In Defense of Townhouses
If you live in Seattle, chances are that you like to complain. You might like to complain about parking or you might also like to complain about ugly new development. (Or, like me, you might like to complain about all the complainers.) So today, all of us Seatteites were happy to see the Seattle Times devote an article to people complaining about the new townhouses sprouting up.
There are about as many complaints as there are complainers. Here are some, swiped from the article:
Their second-floor living rooms encourage residents to squirrel away upstairs instead of chatting with neighbors...
..And the shared driveways are so narrow that parking spills onto the streets...
...it's eroding Seattle's prized single-family neighborhoods...
...said City Councilman Tom Rasmussen. "They are bleak, poorly designed and not consistent with the neighborhood. Some are not sidewalk- or pedestrian-friendly...
...Oustimovitch said, "A project would have been built that would have been appropriate for the neighborhood. Instead what we got was a very vanilla, cookie-cutter town-house development."
Now, many of these complaints are legit. Some of the new townhouse developments are pretty bland, and many seem divorced from the street. But why are the designs so flawed?
Vehicle Miles Re-Traveled
Last week I wrote a post about Washington's new law to reduce per capita vehicle miles traveled (VMTs). Because I jumped right into the geekery, I neglected to provide the proper context. So, to clarify:
** The spirit of the law is excellent. Legislating VMT reductions is an important step on the way to managing our way out of the current carbon and transportation messes.
** The "Climate Action and Green Jobs" law (which contains the VMT provision) is, overall, a good piece of legislation.
** Congratulations are in order to the many advocates and legislators and staffers and others who worked hard on the bill -- and especially Transportation Choices Coaltion, the organization that germinated the VMT provision.
Okay?
Okay. So why did I write the post? Simply, because I've been getting asked questions about it from lots of folks. (I'm talking about well-informed people; people who understand transportation policy in Washington.) And there is quite a bit of confusion about what the law means. I found the law to be confusing too. So confusing, in fact, that I butchered the content the first time I tried to crunch the numbers and write the post.
As importantly, I wanted to answer the most common question I heard: do the per capita VMT targets result in absolute VMT reductions or not? The answer is, as you might expect, is somewhat complicated. But it appears that the provision will not yield absolute VMT reductions, at least not for several decades.
Even so, figuring out how to reduce VMTs is a laudable goal. In fact, it's downright essential to meeting our climate objectives. And Washington should take pride in being the first place to give it a shot.
