The costs of congestion

Streets Blog has reported on the report that New York City residents save at least $19 billion each year by driving less than other Americans http://bit.ly/b7AByO. The Report is by CEOs for cities at http://bit.ly/bAlH0g.

This is really interesting because it puts a cost on not doing things. For example the average New Yorker drives on average 9 miles a day instead of the American Average of 25. This equals a saving of €48 billion. Petrol saved = €2.4bn. These are staggering figures.

This is the type of analysis we need to make sensible decisions about cities and transport. Various associations can we quickly tell us about the costs of a traffic jam, but they equate this to a need to address that problem through good infrastructure.

This is particularly important for light rail/metro vs. bus arguments. This was highlighted at the Irish Planning Institute conference last week with regard to transport options for Belfast. The only figures presented are those of infrastructure cost. The bus is cheaper - go figure. But how many people does a bus get out of their cars, what is the cost of reserving that bus lane? Buses have very low capacity, and get stuck behing each other at bus stops. What about image and environment, and city competitiveness. Quality Bus Corridors are a great improvement, but the service is still a longway off rail.

If city streets are viewed as an asset, buses get to use that asset for a very low/ unquantified cost. In Dublin we have so many buses on street that I think they're having a negative impact on the main city thoroughfares.

New Rail Station-Clongriffen, Dublin

Its great Minister Dempsey has just opened a new DART station at Balgriffen http://bit.ly/cCQ6MQ paid for by Gannon Homes, in turn paid for by NAMA in turn paid for by tax payer (isn't public private partnership great!). However, how on earth did this thing cost €22m. It ain't exactly Penn Station!

I'm throwing my arms around Paris

..as Morissey put is so eloquently in the superb 'Years of Refusal'. I was fortunate enough to visit the city over the last few days with my family. No sense of recession here. The unrelenting beauty of Paris as an urban place is quite humbling, and for all other places a lesson. The quality of the place is not only a reflection of wealth, but it also clearly endemic to the sustainable urbanism and the maintenance of that wealth. How to even express it? Hundred's of year of looking after a precious place, looking after every detail, keep people living there. The showy stuff like the Eiffel Tower (read Guggenheim Bilbao) and the palaces are nothing without the background streets. Everything that we need to learn about urbanism already exists, and has been tried and tested...and its living. Of course sitting on the RER out to Disneyland there's many sides to Paris, and not everyone enjoys the privileges of living in the centre. btw. the people were lovely.

Would you put a bus route through a shopping mall?

There are 2 designated Major Town Centres in the local authority area of DunLaoghaire Rathdown County Council, Dundrum Town Centre (an enclosed regional scale shopping centre) and DunLaoghaire - a traditional town centre with a main street. Both have rail links to Dublin City Centre. But only one has the joy of a 20 tonne bus zoomin down the middle at 30 miles an hour every 10 minutes. One of these centres is increasing rents by 100% in the middle of a depression, the other is on its knees. Clearly theres many factors why DunLaoghaire is suffering, but this has got to be a factor. If you don't put customers first (as they do in a shopping mall), and even worse, make the place dangerous and uncomfortable to walk around(despite wasting a fortune on expensive paving) its no wonder the place suffers. When I talk to retailers, they always say that parking is the problem, but cars don't walk into shops.

The Retail Squeeze

Retail Excellence Ireland has drawn attention to the damage being done to commercial business by institutional investors, particularly on the High Street.

The group highlight (http://bit.ly/bVOfvg) that Rent levels in the Irish commercial property market are now more than double the global average. Without downward movement in rent, they state that the industry will move from a “full serve” model to a “self-serve” model, and a further 40,000 jobs will be lost (additional to the 35,000 lost in 2009).

They highlight a group of institutional landlords including several who are being looked after by the state in NAMA with whom they are tactfully seeking "closer co-operation" as reported in today's Irish Times: http://bit.ly/bNVx4z from @the_irish_times

Their capacity to make any progress with policians in the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment today is much more important to the health and vitality of town centres than any number of policy documents or assessments. This is at the heart of the "Dalkey Dilemma" as previously noted.

Ordinary Places

CABE's lastest publication, Ordinary Places says a 'Smart' thing: "We have a serious problem with the quality of most ordinary streets. Streets determine how places feel,
yet cars still dominate. To civilise them, streets need to be designed first and foremost as places in themselves, prioritising the needs of disabled people,pedestrians and carers with pushchairs, and cyclists, above the motorist. This frees councils to remove clutter such as unnecessary signage and guardrails.
Once sights are raised, streets can start to reflect local identity".

They call this 'Sparking the Debate', and then proclaim the need to teach people visual literacy.

Excuse me, but who did the ******* designing in the first place? Was it 'Ordinary' people or the people trained in visual literacy? If post-war development is anything to go by, training in 'visual-literacy' isn't necessarily an asset.

The pamphlet is described as "a starting point for debate about creating the culture and conditions to help ordinary places to become valued and valuable".

Its 2010, why are we at a starting point? Jane Jacobs pointed this all out over 40 years ago.

CABE goes on to say "It asks how people can directly influence the quality of their places? Why don’t all pupils learn about design, to help make sense of the places around them?"

Another question must be, why should normal people have to give up time from their busy lives to tell professional designers how to do their job for them?

Jane Jacobs pointed the finger firmly at the professional planners, architects and traffic engineers and challenged them to recognise the value of ordinary, messy, mixed use places, which the quantitative models couldn't and can't deal with.

Its entirely condescending and elitist to presume ordinary people need teaching a bit of visual literacy to improve the public spaces and public elevations they have no control over. Isn't this somebody elses job??

Recognising the value of ordinary places is really the only show in town now. Value in the ordinary comes from appreciation of the small humble things, and taking the time patience and care to do things well.. plot by plot..builidng by building etc.

The Dalkey Dilemma

David McWilliams has a genius for coining a phrase, so that whenever we talk about town centre retail we just need to call it the 'Dalkey Dilemma' from now on. He was talking on RTE Radio 1 today following his article in the Irish Independent http://bit.ly/bqntMm. Its very welcome that a high profile, media friendly figure can highlight this pressing crisis: - the death of the mainstreet. He is entirely right that the response needs to be grass route led. The people who need to be making decisions, are the ones whos livelihoods are on the line.

However, any response needs to be seriously organised, professional, and full-time. Traders don't have the time, and while have plenty of good ideas, they may not be the right ones, at a particular time, or geared to the particular challenges of of a village. DunLaoghaire Rathdown Co. Co. brings in millions of euro in commercial rates from Dundrum Shopping Centre, and Carrickmines Retail Park - the retail centres the Council permitted. This income needs to be reinvested in the traditional towns and villages - but the Council arn't the ones to do it alone. They need to set up autonomous BID companies/TCM partnerships which they heavily invest in, and start getting serious.