The ULI, et. al. report BELTWAY BURDEN that Larry Gross called to everyone’s attention at
http://commerce.uli.org/misc/BeltwayBurden.pdf
is a very good piece of work. The Real Estate Section of the 14 February WaPo has a brief summary under the title “Factoring In the Cost of Getting Home.” By the way the entire Real Estate section (usually printed in two parts) was six pages on the 14th.
The report is a very useful contribution to understanding EMR’s post ANATOMY OF A BAD COMMUTE.
Upon further review a few comments:
EMR wonders why it was call “BELTWAY BURDEN?” The burden is not the “Beltway,” it is dysfunctional location and the radial distance from the Core focused job locations.
The data is collected on a Census Block Group basis – which is very good – but it is aggregated by municipal jurisdiction. Think how much more clear the message would be if:
• It was noted that 85 percent (or more) of the jobs in the National Capital Subregion that are not jobs that directly support residential land uses at or below the Village scale (e.g. food and beverage, etc.) are located in the little red boxes on the maps, and
• The data was aggregated by Radius Band and by organic component of human settlement pattern. If it is too much to ask to be aggregated by organic component of human settlement pattern, how about Radius Band and Census Designated Place?
Equally important, it would have been much more effective it the report included all the territory that is in the National Capital Subregion. That would mean putting back in the MSA, the areas taken out for political reasons after the 2000 census such as Winchester and Frederick County VA., Culpeper and King George Counties, etc. While they were at it they should have included Rappahannock and Madison Counties in Virginia, the relevant counties in West Virginia and Maryland so that all the jurisdictions within a 70 mile radius from the Centroid of the Subregion are included. That is clearly what the 2000 Census indicated is in the commuting shed.
A complication that comes from multi-state Subregions is indicated by the listing of Fredericksburg, VA as the jurisdiction with the lowest cost. Also if Maryland treated “cities” as independent entities as Virginia does, Frederick, Md might well rank as well as Fredericksburg, VA. Lumping Frederick, Maryland with Frederick County Md. makes it look like the Maryland city is $10,500 higher in average total cost.
Another suggestion would be to not interchangeably use “community” and “neighborhood” and to clearly define what is meant by both terms.
Then there are two overarching issues:
No where is there a discussion of the need to evolve Balanced Communities in order to bring down the costs.
Second, and related, is implicit reinforcement of the Large, Private Vehicle Mobility Myth.
On the front page of the 14 February WaPo three is a story about the Regional impact of the latest federal stimulus package. “Regional Impact: Billions Slated For Area Schools, Transportation.” Buried six paragraphs down on the jump page is the following:
“The more than $1.6 billion for transportation represents a fraction of what officials (sic) said is needed to unclog roads in the region beset by some to the country’s worst commutes.”
NO, NO, NO
There is no amount of money will “unclog” roads if the money is spent just on transport facilities. There must be a redistribution of demand (aka, functional settlement patterns). This redistribution must match the capacity of the transport facilities with the demand. Building more facilities just induces more widely scattered urban land uses that generate more per capita demand and more congestion.
Belief that there is a way to build ones way out of congestion is the Large, Private Vehicle Mobility Myth as documented by Tony Downs cited in THE ANATOMY OF A BAD COMMUTE.
On a related note under the THANK YOU LARRY post, Larry asked:
“If the “right sized house in the right location” includes homes that are near “shared vehicle” facilities – would that include the use of “shared vehicles” 50 miles from work – as long as they still lived in a “right sized” home?
“In other words – is there also a requirement that the “right location” not use shared vehicle systems for home to work commutes?”
EMR believes Larry already knows the answer to this question but…
Functional and intelligent application of “commuter rail” and “inter-urban” service started as a way to get a few of the residents of what was already a relatively Balanced urban enclave to a job location. By definition most of the residents of the enclave – large or small – lived, worked and secured services IN the enclave. Later day illusions that most residents can hop on the train (or on a PRT or a heavy or light rail shared-vehicle system) is just the shared-vehicle version of the Large, Private Vehicle Mobility Myth.
That is why station-area Balance AND system wide Balance between system capacity and settlement pattern generated demand is so important. Today, most of the METRO system trains leave most of the METRO stations essentially empty most of the time due to a lack of Balance and thus the huge cost.
Now back to Larry’s question.
If the shared-vehicle system serves origins and destinations that are 50 miles apart and if most of the station-areas are Balanced then there is no reason A FEW of the station-area workers cannot travel 50 miles if that is what works best for their Household.
EMR
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