tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post7049166217418494177..comments2024-03-29T03:50:00.893-04:00Comments on Urban kchoze: Highway-oriented development: know thine enemysimval84http://www.blogger.com/profile/10615053214354191224noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-39615133818592581842014-10-25T11:35:18.481-04:002014-10-25T11:35:18.481-04:00Excellent article as usual.
I think another thing...Excellent article as usual.<br /><br />I think another thing we can learn from car-oriented development (especially car-oriented malls) is how to accomodate cars with minimum space and minimum cost (per car, though of course the costs add up if you have lots of cars).<br /><br />Malls typically have surface parking, which avoids both the cost of structured parking and also the bulk of ramps, which take up much more space than stairs or elevators for people. They typically have their parking spots arranged around narrow traffic lanes which are used both by cars driving slowly and pedestrians. The malls I know keep the perimeter of the building free of car parking so that people, cars and trucks can circulate more freely.<br /><br />If we built a fairly narrow local street with the same ideas, it might give 2 narrow traffic lanes shared by pedestrians and vehicles, each flanked on the outside by the building or its buffer area and on the inside by parking. The parking might be a single row of angle parking where cars could back in from either side, and it could be priced to always keep a few free spots, which among other benefits means that there wouldn't be a solid wall of cars dividing the street in two. This would be narrow by current North American standards but provide much more street parking than your Japanese examples.<br /><br />Does this kind of thing get built and if not, why not? Would it be too hard to get in and out of the parking spots unless the traffic lane was quite wide? Would there be too much friction between pedestrians (who would presumably want to use each lane in both directions) and vehicles (who would use each in a single direction)? Is it a problem with emergency vehicle access?Joshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05484810849321286652noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-6233154357939233552014-10-22T13:38:04.034-04:002014-10-22T13:38:04.034-04:00In a broader sense this discussion raises the ques...In a broader sense this discussion raises the question of what the optimal access/mobility balance is for various modes. More access leads to reduced speeds and thus lower overall mobility. The highway, like the railroad, should put mobility, and thus speed and distance, above access. They're links between places, not circulators within places. <br /><br />Back in the day we had commuter railroad stations and local, limited, and express services to try to achieve both fast high-mobility services between big cities and slower more accessible services to smaller cities and suburbs on the same route. Rapid transit systems, like the Chicago 'L' for example, were originally built with almost ridiculously close stop spacing, like a quarter mile, because the neighborhoods wanted the shortest walk possible, even offering to build the stations themselves in some cases. Over time many of those stations had to be whittled away due to lack of ridership and the poor operations they caused. <br /><br />Highways were co-opted by the "we need access" arguments too. After all, if a neighborhood has to contend with the noise, pollution, and destruction of their street grid, shouldn't they be able to actually use the highway too? Of course that leads to wasteful trips, congestion, and bad development patterns. Urban interstate highways are like the highest level stroad in a way, too congested and with too many exists and ramps (accesses) to provide fast travel speeds (mobility), but also too unpleasant for anything but the most low-value development to happen near it. <br /><br />Some of the more regimented interstate highways with express lanes, or limited access toll routes (like the Dulles Highway in northern Virginia) act a bit more like railroads with the different levels of service, rather than the stroads that try to be everything to everyone but achieving nothing for anyone. Still, it seems like we never seem to get this right. A while back an example was given of one Japanese city (not Sapporo) where the heavily-tolled highway skirts the edge and doesn't enter the city at all, with only one or maybe two accesses to the city. That seems like a good way to do it, but then what about development trying to concentrate around those access roads too? Tough situation. Jeffrey Jakucykhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04092631645389171565noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-2049681838112309832014-10-21T23:54:59.858-04:002014-10-21T23:54:59.858-04:00Adelaide looks like a decent street-based car-orie...Adelaide looks like a decent street-based car-oriented city (as cars still dominate mode share) with retail well integrated for the most part into a porous street grid and little high-speed roads in urban areas. It looks like it has quite a bit of potential for more transit and active mode use. It's just that density seems to be a bit lacking. Indeed, from what I can find, 12,9% of all trips are already done on a bike or on foot, 3 times as high as American cities (http://www.atrf.info/papers/2002/2002_Stopher_Bullock_Rose.pdf).<br /><br />Great minds think alike on the impact of high-speed modes of travel and density. Still, I think the density of density matters, rapid transit does allow density to spread around, but without zoning, or with lax zoning, it results in high-density nodes around stations, high-density nodes that can be even higher than what the city would look like without rapid transit (without it, streets would congest and this would limit density locally, so you would have density spread around rather than at nodes).simval84https://www.blogger.com/profile/10615053214354191224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-84707066545665635202014-10-20T10:15:05.379-04:002014-10-20T10:15:05.379-04:00Great post!
I like how you mentioned highways add...Great post!<br /><br />I like how you mentioned highways add land encouraging sprawl. I came to the same conclusion when I was writing my blog post on density without zoning ( http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/7/16/density-without-zoning.html ). Without zoning, density is reduced to a ratio of Population:Area. 'Area' is the amount of accessible land within a reasonable amount of time (This differs for everyone as for some people 'reasonable' may mean 30 minutes. For some it may mean 10 minutes.) Building a highway or a rapid transit line adds to the supply of land, decreasing density.<br /><br />A pedestrian city would be built at a smaller scale than a bicycle city. A bicycle city would be built at a smaller scale than a car city. A car city would be built a a smaller scale than a highway city: http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/images/blog37-5.png<br /><br />If we build highways, car-oriented streets, bike-oriented streets, pedestrian-oriented streets we're going to attract that scale of development.<br /><br />In the area I come from in Australia, our local mall was within walking distance of many houses. But the mall was not just a retail destination, but it contained everyday needs - bank branches, pharmacies, supermarkets, fish shop, council offices.<br /><br />https://maps.google.com/maps?q=-34.875158,138.601304&ll=-34.875545,138.602282&spn=0.005316,0.010461&num=1&t=h&z=17<br /><br />Some of the wealthier neighbourhoods are even more integrated. You have multiple indoor malls that blended seemlessly into the surrounding local shops. There are post offices, movie cinemas, cafes, hardware stores, all within 'pleasant' (not having to cross highways or parking lots) walking distances of the homes. As a result, this was on the most expensive areas of the city to live in:<br /><br />https://maps.google.com/maps?q=-34.875158,138.601304&ll=-34.921188,138.636078&spn=0.005313,0.010461&num=1&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=-34.921214,138.635543&panoid=DOZrZm-bWCPDKclfPgF6XQ&cbp=12,336.39,,0,6.83Andrew Pricehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07803628953483616843noreply@blogger.com