Yes, because what's the point of a nice pedestrian mall that has buses traveling up and down constantly? If cars and trucks are rerouted to other streets, why shouldn't the buses be on those streets? Why clear the streets for pedestrian strolling and shopping and then screw it up with buses? It's crazy, but like some other forms of crazy, we're still doing it here in Madison. Why?
Madison continues to receive grant money from the Federal Transit Administration for every mile of metro buses that travel a fixed path... In upcoming years, the city plans to study the effects of removing some, or all, metro buses from State Street, but will have to consider how much federal funding could be lost....We're doing something that hurts pedestrians and hurts the businesses on the street and I don't think anyone likes because there's federal money in it. Come on, Madison, we're special, but I don't think doing it for the money is the brand of specialness we want.
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53 comments:
The State cares not for efficiency. It's not like it's their money they're wasting.
Suckling at the Federal Teat is a hard habit to break.
Buses are Special.
High-Speed Trains are Special-er.
I am Laslo.
There are union jobs for governmental employees funded by that money!
We've already determined what kind of special Madison is.
Now we're just haggling over the price.
All of the above. Remember the cartoon about Abscam with Senators running toward a money tree ? Thats what this is.
Denver has a very nice downtown pedestrian mall. It does have buses running up and down all day. Since the mall is a mile long they are very handy. Free and stop often. To put them on the other streets would not really be a good idea.
The Federal Government should not involve itself in decisions about town traffic.
"Buses are Special.
High-Speed Trains are Special-er."
But pedestrian malls with high-speed trains would be special-est of all.
We're doing something that hurts pedestrians and hurts the businesses on the street and I don't think anyone likes because there's federal money in it
And the left thinks that only capitalist businesses will do anything for money.
The sad thing is, even with all the Federal grants, the vendors prices are simply unreasonable. Due to the high rent.
States pursue Federal money because it's "free" to state governments, but the money originally came from taxpayers living in the states.
So many perverse incentives and outcome. California and New York taxpayers have to pay for interstates in Montana, which is justifiable (but a toll on through traffic would make more sense). But of course Alaska and Hawaii have to have interstates (Hawaii's was $80 million per mile, the highest cost of any), even though they have no land connection to any other state, and Nebraska has to get counterterrorism money.
"The sad thing is, even with all the Federal grants, the vendors prices are simply unreasonable. Due to the high rent."
The bus traffic does not help the merchants on State Street. It hurts them, but they tend to keep their heads low. Hard to speak up against mass transit.
Buses are more for people who are commuting to work and the drop off spots on State Street aren't too useful for them. If State Street were a pedestrian mall more like Pearl Street in Boulder, it would draw in a lot more people from the metropolitan area. It would be much better for bikers too, and the B-Cycle system would be much more fun to use, much more available to safety-conscious bikers.
So the grants are contingent on leaving the route unchanged in perpetuity? And Congress can't see the folly of this and throw in an amendment, somewhere, to allow cities to retain their grants while rerouting these busses?
That's foolish. No functioning pedestrian street (e.g., in Europe) has vehicles on it, except to permit deliveries in the wee hours of the morning.
At this point, we already know what city governments are. Now we're just negotiating on the price.
You know what the answer to this problem is?
Moving sidewalks.
"The bus traffic does not help the merchants on State Street. It hurts them, but they tend to keep their heads low. Hard to speak up against mass transit.
Buses are more for people who are commuting to work and the drop off spots on State Street aren't too useful for them. If State Street were a pedestrian mall more like Pearl Street in Boulder, it would draw in a lot more people from the metropolitan area. It would be much better for bikers too, and the B-Cycle system would be much more fun to use, much more available to safety-conscious bikers."
Submit a proposal to the city council to re-route the buses. Go get signatures. Drum up support.
Or just wish for it on your blog.
We really enjoy shopping on the Lincoln Road Mall when the wife and I are in Miami Beach, but after looking at Madison's State Street on Google Maps I see a number of reasons why your State Street is less successful.
1) State Street is too long. Lincoln Road in Miami Beach is only 8 blocks long, and is way less than a mile in length. State Street appears to be quite a bit longer.
2) Lincoln Road Mall is aligned with the street grid in Miami Beach, which means buses can circle around it and cars can readily park nearby. About 3/4 of State Street crosses the grid at a 45 degree angle.
Wow, that is so surprising. You mean to tell me that something that might be good for Kansas City might not be good for Seattle? I'm flummoxed.
I apologize on behalf of the people of Minneapolis for creating this awful idea. We invented the pedestrian mall back in 1968 with the twelve block Nicollet Mall and then Mary Tyler Moore popularized it with her hat-toss.
As far as I know, it was the only leadership role we ever provided to cities like Portland and Madison. Our "urbies" usually follow those two areas instead.
Big Mike, State Street is not even a mile long. Check the scale showing on you map.
Huzzah for Central Planning, Technocrats, and Fat Cats!!!
In the 19th Century windmills and passenger trains were 'popular notions', too.
The Pearl Street Mall in Boulder is, I think, a special case: an unusual success. It works, I believe, because of Boulder's unique character. I also believe it shaped Boulder's unique character. Which is to say, the mall isn't successful because of what Boulder is; rather, Boulder is what it is today because of the mall.
And that's not a good thing. When I first arrived in Boulder in 1970 to attend CU there was no mall. There was angle parking on Pearl Street, and many of the shops on that street catered to local farmers and ranchers who visited the town on weekends to stock up on various supplies. On a typical Saturday there were plenty of pickup truck with racked rifles in the cabs parked in the angle parking spaces; and very few hippy/counterculture type establishments. That pretty much changed with the massive migration and influx of California counterculture refugees fleeing San Francisco and L.A. Shortly, these interlopers engineered what amounted to a putsch, getting themselves elected to city council positions and, against bitter opposition from the locals, they basically Californicated Boulder. What had been a nice little farm/ranch/college town was transformed very swiftly into a variant of Berkely and Palo Alto (but, tellingly, NOT the Haight). Building the mall was both an extension and a caused of this process of transformation. So too was the passage of greenbelt legislation, which caused property values hence rents to skyrocket, putting rental housing out of reach of people of lesser means. By the mid-80s Boulder had become a preserve of the rich progressive elites. Rich progressives effectively created this beautiful little Rocky Mountain Xanadu that no average American could afford. Perhaps not coincidentally tuition at CU also skyrocketed in this period so that now it's one of the nation's most expensive state schools, a party school for rich kids. When I went there tuition for the school year (two semesters) was c. $625 and I paid for my own eduction by bartending at Tulagi on the Hill, where I could make my tuition from tips in about three weeks. I think now that Boulder is an awful place and I wouldn't live there even if I could afford it. However, I'll grant you that it is beautiful and fun to visit: a progressive Disneyland, filled with wealthy residents and students trying very hard to be interesting and eccentric and politically correct.
Speaking of high speed rail...
People don't know this, but President Nixon inaugurated the Port of Catoosa.
In college I was in a group which was required to design a high speed rail from the Port to the eastern Oklahoma border (Ft Smith). This would be a non-stop rail, and must be able to handle speeds of 300 MPH.
We then got 15 minutes to brief the Governor, and excite his staff. Afterwards we had sandwiches and punch, and sat around discussing the presentation. It was great fun, and I got to wear my tie for the first time in years.
After the Governor left, one of his men, I don't remember if he was an important fellow, said that it made economic sense, but it would need federal dollars to finance it, as the state was broke. It had no capital for a project that size, and couldn't even borrow it.
So the engineering problem failed, because we didn't provide the Governor a way to pay for it. We should have enlisted an economics major to our team of nerds.
The professor gave us all good credit for the course, as we learned our limitations, which he knew all along that we didn't understand.
The Port of Catoosa languished for years until Nixon got on board, and federal dollars began flowing in like wheat.
This is where your gas tax revenues are going, Not infrastructure rebuilding.
The latest New advance is balloon travel. It makes the air space over town part of an intelligent urban use planning. The inventors are really excited to finally show what Wilbur and Orville right got it all wrong.
It needs to be done for the kids and for nature.
The Port of Catoosa languished for years until Nixon got on board, and federal dollars began flowing in like wheat."
So here's an idea. Cut out the middle man. Lower taxes substantially on the Federal side and raise them in the states. Keep the burden the same but cut out the useless middleman who just sucks away a portion of anything raised for more Washington bureaucrats to live high on the hog. Then the states could (and should) pay for their own shit. I believe that was actually the Founders intention. The Federal government is like the mob. They want a cut of everything, even when they didn't do anything to produce it.
@Danno, I didn't say it was a mile long; it said it appears to be considerably longer than Lincoln Road Mall.
Yeah, in the 70's we did that here, too. Once the project was finished everyone hated the angular concrete sculptures and fountains that were compared to tank traps. At the west end a commisioned sculpture was placed that became locally known as "The Dildo Arch".
http://tinyurl.com/p9w4ezr
They finally tore most of it down so they could, get this, make a light rail corridor. Trains and pedestians - what could go wrong?
I'm in favor of the ethical harvest of human organs. These pedestrian malls have appreciably diminished the harvest.
"It's crazy, but like some other forms of crazy, we're still doing it here in Madison. Why?"
Faux surprise again, right?
Prog crazy is good, therefore must be continued.
Public transit is public, wastes Fed money, often uses union labor, excludes private transportation, and promotes environmental posturing: an irresistible quintuple whammy.
The State St bus-mall is/was a bad idea just because of the structure of it; it does make a good structure for a pedestrian-only mall since it's blocked at both ends (UW at one end and the capitol at the other). The busses have to really go out of their way to continue through the downtown corridor. Keeping them running along Washington and Campus Dr. makes way more sense.
I know, I know, "sense" doesn't really enter into this except in the non-sense sense.
I'm curious - why is Madison special?
There are many well-known reasons why pedestrian malls mostly failed. Such as:
1. The scale is wrong. This applies to pedestrian malls that were not purpose-built as such, but are actually re-purposed streets. A street that can carry two lanes of traffic with parallel parking on both sides is probably at least 66 feet wide, which is a whole lot wider than the corridors in an enclosed mall. It takes a whole lot of pedestrians to fill a space that big; even after you dump sculptures or mini-parks with benches in it it's still too wide.
2. They're not enclosed. Which is fine in Southern California but not as workable in Wisconsin. Some purpose-built pedestrian malls do thrive: in California. Especially if they're oriented more toward food, drink and entertainments than shopping.
3. As with enclosed auto malls, they just take too much time. That may not be a problem if you're there to eat, drink and socialize but it is a problem if you just want to buy something on your way home. And if you do buy something at a pedestrian mall you'll have to schlep it home. Strip malls and big-box stores may be ugly, yet they're convenient (to those who have cars) and are far more time-efficient than any sort of mall.
4. Transit malls have the problems of pedestrian malls, plus the added problem of separating pedestrians and buses.
Trashhauler said...
I'm curious - why is Madison special?
Because the term retarded is no longer used in polite company.
Yes, because what's the point of a nice pedestrian mall that has buses traveling up and down constantly?
Because people who take the bus bitch and whine if they have to walk more than half a block to their destination. San Francisco can't even get express buses on to Geary because Chinatown wants the bus to stop every goddamn block (and they're short blocks there) so some little old lady won't have to carry her live chickens in pink plastic bags more than a block.
"You know what the answer to this problem is?"
A Monorail!
Well I guess it still beats this:
" Saudi Arabia Building All-Women's Industrial City To Comply With Sharia
In order to both comply with strict interpretations of Sharia law and also increase participation of women in its work force, Saudi Arabia plans to build an industrial city for female workers. Today's Los Angeles Times and International Business Times report that the city, which will be built within Hofuf, will have sections and production halls reserved for women within factories, and will be located near residential neighborhoods to facilitate women getting from home to work. The new city is expected to attract the equivalent of $133.3 million (US) in investments and create 5,000 jobs in the textiles, pharmaceuticals and food processing industries. Additional similar cities are planned.
(http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2012/08/saudi-arabia-building-all-womens.html)
Peter at 310, All true. However urban planners are guilty of a much baser form of naiveté and hubris. That is that the existence of a 24/7/365 high density population is the independent variable and the the success of a pedestrian mall is the dependent variable. Not the other way around
Yes, because what's the point of a nice pedestrian mall that has buses traveling up and down constantly?....We're doing something that hurts pedestrians and hurts the businesses on the street and I don't think anyone likes because there's federal money in it. Come on, Madison, we're special, but I don't think doing it for the money is the brand of specialness we want.
Hee...most voters don't even know how to spell "pedestrian," but they know they don't have to spell "money."
Why does downtown Msdison need a "mall" in the first place?
You get in your car and drive to where the shops and restaurants have located...
What is so special about State Street? The student bodies?
Grow up and drive to the mall like everyone else, Madison folk.
Students can hoof it, or yes, use the free buses that go up and down the street...
*Look both ways before crossing, and quit yer bitchin' professor.
Nobody is making you live there...
Ah yes, the old Win-Win con. Feds collect $100,000.00 from local governments, keep $25K for program management, offer $75K matching funds grant to a qualifying local government. Local government spends $25K to write grant application, another $25K matching funds if the grant is "won".
A Win for the Feds, Win for the local government. Losers are the local taxpayers, who spent $150K for something they neither need nor want. Seen it too many times.
And as my old boss (when I was scribbling for the local rag) used to say, "In just about every Government grant, it's a safe bet half the money will be wasted. The other half will be stolen."
@Peter, your point #2 is another difference between the very successful Lincoln Road Mall and State Street:
Lincoln Road Mall is in Miami Beach, so contends with substantially less snow and ice and bitter cold weather than State Street in Madison. ("Substantially less" meaning take whatever the accumulation is in Madison, and it will be zero in Miami Beach.)
Cruising up State St, around the Capital Square and back down State on Friday & Saturday nights was a rite of passage. The first thing you would do when you got your drivers license.
Obviously Madison needs a subway. Surely you can get federal funds for that.
Big Mike said...
We really enjoy shopping on the Lincoln Road Mall when the wife and I are in Miami Beach, but after looking at Madison's State Street on Google Maps I see a number of reasons why your State Street is less successful.
1) State Street is too long. Lincoln Road in Miami Beach is only 8 blocks long, and is way less than a mile in length. State Street appears to be quite a bit longer.
2) Lincoln Road Mall is aligned with the street grid in Miami Beach, which means buses can circle around it and cars can readily park nearby. About 3/4 of State Street crosses the grid at a 45 degree angle.
7/20/15, 10:19 AM
Back in the mid-seventies Lincoln Road and almost all of South Beach was a dump. What it good again was cheap real estate in the early eighties when it started getting trendy and created it's own virtuous cycle. Lincoln Road in the winter isn't so long that one can't walk and shop from end to end and meander on the adjacent side streets.
Graft cannot be turned down
"... but like some other forms of crazy, we're still doing it here in Madison. Why?"
Oh, that is really easy. Madison is the land of the insane, the place outside of reality. Its in the air, it on the ground, its all around, its everywhere (insanity). No place else on earth (possible exception: Austin, TX) is quite as full of certifiably insane folks as Madison.
Austin is full of people who are voting to pull up the ladder because people with cooties might be trying to get in our treehouse.
Lincoln Road in the winter isn't so long that one can't walk and shop from end to end and meander on the adjacent side streets.
And meander it we have, in mid-December. Needed sunscreen. Then two more blocks east and we're on the beach.
Does anyone have ANY idea how many people in Madison mock and joke about the pedestrian flags at various intersections? Seriously - I witnessed a family man hysterically waving a flag at a line of traffic on Sherman Avenue by Tenney Park - he had a woman (wife?) and two little kids in toe. And it was just so pathetic to see this man getting all drama queen waving a flag at a line of cars traveling 25 MPH by Tenney Park.
It's not about traffic folks. It's not about busses. It's about a family man thinking it is best to wave a pedestrian crossing flag in a rage instead of just waiting for traffic to clear to cross a freaking street.
THIS is actually our problem - it's about the mindset of that family man and not traffic.
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