Stairs, Robots, Bike Parking, and Bullet Trains (maybe)
Stairs, Robots, Bike Parking, and Bullet Trains (maybe)
A different kind of post to kick off the new year
Hey folks, trying something a little different this month. Instead of an exhaustive deep dive, this will be more of a collection of random odds and ends. Hope you enjoy.
Seattle rediscovers single-stair construction
In 2023, Seattle passed the nerdiest of nerdy building code reforms: they legalized single-stair construction.
Single-stair or point access block buildings are exactly what they sound like. They’re multi-story mid-rise construction built around a single stairwell with a single point of entry. This pattern requires less land than buildings with multiple entrances. Reducing the amount of land — especially in places like Seattle where land costs are high — is a great way to increase affordability.
In North America, multiple entrances are required by most local building codes, the justification being fire safety. Because wood frame construction is more common in the U.S. and Canada, there’s an underlying assumption that any building could go up in flames at any time…so it’s best to give residents multiple ways to get out.
In Europe, single-stair buildings are made out of concrete. This makes them unlikely to burn down meaning there’s less of a need for multiple escape routes. While new buildings in Seattle will still be wood frame, the code deals with fire risk by mandating things like sprinklers.
While this isn’t strictly speaking new technology, it’s a re-adoption of a pattern that works well all over Europe. And maybe what starts in Seattle will get picked up in other cities across North America.1
Window washing drones
I’ve thought a lot about drones, particularly how they’ll be used and how they’ll be regulated. While I settled on recreation, delivery, and violence as the most obvious use cases, there’ll be a million other things that pop up over time. Case in point, window washing.
This hadn’t occurred to me before but now it seems like an obvious application. As uses like this proliferate, drones will become ubiquitous and about as noteworthy as birds in the sky.
In urbanist Japan, the bikes park themselves
This is not new news, but I only recently heard about Tokyo’s automated underground bike parking.
Takeaway 1: Tokyo continues to urbanism better than almost anywhere else in the world.
Takeaway 2: This is a perfect example of how there are no neutral design decisions. When we build transit infrastructure, that infrastructure is always biased towards some modes and against some others. Painting a bike lane on the side of a 6-lane thoroughfare in Houston or L.A. does not bike infrastructure make.
Texas continues flirting with trains
According to Texas Monthly, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) received Federal grant money to study passenger rail in Texas. The grant was for only $2.5 million (so basically nothing), but the fact that TxDOT is actively interested is noteworthy on its own.
There’s also talk that Amtrak might help resurrect a mothballed Dallas-Houston high-speed rail project. Lots of train-related goings on in the Lonestar state. But why does all this matter and what does it have to do with the future? Well, that has to do with triangles, sorta.
Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and Houston form what we call in the old country the Texas Triangle. This is where 66% of the state’s population lives and 77% of its GDP gets produced. It’s also completely reliant on car-based infrastructure which is…suboptimal. Car-choked Texas highways already suck. They won’t scale as a system to serve the future mega-region the triangle could become.
If the region gets right with transit god, it could pave the way for generations worth of economic prosperity. If it doesn’t, it’ll have to settle for being a couple of urban oases in a desert of parking lots and clogged freeways.
IIRC, New York City allows single-stair construction, but I’m not familiar with any other places in North America where it’s permitted