Just got back from Chicago and the annual meeting of the American Medical Association; we did our usual round of complaining, but we also sent 400 medical students out into the streets (well, the stadiums) to advocate for the uninsured, and we passed some damn good policy in a number of areas. While there, I encountered an amazing urban innovation: the PayStation (warning, 3MB PDF). It’s a blue-box vending machine, scattered around the city, at which you can pay your parking tickets, city fees, and taxes.

I’m not sure whether this is a stroke of genius or idiocy. I suppose it has the potential to allow elimination of some patronage jobs in City Hall (good luck, given that Chicago’s Democratic politics put us to shame), and it’s nice to be able to pay by credit card without a “convenience fee”, but do people really fail to pay parking tickets simply because there wasn’t a little ATM thingy in their neighborhood? I, at least, generally fail to pay parking tickets because I’m in traffic court explaining to the judge why said ticket is unfair. (3 for 3 thus far, and kudos to the poor judge who sits there all day and listens to sob stories like mine.)

You tell me: would you want to see these things come to Pittsburgh? Me, I’d rather have more Council to Go.

Another building saved

Originally uploaded by gophotogo

The palace theater in Greensburg was once scheduled to be demolished and turned into a parking garage. The palace theater has been restored and hosts a number of performances year round. I am in greensburg for Urban Hike www.urbanhike.org. I will say Greensburg has a number of great parking lots which are well labeled, each parking lot has a different name. I am glad this is a theater and not a parking lot.

In case you hadn’t heard yet, the big screen outside the Mellon Arena will not be operational for the first two games of the series versus the Red Wings, instead the arena will be opened up and for a five dollar donation to Mario Lemieux Foundation, fans will be able to watch the game on the screens inside.

Parking (surprisingly) is free after 6 at the arena lots, and concessions and various stores will be open as well.  The screen will return for the two home games, May 28 and 31.

 As that good news came through the pipes, the storm from the downtown banners continues to rage.  This morning, the news was that the Penguins had asked the city for permission, but had in fact withdrawn their request since they would not have the banners done in time.  Now, it’s become yet another chapter in the ongoing saga between Ravenstahl and city council. 

I’m sure stories will change at least a few more times.  It would have been nice to have them up for the home games, but I don’t think it was in the cards.  Oh well…now I have to decide if I should come into town on Monday to see the game.  It’s one time I wish I worked on Memorial Day so I could just walk across the street to the game!

So Pittsburgh beat Los Angeles yesterday…

…and no, not in sports.

According to the latest American Lung Association report - “State of the Air 2008″ - that determines the nation’s most polluted cities, Pittsburgh has been named the “sootiest in the nation.”

Wow, what an honor.

What is this, the 1970s all over again?

The category Pittsburgh claimed top spot in measures short-term particle pollution, or ’soot.’ However, Janice Nolan, the assistant vice president of national policy and advocacy for the ALA, said that “it’s not that Pittsburgh has gotten worse; it’s that Los Angeles has gotten better.”

Small comfort, that.

Oh, and she said that “if the trend continues, Pittsburgh will top two lists, and LA will only be leading the nation in ozone.”

I see. So if the Steel City just keeps status quo, then we can’t make fun of LA-ites any more for being smoggy people. Great. Not to mention that everyone else in the country will revert back to the post-70’s assumption that Pittsburgh was a dirty, polluted city.

Guillermo Cole, a spokesman for the Allegheny County Health Department, told the Post-Gazette that Pittsburgh didn’t deserve the ranking as the high soot readings come primarily from emissions from U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works. “The fact of the matter is that the ranking only applies accurately to the Liberty-Clairton area, and Pittsburgh, the rest of the county and the surrounding counties have much better air,” Mr. Cole said. “Liberty-Clairton is a unique situation. We have a large source, the coke works, sitting in a river valley, so it’s a real challenge. There’s no other area of the U.S. like that.”

The Liberty-Clairton area does not meet federal air quality standards for soot by far, but neither does the surrounding five-county metropolitan area - though soot levels are lower. Plans are in place, however, to improve the city’s overall air quality, especially for the Coke Works.

U.S. Steel has a $1B upgrade in the works for the site which will put the Liberty-Clairton area into attainment by 2015. The rest of the region should hit attainment by 2010.

Even if the area surrounding the Coke Works was removed from the data, Pittsburgh would still rank in the Top Twenty - 16th, to be exact.

So while the news is indeed hard to swallow, remember this: in traffic and commute, Pittsburgh is the fifth BEST city; L.A. is the ninth WORST. And when it comes right down to it, Pittsburghers get more quality time at home and not lodged on the Parkway inhaling exhaust. (Well, except when the “tunnel monster” is running loose.)

Commute vs. pollution? Yeah, I think Western PA wins that round.

Blast furnaces and iron ore at the Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corporation mills, Etna, Pennsylvania (LOC), courtesy of The Library of Congress

Well here is something to be happy about - Pittsburgh is not on Forbes Magazine’s List of the top 10 most miserable cities. We have been talking about this article on the Metrobloggers authors list and everyone agrees that this list extra miserable because the people at Forbes put it into a slide show, instead of just giving you a list. So to save you the trouble of watching a miserable slide show, here is the list:

1. Detroit, MI
2. Stockton, CA
3. Flint, MI
4. New York, NY
5. Philadelphia, PA
6. Chicago, IL
7. Los Angeles, CA
8. Modesto, CA
9. Charlotte, NC
10. Providence, RI

Ii am not sure how I feel about the criteria of this list, it is based on a lot of economic data. I know that there are tons of people who live in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles that love it there. Check out the responses from these cities:
Los Angeles
Detroit

The bizarre schemes of politician’s and their rent seeking pals don’t get much stranger than what’s going on in Atlanta, where serious proposals are out there to directly use school funding to subsidize economic development in a depressed area around a sports stadium. The idea that the stadium might itself be a major factor holding back the development of the area comes up.

“Redevelopment around a sports venue can be tricky. Stadiums attract large crowds on an infrequent basis who stay for short periods of time and cause traffic congestion. That kind of activity cannot support neighboring businesses, and it can make living near a stadium a hassle.

“Sports venues alone are just big black holes that have the ability to depress the neighborhoods in which they’re in,” Stanford University economics professor Roger Noll told the trade magazine Retail Traffic.

Noll, the co-author of “Sports, Jobs and Taxes: the Economic Impact of Sports Teams and Stadiums,” said in an interview that for redevelopment to succeed, traffic has to be managed through mass transit and by providing multiple ways in and out.”

One major problem is the opposing needs of the team ( like a huge supply of parking) and the requirements of the community for density and walkable streets. The result is that contruction subsidies for the stadium are not the end, but the begining of the spending since more and more money needs to be spent to mitigate the stadiums “black hole effect” on the community. Replacing over 40 acres surface lots with garages is going to cost a bit.

Thanks for using my economic development tips.

Former Pakistan PM Benazir Bhutto was assassinated today at a political rally. The Metroblog in Pakistan (http://lahore.metblogs.com) has coverage of the assassination and is now warning people to stay home due to rioting in the streets.

The Los Angeles Metroblog has a post with more information and links.

We had another Propel Pittsburgh meeting last night, finally forming the committees and getting down to the business of discussing ideas and moving towards actually doing something. More on that to come from the Mayor’s office eventually, so I’ll leave it aside for now.

An interesting idea sprang up on the way back home, as I was talking things over with a fellow commissioner who I know from grad school at CMU. He pointed out that we have a fundamental problem with pricing parking, especially downtown and Oakland. At the current price, demand is way over supply in the daytime, but plummets at night (hence the presence of “$5 after 5″ rates).

The idea is this: why not capture that price inefficiency and put it to work for the city? In other words, raise the parking tax back up — but only during normal working hours. At night, let it stay at current rates or cut it further. Charge people for using up a scarce public resource, incentivizing them to carpool and/or use transit. This would also have the nice side effect of boosting transit ridership, helping PAT find its own way out of the hole (maybe even without the drinks tax, though I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting).

Borrowing a tradition from CMU’s campus newspaper, a compliment and a complaint for two Pittsburgh institutions, one new, one old. First off, as a follow-up to my last post about good places to grab a quick pre/post show bite in the Cultural District, I’ll add Palate, a new-ish French bistro on 6th between Liberty and Penn. The food’s good, and it won’t break your bank — they have a very nice little “bar menu” with various medium-sized plates, all for $7, and three of those will very nicely feed two people. Beyond that, I have to give a major shout out to the staff. We strolled (well, hopped, given my crutches) in at about 9:15 last night, cold, hungry, and fresh from a major annoyance, only to find that they’d just closed down the kitchen. They immediately re-opened it, sat us down, fed us well, and didn’t rush us back out the door, despite us being the only customers in the place. You don’t always see that kind of extra-mile behavior in mid-to-high-end restaurants, and they deserve credit for it. We’ll be going back, assuming they survive and stay open.

The complaint, meanwhile, goes to the people who were responsible for the aforesaid major annoyance, namely our state and city government. I injured my knee over a month ago, and have been unable to walk since then. So, I sent off to PennDOT for one of those temporary handicapped parking tags. The first application, they lost entirely. The second one (sent by FedEx and scrupulously tracked) they *also* lost, although yesterday one person claims to have found it. In the meantime, the friendly City of Pittsburgh Police have been so helpful as to issue me a nice large parking ticket for unauthorized use of a handicapped space. I know, it’s the way the system works, but it’s silly. What’s the point of having temporary permits if you can’t get or use them while you’re actually disabled?
(OK, I know, it’s not purely Pittsburgh-related, and I should be grateful that I was able to get surgery and get repaired, not whining about having to go to court and fight the ticket. But hey, having a blog means you get to complain to the Interweb once in a while.)

It seems that Seattle now has a new street car line. I know almost nothing about this so I won’t comment about the wisdom of this particular line or how well it might fit the cities needs. One thing that seemed very smart was the way it is being funded–partly by a tax on nearby property owners. In the days before the government came in to help it seems like there was a rational connection between the way land was used and transportation infrastructure. That’s because most of this infrastructure was being built by private companies who had a serious interest in making sure that each line could pay for itself. This meant that only areas that had or were going to have dense numbers of people and businesses along the line would get lines. There was a constant incentive by people to match transportation type to needs.

In the case of Seattle, the creation of a street car line is likely to enhance the value of property along it; allowing the construction of bigger taller buildings along the line; reducing amount of space wasted for parking; expensive parking garages; speeding commutes and clearing the air. Since the most positive effects of the line are going to help the owners closest to it, this is a reasonable plan. The story also say’s the project will be partly funded by sales of nearby city properties. We don’t have any of those do we????