In the typical
American urban area, from one quarter to one third of the land is devoted to
the automobile (streets, parking lots, driveways, gas stations.) Transportation
is the second largest annual expense for American families, adding up to more
than three times the cost of health care, exceeded only by the cost housing. In
auto-dependent, obese America, transportation means roads. And road issues are dominating the local
news.
The
Moynimont Pothole Initiative failed to get enough signatures to qualify for the
November ballot. Mr. Moynihan and Mr. Miramont deserve recognition for their
help getting the street repair steamrollers rolling, but they miscalculated the
public’s desire to put road repairs above all else.
The Rainier
thing is back. I call it a “thing” because it’s not clear if it’s a cross-town
connector, a freeway interchange, a floodplain development project, or all
three. The projected cost has come down, with the plan now being to duck under
the freeway as it rises to cross the railway. This would be done when that
section of the freeway is widened. What gets complicated is what Cal-trans
would be willing to do for their part of the widening project. Would they cover
the interchange costs? How much of an interchange would they cover? Should
there four ramps, on and off ramps in both directions, or some combination of 2
or 3? Would they fund an interchange at Corona as an alternative?
I’m going
to steer clear of that debate for now, and drive home an idea that came to me as
the City Council debated the Rainier alternatives. What is it I *really* don’t
like about the Rainier thing? It’s that it would result in development of an
area that should not be developed because it is right next to a beautiful and
flood prone river, that that development generates traffic that eliminates the
cross-town travel time savings, and that the development will hurt Petaluma’s
downtown. In short, it’s the development.
So what if,
instead of a Rainier that looked like Rohnert Park expressway west of 101,
surrounded by big box blight, we had a Rainier Parkway, looking more like John
F. Kennedy Drive in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park? What if instead of
looking across vast parking lots to ticky-tacky mall architecture, we looked
across small parking lots to soccer and baseball fields? What if instead of an efficiently
ugly four-lane road that hacked through this oak-lined riparian woodland, we
had a beautiful traffic calming design, lined with new trees and separate paths
for pedestrians and cyclists on both sides.
How do we
pay for this if we don’t develop the flood plain? The City and Chamber’s retail
leakage study put the Rainer area dead last on the list of desirable sites for development.
The development should go downtown and along the Washington and McDowell corridors,
it said. But since that development will put further traffic pressure on
Washington, it’s only reasonable that it should pay for offsite traffic relief.
The City should also aggressively pursue getting open space preservation funds,
to help with land acquisition costs *after* the Outlet Mall expansion proposal
has been rejected. Those new ball fields along the Rainier Parkway would allow
west side parents to get the kids to the game without adding to Washington
corridor congestion.
So if there
is a ballot measure asking me if I want a cross-town connector at the Rainier
location, I might be willing to vote yes.
A final
note to the perpetual critics of funding for bicycle paths: more people *will*
ride bikes when we make it safe and convenient. People want the exercise, they
want to protect our planet. They wouldn’t be driving so much if that hadn’t been
made the only easy choice.
Bibliography [for reference, not for publication]% of Cities devoted to cars: http://bss.sfsu.edu/urbanaction/UA2002/cities.html
% budget devoted to transportation http://www.transact.org/report.asp?id=224