Applying suburban SFD parking standards to urban rentals is stupid

Parking requirements are a pseudoscience, and most engineers mis-apply suburban standards to urban contexts when actual research is explicitly clear that vehicle ownership for urban renters (lower income, smaller households, shorter trips) is less than the '1 stall per bedroom'-ish metric most municipalities have fecklessly adopted.

On car-brain and respect

There are two very different types of respect; respect for a person as a human being, and respect for a person as an authority. But because we use the same word for these two different things, people often talk as if they were the same thing. So for example, when someone in authority says “If you don’t respect me, I won’t respect you.” What they’re actually saying (and justifying) is “If you don’t respect me as an authority, I won’t respect you as a human being.”

-Heather von Stackelberg, "Mugging the Muse", Medium, Oct 24, 2017

This came to mind when I was thinking about motonormativity. Auto-centric design and motor-normity is when the car says: "If you don't respect me as an authority, I won't respect you as a human being". When a car kills a pedestrian, people shrug and say: "must have been in the wrong place, or in the right place at the wrong time". Automobiles have no respect for anything that isn't an automobile. And that's the root of the enormous driver hostility toward bike lanes (especially protected ones) -- it's not just a denial of authority, but one backed up with consequences - enough reinforced concrete to damage a car. The use of flex posts and swale curbs rather than bollards and parking curbs is emblematic. It's nominally pedestrian-oriented design that does too little to challenge automotive authority. It's certainly better than nothing - like a crosswalk or a bike lane, it at least makes a claim that something other than a car has a right to the right of way. But data on sharrows (worthless, more dangerous than nothing) makes clear how much that is worth. 

Ground floor retail isn't vacant by accident

Lot of developers are happy to treat the required ground floor retail as a deadweight loss, much like they do required parking. So income from rents on that space doesn't enter into the proforma, and it's easier to just not deal with it. Compounding the issue is that for new builds, the leasing agent is looking for a stable corporate tenant who can afford to pay the high lease rates. And rather than simply accept lower rents, they are willing to wait. Waiting five years to rent for $100/sf for five years is better than renting for $50/sf for ten year - no buildout or depreciation.

When it comes to transit, there is no 'mode'.

BRT makes a mockery of the 'best for' typology, largely because BRT is such a heterogenous category - quality varies from being heavy-rail competitive to being a bus with slightly nicer stops. (FTA labels aside, most 'BRT' isn't actually 'Rapid'--it lacks exclusive guideway).

American light rail hardly a 'clean' category either - tram-train is the norm, resulting in things like poor Portland (and formerly LA), where a through-corridor suffers a tram section in the middle. All are 'light rail' because they can't share track with 'heavy' rail - metros and commuter rail roads. Light rail is a vehicle crashworthiness standard. 

Having tried to identify all light rail stations (prior to the Transit Politic getting it done) actually transit is bafflingly heterogenous. Even with the 'New Starts' light rail systems, there are three distinct tropes: 1) tram-trains, 2) diesel, and 3) streetcars. 

1) German tram-trains (stadtbahn) are the trope definer for most American light rail - rapid transit service in the suburbs by using a former freight rail corridor, street-running in the central city (to avoid tunneling costs)*. In America, when we lack a freight rail corridor, we've built in freeway medians. 

2) New Jersey River Rail line is the trope definer, but Texas has built a lot of it. Save yourself the costs of electrification (and unsightly catenary) by keeping power generation onboard the vehicle. But that same fix makes stopping and starting both slower and more expensive, so stop spacing is much wider than for electrified traction**. 

3) Portland Streetcar is the trope definer for American streetcars. Portland's modern streetcar uses standard European trams, but that wasn't what got America excited about streetcars--rather, it was Portland's historic streetcars that were the original 'Development-oriented transit'. Supported by a local option tax along the corridor (American transit owes a huge debt to Powell's city of books). The whole concept of a 'pedestrian extender' and using a streetcar as a catalyst for real estate development in a proximate but inaccessible area (Pearl district). All of it street running from go. Over time, Portland has taken streetcar to the next tier, with a streetcar-only bridge, applying the same logic to places across a river. 

*If you put your city center light rail in a tunnel, so it's all rapid transit, it's evolved into a light metro.

** Battery technology may be a game-changer for diesel light rail, permitting both low-cost installation and electric traction levels of acceleration. Getting the brakes right is going to be the sticking point - batteries weigh a lot, so regenerate breaking practically necessary, and the 'trucks' (wheels) on rail vehicles are already complex and putting that much potentially explosive silicon near track is a bit perilous. 

Doubtful battery will be as relevant for trams/streetcars - anyplace that already has transmission lines will keep extending them, so the use-case is marginal--places without systems, for which the competition is BRT, which has a far lower initial investment cost and far better capability for incremental upgrades. 

If you are developer, the things that matter

If you are developer, the things that matter are: 1) financing costs, 2) land costs, 3) construction costs) 4) regulatory costs, and 5) time. 1, 2 and 3 aren't generally in the local remit. 4 absolutely is--regulatory costs (height limits, setbacks, parking requirements, tree coverage) are. Time somewhat is (public process, design review). Right now, land costs too much, because landowners are still pricing it as if we still enjoyed the near zero interest rates of 2020.

Commercial Vehicle Electrification

Commercial vehicles like buses are one of the places where vehicle electrification is spreading like wildfire. Climate ideology may have driven the political mandate for developing electric buses, but their adoption is being driven by cold hard dollars. Fuel costs savings were always going to be greatest for the vehicles that spent the most time in motion. But I suspect once we get data on long-term maintenance costs, production of Internal Combustion Engine buses is done. 

"For-profit developers won’t build it because the ROI doesn’t match their pro forma"

The first time a developer returns a negative ROI on capital, and fails to repay their loans, they cease being a developer. Developers don't have any money of their own. They borrow it from banks or equity partners. And if those partners don't like the ROI, they don't lend the money. Developers watch interest rates (and hence their cost of capital) like it's the world cup, because it's key to their business model - it determines what 'pencils', what can feasible be built with and ROI that covers their cost of capital, their costs, and the risk they undertake borrowing money in the face of appreciating construction cost and uncertain regulatory delay.