MODEL CITIES: USA

Boulder, Portland And Boston Us Cities Turning The Tide

BY PETER NEWMAN
Professor of City Policy, and Director, Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy

Introduction
Boulder
Portland
Boston
References

Introduction

The use of cars in US cities continues to grow with little sign of slowing down. Our global survey of cities does not show however that this is a universal phenomenon. There are encouraging signs in many European, Canadian, Australian and Asian cities, but in many US cities the processes of sprawl and highway building seem to be as out of control as ever. However, Boulder (population in 1990 of 88,650), Portland (population in 1990 of 1,412,344) and Boston (population in 1990 of 2,793,701) seem to be indicating a few signs of hope.

Boulder

Data on car usage in Boulder show that demand management efforts shifted 42% of former car users who traveled to downtown Boulder to other transportation options. Transit use between 1993 and 1997 to downtown area rose from 10% to 21%. This modal shift from the car to alternative forms of transportation took place over a four year period and included downtown employees and other individuals who lived in Boulder and made trips to the central business district to their place of employment and/or for shopping, eating, business transactions, recreation, or to simply watch other people especially along the one km pedestrian Pearl Street Mall. The alternative modes used include bus, bicycle, walking, car pooling, and shuttle service from outlying parking areas.

Boulder has had a policy to try and tame the automobile for the past ten years. It has done this through a range of strategies which are set out below in Table 1.

Table 1 Boulder's strategy for overcoming automobile dependence.

Photo 1 Boulder's stunning surroundings has been a major motivation for its "smart growth" initiatives.

In 1993 the Boulder City Council mandated that nearly 20% of the city's transportation department annual budget be reallocated away from car-related expenditures such as road widening, double turn lanes, more car parking, more stop lights, and better signalization to alternative mode functions. Over a fifteen year period this 20% budget reallocation will be dedicated to non-car alternatives such as smaller buses with bicycle racks, improved pedestrian crossings and footpaths, an expanded network of off-roadway bikepaths for commuters, user friendly bus passes (the Ecopass) for university students, employees, and entire neighborhoods. A separate division called GO BOULDER was formed with a twelve person staff within the Transportation Department. GO BOULDER staff members carry out marketing campaigns, coordinate alternate mode innovations and work on regional traffic demand management schemes. Other cities throughout the Denver Metropolitan Area consult frequently with GO BOULDER staff in efforts to reduce Single Occupancy Vehicle (SOV) uses. Experiments are underway to implement peak pricing or congestion pricing of SOV during rush hour. Programs are in place to reduce traffic and speeding in neighborhoods with roundabouts, speed bumps, photo radar, new small buses and private shuttle services using main transit corridors.

Specific car disincentive programs have been implemented such as doubling rates for car parking to more closely reflect car park land values, doubling parking fines, creating neighborhood parking permits for residents only, and reducing the number of car spaces required in new residential and commercial development.

The encouragement of telecommuting, a citywide bicycle network, 300 free bicycles in the Central Business District (Spokes for Folks), Bike to Work weeks, and bicycle mounted police officers are part of the demand management strategy to encourage non-car mobility.

The impact of Boulder's initiatives are flowing on to the regional level. The Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) has installed bike racks on all 1400 buses. Bike paths are being designed with regional intra-city connections. Boulder is being included in plans for passenger rail connections because of the proven demand for alternative transportation modes. Other towns and cities in Boulder County and the Denver Regional Council of Government (DRCOG) jurisdiction are either duplicating Boulder's car taming experiments or asking that they be considered.

The HOP, SKIP, and JUMP bus system mentioned above in Table 4.15 is an example of metropolitan regional cooperation with the major mass transit provider in the Denver metro area. The large, diesel burning Rapid Transit District (RTD) bus service was very under used in Boulder. They were seen as 'intruders' and out of place in the streets of Boulder. They were seen not only as noisy, polluting and inefficient (most were empty) but also as anti-social. The staff of GO BOULDER and the Boulder City Council recognized this and began to work out an arrangement whereby the City of Boulder would help finance a colorful, fleet of small (24 passenger) circulator buses called the HOP in cooperation with the RTD. It was a very successful 18-month experiment which carried 1-1/2 million passengers.

Photo 2 The "Hop" on the campus of the University of Colorado

As a follow-up to the present HOP circulator buses, a major north-south RTD large bus route was replaced (again with city and University of Colorado student funding) by 15 small size buses called the SKIP, complete with bike racks and circulating on a 10 minute interval. The SKIP service began in August 1997. The third phase is called the JUMP which is planned to connect other nearby cities with direct express service to Boulder.

Boulder's land use strategies are a critical part of their overall strategy. Traffic calming or car elimination is an integral part of land use regulation and zoning in Boulder's comprehensive plan. Mixed use development (work-live proximity), neighborhood market centers, and rezoning of commercial land to reduce jobs and car trips began in 1997. Building permits which show no or little need for SOV use are given priority under the one percent per annum growth management scheme for Boulder (Havlick, 1997).

Photo 3 The Central area is pedestrianised and very lively

Boulder's growth management scheme has been the focus of a great deal of attention. This scheme which sets a very clear growth boundary, with surrounding land being purchased for regional open space, sends a strong signal to the market place that low quality car dependent urban sprawl is not what is being demanded in Boulder. The result has been a strong and very popular green belt now in place and far from scaring away development, Boulder has attracted higher quality development which is building up the city in a less car dependent way.

Photo 4 The area around Boulder has been bought by the city for open space thus preventing urban sprawl

Boulder has shown how local government can begin the process of overcoming automobile dependence in a way that is better for the economy, a distinct improvement for the environment and is strongly supported by the community.

Portland

Portland's strategies for overcoming automobile dependence are set out in Table 4.16 and Boston's in Table 2.

Table 2. Portland's strategies for overcoming automobile dependence.

Portland went through a painful period of assessing its future during the 70's when it planned to build the Mt Hood Expressway through the city which would have demolished 3,000 homes. When it was decided not to build it but instead to opt for a light rail system (MAX), the majority of transportation experts laughed. It was dubbed the "streetcar named expire" as expert transportation professionals anticipated that in a modern US city it would be impossible to get people out of their cars. Their predictions were that the system would be a hopeless failure.

Photo 5 The Max was built instead of a freeway to Mt Hood. This area would have been destroyed but is now a thriving market

It is very hard to find any of those people today. The MAX light rail line is a transportation success story with a doubling of the patronage over the bus system it replaced and a large off-peak usage by families, especially at weekends going into the city to the popular downtown market area through which MAX runs. The only political problem with the decision to opt for light rail instead of a freeway is that now so many other corridors want MAX. As a result, plans are being developed to extend the LRT in a number of directions and the first of these, to the west towards Beaverton, has begun.

Photo 6 Max is very popular

But there have been several other important side effects and changes which have occurred in downtown Portland in parallel with the introduction of MAX. One is that the city centre has come alive through a constructive partnership between the business community and City of Portland planners working towards a more livable, human and economically vital city. For example, some of the business community recognised the opportunity provided by MAX and took the initiative to help re-pave some of the city streets with cobble stones made of ballast from the old sailing ships which once plied the Willamette River. Together with strong support at the city level through visionary planning and progressive urban design, the downtown area of Portland has been gradually "reinvented" around the idea that it should be a human, livable environment in which people can walk, sit, dine alfresco, be entertained and find residence in housing set in attractive public environments. Involvement of the wider community has been important in setting this trend, symbolically expressed in the thousands of individually inscribed bricks making up Pioneer Square in the heart of Portland.

Part of the downtown revitalization process was to introduce lots of trees, seats, flower planters, sculptures, period lighting, artwork and many other elements of good urban design at the street level. A central city car park was torn down and replaced with a public meeting place and a downtown freeway was replaced with a riverfront park. As well, lanes have been taken away from traffic on the two main streets along which MAX runs. The space has been used to provide an exclusive right-of-way for the trains and to widen footpaths, plant trees and provide flower planters. Bus priority streets running across MAX lines have also limited cars to one lane and have been significantly improved with generous tree planting and high quality bus shelters incorporating comprehensive transit system information.

Photo 7 The public spaces and public furniture is very high quality in Portland, reflecting its urban values

On top of these factors, the City of Portland strongly supported over many years, the residential revitalisation of downtown Portland and a ceiling on parking provision which held parking spaces more or less constant, despite significant growth in jobs in the downtown area. Combined with transit priority measures, downtown jobs increased 50% with no increase in car commuting to the central area (Arrington, 1993). Residential projects have included the attractive River Place development described in section 4.3.3.

Photo 8 This park would have been a freeway

In combination with the introduction in 1986 of the completed MAX light rail line, central Portland has begun to take on the air of European city, so unlike the average US city. The city centre is now probably the most attractive in the U.S.

Through a combination of enhanced transit access, human attractions and extra housing, rather than more road space and parking, the Downtown improved its competitiveness in the local economy by increasing from 5% to 30% of the metropolitan area's total retail turnover.

The other spin-off has occurred in the suburbs where citizens keyed up by their victory over the freeway have started to push for traffic calming. The City Government have in response begun a "Reclaim Your Street" project where residents and the local government together are planning how to slow down traffic and make it easier for pedestrians and cyclists.

Finally, the city has recognised that MAX provides the opportunity to develop an integrated approach to land development. They have now developed a plan to curtail outer area growth and direct it to urban redevelopment around transit stops; 85% of all new growth must now be within 5 minutes walk of a designated transit stop. This is the highest commitment to growth management in the US.

A whole metropolitan region cannot change overnight and Portland's overall transit patronage is still low despite the good results in the MAX corridor, but this will grow as the LRT is extended. Portland has shown that it has a new direction based on reconnecting its city to good transit services and that it is not inevitable for the automobile to continue to dominate the city.

Photo 9 A parking structure was removed and Pioneer Square
built instead when the freeway was replaced by the LRT

Boston

Boston's strategies for overcoming automobile dependence is set out in Table 3.

Table 3. Boston's strategies for overcoming automobile dependence.

Some of the data from our global cities study in chapter 3 are summarised in Table 4 below which highlights the position of Boston relative to the average US city, as well as Australian and Canadian cities, European cities and Asian cities. It shows that although Boston is very much a US city in its overall transportation patterns, it does appear to be restraining growth in car use and improving transit use. This case study examines some reasons behind these positive trends.

Table 4. Transportation patterns in 46 global cities, highlighting Boston, 1990.

As the global cities data show US cities not only use cars at a much higher rate than other cities, but the increase in the car use per capita in the 1980's is higher than in the previous two decades. The increase in car use per capita is an extraordinary 2,113 kms per capita, almost equal to the total use of cars by residents in some European cities such as London, Paris and Amsterdam in 1980. And this increase has occurred in a decade when many people were predicting that suburbanisation of jobs would begin to slow down car use in US cities (eg Gordon and Richardson, 1991).

Only Boston has shown a reduction in its car use growth rate. From an increase of 55% in the 60's, to 39% in the 70's and now in the 80's it was much lower again at 16%. This was 2/3rds of the average US city increase in car use from 1980 to 1990. It is still however a lot more driving and it has helped to create more traffic problems in Boston, but it is a small ray of light in an otherwise dark story for the larger US metropolitan regions.

How might this hopeful change have come about? First, there has been a significant growth in the number of transit trips taken in Boston - from 80 to 114 per person per year. This is now nearly twice the US average, but is still well below other cities in Europe or even those in Canada, where the seven largest urban regions average some 141 trips per capita per year. The increase in Boston occurred mostly in the rail system (as in most cities in our global survey). However, this cannot explain all the difference between Boston and other US cities, as the increase in passenger kilometres on transit of 109 km per annum from 1980 to 1990 is equivalent to a little more than the replacement of 64 kms of per capita car travel (if it is just a simple transfer of car use to transit use at the average overall car occupancy for Boston of 1.69). This reduction in car use is not enough even if the so-called 'transit leverage effect' is considered which is the extra savings in car use when people start using transit, eg some car travel is replaced as people tend to shop or incorporate other essential activities on the way to the train, or even manage without a second car if they decide to switch to transit. This factor is perhaps up to 5 times the direct travel replacement (see previous discussion on mixed land use).

We still need to explain why Bostonians had a lower increase in their use of cars of a further 1000 kms or so per year. It would appear that some other urban processes are at work in Boston which are reducing the need to travel. As outlined many times in this book, the key to beginning the process of reducing car use is reurbanisation.

Boston's data are similar to the trends found on Australian cities where in the 60's car use grew at 53% per capita per year, in the 70's this reduced to 29% and in the 80's to 14%. This has occurred without much change in transit and seems to be related to a large scale revitalisation of inner city living. Inner city residents have far lower car use - in Australia it is around 2 or 3 times less, but in New York it is over 4 times less - than in outer suburbs with their greater inherent automobile dependence (in 1990 it was 3,200 km per capita car travel in Manhattan, compared to 13,000 km in outer suburbs).

A similar process appears to be happening in Boston. The inner city (roughly the City of Boston) increased in population between 1980 and 1990 by 14,000 and in jobs by 51,000. This is a major reversal, particularly the population, since in the 1970s inner Boston lost 85,000 residents, in common with big declines in most US inner cities. Of the cities in this study, only in Boston, San Francisco and Portland was there a reversal in these patterns of decline and in these latter cases the proportion of reurbanisation is smaller than in Boston. It is not unrelated that Boston has also had a dramatic reduction in its inner city crime rate.

Photo 10 Boston's inner area is thriving as crime has diminished

The revitalisation of Boston's inner city is a signal to the rest of the US that suburban sprawl and decline of inner cities is not inevitable, it can be reversed. This is highly significant for achieving a more sustainable US city.

The revival of older areas of Boston has much further it can go. Opportunities for infill and rehabilitation are obvious in many parts of the city. The city centre itself has some wonderful development sites, especially once their Central Arterial Tunnel is completed where the chance to build inner city housing should not be missed. Such development will be an obvious boost to the local economy, but it will have much better flow-ons to the wider Boston economy as well. As Boston continues to show US cities how to reurbanise, it is predicted that it will do better economically than other US cities which continue to develop almost entirely on the basis of car-based development.

The above suggests that innovation in urban sustainability begins in the inner city. It can then spread to other parts of the city and suburbs. The design qualities and human scale of Newbury Street or some of the centre of Cambridge can now be translated to suburban centres. This will be the next big challenge for Boston.

In comparison to patterns of change outlined in this book in Europe and Asia, the 80's in US cities were a lost decade - except for some small signs in cities such as Boulder, Boston and Portland. Perhaps these three cities can build on this fledgling start as the innovative US cities. Perhaps they can show that controlling car use growth is one of the keys to economic health in the 90's. Perhaps they can show how revitalising neighbourhoods with traffic calming and mixed use developments can become so attractive politically it becomes normal practice. Perhaps they can start the trickle which becomes a flood as US cities recognise that returning to a more urban way of life is not only the way to stop urban sprawl and develop more sustainable transportation, but there are many more opportunities for livability that come with such a change.

There is much that any city can learn about sustainability from other cities, however in the US there has been a long held belief that the kind of changes we have discussed in Europe or even Canada could not work there. The importance of cities such as Boulder, Portland and Boston is that they are showing that US cities can be reshaped to begin overcoming automobile dependence in ways that fit their culture and values.

References

Arrington, G. B. (1993) Transportation and land use - A shared vision. Passenger Transport, Portland, 2(3), 4-14.

Gordon, P., Richardson, H. W. and Jun, M. (1991) The commuting paradox-evidence from the top twenty. Journal of the American Planning Association, 57, 416-420.

Havlick, S. (1997) Great cities for the 21st century. UNEP Regional Workshop for Asia Pacific, Symposium, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia.