It’s not everyday that we get to report on something we actually had a hand in, but today is one of those days.  Fort Worth South, Inc. wanted to improve the bike parking situation in the Near Southside as part of their larger goal of huge bike infrastructure improvements across the district, and they decided they wanted some outside help.  So, they called us and Trinity Bicycles up and asked if we’d collaborate on a new bike parking improvement plan.  After a lot of discussion, many meetings, and several in-the-field work sessions identifying parking locations, ideal setups, and more, we put together a comprehensive bike parking plan.  Now, we’re happy to report, Phase One of the plan has been approved by the city and funded by the Near Southside TIF (Tax Increment Finance district), so we can give some details.

While we’re still finalizing the number of racks and such, we can say that this will be a pretty dramatic increase in bike parking, even in Phase One.  At the moment, there are approximately 12 of the city-installed Texas star “lollipop” racks across the entire district.  Most of them are on Magnolia Avenue, with two or three on 8th.  Even in the best of cases, the Texas star racks are less than ideal – they look more like street art than bike racks, making them not obvious to riders, and there are simply too few of them and in too few locations.  With the large increases in bike traffic in the Near Southside in the last year or so, thanks to the Magnolia Avenue bike lanes, groups like the Night Riders, and a continued increase in new urban residents, the existing bike parking infrastructure was becoming very inadequate to meet resident and visitor needs.

As mentioned above, we’re still finalizing all the numbers, so we can’t give a specific number yet, but we’re fairly confident that you can look forward to dozens of new racks in Phase One.  Phase One will see new racks installed on Magnolia, Jennings, and South Main at a wide range of popular destinations.  Each location will have multiple racks, with the number determined by current and projected future demand.  The plan calls for simple “staple” racks, such as these:

These are cost-effective, easy to use, and instantly identifiable as bike racks.  They’ll be installed right near the main entrances of destinations across the district.  We hope that this will not only better serve the Near Southside’s existing bike culture, but also encourage more people to ride their bikes in the district, as well as serve as a model for the city on effective bike parking infrastructure (something not very well understood in Fort Worth, for the most part).

As things progress, we’ll update everybody on how the plan is going, especially once we have a final rack count and all the locations finalized.  With city approval and TIF funding in place, we’re getting closer to seeing the new racks being installed across the district.

Our friend at Walkable D/FW has done a fantastically in-depth analysis of Downtown Fort Worth’s intersection density and convergence and what effect it has on walkability, following up on a similar analysis of Downtown Dallas and Downtown Portland.

With the understanding that the grid (of whatever form) provides the neural network of urban economies, the end result, I believe, is one that merges walkability and hierarchy of urban spaces in order to identify problem areas of the City. It is also fun to play with, tweaking various streets and blocks, two-way conversions from one-ways, and seeing the potential transformative effects those changes can have on real estate potential.

The following is downtown Fort Worth run through the same analysis as Dallas and Portland (and I will be doing more downtowns and like this one, hopefully tweaking and advancing the metrics and capabilities of the analysis).

After measuring intersection density per square mile and adding in the convergence factor (direction of streets, type of intersection, etc.), he then started weighting things by factoring in Downtown’s connections with the surrounding districts.  On top of that, he factored in underdeveloped and underperforming lots downtown to show where Downtown has potential to grow – if the form of its streets is brought under control into a more walkable, pedestrians-first form.

One thing this reveals, is the off-center nature of downtown Fort Worth on its “island” and the potential for downtown to expand to the West.

In general, the Meta-Convergence analysis is best at showing opportunity areas where the density and real estate values are underperforming. Most often this is due to the vary roads creating the traffic. The design of the roads are strictly for cars and the buildings and people then withdraw from that road. This is “inside-out” urbanism.

…

When we add in a graphic for “under-performing” or underdeveloped sites we predictably see that most of the underdeveloped sites have a direct relationship with the locations of the car-oriented street framework.

The question then becomes, are these properties really underperforming? In my opinion, the answer is that the surface parking (or parking garages) are a direct market response to a terrible, unsustainable transportation design and network. Parking is the highest and best use, but not a great (or walkable) downtown does it make.

So while there is great potential in where red and yellow overlap, the responsibility lies on the public-side to overhaul the primary roads to something that can move more traffic in a people- and place-friendly manner.

Complete streets are 1) centripetal, in that they draw people to them rather than centrifugal streets which are repellent, 2) can move more traffic by moving less cars (meaning increased modal share via more efficient transportation modes), and most importantly 3) link to the vastly underdeveloped areas immediately adjacent to downtown.

These are the neighborhoods within the 1 to 3 mile radius of downtown where bikes and streetcars make the most sense and will leverage increased development.

This study reveals that the most potential lies along Henderson and W. 7th for both downtown expansion and inner-ring (outside of downtown) development. But the primary barrier to this potential is the overly wide, pedestrian unfriendly design of the both streets.

Here’s the graphic of weighted intersection density vs. underdeveloped lots that Walkable DFW assembled (intersections in red, underdeveloped lots in yellow).

It’s pretty similar to a map we put together ourselves showing similar lots in Downtown (red = surface lots, vacant lots, inappropriate development like bank drive-throughs, unengaging pointless “green space,” etc. while yellow is parking garages, blue = the wasteland around the I-30 ramps).

Complete streets and connections – two things Downtown Fort Worth is missing.  Another quote from Walkable D/FW:

Having personally walked the downtowns of all of the above towns, the rankings of the three downtowns in terms of walkability matches my own sense. Downtown Fort Worth is very walkable, but only in the core between the convention center and the Tarrant County Courthouse.

In relation, Portland also has a much bigger downtown area uninterrupted by disconnective agents. Portland also has done a better job dealing with freeways, which are sunken with the urban grid extending across, maintaining walkability for a more consistent and broader area.

Similar to Fort Worth, Portland also has a river and waterfront forming an edge, however Portland, having removed a freeway have done a better job of breaking down the edge by creating a more publicly accessible riverfront park.

Read more at Walkable D/FW.  It’s instructive to not only post about good things going on, but to also look at what we could be doing better if we’re really going to get serious about building a livable city and urban core.

If you’ve been wondering what all the construction is on Adams Street in the Near Southside, it’s another street narrowing/streetscape project.  The street’s been taken down in width and bulb-outs are being used to contain the on-street parking, to provide a slower, safer, more pleasant street and better parking setups.  Work’s been underway for a while now and it looks like the project is finally starting to enter its last stages, so it shouldn’t be that much longer before it’s re-opened again.

Besides the various townhome developments on Adams (Texana and Oleander Place thus far), there’s the old Dunn Haven Apartments building on the corner of Adams & Magnolia that’s being turned into a marketing company’s headquarters, and the old (and awful) Fort Worth ISD Adult Education Center on the other corner is being remodeled into some kind of FWISD gifted & talented girl’s academy (and while the terrible design of the building isn’t being radically altered, it is at least getting a more interesting paint job to help break up the street facade into less boring components).

Yesterday, the Downtown Neighborhood Alliance had a get-together at the luxurious Villa de Leon condo building over in Uptown’s Trinity Bluff neighborhood, and JD Granger from the Trinity River Vision was on hand to give a presentation on the latest TRV news & info.  Here are a couple of photos from the presentation – JD talked about the progress on the bypass channel, the new bridge designs, Trinity Trail improvement projects around University/Rogers and the Naval Air Station, and many other aspects of the project.  More updates on TRV projects are coming soon.

After abandoning the former Bing Thom designs as being too costly, the Trinity River Vision has three new bridge designs by Rosales + Partners (who are also doing the design of the Lancaster Avenue pedestrian/bike bridge further south).

The new designs are said to take design inspiration from the Y-columns of Tadao Ando’s Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and represent a significant cost reduction:  the new bridges total at a projected cost of $65 million.  When factoring in land acquisition and other expenses, that goes to $110 million – still $45 million less than the Bing Thom designs, according to the Star-Telegram.

It’s hard to tell from the renderings shown thus far, but it appears that the bridges feature wide, separate sidepaths for bikes and pedestrians, similar to bridge designs in more bike-friendly cities.  In addition, the North Main and Henderson bridges are apparently designed to accommodate streetcar tracks in the future.

Click the thumbnails for a larger view:

There is now a Facebook fan page set up by a citizen advocacy group for the streetcar project, where you can become a fan if you’re so inclined.

The city has uploaded a brand-new Bike Fort Worth site, covering the recently adopted bicycle transportation plan.  Included in the goodies is this PDF map of the proposed new bike lanes, routes, and paths (3.4 MB PDF file).

We just have to spread the word a little more about this cool project that fellow Complete Streets/traditional urbanism advocates in Oak Cliff put on a couple of weeks ago.  Go Oak Cliff did “The Better Block,” their own “guerilla” Complete Streets makeover of Tyler Street in X+, on their own using neighborhood supporters.  Armed with about a thousand dollars and some ingenuity, they significantly narrowed the street to slow car traffic speeds, created a protected bike lane buffered from traffic by parking and striping, opened some temporary shops in vacant storefronts, set up sidewalk cafes, and more.

The end result was a street that was massively more pleasant to be on – people walked and dined in what is usually car space, bikes easily rolled past, traffic speeds were dramatically slower creating a much safer place to be, and benefits to local businesses from creating a street as calm, inviting “place” for everybody rather than a car sewer were noticeable – for example, local book store Cliff Notes had their best sales day ever on the first day of the event.

The project showed the benefits to the neighborhood from taming traffic speeds and expanding the amount of space for pedestrians, sidewalk diners, cyclists, and more, and it’s getting much local and national coverage.  The video above comes from Go Oak Cliff themselves.  Here’s a few links to other stories about the event:

The Better Block Wrap-Up - Go Oak Cliff

Emergent Urbanism in Oak Cliff – WALKABLE Dallas-Fort Worth

In Dallas, A Community Transforms A Street – Streetsblog

Guerilla Urbanism:  North Oak Cliff Residents Create Their Own Complete Street – Bike Friendly Oak Cliff

A late arrival, but here’s one more letter of support for the streetcar project, from economic developer Michael Hennig:

April 6, 2010

Mayor Mike Moncrief
Members of the City Council
City of Fort Worth
1000 Throckmorton Street
Fort Worth, TX 76102

Dear Mayor Moncrief and City Council Members,

As an individual who has great fondness and admiration for the City of Fort Worth and as a professional within the field of economic development, I strongly urge you to continue your support of the proposed Fort Worth Streetcar now and in the future.

As you are doubtlessly aware, transportation has been inextricably linked to Fort Worth’s past vitality and development, and I am confident that this will continue to be the case now and in the future. It is, perhaps, for this reason that an issue such as this is held so close to the hearts of countless residents and why, I am sure, your mailboxes have been unusually full in recent weeks.

It would be easy to write this project off as a mere token of nostalgia, a fun but expensive toy (as some have come to describe it) – that is, if the past and the facts were ignored. But I am convinced that beyond the environmental and social benefits that have been brought to your attention, the proposed Fort Worth Streetcar, especially when integrated into a broader transportation network, would yield significant economic benefits to the community. Though I could name many of these, I will highlight just a few.

Once developed, and particularly if extended beyond the Central Business District, the proposed streetcar system would support existing businesses and help to spur new development in high-profile portions of the city that have already been targeted for development through Fort Worth’s well-respected Urban Village Program. As ridership grows, development takes place, and spending near the streetcar line is augmented, a substantial impact will be felt in the City’s TIF and PID districts. In this manner, a streetcar line would produce a multiplier effect within Fort Worth’s most important urban areas.

Another pair of investments that would receive powerful support through the addition of a streetcar line is the City’s ongoing and impressive efforts to boost tourism and convention activity in and around the Downtown Core. As a frequent traveler who has visited many nations on several continents, it is difficult to describe the benefit of having a readily accessible and well integrated transportation network available.

The addition of a streetcar line would also support Fort Worth’s efforts to attract young, mobile professionals and to connect labor with key employment centers. Development and business attraction activities would also be enhanced by the presence of a modern streetcar system which, among other things, would reduce parking requirements in difficult infill areas.

In the end, once Fort Worth has taken the important step to develop a twenty-first century transit system that reflects its stature within the state and the nation, I truly believe that Fort Worth’s close-knit, small-town feel will be enhanced rather than reduced and that the economic benefits of a streetcar line will far outweigh the near-term costs.

Throughout its history, Fort Worth has proven that it does not shy away from any opportunity to lead the state into a new frontier. The proposed streetcar would greatly support the City’s efforts to engender a community that is truly world-class – not simply in size and population, but in character, class and reputation.

A project of this magnitude requires steadfast support from community leaders and I thank you for your service to the community which few could equal. I humbly ask for your support on this important project tonight and well after the first tracks have been laid.

Respectfully yours,
Michael Hennig

Michael Hennig, MPA
President
Civtech Solutions, Inc.

One last reminder for all who can attend to come to the City Council meeting tonight at Fort Worth City Hall (1000 Throckmorton) to support the vote to hire HDR to design our streetcar system.  Free streetcar support t-shirts will be available for the first 200 people to attend.