Austin Contrarian

Shared-lane rail won't manage congestion

David Parvo at the Placemaking Institute defends the City's plan to run streetcars in shared lanes through downtown Austin.  He argues streetcars are an economic development tool and a tool to "help expedite a much needed generational shift that will better manage congestion in the long-term."  Read the original, but his response to Mike Dahmus's criticism that streetcars will only worsen congestion itself deserves a response:

[O]ne hallmark of a successful city is congestion; the more successful a city becomes, the more congested it will be.  And, thus, congestion can never be solved but only managed.

Those who try to solve congestion are being "utopian."

This is wrong.  The hallmark of a successful city is crowds of people going places; congestion is the hallmark of a city that can't manage those crowds of people.  Congestion is equivalent to a tax on going where you want to go.  It's a tax paid in lost time rather than money but it has the same effect:  it discourages trips at the margin.  It manages crowds only by shrinking them. 

Running a shared-lane streetcar through downtown Austin will not manage congestion, unless by "manage congestion" one means "make it worse."  Shared-lane rail will be slower than buses.  A lot of people will ride at first, but in the long run they won't settle for a slower, less convenient form of travel.  Shared-lane streetcars won't expand the flow of people through and within Downtown but will merely reduce the throughput of our roads and buses.  They will make it more expensive -- measured in lost time -- to get downtown, or to get from UT to South Congress, or to get from Caesar Chavez to 12th Street.  They will hurt Downtown in the long run.  

Reserved guideway rail on the other hand will increase the carrying capacity of our transportation network.  People will be able to get around Downtown or from UT to South Congress more conveniently and (I hope) more quickly than by using cars or buses.  Reserved guideway rail will not eliminate congestion for cars and buses.  I'm no utopian.  But it will give people a congestion-free alternative for getting around.  And that alternative will become more valuable as central Austin grows denser.  Shared-lane streetcars will be progressively less valuable as the streets grow more congested.  

Let me add that I know Dave and some of the guys at the Alliance for Public Transportation and in DAA and DANA and CNU who support the in-street rail plan.  These guys share my preferences and goal for Downtown.  We disagree on the method.  As Dave notes, Glenn Gadbois & Co. do deserve the credit for getting rail back on the agenda.  But they should not settle for half measures that will make things worse.  Go all in.   

NB.  Dahmus links this in the comments.  Skip mine and read that instead.  (Should I have put this suggestion at the beginning rather than the end?)

Just find a cheaper place

The Statesman reports:

Travis County commissioners voted today to solicit ideas for a public-private partnership for a civil courthouse planned for a downtown lot that the county recently bought.  Such a partnership would lessen the public cost of the courthouse project, slated for the growing entertainment, retail and condo district near Republic Square Park.

Another way to lessen the public cost would be to build the courthouse somewhere else.  That undeveloped block is an eyesore today, but it cost $22 million precisely because it is adjacent to a "growing entertainment, retail and condo district."  That proximity would be worth a lot to an entertainment, retail or condo development because it would enjoy spillover business from its neighbors.

The County does not need spillover business for its courthouse because it has a monopoly on the dispensation of civil justice.  People must go to the courthouse; they do not need to be enticed.  The County does not benefit from that block's premium location but it is paying the premium price anyway.  Hence the pressure to find unorthodox ways to cash in on the location. 

Rather than plunge into the tricky business of administering civil justice and selling designer handbags from the same building, the County should put the lot back on the market and find a cheaper place to build downtown.   

I'm ambivalent about whether the courthouse will be bad for Republic Square and the retail district in general.  I think it will be a net loss compared to a condo tower with street-level retail -- even if the courthouse eventually offers street-level retail -- because a condo tower would add people in the evening, when foot traffic is thin.  But county courthouses, unlike federal courthouses, generate a lot of pedestrian traffic because so many types of business are conducted there.  Their customers are rarely happy people, so I doubt the nearby shops will see much of a bounce.  Restaurants will, though -- it might be a good time for Jo's to go public. 

(Yes, I know, it's an old photo.)

Central East Austin got whiter

The Statesman has a long article today about the changing demographics of central East Austin, the neighborhoods across Lady Bird Lake from 78741.

Although Austin as a whole saw a sharp rise in its percentage of Hispanics and a relative decline in its percentage of whites, those trends were reversed in Central East Austin.  The number of whites in these neighborhoods rose by 40% while the Hispanic population fell by 9.3%.  Although the number of African-Americans in Austin as a whole dropped between 2000 and 2010, the African-American population dropped by 27%, remarkable since central East Austin has always been the center of Austin's African-American population.

Contrast this with 78741, the neighborhoods just to the south.  There the Hispanic population surged.

What accounts for the difference?

We're still working with incomplete data because the Census Bureau has not released its full data sets.  But I think once we get all the data, two dynamics will be clear:

1.  The West Campus neighborhood saw an explosion of new construction.  This new supply sucked in college students from around the city -- particularly 78741 -- as college students finally had more space to live where they had always wanted to live.  Their migration opened up their less-expensive neighborhoods to other demographics, particularly Hispanics.

2.  Elsewhere in central Austin, tight limits on new construction and high demand led to sharply rising home prices.  Those who wanted to buy in the neighborhoods west of I-35 but were priced out saw East Austin as a reasonably good substitute.    Hence the migration of whites into East Austin and the inevitable displacement of Hispanics and African-Americans.

One city but two housing policies and two market dynamics. 

(You might not believe that supply was tightly limited in central Austin because the decade was filled with one battle after another over proposed developments, many of which were eventually approved.  But development can't respond adequately -- or quickly -- to rising demand if every new dense development requires a fight at City Hall and gets a write-up in the Chronicle.) 

 

Urban planners should learn urban economics

Stephen Smith writes about a Manhattan residential project in which 40% of the units will be set aside for affordable housing, likely due to political pressure.  He asks "How much affordable housing is enough?" and then explains the unintended consequences of large affordable housing mandates:

Obviously, I oppose setting aside this much of new developments for affordable housing. People tend to think of different segments of the real estate market as distinct – how on earth could limiting the number of rich people on Far West Side make prices rise in Bed-Stuy? – but they are inextricably linked. You might not shed a tear for the 20-something banker who won’t get his Hudson River view, but when he then decides to buy in, say, Brooklyn Heights, the higher housing prices are going to have a ripple effect throughout the borough, pushing the envelope of gentrification further and further, until finally the knock-on effects reach places that the Far West Side 2o-something banker who got priced out of the Far West Side would never dream of living.

He is describing filtering.  If you don't understand filtering, you don't understand the dynamics of housing markets.  But my impression is that few urban planners understand this principle.  This is a symptom of a broader problem.  You will never catch me making over-generalizations on this blog, so I can safely say that most urban planners know nothing about urban economics.

O.K.  Donald Shoup is an urban planner and has done first-rate work on the economics of parking.  (But then his Ph.D. is in economics.  Does he count as a counter-example?)  Shoup's ideas have percolated down to rank-and-file planners.  Planners who work at the transportation end of the planning spectrum seem to know a lot of economics.  You probably can't get out of a top-notch school like M.I.T. without learning a bunch of economics.   

But the average city planner can get by without learning much, if any, urban economics.  For example, here is the curriculum for the University of Texas's masters degree in community and regional planning.   The core curriculum does not appear to include any urban economics.  (UT grads, correct me if I'm wrong.)  UT planners can satisfy their elective requirements with courses like "growth management" and "deep democracy" and "historic preservation practice."  The program does not even offer a course in urban economics, although a couple of the electives might touch on the basics.

UT graduates are not required to learn about the bid-rent gradient, filtering, Tiebout sorting or read Krugman's Development, Geography and Economic Theory.  I'm sure they commit The Life and Death of Great American Cities to memory (and it is a great book), but are they required to read Jacobs' The Economy of Cities?

Some practicing city planners do learn these things, I know.  But all planners should be made to.  That planners aren't required to learn it signals students that urban economics really isn't very important.  People shouldn't be allowed to meddle with housing markets without knowing this stuff.

78741 and Hispanics

I've noted that Austin zip code 78741, unlike 78704, saw its population of children surge between 2000 and 2010.  Given this chart, it should be no surprise that its Hispanic population also surged, from 20,966  to 27,913.

Here's the breakdown by Census tract:

Hispanics also rose as a percentage of 78741's total population.  In 2000, Hispanics made up 52% of 78741's population.  In 2010, they made up 62% of 78741's population.  The breakdown by Census tract shows a lot of variation, though:

Hispanics made dramatic gains in Census tracts 23.13, 23.14, 23.15 and 23.16.  They clearly have been displacing some other demographic in these tracts.  Or perhaps "replacing" is more apt.  Each of these four Census tracts had a high percentage of college-age kids in 2000.  In fact, they had four of the five highest percentages in 78741.  I suspect that Hispanics moved into these tracts as college students left for new housing closer to campus.  I don't have the data to confirm this yet because the Census Bureau has not released full data files.  

I think we can draw one firm conclusion from this data.  Although 78704 lost children and 78741 gained chldren, this was not caused by migration from 78704 to 78741; 78704 did not have enough Hispanics in 2000 to account for 78741's growth.   The migration of families with children into 78741 was merely parallel to the migration out of 78704.

(*Note:  Census tract 23.11 was split into tracts 23.17 and 23.18 for the 2010 Census.  I combined them to allow comparison between 2000 and 2010 data.)

Chart o' the day

Prepared by Ryan Robinson and presented here without comment:

Ryan has taken his act on the road, presenting his demographic analysis at a number of (reportedly packed) public forums.  Here is a nice summary of his presentation by Jackie Stone.

Riders v. drivers

This will piss off a bunch of local progressives.   A bill pushed by a Republican (ugh) lawmaker from Katy (ugh ugh) would force Cap Metro to adopt staffing arrangements designed to cut bus driver compensation.  It has now passed the Senate.

It's natural to get your hackles up about this bill since bus drivers are paid so little and what business does some guy from Katy have telling Cap Metro what to pay its bus drivers anyway?

But it's not clear that the progressive position is to support higher wages for Cap Metro's bus drivers.  Cap Metro bus drivers certainly make modest salaries even with collective bargaining rights.  Cap Metro's budget is a zero sum game, though.  Every extra dollar paid to bus drivers means one less dollar spent on bus service, which is a basic necessity for the low-income and many disabled.  Higher pay for bus drivers is simply a redistribution from riders to drivers.  (A similar criticism can and should be made about the Red Line.) 

We bought a transit system because we believe that extra mobility is important, especially for low-income residents.  Should we be willing to sacrifice bus routes or shorter headways for better-paid bus drivers?  If so, how do we make the trade off at the margin?  When do we say, "These five bus routes are more important than an extra dollar per hour for bus drivers?"

Rings of population change

From Stephen Von Worley at Data Pointed (via Flowing Data), maps of block-by-block population changes from 2000 and 2010 for a bunch of American cities.  They show that growth continues to occur mostly at the fringe of cities, which is hardly surprising.  The changes in central city populations are more interesting because you can tell at a glance which central cities are healthy and which are not.

"[D]eep blue indicates that the population doubled (or more), pure red means that everyone left, grey denotes no change, and the intermediate tones represent the spectrum of increases and decreases in-between."

Here is Austin:

You can compare Ryan Robinson's map of the population changes by census tract. 

It would be wise to exercise a little caution with these maps.  Census blocks frequently change from one census to the next, which makes comparisons tricky.  I'm not sure how the author addressed this problem, if he addressed it at all.  [Update:  Steve emailed me to say that he "used the block data for each Census to compute the gridded population for that year, then took the difference.  Nice work!]

Here is what a 25% loss in population (Detroit) looks like:

VMU on South Lamar, finally

Five years after the City adopted the Vertical Mixed Use standards, South Lamar is finally getting its first VMU development.   The barren rise once occupied by the Stoneridge Apartments is being transformed into Ardent Residential's Post South Lamar:

Because the Stoneridge Apartments were perched on a rise, they were isolated both vertically and horizontally from the street.  Bringing the building down to the street has required a lot of excavation:

VMU tends to be expensive.

One project won't transform South Lamar into a pedestrian paradise, of course.   The street is about as hostile to pedestrians as an inner city street can be.  I took the video below from the little strip mall across the street from Post South Lamar's future entrance.  Although the strip mall and the Post are separated by only 60 feet of pavement, they are effectively a third of a mile apart -- the distance, round trip, to the nearest stoplight -- because you can't cross the street there on foot.  (The stoplight was visible from where I was standing; you can't see it in the video because I did not shoot in high definition.) 

Some will argue that it is silly to build VMU on a street so hostile to pedestrians.  I think this development is evidence of the strong demand for pedestrian-oriented (or, probably more accurately, pedestiran-friendly) space.  Ultimately, it will fall to the City to make the improvements necessary to foster a more walkable street.  Like putting in stoplights so you can cross the street.

Downtown Austin: Census Data in Perspective

(Ed.:  The following was cross-posted to Downtown Austin Blog.  Thanks to Jude Galligan for allowing me to publish this on his site.)

Anyone who knows what a construction crane looks like knows that downtown Austin experienced phenomenal growth between 2000 and 2010.  The 2010 Census confirms what we could see:  census tract 11 (which includes the CBD and Rainey Street) more than doubled in population, from 2,386 to 5,512.  And that excludes dense developments that most would consider part of “downtown,” including Gables Park Plaza, the Monarch, Spring and Nokonah, all within Census tract 12.  Add these and Downtown’s growth was even more impressive.

Another way of visualizing Downtown’s growth is to look at the block-by-block change in density.