WW Climate Action Plan Public Review Tonight

[Jerry Foster]

Passenger vehicle exhaust is the primary contributor to central NJ's carbon footprint, and to reduce it will not be easy, considering that so much of our current culture is geared around building more sprawl. Come to the Planning Board meeting Wednesday to see how a developer can subvert the good intentions of a planned mixed-use neighborhood, which should mitigate car-only development, but only if parking is actually shared between the various uses in the development.

The key element is congestion, since it's unlikely we'll come to accept a toll-based road system, congestion pricing or pay-by-miles-driven taxes. Congestion is simply standing in line, or viewed differently, paying with personal time spent, and to get carbon reduction we'll have to accept it as a long term condition that at least has the advantage of treating all road users equally.

Except cyclists and walkers, of course, who can avoid congestion by using nonpolluting means for short trips, which make up 40% of all trips - a huge "reserve" road capacity, since it is easy to substitute short trips w bike/walk trips. But only If the roads allow it, which means road diets and other engineering changes that cost pretty much nothing to implement (some paint).

The social thing stands in the way of cultural acceptance of cycling and walking - supposed bikelash, seeing "those" others as others, calling "those" others arrogant, scofflaws or losers, etc.  Here's a link to an 11-yr-old cyclist's views of the issue, as spoken at a road diet public meeting.
http://laist.com/2015/09/16/this_kid_is_awesome.php

Jerry
also http://wwbpa.org/2015/02/bicyclists-arrogance-explored/

[Alison Miller]

I do not understand what the problem is with the parking at the Maneely/Toll mixed use development coming before the Planning Board on Wednesday.  Shared parking usually means parking serving different uses at different times.  For instance, offices and apartments have shared parking very successfully in many places because people tend to leave for work and vacate their parking spaces before others show up for work, and the opposite happens in the evening.

But when you have retail and apartments trying to share parking, there is conflict in the evening when people want to come home and park near home and others want to park near shopping/eating out.  Having insufficient parking does not lead to more walking and biking; the people who walk and bike will do that anyway. Insufficient parking leads to some people just going elsewhere.  

What we need to change is habits.  What we need to build to help change habits are sidewalks, bike lanes, crosswalks with flashing lights, pedestrian refuge islands, and bicycle parking in apartment buildings and at destinations.

Alison 

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From: Jerry Foster <j3j3...@gmail.com>
To: West Windsor Community Discussion <WWCommunit...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, October 5, 2015 6:53 AM
Subject: WW Climate Action Plan Public Review Tonight

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[Jerry Foster]

Thanks Alison, I'm assuming the planners who set the parking requirements for the mixed use zoning ordinance provided for sufficient parking. The developer wants to provide more, according to the materials provided at the first meeting, because each use (townhouses, apartments/retail, corporate apartments) will support their own requirements *in their own space*. The difference is that the developer intends to separate the ownership of the development, first by subdividing off the affordable housing complex, then by selling the townhouses' common areas to the eventual owners, then spinning off the apartments/retail, and retaining the corporate apartments. This operational model, in my view, subverts/negates the benefits of a planned mixed use neighborhood - the developer gets more density but the community gets more sprawl, only closer together, which is the least desirable form of develoment. More parking spaces discourage walking by disrupting the streetscape - a great example is Quaker Bridge Mall, surrounded by a sea of parking.

For a concrete example, the townhouses might (should, in my view) use the parking ordinarily provided for guests in the area of the retail parking, instead of on the townhouse streets themselves. Since the retail parking is not always full and not all townhouses have guests at all times (and not all corporate apartments are always full) there is the potential for providing sufficient parking for all uses with less spaces.

Jerry