Fairgrounds Opportunities

Alright, I know it's been a while since I last posted, and I'm sorry. Life caught up with me and I lost interest in this blog for a while. But I thought I'd post something here again...

The talk about a Downtown Arena seems to have died down recently, and I'm fine with that, having stated my thoughts on that proposal before. However, I would agree that Albuquerque could do with a nice civic arena (not that anything could ever replace our wonderful Pit, now newly refurbished) tied to some sort of entertainment complex. That's when it struck me: we already have an arena: it's called Tingley Coliseum.



Of course, Tingley is a rather small arena and is something of fixer-upper. But it does have quite a bit going for it: being in the lower reaches of the Heights it is centrally located to a large population (why do you think they keep building new grocery stores out there?) and the Fairgrounds, being a large entertainment complex, is already home to a wide variety of events both large and small. The State Fair is the big one, but there's also the Flea Market and the occasional concert or small convention, like the Home and Garden ones. While a Downtown Arena was touted in part as a means to expand convention space, we forgot that we already have a large area for major events just a few miles east. It just needs a little refurbishing...



This is a rough sketch of the layout of the Fairgrounds today. The red area is the public area of the Fairgrounds, where the exhibit buildings are; the brown area at the north end is the service area; the large gray area on the east side is the racetrack; and the blue area at the bottom is parking, with the bluish-green area being the part of the parking lot taken up by the midway when the State Fair rolls around.

Recently, the racetrack/casino complex closed up shop with plans to move elsewhere, leaving a gaping area of the Fairgrounds that is now unused. There is an incredible opportunity here.



Here's another rough sketch, this one of what could be. The public areas of the Fairgrounds has been mostly left alone due to their historic nature (I find the main street that's there today quite charming, myself), but everything else has been rather dramatically altered. The service area has been pushed south, so that it has about the same amount of space as it does today but with new space facing Lomas Boulevard. That space, along with the space along Louisiana and Central has been filled with private development - I'm thinking midrise office and retail buildings here myself, something that's a higher density than what's across the street today and situated next to the sidewalk with parking behind, so as to create a decent pedestrian environment on the street.

The dark green lines extending out from the center are meant to be large sidewalks, to improve the pedestrian connection from the street to the fairgrounds. The large green squares in the middle are park space; desperately needed in this part of town. There's enough room here for soccer fields and large lawns, which can also be closed off and used for the State Fair two weeks out of the year.

And then of course, you'll notice the large round structure in the very heart of it all - a new civic arena, much larger than the current Tingley Coliseum. Whereas a Downtown Arena would have a limited size, all the space vacated by the racetrack here means a new arena here can be as big as desired.

Downtown already has plenty of entertainment options - there's plenty of bars and theaters there; adding yet one more venue, one for which there's limited room in Downtown, isn't necessary. What Downtown really needs is more residential and more retail, to accomplish the goal of a truly mixed-use area and make it more vibrant and livable. Why build yet one more major entertainment complex when we have a perfectly good one just to the east that's also well-served by mass transit?

Not to mention that this neighborhood could use it; a massive influx of public dollars into this area could really spruce things up here. Developments like Talin are already helping out, but more is needed. Plus, it's an area that tourists are already seeing - think of everyone who gets off I-40 and drives down Central (or for that matter, goes to the State Fair). Wouldn't it make a greater impression on our visitors if we improved a part of town that really needed it, rather than pour yet more money into a neighborhood that's already seen a lot of gentrification?

Our Relationship With Water

Every now and then I see a post on Duke City Fox suggesting that some sort of riverfront promenade by built along the Rio Grande. Usually the San Antonio Riverwalk is cited in these discussions as a case example, another "wouldn't it be cool to have what they have?" Features like restaurants and shops perched on the river often pop up as possibilities in these discussions.

I've been formulating an opinion on this matter for quite a while now, and yesterday yet another post along these lines appeared on DCF, so I jumped into action. Although here the example used was Central Park in New York City, but the basic concept was the same.

Now, there are two main issues with this concept; one is environmental, while the other is more, I'll say "historical". First, the environmental:

The important thing to realize is that Bosque isn't really designed to serve as an urban park (although it does serve that function), it's designed more as a wildlife preserve; to preserve the environment that currently exists there. It's also one of the few remaining cottonwood forests of its type in the world, so naturally there is great sensitivity in this matter. Doing a landscape with grass lawns, floral gardens, and other non-native features just destroys the whole point of the Bosque.

Okay, so that's the practical, environmental take. But then there's my other point, the "historical":

I've been traveling a bit lately, and I've seen the waterfronts in San Francisco, San Diego, St. Louis, Chicago, New York City, and Pittsburgh in the last few years. Here's the thing though: those cities were built around their respective water features, be it the ocean or a river. There is a historical connection to their waterway; at one point, the entire well-being of the city relied on their connection via water to the rest of the world. Their economies were built on it - industry was constructed along the water; shipyards, factories, warehouses, ports, etc.

Once we hit globalization and these cities decide to go post-Industrial, the industry is torn down and the port functions moved elsewhere. All of a sudden, the desire to connect people to the river is an option, because the land is now available. And this connection makes sense; the city was built on the waterfront and the density is already there, so it offers open space to a large population and establishes that historical connection.

So how is Albuquerque different? Well, the city has never been organized around the Rio Grande. Neighborhoods like Los Duranes and Atrisco, remnants of the Spanish agriculture settlements in the valley, are organized around their acequias, but the Rio Grande was too wild and flooded too constantly to settle next to - settlements had to establish themselves just above the floodplain in order to thrive.

Then Albuquerque becomes established around man-made features - the railroad, then Route 66, then the freeways. This period is where most of the city's development took place. After sprawling outwards so much, development starts happening in relation to natural features again, but not to the river - instead, to the Sandia Mountains and the West Mesa, as people start desiring a space perched in the foothills or with a gorgeous view eastward across the valley. In some ways, we are more connected to the Sandia Mountains than to the river - we see it every day, we watch it change with the seasons and with the light of the setting sun, and it seems to watch over us. For crying out loud, we built a tramway to the top of it. The crest and the foothills are kind of like our own little promenade, where many of us go to for regular recreation.

The function of waterways in Albuquerque has never really been for economic or transportation purposes, like it has been in New York or Pittsburgh. The Rio Grande and the Bosque have served as a source of water (both a long time ago with agricultural settlements and much more recently with the San Juan-Chama diversion project), a flood buffer, and an obstacle to be bridged to allow further West Side development. The recreational aspect has been more a side benefit than the primary purpose.

So we have to be careful when we talk about doing riverfront promenades and such along the Rio Grande, because doing so just doesn't fit our historical association with the river. Not to say the Bosque couldn't use a little improvement - I'd love to see a few small boardwalks providing access to the river, where you can sit and watch the river and the wildlife, since river access currently is rather limited, but beyond that would be too much.

Finding the Center

If you asked someone from Albuquerque what the center of the city was, you’d find that the answer varies by the person. Some people spend their entire lives – living, shopping, working, relaxing – in the Heights, and for them the center of their lives is the pleasant houses and scenic trails in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains or the shopping centers of Uptown. Many people work at Kirtland or the labs, and for them that heavily guarded base is a logical center of city life. Some are farmers and ranchers of the South Valley, living by the fields, maintaining the ditches and relaxing in local cafes and bars (Note that all three of these are generalizations, merely examples to grasp a sense of the diversity of the people who live in Albuquerque). As in any other city, to each individual is their own – their own place to live, their own place of work, their own place to reflect.

For many years now, a well-meaning group of people have attempted to establish Downtown Albuquerque as the primary center of the city; the place that, if anyone asked, there would be no doubt that this is the heart. Their reasons are numerous and sometimes difficult to translate into words; their motives are based on a comparative analysis with other cities who have big, impressive Downtowns and have gone through similar soul-searching efforts, as well as a historical context which tells them that Downtown was the center of things until an invention called the automobile grew too popular.

When the railroad came to town, they knew that the place where they put the train station would become the center of a new city. The Old Town Plaza was where the settlement of Alburquerque was born, but the intersection of Central Avenue and First Street was where the modern city of Albuquerque was created. The area surrounding the train station remained as the central business district of the city until the middle of the century. However, there is a problem with using this historical context to create the Downtown Albuquerque of the future: until the construction of the Interstate Freeway System, Downtown was literally the crossroads of the city. Not only that, but Downtown was the center of a much smaller city – few lived west of the river, the fairgrounds were at the edge of the city, and as of 1940 the population of Albuquerque was only about 35,000 people. Even connected to the rest of the country by railroad, Albuquerque was a small city – there is little history of industry here and there have never been any major corporate investments in Downtown (how many large corporations can you name with headquarters in Albuquerque?). How does one take this context to make a place that will serve as the center of a region of - what is it, 800,000 people? - and where jobs, housing, services, and recreation have become increasingly scattered?

My answer is that you can’t. To attempt to do so is to make Downtown Albuquerque into something that it isn’t, that it never has been and most likely never will. Rather than looking at the city as one big mass which is missing a center, perhaps it would be of more use to break down the city into individual components, and find where the center(s) are. The center doesn’t have to be a formal space; it could be something quite simple – a little park, a major intersection, a certain street, even a strip mall – just a place where people gather for some particular reason – to relax, to shop, to work, or a combination of these.

So, in the pursuit of a center, let me share with you my center. Obviously, as a UNM student who lives in the UNM area, the campus is going to be a major center of my life. It also has components that enable it to act as a major city center, namely a whole lot of people working (if you think about it, there is little that separates the office worker from the college student in the eyes of a city planner – we both have to commute, congregate in these large buildings, and work), but also large social spaces which also act as places to recreate, spaces to be entertained, and plenty of shops and restaurants nearby which generate their business thanks to the presence of the university. It is a dynamic area with a culture and a lot of users, so where is the center of this city center?

For me, it’s the corner of Central and Cornell. No other intersection in the city (or for that matter, any city) comes close to this one in what it means in my personal life; not only does the intersection act as an entry point into the campus, but each corner contains some important function in my student life – bookstore on one corner, George Pearl Hall (where most of my classes are) on another corner, the Frontier on another, and on the last corner and just a little down the way is Saggio’s and the post office on one side and Satellite Coffee on another. Here (at least for me, which is the whole point I'm driving at) is the beating heart of Albuquerque, pumping cars and buses along Central Avenue and pedestrians and bicyclists in and out of the campus.

The way I see it, one cannot necessarily create their own center. One has to be pushed into that center. One has to find their center. And this is where the task of creating centers becomes so darn complex, because so much of it is about the individual. Take the urban renewal efforts of the 1960s, which gave us Downtown’s Civic Plaza. It would seem an ideal center point – important functions surround the space, there is plenty of room for large groups to gather, and plenty of decorative elements – yet Civic Plaza has a very dead feel for the majority of time. Save for the occasional large event, few seem to want to spend much time here. Rather, it is Central Avenue that delivers the goods; people will take time to explore the businesses along Central Avenue.

So what does this all mean in the pragmatic sense? What can planning do? How do we give people that center? Here’s some ideas:

1) Find a place of importance. No matter what neighborhood it is, there will be something of importance that's already there. As I said above, it can be virtually anything; it just has to be a place where people already gather.

2) Improve the place of importance. Allow people to walk comfortably through the space. Install the missing components that prevent the space from inviting people in. Give people the chance to explore the place of importance, and it will become a center.

3) Once you have established the place of importance as a center, then fill in the missing pieces and connect it to other centers. Raise densities and add services not yet in the area. Connect it to other centers via mass transit. The key isn't necessarily to create a city center, but a neighborhood center, where one can transition from the private life of their home and their neighborhood to the public life of the outer world, of the other centers of the city.

Braving the Balloon Fiesta Park & Ride

Every year I make an effort to go to the Balloon Fiesta – it’s one of my absolute favorite things about Albuquerque and I can not stand the thought of missing out on the fun. Of course, I don’t have a car, and since all my friends seem to be too busy with homework or just uninterested in the Balloon Fiesta, I have to take mass transit to the Balloon Fiesta, which means taking the park & ride. Last year I took the Rail Runner, but this year I decided to ride the bus from the Coronado mall lot.

Now before you start laughing, let me just say the one thing everyone who makes a bad decision says: it seemed like a good idea at the time. You see, I also had to work yesterday afternoon, so I wanted as much time as possible between when I got back and when I had to go to work. I had only two realistic options: taking the bus from Coronado mall, or taking the Rail Runner. Taking the bus from Coronado seemed like the best option, because there were very few Rail Runner trains serving the fiesta and the first one taking people back from the Balloon Fiesta shows up at 9:30, while the park & ride buses start taking off at 8:30 – a whole hour earlier. Surely that would be the most convenient option!

So the plan was put into action. I took the very first 766 bus east, which arrived at Uptown just before 6:30. I walked to the Coronado lot and first saw the huge line which wound around a few of the parking aisles. My spirits were high until I realized it was getting awfully close to 7:00 and the mass ascension was starting. Right about 7:00 buses seemed to stop showing up, so the line was still for about 10 minutes while they called in more. They finally came and we took off at around 7:15.

The bus driver took us on a speedy route up San Pedro to Osuna, then down Osuna to San Mateo, but then the speed stopped when she pulled in to the Cliff’s amusement park lot. Something was wrong with the tires (and there was a slight smell of burning rubber in the air now) and she wouldn’t be able to take us all the way to the launch field. Deferred maintenance. Great. Fortunately, she had called in another bus, which was waiting at the Cliff’s lot for us.

This second bus was able to get us all the way to the launch field, but not before taking the park & ride’s rather convoluted route up Edith, across a couple of industrial lots, and down a couple of side streets, by which point half of the balloons were already in the air. We got there at about 7:40, and the mass ascension was already half-over. This is where I was thankful I had gotten my ticket online in advance, so I could skip the line for getting tickets at the gate (although it was short) and head straight in.

Nevertheless, I still had a blast. I was still able to take lots of pictures, get up close to plenty of balloons, and witness the colorful spectacle yada yada yada.

At about 8:45 I decided to get in line to get back to the Coronado lot. This is when I realized that out of everyone who took park & ride or the Rail Runner (which was a lot of people, mind you), about 2/3 of them must have come from Coronado mall. The line already wound out onto the launch field, now almost empty of balloons, and I wound up standing in that line for about 45 minutes. By the time I got on a bus and got back to Coronado mall, it was past 10:00. It was only as I was walking back to the Uptown ABQ Ride stop that I realized that since they don’t ask for tickets on the park & ride buses, I could have taken the shuttle to the Rail Runner stop, paid for a Rail Runner ticket, and could have been home by now. This brilliant but delayed thought was rewarded with a slap to my forehead.

Ultimately, I wasn’t late for work, but I didn’t have any time to relax, choosing instead to slug down a cup of coffee and pray they would take me through the rest of the day (it did).

To their immense credit, the bus drivers and the people actually running the show were really well organized, calling in more buses when needed and still being friendly to everyone while doing their job. It was a mixture of bad decisions on my part, some flat out bad luck, and a little bit of poor planning on part of the folks who set up the park & ride that made the actual getting there and back part of the fiesta a real hassle.

Firstly, ABQ Ride: could we get earlier service hours on the Rapid Ride? Seriously.

Secondly, how about making sure all those school buses are in top notch shape before sending them out for the weekend?

Thirdly, could we get some more park & ride locations, particularly in the Uptown area? Coronado and Hoffmantown obviously aren’t cutting it if 2/3 of the riders are still using one park & ride location. I hear that the fairgrounds has lots of parking. So does Winrock, now that I think of it.

Fourthly, maybe we could even devote more buses to the Coronado lot? Maybe expand the Coronado bus bay at the launch field, so there’s more room for all the buses that are needed there?

Or even better yet: hey ABQ Ride, how about running some real routes to that part of town, so that I don’t have to deal with any of this messy park & ride business? A San Mateo-Jefferson Rapid Ride line with a stop near the Balloon Museum would be really nifty.

A Post-Marty Albuquerque

Wow. Yeow.

So there's good news, not-so-good news, and bad news.

I'll jump into the good news first. Most of the City Council races went the way I'd hoped, with Benton and Harris coming back for another term, along with Cook and Sanchez in no-contest runs. But those were no-brainers. The really good news is that the transit tax passed, along with every bond issue and proposition on the ballot.

Then there's the not-so-good news.

I'm definitely not thrilled about Berry's victory. As I said here a couple of weeks ago, I was really pulling for Romero, although I wouldn't have minded (and in fact, expected) a Marty win that much. Berry on the other hand, he's an unknown. Let's face it: this was a partisan race, and the Democrats were split between Marty and Romero here. Marty really ruined this for the Democrats - if he hadn't defied the term limits, I think Romero would have had a much better shot.

But I'm not partisan, and there is a silver lining to this cloud: Berry's an unknown. I don't think we really know how this is going to turn out, and it may be better than the Marty supporters (who today seem to be acting for all the world as if Albuquerque's glory days are over) expect. Sure, the ultra pro-development stance (which Marty definitely possessed) will carry over, but perhaps with less of the attitude. Maybe Berry will be more open to outside ideas. And don't forget: we just passed a bunch of amendments that reduce the mayor's power and gives the city council more control. This can totally work out folks: it's not the end of the world.

However, as far as I'm concerned, it is the end for district 5, where Dan Lewis trashed Michael Cadigan in the race for the city council seat. Cadigan was one of the few guys really sticking it to SunCal and other large developers, and he was one of the fiercer supporters of mass transit on the council. Cadigan wasn't a saint, but this was a vote bought by sprawl developers as far as I'm concerned. I can live with Berry, but Lewis is another matter. Michael, I'm going to miss you.

Overall, I'm a little bummed but still optimistic. I'm not yet ready to state that Albuquerque is about to go down the tubes and wind up another Phoenix - this can still work.

Dr. Chavez or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Trolley/Streetcar/Modern Light Rail (revisited)

Given that this is a blog about living a carless life in Albuquerque, it’s fitting that I started with the most controversial mass transportation issue in perhaps the entire history of the city – the “modern streetcar” system. Since moving here in 2006 (the year it was first proposed), my feelings on the issue have become increasingly mixed and shades of gray have appeared where once there was a glorified image of a shiny trolley running past the Frontier Restaurant.

Full disclaimer: I still love the idea. If it came up for a public vote, I would vote for it, I would use it, and I would love it. It’s still a really cool idea.

But if I had the chance to design a rail system for Albuquerque, this isn’t what I would build.

Let’s go back to how this all started. Back in 2004, the City of Albuquerque produced a short video called “Rail Transit in Albuquerque”, where they promoted the creation of a light rail system in the city and showed off what some nearby cities (Denver and Dallas in particular) had been able to do with their light rail systems. Rapid Ride had just been created and was serving as a test project to see how high-capacity transit could function in the Central Avenue corridor.

A couple of years went by with little word on rail transit, as city officials started to realize that the costs of a light rail system would likely be a hard pill for voters to swallow, even with substantial federal funding. This led to the modern streetcar proposal in 2006, and if you follow what Martin Chavez has said on the issue, it is clear that he’s talking about streetcars as if it was light rail – all of the benefits at a fraction of the cost. As I pointed out in the first post, this is not true; light rail and modern streetcar are two completely different types of transit systems. But in an effort to get a rail system for cheap, the proposal had shrinked and the system had changed.

In 2006, local officials were riding on the first wave of love for the Rail Runner (which has definitely been eclipsed by the second wave which came when it got to Santa Fe) and rail transit seemed to be all the rage in city hall. But when the city came out with the streetcar proposal everything ground to a halt, and a lot of opposition to the project formed. I started getting a bad feeling when I realized it wasn’t just people who were vehemently opposed to the concept of rail, but also folks who loved the idea of rail in Albuquerque but were skeptical of the streetcar as designed. If you couldn’t grab these folks, something was wrong here.

It’s 2009. The streetcar proposal has been used against Martin Chavez as he seeks reelection, since reminders of it (such as Berry’s mention of it) are sure to stir up frustrated feelings in voters who remember the fiasco. There has been city council legislation that attempted to ban any study of rail transit whatsoever. Fortunately, the legislation failed to pass the council and I’m pretty confident that Chavez is going to win reelection. But the tide has changed – public feeling against rail transit feels quite high. What happened? Where did we go so wrong?

This summer, I read a blog called Human Transit, which I highly recommend – it is written by a transit planner who talks about even the smallest (but crucial) details in mass transit systems around the world and whose posts are always thought-provoking and well written. One day I came across a post of his titled “Streetcars: an Inconvenient Truth,” which was perhaps the most fair and balanced viewpoint on modern streetcar systems I had ever seen.

His argument is thus: a modern streetcar system which replaces an existing local bus line (such as the one proposed for Central Avenue) will not make any improvement to overall mobility. “Mobility” here means getting from Point A to Point B in a certain amount of time. And think about it – a ride from UNM to Downtown is not going to be any faster on a modern streetcar than on the 66 bus.

That’s not to say there aren’t any benefits from modern streetcar systems. There’s the obvious economic benefit – rail systems are highly visible and encourage new and higher density development along their route, which is perfect if one of your primary goals is to highlight your city and encourage infill development. There’s also the less obvious environmental benefit over buses – riding capacity, operating life, and the fact that it runs on electricity means there’s less energy consumption per passenger mile than a bus.

These two benefits are fine reasons to support rail transit, but is this really why rail advocates want rail in Albuquerque? When we go to another city and hop on their rail system, are we doing it so that we can see all the nifty new development along the tracks? Are we doing it because the vehicle produces no emissions and has more room than a bus? No, we take it because it is a quick, reliable, and easy way to get to where we need to go. And this is where people are rightfully skeptical of the streetcar proposal.

If want we want is to highlight Albuquerque and have denser development along Central Avenue, then streetcars are right up our alley. But if we’re looking to revolutionize mass transit in the city, where one can get anywhere in the city on mass transit, where it is quick, easy, reliable, and extremely efficient to do so, and where we can encourage denser, transit-friendly development across the city (as Denver is doing so well), streetcars aren’t likely to get us there. Rapid Ride has brought our transit system a long way in a short span of time, but we’ll need light rail to finish the job.

Consider this: Once you actually build a modern streetcar line, the tracks are going to be there pretty much forever. But you can’t really expand a streetcar line very much – the slow speed and frequent spacing of stops means the advantages or riding it (and thus the demand) drops off the further get from the city center. That’s not to say you can’t just build a light rail system in addition to your modern streetcar line later, but here’s something else to consider: There’s only two modern streetcar systems operating in this country at the moment, one in Portland and the other in Seattle (Tacoma has something which might look like a modern streetcar, but it actually acts as a light rail system). Both are in cities that had incredibly well-developed transit systems spanning the whole city when the streetcar line was built; Portland already had an excellent light rail system, and Seattle was just about to open their light rail system. The streetcar was built really as an afterthought – a way to get around the city center once they had established reliable links into the city center.

Like I said at the start; I still love the idea of a streetcar system in Albuquerque. I’m just not sure we’re going about bringing rail transit to the city in the right way.

The Growth of Uptown

This weekend marked a major victory for those of us without cars in Albuquerque (at least, those of us who live along the 766 Rapid Ride line). This weekend, a new Trader Joe's opened in ABQ Uptown! Yes, finally we can get our jars of pineapple salsa, our affordable blocks of feta cheese and affordable organic food, without having to beg our friends to drive us to Paseo del Norte.


And hey, look at their mural inside the store!


This is just the latest addition in a long rebuilding (and rebranding) of the Uptown neighborhood. ABQ Uptown, the faux-urban and rather cheesy (yet strangley compelling) outdoor retail mall has proven quite popular and has in many respects inspired elements of other developments in Albuquerque, such as the proposed Winrock Town Center just across the street.

It's not exactly high-density and not quite what comes to mind when one thinks of "mixed-use" (given that the housing is separated from the retail by a gated fence and a street), but they've done a strangley good job selling each component of the development, judging by how many of the retail spaces are occupied, how many cars are in the housing development, and how they've managed to do what Downtown has never managed to do: attract a major grocery store. It's really no wonder ABQ Uptown is an example other developers are looking at.


And it has certainly changed the face of Uptown, and set the neighborhood in a right direction. Wide, welcoming sidewalks? Street parking? A walkable outdoor area? These are elements that no one would have linked with Uptown not so long ago. And these elements are apparently only going to expand and perhaps get better with ABQ Uptown Phase III and the Winrock Town Center across the street, but these are private spaces isolated from each other by large roadways. How can we make the connections, the public space between these sites, mutli-modal friendly?

There are three major trouble spots which impend pedestrians in Uptown. The first is the massive parking lot surrounding the Winrock Center - a factor already under work; the second is the massive parking lot surrounding the Coronado Center; and the third is the great divider of Uptown: Louisiana Blvd, an eight-lane roadway with one or two left turn lanes in the middle. Elsewhere in Uptown, pedestrians enjoy a fairly friendly environment: two lanes in each direction with a pleasant median, wide tree-lined sidewalks, and a slightly more dense pattern of buildings - still surrounded by parking lots, but not as dangerous for pedestrians as those that surround the malls.

So here's some ideas for making the neighborhood more pedestrian-friendly:

1) Knock off that right lane.

Louisiana Blvd has four lanes running in each direction; not only an effective barrier to crossing the street, but also unpleasent just to be near. Perhaps a good step to encouraging pedestrian use here would be to convert the right lane of traffic into a parking lane, with bulb-outs at the intersections for pedestrians. Or, if the general feeling is that there's enough parking to go around already, then convert it into a bus only lane. Or a bicycling lane. Or both.

2) Extend crossing time.

Right now, just about every intersection in Uptown has pedestrian crosswalks, but the time they allot you means you have to really dash across the street to make it. Let's have a little extra time.

3) Fly over Louisiana.

Even with a couple fewer lanes and longer crossing time, Louisiana will still be a hazard to pedestrians. I dislike pedestrian bridges in general, but maybe a few along Louisiana will be just what we need.

4) Or ride across it.

Establish an Uptown circulator bus route, like the D-Ride, to connect all the different components of Uptown. And make sure you get those buses right up next to the door, so we don't have to trudge through those massive parking lots which will unfortauntely remain until the landowner decides to do a little infill.