Budget
Flyer for a fair share for Metro
The Sierra Club is handing out flyers for FairShareForMetro.com tomorrow morning at four Metro stations. Come help!
The organizers will be at Vienna, Clarendon, Dupont Circle, and Gallery Place stations from 7:30-9:00 am.The flyers will also remind riders about the public hearings coming up very soon: Monday in Vienna and Wednesday in SE DC. Lanham, Arlington, Rockville, and NW DC follow the week after.
Finally, I'll be on the Kojo Nnamdi show's "Politics Hour" on Friday at 1:00 pm, to talk about the WMATA budget and other transit issues, along with WMATA Board Chairman Peter Benjamin.
Public Spaces
Park Service might allow real transit on the Mall
The National Park Service has opened the door to allowing real transit in addition to, or instead of, the guided "interpretive visitor transportation" currently operated by the Tourmobile, but it's not yet clear whether they will walk through that door.
The Park Service has had an exclusive contract with the Tourmobile for decades to provide services on the Mall. While the Tourmobile is great for those visitors who want guided "hop-on, hop-off" tours, many people simply want a bus or other public conveyance to transport them the fairly long distances from one end of the Mall to the other, or from the Mall to nearby restaurants and hotels.The Tourmobile costs $27 per adult, while the Circulator costs $1. However, the National Park Service says their contract prohibits them from allowing Circulator buses on internal Mall roads that the Tourmobile uses, and also from even making mention of the Circulator on their signs. In the past, DC tried to implement a comprehensive Circulator on the Mall, but hostile members of Congress pushed NPS to just retain the Tourmobile exclusivity. DC even offered to buy the Tourmobile to end the impasse.
In its 2006 Visitor Transportation Study, NPS considered six options for transportation on the Mall:
- Keep the current tour routes, which extend from Union Station to Arlington Cemetery and around the Tidal Basin.
- Keep the current routes, extend the Arlington Cemetery service to the Marine Corps Memorial, and add a route going to the museums and memorials on Pennsylvania Avenue and around Gallery Place and Judiciary Square. The service could feature spoken tours or could serve both interpretive and transportation needs by providing interpretation through brochures, individual seat plug-in audio, MP3 players, or the like.
- Expand the current spoken tour service with new routes around the White House, Pennsylvania Avenue, and Gallery Place/Judiciary Square.
- Provide a more extensive service similar to that in Alternative 2, but also serving the White House, Farragut and McPherson Squares, and Washington Circle with possible extensions to the Kennedy Center and Georgetown/the C&O Canal.
- Replace the tour service entirely with Circulator routes on the Mall and Tidal Basin but not to Arlington, and providing no interpretation.
According to a recently-released Finding Of No Significant Impact (FONSI), NPS has chosen Option 2 as its "preferred alternative." While at first it seems frustrating that they didn't choose the Circulators, Option 2 seems to allow for real transit as long as the buses have brochures and signs with phone numbers to call for recorded audio, or something like that.
At the NCPC meeting recently to discuss the National Mall Plan, NPS announced that they've been talking with DC about Circulator service. According to sources familiar with the meeting, they've made a lot of progress and NPS may finally be ready to end its contract with Tourmobile.
Tom Mack, the original owner of the Tourmobile has died, and therefore won't keep going to Congress to lobby against any non-interpretive transit, as he did in the past. His family doesn't want to stay in the Mall tour business. But the badly-written original contract requires NPS to buy out the Tourmobile's vehicles, which means it'll cost NPS to stop continuing the contract.
According to Mall advocate Judy Scott Feldman of Save Our Mall, the Downtown BID (which helped pioneer the Circulator) proposed a Circulator service that could also double as an interpretive service, but NPS rejected the idea at the time. Perhaps the time has now come.
Ending the bizarre Tourmobile monopoly would be a huge step forward, but NPS does still seem to be thinking of the Mall as requiring one single concessionaire. That could be the Circulator, or it could be a different private company. But having an exclusive with one company makes little sense.
Really, the Mall needs two kinds of transportation: tour services and regular buses. They aren't mutually exclusive since they serve different populations. NPS should simply allow local transit buses on the Mall. In addition, they could solicit proposals for interpretive transit.
Maybe the Circulator can propose it with brochures or even in-seat audio on new buses. Or maybe a private company could do it in parallel with the Circulator. They could go together, but don't need to. Feldman also criticized the closed-door nature of this decision. Why should providing transit be a secret negotiation and decision?
Harriet Tregoning, Director of the DC Office of Planning, told me that in addition to working out bus transportation around the Mall, DC would like to work with NPS on bike sharing and management of tourbuses. DC and Arlington plan a large, joint bike sharing system, and the Mall would be a perfect place for many bike stations. These would both facilitate moving around the Mall and also traveling between the Mall and surrounding neighborhoods, restaurants, and Metro stations in DC and Arlington.
The Mall plan also gives little attention to the many tour buses that drive to the Mall. Many of them idle for long periods of time, emitting substantial pollution. They also form a virtual wall 20 feet high, Tregoning pointed out, and while NPS and NCPC would never consider building a 20-foot wall between the Washington Monument and a nearby road, the buses in effect create just such a wall.
According to Tregoning, one TIGER grant proposal DC submitted which didn't get funding involved letting buses park at 5th and I, where a failed project will instead be a temporary parking lot, in exchange for putting transponders on the buses so DC can collect data on their movements and design a better system for managing and parking the buses long-term.
The FONSI also has two additional nuggets. NPS may start allowing Segways on certain designated routes, the sidewalks on roadways crossing the Mall, and on part of Ohio Drive and Pennsylvania Avenue.
Finally, NPS may add meters to some of its parking, "to support transit operations, encourage greater use of transit services and be consistent with regional transportation practices." As Michael Perkins noted in testimony before the DC Council, that might also make it easier to park on the Mall.
Transit
Live chat with Mort Downey
Welcome to our live chat with Mort Downey, federal member of the WMATA Board of Directors.
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 11:50 David Alpert |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 11:59 Mort Downey |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 11:59 David Alpert |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:02 Mort Downey |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:02 David Alpert |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:03 Mort Downey |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:04 David Alpert |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:04 Adam L |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:06 Mort Downey |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:08 David Alpert |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:11 Mort Downey |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:12 DrBubbles |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:16 Mort Downey |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:24 Mort Downey |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:25 Steve S |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:28 Mort Downey |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:34 Mort Downey |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:41 Mort Downey |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:44 Mort Downey |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:45 David Alpert |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:45 Michael Perkins |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:48 Mort Downey |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:49 David Alpert |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:53 Mort Downey |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 12:55 David Alpert |
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Wednesday March 17, 2010 1:02 Tyrone |
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Parking
Bethesda weekend parking: Still free, still too crowded
Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett wants to increase parking tickets to help close the County's $800 million budget gap. If the County is looking for parking revenues, it should also look at its overflowing weekend parking in Bethesda.
There are two public parking lots most convenient to most shops in Bethesda: the surface lot at Woodmont and Bethesda Avenues, and the garage inside Bethesda Row with entrances on Elm Street and Bethesda Avenue. Nearby are many pay garages charging $7 for an evening, but the public garages are free, even on busy Saturday nights.As you might expect, the Woodmont lot is always full on weekends. Any time I've tried to park there, there are typically 3-4 other cars circling around looking for spaces. As soon as someone gives up, someone else comes in. In the garage, it's almost as bad during the day, and just as bad at night. Worse yet, the garage gets backed up with traffic from drivers crawling up the ramps and then, in some cases, right back down again.
Last weekend, Greater Greater Wife and I visited Bethesda for a birthday party. We got there early to see a movie beforehand, then reached the party on time. But others were 30 minutes late or more because they couldn't find a place to park. The garage was full. The Woodmont lot was full. One joked he should have parked at Grosvenor and taken the Metro down.
Montgomery County could easily charge $1 an hour on Saturdays and still fill up that garage. There would be just as many people going to Bethesda, less traffic from circling, and more revenue. And everyone going to a birthday party or the movies would be much more likely to find a parking space.
According to the Bethesda Urban Partnership, the garages a little farther away have ample parking on weekends. But almost nobody uses it, at least not until circling around downtown Bethesda and going up and down the ramps in the garage for 30 minutes. Charging for that garage would entice the more price-conscious to use the more distant garages (or transit) while the more time-conscious drivers could actually find spaces.
Extending that idea, the County should make the Woodmont lot a premium lot. It's most convenient to Wisconsin Avenue, making it the quickest place to park. Instead of making it always the one that fills up first and has the most circlers, they should charge a little extra to park there and make it clear with signs. If someone is coming in to go to the movies or eat at a restaurant and doesn't want to take the time to navigate the big garage, they can use Woodmont. If they want to save some money, use the Bethesda Row garage or one of the farther garages.
Links
Breakfast links: Victories for people
Links
Afternoon links: Stand up and...
Public Spaces
Al fresco dining and parks vs. gangs in Columbia Heights
Outdoor restaurant seating and renovation of a triangle park could help reduce gang activity in a portion of Columbia Heights.
Neighbors near the intersection of 14th Street and Meridian Place in Columbia Heights have long been acquainted with the 3500 crew, a group whose members are often the instigators of noise, littering, drug dealing and violence in the neighborhood.On Wednesday, ANC 1A unanimously approved two resolutions impacting public space on turf staked out by the 3500 crew. The first supported a public space permit request by Social, a restaurant at the corner of Meridian and 14th, for outdoor seating on the wide sidewalk along 14th Street.
The second requested that the Department of Parks and Recreation hold a community meeting within 30 days to address neighborhood concerns about the planned reconstruction of the adjacent "triangle park" between 14th, Ogden and Oak streets.
The park, which gained citywide attention due to Ruth Samuelson's September City Paper cover story about park benches, had gone through a design process in 2006 but did not have funds allocated for construction until now. Turnover at DPR, on the ANC and within the community at large will make it near impossible for this project to pick up where it left off.
Although a DPR representative said at the meeting that the park could be completed by September, that goal seems unlikely as ANC members expressed interest in having DPR revisit elements of the design. A better picture of where this project stands will emerge at the coming community meeting.
Also at Wednesday's meeting, Social received ANC support for a public space permit that would allow it to begin outdoor seating on 14th Street. A restaurant representative said that the restaurant is looking to begin outdoor seating as soon as feasible. Neighbors in the area hope that outdoor diners will provide a counterbalance to the 3500 crew as a presence on the corner.
Though police action has yielded some results, the 3500 crew persists. As the weather warms and the 3500 crew begins to spend more time outdoors on the corner of Meridian and 14th, these issues will become more pressing. Although the park reconstruction will not be complete until after this summer, establishing a permanent group of "eyes on the street" in the form of outdoor diners and wait staff may have an impact on the 3500 crew's constant presence on this corner.
The crew on the corner of Meridian Place and 14th Street is known as the 3500 Crew because they once operated out of the apartment building located at 3500 14th Street. That building, formerly known as The Cavalier, was completely rehabbed and renamed Hubbard Place. Since some "problem tenants" were evicted by building management as part of this rehabilitation, the 3500 Crew has moved down 14th Street to the corner at Meridian.
Transit
Average schedule speed: How does Metro compare?
When New York City's first elevated opened in 1868, it marked the first foray of rapid transit in the United States. Rapid transit was an effort to increase speed and capacity by separating trains from other modes of transportation.
By the time Washington's Metro opened in 1976, the new modern systems being constructed in the United States had a different basis in their design. Not only could trains travel at higher speeds, but they were intended not mainly for inner city transportation so much as for suburb to center city commutes. As a result, they were designed with longer distances between stations.
Station spacing seems to be the largest determinant of average schedule speed: the measure of the average velocity of a train from end to end of a line, including station stop time. Compare the average schedule speed of Metro and the five lines to the average schedule speed of other heavy rail transit operators.
I also conducted an analysis of all heavy rail transit lines in the United States. See the chart below to compare the speeds of different services to each other.
Two particular services are worth mentioning: The 42nd Street Shuttle in New York, and Chicago's aptly named Skokie Swift, now known as the Yellow Line. Both of these services have only two stations, one at each end. Because there are no intermediate stops, their average schedule speed is very high.
Of course actual speed plays a role too. The PATCO Speedline, which has the highest average schedule speed of US heavy rail systems, has a top speed of 65 mph (reduced from the design speed of 75). In second place, BART has a top speed of 80 mph.
Note, the initial charts included in this analysis omitted the Broad Street Subway Express in Philadelphia. This error was accidental, and it has been corrected.
Transit
Live chat with Mort Downey, tomorrow at noon
Recently, we held a live chat with Marcel Acosta, one of the two new federal members of the WMATA Board. Tomorrow, we'll chat with the other, Mort Downey, the principal (voting) federal member.
Mr. Downey was U.S. Deputy Secretary of Transportation under President Clinton, Executive Director and CFO of the New York MTA, and is now a transportation consultant.As a federal representative and someone who doesn't work for a public agency or elected official, we're hopeful he has the freedom to speak his mind on WMATA.
Post any questions you'd like to ask Mr. Downey in the comments. We'll try to get to as many of them as possible during our noon chat tomorrow, Wednesday, March 17th, 2010.
Links
Breakfast links: Monarchy yields to democracy
by stacey2545 on Does saving daylight save energy?
by SDJ on Park Service might allow real transit on the Mall
by hugo on Bethesda weekend parking: Still free, still too crowded
by Daniel on Bethesda weekend parking: Still free, still too crowded
by Allan on Park Service might allow real transit on the Mall
Smart Growth
Add jobs, retail, and housing for all income levels in walkable places like
Wisconsin Avenue, Brookland, and Minnesota-
Transit
Provide more alternatives to driving by expanding Metro capacity, building streetcar lines, and speeding up buses. Grow ridership through better maps and schedules from signs to mobile devices. Read posts »
Public Space
Our roadways are our most valuable public places. Design them to accommodate safe walking and bicycling. Locate plazas and public parks to create numerous focal points for human activity. Read posts »
Traffic
Design neighborhoods around grids instead of cul-de-sacs. Avoid building new freeways or widening existing ones which only induces further sprawl. Read posts »
Parking
Drivers create substantial traffic by circling endlessly for scarce parking. Use pricing to manage curb space and dedicate the revenue to providing alternatives to driving. Read posts »
Architecture
Preserve our row house neighborhoods and beautiful architecture that engages pedestrians visually and functionally. Eschew bad modernism that turns its back on the street and the starchitects that peddle it to "make a statement." Read posts »
Education & Safety
Make our urban areas desirable places for people and families of all ages with the highest quality education and safe neighborhoods for all. Read posts »
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