Irrationality in Buckhead

Let me get this out right at the beginning - I really don't like Buckhead.  Any neighborhood built around high-end retail and soul-crushing traffic is not really a place I am going to enjoy being.  Of course I am sure the people who run Buckhead don't care what I think so that's fine.  Let's move on from there.

And any moving to be done in Buckhead is going to be done very slowly, by car, because Buckhead residents and the business leaders in the neighborhood have come out strongly against a plan by the Georgia Department of Transportation that would replace the underutilized inner lanes, both north- and south-bound, with a center turn lane and use the other lane to add bicycle lanes on each side, between the traffic lanes and the curb.  Originally the plan had been, I think, to extend this configuration northward but now it is only proposed for Peachtree between Deering Road -- just north of I-85 -- and Peachtree Battle (between the small red circles I've added to the map below).

Now in terms of bike infrastructure this is not nothing --the Beltline crosses Peachtree about in the middle of this segment -- but it is not fabulous.  But given the outrage in Buckhead, you would think the road was being permanently closed to vehicular traffic.  Former mayor Sam Massell, president of the Buckhead Coalition, compared public sentiment in Buckhead over this proposal to that generated by the proposal to put a highway through intown neighborhoods in the 1970s and the extension of Georgia 400 through Buckhead.  I find this an astonishing analogy, given that then peoples' homes were being destroyed for new highways.  In this proposal, there will be a dedicated left turn lane and new bike lanes to replaced two underused lanes that are responsible for more than their share of accidents.  The new design will be safer for drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists, but the residents of Buckhead are outraged by the proposal.

That's the word used to describe the reaction to a presentation by an engineer from GDOT at the October 8 meeting of the Board of the Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods.

In the Q&A session, meeting attendees expressed outrage. The apparently unanimous response was solid opposition to the GDOT proposal, though reasons cited for opposition differed. Some felt that bikes had no place on Peachtree since motor vehicle traffic was already very congested and getting worse. Others felt the congestion on fewer traffic lanes on Peachtree would flood their quiet neighborhood streets with cut-through traffic. Some questioned if there were even enough Peachtree area bike traffic to justify having bike lanes. Others expressed concern for the safety for bike riders who would only have a four-foot lane, bounded by a ten-foot traffic lane on the left and the curb on the right. Some argued that Ponce de Leon was a poor model for what should be done to Peachtree since PDL’s right of way was wider than Peachtree’s. And so forth.

To be fair, not everyone in Buckhead actually is outraged.  I know one person who is a Buckhead resident who has been advocating on the other side of this issue, and Jim Durrett, executive director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District, has provided very supportive comments to The Saporta Report.  But Sam Massell has gone on record "opposing any restriping of any part of Peachtree in Buckhead (between I-85 and Club Drive) that includes bike lanes at this time."  (I can't figure out how to attach the pdf of Mr. Massell's letter to the GDOT Commissioner, so I will put the text at the end.  It is available for download with the AJC story.)

I am astonished at the intensity of opposition that this proposal has generated.  Perhaps people who live and work in Buckhead don't go anywhere else, and don't know that real cities that want to create places that people value are making space for bicycles and pedestrians.  (A few examples below from Minneapolis, Washington, DC, and Chicago and also this link.)

Minneapolis

Minneapolis

Empty bike rental rack - Washington, DC

Chicago

Chicago

Chicago

Perhaps spending so much time staring at the brake lights of the car in front of them has made them not completely rational, and the idea of a person on a bicycle speeding past them, while they are stuck in traffic that they have helped create, elicits irrational rage.  I don't know, but I do know after learning a little more about this issue, Buckhead is now inextrictably linked in my mind with irrational people who would rather have car crashes and dead bicyclists than lose one traffic lane they weren't really using anyway.  Is this a part of town you should feel safe visiting or doing business in?  And any forward-looking business looking to relocate should not go to a part of Atlanta that is so manifestly irrational.  There's plenty of commercial property available where people are not so crazy.

How disappointing that leadership in Buckhead (with the exception of Mr. Durrett) is unwilling to actually lead in a forward-looking way.  It will probably change, eventually, but until then, I'm planning on spending as little of my time and money in Buckhead as possible.

Text of Mr. Massell's letter to Russell McMurry, Commissioner, Georgia Department of Transportation

Dear Russell:

When I worked at City Hall in the 1970s I instituted what we titled the Pedal Pool with donated bicycles for staff who had trips to make downtown.  I have long been a dues supporting member o the Atlanta Bicycle Bicycle Coalition and I support its principles.  We were one of the first to contribute ($5,000) to the Path Foundation to help provide early path work at Chastain Park.  I make a special effort to publish routes (about 11.5 miles) of bicycle lanes in our Annual Buckhead Guidebook.  I have written articles encouraging more respect between auto drivers and bicycle riders and I defend the rights of each group to use our public streets as regulated by local Ordinances and other regulations.

In what seems to be a relatively short period of time, our Community has come some distance in welcoming the growth of this mode of transportation.  I'm confident we will continue to increase the practicality of coexistence between bikes and cars.  This is particularly true in Buckhead as Millennials continue to become a larger percentage in the population profile.

However, from our Members and from the General Public, it appears that the argument we face concerning adding bike lanes now to part of Peachtree separates at about age 30 for those in favor against those opposed.  On a popular vote we believe that would calculate to as many as 63% being in opposition.

The Mission of the Buckhead Coalition is "to nurture the quality of life of those who live, visit, work and play" in this Community, and as such we see our position must be to oppose any restriping of any part of Peachtree in Buckhead (between I-85 and Club Drive) that includes bike lanes at this time.  As such, we respectfully urge the State, our City and our CID to discontinue any further consideration of adding any such bike lanes on this Public right-of-way.

Sincerely,

Sam Massell
President

Rezoning Elizabeth Ann Lane

The developer's request for a variance at Cumberland and Wessyngton was on the agenda for the Neighborhood Planning Unit (NPU) meeting on Monday night of last week.  It's not that I thought it wouldn't go through, but I was curious what would happen.  It ended up being passed with very little discussion.

But there was a huge crowd -- a fill-up-the-sanctuary at Virginia-Highland Church-sized crowd -- and long lines to get in because they were verifying addresses on the way in. The reason for the big crowd was a rezoning request in the Lindridge Martin Manor neighborhood, which is part of our NPU.  (Lindridge Martin Manor is one of the neighborhoods that's been doing great work with the South Fork Conservancy on trails.)  Even though this didn't really have anything to do with Virginia Highland or Morningside, the notice went out widely through the neighborhood email lists that this proposed rezoning was a threat to our neighborhoods and we should show up. 

Elizabeth Ann Lane is a dead-end street off Sheridan, behind FedEx Plaza (on Cheshire Bridge, just south of I-85). 

There is commercial development to the north and west of it, a development of barely detached houses and another development under construction to the south, separating it from the strip mall where the Tara Theater and the Publix is.  So this street is nearly surrounded by commercial development.

All of the homeowners on Elizabeth Ann Lane and the adjacent area of Sheridan Road want to sell their houses to a developer who is proposing to put 89 townhomes on the site.

I didn't go into the NPU meeting with any particular opinion about this, although maybe I was included to oppose it on general principle, since the Virginia Highland Zoning Committee seemed to feel so strongly about it. 

The developer's representative made a brief presentation and implied that the houses were run down and an eyesore and they were doing the neighborhood a favor by getting rid of them.  On the subject of traffic, he said that there are fewer cars on Cheshire Bridge now than there used to be, and really, this wouldn't really make it worse.  Personally, I did not find this a highly persuasive argument.

But then the representative of the homeowners spoke.  They want to sell their houses to the developer, and the implication was that they are being offered enough for them that they can get the bigger houses they need for growing families, including accommodating other family members with special needs.  It was a good deal for them, but it wouldn't happen without the rezoning.  And already there is commercial development on two sides of them, so really, the site probably shouldn't be zoned R-4A anyway.

Then the opposition spoke, led by a (I think) a spokesperson for one of the zoning committees.  The arguments were (1) it's not consistent with the Comprehensive Development Plan; (2) it will take away some relatively affordable housing in the neighborhood; (3) the homeowners have no right to expect to make more from the sale of their homes than their value as single-family detached homes, given current R-4A zoning; and (4) the traffic is bad.  Then a man who identified himself as a professor of urban planning at one of the local universities said very emphatically several times that this was just "bad planning," without ever saying what about it was bad, and someone from the neighborhood said that traffic is so bad that the trucks that pick up trash sometimes skip his home.

While the discussion was going on, I looked up Elizabeth Ann Lane on Google Maps on my phone, and saw the map that I inserted above.  If this is what the Comprehensive Development Plan wants for this particular street - well, my thought was, that's bad planning.  And if the concern is affordable housing, the city could require the developer to provide some below market-rate units to school teachers, firefighters, and police officers.  And although the traffic may be bad, in the long run we do need density, and the developer cited in their proposal the proximity to bus lines on Cheshire Bridge and Lindbergh.

Last weekend, I went to Elizabeth Ann Lane.  Contrary to what the developer's representative implied at the NPU meeting, there was only one house that was in bad shape, and it was boarded up, unlike the derelict house near us on North Morningside.  Most of the houses look like the original houses on my street. 

Across Sheridan Road is a development called Sheridan Place, with pretty big houses with double garages that are really close together, and a new development called Sheridan Estates, with luxury homes "from the $800's" with (according to the signs) super pantries, mud rooms, and European appliances (I hope they work better than our Bosch dishwasher).  Incidentally I note that Sheridan Estates is being marketed by Muffley & Associates, along with their Dream Home program, which is where they pay a premium to buy up older homes that can be knocked down and replaced with other houses.  Given the discussion at the NPU meeting, apparently this is only permitted if the houses to be built are large, really expensive ones.

So I sided with the residents of Elizabeth Ann Lane, but the combined influence of all those opposing neighborhood associations had pretty well packed the meeting, and it was defeated, 189 to 124. I'm not completely sure this is the end of the story; I think the ultimate decision belongs to the city, and the developer's proposal concluded with the statement that any action other than approval would violate the developer's constitutional rights under the Georgia and U.S. Constitutions, so once the city makes a decision, it may still not be done. So we'll see what happens.

In the meantime, I have to wonder if anyone else looked at Google Maps before weighing in on this.

Getting There from Here

I hadn't heard of the MARTA Army until September, when they sat their recruiting station up across Boulevard from where I was working at Atlanta Streets Alive, back in September.  I was working at the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition table in front of Blueprint Church and between the Love to Ride group, that was loaning out bikes, and the new Atlanta bike share project, that had examples of some of the bikes that might be available in Atlanta next year.

Across the street were a couple of guys with a table and a tent and a sign that said MARTA Army.  I was working by myself at the ABC tent for quite a while so it wasn't until mid-afternoon that I was able to walk over and talk to them.  The two guys at the table told me that the MARTA Army was working to improve the rider experience on MARTA and their first project is an adopt-a-bus-stop project.  I didn't know that I wanted necessarily to adopt a bus stop, but I did sign up for their mailing list.

Later, I checked out their website ("Hey there, Metro Atlanta LET'S BUILD A WORLD CLASS TRANSIT SYSTEM")  Here's their vision:

The Atlanta region has been diagnosed with a bad case of urban sprawl and traffic congestion by urban planners and transportation experts. Out city needs better public transportation to become more accessible, equitable, and competitive. The Atlanta region's fragmented governmental institutions still lack the support to build the transit system we need. The initiative for world class transit system must come from citizens. Together, we can show that the Atlanta Region is ready for a world class transit system.

This sounded pretty good to me, so I made a small contribution and showed up for bootcamp at Across the Street in the Old Fourth Ward in mid-October.  I think I was the oldest person there (Georgia Tech graduate students seemed to be the major demographic group), but I signed up to get a schedule for the bus stop nearest me.  I didn't stick around long enough to pick it up -- printing and laminating the signs was taking a long time -- but an Emory graduate student offered to drop it by my house later, and I took her up on that offer.

The bus stop closest to my house, at Wessyngton and North Highland, is a stop at which I'd never actually caught a bus, although I did get off there at least once during that week that I was a MARTA commuter, earlier this fall.  But Hannah dropped the sign off at the house, and later Tom and I put it up.  I didn't do it quite right -- the plastic ties were just a bit too tight -- but now the schedule is posted, and riders who don't have a phone or who don't want to use up their data (an issue I heard at bootcamp) can at least know when the bus is supposed to come.  More importantly, maybe, non-riders will take a look and think, you know, maybe I could take the bus.

When Atlanta Streets Alive came to Peachtree Street in late October, I had expected to be out of town, so I didn't volunteer to work.  Then the trip got cancelled and I thought maybe Tom would join me, so I still didn't volunteer.  But he didn't want to or couldn't (I don't remember the details) and ABC really needed help that day so I ended up saying I'd work and ended up assigned to a tent near the Midtown MARTA station.  I didn't have any idea where I could park -- and I am not brave enough to ride my bike there, even on a Sunday -- so I checked the schedules and One Bus Away and got there and back on the bus, from my very own bus stop.

I'm still a big supporter of bike infrastructure in Atlanta, and think it is part of the picture for what Atlanta needs, but what our city needs more than anything is a real transit system, so there is a real alternative to driving for most of us much of the time.  Younger people are driving less; maybe when they are older they'll move to the suburbs but somehow I don't think so.  Atlanta needs transit, and it needs citizens who will advocate for it and who will use it, now, to get to the places they can get to on it.

Last night we went to the symphony. The surface parking lot where we used to park is closed now so we had to park in the deck on 15th Street.  There's a MARTA station, right there, but no easy way to get there from here.  We paid $10 to park.  That's MARTA fares for two people, round trip.

So when you see a schedule on a bus stopm like this one at Highland and Amsterdam, check it out.  Maybe you can get somewhere you need to go, at least sometimes.  Maybe you too will join the army.  And there are a couple of bus stops on the other side of Highland that still need schedules.

A Halloween Intervention

It started with a query on the neighborhood Facebook page from one of our new neighbors - how much candy should we get for Halloween?  The responses were quick and depressing.  Not much.  Hardly any trick-or-treaters.  Some years, we don't even see most of the kids who live on our street, much less anyone else.

(Just now I started to write that "I can understand how some adults may not enjoy Halloween," but that's not actually true-- I don't really understand it.  Halloween involves outdoors and getting out in your neighborhood in the evening and non-threatening interactions with children you don't know, as well as a chance to decorate your house and yard and wear costumes, so I can't understand why anyone wouldn't enjoy it, but maybe some people don't -- dentists, for example.)

The best place I ever lived as far as observing Halloween was Baltimore.  In the late 1980s, I lived in the Hampden neighborhood in Baltimore, and at least at that time, they really knew how to celebrate Halloween.  I lived in a house on Roland Avenue that year, and -- like our new neighbors on Wessyngton -- didn't quite know what to expect in terms of numbers of trick or treaters I should be prepared for.  But it seemed like almost all the houses had Halloween decorations up, so I thought it might be a Big Deal, and got what I thought would be a sufficient amount of candy.  Then I reconsidered and got some more, just to be safe.  On Halloween night, the visitors to my door were pretty much constant throughout the evening.  I have no idea how many trick or treaters came around that night, but it was a lot.  I remember I was concerned I was going to run out of candy. I didn't, but it was close.

If decorating is the measure, Halloween is more of an event in our neighborhood every year.  More and more houses in Morningside have elaborate decorations of the type that used to be reserved for Christmas, with lights and inflatables and life-sized plastic skeletons and tombstones in the front yard.  Here are a few more or less random ones from North Morningside.

Now, based on the Baltimore experience, I would expect that this increasing interest in decorating would translate into hoards of trick or treaters, but it just hasn't happened, or at least not on Wessyngton. 

There were more houses with Halloween decorations on Wessyngton, this year, and some of us put our houses on the Treat Map that was on Nextdoor, but it's not like it was candy corn from Highland to Cumberland.  

What to do? I thought maybe some Halloween lights on our street signs would help, with the thought that trick or treaters have to make a decision to turn onto Wessyngton from Highland or Cumberland, and the houses with lights and decorations up aren't necessarily so visible from those corners. So on Halloween afternoon I went to the Halloween store at the development at Piedmont and Sidney Marcus, to get some battery-powered lights to put up on our street sign at Wessyngton and Cumberland.  

Everyone else in the Atlanta metro area appeared to also have last minute Halloween shopping needs as well.  Even before I got into the store, there was a hint that it was going to be crowded, as everyone visible in the parking lot was converging on this one store.  When I arrived, the line for check out extended to the door and I decided I didn't want to buy anything there that badly, so went to the level below to Target where I found some battery-powered Halloween lights.  There were plenty of last minute shoppers there too, but it was a bigger store and they weren't so overwhelmed.  Once I got home, Iain and I put the lights up on the street sign and we hoped for the best.

We got some early trick or treaters -- mostly little kids who live on our street -- and they continued to trickle by throughout the evening.  Probably there were 20 or 25 who came by, more than I remember ever having.  Was it more houses with decorations, or the Treat Map, or the lights on the street sign?  I'm not sure, but probably all of the above.  And once it got dark, Tom built a fire in our new fire ring out on the drive way, and several of our neighbors stopped by. All in all, it was a very nice Halloween.

The next day, I went back to Target and got more lights (now 50% off), including another set of battery-powered lights for the street sign at the other end of Wessyngton.  

Next year, we'll do even better. I'll be sure to have plenty of firewood, as well.

A Request for a Variance

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I didn't get the letter, but one of my neighbors who did get it send me a photo of it. It was a request to support a variance to reduce the secondary side yard setback from 17.5 feet to 7 feet for a new home to be built at the corner at Wessyngton and Cumberland.  There's a duplex there now; it's been a while since I knew any of the people living there.

The variance request went before the MLPA Zoning Committee a week ago Monday.  Once we saw the site plan, it was clear that the 7 foot setback was not from the curb but from several feet inside the curb; the proposed house will be similarly placed on the lot as the existing house, although it will be facing Wessyngton.  There will be about a 15 foot setback from the curb, unlike the 35 feet setbacks for other houses on this side of the street.

A lot of us from Wessyngton Road came to the zoning committee meeting.  The spokesperson for the developer that was requesting the variance said that the more than 3,000 square foot house that they proposed to build would be in the style of an English cottage that would fit into the neighborhood.  (I am unaware of other English cottages on our street, but maybe I've missed something.)  There were questions about the trees that would have to be removed for the two car garage and the driveway. The speakers for the developer said they'd distributed some letters; they hadn't heard much back, they said.  There was a neighbor who was supportive, they said, and maybe they said (I'm not sure) there was one on Cumberland who had expressed a concern about rental houses.  The neighbor they'd said was supportive was there in person, and he said he was being misquoted, that he'd said he'd have to see the plans.

But there were a lot of us there from Wessyngton Road, and there were questions about sidewalks and a suggestion that they back off on the comments about rental houses.  And there were questions from the zoning committee members about why the house couldn't be farther from the curb, and about the trees that were going to have to be removed.  They ended up forwarding it to the MLPA board contingent on having the elevation and the footprint of the house on record with the city, and to see if a sidewalk was feasible.

Last night it went to the MLPA board and the developers' team was back to present it again, this time with the updated plans that had been submitted to the city.  They were talking among themselves before the meeting, and one of them was saying that the neighbors (that would be us) had come to the zoning meeting because we didn't understand what was proposed, and once we saw the plan we were all fine with it.  I told him that that at least some of us still had some concerns about having a house facing Wessyngton so much closer to the curb than any other house on the street.

The board ended up approving it.  One of the neighbors was strongly in favor of it, and one was strongly opposed.  The rest of us didn't say much.  It seemed pretty much inevitable.

Since then, I've done some thinking about what's really important to me about my street.  Honestly, the houses -- whether they are new English cottages or 1950s ranch houses or the apartments that used to be at the other end of Wessyngton -- don't matter that much.  What matters are the people who live in them; it's the people that make the neighborhood a good place to live.  Some of them are renters and some of them are homeowners.  Some of the renters have been some of the best neighbors, over the years, like our friend Mark, who was the best guitar player on the street.

So, fine, they can build whatever they want. Just find us a really good neighbor to buy the house.

Extra points if they can play guitar.