Vancouver is a more youthful city than Seattle, and it is young people who use transit, especially those with economical student passes.

Good point, Keith. I wonder if Post-Secondary education in Seattle has a mandatory universal transit pass system as we do here?

I generally agree with the author’s argument that Vancouver’s density plays a part in our transit efficiency. Good thing we’re using our last good chunk of property downtown to build density, rather than a giant eyesore casino.

The “bus issue”. My gut tells me that Vancouver neighbourhoods are underserved by buses and trolleys today (except in the downtown peninsula, Broadway corridor, and perhaps 4th Avenue). If we had a higher level of service, then ridership would rise dramatically.

On Broadway, for example, I resist the temptation to call the B-Lines “bus rapid transit” (BRT). They are not riding the centre of the street (away from right turning cars), or tripping the lights (making signals go green as they approach).

Seattle, though, is a whole different kettle of fish. Approaching from the north we arrive at a 220-foot wide gash of concrete opening up to swallow some sixteen lanes of cars. It’s not that this scar in the landscape is of anti-urban proportions. The Champs Elysees, the Unter den Linden, and the Ringstrasse also have that width (Paris, Berlin & Vienna respectively—all of them “under the trees”, even if not Linden trees). No, it’s the totally Amercian way of shaping this traffic function that speaks of something that for Seattle is in the water, or “in the national culture”.

Riding in buses is not American—just ask Mrs. Rosa Parks. Buying newer and bigger cars is American. Neighbourhood footprint has a role to play, but I suspect a minor one.

Mezz, I don’t believe all of what Patrick has to say, although Chapter 2: Restore the Streetcar City of his new book “SEVEN RULES FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES” (2010) is right on topic for our discussions, and I value his work greatly.

However, I view from a different perspective Patrick’s attributing as “democratic” the Jeffersonian Land Ordinance Survey, and the orthogonal cities platted on that system. For me both systems are “Cartesian”. Jefferson was in close contact with the Parisian Avant Garde busy at work overthrowing the King, and playing tennis indoors at the city of Versailles (the oath of independence was famously taken at a covered facility that is still there for viewing). For democracy, Jefferson would rely on a system of checks and balances to smoke out the scoundrels. For building great cities I rather hope the Lord of the Manor at Monticello would turn to science. To the concrete, and verifiable stuff.

As regards Condon’s proposal that we build the public spaces of our cities as extruded corridors, in opposition to the age-old habit of core-and-periphery (location, location, location), what are we to expect from the converging views of an American-Canadian and a South American-Canadian, but room for meaningful difference? The key for me is that the purely Cartesian system has to be overlaid with the human tendencies that both Patrick and I find present as far back as ancient Rome, and beyond. Paradox is inherent in every system, a reputable mathematician once put it to me. As the Renaissance famously rediscovered, the proper application of good science is most often perceived as high art.

Thus, once we get it right that planning for transportation must be part of—must be fully integrated with—planning cities that will be made up of urban quartiers, real work still remains to be done. We must be painstakingly sure that our urban sites will evolve into meaningful places. The endless strips, or corridors—be they known as Vancouver’s Broadway, Los Angeles’s Santa Monica Boulevard, or Seattle’s Aurora Avenue—are probably just more of the degradation of the public realm had at the hands of the total domination of everything by the automobile.

“However, I view from a different perspective Patrick’s attributing as “democratic” the Jeffersonian Land Ordinance Survey, and the orthogonal cities platted on that system”

I am glad to see someone else beg to differ on it too.
Coming from a French city who has adopted an “grid” in 1720, so during the height of absolutism in France: I have hard time to find some more democratic or egalitarian virtue in it, than in a Lenfant vision to name one

By the way, should we mention the Levi strauss take on the pervasive grid system in America?
In “triste tropique”, it explains, it is to strike more with the traditional native village structure,hence disorienting more them, making more sure they abandon their tradition,…

that is eventually a more believable explanation…

@Jon Petrie. Not sure if that $48,499 is before or after taxes.

Based on the 2006 Census. The median after tax income for a lone parent family was $35,700. For a 2 parent family it was $56,577.

To add to your list the price of housing on average is higher in Vancouver as well.

I’ve always thought that idea of transit service vs development and density. Is like the old chicken and egg. You need one for the other and the same the other way.

Having high frequency transit out in really low density residential doesn’t help. Nor does having really high density development with poor transit. Neither one starts things. Bringing better transit service doesn’t mean your going to necessarily have more riders.

I am surprised that Seattle hasn’t decided to have the bus routes feed the new LRT line. I know certain people like the whole one seat ride. But if you have 10 bus routes and each one is only 50% full. Wouldn’t it be better financially to have them pushed together onto the LRT line. Assuming it was feasible.

The egg came first. The feather of the chicken is a mutation of the scale of the reptile. If you assume evolution (good science), then a reptile laid a mutant egg that had scales turning to feathers.

As Paul points out, the rising cost of housing is the reptile we need to keep an eye on. It seems possible that the worst unit in a tower building—say, a 400 sq. ft. unit with no view, no through ventilation, no sun, an too close to the ground to escape the constant noise and pollution from the traffic artery below—can become the bellwether in the market place, setting the new threshold for the entry level unit.

In this scenario, we need transit because we can’t afford cars. And, as the local economy deteriorates further, renting that unit becomes the only sustainable option. The middle class no longer can afford to own a home, or a car. That’s too bad, because we have built Canada, and most certainly British Columbia, to be mostly accessible by car (vacations, special venues, etc.). We can change over substantial parts of our social network (school, work, healcare, shopping, NHL hockey, etc.), but the national parks and the spread out regions are not going to retrofit easily.

The transit option that I hope we are building is one where the entry-level real estate product is free hold or fee simple, ground-oriented and high density. Transit is used to extend the reach by linking together the high-density, human-scale quartiers built of such a building type. There is probably still one car per home, but there are viable options to the automobile, and just about every adult owns a yearly transit pass.

At the “regional scale” Patrick Condon’s vision and mine look just about the same. We can build the European model of density on top of the North American model of suburbia and discover that the build out of the post war years was really an investment in infrastructure to support the next 300-years of urbanization.

Redevelopment of the suburbs in strategic locations—think along transit corridors—can net a ten-fold increase in density, and in tax revenues, for our municipal governments. Densities of 6 to 12 units to the acre can convert to 60 to 100 units to the acre, using 3.5 to 5.5 story building types. The height of the building will be proportional to the width of the fronting street, following urban design principles based on hard data that deliver vibrant and walkable places, rather than the amorphous zoning hatched in the automobile age.

The problems show up at the scale of the architecture itself. Of both the building type, and of the resulting quality in the urban space created by the kind of repetition of type that defines urbanism. We can go on a tour of bare-land strata developments (the building is free-hold, but the site is collectively owned) where the streets are private, and not built to “public” standards. The spacing between the buildings crosses the boundary of human decency because the “urban design” was controlled by the bottom line.

In one case, rear gardens are 20 feet deep, and at the rear side neighbour is just 40-feet/13m away. The front separations not much different. Including the access street, and the front porches or decks the buildings are built barely 44-feet/13.4m apart. Montreal was building better neighbourhoods than this in the 19th century.

In this case, when our friends entertain they regale us with stories of the latest “goings on” behind the windows nearby. In every other way, their units could be building blocks of a state-of-the-art quartiers. We can look at units like this in Surrey, or along Granville Street in Vancovuer. Either is less than 10 years in the ground.

In some cases, councils that seem to be always strapped for money, but have not tapped into their borrowing capacity, are willing to do deals with tower developers to get a one time $1 million-per-tower tax windfall. Of course the last thing we want is our local government acting as developers, or our building industry being dominated by multi-nationals. Local scale applies to more than built form, and there is a good reason to specify building types that can be constructed by either small or large contractors. Developers after all are regular contributors to local campaigns.

In the final analysis, local government is funded by property tax and that depends on population size, not tower height. If we can house the same population in human-scale buildings, than in towers, then we are better providing homes that are ground-oriented and free-hold.

However, to do that effectively we need a particular type of transit. Skytrain we have learned begets bad urbanism.

The transportation has to be planned at the same time as the urbanism.

Returning to Seattle, the five storey-plus wood frame condos that I see going up where the new LRT is running—in Belltown and Seattle Center, near the Space Needle—leave me wondering.

A more vibrant example is 23rd Avenue in Portland, 20 blocks from downtown, and one hopes intensifying at the scale I identify as the “human-scale quartier”, not the Pearl District. That same process, and quantifiably similar results, can extend all over the region of Portland Metro, reaching destinations south like Tigard.

For more on Portland’s transit oriented dense (re)development referenced by Lewis N. Villegas above
http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/05/25/how-portland-sold-its-banks-on-walkable-development/

Seattle’s outskirts are raising its fares which might make a difference.

Seattle Times Sunday, May 30, 2010 – Page updated at 04:30 p.m.

Bus fares go up for many riders
Bus fares are going up Tuesday for many Sound Transit and Community Transit riders.

Sound Transit adult fares within one zone will increase 50 cents, to $2 per trip. And fares from Snohomish County into King County will
increase 50 cents, to a new rate of $3. Youth, senior and disabled fares are less.

Sound Transit is trying to simplify the fare structure, and to make customers cover more than their current 20-percent share of the
operating costs, in its first fare hike since 2005.

Community Transit in Snohomish County is raising bus fares by a quarter — only for local routes, within the county — to an adult rate of
$1.50, youth rate of $1, and a senior-disabled fare of 50 cents. Also, on June 13, Sunday service will be suspended, and certain weekday trips will be reduced.

King County Metro Transit increased fares earlier this year.

and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann's_renovation_of_Paris#Social_rupture

or http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformations_de_Paris_sous_le_Second_Empire#La_rupture_d.E2.80.99un_.C3.A9quilibre_social

scm—if you have teenage kids, which i don’t yet…

But, you raise a good point. Car sharing would not shave more private trips off the streets, but it would reduce parking numbers at the design stage. Will condo corporations own their own share vehicles one day? With the core-and-periphery model building out, LRT/BRT, bike rental and car sharing could be within 5 minute walking distance of all front doors.

Jon, the pictures on the link you posted show the kind of build out that I would see fronting either public open spaces (squares) or avenues 99-foot wide and greater. The second picture, scrolling down in the post, looks like a clone of the drawings we did six years ago for Portland’s St. John’s Neighbourhood.

I failed to mention this, but the original square mile plat of Portland is the best street plan that I know of in the west. Never mind that the 200 x 200-foot block dimensions present a nightmare for building parking and parkades. Together with the 50-foot wide streets, and the 80-foot wide avenues every tenth block, they are a charm to walk on. The “Park Blocks” along 8th and 9th Avenues, on either side of Burnside, I count as the third best urban spaces in North America—after Stanley Park and NYCs Central Park. Urbanism does not get much better than that.

GR thanks for the kind words. Yep. Reproduction is the best form of recognition… somedays it seems like its all you’ll get. However, we want people to understand these urban design facts as well. Not just the planners, but the folks in the room should feel like they can just go on the Bulablog and riff some stuff.

Bill’s idea of the fare price—below three dollars—and voony’s discussions elsewhere that the transit trip should not be longer than 20 minutes—we could tag 5 minutes walking either end—are key and vital statistics for success.

The monthly, and yearly pass fits into that matrix. On the one hand, it lowers the rate for regular uses. On the other, it provides an injection of cash to the transportation authority in advance of ridership.

Thousands of small decisions combine to make great cities.

> Car sharing would not shave more private trips off the streets,

I don’t agree with this. One of thing things that car sharing does is makes people aware of the *actual* cost of driving.

When people own cars there tends to be a mental attitude that the short trip you take to the grocery store costs nothing. There is, in fact, a cost associated with this: gas, wear and tear and the necessary maintenance, etc.

With car sharing these costs are *explicit.* When you get in your car, you are consciously incurring costs.

It stands to reason that a reduction in unnecessary trips would follow.

(I’m in the process of selling my private vehicle and joining a car sharing organization.)

> If the grocery store was walking distance away, the thought of driving
> wouldn’t even enter our minds.

Right. I also think not owning a car expands walking distance: a car owner might consider 1km a reasonable walk to a grocery store, while a non-car owner might consider 2km.

I’m *not* sure we can *quantify* how much the difference is…yet. It would be interesting to do a survey of private car owners who have switched to car sharing to see what the change was…

Generally speaking, I think the short term focus of the “anti-car” lobby (a label which you could probably apply to me) should be:
1) A substantial reduction in unnecessary short trips by car that could be replaced by bike or foot (i.e. your example.)
2) A substantial reduction in Single Occupancy Vehicle (S.O.V.) trips.

A car with four people in it is much less of a problem than a car with one person in it. A car travelling on the highway from Vancouver to Hope may be perfectly reasonable, but using a car to travel 10 blocks to a grocery store seems rather silly (though your comment about brining home a heavy load is also valid.)

Ironically, I’m guilty of the S.O.V. problem. I very rarely drive, but when I do it tends to be alone…mind you if anybody would like to buy a very reliable and rust free 1996 Volvo 850GLT I’m trying to sell it. Cheap. 🙂

My actual cost of driving has, incidentally, been about $6,000 a year. The car is paid for but that includes gas, insurance, all routine maintenance.

Re Lewis’s: “The way we are going to tame the automobile is to provide viable alternatives to owning one.”

It would also help if the price paid for parking spots by automobile owners had a close relationship to construction cost of new parking, particularly where good transit already exists.

1 Kingsway’s recently completed market rental housing, owned by the City of Vancouver, and next to 5 bus lines has circa 90 parking spots for rent at $35 a month –cost recovery circa $250. And in Vancouver’s West End, annual street parking permits cost $69 — i.e. less than 20 cents a day.

Bill, in the 1970’s-1980’s we went from a one car family to a two car, then three and four car, then five, then my older brother moved out before my youngest sister got a car. And, we weren’t the only family on the block doing it. You needed a car to go to work, to go to school, and to go to meet your friends and hang out in the evenings.

That being said, it is a mystery to me too why we need more than one car per family except for the concrete facts of how we have shaped our urbanism.

Jon, the economics of building parking—structured or surface lot—have always been presented to me in “absolute terms”. You could draw a straight line of inference between the daily, weekly, monthly, or annual charge, and the costs of land and improvements (paving a lot or actually building a structured garage).

The only piece missing in the analysis was the fluctuations in the market place. Sometimes they are predictable, some times they are wildly irrational. The numbers you quote prove it.

One of the consequences of sprawl—and I count the tower and podium condos as high-density sprawl—is that hot and cold spots in land values result, for no apparently practical reason.

If you happen to be the owner of a cold spot, then building a “parking lot” is a workable solution for hanging on to the land, paying the taxes, and waiting for better times to come.

Joni Mitchel had a good song about that.