Silver Creek High School cyclist killed this morning on Capitol Expressway.

RIP: Silver Creek High School
student killed
photo: dbking

Sad news this morning on the streets of San Jose. An unidentified Silver Creek High School student died at a local hospital after suffering injuries from a collision with a car while riding across Capitol Expressway in East San Jose. The crash site is two blocks from the high school and just over a quarter mile from the 101 Freeway.

Silver Creek High School Principal Adolfo Laguna in this morning's San Jose Mercury News, stated "the (student's) death is a poignant reminder of how careful motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists have to be around the school area, particularly during rush hour. We want our students to be safe."

Dangerous By Design

Yes this student's tragic death is a poignant reminder; but asking motorists, pedestrians and bicyclist to be careful as a preventive measure against these types of incidents is completely wishful thinking. This intersection is dangerous by design.

Here are some reasons that make this intersection dangerous for drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians.

The speed limit is 45 miles per hour but given that the the proximity to the 101 freeway entrance, speeds typically can reach over 60 miles per hour.

San Jose City Council member Pierluigi Oliverio has been championing 15 mph speed limits near schools but he is limited by California state law to only two lane streets, not 10 lane expressways.  This expressway also known as" Capitol Raceway" is notorious for impromptu races among race tuned autos.

The intersection was designed to reduce congestion by increasing the speed at which autos can negotiate turns. As you can see in this photo (Google Maps), the intersections uses large radii turns creating a triangular area to place the traffic signal. This design to increase the speed of right turning cars is a safety risk to cyclists and pedestrians.

Given San Jose suburban development pattern this expressway channels a high volume of traffic to the freeway during rush hour, bringing large volumes of traffic and young students together in a dangerous mix. The school, with almost 2,500 students also creates its own commuter congestion with parents rushing to bring their students to school before heading on the freeway to go to work.

Crossing Capital Expressway subjects student, cyclists, pedestrians, and the elderly to a 200 foot crossing with no refuge or rest area in the middle of the intersection.

I am always amazed that we have been lead to believe that the suburbs are by design safe than cities. It is evident in this Wall Street Journal Blog post titled "Is Generation Y a "Game Changer" for housing?"   The article quotes a financial services consultant who recently bought a 2,500-square-foot house in south San Francisco. The 23-year old single woman mentioned that she anticipates moving to the suburbs later in life, stating, "In my 20s, I definitely want to live downtown; I like the whole high-rise, in-the-city feel,” she said. “But, definitely when I have children, I want to live in a single-family home. It’s easier for parking, transportation and it’s safer to live in the suburbs away from the city."

The community should use this tragic incident as a starting point to do something about the lack of safety so close to their children's school.

A side note: When I went to the Google aerial photo of the school a counted 9 bikes (out of a student population of 2,500) in one bike parking location; and I'm not surprised.

Update (San Jose Mercury News): The bicyclist, believed to be 16 years old, was traveling east along East Capitol Expressway around 7:35 a.m. when a white Ford F-150 pick-up going northbound on Silver Creek Road collided with him, Officer Albert Morales said. Emergency personnel performed CPR at the scene and took the injured boy to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 8:10 a.m.

Spring into Green at DeAnza College, Cupertino California

New Terminal at Mineta San Jose
International Airport

Spring into Green at DeAnza College

The following is some thoughts presented this morning at DeAnza College's Spring into Green event with a panel of other professionals.


Climate Change, Air Pollution, Toxic Roadway Runoff, Oil Depletion, Keystone XL Pipeline, Fracking, and on and on. We would all agree that these are key issues today that need to be addressed. We, dealing with all things environmental agree, that we should be at least technically conversant on these issues but instead of directly discussing these issues I'd like ask you a few questions.

• Who owns the San Jose Airport? (google search)
• Who owns San Jose Diridon Station? (wikipedia)
• Who owns Cupertino city streets?
• Who owns the tracks on which Caltrain and Amtrak run? (Caltrain / Amtrak)

San Jose Diridon Station

Now I would ask you if you somehow came to this country from another solar system, which system Air, Auto or Train would you think would be at the top of the transportation food chain.

Yes, Air and Auto. When one entity spends over $1.5 Billion on its infrastructure you will get nice facilities, neatly designed with facilities that are convenient for travellers. But after spending over a billion dollars on a new passenger terminal and a seven story parking garage we still do not have direct transit service to the airport?

When you have a street system that is owned by one government agency competing with passenger rails systems which are prioritized below freight such as corn and cars, which system do you think will get noticed, get used?

Before I continue however, two more questions.

• What year did the Japanese Bullet Train or High Speed Rail begin Operations?
• What year did Japan sign a surrender treaty with the US?

   In 1957, Odakyu Electric Railway introduced its 3000 series SE "Romancecar" train, setting a world speed record of 145 km/h (90 mph) for a narrow gauge train. (Wikipedia). So in 12 years Japan, after picking itself from the rubble of the war, sets a world record and by 1964 build a complete bullet train system. With no postwar resources it still devoted its political and financial will to build a world class system. Can you guess what other event happened in Japan in 1964?  

Advocating for Change 

In my experience working to advocate for alternative transportation; working for change in our current system, not only has my perspective changed, but my thinking and methods have changed as well.  In the 1960's mainly do they War in Vietnam and some well publicized environmental disasters, Americans sought to change the system by a variety of confrontation methods; and they worked for large national issues.

For example Critical Mass was a way for San Franciscans who rode bike to say we matter. However their methods were confrontational with such tactics as secret routes, corking of intersections and confrontations with police.

With the advent of peer based and cyber social systems, change can take place without the confrontation but by learning how to frame you position to sell it to groups of strong opposition, by staging fun community events, incentivizing participants, using digital technologies to break up tasks and allowing for collaboration. 

  

Here are some examples of soft change or in other words "winning hearts and minds":

• Bike Party: This once a month bicycle fiesta on wheels has grown and has brought San Jose some cachet as a hip bike city. There are now "Bike Parties" in most northern and Southern California cities, as well as Baltimore, Boston, Denver, and even in Seoul, Korea and our nations capitol. All based on the San Jose Bike Party model.
• Bag Ban: Using the grown field of  "choice architecture" San Jose initiated a ban on free shopping bags, but instead of making it an onerous law with no choice involved, the city prescribes that you pay 10 cents for a bag. In my experience demand for bags has gone done around 97% and with almost no complaints. The program known as "Bring Your Own Bag" has saved not only the cost disposing of the bags but improving the health of our waterways and watersheds as well.
• From Blight to Bright: Governments loved to build things, maintaining them is a whole different thing. Politicians would rather poise for pictures with shovels and scissors than deal with the mundane obligations such as maintenance. General street maintenance along with non-emergency police services are hard to come by. By using the broken window theory we have organized groups of volunteers to go out and clean up blighted areas. Now land owners are starting to take notice and are cleaning up their own properties, improving the community, getting more residents out walking and bicycling.
• Open Data and Civic Hacking: We are currently putting together a group of data nerds who will seek to open transit, municipal budget, and transportation data in a standardized format to allow third parties to develop apps, hardware/appliances, to make it easier to take transit or understand your city. Imagine with an open data standard that you could sit in a pub with an eye on a transit appliance which would display the "next bus" on the wall reducing wait times at transit stops.
• Using carrots and sticks: Getting rid of minimum parking requirements, unbundled parking, bundling transit passes with San Jose Sharks tickets, parking rates based on vehicle weight and size, one way mini car sharing, eco passes, smart phone apps, market based parking, free bike sharing for the first 30 minutes, no validated parking but discounts to pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users, etc.

In none of these instances were technical environmental terms used such as fracking, ozone depletion, or destruction of riparian habitats. Change was incentivizing good choices or fun behaviors that create positive environmental change in the community.

I have listed some video and book resources for you to follow up on.

Thank you.

Additional Resources
Books

• Don't Think of an Elephant - Know your issues and frame the debate - George Lakeoff
• Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service--A Year Spent Riding across America - James McCommons
• Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile - Taras Grescoe
• The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways  - Earl Swift
• The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream- Christopher Leinberg
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs
• The Economies of Cities - Jane Jacobs
• The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape  - James Howard Kunstler
• Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness - Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein

Ted Videos
James Kunstler: How bad architecture wrecked cities
Jason Roberts - TedxOu How to Build a Better Block
Chuck Mahron - Tedx1000Lakes - The important difference between a road and a street

College Courses

Business Administration
101 Land Use and Development
102 Fundraising
111 Accounting for nonprofits
112 Federal and State Reporting Requirements
121 Financing Public Infrastructure (See Transportation 121)
122 Seminar - Corporate Social Responsibility

Civil Administration
101 Intro to Government
102 Intro to City and Municipal Government
103 City Council Rules and Administration
104 Working with City Staff

Communications
101 Issue Analysis and Research, and Reporting
102 Public Speaking
103 Social Media
104 News Media
105 Public Relations
106 Reaching out to younger and non-traditional constituents
107 Issue Framing - Not speaking to the choir

Criminal Justice
101 Public Safety - Police
102 Public Safety - Fire and other Emergency Services
103 Gangs and the community

Economics
101 Regulation and Behavioral Economics (The Shopping Bag Lab)
102 Market Based Parking (The High Cost of Free Parking)
103 Fiscalization of Land Use
111 Incentivizing Developers with fees, mandates, and options
112 City and Park Maintenance - Public Private Partnerships
121 Seminar - Big Box vs. Traditional Retail and the return on investment
122 Seminar - Food Trucks, Street Vendors, and Pop-ups and community revitalization

Information Systems
101 Website Administration
102 Front-end Website Administration - Wordpress
103 Front-end Website Administration - Drupal
104 - Back end administration with CiviCRM
111 Open Data and Civic Hacking Lab

Political Science
101 Issues and Advocacy
102 Community Outreach
103 Issue Campaigning
104 Elected Official Relationship Management
111 Electioneering and Campaigning
112 Legislative and Political Analysis (City, Region and State Level)

Public Administration
101 Roberts Rules of Order
102 Board Administration
103 Corporate and Board Governance
104 Non-Profit Administration
111 Regional Public Administration
112 Membership Management and Engagement
121 Public Accounting and Budgeting
122 Taxation - Property, Sales, Income and Fees

Tourism, Event and Park Management
101 Event Management and Accounting
102 Sponsorship Management and Negotiation
103 Event Promotion and Partnerships
104 Volunteer Coordination

Transportation and Infrastructure
101 The New City and Multimodal Systems
111 Public and Private Transit and Mobile Applications
121 Financing Public Infrastructure

Urban Studies
101 Placemaking
102 Complete Streets
111 Basic Real Estate Development
112 The Sharing Economy - Car, bike, office, and tool share
121 Traditional Real Estate Development and Business Districts
122 Transporatation Hub Development

What goes up must come down or have the chickens finally coming home to roost?

For curses are like arrows

San Jose Mayor
Louis S. Solari
July 1958 - June 1960

shot upright, which falling
down light on the suters
[shooters] head.

The Lamentable and True Tragedy of Arden of Feversham - 1592

Today's Roadshow column in the San Jose Mercury News led with the headline: "San Jose pothole blamed on Reed, Brown, and Pruius drivers". Well, for those of you from out of state, Reed is San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, and Brown is California Governor Jerry Brown.

San Jose resident Joe Coughlin writes to Mr. Roadshow Gary Richards:

"Mayor Chuck Reed should be ashamed of the job he is doing regarding road repair. And we all ought to be embarrassed. We are not only the worst in California, we are the worst in the NATION."

I find this readers rant somewhat timely given that the evening before I attended the city's Planning Commission meeting. On the agenda was a study session to review the city's capital budget five-year plan. One set of figures that shocked me a bit (and after seeing these numbers for a few years I don't get shocked that easily) was the total infrastructure backlog reported at $909 million. Given that this year the city budget is $2.6 billion about 35% of the cities annual budget is represented by infrastructure backlog. Of the cities $909 million in infrastructure backlog $460 million is for transportation backlog, or just over 50%. Of that $460 million, $303 million is needed just to maintain the roadways back to normal levels.

But back to Mr. Coughlin's point. Who do we blame? Do we blame Mayor Chuck Reed, Governor Jerry Brown, or those

Population estimates used to
sell large infrastructure building progam
 in San Jose in the early 60's

high and mighty, wimpy green Prius owners. Well I have a new spin on their conundrum. Mr. Coughlin the next time you go to city hall to blame Mayor Reed; as you enter the elevator to the second floor council chamber gallery, look to your left on the wall. There you will see pictures and drawings, of most of the cites mayors going all the way back to the early days. Look carefully at those mayors from about 1945 to 1973; names such as Doerr, Solari (pictured above), Moore, Welch, Pace, and others. While were at it, let's also include A. P. (Dutch) Hamann, the city Manager from 1950 to 1969, a huge player in San Jose's expansionary history.



These mayors, and many other post-war U.S. mayors set us up with a new blueprint for the design of cities that pushed cities and their boundaries outward in a rush to annex tax generating development. In those days, it appeared that as soon as a new development was built, Dutch Hamann was out to annex it; One example routinely given is the Valley Fair shopping center. Leonard McKay told it so well in a series of two blog posts in 2006. (Dutch Hamann Part I and Part II)



Photo: wikipedia (San Jose)

 

"At that time, a sales tax was a major generator of revenue, and with the council’s approval, a program of strip annexation was set in motion.  Hamann determined where future shopping centers were likely to be located, and then the city proceeded to annex a narrow band of land out along each major road and intersection, thus ensuring that the sales tax revenue would come to San Jose. 

Along Stevens Creek Road to Cupertino, Bascom Boulevard, North First Street, and Monterey Highway to Morgan Hill—each and every area was annexed.  Prior to Hamann’s tenure—more than 100 years—only 46 annexations occurred.  During his 19 years, 1,377 annexations were effected"




If you've ever looked a map of Paris it looks by its very shape, its very design that it would be easy and relatively inexpensive to administer and maintain. Compare that with a map of San Jose (shown above) and

you ask yourself, how do you effectively police a city like this, maintain the roadway system or run an efficient library or parks system? In many areas of the city that fully enclose unincorporated county areas it even becomes more puzzling. Now try to figure out how you administer an effective police force, sanitary sewer systems, roads, streetlights, schools and water systems.

Yes it is extremely complicated. Just ask anyone living in the Burbank section of San Jose, an area where most neighbhors don't know who administers (county or city) parts of their own neighborhood.

Actually the layout of the city used to be worse. That is why 40 years ago the California State legislature created a regulatory vehicle to control crazy city boundaries that were confusing even city officials. Known by their acronym LAFCO (Local Agency Formation Commission), these independent regulatory commissions where created to control the boundaries of cities and most special districts (such as utility, school, sewage, vector, etc.). But more on that in a later post.

Given this willy nilly style of development and city leaders gross over-projection of population growth (see graph) infrastructure building (construction) was the real growth industry when an Apple in this valley was still something you ate. Even though California, the Bay Area, and San Jose grew at astonishing rates in the 1960's, 70's, and 80's their projections show that in 2010 San Jose's population would be at 1.8 million residents. In 2010 the city population was only 952,612 per the United States Census Bureau, or just over half what was projected.

To accommodate this overly inflated growth rate, the city built new sewer systems and water treatment plants (the current plant in Alviso), realigned roadways (Nagle Taylor, Julian and the Alameda), widened streets to nowhere (Park Ave., Minnesota at Meridian), built new railway under crossings (Park Ave. near Diridon), and new satellite libraries (West Valley branch etc. which was rebuilt several years ago), and fire stations.

What these leaders failed to realize was that the future money needed to maintain all this growing infrastructure base could not be recouped by the low yields (nowadays we call this sustainable) on a tax base reflected in the form of bedroom communities and urban sprawl. Many of these projects would not pencil out, or pay for themselves; and this was before Californians (not Mayor Reed or Jerry Brown) decided to severely restrict cities ability to maintain it all by passing Proposition 13 in 1978. So since 1978 cities have had to become very creative to tax these essentials of suburban living; investments in sewer pipe, pumping stations, wide Almaden neighborhood streets, or cul-du-sac living of the Evergreen area.

These leaders threw away the old tried and traditional rules of building cites and went on to build over 4,000 miles of municipal roadways. Now the potholes are coming home to roost (oh well I tried), or the archers arrow has returned to earth only to strike the shooter in the head.

As I have mentioned in many a post we, and many other California cities were built in the postwar era without a thought to how we would maintain these roadways. We have $303 million in unfunded road backlogs. We need around $100 million per year to maintain the system. We have no room in the general budget for repair. What funds are used to fix potholes, at about $16 million per year come from federal and state sources. We are now starting to receive the benefits of the recently enacted $10 vehicle fee but these amounts are nowhere near enough to cover the repair and maintenance of our roadways. State and federal gasoline taxes do not directly finance our maintenance program. Those funds are for building and maintaining  the federal and state highway systems.

Yes we do have a huge pothole problem, a problem that many has grown immensely in the last few years. However until residents and motorist realize how complex, how expensive, and how poorly funded our roadway system is, the problem is just not going to get any better anytime soon.

The chickens have come home to roost.