Tag Archives: choice architecture

BRAC, but for WMATA station names

What’s in a name? Recently, a WMATA Board committee voted to add destinations to the Foggy Bottom and Smithsonian stations. The two will soon be “Foggy Bottom-GWU-Kennedy Center” and “Smithsonian-National Mall” stations, respectively. Matt Johnson at Greater Greater Washington has a good read on why these name additions are a bad idea and will add to rider confusion. But leaving aside the merits of WMATA’s station name policy, the inability to follow that policy is a case-study in importance of decision-making architecture.

The changes contradict WMATA policy, last considered in 2011 when there was universal agreement about problem: station names were often too long, multiple names for a single station was confusing, and the required changes in signage (updating every single map in the system) were substantial and usually understated. Yet, the Board can’t resist adding destinations to station names.

There will always be a constituency for adding a destination to a station. It speaks to the great power of a transit station to define a neighborhood. These name change requests are coming up now, in advance of the opening of Phase 2 of the Silver Line (which will require re-printing every map in the system, changing lots of signage, etc). So long as the ultimate decision about station names sits with the WMATA Board, individual Board members will always be subject to lobbying from name-based interests.

WMATA’s official policy acknowledges the problems with station name sprawl – there’s agreement about the issue, but an inability to follow through. The name policy reinforces two basic ideas, that station names should be distinct, unique, and brief:

  • Distinctive names that evoke imagery; using geographical features or centers of activity where possible
  • 19 characters maximum; preference for no more than two words.

The very idea of adding to a station name (so that station now has two names) violates both principles – the name is no longer singular, and it’s longer than necessary.

This suggests a problem in the structure of the decision-making. Changing the decision-making process could better align the outcomes with policy. The simplest solution is to simply remove the Board from the equation and let staff make all decisions. However, if that isn’t acceptable, there is another model to consider – one similar to the Department of Defense’s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission.

BRAC is a solution to a similar type of problem. Towards the end of the Cold War, there was universal agreement about the need to downsize the military and close and/or realign redundant, outdated, or unnecessary facilities. However, because of the importance of each facility locally, members of Congress would lobby hard on the DoD to keep those bases open. Any action to close bases through Congress would be subject to all sorts of legislative logrolling. The interests of individual members proved unable to meet the overall goal.

The procedural solution of the BRAC Commission was simple: form a commission to develop a list of bases to be closed, based on objective criteria all parties agree on in advance. That list of recommended closures must then be either approved or disapproved by Congress with no alterations or substitutions. Congress was willing to delegate this authority to a commission as a means of solving their own collective action problem.

One political science review of the process notes three key elements that make this delegation of power successful: agreement about the goals, agreement about the steps required to meet the goals, and a narrowly defined scope.

Imagine a BRAC-like process for WMATA station names. Agreement about WMATA’s unwieldy names, agreement on the policy to apply, and a narrow charge to an independent committee to propose changes are all in place. If I were a member of that committee, I might propose a list looking like this:

wmata station names 1-2

wmata station names 1-3

This proposal changes the names of 28 stations. The list includes stations planned (Potomac Yard) or under construction (Phase 2 of the Silver Line); it also assumes the addition of the National Mall and Kennedy Center under the ‘current’ station names.

Highlights from the proposal:

  • Dramatic reduction in the number of stations in direct violation of the character limit – from 20 to 3.
  • Sorry, local universities: you’re off the list of names. Unless a university builds a station on campus (and ‘Foggy Bottom’ is more distinctive than ‘GWU’ – sorry, Colonials), it’s hard to justify appending all of these acronyms.
  • Despite an effort to remove hyphenated names, some remain. Navy Yard-Ballpark has legit wayfinding benefits; Stadium-Armory loses the ‘stadium,’ noting that a handful of confused baseball fans still travel to the wrong station even though the Nationals haven’t played at RFK Stadium since 2007.
  • Those pesky airports: with Metro coming to IAD, it’s worthwhile to spell out ‘International’ in contrast to DCA. The proposal distills down to MWAA’s own shorthand: Reagan National and Dulles International.
  • None of the changes are re-branding efforts – all of the ‘new’ names are either part of the existing names, edited for brevity and clarity.

Imagine this proposal put forth to the WMATA Board for an up or down vote…

Development and the path of least resistance

A quick link that builds on a couple of themes I’ve written about here – development following the path of least resistance, and the need for cities and urban areas to grow in the face of demand for additional development in those places.

Winchester, MA - aerial image from Google Maps

Winchester, MA – aerial image from Google Maps

Zoning makes Massachusetts housing expensive – from the Boston Globe editorial board

Outside of Boston, developers often run into the challenges of regulatory requirements on new development, while city officials come to terms with the fact that the regulatory path of least resistance does not lead to the city’s desired outcomes.

Tidy downtown Winchester, just 20 minutes by train from North Station, should be a prime target for new development. According to one recent study, Greater Boston may need 19,000 new housing units every year just to keep pace with demand. And Winchester would welcome new residents: Town Manager Richard Howard says downtown restaurants and stores are eager to see new residential development on the city-owned lots, and that a planned upgrade to the commuter rail station next year could bring new vitality to downtown. The style of transit-oriented housing would also fall in line with the state’s environmental goals, which call for concentrating residential and commercial development near rail stations.

The obstacle, though, is the state’s dysfunctional ’70s-era zoning code, which sets the parameters for how individual cities and towns plan for development — and, in practice, sets up complex permitting rules and creates numerous opportunities for litigation. The process of securing approval to build new housing in downtown Winchester is so onerous, Howard says, that developers simply won’t bother. And in suburban towns where anti-development sentiment is stronger, the path is even steeper.

The end result? Most development follows the path of least resistance, and the path of least resistance leads to sub-optimal outcomes:

What it amounts to is the worst of all worlds. Sensible, smart-growth housing plans often languish, while single-family homes proliferate on large lots in sprawling suburban subdivisions — one of the few types of housing that can be easily built in Massachusetts under current law. State officials rightly fear that the housing market dynamics squeeze middle-class families so much that they’re endangering the state’s economic health. It also ensures that much of the growth that does occur is unplanned, expensive, and environmentally harmful.

Matching the functional outcomes of a host of complex regulatory processes to a planning vision is difficult, but necessary. It’s also not enough to look at incentives for particular planning goals. Instead, one must look at the entire development process. One must understand the tensions within real estate investment, between city-building and financial performance, how those tensions impact the decision-making of developers, and how the regulatory process creates a choice architecture for those developers.

Choice architecture and behavior change

CC image from sparktography.

In the DC urbanist blogosphere (or, David Alpert across multiple platforms), ‘choice’ is all the rage these days. GGW writes about DC Planning Director Harriet Tregoning being “pro-choice” on transportation; Alpert in the Post writing about housing choices and transportation options; and Alpert again talking about zoning and parking requirements on News 8.

And of course, who isn’t against choice? Richard Layman pushes back on the ‘choice’ rhetoric a bit, noting that maximizing choice alone isn’t sufficient for good policy, and then focusing on outcomes, noting that it’s about “making the right choices.”

My most recent Metro read was Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge, devoted to a lengthy discussion of the vital importance of ‘choice architecture’ in our lives (also mentioned in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow – in the reading list). Choice architecture is all about framing the decisions we make, usually with large impacts on the final outcomes.

In that vein, Layman’s critique of the narrative about choice is spot on – there’s a lot more to a successful policy outcome than just providing choice. However, Thaler and Sunstein might disagree a bit with Layman’s goal of getting people to make the “right choices.” They frame their goals as using choice architecture to nudge us into better outcomes, while still being free to make choices as we see fit – calling this ‘libertarian paternalism.’  Making the choice for someone would be straight-up paternalism.

I don’t want to speak for Layman (and this is almost certainly splitting hairs in terms of semantics), but I can see how his framing on transportation choice would not meet the libertarian threshold. That sense of having decisions made for you certainly explains some of the all-too-predictable ‘war on cars‘ backlash, no matter how misplaced it might be.

There is also the matter of rhetoric. While simply maximizing choices might not be a complete policy, it makes an effective argument. Implementing a good choice architecture is imperative, but is also rather in-the-weeds for common debate. Given how skewed our transportation system is towards framing auto use as the default, changing the choice architecture often is the policy change – people’s behavior will follow.

Examples of transportation nudges can range from how fringe benefits are offered to employers to how parking is leased/bought in apartment buildings. Decisions about the physical environment, such as how much parking to build, are more about broader development markets, as renters/buyers already factor the price/availability of parking into their decision making.  Barring interference from something like minimum parking requirements in the zoning code, the choice is faced by developers, not end users.

The existence of such minimum parking requirements (as well as other aspects of land use regulation) is also an interesting look into choice architecture.  I’ve often heard Chris Leinberger speak not just about doing the right thing with development, but also shifting our regulations so that doing the right thing is easy. So much development follows the path of least resistance. In terms of choice architecture, they opt for the default. Even if not speaking about the choices of individuals (but rather firms and corporations), the impact of choice architecture is enormous.

The parallel that comes to mind is David Schleicher’s emphasis on the process of land-use decision making, and how that impacts outcomes. Schleicher’s argument is that our procedures for land-use decision making provide multiple opportunities for (as an example) NIMBYs with concentrated, hyper-local interests to influence decisions over broader, city-wide interests.  In essence, the procedures and process for this kind of decision-making is a kind of choice architecture – arguably, one with (in Richard Layman’s words) “sub-optimal” results. Opposed to the libertarian paternalism that aims to structure the choice architecture to achieve better outcomes, this architecture is not structured at all – there isn’t an architect.

Nonetheless, this is a complicated discussion – ‘libertarian paternalism’ and ‘choice architecture’ aren’t likely to be effective talking points in a community meeting.  There’s a reason why opponents to some of these changes fall back on incendiary language (“war on cars,” etc), as that rhetoric is simple and accessible.  The rhetoric of providing choice is just as simple (and, I would argue, more honest than the “war on cars”), even if the underlying policies must be more complex.

(EDIT: as I publish this post, Richard Layman writes another post on choice, also mentioning Thaler and Sunstein)