Sarah Says

on my CA gym membership

2012-01-30T21:24:00.003-05:00

So I've been a Package Plus member for almost year now, and a regular Package member of the CA gyms for a little over a year. I got my renewal notice in the mail, due in late March.

I've been happy enough with the CA gyms-- predominately the Supreme Sports Club, since it's on my way home. I stop in most evenings for at least a half hour, longer on weekends and when I sign up for classes.

But I don't know that my use of the facilities is worth the amount I'm paying. That's not to say that it's too high for the amenities that CA offers, but I think it's more just too high for what I use. Rarely do I go anywhere but the SSC. Heck, maybe I just need to drop to a single-facility membership.

I'd really like more classes, and I'd like more opportunities to drop-in on classes rather than having to sign up hours in advance.

(And I have a few other small annoyances that just kick in when I'm considering whether or not to stay with CA, but they are really minor, so, y'know, insert miscelleny here, I guess.)

Either way, I figure if now's the time to try out other gyms in the area, if only to reconfirm that I should stick with where I am. Maybe I'm expecting too much.

So anyone have any gym recommendations?

biking facilities in Columbia are awesome in comparison to major US cities

2012-01-26T22:07:00.003-05:00

The Alliance for Biking and Walking recently released their 2012 Benchmarking report. At nearly 300 pages, it's a hefty read, but there's a wealth of information in here on a variety of measures that convey the state of biking and walking in the United States-- both by state as well as in major cities.

One interesting diagram charts out miles of bicycle facilities (defined as bike lanes, multi-use paths, and signed bicycle routes) per square mile in major US cities. San Francisco and Austin top the chart. San Francisco has 263 miles of bicycle facilities for a ratio of 5.6, while Austin has 1,345 miles for a ratio of 4.5. (See page 98 - 99 of the report. Link above.)

Let’s assume Columbia’s area is 27.7 square miles (which is what Wikipedia says, so it must be true). I know Columbia has a few bike lanes, and some signed bicycle routes (though one of those is Route 29, something I cannot wrap my head around), but I can’t seem to find the mileage of these facilities, so let’s skip them for now to make this quick and dirty.

Assuming 94 miles of pathways, Columbia has a ratio of 3.4, well above the average of American cities (1.8), well above Baltimore’s ratio is (1.1), and equal to DC’s ratio of 3.4. DC is ranked tenth in the country among large US cities, and we are freakin' equal to that.

Well, damn.

(And actually we might score a little higher due to leaving out other less easily counted bicycle facilities.)

I mean, we all know the pathways are a great resource we have but laying the numbers out is interesting, especially considering the number of trips that are considered bikeable-- man, we are in a good place. Sure, critics could say that 94 miles of trailways doesn't mean they go where we want them too, but heck, the same could be said of bike lanes in the comparison cities when we're talking raw numbers.

Bring on the bikeshare.

Columbia according to Google Maps

2012-01-24T21:35:00.000-05:00

Google Maps has tossed its hat in the jurisdiction definition ring by recently highlighting the border of the place a user types in, whether it's city, county, or zip code.

In many cases, this is fairly straight forward. Baltimore, for example, has specific boundaries where Baltimore City ends and Baltimore County begins and that

But Google has gone beyond jurisdictions that have solid boundaries and waded into the somewhat murkier territory of unincorporated areas.

Did somebody mention Columbia?

To be fair, Columbia's a weird example. If you define it by zip code (21044 - 21046), you'd get a different map than if you define it by CA-assessed property or areas that are subject to New Town zoning, where you'd get a map that would include parts of Ellicott City and Clarksville but would omit some areas on a parcel-by-parcel basis. Then you have people's nebulous ideas of where Columbia ends and where Ellicott City, Clarksville, or Elkridge begin and end.

Be that as it may, here's Google's stab at what Columbia is.

I would have just embedded the map here, but the Columbia outline didn't show up on that for some reason. Feel free to explore the actual map here.

Doesn't look too bad at first glance. Route 108 is the northern/western boundary, Guilford Road and the Patuxent (yes?) form the western/southern boundary.

The eastern boundary is totally wonky, though. Closer look:

It's a little hard to see, but we're looking at the dotted line. Apparently at the intersection of 108 and Tamar Drive, the line cuts through a subdivision (zoom in at the link above to confirm!), around Columbia Crossing and part of Snowden River Parkway, and apparently one side of Snowden but not the other as you move further south. Very odd. It doesn't seem to follow zip codes lines as 21045 follows Waterloo Road around until 175.

I guess the line had to be somewhere, right? But it's interesting. This is more than simply a few pixels-- it's distinguishing a place where people live and along with that place comes an identity, in theory.

It's funny how maps shape the way we perceive things. Think back to learning about map projections, and how Greenland dwarfs Africa in the Mercator projection, even though in real life, Africa is seventeen times bigger. Tools like Google Maps (or any maps) can command authority, and we assume they reflect reality in some sort of objective sense. Y'know, even if that's not the case. I mean, anyone who's relied on Google Maps in the past has likely been led astray at least once in their lives.

(Via and spun off of a post by Nate Berg at the excellent Atlantic Cities blog.)

A closer look at the pedestrian-wearing-headphones crash study

2012-01-19T20:08:00.000-05:00

Those unpredictable headphone wearing pedestrians! They're just asking to get hit. And now a study from the University of Maryland proves it.

Brad Aaron from Streetsblog tears the headline-making study apart. While reports latched onto the "pedestrian fatalities increased three-fold over the last seven years due to increased headphone use" snippet, they failed to include some other crucial information that was included in the report.

From the study: "...neither causation nor correlation can be established between headphone use and pedestrian risk." How far are they willing to take the conclusions from their study? "However, we believe our grading system shows strong circumstantial evidence that headphones may have played a role in most injuries and deaths in the case series." Not super strong.

A few large holes in the study (both from Aaron's excellent post as well as from the study itself):

The researchers looked at 116 cases between 2004 and 2011, while total pedestrian deaths during the same time frame numbered in the tens of thousands.

They mostly used media reports to glean information from the crashes-- not the best source of information for a comprehensive picture of pedestrian fatalities. This limitation is something that researchers acknowledge and discuss throughout the in the study.

The majority of victims in the study were not struck by cars, but by trains (55%). First off, car-pedestrian crashes are completely different from train-pedestrian crashes. Aaron writes that this high train-pedestrian crash rate in the whole study could just "as much as anything could call into question the perils of walking on train tracks — or the need for safer pedestrian thoroughfares." Or, as the study says, more media attention paid to these kinds of instances.

Secondly, from the study itself-- there are 4,000 to 5,000 pedestrian crashes per year, and about 50 train-pedestrian crashes per year. The proportion of crashes studied by the researchers doesn't reflect this reality in the least.

The study does not account for other factors like driver error, pedestrian intoxication, suicidal intentions, etc.

Nor could it account for the number of incidents where pedestrians were wearing headphones and did not get hit by a car, or near-misses, or the like (that doesn't make the news), so it's impossible to draw solid conclusions about pedestrian inattentiveness due to headphones.

I highly highly highly recommend reading the study. It's only four pages long and is a much more balanced and unclear picture than reported snippets would have you believe . There are a lot of limitations to the study and a great deal of researcher speculation.

Being attentive and alert while walking, biking, and driving is important. There are a whole host of things to draw our attention away from concentrating on the road, and that can be dangerous. I find it really annoying when people have headphones in to the point of inattentiveness when they really need to be paying attention. (My personal pet peeve-- people in the grocery store with headphones who can't hear me when I say "excuse me" to get that can of tomatoes or whatever they're blocking. People with headphones in while interacting at a counter-- grocery, takeout, bank, or otherwise. Come on!)

Seatbelts, airbags, shocks, climate control, and quiet rides help detach drivers from the reality that driving is the most dangerous thing we do (both to ourselves and others) on a consistent, daily basis. While people in a car have the protection that the car affords us, pedestrians have little or nothing, and they are dependent on those of us who are steering thousands of pounds of metal at high speeds to do so responsibly--especially in an area like ours where major throughfares are lacking sidewalks and other pedestrian infrastructure. Not everyone is a driver, but everyone is a pedestrian -- even if it's just walking from your car to the door of your destination.

new Columbia - Bethesda commuter bus service!

2012-01-17T19:22:00.002-05:00

Back in February of last year, I wrote about two new commuter bus routes that run along the ICC and through Howard County-- the 201 and the 202, which run between Gaithersburg and BWI and Gaithersburg and Ft. Meade respectively.

Now that most of the ICC is complete, the MTA has introduced three more routes-- the 203, 204, and 205. Route 204 runs between Frederick and College Park; Route 205 runs between College Park and Germantown. You can find more info on all of these routes at http://www.mtaiccbus.com.

Route 203 operates between Columbia and Bethesda! It runs on weekdays only-- three times in the morning, three times in the evening, and once midday. Route 203 begins at the Snowden River Park and Ride, stops at the Mall, the Scaggsville Park and Ride, and the Burtonsville Park and Ride, then it takes the ICC westward to the Georgia Avenue Park and Ride. From there, it heads south to USUHS and the Medical Center Metro Station/NIH.

From MTA's Commuter Bus website.

The ride is $5 for a single ticket, though there are more cost-effective ten-trip tickets and monthly passes available as well. You can find detailed schedules and more info from a PDF version of the schedule here.

Alas, dear readers, I am late. MTA was offering free rides on this service through last week, but for $5 it's totally worth a shot anyhow.

I ride the 310 commuter bus from Columbia to Baltimore pretty much everyday and I love it. I don't have to pay for parking downtown. (Actually, I do now have a free spot to park in but the bus stops much closer to my office than the spot, though that is where I park if I have to drive in.) I can sleep or read or work on my ride in. The buses are coach-style buses, so they're comfortable. The service is also very punctual and dependable, which is nice.

Do you ride the 203? If you give it a shot, comment below and let us know how it is.

connecting Columbia... at night

2012-01-12T20:19:00.000-05:00

I know, I know, it's against the rules to use CA pathways at night.

(Technically, I'm pretty sure the pathways that we may or may not use at night are actually Howard County pathways, but that's against their rules, too.)

But walking to our village center would be triple the distance if we used sidewalks that parallel the road at nighttime. So we use the pathway at night, and we carry flashlights. And so do a lot of other people-- both walking and on bikes. Well, some don't use flashlights-- there's some ambient light on the pathway, but not enough for my klutzy self. Others, it seem, can see better in the dark. Anyhow.

In trying to leverage our pathways for connectivity in Columbia, we have to consider nighttime usage of the pathways. If we are serious about people using the trails to commute, we have to recognize that some commuting happens irrespective of sunset and sunrise, especially during the winter.

One time, Chris and I biked to the mall from our old apartment because it was an unseasonably warm day in the winter. It got dark before we could get home (because that happens in winter-- duh). We felt uncomfortable using the pathways, not knowing where we were going, so we ended up walking our bikes back home along Route 175. That was kind of scary and really annoying.

There are safety issues with nighttime pathway use, and in a few different ways. The first would be physical safety, as in, "it's a lot harder to see at night." The pathways in some sections can be twisty and hard to follow. Any hazards are automatically more dangerous in the dark. There's little to no directional signage, so it's easy to get lost. Some pathways are more easily traversed than others in the dark-- more ambient light, located in less forested areas, paths that run along streets, etc. Then there are safety concerns with regard to safety as in crime, something that cannot be discounted, rare as pathway crimes might be. Both of these, I assume, could/would be liability issues for CA and Howard County, but it's cost-prohibitive to light the pathways-- and not really desirable for aesthetic reasons, especially for some of our more idyllic pathways.

It's an issue that any trail used for commuting grapples with, not just Columbia. Bike Maryland, the nonprofit that advocates for bicycling in Maryland (in case you couldn't tell by the name, I guess) is supporting "24 hour trail access for bicyclists for commuting purposes and more" in their 2012 Legislative Agenda. If that somehow passes, it might be something to be considered and figured out sooner rather than later.

There has to be some acceptance of risk on the part of people who use trails at night whether on a bicycle or on foot. For me, whatever elevated risk exists is outweighed by not having to walk (at least) a mile and a half to the grocery store and not having to walk on the sidewalk along Broken Land Parkway. While I'm glad it's there, it can be a little harrowing to use, especially at night with its dim lighting, tree overgrowth, and cars rushing by at 45mph+ a few feet away.

What are your thoughts on using the pathways at nighttime? Do you have any ideas? Are you a nighttime pathway user?

Connecting Columbia

2012-01-10T17:19:00.001-05:00

Over the past year or so, the Columbia Association has done a great job getting conversations about Columbia's future going. From the Speakers Series that brought world-renowned experts in urbanism like Gil Peñalosa and Chris Leinburger to applying for a grant to look at bikesharing in Columbia, and now Connecting Columbia, I'm highly encouraged by this type of forward thinking to get Columbia thinking about where we need to go from here and how to get there.

The newest initiative in this is Columbia Association's multi-pronged Connecting Columbia initiative. The goal, from the Connecting Columbia website, is:

To create a more interconnected bicycling and walking circulation system in Columbia for health, recreational, and transportation purposes

Sounds great to me. I think it's no secret that Columbia's trailways are amazing-- other cities would kill for 90-some miles of trailways-- but underused for a variety of reasons (signage, please!). I applaud CA for looking how to leverage this fantastic resource we have. CA has hired Toole Design Group to "develop an action agenda to enhance CA’s pathway system." So out of this initiative will come a plan with concrete goals for CA to pursue in creating this interconnected system.

So tonight and tomorrow, CA is holding open houses tonight and tomorrow to get public input into the process. Tonight's open house will be held at the Owen Brown Community Center at 6800 Cradlerock Way, and tomorrow's will be at Slayton House in Wilde Lake at 10400 Cross Fox Lane; both are 7:30 pm to 9 pm. You can get more info and RSVP at http://connecting-columbia-public-meetings.eventbrite.com.

(I had every intention on attending the Owen Brown open house tonight but man, this cold has come back with a vengeance this evening. So I'm eating soup and going to bed early tonight instead.)

Can't make an open house? CA has two other opportunities for public opinion online-- a survey and a map where people can identify specific areas for improvement. Both are accessible from the Connecting Columbia page at http://www.columbiaassociation.com/connectingcolumbia.

I'm hoping others will be able to make it out for the open houses and report back! (hint hint)

iowa schmiowa - local is where it's at

2012-01-08T19:21:00.001-05:00

With all due respect to the state and its citizens, of course.

I submit to you that while national politics are important and exciting and all that, what our local elected officials do have just as much affect on our lives, if not moreso, and that's where more attention needs to be paid.

I know, I know, I'm likely preaching to the choir. I mean, if you follow and read local blogs, you likely know what districts you live in and who your elected officials are from County Council up the ranks.

These are (some of) the folks that will be debating the gas tax, same-sex marriage, and various environmental issues over the next few months. They control the budget, taxing, and spending in our state. They are our local elected officials.

At the League of Women Voters Legislative Luncheon on Saturday, attendees had the opportunity to both informally chat with their elected officials, as well as answer questions in a formal town hall type format. Attendees asked about hospital errors in Maryland hospitals, transgender issues, the right to petition, early voting, and effectively training young adults in skills needed for today's jobs.

I'm not saying to focus on local politics to the detrement of following national politics. But maybe instead of reading another article about New Hampshire (Schnew Schnampshire), maybe check out Maryland Reporter. Or read up on Explore Howard's Government + Politics section or maybe the Sun or the Post's local politics blogs. Or, heck, join the League (full disclosure-- I'm a member and on the board). Either way, pay attention!

(Sorry, that was kind of a sucky conclusion but I am battling a cold and that's as good as it gets right now.)

jury duty

2012-01-05T21:39:00.000-05:00

So this week, I served on a jury in the Circuit Court of Howard County. It was both my first time being called to jury duty at all as well as my first time actually being on a jury (uh duh).

I don't really want to get into the details of the proceedings or the outcome or anything like that on here, but share a few thoughts on serving.

It's something we sometimes take for granted but ideas like having the option of a jury of one's peers or being innocent until proven guilty or the total burden of proof being on the state are all really fascinating when put into practice in a court. Of course, all of these ideas doen't necessarily translate into a perfect system. There are of course serious issues in our judicial structure-- it can be slow (to the point of violating peoples' rights) and it's well-documented that it is, uh, "more fair" to some than others.

Confession: I wanted to serve. I was curious to see what it was like. I'm fully willing to admit that I'm dorkier than many folks but yes, there was a certain civic duty element that kicked in. Two judges came into the jury assembly room while about four dozen of us waited and told us to take another look at why we were here; they wanted us to look at jury duty beyond simply having to come in, try to wiggle out of serving if possible, and collecting fifteen bucks. They urged us to see the responsibility and the duty of being a juror from their point of view, and from the point of view of the defendants and the victims-- that is, if we were in one of these roles, we'd want a non-biased jury of our peers who take the time to listen, weigh the evidence, and return a hopefully fair verdict. I knew the jury selection process means that the majority of people called in don't actually end up on a jury, but happenstance (i.e. my number in the line) made it so that I was one of the last selected.

The deliberation was more difficult than I thought it would be. I went into the trial as non-biased as I could be-- which was not too hard considering my answer was "no" to every juror-weeding-out question. But with the witnesses and the evidence and the statements and the scenarios, it's not clearcut, it's not obvious, and it's difficult thinking something through to a conclusion within the strict guidelines that are set up with eleven other people. And of course, it's not simply a thought exercise-- these are real situations involving real people and there are serious repercussions to any outcome.

And it's not as "big" but still significant to me-- I also had to rearrange and try to balance stuff because life and work don't pause for jury duty. During breaks I was on my Blackberry trying to keep up with work emails. It feels like I've gotten a bunch of false starts over the past few weeks with regard to getting back into the swing of things post-holidays and this interfered with that for sure.

All in all, while it was definitely a worthy experience, I can't say "A++ would buy again" anytime soon. Luckily, I've done my duty for the next few years.

Columbia's slogan?

2012-01-02T21:53:00.000-05:00

Atlantic Cities, a blog that's quickly becoming my fave urban planning blog, has a cute rundown of city slogans for 2011-- some political, some marketing. A few of the notable, fun ones:

Baltimore: "A Great Place to Grow"(stemming from SRB's bid to attract another 10K households)
Sumter, South Carolina: "Uncommonly patriotic." (yes, that Sumter)
Buffalo: "Buffalo. For real." (okay)

What would/should Columbia's slogan or motto be?

Photo credit to Fuzzy Gerdes.

How about a snippet of a grand-sounding Rouse quotation? "Columbia: The Next America." The danger of this route is that it might sound a bit dated.

Or something belying how fantastic it is to live here, and that everyone else knows it, too-- "The number two place to live according to Money Magazine," though it has limited longevity depending on where we fall, I suppose.

We could convey our uncertainty about ourselves. "Columbia: an awesome ~~city~~ ~~town~~ ~~suburb~~ place to live." That's a motto that would only work on ~~paper~~ the internet, rly.

Throwback to when things were amazing but hey we're still pretty good? "Columbia: still better than most places but man that cheese shop was the best. Also, Mrs. Z's."

Maybe something stemming from the People Tree concept? "Columbia: a place for people."

Do you have any slogan suggestions for Columbia?

(Have fun!)

piles of meat from Wagon Wheel Ranch!

2011-12-29T17:19:00.000-05:00

About six months ago, Chris and I bought a chest freezer with grandeous plans of buying a lot of local meat and storing it there. (By the way, if you are looking for a smaller chest freezer than the standard larger 10+ cubic foot models, this one is nice.) It has sat fairly empty since then-- we put stashed some CSA vegetables (and prepared meals from the CSA veggies), fruit, and cheese in it, but for the most part, looking into large quantities of local meat to squirrel away kept falling down the to-do list.

UNTIL NOW.

Originally, we thought we'd try a quarter cow or split side of beef to start, but after some discussion, we realized we don't really eat that much beef and didn't really want to be locked into having to eat that much beef. Our focus shifted to the sampler-type boxes that some farms also offer. I can see why-- hundreds of pounds of beef can seem daunting, especially for smaller households, but a sampler box's variety and smaller size seems more... doable. In doing some research, I re-found this guest post from HowChow about Wagon Wheel Ranch and we decided to take the plunge.

I contacted Wagon Wheel Ranch via email to ask how all this worked. They told us to fill out an order form, include the deposit, and mail it in. Easy enough. We ordered the large "Taste of the Farm" sampler box with a mix of beef, pork, lamb, and chicken (the order form breakdown is approximately 50%/20%/15%/15% respectively).

A few weeks later, we got an email with pickup times to come on out and get our haul. The farm is about a half hour from Columbia, very close to I-70. The driveway into the farm was an encouraging sight with cows, sheep, chickens, and pigs roaming about. It was basically the image that pops in your head when you think "free range" or "cage free" as opposed to the news articles that tell you that "free range" and "cage free" don't really mean what you think they mean when it comes to industrial farming.

Our haul included a great variety-- steaks, chops, different sausages, bacon, pork and beef roasts, a whole chicken, and more. The variety is nice, and the fact that sausage and bacon are included is awesome.

It's definitely pricier than your typical grocery store meat but competitive when looking at other sources of local meats-- South Mountain Creamery, vendors at the Howard County Markets, natural groceries in the area. We don't eat a huge amount of meat (more as flavoring, less as the focus of the meal), so the expense isn't breaking the bank for us.

So far, we've been really happy with what we got. After having the CSA for a few years, we're accostumed to figuring out how to use what we get rather than picking what we want, so it's not an issue for us. (Thank you, internet.) Rather, it's been a great way to expand our eating horizons-- first with vegetables and now with how to use different cuts and kinds of meat. Then again, if you are fantasizing about hamburgers specifically, this might not be the haul for you as we didn't get any ground beef in our box (though it is available per the order form).

All in all, we're happy with our box from Wagon Wheel Ranch and are looking forward to emptying our now-full basement freezer.

(P.S. this is the first time I'm using the email-to-post feature, so hopefully it works out)

Washingtonian Center: an example of a successful lakefront

2011-12-27T16:58:00.003-05:00

Last week, I wrote about a few concerns I have with Cy Paumier's proposal for the lakefront and I said I might have some possible ideas. Now that I'm writing it, it's less "ideas that could work" and more "case studies we can learn from." They're a few ideas that work in other areas with similar attributes, but none of this will translate directly to us. I am thinking this might be a few posts going forward (fingers crossed, right), but for now, I'll start with an example of a vibrant lakefront area to the south of us in Montgomery County-- Washingtonian Center in Gaithersburg.

Check out this interactive map of Washingtonian Center here to get some bearings as to what it looks like and what it has.

This place is busy. The walkable shopping district on a lakefront offers a wide variety of stores and restaurants in an outdoor setting. There is destination retail-- Omaha Steaks, GNC, Love Your Eyes. There are stores that encourage browsing-- Charming Charlie, Barnes & Noble, South Moon Under. There are chain and independently-owned restaurants with a wide variety of menu options and price point that entice people passing with outdoor seating and menus on A-frame signs along walkways. There are also quick-stop eateries where people can grab coffee, cupcakes, tart yogurt, and more to sip and nibble while walking or seated at benches scattered around the area.

I can't forget the 18-screen movie theater, the department stores (Target and Kohl's), and the health club.

Essentially, Washingtonian Center is designed to encourage people to come and stay by offering a variety of things for people who come for a variety of reasons. And there are certainly diverse groups of people who come here-- families, folks who are browsing, folks on a shopping mission, teenagers. And for folks who are not coming for the retail and restaurants, but want to walk around the lake with a friend or rent a paddleboat or simply sit on a bench and people-watch-- there is an energy that only people can provide to participate in, to soak in, and to be a part of.

Like our lakefront, there's a lake that is close to offices and dense-ish housing. There is plenty of parking in the area in the form of lots and garages, and I get the feeling that while there is some draw from the folks within walking distance, there are many people who drive, park once, and walk around. It's in a suburban area in a wealthy county with easy access to a multitude of highways (I-270, I-370, the ICC), so this isn't an example pulled out of a large city-- it's in a suburban area that is very similar to our own.

At the same time, retail, restaurants, and entertainment like this at out lakefront would in direct competition with the mall, an anchor of our downtown. Another consideration to weigh is if we (however you want to define the collective "we") want the lakefront to be ringed with shops or be more of a park-like atmosphere. But like I said at the beginning, this is a case study of a more successful lakefront (by my definition of success, I guess), if nothing else. To me, it says that if we want to truly create a lakefront that will generate economic vitality, then we need to ensure that folks who generate that vitality on the ground are involved in any lakefront plans.

***

In the meantime, in case you haven't noticed, posting has been slow. Right now, I'm spinning plates in a host of ways in real life, so bear with me. I'm not complaining-- much of it is awesome and fun and great-- but it's still taking some blogging time for the time being.

The lakefront proposal: more of the same?

2011-12-20T16:23:00.000-05:00

Recently, the Columbia Association released proposed plans to revamp the Lakefront, reported both by Tom Coale at HCR as well as David Greisman with Patuxent. I waffled on whether or not to write my thoughts on it, because they're not particularly supportive of the plan, but then after some Twitter encouragement (thanks Julia and David!) and some thought, I'm doing it. I mean, what's the point in blogging if I don't write what I think and put myself out there, right?

The renderings themselves are beautiful-- there are people, I see cafe umbrellas in the distance, and look at the kayaks and paddle boats! I love paddle boats. But these are conceptual drawings (and $10K don't buy much), so they don't show a lot of important, concrete details. I also wasn't at the presentation, so I'm not sure what kind of additional context was given by the architectural team.

Cy Paumier is paraphrased in the article: the lakefront "is no longer what it should be, he said, not with limited space for outdoor restaurant seating, too little performance space and not enough room for those wishing to walk or relax." (In case it's not clear, I'd like to emphasize that the quotation marks are Greisman's words from the article and not a direct quotation from Paumier.)

But at the same time, these plans are so similar to the lakefront we have now. We do have outdoor seating and sidewalks and grassy areas to sit on and paths to walk. None of these are drawing people to the Lakefront. The most encouraging thing about the renderings to me is the addition of happy people, but I am not sure why they would be there in real life. I don't know that more of what we've currently got will draw more people. Additionally, I don't think the Lakefront's problem is that there isn't enough space to hang out. There's lots of room there now, especially since there aren't too many people there to jockey for space. I don't see the connection between these plans and the cited result that this will "generate new life and economic vitality."

Also, is there such a thing as too much open space downtown? The Phase I plans for Symphony Woods also call for a lot of open space (though that might change given recent developments). Being that Symphony Woods is literally down the street, will there be enough demand for all this straight-up open space? In this case, I mean "open space" literally, not as a planning synonym for "park." I mean empty space.

For this and the "no-bid contract" way this happened, I really hope that the CA Board engages other firms in submitting proposals for the Lakefront.

So what about possible alternatives? More on that soon (hopefully).

What do you think of the proposed plans?

an event for you: annual Legislative Luncheon

2011-12-14T22:20:00.002-05:00

So I don't think I've mentioned on the blog that I recently joined the board of the League of Women Voters of Howard County. I could describe what that is, or I could just quote the website:

We are a non-partisan, multi-issue, grassroots organization whose mission is to encourage the informed and active participation of citizens in local, state, and federal government and to influence public policy through education and advocacy.

That involves a lot of different things, including pulling together the Voters Guide and Voters Forum for local elections, conducting voter registration, holding educational events, testifying on legislation, and much more.

In any case, I wanted to write about an event happening shortly after the holiday season-- I wanted to get it on y'alls calendars early-- the annual Legislative Luncheon. Elected officials at the state level are invited to speak and answer audience questions. It's put on by the League but is open to all. The cost to attend is only $15 for nonmembers, payable at the door.

This year, the Legislative Luncheon will be held at Bethany United Church (2875 Bethany Lane, Ellicott City) on January 7 at 11:30 am.

Plan on coming out to meet and greet your elected representatives!

(Also, consider becoming a member of the League of Women Voters if you like what we do. Check out the website for more details, or feel free to contact me at sarah@sarahsaysblog.com. It's not just a check you send out annually-- there are lots of opportunities for hands-on work as well.)

Hope to see you there!

bikesharing in Howard County?

2011-12-06T18:20:00.001-05:00

So HocoBlogs tweeted a SurveyMonkey link asking opinions about bikesharing in Howard County. There are three very basic questions to answer, so head on over there and take the survey if you haven't already. They start off with the following introduction:

The Columbia Association, as part of a joint grant application with the County to study implementing a bikeshare system in the county, has created a short questionnaire. Your input would be greatly appreciated in understanding who would support a bikesharing program in Howard County and where users would like to go.

Photo credit to daquella manera.
What is a bikeshareing system? Think of it as a bike taxi for short, one-way trips. One is able to pick a bike for a short trip and return in to a station near your destination. Check out a bike for your trip to work, get to the bus or train, run errands, go shopping, or visit friends and family. The stations, usually with 5-15 bikes are strategically placed to allow users to walk to a station and bikes are also equipped with locks so if you want, you can lock it and comeback to it later.

Eeeenteresting!

Bikesharing has been successful in urban areas (see: Washington DC), but it's something that suburban jurisdictions (see: Montgomery County) are also looking into. Even if we don't have the density of an urban area, many suburban trips fall into the one-three mile trip length that bikeshare systems support.

I do worry that we don't have enough bike infrastructure to support a bikeshare program-- stuff like bike lanes, bike racks, roads with slower speeds. Then again, maybe it's more of a Catch-22 type situation-- a larger number of cyclists leads to a demand for more bicycling infrastructure, and one way to increase the number of cyclists is by creating a bikeshare program.

It'll be interesting to see where this goes. If nothing else, it's a good conversation to get started, and good idea to check out that has succeeded in other areas.

kudos to Kelsey's Kloset!

2011-11-30T18:40:00.001-05:00

I know giving experiences is the hip thing to do but you gotta buy clothes sometime, right? Why not buy secondhand from a local young entrepreneur who has just opened up a consignment shop?

The "North Laurel teen opens high-end, secondhand clothes store" headline at Explore Howard caught my eye. The article by Sara Toth introduces us to Kelsey's Kloset, a new, recently-opened women's clothing store started by 19-year-old Kelsey Kleinhen.

I swung by Kelsey's Kloset on the way home from work (okay, it wasn't really on the way home, but it wasn't too far out of the way) and browsed a bit. The store is set up beautifully-- it has a very boutique-y vibe.

Much of the mall-brand clothing skewed a tad younger than my taste, but there was a lot beyond that-- shoes, suits, jackets, blazers, and dresses (both casual and formal). I nabbed an adorable H&M cowl neck sweater for six dollars-- something I was trying to find this past weekend but struck out on.

I can see teenagers having a blast at Kelsey's Kloset. Shoppers who don't have a lot of cash can get a lot more bang for their buck here, and without sacrificing the brands they want to wear. A fun holiday gift could be a mini-shopping spree at Kelsey's Kloset.

As for myself, I will definitely be swinging by when I need a cute jacket or a sweater or a pair of jeans.

It was a little difficult for me to find-- it's in the Cherry Tree Center shopping center close to Maple Lawn-- the red one that you can see from Rt. 29 with the Music and Arts. The store doesn't have a bright red sign (yet?) but it's in the middle of the strip, or the end of the upper parking lot.

Check it out! And best of luck to Kelsey's Kloset.

on calling in sick

2011-11-28T20:35:00.001-05:00

So I'm sick.

I've been teetering between "being sick" and just "feeling under the weather" for a few days prior, but I guess this holiday weekend, the sickness won.

This morning, I woke up feeling terrible. But I woke up and with no objective...ish reason not to go to work-- i.e. my temperature was normal-- I went in anyhow.

Clearly my sick brain wasn't firing on all cylinders. I didn't even drive in-- I took the commuter bus, ensuring that if I went home, I'd have to use the Guaranteed Ride Home program. That's fine-- they are a lifesaver and convenient to use-- but if I drove in, I'm more likely to just hop in my car and go home as opposed to analyze whether or not I'm really sick.

Coming off a four day weekend-- come on, how could I really be sick?

I got into work around 7:45 am and told my boss (after he told me I sounded bad) I'd go home in an hour-- I just wanted to get some stuff done.

Four hours later, he told me to go home. So I finally called up GRH and got a ride home.

It's always easy to recognize when people need to stay home from work, but harder for (me at least) to recognize when I need to call out and take a sick day.

Columbia Mall vs. White Flint Mall in 25 years

2011-11-20T18:47:00.001-05:00

White Flint Mall may be no more.

Jonathan O'Connell in the Washington Post writes that that the owners of the mall want to tear the building down and build a "new town" over the next twenty-five years-- a mixed-use plan with residential, retail, and offices. The 31-acre site will have 5.2 million square feet of space, including "1 million square feet offices in three buildings along Rockville Pike, 1 million square feet of retail, 2,500 residential units and a 300-room hotel." The site includes plans for a school, parkland, plazas, and open space. (The plan still has to be submitted to the county, go through approvals, etc.)

Wow. Go big or go home, I guess.

Of course, you can see where I'm going with this-- a comparison to our mall and its place in the downtown plan. The downtown Columbia plan foresees the mall being a center point while other areas are tearing malls down. It makes you wonder which plan will be more successful-- the one that leverages a mall as an anchor or the one that replaces a mall with a new, mixed-use development.

I know it's not really a good comparison-- Columbia Mall is successful and White Flint... well, even O'Connell dubs the mall as "the Rockville shopping destination whose best days are behind it." Anecdotally-- I grew up in Rockville. We never went to White Flint.

But at the same time, there is no shortage of people saying that the mall (in general) are dead. The mall is too dependent on the suburban model, it's a big box surrounded by asphalt, it's not walkable... you get the idea. In this sense, there seems to be no room for the mall in the future imagined by planners. Is this the best idea for an anchor of our downtown? Hmm.

Don't get me wrong. I like the mall. Chris and I were just there today picking up a pre-ordered copy of Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword from Gamestop and getting dinner at Kabob Connection. It was very busy-- lots of people. If the mall-- as a building form or a destination or whatever-- is dying, Columbia Mall is not the example to prove the point.

We'll see. It'll be interesting to look at White Flint and Columbia in twenty-five years.

a movie to screen in Columbia

2011-11-17T21:42:00.001-05:00

Check out this trailer for a new documentary called Urbanized that is now screening nationwide. It's short. I'll wait.

While we aren't as urban as the cities shown in the trailer, we will be urbanizing over the next thirty years if/when the Downtown Columbia plan shakes out. Bike lanes, central plazas, public transit, and people (!) all make an appearance in the trailer, elements of a vibrant, urban atmosphere that I hope will be included in downtown Columbia's future.

Reviews of the documentary are promising, and I think it would be a great film for us in Columbia to watch. The nearest screening, in Washington DC, is sold out. While Columbia doesn't really command a large, for real theatrical screening, director Gary Hustwit promises a global online streaming release of the film coming soon. Maybe we can get a screening going as part of Columbia Association's Community Building Series (that brought Chris Leinburger, Gil Penalosa, et al)...? Eh? Eh? :)

pedestrians, streetscape, and the public realm

2011-11-15T19:10:00.001-05:00

Christopher Gray has a fun little article in the New York Times about the space that pedestrians have lost in New York City in favor of cars over the decades.

A few lines in the article harken back to a slower time, but also makes you think about what place we now give the automobile verses the pedestrian.

It is a comment on how we viewed our streets that, by design, passengers were meant to board streetcars in the middle of the roadway.

After Charles Gates, a broker, was caught in 1906 driving 25 miles per hour in an 8-mile-an-hour zone in the Bronx, The Times carefully noted that he appeared in court wearing "a blue serge suit and light-colored spats." He expected to get off, but Magistrate Leroy Crane told him, "You are a Wall Street man with millions, and you think that you can do what you please."

Dr. Albert Lamb, whom I interviewed years ago, said that around 1920, when a neighbor fell ill in front of his house on East 70th Street, "my father, also a doctor, just had him lie down in the street."

None of these would happen now. Unprotected transit almost always loads on the right curb as it's generally the only safe option. The tiny dead-end road I live off of has a speed limit of 25 miles per hour along with a sign that reads, "Watch for children."

Of course, lying in the street today is still a great way to see a doctor, but in a whole different way.

Gray writes of a lost public realm, and a different relationship with the streetscape:

So what does this have to do with the New York streetscape? The retreat to what is left of the sidewalks changes the very essence of the common public realm, just as certainly as if, say, tourists had to stay within the arcades surrounding St. Mark's Square in Venice, or look out on Red Square from the porch on St. Basil's. New York's gridiron allows precious few vistas or plazas, but a citizen could at one time have viewed each block as an entirety, with walls and a floor. Now everyone must hug the baseboards.

Columbia was developed in the age of automobile dominance, and much of our streetscape reflects this with large parking lots and enormous signage to be spotted by people rushing by in cars. So while Columbia doesn't have the same lost relationship with the built environment, it also never really had it. Though in that regard, cars driving through historic Ellicott City could be considered a much larger and ruder interruption of the area's character than any Subway ever could be.

Either way, it's an interesting read to see what we've exchanged for the car.

waiting for the bus in Florida

2011-11-13T17:57:00.001-05:00

Well hello there!

Sorry I went and disappeared on y'all-- I went on vacation for a week. We went to Disney World. My husband went often when he was a kid as part of parent work conferences, but I hadn't been since I was about three. So we figured why not?

It was fun. The weather was gorgeous. And now we are back.

When possible, we took public transit a few days to Disney World from our hotel because (a) I'm a transit dork and like to ride different kinds of transit and my husband is game as long as I figure it all out in advance and (b) parking at Disney World is fourteen dollars per day. Orlando's Lynx was $2 each way. The Route 56 - West 192/Magic Kingdom bus was direct from our hotel to Disney's Transportation + Ticketing Center and ran every half hour on a sort of express route because of all the highway-like roads to Disney World. It's also kind of fun that the bus's LED sign said "Magic Kingdom" on it.

So I don't know how all bus stops are in all of Orlando/Kissimmee, and I know they all weren't swank because I saw some signs on sticks in the ground at sidewalks. But I admit, I was pretty impressed with the bus stop outside our hotel on Route 192 (near Orange World).

It was a nice, large shelter with plenty of space for both sitting and standing. The shelter was fully lit. There were bike racks, though the buses also easily accommodated bikes, much like MTA buses do here. Heck, there was even a water fountain and a nice information kiosk with a calendar of events (though no bus schedule). In other words, it was a nice place to wait, bus stop or no.

powerful speed bumps

2011-11-03T16:49:00.000-04:00

From the "Huh. That's a cool idea" department comes MotionPower. It is a high-tech speed bump that harnesses the excess kinetic energy of the cars that drive over it. This energy can power "roadway signs, street and building lights, storage systems for backup psower and emergency power," writes David Worthington in CBS Interactive's SmartPlanet blog.

The speed bumps will cost $1500 - $2000 and will pay for themselves in two to three years. The company says they are "targeting installations in parking lots, border crossings, exit ramps, neighborhoods with traffic calming zones, rest areas, toll booths, and travel plazas." Looks like MotionPower is currently in prototype form, with the company doing testing and analysis.

Sounds neat. Bonus: the start-up company, New Energy Technologies, is based here in Columbia!, which also happens to be a hotbed of neighborhoods that want traffic calming zones. Hmmm. Possible partnership?

Can the speed bumps power speed cameras? Haha.

spent

2011-11-02T22:57:00.000-04:00

Been really busy lately and haven't had a whole lot of time for blogging. I hope to have a post with some thoughts on the green residential tax credit soon.

In the meantime, a friend linked this on Facebook and I thought it would be interesting to share given all the recent reports about living at a lower income in Howard County. Give this game/challenge a whirl.

what are Columbia's trails worth to you?

2011-10-30T18:20:00.000-04:00

What elements boost a home's value? Good schools, pretty neighborhood, remodeled kitchen... proximity to a bike path?

From the University of Cincinnati, via Atlantic Cities, comes research that puts a monetary value on having bike paths within 1000 feet of a house-- roughly $9,000.

In a cool interdisciplinary study, planning professor Rainer von Hofe and economics professor Olivier Parent looked at 1,762 houses close to the Little Miami Scenic Trail in Cincinnati, Ohio. In doing this research, "they found that trails can have significant, positive spillover effects on property values when these properties are located within reasonable distances to the trails" to the tune of $9 for each foot closer to the trailhead. For the average house (in this case, a 40-year old home, roughly 2200 square feet, and priced at about $264K), this means about $9,000 for being 1000 feet away. Interestingly, the effect is the same on both urban and suburban homes.

I know from our point of view, having easy access to the trails in Columbia was a high priority when we bought our house. We wanted the recreation and connectivity benefits of the trailways within walking and biking distance of our front door and/or our back door.

What are Columbia's trails worth to you?

taking up space

2011-10-26T21:00:00.000-04:00

The Maryland Department of Planning had a few mind-blowing tweets yesterday about development in Maryland. (I knew there was a reason I joined Twitter...) I de-Twitterified them-- i.e. I pulled hashtags out-- but you can see the originals here and here, respectively:

In 1973, every person had 6,900 sq. ft. of land for living, work, shopping, schooling, etc. In 2002, each person had 10,400 sq. ft.

It took three centuries to develop the first 650,000 acres of land in Maryland... and 37 years to develop the next million

Tweets like that just beg for more digging, right?! Luckily, the Maryland Department of Planning has a great website.

It doesn't take a genius to know that development has spread throughout our state. Most of us know areas that used to be greenfields (i.e. undeveloped land, often farms) that are now houses, and often low-density development.

In fact, the rate of development has outpaced population growth in Maryland. According to the Maryland Department of Planning, while the population has increased 39% since 1973, developed land has increased by 154 percent in the same time period.

Graphed by me, data from MD Dept. of Planning.

15% of our population now lives on 50% of our total developed land in "large-lot development," defined as areas that are "low density residential" and "very low density residential" that have between 1/2 and 20 acres lot sizes.

Now, of course, it's the right of people to live where and how they want, whether it's a condo or a single-family home on a large lot or anything in between. But we need to recognize that when our individual choices are aggregated, they have an effect on everyone else.

If we continue to develop out as we have been over the past thirty years, we are going to have to pay for that added infrastructure to reach these new developments-- roads, water/sewer, schools. At the state level, we're looking at billions of dollars that could be saved over the next twenty years if we started implementing more smart growth policies moving forward.

From MD Dept. of Planning

That's a lot of money either saved or spent.

But hey, even if we did add all those extra road miles to accomodate commuters coming in from further away, there's a quality of life issue to all of this as well. Another tweet from @SmartGrowthMD:

Maryland residents spent 700+ million hours commuting in 2009, time valued at $9 billion. Is there a better way?

life without Metro and how to reduce congestion

2011-10-24T21:11:00.003-04:00

Photo credit to Matt Blasi Designs.

At the recent Rail-Volution conference in DC (I'll give you one guess as to what it's all about), assistant general manager Nat Bottigheimer shared some statistics as to what Metro means in dollars to the DC area; in a post at Streetsblog, Ben Freid shared a few jawdropping stats. Land value near Metro stations generates $2.8 billion annually in property tax revenues. $195 million of that is directly attributable to transit. Households in the region reap the equivalent of $705 million per year in time savings… and $305 million per year on car-related costs thanks to Metro.

And without Metro, traffic would need 1,000 additional lane miles (the equivalent of two I-495s), four to six more traffic lanes across the Potomac, and 200,000 more parking spots downtown (the equivalent of 170 blocks filled with five-story parking structures) to the tune of nearly $11 billion, plus maintenance.

Freid’s post finishes up with some Arlington stats that make this Columbian jealous. For example, some of the arterial roads near more intense development are actually seeing declines in traffic—in conjunction with local bus use tripling since 2005, walking and biking trails with a higher traffic volume than some arterial roads, and walking capturing 20 to 30 percent of all trips near transit stops.

In case you missed it-- more intense development = less traffic in Arlington. In real life. Denser development makes other modes of transportation like biking, walking, and transit more viable and realistic, thereby getting cars off the road. Plus, those that choose to drive can drive a shorter distance between points A and B.

I would never think to directly translate these stats to us out here in Howard. But these figures are a great demonstration of the impact that transit can have on economic development, congestion, infrastructure, and quality of life.

thanks and welcome!

2011-10-20T22:21:00.003-04:00

First off, thanks to whoever tossed my hat into the ring for the Baltimore Sun's annual Mobbies for the Howard County blog category. I'll fall back onto the tried (or tired, I guess) "It's an honor to be nominated," because it's true. Thanks.

Secondly-- a second welcome to "macsmom"aka Julia to the blogging world. Julia had a great but short run over at Columbia Patch and has struck out on her own with her Village Green/Town Squared blog. I'm excited to read what she has to say, and encourage you to do yourself a favor and add it to your daily/weekly/whenever reading list.

(In writing this, I see I need to update on my blog roll on the right for a number of reasons... hopefully will get around to doing that soon.)

And third, happy fall. I haven't been writing about our CSA this year (it didn't survive my blogging hiccups), but we have a lot of sweet potatoes. So hey, sweet potato sweet potato sweet potato pie!

Have a great weekend.

General Plan Task Force: planning for future growth

2011-10-19T21:18:00.002-04:00

The second of four General Plan Task Force meetings took place last week at the new Robinson Nature Center. We were encouraged to come early and check it out, but since I basically whooshed into a seat at 6:59 pm, I didn't have the opportunity to look around. What I did see was really nice. I was a huge fan of Montgomery County's Meadowside Nature Center growing up, so I'm sure we'll get out to Robinson for a proper visit eventually.

Anyhow.

Last time, I felt my broad, general rundown was a little boring so I'm going to focus on the parts that were really interesting to me (and hopefully to you).

This information in this chart was presented as the state of Maryland's projected growth over the next twenty years, or through 2030. I adapted from the presentation that shows the statewide predictions and how it breaks down for Howard County-- you can check out the original chart and all three presentations here.

While we're slated to get 9% of the jobs increase (which is pretty sizable considering the relatively small size of the county, planning director Marsha McLaughlin relayed), we're predicted to gain only 5% of the population increase. It's interesting that not only are we predicted to gain 42,600 more people, but that number is not really enough to balance out the number of jobs we are predicted to gain. This means that we are going to have more people commuting into the county for that increased number of jobs. So yes-- this means more traffic. We need more housing, and we need more affordable housing.

At the same time, we want to protect the rural west-- we want to keep its agricultural character intact and prevent large-scale development from sprawling out. So that means development will be guided toward the eastern side of the county.

And here's where we get a preliminary map dividing the county up into four categories: areas designated for growth, as an established community, with a low density development-type character, and land that is a rural resource. We were asked our feedback on it.

The task force felt that the red areas needed to be expanded. In this map, they reflect Routes 1 and 40, downtown Columbia, the Wilde Lake Village Center, Maple Lawn, etc. A lot of folks didn't want the official map to overlook development opportunities that were in the brown zones just because it wasn't designated a targeted development area. Some suggested expanding the red area to the entire brown area.

As a valid rebuttal, we were told that making all the brown areas red could relay we weren't really discriminating in choosing where development should or would occur. For example, much of the brown area is single-family homes, and generally, large-scale development won't be occurring on hundreds of individually-owned lots. But including more Village Centers and older strip malls that could be redeveloped over the next twenty years is a good idea, and one that sounds like will be incorporated.

I'll echo what a fellow task force member said last Wednesday night: all of these changes will add up to a very different Howard County from twenty years ago, and from today. These plans, this approach will create a much firmer urban-rural line between west and east county as more development occurs in the east and the west remains rural. The alternative, though, is what?--sprawling out eastward, fighting more traffic, building more roads with more capacity.

The next meeting will be held at the North Laurel Community Center on November 9. After that, just one meeting remains in December. As always, you can visit http://www.planhoward.com for more information and materials.

plugging the hole in MD's Transportation Trust Fund

2011-10-16T19:39:00.000-04:00

After months of evaluating and reviewing options, Maryland's Blue Ribbon Commission on Transportation Funding will present their recommendations to Governor O'Malley on October 25. The Commission was charged with filling an annual $800 million hole in transportation funding. Maryland Reporter's Megan Poinski has a great, straightforward breakdown of the proposed recommendations:

A total 15-cent gas tax increase, phased in over three years ($491 million/year at the end of the three years), then indexing the gas tax to inflation
A 50% increase in vehicle registration fees ($165 million/year)
Increasing the titling tax rate from 6% to 6.5% ($69 million/year)
Doubling the fee for emissions testing from $14 to $28 ($22 million/year)
Increasing miscellaneous MVA fees ($34 million/year)
Increasing MTA fares and ending funding of free rides out of the transportation trust fund ($25 million/year)

One recommendation that likely didn't really require a Blue Ribbon anything is the proposal to introduce a constitutional amendment to put a stop to diverting Transportation Trust Funds to other areas of the budget. Or, as a past report by the Commission states: “Put the Trust back in the Transportation Trust Fund.” Hear, hear.

As frustrating as the transportation infrastructure funding issue is, it’s somewhat reassuring (ish?) that it's not just in Maryland. Many other areas (see examples: metro Atlanta, Virginia) are grappling with the same question: How are we going to continue to maintain our transportation infrastructure as well as meet future transportation needs? Maryland's flat gas tax hasn’t been increased since 1992. That’s not to say that "it’s about time" we raised it since it’s been a while, but costs of everything have increased over the intervening twenty years.

How are these proposals and recommendations going to go over with the citizens of Maryland? Well, conveniently, Morgan State’s National Transportation Research Center recently released a report about what a survey of Maryland drivers think of our roads and how they are willing to continue to fund the system.

Overall, researchers/authors Michael Callow and Nathan Austin found that drivers felt “favorable” toward increasing inspection, licensing, and/or registration and using General Obligation Bonds to raise money. They responded neutrally on toll increases or an increase in the gas tax, and negatively toward “non-road usage fees and taxes”—i.e. sales tax, airport fees, and transit fares and a fee or tax on vehicle miles traveled. Of course, there were a lot of variances in these answers with regard to political affiliation, location, income level, road usage level, road dis/satisfaction level, what would be done with the revenue raised, etc. The authors are also careful to note that while many residents feel that improvements need to be made, "there is a general resistance to new revenue-generating initiatives." No surprise, obviously.

The details and breakdown of the responses are fascinating (and maybe a little wonky). Check out the full report here.

So we'll see what happens. Stay tuned.

area codes, cell phones, and 667

2011-10-13T21:30:00.000-04:00

Photo credit to cod_gabriel.

Prompted by the new 667 area code recently announced for our area, Liz Kay in the Baltimore Sun Consuming Interests blog has a short but fun and thought-provoking post about the "diminishing cultural significance" of area codes (warning, Sun paywall link). With the advent and popularity of cellphones that aren't really tied down to an "area" but still have area codes, there is increasing area code crossover. From the post:

[American Studies professor Sheri Parks from UMCP] discussed how many people hang on to a cell phone number even after they have moved on to a new town. She described area codes as a marker that offers a window into one's background.

So here are our cell phone number stories. I've had the same cell phone number-- with 240 area code-- since high school in Rockville, even though I've moved through three other area code zones since then. My husband Chris has had his number even longer, with a 410 area code. He's not originally from the 410/443 area, but got his first cellphone while a student at UMBC.

Now, I actually (unfortunately) have two cell phones-- one personal and one for work.

I was just lazy, and my moves were all temporary, but now that I've had that 240 phone number for so long, I can't imagine changing it even if I moved out of the area again. Why change it? Long distance phone charges are mostly a non-issue now. On the flip side, though, whenever I come across a business card of someone based locally with an out of area phone number, I wonder why they hang onto that number.

Luckily, living in Columbia, both of our cell numbers are considered local.

an invitation for Howard County's blogless bloggers

2011-10-11T21:11:00.001-04:00

So what about women blogging about local issues and the community?

It's a subject that came up a few times last night, and that has been brought up to me a few times since writing a few posts on gender in Howard County blogs in general and in the "community" blog section a while back. I said back then and still say now that I don't know what can be done/should be done/should anything be done? about the lack of female bloggers in Howard County. We live in a community that has a good deal of women involved in public, private, and nonprofit spheres, in the local media, and in the political arena. Why is blogging about community and local issues different?

Jessie and Robin at HocoBlogs have done a great service to the local blogging community by making the hocoblogs@@@ tag available to tag entries in any category as a "community" post. I think it's a fantastic idea and I'm glad to see that bloggers are taking to it and using the tag as appropriate. I always click blog entries in the Community section as the "guest bloggers" often address issues, share information, and express opinions that are different.

But there are still a lot of people that have things to say, opinions to share. So I am asking you, dear readers. Got any thoughts? Feel free to leave suggestions, comments, ideas below. Have an idea for a blog you'd like to bounce around or want some advice? (for what it's worth) Shoot me an email at sarah@sarahsaysblog.com and let's start a conversation.

In the meantime, I will toss my own blog out there. I am open to publishing anonymous, named, or pseudonym'd community posts. This offer is open to anyone (not just women) without a blog that has something to say. If you have a blog, write what you have to say and tag it with hocoblogs@@@! The goal of this isn't to cross-promote across blogs but to try and give a microphone to other folks out there with different opinions.

I have to have a few guidelines. I do reserve the right to decline a post, but theoretically only foresee doing that if it's, say, really inflammatory or inappropriate. I am totally open to publishing posts I disagree with. I would also like to keep the posts at least loosely based around local issues or our community. I also have to reserve the right to end all this at any time. But I'm not going to be a hard-nosed about this experiment-- that's what it is, and we'll see what happens. Most of this is just off the top of my head and I'll deal with any issues with it as they come along.

I am simply offering an opportunity to try something new with little to lose. Committing to consistently writing a blog isn't easy. It takes takes time and initiative and time and subject ideas and opinions and time. But if you want to dip your toes in and test the water, or if you have no interest in blogging all the time but are itching to share something, please let me know. I think we would all benefit from hearing a diversity of voices and ideas and I guess I'm just trying to cultivate some more. If anything interests you, send me an email. I would love to hear from you.

our commutes without transit

2011-10-10T23:11:00.000-04:00

Why is transit funded with our taxes?

Photo credit to Robert Brook.

Because like schools, everyone benefits from it. We want workers to get from home to work even without a car. We want our grandparents to be able to visit the doctor even when they cannot safely drive anymore. We want options to get from point A to point be without getting into a car. Beyond giving individuals this benefit, our road infrastructure is more efficient when our vehicles are carrying more than one passenger-- less wear and tear on the roads as well as a reduction in congestion.

The Texas Transportation Institute has released its annual Urban Mobility Report, and in it is a great little section called "Added Congestion if Public Transportation Service were Discontinued." For the Baltimore area in 2010, the TTI has calculated that without transit, we would experience an added 13,924,000 hours of congestion delay annually, at the cost of $296 million dollars. The cost is calculated at $16.30 per person hour of travel, $88.12 per commercial hour, plus excess gasoline and diesel consumption.

Even if you don't agree with that cost extrapolation (I for one don't know that I'd calculate my driving worth at $16+ an hour, but who knows), that's still a lot of congestion hours that are saved through use of transit-- i.e., a benefit for everyone.

Of course, there is a TON more information in this annual report, so check out the full report here, and check out the Baltimore-specific info sheet here. Also, see how other cities fared at this blog post entitled "The Cost of Congestion, the Value of Transit" at the Urbanophile.

***

Had a great time (as always) at the Hocoblogs party tonight. If you comment or read on any of the blogs, please consider coming on out to the next one-- everyone's friendly and we all have at least one thing in common to talk about, right?

What will 2035 look like?

2011-10-06T23:02:00.001-04:00

Last night, I went back and forth on publishing yesterday's post and looking back on it, I probably wouldn't have. There's a reason why I generally stay from national politics here-- it tends to get messy and personal and I am not always the best at articulating my thoughts. My general point wasn't to chastise folks (and the wrong folks) for not voting. It was to try and say that I feel that there are more productive ways to try and actually solve the problems that Occupy and We are the 99% folks are protesting. That's not to say (a) that protesting in general is ineffective, (b) the people involved in the protests aren't already doing something, or (c) that I don't think reforms are needed.

But, I mean, it just sounds like a sleepover in McKeldin Plaza.

I could be wrong. And that's fine.

Back to talking transportation!

***

It looks like 2035 will have more traffic.

The Baltimore Metropolitan Council's Baltimore Regional Transportation Board has released a draft of the next long-term transportation plan for our metro area. What does this mean? From the BRTB website:

As an MPO [Metropolitan Planning Organization], the BRTB is directly responsible for making sure that any money spent on existing and future transportation projects and programs is based on a continuing, cooperative and comprehensive (3-C) planning process. All transportation projects and programs that receive federal funding in our region go through this planning process.

Read: this stuff is for real. They've held public meetings around the area and have released the plan, called Plan 2035, online at http://www.baltometro.org/transportation-planning/draft-of-plan-it-2035. I encourage you to check it out yourself-- although there are a lot of sections, it's fairly readable and there are lots of pictures and charts. See what other projects are on the books.

Here's one chart that stood out to me:

From draft Plan 2035, Chapter 5.

A few notes about this graph-- TDM/ERS is Transportation Demand Management/Emissions Reduction Strategies. M & O is Management and Operations. The size of this pot is nearly 45 billion dollars, and this is based on real projections, not just a "here's what we would do if we had an unlimited pot of dough."

So we've got more roads, less transit. And for anyone worried that bike and pedestrian projects are using a huge proportion of the pot, stealing it from highway or road projects, don't worry. That's clearly nothing to be concerned about.

So what's in here for Howard County? We'll start with committed projects-- projects that are already underway or have funds already allocated to them.

From draft Plan 2035, Chapter 5.

The next list is proposed highway and transit projects through the year 2035. These are projects that were decided upon by the BRTB and local jurisdictions from an original 125 submitted projects.

From draft Plan 2035, Chapter 5.

A lot of road widening, and a few transit projects as well, including MARC capital improvements, BRT lanes down the middle of Route 29, and a study to look at the proposed Yellow Line out to Howard County. That means that project ain't gonna happen before 2035. Folks who are interested in seeing an increased investment in transit will likely be somewhat disappointed with this list, but the fact is that putting transit in Howard is going to be really expensive.

One more list-- bike + pedestrian projects. Howard County actually has a pretty good list here:

From draft Plan 2035, Chapter 5.

One interesting note-- the cost for this whole list of projects combined is much lower than any of the highway or transit projects.

So are you pleased? Disappointed? You can submit public comments here (scroll down to "Share Your Thoughts").

This draft is a cold dose of reality. As much as some folks may want a Metro extension to DC or some sort of light rail system around Columbia, it's not happening anytime soon. There just isn't enough cash to go around. Additionally, this doesn't involve local funds, so while it's unlikely Howard County will be able to fund a rail project on its own, this plan doesn't preclude that from happening.

One thing's for sure, though, I think-- we'll likely be stuck in more traffic jams.

Why Occupy?

2011-10-05T23:25:00.001-04:00

Unless you've been living under a rock, you probably have heard about Occupy Wall Street, We are the 99 Percent Tumblr, or one of the other similar protests happening in other cities nationwide, including both Baltimore (via Baltimore Brew, and DC (via the Post).

They reflect a general feeling of anger, frustration, hopelessness about our government and society, one that bails out corporations and banks but not the middle class, as it were. Many of the folks on the 99 percent Tumbler have fallen on hard times (sometimes due to their own actions, sometimes not), are in debt (often from student loans) and have little or no safety net.

My reaction to some of them is an admittedly cold and unfeeling you-made-your-bed-and-now-you're-complaining-about-it. Not necessarily proud of that reaction, but there it is.

My reaction to others is the uncomfortable truth that with enough bad luck, I could easily be in the same boat.

My reaction to all of them is that life isn’t fair. And while we’d all like to take solace in the idea that good things happen to good people, that is not the case. After all, no one asks to be born into a war-torn country or an abusive family or a drought-stricken area. Talk about unfair.

A lot of words have been typed about what the point is of the Occupy protests is. I've read that the protesters lack a clear message, a set of wants, demands, or goals for their demonstrations. Relaying general discontentment is fine, but where does it go from here?

Meanwhile, the amount of public participation in our political process leaves something to be desired. One decent measure of this is voter participation rate. A voter participation rate of 40.9% nationally in the last election (47.1% in Maryland) doesn’t say a whole lot about the interest of the electorate.

This is our country, our political system, and our government. We need to start owning it. The good thing about democracy is that we have a say in how it is run and what happens. The bad thing is that it requires involvement and investment on the part of citizens to function. Democracy is a messy, hard, labor-intensive process. It needs people.

Of course, protesting is a totally valid form of participation in democracy. It’s exercising our right to free speech, and it’s a powerful way to express an opinion. It has a long and storied history in our country. I guess with Occupy, it just seems like a way to actually get something actually done would be to get on board with the thousands of advocacy organizations that work on this stuff every day regardless if it's making the news. Or volunteer with a local political party. Heck, send your photo on We are the 99 Percent to local representatives so they know what stories exists in their district. Wouldn't the energy be better spent that way than camping out at the Inner Harbor?

(I guess I shouldn't assume that folks involved with Occupy aren't civically and politically active already, but the stats say at least a good chunk are not.)

How mad can we possibly get at how our government functions or the influence of the corporations or whatever when less than half of voters are participating in the most basic and fundamental function of a democracy-- voting?

A lot of this is fairly stream-of-consciousness (y'know, in case you can't tell), so I'm totally open to dissenting opinions and conversation. I don't know how strongly I feel about it.

Housing in Howard County

2011-10-03T21:16:00.000-04:00

I mentioned last week that a bunch of fun census data was released in the form of the 2010 American Community Survey; I wrote and created graphs about transportation. Today, I'll look at housing in Howard County. Most of this is pretty straight-forward, though there are a few facts that surprised me. Let's go. (If you want to play around with it yourself, head on over to the Census Factfinder website.)

Definitely more homeowners than renters in Howard County to likely no one's surprise. The ACS records the number of households as 105,358 in 2010, so most of these numbers will reflect that amount.

Housing units also are generally single-unit buildings, again, likely to no one's surprise. The census counts duplexes and townhouses as single-unit buildings even though they're physically attached to other houses, so this number reflects that-- y'know, as compared to a condo or something. The "other" includes mobile homes, etc.

Average housing costs in Howard County for renters, homeowners with a mortgage, and homeowners without a mortgage. Definitely high, but this is Howard County, after all. You can see why housing affordability could be an issue for people who are earning lower wages-- it's a lot of money per month.

Speaking of which, there were some great number on housing affordability. Federal guidelines state that in order for housing cost to be considered "affordable," they should not exceed 30% of a household's income. Keeping that in mind, here are two graphs that show the proportion of unaffordable housing in Howard County, i.e. households spending over 30% of their monthly income on housing costs, be it rent or in a homeownership situation.

They differ by each individual household situation, of course-- what's affordable for one household is different from what's affordable by another. And all households to a certain degree choose where they live and what their priorities are. Perhaps choices are being made to spend a higher proportion on housing to ensure a good school system. However, that also places these households in a more precarious situation should a money emergency arise. We also shouldn't make the mistake in simply assuming that the poor are getting themselves into an "unaffordable housing" situation. These numbers, for example, include households with incomes of over 100K per year.

Let's look at household and family sizes.

Household and family sizes in Howard County ain't that large. If you're assuming a 1950s family, the family households don't even have an average of two kids after counting the parents. It's interesting, then, to compare this graph to one that shows the number of bedrooms that Howard County houses have:

Let's put this same info in a pie chart. Because we can.

That's a lot of spare rooms and offices. Do 70% of Howard County households want 3+ bedrooms, or is that what's available, and therefore what we have?

Either way, interesting stuff!

the proposed Columbia-Bethesda commuter bus route!

2011-09-29T17:31:00.000-04:00

Via HoCoRising and Columbia Patch comes news of a proposed new commuter bus route for Columbia.

From MTA proposal-- kind of hard to see, but it's the green line on this map. Click to enlarge, or check the original here.

The MTA has a 13-page document outlining all the proposed routes with fares, routes, stops, and maps. Route 203, as its being called, would start at the Snowden River Park and Ride, stop at Columbia Mall, Scaggsville Park and Ride, Burtonsville Park and Ride, Georgia Avenue Park and Ride, and end at the Medical Center Metro station. The route takes advantage of the new ICC connection.

It would run three times in the morning, three times in the evening, and once midday, five days per week. The base fare would be five bucks, with different pass options that would reduce that rate.

I like the general idea of a better connection between Columbia and the west side of DC / Montgomery County / Bethesda. I think it's a good idea. I do have a concern about running out of parking at the Snowden River Park and Ride. A few years back, extra spots were painted in due to lack of space. I don't think the lot completely fills up every day, but I wonder if it can accomodate another route. Not sure, this is just as an observer.

Commenter John Hannay, at Columbia Patch has a great point about traffic to reach the Medical Center Metro Station. He instead suggests running down Route 28/Norbeck Road to Rockville Metro Station, and I think that would be a good idea, too. Why fight traffic when the Metro can probably get folks there just as quick?

There is a public hearing in our area to give your opinion at the Owen Brown Interfaith Center on Wednesday, October 5 at 6:30 pm. If you cannot make it (like me), MTA is accepting written and emailed comments as well-- get more info about how to submit that here.

why I'm paying for the Baltimore Sun online

2011-09-27T22:14:00.001-04:00

So the Baltimore Sun is going to start charging for online access.

And I am going to pay for it.

Unlike HoCoRising and Wordbones, I don't subscribe to any newspapers. I never have. Even the Flier for the most part goes right into the recycling bin as I've caught up on most of the news online well before my Thursday afternoon delivery. In my daily or weekly routine, getting home delivery of the paper is a waste, and not just monetarily. It's just not something I need.

Photo credit to Joe Shlabotnik.

Until now, the Sun offered their content online for free, and I was happy to take it, read it, share it, blog about it. Now they are choosing to charge for it. I won't say I'm particularly happy about it-- is anyone ever happy to pay more for something? But I will pay for it. It's a product I want to continue to have access to, and likely more than just the freebie 15 pages per month.

My willingness to pay for access is not necessarily a standing ovation for the Sun's work, but it's recognition of the importance of our metro-region newspaper. It's an appreciation for the fact that it's not free to cover the local news scene, and that advertising and paper subscriptions are no longer covering those costs.

I should also say that willingness and recognition and appreciation is not infinite. From the digital subscription FAQs, I'm happy to see that I will be billed monthly, and I have no problem yanking my credit card back if it's not worth it. At the end of the day, the Sun is a newspaper, not a charity.

And as promising as some of the alternative news outlets are, none of them are really a comprehensive(ish) local news source. I view them as a great compliment to what the Sun has. They are doing a great job with what they are doing, but they too are battling with how to make money, and there's no promise they'll be here tomorrow either. Then again, this move to a paywall by the Sun may cause one or more of them to step up-- who knows.

Do I think this will be a successful experiment? I doubt it. But I'll pay. From there, we'll see.

getting to work in Howard County

2011-09-25T22:34:00.000-04:00

How do you get to work? How long does it take?

A ton of 2010 American Community Survey data came out last week, and I spent a little time checking some of it out. There is a ton of great information in there, and I hope to bring some of it to light over the next few... weeks? (I want to be optimistic here but don't want to get in over my head.)

Some of the interesting stuff is commuting data, especially the modes of transportation and average commute times. I thought it might be cool to see some of this data over time, so I pulled info from 1990 through 2010-- we're talking a span of twenty years. There's been a lot of talk about increasing alternative modes of transportation-- walking, biking, transit, but my hunch is that we're not there yet, even as other jurisdictions are celebrating their gains in this area.

Here is a graph of how we commute to work as Howard County residents:

It's no surprise that the big chunk is single occupant vehicle. There aren't a whole lot of public transit options for many of us. If our workplaces are outside a couple of miles, walking and biking are increasingly difficult, especially given the car-centric nature of our roadways. Two options, however, I think could be improved upon-- carpooling and working from home.

Carpooling takes a little bit of legwork but requires no investment from taxpayers or the government. There are so many folks commuting in the same direction between employment centers, office parks, downtowns, and jurisdictions that could easily share a ride at least a few days per week. It's not an option for everyone, to be sure, but a bump in the number of carpoolers would help reduce the amount of congestion overall.

I say it would take no investment from the government, but perhaps a few HOV lanes on our major commuting roads would give commuters a little push toward finding that person (or two or three) to share a ride with. Beyond saving gas and car maintenance, there is little reason to carpool right now. And unfortunately, the number of carpoolers is dropping:

Working from home-- now that's an interesting one. Again, not necessarily applicable to everyone, but telecommuting is something that is gaining in popularity. The data doesn't reflect huge increases (this graph makes it look more impressive than it actually is, given the margin of error the Census has), but I think it'll probably show greater increases in the coming years.

One dataset I found... shocking, actually, was mean/average travel time to work by mode of transportation. Maryland has the dubious honor of being first place in having the country's longest average commute time of 31.8 minutes. Here in Howard County, the average is 30.5 minutes. When we break it out by mode, one mode of transportation seems to take forever:

Man, no wonder no one takes transit.

Well, that's not really fair. This information tells us that people who take transit to work have the longest average commute times. What it doesn't tell us is why. Is it because transit takes so long in our county? Is it because there is a high proportion of transit riders that take the MARC or a commuter bus into DC, some 30 miles away? Is it some combination of things? A little more digging into this data would show us the real story, but it's an interesting datapoint if nothing else.

Anything about this surprising? I was kind of surprised at the decrease in carpooling, as well as definitely shocked at the numbers for the average public transit commute. Interesting stuff, in any case.

modern racism, Howard County's school board, and you

2011-09-21T20:19:00.000-04:00

There's been a lot of talk around the diversity of Howard County's school board and the recent recommendations of Howard County's School Board Study Commission to elect school board members by councilmanic district, with two more board members being appointed. The end result is supposed to be a more representative school board reflective of the racial and ethnic makeup of Howard County. Check out Joe Burris's article in the Baltimore Sun here, as well as some of the online local buzz from Wordbones, HoCo Rising, and TJ Mayotte's piece in Patch.

In a nice intersection, there was recently an excellent article that's pertinent to our whole brouhaha in The Atlantic called "The Most Racist Thing That Ever Happened to Me." Author Touré asked 106 interviewees to name the worst racist moment they'd experienced, and the most common answer was that it was unknowable, unpinnable. Rather, author Touré writes:

Modern racism is a much more subtle, nuanced, slippery beast than its father or grandfather were. It has ways of making itself seem to not exist, which can drive you crazy trying to prove its existence sometimes.

It's an uncomfortable idea for us, especially in communities like Columbia and Howard County that generally pride ourselves on diversity and acceptance and tolerance and all that jazz. After all, most of us wouldn't consider ourselves racist. But if a minority candidate can't get elected through the democratic process, is it because a majority of us are actually racist? How could our society and our community and our democratic process be racist if we're (pretty sure we're) not?

And why don't minorities just run for office if they want representation?

The Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder's answer to Touré's "most racist thing" question is quoted in the article:

"I imagine it'd be a thing I don't even know ever happened... It would be that opportunity that never manifested and I'll never know that it was even possible."

Interesting. Touré continues:

A decision is made in a back room or a high-level office, perhaps by someone you'll never see, about whether or not you get a job or a home loan or admission to a school. Or perhaps you'll never be allowed to know that a home in a certain area or a job is available. This is how modern institutional racism functions and it can weigh on and shape a black person differently than the more overt, simplistic racism of the past did.

Author Malcolm Gladwell weighs in as well:

"What's scary about prejudice is that it's not a measurable force," Malcolm Gladwell said. "We just know that it's all around and it matters sometimes a lot and sometimes it doesn't matter as much but we don't really know how much."

In a society that still turns identically-qualified job applicants with "black-sounding names" away in favor of names that sound more "white," are we really that surprised (and/or in denial) that there are a number of unseen barriers to running for office for people who are minorities? These barriers might not be as tangible as the blatant segregation of our past, but they are just as real and affect our society just as much.

Is appointing school board candidates the answer? My opinion: only inasmuch as affirmative action is "the answer." (i.e. No. I am not a fan of affirmative action.)

So is it an easy move? A band-aid? Is it worth a shot? Is it the "politically viable" solution or simply a politically-advantageous move, as some are suggesting?

What do you think?

a receipt for services rendered

2011-09-20T21:40:00.001-04:00

And now, the crazy idea of the week! How about a receipt for services rendered to taxpayers?

I don't mean those receipts that come out each year around April 15 that tell us where in the federal government our dollars go into. Don't get me wrong-- I do love them, especially when compared to the public's (often incorrect) perception of how that money is spent. (Like the oft-overlooked fact that roads cost more than the gas tax collects.)

I am talking about a receipt for what we as taxpayers are using. Obvious candidates are roads, libraries, parks. Those are the easy ones. Calculating out the costs of forays into economic development, research, or regulation is a little more difficult, but could probably still be figured out to some level. (Any economists out there?)

Schools are already pretty well calculated this way-- those costs per student calculated out annually. But for the most part, we have little or no point of reference to even estimate how much a lot of this stuff costs. As I think I've said before, having a driveway is really not comparable to planning, engineering, building, and maintaining a road. And because of the nature of paying taxes rather than paying to play-- i.e. libraries and roads are funded through taxes but generally free to use by people-- how much they cost is somewhat invisible to users. I think shedding some light on those costs in a receipt format we are used to could be an interesting exercise.

general plan task force: the fall sessions begin!

2011-09-18T15:11:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, September 14 was the first meeting of the General Plan Task Force to start working on the General Plan for 2030! There were three topics on the agenda-- APFO, the Rural West, and Transportation. Two hours. Go!

APFO (Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance) was the first topic of discussion. We had a quick outline of how APFO works, its goals, and some of the challenges it creates. Then a few large-scale questions were tossed out to spur discussion, like, "Do we need APFO in a slow economy?"

In general, developer and community activist alike said that APFO needed more flexibility built in. Predicting where and how growth will occur is difficult, but it's a system that we're essentially tied to right now. In some areas, like downtown Columbia, projected growth hasn't happened yet. In others, like Elkridge, there is a waiting list for housing development but it can't get built yet.

The point was also brought up that maybe having schools as a limiting factor of development is not a good idea. After all, the number of childless households is decreasing, and school capacity might not be as pertinent to managing development.

The next topic discussed was the Rural West. A lot of issues were discussed under this umbrella. Agriculture was a big topic, including agricultural preservation, the purchasing of development rights, how to encourage innovation, how to ensure that young farmers continue to farm, value added agriculture... the list goes on.

The last topic on the agenda was transportation options. By this time, unfortunately, we were running low on time and had to extend our discussion by about fifteen minutes. Some interesting numbers from the presentation:

Heavy rail: $250 - 300 million per mile
Light rail: $30 - 100 million per mile (streetcars that share car lanes are at the low end of that range)
Bus rapid transit: $20 million per mile
Traditional bus: $350K - $900K per bus

While most of us support a push toward public transit, these numbers are nothing to sneeze at. It's expensive. But at the same time, our road system isn't cutting it. Congestion is increasing, there is a proportion of the population with no cars, and people want a choice. I think the general agreement in the room was that we needed more time on transportation, so that's a topic that might come up again.

This stuff is complex. Sure, we all support managing development and protecting the rural west and alternative transportation. Taking that general "sure, that sounds good" into the details is a little harder. We were given the opportunity to voice our opinions on these different topics, and the Department of Planning and Zoning will take that input into creating the General Plan. It was a very good session, I thought, and one that was interesting. I definitely learned a lot, and am looking forward to the next meeting on Wednesday, October 12 at the new Robinson Nature Center.

beer for chicks

2011-09-07T20:28:00.001-04:00

Do we really need a beer specifically for women?

Available only in Maryland (for now) is Chick, a new "premium, light beer" marketed toward women. The only beer marketed toward women, the website says. The pink packaging is inspired by little black dresses (the bottles) and purses (the six pack). This beer itself is low-calorie, low-carbonation, and low-bitter.

Far be it from me to criticize a local beer company, and a marketing idea thought up by a businesswoman, but I just don't know about this one.

Sure, many mainstream beers are marketed in piggish ways toward guys but there are plenty of beers that are fairly "gender neutral," especially of those of the craft variety. Even then, should the response toward male-stereotype-driven marketing be female-stereotype-driven marketing?

Who knows. Perhaps Ms. Lewis knows something I don't. (Read an interview with her in Village Voice here.) I guess we'll see where Chick goes.

urbana vs. woodlawn for the SSA data center

2011-09-06T21:25:00.000-04:00

The Sun has a great editorial about the upcoming relocation of the Social Security Administration's data center to Frederick County from Woodlawn. In 2015, the data center, 200 jobs, and more private jobs, will be moved to Urbana, a town of about 10,000.

The editorial lists a bunch of reasons why it's a bad idea, but one in particular stuck out to me:

But whatever the motivation, it flies in the face of Maryland's smart growth policies and efforts to direct growth to urban centers and preserve open spaces. Urbana's transit opportunities are decidedly limited. Workers there commute by car, and I-270 traffic has not only grown precipitously in recent years, it is expected to nearly double to 200,000 vehicles per day by 2025, according to the Maryland Department of Transportation.

It's a lot of numbers and buzzwords, but essentially, this move will create more traffic as people have to drive from wherever they live out to Urbana in Frederick County.

Part of the reason why traffic is so bad in this area is because of job sprawl, or jobs moving away from urban centers to suburban areas. No longer do you have a large commute into the center city, making commuter transit like the commuter bus or MARC easier, but you have people commuting from Columbia to Greenbelt, or Ellicott City to Bethesda. Inter-suburban commutes have little in the way of transit options.

And the thing that sucks about it is that there is little we individuals can do about it. Most of us don't choose where our workplaces are, and as long as the commute itself is manageable, it's fine. So even if we choose to live in a walkable paradise with awesome transit access, there's no guarantee that we'll be able to use those amenities to get to work.

At the federal and state levels, we are grappling with shortfalls in infrastructure and transportation funding. One way to cut down on the amount of money we spend is to build densely and use assets that already exist, or are planned:

Meanwhile, Woodlawn will be served by Baltimore's planned Red Line light rail project, a 14.5-mile, east-west line running to Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center on the other side of the city. Construction on the $2.2 billion rail system is expected to begin in two years and will likely require at least $1 billion in federal transit construction dollars.

Um, hello.

Spam in a Hurricane

2011-08-30T19:00:00.002-04:00

Ah, but not the Spam you're thinking of.

As reported by Bruce Goldfarb at Patch, Del. James Malone, a Democrat representing District 12A in the state House of Delegates, spammed a list of at least 4,500 emails with an advertisement for disaster cleanup firm he works for during Hurricane Irene.

The list, according to the article, is a jumble of email addresses-- constituents, business contacts, friends-- "They're from all over the place," Malone said.

I'm sure usually that's not a problem, like when sending those quarterly updates or town hall meeting announcements that elected officials send every once in a while. But a plug for a private business that employs Malone to a list that includes people who say they only contacted him as a constituent? Hmm.

Malone maintains it was not unethical or illegal. "All I was trying to do was tell people there’s a hurricane coming and, 'We’re here to help you.'"

Ohh, so that's what advertising is. Helpful.

William G. Somerville, "ethics counsel to the Maryland General Assembly," is quoted in Goldfarb's article as saying, “the law says that it’s illegal to use the prestige of office to promote a private business... I can’t say for sure it’s unethical. We’re getting close.”

I dunno-- what Del. Malone did sounds exactly like what Somerville described. But I'm no lawyer. Either way, even if the act hugs the line of ethics without crossing it, it doesn't seem... upstanding.

I took an ethics workshop once, and in it, we were told this (paraphrased):

If there's one thing you take away from today, it should be this. Avoid anything that feels like it could be potentially viewed as unethical. Avoid doing anything you wouldn't want to be seen on the front page of the paper. If if feels like it's unethical, it probably is. And even if it's not unethical, it's probably still a bad idea.

Delegate Malone could probably benefit from that workshop.

in search of authenticity

2011-08-28T21:03:00.000-04:00

I don't know about your Facebook news feed, but a piece in the Washington Post has recently made the rounds amongst my friends. It's a light-hearted comparison of Baltimore and DC called "Baltimore integrity trumps DC importance," and it's about how down-to-earth Baltimore is as compared to DC's blowhard nature. It's an interesting read, but I can also distill it down to a few lines of comparison:

Baltimore: charm and community and quirkiness
DC: protests and politics and importance

Baltimore neighborhoods: Pigtown and Hampden
DC neighborhoods: Capitol Hill and Georgetown

And so on. So I get why many of my Baltimore-based friends so gleefully posted the article-- with Baltimore having the inferiorty complex it often does, it's nice for a DC newspaper (the Post!) to publish something saying that Baltimore is better, more authentic place to live.

I know I've used this before but I love it so. From xkcd.
License to use here.

Why do we crave, strive for, and trumpet authenticity? Authentic food, neighborhoods, music, celebrations, travel-- heck, an authentic existence-- these are all something to be sought out and held on to.

Some authenticity is found in geographic areas-- cities are often considered authentic than suburbs, inner-ring or older suburbs more authentic than McMansions. Some is found in culture-- boasting about an authentic restaurant find or making an authentic family recipe. We seek out real experiences within industries that are often considered "manufactured," like travel, weddings, celebrations, music.

The flip side, of course, is that there is so much out there is considered unauthentic-- it's fake, produced, an imitation. Strip malls, the suburbs, theme parks, chain stores. People.

Though you'd be hard pressed, I think, to find someone who thinks they are unauthentic. And it would be similarly hard to find someone who thinks their existence is inauthentic. After all, once strip malls have been around for a while, and are part of a collective memory or childhood, aren't they authentic? What about an awesome, authentic restaurant in a strip mall? When do inauthentic things become authentic?

And what about authentic things that were manufactured? Some up and coming neighborhoods in Baltimore may feel authentic but in actuality, were made possible through government designation, tax breaks, developers, and often, people not native to a neighborhood.

An example: to some, Columbia is authentic-- real people, experiences, neighborhoods. To others, it's just another soulless suburb between DC and Baltimore with a bunch of chain restaurants.

So what's authentic? Does it matter?

***

So the storm has come and gone. I flirted with writing about Irene as my post tonight but then decided I had nothing really to write about it. We hung out at home Saturday afternoon into the evening and night with drinks and snacks. No power outage, no damage, just some wild wind and crazy rain. We had some moisture in the basement-- "flooding" seems too strong a word. No big deal-- Irene was more of an inconvenience than anything serious for us.

And of course, a beautiful day today. Goodbye, Irene.

General Plan Guidelines approved-- onward!

2011-08-25T21:33:00.000-04:00

Since we last talked about the General Plan Draft Guidelines, they have been approved by County Council with a few changes, including the creation of a historic preservation plan (rather than assessing the need for one) and a requirement to do a fiscal analysis. I think the changes are definitely improvements. You can check out the edits that County Council made here (the changes are tracked).

So I guess they're officially no longer merely "draft" guidelines but real ones!

Exciting!

This summer, the General Plan Task Force has convened on a voluntary basis to learn more about County background on topics such as the budget, housing, and transportation. A few members of the task force felt that having a stronger background these areas that play very strongly into the General Plan was a good idea, and DPZ set up a few informational meetings to address pertient topics.

There's been one meeting in June, July, and August, to listen to presentations on these topics. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to make it out to these presentations (boo), but! the presentations-- both the audio as well as slides-- are available online at the Plan Howard website (scroll down to Plugin.) So I'm catching up. (The August meeting was yesterday, and the information presented there isn't available online yet, but I'm sure it will be soon.)

I know this is going to seem like "everyone's a winner!" but all of the presentations so far have been pretty interesting. A few favorites:

Budget: Some really good data and a great overview on revenue-- assessments, income levels, taxes-- and a little bit on expenditures. I learned that a huge portion of the operating budget goes toward salaries and benefits, but most of them are police officers and teachers. Raymond Wacks said, to laughter, "You can cut out the entire planning department-- not that you'd want to do that-- but you'd have very little impact on that pie." Interesting stuff for folks who like to play the budget game.

School planning: I admittedly tend to zone out during discussions of our school system-- not because I don't care, but because I'm just as happy to defer my opinions to folks who have some skin in the game. Or kids in the system. Either way, though this discussion was really interesting-- predicting the demand for schools is directly related to a whole host of data sources: number of births, number of households, projected new construction, the economy... It sounds like folks on the Task Force have strong opinions of school planning, especially given recent school planning developments and news, so that will definitely be an interesting discussion in the fall.

Healthy communities: A snappy little statement from this caught my attention: your zip code may be more important to your health than your genetic code, meaning where you grow up and live greatly influences your health. It sounds like a no-brainer, but at the same time, I think most of us could point out community health indicators that our neighborhoods are missing-- access to safe active transportation (biking, walking), access to quality affordable housing, access to economic opportunity, green + sustainable development and practices...

I highly encourage folks to listen to these presentations if you get a chance. They are a great resource to get background information on these workings in Howard County. The presenters seemed to assume nothing about the audience, and as such, people with any command or no command in these topics can both understand and appreciate the presentations and discussions.

So now what?

The next official steps for the General Plan Task Force are monthly meetings beginning in September to make the steps from "guidelines" to a draft General Plan. What exactly is involved in these meetings, I don't know. But Plan Howard has a list of the meetings, so come on out! Here are the upcoming meeting dates:

Wednesday, September 14: 7 - 9 pm
Florence Bain Center
5470 Ruth Keeton Way, Columbia

Wednesday, October 12: 7 - 9 pm
Robinson Nature Center
6692 Cedar Lane, Columbia

Wednesday, November 9: 7 - 9 pm
North Laurel Community Center
9411 Whiskey Bottom Road, Laurel

Monday, December 14: 7 - 9 pm
Gary J. Arthur Community Center at Glenwood
2400 Route 97, Cooksville

Stay tuned!

fun at Ollie's

2011-08-24T23:42:00.000-04:00

Oh, Ollie's. How I love the random assortment of stuff you sell.

You wonder why some of the stuff at Ollie's is even there. Large cans of Progressive black beans, for example, for 59 cents. (No, they weren't expired, or even close to it.)

And then you have items like these.

lol lol lol

Toy? Edutainment? Other? You decide!

Seriously, while manufacturing these products, someone must have thought they'd end up at Ollie's eventually.

directional signage on the pathways

2011-08-22T20:10:00.001-04:00

What is that? Is it a trail sign?

Don't get too excited, CA pathway fans. This particular directional sign is on Howard County Parks & Rec turf, specifically, on the Patuxent Branch Trail. But it's awesome, right?

Little signs like this would be awesome on the CA pathways. Unobtrusive, informational, easy to spot, easy to read.

***

Oh well. I will say that the five mile trail is a very nice, rather seamless extension from Lake Elkhorn to Savage. The bike ride, a meal at Rams Head Tavern, dessert at Bonaparte Bread, and the ride back makes for a lovely local Saturday afternoon.

~~Beware, though, Savage Mill doesn't have anything in the way of bike parking.~~

ETA 9:46 PM: GeoBerk corrects me in the comments-- there is indeed bike parking, s/he says. We didn't see it, and the folks at Rams Head didn't seem to know it existed... oh well. Next time. Thanks!

Hopefully this doesn't count as parking in the fire lane.

stuck in the suburbs with no car and no transit access

2011-08-21T18:41:00.000-04:00

What if you had no car, and lived in an area with no transit access?

The Brookings Institute has come out with a great report about American households in metropolitan areas with no private car and no transit access-- identifying challenges, interesting statistics, and some surprising facts.

In the nation's top 100 metro areas, there are about 7.5 million households that do not have a private car. The vast majority of them live in areas with transit access-- over 90 percent as compared to the national transit coverage of 68 percent. Brookings says this is likely because households with no vehicle generally will locate themselves to areas with transit access-- makes sense. But there are about 700,000 households across the top 100 metro areas with no private car and no transit access.

So how does the Baltimore metro area fare?

Baltimore ranked 20th out of the top 100 metro areas. It has 114,325 households with no car, or 11.1% of all households. Of that, 6,118 are without any transportation access (i.e. no private car and no transit access). Interestingly enough, Baltimore City is 100% covered by transit as defined by Brookings. This means that those 6,118 households are exclusively in Baltimore's suburbs. The report doesn't break it out further by jurisdiction, so we can't know exactly what proportion is housed in Howard County, but it's probably safe to assume that some proportion lives here.

Another bit of analysis completed by Brookings was to show what proportion of jobs are accessible via transit in under 90 minutes to households with no car. Nationally, households without a car can reach over 40% of jobs via transit in under 90 minutes. That number is high, again, because zero-vehicle households tend to locate near transit. The share of jobs accessible via transit for households with cars is only 29 percent-- because they aren't dependent on transit, they may not take transit access into consideration when choosing a place to live.

In the Baltimore metro area, zero-vehicle households can reach 42% of jobs in under 90 minutes via transit, but that percentage is buoyed by the 100% transit coverage in the city. In the suburbs, that rate falls drastically to only 24 percent-- that's probably a better estimate for us here in Howard County. And heck, a 90 minute commute is a very low bar for workplace accessibility.

If you check out a map of our local transit service, it looks like there is a lot of coverage-- and there is. The mall, the hospital, shopping centers, government offices... a lot of areas are covered by a route or stop. But think about all the housing and residential areas in between that are not on this map. There's a lot of missing ground here. And in that missing ground are households who are essentially stuck in the suburbs.

It comes back to Gil Peñalosa's key question-- are we building our neighborhoods for cars or for people?

Cradlerock School is no more

2011-08-18T18:31:00.000-04:00

We knew it was coming, but here ya go:

"Cradlerock School" no longer exists. In prep for the new school year, the cool silver lettering on the building has been updated to reflect two new schools-- Cradlerock Elementary School and Lake Elkhorn Middle School.

Can you believe it's already mid-August? Where did the summer go?

***

So the internet has been fixed at my house, but there is an alarming cable running from my house to the FIOS box outside. We were told that Verizon didn't have a permit yet for underground digging, so here's what we've got right now:

Er, okay. It also runs across another sidewalk and our neighbor's yard. Oh well. They say they'll come bury it soon, but who really knows.

That being said, hopefully my blogging will become a little more consistent. Though at the same time, my day job is ramping up like nuts right now and doesn't look like it'll be slowing down any time soon. A consistent three days per week is my goal.

rail in the suburbs

2011-08-14T15:42:00.000-04:00

Tom at HoCoRising linked to an interesting article about residential resistance to a rail line running through the transit-oriented development New Urbanist neighborhood of King Farm (a stone's throw from where I grew up... I remember when it actually was a farm along Rockville Pike!)

He writes that as much as a small group of yuppies/community organizers/suburban urbanists want a rail line running through Columbia, and are excited by such possibilities, the fact of the matter is that there will be huge opposition to such a proposal. I totally agree with him-- while it might be easy to look about the Howard County blogosphere or folks who are active in planning/community building here and think, "Hey, everyone wants rail, cool," we certainly are not a good representation of all of Columbia or Howard County.

(A followup from the original article is at Greater Greater Washington-- the railway will indeed run through King Farm, and other articles I'd read a few months back show a greater diversity of opinion than the GOOD article suggests. Either way, though, there was definitely opposition to a rail line in a neighborhood that was designed to have direct transit access from the beginning, and that in itself is... odd.)

And that's why this story out of Detroit is actually news. Via Planetizen is an article by Matt Helms in the Detroit Free Press about a suburban county in Detroit actually wants light rail running into their county. Leaders view the transit link as an important step forward. Residents see a rail link to Detroit as something that will spur redevelopment. A funding source that is being tossed around is a regional tax increase, subject to a popular vote.

My initial reaction to this article is... Detroit?! How will a link to Detroit help anyone? But quite honestly, I know very little about Detroit except to know that a lot of folks who live there are tired of the "ruin porn" that has become so very popular for folks who live outside the city.

So I'll leave the merits of light rail from Detroit to its suburbs alone and simply give a thumbs up to the residents of Oakland County who feel that a rail connection to their center city is a good thing. It's good to see that there is broad based support for transit, and I can only hope that when/if an opportunity comes here for it, we'll be able to take advantage of it.

some ruminations on blogs in Howard County

2011-08-11T20:34:00.001-04:00

Judging by the number of times I use it in blog titles, you would think "ruminations" is my favorite word. Truthfully, I rarely use it in real life.

Last week, the City Paper's Michael Byrne had a great breakdown of Baltimore's online news media, covering Baltimore Brew, the Examiner (for what it's worth, evidently), Investigative Voice, et. al.

I feel like they kind of missed out on a great microcosm of online news/commentary activity by focusing solely on the city. (Yes, I know it's technically the City Paper but they do have boxes out here in Howard County, believe it or not. Check the corner of McGaw and Dobbin Roads.)

Here in Howard County, between HoCoMoJo, our various Patch sites, and of course, the HocoBlogs network, we've got a pretty active online-media community here, keeping within the constraints of the City Paper inventory-- I think most of us are also appreciative of our paper media as well.

We might not be focused on breaking news, but the commentary and reflections on national, state, and local news is pretty important, I think, and definitely "media." And I think tonight's huge blog party, sponsored by the Baltimore Sun, is an indicator of that.

***

Ack! So I know it's been a long time but as I told folks at the HocoBlogs party, my internet at my house is still out and has no ETA for fixing due to the strike. I am too busy at work to blog there, and even my poor lil Blackberry (which cannot blog anyhow) has also crapped out due to unrelated and unknown causes. Might be switching internet providers soon.

Thanks to the Howard County Library for having computers for me to write this on. Might be here a lot more often in the near future.

brb

2011-08-09T10:20:00.000-04:00

My internet has cut out at my house and I've had a bunch of guests and family at said house over the past few days... so I will be back shortly.

I'll also hopefully see y'all at the next hocoblogs party on Thursday!

CSA report number eight!

2011-08-04T16:01:00.000-04:00

So last week's haul, if you remember, was six ears of corn, one very large heirloom tomato, four yellow peppers, one bunch spring onions, one pint of snap peas, six yellow squash, four cucumbers, and one head of lettuce.

Sooo... I mentioned not liking squash last week, so instead of using recipes that highlight the suckers, I used a few tried-and-true approaches.

Blend it into a smoothie! It actually adds a banana-like consistency to the mix, so it's a good addition. Plus, they don't taste like much when you add in frozen peaches and blackberries.
Smother it in cheese, meat, and potatoes! We made a gratin by layering thinly sliced squash, minced onions, cubed ham, and thinly sliced potatoes and poured a cheese sauce over it. Because I have a guilty conscious, we used reduced fat cheese, skim milk, whole wheat flour, and cut the butter in half (apologies to all the foodies out there)... so I'm pretty sure that makes this healthy, right? Seriously though, you could not tell we used reduced fat everything. You also could not tell there was squash in it. Success!

Lesson learned with this, though-- although your instinct might be like mine to bury all the squash at the bottom, this will render your gratin a little too watery. Next time we'll put it on top or mix everything together so that the excess water can evaporate rather than be trapped under onions, cubed ham, and potatoes. Live and learn.

Other things we did with our haul:

I made two awesome salads! Lettuce, onions, corn, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, and shrimp with a homemade citrus-garlic vinagrette.
The tomato also contributed to breakfast egg sandwiches. A slice of tomato makes them yum.
I cooked, sliced kernals off the cob and froze the rest of the corn. We just didn't have time to eat it. Also, I made corn broth with the cobs before composting them. Corn broth-- weird, right? I didn't invent the thing. But I'm thinking on mixing it with crab stock in the freezer for an awesome base for chowdah in the winter. (I forgot that you can apparently use the husks and all that per above linked recipe. Oh well.)
We also made pizza with peppers, onions, and squash.
We also ate lots of raw sliced cucumbers and yellow peppers because they are delicious.
So I'm a little bummed to report that the sad snap peas were picked over by me-- eating the ones that were edible-- and we composted the rest. We probably composted about a 1/3 of the pint. They were tough, starchy, and had little flavor. Big disappointment.

So left over from this week and weeks prior are potatoes, onions, garlic, and scallions. All foods that will last, luckily.

Disappointment with the snow peas last week was more than made up for with the haul this week! Here we go:

1 head red leaf lettuce
1 head green leaf lettuce
4 green bell peppers
6 yellow squash
4 regular sized tomoatoes
1 pint "cherry" tomatoes (very large for cherry tomatoes-- more like "apricot" tomatoes)
5 cucumbers
1 bunch red spring onions
1 bunch white spring onions

Awesome-looking haul! Very summery and freshhh.

A Review of Guaranteed Ride Home: success!

2011-08-02T20:10:00.000-04:00

So yesterday, I went into work thinking I was over my cold enough to go into the office. Soon, though, it was clear that DayTime (the Dollar Tree DayQuil knockoff), cough drops, and tea wasn't successful at keeping my head clear and my fever down. So I took the rest of the day as sick leave and go home.

Problem: I take the 310 commuter bus into work. As you can see from the schedule here, it only runs during morning and evening peak with no midday runs. The only other transit option to get home is to take the Light Rail out to BWI and take Howard Transit's Silver Route to the Snowden River Park and Ride. I've done this before and it takes a solid two hours-- at that point, I might as well stay at work.

Solution: the Guaranteed Ride Home (GRH) program. I wrote about it once before back when it was expanded to include the Baltimore metro area. It's a "safety net" program that gives alternative transportation commuters an option when they have to go home early unexpectedly or work late-- i.e. a cab or rental car to get home.

When you register, you recieve a card in the mail-- I keep it in one of those ubiquitous clear sleeves with my bus pass and work ID. I called the phone number on it and gave them my ID number (assigned when you register), verified my office address, and told them why I was going home early. They said it would take ten-to-fifteen minutes to dispatch a Checker cab, and I would get a phone call when said cab was waiting outside for me. I was responsible for tipping the cab driver, the operator confirmed.

About ten minutes later, I recieved a text message saying a cab had been dispatched, along with the cab number. Then I waited. And waited. About a fifteen minutes later, I went ahead and went downstairs, thinking the cabbie didn't have a phone or something.

Soon enough, though, a cab with the matching number pulled up. I walked over, he confirmed my name, and I climbed inside. "I'm so sorry I'm late," he said. "I got stuck in Pratt Street traffic." Having seen Pratt Street earlier today, I totally understood. I told him the lot my car was parked in (verifying the information he had) and we were on our way.

A $38 cab fare later, we pulled into the Snowden River Park and Ride lot. I signed a slip for his reimbursement for the GRH program and tipped him. Then I got into my car, drove home, took my temperature, and went to sleep.

Overall, a success! The program really helped me out yesterday. Without it, sick-me would have been stranded at work. The worry of being stuck at work is enough of an inconvenience that prevents people from taking transit, and this program helps meet that concern.

Even though it seems like it would be a super expensive program (see: my cab fare), it's actually fairly low cost ($200,000 (annually?) for the Baltimore metro expansion, funded at the state level) because while individual cab fares can be expensive, the program offers much more peace of mind than actual physical rides home. I've been commuting on the 310 bus since 2008 and since then, I've only had to go home unexpectedly early twice.

GRH participants can use the program up to four times per year, and people who use alternative transportation (public transit, bicycling, carpooling) at least twice a week in the DC/Baltimore metro area (defined VERY broadly) are eligible to sign up.

Check it out!

Symphony Woods's lack of sexy

2011-07-31T17:16:00.001-04:00

I think we just expected more after all the hype.

CA president Phil Nelson addressed some of the Design Advisory Panel's criticisms of the Symphony Woods plan in a recent Patch article by Lisa Rossi. He is quoted as saying, “It’s hard to make concrete and plumbing fixtures look very sexy. If you submit a site plan, phase one will be pathways and some...plumbing for a future fountain. It’s hard to make those look innovative and imaginative.”

I get that. We all hear the "infrastructure isn't sexy but it's necessary" line, and I think most of us know that while groundbreakings make the headlines and bring out the politicians, the "underground" of facilities is just as important.

But at the same time, we've also read article after article about how Symphony Woods is going to be an awesome park, a redevelopment. There was much fanfare about the two chunks of $250,000 both allocated at the state level as well as anonymously donated by a nonprofit. The project's price tag has been pegged at about $5.5 million. The vision has been built up to be Columbia's Central Park, "a gathering place" in the heart of Columbia," a "cultural center," a destination for families...

...and we've got concrete and plumbing.

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that I can't help but be just a little underwhelmed with what's on paper. And while I understand that this is just Phase 1, the presenters had little to say about what was planned beyond this initial phase at the recent-ish Symphony Woods meeting.

Underground and prepwork is important, don't get me wrong. But calling the plans (so far) for Symphony Woods a "redevelopment" seems too strong of a word.

Of course, this isn't over. There is lots of opportunity yet to seize (still a few phases to go); I'm still holding my breath.

CSA report number seven is heaven

2011-07-28T21:50:00.000-04:00

CSA report! Last week, we got one head green leaf lettuce, three green peppers, four cucumbers, five zucchini, one bunch spring onions, one pint snap peas, one pint cherry tomatoes, one quart small potatoes, and one head of garlic.

We made salad! By the way, that salad on the right has roast beef in it, which apparently does not photograph well. But it was delicious. Probably made with anything that looks salady in that above list. (except the snap peas-- we ate those plain)

We made squash cakes! This is with the zucchini. I think I've shared on here before that I don't really like summer squash. It has a weird texture. And I'm not a huge fan of the taste. But gussy it up with some eggs and breadcrumbs (or in this case, mayonnaise and flour, because I didn't feel like going to the store and thought I had this stuff) and pan-fry it and you got dinner! Plus more to freeze. It was a lot of zucchini. It also used the spring onions and some garlic.

Aaand stirfry! This was peppers, garlic, some veggies from the freezer, some chicken from the freezer, and leftover Chinese takeout rice. Our fridge was so empty after this meal. And since I cleaned it recently (like pulled out all the shelves and everything), it looked so nice.

We also ate a lot of this stuff plain: the snap peas, the cucumbers, some of the tomatoes. I also made a crazy salad with tomatoes, peppers, garlic, cucumbers with chickpeas, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and cumin. Basically a bread-less fettoush.

We've still got all the potatoes and about half the head of garlic left.

And this Wednesday, I picked up the following!

Okay, here we've got:

six deelicious ears of corn (I know, I've already had one)
one very large heirloom tomato
four yellow peppers (purple was also an option but I already grabbed four yellow and didn't feel like exchanging them)
one bunch spring onions
one (sad-looking, honestly) pint of snap peas
six yellow squash
four cucumbers
one head of lettuce

Exciting!! CORN.

I also want to take the time here to plug several other local bloggers highlighting other area CSAs that I've been following--

Both Kitchen Scribble and Allura are members of Howard County's own Breezy Willow CSA, and they've got lovely drops each week as well. They do a great job of running through their weekly hauls! And they get nectarines! Check them out as well.

the physical impact of highways

2011-07-26T19:44:00.000-04:00

TJ Mayotte recently had a great piece over at Patch about the two "upper" and "lower" sides of Elkridge, split by I-95 and the battle in pulling together a distinct community from the halves. The comment section below the article is also worth your time and highlights a lot of what TJ discussed. Likewise, check out Wordbones's take and comment section-- more interesting stuff there.

Maybe it's because I never lived in a world without I-95, but the visual impact of I-95 is just jaw dropping. The Howard County aerial maps of Elkridge before (1963) and after (1970) are so different-- some trips that probably took a few minutes in Elkridge were now a few miles due to local roads being cut off by the highway. But hey, it was now a lot faster for people to pass through Elkridge in cars, I guess, which was the end goal.

Here are the "before" and "after" shot of a section of Elkridge (click maps to enlarge):

And here's another interesting aerial view-- the 1963 map with our current road structure layer on top of it. You can see the number of roads that were bifurcated due to I-95-- hence the fact that local trip times increased since now, people had to find a way around I-95, or use I-95 to get to where they were going.

Now, I know I-95 will never be torn down in a million years, but it's worth noting that other communities are examining the impact of bohemoth highways in their communities, and how they seperate people and neighborhoods. They were often planned and built in a time when getting cars from point A to point B as fast as possible was the top priority, the main concern. That focus caused us to often overlook the reprocussions for everyone and everything else.

And yeah, I say that knowing that we're still in that time and mindset in many cases.

Anyhow, some jurisdictions are taking a look at their highways and in planning for their future, are considering pulling them down. New York City, for example, is using a federal grant to holistically study the impact of tearing down the Sheridan Expressway, a short, "lightly-used" highway. Noah Kazis with Streetsblog writes that NYC is focused "not only an expanded transportation analysis looking at the area’s broader highway system, but also issues like access to the Bronx River, which is cut off from neighborhoods by the Sheridan, and the development of housing and jobs."

And of course, proposals to remove the elevated portion of the JFX/I-83 in downtown Baltimore pop up from time to time.

Elkridge isn't alone in its being split by a major highway, and unfortunately, many similarly divided communities suffer. It's hard to develop and sustain a sense of community when there is literally an physical barrier dividing an area. We are shaped by our surroundings, and the effect that highways have on an existing community is an example of that.

***

So as regular readers are probably picking up, I've dropped my posting schedule down from weekday nights (defining that as Sunday through Thursday) down to roughly three nights per week. I mentioned a while back in seperate entries about hitting that burnout wall, and about reassessing what I'm doing here with this blog. Some evenings, I've been reaching for something to write about because I feel like I have to put something up. Oddly enough, it's not totally obvious where I felt like I was reaching because they're often the more widely-read and commented posts. Go figure. In any case, dropping down to three days per week will allow me to think things through better and take the time needed to put quality posts up.

That's the plan, anyway!

teen curfew up for consideration in neighboring Montgomery County; what about us?

2011-07-24T19:44:00.000-04:00

Photo credit to Sharon Mollerus.

The Baltimore Sun has an interesting editorial on the proposed teen curfew that the Montgomery County Council is considering that would essentially ban unsupervised minors in public places from 11 pm until 5 am on weekdays and 12 am until 5 am on weekends. As most readers probably know, Baltimore City already has a teen curfew in effect, and the editorial is spun to the effect of "What Montgomery County can learn from Baltimore City."

The curfew effort stemmed from a few "troubling" events that caught a lot of attention-- the editorial mentions a gathering of about seventy teens in Silver Spring that results in fights and a stabbing. Although that level of concern hasn't reached curfew level here in Howard County, I'm sure I'm not alone in hearing worries about teenagers at the mall, village centers, or roaming about and if it's something to be worried about.

I agree with the Sun's advice that enacting a curfew for teenagers seems an easy, cost-free approach to controlling teenagers, but isn't a slam-dunk solution. I also have serious concerns about how discriminatory the approach is, and that it's punishing a group of people, limiting their rights, for the crimes of a few, especially for a group of people that have limited political pull. (Plus, the public meeting for the curfew is at 1:30 pm on a Tuesday during the summer?) But, as the article points out, there are lots of jurisdictions that have similar curfews in effect, and they're clearly seen as a deterrent to teen-involved crimes.

It'll be interesting to see how this proceeds in our neighbor county, and if it passes-- how it affects crime rates, businesses/retail, and hell-- teenage participation in politics, even. It would behoove our teenage population (and parents of teenagers, too), I think, to pay attention to what happens down in Montgomery County-- it could be a harbinger of things to come to our own neck of the woods.

looking into the past: historic and present Ellicott City in single-double photograph

2011-07-21T17:19:00.001-04:00

Okay, via Greater Greater Washington, to Business Insider, to a Flickr account comes some really cool photos taken with old photos in present times. Confused? A picture is definitely worth a thousand awkward words here, so I'll link to the set of old-meets-new in the greater DC area by Jason Powell. Be sure to check out the composite photos of historic Ellicott City here, here, and here.

~~(I would embed the photos here, but since they're all rights reserved, I'll just link y'all. The photos I do use in my blogposts have all been made available for use via Creative Commons.)~~

ETA 7/22 11:14 am: Per Jason Powell's comment below, I'll share the EC photos (thanks!). Here they are in all their amazingness:

Enjoy! Have a good weekend.

CSA report... #6?

2011-07-20T19:16:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I missed a CSA report last week. We gave the veggies to a friend since we were out of the house. I froze most of the veggies from the previous week and we have a very full freezer. We also threw a party two weeks ago, and used some veggies there (coleslaw, etc.) But to be fair, that was a long time ago. So let's focus on the present. Here's our pickup from today:

Vegetables!!

one head green leaf lettuce
three green peppers
four cucumbers
five zucchini
one bunch spring onions
one pint snap peas
one pint cherry tomatoes
one quart small potatoes
one head of garlic

Very exciting stuff. Tonight, because it's too hot to cook, we had lovely salads.

GA pedestrian convicted of vehicular homicide and our own unsafe crossings

2011-07-18T22:01:00.000-04:00

How terrible is this story? A mother whose son was hit by a car while crossing the street with his family has been convicted of vehicular homicide as a pedestrian.

Raquel Nelson was crossing a dimly lit street with no crosswalk with her three children when Jerry Guy hit them with his car. Nelson's four-year-old, A.J., later died from his injuries.

From Elise Hitchcock's article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Jerry L. Guy, the driver who admitted hitting the child when pleading guilty to hit-and-run, served a 6-month sentence... Guy confessed to having consumed "a little" alcohol earlier in the day, being prescribed pain medication and being partially blind in his left eye, said David Simpson, his attorney.

Meanwhile, Nelson faces up to 3 years in jail, to be determined at a hearing on July 26.

According to an older article by Ralph Ellis in the Journal-Constitution, the nearest crosswalks were three-tenths of a mile away, and the family was crossing a four lane road from a bus stop to their apartment. Nelson hadn't intended for them to be out at dark, but since they had missed the previous bus, they had to wait another hour for the next bus.

In a post on DC Streetsblog, blogger Tanya Snyder took a Google Streetview shot of the area:

Via DC Streetsblog.

We all know areas here in Howard County that look like this where pedestrians cross dangerously-- often they don't have a choice. It's not uncommon that it's a bus stop that's their orgination or destination. Check this out on Snowden River Parkway between the two Berger Road intersections by Lincoln Tech:

No sidewalks, dangerous sloped median, guardrail to prevent crossing, and no crosswalks. The nearest crosswalk is about a tenth of a mile away, but it doesn't really matter with the lack of sidewalks. In real life, there are lots of bushes there before the guardrail, too. The speed limit here, as you can see, is 45 miles per hour. (You can explore the area in Google Maps by clicking here.) It's dangerous now, but a tragedy when someone gets hurt or worse. Here's hoping that doesn't happen, but looking at this intersection and comparing it to the one where A.J. Nelson was hit and his mom was convicted of vehicular manslaughter, it seems to be a tragedy waiting to happen.

back! with some navel-gazing

2011-07-17T18:48:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned about a week ago, I was involved in some heavy duty training for work last week. Beyond simply training in my field, which was fantastic, there was a lot of personal and professional evaluation and reflection, something that I really appreciated and apparently needed. It's easy to just keep moving forward! without a set of priorities or a plan (well, at least for me).

Oddly enough (or perhaps not), my blog and the purpose behind it came up for me over and over again. I have no purpose behind it except to share thoughts and ideas. I have no goal, I have no plan. I think that's okay. Well, I think it would be better if there was something driving it, considering how much time it takes each night. And after not blogging for nearly a week, I became really aware of just how much time it does take.

So over the next few weeks, I'm charged with figuring out what I'm doing and where I'm going with regard to anything and everything. There's nothing wrong with just filing what I do here five nights per week under "hobby." I just need to figure out what everything is.

I had a whole 'nother discussion below but decided to nix it. I'll be back (for real) tomorrow evening.

out of the office

2011-07-12T10:19:00.000-04:00

So I originally intended on blogging through this week, but I'm pretty sure now that it's not really going to be possible. I'm in 12-hour training days through Friday and can't find the time to blog, so I'm gonna go ahead and put an out of the office post up and I'm shooting to be back on Sunday night.

kabob connection at columbia mall: yum!

2011-07-10T21:04:00.000-04:00

A few days ago, I met a family member at Kabob Connection at the mall for lunch. I hadn't been there, and I honestly don't usually seek out the mall food court to meet for lunch, but it came highly recommended from a friend.

Well, it was delicious. And fun to watch.

Kabob Connection has the standard Iranian kabob offerings-- chicken, beef, lamb, gyro with bread, rice, and/or salad. The food is really good-- I had the chicken kabob sandwich and my lunch companion had a gyro sandwich.

The cool thing about Kabob Connection is that the meal prep is in the front, and you can watch the cooks doing everything. A cook tends to seven or so skewers of kabob over the hot grill. Another guy is baking bread in a modern tandoor oven. He uses a rolling pin to get the bread to size, then uses a spiked roller to ensure the bread stays flat. He then lays the bread flat on a large pillow, picks it up, and slaps the bread against the wall of the tandoor, where it cooks. When it's done, he pulls it off with a pair of tongs. This way to cook bread has been used for thousands of years, and you see it everywhere in India, but it's really cool to see it now in a mall food court in Columbia. The gyro machine is not a rarity, but you'd be surprised at how many places just reheat frozen gyro slices. It's up in the front, slowly turning.

The food is made to order, so expect a bit of a wait, but it's worth it. Check it out.

suburban/urban carbon footprints, the agricultural industry, and us

2011-07-07T21:37:00.000-04:00

It's logical to think that people who live in cities have a smaller carbon footprint. Denser development uses resources (space, infrastructure) more effectively. There are usually a number of alternative transit options: public transit, walking, biking. And when a city-dweller does have to drive, it's often a smaller distance due to the denser development.

This type of logic guided folks toward thinking that people who live in cities have smaller carbon footprints. Obviously, right?

Well, it depends on how you measure carbon footprints.

After all, there is a lot more to pollutin' than what we do in our daily lives. In a new report, researchers Jukka Heinonen and Seppo Junnila from Aalto University in Finland argue that a more "comprehensive evaluation" should be made, one that includes life-cycle assessments (and therefore, carbon emissions) of products to the location they are used, not produced. Heinonen is quoted at PhysOrg.com:

If a TV set is made in a factory in the countryside but bought and used by a person in a town, the carbon emission generated from making the television should be allocated to the consumer, not to a manufacturer making it for the consumer.

After all, the consumers, wherever they are, are driving the demand for the TV factory. Using this approach, researchers found that carbon footprints were closely correlated with standard of living and income, but not urban vs. suburban household location. A few simplistic examples: wealthier people have more stuff, tend to drive even when transit is available, fly to vacations more often. Poorer people have less stuff, rely on transit whether or not the system is efficient, and fly less often.

Interesting stuff. In Howard County, with both a high proportion of suburban development as well as high-income residents, signs would point toward a higher carbon footprint all around. Then again, there is such a concentrated push here toward sustainability in Howard County-- compost bins, rain barrels, home audits-- that I would hope that stuff makes a difference.

I couldn't help but think about how Heinonen and Junnila's approach to carbon footprints is analogous to Maryland's relationship with Eastern Shore farming, sorta. Draft restrictions on fertilizer and manure to help control some of the runoff into the Chesapeake Bay will hit the farmers out there hard, according to the Maryland Farm Bureau as quoted in a recent Baltimore Sun article. But as the consumers of chicken and produce out of that area, we consumers are also responsible for that pollution into the Bay.

Well, you might say, I like chicken but that doesn't necessarily mean I support polluting practices. I favor restrictions to save the Bay. Vote with your wallet, then. Show the market that you're willing to put your money where your mouth is and pay more for more environmentally-friendly or sustainably raised produce and chickens. In this economy, I can't blame farmers that are wary of anything that would drive food costs up.

That stuff's pricy, you could respond. True, but regulations on farmers will likely have the same effect-- costs will go up for the farmer, meaning food prices will rise. We unfortunately can't have it both ways-- cheap and environmentally-friendly. (And heck, there's that idea that we spend less per paycheck on food than generations previous... though I cannot find it right now. Pollan? Bittman? Someone.)

It's too bad that food can't be like tires (that might be the first time that phrase has ever been written but stick with me here) in that the "environmental fee" for disposal is broken out at the end and you see how much it costs.

Check out the article at PhysOrg.com here, and the full report at IOP Science here.

CSA report #5: moving beyond the leaves

2011-07-06T21:49:00.000-04:00

Last week's CSA haul was four yellow squash, a bunch of beets + greens, one small head of cauliflower, two heads of broccoli, mustard greens, green leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, and red romaine lettuce.

So we had a vegetable switcheroo where we took the four small yellow squash up to my in-laws' house and came back with four very large zucchini (among other vegetables and fruit). So I'll go ahead and run through the vegetable lasagna I made with one of those zucchini in place of the four small squash because they're pretty interchangeable.

I cooked down the beet greens, mustard greens, the head of red romaine and half of the romaine lettuce down and added it to a can of crushed tomatoes in tomato sauce seasoned with Italian seasoning, garlic, salt, pepper, Tandoori masala (secret ingredient!), and sugar. I heated the mixture through.

In a separate bowl, I mixed 32 oz of ricotta cheese, salt, pepper, parsley, and two eggs.

Finally, I sliced the zucchini very thinly with a mandolin. If you don't have a mandolin, you can use the egg-slicer side of a grater-- that works, too.

I layered greens in tomato sauce, zucchini slices, shredded mozzarella cheese, and the ricotta cheese mixture until it reached the top of a 9 x 13 pan. I then popped it into an oven preheated to 375 degrees for 45 minutes. While many lasagnas are baked with foil on top, it's much better to leave this one uncovered because the zucchini has so much water in it and you want to get rid of that. It might bubble over a bit-- if this concerns you, put the casserole dish in a sheet pan to catch any boil over. I broiled it for another three minutes to brown the top a little more.

The verdict? Uh, amazing. You don't even miss the pasta or the meat. Okay, this might be even better with sausage but really, what isn't?

We also made the fantastic Prosciutto, Fig & Brie sandwich from (fellow Howard County) blog bakkich! The only differences were that I stuck some green leaf lettuce in there and we used English muffins because Trader Joe's didn't have any whole wheat baguettes and the jam I had was orange + fig. But oh my gosh it was awesome. Go make it. We paired it with a green leaf salad with beets on top.

The rest of the green leaf lettuce and half of the romaine lettuce went into smoothies.

I also ate the rest of the (boiled, cooled, peeled, sliced) beets plain.

This week marks the first week that we didn't finish everything-- we have all of the cauliflower and broccoli left. I'm gonna blame being out of town for the long holiday weekend. So those will go into the freezer for another time and we start anew this week.

Speaking of this week...

Whoa, not many leaves anymore! Here's the breakdown:

one bunch white onions with green onions attached
one bunch beets with greens
one head green leaf lettuce
one head red leaf lettuce
three small heads of broccoli
one bunch basil
one head purple cabbage
three yellow squash
five cucumbers

I'm really liking the extra produce-- I usually put "Bonus!" for the ninth item, but that makes it seem like it's something small rather than a full fledged item.

Check out past CSA posts (this year and last year!) here.

burning out + pretty photos of our neighborhood

2011-07-05T21:37:00.002-04:00

Sorry for the lack of posting yesterday...

The past few weeks have been a little crazy for me, both work-related as well as full-up evenings and weekends. I've not been following our agreed-upon rules of only a certain number of engagements per week, i.e. I've been putting in more than I know I should across the board on a bunch of unrelated things. Tonight, I realized that although it was supposed to be a four-day work week for me, I will have to put a few early hours in on Saturday and a half-day on Sunday through the next week of solid twelve-hour days of trainings. I'm teetering on the edge of burning out and I have to pull back where I can before I do.

I'm not saying this to boast about how much I'm doing; rather, my limits are a lot lower than most other people and I need to recognize that better. And faster.

So in lieu of a real post tonight, here are some pretty pictures in our neighborhood of Owen Brown-- the fields behind the library and Lake Elkhorn. Chris took these a few months back on a walk we took soon after he got his (then new) iPhone.

news on the General Plan! (and some of my thoughts on the developments)

2011-06-30T22:13:00.002-04:00

When we last left the General Plan draft guidelines, they were presented to the Planning Board for consideration and feedback. The recommendations that the Planning Board had were released on June 13 (for those of us who didn't go to the meeting, that is). This was after a public meeting on May 12, an open comment period until May 19, and a worksession on May 26.

The Planning Board opted to simplify and generalize the guidelines a bit, to "allow for flexibility and public input." The thought process, according to the recommendation, was to ensure that "ideas are retained without the need for highly specific directions about how to implement the ideas."

So let's look at a few of the changes they made. This certainly is not an exhaustive list, and if you want to read the different versions, they're all available online:

Original guidelines
General Plan Task Force version
Planning Board version
County Council Resolution 117-2011 (same as Planning Board version but with legislative language intro)

To make life easy, I'm going to refer to the General Plan Task Force version as the old version and the Planning Board version as the new version. When referring to the guidelines, I'll use the number as well as the guideline name (ex: #7 Housing). A disclaimer-- I did not attend either Planning Board meeting, so I'm just going off the documents and not what was said at the meetings. (The meeting minute links are broken, so I did not use those either.) Here are two excerpts from the two drafts:

Old Version #2: Public Participation General Plan Guidelines:
A. Provide an open, transparent and dynamic process for involvement by the public in General Plan development and adoption.
B. Increase public awareness and build on the current high levels of stakeholder’s civic engagement by using traditional and new forms of outreach, such as social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc.), to broaden the demographics of participation to be more inclusive.
C. Establish a process to identify and incorporate views of the under-represented demographic or special populations and cultivate opinions from and engage with those who may not be currently, actively engaged in process including residents, business-owners and non-profit organizations.

New Version #2 Public Participation General Plan Guidelines:
A. Optimize traditional and new forms of outreach, such as social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc.), to broaden the demographics of participation.
B. Cultivate opinions from under-represented demographic or special populations and organizations that may not be currently, actively engaged in the process.

It's interesting that the Planning Board opted to remove A from the old guidelines, considering that public hearing processes aren't really currently dynamic, and while they are open from a legal standpoint, it can be difficult for Jane Q. Public to figure out when, where, and why to show up. I suppose it's somewhat addressed in the new version's B, where they seek to cultivate opinions from people not currently involved, but I still like calling attention to the public meeting process itself.

I do like that B and C from the old version is much cleaned up in the new version.

Another thing I noticed throughout is that a lot of the "increase public awareness" and "public education" points have been removed, and I think that could be a mistake. There is a bullet point under #6 Transportation that aims to "increase public awareness of the relationship between personal vehicle miles traveled and highway congestion, air quality, greenhouse gases, and energy independence, as well as how compact multi-modal development patterns contribute to a healthier environment and lifestyles." That bullet point does encompass a lot of the education gap there is about density and why it's a good and necessary thing, which touches on other categories like #7 Housing, #8 Economic Development, #5 Infrastructure, #4 Community design. If they don't want to include education and awareness throughout the guidelines, I think it might be better if placed in the #12 Implementation section so increased public awareness and education will be applied to all guidelines. What does ag preservation accomplish? What does a historic preservation plan entail? Why do we need affordable housing?

Speaking of explaining what stuff means, I have no idea what this diagram under #1 Quality of Life and Sustainability means:

I Googled it, and apparently it's based off a representation of sustainable development, though the breakdown was environment, society, economy from outer ring to bulls-eye. Not totally sure what the diagram above means, but if it's going to be in the guidelines and it's not a common diagram, it should be explained.

The Planning Board also recommended a financial analysis during the development of the plan "to help drive the plan proactively, as opposed to undertaking after the plan which could limit implementation." Great idea-- love this.

So I think overall they're improved, but it could still use a little refining. The next step is going to the County Council for their adoption of some version of the guidelines. Then it'll come back to DPZ and the General Plan Task Force to create the actual General Plan; that goes through the fall.

CSA report #4: grilled lettuce? (yes!) + coleslaw

2011-06-29T20:40:00.002-04:00

The highlight of this week was chicken coleslaw two ways. I split the head of cabbage in half and made two different chicken coleslaws-- Asian and Cajun "inspired," I guess. (I hate phrases like that... "Oh, soy sauce! It's pan-Asian cuisine!")

For the Asian-style coleslaw:

toasted a 1/4 cup each of sesame seeds and almonds
marinated diced chicken in soy sauce, sesame oil, sriracha, rice wine vinegar, then sauteed
made dressing of same ingredients + a little water to thin out
combined all ingredients

For the Cajun-style coleslaw:

marinated diced chicken in olive oil, lemon juice, and Cajun seasoning, then sauteed
made dressing of same ingredients + mayonnaise and a little water to thin out
combined all ingredients

My favorite way to combine salad ingredients is to put them in a big Lock&Lock type container and shake the heck out of it. Shaken > stirred for dressing coverage and ingredient dispersal.

The other fun thing we did this week was to make grilled salad. Oh yes. We grilled the green and red leaf lettuce to serve along with hamburgers. The lettuce picks up that grill flavor and wilts ever so slightly. We topped with grilled croutons and some dressing-- easy peasy, but would probably be even better with some cheese and more vegetables.

Other things we did:

mini hot pocket things with the broccoli (the link isn't really funny. it just gets stuck in my head.)
peeled the broccoli stems to get past the tough exterior, sliced and ate plain...amazing
spinach went into mini bacon + spinach quiches (a little bready, unfortunately)
made our dream come true with Chick'n'Friends + southern-style greens with the arugula and kale (a mistake-- should have picked one strong-tasting green and used one more mild green...live and learn, I guess)
chard went into breakfast smoothies

And that's it! So far so good.

This week, we've got a few more colors besides green!

This is:

four yellow squash
a bunch of beets + greens
one small head of cauliflower
two heads of broccoli
mustard greens
green leaf lettuce
romaine lettuce
red romaine lettuce (crazy, right)

Woop woop!

howard county police resources + neighborhood watch

2011-06-28T22:14:00.000-04:00

After my post last week about crime stats in Howard County, Elizabeth Schroen from the Police's Public Affairs Office got in touch with me to share some other very cool tools and resources that are available online.

As the FBI data (which Howard County Police provides) stopped at 2009, she provided 2010 data for Howard County broken out several ways, and with previous data to make year-to-year comparisons easy.

Howard County not local enough? There's a Howard County GIS application so you can search for crime super-hyper-local around your home, school, workplace, or hangout. The data is broken out by Standard Reporting Area.

If you're interested in crime on a daily basis, you can check out their daily records at the Howard County police website or do as I do-- follow them on Facebook.

Photo credit to Daniel Lobo.

So what do you do with all this information? I'll tell ya. If you're concerned about crime in your neighborhood, contact your community resource officer and they can tell you. Our neighborhood is safe-- kids running around everywhere-- but there are one or two consistent trouble spots. Chris set up a neighborhood meeting with our community resource officer, who came over to our house with a whole pile of brochures about different programs, including stuff that individual households can do as well as neighborhoods.

(One awesome thing? The Howard County Police Department has this program called the Home Security Survey where they will come out to your house and check to see how secure it is. This isn't just "oh, the door is unlocked" but as the website says for example, checking to see if you have an adequate wood screw size to reinforce your front door's strike plate.)

Chris pulled together a followup meeting for tonight with some neighbors to get the ball rolling on a neighborhood crime watch program. It's a flexible program that helps assist County police track suspicious behavior and pull patterns that might not be as obvious otherwise (since they've got a lot going on, obviously). Residents simply keep an eye out, be sure to call the non-emergency line if something doesn't look right, and report that they did so to a "block captain." It can be more complex or simpler as needed; that's basically the approach we figured would be right for our lil neighborhood. So we'll see how it goes!

Like I mentioned last week, Howard County's a safe place to live. But any neighborhood can benefit from a little vigilance, and a crime watch program can help ensure that the neighborhood remains a safe place to live.

Columbia's chance for survival in a post-apocalyptic world

2011-06-27T22:25:00.000-04:00

Oh yes, you read that right.

If you’re not familiar with James Howard Kunstler’s work, his stuff is worth a read. It's very dark, but it's also one prediction of what the world will look like post-peak oil. I read some of his stuff in grad school; I also had the opportunity to see him speak in Baltimore a year or so ago and he was electrifying, to say the least.

Kunstler has a new article in Orion Magazine talking about big cities and the suburbs and his thoughts on their likelihood for survival post-cheap energy. He writes (long quote here):

All suburbs have a problematic destiny. Some will do better than others, based on idiosyncrasies of politics and geography. A few will be retrofitted into towns, though a shortage of capital will be a big obstacle when it comes to money for police and other services. Suburbia’s characteristic lack of civic armature suggests an absence of community cohesion. I expect many suburbs will become squats, ruins, and salvage yards.

Meanwhile, our big “metroplex” cities will run into as much trouble as the suburbs, but for different reasons. Categorically, they are not scaled to the energy realities of the future. Our giant cities are products of the cheap energy era; the arc of their explosive growth since 1945 is self-evident. They’re simply too large and too complex. Everything about them is designed to run on endless supplies of cheap fossil fuels and the resources and byproducts made possible by them: steel, copper, cement, plastic, and asphalt. To support daily life, they require far-flung supply chains dependent on complex transport systems. Like it or not, we are entering an era of reduced complexity, and a lot of the systems we now depend on—from factory livestock to “warehouses on wheels”—simply won’t exist anymore.

So hey, Columbia might have a chance at surviving in Kunstler’s world view, as long as peak oil holds off until we can get some alternative transit improvements in the area along with some density downtown. I'm reminded of Gil Peñalosa saying that Columbia could be easy to bike-- after all, it's only about eight miles square. Plus, we've got a lot of community involvement here, which is somewhat atypical as compared to other suburbs.

Kunstler also identifies a connection to agriculture as being essential to survival. Ridiculing ideas like vertical farming (“a particularly dumb idea”), he instead directs us to look into the past:

But we better get our heads straight about where most of the food will have to come from, especially when a lot more of it will have to be grown locally. The appropriate place for that is outside of town. There’s a big difference between gardening and farming. Some activities are essentially rural and some urban, and we need to reestablish this distinction.

As said in a recent episode of “And Then There’s That,” we are lucky in Howard County to not only have an agricultural past, but an agricultural present. (By whom and in which episode, I cannot remember. It may not have even been in "And Then There's That." Maybe someone who knows can enlighten us. I know I heard it somewhere.)

Kunstler summarizes it well for the skimmers:

I don’t think there’s any question that we have to return to traditional ways of occupying the landscape: walkable cities, towns, and villages, located on waterways and, if we are fortunate, connected by rail lines. These urban places will exist on a much smaller scale than what is familiar to us now, built on a much finer grain. They will have to be connected to farming and food-growing places. A return to human scale will surely lead to a restored regard for artistry in building, since the streetscape will be experienced at walking speed.

Head on over to Orion Magazine and read the whole piece. Kunstler is great at painting a picture with his words, and I’m skipping over a lot of the content of his column. It’s a good read. If you like it, check out his blog at http://www.kunstler.com/blog (NSFW language in blog title).

involving newcomers

2011-06-26T21:44:00.000-04:00

At many Howard County and Columbia events, it seems like the same crowd comes out again and again, many of which are Columbia pioneers or have lived here much of their lives. And that's great. It's good to know that people have put down roots, and continue to care about their neighborhoods and communities.

At the same time, there are lots of new people in Howard County, relatively speaking. The 2009 1-year American Community Survey reports that 6.9% of residents had moved into Howard County from elsewhere (other counties, other states, and abroad) over the past year. And that's for one year! Less than half of Howard County residents were born in the state of Maryland.

We all hear about our society and our world becoming more mobile, and as such, we expect more people moving around from place to place. As such, our communities are always evolving-- new people, new families, new needs...

...and new opinions. It's not enough to celebrate fifty people (per Patch's estimate) coming to a Symphony Woods hearing when it's the same fifty people that have been coming to all of the Symphony Woods hearings since before it existed.

This, like all good things, is easier said than done. But recognizing an issue is a first step, right? Thoughts or ideas?

Oh, I guess I should add this full disclosure: I moved to Howard County in 2008, and got involved in the blogs after googling "Victoria Gastro Pub." Since then, my involvement moved into real life; I've tried some things out on my own, and have also been invited to other things by hyper-involved folks, for which I'm really grateful. But I know that model doesn't necessarily work for everyone.

safety concerns in Howard County: reality or perception?

2011-06-23T22:03:00.000-04:00

One unsurprising aspect of the Columbia Foundation's Listening Project report is the sentiment back about safety. People feel unsafe on pathways, bus stops, the mall, our village centers, our homes. And of course, it’s undisputed that there is more crime now than ever, right?

Hold up. What?

Surprise! That’s actually not true. Crime rates have been decreasing nationwide for a while now (Link is a super interesting Wikipedia article. Click it after you're done here.)

Of course, what national crime rates are doing have little bearing on what’s going on in our backyards. So, ta da! I bring you Howard County data. The FBI has been tracking property and violent crime data at the county level since 1985, over twenty-five years ago. And Frank Hecker has a Google Docs spreadsheet of Howard County's population year-by-year from an older entry that supplied the population numbers. After all, it's not simply the number of crimes, but the rate (number of crimes compared to the population).

The FBI breaks crimes out in a number of categories, and they are divided up as follows:

Violent crimes

Murder and nonnegliegent manslaughter
Forcible rape
Robbery
Aggravated assault

Property crimes

Burglery
Larceny - theft
Motor vehicle theft

First, a graph of the crime rate-- total crimes that the FBI reports vs. population.

Now, we can argue back and forth what constitutes a "safe" crime rate. (Check out the Wikipedia article I linked to above for lots more graphs and charts at the national level). There have been some small ups and downs but over the last twenty-five years, the total number of reported crimes has gone down, and by quite a lot, actually.

Next, let's pull out the property crime and violent crime rates separately. First, property crime, which has also dropped significantly, mirroring the total number of crimes.

Next, violent crime. This category has dropped, too, but only slightly. At this scale, though, with two - three violent crimes committed per 1,000 residents, very small increases and decreases will seem exaggerated (for example: a homicide rate technically doubling if it goes from one to two over two years).

Now, what's wrong with this data? Well, that question kind of sucks-- as I learned in stat class, data isn't "good" or "bad." It either tells you something or it doesn't. So what doesn't this data tell us? A few things off the top of my head:

It only reflects reported data. That means any crimes that went unreported are not in here. There are differing opinions as to how many unreported crimes there are for every reported crime, especially in specific categories (rape being one that is chronically underreported). This data could simply reflect a reduction in the number of crimes that are actually reported and not committed, and there's no real good way to tell if that's the case. In the case of Howard County, with its relatively engaged citizenry, high quality of life, and a desire to remain such, I doubt the decrease in reported crime reflects simply a decrease in reporting, but it's always possible.
"Howard County" is as specific as this data gets. Crime is not static, and while Howard County crime rates have dropped as a whole, it might be that specific neighborhoods are experiencing increased crime while others are dropping off, meaning that in some neighborhoods, crime really is on the rise. I'm sure the Howard County police department has more specific statistics, and hey, that might be for another post.
There are precious few details. This data simply reflects reported crime. It doesn't, for example, get into how many of these crimes were committed by someone that the victim knew, or if it was a random attack. We might worry about shady people on dim pathways, but the fact of the matter is that most violent crimes are committed by people the victim knows.

So where does this leave us? Perhaps news stories of missing kids gets more press now, or people are just paying more attention, but people think safety is an issue, and often, more of an issue than in the past. But safety concerns in terms of criminal activity might be one of perception, and possibly slightly blown out of proportion. That still makes it an problem to deal with, of course. And Howard County is hardly crime-free-- people should still be taught how to be aware of one's surroundings, learn the signs of unhealthy relationships, know how to get help.

What do you think about crime in Howard County? What other data sources do you know of, and what else do you think this data tells us?

CSA report #3: right now, it's easy eating green

2011-06-22T21:00:00.001-04:00

The big awesomeness in CSA news is that this week, we got rid of about four bunches/heads of greens by making southern-style greens. They were super easy and wonderfully delicious. I'd never had traditional greens before having the collard greens at Chick'n'Friends. This week, when we had a pile of greens that had to be eaten (we were out of town last weekend), I figured we had to get through them in one meal and the greens from Chick'n'Friends came to mind.

I looked online how to make them, and essentially, you just have to chop them and simmer them in stock for a half hour or so. So I started off with some minced garlic in bacon fat (uh huh), added the greens a handful at a time to wilt, then added a container of homemade crab stock (this was the key, I think). After about twenty minutes of simmering, I got the genius idea to add a can of black beans to make it a little more substantial. Chris added Old Bay, cajun seasoning, salt, and pepper and let it simmer for another ten minutes.

There are apparently two approaches with the excess stock-- leave it in (so much flavor!) or strain it out (much less mess!) I went the middle road and boiled much of it off to keep the flavor but also some of the liquid.

It tastes better than it looks. And yeah, I usually eat lunch at my desk.

So good. Good enough that Chris said we should make it again next week and pair it with some fried chicken from Chick'n'Friends. SOLD.

As for the other eatin's:

We ate the white radishes plain: crunchy and mild. Easy eating.
I tossed some greens in with spaghetti.
We had some salad and I continued drinking green smoothies.

I will also share a smoothie story. I accidentally included arugula or mustard greens in one of my smoothies this week (I had a few types all chopped up in one bowl in the fridge) and my smoothie was a little peppery. But not bad, interestingly enough. I might do it again... this time on purpose.

We grilled the garlic scapes and they were pretty good. They calm down a lot when they are grilled. Just be sure to cook all the way through-- the stems take longer to cook than the thinner ends. Might be a good idea to cut them when they start getting thicker and cook those ends a little longer.

We succeeded in eating everything we got last week. So on to this week's pick up!

Super pretty.

Leaves! The specifics:

one bunch red chard
one head green leaf lettuce
one bunch spinach
one bunch kale
one bunch arugula
one head red leaf lettuce
two small heads broccoli
one head cabbage

Onward! hocofood@@@

a public desire for better transportation in Howard County

2011-06-21T20:30:00.000-04:00

The Columbia Foundation released a report on its recent listening project, a very cool survey of people (both residents and nonresidents) about thoughts on advantages, a sense of community, and unmet needs that Howard County has.

It's an interesting, readable report that I highly suggest everyone to take a look at (and it's only 34 pages long, with graphs). I'm sure others will parse what the Columbia Foundation found and concluded, but I thought the findings on transportation were interesting.

Word cloud from Columbia Foundation Listening Project report.

In case you ignore my advice and don't read the report, or are saving it for later (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt), the Columbia Foundation found that respondents found transportation access in Howard County sorely lacking. From the report:

Overall it was deemed that if one does not have a car, he/she is at a serious disadvantage. Not only did the open-ended answers certainly convey transportation to be an issue, but when considering the likert scale answers to the question of how satisfied residents were with transportation, a large majority answered dissatisfied as well. Close to 70% of the respondents checked neutral or dissatisfied with transportation.

Color me a little surprised at the proportion of folks who feel that transportation is an issue in Howard County. It's not that I disagree with them, of course. It's interesting that in such a wealthy county, the fact that our transportation system is lacking is widely recognized, and that there is broad support for more public transportation options in the County.

While a lot of us can drive, there are still many who cannot-- people who can't afford cars, kids under 16, members of the disabled and elderly populations. There are still more who don't want to drive everywhere, and that should be a valid choice. We all have to go somewhere somehow at some time. Transportation (defined broadly) is a universal need, and improving it will help everyone.

it's gettin real in the Whole Foods parking lot

2011-06-20T20:25:00.000-04:00

Although we cannot experience this specific conundrum here in Howard County due to our lack of a Whole Foods, I'm sure y'all can appreciate.

public transit and an aging population in Howard County

2011-06-19T21:12:00.000-04:00

"What happens when people in this largest generation ever, with the longest predicted lifespan ever, outlive their ability to drive for everything?"

Photo credit to Horlan Varlan.

The question posed by John Robert Smith, of Reconnecting America and Transportation for America is one that drove a recently released report entitled "Aging in Place: Stuck without Options." Guess what it says with a title like that?

As the Baby Boom generation ages, many will have few options besides an automobile to get around. The report cites research that says adults over the age of 65 tend to drive less to visit the doctor, run errands, eat out, and see family and friends. The vast majority of Americans express a desire to age in place, meaning that many people who will eventually have to depend on public transportation currently live in an area that does not have good access to public transit.

The Baltimore metro area (which I assume includes us, but who knows; check out the full report here, Baltimore stats are on page 51) in 2015 is slated to have 211,401 people between the ages of 65 and 79 will have poor transit access, i.e. 53% of people in that age group.

It comes back to Gil Penalosa's 8-80 Cities approach. Our cities need to be neighborhoods where eight year olds and eighty year olds and everyone in between can thrive and live happily, not live in increasing isolation as people age. Nonprofits like Neighbor Ride are currently filling the gap as much as possible, but as larger segments of the population age, do we need a wider-range public transportation solution?

guerilla painting

2011-06-18T09:20:00.000-04:00

Whoa, happy Saturday! I don't write much on Saturdays but I came across a fun little story that seemed good for a Saturday morning.

Now, I'm not advocating for doing something illegal...but this is really cool.

This Big City has a post about groups of guerilla citizen planners that are popping up worldwide to take things into their own hands and helping to shape their cities:

They are taking control over what happens in their cities. They are helping to build them, mostly with paint. Local groups all around the world are taking the initiative and are building the infrastructure that governments refuse or are slow to do....Although their actions are illegal (and sometimes even reversed by the city government), they respond to a need for this type of infrastructure that isn’t being met.

These groups are painting sidewalks and bike lanes to help make their intersections and streets a better place. The post has a few cool examples, including a group of citizens who painted in a planned-but-never installed bike lane as well as governments actually enhancing the guerilla improvements. How awesome is that?

I'm not necessarily encouraging this, and I know that the Columbia Association isn't a government organization, but I can think of a few pathways that could use some freshly painted street labels...

CSA report #2

2011-06-16T21:39:00.000-04:00

So with last week's produce,

(a pint of strawberries

a bunch of radishes + greens

one bunch red chard

one bunch rainbow chard

two heads of broccoli

one bunch garlic scapes

one bunch kale

one head red leaf lettuce)

we did the following:

From upper left, clockwise:

Homegrown radishes + garlic scapes went into a sandwich spread
Made broccoli + cheese ravioli-style hot pockets
Greens + scapes + ricotta pie, as described last week
Made a Cajun-style curry type dish with greens + red beans + garlic scapes + sausage + coconut milk served over rice
Also, we ate the radishes and strawberries plain.
Oh, and I snuck greens into awesome smoothies:

If I am adding wheat germ we bought for a
cookie recipe, does that make me a hippie?

This week, we got more greens!

rainbow chard
white radish + greens
garlic scapes
green leaf lettuce
romaine lettuce
spinach
mustard greens
arugula
BONUS! collard greens

Until next week!

hocofood@@@

Rouse on the planning for the future

2011-06-15T21:17:00.000-04:00

Upon recommendation, I'm currently reading New City Upon A Hill: A History of Columbia, Maryland by Joseph Mitchell and David Stebenne (available at your local library). It's a very readable book about the history of Columbia, y'know, in case the title wasn't obvious enough. Not being from here, there's a lot of information in it that's new to me, and I'd pass on the recommendation to anyone who's even slightly curious about the history of Columbia. (Bonus: it's available at your local Howard County library!)

I was struck by a passage in the book and just how timely it is considering it is describing the beginnings of Columbia and Howard County in the 1960s. The following describes the annoucement of the development of Columbia by the Rouse Company (pg. 59):

On the following day, James W. Rouse and Company issued both a press release and a memo to its stockholders. The former hit upon four points that would be made over and over again in the campaign to sell the model city to Howard County: (1) growth will occur; it may be moderated, but it can't be stopped; (2) present planning and zoning cannot preserve real open spaces and new planning and zoning was needed (3) the important natural resources of the area must be protected; (4) new developmet should be concentraed into fine, well-balanaced communities.

Wow. Could that not describe the crossroads we are at now? And why Columbia's downtown plan and the general plan is so important for moving forward? Amazing how things can change but how there are just some things that are constant. Leinburger said in his talk that Rouse would be advocating for the downtown plan; this reflects that, too, I think. Interesting stuff.

***

I know Wednesday is usually a CSA day, and I did pick up my veggies today and take a photo, but I won't have enough time to do the whole recap thing tonight, so tomorrow will be CSA report #2! I promise.

public transit cuts planned in our area

2011-06-14T20:29:00.001-04:00

Depressing but timely.

During our discussion of bringing rail to Columbia, Explore Howard's Gwendolyn Glenn writes in a recent article that Central Maryland Regional Transit (CMRT) is looking at raising fares and cutting service in the Laurel area due to a $310,000 gap in the budget. Glenn writes:

[T]hey are considering discontinuing the F route in Laurel, modifying the city's C route, eliminating free transfers, reducing the base fare by 50 cents and increasing the cost of a monthly bus pass to $96.50, a nearly $30 hike.

Ouch. Currently existing transit is experiencing the budget blues, let alone adding on the amazing rail system that we've been imagining. (CMRT also runs Howard Transit, though I'm not sure what, if any, budget connection exists between Connect-a-Ride and Howard Transit.) ETA 10 pm-- the article says that the route averages only six people per run, which is really low considering the $50K (per what, I don't know... year?) price tag. One would think that a route that runs between Laurel and Ft. Meade would command higher ridership, but clearly that's not the case. Might have something to do with the very limited schedule.

I've written before that I worry about how to fund the high cost of building an awesome transit network. That cost should not be something to dissuade us from pursuing rail, but something to figure out and overcome. But beyond the cost of just building the system are the maintenance and operations costs, which are sizable and generally more difficult to obtain federal funding for. (Of course, I say that after it's been recently announced that the Obama Administration is proposing $10.7 billion in funding for "Bus and Rail State of Good Repair," i.e. maintenance, but still.) It's not sexy, and there's no groundbreaking with pretty shovels, but a reliable, maintained, and well-funded system is a basic requirement for a system that that people choose to ride.

***

And heck, as an aside, operating costs are especially hard to get in control of when counties that are benefiting from service aren't even contributing to the budget! Also from Glenn's article:

Although Prince George's County is served by CMRT buses, its officials provide no funds to the system....Prince George's County Councilwoman Mary Lehman attended the June 8 meeting and said although she was unsuccessful in getting the council to approve the requested $200,000 for CMRT in the 2012 budget, she will continue to push for additional funds for the transit service. However, she warned officials that cutting routes may not be the best plan in addressing their deficit.

What? How can and why should CMRT continue to serve Prince George's County if they are receiving no funding from the jurisdiction? How does Prince George's County have any legs to say in how CMRT does business?

The role of rail in (downtown) College Park

2011-06-13T22:28:00.000-04:00

I'm sure most readers of this blog are fairly familiar with College Park. It's not really known for being an awesome place (apologies to two of my sisters who went to school there... but you know I'm right). Childs Walker of the Baltimore Sun writes:

Visitors to College Park are greeted by traffic-choked U.S. 1, with its worn storefronts and lack of a discernible center.

Yeah, basically. So it's no wonder that university president Wallace Loh said,

When I peer into the future, the biggest challenge to our rise as a premier research university is not internal, it's the larger community we're a part of.

I can totally see this. College Park bills itself as being close to DC, but in reality, the Green Line Metro Station is a far walk, or more realistically, a shuttle ride away. The embrace of the Purple Line running through campus by the Board of Regents is great news for the campus in getting better connected with the rest of metro area and DC proper in a meaningful way.

The proposed line is helping to spur development in the East Campus area, bringing retail, hotels, and residences to College Park and creating a more urban, walkable experience. While it admittedly will do little for the awful Route 1, it's at least a step in the right direction.

One interesting quote popped up as to why university officials finally agreed to back the Purple Line in the form will likely receive federal funding:

But there's also the daunting fact that a peak-hour commute to Bethesda, 14 miles away, is projected to take 90 minutes by 2020. "There's no way we can retain faculty if that's the case," Loh says. "It's either massive gridlock or the Purple Line."

Wow. An hour and a half commute between College Park and Bethesda by 2020. 2020! That's only nine years away. With numbers like that, it's no wonder the Board of Regents hopped on the bandwagon-- they saw the writing on the wall of congestion being worse than an annoyance, but something that would actively dissuade talent from accepting a job at the university.

While a large part of that congestion is due to horrific Beltway traffic, it does make you wonder how bad traffic will be around here by 2020, and if that traffic will be bad enough that people will not only clamor for public transit, but use it voluntarily. The flipside-- if nothing is done, or if it's too late, which is just as bad, maybe we'll end up with our own depressing congestion predictions with no other options but sitting in traffic.

The importance of rail in Columbia?

2011-06-12T20:44:00.001-04:00

Columbia's well positioned to be a successful community in the future, says Chris Leinburger. The one thing we're missing here, Leinburger said, is rail. We've got the seeds for everything else except rail. We need rail. (Props to HoCoMoJo, CA, and Howard Hughes for making the video available online.)

I know Leinburger didn't come to Columbia to give us all the answers, but it's not enough to say we need rail transit. Rail where? To Baltimore? To DC? An inter-Columbia rail system? Saying "we need rail" means little without the details.

So let's look at the details. I'm not a rail planner, so I'm going to get real simple and just take one easily understood and easily measured example-- commuting patterns related to Howard County. Below are two screenshots taken from the presentation that DPZ gave to the General Plan Task Force a few months back that I love so much. This first map is commuting patterns of Howard County residents.

As you can see from the map, Howard County residents work in every direction. About 16-17% commute to each Montgomery County, Anne Arundel County, Prince Georges County, and Baltimore City. About 13% commute to Baltimore County, and 10% commute to DC proper. Besides that, over one-third of Howard County residents work in Howard County. The next map is commuting patterns of people who work in Howard County.

Likewise, people commute into Howard County from all around as well. Twenty percent of commuters into Howard County are from Anne Arundel County. Carroll, Montgomery, PG County, and Baltimore City each account for 8 - 13% of commuters into the county. DC residents working in Howard account for almost one percent of commuters into the county, and Baltimore County residents are nearly 30% of workers coming into the county.

Our commuting patterns are very fractured, and a lot of that is due to our location between DC and Baltimore; we commute to two center cities and their suburbs. Beyond that, there are hefty job hubs spinkled throughout the metro area-- APL, NSA, Ft. Meade, etc.

Based on this information, where should our rail system go?

The idealistic answer, of course, is "everywhere." I mean, roads are everywhere, right? People go in every direction. But that's not realistic-- it's very expensive to build rail. For example, the proposed Red Line is slated to cost $1.8 billion (in 2009 dollars). The expected cost of the Purple Line was just increased to $1.93 billion. Now, the state of Maryland doesn't pay for all of it; a sizable chunk of money comes from the federal government as well, but it's not like government at any level is flush with cash right now.

It's easy to clamor for rail and I certainly don't think we should preclude any future shots we'd get at rail. After all, a rail extension to Columbia from Baltimore is indeed on the books. But it's something that'll require regional effort-- rail to Columbia is bigger than just Columbia. And that region is currently focused on Red Line (slated to begin construction in 2013), with the Green Line next. The opportunity for rail in Columbia is likely years away, and even then, a single rail line up to Baltimore will not solve all our transportation problems, even if you include the connections that could be made through an extensive rail system in Baltimore.

So what then? I have a few ideas... but I would love to hear your thoughts.

dive into carpooling (ha!)

2011-06-09T17:28:00.000-04:00

Think about the roads you traverse during your commute. Routes 29, 32. Maybe an I-x95. There are hundreds of people driving in the same direction at the same time. One would think that at least a few of those people are from the same neighborhood, and of those few, a few of them probably work in the same area.

Photo credit to Joe Shlabotnik. Doesn't this look refreshing?

When commuters see congestion, it's easy to think "man, we need more lanes." But as most people recognize, we can't simply widen our roads into perpetuity. A few reasons why-- building more lanes will not solve congestion issues (i.e. the solution to obesity is not to buy bigger pants), widening roads costs money, and in some areas, widening would require the purchase of private land.

I know everyone's waiting for an awesome transit system in our area (rail, specificially, if you're Chris Leinburger, something I disagree with but I won't get into that now), but it's costly, takes time, and isn't here right now. Meanwhile, traffic and congestion is here right now, costing us commuters time, money, quality of life, stress...

In a recent post, Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic paraphrases Paul Minett of New Zealand-based ridesharing organization Trip Convergence:

Mr. Minett advanced the notion that ridesharing — a system by which people get out of their own cars and essentially share a vehicle with other commuters taking similar routes to work — could triple or quadruple the capacity of existing roads, all without any added physical investment, the stuff no one can afford anymore.

Carpooling is a transportation solution that can be implemented now, and on an individual basis. It's a good answer to those "but what can I do?" type questions. It doesn't require securing funds or engineering studies. And in our metro area with its fair share of a large, campus-type employers and two center cities, could be as easy as sending a few emails out around the office. (And heck, with social media, maybe even easier than that.)

I'll put in my usual caveat that there are of course folks that carpooling won't work for. Sometimes there are creative ways around possible issues, but then again sometimes not.

A few tips-- if you don't live close enough to swing by fellow carpoolers' residences, but are interested in meeting at a central location and leaving a car somewhere, area park and ride lots are available for carpooling. Also, carpooling at least two days per week also qualifies commuters for the Guaranteed Ride Home program, which offers a free cab ride or car rental home up to four times per year in the case of an emergency or unexpected overtime.

It's that time of year again... 2011 CSA report #1

2011-06-08T21:15:00.000-04:00

Today was the first day of One Straw Farm's CSA season at MOM's over in Jessup. Last year, I recapped all of the CSA pickups with a description of what we did with the vegetables, and every once in a while, I'd share a recipe we made that used CSA vegetables. I will be doing the same this year, though I'm aiming to highlight the recipes and finished products a bit more. (You can check out my past CSA posts here.)

One Straw Farm offers eight items per week through the end of November. While they do offer half-shares at farmers market locations, we've opted for the full share in past years because we don't want to drive to a market in the city to pick up veggies and we've done a decent job at eating all the vegetables in past years (even though it's just two of us). This will be our fourth year with One Straw Farm's CSA, and we've been really happy with them.

I like writing about this because we've had some past experience with eating a CSA. I'd like to think that writing about it might help others eat their pile of veggies, or give someone a little push to go ahead and sign up for one. Eating seasonally can be a bit of a challenge, and there is definitely a learning curve. We've learned a lot about how to eat CSA vegetables through trial and error and from the vast resources of the internet. I'm especially a fan of Allrecipes's search-by-ingredient function. So don't feel bad if you don't know what to do with sweet potatoes and cabbage and beets, preferably in one meal! Been there, done that, wrote a blog post.

So, without further ado, the vegetable haul for this week:

This early on in the season, I love the leaves. Here's what we've got:

a pint of awesome strawberries (we ate some before I took the photo)
a bunch of radishes + greens
one bunch red chard
one bunch rainbow chard
two heads of broccoli
one bunch garlic scapes (the funnest shaped vegetable ever, but that also makes them annoying to chop)
one bunch kale
one head red leaf lettuce

Tonight for dinner, we made a Ricotta Spinach Pie from Epicurious/Bon Appétit. It's a simple but really satisfying recipe, and the good thing about it in this weather is that it can be eaten hot or cold. We made a few alterations to the recipe:

Obviously, instead of frozen spinach, we cooked down some greens-- the radish greens, kale, and red leaf lettuce, to be precise
We used garlic scapes instead of an onion, sauteed in olive oil instead of butter
Instead of store-bought pie crust, Chris made the pie it out of white whole wheat flour
I used about six ounces of a reduced fat "Mexican mix" cheese (it's what we had); also used reduced fat ricotta
I skipped the nutmeg and the cup of parmesan cheese

Mmm mmm good. (Next time, there will be a photo here of the dish...)

bike tourism

2011-06-07T20:37:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday... I was in Cambridge yesterday and this morning for work and I accidentally left my laptop at the office. I tried blogging on my iPod touch but, y'know, I just don't have that kind of patience.

Elly Blue has a great article in Grist about the economic impact of bike tourism. She offers a recent study that found that bicycling tourism contributes over $1.5 billion to Wisconsin's economy annually. Blue extols the virtues of bike tourism:

You're expanding your horizons under your own power and putting your money directly into small, local businesses rather than into your gas tank or the chain hotels off the freeway.

Last year, Chris and I biked the C&O Canal over five days for our honeymoon. Being on our bikes, we didn't have to factor in the cost of fuel in our budget and planning and could splurge on food and lodging instead.

Putting the practical aside, being on bikes gave us a different kind of vacation experience. In the more remote parts of the trail, we biked side-by-side and talked for hours without being interrupted by life. It was nice and calm. On other parts of the trail, it was nice seeing the parks and our resources so well-used.

We quickly fell into a new, short-term rhythm of timing food and breaks by the mile marker, port-o-potty, and water pump. We counted down the miles to our hotels and B&Bs. (Plus, we could eat pretty much anything we wanted, having biked all day.) We could only bring what we could carry on the bikes.

It was a good time, and an good adventure. And when we rolled our bikes toward the car we'd strategically parked after rushing that last day to make sure we weren't on the Metro with our bikes during rush hour, there was a sense of accomplishment that doesn't accompany most other vacations. I wouldn't want to do a multi-day bike tour for every vacation, but it's definitely a different option, and we'll likely do more in the future.

And hey, within the next few weeks, we have a weekend bike trip in Annapolis planned. We’ll be biking down the Baltimore + Annapolis trail on a Friday, spending the weekend down there, and biking back on Sunday, and we are soooo looking forward to it.

upcoming meeting about Symphony Woods

2011-06-05T20:18:00.002-04:00

On our way out of the Leinburger talk, there was a table with related brochures, pins, and stickers. One large piece of collateral was a large flyer for an upcoming community meeting about Symphony Woods. Technically, it's a "Pre-Submission Community Meeting for Final Development Plan." The flier says that:

The purpose of this meeting is for the Columbia Association to provide information to the community about the proposed development and to allow community members to ask questions and make comments.

I admittedly haven't been out to any of the past community meetings about the Symphony Woods developments, but this one is on my calendar. I've written in the past about Symphony Woods, and I hope the plans presented will make it an active park and a destination for folks (y'know, besides Wine in the Woods and Virgin Mobile Free Fest).

The flyer also provides an update on the park process: construction is slated to start on Phase 1 in Spring 2012. CA still has a few more meetings and approval steps for the county before it can do so.

The meeting is on Thursday, June 16 at 7 pm at the CA Headquarters (10221 Wincopin Circle), and you can find more information (though not the much more eye-catching and informative flier I have) at CA's press release here.

ETA 6/5 9:47 PM-- Per Jessie X, you can RSVP at http://symphony-woods-public-meeting.eventbrite.com.

suburban splendor + walkable urbanism for Columbia

2011-06-02T20:44:00.001-04:00

There have been a bunch of great blog posts with glowing reviews of Chris Leinburger’s talk on walkable urbanism. Rather than rehash what's already been done so well, I’ll go ahead and discuss bits and pieces that I thought were interesting over the next few days. You don't have to read the recaps to get what I'm saying here, but I encourage you to do so if you've got some time: Hecker, HoCoPolitico, HoCoRising, Rocket Powered Butterfly. (That was alphabetical order. Lot of H's there.)

Leinburger offered us Columbians a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too scenario, stating that people can choose to live in "suburban splendor" while within walking distance of "walkable urbanism." How can you turn that down, right? Best of both worlds!

I think it might be a little hard to imagine in reality-- mentally, we rigidly think CITY and SUBURB and never the twain shall meet.

Leinburger offered an existing example in Beverly Hills, CA. He has a friend who lives at the corner of Gregory Way and Peck Drive out there (apparently unrelated to the actor with the same name), and it's smack dab in suburban splendor. Quiet streets with grass, trees, single family homes, etc. Here's a Google Street View of the area:

View Larger Map
This view is on Peck Drive looking south. The first intersection is Gregory Way. If you spend a little time clicking around, you’ll see this is a gorgeous neighborhood with beautiful houses and lawns.

A half mile away (or a 10 min walk according to Google Maps) is the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive. You might have heard of it? Rodeo Drive? This dense, pedestrian-friendly, walkable urban area boasts all the amenities that make a there there.

(And if you want to browse the area via Street View, click here. I just couldn't include all my awesome notations on the browseable version.)

Leinburger's point is that we can have it all. We can having vibrancy and nightlife and pedestrians and outdoor cafes and bike-friendly downtowns AND we can have the quiet suburban existence, all within our lil town. It's been done before, and there's no reason why it can't be done here.

why I can't get worked up about in-state tuition for illegal immigrants

2011-06-01T21:51:00.001-04:00

A petition against in-state tuition for illegal immigrants (or rather, to put it to referendum in 2012) has gotten a lot of support, with over 40,000 residents signed on already, according to a blog post at the Baltimore Sun.

I can understand both sides of this. On one hand, I don't want a student who had little say in how they ended up in Maryland barred from pursuing higher education at in-state rates if they have been contributing taxes, especially if they are also pursuing legal residency. On the other, I can understand that the state isn't necessarily in the financial position to offer in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, and there's the sticky situation of the legal status of people who are here illegally. The issue is convoluted, and there are a lot of considerations to be made given the state of our current immigration system.

But let's zoom out a bit to get a little perspective. I'll tell you what does tick me off, and why I find myself unable to get worked up about allowing illegal immigrants to pay in-state rates for college after demonstrating proof of paying state taxes for three years.

The Sun's post says that legislative analysts estimate the in-state tuition for illegal immigrants law will cost Maryland $3.5 million per year by 2016, and that's no small amount of money.

BUT.

As discussed in a Sun editorial stemming from the Distinguished Scholarship debacle a few weeks back, Maryland's legislative scholarship program costs $11.7 million annually.

In case you're not familiar with it, the legislative scholarship program is one where individual representatives get a chunk of cash to give out to college students as each representative sees fit. Each state senator gets $138,000 and each delegate gets $35,436. The Sun editorial writes:

Lawmakers may claim they only give aid to those who deserve it, but investigations by this newspaper and others in the past have found that's not always so. At times, they are used as little more than political payoffs to friends and allies. Maryland is one of only five states that offer legislative scholarships, and it's a disgrace, particularly in these difficult economic times.

The Diamondback reports in an article awhile back that some representatives split their money amongst all applicants. Others look at need, merit, leadership, and/or level community service. Some (including Senator Allan Kittleman) even give their money to the Maryland Higher Education Commission to distribute.

But there is no real system in place to ensure the dollars go to the most deserving students by any standard or measure. There's nothing that prevents just handing scholarship dollars to supporters, donors, even family members.

Somehow with all the cuts to financial aid and more legitimate forms of funding for college students, the legislative scholarship program keeps on chugging along.

***

Some really great stuff at the walkable urbanism 21st Century Development Trends presentation by Chris Leinburger... I'll be writing up some of my thoughts on it soon. Probably over the next few days, actually, since there was a lot in there I'd like to talk about.

crazy commute considerations

2011-05-31T21:27:00.000-04:00

Long commutes suck. And hey, science says it's true, too.

Annie Lowrey writes in Slate that a Swedish research study has found that "couples in which one partner commutes for longer than 45 minutes are 40 percent likelier to divorce." The researchers don't correlate the two-- other circumstances could lead to the long commutes that are actually the culprit for the higher divorce rate.

No worries, though-- other research has linked obesity, unhappiness, lower social interaction, physical pain, and other maladies to longer commute times. As Lowrey puts it,:

If you are commuting, you are not spending quality time with your loved ones. You are not exercising, doing challenging work, having sex, petting your dog, or playing with your kids (or your Wii).

In other words, for the most part, it's often wasted time.

Photo credit to genvessel.

Now, I can get behind the work commute as good transitional time between "work" and "home" worlds. I write a while back about the desire for a commute-- i.e. most peoples' idea of an ideal commute was not "zero."

The comments below the article, if you dare, are a little annoying. Some folks defend their life choices as if they're being attacked while others stick to the hotness urbanist line that if people lived in the city, they wouldn't have to commute long distances. Anyone who lives in this area knows that's not always true. Decentralization of jobs and "job sprawl" means that not everyone works in the traditional "center city" anymore. Plus, our location here in Howard County puts us right in the middle of two large traditional center cities, let alone other smaller employments centers (us being one of them).

How many households in Columbia are dual-income where spouses work in opposite directions from the house? I know mine does. I work in Baltimore while Chris works in Greenbelt. Moving to Baltimore, while making my commute easy, makes Chris's about 45 minutes long, and vice versa if we moved to Greenbelt. All of this is besides any discussion or consideration of a community's amenities, the quality of school systems, or crime rates, etc.

The article does point out, however, that the oft-referred exchange of the big house in the 'burbs and the long commute usually isn't worth it. An hour of commute time is worth a 40% salary increase, and while we think we want (or even need) the extra bedroom or bathroom, it doesn't really make people happier.

And isn't that what we all want? To be happy? Always easier said than done, I guess.

the conversation about Columbia

2011-05-30T22:18:00.000-04:00

This weekend, Chris and I took Friday off and drove up to Indiana to meet up with a side of my very large family. It's always a good, hectic time. We're all fairly close and use excuses like weddings and graduations to all come together once a year. A few things that are increasingly weird (and not in a bad way at all): cousins with longterm boyfriends and girlfriends who come to these family reunions and relatedly, cousins having kids that are now walking and talking.

But anyhow.

Following Tom's post at HocoRising, I read Janene Holzberg's piece in the Sun with the interview with Chris Leinberger, where he offers a somewhat different view of Columbia than we are used to hearing. The article, and Tom's followup are both definitely worth a read.

I find it really interesting that there are Columbia Association board members concerned about CA's sponsorship of the event. I can say that I for one don't see the Columbia Association's sponsorship of the event as tacit approval of everything Mr. Leinburger thinks or will say, but rather a continuance of the ongoing conversation of what Columbia is, can be, and should be. I think bringing in urban planning experts is a smart move on CA's part to keep this conversation going, and to take an active role in it.

However ambiguous the interview with Leinburger, I like the quote that Holzberg ends the article with:

"And having that suburban splendor while being able to walk to urbanism is the best of both worlds," he said. "We are looking for special places for the ages, not the flavor of the month. What we built 40 years earlier needs to be modified to fit the newer generation, and we are learning that it's absolutely achievable here in Columbia."

Sounds like a great start. Hope to see some of you there.

In defense of not knowing, or, our little bubbles

2011-05-26T22:56:00.000-04:00

Sorry I didn't post yesterday... my week has been a little like this:

Photo credit to Wikimedia Commons.

And yesterday, the "blog" plate had to tip.

Anyhow.

There have been a few good pieces that have been floating around about our little bubbles and how much we can rely on our experiences in them. Or, I guess more accurately, how little we can rely on it.

A few weeks ago, Kate Yemelyanov, (aka Dinosaur Mom) wrote a column in Patch about the word "ghetto" and its misapplication on a number of levels to Columbia. She writes:

...I can see that Columbia has its own poverty and racial fault lines lurking beneath the Benetton-ad exterior. But when my kids throw out the word “ghetto,” it ticks me off.

It reminds me that Columbia is the only reality they know.

Check out the comment section, too, for a more... spirited debate.

Tom over at HoCo Rising had a few fantastic lines about our bubble here in Howard County (that’s not to say these are the only fantastic lines he has written). He linked to an interesting percentile breakdown of income earnings in the US and questions readers about if we actually even know folks who are earning money at different levels. And if we don't, how can we even begin to know what people of other income levels need? He writes:

As much as we may complain about the rich exploiting the poor, I think there is also a secondary concern related to the stratification of income classes. You may vote with the "poor in mind," but do you really know the needs of lower income workers? Or are you guessing? Doing what the TV said the poor want? Paternalism?

I'm not just bashing folks who live in Howard County or kids who don't know any better. Everyone has their little sphere that they know in and out and beyond that... most of us really don't have a clue. That's why it's important to involve all kinds of people in the conversations that will present solutions to solve "the problems," whether it's politics, nonprofits, community associations, whatever.

Let's get out of potentially controversial areas (crime and money, oh my!) and look at some amazing visualizations created from 2010 Census data highlighting population and vacant housing by county. Here's the visualization of Maryland:

The one county out in the red is Worcester County, and they have a housing vacancy rate of 60 percent. A little online research shows that it's because they have a very high proportion of vacation houses, which would show up as "vacant." Makes sense-- Ocean City and all that.

But at the same time, how do you plan for an area that has such a low year-round residential base with such high seasonal visitation and employment? The needs of residents are drastically different from the vacationers, but it's in the best interest of the government to balance them out and meet the different needs as best they can. How do you even determine the needs of the different groups in any sort of defensible way? It's not like vacationers show up to public meetings or write letters to the editor. (Then again, maybe they do. I have no idea.)

While I have no idea, folks out in Worcester probably do, and it's safe to say that the needs of Worcester County are completely different from, say, Howard County.

On the flip side, Baltimore City has a housing vacancy rate of 16 percent. That doesn't sound like a lot until you drive through the city and see that the vacant houses aren't uniformly spread throughout the city but exist in chunks. Whole blocks are vacant. That issue brings up a whole 'nother set of questions. What do you do with vacant blocks? What can you do? What should be the short term vs. long term goals? What is the government vs. the private property owners' role? What happens if a block is completely vacant except for one property owner?

I don't really know... and that's okay because there probably are people who do.

school zone speed cams and the reality of pedestrian fatalities

2011-05-24T21:24:00.005-04:00

Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do has a great article in Slate with a number of well-reasoned arguments against those ubiquitous "Children at Play" signs, including this one:

Does the presence of a "Children at Play" sign subtly hint that there aren't children at play in other locations? Does the sign breed a false sense of security?

It’s an interesting, and I think valid, point. Likewise, one assumes that in a school zone, there are a lot of kids, so it’s generally a good idea to slow down. School zones require that drivers drop to 25 mph to make the area safer for kids. County Council recently passed legislation that would allow speed cameras within a half-mile of a school.

But kids are not limited to school zones and cul-de-sacs (culs-de-sac?). My neighborhood has roving groups of kids on scooters and bikes, so they do get around. Hell, Broken Land Parkway, Snowden River Parkway, Route 29, and Route 32 are all within a mile of my house as the crow flies or as the pedestrian walks (or the kid scoots). Two weeks ago, I caught sight of a group of three preteens walking on the shoulder of Route 175.

The point of these school zones and speed cameras is to prevent accidents, injuries and fatalities that involve kids. But if pedestrians (kids or otherwise) can be anywhere, why increase enforcement in localized areas?

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there have been twelve pedestrian fatalities in eleven incidents in Howard County between 2007 and 2009. None were in school zones as far as I can tell by looking at them on the Google Earth map. Most were on weekends and at night, i.e. not during active school zone times. (ETA 6:35 am: accident locations)

Accident Locations, 2009

Near intersection of Cradlerock Way and Swan Point Way
Ramp between Route 100 and Route 29
On Route 29

Accident Locations, 2008

Near intersection of Sykesville Road at Deer Hill Road
Near intersection of 108 and Snowden River Parkway
Two separate incidents near intersection of Route 175 and Route 1
Near intersection of Cradlerock Way and Dockside Lane

Accident Locations, 2007

Three separate incidents on I-95
Near intersection of Little Patuxent Parkway and S. Entrance Road

Caveat: nonfatal injuries aren't included in this, so it's impossible to draw conclusions about nonfatal injuries in school zones from this data. What this does show us is that pedestrian fatalities happen in a range of areas and times and more often than not, not adjacent to or during school hours and not around school zones.

It's interesting, given this information, that the push for speed cameras happened around safety in school zones. Maybe it comes back to Vanderbilt's article on "children at play" signs and why they persist even if they're likely ineffective: "In a word: Parents." The perception is that roads around schools are unsafe. But with flashing lights and doubled fines and crossing guards and soon, speed cameras highlighting our schools in the interest of protecting our kids, I hope all this attention on school zones is not at the expense of everywhere else, i.e. where pedestrian fatalities actually occur.

ETA: P.S. I'm not necessarily advocating for speed cameras to be expanded to the rest of the county-- I'm defining "enforcement" and "improvements" broadly. Also, I have to say that I do know that the Owen Brown Village Board advocated for a nice crosswalk at Cradlerock Way where two of the fatalities occurred, and that has been built, so that's not to say the rest of the county is being ignored, we just have to ensure that it is not.

bus rapid transit in Montgomery County?

2011-05-23T22:06:00.001-04:00

Montgomery County is moving through a planning-level analysis to see if BRT, or bus rapid transit, could help alleviate congestion issues they're experiencing. (Via Greater Greater Washington.)

Bus rapid transit, per the executive summary:

The study focused on implementing a BRT system that would emulate light rail operations in terms of the features provided, but would operate on the arterial roadway system in the county. This BRT system would rely on walk access, local bus transfers, and some park-and-ride access, and would combine the most attractive features of light rail with the lower costs of bus technology. Instead of trains and tracks, BRT invests in improvements to vehicles, roadways, rights-of-way, intersections, and traffic signals to speed up bus transit service.

Hopefully that made sense. BRT is essentially a type of public transportation bus service that is treated more like a train with tracks, like with dedicated roads or lanes, often with more distance between stops, and signal priority. The idea is quicker service with a lower cost than other track-based operations - one that would attract a choice ridership. (Wikipedia article here.) It's not super common here, but there are successful examples all over the world. Curitiba, Brazil is one particular success story that planners like pointing to.

The system, proposed by Parsons Brinkerhoff for Montgomery County DOT, would be 148 miles long with 16 routes and 150 stations. The service wouldn't have dedicated roadways, but separated, exclusive lanes are proposed.

From MCDOT Countywide Bus Rapid Transit Study Executive Summary.

The system is projected to cost $2.5 billion (not including right-of-way costs) and carry up to 270,000 riders per day by 2040. For purposes of scale, that number is over double the current ridership of Ride-On, Montgomery County's local bus service.

To bring it home... what routes would you want to see on a Howard County BRT system? What routes would be popular and successful?

activating the front yard

2011-05-22T21:16:00.002-04:00

A few weeks back, our HOA decided to hold a cook-out board meeting in our front yard-- an informal make- up meeting to replace one in which we didn't meet quorum.

It was scheduled for this afternoon. Chris and I dragged our grill from the deck out to our front sidewalk to cook up some burgers and hot dogs. We set up some chairs in our front yard and fired up the grill as other board members began showing up with other goodies.

Our friendly next door neighbors saw what was going on and decided to join us. We had a short informal meeting and then all hung out for a few hours. We packed it up around 6 pm, two hours after "the meeting" was supposed to end. It was really nice, and felt like being part of a community.

"This is new," someone remarked. "A cookout in the front yard."

It reminds me of something I read in Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone about the impact of the garage on informal neighborhood interaction. With more people are now pulling cars directly into the garage, it has effectively reducing any chance to run into ones' neighbors:

With increased use of automobiles, the life of the sidewalk and the front yard has largely disappeared, and the social intercourse that used to be the mainc characteristic of urban life has vanished.

Now, we don't have a garage, but are often in a rush when heading to or from the car. I compare this to a friend's house in Baltimore City. They have a nice front porch with seating. During a birthday party a few weeks back, we all hung out on the front porch with food and drinks. Their neighbors were also enjoying the nice day, and eventually merged into the party. Interaction between us and them was easy, and I was jealous. Our front yard, while fine, is inactive.

While on the subject of front yards, I said, "I think I want to pull out these bushes and put in a front porch," pointing to the bushes behind us. "Wide enough for a nice bench to hang out in the front yard, flush with the landing to the door."

"You'd need RAC approval," said someone else. "But I think someone else did that, too, so you could probably get it as long as it matched and all that."

We're considering it.

(My husband's name up there isn't a mistake. He mentioned to me on Friday evening that he'd rather I use his name in my posts instead of "C," so Chris it is.)