 Welcome welcome to the buried TCU transit oriented development walking audit I'm Brandy O Quinn, and I'm policy manager for Blue Zones project And I just want to say thank you so much for spending your Saturday afternoon With us Dan burdened Samantha Thomas live in Washington State, and they brought us this cool weather, which I appreciate, right? Thank you Yes, I want to especially do a thank you to our city councilwoman and Zeta for joining us This is in her district And also city staff all of you that are part of city staff Thank you very much for all being here because this is we couldn't do this without all of you And especially on a Saturday, and I just want to do a shout out to all of you So thank you, and I'm going to give it to Dan so we can get started Let's ask and to say a few words and would you like to say a few words? Would you like to sing a little song? Hi? Good morning? I'm glad you all came or it's afternoon now, isn't it? I'm sorry, and I'm really happy to be here I wish I could have been part of the the activities this morning as well But I had a Bermitt's photo go to with my son and one of his classmates was celebrating that accomplishment today So I'm really looking forward to this. I am a pedestrian and I like to walk around as much as I possibly can I came from a place where pedestrians have the right of way no matter what they're doing even if they're jay walking whatever So when I moved here, I took my life into my own hands because people who drive cars around here Don't really yield to pedestrians So I try to be a pedestrian in a little bit of an aggressive way if I have a walk sign I'm walking but I'm going to make it clear that I'm walking so I'll put my hand out Say you need to stop and let me go here so I'm really looking forward to having this audit and figuring out some ways that we can try to make The streets in Fort Worth safer for all the users The people who drive the cars the people who walk and the people who ride their bikes and any other mode of Transportation that people choose to use in our community. So I appreciate this very much and thank you all for coming out Thank you, and let's like give her a big round of appreciation We're Gonna start a little presentation. So we would love to have everybody come up and grab a seat If for no other reason it makes it look really powerful in front of the camera So we can get everybody to come on up and join us we do a little bit of a presentation and First of all, I'm very pleased that this neighborhood was selected to be part of the original eight neighborhoods that are being featured under the work with blue zones that This is going to be become an important set of models these eight neighborhoods for all of Fort Worth What we're talking about is a vast change over time For Fort Worth to become more focused on its people We've been over designing our cities throughout all of North America For the automobile and it started to really impact the economy health The vitality and the very core structure of what neighborhoods are about So what we're wanting to see unfold here is a one neighbor at a time boost To becoming the great vital city that's going to I think show the way for all of Texas If not the entire much greater region So I'd like to do a little bit of a presentation and move right in How many had before today not even heard of blue zones? How many is this a new concept just several okay? So the words getting out So I'll be able to describe blue zones a little bit in just a minute But I'm gonna do it by telling some stories. So let's assume the gentleman standing in the left panel Feels that his community should be about all the things that we see celebrated here children families successful retail thriving main streets And it should be Throughout all of human history. It's been about that but He's standing in la la land. That's Disney world The real world became something very different people are now spending more time in their cars than they would like They are having to rush their children across streets. They look out on an endless sea of Meaningless environment that isn't worthy of defending and We get older we realize we have not created the right infrastructure for us to stay healthy So what blue zones is all about is really rebuilding cities One neighborhood at a time now, that's the built environment part There are nine different elements to blue zones to bring back health happiness and vitality and longevity But the built environment is going to be the toughest one to bring back fully So what I like to say is if we just set one principle that we will not spend a single dollar on Transportation that doesn't increase adjacent land use Then we're going to get it right if we get that right It's a home run and it really is so that's our concept and Just to share that this is a very wide-range project of problem of immense proportions This is another city. It's Tallahassee, Florida, Tennessee Avenue and This road like six or eight others designed just like it Rushes traffic out of the downtown at night empties the downtown of all life In order to get people home to suburban Places it takes out a life of another student every year Because it wasn't designed for people it was designed for speed and efficiency and it did that But it backfired this probably explains more than any other image. I could show you how well it backfired if you Take a look at the sign it says to walk correct There are sidewalks There are bike lanes But no one's walking no one's biking. This is the high school in Maui In the island of Maui, this is their high school. It's not what you would expect and The reason the traffic is backed up and it will Take 20 minutes to get through this one intersection Is that we only designed our system for one thing? to move cars Now we realize That putting all of our investment into moving cars has never worked in any city of any size any scale any place But if we start to design for people we get away from that problem Now that's only meant to be one facet of the problem when I was still in high school Jane Jacobs in the The death and life of great American cities was already telling us where we are going wrong and So Jane Jacobs says don't blame the car Blame ourselves for not understanding the complexity of cities and So that's what we're trying to do now is to understand all of the elements that go into making a neighborhood And therefore a city a great place to live to have choices in transportation son So there's a key concept If you want to have more traffic invest in traffic if you want to have less traffic invest in people and So this is my brother of a different mother Dan butener and Dan is the ultimate researcher on longevity health happiness vitality and He hired me from the get-go with Albert Lee, Minnesota to be in charge of the built environment And so that's what both Samantha and I do and it's a fun thing I like to say it's the funnest job. I could ever have That I get to work with the best people the brightest minds people ready for change And we do this through what we're about to take which is a walking audit We're going to take a look at the neighborhood through a new lens and start to see the neighborhood with all its possibilities this is about the 15th or 16th town we worked in but this is the biggest this is the granddaddy of them all Fort Worth and It's where we're going to have to take our previous knowledge of leading walking audits being introduced to people doing things And as we do walking us we're learning from every walk. I've ever taken this is a Group of urban designers. I'd like to say the next urban designers of America. They're the top top people in at MIT and We let a walking audit for them to teach the skillset and this is basically what we're doing we're setting a stage for anyone to appreciate and joy make use of their city and Of all ages and if we pay attention to the needs of the very youngest among us and The most senior of us then we're going to get it right for everybody everybody in the middle Will be served by getting those dimensions, right? So I put this presentation together because of where we're sitting with the opportunities for Transit-oriented development with the tea left off Right, we're going to come up with a great overall area and What we're talking about is how do we build into the strength? How do we build a vital economy and one that's just not going to continue to spread the money out into? Suburban places that cost a lot more To do we want all these things We want green space ownership pride strong economies low crime and balanced budgets and we can do all those things because the principles truly Surround getting the right urban design in place and if we do the right urban design taxes go down not up and As we do this we get better public services water Sewer roads, please fire everything We now have budget to cover because we're getting the elements of building a city correct I think it's important to point out that good design also will reduce the amount of time people spend driving and especially commute drives Which tend to be a huge part of the whole issue? It also means though we're going to be able to have more walking more biking more transit more choices all the time for all people Also, if we get the urban design correct, we're going to see a true Boost in the local economy all towns are in competition with one another all jobs are going to go to those towns that build place and We see that we understand that but also all towns are seeking a way to protect and preserve as much open space And natural space as we can everybody wants that there's no disagreement on that It's also important to point out that communities become safer when we create the right styles of housing that watch over streets The bottom row of homes by the way are affordable houses built beautifully attractively so attractive in fact that right across the street from those homes We see units that are being rented out for three thousand a month Market driven houses. This is in Sacramento. You've got to make sure every product you put on the ground is Celebrating the other products that might want to come to that same street It's important to to point out that as we do this We're really looking for that mix of uses that diversity that we can live workshop play do everything Without having to go a long distance. We might still drive Or we might now walk or bike if we get the dimensions correct and also all these things create active living and Those things we really want the most so all of these things we're talking about are really Requiring a new way of looking at where we place buildings how we place buildings how those buildings work in collaboration with one another and the good news is The many towns that are doing this and Fort Worth is one of them, but still in little pockets They're finding that the return is really based on getting the right mix of uses and Density it's the word that people don't want to use but it turns out to be the word that makes everything else work. I Want to share Why this now requires a different way of looking at anything we do This is a little town. I got to work in did their master plan for them marina. That's in Monterey County, California very expensive living here, so this is one of the more affordable places and What story goes with this is that the transit agency? Realized they needed a hub They acquired the only remaining land in the town center and this is what they proposed and When a number of us looked at this we said This serves their needs adequately, but it fails the community It basically is taken over the whole remaining infrastructure opportunity and putting in their single use which is to hub transit and they would even put in parking for their own employees and things like that here and Minimize any other uses that we might see so our team came in and said what this area really wants and must have as a town center and Why not have the town center work around the transit hub you'd orient your buses differently? You wouldn't use up all the space you may not even have places for your employees to park here But if you did that it may be a couple blocks away because this is the Portion that has to work for the entire community So we showed them what it would look like they could have a lighter density It could be like this and it would work or they could go for an increase in density And now have even higher performance and a higher rate of return So I think you can see what we're talking about when we talk about bringing together a TOD, this is a true TOD built the hub the housing everything around it now if anything is to work in the future and certainly economically It's got to give return cities aren't going to be able to work on Borrowing money for much longer And so one thing that would be a direct benefit to everyone in Fort Worth Is if not everybody had to own as many cars as they own So if you only took 15,000 cars and that's not a lot of cars for a city of this size and people didn't need that second car The city would reach a hundred and twenty seven million dollars That's money that keeps get pumped through from the barber to the dentist to the body shop repair and so on That money stays in the town. It doesn't go off to Tokyo. It doesn't go off to anywhere else And that's just with 15,000 cars We also can see it from cost of operating the city if you have a really well connected neighborhood and yours is and You retain that high level of connectivity in your future designs Then it costs a hundred and fifty nine dollars per household for fire service for one year That's reasonably affordable But if you use the other pattern the one you see on the right Where the streets are disconnected? One fire station can cover far fewer homes So fire service protection there is seven hundred and forty dollars So we see an increase in our tax base Just for fire service alone on how we lay out and design our community By the way, that gets compounded you multiply it times police and sewer and water and UPS delivers Everything is more expensive if you have a disconnected set of blocks So one of the tools that we're now going to talk about is how do we complete our streets? How do we make them where people can get across the street? Where people actually want to live on the street and watch over the street? It really is fairly simple It does call for and this is part of the blue zones philosophy is to create a street design manual or guide for Fort Worth to protect your engineers and keep the tort law To a minimum because this is already approved the style street And if we do that then we're going to end up with increased land values new maintenance funds streets pay their own way through the increased valuation of land and It's so simple But it's something you are going to prove for the rest of Texas You're going to find it the discovery first your streets might look different. They might be designed not for speed but for quality of life and For multiple mode choice and things like that. So you might see different lane direct dimensions You might see different can give configurations with parking with bike lanes cycle tracks all kinds of things So it's just an example of what a complete street might look like but there is no single formula for a complete street Every single block and every street is going to have its own set of contacts. So we designed for it that way Some of the other payout. This is a very good friend of mine Matt Lerner who created walk score Samantha, can you look up the walk score here? Yeah Walk score is a very simple measure from a zero point to a hundred points And if you can just increase your neighborhood say five points your home values go up eight hundred dollars per point or $3,000 per point just depends on the context But you're you're going to see a greater greater greater return on investment the more diverse the neighborhood becomes That's that mix that we are looking for Then we can see how ultimately this pays off by the way eighty three percent of America is now urban That number is going up By 2050 the world will be two-thirds urban and We just crossed the 50 percentile about what eight years ago something like that But the world is going to become urban and that's the only way we're going to save the environment But the urban better be good It better be a place where people do want to live do want to invest and we're valuations hold Couple of the key principles if we're going to make this work Just as it has always worked out all of human history our cities are designed around transportation Starting with the foot aided by the donkey the mule the canal boat the ferry the train the trolley every neighborhood has always been designed around transportation and As long as we've been getting it wrong We're going out of proportions that are affordable So someday we're likely to see the kind of mix you see here things like trolleys and trams and light rail and trains and bikes and feet and buses and All that together gives us both a design that's context-sensitive Accessible reliable effective and safe. That's all we're saying that in combination makes a neighborhood livable pretty simple It also means that we're not going to look at speed in the future for local streets or or collector or arterial streets we're looking for Streets that continue to perform but not at grossly excessive speeds because they take out human life And they remove even the desire to try to walk along a street So among the things we're going to see is yes, we'll continue major Capacity of a road we have to But now here on out will probably put even more meaning and emphasis on those things We measure that we care to have more of Still measure the thing you don't want and hopefully you'll see it go down But start measuring the thing you want and find good ways to measure that a Quick story to go with this image. This is Gulf Shores Orange Beach, Alabama We are leading a walking audit here and We found out people wanted a village here. They didn't want to have to go as far to get groceries and and services So we said yeah, this is a good location for you know, what amounts to a toady And then later in the afternoon. We found out that the state was about to widen this road into this I was presenting in the room that night and the traffic engineer was sitting just off to my left and she started to cry I'd never seen a traffic engineer cry So I asked kid kid why are you crying? She said damn we're at 90% plans completion. I said so You haven't built it yet They went back to the Alabama DOT and they started over and what they will now get is this a Roundabout will move 30% more traffic per lane than any other type of intersection that you can build It brings more money It's a place buildings want to cozy up to and not shy as far away as they can and It increases the value of land But we're really talking about different size different scale an industrial community that really truly wants real place and A place to come to to gather to enjoy to appreciate So all of the things I've been showing you are based on a principle of getting the target Speed what we want not the posted speed, but the actual speed people drive Street on the top. How fast would you think people who drive there the bottom one? Yeah, and those are pretty much right on Track the first one only is tasked to move 18,000 cars with seven lanes bottom one 54,000 cars with four lanes and this one's working better the land values of five times higher This is Berkeley and that's Spartanburg South Carolina Lancaster California Took the road of essentially you see on top and turn it into the road on the bottom Within a few years. They were bringing in over half a billion dollars of new buildings You get the right street. You get the right response So how fast do you think the average driver would drive here? Yeah, pretty fast What what about now? What about now? What about now? What about now? And all this sets the stage for this And once you get here 15 would be very predictable So that's how you change target speed by design Very important though for us to understand That building a walkable environment is more than sidewalks. So the sidewalks are missing here, right? So you add those and As you add those You still aren't solving the big problem That if people are to live here to let their child walk to school whatever what they're most concerned about is security and Until you Add some other elements People don't feel secure. It's still missing. It's still missing. What is it eyes on the street? Until you have the eyes on the street until the buildings behave People are unlikely to walk So that's the complexity we're talking about so we can go through one entire investment area this one in Honolulu You can see we can fix up the park when putting good edges create some sense of place and Spend a little more money on the park and create a nice grain but now it's when the buildings start to move in and create that wonderful sense of wall and Observation of the place that you really truly see the transformation and now Significantly increased values in home. So I just wanted to show that much to help build a vocabulary and To give us a basis as we walk and talk and see new things that we're going to appreciate How much effort is going to take and then be willing to take that effort to make things work? So That helpful Okay