The Real Message from the Rejection of Proposition T

The Blame Game has begun. With the rejection Proposition T, RIFT supporters have unleashed a barrage of explanations and recriminations. These mostly deal with the money spent by “out of state” developers. We’ve also been reminded that virtually half of Santa Monicans supported the measure.

Supporters of Prop T seemed to miss the message imbedded in the vote.

This was not a close election. By example, I would point out that the gap between the two presidential candidates was 7%, and no one is arguing that it was a nail biter. The margin of victory of Prop T was 12%. This was a fairly sound rejection of the measure. While Prop T supporters argue that 16,000 folks voted for it, it should be noted that 20,000 residents voted against it.

Yet, I read and hear that this election was bought and paid for by “greedy” developers who subverted the residents’ wishes. The suggestion by the Prop T proponents that these 20,000 voters were somehow duped or misled is naive. That their vote somehow distorts the “residents,” wishes or that they are somehow less representative of the "community" is insulting. Prior to the election, I was told more than once by Prop T proponents that Santa Monicans are smart, that they would “see-through the developer mis-information.” So either, all of a sudden we’ve gotten dumb, or 20,000 Santa Monicans thought Prop T was not good policy. If the Prop T supporters don’t at least consider this in their post-election introspection than they are deceiving themselves.

Even the Santa Monica Mirror, hardly a tool of the development community rejected Prop T in its endorsements. The paper argued, as have many others, that the City has undertaken a public planning process, albeit a slow one, resulting in a plan known as LUCE, as imperfect it is, that ought to be respected. It is neither a top down document, nor is it the product of a handful of community advocates, but one with a whole host of authors , contributors and critics.

Clearly Santa Monica is not a monolithic community. It does not have one resident constituency, but many. It is a constituency that will continue to evolve in unpredictable directions. LUCE is a document that is full of compromises reflecting the heterogeneity of opinion to be found in this wonderful city. This election seems to me to be an acknowledgement of those differences and shows respect for this multi-year process. That’s the message I think we should be taking from last Tuesday’s Election Day.

Way to Go Santa Monica!!

Well, we dodged a big one last night. Proposition T was defeated by a 12% majority. That strikes me as a victory for the LUCE process, and a defeat of ad hoc planning by a strident minority. Over the next few weeks I will transform this blog into one that advocates on urban design and planning issues in the city, but for now, I will just enjoy. Congratulations to all who worked against this measure, to our re-elected council members, and to everyone who voted for Measure R, an important part of this overall effort.

Why Proposition T May Not Be Good for Local Shop Owners

One of the curious arguments that I've heard in support of Proposition T is that by capping commercial development in the City we will be supporting Mom and Pop stores. To be fair, this is not the main argument in favor of the measure, but it has been offered as something of an indirect benefit. I assume that the belief is that by limiting new commercial development we will be minimizing the ability of new chain stores to come into the city and effectively put these local shops out of business.

However, I'm not sure I buy this argument. Local stores, such as my favorite second hand bookstore, Kultura Books on Ocean Park at 17th Street (shameless plug, I know, but it's owned by a great couple who really know books, music and art) survive and sometimes thrive because they effectively compete with the chains, either because they've carved out a unique market niche, offer superior service and/or pay cheaper rent. In most cases all three conditions are present.

So how will Prop T effect any of those three criteria? Well, I suspect it will have an affect on rents. Prop T will be of great benefit to existing commercial property owners in the City by limiting future supply. The price of real estate, like every other commodity is driven by supply and demand. Unfortunately, this measure will not affect demand. As a result, a scarcity of commercial space will be created over time driving up commercial rents. Commercial landlords will be handed a gift with this measure. For absolutely no effort, they will see an ever growing rise in commercial rents, merely because they have been freed from competition. Chain stores will still make every effort to come into the City, but they will have fewer options. This pattern of ever rising rents, in cities that have severely limited growth, is common. In this case, it's a sure way to drive out the Mom and Pop's we'd all like to protect.

RIFT Does Not Prevent More Shopping Malls

The literature for Prop T claims that the City has projected the equivalent of up to five more Santa Monica Place Malls in the future. Presumably, passage of Prop T will cut that in half, and so we’ll only have to deal with 2 ½ of these. That doesn’t strike me as much of an improvement.

I don’t ever want to see any of more these mall in the City -- Not one more ever!
I don’t want to see another Water Garden project either.

However, my problem with Santa Monica Place and the Water Garden is not a quantitative one. So I don’t think setting an arbitrary limitation on the quantity of commercial development in the future will, by itself prevent such abominations in the future. The problems of these two projects and others of their ilk are ones of design, and diversity, not mere quantity.

By diversity, I am referring to the mono-culture that each of these projects represents. One is a concentration of office workers only, the other an amalgam of shoppers. Both such concentrations are recipes for congestion. They each subject the city to a pulse of traffic at certain times of the day, while allowing the underutilization of expensive resources at other times. Diverse development provides a more round the clock set of experiences. This spreads out the traffic, and utilizes resources more efficiently, while allowing people to live, work, shop and play within a walkable area.

By design, I am referring to their lack of transparency, both literally and urbanistically. Both of these projects (and they are very definitely projects, not districts, not neighborhoods, not pieces of a town) are ‘coarsely grained.’ Think of a fabric, where the City’s warp and weave is very tight, but a moth has come and eaten a hole in it. Each of these project sits within that moth-hole eaten fabric, what urban designers call a super-block, completely out of scale with the urban street grid of the city in which they sit. In the case of Water Garden, a very sub-urban, highly irrigated and non-native buffer of unusable green space separates the project from the rest of its neighbors turning the edges of the project into auto-dominated no-mans’ lands. At SM Place, a set of parking garages, and blank walls (only some of which are being ameliorated by the renovation) isoloate the behemoth from the City.

If the quantities of commercial space that each of the project represent were distributed more evenly, in more diverse and in more transparent and pedestrian friendly arrangements they would hardly register in terms of traffic and no one would be using them as the poster children of ‘over development.’ I know this because there’s a whole lot more commercial development on the three blocks of 3rd Street that constitute the Promenade than there are at these two projects and no one uses the Promenade as the thing to avoid. I don’t here folks complaining about how lousy Wilshire Boulevard is or Main Street. Good urbanism, diverse and well designed always has a constituency.

Proposition T does nothing to assure good urbanism anywhere. In fact it does the opposite. It limits diversity in favor of a mono-culture of housing. With Proposition T we’re just making the same mistake over again, just giving it different, but worn out clothing.

Proposition T = Common Sense-NOT!

The other day, I noticed an aging little industrial building being rehabbed on Olympic Boulevard in Santa Monica. It’s in the vicinity of the Upper School at Crossroads. Empty for at least three years now it was, until this rehab began, really falling apart. I’d guess it to be about 20,000 sq. feet it size, but it might be a bit more. A new “industrial sash” i.e., a window system composed of a grid of metal with small glass panes in between, is being installed, and the building appears as if it is being readied as a space for a design firm, but that’s just me surmising – it really doesn’t matter. 

What matters is that an abandoned hulk of a building is being brought back to life, and its effect will be to put more eyes on the street, and to bring a bit more humanity to an otherwise soulless boulevard.

However, because the building has been vacant for more than two years it would, under Proposition T, be considered new. So if this project were being undertaken under RIFT, the proposed renovation of this 20,000+/- sf. building would be in competition for the 75,000 sf. of allocable commercial space in a given year. If it succeeded in being selected (who knows how that will be done) only 55,000 sf. would still be available in the entire city for allocation in a given year. This is maybe enough for a viable medical office building (remember hospitals are exempt, but medical office space is not).

The renovation of Santa Monica Place is also most welcome. While in my opinion it doesn’t go far enough (it is still a mall after all) at least it will be better connected to the rest of the area. However, the old Robinsons-May department store has also been vacant for over two years. Its renovation and refilling as a Nordstrom would, if constructed under Proposition T, absorb at least a year’s worth of commercial development (probably more). The Wilshire Theater has been vacant, I’d guess about a year now, and assuming it stays that way for one more year, its renovation would suck up well over another year’s worth of commercial development, just to bring it back to life. And that’s assuming that these projects were “selected.” Nothing in Proposition T gives priority to renovations or rehabilitations or even the re-leasing existing space. These buildings, could simply sit waiting their turn, if in fact their turn ever came. Does this make any sense?

But I’ve heard a lot about how Proposition T, with its cap on new commercial development, will lead to a reduction in traffic increase, that it’s just “common sense.” Even Council Member Bobby Shriver, a man for whom I have great respect (but happen to disagree with on this issue) has written as much in his belated endorsement of the measure.

Well the world of planning is full of such “common sense” debacles. Whether it was the separation of uses, which led to so much traffic congestion to begin with – housing over here, shopping over there, workplaces over in this other area – a prescription referred to as “Euclidean Zoning” (after the supreme court decision involving the city of Euclid, OH), or the post-war penchant by traffic engineers to create nice and wide residential streets under the belief that wider was safer – a strategy that, as it happened, simply encouraged cars to go faster resulting in more pedestrian fatalities than had been the norm, our planning history is full of “common sense” approaches that were anything but sensical. I could go on. For example there’s the "common sense" approach to traffic planning that minimizes intersections in favor of unimpeded multi-lane arterials of the Cloverfield ilk that supposedly make traffic go faster and unencumbered, but which, in the end, lead to such pedestrian unfriendly travesties as the Water Garden.

Then there was the common sense approach of building urban shopping malls that were the rage in the 70’s that led to the destruction of blocks and blocks of good urban buildings, the privatization of the public realm, and concentration of one type of space in a very tight area, (causing massive traffic congestion) in order to construct such street-killing, soulless behemoths as Santa Monica Place.

So it may seem like common sense to limit commercial development as a way of reducing traffic, but only if:

1) Santa Monica itself were isolated, and could control what happened beyond its borders;
2) Santa Monica did not have a major interstate, and a collection of state highways and arterials bisecting its geography allowing traffic to move through the City on its way to other places;
3) The limitation imposed by Proposition T was not so transit-unsupportive;
4) The limitation would not reduce the effectiveness of Transportation Demand Management;
5) Proposition T provided incentives for re-using existing space and did not treat existing commercial space, vacant over two years, as if it were non-existent
6) The limitation imposed by the measure got at the root of the problem, which is not the quantity of space, but how people get to the space that exists;
7) The limitation had a realistic set of supportive policies that created priorities according to: geography, diversity and land use mix; among others and
8) There weren’t other, better measures that could and should be deployed.

So to those who say Proposition T is just “common sense,” I say, NOT.

Reason #1. Reducing commercial development to 75,000 square feet per year will not reduce traffic and may even increase it.

Actually, Proposition T don’t claim that RIFT will reduce traffic, only that it will slow the rate of traffic increase. So, of course, we’ll never know if it has worked or not, because there is no base line. How do we know how fast traffic would have increased if the measure hadn’t passed? How do we know if Proposition T reduced that rate of traffic growth by 10%, 50%, none at all, or even made matters worse?

Another way to frame their argument it seems to me, is that traffic in Santa Monica is terrible, and and that RIFT is a measure that will allow it to get worse slower than it would have otherwise gotten worse. Sounds amazingly half-baked. I think my six-year old framed it best when he said, “that’s just dumb.” I mean if you went to a doctor, with a chronic and debilitating disease, and she offered you a therapy that would slow your rate of decline, but you knew that other therapies existed that, over time, would actually allow you to see an improvement, wouldn’t you fire that doctor?

The Proposition T literature loudly proclaims, in bold type, “Our city's own traffic consultant says we can’t fit any more cars on our gridlocked streets,” How is a measure that acknowledges a problem, but then fails to provide anything resembling an adequate solution acceptable? (By the way the City uses a lot of traffic consultants, so I’d like to know which one made such an inane and unprofessional remark).

In other words, why doesn’t this measure attack the root cause of the problem, which is how people get around to work, to shop or to play? We know that there are cities with far greater density with less traffic burdens. The reason, this measure doesn’t attack the root cause, is that by doing so, the Prop-T advocates would acknowledge the value of appropriately designed mixed-use development to the long term health of the city. This measure uses the traffic as a Trojan horse to fight something more at the heart of every development issue in the city, which is that the Prop T backers simply do not want to see any more growth. Proposition T backers, would like to put a wall around this city and freeze it as is.

How do I know? Well again, look at the literature from a recent “Yes Prop T” mailing: “And more development is coming, Lots more. Our City Council just voted to INCREASE new building heights on all of our major boulevards from Wilshire to Pico to as high as six stories tall.”

So what does this have to do with Proposition T? Not one thing. Proposition T does not in any way affect the building heights in the city. This is just a scare tactic. It is intended to get the reader to distrust all developers, those interlopers “(some from San Francisco and Beverly Hills),” who would continue to do work in this city, and contribute to its evolution and its tax base.

Moreover, residential development, which is unaffected by Prop T, will probably increase as a result. So if you think voting for Proposition T will somehow change or overturn what the Council has just passed than you are in for a disappointment. All that will happen is that you will assure that this six-story development is almost exclusively residential. But you respond, well doesn’t residential development generate less traffic than commercial development? Not necessarily; it depends on the context.

“Okay, so maybe Prop T won’t affect traffic at all, where’s the harm?” you ask, “how could Prop T actually increase traffic (at least more so than not endorsing Prop T)?” Simply put, because it is fundamentally contrary to the smart growth principles that affect mobility and travel impacts that so many progressive cities, cities that are attempting to be as green as Santa Monica are incorporating. And please don’t take my word for it, go to:
http://www.smartgrowthplanning.org/ForecastMeasure.html, a web site put out by Fehr and Peers, one of the largest and most respected transportation planning firms in the nation.

The literature identifies five key measures:

1. Transit Proximity
2. Density of Development
3. Diversity of Development
4. Design of Development
5. Destination Accessibility of Development

Let’s highlight three of them:

Density of Development: Higher numbers of residents and jobs per acre are often a Smart Growth planning objective, and are effective at reducing travel and other impacts, especially when accompanied by high levels of regional accessibility, mix of uses, and quality urban design. Development density is a useful indicator of Smart Growth plans, and is usually measured in terms of total population and employment per acre. Density also reduces the need to convert exurban land to urban uses.

Diversity of Development: Land use mix measures the relative balances of jobs and housing as well as the mix of retail and non-retail jobs within walking/ biking distance or, secondarily, short driving distance. Diversity is correlated with reductions in vehicle trips and vehicle miles, and is therefore an indicator of a Smart Growth plan.

Design of Development: Smart Growth concepts often involve walkable neighborhoods. When measured in terms of connectivity and density of the street and pedestrian networks and sidewalk completeness, walkable urban designs are correlated with reduced vehicle travel, and represent a useful indicator of Smart Growth.

So if you think substituting residential development for commercial development is the right way to go because you think the former will generate less traffic than you are being duped for a second time. As I’ve said before, it all depends on context.

An Intermezzo to discuss the mythology of RIFT

I received a rather angry email today from a political candidate, who after questioning my motives for opposing Proposition T (i.e., because I am an architect and urban designer, I must be in league with the devil), finally got around to the real issue, writing:

"....most residents do not want to make Santa Monica into SF, DC, NY or even WLA or Playa Vista. We don't need out of towners to tell us what our city should be like. We want to keep what's left of our small beach town atmosphere."

Voila, I thought! This the hidden agenda, to preserve "what's left of our our small beach town." This is at the heart of what I call the mythology.

Maybe it's because I am a newcomer (having lived here three years), but I can't quite reconcile how a city that was home to 30,000 air-craft manufacturing jobs could be thought of solely as a small beach town. Clearly, Santa Monica has had another side to itself, a manufacturing town that played a critical role in the machinery of World War II production aircraft. The Santa Monica that I visited, perhaps twenty-some years ago, I guess after Douglas had closed down, was forlorn, and somewhat down on its heels. It was neither funky, nor laid back, but I'm not sure it's the Santa Monica that's remembered with as much fondness.

The comeback of Santa Monica over the last 2 decades is remarkable, clearly a case study for planners across the country. But this selective memory of the city, by at least a few of its long-time inhabitants, seems to be at the heart of almost every land-use debate in Santa Monica, and one, that in the context of RIFT must be addressed head-on.

Proposition T will not preserve what's left of the "small town beach atmosphere." In fact it will kill it. As I've argued previously (see Reason #9), Proposition T will have the effect of substituting housing-only districts for any sort of sustainable mixed-use development. The housing will be of some density (to be negotiated, no doubt) and cause more traffic than the uses that Proposistion T aims to limit. That new housing will bring even more "outsiders" into Santa Monica, who will demand services, shops, nightlife, etc. They will vote, both with their feet and at the ballot box. These new residents are unlikely to share the same concerns as those who would advocate "keeping what's left of the "small town beach community."

In other words, Proposition T will simply not accomplish the existential preservation goal some its proponents have invested in it. The situation reminds me of a prize fighter on his last legs, swinging wildly, hoping to land a lucky punch, but lacking any strategy or tactics to get back in the match.

On election night, if the measure passes, proponents will pop the corks and celebrate. But in five years, this existential preservation issue that seems to haunt this City will reemerge. Who really won that election five years ago the RIFT supporters will wonder, their faith in the myth of this measure dragging. Of course we all will have lost.

Reason #8. This measure will hurt our city's efforts to halt global warming.

Now you might ask how could a measure aimed at reducing traffic by capping commercial development contribute to global warming? Well, as suggested in previous posts, it’s because this measure simply won’t reduce traffic, not one little bit. Indeed it will more than likely increase it.

How can this be you ask? Isn't it a given that less commercial development= less traffic? Isn't that what RIFT's supporters confidently argue on their own web site?

“Despite what the opposition claims, traffic engineers agree that new development creates more traffic.”

Well, no it isn't a given. The fallacy is evident when one asks the question, what traffic engineers are they talking about? Not one competent traffic engineer I know (and I actually know at least 50 working in small towns to large cities--and in universities) would ever make such a bold claim. Most traffic engineers will tell you the effect on traffic depends on factors including: what kind of development, what's in the area, what the context is, how much parking is provided, what sort of Transportation Demand Management programs are part of the project, if congestion pricing part of the equation, etc. So the question remains: What kind of development are those traffic engineers talking about? Not all new development creates new traffic.

But supporters continue:

“And the city itself has said that commercial development creates far more traffic than any other kind.”

As we’ve seen from Reason #9 below, this comment is unsupportable. It was made by one traffic engineer with the City who is using outdated ITE standards (for more on ITE Standards see Reason #9 published below). But the argument goes on to say:

“Without some limits on commercial growth, traffic will continue to worsen every year. Developers know it, the city knows it, and so do residents.”

Now this is the kind of argument worthy of Sarah Palin (okay, I couldn’t resist). If proponents of RIFT say it over and over, than I must know it? Is this a faith-based initiative? Developers don’t necessarily know it, because it’s not necessarily true. The arguments sound so much like the Republican Vice Presidential nominee: circular reasoning, no specifics, and a proponent who doesn't really understand the complexities inherent in the issues.

“Our only hope for curbing traffic growth is to slow down the type of development that generates the most traffic.”

Well, on this point I do agree, but that type of development, the kind that generates the most traffic, is the low-density, single-use development that got us here in the first place. Unfortunately, that development is precisely the opposite of what Proposition T aims to accomplish.

So let’s get back to global warming. We know that 40% of carbon emissions come from transportation, so every effort to reduce single-occupancy vehicle use should be the highest priority. Yet when Terry O'Day, Executive Director of Environment Now, claims that RIFT will actually cause global warming, his comments are met with a patronizing dismissal by the Prop-T proponents. The pro-RIFT website features the comment that "he's a reasonable young man," as if to say, but totally naive. Well since Mr. O'Day can hardly be considered a tool of the developers, and doesn't strike one as naive, there must be another explanation for his assertion.

Let me attempt to provide it by asking these questions: Does anyone really think that putting a cap on commercial development in Santa Monica will somehow make the demand go away? Does anyone  think that the demand will not simply be satisfied somewhere else, like West L.A, Venice, Marina D.R or Culver City? From a tax revenue point of view, our loss is their gain. But wait a minute, people will still have to drive there. Santa Monicans will drive further, and folks coming in will cut through Santa Monica to get there. Moreover, the possibilities for true mixed-use development here in S.M. will be diminished, and we will return to making housing-only bedroom communities. What do you think that will do to the traffic? That's what O'Day means by arguing that true mixed-use development adjacent to transit is an ESSENTIAL part of the project to reduce, and ultimately reverse global warming. We do not live in a little cocoon here in Santa Monica

Wouldn’t it make sense, therefore, to locate a mix of jobs and housing at, say the future light rail stop at Bergamot Station, so folks could take public transit to work? Walking, bicycling and using public transit to get to jobs and retail services are effective at doing reducing global warming. Minimizing Vehicle-Miles-Traveled (VMTs) is another method. That is, even if you have to drive in your car, if you drive less, you burn less fuel and emit less carbon. Proposition T, will clearly have the opposite effect. Santa Monicans will drive further to get to services outside of the city.  Medical office workers and patients will drive between hospitals and doctors’ offices where they could have otherwise walked. Employees will drive through Santa Monica on their way to new jobs in Venice and Marina Del Rey, where they would have previously stopped in Santa Monica.

But maybe you're thinking: Look, I get what you saying, but don't we have to do something? Yes, and there's plenty the city could do. We could emulate cities like Belleview, WA, or Boulder, CO, cities that, like Santa Monica, lack rail transit, but have made serious inroads into traffic congestion without mindless development caps:

In downtown Bellevue, utilizing Transportation Demand Managment techniques, the drive-alone commute rate fell by 30% from 1990 to 2000, falling from 81% driving alone to 57%.

In Boulder, since 1995, the drive-alone rate for employees working downtown has fallen almost 30%, from 56% driving alone to 36%, while the transit mode share (busses) has more
than doubled from 15% to 34%.

Finally, in downtown Stockholm, Sweden, six months into the trial of a "congestion pricing" experiment, the average traffic reduction across the control points between 6:30 AM and 6:29 PM has been 22% -- IN SIX MONTHS.

Where do I get these examples? Well Santa Monica is hardly the first city in Southern California to wrestle with these issues. A traffic reduction strategy report compiled for the City of Pasadena pointed me in this direction. It's available at:

http://www.ci.pasadena.ca.us/trans/ARCHIVE/20070421_Workshop/Pasadena_Traffic_Reduction_Strategies_11_2_06_DRAFT.pdf

So, once again I'm not arguing for the status quo and for doing nothing. I am arguing for a more thoughtful land use strategy that combines a mixing of uses with robust Transportation Demand Managment techniques that allow us to create a much more vital, equitable, convenient, and sustainable city than we have today. Proposition T takes us in the opposite direction.

Reason #9. RIFT is biased against lower income folks

Wow, you say, that's a fairly bold assertion. Especially in light of the fact that a cap on commercial development is likely to result in even more opportunities to build housing, which should bring down the cost of housing, and therefore make life more affordable no? In short, No.

When we look at affordability, the cost of housing is just one part of a larger equation. Folks who purchased housing way out in Apple Valley in San Bernardino County or Santa Clarita under the rubric, "Drive till you qualify" learned that lesson fairly recently with the rise in gas prices. I implicitly learned that early in my own career, when I moved from New York City to Charlottesville, VA. You would think that my quality of life would have improved by that move, since housing in the latter is considerably cheaper. But in New York I didn't need a car, while in Charlottesville, I did. The savings in rent were more than eaten up in the expense of automobile ownership. With the cost of automobile ownership estimated to average $8,000/year (after taxes),* working families who don't need two cars, or even one, are simply better off then those who do. Those families can afford to have their children participate in after school activities because they don't need to take off work to schlep them to those events. Note that the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) views affordable housing,

"...within the context of neighborhood design, where pedestrian quality, the provision of public space, and walkable access to services [and jobs] become an essential part of the affordability equation. ...the emphasis is on mix rather than any one form of housing by itself. New Urbanism elevates the principle of urbanism, within which the quality of diversity is seen as essential." http://www.cnu.org/node/936

So building affordable or work-force housing that is not intimately connected with jobs and services is simply not a very good strategy. Again you might argue, "Hey, Santa Monica already has plenty of jobs, and plenty of retail. What we don't have is adequate housing for the people who staff those jobs." All of this is true. We certainly need housing at all price points, and I would hope that housing grows at a faster rate than job growth specifically for that reason. At the same time, however, the most robust mix of jobs, services and housing is probably the best prescription to ensure an adequacy of car-reduced and car-free options for both residents and employers alike. That's a more equitable equation for lower income families.

So again, I'm not arguing for the status quo. The machine is broken, that's clear, but the tools required to fix it are are more varied and more precise in their nature, more like those of a surgeon, than those of say a rough carpenter installing plywood. In other words the building of "housing-only" areas strikes me as a really bad idea.

*estimate of cost per year from http://carsharingus.blogspot.com/2008/05/aaa-cost-of-car-ownership-for-2008.html

Reason #10. Proposition T-RIFT, will not stop development, just commercial development. The increased housing will generate even more traffic.

Really, you might say, how is that? Well land has value based upon what someone can use it for. So, if I'm a landowner, and I've got an underutilized asset, (such as a lot of parking, and an unused building on my land) what can I do with it? Since the only thing available is to build housing, I'll build, guess what? housing. Won't that be better you ask, since that housing will help to equalize the jobs to housing inbalance that Santa Monica currently, "enjoys?" Moreover, doesn't housing generate less traffic than commercial development? Indeed the pro-Measure T web site asserts:

"According to the city's own traffic engineer, commercial development brings in 3 to 4 times the amount of traffic as new residential development. Therefore, by slowing the pace of commercial development, Prop T will reduce the future growth in traffic congestion."

But if you're a traffic planner or engineer and you buy this argument, than I've got a bridge in Alaska to sell you. Here's what two of the nation's premier traffic planners, Adam Millard-Ball and Patrick Siegman, have to say in, Planning Magazine, about the "traffic generation" methodology behind this assertion.

The [traffic generation] methodology has long been seen as a routine process, undertaken by traffic engineers based on Institute of Transportation Engineers manuals. Increasingly, however, planners are realizing that conventional traffic impact analysis creates serious hurdles for compact, transit-oriented development.

The problem is simple: Traffic study methodologies are designed to analyze single-use, auto-oriented suburban development proposals. Although thousands of pedestrian- and transit-friendly traditional neighborhoods exist —indeed, this was the predominant pattern of development before World War II— the most commonly used manuals contain virtually no data on them.

In fact, the recommended procedures for preparing a trip-generation report declare that such places are not proper candidates for study.

ITE's Trip Generation is the customary reference for figuring the number of vehicle trips likely to be produced by a given amount of development.... However, as the companion Trip Generation Handbook reports, "The data contained in Trip Generation are, by definition, from single-use developments where virtually all access is by private automobile and all parking is accommodated on site."

Why is this true by definition? ITE's recommended site-selection procedures for a trip-generation study declare that it should be possible to isolate the site for counting purposes. Therefore, selected sites must have "no shared parking...; limited ability for pedestrians to walk into the site from nearby parcels; [and] limited transit availability or use.."

"These procedures rule out counting the traditional mixed use neighborhood, which, for ITE, has too much shared on-street parking, too much walking from place to place, and often too much transit.

As a result, although millions of Americans live, work, and shop in traditional streetcar suburbs, mixed use neighborhoods, and downtowns, Trip Generation's 1,822 pages offer no insight into their travel habits.

(to read the entire article go to: http://www.stanford.edu/~adammb/Publications/Millard-Ball_Siegman_2006_Playing_the_Numbers_Game.pdf

Well, using the out of date formulas of the traffic engineering industry each housing unit generates 8-12 car trips a day. Let's say, for this exercise, a new housing unit is 1000 square feet (a teeny bit small for an average, but easier to do the math). By the same industry standards, each new 1000 square feet of office space would generate 8-16 trips a day, more or less the same. Retail space would generate about 10 trips per 1,000. But those are the most suburban standards assuming, everyone drives for every trip. The reality is however, that buildings per se do not generate traffic in themselves. It is the position of these buildings within the urban environment that determines the traffic load. Retail space in downtown Santa Monica generates only 40% of the traffic that the same amount of space would generate in the suburbs. The reason being that the City uses a "park-once" strategy, so each car trip is more efficient. Moreover, there are Transportation Demand Management techniques that office building owners utilize that easily reduce car trips by 50%, (incentives for car pooling, biking, walking or utilizing public transit) and possible more (like having a mix of service retail uses near the office space minimizing lunch hour trips).

But why, you ask, is the housing number as high as it is? Well, again this is a number generated primarily from single-family suburban houses, which are on average considerably larger than 1,000 sf and occupy considerably more land. However in high value communities such as S.M. the unit sizes are smaller, and the density greater, but the amount of cars don't go down very much UNLESS the housing is in a mixed-use neighborhood, where residents can walk, bike or transit to shopping and work, precisely the kind of development Measure T prevents. But the pro-Proposition T forces assert that the:

Lantana Entertainment expansion on Olympic/Exposition near 28th/Stewart... will bring 200,000 additional sq ft of commercial/office space and 2,000 additional daily car trips through Pico neighborhood and Sunset Park...

But what if the project were not to be built? We'd no doubt get 200 or so residences, with somewhere around 8 -12,000 car trips per day generated (using the same methodology), with considerably less tax revenue for the City. But you could argue, with the housing we're no worse off, so maybe it's worth taking a chance on this. Except there's a third possibility: why not split the difference? Why not work toward on a one-to-one jobs to housing ratio in every major project, or within a specified geographic area so that a true reduction in traffic could be achieved? Imagine the sheer pleasure of being able to walk to work? That would require a progressive land use policy, that granted, we haven't achieved in this City. However, one thing's for certain. We we will never achieve that kind of enlightenment if this RIFT comes into being.

Okay, the 11th Reason to Oppose R.I.F.T.

So I missed a big one. It turns out that while Proposition T exempts hospitals from the cap on commercial development, it does not exempt medical office space that is often needed to support those hospitals. Wow, was this a well thought-out initiative or what? There is a full page ad this week in, of all rags, the Santa Monica Mirror (hardly a tool of the developers, I think we can agree) and Surf Santa Monica from both of Santa Monica's hospitals arguing quite cogently why this is a really terrible measure. The ad points out that even non-profits are not exempt. These uses must compete with car dealerships and fast food joints for those precious 75,000 square feet of space allocated each year. These two institutions, one public, one private, seem to have a real concern for the long-term viability of their respective institutions if this measure passes, stating,

"Proposition T could severely limit the Hospitals' ability to provide essential health services by limiting the building of medical office space..."

That alone ought to be reason enough to kill this measure. To read the full opinion piece navigate to:

http://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/letters/Letters-2008/October-2008/10_02_08_Joint_Statement_Concerning_Prop_T.htm

The Top 10 Reasons to Oppose RIFT

Okay I do not mean to trivialize this with a "Late Show" type listing, yet I do think it's a good way to start the conversation. In this post I will identify the top 10 reasons why I think that Proposition T is a bad idea. This is just an outline. In follow-up posts, I will go through each of these reasons in detail, one per post.

So here they are:

1. Reducing commercial development to 75,000 square feet per year will not reduce traffic and may even increase it.

2. There are more effective ways to fight traffic congestion. This method is like using a chain saw to do heart surgery (or as my teacher used to say, if the only tool in your box is a hammer, than every problem looks like a nail).

3. This measure will not increase pedestrian safety.

4. This measure will require cuts in services, increase in taxes, or some of both to maintain a balanced budget.

5. This measure will affect the ability to redevelop abandoned industrial sites in the city particularly along Olympic Avenue

6. This measure will seriously affect the ability to humanize Lincoln  and Pico Boulevards

7. This measure will impact the likelihood of the Purple Line, aka, "the Subway to the Sea" aka, the Wilshire Blvd. subway from ever getting beyond Westwood. (Note, I'm not talking about the Expo light rail line here, but the actual underground subway).

8. This measure will hurt our city's efforts to halt global warming and create a more sustainable environment.

9. It is biased against lower income folks.

10. It will not stop development, just commercial development. The increased housing will generate even more traffic.

There are other reasons, but these are mine.