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Davisite Banner. Left side the bicycle obelisk at 3rd and University. Right side the trellis at the entrance to the Arboretum.

Month: July 2021

  • City of Davis and the (Near) Future of Rail Travel

    L21spanish

    Virtual Public Workshop! Thursday, July 15 from 530 to 7pm

     

    I wrote the Bicycling, Transportation and Street Safety Commission (BTSSC) earlier today:

    To the BTSSC,

    I strongly suggest that the BTSSC set up an ad-hoc sub-committee about Link21 so that it can stay engaged long-term, receive and process community input and then at the appropriate time make recommendations to the City Council.

    The City of Davis is a small tomato in a huge pot of soup in this matter, but the railway proportionately bisects the City of Davis more than other town along its current route between Oakland and Davis. Davis grew around the rail and I-80 corridor in a way that – especially in the last 60 years – did not facilitate multi-modal travel based on the railway. A typical regional or suburban station like Davis in much of Europe would have multiple bus lanes that terminate at the station and hundreds of secure bicycle parking space for all kinds of bikes, suburb connections for walking and cycling for all directions, and a lively place for activity in front of the station, instead of a parking lot. The City has made some progress in this area of late, but, for example, there are still many who want a new parking structure at the station, and voters thankfully – but only narrowly – disapproved a new development project far from the station with no good cycling connections to it, lots of parking and imagined good access to I-80.

    I had tried to form a sub-committee nearly three years ago about the I-80 Managed Lanes Project, but it was terminated shortly after Commission approval because the second member moved to Sacramento. While I appreciate the healthy skepticism the BTSSC had about the Managed Lanes Project at the last meeting, I believe it prudent to get ahead of the game as much as possible for this even larger project that relates to both the Managed Lanes Project as well to our Downtown and General Plans, as significantly improved rail service would facilitate the creation of a lot more carfree or carlite households in town. As you seem to recognize, the worst outcome of the Managed Lanes project will do nothing but worsen traffic in town and literally throw a rotten tomato at our forming Climate Policy. The worst Managed Lane implementation will not support railway travel until perhaps many years from now, and indirectly, when thousands of Davis residents, frustrated with increased congestion and pollution, surround Caltrans District 3 HQ and bombard it with stinky, rotten tomatoes genetically-modified to annoy "deaf" state officials and narcissistic automobilists.

    TomatoesAs a robust railway powered by renewable energy is a key tool in fighting Climate Change, I would also suggest you consider making the sub-committee a joint one with NRC, and Social Services too in order to help ensure that the system is accessible for all households.

    The person who seems to be the current project manager for this part of the Megaregion, Jim Allison from Capitol Corridor, is very approachable and helpful. The Link21 sub-committee would be wise to also connect with other – especially smaller – communities along the corridor in order to create common, expected and seamless last-mile connections to their stations, and dense and proximate housing that makes good public transportation possible. All the pieces are necessary, but the puzzle has to be solved by everyone. I think that I prefer the tomato to the puzzle metaphor.

    Thanks,

    Todd Edelman"

  • Where are our fully-loaded EBT cards?

    Foodbanks

     

    Yesterday, the Davis Vanguard's "Food Assistance Has Tripled in Yolo County in the Past Year – Here's How We Can Continue to Meet These Critical Needs" invited some obvious praise – and perhaps some not so obvious further thoughts…

    But to start I'll say: Good going Yolo Food Bank! And Freedge, Davis Nightmarket, Tuesday Table, Buy Nothing (Facebook) and others in your efforts towards nutritional equity. It’s also vital that doubling for Calfresh (EBT/”Food stamps”) at Farmers’ Markets continues.

    I’m curious, however: The combined value – monetary, simplified – of the assistance one e.g. single-member household can get from Calfresh and related government-programs with YFB and the other programs is substantial. If one has the capacity, organization, transportation etc. it’s not difficult to receive upwards of $400 of assistance per month. That’s great, but a wealthier person – I didn’t say a “wealthy person” – can simply go  to Nugget, the Davis Food Co-Op, or the many specialty stores for all their needs (yes, one can use EBT for food items on Amazon). No travel around town (a challenge for people without easy automobile access), no waiting out the produce at Farmers’ Market which is distributed for free later in the day.

    So it seems that potential calories, proteins, phytonutrients etc. are at a considerably more equitable level than the distribution system itself. A member of a low-income household visiting a half-dozen locations at all times of day for food which the wealthier person can get in one trip is simply far from equitable.

    Is there a concept in these organizations to administratively and literally centralize all this food into a seamless operation, for example a $500+ monthly Calfresh allowance for a single-person household, and perhaps even a certain fraction that can be used at a restaurant (Calfresh currently partners with McDonald’s, 7/11 etc, seems contrary to the program’s nutrition agenda but paternalism is not welcome here, okay.)? Is this a goal, that’s stymied – at best – by government actors? What examples do we have from other places?

    Hungry for some answers….

     

  • Vague lanes solving regional pains?

    Davis80

    Not the Caltrans project! This is the author's concept for a bypass to and from the Bypass.

    On July 1st Davis Vanguard covered the announcement of Federal funding of 86 million dollars for the Yolo-80 Managed Lanes project.

    I appreciate most the comments of Alan Miller, Alan Pryor and Richard McCann. I hope I can add something below.

    The MTC area gets a lot of income from its bridges, and uses it for public transportation. Consider that Davis and SACOG-area drivers pay into this when driving south to San Jose, west to Oakland and San Francisco, and so on, but people from those areas make no similar contribution our region – really, the east side of the Northern California Megaregion – when traveling to Davis or Sac or of course towards Lake Tahoe.

    Caltrans dropped the long-promised new bike-ped bridge across the Bypass, replaced by some improvements on the west side of the Bypass. Combined with new infrastructure such as separated lanes and a lot of shade trees in West Sac,  the  whole corridor could be optimized for faster e-bikes and provide a good alternative for many, especially in east and the east part of South Davis. But… nope! Or so it seems.

    The graphics in the Caltrans presentation on the Yolo 80 Corridor planned for the BTSSC meeting this Thursday show only buses in the managed lanes, which is not what’s really planned for the managed lanes. Nasty! The managed lanes are mostly in added lanes, and if these lanes are available for private vehicles off-peak, for a premium, or free for a carpool then induced demand happens – see also Alan Pryor's comment in the Vanguard article – and we eventually lose.

    It’s also not clear how this project interfaces with the 80-Richards project.

    It’s not clear how much congestion there will be during the long construction period.

    It’s not clear if any general re-paving will decrease noise (new technology makes this possible).

    It’s probably unlikely that Caltrans will support a discount on Capitol Corridor during the construction period.

    But yeah, rail. What’s up with the future Capitol Corridor improvements? How does this project related to our impending new General Plan? My favorite idea is to build a highway bypass south of town and then put the railway below grade so that it also no long splits the City in two (in retrospect, it would probably have been better to not build anything south of the 80-rail corridor). Anyway, all the new space roughly in the center of Davis could be the location of a lot of new dense, mixed-use development which could facilitate low-vehicle ownership or at least use, as it would eventually be convenient to UCD and Downtown by bike, to both Sacramento and especially the Railyards, and to points to the west by rail. It would also be much quieter in parts of the City with this sort of ring-road solution. In general terms it would complement my concept for building above 113 roughly between Russell and Covell. I've also proposed a noise-mitigation and solar-generation project for the I-80 corridor through Davis.

    Related to this whole thing and that next to last point, over three years ago when I was on the BTSSC I initiated a sub-committee on 80 and related. It never went anywhere and was dissolved as the other Commissioner who joined it moved to Sacramento and no one else on the Commission wanted to pursue this… route. Sigh. Please demand that BTSSC members ask some hard questions this Thursday!

     
     

  • You might be a YIMBY if…

    Affordablehousingmeme

    By Rik Keller

    You might be a YIMBY[1] if:

    1. You advocate for zoning deregulation and “filter down” affordable housing thinking those are very different from Reaganomics, deregulation, and trickle-down housing.
    2. You are a “faux-gressive” who laces your rhetoric with terms like “social justice” and “equity” and “sustainability” without thinking of the impropriety of appropriating and co-opting those terms; meanwhile, the effects of the policies you promote kick people of color out of their homes in lower-income areas  and promote unregulated sprawl  onto farmland or habitat.
    3. You pretend that people who point out the deep connections of your movement to development real estate interests and funding are “conspiracy theorists.”
    4. You need a foil to vilify, so you pretend there are organized NIMBY[2] groups that want nothing built anywhere ever, then ferociously battle this strawman.
    5. You claim we have “under-built” housing for decades and blame it on the NIMBY boogeyman without evidence.
    6. You think that because you took one economics class in college and learned one thing (the “law” of supply and demand, not really a law at all), you understand complex housing markets and that your simplistic prescriptions are “solutions”.
    7. You engage in naive magical thinking, conjuring up a world where if you build more housing, only the people you want to move in, move in—no rich out-of-town investors! —and developers will want to build so much housing that prices will drop, reducing their profit margins.
    8. You claim affordable housing activists who advocate for specific affordable housing programs are too naive to understand how free market capitalism and Econ 101 will benefit them.
    9. You avoid even mentioning actual programs that produce affordable housing such as inclusionary zoning programs and funding public housing.
    10. You believe that “build baby build” is the only answer and eschew all other solutions or even suggestions as to how to get affordable housing built.
    11. You don't care where you build. It could be next to a freeway, in a historic neighborhood, on prime farmland, or wherever—just build.
    12. Your movement belittles, insults, and vilifies anyone who points out the flaws in your reasoning as a way to distract from the real issues.
    13. You try to start class wars and generational wars, pitting the middle class (especially older) against people with lower incomes, in favor of high-income developers.

     

    [1] YIMBY stands for “Yes In My Back Yard.” However, since YIMBYs often advocate for building in other areas outside of where they live, YIYBY (“Yes In Your Back Yard”) might be more accurate, albeit not as easy to say. “BANANAS” (Build ANything ANywhere AlwayS) is another suggested acronym. Self-identified YIMBYs have been making their presence known in Davis.

    [2] NIMBY stands for “Not in My Back Yard.” No one actually calls themselves this; it’s an insult that YIYBYs (see previous footnote) like to sling against anyone who tries to argue for good projects and good planning.