How should Baltimore developers prepare for the future of transportation?

In the seventies the German Railroad had a very successful campaign that stated "everybody talks about the weather - we don't".  Those days are long gone with modern transportation being much less resilient to weather. Adjusting this slogan to current day Baltimore, one is tempted to say "everybody talks about the future of transportation - we don't." And that includes the City as well as private developers.

Full steam ahead into the past: Reconstruction of
Central Avenue, the new Central Ave bridge to Harbor Point and the new
Whole Foods tower with 575 parking  spaces (Photo: Philipsen)

How else to explain the cranes towering over buildings going up right now which sit on top of giant parking garages, either above or below ground, on Baltimore Street, on Aliceanna or on Light Street, frequently even with those sloping floors that prevent any other use than driving and parking cars on it. When asked about the dead investment that these garages represent, developers usually shrug their shoulders and refer to the banks who just want to see parking before funding a project. The issue whether parking garages are a smart development investment has come up before. The old mantra of "one can never build enough parking" has long changed to regret.  Developers like Toby Bozzutto or Tony Rogers both bemoaned at a tour of their facilities that the huge garages already sit mostly empty at Symphony Center or at the Fitzgerald. This was a couple of years ago! To continue to pour more concrete into parking is a curious thing, considering that projects under construction now have a amortization period that lasts decades.

Most transportation experts predict that autonomous cars, taxis, buses and trucks will be here, like "tomorrow".  Opinions about the the future of AVs differ, some think that a complete conversion to AV's will take decades, some predict that the conversion will be much more rapid but all have to admit that AV's are already part of the mix in many places. All agree that AV's should reduce the amount of parking that is needed and relax the need for parking right in the same building.  Baltimore may come late to the party, but it will happen, here too!

Today, in the second decade of the 21•1 century, and as we anticipate the arrival of self-driving vehicles on city streets, we have a historic opportunity to reclaim the street and to correct the mistakes of a century of urban planning. This adaptation starts with a plan. (Janette Sadik Khan)

Other than cities and State DOTs, there would be nobody more affected by new transportation technologies and delivery models than developers who cast their best guess about the future in concrete, thus betting their money on the right prediction. So why are they so stuck on business as usual?

"The biggest impact is going to be on parking. We aren’t going to need it, definitely not in the places we have it now. Having parking wedded or close to where people spend time, that’s going to be a thing of the past. If I go to a football game, my car doesn’t need to stay with me. If I’m at the office, it doesn’t need to be there. The current shopping center with the sea of parking around it, that’s dead."Alain Kornhauser, Professor at Princeton

Imagining a comprehensive response to the new technologies would be easiest in large comprehensive new developments such as HarborPoint, Canton Crossing or Port Covington. They present excellent opportunities for policy pilots which ensure that AVs will be used with good outcomes and not run roughshod over the city worse than the auto-centric past.

Canton Crossing garage: 1,295  parking spaces on  seven7' low floors

I don't know why there isn't more done to anticipate the future unless there is a lot of planning going on clandestinely behind closed doors. Assuming that is not the case, here are a few suggestions and recommendations for developers:

• Don't build more parking than the absolute minimum you have to build under zoning or lender requirements. Push back against the business as usual approach. "One can never have enough parking" is already dead!
• Get out of building your own parking by forging agreements that include shared lots, shared garages, and payment of fees in lieu.
• If you must build your own parking build it as a flex space that has enough height and facade frontage to be gradually converted into revenue generating space such as office, apartment, or amenity space, floor by floor, starting from the top. 
• Include space for care share services such as Uber or Lyft, initially with drivers and eventually driverless. In either case there need to be clearly designated pick-up and drop off zones that allow a proper match between rider and vehicle, comfortable waiting and safe access to those points. 
• Give transit a second look. Even if your project ins't on top of a subway station or otherwise doesn't qualify as transit oriented development, new technologies could bring existing transit closer than you think for example through
• bikeshare, 
• car share
• automated shuttles
• automated pods
• Transit could look different than you think: Many experts expect that technology will allow a much more seamless transit delivery that combines fixed-schedule/fixed-route transit with demand-based van-type transit 

  

  Graphic: Buero Happold brochure

• Consider different cars: Even private cars may park themselves and could use automated garages with lifts and stacked cars that occupy about half as much space because they don't need all the ramps and aisles and fool-safe wide spaces. Those compact garages would function much closer to those New York City garages where drivers leave the car to garage operators who pack the vehicles in without much space around them.
• Build facilities for electric vehicles which need a charge. Charging technologies are rapidly changing but whatever they are, charging likely won't happen at a "gas station" but will be at places where vehicles are "resting" anyway, be it parked (as private vehicle) or staged as a fleet vehicle. 
• Consider space for all the automated service vehicles that will deliver stuff to your building, including drones. Delivery of packages by USPS, UPS, FedEx or pizza cars is already a usually unresolved problem, whether it is for where these vehicles stop to unload or where their deliveries get stored. Time for create design solutions that have the potential to brand a new project!

Many developments which were built by clinging to old formulas sit on a surplus of parking because car ownership rates have already gone down and share-transportation models continue to be very popular with the younger generation. It is likely that semi or fully autonomous vehicles will accelerate this trend. Even Tesla won't be able to stop the fact that owning a car has become much less a status symbol or object of dreams than it was in the past.

NACTO brochure: Blueprint for Autonomous Vehicle Urbanism

Cities will continue the trend to grow not so much for the old reasons (ports, highways, rivers, rail-lines) but because they offer attractive choices and experiences to live, work and play. The modern city can offer all that, the suburb can't. Key for positioning cities at the top of the heap will be to avoid the dirt, danger and congestion from old style traffic. To deliver, developers and cities must push in the  direction of clean shared vehicles and efficient modern mass transit. This will be the only way to avoid being choked by a new generation of cars, vehicles that can drive around without anyone in it. For Canton, Federal Hill or Fells Point, communities already suffocating from traffic, the future could easily be a nightmare as well.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA