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Congestion
Doug Looney's assisted suicide is enough to make any author nervous when writing about Boulder's peculiarities. However, local traffic angst is a target so juicy that it's worth risking a handful of pills from Executive Editor Barrie Kevorkian.
Debate about traffic congestion is gathering heat, and fast. Quiet frustration behind the wheel, on two wheels, and on sidewalks is boiling into public anger.
There is an amazing difference between what you hear on the street and what you hear from City Council. "Oblivion at Council" may be a bit too strong, but it's fair to say that the worst congestion in town is not on the streets, but in Council chambers.
Last week's news is a good example. While there are cries for action everywhere, Council voted to embark on a two-year study of traffic trouble. Most folks seem to think we are ten years behind, and don't have another two to fool around.
(The Council also decided to accept a half million dollars in Federal money to pay for half the cost of the study. Delay is bad, but accepting a free Federal lunch is disgraceful. Compared to our municipal peers around the country, Boulder is rich -- flat out wallowing in money. Was there no other, less rich American city with a more deserving need for 492,000 taxpayer dollars? If not, could the taxpayers just keep their money?)
The Council no doubt feels busy, but to many observers the busyness is rooted in cherished, old notions which didn't work or won't work. Meanwhile, new ideas languish.
Failing ideas include the belief that people could be made to live where they work, while citizens persist in seeing work and home as separate issues. Perhaps worst is the Council-with-no-clothes idea that the City can continue to grow rapidly and at the same time achieve dramatic improvement in traffic.
What should be done? Heard all over town, even among real estate people (gasp): above all, get a grip on growth.
Twenty years ago, Boulder limited housing growth. In the Nineties, booming commercial construction and regional growth are doing damage to the quality of life in a way unmatched since the Seventies. A comparison of Council growth management action in the Nineties to that taken in the Seventies is not flattering to current Council.
Here are some traffic-related growth management specifics.
Few want to limit jobs or business opportunity. However, if commercial construction continues at its current pace, improvement in traffic is a fantasy. Commercial growth management has passed by default to the "Slow Growth!" initiators. As flawed as that initiative is, it's likely to pass. (Then will come more meat-ax initiatives: freeze the city limits in place, for one.)
Many survivors of the North Boulder "planning process" share angry disbelief that it's possible to build 3,000 houses there and reduce traffic. South Boulderites are wondering why in the world a new, huge museum is to land next to the overused Turnpike. "Women of the West" is worthy, and lord knows correct, but here? In the 28th-30th streets corridor, what idiocy propels the pushers of a Greater Crossroads?
There should be a halt to commercial construction downtown until parking can be brought into reasonable balance with need, and commercial construction should never again be allowed to leapfrog parking resources. Council should drop the absurd notion that a hotel at Ninth and Canyon will not add to traffic.
Mr. Appelbaum (joined by a majority of Council) believes that scarce parking will limit traffic. Could we spare five hundred bucks of that survey money for a plane ticket to send Mr. Appelbaum to New York City? There, parking has been unobtainable for forty years, and gridlock rules.
In alternative transit, there is a chance to innovate by trying small-scale experiments, as opposed to the failed, grandiose 1994 transportation plan. For example, the Hop seems to work. At least there are people on those buses, unlike the RTD empties.
We have some (overcrowded) park and ride facilities for people commuting out of Boulder, which was our leading transportation problem until about 1975. How about park and ride for people commuting into town -- roughly double the outbound traffic? If we can't talk Louisville and other neighbors into their own satellite lots, how about doing our own? (Wouldn't the museum site make a nice spot?)
Automobile use is intractable because it works. It is a very efficient way for labor to get to market. Unfortunately, the efficiency depends on disregard for air quality, noise, traffic, and nerves. However, in this dysfunction lies opportunity: drivers will pay money to assuage their feelings of guilt.
While Mayor Durgin fears voter reaction to congestion taxation, have a look at Aspen. Amid threats of armed insurrection, Aspen this winter went to paid parking, and plowed the receipts into innovative transit. Pay a small, subsidized fee, and the minibus comes to pick you up. There are reports of a sudden drop in traffic, and parking spaces at peak hours have gone from 99% occupied to 85%.
Maybe Aspenization isn't so bad after all.
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