Does It Matter Who Pays For Sidewalks Or Is Walk Score Useless?

Some advocates for pedestrian access claim that the source of funding for sidewalks strongly affects a city’s walkability. Groups such as Atlanta’s PEDSargue that if cities fully fund sidewalk construction without any cost placed on adjacent property owners, walkability will be higher.

Measuring walkability is fraught with controversy. Walk Score is a popular tool that measures how pedestrian-friendly a city and its neighborhoods are. However, it is dependent on the proximity of residences to businesses. Their focus appears to be that it is more important to have somewhere to walk to than to have a clear path to get there. Such an assumption is a great way to start a bar fight among urbanists.

Let’s compare how the walk score for a few select cities varies under the following two circumstances: 

1.      1. The city spreads the cost of building sidewalks among all taxpayers, as with streets and highways via taxation.

2.      2. The city puts the onus of paying for sidewalk construction on the adjacent property owners.

The possible walk score range is 0-100. Higher scores reflect better walkability using this metric. Note that I am focusing on city policies for new construction to fill in sidewalk gaps.

Georgetown, a section of Washington, DC, features a dense grid, small blocks, and extensive sidewalks.

Washington, DC, updated its sidewalk installation policy in 2015 to ensure that gaps in sidewalk coverage were filled even when no new construction projects, such as road improvements or development projects, were planned. New sidewalk construction in gaps is prioritized as follows:

1.       School areas

2.       Routes that provide access to parks and recreational facilities

3.       Transit stops

4.       Locations where the absence of a sidewalk creates substantial pedestrian safety risks

5.       Roadway segments for which residents have petitioned to have sidewalks

The process is primarily staff-driven until the last criterion. It requires property owner input, but not their contribution of funds. Washington’s walk score is an impressive 77.

Fairfax City, VA, a city in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., reserves the authority in its Residential New Concrete Sidewalk Policy to build new sidewalks via its tax-funded Capital Improvement Program. Neither payment nor permission from adjacent homeowners is required, though notice to them and nearby civic associations is. The city has a lackluster walk score of  52. 

Sure, Fairfax City will pay for sidewalks, but is this highway-choked sprawl really walkable?

Los Angeles, CA is often thought of as the stereotypical, car-centric American city, yet its walk score of 66 indicates that perception may no longer be accurate. Thanks to the settlement of a lawsuit over the city’s failure to make miles of broken and missing sidewalks comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, L.A.  must commit $1.3 billion to pedestrian projects over the next few decades. That enormous commitment led the city to embrace a “fix-and-release” policy for sidewalks. 

Under this scheme, L.A. will pay to build new sidewalks, as well as reconstruct damaged ones, next to commercial, industrial and residential properties. It will then offer a limited warranty period that guarantees only one repair in the future. The duration of the warranty is twenty years for sidewalks next to residences and five years for those next to commercial properties. 

Nobody walks in LA, especially if they close off the entire street.

On the day the plan passed, L.A. Councilman Paul Krekorian claimed, “This fear that seems to be out there that suddenly people are going to have a burden dumped upon them – that just isn’t the case.” But, that’s exactly what will happen once the warranty’s clock runs out. For those of limited financial means, fixing a city sidewalk could be a heavy burden. 

Atlanta, GA mirrors Los Angeles by shunting the cost of sidewalks squarely on the shoulders of adjacent property owners, though without L.A.’s limited warranty. Sidewalk gaps in Atlanta are common and building new sidewalks can be costly, thanks to Atlanta’s use of hexagonal blocks instead of poured concrete. Atlanta’s walk score is a poor 48. 

Few would argue that Atlanta is a pedestrian-friendly city today, but that may be about to change thanks to T-SPLOST.

In response to this poor environment for walking, the city leadership backed a referendum on a special local option sales tax for transportation, commonly known as T-SPLOST.  Now that it has passed, $300 million in revenue will be generated over a five year period. Sidewalk projects will receive over $69 million of that amount.

Alexandria, VA, has a sidewalk policy that spreads the cost of sidewalks among all taxpayers, while effectively allowing adjacent property owners to veto a new sidewalk. Applications to the Residential Sidewalk Program require the signatures of five residents within that project area in support of the sidewalk. Those commuting through the area to reach a transit hub like King Street Metro station won’t be counted. Additionally, Alexandria “requires the identification of a project champion, who will be the main point of contact for the City.” That champion must then: 

…notify each household in project area with flyer distribution and provide signatures noting support for or against the project from 80% of addresses in project area. Property owners directly adjacent to proposed sidewalk MUST sign the petition and note if they support or do not support the project.

There is no exception if an adjacent property owner refuses to sign and indicate support of opposition. Conceivably, that conveys a veto power to those who don’t cooperate with the process.

This is close to a schoolbus stop and along a busy pedestrian route to a Metrorail/Commuter rail/Bus transit hub. Pedestrians are forced into the street because the city gives homeowners a veto on sidewalks.

Alexandria maintains Silver level status as a Walk Friendly Community, a designation made by a coalition that includes the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals, the League of American Bicyclists, and multiple federal agencies. However, that status appears to derive from a combination of staffing and a city Complete Streets policy, rather than sidewalk conditions. The city’s overall walk score is a mediocre 61. 

New York City, NY,puts all responsibility for construction of missing sidewalks onto adjacent property owners. That includes both installation and subsequent maintenance. If a property owner refuses to comply, the city will do the work, send them an invoice, and place a lien on the property, if necessary.  As with Los Angeles, this approach could be a burden on property owners in low-income areas.

Is a city walkable if the sidewalks are so crowded that pedestrians walk in the street? That's happening in NYC, but Walk Score rates them highly.

New York faces a serious pedestrian congestion issue in the city. Sidewalks in extreme high-density areas such as Manhattan simply aren’t wide enough to handle the traffic. The New York Times refers to this situation as “Sidewalk Gridlock.” However, despite this apparent infrastructural shortcoming, the city still has a high walk score of 89.

The funding source of new sidewalk construction does not appear to track with walkability as measured by Walk Score. That would indicate that either Walk Score’s methodology is utterly useless or that the importance of sidewalk conditions is overrated. Until a metric is developed that directly accounts for sidewalk conditions across multiple jurisdictions, this is a debate that will be impossible to settle, as measurement of walkability will remain largely subjective.

Can Transit Ever be a Free Ride? In Vienna, Perhaps

If there’s one debate in transportation that’s never-ending, it’s the argument between those who say transportation systems should be free for the disadvantaged and those who believe that these systems must be self-sustaining or even profitable. The former group claims that low-income riders are dependent on mass transit to get to their low-paying jobs, so fares must be kept at nominal levels without regard for operations and capital improvement costs. The latter thinks that all entities, including governments, should be run like private companies and earn a profit. Sadly, both sides are living in a fantasy world.

In San Francisco, advocates for low-income students are pushing the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to offer free passes to disadvantaged youth. Their argument is based on the claim that school bus routes are being cut back and students’ families can’t afford to pay full price for MUNI fares. Fares climbed nearly 1.6% in July 2012, representing a 70% increase over costs in 2009. As exorbitant as that increases appears, it still leaves MUNI fares at a cheaper level than Boston and New York. But that’s small comfort to someone who suddenly can’t afford to ride.

Yet the need to raise fares was very real. This transit agency, like Washington’s Metro and virtually every other system around the US, had deferred maintenance for years thanks to a budget shortfall that’s over $20 million dollars this fiscal year---and climbing. In some cases, MUNI had gone so far as to use Glad garbage bags to insulate wiring on their fleet of electric buses. This sort of ingenuity is commonplace in underdeveloped countries. Perhaps an application for UN aid is in order if the fare increases don’t work out.

A Muni bus free of garbage bag insulation. Photo courtesy of Sam Bowman/Wikipedia.

So, is the only option to raise the fares forever upwards? That’s fine if you don’t mind catastrophic levels of vehicular traffic on the road. Part of the main justification for mass transit is to provide an alternative to sitting in traffic for hours on end. A fare rise will screen out those who either can’t afford it or simply don’t think the expense is worthwhile. Those who drop out of the transit system will inevitably get in their cars and attempt to drive on overburdened roads, thus leading to traffic jams.

Driving can appear to be a cheaper than transit to users because roads in the US are heavily subsidized. You seldom pay a toll, so the only cost is time and gas. Congestion pricing has been proposed in a number of cities, but many drivers don’t like the idea of suddenly having to pay for a road that they used to drive on for free. The scheme works well in London, but that didn’t stop an uproar from occurring when New York City proposed a congestion charge for Manhattan. 

A rare case of roads paying for themselves: the London Congestion Charge zone. Photo courtesy of Nevilley/Wikipedia.

Keeping prices for mass transit at a lower level would appear to be the best way to alleviate congestion, just to keep drivers off the road. But in terms of funding, you’re right back to where you started. The subway/streetcar/bus network will be overburdened and unable to pay its own way. Happily, there’s a way around this predicament.

Vienna in Austria recently reduced the price of its yearly passes from EUR 449 to EUR 365. The monthly passes dropped from EUR 49.50 to EUR 45. That’s a decline of over 18% and 8% respectively.

How can Vienna’s transit system keep going with such a dramatic cut in fares? Simple: they make up the revenues elsewhere.  Vienna is cleverly forcing occasional users to choose a long-term investment by raising single ticket fares 11% to EUR 2. The occasional riders are now faced with a stark choice: shell out more money to maintain the option of transit use or make a commitment that will save them a lot of cash, but will bind them to a transit mode for the long term. The rational ones will choose the discounted pass.

Vienna's streetcar fleet (part of Wiener Linien), now available at lower prices! Photo courtesy of Martin Ortner/Wikipedia.

Vienna will forego some cash from those who switched from full price single tickets to the discounted annual passes, but someone who buys a one-off pass does not have the same motivation to return to the system that an annual pass holder does. The annual pass holder has invested in multiple trips and is unlikely to let them expire, as that would be tantamount to throwing money away. The occasional single-ticket user has no such motivation. It’s the same principle that operates behind frequent flyer miles and other reward programs. However, there’s still lost revenue to be made up, as the existing user discount amounts to EUR 31 million. How does Vienna plan to make up the remaining balance?

It helps that the sales volume for the annual passes has jumped by 16% (60,000 additional passes). That’s an additional EUR 5 million in the coffers. As any big box retailer will tell you, the key to success is volume.

Fare dodging is another loss area that Vienna is tackling with vigor. The penalty for being caught without a ticket used to be EUR 70. It’s jumped a staggering 43% to EUR 100. Those users that are caught will obviously have an additional encouragement to buy an annual or monthly pass.

Does this mean that Vienna’s transit will be completely self-sustaining or even profitable? Of course not. But then again, the alternative---driving---isn’t, either. At least this model offers some measure of financial sustainability, fairness of access, and congestion improvement. That’s surely better than the model of deferred maintenance, endless fare increases, and capital starvation dominant in the US.