interesting to see some of the comments made by sioux falls citizens. most seem optimistic and willing to change their lifestyles. It will be interesting to see how the new zoning ordinance panes out in the next decade.
Gas prices change way Sioux Falls plans
Small neighborhoods, bike lanes part of strategy
Thom Gabrukiewicz
tgabrukiew@argusleader.com
a sizzling Sioux Falls afternoon, gas fumes rise from the nozzle as you fill up the tank.
The numbers on the pump spin by and there's a grumbling frustration that your money is evaporating with the vapors.
At $4 a gallon for gas, many folks in the area have reached their tipping point. Sioux Falls residents increasingly are using bikes and scooters, catching buses and moving closer to their jobs as reality sinks in.
Planners at City Hall see the price inflation as an opportunity to change people's long-term habits. It is more efficient to drive less, use alternative and public transportation and embrace a more compact version of growth known as "new urbanism."
For instance:
The first dedicated bike lanes were painted on some Sioux Falls streets this summer with more to come. The idea is to make it easier for bicyclists to share the road with motor vehicles.
The city is in the midst of the first revamping of its zoning regulations in 25 years with an eye toward more green space and less concrete. The Shape Sioux Falls initiative asked citizens about the kind of city in which they want to live.
There are more opportunities to move in and closer to the city's core where officials say residents can live, work and recreate in a smaller area.
Sioux Falls has many advantages over other communities when it comes to adjusting to alternative transportation. It's still a relatively small parcel of land - less than 10 miles across at any given point - with few freeways and a predictable grid of streets.
The trick is getting people to think about roads as more than the domain of speeding cars and trucks.
"We're trying to tell people, 'Share the road, share the road, share the road,' " said Sam Trebilcock, a transportation planner for the city. "We don't build a street just for cars, but for all modes of travel."
Quick changes
There is no better time in America - and Sioux Falls - to launch a reorganization of policy, said Armando Carbonell, chairman of the Department of Planning and Urban Form at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a planning think tank in Cambridge, Mass.
"When gasoline prices reached $4 a gallon, a psychological threshold appears to have been crossed," he said. "This has led surprisingly quickly to changes in vehicle choice and, based on recent differentials in real estate values, a premium on location efficiency favoring more compact, centrally located and transit-serviced developments. These behavioral changes reinforce other trends in demographics and residential preference that have been noted by planners."
The grim economic reality is pushing average Sioux Falls residents to embrace alternatives.
"For me, it's either bike or walk, or use the bus more," said Deb Christofferson, a communications technician at City Hall, who in the past two months began to use alternative transportation rather than her Chevy Suburban.
"If I need a gallon of milk, I walk. I love to walk. I'm definitely driving less. I feel like I'm doing my part."
Sales are up at bike shops in Sioux Falls.
"Definitely, there's more awareness out there," said Kyle Hoff, a salesman at Spoke-N-Sport, 313 W. 37th St. "It's tough to deny that gas prices are getting people riding bikes more."
It's not just the high gas prices that has people starting to dust off their neglected two-wheelers.
"Sioux Falls is an easy town to get out and back without a car," said Erik Nelson, owner of Prairie Cycles, 1116 S. Minnesota Ave. "It's easy. Everything's laid out on a grid. Get a block off a busy street and you just sail."
Bus isn't 'scary'
Bus ridership on Sioux Falls Transit is rising, too.
"You'd be surprised who's riding the bus in Sioux Falls," said Nadene Oppold, a pharmacy technician who doesn't own a car. "It's not scary. It's a great place to meet people, meet friends."
Mopeds and scooters have become commonplace on Sioux Falls streets. Scooters can get more than 100 miles to the gallon. And if the motor is less than 50 cubic centimeters and doesn't have a clutch or need shifting, a rider doesn't need a license in South Dakota.
"I enjoy it. I ride it around for fun," said Lynn Powell of Sioux Falls, who bought his used Chinese-made Manco scooter three summers ago for $500.
"I've put 700 miles on it this year, and I'm getting just shy of 100 miles to the gallon, 98.9 to be exact. It does a lot better at the pump than my pickup."
Way better. Powell, who is retired but works four days a week as a valet at Avera McKennan Hospital, has spent less than $30 to gas up for his scooter ramblings this year.
"At the pump, it's $50 to $70 just to fill up the pickup once," he said of his Chevy half-ton.
New urbanism
Uncertainty at the pumps creates an extraordinary opportunity for civic planners, Carbonell said: Plot and plan for a mixed-use landscape that doesn't rely on the automobile.
Called new urbanism, it's a movement that began in the 1980s. It promotes compact, walkable communities where people can work, live and play.
"To satisfy this anticipated demand for more compact living, planners are going to need to provide for more housing options at greater densities than have been typical in the recent past and more transportation choices, including transit, bike, and pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods," Carbonell said. "This will require changes in regulation - zoning and in capital investment."
In Sioux Falls, the city already has in place a comprehensive bike plan, bus plan and pedestrian plan. Planners are looking at ways to revamp zoning laws to plan for more mixed-use areas where people can live and work without much travel, if any.
For bike commuters, maintenance workers in May began to paint shared parking and bicycle lanes - called the on-street bicycle facilities plan - on parts of Bahnson Avenue, West 32nd Street and Ralph Rogers Road. Next year, people will begin to see "sharrows," lanes where vehicles and bikes can share the road, on Dakota Avenue and Main Avenue downtown and 22nd Street from Phillips Avenue to Kiwanis Avenue.
In the future, the plan calls for the addition of dedicated, 5-foot-wide bike-only lanes.
"We want to get people to look at (the bicycle) as a travel option," said Trebilcock, the city planner.
Attitudes need to change, he said. In the bike plan, 25 percent of people surveyed said bikes should never be ridden on the street and 42 percent said bikes belong exclusively on the sidewalk. Most residents said bikes belong only on recreation trails.
"Bicyclists need to look at themselves as vehicles," Trebilcock said. "They need to be responsible on their bikes, they need to stop at stoplights. If they do so, they become predictable to drivers."
Catching the bus
Beyond the bike, the city pushes its buses, 12 fixed routes that loop throughout Sioux Falls.
Ridership on Sioux Falls Transit was up 2.37 percent in May, compared to the previous May, which is the most current statistical month available, said Debra Gaikowski, the city's transit planner. This year, bus ridership is up 10.45 percent from 2007.
"Ridership is the highest it's been in a really long time," Gaikowski said. "But that's a double-edged sword. Even with full buses, the price of gas affects the system. Fares are just a small portion of where our funding comes from."
The city's transit system operates on a $6.6 million budget for 2008. Patrons pay $1 per ride or $25 for an unlimited monthly pass. However, the Sioux Falls transit board has recommended to the City Council that fares be raised to $1.50.
In 2005, the transit system added bike racks to the front of buses, which allows people to bike to a transfer station and ride to work or to a stop and finish their commute by bike.
The city tracks those numbers as well. In 2006, 3,168 people popped their bike on the bus and rode. In 2007, the number was 5,145. Through May of this year, 1,258 people in Sioux Falls had bused themselves - and their bikes.
"We've been happy with those numbers," Trebilcock said. "It's a nice way of saying, 'Let's multi-mode.' "
Will it sell?
In the end, it is up to the public to embrace alternative transportation, embrace the idea of new urbanism.
It's clear that not everyone can or will get on the bus or pick up a bike.
"I'll continue to drive, but I'll drive a different car," said Cody Casey of Inwood, Iowa, as he filled up his 1980 Pontiac LeMans, with its 455 cubic inch V-8. "I just like the car 'cause it's fast."
Even at $7 a gallon?
"Yeah," he said. "Just not this one."
Will new urbanism sell on South Dakota's wide-open prairie, with its share of windy days and winters that border on brutal?
"We'll never get rid of the suburban-feel option," Trebilcock said. "But we need to give them the opportunity, the opportunity to bring those live-work-play options like what we have in the downtown area."
Reach Thom Gabrukiewicz at 331-2320.
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