As if to echo the debate over the viaduct replacement here in Seattle, a pile of stories came across my desk today about highway replacements (and "replacements") around the country. Here's a roundup: In a piece called "The End of the Road: Saying Goodbye to Freeways," NPR reports on several cities that are either tearing down highways or "talking about it," including New Orleans, New Haven, Cleveland, and Seattle. "Even the U.S. Department of Transportation, which spent decades promoting highways, recently stunned planners when it backed some freeway removal plans," NPR reports. As Seattleites can attest, however, there's a big difference between "talking about" tearing down freeways---as we've been doing here for the past seven years---and actually doing it. And even some of those "teardown" projects haven't necessarily improved the cities they're in, thanks in large part to state highway departments that don't support highway removal. In Cleveland, for example, the city wants to convert the West Shoreway freeway, which cuts the city off from Lake Erie, into a "slower, tree-lined boulevard," Streetsblog Capitol Hill reports. But the city has run into trouble at the state legislature, which has refused (thanks in part to lobbying by Cleveland's suburbs) to reduce the speed limit on the state-owned highway and has thwarted efforts by the city to add crosswalks, stop lights, and other pedestrian-friendly, traffic-calming improvements. Now, "Plans to redesign the highway with boulevard-style medians and the addition of trees are moving forward, but most of the aspects of the plan that would make the lakefront more accessible have been removed. "Although the addition of a bike and pedestrian trail survived, since it will be located on the lakeside of the highway, even bicyclists will have to access the paths through one of the tunnels" under the freeway, the only pedestrian access points to the water. In Boston, the Big Dig continues to make news with the revelation today that state transportation department officials kept the agency's director in the dark for a month about potentially hazardous light fixtures in the infamous tunnel. According to a front-page story in the Boston Globe: "Transportation Secretary Jeffrey B. Mullan said he did not learn about a Feb. 8 incident in which a corroded 110-pound light crashed onto the roadway in the Thomas P. “Tip’’ O’Neill Jr. Tunnel until March 9. "A senior aide to Mullan said that the road crew that initially cleaned up the fallen fixture treated it as road debris to be disposed of, apparently not appreciating the public safety threat posed by heavy falling objects in a tunnel used by more than 100,000 vehicles daily. No vehicle was damaged, but an internal inspection of light fixtures, conducted largely without Mullan’s knowledge, found about 300 that showed signs of corrosion where they are attached to the tunnel ceiling." Infrastructurist asks, "Is removing a major road really a good idea?" and concludes, basically, yes. Although redevelopment hasn't happened as quickly as every city that has removed a freeway has hoped (Milwaukee is one example), the cost savings and economic opportunity have universally been "significant." Another benefit of freeway removal is that, contrary to what freeway boosters fear, it often creates better traffic flow. Infrastructurist explains, citing a 2009 article from Scientific American: Simply put, drivers stop selfishly racing for the easiest route: The solution hinges on Braess’s paradox, [computer scientist Michael] Gastner says. “Because selfish drivers optimize a wrong function, they can be led to a better solution if you remove some of the network links,” he explains. Why? In part because closing roads makes it more difficult for individual drivers to choose the best (and most selfish) route. In the Boston example, Gastner’s team found that six possible road closures, including parts of Charles and Main streets, would reduce the delay under the selfish-driving scenario. (The street closures would not slow drivers if they were behaving unselfishly.) Finally, closer to home, Seattle Transit Blog has a visual aid (above) for surface/transit/I-5 supporters in Seattle. The upshot: Surface/transit/I-5 has more transit, and less highway, than any other option.
Yesterday, the city council’s Planning, Land Use, and Neighborhoods Committee (PLUNC) approved a controversial special zoning change that would allow the University of Washington to build a much taller research facility on Vulcan-owned land in South Lake Union than what’s allowed under current law. The building (assuming it’s approved by the full council) will be 125 feet tall—40 feet taller than the maximum that’s currently allowed in South Lake Union. (Overall, the building will have the same number of square feet as what’s currently permitted, but would be taller and skinnier.)
The university and Vulcan won their rezone by convincing the council to use a special rule, known as a “text amendment,” that allowed them to circumvent the usual neighborhood planning process and exempted them from rules that usually govern upzones on single plots of land, or “contract rezones.”
Not everyone on the council committee agreed with the decision. Tom Rasmussen, for example, called it a violation of the council’s commitment to neighborhood planning. “We’re bending over backwards to help one property owner,” he fumed.
The controversy over the UW-Vulcan upzone wasn’t primarily over the additional height (which would be allowed under most of the alternatives the council is already considering as part of the neighborhood planning process) but over the process itself, which two council members (and many residents in the South Lake Union neighborhood) argued gave a special deal to the UW and Vulcan.
Ordinarily, a project like this one would be considered as part of neighborhood planning—which, in South Lake Union’s case, is supposed to be completed in 2011. However, if a property owner can convince the council that their project deserves to move forward more quickly, they can request a “contract rezone” for a single piece of property. The downside, from a developer’s point of view, is that a contract rezone comes with numerous restrictions and requirements—for example, since a contract rezone is a “quasi-judicial” process (in which the council is essentially serving as a panel of judges), developers and others can’t lobby the council in favor or against it, and the council can’t discuss it publicly. Additionally, contract rezones usually require developers to pay for mitigation (like sidewalks and open space), cost more, and take longer than non-quasi-judicial rezones.
There is one other alternative for developers, like the UW, who want to fast-track their projects: A so-called “text amendment,” which includes none of the restrictions or requirements that are in a contract rezone—no (necessary) mitigation, no limits on lobbying, no extra time or costs. There’s a catch, though: A text amendment can’t be restricted to just one piece of property or one property owner.
How did Vulcan/UW get around that requirement? Apparently, by including a single piece of adjacent land in their text amendment request. However, that land—which is not owned by Vulcan—can’t take advantage of the height increase, due to a restriction on its air space (Kenmore Air planes fly above it). So it’s hard not to conclude, as council member Nick Licata did at yesterday’s meeting, that “this text amendment applies to only one block.” Translation: The rezone was fast-tracked for the UW and Vulcan.
In fairness, the UW didn’t exactly dispute that they were asking for a special deal. As UW medical school vice dean Ruth Mayhan told the council, “Without this project, we won’t have the space we need to support that program growth in the future. We do not have good alternatives to provide this research space,” Mayhan said, which she called “critical to our ability to attract and retain top researchers and the staff who work for them.”
We have a call in to Vulcan, which did not send a representative to testify at yesterday’s meeting, and will update if and when we hear back from them.
However, residents of the S0uth Lake Union neighborhood—those who are actively working on the area’s neighborhood plan—spoke emphatically against the proposal, calling it, among other things, “a significant increase in density for private benefit without public benefit” (Lake Union Opportunity Alliance representative John Pehrson) and a “totally inappropriate spot rezone [that] flies in the face of” neighborhood planning (Mirabella apartments resident Diane Masson). Masson later sent an email to council members calling the rezone “pure manipulation of the public process” and “clearly against the [South Lake Union] neighborhood plan.”
Two council members—Licata and Rasmussen—voted against the proposal. Licata worried aloud that doing a rezone for a single developer without going through the usual process would open the council up to “legal exposure.” Rasmussen, meanwhile, was uncharacteristically incensed about the unorthodox process.
“How can we expect neighborhoods to have confidence in the planning process and the land use committee of the city council when we do something like this?” Rasmussen said. He added that his vote against the rezone “is not against biotech, it’s not against Vulcan or research or good design, because I think that those can be achieved within the land use code. It’s a statement in favor of the integrity of neighborhood plans, environmental rules, and the land use code.
“This is not the land use committee’s finest hour,” Rasmussen concluded.
Contacted after yesterday’s meeting, land-use committee chair Sally Clark said she was generally opposed to using text amendments to upzone single pieces of property. “It’s not the way these kinds of zoning changes should be made,” she said. “The council needs to send a signal that we don’t like these and would really prefer that text amendments not take the place of what should be other processes.”
However, Clark added that she thought Vulcan and the UW “made a compelling case. … We have these competing desires to do a great job at neighborhood planning, which I fully believe in, and we have this competing desire to make sure we’re not standing in the way of economic development, particularly biotech, which we’ve committed to as a city.”
|
|
|