is far from “long-term affordability” and seems to guarantee unaffordability in 30 years or delayed displacement at best. In order to make these TOD Overlay Districts a success for all residents regardless of income, the ETOD program needs a more robust plan for affordable housing in these areas that guarantees opportunities for low- and middle-income residents for years to come. At a minimum, ETOD should increase the terms to 50 years in order to allow for more housing to be built and for low-income individuals and families to stay in their community.

According to HUD, the typical household stays in assisted housing six years, four years for families with children, and nine years for elderly residents (McClure 2017). This means that Raleigh has the potential to double the amount of low-income residents housed by increasing the term by 20 years. With the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, a federal affordable housing program established under 26 U.S.C. §42, affordable units are required for 30 years at a minimum (2022). In order to show Raleigh’s commitment to sustainable affordability downtown, the policy around TOD Overlay Districts should be updated to go beyond the federal minimum to offer 50 years of affordability.

Public Engagement Needs

Beyond policies for affordability, the City of Raleigh needs to prioritize extensive and equitable public engagement. The plan cites public engagement as a part of the process but fails to provide numbers or detailed descriptions about the type of engagement events, the number of people engaged, or the demographics of these events around the ETOD program. As Chapple and Loukaitou-Sideris mentioned in their work, this is a very important aspect of equitable transit planning.

The lack of public engagement makes it appear that this plan is following a similar path to the failed light-rail project just a few years before. In fact, the TOD Overlay Districts were originally created for the light rail project (City of Raleigh 2022). One of the main marks against the light-rail project in the Triangle is that it would have served middle- and high-income riders and was more focused on attracting new ridership rather than improving service for current riders. If the City of Raleigh does not prioritize the residents currently living in these areas and using the existing bus system, the TOD Overlay Districts may hurt the very people Raleigh is trying to assist in adding the ‘E’ to TOD. In order to promote equitable public engagement, Raleigh should engage the public in each part of the process from the location of these districts to the design.

In a study on TOD in the Netherlands, Pojani and Stead emphasize the importance of seeing TOD as Transit-Oriented Design, which focuses more on the design around the node or transit center (Pojani & Stead 2015). Allowing the public to participate in the design stage of planning will allow current residents to influence the placemaking of these rapidly growing and changing areas. By engaging current residents and riders in early planning stages and designing charettes further along in the process, the City of Raleigh will better engage the public they hope to help by encouraging equitable development.

Earning the E in ETOD

Equitable Transit Oriented Development is an exciting opportunity for the City of Raleigh, but it is also important to make sure it is done well. In order to earn the E in ETOD, the City of Raleigh needs to reconsider the parameters of its TOD Overlay Districts to achieve the equitable outcome they desire from the “twist” on Transit-Oriented Development. By offering a 50-year term instead of 30 years for affordable units and engaging the public throughout the transit planning process, the City of Raleigh could better achieve these equitable outcomes.

Works Cited

Chapple, K., & Loukaitou-Sideris, A. (2019). Transit-oriented displacement or community dividends? : Understanding the effects of smarter growth on communities. The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11300.001.0001

City of Raleigh. (July 2020). “The Equitable Transit-Oriented Development Guidebook.” https://cityofraleigh0drupal.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/drupal-prod/COR22/EDATGuidebook.pdf

City of Raleigh. (December 2022). “What is a Transit-Overlay District?” https://raleighnc.gov/planning/what-transit-overlay-district

McClure, K. (2017). Length of stay in assisted housing. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research.

Pojani, D., & Stead, D. (2015). Transit-oriented design in the Netherlands. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 35(2), 131-144. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456X15573263

26 U.S. Code § 42. (2022). Low-income housing credit. https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/USCODE-2021-title26/USCODE-2021-title26-subtitleA-chap1-subchapA-partIV-subpartD-sec42

About the Author:  Amy Grace is a second-year master’s student in the City and Regional Planning program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. At UNC-CH, she specializes in transportation and studies how multimodal solutions can transform transportation networks. On the weekend, you will likely find her at her local Home Goods, walking on the Tobacco Trail with her dog, Josie, or trying a new restaurant in the Triangle with her husband, Graham.

Edited by Kimmy Hansen

Featured image courtesy ofCity of Raleigh, NC

What are the Urbanists Listening to?

By Emma Vinella-Brusher

Looking for some podcasts to listen to while walking to class, doing chores, or avoiding homework? Check out some of our favorite urbanist (or urbanist-adjacent) podcasts and featured episodes below. And if you’re looking for, even more, our September 2020 post includes a few more recommendations.

99% Invisible
323- The House that Came in the Mail Again
Design is everywhere in our lives, perhaps most importantly in the places where we’ve just stopped noticing. 99% Invisible is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture.

• Starting in 1908, the company that offered America everything, Sears, began offering what just might be its most audacious product line ever: houses.

Decoder Ring (Slate Podcasts)
The Mall is Dead (Long Live the Mall)
Decoder Ring is a show about cracking cultural mysteries. In each episode, host Willa Paskin takes a cultural question, object, or habit; examines its history; and tries to figure out what it means and why it matters.

• In this episode, author Alexandra Lange explains the atriums, escalators, and food courts of the singular suburban space of the mall.

How to Save a Planet (Gimlet)
Make Biking Cool (Again)!
Join us, journalist Alex Bumberg and a crew of climate nerds, as we bring you smart, inspiring stories about the climate change mess we’re in and how we can get ourselves out of it.

• In this episode, the hosts look at how cycling developed its dorky reputation and counter it with some propaganda of their own.

Next City (Straw Hut Media)
The Business That’s Owned by an Idea
Each week Lucas Grindley, executive director at Next City, will sit down with trailblazers to discuss urban issues that get overlooked. At the end of the day, it’s all about focusing the world’s attention on the good ideas that we hope will grow.

• This episode discusses Artisan Firebrand Bakery, an Oakland bakery owned by a “perpetual purpose trust” where the majority owner is the business’ mission itself.

Our Body Politic (Diaspora Farms)
How Building & Maintaining Community Makes a Healthier Society for All

Created and hosted by award-winning journalist Farai Chideya, Our Body Politic is unapologetically centered on reporting on not just how women of color experience the major political events of today, but how they’re impacting those very issues.

• This episode features author Dr. Marisa Franco, who shares insights on the mental and physical benefits of social interactions and community building and how in times of loneliness, people are prone to inadvertently sabotage these critical bonds.

Outside Podcast
Forces of Good: The Gearhead Librarian Who Revived a Town

Outside’s longstanding literary storytelling tradition comes to life in audio with features that will entertain, inspire, and inform listeners.

• This episode presents the story of a very enterprising librarian who came to a struggling town in Maine and took action on a novel idea: What if, in addition to loaning books, we started lending outdoor gear?

Talking Headways: A Streetsblog Podcast (The Overhead Wire)
Episode 345: The Heat is On

Jeff Wood of The Overhead Wire interviews public officials and advocates about transportation and urban planning policy.

• This episode features Dr. V Kelly Turner, Director of Urban Environment Research at UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation, and covers how to think about, measure, and regulate urban heat.

The War on Cars
The Pedestrian

The War on Cars brings you news and commentary on the latest developments in the worldwide fight to under a century’s worth of damage wrought by the automobile and to make cities better.

• In this episode, the hosts take a look back at author Ray Bradbury’s dystopian vision in his short story “Pedestrian” and talk about how walking contributes to our essential humanity, and what we lose when we build environments that make it impossible for people to walk.

Technopolis
Battery City

Technopolis is a podcast from CityLab about how cities are changing with new technology.

• In this episode, the hosts have a discussion with John Zahurancik from Fluence Energy and Rushad Nanavatty of Rocky Mountain Institute on renewable energy for future cities.

What else should we be listening to? Share your recommendations in the comments below!

Emma Vinella-Brusher is a third-year dual degree Master’s student in City and Regional Planning and Public Health interested in equity, mobility, and food security. Born and raised in Oakland, CA, she received her undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies from Carleton College before spending four years at the U.S. Department of Transportation in Cambridge, MA. In her free time, Emma enjoys running, bike rides, live music, and laughing at her own jokes.

Featured image: a collage of podcasts

Flipping the Script: Understanding Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety in Chapel Hill-Carrboro

By Emma Vinella-Brusher, Angles Managing Editor

Each year, over 3,000 pedestrians and 850 bicyclists are hit by vehicles here in North Carolina, making our state one of the least safe states for walking and biking[i]. Last month, the UNC Department of City & Regional Planning and Collaborative Sciences Center for Road Safety were joined by Tom Flood of Rovélo Creative and Arleigh Greenwald aka Bike Shop Girl for a free, two-day workshop on addressing this crisis.

The April 22-23 Flipping the Script on Traffic Violence event featured a guided bike ride and walk, a facilitated discussion about marketing/storytelling, and a workshop to develop marketing content. Students, academics, professionals, and elected officials gathered together to learn how to better communicate the critical issue of traffic violence towards our most vulnerable road users.

Flipping the Script kicked off at 1 PM Friday with a casual bicycle ride through the streets of Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and the UNC campus. Participants covered ~4.5 miles and stopped to photograph and discuss traffic safety concerns along the way. This was followed by a one-mile walking tour of downtown Chapel Hill, for another opportunity to identify safety challenges for pedestrians and bicyclists in the area. The day concluded with a facilitated debrief of both tours and discussion of opportunities to advocate for and improve local road safety.

Day 2 of Flipping the Script consisted of an afternoon hands-on workshop, where participants practiced crafting effective media messages about road safety challenges. The group developed messaging around the safety concerns facing pedestrians and cyclists to share with the public and local elected leaders in the hopes of making our streets safer for all.

Thank you to Tab Combs, Seth LaJeunesse, Tom Flood, Arleigh Greenwald, and everyone else in putting on this fantastic event!

[i] Watch for me NC, “Crash Facts.”

Featured image: Bicyclists participate in the 2022 Durham Ride of Silence to honor cyclists who have been killed or injured while cycling on public roadways, courtesy of author

New York City Congestion Pricing is Needed – But Only if Equity Concerns are Taken Seriously

By Sophia Nelson

If the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) approves the Central Business District Program’s Environmental Assessment, New York City will be the first in the nation to implement a congestion pricing program, something it desperately needs to minimize congestion in Manhattan and to raise revenue for overdue transit improvements, but it must help make transportation easier for those it aims to serve – not harder.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Reform and Traffic Mobility Act, approved in April 2019, included a tolling program to be facilitated by the MTA’s Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA).[i] Revenue will be used to fund the MTA’s capital program, which is in dire need of funding for system modernization improvements. While the program has been criticized by certain residents for unfair tolling, the MTA assures the public that the program is necessary for reducing congestion, decreasing travel times, and improving air quality.[ii] However, the success and overall acceptability of the program relies on the MTA’s ability to adequately address real or perceived concerns about inequitable impacts.

According to the MTA, 95 percent of trips to the Manhattan CBD by low-income populations are made using public transit. Further, fewer than one percent of commuters to Manhattan’s CBD are low-income individuals who drive,[iii] meaning only a very small portion of low-income commuters will be directly burdened by the toll.

The program still must consider the effects on low-income car users from the outer boroughs, however. In 2008, FHWA produced a report titled Lessons Learned from International Experience in Congestion Pricing, which summarizes some successes and failures of other congestion pricing programs. This report found that low-income car users are most likely to be negatively affected by congestion pricing.[iv]

To address this, the MTA plans to provide discounts on commuter rail to New York City residents of up to 20 percent. It also agreed to commit funds to improve bus service from Queens to Midtown, which would improve transportation options for car-reliant households.[v] To take it a step further, a portion of the toll revenue could even be used to subsidize taxis or ride-hailing services for first/last mile connections, thereby providing even more mobility for commuters from areas with poor bus or subway access.

The FHWA also notes that the distribution of toll revenues is important for ensuring equitable results. Since all the revenue will be directed towards public transportation expenses – 80% for New York City Transit, 10% for the Long Island Rail Road, and 10% for Metro-North Railroad – the resulting improvements will be directly benefitting lower-income residents and public transportation customers.[vi]

Once the program begins operation, the TBTA is required to collaborate with the City Department of Transportation to produce biannual reports on topics such as impacts to traffic congestion, changes in traffic patterns, and environmental improvements.[vii] However, there is no specific plan to evaluate equity impacts after the program is implemented. The FHWA report notes that, while some cities have designed their policies with equity in mind, post-implementation equity analysis is lacking. Though New York City is completing the required amount of public engagement, planners could take the lead on collaborative planning and on integrating equity into the process. If the public is only engaged before the program has started, how will the city know how it impacts residents’ day-to-day lives down the road?

Another important question about the congestion pricing program: who is going to be exempt? Who is going to be eligible for a tax credit? Who is going to pay the $23 toll every day? As expected, many residents are already attending the public engagement meetings to advocate for exemption. The MTA Reform and Traffic Mobility Act exempts emergency vehicles and vehicles transporting those with disabilities, but who else will be exempt is yet to be decided.[viii] Some say that just residents of the congestion zone should be exempt; others say that suburban commuters or even off-duty police should be exempt. With equity at the forefront, the MTA must listen to these concerns and re-evaluate who should bear the burden of congestion tolls.

If the congestion pricing program is rejected, the MTA would need to cover increased capital costs somehow – which would most likely result in a fare increase. This policy would hurt most New Yorkers who utilize public transit, but especially low-income individuals who are disproportionately burdened by transportation costs. Clearly, New York City needs a congestion pricing program now more than ever. But if New York City wants their program to be a successful model for other cities, equity concerns must be seriously addressed as the details of the program become finalized.

[i] “MTA Reform and Traffic Mobility Act,” Pub. L. No. S01509C (2019).

[ii] “Central Business District Tolling Program,” MTA, accessed February 17, 2022.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] K.T. Analytics, Inc., “Lessons Learned from International Experience in Congestion Pricing” (Federal Highway Administration, August 2008).

[v] Matthew W. Daus, “NYC Congestion Pricing Primer: Plans, Policies, Pandemic Impacts & Ideas to Make It Work Better!,” Black Car News (blog), November 2, 2021.

[vi] “Central Business District Tolling Program.”

[vii] MTA Reform and Traffic Mobility Act.

[viii] Ibid.

SophiaNelson is a first-year Master’s student in City and Regional Planning. Specializing in Transportation Planning, she is particularly interested in urban public transit systems and equitable community engagement.Sophiareceived her undergraduate degree from the University of Washington, where she studied urban planning and geography. Besides her interests in planning, she loves hanging with her cat, cooking, and tending to her houseplants.

Edited by James Hamilton

Featured image courtesy of Curbed NY

On the Road to Transportation Leadership in Blacksburg, VA

Earlier this semester, a group of seven UNC Transportation Planning students made the trek up to Blacksburg, Virginia for the 2022 Southern District Institute of Transportation Engineers (SDITE) Student Leadership Summit. Jointly hosted by Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia, the conference brought together students from 24 universities for a weekend of presentations and networking.

Under the theme “Invent the Future: Developing the Next Generation of Transportation Leaders,” the goal of the conference was to promote leadership and professional development for transportation students across the Southern U.S. Though the event largely catered to transportation engineers, our DCRP students still came away with some new knowledge and professional connections.

The bulk of the conference occurred on Saturday, February 26^th with a jam-packed day of speakers and interactive sessions. Highlights included “Big Data in Transportation” led by Mena Lockwood of the Virginia Department of Transportation, and “Soft Skills in a Technical World” by Chris Tiesler of Kittelson & Associates Inc. The day’s activities concluded with dinner, social, and networking at Eastern Divide Brewing in Blacksburg.

Check out the images below for a peek into life at the SDITE Student Leadership Summit.

Featured image: 2022 SDITE SLS Attendees, courtesy of conference organizers

Seems Like an Unsolvable Problem: A Loosely Hinged Recommendation for Tackling Bus Driver Shortages

By James Hamilton

This week Chapel Hill Transit celebrated Valentine’s Day by restoring several bus trips that had been removed at the beginning of the year.[i] Following an erratic Fall semester, the provider officially reduced its service in response to staff shortages. Beginning in January 2022, the A, CL, CM, CW, D, J, and N routes all had leaner schedules with the goal of “minimizing missed trips throughout the system.”[ii] Anecdotally, reliability did indeed improve; however, despite adjustments as “the number of callouts [started to] decrease,” conversations among frustrated UNC students on being late for class were replaced by those on having no choice but to be half-an-hour early instead.[iii] Even as route schedules continue to return to normal, expectations for service quality remain low.

The bus driver shortage is far from a unique problem for the Town of Chapel Hill. In October 2021, public transit employment was at 84 percent of pre-pandemic levels.[iv] Arguably the most heavily hit by the trend are schoolchildren: over 80 percent of school districts have altered their service since the outbreak of COVID-19, further complicating the learning of student cohorts already balancing blended instructional delivery modes.[v] More broadly, public transit disruptions have racial equity implications, as 60 percent of riders nationwide are people of color.[vi]

Other than food and agriculture workers, transportation operators face the highest risk of COVID-19 death of all employment sectors, so an individual’s cost-benefit analysis that produces a verdict that $16.50/hour is not worth jeopardizing her health or that of her loved ones is, perhaps, understandable.[vii],[viii] With that in mind, below I evaluate potential policy measures that Chapel Hill Transit and other public transit systems can consider to remedy the impact of bus driver shortages.

At the beginning of the 2021-22 school year, Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago proposed rideshare companies as a potential stop-gap for bus driver shortages caused by mass resignation over Chicago Public School’s vaccine mandate.[ix] The idea would be to strike an agreement with Uber, Lyft, or a similar company to fulfill the transit needs of the city’s school children. Although no deal was made, the suggestion no doubt tickled the fancies of transportation engineers. Can mass transit need be fulfilled by a fleet of personal automobiles operated by gig workers?

Uber certainly seems to think it has a role to play; the company is positioning itself as a new public transit option, suggesting that replacing 1 to 6 percent of bus trips with their ridesharing services could result in a 15 to 30 percent cost reduction per trip for transportation agencies.[x] Putting aside that Uber almost exclusively cited data from “Uber analysis” in its report, the conclusion is not illogical: ridesharing’s variable cost structure is inherently more responsive to demand than is the fixed cost structure typical of public transportation agencies. In Uber’s vision, if it were to integrate into a public transportation system, tax-payer money would go directly to its corporate headquarters instead of toward financing bus routes; so, if ridership decreases, cost would too. The simple beauty of this measure is that the more thoroughly a local government commits to it, the less consequential the shortages become. Running out of bus operators? Cut some lines, throw subsidies at Uber, and save some money.

Potential Impact of Policy on Chapel Hill Transit

+ Point-to-point service would improve first- and last-mile connectivity; blind allegiance to the Invisible Hand would restore patriotism to Orange County.

– The rush of developers hoping to revitalize defunct bus stops could cause speculation.

Induce Demand for Operators

Historically, transportation planners have either misunderstood or chosen to ignore “induced demand.” This economic principle states that if a good that people value is provided at no cost then demand will meet the supply.[xi] The frequently referenced (and even more frequently witnessed) scenario is that of highway expansion; local governments try to alleviate traffic by building new lanes, thereby attracting more car drivers to the road and instead increasing congestion.

Cries for officials to recognize this trend are only growing louder, and opportunity awaits those that do. Not only can planners reverse their auto-centric policies and reduce congestion and emissions, they can mitigate bus driver shortages as well. Following the above logic, if public transit providers construct buses and allow people to drive buses free of charge, the demand of people willing to drive buses will meet the supply of buses. In theory, this policy could maximize the potential of induced demand in transportation, as bus operators are paid – imagine how many cars would be on the road if drivers earned money to be there? It remains a personal curiosity and frustration of mine that so few planners have a working understanding of induced demand.

Potential Impact of Policy on Chapel Hill Transit

+ Surplus bus drivers can be retrained as bus conductors, adding new jobs to the economy and reinstating a sorely missed pillar of 1970s European society.

– Building more buses may contribute to sound pollution by also inducing demand for young mothers singing “The Wheels on the Bus.”

Force Passengers to Say Thank You

Doug Conant, former CEO of Campbell’s Soup, wrote 30,000 notes to his employees between 2001 and 2009, each one thanking an individual for a specific contribution; in that time, the company transformed from one with falling stock to one outperforming both the S&P Food Group and the S&P 500.[xii] Many understand the power of the words “thank you” on an intuitive level, but thinking about the phrase as having economic value is not so widespread.

As mentioned above, many former or potential bus operators do not see the pay as worth the risk of transmitting COVID-19, but the increase in gratitude that a thank-you-mandate would provoke would effectively add an additional wage, thereby encouraging more drivers to work for public transit providers.

Potential Impact of Policy on Chapel Hill Transit

+ Bus operators will feel so valued that Chapel Hill will never have to worry about collective bargaining.

– If saying thank you is forced, there is an outside chance it will come across as disingenuous thereby having the opposite effect.

Wait for the “Thin Air Phenomenon”

Perhaps by virtue of its Big Bang ancestry, the world has a habit of conjuring something where nothing came before it. From monoliths to Beanie Babies, Jesus to Eminem, unexplained phenomena can be found throughout human history. American democracy has often relied heavily on the “Thin Air Phenomenon” to drive much of its national agenda. Trickle-down economics, good-guy-with-gun theory, and clean coal initiatives have all successfully informed government officials that doing nothing is often the best way to achieve desired results. Waiting might be transportation providers’ best option.

Potential Impact of Policy on Chapel Hill Transit

+ Easy, no cost to tax payer

– Can the Town be trusted not to abuse handouts?

Pay Bus Drivers More

The least likely measure that I shall not waste time articulating.

[i] Town of Chapel Hill, “Chapel Hill Transit restores trips on the CL, D, & J routes Monday,” February 9, 2022.

[ii] Town of Chapel Hill, “Chapel Hill Transit reduces its transit service starting Monday,” January 7, 2022.

[iii] Town of Chapel Hill, “Chapel Hill Transit restores trips to several routes Monday,” January 20, 2022.

[iv] National Campaign for Transit Justice Alliance for a Justice Society Labor Network for Sustainability TransitCenter, Invest in Transit Equity, Invest in Transit Workers, February, 2022.

[v] National School Transportation Association, “NAPT, NASDPTS and NSTA Release Findings of School Bus Driver Shortage Survey,” August 31^st, 2021.

[vi] National Campaign for Transit Justice Alliance for a Justice Society Labor Network for Sustainability TransitCenter, Invest in Transit Equity, Invest in Transit Workers.

[vii] Yea-HungChen et al., “Excess mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic among Californians 18–65 years of age, by occupational sector and occupation: March through October 2020,” Plos One 16(6): e0252454.

[viii] Indeed.com., “Bus driver salary in Chapel Hill, NC,” accessed on February 5, 2022.

[ix] Nader Issa, “CPS talking to Lyft, Uber after bus drivers quit over vaccine mandate,” Chicago Sun Times, August 30, 2021.

[x] Uber, Transit Horizons: Towards a New Model of Public Transportation, accessed on February 5, 2022.

[xi] Steve Davis, “More highways, more driving, more emissions: Explaining ‘induced demand,’” Transportation for America, October 20, 2021.

[xii] Rodger Dean Duncan, “How Campbell’s Soup’s Former CEO Turned to Company Around,” Fast Company, September 18, 2014.

James Hamilton is a first-year Master’s student with the Department of City and Regional Planning whose interests center on urban design in relation to community marginalization, environmental justice, societal cohesion, and suburban retrofit. He studied public policy and economics at Duke University and has since worked in New Orleans and New York before circling back to the triangle. Never happier than when he is hiking up a mountain or traveling on a train, James fails to commit enough time to his average writing collections, ambitious reading list, and lifelong rugby enthusiasm.

Edited by Amy Patronella

Featured image: A Chapel Hill bus advertises for new operators. Courtesy of the Town of Chapel Hill.

Missing the Train: Why Raleigh’s Lack of a Light Rail is Holding the City Back

By Ian Ramirez

If you’re a vehicle owner and you’re reading this, I’m willing to bet you can think of a time or two in your life where you felt a real freedom attached to driving. However, I’d also wager that you don’t always love sitting in traffic when you’re already twenty minutes late to work. Recognizing the environmental and economic downturn that has been borne out of American auto dependency has planners searching for both sustainable and efficient transit options to offer to the average commuter. However, where cities like Raleigh have faltered on offering new-age transit options, others like Charlotte are at the forefront of modern mass transit. The questions of how to best move the thousands of residents that make daily commutes into a city may at first seem daunting, especially given the American romanticism of the car. But for planners, the answers may lie in the not so distant past.

In the early 20^th century, streetcars lined the roads of American cities in all directions, offering clean and safe transportation for all. Now, the light rail is doing the same thing in many major US cities. Given that light rails cost less than subways, are often cheaper to construct and maintain than normal trains, and offer more consistent on-time service than buses, it is easy to see why urban planners across the country have made the light rail their answer to both sprawl and auto dependency.

Throughout 2020, Raleigh had a single occupancy vehicle use rate of nearly 80%.[i] This means that nearly 80% of drivers were traveling alone when commuting. In addition to Raleigh’s high rate of lone drivers, the current average commute time is 23 minutes.[ii] These statistics indicate the city’s need for some form of mass transit that can alleviate the burden placed on both infrastructure and environment by auto dependency. As a regular driver in the Triangle, it is this writer’s very professional opinion that something needs to change so I can spend less time sitting in Durham traffic. There are innumerable reasons the light rail is an excellent answer for this conundrum. In multiple cities, this form of mass transit offered not just alleviation from congestion, but also economic and neighborhood revitalization in downtowns of cities in decline.

Since 1986, the MAX Light Rail in Portland, Oregon has carried urbanites all over the city. The city has a population of approximately 650,000 people, and yet the light rail still manages to move roughly 3.9 million people annually. During non-Summer work months, like October, the Portland light rail moves an average of about 80,000 people a week. [iii] Given Raleigh’s similarity in population (467,000 people in 2020), and the abundance of surrounding towns outside of both Portland and Raleigh that serve as bedroom communities bursting with city commuters, the success of the light rail in Portland bodes well for Raleigh. The large number of mass transit users in Portland bodes well for other cities bold enough to introduce light rail as a transit option, despite some worry about who precisely benefits from light rail services.[iv]

On that note, it is important to ensure that low income individuals, people of color, and other disenfranchised communities are offered the opportunity to make use of a light rail, since these populations are often the ones who rely on mass transit services the most. Minority communities are often faced with, as engineer Christof Spieler states, “different standards for ‘choice’ and ‘dependent’ riders (that is to say white and Black).”[v] Spieler’s article goes on to explore the inequities in transit quality, bus stop location, and overall experience for commuters in different boroughs of Houston, Texas. While a light rail will not solve every racial divide in the transportation sector, equitable and clean transit is a great way to offer services than benefit multiple communities within a city. However, to reach those underprivileged communities, a city must first take a leap of faith through one key step: giving people new ways to get around.

Charlotte, North Carolina is a recent convert to the light rail lifestyle, having just debuted a light rail service in 2007. The city of Charlotte is an excellent example of a metropolis that recognized the potential benefits a light rail could have. Like Raleigh, Charlotte is surrounded by smaller towns and suburbs full of city commuters, and the city’s own data suggests that a least half of the city’s workforce commutes from outside the county. Additionally, the same data indicates that roughly 37% of Charlotte commuters spend over 30 minutes in their vehicles each morning.[vi] I was born just outside Charlotte. My parents ultimately moved us out of the city in the mid-2000s because the daily congestion was becoming unbearable. The data in Raleigh is strikingly similar, though commute times in the capital city are admittedly a bit quicker than that of the average Charlottean.

However, the Charlotte Department of Transportation (CDOT) rose to the challenge, working with the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) to debut the light rail and revamp the streetcar system across the city.[vii] While the system may not have been in place as long as Portland’s, and as such cannot be analyzed as extensively, implementation in Charlotte points towards something that might prove to be a useful transportation solution for Raleigh planners.Charlotte geared their resources in the direction of capacity increase for transportation options. As a result, the city now has the potential to move more residents on public transit than ever before.

City officials hope that with this expansion of transportation options, people will make the transition from personal vehicle use to a more sustainable and accessible transit option that will also cut down on their daily commute to work. Charlotteans did not just invest in a light rail, they invested in their own future. Raleigh should do the same.

[i] United States Census. (2010). Census of Population and Housing. US Census Bureau.

[ii] American Community Survey. (2021, October 8). American Community Survey Data Tables. US Census Bureau.

[iii] Trimet. (2020, September 29). TriMet Service and Ridership Information. [Ridership Data and Analysis]

[iv] Chemtob, D. (2021, September 27). New light rail would drive development. But what about moving people? Axios Charlotte.

[v] Spieler, C. (2020, August 24). Racism has shaped public transit, and it’s riddled with inequities. Rice Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

[vi] Charlotte Area Transit System. (2019). 2030 Transit Corridor System Plan.

[vii] The Charlotte Department of Transportation. (2020, October 13). STATE OF MOBILITY: Charlotte 2020.

Ian is a second-semester senior at UNC, set to graduate in May with a BA in Public Policy. He also has minors in Geography and Urban Planning, the latter of which led him to the Carolina Planning Journal. He is a DJ for WXYC, the campus radio station. Ian was recently accepted to the Master’s Program in Public Policy at UNC, and will be part of the first cohort to graduate from the program. His planning interests include environmental land use planning, expansion of public transportation, and revitalization in areas initially targeted by Urban Renewal.

Edited by Ruby Brinkerhoff

Featured image: LYNX light rail system in Charlotte. Courtesy of James Willamor, Flickr

New Website Highlights Communities’ Perspectives on Urban Renewal

By Lindsay Oluyede

Between 1955 and 1966, U.S. cities reported displacing approximately a third of a million families for urban renewal projects. As noted by researchers at the University of Richmond, their homes were razed to clear land for redevelopment that included “new, sometimes public housing, more often private, or for other purposes like the development of department stores or office buildings.”[i] The displaced families were disproportionately African-American. In 1961, 66% of residents of areas marked for urban renewal projects were African-American, though they made up 10% of the U.S. population at that time.[ii]

Undoubtedly, these communities were forever changed. Recently, efforts to understand the experience of the residents whose neighborhoods were lost to urban renewal have occurred. Around the country, universities, local libraries, and historical societies are documenting the stories of these communities and their residents.

A new website, Urban Renewal: In Retro (www.urbanrenewalstories.com), brings together multimedia projects that tell the story of communities impacted by urban renewal. The features of the website include:

• Interactive Map: A Google map that compiles projects about the impact of urban renewal on communities around the country. The projects include oral histories, documentary films, museum exhibits, etc.
• Learn More: A list of resources about the urban renewal era.
• Submit a Project: An online form to share similar projects that can be added to the map.

Remembering the Past for a Resilient Future

These projects offer a perspective on urban renewal from the voices of the people who lived through it. The communities displaced by urban renewal faced immediate and enduring consequences, including the trauma of moving involuntarily and the lingering loss of community.

Community trauma and resilience—the ability to respond and adapt to new circumstances—are inextricably connected:

“…improving resilience requires intervening in that cycle of unacknowledged community trauma. A legitimate intervention into this cycle depends upon public knowledge, public understanding, and public acknowledgement of past events in order to avoid repeating oppression, injustice, and mistakes, and revictimizing communities and individuals still affected by the wrong.” [iii]

The motivation to create Urban Renewal: In Retro stems from the desire to encourage conversations about community displacement and resilience, and hopefully inspire future policies and planning that support more just and equitable outcomes.

[i] Digital Scholarship Lab, “Renewing Inequality,” American Panorama, ed. Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers, accessed October 31, 2021.

[ii] Fullilove, M.T. (2001). Root shock: The consequences of African American dispossession. Journal of Urban Health 78, 72–80.

[iii] Dukes, E. F., Williams, J., and Kelban, S. (2012). Collective Transitions and Community Resilience in the Face of Enduring Trauma. In Goldstein B. (Ed.), Collaborative Resilience: Moving Through Crisis to Opportunity. The MIT Press.

Lindsay Oluyede is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning. As a researcher, she unearths empirical insights from diverse perspectives to inform policy recommendations to improve transportation equity. Lindsay created Urban Renewal: In Retro while participating in the Maynard Adams Fellowship for the Public Humanities program.

Edited by Jo Kwon

Featured image: Map of urban renewal storytelling projects. Courtesy of Lindsay Oluyede.