A Car Dependent City
Sometimes I think the best way to gauge the wrong direction Stamford should be heading is to sample Topix posts on Stamford Advocate articles. In response to a recent article on the Stamford Light Rail study a poster dismissed the idea of even pursuing the feasibility study phase because Stamford is, in his opinion, a “car dependent city”.
At best that sentiment could just be a commentary on a current condition in the city, although I would argue that’s not necessarily the case everywhere in Stamford. The downtown, in spite of some of its faults, is not car dependent. Other neighborhoods like Glenbrook, Springdale, the East Side, West Side, & South End have steered their trajectory by varying degrees towards non-auto exclusivity proving total auto dependence can be lessened across Stamford’s varying grades of Stamford’s urban and suburban character.
If the suggestion of Stamford as a “car dependent city” is considered an ideal natural state and something worth protecting, that’s both a sad and dangerous position to defend. The idea of a car dependent city in itself is something of a oxymoron. Cities by definition have a higher density of building and population that allow a citizen to function without a car as multiple uses - homes, shops, work, function closer together. A car dependent city takes a suburban condition, the need to drive everywhere, and marries it to the population density that comes with a city. Approaching it from an abstract angle, the car dependent city of strip malls and cul-de-sacs is a place not worth caring about. There are ways though of framing it in terms perhaps the more auto-centric minded can more easily come to a consensus on. It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out lots of people, driving lots of individual cars equals gridlock. If all the other cultural, social, economic, environmental, health, and societal benefits of a system of living not slave to individual automobile transit aren’t enough, gridlock alone should be enough to convince people to consider integrating and encouraging some alternatives that move people about without relying exclusively on individual auto transit. The arguments against almost always look at these alternatives as novelties dropped down as traffic lane blockades rather than a potential agent of change in some new equilibrium.
There are a number of steps Stamford can take or is taking to diversify transit across different levels – moving people in and out of the city, between city neighborhoods, and within neighborhoods, that can drastically improve quality of life. These will be humbly be laid out in a series of posts called “BlogStamford Solves Stamford’s Transit Issues” Stay tuned.
14 comments :
Even thought living in downtown does not require a car for going to work (if you work in downtown), or to dinner or theater, you need one to do you groceries. There is no way you can do your groceries in Stamford without a car. At least 1 car per household is needed.
BTW. I'm taking a bus each day to get to my office in downtown.
I think the light rail idea is interesting but don't see the true potential if it basically runs from Bull's Head to new Harbor Point development. I would think covering more east/west ground to high-density/low- to moderate income residential areas in the Cove and West Side to bring those groups in and out of downtown would increase its use versus a route that starts and ends in mostly offices/retail areas. Dallas has that kind of trolley system in its uptown area and it is mostly unused outside of a stray tourist or two.
I would love to be able to ditch one or both of our cars, but it's just not feasible in today's Stamford. The city is fairly spread out, though not sprawling, and we do have plenty of public transportation choices, but it's still tough to get around without a car if you want to go anywhere beyond a small radius.
I live near the Tully Center and work in Harbor Plaza, so I could take the #33 bus to the train station and then hop the shuttle to my building, but that takes almost forty minutes, as opposed to a twelve-minute car ride. It's a two-mile walk, but I'd have to risk my life at the Elm St./I-95 interchange as well as a number of other sites in Shippan.
The grocery issue is a good point, too. Until we get a real supermarket downtown, I have to drive to Stop & Shop, Mrs. Green's or the Norwalk Whole Foods.
Sigh...here's hoping that Stamford's future is greener and more pedestrian-friendly!
For me the other issues which puts me off walking is
1, the danger element. As well as the crossings being intimidating especially when you have to cross 6lanes, the cars seem to be oblivious to pedestrians. I would love to narrow Broad Street and make the pavements wider by shutting one of the lanes.
2, the streets are ugly. walking a city street should be a pleasure. In stamford it is generally not given the lack of interesting things to look at, the number of empty shop fronts, windowless buildings (i.e the mall, Target and Burlingtons) and the general car dominating environment.
As a person who has been forced to live by foot, I find no issue with getting to work, even the buses are convenient.
Most of my walking is pleasant and I will prove it in a post on my blog.
When JR said dangerous, my thought immediately went to possible mugging, which i had some experience with a long time ago, but realized that even with my cane, Stamford is significantly safer, except for the true point JR made, cars.
If I had Stamford Talks' idea of a paint ball gun for every car who was too much in a hurry while I (with my cane) was crossing in a legal manner a cross walk, there would be a lot of marked cars.
I actually could get to the grocery store by bus without a huge hassle and restaurants and movie theaters are easy.
I live on the West side.
I think of when I first moved here and lived up Long Ridge Road and all of that changes.
There you must have a car. Bus service bites the big one and nothing is convenient without a car. Of course that is why sometimes North Stamford wants to succeed. they get precious little service from the city (except maybe my help with wells, ticks and bats) and nothing is convenient, but North Stamford is Suburbia with larger acreage, usually more affluent people (not all, cause there are some old timers hanging on) who are not really "citified".
There is a huge difference, but there are also only a bit more than 5,000 households up that way and far more people in the smaller, less affluent areas of the West and East sides, the south end, springdale, Turn of River and belltown.
I was the one who wrote that on Topix thread about light-rail. Yes, Stamford is a car-centered city and this feasibility study is a waste of money. The blogger who runs this blog needs to learn how to spell.
Stamford is incredibly walkable - I agree about groceries, but if you live and work downtown, you can walk to work, movies, bars, restaurants, the library, shopping and metro north if you want to go further afield.
I would like to see more clean-air buses in Stamford ... even smaller, half-size buses if they run more frequently. I used to live in a city in England about the size of Stamford, and that's how I got around (easily!) to all parts of the city. Buses ran quite frequently, and the larger (full-size) buses would come perhaps once an hour. The rest were small buses.
I live right on a bus line, but the bus only comes once an hour, and never on time. I've tried to take it on several occasions and given up. Most of those occasions were at night, going out on the town; wouldn't it make a lot of sense to keep buses running at night, when people come stumbling out of the bars?
Plus, we already have streets and bus stops and whatnot.
Thanks for the visit Topix Man.
Maybe Stamford is a car dependent city now (although as I pointed out and other backed, it’s not true everywhere in the city). Car dependency is not a condition worth protecting. It’s like bragging at the advent of indoor plumbing that your city is Outhouse Dependent. Population and fuel costs won’t make that a realistic system in years ahead.
Now I didn’t advocate eliminating cars, but you do have to work in alternative ways of getting around into the mix, be it walking, biking, street rail, busses, etc. The tools to tackle are as low tech as the stripes you draw on the road all the way to million dollars transit systems. Different options would be more or less relevant in different areas of town. You aren’t going to run rail lines through North Stamford.
Car dependency isn’t some natural state for Stamford necessarily, the area has a history of walkable, transit oriented urbanism. Parts of town like Springdale and Glenbrook were “railroad suburbs” incorporated into the city. The city also used to have an extensive street car system. I don’t know the specifics of Stamford’s trolley demise, but in other parts of the country companies like GM were involved with buying and ripping up lines for the express purpose of eliminating competition.
Topix man here again. I'm not saying that Stamford needs to continue to be a car-dependent city, but you have to realize that the population is too small to support light rail anyway and there is no space for light rail. Maybe in the distant future when the population hits 500,000 and we have high-rises stretching down High Ridge to Briar Brae we'll need underground rail. This is not a situation of "build it and they will come."
I think a new supermarket is opening on the east side. It is opening soon on the old Bev Max site next to the Camera shop on a strip on the post road.
The new shiny Walgreens is now open on the east side. Also Butterfield 8 on Bedford St also looks very close to opening...
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