At a public meeting last night, someone suggested tearing down the only remaining neighborhood grocery store in our area in order to expand public transit options. And the planning firm unveiled a map showing what they considered a wonderful addition to our neighborhood: a large parking lot.
Plenty of residential areas include nothing but residences, and because of that they don’t tend to feel like communities. A community needs gathering spots, places for chance encounters, reasons to venture outside your home short of driving to work or to the mall. I grew up on a residential street in a small village, just two blocks from the village center. Thinking back on it, except for grad school I’ve always lived close to shopping areas, and I usually take that sort of experience for granted. I’m still addicted to my car, and cannot imagine life without it. But there’s my level of addiction, and then there’s the level of addiction that allows someone to suggest that a parking lot is actually more useful in a neighborhood than a grocery store.
At the public meeting before this one discussing a light rail line, an audience member tried to point out that it was important to consider access at the other stops of the rail line as well, because the reason to take the rail line involved getting off somewhere else. The planning firm doesn’t seem to agree, and tends to treat the train as the destination. I want transit options because I like to venture beyond my neighborhood, but not if the cost is no longer having a community.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Neighborhood amenities: comments
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8 comments:
I do realize that my assortment of selections in the poll is rather arbitrary -- neighborhoods also benefit from having a post office, hardware store, library, bakery, coffee shop, or flower shop, for example. There are many valid options, but I felt comfortable leaving out the parking lot option. And the cell phone shop, for that matter.
All of the choices in the poll are nice to have in the neighborhood, and certainly can contribute to the sense of community. It is great to be able to walk to these places, and have them readily accessible. Of course, if you need to go somewhere else, you can always hop in your car and go. However, if the car option is taken away from you (such as when someone can't drive), then public transit becomes hugely important and has a big impact on one's family.
In DC, they have been planning on expanding the metro to reach the airport. This would include adding stations at Tysons Corner (a hugely congested and fast-growing area) and Reston (where we live), and then Dulles. This has been in the planning stages for 30 years! They have spent 150 million dollars on plans. Construction was to start this year. The FTA was to provide $900 million. A couple of weeks ago, the FTA (which has been going along with the project all this time) suddenly said they are not funding it. The Bush administration is very much against funding public transportation. Hmm. Public transportation from the nation's capital to the major airport, in one of the most congested areas in the country. What an idea!
The transit plans here will be competing for those same elusive FTA dollars in the New Starts program (and I saw a presentation a month ago that talked about the Dulles project), but they’re stretching out the environmental review process long enough to push the federal decision well into the next administration. Probably a smart move.
A lot of people around here live without a car, either by choice or by necessity. While we have a car, Lisa depends on public transit for her commute since a parking pass at her workplace would cost thousands of dollars a year (and driving into town every day would not be fun, either). Sadly, the feds are not the only level of government that hates funding public transit -- it’s a major punching bag at the state and local level as well. Under Mitt Romney, the state refused to pay even for the court-ordered transit projects, and every town complains bitterly about their transit assessments.
In an ideal world, I could live close enough to walk/bike to work. I'm a huge proponent of live/work space as an intentional facet of community development.
I choose public transportation as key, followed closely by a grocery store and post office. My ideals then include library and coffee shop.
I guess I'm torn. There does need to be some additional parking so that folks can really use the facility without crowding the neighborhood. I hate parking garages as they seem to be an efficient use of footprint but hazardous to drive in and unsightly. It's way more expensive but the underground parking garage--3 levels?--with shops above would be the best of all worlds. One of the things I liked about Porter Square T stop is that I can go into the shops there on my way to or from the T. It seems to me that there are ways to build public transportation into the community in a way that really encourages a community to grow up around the facility.
But I get that people don't want to put the money into doing it right. It seems so short sighted but there it is.
Most light rail and subway stops (T stops around here) don't have parking, for two reasons both related to the high population density around the stops. The first is that enough people live near the T stop that you have enough riders in walking distance to justify a stop. The second is that a high population density normally means already heavy traffic, so adding parking means an impossible traffic burden. In tabula rasa planning, we might add a park-and-ride T stop like Alewife at the end of every line, but those stops are atypical -- they're not located in neighborhoods and they are well-served by road connections to areas further away. Neither of those conditions applies here.
I loved being able to walk to work when I lived in a smaller city. Given that I work in Boston, there's no way I could afford to live within walking distance of my current office. (My former boss did. My current one lives in Austin---a tough commute except that she won't visit here often.)
I would rather have the stop and a parking lot than not have the stop. Like Michael, I think a stop and a coffee shop (or pizza/deli) would be ideal. Who knows, maybe by the time I retire, a one-seat ride to work might be a reality. Not that I'll retire from this job, but you know what I mean.
That was me. Being lazy again.
---Lisa
Poll results: the most important amenities in a neighborhood are
grocery store (5)
pharmacy (0)
pizza/sub shop (3)
dry cleaner (0)
bookstore (1)
public transit (5)
6 people voting.
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