MORE Thoughts -- PRCo--2000 -- What Trolleycars Remain ed??

[Donald Galt]

It's a little intimidating to face this long, profound treatise from Fred 
Schneider - hence the delay - but I'm going to try tackling just a few points.

> The East Liberty Mall was not
> significantly different from European physical construction practices of the era
> but, like so many American attempts to copy what works in Europe, we failed to
> first compare our thoughts with those of the typical European.  We took the
> physical urban changes totally out of context with the German, Swiss, or Austrian
> mindset.  In so doing, we failed miserably and we will continue to fail every time
> we ignore why their system works for them.  

I have to plead ignorance of the East Liberty Mall, but suspect there may be 
an additional factor here: you probably had a failing commercial district 
which was turned into a pedestrian mall as a last resort. When that failed 
the obvious scapegoat was the mall concept itself.

Closer to home for me are two examples: downtown Tacoma went into 
decline more than a generation ago, and Commercial Street (not, despite its 
name, a major artery) was turned into a transit mall. The business district 
has never revived significantly, and the mall is a backwater.

By contrast, Westlake Square in Seattle was turned into a pedestrian mall 
many years ago now, with not only motor traffic banned but also 
trolleybuses (to my mind a mistake, but that's another story!) When a few 
years ago Nordstrom was negotiating with the city to move to the old 
Frederick & Nelson building nearby, they were adamant that Pine Street 
through the square in the next block be re-opened to traffic (the street had 
always been open past the store itself, but tended to be congested because 
of the blockade at the next corner.) The city buckled under, despite huge 
popular protest. What appears to have happened is that the square 
continues as a lively pedestrian mall, with about 16 trolleys per hour midday 
(one way only) and fairly minimal motor traffic, nothing approaching the load 
it bore at one time. People still protest the re-opening, but a de facto semi-
mall is maybe better than none at all.

The point I think I am making is that we need to be careful in attributing 
cause and effect.

> I remember Frits van Dam telling me that he was probably the only person in his
> neighborhood who rode a bicycle to work in the Hague or took his family downtown
> at night on the tram instead of driving his car.  Frits explained that public
> transport was provided in Holland for the youth and the elderly.  
> 
Some truth to this but possibly an overstatement? I Don't know about The 
Hague personally, but my own fairly recent (mid-1990's) experience in 
Amsterdam, day and night, suggests good patronage from all classes.

Dutch and American eyes may interpret the same scene differently. Around 
here, though the old and the disadvantaged are disproportionately 
represented on the buses, they constitute nothing like the entire ridership. 
Still, it's a far cry from Zürich.

> In much of Europe, no one is going to provide free parking at a shopping
> center ... you want to park, you pay.  Just a concept they have. 
>
Imagine!
> 
> The Swiss can post signs suggesting that motorists turn off the engine
> while waiting at a red light; the drivers will do it simply because it is
> the proper thing to do. 

Here, light cycles are getting longer and longer, and nobody shuts off his 
engine. Not even waiting at drawbridges.

A beef in my earlier post was that in the US everything is done with the 
automobile in mind, not the pedestrian. My perpetual rant concerns push-
buttons at traffic lights. These were originally conceived as an aid to 
pedestrians needing a way to cross highways where there was no other 
reason to stop traffic. Now - in my city, at least - they have been turned 
against the pedestrians. Even where the light regularly changes for cross 
traffic, the walk light stays red unless you get there in time to hit the button 
before the cycle has started - always assuming, of course, that the button 
works at all. And this along ordinary city streets in areas with heavy foot 
traffic!
> 
> Three years ago, I remember standing ... in Avignon, France  in the evening
> "not so rush hour" watching the almost empty city bus restricted in a sea
> of autos.... Every city of 3000 souls or more seems to have [a mall] now.
> In East Germany, where clear titles to land in the 1990s was problematic,
> much of the new construction was suburban.  Its changing.  Hurry and you
> can still see some traces of the old world. 

Sigh! The pressures of population growth in general, plus rising prosperity, 
plus the undeniable attractions of the private car, are bound to have their 
effects upon the countryside. This was already being decried in Europe 
three decades ago - or even a century ago.

Fred's choice of Avignon is probably no coincidence: it bears some 
comparison with Lancaster PA - both smallish cities, both with heavy tourist 
traffic (though with Avignon the biggest attraction is in the heart of the city 
itself.) In many larger European towns (not that much larger, either - 
consider Salzburg) the public transport systems are undergoing expansion 
under the pressures of ridership. And in the UK, rail lines closed in the 
Beeching era are being eyed for re-opening. None of this has a parallel 
anywhere in the US. 

Indeed, the differences that Fred cites, population densities etc, are a 
factor. Indeed, much of Europe drives where it once used other modes. And 
I too know what it is like to be on a French highway in August. But popular 
attitudes and public policy in the US seem stuck in the era when the 
country had half its present population. At least Europe presents some 
alternatives to the automobile monoculture.

Don