Europlanning

Google maps for cyclists! Sadly only in the US right now...

2010-05-04T21:09:00.001+02:00

Janette is at it again

2010-04-25T22:10:00.013+02:00

Not content to rest on her laurels, Janette Sadik Khan, commissioner of the DOT, is breaking new ground on New York City's streets. Since the Times Square, Madison Square, and countless other street redesigns, as well as the 9th Ave, Grand St, and Sand St (leading up to the Brooklyn Bridge) protected bicycle paths to name a few, the DOT has acquired the reputation of being a sleek and effective planning organization. Even a spokesperson for business interests in Midtown, Dan Biederman (president of the 34th St Partnership, the Chelsea Improvement District, and the Bryant Park Corporation) asserts that “This is not your father’s D.O.T. This agency says they do something and they do it.”

And indeed this can-do agency has taken on two more of New York's landmark intersections, handing them over to pedestrians, cyclists, and buses: 34th Street and Union Square. Both plans have been announced recently and will take shape in upcoming months. While the 34th Street redesign should be done by the end of 2012, Union Square may be up and running as soon as Labor Day, which for my non-US readers is a day in early September when you should stop wearing white pants (or better yet you could avoid them altogether). But I digress.

According to the New York Times, rejiggering 34th Street would look something like this: "On the west side of the pedestrian plaza, all car traffic would flow west, toward the Hudson River. On the east side, all car traffic would move east, toward the East River." At the heart of the project are plans for a pedestrian plaza, although buses would be allowed to flow through. This plaza would stretch between 5th and 6th Avenues, connecting hotspots such as Herald Square and the Empire State Building. The plan bears a pricetag of $30 million. That said, according to a study by the city, about 90% of the people traveling along 34th Street are on a bus or on foot (Source). In other words, until now, 10% of people (in cars, including taxis) have been occupying approximately 75% of the street surface (my estimation from google maps satellite). Despite that, it is also one of the most congested corridors in the city, to the point where it is usually faster to walk from one end to the other than to drive.

Union Square, on the other hand, has long been a pedestrian haven, attracting throngs both to the park and the Greenmarket (as well as to a Christmas market in December) - not to mention the Whole Foods at the southern end. The DOT plans to "reshuffle" traffic at a problematic corner of the square. According to the Times: "Under the new plan, all traffic heading south on Broadway toward Union Square would be blocked off at East 18th Street; at that point, cars would be forced to take a left-hand turn. East 17th Street, meanwhile, would become one-way, with only westbound traffic allowed in a single lane. A pedestrian plaza would be installed along the north side of the block between Broadway and Park Avenue South, and a bicycle lane and pedestrian walkway would be built on the south side." (Source). If you didn't understand that, be not alarmed. The map below shows my interpretation of this new and improved corner. The lines represent the redirected flow of car traffic (Eastbound on 18th, Westbound on 17th), and the blue rectangles are the pedestrian zones.

All I can say is that I cannot wait to come back to New York and see these new projects for myself, or at least Union Square since the other one will take a bit longer. The city where I live now, Hamburg, is fantastic as far as public space and pedestrian zones are concerned. In fact many European cities are far ahead of New York in terms of allocating space to pedestrians and cyclists. However, I would wager that the New York City DOT's accomplishments in recent years far surpass most European cities' in sheer number and speed of implementation, and as such are unprecendented. But despite my rave review, I won't give them a pat on the back just yet... As my grandfather always told me as a child, "There's always room for improvement."

I'm a published writer...!

2010-02-24T19:19:00.000+01:00

Click here for my "contributor" page on the Columbia Spectator's website.

Transportation Alternative gives an interview about the New York biking improvements

2009-12-16T14:55:00.006+01:00

Bike Sharing, Part 1: Vienna

2009-11-19T21:49:00.003+01:00

A few weekends ago I decided to leave the increasingly gray city of Stuttgart for a bit of cultural intra-venus. I took a night train to Vienna, where I spent three days museum hopping and indulging in Viennese pastries and whipped cream topped coffee laced with liquor. Somewhere between the high art and the rich dessert, I found time to explore the Vienna bike share program, called Citybike.

The second time's a charm

One of the oldest of its kind, it was originally launched in 2002 under the name Viennabike. However, the system faltered due to vandalism and theft. This is rather unsurprising given that the bikes locked into the stations with a mechanism similar to that of a supermarket shopping cart, with the use of a coin. It was taken over and rebranded by the marketing firm Gewista in 2003. A little digging revealed some interesting tidbits about this company. Originally founded in 1921 as a part of the city government to market the transportation sector, it has since developed into a private marketing company specializing in advertizing on public transportation vehicles and in stations. The majority shareholder of Gewista is none other than JCDecaux, the company responsible for the the Vélib' system in Paris. Similarly to Vélib', the financing model is based on advertizing, but in contrast, it is not the stations but the bikes themselves that bear the branding.

My experience with the system was mixed, though overall I would recommend it to visitors of this lovely city. First I completed the online registration, which required my credit card information and charged me 1 euro, which would be available as credit for using the bikes. Unlike the Paris system, this one accepts foreign credit cards, excpet Amex. The first hour of use is free of charge, followed by increasing charges with each hour. The second hour costs 1 euro, but users can get a bonus hour by putting the bike back for at least 15 minutes at the end of an hour. I found the online registration very easy, and it was available in both English and German, though no other languages.

It was effective immediately, so that same day I set out to rent a bike. But first, I cautiously printed out the map of the Citybike stations. I went to the Opera house where I had spotted a station the day before, but to my dismay it was empty! Already I was not wildly impressed with the system’s management. Luckily the next station was only a few blocks away, which redeemed them a little. The bike was very easy to rent. The experience was much like using a bank machine, except at the end of the transaction I got a bike instead of cash. The bikes are fitted with a contraption that seamlessly slots into a catch on the stands, as this photo below illustrates. It connects to the computer system which instantly recognizes that the bike has been returned. Clearly a major upgrade from ViennaBike!

The bikes themselves are state of the art. They are a smooth ride, easy to adjust, and even have a handy basket for ladies with purses, such as myself. Users can also use their phones to check for the nearest free station. I didn't use this feature, since I didn't have a working phone, so I cannot comment on its effectiveness.

Riding the Ringstraße

I happened to be at one of the busiest tourist spots in the city, along the Ringstrasse, which was built in the 19th century by the Hapsburgs when they planned a major redesign of the city. The Ringstrasse is the mother of all complete streets. Though it is wide, it accommodates several different modes and gives each of them equal space and protection from each other. In the middle, cars zoom by, but each lane on the side is dedicated to trams. Then there is a buffered lane with two rows of trees, under which there is a continuous separated bike lane, as well as a lane for walkers. Besides that is another lane for local traffic, and then a wide sidewalk with more trees.

When this street was built it was conceived as a ring around the old city, and along it were built some of the most prestigious institutions such as City Hall, the Opera House, the House of Parliament, the Volkstheater, and so on. This example of early urban renewal heralds the rise of City Beautiful, which similarly changed the face of Paris under Haussman, and later swept across the Atlantic and left its mark on Chicago and Washington DC. This design movement favored monumental buildings on grand boulevards or plazas, in order to inspire civic pride. In this case, they were meant as a monument to the glory of the Austro Hungarian Empire, of which Vienna was the capital. At the time, the two cultural capitals of continental Europe were Paris and Vienna. But while France was in political turmoil with the rise and fall of Napoleon, the Hapsburgs maintained a steady grip of power. Sadly now the city is itself something of a monument to that former glory.

But that aside, the Ringstrasse lends itself well to cycling, and I saw dozens of people enjoying the city on two wheels. Outside of the Ring, the bike lane situation was hit or miss. Unfortunately I was unable to get a comprehensive picture of the state of the bike network in Vienna because there is no publicly available map of it online. That is a major criticism of mine with respect to cycling in Vienna. In a city where bike lanes are not ubiquitous, information about where to bike safely is essential.

What's wrong with it?

Another information misstep on the part of the City was the low resolution of the bike stations map provided online. With the help of another more detailed city map, I was able to establish the vague location of some of the stations, but then I circled around for 10 to 15 minutes looking for them. In a city where the sun sets at 5pm in October, each station should have a distinct and well-lit sign. Their location should be incorporated into the common city map that is given out at hotels, which shows all the public transportation lines and stops.

My harshest criticism of Citybike, however, was the underwhelming number of Citybike stations. The program is small compared to its peer systems in Paris, Lyon and Barcelona. How small? With only around 63 stations, mostly concentrated in central Vienna and along the way to Schloss Schönbrunn, the Hapsburg summer palace, it is 5 to 6 times smaller than those in similarly sized cities of Lyon and Barcelona. In other words, though it is admirable that the city was among the pioneers of such a system, it has been far outstripped by peer cities' and is woefully inadequate to serve the city's population.

That said, the data shows that the Viennese are by far the most important users of the program. While 74% of all rides this year have been paid for with a local bank card, 17% have been paid for with credit cards and only 3% with the tourist card. This may be explained by the comparative difficulty of obtaining a tourist card (available at select hotels and at the tourist information booth), as opposed to registering online with a credit card for a mere euro.

In sum, though the stations and bikes are on par with those in Paris and Lyon, the system has fallen behind compared to its peers. This is all the more surprising given Gewista's affiliation with JC Decaux. Perhaps the parent company should take a closer interest in Gewista's activities. Given that Citybike has been around for six years, it should by now have developed into a much larger system with better and more readily available information for users. The concept of a bike share is to function as a part of its city's public transportation infrastructure. I would venture to guess that few resources have been invested in it. All in all, I had a lot of fun using the system, and I would recommend it for tourists looking for a cheap, efficient, and fun way to see the historic city center. But if you are ever in Vienna, the station at Stephanplatz is hidden behind the cathedral to the North, on the opposite side from the U-Bahn entrance. It took me a while to find it and at least this way maybe you will benefit from my experience.

Interesting videos on urban planning from around the world

2009-10-09T15:30:00.006+02:00

There are several videos. Click on the arrows on the side to browse through them.

Metropolitan and Regional Planning

2009-09-22T22:30:00.001+02:00

I ended my last post by pointing out that people no longer just dwell in cities, but rather in large metropolitan areas that encompass several cities and towns. This seems like an obvious point, and yet the next step in the logic, that therefore cities should be managed and planned comprehensively on a regional level, is ignored.

So what do we have? We have planning departments in each of our municipalities. But each metro area is composed of many municipalities. Thus the nightmare we currently have: dozens of tiny planning departments, each out for the best ratio of property taxes to amenities in their own town, and caring little for what happens in the next town over.

In places where there is a regional metropolitan planning agency, such as Minneapolis- Saint Paul, it does not have much power. (Full disclosure: I wrote my thesis about this city so I will probably refer to it often). In MSP, the Met Council, as it is called, is appointed by the governor and has very little power over the planning that gets done in each individual town within its purview. It can review their plans, but not alter or veto them. So what does it do? It plans and manages the transit system for the majority of the region. Several of the richest suburban towns have opted out and run their own bus system, though. Of course it should be fairly obvious to anyone reading this blog by now that planning transportation and land development separately makes for a failing transit system and lots of sprawl.

A directly elected regional government

Enter Stuttgart, the city where I am working and living. Since 1994, the Stuttgart Region has had a directly elected Regional Assembly (Regionalversammlung). Each of the 6 counties selects a number of representatives proportional to its population size. The assembly is at least 80 strong, and composed of members of several of the different German political parties. The most recent assembly was elected just this summer, and its political composition is illustrated below.

The Regional Assembly of Stuttgart is vested with the power to oversee the creation of a Regional Plan every 10 years by the regional planning agency (Verband Region Stuttgart, which from now on I will refer to as VRS). The plan takes years to research and draft, and the Regional Assembly is re-elected every 5 years. So the planners are usually at great pains to get the whole process over with and the plan adopted before the elections change the political landscape.

This is not always easy, and in fact right now, though we have a brand new assembly, the final draft of the plan has not yet been formally adopted and is still vulnerable to last-minute alterations by politicians with an agenda. Naturally the planners I have spoken to are not happy about this prospect, as they have spent years working on it. It is quite a serious-looking document, weighs about the same as a coffee table book, and has a nifty pocket at the back filled with dozens of explanatory maps for the unfolding.

A legally binding regional plan

Despite these minor inconveniences, regional planning here is a reality, which continues to startle me daily, and the effects are far-reaching. Once the plan is adopted, it is legally binding. The staff of the VRS then review all local plans and decide whether they fit within the confines of the Regional Plan. Hundreds of zoning documents pass across their desks. They themselves do not accept or reject a proposal, but they present the proposals along with their verdict to the Planning Committee, which meets every few weeks. The latter is formed by members of the Regional Assembly, and I will be seeing this Committe in action tomorrow, so I will be able to report back what exactly they do there.

The main point is that they have a mandate not only to adopt, but also to implement the Regional Plan, and therefore the decisions they take on planning proposals are binding. As a result, we have the fairly dense radial pattern of development in the Stuttgart Region that you were able to see in the map from the earlier post.

Comparing Modal Splits - Stuttgart and Minneapolis- Saint Paul

2009-09-22T17:31:00.004+02:00

It's extraordinary how much regulation and planning Germans put up with compared to Americans, but evidently it pays off. For instance, I can get everywhere I want to go with clean, fast light rail public transit, and yet the entire metropolitan area has 2.7 million people living in it, which is halfway between metro Portland, OR (2.1 million) and metro area Minneapolis-St Paul (3.3 million).

Travel breakdown

To put this into perspective, on average about 4.6% of the MSP population commutes by public transit and 88.5% by car (of which 10% car pool). Less than 3% bike or walk. According to the Stuttgart Regionalverkehrsplan (regional transportation plan), here 58% commute by car and 12.9% by public transport. About 29% of commuters bike or walk! In other words even though it's a smaller city, its transportation system is extensive, fast and reliable, and new land development is channeled along train lines. In MSP, the opposite is true: there is a lot of unguided sprawl and a sub-par public transit system, mainly composed of bus lines (which get stuck in traffic and make frequent stops).

A radial city

The following map shows the development axes along which most of the Stuttgart Region's new development is directed. Existing towns are shown in pink, and believe it or not, development takes up only 20% of the total acreage of the region (click on the image to enlarge it). The black lines represent the axes along which infrastructure is bundled: train lines, gas pipelines, electricity, water, etc. The region is planned comprehensively based on this basic premise. In order to keep open space for agriculture and nature, they acknowledge the necessity to prevent greenfield development through very heavy handed regulations ranging from restrictive zoning to targeted subsidies. I will elaborate on those methods in later posts.

It is important to note that I am talking about metropolitan areas, which include suburbs. The stats are very different for the cities proper, but the reality is that the population of most cities is increasingly located outside of the city limits, and to leave out their footprint is to ignore a large chunk of the population.

Introduction

2009-09-10T20:16:00.003+02:00

I am an urban planner from New York City. I recently completed studies at Columbia in Urban Studies and Planning. While I was there, my research focused on the feasibility of reducing car dependency in the United States through urban planning, economics, and policy. In addition to New York, I have lived in London, a small town in Northern Italy, Asunción (Paraguay), Buenos Aires, and Minneapolis-Saint Paul. This is me:

I have recently been lured to Germany by a sustainability and renewable energy fellowship, and am now working for the Stuttgart regional planning agency (Verband Region Stuttgart). I will be here for at least three months, and consider this a great opportunity to embark on a project inspired by one of my favorite authors, Robert Cervero. I have decided to research the different land use planning methods and transportation systems in the cities that I visit. For those of you who haven't read his book "The Transit Metropolis," it provides wonderful insight into the different ways that cities of all sizes in different parts of the world can configure themselves to become sustainable, transit-oriented, highly livable places.

Though I will initially write a great deal about Stuttgart, which is a fascinating example of regionally coordinated planning, I plan to branch out into the rest of Germany and Western Europe. Possible case studies include Berlin, Karlsruhe, Munich, Vienna, Freiburg, as well as Amsterdam, Paris, Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Stockholm, etc. All of this research will be published here on a regular basis.

The main questions I ask are the following: What makes cities here different (dare I say better, from a planning and sustainability perspective) than most of those I've seen and studied in North America? How can these characteristics, methods, and policies be replicated or adapted abroad? What insights do these compact transit cities provide for growing cities in the developing world? But also, what are the drawbacks of the planning and policy tools used here in Europe?

I welcome responses, questions, critiques, and challenges to my ideas. Unlike most blogs, I assure you that this one will not be personal. Naturally, I have my own biases about urban planning, which I will not attempt to dissimulate. I may at times wander into the fields of food politics, environmental and renewable energy policy, and social commentary. However, the majority of my posts will be urban planning and transportation-related.