“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads” (or, my problem with Transportation Plans)

"What I’m asking for is something that isn’t expensive at all. I’m asking for vision. Who are we as a city? I didn’t want to move out here just so that I could be part of some sort of massive, mass-producing set of subdivisions. If we’re the most expensive city to live in in Hays County, it’s because we’re not using vision. We are trying to run an expensive city with lots of dreams on the backs of homeowners. It just doesn’t work that way. We have to be in sync with business development. Already, everybody in the country knows that Kyle is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States. We don’t have to give away anything to get businesses to come here. We need to be reasonable about who we could become. What’s it gonna look like in 10 or 15 years when we have nothing but decaying subdivisions one right after the other? We can do better than that. I think we just need to slow down. Let’s see if we can find a viable vision. I think our economic development plans which to this point have brought us really not much more than more fast food than anybody needs. I think that plan and whoever is behind it should fall on their sword and start all over. So, I’m asking for vision. I’m asking to you to think about each and every homeowner and rental person and mother and father who are trying to put food on the table. Let’s not go crazy with somebody else’s money."

Christina Depperschmidt, a Kyle resident of close to 10 years, said these words last night to the City Council during its hearing on the proposed tax rate. But her plea — "I’m asking for vision. Who are we as a city?" — echoes far beyond one fiscal year’s budget, one year’s proposed tax hike. It resonates even beyond any proposed economic development and especially any transportation plan because those plans fail to answer that question she posed. "Who are we as a city/" as well as the logical extension of that question — the extension that addresses vision — "What is it we want to become as a city?" or as Ms. Depperschmidt said: "What’s it gonna look like in 10 or 15 years" or 25 or 50 or 100 years?

I have many problems with transportation plans. First, they do not exist as a planning mechanism; they exist only as a funding mechanism. The only reason a locality embarks on the folly of a long-range transportation plan is because that locality would not be eligible for state and federal highway funds without such a plan, as if those funds were a good thing to begin with.

Second, as I have said many, many times, transportation plans are a 20^th century solution to a 21^st century problem. I mentioned this during an urban planning seminar I attended in Austin last week, a seminar where most of those who participated disagreed with my arguments on this. Not only did they wind up agreeing with me by the end of the seminar, one of them went so far as to say he now realized transportation plans are nothing more than an extension of the 19^th century concept of manifest destiny.

The word "flow" is attached to describe traffic movement for a reason. Traffic does indeed flow like water. Imagine a river meandering south to the sea. But someone comes along and cuts a channel to create a stream that doesn’t meander, but carries water directly south to the sea. What happens? That channel fills with water, but it doesn’t decrease the amount of water meandering in the original channel. Transportation plans are the instructions for exactly the same result on our roadways. If you’re goal as a city is to grow from a municipality with a half-dozen highly congested roads to a municipality with a couple of dozen highly congested roads, a transportation plan will tell you exactly how to achieve that goal. But is that "Who we are as a city"? Is that really our vision for the future? I hope not.

Which brings me to next problem I have with transportation plans as well as other such plans. They are all regarded out of context with the future of the city as a whole. They don’t answer that overall question of what we want to become as a city. What do we want to look like 50, 75, 100 years from now.

Let’s examine that future by reviewing our past. This is what your cell phone looked like 25 years ago. In 1990, there was no wifi, no Facebook, no Twitter. In fact, laptop computers didn’t really enter the public consciousness until the mid-1990s and even then one cost about $3,000. If you had tried to explain the concept of wifi to a Kyle city leader in 1990, he or she probably would think you should be committed. Today the very notion of existing without wifi seems incomprehensible.

So what’s the world going to be like 25 years from now? I have absolutely no idea and I don’t think anyone around here has any idea either. So why are you wasting your time designing a transportation plan for 25 years from now? (The answer, of course, is not because it's the logical thing to do, but only because of the money.)

My idea of vision is not to look at transportation in isolation, or development in isolation, but at the interrelationships that make up the entire fabric of a city. Here’s my challenge to all you "planners," all you "visionaries" out here. I challenge you to find ways to achieve this goal: Making Kyle the most liveable city possible. How do you achieve that? I’ll be the first to admit, I have absolutely no idea how you achieve that goal. My lot in life is to report about those who do have those ideas for getting there. But I am absolutely convinced that’s the goal we should be striving for and everything we do involving planning should fit within that concept. I am also convinced there are people out there who can begin steering us in the right direction, people like Charles Marohn of Strong Towns and Jeff Speck and even the Governors' Institute on Community Design. The resources are out there, if you care enough about our future to seek them out. I would argue that instead of wasting time trying to conceive a transportation plan, import Marohn, Speck and/or their disciples to help us develop a plan for the future of the entire city, a visionary plan, a plan that not only answers the first question Ms. Depperschmidt posed – "Who are we as a city?" — but also her second " What’s it gonna look like in 10 or 15 years."

Not what kind of transportation plan should we have, not what kind of development plan should we have, but what kind of city should we have and what kind of city do we want to become?