Rights of Way

2009-11-05T12:24:00.001-05:00

Corey at the Portland Maine Daily Photo blog has published some shots of the under-construction Bayside Trail, an exclusive street for bikes and pedestrians that will extend from Elm Street in Bayside north to Tukey's Bridge and the Eastern Prom.

Much of the excavation for this project is being done in order to treat stormwater in the neighborhood, which is build on filled-in land. The "Bayside Promenade" will include raingardens and landscaped swales to collect and filter rainwater, rather than let it collect street grime and pollute Casco Bay.

Also in the works: bike lanes on Ocean, Forest, and Deering Avenues (several sections of these streets are still being repaved, after a rainy summer postponed work). Signs are up but the paint on the street isn't there yet; at this point, I wonder if Public Works might hold off on striping the lanes until next spring. Stay tuned.

L.L. Bean is moving out of downtown; will Renys move in?

2009-11-04T18:50:00.007-05:00

LL Bean yesterday announced that it would be vacating its 20,000 square foot store on Congress Street, leaving a big hole in retail services in downtown Portland, according to Mainebiz.

When it opened in 1996, it was seen as a big vote of confidence in the struggling Congress Street corridor. It may be hard to believe today, but back then, just about the entire length of Congress Street was plagued by vacant storefronts, empty sidewalks, and a reputation for sleaze. Recruiting LL Bean to the neighborhood was seen as a coup in the city's revitalization efforts, and helped attract other tenants (like its next-door neighbor Olympia Sports, which moved in soon afterward) to do business downtown.

Congress Street today is resilient enough that the store's departure shouldn't be a big deal - indeed, in recent years, the inside of the outlet store seemed tattier than the street outside. But for a while, anyhow, LL Bean's departure is going to make it even more inconvenient for city-dwellers to procure reasonably-priced shoes and clothing without driving to the damned Mall. However, a large retail vacancy in downtown Portland is too valuable to sit empty for long.

The 20,000 square foot space would be perfect for one Maine company that's had its eye on the Portland market for some time: Renys. Renys is a general merchandise store (they sell towels, toys, laundry detergent, tupperware, etc., etc.) with a track record of locating stores in downtown areas and Main Streets. They've been holding out for a space that's big enough - and according to what I've heard, 20,000 square feet is their threshold.

Another long-awaited business that's allegedly searching for spaces in Portland right now is the grocer Trader Joe's. Last spring I asked a manager at TJ's Cambridge store about rumors that the chain was looking at Portland, and he confirmed that the company hoped to be operating in the Portland area by the end of 2010. Trader Joe's stores tend to be smaller than 20,000 square feet, but they could probably find some use for the extra space. For instance, the TJs around the corner from my college campus shared its space with a produce market similar to Rosemont.

The art-deco styled building (I believe it was originally a Woolworth's store) is showing its age, and it could use some work done when LL Bean moves out. And a new tenant will probably fret about parking, even though most customers will arrive on foot. But luckily, there's a city-owned garage right across Free Street, and City Hall should consider offering a long-term parking lease to tenants, like Renys, that would serve the community with affordable retail services.

Addendum (11/5): Another possibility being bandied about on Twitter is a Mardens, the surplus and salvage store. Even though a lot of people love Marden's, I can't say I'm one of them - I've found that their stores are usually a disorganized pile-up of big-box castoff merchandise. It's usually a gamble whether or not you'll find anything useful there - but then again, the same was true of the LL Bean outlet. They also seem to be aiming for bigger store sizes these days, so they may not be interested.

Hummer: under new ownership

2009-09-28T13:07:00.003-04:00

Wired Magazine's auto blog recently summarized some interesting research done on the psychology of meathead Hummer owners:

According to an article published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Americans who believe in rugged individualism and the frontier myth see an H2 as John Wayne on wheels. “As we studied American Hummer owners and their ideological beliefs, we found that they consider Hummer driving a highly moral consumption choice,” the authors wrote. “For Hummer owners it is possible to claim the moral high ground.”

The same research found that "The moralistic critique of their consumption choices readily inspired Hummer owners to adopt the role of the moral protagonist who defends American national ideals."

That is to say, all the haters flipping the bird at these bankruptcy tanks are only calcifying their owners' beliefs that they're defending the Real America.

With that in mind, then, I'd like to offer some more effective talking points for our discussions with Hummer drivers:

"Great, another loser driving a General Motors bailout-on-wheels. Get a job and stop wasting taxpayer money!"
"Hey, a Hummer! The latest brand-acquisition of Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery! You bleeding hearts just love sending your money to the filthy commies, don't you?"
"So how does it feel to drive THE icon of America's failed auto industry? It must feel pretty good to YOU GODDAMN AMERICA HATERS."

Not that this is a complete list. Add your own in the comments, please.

Survey says...

2009-09-23T13:53:00.004-04:00

The Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey has been released. Among the findings:

The share of workers who drove to work alone has dropped to 75.5% from 76%. This 0.5% drop represents about ten million fewer cars on America's roads during rush hours.
The share of households having one car or no car at all rose to 42.2% from 41.8%. That 0.4% increase indicates that about half a million households got rid of at least one car between 2006 and 2008.

USA Today reports on these and other findings from the latest Census research.

UPDATE: I just looked into the Maine data, which is even more striking.

In 2007, 78.3% of Cumberland County's workers commuted to work by driving alone.

In 2008 , though, that figure declined to 75.4% - almost three full percentage points.

Keep in mind that there are substantially fewer workers in Cumberland County this year as well, so these figures understate the actual number of cars that aren't driving during rush hours anymore. The people who are still employed are carpooling and using transit more:

The number of carpooling workers in Cumberland County spiked from 8.6% in 2007 to 10.3% in 2008.
The number of people using public transportation to get to work in Cumberland County also increased, from 1.1% in 2007 to 1.3% in 2008.

It's impossible to make a solid conclusion from this data alone, but a hypothesis that's at least consistent with this information is that workers who have better access to transit options are also more resilient against unemployement. If you live in-town, near a bus route or near other coworkers, you're also more likely to live close to a greater number of job opportunities. Conversely, workers who live out in the boondocks, and are saddled with high transportation costs, face a steeper battle in finding new jobs.

How much is a redeveloped Franklin Street worth?

2009-09-15T07:12:00.001-04:00

Detailed images and simulated animations for the three concept designs for Franklin Street are now online at franklinstreet.us. The Committee that's refined these three concepts is now accepting public input and thinking about "phase II" - a detailed design and planning process focused on one design scheme, which will probably cobble together the best elements from these three concepts.

Below, a view of the "urban street" concept, looking towards the harbor from the corner of Cumberland Avenue and Franklin Street. This concept would replace the southbound leg of the current Franklin Arterial with redevelopment along the eastern edge of Lincoln Park:

An important unanswered question about all three concepts is how the city can afford to build any of them. While the infill development surrounding the new street would be built by private developers, who would buy the land from and pay future property taxes to the city, the private development won't happen until the City pays the up-front construction costs of the new, improved Franklin Street. And with a project scope that includes several new intersections, extensive excavation work, and miles of new sidewalks, that construction project is likely to cost well over ten million dollars.

That sounds expensive, especially in this fiscal environment. But there are a couple of important factors to keep in mind: first, this is a federally-designated highway (Route 1A) and is therefore eligible for federal funding. In fact, in other similar projects, Washington has paid up to 80% of the total construction costs, leaving the remaining 20% to local and state governments.

Second, the redesigned Franklin Street is going to open up acres of very valuable land for redevelopment. Much of that land is already owned by the City of Portland.

And third, even land that's privately-owned, and blocks away from Franklin Street, is going to become more valuable once the new, improved Franklin Street improves access between downtown, the Old Port, Bayside, and Munjoy Hill. As those properties increase in value, they'll contribute more money to the city's property tax revenues, and become more attractive for higher-value redevelopment.

Taking these three points together, then, we can form a hypothetical scenario in which the Franklin Street project could actually make a lot of money for City Hall. Suppose the City endorses a Franklin Street concept that would cost $20 million (a conservatively high estimate), but would also open up 4.5 acres of publicly-owned land for redevelopment (by way of comparison, the entire Top of the Old Port Parking Lot is a bit less than 3.5 acres; it's privately-owned, but the city owns all of the empty space in the existing Franklin Arterial median, and the City's Housing Authority owns a lot more underutilized land along to Franklin Street in Bayside).

Let's say the Federal government agrees to pay 80% of the cost of the construction, since this is a marquee economic development project that will improve mobility and livability, and the fact that it has the support of Maine's swing-vote senators doesn't hurt. And let's also assume that Portland's State House delegation flexes some muscle and gets Augusta to pitch in 10% of the project's cost from the state's gas tax revenues.

That leaves 10% of the cost - $2 million - remaining. That portion of the costs would easily be covered by sales of City-owned land along Franklin Street.

Where Franklin meets Middle Street, the old Jordan's Meats factory recently went back on the market (in a recession) for a list price of $4.75 million. That's a two-acre parcel of land, and even though there's a building there it will probably be torn down by the new owners. That means the land in that neighborhood - adjacent to the Old Port and the India Street neighborhood - is worth about $2 million an acre. And, coincidentally, the City and the County, together, own about an acre of land within two blocks of that site. The County's land, next to the Courthouse and Lincoln Park, would be particularly valuable for law offices and was even proposed as the site of a high-rise office tower two years ago.

In addition to the land near Newbury Street, the City owns about three acres of underutilized "parkland" on the east side of Franklin near Oxford Street, and in the empty median strip next to Franklin Towers, plus another acre of land in various Portland Housing Authority parking lots. This Bayside real estate is less valuable than land near the Old Port, and some of this acreage might be preserved as the highly-productive Oxford Street Community Farm. Still, in order to invite new vitality into East Bayside, the City could offer up 2 acres of its land near Oxford Street for redevelopment, and net another million dollars for construction and redevelopment efforts.

Furthermore, once Franklin gets rebuilt and the City's properties are sold, the City will enjoy new property tax revenues. If the city sells 4.5 acres to private developers, and that land is worth (on average) $4.5 million, the City will immediately begin collecting an extra $120,000 in additional property tax revenues - enough to hire two more teachers in local schools.

And once private developers start building multi-story buildings on that same land, the assessed value of those properties will double or triple, along with the city's revenues.

In sum: with typical matching funds from the State and the federal governments, plus real-estate investments from the private sector, the City should easily be able to rebuild Franklin Street. And doing so is likely to add millions of dollars to the revenues side of its balance sheet.

The Increasingly Lonely Road

2009-09-14T18:26:00.001-04:00

Last summer, when gasoline prices hit $4 a gallon, the driving factors behind the price-spike were supply (the world's oil resources are limited and the remaining oil is increasingly expensive to extract) and demand (on top of growing consumption in the U.S., the economies of China, India, Brazil, and other emerging economies were growing at a breakneck pace, and sucking up an increasing portion of the world's oil supplies).

Then the global recession happened, and oil prices settled down - but still nowhere near the levels where they had been in the 1990s. You might recall that some people blamed "speculators" on last summer's price spike. The recession, I think, proved the falsity of that claim: through the depths of last fall's credit freeze, "speculators" with any cash to spare were few and far between (and its unlikely that the few that remained would have bothered with oil futures). Yet oil prices, adjusted for inflation, still remained much higher than they were in 1998, the peak of the Clinton-era boom.

So where do we stand now, looking toward recovery? Don't look now, but gasoline prices are creeping up towards $3 a gallon again. On the supply side, some new oil discoveries represent the payoff from increased exploration from the days when prices were sky-high. But those new discoveries are still hard to get to, and the oil is going to be expensive to extract.

On the demand side, lots of unemployed people stopped driving and almost everyone resolved to drive less to save money in the United States this past year, and consumption dropped a few percentage points. But while we were taking a breather, emerging Asian economies continued to grow at a breakneck pace - the global credit crisis registered only as a brief dip on their GDP growth charts, and now they're growing as fast as ever.

So where does that leave us? On the supply side, the global "pie" of oil supplies is a little bit larger, provided the customers are willing to pay more for their slices. But on the demand side, countries like China, India, Russia, and Brazil are gobbling up a lot more oil.

So when our economy returns to "normal", and if we go back to the gas pumps to consume as much oil as we did in 2007, we're going to have to pay a lot more for it, because hundreds of millions of people in the developing world are also making bids to buy this limited resource.

More realistically, though, Americans probably aren't going to go back to the gas pumps the way we did in 2007, ever again. We're driving less as we get older, and those of us who still do drive are going to drive for shorter distances in more fuel-efficient vehicles. And prices will remain high, as demand elsewhere in the world gulps up the remaining oil. That's the conclusion of a number of commodities experts and economists summarized in this article from Barron's. An excerpt:

Unfortunately for U.S. drivers, $3 or more might be the new norm...

"It's pretty clear that the 2007 level will be the peak in [domestic] gas consumption for a long time to come, if not forever," says Ed Morse, the former head of commodities research at Lehman Brothers and now a managing director at Louis Capital. Goldman Sachs expects the nation's gasoline demand to fall 0.5% in the second half, tick up 1% in 2010, then remain flat in 2011, as supplies tighten and prices stay high.

This has important implications for state highway agencies, which rely on per-gallon gas taxes for their budgets. If gas consumption is declining or flat, that means there's going to be less money available for highway construction - even as construction costs continue to increase. Raising gas taxes will only serve to depress demand even further, and cause more people to drive less as a way to save money.

States like Maine will increasingly have trouble maintaining existing roads, and building new roads (and increasing our maintenance costs even further) will be out of the question entirely.

That's the fiscal reality. But it's anyone's guess when the alternate-universe space-cadets in Augusta, who are still planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on freeway widenings, will get the message.

Three concepts for Franklin Street - Detailed

2009-09-03T09:24:00.008-04:00

These are photos of the display boards that were being shown at last night's public meeting in City Hall. In addition to these, MRLD had also produced a really neat 3-D animation of the three concepts - hopefully they'll be able to put those videos online soon. All of these alternatives have 4 lanes from I-295 to Congress, and 2 lanes from Congress to Commercial.

You can click these photos to enlarge them for more detail.

The "Urban Street Concept"

The "Parkway" concept:

The "Multi-Way Boulevard" Concept

TONIGHT: Public Presentation of Franklin Street Design Options.

2009-09-02T12:07:00.002-04:00

A message from the Franklin Redevelopment Authority:

Please come to learn about the three design alternatives, the Context Sensitive Solutions study model that has guided the process, and to offer your input on the alternatives - and bring a friend!

Wednesday evening, 6- 8pm
In the Merrill Auditorium Rehearsal Hall, behind City Hall on Myrtle Street

The Portland Press Herald published a preview of the alternatives (shown at right) in last Saturday's paper. Members of the public will have a chance to mix-and-match their favorite design elements from each of the three choices, ask questions of the Committee, and learn about the project's next steps at this evening's presentation.

Portland's Renegade Bureaucrat

2009-08-30T13:36:00.003-04:00

Colin Woodard writes an excellent post-mortem of Portland's Maine State Pier and Ocean Gateway fiascos in last week's edition of the Working Waterfront newspaper. Woodard details how one city bureaucrat, former ports and transportation director Jeff Monroe, fabricated economic-impact numbers to convince the city's councilors to spend tens of millions of dollars on cruise ship infrastructure.

Woodard summarizes new research from Todd Gabe and James McConnon, economics professors at the University of Maine who surveyed actual passengers at the cruise ship gangway last summer:

"Their conclusions: the average Portland passenger spends $80.52 ashore, 22 percent less than previously assumed. Almost $7 of that is spent in Freeport (where many are bussed) and an unknown amount in the Kennebunks and the White Mountains of New Hampshire (two other popular bus tours.)

...This raises questions about Jeff Monroe's $200 per passenger per day estimates, which were contained in a 2002 city study used to justify the construction of Ocean Gateway. The figures clearly do not stand up to scrutiny.

...Taken together, [his] errors appear to amount to approximately $86 per passenger, nearly half of Monroe's $200 estimate, raising the possibility that the city built Ocean Gateway on the assumption that revenues to the region would be nearly twice what they actually are."

Monroe's optimistic estimate was used to justify the city's $21 million expenditure on the new Ocean Gateway cruise ship terminal. His fake numbers were called up again three years ago, when the city rushed to sign over the publicly-owned Maine State Pier to the politically well-connected developers at Ocean Properties, who promised to "fix" the pier's allegedly-unstable pilings in exchange for the right to build a $100 million hotel-and-office complex, replete with solar panels planted in the shade, on top.

Once the "necessary" repairs were made, the renovated Maine State Pier would also be made available for more cruise ships. But the city "needed" a private developer to foot the substantial repair bill.

"The public was repeatedly led to believe that the pier was in dire need of repairs," writes Woodard, "the costs of which were estimated at as high as $26 million."

Conspiracy theorists have had plenty to work with: when a competing firm unexpectedly responded to the official call for proposals, the city council let Ocean Properties redesign their plans not once but twice; Ocean Properties employees gave generously to the campaigns of the current mayor and to two successful city council challengers, including one who'd been their paid community organizer.
Here's the kicker: the pier never needed serious repairs at all.

The City finally paid for an independent assessment of the Pier's pilings this July, instead of relying on the faithful word of Jeff Monroe and private developers. A July 11th Press Herald article reported the results from engineer Wayne Duffett, who said that "once you get underneath, [the Pier] is in remarkably good condition, and for the most part quite capable for the loads it is designed for.''

Fortunately, the financial crisis swept the developers away before the City had a chance to make the same multi-million dollar mistakes on the Maine State Pier that it made on the Ocean Gateway terminal. Three years after the developers made their pitches to rescue the allegedly-unstable Pier, it's still standing - in fact, there's a cruise ship there today.

With the benefit of hindsight, the hundred-million-dollar hotel and office complex perched atop pilings in the ocean is a textbook case of real-estate-bubble development hubris. But three years ago, the plans dazzled the city into spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on staff time, attorneys, and meetings for the competition to develop the Pier. Woodard notes that "Ocean Properties employees gave generously to the campaigns of the current mayor and to two successful city council challengers, including one who'd been their paid community organizer."

Several of those councilors elbowed their way onto the City's Community Development Committee, which would have overseen large development projects like this one. Except now, with the credit crisis, there's not much for the Community Development Committee to do. Instead, Ocean Properties' favored candidates are spending a lot of low-pay hours with the mundane details of zoning language changes, proclamations, and liquor license approvals. One has to wonder whether a guy like Councilor Dan Skolnik, who is still really burned that no one is going to build a luxury hotel on the Pier, is wishing that he could be spending more billable hours at his day job as an attorney.

But why would Jeff Monroe, nominally a civil servant, manipulate so many numbers and lead the city to spend tens of millions of dollars on infrastructure it didn't really need?

As the Ports and Transportation Director, Monroe would have been in charge of overseeing the maintenance and operations of these multi-million-dollar facilities. It may have been a question of prestige. Or it may have been aimed at preserving his own job, by making the Pier and the cruise ship business look more important than they actually were.

Either way, it didn't work. Monroe got laid off last year as the city struggled to balance its budget through the recession.

A cautionary tale for citizens and their representatives: beware of bureaucrats bearing multi-million-dollar engineering schemes.

And for bureaucrats: beware of believing your own bullshit.

To read more about the Maine State Pier in the archives, follow this link.

Construction on the Downeaster line

2009-08-26T11:18:00.004-04:00

The Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority continues to wait for word from Washington about funding for its Brunswick extension project, but in the meantime, construction is about to get underway on a track rehabilitation project in Portland that will improve service on the existing Downeaster route and also prepare tracks for the eventual Brunswick extension.

Earlier this summer, the Federal Railroad Administration announced a half-million-dollar grant to the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority to improve the Downeaster's tracks in Portland, and to upgrade a turnaround near the Merrill Marine Terminal so that future trains will be able to turn and head north to Freeport and Brunswick. The map below shows the tracks that will receive upgrades as a solid red line, and the future northward extension will follow the dashed line up to Woodford's Corner and beyond:

If you've ever ridden the Downeaster, you've probably noticed the slow start coming out of the Portland station. The tracks that thread their way between the Cumberland County Jail and the new Mercy Hospital campus are old, and as a result, passenger trains are limited to a 10 mile-per-hour speed limit between the station and the bridge.

The planned upgrades will boost speeds on that section to 25 mph - not a huge difference, but one that will shave three to five minutes off of every trip south. The turnaround will also help the Downeaster deal with breakdowns more gracefully, and offer more flexibility for freight trains headed to the Merrill terminal.

Construction is set to begin this fall, and is scheduled to be complete by March 2010.

As for the extension to Brunswick, we should have a better idea of where that project stands next month, when the Federal Railroad Administration announces its first high-speed rail grants from the stimulus package (a Wall Street Journal article today outlines the stiff competition for stimulus funds).

Seriously?

2009-08-12T10:24:00.003-04:00

Elm Street in Bayside. This is the main route between downtown Portland and the new district of mid-rise office buildings sprouting up along Marginal Way:

Photo by Corey Templeton, originally published in his Walk Around Portland blog.

PACTS blog and the new Regional Bike/Ped Plan

2009-08-06T16:11:00.003-04:00

PACTS, the regional planning agency that directs transportation investments in the greater Portland area, has started a blog.

Keeping a government planning website up to date with the latest meeting minutes and planning documents isn't easy, and most public agencies (PACTS included) struggle with it. But blogs are easy for anyone to update, so hopefully, this will give citizens (and PACTS committee members themselves) a better way to stay in the loop.

The inaugural post is all about the draft Regional Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan Update. The centerpiece of this plan is a mapped network of bike routes, sidewalks, and pedestrian trails in the greater Portland area, going as far west as Sebago Lake, south to Biddeford, and north to Freeport. You can provide feedback by leaving a comment.

Portland Peninsula Transit Study passes City Council Unanimously

2009-08-04T12:57:00.003-04:00

Last night, Portland's City Council voted unanimously to adopt the Peninsula Transit Study into the city's Comprehensive Plan.

The City now has an action plan focused on reducing the need for parking lots and garages downtown and improving our transit, walking, and bicycling infrastructure. Here's a link to the list of priorities (PDF file).

Now that the Study is a part of the Comprehensive Plan, we also have a powerful legal barrier to Augusta's attempts to pave over our city with unneccessary highway lanes. The Study specifically states that Portland will better manage traffic in our city and ultimately reduce the number of cars coming downtown, because we simply can't afford to widen local streets and expand parking garages for more car commuters. Instead, we should be investing more money in better bus service, which is a fraction of the cost of new highway lanes.

This contradicts Augusta's rationale for building new lanes on I-295, Veterans Bridge, and elsewhere. Maine's Sensible Transportation Policy Act states that the Maine DOT's projects must be consistent with local comprehensive plans. Now that the Transit Study and its goals are part of Portland's Comprehensive Plan, we have a very strong legal argument for throwing cold water on Augusta's asphalt fantasies.

Will the Maine DOT, in its financially weakened state, risk an expensive lawsuit that will force it to divert more of its dwindling gas tax revenue towards better regional bus service, at the expense of its close friends in the sand and gravel lobby? I bet they will, and I'm looking forward to it!

Read last night's success story at the Maine League of Young Voters blog. The League was fantastic in orchestrating grassroots support for this, and I'm looking forward to working with them more as we get the Study's recommendations implemented.

The Council also heard the first (of two) reading of several zoning amendments that would reduce parking requirements and promote more walkable development in the city's off-peninsula neighborhood commercial zones, in places like Rosemont, Woodfords and Morrill's Corner, and North Deering. While not strictly a Transit Study recommendation, these changes are certainly in the spirit of the Transit Study, and they deserve to pass when the Council meets again.

Planning Board Endorses Transit Study Recommendations and Parking Reductions

2009-07-15T17:54:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, last night's meeting went on way too late for me to stick around. But thanks in part to those of you who wrote in your comments, the Planning Board did decide to endorse the Peninsula Transit Study and sent it on to the full Council to incorporate it into the City's comprehensive plan. Hooray!

The Board also endorsed a few zoning amendments that will loosen and reduce the city's parking requirements in mixed-use business zones off the peninsula - mainly along major roads like Forest Avenue and Washington Ave. in North Deering. The previous zoning basically required huge parking lots to go along with any new development, which meant that we mostly got a bunch of new strip malls in those neighborhoods in the past 30 years. With any luck, these changes should open up those areas to more walkable infill development.

More City Hall business

2009-07-14T12:35:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately I was unable to attend last night's meeting in South Portland. But from what I hear so far, it was a success: the airport and the state have agreed that an expanded runway and a bike/ped trail can coexist along the edge of Long Creek.

The city of South Portland has hired an engineering firm to draft a preliminary plan for connecting the new trail with the planned bike lanes and shared sidewalk that are slated to be built on the replacement Veterans Bridge. According to the Forecaster's report, that study could be finished in the next three weeks, which would give plenty of time for the designers of the new Veterans Bridge to adjust their plans accordingly.

In other news, there's going to be another important meeting this evening in Portland's City Hall, when the Planning Board holds a public hearing and a vote on whether to incorporate the new Peninsula Transit Study into the city's Comprehensive Plan.

The Public Hearing starts at 6:45 PM. They have to review prior decisions and one other contentious agenda item before they get to the transit study, probably around 7:30 or so.

Just to be clear, they're only voting tonight on whether to incorporate the study into the Comp Plan. Implementing specific recommendations, like unbundling parking costs from your rent, would come later. This vote just provides the city planning staff a go-ahead to start working on those specific ordinances. Here's an outline of what the study is proposing.

The Board is also going over some amendments to the city's zoning codes that would, among other things, reduce parking requirements in certain off-peninsula mixed-use zones (like the Forest Avenue corridor) to one parking space for every new unit of housing. Currently, new homes built off the peninsula require 2 new parking spaces - a requirement that makes the construction of new middle-class housing unfeasible in most cases. These amendments are the third item on the agenda, and here's a link to a summary of them.

It would be great to get a good turnout to demonstrate public support for the Transit Study and its recommendations, which would lower the cost of living significantly for those of us who don't drive all the time.

If you can't make it, you can send written comments to Barbara Barhydt, Development Review Services Manager: bab@portlandmaine.gov

Previously on Rights of Way:

Transit Study Public Forum (July 2008)
Study Recommendations Being Implemented at Maine Medical Center (July 2008)
How to Turn A Parking Lot into $1 Million: The Economic Opportunities of Parking Deregulation (August 2008)

TONIGHT: Come to South Portland to support a bike/ped connection across Long Creek

2009-07-13T06:50:00.000-04:00

As regular readers should be aware, next year's reconstruction of Veterans' Memorial Bridge between the West End of Portland and the Ligonia neighborhood of South Portland will include a 12' wide shared sidewalk, plus a 6' wide shoulder for bicycles.

It's going to be a valuable new connection, but in terms of linking the huge employment areas of western South Portland to the Portland peninsula, there's still a missing link: there's still no safe way for bikes and pedestrians to cross Interstate 295 in South Portland (the Maine DOT's botched reconstruction of Exit 3 in South Portland two summers ago destroyed the only safe crossing point of I-295 for bikes and pedestrians: now, Redbank schoolchildren have to cross 12 high-speed freeway ramps and go under three dark underpasses on their way to elementary school. Thanks, Augusta).

Anyhow, South Portland activists have been working hard to create a new, safer connection across I-295 and Long Creek. The proposed Long Creek bike/ped bridge (mapped above) would connect the Redbank and Brickhill neighborhoods of South Portland directly to the new Veterans Bridge bicycle and pedestrian paths. By this routing, the bike trip between the Old Port and the Maine Mall would be transformed from a 6-mile trip along stressful streets like Outer Congress or Broadway, to a 5-mile trip along low-traffic neighborhood streets and dedicated bike paths.

It would also open up new access to employment and housing for car-free or one-car households on both sides of the harbor: National Semiconductor would become an hour's walk (about 3 miles) from the West End's affordable housing complexes, for instance. The new Mercy Hospital campus on the Fore River would become an easy, 2 mile bike ride from Brickhill and Redbank (which would be about a 20 minute ride at an easy, no-sweat pace).

The only obstacle to this happening is the publicly-owned Portland "International" Jetport, which is objecting to the new bike/ped connection due to its long-range plans to extend a runway nearby. However, it's not clear why a bike path along Long Creek couldn't coexist with a longer runway, especially since numerous other cities have roads or trails around their airports.

The South Portland City Council is holding an important meeting this evening to determine whether or not the Jetport should be allowed to expand without also providing this important bike/ped connection. Here's the announcement from Shay Bellas of the South Portland Land Trust:

The South Portland Land Trust is making our vision for bike/ped bridge over Long Creek a reality. But we can't achieve the dream without you. As you know, the proposed span has tremendous implications for improving our quality of life and commuting options.

Can it be done? — YES
Will it be done? — Perhaps
We NEED your support this Monday night, July 13
from 6:30 - 8:00 pm.

All the stakeholders involved are poised to embrace the vision.

The next step is up to you.

We need you to help us show the South Portland City Council how the bridge is, in the words of one urban planner, "a game changer" for the greater South Portland area. The best way to do that is for you, your colleagues, friends and neighbors to attend:

The South Portland City Council workshop
This Monday, July 13 from 6:30 - 8:00 p.m.
South Portland Community Center
21 Nelson Rd

Here's a map to the meeting. If you plan to bike there, take the Highland Avenue bike route: from Portland, cross the Casco Bay Bridge, take a right at the end, then take the first left onto Anthoine St. next to the Public Safety building. At the end of Anthoine, turn right on Highland. The community center is behind the high school, just past the oil tanks.

Briefs for June's Green Streets Day

2009-06-26T07:41:00.003-04:00

It's Green Streets Friday! Anyone walking, biking, carpooling, or taking transit today should sign in at portlandgreenstreets.org and reward yourself with freebies and discounts at participating local businesses.

Here are a few other things going on. Watch out for the whizzing bullets:

The Veranda Street bridge in East Deering is closed to cars, but not to bikes and pedestrians. The contractor has built a temporary bike/ped bridge, which is wheelchair accessible and wide enough for two people to pass abreast. Bicyclists should walk their bikes across, since the bridge's ramps make some tight turns.
Munjoy Hill residents are lobbying U Car Share for a new pod of vehicles for their neighborhood, according to the June Green Streets newsletter. Sarah Cushman reports that "If you live on the East End in Portland get your membership application fee waived for a limited time. Log in at www.ucarshare.com to sign up anduse this promotional code: MUNJOYHILL. If enough of East Enders join, the company will locate a car close by. For more information, contact Peter Alexander at 773-4606."
Last but not least, this editorial from today's Portland Press Herald, about some of the parking recommendations from the Peninsula Transit Study, is spot on. Its opening line: "Downtown real estate in Maine's largest city – its cultural and commercial center – is too valuable to be used to store cars." Read the whole thing, though - I couldn't have said it better myself.

New indoor bike parking downtown

2009-06-23T14:10:00.003-04:00

I had some fun at John Peverada's expense a couple of weeks ago, regarding his parking agency's fear of mopeds in the city's parking garages. But let's give him some kudos: Mr. Peverada's Spring Street Garage (the one next to the Civic Center) has just installed some of the city's first indoor, sheltered bicycle parking.

Downtown office workers now have a safe, sheltered place to park their bikes, just inside the garage's Free Street entrance:

View Larger Map

Three concepts for Franklin Street

2009-06-22T07:55:00.002-04:00

Check out franklinstreet.us for the three latest concept maps for what Franklin Street might look like in the future (pictured above is one concept, with a 4-lane boulevard north of Congress Street and a two-lane street between Congress and the waterfront).

The city's Franklin Street Redesign Committee will be reviewing these concepts this month and refining them for phase two of the project, which will make detailed analyses of each one and recommend a final design. You can leave comments for the committee on the franklinstreet.us website, or by e-mailing info [at] franklinstreet.us

Downtown's changing geography

2009-06-18T09:44:00.004-04:00

The great recession is having all sorts of impacts on our city's geography - what are we going to do with all the abandoned auto dealerships, for instance? - but one of the big changes to come was announced yesterday, when the new owners of the Portland Press Herald announced their plan to sell their building and the adjacent empty lot that used to house the printing presses to a New York developer.

The developer, a fellow named John Cacoulidis who's probably best known in Maine for his attempted tax-revolt hissy fits against the town of Cumberland, where he owns an offshore island, plans to renovate the Press Herald office building for office space and to redevelop the entire block bound by Pearl, Cumberland, Congress, and Myrtle with a new, 30-story tower. From this morning's Press Herald article:

His vision calls for a basement-level parking garage, with retail shops, a pharmacy and a bank on the first floor. He would top that with another eight levels of parking and build a hotel and office space above that.

The article also has this quote from Cacoulidis: "It will be a really classy building."

On that point, I have my doubts. Cacoulidis also owns a large chunk of land on South Portland's Spring Point. About eight years ago, this is the "really classy" building he proposed to build there:

You probably guessed "casino," right? Not quite: it would be a massive, hangar-sized convention hall - big enough to hold aircraft indoors was the gimmick, hence the plane being towed inside on the tongue-like ramp in the image above - capped by a plastic surgery hospital, capped by twin 640-foot towers with hotel rooms inside. I seem to recall Cacoulidis saying that famous people would want to recuperate for a few months in the luxury hotel upstairs after their plastic operations. I'm not sure why he wanted to disguise the whole complex so it would look exactly like a 1970s-era Las Vegas casino - maybe to throw off the paparazzi?

And oh yeah - it would have been connected by an aerial tram strung across the harbor to downtown Portland:

I guess this would have gone somewhere near the Portland Company complex. These images come via plans2pictures.com.

Anyhow, as classy as these buildings may be, I do have some serious concerns about whether Cacoulidis is capable of envisioning a building that will fit into the context of Congress Street. His grandiose plans for South Portland seem to expect that most people would have arrived at his building by air - note the preponderance of aircraft like helicopters in the images above. That probably sounds good to an elderly multi-millionaire like the developer, but Congress Street's buildings need to engage the street, and be designed with the expectation that most visitors and workers will be arriving by foot, on the sidewalk.

More practically, though, is the question of whether Cacoulidis is for real. In the past decade, he's made some big real estate purchases here. But in spite of his grandiose plans, he's never built anything. His property in South Portland is still empty, used only as an illegal dumping site from time to time. His newly-bought Press Herald office building is going to be empty soon - where's he going to find new tenants for that building, much less for a 30-story tower? I have my doubts about whether Cacoulidis can live long enough to see his vision turn into a reality.

ACTION ALERT: Call Rep. Pingree to Save Pedestrian Access to Back Cove!

2009-06-17T07:27:00.000-04:00

The Maine League of Young Voters has just sent out a new action alert with a focus on including pedestrian and bike access through the Exit 7 underpass, between Franklin Street and the Back Cove Park. This connection has been called for in city Comprehensive Plans since the 1980s, and is a high-priority "missing link" in Portland's trail and sidewalks network.

Unfortunately, the Maine DOT engineers in Augusta - people who rarely drive through this intersection, and have never walked through it - have decided, by bureaucratic fiat, to block pedestrian access at this location by widening the freeway off-ramps, allegedly for "safety" purposes.

To be fair, the Maine DOT is proposing some positive steps: adding a traffic light at the end of the northbound on-ramp (at the 'd' in Bayside in the birds-eye view below), for instance, would give pedestrians a safe place to cross the offramps. And, although it's probably not the best use for the Maine DOT's rapidly-dwindling funds, I have no beef with adding another lane to the northbound ramps, which wouldn't affect pedestrian access and would give cars a place to rest while they wait for the light.

But there's no need to add another lane to the southbound ramp (the one that curves along Back Cove), which is nearly 1/2 a mile long and never has traffic congestion issues. The Maine DOT keeps on citing an arbitrary prediction of 30% traffic growth, which will supposedly neccessitate the extra lane. But in the past 20 years, there's been no measureable growth in traffic here - roughly the same number of cars come through here today as in 1985.

So now that gas is headed towards $4 a gallon and GM and Chrysler are bankrupt - now Augusta expects thousands of additional cars to materialize here? That's baloney, but unless we make a lot more noise, this stale lunchmeat will be forced down our gullets, with a lot more traffic to go along with it, at a cost of $2 million to you, the taxpayer. Building the safe, well-lit sidewalk that the city actually needs, instead of an extraneous highway lane, would cut the project's bill in half.

Portlanders sent a lot of grassroots complaints about the Maine DOT's spendthrift bullheadedness this past winter. In fact, I'm pretty confident that Exit 7 may have been a tipping-point issue in the Legislature's ultimate decision not to raise the state's gas tax this summer, as a few key legislators were forced to ask themselves why they should divert tens of millions of dollars away from Mainers' disposable incomes, just to prop up the DOT's Circus of Whimsical Asphalt Fantasias.

But now, we need some top-down pressure on the DOT. The $2 million that Augusta plans to spend on this widening project would come from a federal earmark approved in 2005, at the behest of Rep. Tom Allen. Now that Rep. Chellie Pingree has taken over that seat, she's in the best position to hold the Maine DOT accountable. After all, what's the point in her fighting for funding in Washington if the Maine DOT is just going to piss it away on projects like this one?

So here's your chance to hold these renegade bureaucrats accountable for once: call Rep. Pingree today. She and her staff are friendly and want to hear from you, but more importantly, if we can muster a few dozen phone calls, our chances of getting a safe pedestrian connection to Back Cove and saving a cool $1 million in the process will be much, much better.

Here's a sample script that you might want to use as a guideline, but feel free to riff with personal stories about walking and biking in greater Portland, and the importance of this connection:

-- 207-774-5019 --

"Hello, this is a message for Chellie Pingree. My name is ________ and I live in [City, ME.] I'm calling to express concerns over how the Maine DOT is planning to spend our federal earmarks to expand the freeway ramps on Exit 7, without providing adequate pedestrian access between Bayside and Back Cove. Some elements of their plan - like adding a new traffic light and crosswalks - are moving in the right direction. But their plan to widen the southbound off-ramp, thus blocking pedestrian access to Back Cove Park, goes against our state's goals for energy independence, fiscal responsibility, and reducing pollution. Please encourage the Maine Department of Transportation to spend some of the money from the federal government on sustainable transportation alternatives for our future, not more highway!"

Also important: let us know if you called, either by sending a quick note to Katie at the League office in Portland or by leaving a comment here.

Ha!

2009-06-10T16:06:00.001-04:00

A reader of the Planet Money blog reports on an unintentionally funny economics question:

I recently bought the foreign service exam study guide since I am taking the test this Friday. The test consists of, among other things, basic economics questions. I was so amused by one of the sample questions that I just had to share:

All of the following are examples of United States products that would typically fail to be produced to optimal output without government intervention EXCEPT:

A. national defense products.
B. light provided by lighthouses.
C. new automobiles.
D. new highways.

And in the answer section:

C. This is the correct answer. Automobiles are not a public good. Optimal production of automobiles is related to the demand for them by individual consumers.

Bike Lanes on Ocean Ave - Important Neighborhood Meeting TONIGHT

2009-06-09T12:02:00.007-04:00

Hey, wouldn't it be neat if Ocean Avenue looked less like the photos on the left, and more like the photos on the right?

If you'd like to have bike lanes on Ocean Avenue between Payson Park and Woodford's Corner, come out to tonight's neighborhood meeting at Cheverus High School's library, at 6:30 pm.

"This meeting will dictate the outcome of whether or not bicycle lanes get established on Ocean Ave between Forest and Washington," says Katherine Earley, Portland's city engineer.

I know it's raining, but that won't deter crankypants neighbors who think that extra on-street parking is more important than bikes. Buck up and show up!

If you're on Facebook, take a moment to rsvp here.

Vote Tomorrow for Portland's Charter Commission

2009-06-08T06:51:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow (Tuesday) the City of Portland will hold an election to convene a new Charter Commission. The Commission will be responsible for reviewing and recommending changes to the city's governance structure - in effect, updating City Hall for the 21st century.

It might sound obscure, but this is an important election. City Hall needs to modernize, to become less bureaucratic and more entrepreneurial in how it gets things done. The city's status quo - taking eighteen months to decide whether or not to paint a few parking spots for scooters downtown, for instance, or four months (and counting) to decide whether or not to approve a new triple-decker on Munjoy Hill - is a burden to our taxpayers and to our economy. If our city is going to adapt to the new, carbon-constrained world, it needs to make these kinds of decisions much more quickly, and be less concerned about abandoning older, failed ways of doing business.

Luckily, this election has attracted some very talented candidates. I'd like to single one of them out for my first-ever blog endorsement: Jim Gooch, who is running for an at-large seat on the Commission.

I've worked with Jim thanks to his employment at the Trust for Public Land, where he's managing a regional open-space planning effort among about a dozen towns in the greater Bangor area. He doesn't have a specific platform or an agenda at this point, beyond creating a government that is more accountable and responsive in general, but is more focused on embracing a public process that considers a broad range of ideas and possibities. He's also a very smart guy, a former attorney with a degree from the Yale Law School, where he studied, among other things, governmental structure.

As for the other candidates, check out the League of Young Voters' election guide. I generally agree with their endorsements but would like to add special consideration for two candidates who didn't receive endorsements: Robert O'Brien (running for the District 2 seat, for the West End and Parkside) and Steven Scharf (running for the District 4 seat in East Deering). O'Brien has been a young and successfuly representative on the City's school committee and has also worked on several other progressive campaigns, including the Opportunity Maine initiative. His understanding of how the School Committee fits into the rest of the city's government would be valuable on the Commission. That said, he's running against another talented candidate, Dan Jenkins, a lifelong Portlander and a recent Muskie School graduate with some really innovative ideas. I haven't yet decided how I'll cast my ballot tomorrow, but I think that Portland would be well-served by either of these guys.

In District 4, I'd like to encourage people to vote for Steve Scharf. Steve has attended more meetings in City Hall than anyone else, and he knows how city government works - and doesn't work - better than almost anyone else in the city, including most City Councilors. He's a Republican with a strong libertarian streak, which will be an important perspective for a City that's trying to reform its government into something that's sleeker and more responsive (sure, I might not agree with his stances on abortion or the state's human welfare budget, but those things are out of bounds for a Charter Commission to deal with). And Steve's been an excellent and devoted defender of bicycle and pedestrian issues as a long-time member of the city's Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, where it's been my pleasure to work with him.

So don't forget to vote in tomorrow's citywide election. Polls will open at 7 am and close at 8 pm.
Click here for a list of polling places.

Franklin Street Concepts

2009-06-05T12:05:00.004-04:00

MRLD and Smart Mobility, the planning and traffic engineering consultants hired by the city to aid the Franklin Street Redesign Committee, have published two concepts for a new Franklin Street. Both feature extensive redevelopment opportunities, a restoration of Lincoln Park, restoration of cross-streets like Oxford, Federal, and Newbury, and downsizing Franklin to two lanes between Congress and Commercial Streets in the Old Port.

Hard copies of these images are available at City Hall. In the maps below, gray boxes indicate intersections with traffic signals; red areas indicate redevelopment opportunities, blue dotted lines represent new street connections.

Urban boulevard concept, with roundabouts at Cumberland, Congress, and Commercial. "The Urban Boulevard alternative has a landscaped median from Marginal Way to Congress, then transitions into a 2-lane urban street from Congress to Commercial. It includes a 2-way bike path on the north/east side of Franklin along its entire length from the Bayside Trail to the waterfront."

Multiway boulevard concept. "This alt. has a 6-lane multiway boulevard from Marginal Way to Oxford [4 lanes plus two low-speed parking/biking lanes on the outside]. At that point, it transitions into a 4-lane urban street, up the grade through Cumberland to Congress. From Congress to Marginal there would be a two lane urban street, with bike lanes."