Memphis at Eye Level: Part 2

“Memphis at Eye Level: Part 2” is a reference to “The City at Eye Level”. I finally volunteered with the bike riding portion of the Urban Bicycle Food Ministry‘s program, which happens on Wednesday evening and Saturday morning. Since I am not an early bird, I was struggling for weeks to motivate myself to wake up early enough to volunteer with the Urban Bicycle Food Ministry. The Saturday morning program starts with cooking at 7am and delivers the food at 7:30am. I previously helped to cook for the Wednesday evening program. I wanted to deliver the food, but I needed to prioritize eating my own dinner. The program is during dinner time on Wednesday evening. The program celebrated eleven years this weekend.

As someone who was raised (felt forced to attend) in Bethpage Presbyterian Church, which is located in North Carolina, and now attends the Unitarian Universalists church called Church of the River in Memphis as I continue to evaluate my religious beliefs as an agnostic in the South’s Bible Belt, I actually find the video below to capture my viewpoint on religion more accurately than any traditional church video. I prefer to be outside the church walls helping my community rather than stuck inside the church walls just talking about how I could help my community. I also love how the organizer accepts anyone from any religion to volunteer. This is what a welcoming church environment should mean. I get frustrated when I see churches say that they are welcoming to only find out that they are only welcoming to people who agree with their viewpoint. I strongly believe churches should be a place where people can discuss and argue about controversial topics. Unfortunately, churches are all too often places for groupthink. I believe groupthink is how some wars were started and why some current wars have no end in sight. I hate groupthink!

Source: Urban Bicycle Food Ministry

Ray’s Experience Volunteering

While I wish it did not take a special day to motivate me to get up early to volunteer with the Urban Bicycle Food Ministry, I finally motivated myself to wake up early when I felt the need to help veterans on Veterans Day. Unfortunately, veterans are more likely to be homeless than other Americans. I was impressed by the program’s operation. The homeless people and other struggling people that we encountered on Main Street were very aware of the program’s existence. They lined up to get a meal from me and the other volunteers. Since I was busy giving out the meals, I did not have time to get their permission to take photos. The organizers said I could take photos if I got permission from the people we were helping.

I may have broken this rule when taking the photo below. The kid got on the adult bike, and I did not have enough time to ask their parent for permission to take the photo before their kid got off the bike.

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A post shared by Ray Atkinson (@rayplans)

Involving Homeless People in Public Outreach Process

As I was volunteering, I kept thinking about how I rarely see homeless people in public outreach processes. While I will admit that I want biking and walking to be viewed as something that everyone does and not just low-income people, I realize that currently biking and walking for transportation in Memphis appears to be mostly done by low-income people. I should clarify that I specifically included “for transportation” because I have mostly seen wealthier people in Memphis bike and walk only for exercise. I usually see these people drive for transportation. I hope my work encourages these people to also bike and walk for transportation and view biking and walking as normal modes of transportation. I enjoyed seeing this when I studied abroad in Denmark and the Netherlands. Most people in these countries viewed biking and walking for transportation as normal parts of their culture.

As I try to change the walking and biking cultures in Memphis, I am concerned about how to get homeless people and others struggling on the street involved in my public outreach processes. Since they likely do not have computer or internet access, they likely are not aware of public outreach meetings. I likely will have to go to them instead of expecting them to come to a usual meeting room. Due to my limited budget, I am not suggesting that my program will always be able to do special engagement activities for people living on the street. I mostly wanted to share how this population is often excluded by typical public outreach approaches. Do you think that my program could partner with the Urban Bicycle Food Ministry to organize mobile public outreach activities?

Future Blog Post

I think a great opportunity to experiment with innovative public outreach approaches will be during the City of Memphis’ Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) Action Plan creation process, which kicks off this month. Since the USDOT website publicly shares the grant amount, I can share that this action plan has $800,000 worth of federal and local funds. I view the homeless population and other vulnerable low-income street users as critical people to be involved in this planning process. I doubt the typical email and snail mail notification approaches and public outreach strategies will be effective at involving this population, especially due to the fact that they do not have an email address or physical mail address. Have you seen innovative approaches to notify and engage homeless people in your planning process?

Petaluma’s Ambitious 2030 Carbon Neutral Goal

One of the reasons why I accepted the City of Petaluma’s offer to be the Senior Transit Planner is because I feel strong commitment from the City staff to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. As a planner, I am used to goals gathering dust in a plan, leaders not being fully committed to achieving the goals, or the language of the goals being weakened. In case you notice, I have never published a post about climate change before. While I consider myself to be a lifelong learner, the main reason why I have not published on this topic before is I am not a climate change expert.

Thankfully, my knowledge of this topic is not as bad as my Spanish skills, which I am struggling to improve through Duolingo. Learning a language as an adult is tough! I wish I had focused more on learning Spanish and other languages when I was younger. I took French at Northwest Cabarrus High School, which is located in North Carolina, because all of the Spanish classes were full. I have forgotten most of what I learned because I have not used French recently. Selfishly, I wish most non-English speaking Petalumans would speak French because my French is still better than my Spanish.

Sorry for the tangent. I have been stressed about struggling to learn Spanish. Since most non-English speaking Petalumans speak Spanish, I guess this is not a tangent because being bilingual in Spanish would help me be able to do outreach to Spanish-speaking Petalumans.

Clackamas County (Oregon) Climate Action Plan Proposes 2050

I hate to embarrass Clackamas County, which is located in the Portland, OR region, but I feel the need to share what they are doing wrong in hopes that other government agencies will do better. While I represented Clackamas Community College (CCC) on the Community Advisory Task Force (CATF) for the Clackamas County Climate Action Plan, my personal perspective in this post does not represent CCC’s perspective. Since CCC never took a stance on the controversial I-205 Toll Project, which is a critical project when deciding how to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, I actually did not feel fully able to represent CCC on the CATF. The main reason why the I-205 Toll Project is a critical project is the transportation sector generates the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions. How can Clackamas County possibly achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 when it supports widening I-205 (whether or not to create a toll is another issue)?

Source: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions

Petaluma Transit Is Ready To Achieve 2030 Goal

While 2030 is not here yet, the energy (pun intended) I feel from my coworkers and City Council give me confidence that we will achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. The below photo and link are included in the City staff email signatures. Since the link informs the public about how they can help the City achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, I believe the “I’M READY” refers to every person in Petaluma being ready to work together towards achieving this goal.

Source: https://cityofpetaluma.org/departments/climate-ready-2030/

Petaluma’s goal is ambitious because I believe cities usually just make sure their goal complies with the state’s goal. As the below background shows, California’s carbon neutrality goal is 2045. While the background states that the City of Petaluma committed the City to this same timeframe, the City Council adopted the more rigorous 2030 goal during its January 11, 2021, special meeting.

Source: Climate Emergency Framework

As the Senior Transit Planner, I am working with my coworkers to achieve the below Climate Emergency Framework goals. Due to how expensive converting Petaluma Transit’s fleet to non-combustion vehicles is, we have been applying for grants to purchase battery-electric buses. While this conversion process could take longer than 2030, we are hopeful that converting as much as possible of our fleet to battery-electric buses by 2030 will help us achieve the carbon neutrality goal.

Source: Climate Emergency Framework

In case you are wondering how the electricity is generated, Petaluma Transit’s hybrid electric buses are currently powered using Sonoma Clean Power’s EverGreen Program, which uses geothermal energy from geysers and solar energy from six local projects in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties. Surprisingly, Sonoma Clean Power is the only utility in California to provide the option of using 100% renewable, locally produced energy day AND night. While the power generation details are not final, EverGreen Program should be used for most or all of the power needed to operate the battery-electric buses.

Source: https://sonomacleanpower.org/programs/evergreen

Rainier Avenue Demonstration Project

As hopeful as I am about Petaluma achieving carbon neutrality by 2030, I believe converting to battery-electric buses will not be enough to achieve this goal. Many Petalumans will also need to shift from driving to walking, biking, and riding transit. One way the City of Petaluma is trying to encourage this shift is through projects like the Rainier Avenue Demonstration Project. Since this is a temporary project, I am curious to see whether the project becomes permanent. Due to many negative Nextdoor comments about this project from angry motorists, who do not like change in their neighborhood and believe no one bikes in Petaluma, I am concerned that the project may not become permanent when Rainier Avenue is repaved and restriped in 2023. While City staff and City Council feel energized to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, are car-dependent Petalumans open to making a shift from driving to walking, biking, and riding transit? If not, can Petaluma still achieve carbon neutrality by 2030?

Source: https://cityofpetaluma.org/rainier-active-transportation-improvements-with-paving-project/

Future Blog Post

While I could write more, I am getting tired. It is almost midnight, so I should publish this post and go to bed. As I think about future blog posts, I could also write about my car-free trips in Petaluma and throughout the Bay Area. Since I keep getting sick (not bad enough to be hospitalized) and California just had a record-breaking heat wave, I have not traveled beyond Petaluma for several weeks. My 32nd birthday is on September 19, so I want to do something special for my birthday. This may give me something to blog about. I am open to suggestions. What do you want to read?

Which Certification(s) Should I Pursue?

I have missed blogging over the past nearly three months. Since you may be thinking that I exhausted all my ideas to blog about, I want you to know that I have thoughts to share. I felt the need to stop blogging because I needed to concentrate on studying for the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) Certification Exam, which I took and barely failed on November 10. In case you are curious about how comprehensive the 170-question (only 150 questions are scored) exam is, it covers the following five major topic areas:

Fundamental Planning Knowledge (25% of exam content)
Plan Making and Implementation (30% of exam content)
Areas of Practice (30% of exam content)
Leadership, Administration and Management (5% of exam content)
AICP Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct (10% of exam content)

While I thought Planning Prep’s free practice exams and questions would help me prepare for the exam, I learned the hard way that the exam questions were very different from the practice questions on Planning Prep. This website was created in 2001 and the exam has changed several times with the most recent change occurring in 2017, so I am not too surprised that Planning Prep has not been able to keep up with the exam changes. I learned helpful planning knowledge while using Planning Prep, so I see a silver lining. Hopefully, Planetizen’s $255 AICP Exam Preparation Class will better prepare me for the exam. Since I do not want to forget what I studied for the past two months and want to stop stressing about the exam as soon as possible, I plan to retake it in May 2020. I will have to keep putting my blog on hold so I can prioritize studying again.

As the title of this post shows, my decision about whether to keep pursuing the AICP was not an easy decision. This decision has become harder over the years because I have learned that other planning-related certifications exist. I was only focused on the AICP when I was evaluating where to attend grad school. Even though there are other planning-related certifications, Portland State University’s Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) program only promotes the AICP on its website. I graduated from PSU’s MURP program in June 2016.

Since I thought it was automatically assumed that all MURP alumni would pursue the AICP like I believe all engineers pursue the Professional Engineer (PE), I have been surprised to learn that many MURP alumni do not plan to pursue the AICP. While I still plan to pursue the AICP, I wanted to share other certifications that I may pursue in the future.

My job involves working on Transportation Demand Management (TDM) projects. The Association for Commuter Transportation is launching the TDM-Certified Professional (TDM-CP) in Spring 2020. Since many TDM professionals are planning to pursue or have the AICP, will our profession consider the TDM-CP as prestigious as the AICP?

Another planning-related certification is the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU)’s CNU-Accredited (CNU-A). My review of comments on Cyburbia comparing CNU-A to AICP shows that many planners view the CNU-A as a scam and the AICP as credible. Since both certifications have similar processes, it appears the main reason why the CNU-A is viewed as a scam is it was launched after the AICP.

Since I manage public engagement projects, I am considering the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2)’s Certified Public Participation Professional (CP3) or Master Certified Public Participation Professional (MCP3). These certifications are also pursued by planners that have the AICP.

Michigan State University’s National Charrette Institute has a Charrette Certificate Program that looks similar to the IAP2’s certification program. As you may remember, I helped manage the planning, execution, and follow-up for a five-day intensive community planning charrette for the City of Alexandria, VA. Since my dad graduated from The Ohio State University (alumni really do emphasize “The”) and my maternal grandma watches OSU sports when I visit her, I doubt they would enjoy me going through a Michigan State University program. I guess it could be worse. The program could be through the University of Michigan, which is OSU’s archrival.

While I do not use GIS as much as I used to during previous jobs, I have thought about pursuing the Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP) someday. Since I do not have four years of full-time GIS experience yet, I do not qualify to apply for the GISP yet.

Before I started studying for the AICP this year, I took three project management courses at Clackamas Community College. My teacher has been encouraging me to keep taking courses after I pass the AICP. He has been persuading me to pursue Project Management Institute’s Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.

I am exhausted just thinking about all of these certifications! Most of them require an exam and the application processes are not cheap. Since it appears most planners see the AICP as the most prestigious planning-related certification, I plan to start with this certification. Do you think I should pursue other certifications after I get the AICP or is one certification enough?

Using Oregon House Bill 2001 to Prioritize Missing Middle Housing Near Transit, Biking, and Walking Corridors

Oregon Governor Brown signed House Bill 2001 into law on August 8, 2019. While many local, state and national news articles have falsely sensationalized that this bill bans single-family zoning, this bill actually provides cities throughout Oregon (not just Portland) with more housing flexibility because it legalizes missing middle housing. As the below diagram shows, missing middle housing is a residential typology spanning the range of densities between single-family detached homes and mid-rise to high-rise apartment buildings. Missing middle housing types were common in the US through the first half of the 20th century but have largely disappeared from development over the past 70 years.

Source: https://missingmiddlehousing.com/

Unfortunately, House Bill 2001 does not require cities to prioritize dense housing near transit, biking, and walking corridors. Due to this, I was hoping Senate Bill 10 would also pass because it would have legalized more dense housing near transit corridors and removed mandatory parking minimums within a half-mile of rail and frequent bus service statewide. The below map shows where zoning would have been impacted in the Portland region.

Source: TriMet and Sightline

While I am disappointed that this bill did not pass, my friend, Michael Andersen, reported in this Sightline Institute article that House Bill 2001 is the “first law of its kind in the United States or Canada”. Since cities like Minneapolis have legalized missing middle housing, it is important to note that Oregon is the first state to legalize it statewide in “all cities with more than 10,000 residents and all urban lots in the Portland metro area.”

Cities Need to Prioritize Missing Middle Housing in Transit, Biking, and Walking Corridors

While House Bill 2001 does not require cities to prioritize dense housing near transit, biking, and walking corridors, advocates like myself are working with cities to amend land-use regulations and the comprehensive plan to prioritize dense housing near transit, biking, and walking corridors. I had a meeting yesterday with Laura Terway, who is Community Development Director for the City of Oregon City, to discuss where the City needs to prioritize dense housing in Oregon City. We reviewed the below zoning map. I only took a screenshot of the legend because the map was not legible until zooming in. We found plenty of single-family housing near TriMet’s frequent bus service. We plan to review whether to upzone this single-family housing to transit-oriented development (TOD). House Bill 2001 requires the City to allow missing middle housing in most areas that are currently zoned for single-family housing, but the Oregon Legislature decided to allow local jurisdictions to decide where and how to design the missing middle housing. Since we want the public to be educated about their housing and transportation choices, I shared this 2015 missing middle housing report that a PSU Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) team created for the City of Tacoma, WA.

Source: https://www.orcity.org/maps/zoning-map

I am a transportation planner and specialized in transportation planning at PSU, so I am out of my comfort zone advocating for housing and land-use changes. Since I consider myself a lifelong learner, I am excited to learn more about land-use planning and zoning through my new advocacy work.

Potential Political and Public Resistance to Missing Middle Housing

I am aware that I likely have a minority viewpoint in Oregon City. While most of my Portland friends are YIMBYs (Yes In My Back Yard), I have met few YIMBYs in Oregon City. I believe most Oregon City residents are NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard). Even though HB 2001 requires Oregon City to allow missing middle housing, it does not require Oregon City to amend land-use regulations and the comprehensive plan to prioritize dense housing near transit, biking, and walking corridors. While there are many PSU MURP alumni on the planning staff for the City that agree with my YIMBY perspective, we expect to encounter political and public resistance when we try to implement amendments to land-use regulations and the comprehensive plan.

Since I know companies are biased to their viewpoint, I was hesitant to share Redfin’s June 2019 housing density survey results. Redfin commissioned a survey of 2,929 US residents who bought or sold a primary residence in the last year or plan to in the next year. 71.5% or 2,095 of the respondents identified as White or Caucasian, 345 identified as black or African American, 206 identified as East Asian or Asian American and 283 identified as Latinx or Hispanic American. According to the survey results,

53 percent of total respondents oppose housing density near where they live; 27 percent support policies that enable it.

Redfin filtered the survey results by race. Before I share these results, I want you to remember that Oregon City is mostly White. As of the 2010 Census, Oregon City was 91.1% White.

Racial Dot Map of Oregon City. Source: https://demographics.virginia.edu/DotMap/index.html

56% of White respondents oppose housing density near where they live; 23% of White respondents support housing density near where they live.

Source: https://www.redfin.com/blog/high-density-housing-sentiment-by-race/

Since I am trying to connect with other YIMBYs in Oregon City, the below survey results confirm what I already expected. Younger homebuyers and sellers are more likely to support housing density near where they live than older homebuyers and sellers.

Source: https://www.redfin.com/blog/high-density-housing-sentiment-by-race/

I plan to publish future blog posts to update you on my experience advocating for missing middle housing near transit, biking, and walking corridors. Is there anything specific that you would like me to blog about?

Ray Improving Project Management Skills

I am excited to share that I am starting classes again this fall to earn my Associate of Applied Science degree in Project Management at Clackamas Community College! I admit that you likely would not have seen the words “project management” written by me during high school and my first undergrad experience at UNC Charlotte. I observed geographers and planners work on projects when I shadowed them and worked with them during internships, but I doubt I realized that project management existed and what it really meant.

Screenshot: Clackamas Community College

My First Project Schedule

My name was included in a project schedule for the first time when I worked on launching Philadelphia’s Indego bikeshare program during Summer 2014. I worked on this project as a Transportation Planning Intern at Toole Design Group in the Washington, DC office. I cannot publicly share the project schedule, so the below photo shows Indego. My name was included in project schedules throughout grad school at Portland State University (PSU) and work at MetroBike. Since I applied to PSU before interning at Toole Design Group, gaining project management skills likely was not something I thought I would learn at PSU. My name is currently included in project schedules at Clackamas Community College. I think this shows how much I have grown as a professional.

Photo: Bike Share Philadelphia

Getting Certified

Now that I better understand what project management is and why it is so useful for my career, I am excited to hone my project management skills by taking classes at Clackamas Community College. Since college tuition is not usually free in the US, I am thankful one of my work benefits is a full tuition waiver. I still have to pay college fees and for textbooks. These minimal costs should be worth it when I graduate and become eligible to take the Project Management Professional (PMP) or Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) exam. According to the Project Management Institute’s Earning Power Salary Survey, “those with a PMP certification garner a higher salary (20% higher on average) than those without a PMP certification.”

I am still planning to take the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) exam in May or November 2019. I will have at least two years of full-time planning experience by late 2018 or early 2019. This is a requirement to be eligible to apply to take the AICP exam. I may also take the Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP) and Congress for the New Urbanism-Accredited (CNU-A) exams. There are so many certifications that interest me!

Using My Certification(s)

While being certified is great, I want to use my certification(s). As I mentioned in this post, I will have a new student assistant starting on Monday, September 10. She will work for me until the end of Spring Term 2019, which is in June. Besides the student assistant I briefly supervised for one week during Spring Term 2018 and the high school student I volunteered to supervisor as a part-time Outreach Intern at Charlotte B-cycle during Summer 2013, I will be supervising an employee for the first time in my life starting this fall.

Since I want to be prepared to supervise my new student assistant, I have been working with my boss during work time and my Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals (APBP) mentor during personal time to create a 2018-19 academic year project schedule for myself and my student assistant. I plan to write a future post about how this project management experience went for us.

Living Car-Free in American Suburb

Yes, you read the title of this post correctly. I am currently living car-free in the American suburb of Oregon City, which is located at the southern edge of the Portland, OR region.

Oregon City is located at the southern edge of the Portland region. I live and work in southern Oregon City. Source: AARoads

I will admit that I did not envision living and working in a suburb similar to my childhood hometown of Kannapolis, NC when I moved from Kannapolis to Charlotte in August 2009 to start undergrad at UNC Charlotte. Since I hated feeling forced to drive an automobile for every trip in Kannapolis and loved the freedom of many transportation choices in Charlotte, I never imagined returning to a suburb after graduating from UNC Charlotte. As I hope this post shows you, returning to a suburb may have been the best decision for my career.

While I still prefer living in an urban area and miss living in Arlington, VA’s award-winning Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor, I feel I am making a much bigger difference working in the suburb of Oregon City than I could have made working in a big city. This is mostly because I am the only transportation planner at Clackamas Community College (CCC) and one of the few active transportation planners in Oregon City.

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I worked or interned in Charlotte, Philadelphia, Portland (OR), and the DC region, so I am confident that if I worked in a large city I would be in a large transportation department with many staff working on active transportation planning issues. While I am not trying to devalue the work that planners do in big cities, especially since they have to work on more complex issues than I have in Oregon City, how much difference does EACH of these planners have in creating change in their big city?

Since I am an entry-level transportation planner, I keep thinking about how much more difference I am making in Oregon City than I could have made as an entry-level transportation planner among many entry-level transportation planners in a big city. While I have to get permission to do things like apply for grants, I have been given plenty of professional freedom so far to pursue what I feel would be useful for improving multimodal transportation choices at CCC. This also means that I have to be more responsible for the decisions I make because I am the only transportation planner. Since I was micromanaged at a previous job (purposely not giving specifics because I do not want to embarrass a previous employer) and this overwhelmed my supervisor and me, I am thankful my current supervisor is not micromanaging me.

While I wrote earlier how Oregon City is a similar suburb to my childhood hometown of Kannapolis, Oregon City has much better active transportation access to Portland than Kannapolis has to Charlotte. After biking from my home in southern Oregon City to Downtown Oregon City on almost completely connected bike lanes, signed bike routes and sharrows, I can ride on almost completely connected trails all the way to Downtown Portland. The regional version of the below trails map can be found here. I actually helped create this map during my internship at Oregon Metro.

Regional trails between Oregon City and Downtown Portland. Source: Oregon Metro

The below map shows most of the bike infrastructure between Oregon City and Downtown Portland. Since Portland’s famous neighborhood greenways and Oregon City’s signed bike routes and sharrows aren’t shown at this zoom level, I wanted to note that this is missing from the below map.

Bike infrastructure between Oregon City and Downtown Portland. Source: Google Maps

Unless I rarely wanted to visit Charlotte or spend lots of time and money on transferring between multiple transit systems in the Charlotte region (I can take unlimited trips on TriMet’s light rail lines and buses throughout the Portland region for $5/day), I could not have lived car-free in Kannapolis. While the Carolina Thread Trail is working to connect trails throughout the Charlotte region and I volunteered to help create the Carolina Thread Trail Map, it is not possible today to use trails or any other bike infrastructure to bike between Downtown Kannapolis and Uptown Charlotte. Since Charlotte’s bike lanes, signed bike routes and sharrows are not shown at this zoom level, I wanted to note that this is missing from the below map.

Bike infrastructure between Uptown Charlotte and Downtown Kannapolis. Source: Google Maps

Oregon City has good biking and transit access to Portland, so I have been able to visit Portland frequently without driving. While some people in Oregon City have suggested I should buy a car so I can travel quicker, owning and maintaining a car is expensive. Plus, my job literally involves helping people to reduce car dependency. I can currently motivate people to reduce car dependency by telling them that it is possible to live car-free in a suburb like Oregon City because I live car-free here. How would they react if I told them I gave up and purchased a car for the first time in my life?

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While I live car-free in my personal life, I cannot reach all my work trips by walking, biking and riding transit. Since I did not want to buy a car for work trips, my supervisor helped me reserve the below hybrid electric car, which CCC owns. This car is only available during the summer term because students learn how to reconstruct the car during other terms. Due to this, I have had to use expensive transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft to travel for work trips during the rest of the year. Even though I was nervous about whether my supervisor would support my car-free lifestyle, he has been very supportive.

I have so far driven the hybrid electric car to and from the Clackamas County Coordinating Committee (C4) Meeting near Mt Hood. Since this was the first time I drove after moving back to Oregon and I didn’t drive much when I lived in Virginia, I had to adjust to driving again. I have always been a slow driver, but Oregon drivers have been proven to be among the nation’s slowest drivers so I fit in.

Hybrid electric car provided for work trips. Photo: Ray Atkinson

As my below Instagram post shows, the C4 Meeting provided me with good insights into Clackamas County’s transportation priorities. Unfortunately for my work to reduce car dependency, widening I-205 is definitely the top priority. Oregon DOT (ODOT), which presented about the I-205 toll and widening project during the C4 Meeting, has been trying to get support for widening I-205 by saying this will reduce traffic congestion. While traffic congestion may be reduced in the short-term, induced demand has shown that widening highways never reduced traffic congestion in the long-term. This is why ODOT needs to use the I-205 toll revenue to fund active transportation projects, which have been proven to reduce traffic congestion on highways. If ODOT is looking for an existing program to review, I recommend the I-66 Commuter Choice Program because revenue from the I-66 toll in Northern Virginia is directly funding active transportation projects in Northern Virginia.

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I have not decided what my next blog post will be about, but it will probably be something about what I am experiencing in Oregon. Thank you for reading my blog!

Value of Transit is More Than Just Transit

As a native Charlottean and proud alumnus of UNC Charlotte, I’m excited to finally see the Blue Line Extension (BLE) from Uptown Charlotte to UNC Charlotte’s main campus open today. I hope this will help shift the mindset of Charlotte being an automobile-dependent city to a transit-dependent city.

Source: CATS, City of Charlotte

I wish I could write that I’m as excited to see the success of transit-oriented development (TOD) within walking distance of the BLE stations. While I realize development changes are often long-term, these changes are influenced by past and current planning and zoning decisions. My friend and mentor, Martin Zimmerman, researched how Charlotte has the zoning enforcement tools available to get the best value out of its $1.2-billion-dollar BLE investment.

Insiders know that zoning enforcement tools have been available for at least 14 years to assure orderly growth on transit corridors. It’s just that those granted the public trust lack the gumption to use the tools and say “no” to landowners who could care less about building to transit-friendly standards.

For readers that aren’t transportation or land use planners, I want to make sure you understand what I mean by “value”. While most of the Charlotte mainstream media’s focus on the new BLE has been on the light rail trains and stations, the BLE’s value extends far beyond this. The BLE is also impacting the surrounding land use and people’s travel behavior. As Martin’s op-ed shows, much of this is currently automobile dependent. Automobile-dependent land uses and travel behavior have many costly negative externalities. Through promoting TOD land use and encouraging active travel behaviors like walking, biking, and riding transit, Charlotte can get the best value out of its $1.2-billion-dollar BLE investment. Since I’m a visual learner, I tried to find a visual to explain this. I hope the below visual helps you. Do you understand what I mean by “value”?

Since this post was focused on Charlotte, I want to clarify that many cities throughout the US have the same issues with getting the best value out of their capital transit investments.

Source: @adifalla

Virginia’s Lee Highway Alliance experiments with State of Place’s walkability analysis tool

Today is the National Day on Writing, which asks people to share why they write using #WhyIWrite. I started this blog in 2014 and wrote the following post because I’m passionate about opening people’s eyes to transportation issues that I also used to be blind to. Since Greater Greater Washington‘s staff helped me write this post so it could be posted on their blog, the structure is different from what I usually write on my blog.

The Lee Highway Alliance (LHA) in Arlington, Virginia is working to make the Lee Highway Corridor more economically vibrant, walkable, and attractive. State of Place is helping them achieve their walkability goals. Walkability is simply a measure of how friendly a given place is to walking. People who live in highly walkable places see a slew of health, environmental, and financial benefits.

The Lee Highway Corridor is located in north Arlington just north of the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor. Unlike the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor, which helped Arlington win the Gold 2017 National Planning Achievement Award for Implementation, the Lee Highway Corridor remains a primarily automobile-dependent, suburban-style place.

Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor, past and present. Images by Arlington.

As is typical of most of the commercial corridors built throughout the country during the mid-to-late 20th century, the general development pattern of the Lee Highway Corridor is low-rise commercial development with prominent surface parking lots and limited pedestrian, bicycle, and transit infrastructure.

It is a major automobile commuter corridor. In order to create the place that the LHA envisions, the Lee Highway Corridor needs to become a place that prioritizes people and community over automobiles.

Since the LHA wants to provide people with healthy transportation choices and attract vibrant economic development, it hopes to improve the Lee Highway Corridor through a new vision that includes distinct, walkable, mixed-use neighborhood centers.

Proposed neighborhood centers showing a spectrum of density. Image by Arlington.

One of the proposed neighborhood centers, Lee Heights shopping center, is shown below:

Illustrative concept for Lee Heights shopping center, existing and proposed. Image by Arlington.

There are many tools that cities or other planners use to determine how pedestrian-friendly an area is and how they can improve “walkability.”

So how do planners determine how walkable an area is?

You can see a walkability analysis in action in Virginia

Recently, LHA was one of six organizations across the US to win a five-block walkability analysis from State of Place, a software company that uses predictive analytics to quantify what people love about a given place.

State of Place uses ten urban design categories, such as density, connectivity, and traffic safety, to assess how walkable a block, a group of blocks, or an entire neighborhood is. During the past several months, they assessed the walkability of Lee Highway. Results will be presented to the public on Saturday, October 21 from 10am-12pm at the Lee Highway Alliance office, which is located at 4620 Lee Highway, Suite 208.

There are pros and cons to all walkability assessment tools

State of Place’s approach isn’t the only walkability assessment tool available. Another tool is called Walk Score, which provides a number on the 100-point scale that measures the walkability of any address.

Most cities use Walk Score, but State of Place walkability researcher Dr. Mariela Alfonzo says this tool tends to overestimate the walkability of high-access, low-income communities, among other problems.

Joe Cortright at City Observatory rebuked Alfonzo’s criticisms, saying State of Place’s metrics are highly complex, extremely labor intensive to gather, and consequently very expensive. Plus, they have not been implemented enough to let an objective third party assess their accuracy and utility.

While there is no perfect way to assess how walkable an area or city is, both tools are a great start to understanding how to improve the accessibility and livability of a given area.

Here’s how walkability scores are created

I’ve had the opportunity to personally use the State of Place tool to conduct a similar analysis in Tigard, Oregon last year. With help from three of my Master of Urban and Regional Planning classmates from Portland State University, we created neighborhood walkability assessments for the Tigard Triangle and Downtown Tigard.

Team of Master of Urban and Regional Planning students from Portland State University with client, Lloyd Purdy of Tigard, OR (left to right: Ray Atkinson, Curtis Fisher, Lloyd Purdy, Linn Davis, Wala Abuhejleh)

My team used the inventory tool to capture data on more than 280 built environment features, in ten urban design categories, that contribute to the walkability on every street segment in this area.

We underwent a rigorous training process where we practiced using the inventory tool in four different sample settings. Individual results from the four sample settings weren’t exact matches, so we understand our data collection in the Tigard Triangle and Downtown Triangle isn’t completely accurate. For example, one person could have felt safe walking on a street segment while another person didn’t feel safe walking on the same street segment.

We walked 74 street segments in the Tigard Triangle and 15 street segments in Downtown Tigard. The data was submitted to State of Place, who used their proprietary algorithm to generate an Index score for each segment on a 100-point scale. The results are shown below:

State of Place Index for Tigard Triangle and Downtown Tigard

The index for the Tigard Triangle is 33 out of 100, a low walkability score meaning most trips require an automobile. For comparison, Downtown Tigard scored 66.

The profile breaks the index down into ten urban design categories that contribute to the walkability of the place, so cities can know where to prioritize walkability improvements. As the profile shows, the weakest category for the Tigard Triangle is lack of parks and public spaces.

State of Place Index and Profile for Tigard Triangle

However, increasing parks and public spaces don’t do as much for walkability as adding density, pedestrian amenities, and traffic safety.

Since most cities have scarce resources, State of Place also provided the “Weighted by Impact and Feasibility (Walkability)” chart, shown below. Constructing a building is expensive and often depends on the private sector, so density isn’t the most feasible way to improve walkability.

Since the public sector has more control over adding pedestrian amenities and improving traffic safety, and the non-weighted profile shows these are weak in the Tigard Triangle, they are the most feasible ways to improve walkability in this place.

State of Place charts for Tigard Triangle

The city used this data and my team’s recommendations to help create the Tigard Triangle Lean Code, which was adopted in August 2017. The lean code promotes building and site designs that improve walkability.

Tigard Triangle Lean Code. Image by Tigard.

If this analysis interests you, results from the Arlington walkability analysis will be presented to the public by State of Place on Saturday, October 21 from 10am-12pm at the Lee Highway Alliance office, which is located at 4620 Lee Highway, Suite 208. I plan to write a post with public reaction to the results.

Vocal Advocacy to Mapping Advocacy

While adjusting from being a full-time graduate student to my first full-time, permanent job over the past six months has been a learning experience, my toughest learning experience has actually been learning how to still be an advocate without risking my dream job. In a perfect world, “I’m speaking as a resident of Arlington County and not as a consultant for Arlington County” should be enough for me to keep being a vocal advocate without risking my dream job. As this post shows, my first documented time of being a vocal advocate was in January 2009, which was during my senior year of high school. Since we don’t live in a perfect world, I need to be more careful of how I approach my advocacy work.

This interview with a local reporter about a new Capital Bikeshare station at the Shady Grove Metro Station is a great example. I told the reporter that I was only willing to be interviewed if he interviewed me as a cyclist and not as a consultant for Montgomery County. Even though the reporter followed through on my request, my boss asked me to not do any more interviews and to refer reporters to the County’s Public Information Officer. My boss also said I represent MetroBike, Capital Bikeshare, and our clients at all times, so it doesn’t matter whether I tell the reporter to interview me “as a cyclist and not as a consultant for Montgomery County”.

Source: Ray’s interview with Michael Gordon

While my boss has trusted me to understand how to be a careful and aware vocal advocate at public meetings, my friends and family have suggested that being a vocal advocate isn’t worth the risk of potentially losing my dream job. Since I agree with my friends and family, I’m experimenting with another advocacy approach that I’m calling mapping advocacy.

I’m planning to silently (no risk of being interviewed or speaking at public meeting) advocate for a better regional trail system in the DC region by using my GIS knowledge, skills, and abilities and partnering with two DC-based non-profit organizations, which are the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC) and Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA). WABA launched the Capital Trails Coalition in 2016 and I serve on its Analytics Working Group, so this is how I learned about the project that I’m helping to complete. Full-time employees of both non-profit organizations have offered to request additional help for our project from their organization’s volunteers, so the official name for my new advocacy work may be Public Participation GIS (PPGIS).

Since I haven’t done any complex analysis in QGIS yet, I’m looking forward to learning how to use QGIS to complete the complex analysis needed for the Capital Trails Coalition’s project. As my senior honors thesis from UNC Charlotte shows, I have done this complex analysis in ArcGIS. I no longer have free (included with tuition and fees) access to ArcGIS like I did at UNC Charlotte and Portland State University, so I’ve been learning how to use QGIS.

Assessing Spatial Equity and Accessibility to the Little Sugar Creek Greenway from Ray Atkinson

The below examples from my senior honors thesis show the analysis I plan to do for the Capital Trails Coalition. I plan to digitize all the regional trailheads and connect them to the walking, biking, and driving infrastructure networks. This will allow me to create multimodal service areas for all the regional trails in the DC region. I can use the service areas to do further analysis like overlaying the service areas with US Census data. This analysis will allow me to see socioeconomic issues that could be improved with better planning.