Courtesy of making the Streetsblog “front page” today for the article “Stockton less sprawling than Portland or Washington DC? Not so fast,” I became aware of the blog Stockton City Limits. It’s a great site that I recommend you look at, and I’ll be delving into the site more in the coming days. The topics are similar to this Getting Around Sacramento blog, including community, development, transportation, and smart growth. Stockton is similar in many ways to Sacramento, not just because it is on a river, but it is another classic Central Valley sprawl city which has a livable core but is surrounded by unsustainable suburbs with dismal walk scores and declining economies.
Category: livability
sprawl hurts
Two articles from the Sacramento Bee this Sunday illustrate how sprawl hurts us all.
How much water a community gulps varies across the Sacramento region (SacBee 2014-03-09)
The article highlights the remarkable variation in the amount of water used per capita by different areas in the region, with Granite Bay being the poster child for extensive lawns and landscaping. These exurban areas suck up the water that could be used for more productive domestic or agricultural purposes. This is not a lifestyle choice, this is extravagant misuse of our common resources. Where does this happen? Almost always in the exurbs. But many of these people still work in the urban core, their commutes eased by the freeways and arterials built with the money taken from the rest of us taxpayers. They have us coming and going. Literally.
Sacramento ‘ruralpolitans’ feed the animals, then don suits for city jobs (SacBee 2014-03-09)
The article highlights people who live in rural areas close to the urban core and commute to regular jobs. Another seeming lifestyle choice, made possible by the freeways and arterials that make it easy for people to live in a seeming rural paradise but work where the jobs are higher paying. They pay low property taxes, but benefit from the transportation network and other services that all of us pay for. If these people were actually serving some agricultural purpose, I’d be a lot more willing to provide some subsidy to their lifestyle, but they are only playing at agriculture, contributing nothing to the rest of us.
Sacramento and the 12 strategies
Several Sacramento area people have referenced the article “12 Strategies That Will Transform Your City’s Downtown” on the UrbanScale blog by John Karras. I’d like to look a little more closely at some of the strategies. If you have information or thoughts about any of these, please contribute.
#1 Turn one-way streets into two-way streets. Sacramento, and specifically downtown/midtown, has most of the one-way streets in the region. The city does have a policy to convert some of these streets, but the effort stalled, and no one seems to know why or be willing to admit why. Several streets have been resurfaced recently without being converted, though this would be the perfect time to do it. These include H, I, 9th, and 10th. There are some costs to conversion, turning signals around or installing new signals in some cases, the the reward in walkability and retail success is worth it. The post says “One-way streets are great if your only goal is to channel traffic through your downtown, but they are bad for pedestrian activity and retail opportunities. Two-way streets create a more comfortable pedestrian environment and have been shown to increase property values.” J Street in Sacramento is a classic example of how one-way streets reduce retail business. All those thousands of cars streaming by the most dense retail street in the region, and only small bubbles of successful retail to show for it. I’m glad Karras has this one on the top, because it is one of my strongest desires, with many blog posts: Two-waying streets in SF, New bike lanes, diets and sharrows downtown, street changes, more on conversion to two-way streets, and Choosing streets to walk.
property taxes and blight
Why do buildings and lots sit empty for years throughout downtown Sacramento and beyond? Because there is little consequence to the property owner of leaving them empty. They continue to pay property taxes while waiting for some development scheme that will make them so much money that the years of property tax are a drop in the bucket. Occasionally, a property is taken for non-payment of property taxes, but that is rare.
While the building or lot remains empty, the city (I’ll use “the city” for the cities and counties and utility providers) still has costs associated with the property. The cost of electrical, water, sewer, telephone, the street network, and transit in an area has more to do with the capacity of the system and the network passing by a property than the specific connection to the property, so the city still has costs even though they are receiving only a pittance of property tax. Fire and police services are actually higher for empty building and empty lots because they attract vandalism, crime, illegal occupancy. They drag down the property values of everything around them, and therefore the property tax income from everything around them. They are in large part the very definition of blight.
Ironically, many of the empty buildings and empty lots in downtown Sacramento are owned by the city itself. So the city is costing itself money by letting these sit, and of course that means that it is costing us taxpayers.
When the economy slowed, those big projects that would make a lot of money evaporated, and so more and more property sat unused. But it did not need to be unused. Smaller scale projects were always possible. I think one of the big differences between downtown and midtown in the downturn was that midtown had a large number of small properties owned by people with moderate dreams of development and redevelopment, while downtown had a few large properties owned by people with grandiose dreams. Those dreams crashed, and so did downtown. A number of successful businesses were dragged down by the failures around them. Midtown went through a slow time, but lost far fewer businesses, and is now picking up in a way that downtown has not.
So, what to do? As always, I have some outside-the-box (or off-the-wall, some would say) solutions to propose.
1. Assess property tax on all government entities. What purpose would this serve? Wouldn’t it just be moving money from one pocket to another? Yes, but it would make the cost of maintaining empty buildings and empty lots show up on the balance sheet as a direct expense. As with all things financial, we pay it no attention until it shows up on the balance sheet and affects the bottom line.
2. Assess empty lots at the value they would have if developed, based on typical properties surrounding it. Seems unfair? Not in my mind. The empty lot is costing the city, and all of us, directly in terms of services needed, and indirectly in creating blight that lowers property values and depresses economic activity. This higher level of property tax would encourage the owner to move forward with development. In a few instances, these empty lots could be converted to public purpose such as a park or farmers market location, but the number of those conversions would be small relative to the number of properties
3. Double property taxes every four years for both empty lots and empty buildings. This would give the owner a strong incentive to do something. While regular property taxes can largely be ignored, when it goes up 2X, then 4X, then 8X, then 16X, no property owner will leave the property unused.
I have no illusions that even these radical proposals would bring vibrancy back to downtown, but along with many other policies and actions, they would certainly help.
I think something needs to be done about surface parking lots, which are another unproductive use of land that costs us all money, but that is another topic for later.
I’ve uploaded a few photos to Flickr of abandoned downtown, along J and K streets. It would take days and thousands of photos to document it all.
WalkScore update
Walk Score offers an assessment of the walkability of any location. It is available in any browser at https://www.redfin.com/how-walk-score-works. The Redfin app shows walk score, bike score and transit score for each listing (scroll way down). Walk Score is based on the distance to the places people want to go, such as grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, bars, movie theaters, schools, parks, libraries, bookstores, fitness locations, drug stores, hardware stores, and clothing & music.
WalkScore has released for Sacramento a new walk score, 43, transit score, 33, and bike score, 68. New York is the top walk score city at 92, followed by San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia and Miami. New York is the top transit score city at 81, followed by Boston, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Philadelphia. Portland is the top bike score city at 70, followed by San Francisco, Denver, Philadelphia and Boston. Sacramento compares very well in bike score, at 68, but poorly in walk score and transit score.
For the Sacramento region, walk scores in various neighborhoods range from 5 to 92 (of 100), transit scores range from 11 to 65, and bike scores range from 38 to 100. In general, the scores track with each other, walk friendly = transit friendly = bike friendly, however, there are exceptions. You can look up your neighborhood on the chart linked below, or go to WalkScore for a lot more detail on Sacramento. The top five neighborhoods are Boulevard Park, Downtown, Midtown/Winn Park/Capital Avenue, Marshall School and Mansions Flats, all in the city of Sacramento. WalkScore exists largely as a sales tool for houses and apartments, but it has broad applicability as well.
SacramentoNeighborhoodsWalkScore
Reference: The top 10 US cities for public transportation (Kaid Benfield, NRDC Switchboard, 2014-01-28)
And, I’m happy to report that where I live, on the border between Midtown and Downtown is:
And that’s why I live here!
Not all economic development…
“Not all economic development is created equal. Not all local investments build wealth in our community. Not all open markets produce optimal outcomes for all places. If we want our places to prosper over time, we have to be prepared to ask a tougher set of questions at the local level.” Charles Marohn, in Dunkin Our Future, on Strong Towns blog
Why Not Here?
sactown magazine has an interesting series of articles grouped under Why Not Here? which I like for its thinking outside the box. Though most of these are not directly transportation related, they are about transforming the nature of Sacramento and bringing residents into downtown. Most of the articles were written by sactown co-owner Rob Turner.
I believe that these are important goals because it is only through dream-big projects that the money to fix our transportation woes will become available. If we have to wait until our regular tax base can fix things, we will be waiting a long time, but new developments can fix things as part of their design. Several ideas are about bringing regular and high-end housing to downtown, which encourages walking, biking and transit solutions rather than more driving and more parking.
- Return of the JFDI (sactown 2013-12); this one is about the Community Center Theatre
- A Walk on the Wild Side (sactown 2013-12)
- A River Runs Through It (sactown 2013-10)
- A Sleeping Green Giant (sactown 2013-10)
- Looking for a Square Deal (sactown 2013-08
- #HereWeBuild (sactown 2013-06)
the magic water fountain on M Street
In my previous post, I complained about the non-functional water fountains at SacRT light rail stations, but in doing so, I remembered that I’d never posted about the water fountain on M Street in Sacramento. Herewith is my paean to the M Street water fountain.
In a tiny triangle park at M Street and 48th Street in East Sacramento is a wonderful thing, a public drinking fountain. Not only is there a drinking fountain, but also a decorative fountain, and benches, and flowers, and shrubs, and a patch of grass. I stop here on every trip, whether I’m thirsty or not, just to celebrate this little corner. Sometimes I’ll stop and lie on the grass, or sit on the bench and enjoy the fountain. Other times, it is just a quick drink and on with my trip. I’ve seen mothers here letting their kids play, and retired folks just passing the time. There is always a bowl beside the fountain for dogs to have a drink as well.
confronting the stop sign myth
I often see or hear the statement “bicyclists run stop signs all the time.” The person making the statement is not just making an observation, but trying to justify some attitude or action on their part, such as “bicyclists shouldn’t be on the road,” “bicyclists should be on the sidewalk,” “bicyclists should be thrown in jail,” “it is OK to intimidate or run over bicyclists,” or “we should not be spending any of our transportation money on bicycle facilities.”
I think that it is time for all of us to confront that statement and end its use. Yes, it is true that some to many bicyclists run stop signs. It is also true some to many motor vehicle drivers run stop signs. To refer back to my earlier posts on stop signs, stop signs are installed largely to reduce vehicle speeds and to get drivers to take turns at intersections. Bicyclists are rarely exceeding the speed limit, so that function is not served by the stop sign, nor by a bicyclist stopping. In the case of taking turns, the issue is taking turns, not the act of stopping. If a bicyclist does not stop at a stop sign, but no other vehicles are present which should go first, then the function of the stop sign to get people to take turns is intact, it has not been violated.
clarifying my doubts
Just before posting “doubting protected bikeways” yesterday, I’d been reading Momentum Magazine, one of my favorites. After posting, I turned the page, and there was a 14 page article entitled “The Rise of the North American Protected Bike Lane” by Angie Schmitt (not yet posted to their website, so you’ll have to read the paper or digital copy). The article is a classic defense of protected bikeways, with the standard criticism of vehicular cycling.
The heart of the article is the “by the numbers” graphic which shows the increase in bicycling in seven different cities that occurred after installation of protected lanes. The increases are impressive. The text talks about Portland research on types of bicyclists, positing that such facilities are necessary to get the “interested and concerned” 60% onto bicycles. Though safety is mentioned several times, it is clear the greatest benefit proposed is an increase in bicycling mode share. I’m not in disagreement with any of this. What I am in disagreement with is the focus on increasing bicycle share as the most important goal of changes we make to our streets.
Bicycling mode share in the U.S. ranges from below 1% in some places to as high as 6% in a few cities. Andy Clarke of The League of American Bicyclists is quoted as saying we could increase this to 10% or even 15% with the use of protected facilities. Sounds great. The problem is that it leaves a whole lot of motor vehicles on the road, making our cities unlivable and threatening the lives of pedestrians.
Getting Around Sacramento 