CNU Transportation Summit: Day one wrapup

A Voodoo Donuts sticker on a commuter bike at OHSU — you can’t get much more stereotypically urbanist Portland than this.

Day one of the Congress for New Urbanism’s Transportation Summit 2009 is now over. I have a small pile of notes and I’m simply not going to get to them all tonight, especially since I have an early morning commute to make to day two. (Advantage outsiders: they get to stay at the hotel and thus have way more free time — providing that the jet lag isn’t killing them anyway.)

Speaking of the hotel, the event is being hosted at downtown’s The Nines. I’ve been a bit mixed about this facility — to be frank I think the interior design is a bit too Los Angeles for my tastes. That said, there are some cool spaces in the building, especially “the library” at Urban Farmer, a space that contains many bookshelves, comfy chairs, and a pool table.

I’ll just run over the highlights. The basic theme of this event has been to try and reform the engineering standards used for designing our transportation systems so as to better support CNU’s goals. This includes a heavier emphasis on grids rather than lineal/tree street arrangements, as well as other factors.

After some opening remarks from various dignitaries including Metro Council President David Bragdon, Metro Councilor Robert Liberty gave a presentation on, essentially, how Portland is not that special of a place. By this, Liberty meant to point out that the city we had here 20-30 years ago was pretty much similar to many cities in the nation, with no specific quality that made it significantly different. Putting up a postcard photo of the city on the screen, Liberty noted that “if it weren’t for the volcano in the background, this could be Cincinnati.” Another important factor that was pointed out was that residential density is now approaching 4400 square feet per household — a density that is very similar to streetcar era Portland with it’s 50-by-100 foot lot sizes.

This is hardly New York City density, and this may be an emerging theme of the conference. Density is often portrayed as the plopping of character-changing large apartment buildings in previously single-family residential areas. Perhaps this not the case for our region, however. Later, Nelson\Nygaarrd’s Tom Brennan discussed the Metro High Capacity Transit System Plan, and noted that many of the highly used existing HCT lines had densities near to stations as low as ten units per acre. “This is far lower than the accepted national numbers [for making HCT work].” Brennan suggested that perhaps this is due to better pedestrian and bike connectivity to these stations. Later, Stuart Gwin from the Portland Bureau of Planning pointed out that the returns on density are an inverse exponential curve, with an area where returns diminish on investment. The ideal, according to Gwin, seems to hover around 50 units per acre. This sees to tie into the idea of Form-Based Code, which inherently implies that there is an ideal density that balances public investments with community returns.

Gwin, however, had darker news to deliver. While the Federal government provides funding for regional transportation investments from highways to transit, it provides essentially no funding for local city streets. Metro, with mandates for liveable densities and community focal points such as regional centers, town centers, and station communities, does not have the funds to finance these investments, and local cities are thin in the wallet. Pointing to a slide showing block after block of yet to be built roads in the Gateway Regional Center, Gwin noted that “nobody has the money for this, and it would be too onerous to ask the local property owners to pay.” This may be a clear weakness in numerous local projects to urbanize outlying points, from communities built around MAX stations clear through to transitioning suburban centers such as downtown Tigard and central Beaverton: revitalization may require significant transportation investments, but neither the public nor private sectors can afford to make the changes using existing methods.

I will be packing along the laptop for tomorrow, and providing that it does not finally give up the ghost on me, I will post a few reports during the course of day two.