An Email

I know posting has been sparse recently as I have been busy with a new job and overwhelmed by selling my suburban house while preparing for a series of temporary work-related relocations. But recently I received an email regarding municipal land use policy that I wanted to open up to a wider debate. Please leave any constructive comments you might have regarding the issue.

S 

do you think it is a good idea, bad idea, or value neutral idea for a small town to amend their ordinance protecting "open spaces" in order to allow for the refurbishing of an existing building to be transformed to affordable senior housing.
(I don't know if "open spaces" is a standard term, but in this case it means land zoned for institutional use and includes areas that have a lot of property such as schools, churches, library etc)

I watched a LONG debate/discussion at a city council meeting and found I'm kind of in the minority in my opinion and wondered what a less biased person with actual knowledge of city plan would have to say.

-s

Dave Murphy 

"Open space" is a very sketchy term. Gigantic empty lawns that nobody uses for anything are often considered "open space". On the one hand, if they can be used for something more meaningful, I'm all for it. If a building or set of buildings reinvigorates the town, absolutely it is a better use of the land, regardless of its use.

A great example in my opinion would be Four Corners, an area we both know and love... When they tore down the Kay Tract to build Blair High School, they demolished acres and acres of "green space". That area was a haven for homeless people and drug activity. It was unpatrolled, unregulated, secluded, and crime-ridden.

But when they tore out all those trees, what arose was a school already too small for its student body despite the fact that it was spread out over twice the real estate of the old school. The main feature that interacted with the rest of the "town" (if one were to consider Four Corners its own town) was not the main facade of the school, not the grand entrance, walkways, side buildings, or even athletic fields; it is the driveways and parking lots that front the school.

It secluded the student body, who for the most parts are residents of Four Corners and downtown Silver Spring, from the rest of the town. Was it a better municipal use of land than a bunch of trees with trash and homeless people? Absolutely. But does it contribute more to the townliness of Four Corners? Barely.

A good side effect was the pedestrian improvements that came along with a 3,200 student school, and Four Corners desperately needed those pedestrian improvements. But despite the fact that it is the most heavily traveled intersection in Eastern Montgomery County (for PEOPLE, not cars... more people move through that intersection than even Georgia and Colesville) no major mass transit improvements came with the school save for maybe a bus shelter or two.

Now consider the lawns providing the setback for St. Bernadette's. That is open space. It is green space. Is it serving the people of Four Corners? Does it serve St. Bernadette's other than to isolate it from the high speed traffic of University Boulevard or the "public school kids" that as a universal community of faith we ought to be reaching out to and embracing? The only thing I've ever used those fields for is stretching out a football team before a game at St. Bernadette's. And in 5 years of coaching and two years of playing, I can count the number of times I've done that on two hands.

Now consider something like this:
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=3922

Erik Bootsma, the architect that authored this article, is a Beaux Arts architect and a Catholic. He writes about religious structures often. Here's his website, it's great:

http://beatusest.blogspot.com/

But back to the suburban church being retrofitted... American churches are often gigantic, isolated structures that are monuments to themselves. Whereas in Europe, Cathedrals are the centerpieces of the towns, in America you have junk like the Mormon tabernacle, which only interacts with people driving down the Beltway and in no other way serves as a structural outreach to the community. For all their questionable doctrine, this is actually my number 1 gripe with the Mormon church. They structurally isolate themselves from their surroundings, even in Salt Lake City. But nowadays, every church does that. They move from central locations to wherever they can have the biggest parking lot, assuring that few will walk to their services and ostensibly turning away anyone that does not drive a car.

If St. Bernadette's was to take the lawns in front of the parish and do something useful such as what Bootsma proposed there in Arlington, it would create a community directly affected by the parish rather than isolated from it. And for a religious institution, what better way to attract members than to make the primary structure (the church) the focal point of a community? And as far as traffic on University Boulevard goes, building frontage could slow traffic down, and a more permeable street network could actually relieve congestion there. A train line running up Columbia Pike would be nice also.

As for your case, affordable senior housing is never a bad thing in theory. But what are they building? Garden style apartments with ample parking that will eventually mock seniors who lose the ability to drive? Or a community of well designed buildings that will allow seniors to partake in society without forcing them to drive? In my opinion, the latter serves more use than an open lawn that nobody uses.

A Bike Crossing and a Disconnected Street

I drive around the College Park Metro Station a lot. That area is home to one of the most notable examples on Prince George's County's long list of misguided transportation infrastructure disasters. The College Park Trolley Trail crossing at Paint Branch Parkway. Rethink College Park has chronicled the embarrassingly over-the-top markings, signs, and traffic implements to bring notice to the heavily traveled bike path crossing.

Allow me to set the scene: The College Park Trolley Trail runs along the bits and fragments of a disjointed Rhode Island  Avenue between Route 1 and the MARC/Metro tracks. It is a heavily used trail that connects north College Park to the University and the Metro Center, and this crossing is a crucial point on the path. Paint Branch Parkway is a four lane road with a double yellow line. The south side of the road has a sidewalk that goes under the train tracks to the Metro station. The north side has nothing between the train tracks and Route 1 despite several bus stops along the route. The only signalized crossing accessible to the north side of the CPTT is at Route 1, about a quarter mile west. And as mentioned above, there are no sidewalks to get there.

College Park has been trying to get a HAWK signal at the intersection, an option the County dismissed quickly. There is another way to get the crossing signalized, however College Park is likely to foolishly dismiss it: connect Rhode Island Avenue to Paint Branch Parkway.


View Larger Map


The CPTT and Rhode Island Avenue would intersect Paint Branch Parkway at the same place, and the vehicular intersection could receive a traffic signal on which the bike and pedestrian path could piggy-back. This would also improve street connectivity in traffic-clogged College Park. But that's exactly why the idea will probably never be explored. It would attract cars into the neighborhood, a notion that the University and the residents will likely balk at. Never mind the fact that it houses College Park's newest parking garage at Knox Road and Yale Avenue. People won't want through traffic by-passing traffic-choked Route 1 on the narrow, speed-bumpy neighborhood streets.

Prince George's County, like most of the rest of the nation, favors funneling traffic onto main streets instead of keeping a permeable network of interconnected and redundant streets. Usually, this just isolates communities and creates traffic problems. In this case, however, it hurts (sometimes literally) pedestrians and bikers who cannot count on Paint Branch Parkway drivers to obey the 35 mph speed limit or the state law that mandates cars stop at all crosswalks for bikes and peds.

In most other wealthy countries on earth, bikes, cars, pedestrians and transit find a way to coexist together on publicly maintained roads. This separation of modes with a grossly negligent safety situation once again emphasizes that in a country that is already bad at that, Prince George's County finds a way to prove they are one of the worst.

Youth Sports and the Automobile

It's August, the time of year where I return to my favorite volunteer activity coaching youth football in Silver Spring. Youth sports, despite my lack of athletic prowess, were a big part of my childhood and were probably the only thing that kept me reaching the age of 20 with any semblance of physical conditioning. To a suburban child, youth sports will offer exercise and teach social integration in a safe environment.

My 2008 squad.

Exercise is a valuable commodity in the suburbs. You don't burn many calories from the passenger seat of a minivan. The extreme, of course, is Saratoga Springs, where a student was recently punished for riding his bike to school. The policy against biking to school is of course disguised in the name of safety. Social integration is also more valuable in the suburbs. Suburban children grow up cloistered in pods that effectively segregate socio-economic classes from each other. And despite the marketing, the suburbs are not the safest place to be a kid. So a program that offers exercise, social integration, and safety ought not be undervalued, be it football, swimming, ballet, or whatever.

Are youth sports a rare positive side effect of suburbanization? The Mid Maryland Football League has 26 programs spread out over Montgomery, Prince George's, Anne Arundel, Howard, Baltimore, Frederick, and Carroll Counties, and could never survive without the suburban infrastructure. I used to think youth football could not survive without it at all.

***

The Silver Spring Saints, for whom I coach, are one of the oldest youth programs still in existence in the DC area. When I played on this team as a youth, however, it was Saint Bernadette's, a Catholic Youth Organization program. CYO football went under in 1995, however, and the Silver Spring Saints rose from the ashes, playing their home games at Saint Bernadette's field. When It was Saint Bernadette's, however, the program had two teams with about 23 or so players per team. At its peak, the CYO had 40 or 50 such teams in Montgomery, Prince George's, and DC, and they were broken into geographic-based divisions. It was the premier youth football program in Maryland for decades.

When the Silver Spring Saints joined the Capital Beltway League in 1995, the one-time parish-oriented program had to struggle to field teams in six weight classes, effectively tripling the size of the program overnight and drawing in players from a much larger area. As it struggled with finding enough players, the notion of playing games close by started to disappear. Montgomery Village, Clinton, Germantown, and Bowie were now the away games as opposed to other small teams in Silver Spring, Wheaton, and Rockville. This season, the Saints have joined the Mid-Maryland League to escape the poor organization of the CBL. They are now required to field 12 teams. Many of them will only have about 15 or 16 players. (For those of you not familiar with the sport, there are 11 on the field at a time. An NFL team has 53 players. 24 is an ideal number at the youth level)

I love the Saints organization, and what it does for young men between the ages of 6 and 14. Growing up in a single parent household, it gave me male role models, goals, and a sense of belonging that every boy should experience. But in the time between when I played and now that I coach, it has gone from a "mom and pop" program belonging to a community organization to a "big box" program. The parish still has a strong influence on the program, which in my opinion has kept it about the players and not about championships and egos (though we win our share of games).

No, it's hard to imagine youth football now without cars and giant parking lots at each field, where 12 games are played by each program every Saturday and teams drive as many as 80 miles to play each other. But it hasn't been that way throughout the history of the Silver Spring Saints. For their very first game 58 years ago, the first 12 Saints played Saint Micheal's of downtown Silver Spring, two miles away from Saint Bernadette's. To get there, they took a Capitol Transit Bus.

Circular Logic

Tonight I did a very friendly thing and helped a buddy of mine move from Columbia to Gaithersburg. It's a cumbersome route to drive, but I was determined to avoid the rush hour freeways and see what little remained of the northeastern Montgomery County rural areas on the back roads. It is not actually a bad route, if not for the constant stop-and-go through Ashton, Olney, and Gaithersburg.

Woodfield Road, which is currently being widened, at Fieldcrest Road. This intersection could have been a roundabout, but instead the county has decided to induce more demand along this route. (Photo by thisisbossi)

Most of my route (MD-108 to Fieldcrest Road/ to Woodfield Road/MD-124) was two lanes roads, but these two lane roads would mushroom to as many as seven lanes at major intersections. This phenomenon is obviously to prevent long backups at these traffic lights. And in such suburbanized areas, people are driving to get anywhere, hence the percieved need to prevent such backups.

But I noticed that, even during the end of rush hour, I would sit at a traffic light for as many as 90 seconds without a single other car at the intersection in any direction. This made me think of something I read via GreaterGreaterWashington's Dinner Links a few days back; roundabouts as a traffic solution.

As time goes by, intersections grow wider, adding capacity to these suburban intersections. the stretches between the intersections are often are widened shortly after. I noticed this happening on Woodfield Road during my drive. Once this happens, the overall capacity of the road is increased, which induces demand, ultimately contributing to more traffic.

Perhaps before we widen roads in suburban Maryland, we ought to try putting roundabouts in at these intersections. They would improve the flow of traffic without adding more capacity and inducing more demand. Overtime, this would save billions in construction costs. It would reduce the maximum speeds of the cars driving the routes, making the roads safer. But it would not add more time to the trip. During off-peak hours, it might even speed up trips. Other safety bonuses: roundabouts decrease the number of points for a collision to take place by 75%, and also eliminate people speeding up to make a green light. It would save gas, as the article in the above link mentions, accelerating from a dead stop is the least efficient thing an internal combustion engine can do. This would decrease the need for that greatly. And if Gaithersburg ever decides to return to its once-progressive planning style, it would facilitate pedestrians more safely and efficiently.

The fact of the matter is that this could serve as a solution at suburban intersections anywhere, and even many urban intersections. Once the capacity is added and the demand is induced, however, it would be a lot tougher to implement. So why haven't we started doing this on our two- and four-lane roads? Why perpetuate a cycle of increased traffic when we could more easily perpetuate a cycle of efficient traffic flow on our suburban routes?

Imagine Prince George's Plaza

Though nowhere near up to par with Arlington's Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor, Old Town Alexandria, or the central business districts of Bethesda and Silver Spring, Prince George's Plaza might be the best example of transit-oriented development in Prince George's County. It combines a Metro station with heavy retail, medium density housing, and a walkable street grid. Unfortunately, those things are not integrated with each other.

I love the City of Hyattsville. As soon as I can afford to do so, I plan on moving there. It has a ton of potential. Potential, however, means room for improvement.

Anecdotally, I was told by a Hyattsville Police officer that the city plans to annex and redevelop the suburban style medium-density apartment complexes north and west of the mall. In this same conversation, the officer, who was advising me on where the city experienced most crime, cited garden style apartment complexes like these (like Kirkwood near West Hyattsville station or the apartments on the southwest corner of University and Adelphi) as the worst offenders. I can only assume the isolation of the buildings behind PG Plaza makes them ideal places to engage in criminal activity.

Generally, I don't like the idea of putting heavy transit near a mall. Malls are inherently car-oriented, and over the past decade they have experienced severe decline in image and practicality. The Mall at Prince George's (which I will forever call PG Plaza despite its new name and this newfangled civic movement against saying "PG" in favor of "Prince George's") might be able to take advantage of the Metro station across the street.

Many of the larger development projects in Prince George's County have been greenfield developments outside the Beltway and far from transit taking on a semi-new urbanist format, but are far from transit and isolated from the better urban design closer in. Bowie Town Center and National Harbor are good yardsticks for what we can expect out of planned developments at Brandywine, Westphalia(pdf), Konterra, and Woodmore Town Center (pdf): far from existing transit, isolated pockets of walkable mixed use surrounded by parking. PG Plaza, if redeveloped, can present a retail design similar to that of Bowie Town Center with the added advantage of being across the street from a Metro station in an area that can easily be reticulated into the surrounding street grid.

Remove the roof, which PG Plaza didn't always have anyway, and lay down the grid. I give you new Hyattsville:


View Larger Map

With this, perhaps more pedestrian friendly changes will occur as well. East-West Highway has three shockingly bad design flaws on that stretch. First, the median fences. Anytime a street has a fenced median to discourage jaywalking, it's a sure sign of poor design. Pedestrian traffic is like water flow. It will find the path of least resistance from origin to destination, and will creatively by-pass obstacles. Instead of trying to force pedestrians to go out of their way to cross East-West, embrace the foot traffic with more crossings, traffic signals, and a parallel street to spread out the traffic.

Next, the pedestrian bridge from the Metro station to the mall parking lot has to go. Parking ought to be consolidated into a garage, and the street frontage should be developed. pedestrian bridges over suburban arteries like this are not functional, they encourage speeding on the road, they kills street life, and they are unbearably tacky. Perhaps if the street frontage has an arcade with an upper level of shops and whatnot, it could stay, but generally it looks horrible and it proves to be cumbersome for access to the Metro station.

Third, rename the damn road. East-West Highway (MD route 410) is a title unbecoming for a road passing through the CBD's of Bethesda, Silver Spring, Takoma Park, and Hyattsville. In Takoma Park, 410 is actually called Ethan Allen Avenue. Perhaps Hyattsville could follow suit and rename it something like "John Clark Hyatt Avenue" after the town's founder. Apt, historical, and far less generic.

Hyattsville is evolving as a city. It has come a very, very long way in the last decade, and it continues to grow and improve. PG Plaza will undoubtedly emerge as a hot spot for good urbanism. Eyesores like the pedestrian bridge will be replaced by more of what we're seeing in the nearby Hyattsville Arts District, and instead of an island of good urbanism, it will grow into the fabric of the surrounding areas.