The Good and Bad of Houses

 So as I mentioned in my last post, there's a bit of a blind spot to this blog sometimes, which is that while urbanism is about how people live and move in their cities, I tend to focus more on move than live.

I'm not going to fix that with one post and I'm not going to try. But I do want to talk a bit both about how I see the value in the urban form that is most commonly idealized in the US (the single-family detached house) and how I see it as a limiting factor--and that the tension between those two can be, and should be, mitigated to at least some extent by design choices.

This is particularly important if we're going to get the kind of density we need both for urban transportation to work well and to accommodate all the people who want to live in our cities, let alone if we have the idea of something like a 15-minute city in the back of our minds.

1. Why Houses Rule

Look, I have lived most of my life in a single-family detached house and I'm not going to pretend I don't see the appeal.

There's privacy (see the wall?). There's beauty (OK, I don't love the house color myself but look at those trees!). There's ample space (that house has so many bedrooms!). There's fairly efficient design given the space (it's pretty easy to heat and cool because of its compact nature, if done right). 

This is a good house to live in and a nice place to make your home.

You can have space you make your own; you hear relatively little from neighbors or street noise; you can park cars, play basketball, grill out, do whatever your heart desires in your own space.

Of course lots of people want and like these. It'd be stranger if they didn't, especially as we cannibalize and remove public spaces that might be venues for some of that personal expression and social activity.

2. Why Apartments Rule--or the Limiting Factors of Houses

What we have, in a sense, is a tragedy of the commons. Because single-family detached homes are great for the people living in them. But too many of them in one spot tends to bring a whole series of problems--not least that all those houses tend not to actually be full of families and so the space per person goes way up.

That building above? It's right next to an apartment building. I say this to make clear that you don't need to build only one type of housing in an area. It's not like joinery, where a certain cut only goes in with another cut. It's more like LEGO: you can stick whatever the heck you want next to each other and it works within some basic constraints.

But we often build out, especially in the US, through zoning that emphasizes or even allows only a single kind of home, and then act surprised when too much of that kind of home produces problems.

Gaze out into the fringes of Chicago, where everything becomes a single family home...

If every house is this big, every house is great for all the things listed in #1. But also every house has some limitations too:

a) Cost 

That house sold for over a million dollars. Not everyone can afford this (obviously).

b) Space

As mentioned above, that house is big. How many people are actually living in it? How many per square foot? How much space does that take to house your population? Some of these houses can be reconfigured to fit more than one family, but that's usually inefficient and awkward especially compared to purpose-built multi-family housing. I lived in one in Rochester, NY; I know from personal experience.

c) Size

The flip side: if I have a family over a certain size, I need a bigger house.

d) Flexibility

Due to the above, this house doesn't flip easily, it doesn't rent cheaply or easily (if it were even rented), and it doesn't provide much option for younger families coming up the housing ladder or elderly families downsizing. 

All of the above are things apartments and condominiums do a lot better. They cost a lot to build but recoup that by spreading costs over a lot more people. They can be carved up to allow more and less space in various configurations much more easily than a house (and can be built with multiple options in advance, even). They  allow families to move in and out of an area, or to find larger or smaller space, much more easily, and with a lot less friction than constantly buying and selling real estate.

And that's not even getting into the fact that it's rare for houses to have street-level retail, which pushes buying and selling into their own designated zones and feeds both car dependency and lack of options in a neighborhood.

3. Resolving Tension

The basic point of how to resolve this tension is of course to permit multiple zoning options. If you don't have to build single-family, someone will take a chance on other options. But it goes beyond that. We need to make apartments and condos attractive to people, not just force them into them.

What does that mean?

It might mean having a greater variety of apartment/condo options on the market: not just studios and 1-bedrooms that assume singles and couples, but more 3-4 bedroom options as well that allow people to be part of apartment or condo living while having children, even multiple children, and space.

It might mean using some of that space savings not just on more housing, but on housing-associated amenities, like this park in Toronto that's surrounded by high-rise condo/apartment living (and an urban highway, but sssh!).

It might mean emphasizing those unique elements of apartment-heavy streets, like the street-level retail and the attendant Jane-Jacobs-style eyes on the street, to drive home the benefits of that urban fabric.

It might mean better upkeep of social housing and other high-rise options that have a bad reputation so that people don't associate them with negatives as much.

There's a lot of things it means. But fundamentally, it means remembering that since we can't all have single-family detached homes and all the other things that make cities great, we have to make it appealing to live in other ways--and it can be. 

We can't do that by denying that single family homes are great. We do it by making the alternative just as great or better.

American Transportation

The 250th anniversary celebration of the US seems like as good a time as any to think about how the US stacks up globally in terms of this blog's focus of urbanism and transportation.

To be clear, by "globally" I mean here against other Westernized, industrialized countries. If we want to claim to be the wealthiest, best, most shining-city-on-a-hill country in the world, we should be comparing ourselves to people who are in similar circumstances and do urbanism in a model that's based on similar wealth and a similarish social organization. I am not here to debate the value of a traditional Micronesian village as an urbanist space or to try to distinguish between the various ways that societies have organized themselves and their spaces across time and space and declare one or the other superior. Rather, I'm suggesting that there are certain standards that we look for in Western societies, of which the US is one, in their social, geopolitical, and spatial organization, and then looking at how the US might compare to its apparent peers.

And since this is around July 4, I'm going to look at how the US is doing on urbanism along three Jeffersonian axes: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

1. Life 

Let's start with a big, long list: nations by traffic-related deaths. 

Obviously, there's per capita here, which the US looks middle of the world pack in, just under the global average. But look at the countries above us and below us, and think about their wealth. And then adjust the same list by per billion km of driving. Well, you lose a lot of countries for lack of data. But we look good compared to say a Belgium, a New Zealand, and a South Korea, each of which are higher--but then there's Canada and most of Europe well below. 

This is not intended to be conclusive data, but rather an indication: in terms of allowing, promoting, and sustaining the fundamental guarantee of "life," the US is not doing its best.

And that's just actual deaths. 

There's a good argument to be made that specific deaths from traffic (while obviously to be minimized) are neither the only nor even the most significant life impacts of transportation and urban design. 

There are significant health and environmental benefits from reducing car use. Conversely, cars produce massive negative externalities--that is, beyond the direct effect of a car going somewhere, other social and environmental effects happen to those who are not necessarily behind the wheel or in the vehicle, and these tend to be bad.

Now, how does the US stack up? Well, a lot of those negative externalities are global (i.e. climate change) but not all of them are. And the US has a lot of good programs that help with environmental problems caused by car-centric design, such that it actually comes out pretty well on things like global air quality rankings. 

So overall, this is a matter of something that the US could do better on rather than something that's absolutely tanking. The design isn't always great: this type of road is not designed well for life.

And neither is the highway right next to it.

And despite that I would say Milwaukee, where the pictures come from, is better set up for urban design for life than most of the US.

So a middling grade--but goodness could we do better than middling if we prioritized this.

2. Liberty

I've posted about freedom and liberty in urban design and transportation before, multiple times. So I don't want to belabor the point too much. 

But honestly, I feel freer in a city where I can go where I want without a car than in one where I can go where I can take my car anywhere.

And this car is limiting my freedom as a pedestrian, of course.

But let's be fair: there's lots of places in the US that do provide some of that freedom. I think of these 14th Street Station patrons as pretty darn free to wander NYC.

And while this meerkat is caged, the people who visit him in the DC Zoo have admirable mobility and freedom.

This dockless bikeshare in Seattle is a great example of urban freedom (even if, like the car on the sidewalk, a pedestrian might disagree).

And I think these Chicagoans are having a wonderful time walking in the street, which is more freedom than they always have but still.

Basically, we know how to build cities in the US that are free to roam and free to wander--but it's not our default urban design.

This is our default design (though this in particular is Louisville, KY).

And the thing is: that's not unheard of internationally either.

This Dutch street is just as parked up.

And presence of a bus aside, this Toronto street ain't so great a design either.

So it's not like we're uniquely doing this poorly--but the degree to which it's the default in our city design is a problem. And the most annoying thing is that it didn't have to be this way. We rebuilt our cities like this; we used to have different, less car-centric systems.

Perhaps we are all, truly, Waiting for the Interurban.

3. The Pursuit of Happiness

This is of course a difficult one to grapple with, because I cannot deny the number of people for whom the car itself is a symbol of both happiness and its pursuit.

And I also don't want to discount the people for whom other elements of our urban design that I don't tend to talk about as much are important as well: the big house with its fenced yard and space.

Say, the house I grew up in as a child.

But I do also want to emphasize that, as with the car-centric design and freedom, I think the pendulum has swung too far in how we build our cities. We tore out the interurbans in Seattle; likewise, we zoned out the possibility of building more of these little apartments (just down the street from the house above):

I grew up in a house with a yard--next door to a multifamily apartment building. I don't think the kids there had a worse childhood than I did. We could catch the same buses, go to the same schools, eat at the same restaurants, shop at the same stores.

But for a long time their building was only there because it was grandfathered in; any new construction in our part of town had to be like my house (Seattle is doing a bit better on that now, but still not enough in my opinion). And that's the flaw: there's nothing wrong with people wanting the house, as long as that isn't used as a reason to stop the existence of the apartment as well--especially as we experience a massive housing shortage across the country and indeed the world.

And it is a worldwide problem: the pursuit of happiness through homeownership (whether that's house ownership or not) and even just stable renting is a problem worldwide, and so I don't want to pretend that the US has failed here more than anyone else.

And while other countries have tried things like social housing, that hasn't always been a panacea, and even the places that have done so haven't stemmed the tide of rising prices and demand.

This quintessentially Dutch street isn't exactly filled with new buildings. We're not the only ones who need more.

Everyone needs to build more, and build better, in order to allow for that pursuit of happiness for our ever-growing population.

But we have to be smarter about how we build: and the US is one of the biggest offenders in terms of building out into the wilds instead of infilling or building up. Again, there are exceptions, but by and large we sprawl. And that makes for longer commutes (and longer potential commutes even if individuals find better jobs) which have their own impacts on happiness.

So overall, what do I think of how the US is performing on these three metrics?

We're clearly lagging on life--and it's reflected in the underlying life expectancy data. 

We're doing better on freedom and the pursuit of happiness--but partly because those are less objective measures. And also partly because everyone is doing less well on some of the elements of those two.

And after all, if this is supposed to be a time of American exceptionalism, of making America great again, of America First--should we really be happy with doing better relatively only because others are doing it badly too?

We can be better at how we build our cities--and we owe it to ourselves now and in the future to do so as soon as we can.

Seeing Cars from Transit

 There's nothing quite like being on a train and looking out at the cars that you're passing. Conversely, there's little more annoying than looking out and noticing the cars are passing you. So here are some thoughts about that.

1. Hands-Free, Mind Free

One of my main thoughts in such a context is remembering that I'm privileged to be able to look at the cars as much as I want: after all, when I'm driving, I really shouldn't be looking at the train at all.

Who can tell if these cars are passing the Finch West LRT or not? What I can tell is that those drivers are having to pay attention to the road in the rain, and I'm not.

This streetcar may be stuck in traffic, but at least if I'm on it I'm not the one paying attention to that traffic and the red light.

There's a freedom to being on a train--or a bus!--that is distinct from the experience of driving, and it's one I remember every time I watch cars from transit.

2. Imagining Other Lives

Sometimes the cars you're seeing aren't competing with your transit, though: sometimes they're just an excuse to imagine how other people's lives are going while your mind wanders--or while your body is lifted hundreds of meters in the air.

Hello, motorists driving down the Thames! I wonder why you're there! It's probably not the same reason that I'm in the sad little cloud car. Unless you're new here and a car is just as unusual to you as a gondola!

I guess the above picture is of another bus, and not a car, but one of my favorite activities on the second story of a double decker is to look about at the other vehicles and consider why everyone else is here.

3. Not Needing Parking

Sometimes the cars you see from transit aren't even driving.

Apologies for the misty picture, but the windows on the Citibus weren't as clean as they could be. Still, you can see the parked cars, right? It's a nice reminder that I don't have to find my own parking on transit--though to be fair, parking in the QCA isn't the hardest thing to find.

And sometimes they just seem parked (sorry London)...but that's more like #1 and #2 above.

Overall, for me the chance to see cars from transit is just another form of transit tourism: it's a chance to think about others' lives and the choices we make--both individually and collectively. What does it say about our society that we have so many cars? What does it say about us individually each time we take those cars out on the roads? And what does it say about me that I'm sitting on the once-hourly bus instead of a car that would let me go where I wanted when I wanted?

Finch West Feedback

Since I talked about the Eglinton Crosstown, I figure I should also say something about the Finch West light rail, which I rode during the same weekend.

This line has already received some negative feedback, especially in urbanist circles, to the point where there were immediate changes proposed after it opened. 

So today, I want to focus on the positives. Yes, I think it's less-well-implemented than the Eglinton line. But I think there are good bones there and for many cities I've been in the Finch West would be a major upgrade. Just...not Toronto. But let's look on the bright side today!

1. Clear, Effective Advertising

One critique I have of many transit expansion plans and implementations that I've seen is that there may be very good reasons for the expansion and the expansion may be great on the ground, but it's not clearly communicating to the public what all this disruption and money and time was about.

Finch West, ironically for a project so bedeviled in the implementation, does not have that problem.

The TTC's branding and advertising around the new line are, to my eye, attractive, positive, and direct.

They are not afraid of telling you that this is good, that this is useful, or that this is an improvement for the whole region.

The branding is even directly imposed on the LRT trains themselves, not just in stationary stations where you would need to already be there to see the ad.

And I think it's a friendly, welcoming font and general color palette as well. Seeing this branding made me want to take this particular train (as opposed to my general orientation that I want to take any and all trains, of course) and that's to the good!

2. A Pleasant Experience

Look, speed is and remains an issue. But actually being on the train itself was a positive experience: that "1 smooth ride" branding isn't just talk.

The seats are comfortable and I like the colors. It's a pleasant LRT/tram/streetcar experience. Is it a metro? No. But for what it is trying to be, it does the on-ride experience well.

The stops are simple, but that helps keep costs down and they are certainly equal to or better than most surface-level tram stops I've encountered. And I like trams! 

There's decent cover, clear signage, and a decent waiting experience even in the rain when I took these photos.

Overall the physical experience of the system is a good one, and I think that that's something to build on.

3. Good Final Station

The Finch West LRT runs right into the main subway system, with a good connection at, unsurprisingly, Finch West.

The final stop is underground in a facility connected to the Finch West stop on the subway, and it's both easy to find and easy to get to.

I know this is a repeat picture, but again: very clear.

Now, it's not currently connected to any other part of the network (other than buses). But the potential exists for such connections--in theory it will hit GO trains and maybe even line 5 at the airport. And the fact that the final station is a good one is a sign that if the expansions to the network are done well, there's nothing that means that the other complaints about Line 6 have to be permanent. It could speed up; it can connect better; it can run faster and more often.

The potential is there. As I said, I know of other cities where the speed and frequency of this line would be desired. It's not at the level of Line 5 or the actual metro-type subways in Toronto, but it is, for example, much better than the TTC streetcars downtown.

It's something to build on, and I had a good time on it--even if I'm not going to pretend that it's a perfect system.

Zen and the Art of Trail Maintenance

This post could also be called "the curse of 'recreational' paths." 

Basically, we had some bad rains and flooding in Davenport recently, and so when I tried to bike home from work I encountered this:

And this was just the one that I bothered to dismount, photograph, and continue. Basically the whole Duck Creek Trail was like this, from pools of water across the entire trail to every underpass choked with mud.

And unsurprisingly, I have some thoughts about that.

1. Bike (and Pedestrian) Infrastructure Should Count 

This is the reason for that alternate title up there: because these trails get identified as recreational, the city (and not just Davenport, in my experience) acts like they don't count as infrastructure. They're just for fun, just for exercise, just for recreation. And thus when there's a storm or some other major disruption they basically don't count in the calculus of what needs repairing, cleaning up, or just general maintenance in the aftermath.

But while it's easy to discount these trails, they're actually pretty important: not only are they unique opportunities to get cars off the road and people moving on distinct paths that have affordances that streets don't (no easier way to get to the softball fields!), they're also relatively small and easy to repair. If we bother, of course. 

In some ways what annoys me most is the tire tracks in that mud up there: someone did drive a vehicle through (and given what I see on the trail they were almost certainly a city employee). But whatever they drove through didn't clear the space. All it would take is a few minutes with a plow to get that mud off--much less than a street takes to clear, because the trail is smaller. But it never happens.

2. Ongoing Problems Compound 

Making that mud worse is the fact that the trail also has consistent spots where it's graded poorly so the water pools instead of draining off. This happens without flooding anytime there's a rainstorm. And every time it makes the trail significantly harder to use--while also compounding itself by encouraging people to use the grass next to the trail instead, worsening the overall health of the trail space.

I'm not suggesting these are as easy to fix as the mud--but I am suggesting that if the only major roadway in an area got the same consistent giant puddles it would have been a much higher priority. 

3. The Knife's Edge

Overall, this is symptomatic of a larger issue with bike and pedestrian infrastructure not only in the QCA but in the US outside of very few cities. It can function for commuting, or eerands, or generally for life for a while, but it's on a knife's edge. Just a little nudge: one storm, one rainfall, a section of trail that wasn't a priority to restore when roadworks took it out, and suddenly the whole system collapses. I had to change my clothes afterwards when I rode this because there was so much mud and water on the trail. If I had had a meeting or other event I needed to be clean for, it would have meant I could not use the bike to get there. And it wouldn't be the bike's fault.

We treat trails and paths and other bike infrastructure and pedestrian infrastructure as a complete afterthought, at best. It's always on the periphery--sidewalks and gutter bike lanes get the worst of storms too--and it's always the last priority. This makes it difficult to impossible for people to commit to using it, which creates a vicious cycle where no one uses it and so it looks like investments would be wasted.

So please, keep the dang trails open even after a storm. And stop treating this non-car infrastructure like it doesn't matter--because it can only matter if it gets some actual attention.

Basic Amtrak Thoughts

Having recently taken the California Zephyr, Amtrak's Chicago-Bay Area service, for approximately half its length on a trip to the Rockies (as well as a lengthy set of experiences previously in my life, of course), I have some thoughts on train travel in the US that I wanted to share. 

1. Timeliness is a Huge Issue

Amtrak has significant issues with not owning its track and with not getting priority over freight because of that (which it's supposed to). These are structural problems that operations can't be expected to magically solve. 

That said, I boarded my train in Galesburg, IL half an hour late, despite being only the third station stop out of the origin in Chicago. For a train with dozens of later stops, that's a really bad start.

And don't get me started on the poor folks who were waiting for the Southwest Chief, which at the time we departed were still waiting on a train already 6 hours late and projected to be 8.

Again, Amtrak has serious structural problems that the actual train operators are not responsible for--but that is unacceptable. Our train was scheduled for late afternoon; the Southwest Chief was scheduled for the morning. But imagine doing the same wait for a train scheduled for 2am (the scheduled time in Lincoln, NE); do you show up mid-night and then wait until the actual morning? How exhausted would you be? How likely to take the train again?

Making it worse is that different sources available from Amtrak give different projections: is it 20 minutes late or 30? 6 hours or 7? It's not even consistent across Amtrak's website, app, and display boards in the stations.

2. Frequency is Non-existent 

If you miss your train, I'd say good luck on getting another except even that would be impossible: there's no such thing as good luck with Amtrak trains because they come once a day, twice if you're lucky. Yes, that's not true in the Acela corridor, but for the rest of the country missing a train means literally not traveling.

This happens once a day. Don't be late!

This also means that there are trips for which the train will literally never be convenient despite being technically served. The train comes to Lincoln, NE at midnight in one direction and 2-3 am in the other: there are no other times, and no other options on that route. The same is true the next/previous day on the same train (depending on direction) for Salt Lake City. So it will not be convenient for any person on a normal sleep schedule to ever get a train from either of those cities, despite being "served."

Again, there are systemic reasons for this, but it breaks the effectiveness of the system more or less entirely.

3. Great Views, Mediocre Other Experiences 

If you want a beautiful and amazing tour of the sights of America, Amtrak is unrivaled.

It's gorgeous! You can't relax and look at these while driving. It's truly unique as a way to explore the country and its physical wonders.

But there's not much else to do on the train (and these are long train rides, up to two days). The Wi-Fi that is advertised only works sometimes, usually not. The staff of the dining and café cars are great, but the stocking of both cars is hit and miss (and frequently therefore out of the better food options fairly early in the trip). The seats are comfortable as designed, but in need of repair or maintenance frequently (they may not fully recline, for example). The track, which again is not actually Amtrak's and so they can't totally be blamed for it, is bumpy and not up to par with intercity rail in other countries. 

Basically, the Amtrak experience is one I recommend having had, but can't recommend using for actual transportation unless you live on a rare frequent corridor (Acela, the Milwaukee-Chicago line, Portland-Seattle-Vancouver, etc.). Which is a shame: train travel is ecologically better, and being delivered to a downtown instead of the airports on the outskirts of cities is a big plus.

But it's not functional, not really. And I wish it were not so.

Eglinton Crosstown Considerations

When I recently visited Toronto, I found myself staying just off Eglinton Avenue, and thus primarily utilizing the Eglinton Crosstown extension of the TTC: a light rail that in many ways (including on the TTC maps) wants to be a subway.

Because where I was staying was directly on Line 5 (as it's designated) and my destinations largely weren't (shoutout to the Center for Renaissance and Reformation Studies at Victoria University, University of Toronto and to Snakes and Lattes), I took Line 5 a lot, including transfers to other lines and buses. And I have thoughts!

1. Seattle-Like

My first and dominant impression was that the line reminds me heavily of taking Sound Transit in Seattle. It's a light rail that operates more like a subway in terms of demand and frequency, but lacks the grade separation it should have for part of the route and has some weird variations in stop spacing and thus speed.

Also, visually, both involve cars that are a little less efficient at what they should be doing (carrying a ton of passengers) than they should be, because of their more tram-like design.

Both are/were also a single line (yes, I'm both aware and very happy that Seattle's is not anymore and that it's been a big boost to ridership, and obviously Toronto has other lines) that seems to fall a bit below expectations while still being awesome.

The stops that aren't underground could be a bit more physically protected from the elements, for instance, and definitely spaced further apart.

Basically what I mean by saying it's Seattle-like is that I'm so so glad it's open, but I have minor critiques of how it was designed and implemented that do not overall detract from that gladness.

2. Good Connections

Of course, where it's massively distinct from the 1 line or even the 2 line in Seattle is that it is the 5 line, and that means its intimately connected to a lot more transit than anything in Seattle is.

The connections to the 1 Line (Yonge-University) are pretty straightforward and generally well-marked, and allow the 5 be a fully-integrated part of the larger Toronto transit scheme. 

This is clearly and appreciably indicated at the stops as well, and honestly extending a lot further down Eglinton is a big boon to the overall transit health of the city/metro. Is it the full vision of Transit City? Probably not. Is it a meaningful upgrade? Oh yes.

Frankly this line unlocked a great deal of the eastern part of the city that I had previously found annoying to access, and the concomitant changes in bus service also made general access around the city better. Maybe Toronto should edge out Vancouver if I ran CityBracket again...but this line wasn't open yet, and we didn't know how it would turn out.

That's right, this actually opened this year, 2026: it's brand spanking new. And so it's good that it hasn't had quite the growing pains of its cousin, the 6 Line, which I'll get to in more detail than last time someday soon (yes, I rode that too). 

3. A Good Experience

That's the thing: overall, this is a good line. It's a good experience. Quick dwell times, even on weekends; quick transportation, unless you're literally going end to end; a good vehicle experience, though I do think they could be more subway-like and less tram-like and do a better job of throughput.

It would probably also help if they could be full walkthrough and if they were a bit clearer on the outside stops about where the trains will actually stop: they future-proofed the line to larger trains, but that means that the back of the stop usually doesn't actually have train doors.

They're good at indicating this at the underground stations (and the wayfinding in general is better than most North American transit I've seen) but not so much outdoors.

The trams are pretty, too.

The seats are comfortable, if again it would likely be even better if they were more subway-style, leaving more standing room around them.

And they are often faster than the traffic--though it would be nice if they didn't have to stop for the same lights.

Overall, I really enjoyed taking the Line 5 Eglinton Crosstown, and I highly recommend it to anyone visiting or transiting Toronto.