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LA County's New Standards for Health-Conscious Urban Design
The County Board of Supervisors today approved the Healthy Design Ordinance, which rewrites planning regulations in unincorporated parts of the county to "modify and establish uses, development standards, and permit requirements to encourage more walking, bicycling and exercise..." The HDO is the latest effort from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health's Project RENEW...to reduce obesity, especially in disadvantaged children...Here are some things the HDO will do:... Require pedestrian and bicycle access to "cultural, recreational, and lifelong learning facilities..." LA Curbed, January 24, 2012
America's Health Threat: Poor Urban Design
Researchers can have revelatory moments in remarkable places...Dr. Jackson, who is now a professor and chair of environmental health sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles's School of Public Health, has become one of the leading voices calling for better urban design for the sake of good health...Dr. Jackson has released another scholarly book, an edited collection on the topic, called Making Healthy Places: Designing and Building for Wealth, Well-Being, and Sustainability (Island Press), and he is also the host of a four-part miniseries called Designing Healthy Communities, which will air on public television. The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 22, 2012
ODOT Conducting Traffic Speed Study on Hwy. 62
Oregon Department of Transportation traffic engineers pulled out their radar guns last week... over Highway 62 through Eagle Point. They were conducting a speed-zone investigation to determine whether the speed limit within the city limits could be reduced from 55 to 45 mph. The speed check came at the request of the City Council, whose members said they believed a lower speed limit was necessary because of the many new businesses built along the highway..."It can probably be dropped pretty easily," said ODOT Traffic Engineer Dan Dorrell, "unless the 85th percentile is way too high, but I don't expect it to be. I don't think people are doing 70 through here."...Councilwoman Kathy Sell asked for an explanation of the 85th percentile. Dorrell explained that it was the speed at or below which 85 percent of the vehicles are traveling...."It seems so odd," said Mayor Russell, "that if people are driving too fast we can't. That's why we want to lower the speed." "Most people think you just put up a sign to lower the speed," Dorrell said, "but that's not how it works. If you have an open roadway, people are going to drive what they think is a comfortable speed. So if you arbitrarily lower the speed from say 65 to 45, it's been proven historically that accidents increase." Dorrell said that even if the 85th percentile speed turned out to be too high, he thought it still might be possible to lower the speed limit. Mail Tribune, January 18, 2012
Clackamas County on Right Track with Rail Project
Clackamas County is a representation of Oregon itself...Adding any kind of transportation capacity is expensive. But Clackamas County's share of the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail project is less than 2 percent of the entire project cost. That investment will help revitalize Clackamas County neighborhoods and will provide county residents with easier access to high-paying jobs. The Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail project has been discussed, studied and open to public scrutiny and involvement for more than a decade. Countless public meetings have been held, input was extensively gathered and considered, and changes were made based on broad citizen involvement. Federal funding was secured, and project construction has already begun. The Oregonian, January 17, 2012
Wal-Mart Tries Oregon City Again with Scaled-Back Plans for Grocery Store
After unsuccessfully battling to build a big-box store several years ago, Wal-Mart is back with plans for a scaled down project that includes office space and a few smaller retail buildings...Oregon City's planning commission will have to approve the project, which includes 453 parking spaces. The traffic impact will be one of the factors could affect the land-use request. The Oregonian, January 11, 2012
Federal Highway Dollars Pay for Southern Oregon Bus Shelter That Cost As Much as a House
Should a simple bus shelter -- basically a few benches covered by a roof -- cost as much to build as a three-bedroom house? That's a question that is provoking outrage and official embarrassment in the southern Oregon city of Grants Pass, which this week signed off on a project to build five bus shelters at an estimated cost of $106,000 apiece...Engineering and design work on the Grants Pass shelters, which already has cost more than $100,000, would have been much cheaper if the city had been allowed to do it in-house, said Scott Lindberg, who oversees city grant money. But that's not allowed under state and federal spending rules, which require a level of certification that Grants Pass doesn't have, Lindberg said. The Oregonian, January 11, 2012
Surprise Shift on Lake Oswego Council Halts Portland Streetcar Project
The Portland-Lake Oswego streetcar project appears to be dead -- or at least suspended -- after losing suburban political support. In an unexpected twist at the end of a Lake Oswego City Council meeting Tuesday night, Councilor Bill Tierney announced that he had second thoughts on the proposed connection into the city and withdrawn his support...The Lake Oswego streetcar proposal encountered opposition from many city property owners who expressed concerns over issues such as the project's initially projected $458 million price tag by a planned completion date in 2017 to potential quality of life and environmental concerns. A community survey conducted late last year...found 52 percent of respondents opposed the project. The Oregonian, January 11, 2012
Distraction Draws Texters to Transit
Could TriMet be working on a new marketing campaign promoting the freedom to text or talk on your cellphone while someone else is driving?...In December, TriMet recorded 7.8 million trips -- or boardings -- on TriMet buses, MAX and WES Commuter Rail, up nearly 1 percent from the same month last year. Weekday bus ridership was the highest since November 2008, up 5.2 percent, Oregon’s largest transit agency said. Meanwhile, MAX Green Line and Westside Express Service commuter rail both continued double digit increases. Green Line weekday trips increased 12.4 percent and WES was up 23 percent. Rush-hour ridership also continues to climb, with MAX light rail trips up 9.5 percent and bus trips up 6.8 percent last month. The Oregonian, January 11, 2012
National Planning Excellence Award Winners Named by American Planning Association
Today, the American Planning Association names the winners of the 2012 National Planning Excellence Awards. January 10, 2012
How to Boost Biking & Walking in Your Town: Lessons from Minneapolis
After being acclaimed as America's best city for biking...Biking rose 22 percent across the Twin Cities compared to 2010, according to data just released by Bike Walk Twin Cities. And it's up a whopping 53 percent since 2007, when the organization began counting bicyclists and pedestrians at 42 locations in the two cities and adjoining suburbs...Accurate bike and pedestrian counts are critical to the growth of biking and walking in America, Pasiuk explains. "Policymakers act on hard evidence -- they want to be able to know if their investment is paying off and that more people are relying on biking and walking as a regular transportation pattern. These counts show what's happening on the streets in a way everyone can understand." Huffington Post, January 3, 2012
Some Eugene Area Businesses Rally Behind LTD's EmX Project
Ralph Forrest-Ball hands out bumper stickers declaring his support for the deeply controversial proposed west Eugene EmX bus line...With Lane Transit District’s latest rapid-bus project scheduled for an up-or-down vote in the coming months, Forrest-Ball has joined a group of business people and others who are coming out in favor of the line to west Eugene. Opponents dismiss the group as an attempt by LTD to sway public opinion. But EmX supporters say they’re speaking up precisely because widespread support for the project has been run over by a vocal group of opponents...“Transit’s good for business,” Gunderson said. “If you look at other cities, rents are higher along transit lines because there are more customers there. Businesses are attracted there and development follows them. Register-Guard, December 28, 2011
In Madrid's Heart, Park Blooms Where a Freeway Once Blighted
...All around the world, highways are being torn down and waterfronts reclaimed; decades of thinking about cars and cities reversed; new public spaces created...Most famously, in beauty-mad San Francisco, the 1989 earthquake overcame years of entrenched thinking: the Embarcadero Freeway was taken down, which reconnected the city with its now glorious waterfront... In Milwaukee, the destruction of the Park East freeway spur has liberated acres of downtown for parks and neighborhood development. Even the nearly-30-year, bank-busting Big Dig fiasco made Boston a better place...But Madrid Río is a project whose audacity and scale, following the urban renewal successes of Barcelona...can bring to a New Yorker’s mind the legacy of the street-grid plan, which this year celebrates its 200th anniversary. That’s because the park belongs to a larger transformation that includes the construction of dozens of new metro and light-rail stations that link far-flung, disconnected and often poor districts on Madrid’s outskirts to downtown. New York Times, December 26, 2011
Sisters Residents Raise Concerns About Highway
Meeting in Sisters Thursday night...on the draft 20-year County Transportation Services Plan (TSP), the county planning commission heard one consistent theme...: "We've been talking to you...for years and there is no indication that you have heard us." Concerned citizens...expressed concern about...the need to add extra lanes to Highway 20 between Black Butte Ranch and Sisters...The current plan indicates that the section of Highway 20...will "fail" on or before 2030...By law, the state and county are required to use the census data and subsequent growth projections provided by the 2005 census report. But as Bowen argues...due to the economic slowdown those projections are no longer even remotely valid. The county is working with numbers that show a 20 percent increase in traffic flow into Sisters by 2030. Using the actual current ODOT numbers, Bowen has shown that the real projected growth is actually negative for at least the next several years...But ODOT and the county still maintain that they are required to use the 20 percent number, which means that they plan (and spend design money) accordingly. The Nugget, December 20, 2011
Gasoline Burns Up Family Budgets
It's been 30 years since gasoline took such a big bite out of the family budget. When the gifts from Grandma are unloaded ...the typical American household will have spent $4,155 filling up this year, a record. That is 8.4 percent of what the median family takes in, the highest share since 1981. Gas averaged more than $3.50 a gallon this year, another unfortunate record. And next year isn't likely to bring relief. In the past, high gas prices in the United States have gone hand-in-hand with economic good times, making them less damaging to family finances. Now prices are high despite slow economic growth and weak demand. That's because demand for crude oil is rising globally, especially in the developing nations of Asia and Latin America...Over the past decade, gas has taken up 5.7 percent of the family budget. If families had spent only 5.7 percent this year, they would have saved $1,300. The Oregonian, December 19, 2011
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