Tag Archives: bicycles

Kickstarting Urban Innovations

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We often hear from conservatives that the public sector is inherently inefficient, lacking the competitive pressures that drive innovation. A great deal of the evidence seems anecdotal, although it’s not hard to come by. The work of most public agencies is at least somewhat more visible than that of most corporations. People build long memories, for instance, of long lines for driver’s license renewals. Today, however, most of us renew online unless there is some reason we need to retake the test or replace a lost license quickly. How often do we remember the agencies that have created more modern customer service operations? I read in the Chicago Tribune’s endorsement today of Cook County treasurer Maria Pappas for re-election that, in the past 20 years, she had reduced her staff from 250 to 88.5, while also digitizing more than 4.7 million pages of old records. Was anyone noticing?

Count me a skeptic on the broad theory of greater efficiency in the private sector. I’ve long been more inclined to assess efficiency and innovation on a case-by-case basis. I don’t think it is at all impossible to innovate and streamline public-sector operations, nor do I think all businesses operate efficiently. In due course, obviously, the latter may go out of business, but there are also ways for voters to hold public agencies accountable—if they are so inclined, which sometimes they are not. People are sometimes more than willing to re-elect dinosaurs for a variety of reasons, just as they sometimes continue to patronize sluggish businesses. Human decision making in both the political and economic realms can be rather fallible, a fact that the field of economics is finally coming to terms with (witness the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, the subjects of the Michael Lewis book The Undoing Project, or of Richard Thaler).

It is thus heartening to see someone like Gabe Klein produce a short, snappy volume, Start-up City, that provides both case studies and principles for public-sector innovations in our cities, with an eye to building the cities of tomorrow that are in fact competitive with their peers in fostering both better service to their constituents and better prospects for environmentally and socially beneficial economic development.

Gabe Klein. Images courtesy of Island Press.

Klein’s book discusses the innovations he introduced first in Washington, D.C., and later in Chicago, in both cases managing the city’s transportation department. When the mayor of Washington appointed him to the first post, he pulled Klein out of the private sector, where he had been involved with a bicycle company, food trucks, and Zipcar. Those enterprises exposed him to competitive entrepreneurial environments where innovation flourished, but also to obstacles that regulators can pose to innovation. Klein flourished in the public sector as well because he firmly believed that innovation in public agencies, even those that had been somewhat stodgy and resistant to change in the past, was eminently possible. He set out to prove it through a combination of public-private partnerships, new thinking about agency missions, and a determination to find a way to make things happen. He distills the lessons from these experiences in a series of short eight chapters that are called, well, lessons.

Those lessons are not bashful or pain-free. For example, Lesson #1: Don’t Be Afraid to Screw Up and Learn. Klein’s underlying point is simple: If you spend your time indulging a fear of making mistakes—which, sometimes, in the public sector, can be very visible—you will accomplish little or nothing. This preoccupation may ensure short-term survival, but in the end, it is self-defeating (not to mention boring). It helps, of course, to have a mayor or other public chief executive who has your back. (Get that assurance before you accept the post.)

I won’t belabor the points here because I’d rather encourage you to read this book, which is not a long read but is definitely an inspiring one. But I will note that, in both cities, despite some entrenched opposition, Klein managed to instill numerous and prominent bicycle lanes on city streets, as well as engineering the completion of the 606 Trail in Chicago, a project about which I have written in the past, and the Riverwalk in downtown Chicago. Along the way, he discusses the marketing and branding of public projects, creative approaches to financing those projects, and effective means of engaging the private sector in meaningful partnerships. You will also learn from Klein’s smooth prose that he is an effective salesman, communicator, and presenter, making it small wonder that Mayors Adrian Fenty in Washington and Rahm Emanuel in Chicago would seek him out to serve in their administrations.

But I also want to make clear that Klein is not sui generis and does not claim to be. One need only look at the innovations of Janette Sadik-Khan in New York City under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, creating pedestrian walkways in the middle of Manhattan while improving traffic flow, to know that such innovation can abound in the public sector. (Sadik-Khan has her own book, Street Fight, that details her experiences in city government.) All that is required is the political will to turn the entrepreneurial spirit loose in city government. The only real obstacle is a lack of commitment and imagination.

Jim Schwab

The High View of Chicago

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The Bloomingdale Trail (awaiting improvements) viewed from our backyard

In my last blog post, I extolled some of the virtues of staying put, at least for a vacation, as opposed to roaming the world, a charge to which I plead guilty on a regular basis, though more in connection with work than pleasure. That was a teaser to my real goal of introducing readers to one of the most intriguing projects in Chicago in recent years. The wonderful thing is that my wife and I live just 50 feet from the Bloomingdale Trail. I can even overcome my dislike for the name the larger project surrounding the trail has acquired: The 606. Intended to convey the idea that this is everyone’s project in Chicago by using the first three digits of the city’s many ZIP codes, I find it as unappealing as most things numerical when a real name using words could have been found. But this decision has been made, and it does not necessarily harm anything. The idea seems to have been that the simple name, “Bloomingdale Trail,” which we started out with, and which simply parallels the name of the narrow street beneath it, would confuse people. There are towns named Bloomingdale, after all, and somehow we would not understand, or people elsewhere in the city would think the trail is not theirs because it is ours. I don’t follow all that, but I’ll live with it. The project is still worthwhile. And Bloomingdale remains the name of the trail itself.

What we are discussing here is a public amenity born of an old railroad spur line. Beginning in 1873, the Chicago and Pacific Railroad operated this 2.7-mile span through some dense neighborhoods, serving  various small factories. Despite these economic merits, the line caused a good deal of consternation when its trains tied up traffic, blocked fire trucks, and otherwise displeased the neighbors in Logan Square, West Town, and Humboldt Park, the three North Side neighborhoods in Chicago that it traversed. The residents pleaded and demanded with City Hall that the tracks be raised above street level to minimize conflict, and over several years, beginning in 1910, the city did just that. Instead of the railroad continuing to run down the center of Bloomingdale Avenue, it was raised 20 feet with the construction of two concrete triangles into which dirt was poured, with the tracks laid on top. A total of 38 viaducts then allowed street traffic to cross beneath the railroad. However, by 1994, when we built our house on Campbell Avenue, the railroad was barely operational, and the question was what would become of it. Tearing it down would have been very expensive.

The Campbell Avenue viaduct.

So the question arose: Why not turn it into linear public open space?

And so the Bloomingdale Trail began to emerge as a conceivable alternative. By 2004, the Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail had emerged as leading advocates in the community for such a course. Plans began to be laid, and by the time Rahm Emanuel became mayor in 2011, efforts were underway through the city to use federal transportation enhancement funds to develop such a park, including bicycle and pedestrian trails as well as street furniture and trees, all within a design that would allow people in this elevated space to enjoy magnificent views of the city below while finding peace and quiet, and maybe even some wildlife, in a high place.

Of course, as with any such project, there were issues to be addressed, problems to be solved. How would the city protect the privacy of homeowners and condominium dwellers adjacent to the trail? How would it provide adequate access to the trail not only for the physically fit, including bicyclists, but for the disabled? A system of winding ramps emerging from existing public park spaces throughout the span of the trail showed up on diagrams and maps at public meetings. Chicago responded as Chicago does, and hundreds of us showed up at neighborhood sessions to discuss, debate, suggest alternatives, and ask questions of the Chicago Department of Transportation, the lead agency in the project, the Chicago Park District, and the staff of the Trust for Public Land, which was representing the Park District in the process of acquiring public input. This transpired throughout the last two years, and finally, the 606 Project, which includes all the accessory amenities to the trail, was inaugurated, and work on the trail began this summer. The mayor wants to be able to ride the trail by the end of next year; certainly, it is likely to be finished before the next municipal elections in the spring of 2015, however ambitious that schedule may seem. This is, after all, the City of Broad Shoulders. Things get done. One of those broad shoulders is about to become a trail—and only the second elevated rail-trail in the U.S., after the High Line in Manhattan.

 

Work underway on access point at Milwaukee Ave.

 

It is also likely to become a source of joy, exercise, and exposure to urban nature for thousands of nearby residents and those throughout the city who are willing to find their way to this combination of concrete, dirt, trails, and trees that towers just beyond our property line.

 

Jim Schwab