Extensive streetcar networks and smart urban design should be part of planning for decades to come, according to a University of British Columbia professor speaking at Metro on Tuesday.
Presentation video
Check back later for video from Patrick Condon's brown bag seminar at Metro.
On the surface, that's not much more revolutionary than, say, a proponent of rosary beads speaking at the Vatican or a craft beer fan walking into Portland's Horse Brass Pub.
But it was the urgency in which Patrick Condon framed his presentations, the first to about 60 visitors and Metro employees at a 90-minute lunchtime seminar, then later at a Metro Council worksession, that grabbed attention.
"The thing that really motivates this is saving the planet," Condon said. "We will drain the planet very quickly if everybody drives a car." That applies to electric cars, too, Condon said –"We're going to suck the planet dry with electric cars just as fast as any other way."
Condon was critical of a planned expansion of the Vancouver, B.C., SkyTrain, burrowing under much of the city and connecting the university and a beach on the west with the city's eastern neighborhoods, at a cost of more than $400 million a mile. (By comparison, the planned Milwaukie light rail extension is forecast to cost $191 million per mile. The MAX Green Line cost $575 million for eight miles of new tracks.)
"Just for demonstration purposes, you could rebuild the entire historic streetcar system for Vancouver, Burnaby, North Vancouver" for the same cost as the underground SkyTrain line.
He also advocated for policymakers to think more extensively about long-term costs associated with projects. He compared the cost savings of adding a bus line versus a streetcar to living in a tent because you can’t afford a house up front.
“Buses are not fantastic,” he said. “If you get everybody on buses, they’re still running on diesel. The planet will still die, just slower.”
But Condon had more than cost in mind in his support of streetcar-based transportation systems (which included a return to grid-based street layouts and other features of pre-automobile urban North America). He pointed out that dense high-rise developments, clustered around high-density transit lines, have a greater carbon footprint than midrises – which can often, also, look more appropriate in neighborhoods.
According to Condon, an average suburban home uses 15,000 kilowatt hours per year, compared to 8,000 a year for a residential high-rise unit and 5,500 for a residential mid-rise condo, townhome or apartment. The savings come from simple things like sunlight filtering by trees on a 4 or 5 story building.
Later, at the council's worksession, Condon pointed to North Vancouver's planning as a model for carbon reduction. The city is planning on tripling its population in the coming decades, without footprint expansion.
Both audiences had questions for Condon, particularly around the applicability of his theories to the United States.
Mary Vogel, of the Congress for the New Urbanism's Cascadia Chapter, pointed out that the ongoing recession has put redevelopment on the back burner in many areas. And John Fregonese, a principal at Fregonese Associates and a Metro consultant, asked if there were any examples of areas that were successfully converting old, strip-mall style developments into the kind of urban designs Condon was talking about.
"The resistance to acknowledging the level of crisis that confronts this nation is really very depressing," Condon said. But the conversions have worked, particularly in the Marine Drive area in North Vancouver and West Vancouver.
"The trouble for most North American communities is the land economics have to come to a certain point before those things start to pencil out," Condon said. "In Vancouver, land is so bloody expensive, and that's a good thing because nobody wants to use that land anymore to park a car on all day. It's way too expensive."
The logic doesn't just apply to strip malls, Condon said. School districts, for example, have to be convinced that smaller school sites will equal healthier kids – that children will get more exercise living in a walkable community than they would in a suburban setting with a large grass field to play in at recess.
At the worksession, Councilor Rex Burkholder pointed out that houses in Portland's streetcar heyday simply had more people, perhaps averaging up to six people per home instead of 2 or 3 in Portland's bungalows today.
Condon cited a tendency in British Columbia to look the other way at zoning violations that increase density, as well as a general cultural assumption that property rights are inherent in the crown, not the property owner.
Councilor Kathryn Harrington asked what "realistic actions" could be taken at the localized level to encourage smarter development.
"This is good news for you – land use is very important," Condon said. Portland's urban growth boundary will eventually force the same kinds of market-driven changes that natural and political boundaries have forced in British Columbia, he said.
Condon also spoke at the West Linn City Council and was scheduled to speak Tuesday night in Damascus.
Correction - An earlier version of this story had the incorrect date for Condon's talk in Damascus. It has been corrected.