Broken promises and an evaporated dream: Innovation Village West Baltimore

Today I take the rare step of using this blog to amplify an article published in a commercial media outlet, the Business Journal's article titled: 

"They Never Followed Through"

The article is written by Morgan Eichensehr and Ethan McLeod.

Innovation Village founder Richard May at a  media
event" on June 20, 2016 (Photo: Philipsen)

It is a follow up I should have done myself after my 2016  hopeful reports about the Baltimore Innovation Village on this blog here and here.

I knew that not much has been left of Innovation Village for some time, but feared to "rub it in" when Baltimore has enough other broken promises. But even a layperson's "journalism" should maintain the unflinching view that I had, even when Innovation Village was first launched.

My skepticism was obvious in my opening lines of the article under the title:" Innovation Village: What's Next?"

In a well attended public "press conference" long on speakers and short on specifics, Innovation Village, a private and non-profit undertaking got another boost in public awareness. [...]

Questions about the hype also characterized the last paragraph of my article:

Practically minded people in the community, people who have been in the trenches of actual community development work for years, ask what specifically the Innovation Village has done or will do. That is a fair question. Proclamations alone won't do. But the array of people in support of the concept is impressive

The skepticism turns out to have been quite justified as today's inquisitive BBJ article shows. It quotes disenchanted stakeholders:

Dale Terrill, who served as vice president for the Mount Royal CDC before he left the organization in 2017, said May was “a very good salesperson and promotional marketeer,” but the internet access initiative amounted to “a farce” without any real plans for implementation. Mount Royal CDC itself has lapsed, having forfeited its registration last year, per state business records.

Lucas, of Moms as Entrepreneurs, said the whole situation is the kind that makes West Baltimore residents feel disillusioned and so often distrusting of those who come into their communities and say they want to build something new.
“Everyone made such a big deal about these big plans...and none of that ever really materialized,” she said. “Where was the accountability? Where is Rich May?" (BBJ)

Tammira Lucas and Leon Pinkett at the media event
(Photo: Philipsen)

The idea of investing in West Baltimore via innovation start-ups and technology was and is wonderful. Instead of innovation concentrations in already well to do cities and their wealthy communities, Baltimore would harness the start-up culture for investment in its poorest neighborhoods that had gained international notoriety after the death of Freddie Gray. Problem is, Baltimore's pool venture capital available for start-ups doesn't measure up to other cities.

"Technology mirrors those who developed it. We must not just be consumers but drivers" [of smart cities and] do the analysis and the math ourselves." (York Eggleston of Semantic Labs at the Baltimore Smart City summit 2017)

For his public "press conference" about Innovation Village Richard May, "the good salesman" had managed to bring out everyone with a name in Baltimore. They all lined up to take the podium on a warm and sunny June Monday in 2016: Congressman Elijah Cummings, Mayor Pugh, MICA President Hoy, Urban League President Howard Henderson, Delegate Barbara Robinson, Delegate Keith Haynes, BDC CEO Bill Cole, Councilman Mosby and Leon Pinkett, III, Assistant Deputy Mayor for Economic and Neighborhood Development. A slew of groups who practice equity innovation in Baltimore such as Jeff Cherry of Conscious Venture Labs, Sheldon Caplis of the Food Hub, Joe Jones of the Center for Urban Families and Tammira Lucas of Moms as Entrepreneurs seemed to vouch for the solidity of the concept. The late Congressman Elijah Cummings said:

"This is a faith event. It takes a village for a city to be healthy and children to be what they are meant to be. We finally have a model. We are under a microscope. How will we do in changing the trajectory of so many young people?

...Diversity is not our problem but our promise.

Congressman Cummings in 2016 at the same event
(Photo: Philipsen)

We make sure we will be here for the launching" [of Innovation Village]. [...]all of Baltimore" should be rising:...I will say 'all' until I die". (Congressman Elijah Cummings)

This is a large group of people to disappoint and essentially deceive. Worse, though, the result represents another broken promise for West Baltimore, where no big promise ever came through, from Jim Rouses' envisioned turn-around to the cancelled State Center and Red Line projects, to "North Avenue Rising" which due to lack of City investment never grew beyond being a streetscape and bus lane project.

The 2016 press conference took place in front of Coppin's big new Tech Center. Behind it literally the notion that an Innovation Hub needs to be backed by an institutional partner. However, Coppin was only a photo-op, there was never a formal agreement for Coppin to be an institutional anchor, plus: Coppin's Tech facility is also more promise than reality. The university is reeling from lack of enrollment and has neither staff nor resources to fill its own tech center with tech content, let alone provide the backbone for a concept like Innovation Village. This left Rich May doing his thing until he didn't feel like it any more. 

Founder Richard May can't be found anywhere, according to the BBJ, even his partners haven't heard from him for over a year. Partner Andre Robinson is sanguine about it. He told the BBJ:

“[Innovation Village] was essentially a framing moment, but never rose above that. It fell apart and that was a big blow. But we have to shake it off and look at what we learned. We have to continue the work of building an inclusive, engaged Baltimore.” (Andre Robinson) 

Richard May still active at a BIW '17  event

  

Robinson, always good with catchy terms, essentially tells us, the idea is described ("a framing moment"), but it didn't come off the ground. What he doesn't say is that the"blow" to the idea leaves it blemished. It is hard to imagine that another high powered group would come out any time soon to embrace Innovation Village 2.0, even less likely will it be that vulnerable communities would embrace it.

The warning signs were there, early on. West Baltimore stakeholders who had been in the trenches for years were miffed about May swooping in and getting all the attention. Some said they were not consulted.  As the BBJ enumerates in its article, Innovation Village's physical presence shriveled from being "an anchor" Madison Park North, a new mixed use development planned for Reservoir Hill along North Avenue that is in itself a broken promise, to being housed in Mondawmin Mall (more broken promises) and eventually finding refuge in a branch facility of the Baltimore Community College on 2600 Liberty Heights.

Innovation Village promised bringing education, jobs and opportunities to West Baltimore, needs that are now bigger than ever, given the huge economic downturn and the health hazards that COVID has brought and which hits disinvested and disadvantaged communities harder than others. Access, knowledge and control of innovation (i.e. information) technology is more relevant for equity than ever as well.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Innovation Hubs elsewhere: Curbed: Can Cities Create Innovation Hubs that Work for the Entire Economy?

The Russian Roulette of leaky gas pipes

Some Baltimoreans had just comforted themselves that a massive explosion like the one in Beirut would not happen in here, no matter how many complaints there are about the competence of local government. Nobody would put thousands of tons of Ammonium Nitrate into a warehouse and then throw away the keys. But then three Baltimore rowhouses blew away on a bright and sunny summer morning, just like that. The destruction happened on a much smaller scale than in Beirut, but what neighbors stared at in the 4200 block of Labyrinth Road in Baltimore's Milbrook neighborhood looked quite similar to what happened in Lebanon.

What's left of three rowhouses in Park Heights

Three houses were entirely flattened, people were trapped in the rubble and neighbors could feel the blast wave blocks away where it blew windows and doors out of their frames and knocked people and items over in the process. On a hot and humid Monday morning, the only plausible explanation for the blast is natural gas. The cause, however is officially unknown as of this writing. Gas is carried through lines which crisscross the city almost under every street, providing a fairly clean and efficient source of heat for furnaces, hot water heaters, dryers and stoves in tens of thousands of homes for a total of over 600,000 customers in City and County. Each of these appliances can be faulty and cause a leak.

The homes on Labyrinth Road were not some abandoned vacant structures with squatters in them, but neat home-owner or renter-occupied  houses with front and back yards in a block with one gap. The gap was adjacent to the three destroyed homes, which is why some initial reports spoke of four destroyed homes.

The three houses from the left are no longer standing. (Google Streetview)

Labyrinth Road isn't much in the news, nor is the labyrinth of pipes buried under our streets; until something goes wrong and water shoots out of ground in a giant geyser, a sinkhole opens up and swallows entire cars, or electric power goes out.

The most spectacular failure of all, though, is a gas leak that leads to an explosion, often combined with a devastating fire. In a city where the infrastructure generally has surpassed its intended life cycle, the idea that corroded leaky gas lines can be anywhere becomes unnerving, once one becomes aware of the destructive force of gas.  Luckily, in Park Heights whatever fire there may have initially been (some black smoke was reported) was snuffed out by the debris itself. Still, two people died and at least seven were injured, dozens were displaced from their no longer habitable homes. The full urban disaster response system, well organized in Baltimore, swung into action and remained busy all day and night to the point of exhaustion just to deal with the immediate aftermath of the explosion.

A labyrinth of gas pipes of various sizes crosses the City (SUN photo)

Natural gas travels from wellheads to consumers through a whole series of different types of pipes.

Huge new shale gas reservoirs retrieved through fracking have made gas more competitive and allowed the US to replace coal and reduce overall carbon emissions.

The country, in fact, has now so much natural gas, that a shipping facility in Calvert Cliff was retooled from import to export. 

In that case, gas would be liquefied, i.e gas under so much pressure that it is forced into a liquid state. But already, doubts about fracking and gigantic gas pipelines have reversed the fortune of this particular fossil fuel. Fracking has been banned in Maryland and elsewhere and just last month the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline has been abandoned midway through construction and after Virginia-based Dominion Energy and North Carolina-based Duke Energy had spent $3.4 billion on the project. Gas is a fossil fuel and not a green fuel. California and some other places have lately legislated gas bans that prohibit new "natural" gas hook-ups.

Pipelines, flowlines, gathering lines, transmission lines, distribution lines, and service lines, by contrast, carry gas in the gaseous state at varying rates of pressure. The higher the pressure of gas in a  gas line, the more potentially dangerous an accident with that line could be, as in the series of September 2018 Massachusetts gas fires and explosions that came from an accidentally over-pressurized line.  If local lines, not meant for high pressure, are suddenly inundated with high-pressure gas, it could result in an explosion by either the pipes themselves exploding or, more common, causing gas to leak out of pipes and valves and into homes, where it could be ignited by small sparks such as the ignition lights of the devices using gas. Rapid pressurization of normally low pressure pipes could be caused by a failure at a valve that separates high- and low-pressure pipelines or some type of human error in setting those valves. At this point, there is no indication that there was any over pressured gas pipe. More likely would be a leak from a degraded pipe that could have caused a large accumulation of gas somewhere underground or in the basement of a structure.  BGE stated late on Monday that it has found no leaks on the service lines to the destroyed buildings nor in the nearest main. BGE dates the gas lines to the 1960s. It says the lines in the area of the explosion were last inspected in July 2019. 

Nearly 4000 hazardous (dark) gas leaks (non hazardous: light blue)
reported for the BGE service area.
Source: Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration

The network of gas lines is much like a tree with a trunk at the center and ever thinner branches at the perimeter, or like the water system with huge pipes becoming at the end just 2" or less when servicing a house. When all those pipes become obsolete at the same time, because much of the network in the core city has been installed in the same period, we have a problem. That is the problem Baltimore is facing with all infrastructure in its older sections, whether it is water, sewer or gas. Yesterday's explosion, near the Baltimore City/County line in a somewhat newer section of the city, did not involve the oldest pipes.

Baltimore gas lines leak at a high rate as the Baltimore SUN reported in an article published in September of last year. In the article  BGE Vice President of gas distribution Chris Burton is quoted attributing the dramatic increase of leakages to what he called “accelerating failure" of  ¾-inch gas delivery pipes in suburban Baltimore which were installed before the 1970s. It’s a problem in many older cities and suburbs, he said. Older gas lines were constructed with cast iron pipes that corrode over time.  Burton says that BGE is replacing about 50 miles of old pipes each year under the the 2013 mandate of the Maryland Strategic Infrastructure Development and Enhancement program, or STRIDE. BGE has set aside $963 million in a five-year plan for gas infrastructure upgrades. 

Reportedly about 1,100 miles of BGE’s 7,500 miles of gas pipes are made of old cast iron that needs to be replaced. BGE told the SUN that they receive up to 30,000 calls a year about gas odor or suspected leaks. 600 people, plus 600 contractors are assigned to gas leak detection and repair. Gas leaks can undo a lot of the initial benefit of the normally clean burning natural gas over coal. A large component of un-burned gas is methane, one of the most potent greenhouses gases, at least five times worse than CO2. Undetected methane emissions from gas lines as well as from refineries and oil wells have been recently identified as being a much larger contributor to global warming than originally estimated. 

New yellow polyethylene gas replacement pipes (STRIDE image)

The problem of leaky gas pipes has not gone unnoticed for some time. A series of explosions has punctured the general disinterest in infrastructure: Three separate episodes in Queens in killed people, in the 2010s and a half-dozen others in New York City left people injured, according to federal records dating back 10 years. Across the country, a rupture in a major pipeline in San Bruno, California in 2010 caused an explosion that killed eight people. In 2011, a leak from an 83-year-old cast-iron main in Allentown, Pa., caused a blast that killed five people according to the New York Times. In Maryland a devastating gas explosion occurred in Columbia as recent as a year ago and destroyed 22 offices.

“It’s like Russian roulette. The chances are, you are going to be lucky, but once in a while, you’re going to be unlucky.” (Robert B. Jackson, a professor of environment and energy at Stanford University who has studied gas leaks in Washington, D.C., and Boston as quoted in the NYT).

New installation and replacement lines are usually made of plastic,  more specifically semi-rigid polyethylene, supposedly a gas pipe material that can last a hundred years. That's how old some of the cast iron lines also are. It can be expected that BGE and its parent company Exelon will come under pressure to accelerate its pipe replacement program. So far consumers can be charged as much as $2 a month for the gas replacement program. Other surcharges are for green energy. It remains to be seen, how much momentum the terrible explosion  will carry into the complicated deliberations of the State Public Service Commission and whether STRIDE will be further accelerated. 

Columbia gas explosion, August 2019

Gas, water, sewer, electric networks, public transit and housing are all on the ever larger list of items where the backlog of missed maintenance and infrastructure repairs has become nearly unmanageable. That an aggressive course of action can pay off is shown by Duke Energy in Ohio, which also serves Cincinnatti. According to the NYT, beginning in 2002, Duke Energy began a 10-year, $700 million program to replace about 1,200 miles of cast-iron and bare-steel gas pipes. The number of leaks per miles for Duke Energy now ranks among the lowest in the country, the paper reports. STRIDES higher funded program anticipates full replacement of old pipes over 20 years.

The explosion In Northwest Baltimore shows once more, that the strategy of kicking the can down the road until a disaster happens is deadly and irresponsible. The responsibility rests with greedy utility companies that spend money on giant new projects instead of upkeep, politicians who prefer ribbon cutting over maintenance and with us consumers who don't want to pay the taxes and fees that are necessary to maintain a good state of repair. Of course, COVID has put us in a worse position to catch up. 

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

The article was updated  Tuesday, 8/11/20 at 16:00h for additional information from BGE

Discoveries in Baltimore

A little bike ride to discover what has changed in recent months of mostly isolation and little unrestricted roaming is a refreshing activity. Here a few things I found on a not quite so hot Friday evening along Baltimore's waterfront:

Little Italy which clamored first for closed streets in favor of outdoor dining still doesn't have this. But they keep their Christmas decoration (I know, the Italian flag colors!) all year, as consolation.

A few isolated diners populate the terraces at the Inner Harbor pavilions, which were largely deserted even before the pandemic

The foot of the awful HarborPoint bridge has been enhanced by this outdoor dining arrangement

Mostly no water taxi service, just as during the winter and early spring, another thing that didn't work well even before COVID

A few new features at the McKeldin Plaza, an attempt to make the desolate situation after the demolition of the original more palatable. The mister is a weak substitute, but its better than nothing

A display celebrates "community based design" that "replaces concrete with green". Oh the chutzpah! If there ever was a top down planning decision, the demolition of the old fountain was one.

Slow Streets cover now miles of city streets. What would have taken years of debate became doable in weeks. This a great step towards "complete streets" or "livable streets as Delegate Robbyn Lewis prefers to say.
In the back the Perkins Homes slated for demolition for a new mixed income housing development with TIF

Intrepid travelers arriving at the Pendry Hotel where life seems to go on. 

Thames Street is largely closed to traffic so the row of restaurants can expand into the street, a much more pleasant solution than the angled parking that was there before, but why all those ugly Jersey barriers?

What is known as "parklets", small wooden terraces on what used to be parking spaces, has now been implemented on a bigger scale in Baltimore: Long overdue, but very welcome! (Broadway at Shakespeare Street)

Street performers have to do with less audience, as well but at least they play, whereas the Symphony is not.

The Avalon, once proposed as an all glass extravaganza, is now almost complete in a much more modest outfit. It will interesting to see if the influx of millennials to downtown Baltimore continues

The good old Circulator bus is still doing its rounds, now with masked operators and riders, and yes, should I mention it had troubles before COVID?

The posh restaurants in Harbor East protect their glass with progressive slogans, a too transparent approach to go with current sentiment

Extra many traffic lanes with quite a good number of cars are still the norm in downtown, Light Street is an extreme example

Space enough for some vending activities at corners that may not always be licensed but have a long tradition in Baltimore 

The always ugly Mario Shack building that once sat next to the Constellation is now gone. In its place a new water taxi terminal will rise in hopes of tourists to come back one day

Central Avenue is finally open again, but the sea of asphalt is unimaginative and crazy, given that the road dead-ends on HarborPoint. What a stark counter example to the good stuff going on in Fells Point and elsewhere. The good news: The spanking new very large Whole Foods is open now. Here, too is the question: Will the apartments fill?

Black Olive streetside eating on Bond Street

Those party barges in front of the Power Plant come in handy now, when only outdoor dining is permitted. 

Kids can run, even with a mask on!

I just can't get enough of those new parklets!

Strolling through the city, a nice form of entertainment in normal times, has become a rare luxury in a time when we have to stay away from each other, hide behind masks and are advised to avoid any unnecessary outings. How right this advice is, shows everywhere where it has been disregarded. And yet, from time it is necessary to go out, carefully, that is, and see that even under these extreme circumstances life is going on, even if it is on a much lower level.  It is also good to see that this crisis is an opportunity to fix a lot of the things that didn't work well before. Each catastrophe also includes an opportunity. 

Stay well everybody!

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Moving out of Baltimore's Westside

The last 32 years I spent hoping for the renaissance of Baltimore's Market Center District which was eventually dubbed "Westside". But aside from receiving one of the dumbest booster slogans of the many that were tried out in Baltimore ("The West has Zest"),  the results were far from remarkable.

Howard Street, perpetually failing to thrive
(PHoto: Philipsen)

Now it is time for me to move on.

The slogan was bestowed in the proud tradition of developers who name their projects after what is no longer there. Indeed, the Westside was once Baltimore's retail core and had all the zest a city at the time could muster.

I arrived in time to witness the last vestiges wither: I saw the last two department stores close at Lexington and Howard and the ailing pedestrian zone ripped out in favor of an equally dead Lexington street with two way traffic and a few parking spaces. I saw an ill conceived bus mall on Howard Street be replaced by a mixed-traffic light rail/ cars street that remains lined with shuttered stores. A lot were refurbished though after Honolulu Harry's Weinberg real estate empire, finally let go of them. I saw two busy and popular intercity bus stations close and be relocated adjacent to the city incinerator, the low income bus riders were considered unwelcome downtown. I saw the city expelling a bunch of businesses so an entire block could be offered up to a real estate developer full of empty promises and a whole series of plans for the Lexington Market generated and nixed again. I saw a prominent developer demolish a bunch of buildings waving glorious reconstruction plans, only to leave to big holes west of Charles Street, still no change in sight.

The Incomplete list shows, that not so brilliant city decisions and lack of of oversight plays a role in the absence of really amazing progress, even though Camden Yards, the Convention Center expansion, the Hilton Convention Center Hotel, CenterPoint and the Hippodrome Theatre were built, all projects which were anticipated to give the old retail area a shot in the arm. The late developer David Hillman tried his luck with the adaptive reuse of  the former Hechts department store on one end and the old BGE headquarters on the other, both remarkable projects in themselves, but separated by the ill fated "superblock" which dragged them both down. Whatever investments, no matter how large, remained islands in a sea of unabated disinvestment. 

Weinberg properties on Lexington Street: Demo everything
(Photo: Philipsen)

When my employer, the architecture firm of Cho, Wilks and Benn left Charles Street for West Saratoga Street for what is now known as the MAP building, there was hope and optimism in the air. Kurt Schmoke had just been elected Mayor and hopes were high that Baltimore would amplify its newly gained Inner Harbor luster and also turn around the moribound retail district.

Alas, it didn't happen. One crisis chased the other, some were home-made (Schmoke never really gained the traction everyone had expected), some were national, chiefly with Ronald Reagan beginning a long period in which the government was seen as the problem and not the solution.

Those things are not inevitable. In the same time the Westside largely languished, Cincinnati, another city hard hit by de-industrialization, turned its similarly structured, and possibly even more decayed, historic Over the Rhine area into a stunning success story.

Why did it work in Cincinnati and not here? Baltimore never mustered the urgency with which the mayor and the business community there came together after their own civil unrest; it, too caused by the death of a black man killed by police. There they didn't just talk, but they also acted and assembled the funds needed to turn an entire part of the city around. Their streetcar was never seen as the thing that killed the street but as a train that brought in new energy. There they were very clear what they wanted: Revitalization with equity. Not demolition but restoration, not gentrification but affordable housing, not national chain stores but local mom and pop retail. They wanted a vibrant mixed use community with parks and pools, restaurants and shopping and plenty of housing for all income levels, especially low incomes.

Four Ten Lofts: New Apartments on Eutaw and Mulberry
(Photo: Philipsen)

By contrast, Baltimore could never come up with a cohesive vision and funding plan for the Westside. Was it supposed to be a new residential neighborhood, a restaurant district, a collection of unique mom and pop storefronts, an arts and entertainment district  or a big transit and event center? Leaders usually opted for "all of the above".

The Weinberg Foundation dreamed of Harlem USA as a model and envisioned lots of demolition, a multi-plex movie theater and large national brand stores. Preservationists were rightly outraged, the area is full of beautiful historic architecture. BDC then developed its own masterplan that can best be described as middle of the road. Some demolition, some big stores, some small stores and plenty of new dwelling units. The squabbles over preservation or demolition continued. though, so did the different aspirations regarding the type of retail that should be here. Those in charge seemed to agree usually that the retail that thrived in the area, beauty and nail salons, barbershops and stores that sell luggage and cellphone plans, was inferior or undesirable. That always seem racist in a not too subtle way.

Developers were supposed to introduce their own visions, further exacerbating the dissonant cacophony. Urban renewal plan amendments, big renewal development projects and projects billed as catalytic came down the pike in regular intervals. Some dubbed a success, such as CenterPoint, a full block sized urban infill with some restored old buildings and many bland new ones. The project was supposed to bracket the new Hippodrome. At the time State Senator Barbara Hoffman had skillfully forced some preservation by linking Hippodrome funds to an now defunct "memorandum of Agreement" that classified the many historic buildings as "must be preserved", should be preserved" and "are dispensable". Weinberg's properties north of Lexington Street and east of Stewart's were exempted from the three part classification and subsequently all demolished. To this day nothing replaced the grassy lots. The Westside is still a child that is "failing to thrive".

The Mayfair: decay from neglect always leads to demolition
(Photo:Philipsen)

The hopes and dashed hopes, the three steps forward and two back (sometimes it was the reverse) are legion. many were chronicled in my blogs. A debacle of epic proportion was the so-called Superblock, the failed attempt of the City to play big by redeveloping a really large block all at once, clinging to a developer long after it was clear that his puppy would never hunt. The buildings remaining in this block remain mostly shuttered to this day.

Of course, in Baltimore, hope springs eternal, and local grit realized renovations bit by bit. Finally, even a new Lexington Market has been started, once again a lift based more on demolition and new construction than character preservation.

All the while existing stores continued to fail, vacant buildings burned, crumbled or get demolished (sometimes all three). An example of the utter inability of getting the departments coordinated and on the tail of a lackluster building owner, is the former Tunnel Nightclub building on Eutaw Street, once known as the Gomprecht Building. Nothing was touched after the gigantic fire years back, a fire that was likely caused by squatters because the building stood vacant. The now burnt out shell, untouched and precarious is a disgrace on Eutaw Street to this day. The best prospect seems to be another demolition and another weedy empty lot.

Lexington Market: Arcade now demolished, no use for the old market
(Photo: Philipsen)

All those years I walked and biked the streets, dodged the pan handlers, the sleeping homeless and ad hoc vendors of all kinds of ware. My base was first the office on Saratoga Street and then my own place at the corner of Eutaw and Franklin.

My cousin who had grown up in Johannesburg went to the market with me on a visit.  "Reminds me of home", she said when seeing the midday scene around the Lexington Market . She told me that she "has never seen something that looks so African outside Africa". She truly liked the lively street-scene and the impromptu character of it all. Yes, the Westside with its many transit stops had more people on the sidewalks than the rest of downtown combined.

,

Westside Night Market, a small success
(Photo: Philipsen)

Now I moved to Pigtown after I had lost my lease. It was time to downsize and get rid of 25 years of paperwork. Looking through all the files I found not only projects that my firm completed in the Westside (The first new retail in decades, the stores in the 300 block of Eutaw Street wrapping the Comfort Link district cooling plant, some assist to small retailers) but also notes from the many years I participated in the advisory committee arguing with BDC about the best way forward, mostly without success.

For me an era comes to an end. 2020 is the year of the end of eras, globally, nationally and locally. Globally thanks to the virus, nationally due to the end of white supremacy (hopefully crowned by an election that reflects that), and locally, with a young progressive mayor taking over.

The future is far from certain. In tthe fog lurks opportunity and risk, on every level.

Baltimore's Westside, just as the entire city, could slide back even further, or it could make the leap forward that is needed to pull it all together.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

My previous articles about Market Center? Westside (from most recent to oldest):

Market Center: "The quality of the public realm impacts how people perceive and treat a community"

The Gombrecht Building, neglected, burnt and now slated for demolition.
(Photo:Philipsen)

Connecting the dots: Working from strength in West Baltimore

Its not all falling apart: Small miracles in Baltimore's "Westside"

Will the Lexington Market finally be saved?

"Night Market" brings Westside dead-zone to life

Baltimore's old downtown - what's next?

Rooting for Market Center

Westside 7-11 shuttered after only two years

What Baltimore and Cincinnati have in common

A vision is needed for Metro West

Mulberry at Park: Affordable Housing in the Westside

Where is the Baltimore retail district?

Westside restaurant woes

Demolish the Lexington Market?

Revelations of a morning walk

Many reasons to demo the Arena

When auctioning off SSA - don't overlook the opportunities!

Desolation into Hope: Example Westside Theater Initiative Le Mondo

Matchmaking between artists and developers

Why downtown needs a bus hub and where it could be

How a glorious future can spring from behind shuttered doors

The Superblock - new hope after 11 years of waiting 

The city convention hotel, failing to deliver in several respects

390 feet tall in the historic Westside

Another chapter in the the long history of the Congress Hotel

Progress on the Westside: Apartments at Park and Franklin Proposed

More Progress on the Westside: Fillat on Liberty

New Life for the Westside?

Westside Stories

Westside Stories (2)

Is Baltimore transit doomed?

Bus operator under COVID

The Regional Transit Plan is nearing its completion deadline in October. It was legislated when expanding Baltimore region transit was a viable option in principle, except that only Maryland's Governor had thwarted it throughout his time in office. Now with COVID still upon us, transit's perspective looks even more difficult. 

Critiquing a recent article in CityLab I am making the point that this is even less a time to cut transit funding or services. 

When even a progressive voice such as CityLab questions transit's future because of the pandemic, one has to wonder. This article takes a critical look at some of the predictions expressed in a CityLab article dubbed a A Post-Pandemic Reality Check for Transit Boosters.

Already the title choice is dubious. The the urban news and opinion service, which was formerly published under the flag of the Atlantic now sails under Bloomberg with Hyundai as one of its main sponsors. The title implies that those who promote transit somehow miss reality. This is an assumption usually found among conservatives who think that transit is a lost cause anyway.  Laura Bliss, who has written many well informed and illuminating articles about transportation in CityLab, assembled a number of expert opinions which culminated in the suggestion that the future of transit is to be a "social service" focusing on essential workers and a few routes with high frequency reliable service.

“For many years we have a lot of aspirations for transit: We want it to beat traffic, fight climate change, and revitalize communities. But the two things it has demonstrably done in last half century is provide mobility for those without — whether that’s due to age, income, or disability — and allow highly agglomerated places function. My educated guess is that we will see the rise of transit as a social service.” (Brian Taylor, an urban planning professor and director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles)

London bus in front of St Paul Cathedral  March 2020: Cashless and fully
enclosed operators were typical for London buses for years

The piece has more problems than just the headline.
It appropriately begins with a historic reference to the Spanish Flu which occurred during the hey days of transit, especially streetcars. But it concedes that transit recovered pretty quickly which does little to support the notion that transit boosters need a reality check because of COVID 19.

In 1918, streetcars were the top urban transportation mode in the United States. And they were packed: Americans made about 140 trips per capita, about 15 billion trips total, that year. [...]Still, the popularity of mass transit did not suffer dramatically in the succeeding years (Laura Bliss)

To get to the period when transit really declined drastically from its 1918 peak, the author has to throw in the Great Depression, the rise of the automobile and World War II, all three not related to the Spanish flu and thus, telling us little about transit after COVID-19. But the limping historic precedent is just the beginning. Much more concerning is what follows couched in the opinions of experts.  The arguments either don't add up or they are alarming for their implications on social equity and climate change.

Transit (blue) takes a beating in cities around the world (Apple Mobility)

The article states correctly that transit ridership after a boom during the 2008 financial crisis decreased again in recent years. As the main reason Laura Bliss  and her her transit experts indicate that data show that formerly "transit dependent" riders were lost in greater numbers than "choice riders". Here this important section of the article:

Explanations for ridership’s downward slide during these years abound. Cheap gas and easy credit for auto loans increased the appeal of car use, while service quality deteriorated on the older parts of transit systems. Ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft emerged, and a housing affordability crisis pushed many people outside the range of reliable transit.

In Southern California, Taylor and his colleagues have found that the largest drops in ridership have come from groups that were traditionally the heaviest, most economically dependent users of transit. Lower-income immigrants in particular have abandoned buses as car ownership among those communities has increased. While the share of discretionary riders has increased slightly, thanks to increased investment into rail and rapid bus service geared toward more affluent commuters, “their added trips are still overwhelmed by lost trips from others,” Taylor said.

Bus with front portion temporarily blocked for driver safety

If this analysis would hold for major transit systems across the country, it would seem curious why the article recommends to focus on the the very group that left transit in droves and to ignore the riders that seem to have come to transit more recently. But this is exactly what is suggested in the article:

But the best indication of the future face of transit may be the people on board right now.

In other words, focus on those super dependent riders that can't let go of transit, even in the midst of a pandemic. That would be a stunning reversal of the past efforts of attracting the so called choice riders and increase the pool of transit riders beyond those who have no other option. The article isn't subtle about who the "captive" riders are:

Transit, an urban mobility navigation app, has found that 68% of the people using it to plan bus and metro trips right now are women, most of them black and Latinx.

To be sure, the desire to attract "choice riders" has been rightly criticized by folks who bemoan the lack of equity in transit systems where the fancy rail lines and commuter buses serve the wealthier populations while poor neighboorhoods have to take the unreliable and slow bus. On closer inspection, though, achieving equity is more complicated than not providing service for wealthier folks any longer. It is no solution to eliminate the better services and leave poor riders with the crappy service. One has to remember that the desire to cut services and concentrate investments on buses instead of rail has always come from those who use equity only as a smoke screen to defund larger transit investments, just like Hogan did.

Transit is always about the network. Cutting services and routes will hit the riders hardest who have no other choice of mobility: Transit limited to the poorest neighborhoods and the low paying job centers would essentially not only lock those essential workers (those "on board right now) into the geographic areas of concentrated poverty which currently have the longest commute times but also deprive them to make any other "non essential") trips.

In the neighborhoods in which these workers live and work, most everything is seen as a "social service", from substandard public housing to substandard schools. It is precisely this attitude of seeing basic functions such as mobility, housing or education as something that should be delivered differently for the rich and the poor, that is one of the the causes of inequity in the first place. 

Airport bus, Dulles International: The problem of safe
transit under Corona is universal 

Social scientists, educators, architects and transit professionals have long realized, that improvements on those services can only be achieved if  they are provided to a economically diverse clientele. In other words, only if transit providers need to worry about "choice riders" going elsewhere, precisely because they have a choice, will they provide an acceptable service. Not, if riders consist exclusively of those who have no other choice but to accept whatever crappy service they get.

The article concedes that service reduction would cause even more ridership reduction. This is, in effect, cutting the legs off its own argument.

“There’s an elasticity that shows if you cut service by 10%, you can generally expect ridership goes down 3-6%,” Greg Erhardt, civil engineering professor at the University of Kentucky, specialist in travel behavior and transportation planning.

Admittedly, as long as the risk of catching a potentially deadly virus exists, transit will not be the most attractive form of transportation for those who can alternatively hop into their own car in which no virus threat exists. But the article also concedes, that the car is not an option for large cities.

Who will ride in the wake of coronavirus? Passengers will inevitably return in dense cities with extensive systems, such as New York City, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, where transit is critical for thriving urban economies to function (Taylor)

If transit can't be substituted in those large cities, it has to be made functional and safe during a pandemic. That is where the real challenge resides. If transit can be made safe in large cities, it can work even better in smaller ones. The solution is not service reduction and giving up on transit as a solution to congestion, bad air and climate change, just as the pandemic cannot be the excuse for giving up on education.

As widely understood now,  the pandemic enlarges existing problems and accelerates existing trends. In the case of transit, it means that transit experts and agencies have to solve the long standing issues of unreliable, crowded and unhygienic bus transportation by making buses more pleasant and comfortable, offer faster and more reliable service and by supplementing fixed route, fixed schedule service with flexible on-demand type services that seamlessly integrate with existing transit. This is exactly what the buzz word transit as a service  means which had become popular before the pandemic. COVID-19 has shown that transit is essential to keep this society going. But one can't just  put this insight on its head by saying it needs to function only for essential workers. That is as deeply flawed as  to say water is needed for survival so one can cut food. It makes much more sense to say: if transit can be fixed and made safe, reliable and even enjoyable for essential workers, it can be that also for everybody else.

This is my no means a small challenge. As the action group Dream Corps - Green for ALL notes in the its current "issue paper":

Transit agencies must now tackle a host of new questions: How do we protect transit workers and riders from the virus? How can we innovate service delivery to prioritize essential workers and those dependent on transit to meet basic needs? How do we fund public transit operations in the short and long term? And, how do we fund other ongoing and critical projects such as transitioning fleets to cleaner fuel technologies and zero-emission vehicles — actions necessary to combat climate change and protect public health — in the midst of uncertain budgets? (DreamCorps)

Many Issues that have been debated for decades. They must now be implemented. That means investing in transit instead of further disinvestment.  Measures that merit investment include:

Report by DreamCorps

•  fully integrated regional fare compacts in which one single ticket is valid among all forms of transit mobility in the entire region. 
• cashless and contact free forms of payment that accelerate service and provide increased operator safety
• "last mile" services that integrate services known as ride-sharing, bike sharing and scooters
• Express or commuter direct service routes with limited stops that originate not only in posh suburbs and go to choice employment centers but also originate in poor neighborhoods and go to low paying jobs.  
• Emission free vehicles that improve air quality and reduce carbon emission. The impact would be especially useful in poor neighborhoods where parks are scarce and emissions from incinerators, factories and diesel trucks are concentrated.

There is no way that the pandemic should be accepted as an excuse to open up another round of anti-urban policies, defunding transit or given the single occupant automobile another lease on life since those exact repeats would throw us back decades in the fight against climate change and wasteful use of limited resources such as open space, challenges that will ultimately prove much more difficult and dangerous than COVID-19.

 Klaus Philipsen, FAIA