What I Like in a City

Originally published in the Northland Reader now the Reader Weekly, March 16, 2000

As a newcomer to Duluth, I’m not quite familiar with all the plans for changes to Duluth, for example Vision 2001, but I appreciate many of the things Duluth offers and hope to see these features improved.

Duluth offers some transportation choices that makes a city great and to human scale.  Namely, if one is so inclined, one can easily choose to go by foot, bus, or car, in that order.

These choices are not easy everywhere in Duluth, but in Chester Park where I live, I have used all three choices to reach UMD, Mt. Royal, Kenwood, the lake, and even downtown.  I much prefer to walk unless time is a factor.

Walking not only provides exercise and fresh air, but it gives me time to observe and experience an area.  Walking by parks, houses, and shops, there is much to see that is only a blur when seen from a vehicle.

Taking the bus is a second choice if time is short or the weather is bad.  Walking downtown is good exercise but only if I want to spend an hour or more doing so.  With a bus, I can be downtown in one-quarter that time.  Taking the bus provides conveniences that many don’t consider.  First of all, I don’t need to worry about parking.  Secondly, even if parking is easily available, a bus may get me closer to the door.

Taking a car is a third choice if time is important, if I have a lot to carry, or if the bus doesn’t go to my destination.  Time can be important in two ways.  It can take longer to do an errand or the buses aren’t running at that time of day.  I often drive downtown for evening events because they might run past the last bus or because I might just miss an hourly bus.  I take a bus to church downtown but my wife has to drive; choir practice starts before the buses do.

I do have a historical bias for this opinion.  I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio (not one of its suburbs).  I walked to school until I was in high school, then I took three buses.  The buses were frequent enough that I never had to worry about how late practice lasted.  Even when I started college I took a bus and a rapid transit train.  We did most of our shopping in walking distance of our home; otherwise we hopped a streetcar to go downtown.

Since then I have lived in Minneapolis, Rome, Stockholm, exurban Philadelphia, and exurban Minneapolis, I have had extended stays in New York, London, Paris, Helsinki, and Basel, and I have visited many other cities from Leningrad to Los Angeles to Osaka.  (What’s “exurban”?  So far out from the center that there are no sidewalks.)  Many of them offered both walking and public transportation opportunities.  In fact, those I enjoyed the most were those that had vibrant centers where people walked, shopped, wined, and dined until late in the evening.  New York, Rome, Paris, Stockholm, Osaka, and Tokyo are full of lights and activity well past a Midwesterner’s bedtime.  Their centers are accessible until midnight or beyond.  But my favorite was Basel, Switzerland.

Most of the time that I was in Basel I worked evenings.  I could either walk or take a streetcar from my hotel to the customer site and back.  Streetcars ran until one in the morning.  If I walked, it was not past monolithic buildings and parking lots but past parks and shops with interesting displays in their windows.  Within walking distance of the hotel were dozens of restaurants, a couple of grocery stores, many, many shops, an outdoor swimming pool, several parks, and the zoo.

I don’t think Basel was designed; too many of the streets intersect at other than a right angle.  I think Swiss efficiency made the best of the situation over the centuries.

Duluth will never be like Basel for a variety of reasons and many of us would not want that.  But in our vision for Duluth, we can adapt some of the elements that made Basel interesting.

First, we should make existing sidewalks more user friendly.  We could encourage homeowners to cut back overhanging branches and keep sidewalks clear of snow and ice.  We could ticket cars that are parked across crosswalks or even in drives but over the sidewalk.

Second, we should have a more aggressive program for sidewalk replacement or repair.  We should also examine funding; is it fair to make a homeowner pay for a sidewalk?

Third, we should keep streets drier by repairing potholes and low spots.  Why should a pedestrian have to run past a puddle, like on Woodland south of Mt. Royal?

Fourth, we should have more frequent buses and more coverage.  Should our only ways to get to the DECC be by driving, walking over a freeway bridge, or walking a long, monochromatic skyway?  We should have shuttle buses from DECC to downtown at event times, including Omnimax.  We have no skyway to Canal Park but bus service is limited to daylight hours.  We should be able to go by bus on a Saturday night to a downtown restaurant or theater.

Fifth, we should plan new development based on how people will get there.  Should people have to walk across a windy, dusty parking lot dodging drivers more concerned about looking for a parking space?  Should buses have to go in and out of parking lots so that passengers need not walk across said parking lots?

Sixth, we should consider more mixed use like that which some people would like to see on Fourth St. E. between Fifth and Sixth Avenues;  that is, shops at street level, residences and professional offices above.

In other words, let’s remember that cars are only a means, not an end.  Let’s design for people, not just one of their means.

Rain or shine: VOTE! If you don't, you could give the election away!!

Rain or cool weather means lower Democratic turnout.  Does this mean those without cars don’t show if the weather is not good.

"These findings significantly illuminate the theory in regards to voter turnout. In
particular, these results show that the primary exogenous mechanism through which
turnout affects elections is the composition effect. In other words, when turnout is
increased, newly mobilized voters are disproportionately Democratic.  Furthermore, these results illuminate a question that has been claimed to be unanswerable: If one could increase voter turnout, would it help Democrats? We find that the answer to this question is, resoundingly, yes.”

"The Joke Isn’t on the Democrats?  The Partisan Effects of Voter Turnout"
Alexander Kendall, Political Science, Stanford University
http://web.stanford.edu/class/polisci353/2004spring/reading/kendall_final.pdf

Riding a rocket to a standstill

Our son and his four-year old son were coming from Japan to the Twin Cities in the last week of August.  My wife planned to stay in the Twin Cities until Labor Day and then bring our grandson back to Duluth with her.  I didn’t want to stay in the Twin Cities that long and wanted to spend most of the weekend at our cabin.

There was no point in driving two cars down so that we could come back separately.  Ah ha! This is my chance to try Jefferson Lines’ Rocket Rider.  I went to Jefferson Lines’ web site and determined that my best choice was to get the bus at 5:55 P.M. at the University of Minnesota stop.  That seemed the easiest to find.  The bus would arrive at UMD at 8:55 P.M., just in time for me to catch the 9:00 DTA bus down the hill.

I ordered my ticket online, printed it out and tucked it in my backpack.

After I had my ticket and before we left for the Twin Cities, the rains came.  And the rains came.  Our sump pump turned our lawn into a swamp.  There was so much water that it washed the mulch and gravel down from the side of our newly-built steps to the front walk.  It even undercut the steps.  There goes going to our cabin on Saturday.

I fretted about it for the rest of the week, even more so when I was in the Twin Cites and more rain was coming in Duluth.

Well, it wasn’t raining when my wife dropped me off at the U of M stop in Minneapolis.  The bus arrived on schedule.  I gave my ticket and travel bag to the driver and got on a nearly empty bus.  Plenty of window seats left.

The next stop was the Union Depot in St. Paul.  I was glad that I didn’t chose that as my stop.  Even though I have some familiarity with Downtown St. Paul, I couldn’t keep track of the streets that the bus driver used.  Besides, there must have been twenty people waiting for the bus.

Two young men got on that were speaking some foreign language that sounded Slavic to me.  I asked the man that sat next to me “What Slavic language are you speaking?”  He looked at me in consternation and said that was German, they were from Basel, Switzerland!  Finally, I understood why my German colleagues in Basel were upset with their Swiss colleagues for holding meetings in Schweitzerdeutsch.  Anyhow, the two young men were impressed that I had spent several weeks in Basel.  We had sporadic conversations after that; my seat mate was engrossed in a book, as was I.

The driver announced that we would be at UMD by 8:30.  But he didn’t consider the heavy traffic going north for the long weekend.  It didn’t really clear up until Forest Lake.  Although the bus driver allowed lots of room behind the cars he followed, my guess is that he was going 75-80 miles per hour.  It seemed that he spent more time in the left lane than the right.

As darkness fell, I had a harder time knowing where we were.  I would see the signs as the bus approached them, but I never saw them as we passed them.  Of course!  There often were not any cars close enough behind to shine lights on the signs.

We arrived at the West Duluth bus station sometime before nine.  Most of the passengers got off there.  The Swiss asked if I was familiar with an address in the 300 block of E. Superior St.  One was getting the address out of a guide book, but I didn’t think to ask to see the entry.  I suggested they take any of the buses on Grand Avenue and offered to look up the schedule on my iPhone.  They said they would take a taxi.

The bus arrived at Kirby Plaza after nine.  I didn’t want to walk home with a heavy backpack and a travel bag, and so I had to wait until ten.  Oh, to be back in Basel where one tram line ran every ten minutes even at midnight!

I’ll spare you the details of how I fixed the erosion by our front steps, but I think the new sod will hold and be green.  But the task left me too tired on Sunday to go to our cabin, and I was still to tired on Monday.  So, my rocket ride left me at a standstill.

What did I think overall about the Rocket Rider?  It beat driving alone for two-and-a-half hours.  The seat was comfortable and I got to read a good portion of a book.  The overall time was longer, considering having to come from Shoreview to Minneapolis and waiting forty-five minutes for a local bus ride of three minutes.  The $27.99 I spent for a senior ticket would beat the $50 or so that I would have to spend for gas.  But that’s round trip for gas.  I would be ahead with an SUV over a bus had I taken the bus both ways.  If I had taken the Prius, I would have spent less for gas for a round trip than I would have spent for one way on the bus.

If you consider a family of two or more, then the car is definitely a better deal than a bus trip.

I couldn’t find any quick information about the Northern Lights Express, but my guess is that it may be a good deal for somebody traveling alone city center to city center.  All others would find a car cheaper and quicker.  That’s a hard thing to write for a guy who likes trains.

Mel would move back to Basel but it would be too far from his cabin.

Cars vs. transit - apples and oranges or dollars and cents

Every so often, the newspapers publish a letter or opinion strongly against transit.  The current favorite target is the Green Line between Minneapolis and St. Paul.  At least the critics are writing about the costs and not about “government taking our cars away”.

I would like to turn the last phrase around and say that “government took our street cars, buses, and trains away”.  “Government” did this by building bigger and faster freeways and reducing transit service.  Why take a bus that runs every hour or half-hour when you can arrive at your destination in your car in fifteen minutes?

I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and got around by foot, bicycle, street cars, and buses.  I rarely bothered with a schedule because service was rather frequent.  By the time I got to graduate school, most service had deteriorated to the point that I could walk to school faster than I could take two buses.  In bad weather, I drove.

Those who complain about “government taking our cars away” should look at it as “making room for me”.  If more people took the public transit, there would be more room for those who chose to drive.

Think about how a bus makes more space for drivers.  Suppose a forty-foot bus has an average load of twenty-five passengers.  Suppose a fifteen-foot car has an average load of two passengers.  Assuming that all vehicles are traveling at 55mph with a safe-stopping distance between them, then a bus would need less than fifteen feet per passenger but a car would need sixty-eight feet per passenger.  See, government can be efficient!

I use the load of twenty-five passengers above because that was my usual load driving a bus between Maple Grove and downtown Minneapolis.  If buses were carrying forty passengers instead, which some do, then the comparison would drop to nine feet of highway per passenger.  I’ll let you do the comparison for four passengers per car.  However, my first figure is generous in that so many cars have a single occupant.  Using that figure shows us that a single occupant uses almost ten times as much highway space per passenger as a bus carrying twenty-five passengers.

Think about the parking space needed. A forty-foot bus will need about 360 square-feet of parking space at the terminal.  They would all be jammed together.  A fifteen-foot car would need over 200 square-feet of parking space in a lot or garage.  That is around 100 square-feet of parking space per passenger.  On the other hand, if a bus made three runs, it would only need less than five square-feet of parking space per passenger.

It’s a bit of a slog to find CO2 emissions and fuel efficiency figures, but from Wikipedia I found a 2008 Toyota Prius has a rating of 46 mpg and 55-passenger buses in Santa Barbara have a rating of 6.0 mpg.  Using the previous figures of two passengers in a car and twenty-five in a bus, we get 92 mpg/passenger for a Prius (worse if we use some other vehicles) and 150mpg/passenger for a bus.  If the bus had forty passengers, we would get 240mpg/passenger.

In areas where traffic comes to a standstill and buses drive on the shoulder, the buses would definitely be doing better on emissions.

Every time I drive to the Cities, I marvel at all the land gobbled up by that huge interchange of 35E and 694.  How much tax revenue is lost for that land?  I took an easier sample.  Using Hennepin County’s Property Interactive Map, I selected a few residences on Second Avenue South that were south of Lake Street.  Houses on Second Avenue there overlook I-35W Gulch.  The real estate taxes there are about $2,500 per year.  There are about 31 blocks from Lake St. to the city limit at 62nd Street.  I-35W is one block wide.  The city, county, and school district taxes lost for that section of freeway are over $1.8 million.  For this little article, I am not going to make the effort to calculate the taxes lost for all the freeways that scar the Twin Cities.

Sadly, the freeway is probably used more by people that don’t even live in Hennepin County, but counties to the south.

It wasn’t “government that took our buses away”, but land speculators and corporations.  In the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries, railroads and land speculators encouraged people to move to the suburbs to get away from “those people” in the city.  Then the car manufacturers lobbied for more roads for their vehicles.  Roads were a subsidy for cars, but to pay for the roads, governments couldn’t afford street cars and buses.

Ironically, now many affluent are moving back to the cities and pushing “those people” out.  First it was land speculators attracting people out from the cities, and now it is building speculators attracting people back to the cities.  Pst, hey buddy, I have this nice New York City condo for you, only $25 million.