This blog is to discuss transportation, urban planning, and land use issues in the Pittsburgh area. My name is Jonathan Salmans. I have developed an interest in urban and transportation planning, and want to write down and share my thoughts on those topics as they relate to Pittsburgh. My formal background is in engineering and I have a Masters in Mechanical Engineering, and Bachelors degrees in both electrical engineering and economics. While this blog will not be overly technical, I do have a comfort with using numbers that will come across in some of the blog posts.
I currently live in Squirrel Hill and work in Monroeville, so if those locations appear disproportionately in my blog it is because I am able to draw on personal experience.
In this post to kick off my blog, I wanted to outline the values and priorities that will be the foundation for my future posts.
Transportation Safety and Healthy Living
Far too many people in Pittsburgh and in the United States as a whole die or are injured travelling. While the United States has a lower safety record for rail travel than other countries, the overwhelming majority of transportation injuries and fatalities are due to automobiles.
Transportation safety needs to be considered in a holistic way. For example, when the inconvenience of airline security causes more people to drive cars, our country’s investment in anti-terrorism prevention actually results in more deaths and injuries that don’t typically make headlines. The health and mortality consequences of pollution need to be considered. So do the benefits of exercise from walking and cycling.
Therefore we need to consider how planning decisions affect safety and health outcomes overall, and not try and improve safety for each transportation mode in isolation.
Beautiful Cities
People want to live in and be in beautiful places, and transportation and land use decisions have a big impact on the aesthetics of where people spend their time.
Walkable public spaces are people friendly and welcoming, whereas highways and strip malls are unattractive and hostile to pedestrians.
Historic preservation of attractive buildings is important. So are parks and urban trees. Surface parking lots and strip malls are ugly, as are blighted buildings and graffiti. We need to think about the impact of policies on the beauty of the city, and make those consequences a priority.
Rapid Destination Access
City planning should aim to maximize the number of destinations that can be travelled to in a given period of time. The corollary is that the number of residents living with a given travel time of a destination is also maximized.
This goal increases the number of jobs available within commuting distance of their residence. It provides choice for restaurants, amenities and leisure activities. Finally, it allows activities that benefit from a large number of people being brought to one location. This includes sporting events and cultural shows. It allows and supports industries that benefit from or require large numbers of people to be brought together.
Many evaluations of our transportation system have a misplaced focus. They focus on travel speed rather than time to destination. The quality of the system is evaluated based on travel times compared with what they would be by car in free flow conditions (i.e. if there were no other cars on the road). This is an autocentric way of evaluating transportation that tends to conclude that we need more roads, more lanes, and more parking.
When people visit Pittsburgh from the suburbs they often find it frustrating that traffic moves more slowly in the city. The fact is though that travel times between destinations are lower in the city. This is not just because destinations are closer together. It is also because there is typically a more direct path to get to the destination. The cul-de-sac sprawl layout that is common in the suburbs results in the path to a destination often being much farther than the distance as the crow flies.
The presence of more mass transit also allows far more people to travel a route before the streets become congested. This allows for the higher density that results in reduced travel times.
Affordability
Many cities that have good public transportation and pedestrian infrastructure (e.g. New York, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo) and therefore meet the goals of safety and rapid destination access also have high costs of living. It is important that housing and transportation costs be limited so that people of all income levels can enjoy the benefits.
This is achievable. The cost to build and maintain transit oriented development is typically lower than automobile oriented development. The reason transit oriented cities are often so expensive is that there is high demand and artificially constrained, limited supply. Additionally, the reduced transportation costs that a good public transportation system provides makes it possible to spend a larger portion of one’s income on housing.
Often when the term affordable housing is used, what is really meant is government subsidized housing. This is not what I am referring to. Policies need to facilitate market rate housing that is low cost.
Inclusion
It is important that everyone be able to travel sufficiently to participate in society. Public transportation is essential for this. It allows people who are physically unable to drive or too poor to afford to use a private automobile to get where they need to go. This allows them to get to their jobs and to contribute and participate in society. It also saves government safety net programs money.
Conclusion
In this blog I plan to make specific, actionable recommendations that will further these goals. I will also discuss general principles that are relevant to Pittsburgh with local examples. I hope readers will respond in the comments to sharpen my thinking and show me when I’m wrong. I also hope this blog will influence people to make better decisions for Pittsburgh.
