Christopher Leo

April 7, 2010

DOES WINNIPEG HAVE TO KISS RAPID TRANSIT GOOD-BYE? A TWISTED TALE

The seemingly endless rapid transit debates in Winnipeg have taken a strange turn. Mayor Sam Katz, who began as a firm rapid transit opponent, relented in 2008 when he and former premier Gary Doer announced the Southwest Rapid Transit Corridor, connecting downtown to the University of Manitoba. As recently as 2009, a second leg of the rapid transit system, eastward to Transcona, was on the city's wish list of infrastructure improvements.

Many Winnipeggers have probably concluded that, after more than 30 years of dithering, a rapid transit system is finally a done deal. That conception may have been reinforced by Mayor Katz's more recent declarations that he would prefer a much more expensive rail system to the bus rapid transit line now under construction.

Before you stand and cheer,

remember that the city has only committed itself to the first half of the first rapid transit line, and take a look at the rest of Katz's statement. He wants to spend the money earmarked for construction of the second half of the first rapid transit line on roads instead.

Say what? He wants a much more expensive system, but he also intends to divert rapid transit money to roads? No problem, the Mayor says. We can have both rapid transit and roads. He offers no suggestions as to how that might be accomplished, beyond the suggestion that the federal government might be persuaded to pay for it. The federal government, however, wants Winnipeg to finish the southwest line, not spend the money on roads.

If the money is diverted to roads, we will be left with an amputated half-leg of a rapid transit line, in effect a line to nowhere. A complete rapid transit line can draw new passengers to transit and provide lucrative new opportunities for development near the transit stations. New development increases the city's revenues and can turn transit into a paying proposition. A half rapid transit line has little potential to draw either passengers or development.  

Money spent on half a rapid transit line is money wasted. Dreams of future rail lines are no substitute for an actual rapid transit line now, but, for more than 30 years, our experience has been that whenever it seems within reach, it slips just beyond our grasp.

Posted by leo-c at 2:35 PM

October 12, 2009

DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO BUILD A HIGHWAY THROUGH RIVER HEIGHTS?

The City of Winnipeg has set out on a plan to build a highway through River Heights and Waverley West, ultimately connecting Ness Avenue with the south perimeter highway. Three reasons are given for this, one of which makes a more modest version of the proposal defensible. A second one is indefensible, and the third is a really bad idea.

The plan calls for Kenaston Boulevard to be expanded to six lanes - nine lanes at the intersection with the Sterling Lyon Parkway. The defensible argument is that additional capacity on Kenaston will be needed to serve a mega-complex of big box stores, the Tuxedo Yards development, featuring furniture giant IKEA, at the intersection of Kenaston and Sterling Lyon.

Unquestionably the city should ensure reasonable access from the centre of the metropolitan area to a new commercial mega-complex, and that could call for increasing the capacity of Kenaston Boulevard, although we can almost always count on civil engineers to overestimate needed road capacity - as they did in planning the Norwood Bridge a few years ago. It would be reasonable, therefore, to look into the possibilities for a less drastic expansion of road capacity than what is being recommended, remembering that the road will necessarily reduce the attractiveness of the primarily residential neighbourhood that may be developed there in future.

If the city were genuinely interested in a reasonable degree of control over its own development, it would also be considering a more central location for IKEA, as former Appeal Court Justice Charles Huband has suggested, and asking some critical questions about the impact of another mega-complex on commerce in the rest of the city. But the real mistake was the previous location of a mega-complex at Kenaston and McGillivray, still farther out. With that mistake now irreversable, the IKEA complex becomes infill development.

In short, some road development may be necessary to accommodate the planned commercial complex. What are the other two reasons given for the plan for a massive expansion of Kenaston? The first is that the road will accommodate southbound international truck traffic from the airport. That reason suggests the city's civil engineers need a refresher course in introductory road-building.

If they take a look at their intro texts, they will be reminded that the first function of an urban expressway system is to enable traffic that does not need to traverse the city to by-pass it. That is the function of our perimeter highway and of by-pass highways across North America. Truckers are well accustomed to the extra mileage such by-passes incur and welcome being spared the necessity of down-shifting for city traffic.

Somebody in the Public Works Department understands that, because the city is also planning a direct link to the west perimeter, which is located only a short distance from the airport. Sensible road planning would shrink from the suggestion that airport traffic be offered any encouragement at all to traverse River Heights. It would in fact ensure that any Kenaston expansion is planned in such a way as to discourage unnecessary truck traffic. That again makes the case for a more modest expansion than the one that is being planned.

The third reason for the expansion bears on the city's unwise decision to open up the massive new Waverley West tract for immediate development (For more detail on this decision, see the last few paragrphs of "Are you tired of the sprawl game?"). Development of Waverley West supposedly requires the extension of the planned Kenaston highway across Waverley West to the south perimeter highway. The effect would be the provision of high-capacity road access, at city expense, almost to the edge of any new developments in the neighbouring municipalities of Ritchot and Macdonald.

The last time the city did that, with the extension of McGillivray Boulevard to the perimeter, we were rewarded - as I showed in an earlier blog entry - with an entire new subdivision just outside the boundaries of the city. Today, residents of Oak Bluff travel regularly in and out of the city, on a road thoughtfully provided for them by the good citizens of Winnipeg, to enjoy the services provided by Winnipeg taxpayers, without having to pay property taxes to the city.

There is no reason to repeat that experience. Future residents of Waverley West can have reasonable access to the centre of the metropolitan area, and, with more modest road development, citizens throughout Winnipeg can have reasonable access to the IKEA development, without building a highway across River Heights and Waverley West.

••••••••••••

For a discussion of the wider significance of the Norwood Bridge expansion, see:

Christopher Leo, “The North American Growth Fixation and the Inner City: Roads Of Excess.” World Transport Policy & Practice, 4 (4) 1998, 24-29. All issues of this journal are available free on line, at the journal's web site. My article starts on p. 24 of the issue accessible at the link labelled "wtpp04.4.pdf".

Posted by leo-c at 9:52 AM

July 9, 2009

RAPID TRANSIT: COST OR OPPORTUNITY? IT’S UP TO US

With Jonah Levine

It’s taken Winnipeg a generation to get around to building the first leg of a rapid transit system. You might think that settles the matter, and that now we are down to inconsequential details. On closer examination, however, it becomes clear that many important decisions remain, decisions that could make the difference between a successful rapid transit system and a white elephant.

As members of the Winnipeg Rapid Transit Coalition, Jonah and I have been involved in discussions with transit officials and city politicians about the central issue of the system’s accessibility. The discussions have been cordial, but so far we have been unable to reach agreement on the question of whether the first leg of the southwest rapid transit corridor will be built in such a way as to enable cyclists and pedestrians to move safely back and forth between the South Osborne neighbourhood and downtown.

The rapid transit line will run parallel to a rail line, and, in the absence of a safe route over the rail line, there will be a gap in the first phase of the active transportation corridor which is to run parallel to the rapid transit line - a gap that will pose formidable obstacles, not only to pedestrians and cyclists, but to anyone trying to reach the rapid transit line from the other side of the rail line. The gap is illustrated and explained in detail in posters available by clicking on:

The Gap, part 1.

The Gap, part 2.

The response of city officials to our representations has been that the city cannot afford an overpass, which will cost $14 million, according to one estimate. The WRTC argues, and I agree, that $14 million, though it is indeed a lot of money, is not a great deal in comparison with the cost of a rapid transit system that falls short of its potential.

At the heart of our disagreement is a question that's both simple and fraught with significance: Is rapid transit just a cost or is it also an opportunity? Unquestionably it is a cost. The transit line, and the associated active transportation corridor offer:

•Improved mobility for many Winnipeggers who cannot afford cars, or prefer not to use them unnecessarily

•Reduced pollution and greenhouse gas generation

•A beachhead in the battle against sprawl, and against Winnipeggers’ currently all-but-total dependence on cars for much of their transportation

These are public benefits that cost money, but that make Winnipeg, in many ways, a better city. In all of this, there is no serious disagreement between the WRTC and the city. Our disagreement with the overall direction of city policy is in the degree to which we see rapid transit, not only as the price of civility and environmental sanity, but also as a major development opportunity. Our argument is that a properly constructed rapid transit system yields development opportunities that can generate enough revenue to dwarf the costs of the access on which that revenue will depend.

To a degree, city leaders understand this, but so far they fail to grasp its full significance. Their comprehension of the concept of a rapid transit system as a development opportunity is evident in the fact that the first leg of the system will be financed by a tif, short for tax increment financing - financing out of future revenues. The transit line will be paid for out of the revenue that will be generated by the Fort Rouge Yards neighbourhood, a new neighbourhood on currently empty land that will be served by the rapid transit system.

In other words, the transit line produces development opportunities, and the tax revenues that those opportunities generate will pay off the money borrowed to build the line. What the city seems not to have grasped fully is that the primarily residential South Osborne neighbourhood is only the tip of the potential development iceberg.

If the city provided for access across the rail line, a world of additional development opportunities would open up along the adjacent east side of Pembina Highway. Currently, that stretch of land is home to a strip of relatively low-density commercial development, a lot of surface parking and, apparently, a significant proportion of empty land. The character of this area is suburban rather than urban, and as Winnipeg develops, it becomes increasingly inappropriate to a location so near the city centre, and the quintessentially urban neighbourhoods of Osborne Village, Corydon Village and the South Osborne neighbourhood.

With ready access to a rapid transit line, well connected to the centre of the city and the University of Winnipeg, and later to the University of Manitoba as well, that land could be redeveloped into a much higher density commercial development, or some mix of commercial and residential development. The revenues that could be generated by such development would dwarf the cost of overpasses. As a bonus, the additional riders transit would get would improve the viability of the transit system as a whole.

My central point is really very simple: It’s crazy to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a rapid transit line and then to slash its potential benefits in order to save a few millions.

••••••••••••••

This entry is an expanded version of a recently-published newspaper article:

Christopher Leo and Jonah Levine, Let's Not Skimp on Rapid Transit. Winnipeg Free Press, 5 July 2009. Accessible at http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/lets-not-skimp-on-rapid-transit-49971382.html, down-loaded 5 July 2009.

Scholarly research on transit-oriented development:

A veritable gold mine of information is available at the web site of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute.

See also:

Hank Dittmar and Gloria Ohland, The New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit-Oriented Development. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003.

Kenneth J. Dueker. A Critique of the Urban Transportation Planning Process: The Performance of Portland's 2000 Regional Transportation Plan. Transportation Quarterly 56 (2), pp. 15-21.

John Renne and Peter Newman (2002). Facilitating the Financing and Development of 'Smart Growth' Transportation Quarterly, 56 (2), 23-32

Posted by leo-c at 11:51 AM

February 1, 2009

WHAT'S YOUR PREFERENCE IN A RAPID TRANSIT LINE, WINNIPEG? ECONOMIC ASSET OR WHITE ELEPHANT?

It looks as if there's a rapid transit line in Winnipeg's future. Problem solved, right? Wrong. The choice facing us now is whether or not we succeed in building a viable system, one that provides a better service than the buses on Pembina Highway do, and one that creates new economic opportunities while fighting sprawl and improving the environment.

The question hinges on the accessibility of the stations, and on land use regulations adjacent to them. If the stations are readily accessible, rapid transit can create new development opportunities, contribute to the clean-up of our environment, and provide a much-needed transportation option to all those who do not have access to an automobile, or prefer convenient public transportation. To the extent that they are not, users of rapid transit will have experiences similar to those I had in Miami last summer, and Winnipeg's development will suffer accordingly. As I write this, the prognosis is not good.

Last summer, on my way home from Belize, I entered the United States at the Miami airport. My flight home the next morning departed from Ft. Lauderdale. No problem. There's a commuter rail line connecting the two cites, with a stop not far from the hotel room I had booked in Ft. Lauderdale. Isn't rapid transit great?

It turns out that, if you're travelling from Miami to Ft. Lauderdale, not so much. It was about 8 pm by the time I cleared the draconian U.S. customs in Miami. I hauled my bag off the carrousel, and turned around, expecting to see a sign pointing to the commuter rail stop. No sign, but luckily I speak English, unlike many who arrive in Miami in need of affordable transportation. After asking several people for directions, I was able to identify one of several bus stops in an obscure corner of the airport, where, if I waited while numerous other buses came and went, I could catch the 38, a shuttle to the transit stop.

Arriving at my stop in Ft. Lauderdale, I emerged to find myself alone in an empty station. A road passed in front of the station, an expressway buzzed in the distance, but otherwise there was nothing to be seen but an expanse of grass. There was a pay phone, but no phone directory, and I didn't know the names or numbers of any taxi companies. The pay phone didn't take credit cards and I didn't have enough American change to make a call.

I dithered for awhile: Should I try hiking? I didn't see anything to hike toward. Should I call my wife on our 800 number and get her to call Miami directory information? Would she be able to call me back on the pay phone? As I considered my options, the next train pulled into the station and a single passenger got off. Salvation! She changed a dollar for me and gave me the name of a cab company.

I haven't studied rail transit in the Miami area, but if my experience is indicative of what has been done there, the commuter rail line is a veritable symphony of missed opportunities. Easy access to the rail line from the arrivals area of the airport would have guaranteed a steady stream of passengers, and of money into the fare box, to help build the viability of the rail line, and of any future extensions of it.

At the station in Ft. Lauderdale, planning authorities could have zoned the expanse of green grass that confronted me for the development of a large amount of compact housing, which, in turn, would have created new opportunities for commerce, perhaps along the lines of Mockingbird Station in Dallas.

So will Winnipeg follow Miami's example or that of Dallas and many other cities? The first leg of our bus rapid transit system is still in the process of being planned, so there's time for changes, but, on the strength of the information available, it doesn't look good. Of the four stations now being planned, two - Morley and Jubilee - appear to be inaccessible to adjacent residential neighbourhoods on the west side of Pembina highway. There are also serious concerns regarding the accessibility of the bicycle trail that is to be developed in conjunction with the rapid transit line, and accessibility for persons with disabilities. Click here for a map.

If city government wishes to make the most of this opportunity, and ensure that the investment in rapid transit becomes the asset it can be, it had better ensure that the planning of the line proceed carefully and with the benefit of advice from area residents, cyclists, developers and any citizens who can provide relevant information.

Posted by leo-c at 5:17 PM | Comments (1)

December 25, 2008

A FAUX PAS AND A LESSON IN INFRASTRUCTURE

I committed a faux pas in Tokyo last week. I was at a conference of the International Sociological Association, listening to a presentation by John Mock, an anthropologist at the University of Tsukuba in Japan. Professor Mock was explaining his findings from a study that showed how little provision there was for cyclists on the streets of Tokyo.

Cycle lanes are either absent altogether or inadequate. Some dead-end into barriers. As a result, pedestrians tend to ignore the cycling lanes, and cyclists ignore the rules, endangering pedestrians by riding on sidewalks, or riding on the wrong side of streets. I was amused by Professor Mock's presentation, and, from time to time, I laughed, a bit obtrusively, I'm afraid.

After the presentation, it occurred to me that my Japanese colleagues might well have well have thought me to be amusing myself at Tokyo's expense, laughing at the city's failures. In, fact, I was laughing in recognition of the fact that Professor Mock could have gone through his notes, substituting "Winnipeg" for almost every reference to Tokyo, without any loss of factual accuracy.

Tokyo's failure to make appropriate accommodation for cyclists has nothing to do with any peculiarities of either Tokyo or Japan. It is rooted in something I have observed everywhere I have gone, except parts of western Europe -- the prioritization of speed in the movement of automobiles over every other consideration, even the safety of pedestrians.

I have done a series of studies on the politics of urban transportation, and, if my experience is any guide, Tokyo's decision-makers may well have raised the issue of an unacceptably high level of deaths from bicycle accidents and been told by their civil engineers that any action leading to less freedom of movement for automobiles would cause unacceptably high levels of congestion and harm Tokyo's economy.

The idea that all other considerations should be swept aside in favour of freedom of movement for automobiles is deeply entrenched, not only in conventional wisdom, but also in the profession of civil engineering, which is supposed to serve science and the public good, not a narrow interest. Our apparent determination to favour the automobile over all else exacts a heavy price.

The old, the young, the poor and the disabled lose their independence, because they must wait for others to drive them wherever they wish to go. Parents, for their part, are forced to waste hours each week chauffeuring their children, because we have built an infrastructure that leaves most people solely dependent on automobiles for mobility.

And, of course, there is also the slaughter on the highways - which has become so routine that it isn't even considered a cost - and the damage to the environment, not to mention that, in many parts of the world, we don't have enough money to maintain all the roads we have built.

When the automobile first entered our lives, it opened up a new world of opportunity for mobility, but the dream has turned into a nightmare. As is so often the case with human behavour, we have got ourselves into a great mess by continuing unreflectively along a path that seemed reasonable at first. It will take some doing to change course and repair the damage.

•••••••••••••••••••••

Professor Mock's paper:

John Mock, Contested Borders—Tolerated Mayhem: Contested Space on the Streets and Sidewalks of Tokyo. Paper presented at a conference of the Research Committee on Urban and Regional Development, International Sociological Association, Tokyo, 17-20 December, 2008.

An excellent source of intelligent and environmentally aware reflection on transportation issues is a journal entitled World Transport Policy and Practice, available for free on the internet.

Posted by leo-c at 2:57 PM

December 13, 2008

IKEA: DOING WINNIPEG A FAVOUR OR LOOKING FOR A SWEETHEART DEAL?

The perennial "Is IKEA coming to Winnipeg?" story recently took a new twist. According to the Winnipeg Free Press, an IKEA spokesperson characterized Winnipeg as "the market that we are taking the most serious look at right now for expansion." She said IKEA has identified a location, but refused to say what it was and fed the air of mystery that has surrounded this story from the beginning by adding: "It is very premature for us to say anything at this point."

Still, it was enough to leave Winnipeg's legion of IKEA fans bubbling with enthusiasm. A typical comment on Skyscraper.com: "The fact that this city is even on the radar shows that we are not some deadwater city with no potential, as these kinds of stores don't set up in places like Sudbury."

IKEA's strip-tease approach to announcing its intentions one tantalizing detail at a time has all the earmarks of development strategists who are savvy in the ways of exploiting the collective inferiority complex of a slow-growth city. Many Winnipeggers feel bad about their home because they consider it to be, not the excellent place to live that it is, not a great place for dining out and enjoying every variety of the arts, which it is as well, but a backwater, not worthy because it is not as big as Calgary, Edmonton and Toronto.

Inferiority complexes offer excellent opportunities for head games, and nobody plays them better than developers. If IKEA does come to Winnipeg, the first step in preparing for the move will be negotiation with the city about the terms and conditions for locating here. IKEA, we may be sure, will be seeking concessions: possibly cheap land, tax concessions, a good deal on the cost of infrastructure, or maybe favourable terms regarding design and location of the store.

Every concession the city grants IKEA extracts costs us, financially or in other ways. By letting representatives of the company, and our political leaders, see how avidly we desire one of their stores, and how deeply that desire is tied to our sense of self-worth, we put pressure on politicians to make concessions. Let's hope that Winnipeg doesn't join the ranks of those who, notoriously, are born at the rate of one a minute.

29 December 2008

POSTSCRIPT

I returned from a business trip to Tokyo to find that IKEA is already a done deal. From news reports, it does appear that some substantial concessions may have been made in the cost of infrastructure needed for the new development. News reports are unclear regarding other possible concessions.

Posted by leo-c at 5:56 PM

November 13, 2008

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN UTICA TURNED WATER SERVICES OVER TO A REGIONAL AGENCY

Here's an excerpt from an article that ought to be required reading for anyone who is involved or interested in the proposal to turn Winnipeg's water and sewer services over to an independent regional water utility. It raises questions that require careful consideration. The complete article is available at http://strikeslip.blogspot.com/2008/11/wrong-regionalization-oneida-county.html

Thanks to Tom Christoffel for pointing this out to me.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Wrong Regionalization: The Oneida County Sewer District
[This article was originally published in the October 2008 "Utica Phoenix":]

Over 40 years ago Oneida County made the first "regionalization" effort in Greater Utica by forming the Oneida County Sewer District to serve 12 area municipalities. The goal was noble: build a system of sanitary sewer interceptors, pumping stations and a treatment plant to clean up water pollution in the Mohawk River, and make it affordable by spreading the cost over all system users by charges attached to water bills. The goal was accomplished, but flaws in the scheme have produced harmful results.

Dilution of representation: One flaw is that sewer district residents ceded control of the system to many disinterested parties, specifically, the county legislators from places untouched by the sewer district. This meant that decisions would not necessarily be made from the perspective of the customers receiving the service and paying the bills, but rather by many people who would not be held accountable for their actions - people who could use their controlling position to advance other agendas.

Uncoordinated decision-making: Another flaw is that decisions over sewers are made by people with no responsibility for other municipal services, making it unlikely that decision makers will be aware of how their decisions could adversely affect the supply of other services.

Diluted representation and uncoordinated-decision making have contributed to urban sprawl, the county's violation of water pollution laws, and the people of Utica subsidizing suburban growth.

Utica is geographically small, with most of its land previously developed. In an older age when people gravitated to cities for convenience, as structures aged and fell into disuse, they were replaced with something bigger and better. Utica was no different. With the automobile and improved highways, outlying areas also became convenient to reach. Since it usually is cheaper to build on undeveloped land ("green fields") than tearing down an old structure and rebuilding, both people and businesses started to migrate to the suburban areas as city structures aged, paying to extend the city's water and sewer services.

With the advent of the Part County Sewer District and its interceptor lines, far-flung localities were able to tap into the treatment plant located in Utica. These places could never have afforded on their own the level of service that they received. Since the vast bulk of the population lived in Utica, Utica residents paid for most of the cost of this system. In effect, Utica residents were financing suburban growth while encouraging the rotting of their city from within.

(Click here for the complete article from the Utica Phoenix.)

Posted by leo-c at 1:11 PM

November 8, 2008

A REGIONAL WATER UTILITY: BUSINESS-LIKE GOVERNANCE OR A WAY TO DODGE RESPONSIBILITY?

Mayor Sam Katz wants to create a regional water utility, to run Winnipeg's sewer and water systems, possibly taking over garbage disposal and recycling as well. The agency would operate independently of city council and, if it wished, market Winnipeg's water to adjacent municipalities.

The agency would set rates for the services it provides, applying to the provincial Public Utilities Board for permission to raise rates. Katz told the Winnipeg Free Press that "Handing this power over to the board would take politics out of the process." Good idea, eh? No more interference in these services from low-life politicians: just good, honest, business-like governance.

Wait a minute: It was a politician that proposed this. Why would a political leader want to hand over a substantial chunk of his responsibility to someone else? The answer can be found in the city's most recent six-year capital budget, which sets out the money that the city must invest in maintenance and improvement of its services.

Click here for capital budget summary.

The biggest liability on the list is $826 million for sewage disposal projects, a consequence of the provincial government's order to the city to clean up the water it dumps into the river system. Not far behind is $164 million for the water system. Imagine how much easier the mayor's life would be if future sewer and water rate increases, as well as sewage and water supply problems, could be blamed on the Public Utilities Board and the regional water agency.

Anyway, everyone seems to love the idea. The Winnipeg Free Press referred to it as "branching out". In a radio interview, a couple of political leaders in municipalities adjacent to Winnipeg voiced their strong support, and expressed their impatience with nonsensical arguments about sprawl.

Sprawl? Does this have something to do with sprawl? In trying to answer that question, it helps to bear in mind that industrial and commercial development requires the kind of generous and reliable water supply that only a municipal water system can deliver. Already all the municipalities surrounding Winnipeg are able to build their revenues by offering opportunities for residential development at substantially lower tax rates than the ones Winnipeg can offer.

Wouldn't it be nice if those municipalities could compete on similarly favourable terms for the Winnipeg region's industrial and commercial development? Indeed it would, for them. And for Winnipeg?

As it happens, I can draw you a picture of what the regional marketing of Winnipeg's water might hold in store for the city, because there is at least one precedent. After World War II, decision-makers in the thriving city of Detroit thought they had hit on a wonderful opportunity for revenue generation: Market their excellent municipal water supply regionally. In the years that followed, Detroit lost its mainstay, automobile manufacturing, in part to municipalities in the region. Residential and commercial development joined the exodus.

Detroit industrial buildings

A Detroit street

Detroit towers and homes

Today a visitor to Detroit can, if she ignores warnings from tourism advisors - as I did a few years ago - walk for hours through the empty streets, past the abandoned buildings of what remains of one of America's most dynamic cities. It's actually quite safe. The streets are so empty that, if you do meet someone, they'll probably stop and talk to you, and they may tell you stories about the grand hotels, and the tycoons, the jazz musicians and factory workers who used to jostle each other in the crowded streets of Detroit.

Of course, Winnipeg is not Detroit. No two city histories are identical. But what we can learn from Detroit is how rapidly and completely a city can be devastated by growth beyond its boundaries, even a major city like Detroit, never mind a medium-sized or smaller city like Winnipeg, Camden, N.J., East St. Louis, Illinois, and numerous others whose downtowns have been similarly ravaged. Given that potential, it makes no sense for Winnipeg voluntarily to give up one of the few development tools it controls, and turn it over to an agency that will have every incentive to meet its costs by promoting growth wherever possible, and no real incentive at all consider the city's ability to maintain its own viability.

It has been suggested that the sale of Winnipeg's water might be in the city's interest if adjacent municipalities were required to pay a substantial premium for the same service Winnipeg gets at a lower price, or that it might be all right if water were supplied on the stipulation that the adjacent municipalities could not use if for commercial or industrial development. The thing to remember is that, once water supply is turned over to an independent agency, such decisions will be out of the hands of either the citizens of Winnipeg or city council.

The independent water utility would be free to sell water to any municipality that wanted to buy it, and would have every incentive to do so at every opportunity. The setting of the price for the water service would be in the hands of the Public Utilities Board, also entirely beyond the control of Winnipeg's citizens or city council. The PUB would be unlikely to agree to differential rates for the same service.

••••••••••••••

You can find a detailed account of the evolution of water policies in metropolitan Detroit in:

George M. Walker, Jr., and Norman Wengert, Urban water policies and decision-making in the Detroit metropolitan region. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1970.

Posted by leo-c at 6:32 AM | Comments (1)

September 19, 2008

DOES RAPID TRANSIT FIGHT SPRAWL? NOT NECESSARILY

At last, after more than 30 years of vacillation and obstruction, it looks as if Winnipeg will finally get the first leg of a rapid transit system. Appropriately for a blue-collar town with a deeply-rooted culture of caution and frugality, it will be a low-budget diesel bus system, rather than a more expensive, classier and more environmentally friendly rail system. Nevertheless, it will open new opportunities for Winnipeg.

The system's most significant long-term benefit has been largely neglected in discussions leading to the decision to develop rapid transit. Potentially, a dedicated rapid transit line paves the way for new kinds of neighbourhoods that will be less dependent on automobiles around the clock, not just on the daily commute. That's because the existence of the transit line creates new incentives for the development of such neighbourhoods.

When a developer is choosing a location, and deciding what kind of development will go there, a major factor in the decision is access: How long will it take to get back and forth from the city centre, and what means of transportation are available? If accessibility is good and the main means of access is roads, chances are the developer will opt for single-family homes, and, since buyers of such homes usually like quiet neighbourhoods, the area will be exclusively residential, with shopping and jobs located elsewhere. Once settled in those neighbourhoods, the residents are almost totally dependent on their automobiles, because bus service is likely to be poor, and even the smallest daily errands will be run in a car.

Rapid transit opens up possibilities for a more urban style of development, a market that is generally under-served in Winnipeg: A denser neighbourhood consisting of a mix of homes, apartments, local shopping and public facilities, all within walking distance of the transit stop. Planners call such neighbourhoods transit-oriented development. People living there will have no need for two or three cars, because they will be able to do most of their daily business on foot, by transit, or on the bike path that will be developed parallel to the rapid transit line.

The potential benefits of a rapid transit line, therefore, go far beyond the convenience of a quick trip to work and back and the environmental benefits of reduced vehicle emissions on that trip. They also include:

• Reduced land consumption, resulting in less sprawl.

• Life-styles generally less oriented to automobile use - not just on the daily trip to work and back - and therefore less cars on the road and less filth in the air.

• More exercise and healthier bodies.

But those are potential benefits, not a sure thing, because there is an alternative. The land development around rapid transit stations can consist of parking lots instead of neighbourhoods. Political pressure for developing rapid transit this way will come from residents of auto-dependent suburbs who like their cars but would like to avoid some of the congestion on their daily commute.

Political pressure from suburbanites will be abetted by residents of neighbourhoods near transit stops who not only don't want to live in dense neighbourhoods, but are also fearful of the development of dense neighbourhoods nearby. What's more, rigid zoning and building code regulations may come down on the side of those who prefer asphalt to neighbourhoods. If asphalt lovers win the day, rapid transit, far from providing a counter to sprawl, may actually give it a boost, by improving the accessibility of ever more distant, auto-dependent suburbs.

Winnipeg is off to a good start in avoiding that fate, because financing for the first rapid transit line depends on revenues from a development next to the line that will presumably be transit-oriented. But that is only one short stretch of the line. There will be many opportunities for development at other points along the line. In a city as auto-dependent as Winnipeg, there are bound to be advocates for asphalt and opponents of density at those points. If we want Winnipeg's rapid transit system to be a sprawl fighter and a boon to the environment, rather than a gift to the petroleum industry, we had better be ready to make our case.

Posted by leo-c at 4:51 PM

August 25, 2008

OPPOSITION TO SPRAWL ISN'T ANTI-RURAL. IT'S PRO-RURAL.

For years, I've argued that urban sprawl is the source of a long list of serious urban social, economic and environmental problems. In recent years, I'm finding that more and more people agree with that line of argument. Today when they disagree, the disagreement, as often as not, takes the form, either of allegations that government policy favours cities over rural areas, or of hymns of praise to the virtues of rural life.

The impression I leave, apparently, is that, because I oppose sprawl, I am pro-urban and anti-rural. Not only is that impression mistaken, the whole idea that there is an irreconcilable conflict of interest between cities and the countryside is a major source of bad public policy.

The reality is that sprawl is potentially as harmful to commercial agriculture as it is to cities. The problem begins with the fact that a very substantial proportion of Canada's best agricultural land is located near cities, and that, conversely, urban development often takes place on prime farmland. But here's a bigger problem yet: You don't have to pave over farmland to erode its viability. All a rural municipality has to do to undermine commercial agriculture is be open-hearted in allowing farmers to sell out some tracts of land for residential development

Disillusioned urbanites move out of the city because they think they prefer the bucolic charms of the countryside - until they notice how it smells. A substantial scholarly literature cites a variety of ways that residential development in farming areas damages the viability of agriculture:

• Complaints from residents not only about smells, but also about heavy machinery on roads and other perceived nuisances resulting from agriculture.

• Residential activities that interfere with farming operations such as commuter traffic and harassment of farm animals by pets.

• Most significantly in the long run, escalation of land prices that inflate the cost of farming.

Environmental implications of such development are even more disturbing, as we can see from the typical example of the Municipality of Springfield, immediately east of Winnipeg. Springfield is allowing widely-scattered residential development, and most of it is in one of the municipality's prime agricultural areas and in an area where the municipality's major resource of ground water is located. All the residential development on top of the prime water resource relies on septic tanks for sewage disposal, which invariably poses a greater risk to ground water than a community sewage system.

Two urban communities in the middle of the prime agricultural area, Oakbank and Dugald, have been provided with the services required for higher concentrations of urban development. The Springfield official plan itself stated in 1998 that the growth potential of livestock husbandry had already then been limited by past residential development, but the municipality was and is determined promote further residential development, even though it remains primarily an agricultural area and will certainly not rely primarily on urban development for its economic viability in the foreseeable future.

This is not an unusual situation. It is typical. It has been a political issue in the United States for decades, but has received much less attention in Canada. It ought to be a greater concern in Canada, because we have less high-potential agricultural land and a greater percentage of it is threatened by urban develiopment. Canada's situation has been likened to having the population growth of Florida located in the heart of the U.S. cornbelt.

In other words, the sprawl issue is not about decadent urbanites wishing to deny solid citizens the spiritual and physical health benefits they will supposedly gain from fresh country air. It's about viable commercial agriculture and clean air, water and soil - as well as the social health and financial viability of cities. This is only one more reason why, instead of viewing the sprawl issue as a clash between urbanites and people who don't like cities, we all need to recognize the importance of sensible land use control measures.

Medieval cities were walled, not only for self-defence, but also because cities work better when they are contained. We will not wish to go back to building walls around our cities, but the sooner we give up on the illusion that it's possible, at one and the same time, to enjoy the benefits of both rural and urban life, the sooner we will stop laying waste to cities, the countryside and the environment.

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Documentation of the points I've made, and much more, can be found in:

Ralph E. Heimlich and Kenneth S. Krupa. 1994. Changes in land quality accompanying urbanization in U.S. fast-growth counties. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 49(4) 367-374.

Christopher Leo, with Mary Ann Beavis, Andrew Carver and Robyne Turner. “Is urban sprawl back on the political agenda? Local growth control, regional growth management and politics.” Urban Affairs Review, 34 (2) 1998, 179-212.

Christopher Leo. 2002. “Urban development: Planning aspirations and political realities.” In Edmund P. Fowler and David Siegel, eds., Urban Policy Issues (second edition.) Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Posted by leo-c at 2:19 PM

June 28, 2008

BEAUTIFUL STADIUM PROPOSAL? HEADS UP FOR THE BAIT AND SWITCH

The Creswin Properties proposal for a new stadium and waterfront development in Winnipeg's South Point Douglas neighbourhood looks beautiful, doesn't it? There's no denying that, but maybe now it's time to take a look at what happened in Edmonton, when Triple Five Corporation made an irresistible offer to obtain a massive commitment of public funds and then used local politicians' commitment to keep them on-side, even as the more attractive features of the original offer were withdrawn, and its price increased.

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be attracted to the beautiful images below, which appeared today in the Winnipeg Free Press. But as they admire the images, Winnipeg's citizens and decision-makers should bear a couple of other things in mind.

In the first place, don't lose sight of the fact that the Point Douglas neighbourhood, which has been through a lot of very hard times, has lately accomplished the difficult task of getting itself organized and attacking some of the problems that have plagued it. A massive public facility, with the inevitable multitudes of automobiles and crowds of people, leaving bottles, wrappers and chicken bones in their wake, is a huge liability to a residential neighbourhood.

Do the developers have anything better to offer the neighbourhood than rowdy football fans, broken glass and half-eaten corn dogs?

Citizens and decision-makers should also bear in mind that the pictures, by the developer's own admission, are just drawings, with no commitment behind them. If we're going to consider spending our hard-earned tax dollars to visit this development upon Point Douglas, we had better note what happened in Edmonton, - just one example of many such instances - and make sure that we learn from those mistakes.

Posted by leo-c at 5:03 PM

December 30, 2007

TALKING TO EACH OTHER INSTEAD OF SHOUTING: A DIALOGUE ABOUT SPRAWL AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Peter Holle, president of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a conservative think tank, responded to my comments in another blog entry with some remarks of his own about sprawl, and other issues of urban governance and development. In this entry, I reproduce most of his comments, in boldface, and follow them with my responses in italics.

I submit this entry as a beginning of what I hope can be a more extensive dialogue. Those of us who disagree on important questions of city politics have too often been self-indulgent in preaching to the converted, and ignoring our opponents. Genuine dialogue is much more likely to produce good policy than rigid adherence to set points of view.

PH: Sprawl is natural outgrowth of dispersing economy (communications and car technology, rising wealth levels). Policy makers largely waste time and resources trying to stop this.

CH: Whether that statement is true depends on what you mean by "sprawl". If you mean any extension of a city or metropolitan area that includes single-family residences, you're right. It's true globally that cities are growing and that many affluent home-buyers are looking for spacious homes and grounds as far from the city centre as possible.

However, there is room for a considerable proportion of low-density, single-family development, even with land use regulations aimed at limiting sprawl. Sprawl becomes toxic when low-density development gets preferential treatment so that it is, in effect, subsidized, and when low densities are combined with rules that require strict separation of land uses - keeping residential, commercial and industrial tracts of land strictly separated from each other.

That kind of development has the effect of limiting choice, by putting developers in the position of having to make financial sacrifices and fight bureaucratic battles if they wish to provide an alternative to conventional low-density, land-use-separated development. It puts home buyers in residential districts that are strictly separated from work and shopping in the position of being completely dependent on their automobiles for transportation. And it makes it impossible to provide convenient bus service except with unsustainable levels of subsidy. Finally it often strands the elderly, youth, poor people and disabled people, or makes them dependent on others for their transportation.

Land development is very strictly regulated, down to very small details. The suggestion that it represents the untrammeled operation of market forces is simply wrong. In fact, a true free market in land is an impossibility, because free markets presuppose, among other things, unlimited supply and the supply of land is by nature limited. Land use is always regulated and we have sprawl because our regulations require or encourage it.

PH: Insofar as we have sprawl it is artificial, an outgrowth of old style government policy. Our recommendations for curbing artificial sprawl include the measures set out in boldface below:

Tax land not improvements. The existing property tax system penalizes density.

CH: Your point, I take it, is that, since we tax buildings, and the improvement of them, development of land incurs a tax liability, while land that remains undeveloped and sparsely developed is very lightly taxed. That greatly weakens the incentive to develop the land and thereby works against density. It has long been advocated that either only land be taxed (the single tax), or that the tax on land be raised, while that on improvements is reduced (the split tax). If it becomes expensive to leave land lying idle, its owners will be more interested in developing it, so that it produces revenue.

These proposals are well worth considering. The split tax has been tested in a number of Pennsylvania cities, and there is a good case to be made in favour of it. As well, it could be argued that the main problem is that the split tax does not go far enough - that a single tax would have produced a better result. In practical political terms, some powerful oxen would be gored by either change. Perhaps we should be forging a left-right coalition to advocate for a reform of the property tax.

PH: Fund services with user fees not property taxes to catch free riders.

CH: Free riders are people who cause problems, but do not pay for them, and therefore have no incentive not to cause the problems. The classic free rider case is air pollution. Each automobile driver and each factory contribute to air pollution, but they do not pay to clean up the dirty air they have produced. As a result, virtuous citizens and companies that seek to reduce air pollution pay for their virtue, while those that continue to spew pollutants do not pay for their wrong-doing. The virtuous ones pay for cleaner air but continue to breathe dirty air.

Even the most starry-eyed market utopians - those who believe that virtually all political and social problems are best solved by the application of free market principles - agree that the free rider problem requires some kind of intervention from government. An obvious solution is to find a way of charging the polluters for their pollution, so that they are forced to pay for their sins.

That line of reasoning makes perfect sense for air pollution. It is more difficult to see how it applies to public parks, zoos and public libraries. Typically, these have been paid for initially and maintained with funds collected from taxpayers, and available for all to enjoy. Restricting access to them with user fees makes them available only to those who can afford to pay. Everyone pays taxes. To bar some of them from the use of public services that they have helped pay for seems unfair.

As for the free rider problem, it is difficult to see what harm is caused to public parks, community centres and public libraries by opening them to the public at large, without restriction. By the same token, there is a potential public benefit in providing opportunities for recreation and literacy to people who cannot afford to pay. And sprawl? Will the proceeds of user fees be used to finance anti-sprawl measures? My advice to readers is not to bet the farm on that proposition.

PH: Increase efficiency of city services using modern delivery models.

CH: I'm in favour of that as long as it's not a fancy way of saying "cheap labour". Following on the publication of Osborne and Gaebler's Reinventing Government, many improvements have been made in the delivery of city services by using newer administrative techniques, including some that involve methods imported from private enterprise. The result has been both increased efficiency and lower cost.

Unfortunately, some of the lower costs have been achieved by forcing wages down, typically by exposing unionized city workers to competition from private contractors who pay lower wages. As a result, workers who had enough money to be able to buy the many things their children needed in order to get a good start in life are now less able, or entirely unable, to do that.

Low wages - not only in the delivery of municipal services, but generally - are a good way of reducing the life chances of the next generation, by putting today's parents in the position of not being able to afford to give their kids the care and education they need. This is a very short-sighted policy, which, in the long run, incurs both economic and social costs.

PH: Remove rent controls and target assistance to low income earners in order to make housing affordable for them.

CH: I agree that the case for rent controls is weak, because it involves a transfer of wealth from landlords to tenants, which is not at all the same as a transfer of wealth from the wealthy to the poor. In addition, it may reduce the incentive to maintain rental dwellings. But we shouldn't kid ourselves that removal of rent controls will free us of the need to make some public provision for affordable housing, and social housing. Affordable housing is not what developers make money on.

As for targeting housing money to low income earners, that's one of several ways of dealing with the fact that, in most cities, even some people who work hard may not be able to afford shelter. We can't do justice here to this complex issue. Let's take it up another time.

PH: Encourage development in the centre city, with the objective of supporting it more as an interesting living place and less as a shopping and working place.

CH: I don't think that downtown needs to be less a working and shopping place than it is now, but I do agree that we need to place heavy emphasis on housing, including affordable housing, in the development of the commercial heart of the city. That, in turn, will open more possibilities for retail trade - in other words, shopping. For the city as a whole, perhaps the most important single planning objective should be to take sensible measures to reduce as much as possible the existence of areas that are exclusively devoted to any one use.

The most recent Winnipeg zoning code revisions - like those in many other North American cities - take some modest but useful steps in this direction. Like affordable housing, this is another critically important but complex issue that we should resolve to discuss in more detail another time.

PH: Zoning restrictions on supply and disproportionate investments in light rail/mass transit are yesterday's answers. They simply push people to live outside the zoned area, penalize home owners by artifically raising house prices, and otherwise waste scarce resources that should be used for other transport infrastructure.

CH: Zoning restrictions and investments in public transit are two different issues. I agree that conventional zoning is too restrictive. As I argue above, conventional zoning in effect mandates sprawl. We need to make it much easier for developers to do infill development and to offer suburban choices that are different from the familiar pattern of large residential areas, strictly separated from shopping and workplaces.

As for public transit, Winnipeg has a system that continues to be generally efficient, despite the fact that it has been poorly supported. We need to support transit and improve it, in order to reduce dependence on private automobiles and to enhance the freedom of the young, the elderly, the poor and the disabled, as well as their ability to control their lives and provide for their livelihoods. As I argue elsewhere, this is not as hard to do as many would have you believe.

Want to find out more?

Alanna Hartzok defends the split tax in "Pennsylvania's Success with Local Property Tax Reform: The Split Rate Tax", American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 56, No. 2, 205-213 (Apr., 1997). Unfortunately, this issue is seriously under-researched.

On new service delivery models, see David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector, New York: Penguin, 1993. This is a readable classic that, for better or worse, foreshadowed a great deal of what has gone on in municipal government since it was published.

Posted by leo-c at 5:10 PM

March 3, 2007

FIXING SPRAWL WOULD BE A LOT EASIER IF WE'D FOCUS ON THE PROBLEM

In a post entitled "Are You Tired of the Sprawl Game?", I argued that we miss the essentials of the problem of managing urban growth by focusing instead on images and ideologies - arguing, for example, about New Urbanism vs. modernism, or liberalism vs. conservatism, instead of doing what needs to be done. In this post, I follow that argument up with some practical suggestions for Winnipeg.

I focus on a particular city because that's really the only way growth problems can be addressed. Each city is unique, and there is no universal template. That said, each city displays many similarities with many other cities. My suggestions for Winnipeg will resonate with many who are familiar with the problems of other mid-size, slow-growth cities in North America.

In Winnipeg, as in many other slow-growth cities, the essence of the problem of sprawl is that we extend roads, sewers and water lines much farther than we need to to accommodate our slow population growth. As a result, the costs of these facilities spiral out of control for want of enough property owners to pay for them. There are a lot of simple, straightforward planning practices that we could be following to help bring our runaway infrastructure and servicing costs under control, while making the city a more interesting and pleasant place to live.

There are generally no very good reasons why we're not doing these things. The most important single reason is quite simply that North American cities have, over the past three-quarters of a century, been developed on principles that sounded good in theory but haven't worked in practice, and we've been slow to break the bad habits that developed during this period.

Here's my five-step program for getting a start on breaking those habits:

1. GET SERIOUS ABOUT DOING NEIGHBOURHOOD PLANS FOR THE SUBSTANTIAL AREAS WITHIN THE CITY THAT ARE AVAILABLE FOR CONVENTIONAL SUBURBAN DEVELOPMENT.

The development industry and the city planning department talked City Council into opening up a vast new tract of farmland now called Waverley West, which will greatly increase the city's infrastructure and service delivery burdens. They won City Council approval for this ill-advised move by arguing that there was a critical lot shortage. What they didn't say was that the reason for the shortage is that the city has failed to do the planning work necessary to open up areas within the city that would be suitable for regular suburban development, but would not constitute sprawl, and would allow us to make more efficient use of existing infrastructure and service networks, instead of developing new ones. The city needs to hire more planners and put them to work on this critical task. (Go to Are you tired of the sprawl game? for more detail.)

2. SUPPORT THE TRANSIT SYSTEM BY PAYING ATTENTION TO THE LOCATION OF NEW MEDIUM AND HIGH-DENSITY DEVELOPMENT.

People living in apartments and row houses tend to be users of transit, if convenient transit is available. But if we permit the location of apartment buildings in the far reaches of such suburban areas as St James, or Island Lakes, as we have, we end up with apartment dwellers dependent on automobiles for almost all their transportation, because it's impossible provide a good transit service in those locations. An efficient transit system that draws a lot of passengers is essential to the development of a sustainable city.

3. GET BUSY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF RAPID TRANSIT, A JOB THAT ALMOST EVERYONE NOW ACKNOWLEDGES NEEDS TO BE DONE.

Fifty years of talk and studies should provide an ample basis for decisions. The establishment of an efficient, modern transit system would be a critical step toward bringing the costs of services and infrastructure under control. In tandem with the development of rapid transit, land use measures need to be taken to allow so-called transit-oriented development along the transit lines.

4. MAINTAIN AND EXPAND THE GOOD INITIATIVES WE HAVE UNDERWAY FOR THE REVITALIZATION OF INNER CITY RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBOURHOODS AND THE COMMERCIAL CORE...

...and intensify the focus on the development of housing to support both the commercial heart of the city and low-income residents of nearby neighbourhoods, instead of abandoning those initiatives, as the city now seems to be doing. (A recent measure to provide tax incentives for multi-family and mixed commercial-residential development is a step in the right direction.) A lively, attractive downtown, where people from all walks of life can afford to live, is central to the achievement of all the other objectives I advocate.

5. PUT NEIGHBOURHOOD COMMERCE, SHOPPING-MALL-BASED BUSINESSES AND BIG BOX DEVELOPMENTS ON A LEVEL PLAYING-FIELD.

At the moment, such big box stores as those in the St. James Street strip enjoy hidden subsidies because they do not have to meet the same standards for building design or contributions to infrastructure maintenance as other businesses. The importance of giving all our business people an even break ought to be obvious to everyone, regardless of their political beliefs. For more information, read The Twilight Zone of City Zoning Regulations

We can get all these things done without arguing about New Urbanism vs. modernism, liberalism vs conservatism or capitalism vs. socialism. By all means, let's continue these debates. They're inherently interesting, and important in the long term. But they need not and should not distract us from pursuing straightforward planning measures that can help restore Winnipeg's ability to manage its resources within its budget, while making the city more attractive and more functional.

Want to find out more? Here are some useful sources:

A more detailed and comprehensive set of proposals for growth management in the Winnipeg region is presented in Richard Lennon and Christopher Leo. “Metropolitan Growth and Municipal Boundaries: Problems and Proposed Solutions.” International Journal of Canadian Studies, 24 (Fall), 2001, 77-104.

For land use measures that support the transit system, go to http://www.vtpi.org/, or just run a search on "TOD" or "Transit-oriented development". The internet is full of useful information about this important subject.

Posted by leo-c at 5:32 PM

January 5, 2007

WHY AND HOW CITY POLITICIANS AND THE PUBLIC ARE MISLED BY OFFICIALS

This is the third in a series of articles about how poorly the public interest is represented by many Canadian municipal governments. In a previous entry, I showed how developers are able to bend our representatives to their will and in this entry I will provide an example of how public servants do it.

In both entries I use a careful examination of a particular case as my medium. These cases are not unusual events. On the contrary, I chose to examine them in detail, and nail down exactly what happened, because they seemed to be typical of situations I have observed repeatedly in case studies of urban development issues in Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver, Portland, Oregon and other cities.

The suggestion that developers could be motivated to promote their own interests over those of the public will come as no surprise. Their job is to make money and their responsibility is to their shareholders, not the public. But some readers may find the suggestion that public servants could also promote a narrow interest at the expense of that of the public harder to swallow. Therefore, let's look at what their motivations might be.

It's important to begin by remembering that no one is objective. We all carry our biases with us. Many of these are based on our professional or occupational training. The expression, "to a person with a hammer, everything looks like a nail", sums it up nicely. Similarly, to many road builders, speed and ease of automobile access is the primary urban development concern.

Most engineering designers and managers now at the peak of the profession were educated in engineering faculties where the dominant tendency was to think of road-building as a technical matter, in which road design involved the projection of traffic demands and the efficient accommodation of that traffic at a manageable cost. In that climate of thought, the suggestion that there is a social and an environmental dimension to road-bulding was not taken seriously and, when such suggestions came from politicians or members of the public, they were resented as “political interference” and as an assault on the engineers’ professional integrity. This belief-system is still very much in evidence, especially among the decision-makers in municipal public works departments.

The ideas about road systems that are being applied in North American cities typically have two sources that are important for our purposes: developer proposals and the traditional norms and conventions of civil engineering. The contribution of developers is that they decide on the parcels of land that they see as profitable spots for development and propose them to the city. In Winnipeg and many other cities they have good reason to expect a sympathetic hearing from local government.

It then becomes the obligation of the city to work out the development of the rest of the city’s transportation system to accommodate recent and expected future development. For example, a burgeoning of new subdivisions at Winnipeg’s southern edge in South St Vital and South St Boniface contributed to a city decision to build an expressway serving that part of the city - Bishop Grandin Boulevard - and occasioned the opening-up of an under-used and heavily subsidized bus line into Island Lakes, one of the new subdivisions. It also eventually stimulated the replacement of the Norwood and Main Street bridges with a massive new eight-lane structure. These bridges, located downtown, are part of the road system leading to the newer southern subdivisions.

While money was readily available for these extensions of the transportation infrastructure, as as well as a long list of other, similar extensions in all directions from the centre of the city, funds for the maintenance of existing infrastructure dwindled. A meticulous 1998 survey of the state of Winnipeg’s infrastructure found a massive disparity between the amount needed to maintain existing infrastructure and the amount actually being spent. Regional streets, for example were found to be $10.2 m a year short of the required amount. Even more drastic was the situation of residential streets, which were found to have benefited from an average annual budgeted expenditure of $2.5 m, compared with a requirement of $30 m, a disparity of $27.5 m. The overall infrastructure deficit was estimated at $1 billion or more.

In all of these respects, Winnipeg was following the conventions of modern North American city-building: developers decide where they want to locate new development and pay for some of the services immediately required by the new subdivisions. The city ensures that they become connected into the city-wide service network, and that the city-wide network is expanded as necessary to accommodate them. It is in deciding on the character of this expansion that long-established norms of the engineering profession take over.

“EASY DECISIONS”

Many examples could be found, but a recent case in point was that of the Norwood Bridge, an inner city-suburban link referred to above. When the plans for the Norwood Bridge reconstruction were being mooted, city officials presented four alternatives, including the following two: It would cost $78 m for a six-lane, divided bridge that was pictured as providing a “fair” level of safety, and “poor” traffic capacity, accommodation for transit and accommodation of traffic during construction. By contrast, an eight-lane, divided bridge that was rated “good” in all four categories would cost only $80 m. That was an easy decision: only $2 m extra for a vastly superior bridge.

Such “easy decisions” are standard items in the arsenal of public servants who have made up their minds about which course they wish their political masters and the public to pursue. Council chose an eight-lane bridge, and it soon became obvious - as it often does in such cases - that the “easy choice” was not so easy after all. By 1998, the cost of the new bridge had escalated to $102 m. And with only one of the two spans built - still less than the six-lane alternative that was portrayed as inadequate - traffic line-ups at rush hour had greatly eased. The final cost of eight-lane span was $113 million, $33 million more than originally promised.

Over-building of bridges and roads exacerbates the dilemmas Winnipeg will face in future. Increased road and bridge capacity has two consequences: First, an improved route draws traffic as it becomes the route of choice for drivers who previously favoured other routes. Sooner or later, this increases pressure on city council for further road works. For example, traffic line-ups on a bridge may be replaced by tie-ups on narrower roads leading to and from the bridge. Such consequences are not unanticipated by engineering staff, and resulting public demands for widening of the road leading away from the bridge may be seen by them as long-overdue recognition of necessities they understood to begin with.

A second consequence of increased bridge and road capacity is reduced travel time to the urban fringe, which leads to an increase in the economic viability of sprawl and leap-frog development. The upshot is intensified political pressure from developers for the approval of subdivisions that will be costly to serve. And once the new, typically low-density, auto-dependent subdivisions are built, they provide a fresh supply of citizens who have no convenient means of getting around other than the private automobile. It is a vicious cycle, in which each new attempt to solve the problem of allegedly inadequate road capacity has the ultimate effect of exacerbating it.

The high priority accorded road projects tends to crowd out alternatives. In Winnipeg, city council has readily agreed to one road project after another, heedless of the fact that each one exacerbates the sprawl dilemma. Meanwhile, transit facilities that could contribute to the amelioration of sprawl are postponed indefinitely. Since the mid-1970s, plans have been underway for the construction of the Southwest Transit Corridor, a rapid transit line consisting of cost-effective diesel buses running on a concrete strip dedicated exclusively to transit.

This line is considered viable because it connects two population concentrations - downtown and the University of Manitoba - along the relatively heavily-populated Pembina Highway corridor. It would ameliorate traffic congestion along Pembina Highway - the artery connecting the University of Manitoba with the inner city - and encourage cost-effective, compact development along the route, in contrast to road and bridge projects’ encouragement of sprawl. Estimated total cost for the entire facility would have been $70 million in 1997 - less than the lower-cost alternative for the Norwood Bridge, which was deemed inadequate. However, postponement of rapid transit has been a routine feature of City Council’s annual budget deliberations for at least two decades, and remains so in 2007.

ALTERNATIVES

In short, Winnipeg's city council, and many others, neglect their duty to the interest of the city as a whole when they accept the norms of traditionally-minded civil engineers as the final word on the extension of transportation infrastructure. As well, instead of, in effect, delegating to developers the right to decide where the city will expand, cities could exercise their authority to determine the location of new subdivisions. In theory, that power is being exercised now by city councils through their planning departments, but in practice the main influence over those decisions rests with developers and road-building specialists.

Winnipeg could have developed very differently. It seems very likely that the Norwood Bridge project could reasonably have been much more modest than it was. With a less auto-dependent, more compact form of development, the suburban road system - of which Bishop Grandin is only one example - could have been less extensive, and the transit system less of a drain on the treasury. In their development of roads, as well as the full range of other municipal services, Winnipeg, like other cities, is expanding rapidly, at ever lower densities, primarily in response to developers’ calculations about where the profit picture looks favourable for them, without serious consideration of how all of these developments will be tied together with infrastructure and serviced.

Winnipeg's suburbs sprawl, its inner city decays and the costs of servicing all of this uncontrolled development spiral out of control. As with any political discontent, the causes of this state of affairs are complex, but a very important cause is the inability of our local political institutions fully to address the complexities of the problems that face us.

•••••••••••••••••

Want to find out more? This article draws on research presented in Christopher Leo, “The North American Growth Fixation and the Inner City: Roads Of Excess.” World Transport Policy & Practice, 4 (4) 1998, 24-29. The article was reprinted in John Whitelegg and Gary Haq, eds, The Earthscan Reader on World Transport Policy and Practice. London: Earthscan Publications, 2003, ch 20.

A very useful source is Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream, by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck (New York: North Point Press, 2000), especially chapter 5.

Two books by Anthony Downs are helpful as well. The first (Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-hour Traffic Congestion. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1992) treats traffic congestion as a problem in its own right. In the second (New visions for Metropolitan America. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994) Downs expands his field of view, placing traffic problems in the wider perspective of metropolitan development, and reaching some different conclusions.

Evidence that there are alternatives to the sad state of affairs in Winnipeg, and many other cities, may be found in the Oregon Department of Transportation's Western Bypass study: Alternatives Analysis (Portland, OR, 1995) and in 1000 Friends of Oregon's Making the Connections: A Summary of the LUTRAQ Project (Portland, Oregon, 1997).

Posted by leo-c at 7:16 PM

November 26, 2006

THE GREEN PARTY OF WINNIPEG: HOW TO HAVE AN IMPACT

Winnipeg has a green party, consisting of a small but committed group of people who are determined to exercise an influence on the city's future. This may actually be possible. Public awareness of environmental issues appears to be growing, while disenchantment with business as usual in city hall is always there to be tapped. But it will be very difficult.

One of the problems the party must face is the long-standing bias against political parties in local government. As I point out elsewhere, parties are seen by many as counter-productively disputatious representatives of special interests, insufficiently concerned with common-sense governance in the interests of the city as a whole. The Green Party of Winnipeg has an opportunity to overcome that bias, but to do so it must move beyond purely environmental concerns, such as opposition to sprawl and pesticides, and consider how an environmental perspective can be at the heart of a platform that addresses the needs of the city as a whole.

Following are a few of the many questions party members may wish to consider if they hope to build their movement into a truly effective political instrument.

SPRAWL

The party is of course opposed to sprawl, and says so in its platform, but what to do about it? The party's platform states: "Planning focus will shift to reinvestment in existing neighbourhoods rather than developer-driven new ones; redevelopment will replace development as the preferred option."

That's not a plank for a platform, it's a sentiment. It’s not enough to prefer infill development to conventional suburban development, because a platform needs to be capable of passing muster as a business plan. A lot of home buyers don’t want infill housing, but do want to live in a conventional suburban neighbourhood. Advocacy of and support for infill development in inner-city neighbourhoods is in itself laudable, but it does not answer the question of where conventional suburban housing will be located.

Winnipeg can in fact accommodate new neighbourhoods in the suburban style in a manner that limits sprawl a great deal more than current land use policies do. If the Green Party wishes its position on sprawl to be taken seriously, it must say how it intends to do this.

LAND USE IN THE WINNIPEG REGION

The Green Party's call for additional development charges on new fringe development makes a lot of sense. There is a very reasonable case to be made for the proposition that current development cost structures in effect subsidize new subdivisions at the expense of the rest of the city. But this question cannot be addressed in isolation from the question of land use in the Winnipeg region as a whole, because, in the absence of a regional policy, additional development costs within the City of Winnipeg will simply drive development into urbanizing municipalities adjacent to the city.

Therefore, the Green Party must also have a regional land use policy. It could, for example, advocate the creation of a regional government, or increased provincial regulation of land use outside the city, or possibly a tax surcharge on municipalities outside the city, to be rebated to the city in order to help cover the costs of services the city now provides free of charge to users from outside the city. Each of these approaches has advantages and disadvantages, but without some approach to regional land use issues, the Green Party's approach to new subdivisions is not workable.

PORK PRODUCTION

At last report, the City of Winnipeg was hoping to seal a deal with pork processor OlyWest for the location of a major new hog processing facility in Winnipeg. The Green Party does not have an official position on this initiative, but within the party there is much anti-OlyWest sentiment. If the party opposes OlyWest, it should also consider what alternative policy it supports. Does the party wish simply to leave pork production to other communities, or will it advocate a different way of producing pork? A related question concerns employment. Most of the employees of OlyWest would be immigrants and Winnipeg has a substantial population of immigrants. If the Green Party proposes not to create these jobs, it should also consider its position on job creation for immigrants.

OPEN SPACE POLICY

It would make a lot of sense for the party to consider how it can expand the appeal of environmental concerns beyond the constituency of committed environmentalists. One way of doing this would be to advocate the development of a comprehensive open space policy covering everything from parks and community gardens to parking lots, empty lots and rail lines. Such a policy could facilitate the transformation of a patchwork of different types of open spaces into a system of pathways, recreational spaces and greenways, which would also be available as paths for leisurely walks and commuter routes for bicycles and pedestrians. Many Winnipeggers who are less concerned than Green Party members with the ills of the environment might find such a policy attractive for other reasons.

BUSINESS

Whether the Green Party and I like it or not, the business community is always a major force in municipal politics. There is no need to pander cravenly to everything the Chamber of Commerce demands, but without a platform that is capable of drawing some support from the business community, chances of implementing a program are slim to none. The Green Party platform should include provisions regarding taxes, land use regulation and other issues that concern business owners and managers. In developing such provisions, Green Party members might wish to ask themselves how at least some tax and land use regulations could be good for both business and the environment. My next suggestion is one of many items the party might wish to consider in that context.

GREEN BUILDINGS

The Green Party platform calls for a green buildings policy, but the wording suggests that that would apply only to city buildings. The energy savings that go with green buildings also save money. Can the Green Party work out a way of creating a loan fund - possibly in co-operation with Manitoba Hydro and the Manitoba provincial government - for retrofitting buildings to make them energy-efficient, with the loans to be repaid out of the savings on energy costs? If a workable program along these lines were developed, it would be bound to draw support, not only from the business community, but also from people in the construction trades.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

These are only a few of the questions the Green Party of Winnipeg must consider if it hopes to be seen as a real political party, fit to run the city, and not just as a special-interest group. It must also decide how it would pay for addressing Winnipeg's infrastructure deficit, how it would manage its relations with the provincial government, what to do about affordable housing, and more. All of these questions can be considered from an environmental perspective. In so doing, the party should be able to build and strengthen its program for environmental protection, while at the same time demonstrating its fitness to govern.

Posted by leo-c at 11:38 AM

October 22, 2006

ARE YOU TIRED OF THE SPRAWL GAME?

Are you tired the sprawl game yet? Did you read the newspaper article in the Free Press headlined "The Joy of Sprawl"? Maybe not, so I'll summarize it. I'll keep it brief because you've read it all before.

Robert Bruegmann reminds us how much we like the mobility the private automobile gives us, and how unpopular public transit is (not exactly true of Winnipeg, which, despite its old-fashioned bus fleet, draws far more passengers than any comparable American city’s transit system does). He says the problem with Los Angeles is not that people there are too dependent on their automobiles, but that too much money has been spent on transit and not enough on roads. He ends with a vague outline of unspecified new technology that will (when it's been invented) combine the convenience of the private automobile with the efficiency of buses or trains. Meanwhile, presumably, we should put more money into roads.

But that's actually Move Two of the sprawl game. The game starts with a handsome youngish architect, wearing an expensive sweater and Italian leather shoes, cataloguing environmental costs of excessive automobile use and telling us that the solution is Cute Neighbourhoods. He paints an attractive picture of fashionable townhouses, brick pavement, a community centre, some stores within walking distance, and happy children riding their bicycles to the transit stop.

Next we get a representative of a right-wing think tank with a word like "heritage" or "frontier" in the name. Hanging on for dear life to the fact that, if planning controls are very weak, you may be able to get a piece of cheap land by the highway at a distance from the city, he represents himself as an advocate of affordable housing. He then reminds you how much you love your automobile and hate public transit... well, you know the rest.

Finally, we get a representative of the city planning department, telling us that, because of an alleged lot shortage, which is driving increases in the price of housing, we desperately need to open a very large tract of farmland for urban development. (House prices have been rising all over North America, so I guess there must be lot shortages everywhere.) But, she adds, we're going to build Cute Neighbourhoods on that large tract of farmland, so we're actually on the same side as the guy with the Italian shoes.

The problem with the sprawl game, aside from its repetitiveness, is that, while everyone is publishing his way to a full professorship, taxpayers are being smothered by the cost of roads, sewers and water lines, and transit systems are declining. There are no mysteries here. We know the best way to deal with this situation, and Cute Neighbourhoods are OK, but they’re optional.

If we can provide a reasonably efficient transit system, quite a lot of people will use it. We’ll save wear and tear on roads, and reduce global warming and air pollution. The way to get an efficient transit system is density: there have to be enough people where the transit stops are to fill the fare box. There is a lot of density in any city, so the trick is to locate the apartment buildings, town houses, factories, and office buildings in such a way as to keep as many people as possible within walking distance of a transit stop.

We used to know how to do this in Winnipeg. For example, there are lots of apartment buildings along Portage Avenue, St Mary’s Road and St Anne’s Road and, not coincidentally, those streets get good transit service. But what are we doing now? Well, the planning department was drastically reduced in the 1990s, and hasn’t been anywhere nearly fully restored, so developers do pretty much whatever occurs to them. Their job is to worry about the bottom line. They don’t have a lot of time or incentive to think about efficient infrastructure and transit.

As a result, what we get, instead of configurations of density that support transit, is random scattering. For example, there’s a large, new apartment building near the north end of St James, with a big parking lot, that gets a bus every half hour at the height of rush hour, and that bus only takes you to a far western location on Portage Avenue, after which you have to transfer – at least twice if you’re going north, east or south of downtown. You can count on it that those apartment dwellers will be using their cars most of the time. The same is true of an apartment building in the middle of Island Lakes, and many others in similarly ill-thought-out locations.

Another example: City Council decides to allow the building of a hog processing plant that will employ a lot of immigrant workers. Winnipeg is an ideal location for such a facility. Because the planning process took place largely in secrecy, it is difficult to know what went on, but the location of immigrant neighbourhoods and of the proposed plant suggests that transit connections were not considered. So we may well end up with low-wage workers forced to spend hours each day commuting to their jobs.

Another thing we need to do in order to keep ourselves from being smothered by the costs of infrastructure and a declining transit system is to make sure that we develop green fields that are closer in before we open up ones that are farther out. City Council committed a violation of that simple rule when it opened up the massive tract of farmland called Waverley West to suburban development.

We know that because the city planners’ own figures tell us that the estimated number of lots available for conventional suburban development (before we opened up Waverley West) was more than the maximum estimated demand for such lots by 2011. (See note at the end of the article.) Wait a minute, you say, how is that possible? Didn’t the planners and the Manitoba Homebuilders’ Association keep telling us that we suffered from a critical lot shortage?

The answer is that the few planners left working for the city after the cut-backs of the 1990s haven’t had time to do the planning work necessary to open up the tracts that were already available before the city opened up Waverley West. Presumably that small but stalwart band of city planners is now busy doing the planning work for Waverley West, and the empty spaces in the city will become our children’s liabilities.

Apparently, although, as a society, we can afford to finance the heritage guy and the architect with the Italian shoes, as well as all those Cute Neighbourhoods, we can’t afford to keep our infrastructure and transit system affordable.

NOTE ON SOURCES: You can check the planners' projections of requirements for suburban land and land available for suburban development by consulting the City of Winnipeg Residential Land Supply Study (City of Winnipeg; Department of Planning, Property and Development, 2004). In that document, land usable for conventional suburban development is called "greenfield" and the number of lots available within Winnipeg (before Waverley West) was estimated at 20,300 (p. 13), while the most optimistic population growth projections yielded an estimated maximum demand of 19,618 for lots by the year 2011 (p. 8).

Posted by leo-c at 2:55 PM