Hey, IDOT, leave my stroad alone!

The six lanes of 1st Avenue (Iowa Rte. 922) by Coe College

A major challenge to creating a walkable town is the legacy of auto-centric street widening in past decades. Reconfiguring or narrowing the street so it works with, rather than through, the neighborhood is a logistical as well as a political challenge. It is especially so when the street in question is a state highway. While there are exceptions--I wrote about King Street (State Rte. 7) in Alexandria, Virginia last spring--for the most part state transportation departments have their standards and they're sticking with them, and too bad for the town that has to co-exist with a four-lane highway slashing through its commercial and residential districts. (For a tragic case from Syracuse, New York (State Rte. 108), see Larsen 2017.)

My home state's Department of Transportation, on the other hand, has for some time been suggesting to towns that they could put their state routes on "road diets" (see Strong Towns 2019). Typically this involves taking a four-lane road and converting it to three--one lane for through traffic in each direction, and a central turn lane. This leaves room to create bike lanes, on-street parking, bulbouts at crosswalks, room for street trees, or other treatments that enhance the safety and convenience of pedestrians and cyclists. Not only does this accommodate more modes of transportation than the current number of one, but it reduces crashes and traffic speeds without impacting overall traffic flow (Schmitt 2014; Speck 2012: 163-167, both cited below). All this serves to support the local business climate as well.

The Iowa Department of Transportation Design Manual lists four reasons for towns to consider road diets:

• high accident rates involving left turning movements, sideswipes, rear-ends, or crossing traffic
• the need for traffic calming 
• pedestrian and bicyclist safety issues 
• “defacto” left turn lanes: areas where a four-lane facility is operating like a three-lane facility, with the inside lanes operating as left turn lanes.

IDOT notes A portion of US 75 in Sioux Center, Iowa has been converted from a four-lane facility to three lanes with a [two-way left-turn lane] and the results have been very positive: a sharp decrease in accidents and excessive speeding, and support from both the public and businesses along the highway. Average daily traffic counts (ADTC) through downtown in 2015 ranged from 11,000-13,000, roughly the same as four years earlier.

IDOT considers cutting to three lanes appropriate up to an average daily traffic count of 15,000-17,000. What probably matters more is the highest volume of traffic on a typical day: the Federal Highway Association Road Diet Informational Guide recommends 750 vehicles per hour per direction (vphbd) as the top for a road diet, but suggests towns "consider cautiously" peak volumes as high as 875. Both manuals contain a number of reasons not to do it as well: roads that serve to move traffic rather than to access property, that have vehicles with frequent stops or slow starts, near railroad crossings, or where there is on-street parking (IDOT). This seems overly cautious to me, though I can certainly see concerns about backups at at-grade crossings--many trains move slowly through downtown Cedar Rapids, and there's only one bridge over the tracks--or waiting for someone to parallel park.

The central Iowa town of Indianola is considering a second round of road diet on State Rte. 92 (Albertson). 2016 ADTC for 2nd Av is 10000-12000 west of the intersection with US65/69, where it's been converted to three lanes, lower east of the intersection where four lanes remain. IDOT data show the four-lane portion has three times as many crashes as the four-lane portion, despite the lower traffic count.

Downtown Grundy Center (Google Maps screenshot)

Perhaps not surprisingly, there has been some pushback. The IDOT manual warns, Typically, initial community reaction to the conversion will be negative since it seems logical to assume that eliminating a lane will reduce capacity and increase delays. These gains in safety, commercial viability, and overall pleasantness seem to come at the expense of auto drivers. A lot of these drivers have children who walk to school, or enjoy a good walk or bike ride themselves, but others are not willing to yield the policy privileges they've enjoyed for decades. A Los Angeles group called Fix the City, complains of those who "want to make driving our cars unbearable by stealing traffic lanes from us on major streets and giving those stolen lanes to bike riders and buses" (Linton 2019).

In Iowa, Rep. Sandy Salmon (R-Janesville) wants to ban IDOT from promoting/recommending road diets in towns (Albertson 2019). Her bill, House File 41 would prevent IDOT from doing anything other than providing statistical data to the towns through which its highways run. As it works in Iowa, the final decisions rest with the affected towns, as it should be--right, conservatives?--but there are always those who see any step away from auto-centrism as a threat to western civilization that must be opposed at any cost.

Other towns where IDOT recommendations have met with local pushback:

• Knoxville: ADTC 2014 on Iowa Rte. 14 peaks at 10700 south of the intersection with Madison St. At intersection with Pleasant St it's 7900 s and 9200 n
• Grundy Center: ADTC 2017 on Iowa Rt 14 is 6200 on G Av where Rtes 14 & 175 run together. When they split it's 3590 on 4th St (Rte. 14) and 4590 on G Av (Rte. 175)

Really, Grundy Center? 6200 cars a day need four lanes??

As I've noted in earlier posts, the future of Iowa's small towns continues to be very much in doubt. Traditional small towns retain the grid patterns and older commercial buildings that inspire urbanists everywhere. Maybe those downtowns can't all be brought back to life, but how running a four-lane highway through them helps town life is beyond me.

MAIN SOURCES:
Jeff, "Grundy Center Fights Back Against Three-Laning," Iowa Highway Ends (Etc.), 13 February 2019
Joe Linton, "L.A. Anti-Road Diet Conspiracy Trolls Trying to Go National," Streetsblog LA, 4 February 2019
Angie Schmitt, "The Airtight Case for Road Diets," Streetsblog USA, 29 October 2014
Jeff Speck, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2012)

Iowa losing millennials, needs workers

We can't do anything about Iowa weather, but maybe there are other ways to retain our young workers and our seniors

William H. Frey’s interesting analysis (cited below) of census data on migration for the Brookings Institution reveals shifts over recent years in moves by both young workers (aged 25-34) and seniors (aged 55+). While his analysis focused on major metropolitan areas, are there lessons in here for Iowa for attracting and retaining either group?

First, despite economic recovery, relocations by both groups have not returned to pre-recession levels. Does that mean individuals are constrained by lack of resources from moving to employment centers or retirement communities? The choice of places people have gone or left also suggest affordability is a primary concern. Iowans take heart! Our state has a delightfully low cost of living, particularly when it comes to housing and transportation.

Houston is #1! (Source: elratoneducado.blogspot.com)

The number one landing spot for young workers between 2012 and 2017 was… Houston. Dallas was #3. Why are we not hearing more about these trendy places? Other cities with a net gain of 7000 or more include Austin, Charlotte, Denver, Portland and Seattle. All of the top 20 are in the South or the West except for Columbus, Kansas City and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Metros with the biggest loss of millennials are (in order) New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Diego and Miami. Frey’s analysis: Today’s young adults, now including those in the prime millennial ages, show a penchant for “educated places”… as well as more affordable areas… with pre-recession hotspots like Riverside, Phoenix and Atlanta showing reduced appeal. Those pre-recession hotspots are, of course, full of car-dependent suburban subdivisions.

“Educated places” like Austin, Denver and Seattle have nearly half of young workers with college degrees. This is also true of the three Midwestern cities among the leading landing places for young workers. It’s not the only key to success: #1 Houston has only 33 percent of young workers with college degrees, and Dallas is barely above that, while Boston (58%), Washington (54%), Hartford (50%) and New York (47%) all show net losses. Surely affordability, or the lack thereof, has a lot to do with that; those of us who believe price signals are real have been waiting awhile for the trendy places to top out while places with lower costs of living take off.

Seniors are, not surprisingly, headed for the Sun Belt, led by Phoenix, Tampa-St. Petersburg, and Riverside. But sunny Los Angeles showed the second largest losses among seniors (behind New York), and San Diego also had a net loss. Seniors who relocate seek the sun but are also fleeing high costs-of-living.

Iowa is one of 19 states that had net out-migration among both groups between 2012 and 2017: -896 among young workers, and -1705 among seniors—this despite our low cost-of-living and low unemployment rate. Iowa also has sad, lonely employers: “I’ve been in three business visits already today,” Governor Kim Reynolds said one day last month, “and at every stop, business is growing…. But they need people” (Miller 2019).

Of course, if there were a simple answer for that, we’d have found it by now. We can probably now say that there’s no quick fix—whether that be tax cuts, business relocation incentives, or big attractions. A number of towns have maintained or increased their population by welcoming refugees (Misra 2019); we might think about enhancing our Bureau of Refugee Services as well as lobbying the Trump administration to change their current anti-refugee policy.

In the longer term, we might think about the future impact of automation on employment… research suggests that small cities (like Dubuque and Sioux City, rated the most likely in Iowa to suffer great impacts) will feel the effects of automation on employment more than large cities, because large cities have greater proportions of knowledge workers (Frank et al. 2019). We probably want to stop the streak of several years of funding education below the level of inflation, which looks to continue this year (Lynch 2019); sure, it saves money and allows us to keep taxes low, but it hardly supports the “educated places” Frey notes are attracting younger workers. If the state needs workers we need a plan to fund essential services.

MAIN SOURCE: William H. Frey, “How Migration of Millennials and Seniors Has Shifted Since the Great Recession,” Brookings, 31 January 2019

SEE ALSO: "What is the Future of Iowa's Small Towns?" Holy Mountain, 3 July 2018

Green Book and wedding cakes

Poster (Source: imdb.com)

While the rest of America was watching the Super Bowl, my wife and I played rebels and went to a movie instead. We saw “Green Book,” directed by Peter Farrelly, which tells the based-on-a-true-story of a 1962 concert tour of the southern U.S. by black pianist Don Shirley. Mahershala Ali stars as Dr. Shirley, Viggo Mortensen plays the parochial white New Yorker who serves as Shirley’s muscleman-driver, and Linda Cardellini plays Mortensen’s wife.

Example of green book, from New York Public Library
via history.com

The Green Book referenced in the title, which as book qua book actually doesn’t factor that centrally to the plot, was a publication intended to guide black travelers around segregated America, listing places where they could shop, eat, lodge, and so forth. Many of those places depicted in the film were rather low on the amenities scale, but blacks who looked for better accommodations were putting their lives on the line. In the course of the movie Dr. Shirley was physically assaulted twice when he found himself in whites-only facilities; other occasions were merely awkward.

Listed in the Green Book, low on the amenities scale (Source: imdb.org)

Segregation in 1950s-60s America was by no means confined to the South. The State of Iowa, which comprises about 54,000 square miles, as of 1953 included exactly twelve places where African-Americans of that day could lodge; that year entrepreneur Cecil Reed found no place his family could stay between Cedar Rapids and Denver ("Sepia Motel" 2018, Fannon 2013). The scarcity and sketchiness of public accommodations open to blacks surely informed the public accommodations provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act which bars discrimination on the basis of race. As with segregated schools, segregated accommodations were separate but not close to equal.

Page showing Cedar Rapids's lone entry in the 1940 Green Book

Fast forward to this decade, where a number of businesses small and large are claiming exemptions from civil rights laws protecting gays and lesbians, based on the Constitution’s guarantee of free religious exercise. In a widely-known case, the Supreme Court last June upheld a Colorado bakery owner’s religious freedom claim against the State of Colorado after the baker refused to bake a cake for a gay couple’s wedding. Four years earlier, the Court found the Hobby Lobby Corporation entitled to claim religious exemption from providing their employees insurance plan(s) under the Affordable Care Act that included contraception coverage.

I’ve been making the case on this blog that inclusion of all, on an equal basis, is a fundamental aspect of community; in our common life, there can be no second-class citizens. You can’t exclude people based on their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, &c., &c. If you believe religiously, as people did not too long ago, that blacks are not entitled to the same access to opportunities as whites, that religious belief is twisted but protected, but can’t be applied in the public square. Exclusion from the benefits of society is fundamentally wrong.

But, pragmatically, gays getting married, or women seeking contraception, are not today in the position of blacks circa 1962. There surely are multiple bakeries in Lakewood, Colorado (pop. 147,000) that would do a cake for a gay couple; insurance companies at the time of the Hobby Lobby case seemed eager to find a work-around to keep the corporation’s hands clean. Without denying that we’re not close to full equality of all people, both gay marriage and contraception are part of the mainstream national culture today. No Green Book is necessary for anyone to find the services they need.

Outside Hawkins' Mens' Store, where things aren't going to go well (Source: imdb.org)

There still is, of course, the problem of humiliation when one finds that “we don’t serve your kind.” Ali’s character in “Green Book,” Dr. Shirley, repeatedly encounters situations where establishments that don’t display a “Whites Only” sign nonetheless serve only whites, or serve blacks but don’t allow them to use dressing rooms, eat in the actual restaurant, and so forth. It seems at the very least establishments that claim religious based exemptions from serving certain types of people make that publicly known. Then everyone would know in advance who could get served, and could make their purchasing and job application decisions accordingly. (Note: There is a bar in Cedar Rapids I won't patronize because until recently they displayed a prominent sign banning do-rags. I don't wear do-rags, but I also choose not to be associated with what smells like racism.)

I'm coming from a position of privilege on every dimension, so I'm trying to speak cautiously here. (Unfortunately, Blogger does not offer a "Cautious" font.) I think exclusion is exclusion, and it's wrong. Paint it with religion, and it's still exclusion, and it's still wrong. The conditions faced by black Americans well into my lifetime were intolerably wrong, and the provisions of the Civil Rights Act were way overdue. Could it be that the contemporary situations I referenced are... tolerably wrong?