I live on the East Side of Saint Paul in a neighborhood that is filled with public parks and has extensive winter ski/summer bike trails. However, these trails are not well connected to Downtown Saint Paul or the rest of the Twin Cities bicycle network. This makes bicycle commuting a challenge and also reduces the amount of recreational cyclists who visit the area. This should be changing. The city Public Works Department has announced that it intends to put in bike lanes on Upper Afton Road this summer as part of a resurfacing project. Because of the proposed changes to the parking set up, a community meeting was held this past Thursday and a public comment period is now open before a hearing and vote by the City Council later this spring.
I made a point to attend this meeting because I am both a bike commuter and recreational cyclist and knew that someone needed to speak for the rest of the neighborhood. Upon arriving at the meeting, it was largely as I had expected: most of the attendees were residents of the affected street and almost all of them were vehemently opposed to bike lanes, to loss of parking, or to both. This was not a particularly rational view because, as someone who bikes and drives that street daily, I have come to the same conclusion as the city parking survey, specifically that there is very little street parking utilization in general, so very little will be "lost" by the residents. Their opposition, therefor, struck me as a product of emotion, entitlement, misunderstanding, prejudice, and irrationality.
Some opposed residents were just not good at logic and listening. They continued to bring up unrelated issues, unrelated streets, or issues that the bike lanes would help resolve (like speeding, bike lanes make a road seem narrower which has been demonstrated to lead to lower speeds). Fortunately the city planning people, neighborhood council members, and City Councilwoman were all very patient and repeatedly explained the benefits for these people.
The less rational, more emotional, and occasionally prejudiced residents were far more difficult to deal with. They tended to have stereotypes about bicyclists. They had unfounded beliefs about level of usage (both of parking and bike lanes). And had a number of other unrelated complaints about how it would be paid for (via wheelage fee, not special assessment) and land values/property taxes (if anything, they should go up with a bike friendly neighborhood). There were also some very weird, barely concealed racist elements, especially when an elderly crank started ranting about how he "paid a lot of taxes" and then the city "stole" one of his parking spots to put a bus stop in and now is taking away the others for bike lanes. His digression on the "whiskey bottles" and major transit center that the buses service was an appallingly low level of discourse that marked him pretty clearly as an entitled, racist, obstructionist who likely sincerely felt that he owned the street in front of his home (despite the fact that it belongs to the city and therefor all of its residents). This belief in ownership of parking is understandable, but wrong, and street planning decisions need to be made with the best interest of an entire community in mind. Indeed, that is why Saint Paul has an extensive and detailed bike plan for developing bicycle infrastructure so that it might someday catch up with Minneapolis and its enviable bike culture. While not everyone is happy, usually bike lanes come to be seen as a benefit and the controversy quickly fades away.
So, yes to bike lanes: better commuting infrastructure, safer way for kids to get to school and playground (both of which are on the proposed path, movement toward a more integrated recreation network, safer streets, better property values. No to excess on street parking which has myriad problems and causes many more. And really, the issue isn't the biking (or the buses, or the racism), it's the weird American relationship with cars and the places we put them.
As some of the anger I witnessed at the meeting shows, people have often irrational beliefs and emotional responses to parking issues. They feel entitled to public space in front of their home, to free parking when they shop and run errands, and are often oblivious to the explicit and latent economic and environmental costs of the excess of, often empty, paved space, much of which is mandated by city building and zoning codes.
In addition to the carbon output of cars in commute, there are additional carbon costs just from circling a block looking for a meter or a space, especially in areas where parking is under priced (a subsidy to businesses at the public expense). Furthermore, parking is the largest land use in a city, and allowing it to be free greatly influences the transportation choices people make (with both economic and carbon costs imposed). As mentioned above, much of it is legally required, even if it sits empty on supposedly huge demand days. Some places are starting to rethink what parking lots can be, either by redesigning them or by adding supplementary secondary uses (as solar farms, drainage areas, or tree-lined grids). For much more on parking lots, I highly recommend this entire series from Sightline (much of which has also appeared on Grist).
As for my local parking issues, Saint Paul has finally moved into the world of thirty years ago and decided that it will start charging for parking at night, begin using event rates in certain areas, and expanding meters to previously free areas that are high traffic. While each is a small step, when put together they will make progress toward rationalizing the use of one of the city's largest public properties (its streets) and generate much needed revenue for infrastructure and other public works projects. If it also encourages people to use more environmentally sound transportation methods or to take advantage of the expanding bicycle infrastructure, even better.
Monday, March 7, 2016
Thursday, March 3, 2016
Sandpiper Pipeline Delayed
A lot of oil moves around this country, and much of it moves through pipelines. Due to the fracking boom in North Dakota and the expansion of tar sands bitumen mining in Alberta, a lot more has been moving around lately, much of it by rail or truck. All of these transport methods are problematic, but for different reasons (I'm not going to go into the horrible environmental effects of tar sands or fracking or the climate and other impacts of oil and natural gas right now, but the links above should provide a good taste, or the documentary Gasland). Trucks are inherently inefficient ways of moving that quantity of oil (or of anything), with greater risk of accidents per mile traveled and greatest carbon output per ton/mile. Rail is better on some but has other problems, including backlogs and delays as well as a history of spills and explosions. Many have said that these problems both support the expansion of pipeline infrastructure for moving an increased volume of oil.
Pipelines, however, are complicated things. They generally run in segments from a wellhead in an oil field to some kind of collection station. There oil (or bitumen, in the case of tar sands), is often blended with solvents and/or heated and sent into a larger pipeline system for transport to major distribution centers. They might cross private lands, public lands, and lands owned by the pipeline company. They also cross rivers, wetlands, roads, and anything else that happens to be in their path. As long as we have an economy driven by fossil fuels, we will have a pipeline problem. We might not need as many as we have, but all the ones we legitimately need do have to go somewhere (both need and location are important fights). Pipelines also are intrusive, requiring a substantial right-of-way, have a propensity to leak, and are not always well monitored.
So pipelines are a necessary evil, but we certainly don't need to build more of them than is economically justified and we definitely should avoid routing them in places that are environmentally sensitive. Which brings me to Sandpiper. It is a pipeline that would run roughly 300 miles across northern Minnesota from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota to Superior, Wisconsin. It would run relatively directly through the Lakes Country, a wetland heavy and fragile area, but would be most economical for Enbridge Energy, the oil company that wants to build it. It would also follow an existing pipeline right-of-way for about 75% of its length and the company has easement agreements for access/permission to cross private land with about 95% of the affected properties. There have been some supporters of the direct route, with its risks to the environment and cultural resources, but there have also been critics who sued the Public Utilities Commission over the process demanding that an Environmental Impact Assessment be conducted before issuing a certificate of need.
Last summer, the pipeline opponents won in the Court of Appeals, and the PUC was ordered to conduct an assessment before granting a certificate of need. This is an important development because once a certificate of need is granted it becomes much harder to stop a pipeline. It might be possible to change the route a small amount, but the builder would have a large amount of leverage. This is particularly true here, where Enbridge already had 75% of the route in right-of-way and 95% acquisition of needed easements. Acquiring the remaining 5% would have been a simple matter of exercising eminent domain to claim the right-of-way or easement (and unfortunately for the landowners, Minnesota's "Buy the Farm" law doesn't apply to pipelines, only transmission lines, so the residents and farmers would be forced to live with the pipeline and the company's right of access and perpetual maintenance). The newest PUC action has required final submission of the environmental review, which could take years (especially if it ends up in litigation). This has meant a push back in the estimated completion date for the project. It has also provided a number of new opportunities to kill the pipeline outright, kill it by atrophy of support, or re-route it into less sensitive pathways (which might also kill it). The pipeline could be deemed to great a risk to the State's environment and natural resources. It could be forced to move to a less economically favorable route. It might even lose its economic justification if the price of crude oil continues to stay low and North Dakota's oil fields go into what may be a slowdown or a prolonged slump. All of these would be ways that could stop the pipeline in its tracks, and that is a much easier thing to do before it gets its certificate of need. It does take time, effort, and energy, but it can be done if enough people put in the work. It might also buy enough time to build the political pressure to end the threat entirely.
Pipelines, however, are complicated things. They generally run in segments from a wellhead in an oil field to some kind of collection station. There oil (or bitumen, in the case of tar sands), is often blended with solvents and/or heated and sent into a larger pipeline system for transport to major distribution centers. They might cross private lands, public lands, and lands owned by the pipeline company. They also cross rivers, wetlands, roads, and anything else that happens to be in their path. As long as we have an economy driven by fossil fuels, we will have a pipeline problem. We might not need as many as we have, but all the ones we legitimately need do have to go somewhere (both need and location are important fights). Pipelines also are intrusive, requiring a substantial right-of-way, have a propensity to leak, and are not always well monitored.
So pipelines are a necessary evil, but we certainly don't need to build more of them than is economically justified and we definitely should avoid routing them in places that are environmentally sensitive. Which brings me to Sandpiper. It is a pipeline that would run roughly 300 miles across northern Minnesota from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota to Superior, Wisconsin. It would run relatively directly through the Lakes Country, a wetland heavy and fragile area, but would be most economical for Enbridge Energy, the oil company that wants to build it. It would also follow an existing pipeline right-of-way for about 75% of its length and the company has easement agreements for access/permission to cross private land with about 95% of the affected properties. There have been some supporters of the direct route, with its risks to the environment and cultural resources, but there have also been critics who sued the Public Utilities Commission over the process demanding that an Environmental Impact Assessment be conducted before issuing a certificate of need.
Last summer, the pipeline opponents won in the Court of Appeals, and the PUC was ordered to conduct an assessment before granting a certificate of need. This is an important development because once a certificate of need is granted it becomes much harder to stop a pipeline. It might be possible to change the route a small amount, but the builder would have a large amount of leverage. This is particularly true here, where Enbridge already had 75% of the route in right-of-way and 95% acquisition of needed easements. Acquiring the remaining 5% would have been a simple matter of exercising eminent domain to claim the right-of-way or easement (and unfortunately for the landowners, Minnesota's "Buy the Farm" law doesn't apply to pipelines, only transmission lines, so the residents and farmers would be forced to live with the pipeline and the company's right of access and perpetual maintenance). The newest PUC action has required final submission of the environmental review, which could take years (especially if it ends up in litigation). This has meant a push back in the estimated completion date for the project. It has also provided a number of new opportunities to kill the pipeline outright, kill it by atrophy of support, or re-route it into less sensitive pathways (which might also kill it). The pipeline could be deemed to great a risk to the State's environment and natural resources. It could be forced to move to a less economically favorable route. It might even lose its economic justification if the price of crude oil continues to stay low and North Dakota's oil fields go into what may be a slowdown or a prolonged slump. All of these would be ways that could stop the pipeline in its tracks, and that is a much easier thing to do before it gets its certificate of need. It does take time, effort, and energy, but it can be done if enough people put in the work. It might also buy enough time to build the political pressure to end the threat entirely.
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