Latest and Greaterest

by Ed Lazere

This morning, homeless individuals and advocates gathered to speak to the crisis in the lack of shelter for homeless individuals and families in DC. The Homeless Emergency Response Workgroup held a rally at Freedom Plaza at 10:00 am. They also released a report on unmet shelter need, a "Declaration of Inter-Dependence," and a letter to the Mayor and DC Council asking them to address the crisis.

A rise in homelessness in the District of Columbia is the latest evidence of the devastating impact of the economic downturn. The number of homeless families with children is up 25% this year, and 200 families are on a waiting list just to get into emergency shelter, according to the sign-on letter. Yet a main shelter for homeless families (at D.C. General) is slated to close because there is no funding to run it past the winter months.

A study of DC shelters in April by the Homeless Emergency Response Workgroup — a coalition of service providers, consumers, religious groups, advocacy organizations, and other community groups — found that many people were turned away due to lack of capacity, with a high of 79 turned away on one night. They also showed that shelters in the individual emergency system were in overflow on 18 of 31 nights in May 2009, compared with zero nights in May 2008.

Both shelter and day service providers have said this is one of the worst years in terms of increased need for services. Unlike in past years, the demand for shelter has not decreased with the warmer weather.

What do the organizers want? The letter to the Mayor and Council asks for in increase in shelter beds and an improvement in the quality of DC shelters. Equally important, it asks the city to live up to the legal mandate to track "unmet need" for shelter. The letter also supports increasing housing resources in order to solve homelessness, but recognizes that emergency shelter needs will continue and that the District needs to do a better job of assessing and meeting that need.

by Kent Boese

The McLean House, located at 1500 Eye Street, NW, was perhaps the most opulent of the many great houses erected in Washington at the turn of the century. A Renaissance-inspired structure, the house covered one-third of a city block on the south side of McPherson Square.

The mansion incorporated the original house on the southwest corner of 15th and Eye Streets that was built in 1860 by Jonah Hoover. From 1865 to 1869, the house was occupied by Senator Edwin D. Morgan, a wealthy stockbroker and wholesale grocery merchant.

The house was leased by John Roll McLean in 1884, and he purchased it several years later. Subsequently, the home was enlarged in 1886, 1891, 1894, and 1896. McLean was the only son of Washington McLean, who started as a boilermaker in Ohio and made a fortune as a manufacturer of Ohio River steamboats.

The younger McLean got his start at his father's paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, taking charge when the family moved to Washington. In 1905, McLean purchased the Washington Post, which deteriorated under his leadership.

In his personal life, McLean liked to entertain on a grand scale. To this end, he commission John Russell Pope to expand the house (which he'd already added on to four times) into a block-long Renaissance in-town villa in 1907. For the interior decoration, the leading New York designer Elsie de Wolfe was engaged.

Upon John's death in 1916, the house passed to his son Edward. Edward, a known alcoholic, had married Evalyn Walsh. Edward spent his last days in a Maryland sanitarium, where he died in 1941.

Evalyn Walsh McLean leased the house to the federal government in 1935 for use as office space for three of the New Deal agencies. In 1939, it was sold for $2 million and demolished for the Lafayette Office Building.

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Shortly after the parking minimums debate, anti groups started echoing a common theme: The DC government is trying to get rid of cars. At many individual meetings, from Historic Dupont Circle Main Streets to the ANC 2F task force on the ARTS Overlay, some residents have made statements like, "DDOT's declared policy is to get rid of cars," as though this were simply established fact.

That's baloney. Designing public policy to shift our transportation mix slightly away from driving and slightly toward transit use, walking and bicycling isn't a plot to ban cars. When airlines announce that they plan to cut capacity by 10%, people don't roundly declare it a secret plot to eliminate planes entirely. DC also reduced the loan guarantee assistance it provides to help lower income buyers get mortgages, but nobody wrote that this is a "war on homebuying."

Why does much of the rehetoric imply that either everyone must drive, or nobody? In a Capitol Hill email list discussion of David C's Safeway post, one resident argued that we need a lot of parking, saying, "It is naive to think that shopping at Eastern Market by using Metro or our feet, while holding down full-time jobs and raising families should be the norm. I happen to live on a subway line and it is still inconvenient."

And I know many people who do shop at Eastern Market by using Metro or their feet (or their bicycle). I also know people who drive. The beauty of a multi-modal transportation system is that not everyone has to use the same mode. There needn't be only one "norm." Maybe this particular resident does need to drive. She should be free to. But many people very easily fall into the trap of thinking that because a life choice wouldn't work for them, it must be bad. If we followed that thinking, then we'd have outlawed computers years ago, since large segments of the population still find them very confusing.

Similar thinking pollutes CakeLove founder Warren Brown's thinking about parking. He responded to our criticism yesterday, saying that Metro doesn't really work because to get from U Street to National Harbor, he would have to take a lengthy trip by train and bus. Of course, as we know, National Harbor is especially transit-inaccessible. Warren might be the only person in the region who regularly goes between U Street and National Harbor. I have no objection to him driving when he does.

Warren also writes that "driving is a fact of life." Eating salty foods is a fact of life, too, but no government agency hands out free pretzels, and when health advocates suggest we try to cut back on sodium, nobody claims they're trying to stamp out salt from the earth. For some reason, an argument keeps surfacing that because driving is part of life, the government ought to spend billions of dollars to remove whole buildings and replace them with empty spaces for them to put their vehicles. Moreover, nobody should have to pay to use that space. And if the government refuses to build those garages, or expects to recoup its costs by charging a market rate, it must be evidence of a secret plot to wipe out all cars and force everyone to ride a bicycle.

Update: I removed a mention of Tom's comment, as he clarified that he didn't mean it in the way I interpreted it.

Last night, the Capitol Hill Town Square project team presented three options for improving the plaza where Pennsylvania Avenue intersects 8th Street, at the Eastern Market Metro station. The plans ranged from minor landscaping improvements and traffic calming to modifying the route of Pennsylvania Avenue through the site.

The study began with residents and business groups who envisioned turning this plaza into a "town square" for the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Currently, busy Pennsylvania Avenue bisects the area into two very separate sections, and the disjointed feel divides the commercial corridors on 7th and Pennsylvania northwest of the site from Barracks Row on 8th to the south. Other squares from the original L'Enfant Plan, like Stanton Square, became true parks thanks to the roadways running around, rather than through, the site.

The first option keeps the current arrangement with two separate parks on opposite sides of Pennsylvania Avenue. New and better landscaping would add trees, consolidate the paved part and creating a circular plaza in the eastern park. "Stronger plantings" in the Pennsylvania Avenue median would dissuade midblock crossings from 8th Street north of the plaza to the Metro station, where many people cross today.

Along with the other two, this option includes some traffic calming. The transportation analysts from Gorove/Slade concluded that Pennsylvania could become three lanes on each side instead of the current four, calming traffic without diverting cars onto side streets. They also recommend removing the short segments of D Street between 8th and Pennsylvania on each side, creating larger pedestrian plazas in front of the Hine site and Barracks Row.

Option 2, the "Triptych," would build an oval in the center of the plaza, creating three parks. Pedestrians would have to cross fewer lanes at any one time, and this option (as well as the third) create more direct walking paths from the north to the Metro station, removing the temptation to dash across Pennsylvania midblock.

The third option, "Central Park," involves fully diverting Pennyslvania around the edge of the square to create a single, large park. 8th Street would be closed to cars, but still available to emergency vehicles.

To minimize noise impacts for the residents on D Street, Pennsylvania Avenue would not actually use the D Street right-of-way, but would run parallel. A planted barrier would separate the two and reduce noise impacts on the houses. Nevertheless, as one resident pointed out during the question period, according to the team's diagrams, such a barrier would probably reduce noise to the first floor of nearby houses but not as much to upper floors, which often contain bedrooms.

Several people, including resident Kathy Henderson, called the Triptych the most "visually appealing" option, and I agree. As with a potential circle at North Capitol and Irving, a circle (here oval) borrows the design language of many other parts of DC (though Capitol Hill's vernacular does use squares more than circles). That options could create something with a greater sense of place than the current arrangement, while keeping cars far from nearby houses.

Next: Residents' reactions.

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by Kent Boese

Then: 519 and 521 Rock Creek Church Road, NW, newly completed and offered for sale in this ad from May 29, 1910. Ranging from $4,950 to $6,250, the only major differences in these homes besides the price is the size of the lot and the choice of smooth stucco, textured stucco, and red brick.

Now: 521 Rock Creek Church Road sold on March 26, 2009, for $525,000. It was originally listed nearly a year earlier for $703,500, if memory serves.

If Metro separates the Yellow and Green Lines to add capacity across the Potomac, we could align service various ways. What about a hybrid of the two?

Squalish diagrammed a potential service pattern where some Blue trains take the 14th Street bridge, while others go past the cemetery to Rosslyn. Likewise, some Silver trains go through the Rosslyn tunnel, while others go past the cemetery the other way to 14th Street.

Squalish's diagram shows most (2/3) of the Blue and Silver trains going past the cemetery, but fewer could as well. Most trains would follow the more direct route into DC, but a few would use the cemetery track to switch places. We'd have some service past Arlington Cemetery, allowing people to transfer, but not so much as to let the merges and unmerges slow the whole system down.

To make things simpler for riders, we should give a single color to all trains following a particular route through Arlington and DC. If one color follows two paths, it should only do so at the periphery. I recommended the same for the proposed "Blue Line Split".

Nevertheless, this could definitely confuse riders. There are now, eight services, six involving the Virginia side: Dulles-New Carrollton, Dulles-MV Square, Vienna-New Carrollton, Franconia-Largo, Franconia-MV Square, and Huntington-MV Square. Whereas calling Franconia-Greenbelt service "Yellow" only affects those going to the four stations south of King Street, none of which draw tourists, this would also affect the 14 stations on the Orange and planned Silver Lines, including everyone going to Tysons or Dulles Airport.

Most likely, Metro would need to begin giving trains secondary designations, such as numbers, as New York does, with one number for the Orange Line to Vienna service and a different number for the Orange Line to Wiehle Avenue or Route 772.

by Stephen Miller

Last month, National Harbor was unprepared for cyclists and pedestrians accessing the waterfront resort via the new Wilson Bridge active transportation crossing. The sustained demand for bicycle and pedestrian access has led the property's management to make changes, including the installation of temporary dismount signage and makeshift bike racks where the crushed clamshell surface trail known as the Harborwalk reaches the "downtown" area of the complex. Developer the Peterson Companies says that permanent bike racks and dismount signage will be installed at this location by the end of July. In addition, Director of Marketing Rocell Viniard says that National Harbor security and event staff, who at the beginning of June weren't even aware of the existence of bike racks within the facility on Waterfront Street, have been trained on the new bicycle policies.

However, the developer still seems reluctant to pave the Harborwalk. Viniard tells me that "the Harborwalk will not be paved in the near future" nor has any decision been made to pave it, since the pathway was originally intended for leisure walks and jogs by hotel guests and residents. National Harbor management needs to realize that the Harborwalk is no longer a dead-end path. It's the connection between National Harbor and a first-class bicycle and pedestrian facility on the Wilson Bridge, with the potential to bring thousands of new customers from Alexandria and the Mount Vernon Trail. Providing these customers with substandard facilities indicates that National Harbor doesn't want their business.

Residents of the North Portal Estates neighborhood thought they were getting a nice, new street reconstruction, including sidewalks to keep themselves and their children safe. That is, until one politically-connected resident intervened personally with Mayor Fenty. Now, DDOT has just finished reconstructing several main streets in the neighborhood as wide roads for cars to speed, without protection for pedestrians heading to work, school and stores.

North Portal Estates is DC's northernmost neighborhood, nestled into the northern corner of the city where the streets are named for trees and flowers. The neighborhood consists of single-family houses a short walk from Silver Spring, where many residents, such as Katherine Trimble, use Metro to get to work. She walks downhill along Tamarack Street to reach 16th and enter Maryland. Many cars, too, drive downhill, and often at high speed, making many residents feel unsafe in their neighborhood.

In March, DDOT representatives told the neighborhood that sidewalks would be part of the planned reconstruction of Verbena and Tamarack Streets and East Beach Drive. Many residents welcomed this news. Some others, including the leaders of the North Portal Estates Civic Association, argued that the neighborhood doesn't need sidewalks. DDOT has a policy of installing sidewalks on at least one side of every street when they do a reconstruction.

Soon after, however, pedestrian advocates learned that DDOT had dropped the sidewalks on direct orders from Mayor Fenty. According to sources within DDOT, a politically influential resident affiliated with the civic association asked the Mayor to delete the sidewalks. Without any official public notice, DDOT made the change. The crews have just wrapped up their work, finishing the curbs without sidewalks and repaving the streets. Residents will have to dodge speeding cars for decades more until it's time again to redo those streets.

Sidewalks should be a part of every street reconstruction. Even in more suburban parts of the city, people walk, and our street designs should encourage them to. Where neighborhoods have no sidewalks, the streets are almost always plenty wide to add sidewalks on at least one side without shrinking anyone's front yards or destroying trees.

Last year, Councilmember Mary Cheh introduced a bill to require sidewalks on at least one side of every street when DDOT reconstructs a street. The Council didn't act on the bill last year, because DDOT assured them it already had a policy in place. Now that we know the Mayor will waive the policy for friends, it's time to pass the bill. The Council is holding a hearing this afternoon on this year's version.

However, the draft bill still leaves too much wiggle room for exceptions based on politics. It lets DDOT "issue a finding that it is impractical or unnecessary to install a sidewalk if the Director determines that the physical site conditions would make it impossible or unduly expensive to construct the required sidewalk, or if it would lead nowhere and would be highly unlikely to serve any pedestrians." That's a loophole big enough to drive a road crew through.

Instead, the bill should set specific, objective standards for those situations where a project may continue without sidewalks. Those standards could factor in the zoning classification (commercial street should always have sidewalks), the street classification (collector streets should always have sidewalks), the number of residences (even more than a handful is enough), and whether a street is dead-end or is near a school or park.

The bill should also require public notice and hearings before any project proceeds without sidewalks. If DDOT fails to meet these standards, the bill should prohibit spending any money on the project. It's too bad DC laws need such clear measures, but as we've seen from inclusionary zoning or fire trucks on cable TV, Mayor Fenty has shown few qualms about flouting the expressly stated wishes of the DC Council.

The Montgomery Planning Department just recommended widening I-270 between Rockville and Clarksburg to 12 lanes, and adding two new lanes north of Clarksburg. The project would cost $3.8 billion, and would be a disastrous move for the County. The analysis relies on antiquated Level of Service analysis that downplays the side effects of the widening on sprawl, and ignores other alternatives such as pricing existing lanes which would alleviate congestion more cheaply and with much less damage.

Widening 270 would fuel the greatest expansion of auto-dependent sprawl in Montgomery County in over a generation. In 1980, foresighted Montgomery County leaders created the Agricultural Reserve, protecting 90,000 acres of farmland in the county's rural area. They created a program to transfer development rights from agricultural land to the denser, downcounty areas, to focus growth around existing infrastructure and existing jobs.

The Reserve excludes several large areas around Clarksburg and Germantown, and as the Planning Board notes, the County has added significant amounts of new housing there, as well as in Frederick County. However, the report ignores the huge, real effect of induced demand. New lanes would spur even more auto-dependent single-family homes out in these areas, homes very, very far from jobs. The development would put pressure on future County leaders to narrow the Reserve. And, most of all, it would drive even more sprawling growth in Frederick County.

Instead of seeing freeway expansion as driving demand, the Planning Department report simply takes development as static and focuses almost entirely on vehicular Level of Service (LOS). That's entirely the wrong measure.

Planning Staff have taken a small bite out of LOS-centrism in the proposed Growth Policy, recommending a change in the standard from D to E. But if you're only designing a transportation network with the goal of moving as many cars as possible as fast as possible, you end up with distorted answers. As the saying goes in transportation planning, "If you plan for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get people and places."

The staff report dismisses the "no-build alternative" simply because it will not relieve congestion on the roadway. But it doesn't challenge the basic assumptions that speeding the drive from Frederick during rush hour should be the County's priority with $3.8 billion.

Worst of all, the staff never consider better options, like congestion charging on existing lanes. FHWA itself concluded that charging tolls on 270 during peak periods could move enough "discretionary" car trips to other times to alleviate the congestion problems on 270. Freeways behave somewhat paradoxically, where very small changes in demand cause big changes in congestion. Brookings just released a paper recommending a road-use pricing system.

Next: Another way to improve transportation in the corridor, for less than $3.8 billion.