Sassafras Blog

Guerilla Green Streets!

Un-permitted Sustainable Interventions that make a statement.

So I am back in Portland reconnecting with an old colleague and friend, Jason King of Greenworks (http://www.greenworkspc.com/ and http://landscapeandurbanism.blogspot.com/). We are sitting at Stumptown Coffee (http://www.stumptowncoffee.com/) catching up on new projects, goings on in the sustainability world in Portland. He brings up work he is doing with UDP (http://www.udplp.com/) on a project on Division Street and tells me that he got a call from someone there not too long ago asking for his help taming a “guerilla” green street bioswale. I laughed out loud. That is my guerilla green street! Designed and installed along with my good friend Nancy. Hey, I did a lot of research for Metro’s Green Street manual and wrote the Trees for Green Streets manual  (http://www.oregonmetro.gov/index.cfm/go/by.web/id=235) as my masters thesis so I wasn’t going to wait for the city to catch up with me. I just did it! I had to first remove a driveway entrance and then convince my concrete guys to leave a little notch in the curb. Voila. And it seems to be doing pretty well.

I have often thought about starting a “guerilla” group that did midnight interventions to make a statement about underutilized land and the ability of ordinary citizens to just take over their community spaces instead of waiting for the city to approve or permit these good, smart, safe and easy actions. A list of dream projects include:

Victory Gardens Everywhere!

Food garden installations on vacant lots. In the cover of night, get a group of 10-15 people to plow and plant vacant underutilized lots with veggie starts. Voila! Instant food gardens that not only beautify but also help meet the food needs of community members (the current city run community gardening program is so backlogged it will never catch up with the need/demand). A sign would explain why the garden was installed and the group would continue to maintain and grow the garden. I know, I know. Private property rights are at stake here. But more than likely these lots are owned by people far, far away and it is possible that they might actually like the fact that people are taking care of their lot. I know I know, liability. The curse of creativity. But let’s go down that road when we get there. Who knows maybe they will warm up to the idea and work with us to keep the food garden alive.

Covert Crosswalks!

Stenciled cross walk interventions at key intersections. First we create a stencil for different road widths (2 lane, 4 lane, etc) We base the stencil on an actual crosswalk so it meets the city criteria. Next we find the right kind of paint. Then we find a group of 6 people to create the crosswalk during the wee hours of the night when there will be little to no car traffic. I would love to do this on Division Street since it has taken over 7 years for the city to get its act together to implement the green main street concept. It’s just this little reminder that says, “see, we can get stuff done and why not do it? It doesn’t hurt anyone, and hey, maybe this is a way to test some of our ideas without investing a huge amount of money.” This could apply to the protime lanes on Division Street too. Just remove those signs for a few months and see what happens. Why not? It’s so simple. In face, I will volunteer to remove the signs. Anyway, I digress. Back to covert crosswalks. The other place I really think these covert crosswalks need to be installed is on Burnside between the family oriented Laurelhurst neighborhood to the north and Laurelhurst Park to the south. It is absolutely Un-Portland to not have crosswalks that help people get to parks safely. Let’s just do it and show everyone that it is a good thing. Drivers actually stop for people who are in crosswalks. If there are no stripy things across the streets, people don’t think peds have the right of way. It would literally take 1 hour, max, once the stencil is made and paint procured. 

Energy Uncertainty: Know Your Municipality’s Vulnerability

No one else is thinking about this. What can you do? 

Riding the Rails in 21st Century America

Imagine planning a non car-oriented trip to Portland, Oregon from Vashon Island, Washington. Luckily I live near the north end ferry terminal and can easily walk down to the ferries. There are two different options once I get there. I can ride the foot ferry, which runs twice every morning at 7am and 8:15am or the car ferry, which runs about every 30 minutes during the morning commute.

The advantage of the foot ferry is that it puts me right in downtown Seattle about 5 blocks away from the Seattle Train Station. Not that the car ferry is inconvenient. You just have to catch a bus at Fauntleroy and head through the most polluted part of Seattle. Plus it is so much fun to land in the center of the city on a foggy rainy morning with the salty Puget Sound lapping against the docks.

Next, I need to determine which train to get on. If I take the 7:00am foot ferry I will land on the city shores at 7:30am, which is exactly when the southbound train leaves. Not happening. The next train is at 9:45am, so if I take the 8:15am foot ferry I will land at 8:45am, a quick 15 minute walk through Pioneer Square, a cup of coffee (in my own travel mug of course) at Zeitgeist and then onto the station with 20 minutes to spare! Things are going my way and I am looking forward to settling down in the café car to get some work done as I look out the window on a journey that provides stunning visuals of polluted industrial land, farmland and gorgeous natural areas of the Puget Sound that extends down to Olympia.

I arrive at the decrepit Seattle Train Station at 9:20am to find a ticket line 10 people deep and only 1 ticketing agent working the counter. After about 5 minutes another ticketing agent starts to assist and things start to pick up. I am not in a rush, as I know from my last experience that the train will not leave without me.

I overhear the people in front of me complaining about the train not leaving until 11. Surely this is not my train. They must be going north to Vancouver. But as I continue to wait, I get a sinking feeling. By the look on many people’s faces this is not what they expected of their train trip down the nw corridor. Or maybe it is what they expected. Nobody is complaining, they just have the slumped over posture of surrender. It’s happened again. Amtrak has let us down again.

Sure enough I step up to the counter, hoping that my optimistic outlook would change the inevitability of my situation, to find out that indeed my train is late. My mind starts racing as I listen to the agent give me my options. “The train you are on see, train 11, is running late, and is scheduled to leave at 11….but it may not leave. It may not ever leave.” May not ever leave? Ever? I could tell she was pushing her second option to prevent further anxiety on my part. “We have a train leaving at 11:20 that goes straight to Portland (as if the other train does not go straight to Portland. They all go straight to Portland). She reassures me that this train will leave, on time, and arrive in Portland at 3:00pm. She promised. So I agree. Just to see what kind of customer service I will get, I ask one more question. “Can you give me a discount on the ticket or a free ticket for the inconvenience?”

She looks at me kinda sideways, like I just asked her to have sex with me in the bathroom. “Um, well. Let me see. I will…um…go ask.” She sneaks away into a room off to the right of the counter with the fluorescent glow of bureaucracy and complacency. The kind of light that sucks your energy away and makes you not think and just do what you are told. A few minutes pass and I start to feel like a troublemaker. If I could just get everyone together in a circle and talk about why it is so important to demand customer service. Demand a trustworthy system of public transportation that runs on time, is clean and draws people who want to work for something that…well…works, like in Japan. My mind starts racing. I know Amtrak is set up to fail. I know it is criminally under funded and that it will never work. They don’t own their own tracks, must pull off to the side when there is freight traffic, and go about 40 mph max because the tracks are so old. The result is consistently late arrivals and departures, and more importantly broken promises. The Japanese would never allow this. Maybe it is the Japanese ethic of mottainai – waste not – like waste not of my time.

But maybe it is something in our culture. We don’t’ expect public transport to work, which is why we drive and fly. Plus, the well-educated elite make excuses for not riding and associate public transport with “poor people” who are “crazy” and “smelly.” Really, highly educated people that I know and love say these words to me…out loud. Without hesitation. And you know how it hits me. Like someone just used the n word in a sentence without blinking.

Some people have to ride public transport because they cannot afford to drive. And this population is growing, not shrinking. And some of the elite riders are giving in too. They bring their ipods or just put on a pair of headphones so these “crazy poor people don’t start talking to me.” Others, myself included, ride public transport because they actually want to do everything they can to save the planet and riding on a bus or a train is the least they can do.

Driving and flying are one of the most environmentally destructive things we can do besides having children, so taking public transport makes a huge difference. If you can slow down enough, lower your expectations enough, give in to the larger forces of the universe that are working on you, and make the best out of an otherwise not so bad situation then you can attain the patience and dedication it takes to ride the rails of 21^st century America.

But I digress.

It is 10:45 and my train leaves at 11:20, so I better pack up and head over there. It’s another roll of the dice to see if I get to Portland on-time, as promised at 3pm. Nothing hurts more than broken promises.