The single meters will return to the West Broad Street deck in late July after it’s resurfaced, Bethlehem Parking Authority Executive Director Tom Hartley said.

The authority placed two multi-space meters on the deck in November 2011. Refuting merchants inside the Main and Broad streets building, Hartley said parking authority records show the multi-space meters have not driven away customers.

About 10 percent more people used the machines in the first five months of 2013 compared to the first five months of 2012, Hartley said, but he’s willing to test single-space meters to satisfy the merchants.

(Via Lynn Olanoff)

They keep closing off the corners of the circle for big events, aka times of peak parking demand, and it’s no big deal. People find other places to park, and everyone gets to enjoy more public fun in a nice public space.

If this can work during peak times, obviously it’ll work during off-peak times too. Easton should eventually pave over the parking spaces in the circle permanently and extend the public space out further. They might even want to consider raising the street surface at the crosswalks and giving the raised areas a cobblestone surface or something to calm traffic.

Easton is booming right now and Centre Square is one of the greatest places in the LV. But that shouldn’t mean Mission Accomplished. Every place could do its thing better, and Centre Square could be an even greater public space with more sidewalk space, more outdoor seating, better landscaping and slower traffic.

- Sell Gracedale- Stoffa, Angle, and a few other folks in the whole county want this. Very few, based on the referendum results.

- Keep Gracedale at all costs- Essentially this is the coalition and labor folks, and some of their allies in office. These are folks who don’t want the home sold, don’t want to give the contract to Lifestar, and really aren’t even for the management company. They may find some savings they like, but they wouldn’t support sale no matter what.

- Keep Gracedale, but accept the paradigm that it needs to create savings- Essentially they accept that the home is bleeding money and must find savings, but they want it kept anyway. This is like Bob Werner, and for that matter, John Callahan on this issue.

These divisions are not new. Let’s be honest, the entire County Executive Primary was about this. Reibman and McClure had the backing of the most pro-Gracedale people, and even now some of them are unhappy that Callahan won. The annoyance of the “keep it no matter what” crowd with the people looking for savings is fairly tangible. The debate over the ambulance company is putting this into plain view. Stoffa’s actual position, that the home must be sold (he still advocates for that position reportedly), is dead. No candidate for his office supports it, no council person with any sense supports it either. He is now dividing his opponents quite nicely with the question of how to save money on the home.

I think an honest debate on this issue should have three distinct, clear sides. On side one, Stoffa’s side, which is not really politically pragmatic. The second side should say that they would never support selling or changing Gracedale, and it’s worth whatever it costs. The third group should advocate to make the home more efficient. Rather than debating who is in favor of the home, or other stupid debates, I think it’s now time to debate what the home should cost, and how we’re going to pay for it.

This won’t surprise anyone but I think Team Savings clearly has the better of the argument. The political consensus seems to be that nursing home care is a core public service that needs to be provided in-house by local government (rather than just giving people cash to live at the nursing home of their choosing). My view is that poor senior citizens mainly need cash from us, and that paternalism is inappropriate for seniors and their families, but I think Rich is right that no politician’s going to reopen this disagreement any time soon.

The task now is limiting how much of the County budget will go to this service. State and federal aid to county-run homes is getting phased out, so local costs will probably continue to grow a bit. I think this is one of the less important things that County government does, or could be doing, so I’d like to see the tax revenue devoted to running Gracedale stabilized around the current level. This should not crowd out criminal justice services or EMS or farmland preservation, and should not interfere with forming a County police force. County Council shouldn’t fight the less expensive Lifestar contract, or any other less-expensive contract. This issue is now about the best way to maintain service levels while reducing spending and overpayments to service providers. I don’t think every last government undertaking should have to pay for itself, but this particular service is low on my list of priorities for County government, and I do not want to see it crowd out the things I think the County should be spending money on.

Lynn Olanoff says:

Bethlehem officials have been working on plans for a year plus to do away with the current right turn lane going northbound. I think last time I talked to Mike Alkhal he said the work was going to be done later this year. Here’s a story I wrote on the project in April 2012: http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/bethlehem/index.ssf/2012/04/fahy_bridge_lane_in_bethlehem.html
Lynn Olanoff says:

The major Fahy project planned for 2015 (assuming Corbett’s transportation funding is approved) also would redo the pedestrian access near Columbia and Third streets — it would be directly onto Third. They may also do away with the other “slip” ramp coming off West Lehigh Street. http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/bethlehem/index.ssf/2013/04/bethlehems_fahy_bridge_to_get.html

That’s great news-to-me, and let me just repeat that the option exists to make these changes on the north side of the bridge immediately with road cones while the permanent redesign is in the works.

Doing away with the slip ramp on W Lehigh Street is also a good idea that would be even better if paired with PennDOT’s “complete streets” redesign of the Fahy Bridge. The slip ramp could be narrowed a bit and become a protected bike ramp onto a protected bike lane on the bridge. I’ve always wanted to see a separated green bike lane running down W. Lehigh Street anyway, going around Conestoga, up Spring St. and into the West Side neighborhoods. 2nd Avenue is quite wide and I think it would be cool to eventually have a bike boulevard between Broad and Spring. This would connect the West side neighborhoods to Southside Bethlehem via a bike path through some pretty low-traffic areas, without anyone having to go through the Northside downtown.

I have two problems with the current farmland preservation program. One is that the Counties aren’t strategic about which farmland gets bought. The goal needs to be to strategically buy the land that’s right outside the current edge townships, which people would most want to use for new large-lot exurban housing development or shopping centers. The purpose of land preservation needs to be to stop more sprawl development.

The other problem is that Counties buy development rights to farmland and then don’t use them for anything. They’re sitting on millions of dollars’ worth of development rights. What Ron Beitler is proposing is a Tradable Development Rights bank, where developers can buy those farmland development rights and convert them into air rights to use in the built-up areas.

For instance, downtown Allentown’s zoning code caps building heights in a “high density” residential area at 38 feet. That’s not very high density obviously, so the city could pick an area where developers can cash in their development rights from the TDR bank, and build taller than the zoning code allows by-right. In Northampton County, the former Steel land could become a TDR zone. Currently building height is limited to 200 feet, but developers could have the option of cashing in development rights and building taller than that.

Every square foot of developable space that becomes inactive in the rural areas due to farmland preservation just gets transferred somewhere else.

The best part about this is that no public money would be required, since developers would buy the development rights, and the County would turn around and use it to purchase more farmland.

Going from south to north, the right turning lane is designed to speed traffic right through the cross-walk, precisely where pedestrians are supposed to enter the pedestrian/bike path. This is designed to be a death trap, and it’s not going to get safer until the turning lane is eliminated.

That is what Jeff Speck recommended in his 2009 walkability report for Bethlehem, and he said both sides of the pedestrian crossings needed to be fixed “in short order.” This was two years before Pat Ytsma was killed.

This is an issue that is really pure politics masquerading as a technical decision. Who gets the street space? Motorists want to have most of the street space in this intersection because they want to drive fast. Cyclists and pedestrians want more of the street space because they don’t want to get killed. People need to decide if high speeds are appropriate to this intersection and bridge, or if it should be more accessible and friendly to pedestrians.

That’s a political choice. Once the political choice is made to make this intersection safer, the problem can be fixed very quickly and cheaply. It’s true that a long-term fix could get expensive like if you wanted to turn that whole traffic lane into a nice wide sidewalk or bike path. But in the short term it would cost Bethlehem virtually nothing to close off the turning lane tomorrow with some road cones, or some paint and planters.

From a public finance perspective, exurban sprawl development is basically a big Ponzi scheme. The property tax revenue from Big Box development is pathetically meager, and the public return-on-investment in the infrastructure needed to serve this kind of development is massively negative in the long run.

That’s why sprawl developers always come hat-in-hand to local governments when they want to build a new interchange – they can’t build this stuff profitably without public subsidies.

That’s what we’re seeing with this Hamilton Crossings proposal in Lower Macungie. The developer is straight up saying that if the public doesn’t subsidize this project, then it’s not getting built. What more do the free market-loving Lehigh County tea party folks need to hear to vote this down? The government subsidies to Costco and Whole Foods are going to lower their rents relative to the Giant across the street and hurt Giant’s business.

I think a lot of the time we hear incumbent businesses complaining about the lack of a level playing field they’re actually defending protections that tilt the playing field to them, but in this case Giant is not rent-seeking. They actually have a point about unfairness. If the Hamilton Crossings developer had to put up his own money, rents would be higher for Costco and Whole Foods, and they wouldn’t be gaining a competitive advantage on Giant. But because they’ll be paying sub-market rents thanks to the TIF, they’ll be better able to compete with Giant on prices.

So there is a solid free-market Republican argument against this thing. Bruce Schanzer is thinking he can do this project without the TIF. I don’t really believe it, but that should make the free market argument against the TIF even more compelling. If this can in fact be done in a profitable way with no public subsidy, then why lose tax revenue?

The main reason I don’t like this project is because the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission doesn’t like it. I think the LVPC’s Comprehensive Plan for the region is a decent smart growth plan, and I believe that LVPC rulings should be legally binding. Since they’re not legally binding, the next best thing is for elected officials to treat their recommendations as binding, especially when it comes to rejecting new sprawl. A new Big Box shopping center is the last thing this area needs. Future retail businesses and grocery stores should get built in infill locations in the existing built up areas – the city downtowns or the existing shopping centers. Much as I’d like to see the Lehigh Valley get a Whole Foods, it really should go in downtown Allentown or Bethlehem.

The biggest problem on Southside Bethlehem in my view is the ridiculous amount of centrally-located land consumed by value-subtracting surface parking lots. I would eventually like to see every surface parking lot on 3rd St, 4th St, and Surface Lot Mile next to the Greenway replaced with a building. But politically speaking, if we want to get rid of all those surface parking spaces then we “have to” replace them with some structured parking. I don’t actually think you have to replace them, because most are empty most of the time. But that’s what some people are going to demand every time a surface lot gets built on, so it’s useful to be able to point at the parking garage.

A closely related issue is future development, and whether new commercial and residential buildings will be required to supply their own parking spaces. Regulations requiring new developments to include parking are a very regressive subsidy from non-drivers to drivers. They drive up the cost of housing and commercial space, they take away curb parking spaces with curb-cuts, and they prevent neighborhoods from becoming more walkable and pedestrian-friendly. If you want Southside Bethlehem to become a place where you can live and walk a reasonably short distance to access most of your basic needs, and you don’t need a car to get everywhere, then the ratio of parking spaces to people needs to shrink over time.

The two things that need to happen in the short term are:

1. zeroing out minimum parking requirements in the areas just outside the Southside Central Business district zone

2. exploring more shared parking options in parking structures

If developers didn’t have to provide parking spaces, and residents and local employees were renting parking separately, I think you would see substantially more infill housing and commercial/mixed-use development, especially on top of surface parking lots. Having another large parking garage on Southside to point to would improve the odds of getting the votes on City Council for pro-walkability zoning changes.

Let’s step back for a minute though and ask why BPA has to build a new municipal parking garage. After all, parking is not a public good. It is both perfectly excludable and perfectly rivalrous, meeting neither of the criteria for something to be a public good. It’s actually a great example of a market good, since parking spaces are scarce and people are willing to pay money to rent them.

If Southside Bethlehem had a parking shortage, there would be a huge profit opportunity akin to a $20 bill sitting on the sidewalk for someone to build a parking garage and charge people money to rent spaces. Why don’t we see anyone doing that? Why would it take millions in subsidies from state government to build a parking garage if a parking shortage (a profit opportunity) exists?

One possibility is that nobody’s doing it because city government has been saying for years that they intend to do this, and that’s scaring away potential investors. Another possibility is that there is not really a parking shortage right now, and city government is just planning for future (auto-oriented) development – trying to head off a future parking shortage before it occurs as a result of some of the new developments planned for that area.

My view is that city government shouldn’t own parking assets in the first place, and especially shouldn’t build expensive structured parking capacity preemptively. If you want this neighborhood to develop in a more walkable, bike and pedestrian-friendly way, then you need to plan for the ratio of parking spaces to people to shrink. Why not plan for a greater percentage of the traffic generated by these new developments to be foot traffic or bike traffic or bus traffic and see what happens? It would be better to let private investors build as much parking as people want to pay for, and have the BPA stick to pricing curb parking at market rates.

Dent thinks that it makes the Republicans look terrible to be wasting time on an abortion ban that looks like it was drafted by the Afghani National Assembly at a time when voters are frustrated with weak growth in jobs and wages, and with the Boehner House for doing the opposite of what’s needed to fix these problems.

And he’s right! The timing does make the Republicans look ridiculous. But you know what else makes Republicans look ridiculous? The bill! Also, too, the evident hunger on the Republican side to tediously debate the pros and cons of rape pregnancies, and defend the veracity of their positions with evidence garnered from methodologically-suspect Nazi experiments.

Back to Dent. Is Dent a moderate on women’s health care or “abortion in particular” as Keegan Gibson claims? No. No he is not.

Keegan may be referring to Dent’s symbolic vote against cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood before he eventually voted for the final bill. Dent also voted for the Stupak Amendement, which bans private insurance plans that cover abortion from being sold on the health insurance exchanges. He voted for HR 3, the notorious “rape audits” bill, which also redefined rape to protect date rapists, and banned local government funding for abortion in Washington DC.

Therein lies the trouble with defining “moderate” heuristically to mean “on the left wing of the Republican Party.” Is Dent’s record less nasty than what other Republicans want to do? Moderately so, yes. But this is the most conservative Republican Party that has ever been. Being a member of this Republican Party necessarily means you are extremely conservative. An actual moderate would have defected to the Democrats by now: