Posts from December 2009
Parking
Parking changes could fix holiday traffic on Rockville Pike
Reports of congestion near malls across the region this holiday season make it sound like the recession never even happened. They also raise questions about how we handle traffic throughout the year.
Photo by thecourtyard.
Many strip malls along Rockville Pike were built in the 1950's for local shoppers. Today, they've evolved into multi-story, multi-building campuses, drawing customers from across the region with a variety of high-end speciality goods. More shoppers means more cars, which has made Rockville Pike notorious for nasty traffic.
Here are some solutions property owners could implement in time for next year's holiday shopping season. They're meant to be completed with minimal public intervention, though they would require some cooperation among private developers. They will reduce congestion within the parking lot, at the mall's entrances, and on The Pike itself.
Drop the "walk-off" policy. It prevents nearby office workers or Metro commuters from taking up parking spaces. But it also means that someone visiting two adjacent shopping centers has to drive and park twice, creating congestion on the property and on Rockville Pike as well.
Last week, I went looking for a store in Congressional Plaza at Rockville Pike and Halpine Road. I then realized that the store was in the next block at The Shops at Congressional Village. Instead of getting back in the car, I walked two-fifths of a mile to the store, passing every other store in both shopping centers and stopping in a few of them.
Shopping centers could create a privatized version of Montgomery County's Parking Lot Districts in Silver Spring, Wheaton and Bethesda. Property owners may resist sharing parking and customers with other malls, but it could benefit them. Visitors would spend less time trying to park and more time spending money at a greater number of stores. Disabled shoppers or those with large packages may continue driving from place to another. But it would reduce traffic from those able and willing to walk the extra distance.
Raise awareness of all parking options. Each shopping center has a lot facing Rockville Pike, advertising to passing motorists that parking was available. But many shopping centers and even stand-alone stores and restaurants along Rockville Pike have additional parking areas that are often unknown to customers.
Half of Federal Plaza 's parking is in a rear lot facing East Jefferson Street. Congressional Plaza sets aside spaces in the garage of an adjacent apartment building. And Montrose Crossing (pictured above) has not one, but two parking garages. They all usually sit empty because visitors see the lot in front and assume it's the only one.
In a study of a Los Angeles neighborhood, UCLA professor Donald Shoup discovered that a lot of traffic comes from people looking for parking spaces. The same goes for parking lots along Rockville Pike. If motorists knew that were available in back or in a garage, they could go straight there rather than looking for a space in front.
Charge for the most convenient spaces. People will seek out free parking if they're using a space for hours at a time. But those in a hurry or running multiple errands will pay for the guarantee of open, easy-to-reach parking.
Install meters at (non-handicapped) spaces within the first few rows of store entrances, give customers thirty minutes to shop and charge fifty cents. These spaces will turn over quickly, meaning more shoppers can visit the center. Those staying longer can park in free spaces further out or in garages, which in many cases are just as close to the stores. Not only will people know about other parking options, but they have an incentive to use them.
Charging for all spaces could potentially backfire so long as a nearby shopping center still offers free parking. But it's a good way to ensure that parking spaces are available for customers. Both the City of Rockville and Providence, Rhode Island, which made public parking free during this year's holiday season, found that lots filled up with Metro commuters or office workers at the expense of shoppers who couldn't find a space.
Long-term plans call for turning Rockville Pike between Shady Grove and White Flint into a string of urban villages akin to those along the Orange Line in Arlington. This will deal with many of the current issues surrounding The Other Pike today as it becomes easier for people to live, work and shop along the corridor without a car. But until that happens, implementing creative ideas like those above could provide quick relief to frustrated shoppers come next Christmas.
View improving holiday traffic along Rockville Pike in a larger map.
Links
Breakfast links: Put your hands up for Detroit
Photo by jbcurio.
Photography
What's That? #6: The answers
A quiet week, no winner.
I'm not sure if it's that it got tougher or the light holiday traffic, but no one guessed any of the What's That? images from Sunday's game.
Here are the photo clues from this week's contest with a more inclusive picture below each one. The locales are: The fountain at Theodore Roosevelt Island, entrance to the Center Building at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, and The U.S. Department of Agriculture building in DC (notice the corn plant tops on the columns).
You can see the comments from What's That #6 here.
Sustainability
Reusable bag incentive begins in two days
Friday won't just start a new year and a new decade: It also will start a new era in environmental economic incentives as the nation's first bag charge goes into effect in DC.
Image by DDOE.
Starting Friday, residents will pay 5 cents for each paper or plastic bag, with the revenue going partly to the retailer, partly to administration, and the rest to clean up the Anacostia River.
We stopped in Trader Joe's on the way home from the airport today, and the cashier confirmed they'll be charging. "It's the law," he said, but warmed when I told him I supported the policy. He said he likes it because the money goes to "green programs."
According to the cashier, TJ's will give out free reusable bags during the first week, and will generally offer shoppers a five cent discount for each bag they bring in and use for their purchase. (The law gives retailers 2 cents per 5-cent bag instead of 1 cent if they offer this 5-cent discount.)
Other retailers are getting on board as well. Despite their earlier opposition to the bill, Giant has now gotten on board, appointing a "Green Captain" for each DC store to find opportunities for environmental improvement, offering an estimated 250,000 free reusable bags during the first week in January, and also retaining the 5-cent credit they already offer.
Councilmember Tommy Wells released a list of some of the stores offering promotions tied to the bill. Harris Teeter will give free bags to customers who use their VIC cards and spend more than $20 in January. CVS is distrbuting some of DDOE's reusable bags at various locations and will also give shoppers a $1 coupon for every four times they bring reusable bags. Safeway is distributing bags through local nonprofits. And Target will offer the 5-cent credit for bags customers bring in.
DDOE will continue to distribute its bags throughout January. According to Wells' office, Capitol Hill's business association CHAMPS created bags featuring art by children in Hill schools coinciding with a series of lessons on pollution in the Anacostia. Hill businesses will be selling the bags and using the proceeds to fund more bags and more environmental lessons through the Capitol Hill Green Schools Initiative.
For those of you in DC, what are your local stores saying they will do about bags? Are there other local bag initiatives in your area?
Virginia Delegate Adam Ebbin (D-49th, southern Arlington/Arlandria/Bailey's Crossroads) and Maryland Delegate Al Carr (D-18th, Chevy Chase/Kensington/Wheaton) plan to introduce similar legislation in their states' legislatures shortly after the New Year. Both introduced the bills last year as well, but neither got out of committee.
Links
Breakfast links: Cry me a river, build a bridge
Image courtesy DDOT via JDLand.
History
Then and Now: Anteater statue at the National Zoo
The giant anteater statue in front of the Small Mammal House at the National Zoo has been at that location since it was unveiled on March 25, 1938. The historic image captures the moment shortly after that unveiling. The bronze statue is six feet long and three feet high. The participants at the unveiling are identified (from left to right) as sculptor Edwin Springweiler, Dr. Alexander Wetmore of the Smithsonian Institution (who unveiled the sculpture), Head Keeper William Blackburn, and Dr. William M. Mann, Director of the National Zoological Park.
Historic image from the Library of Congress, Harris & Ewing Collection.
Development
Growth policy must talk about building community, not formulas
This is a new house for sale.
It has four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a one-car garage, and a small but flat yard. It's located in an established community with well-kept homes and top-rated schools that look like something out of a movie.
It is affluent, but middle-class by D.C. standards, and it's not very different from other D.C. suburbs with detached houses and lots of cars.
Yet this neighborhood has all the conveniences of a small city. There are two supermarkets within ten blocks. Six blocks to the Metro, bus routes, and a proposed light-rail line. Five blocks to Barnes & Noble, along with two movie theatres, three ice-cream shops, and dozens of restaurants. Four blocks to the high school. Two blocks to a trail leading to the Potomac River and Rock Creek Park.
When you have to drive, the car trips can be short. There are two shopping malls, a major university, premier research facilities, and even national parks within fifteen minutes. The traffic can be bad, but it's not always an issue because everything is so convenient.
Current laws make it nearly impossible for small-scale retail to locate in residential
neighborhoods, like this block of shops in Martin's Additions.
The best part is that you have choices. In this community, some people will travel by car, others by foot or bike, and still others by bus or train. Some will live in a detached house or a townhouse or an apartment. Some will shop at chain stores or independently- But these choices are only available to those who can afford to live in a community like this. It could be North Woodside in Silver Spring, Del Ray in Alexandria, or Clarendon in Arlington. This house happens to be in the Town of Chevy Chase; over the summer, it was selling for two million dollars. There's so little supply of places like this, and so much demand, that they've become a luxury available only to those who can afford it.
But this lifestyle could be more affordable if it was available to more people within Chevy Chase or in White Flint, Wheaton, Langley Park, Gaithersburg or even in Calverton, where I live. We should be talking about the kind of community we want to live in Urbanism is not a numbers game. It's the collective result of individual choices made over a period of time. The kind of places we cherish in Montgomery County have largely happened by accident. The county's oldest neighborhoods - Takoma Park, Woodside, Kensington, and Chevy Chase They weren't too different from a new planned community in Clarksburg or redeveloped neighborhood like Bethesda Row. But over time these communities could accommodate changes by other individuals with other ideas, giving them a unique, but unanticipated character.
You can't make that happen with formulas, figures and covenants. Nor can you preserve a great community in amber, as some of our civic leaders have tried. It's no surprise that we can't build Chevy Chase again. But it's disappointing that many people think we can by restricting the number of cars on a road, the number of kids in a school, or even the income of people who live there.
That's not to say that we should ignore the condition of our infrastructure. New development may not always cover the cost of new schools and roads, while existing neighborhoods may need public facilities but can't pay for them. Finding new ways to get the amenities we need while allowing our communities to grow and change It doesn't always cost two million dollars to live in a safe, walkable neighborhood with good schools, convenient shopping and excellent transportation. But these kind of communities are often out of reach for many people in this area. If we can stop relying on numbers and let our communities evolve as they must in order to stay alive, they won't have to be.
Do we prevent good development from happening by trying to legislate away bad development?
Links
Breakfast links: Stalled and crashing, but not burning
Photo by muckster.
Bicycling
Ask GGW: How are the trails? And talk about traffic calming
Reader Simon asks,
Photo by M.V. Jantzen.
Do you have any updates on the status of non-car routes into DC? I understand that most footpaths are clear, thanks to the rain, but that the entrances and exits of such paths can still be blocked by piled up snow making it impassable for wheelchairs, and difficult for pedestrians.Do you regularly walk or bike on any of these trails and can fill in the status for other readers who might want to use them for commutes or recreation?As for biking, I understand that the Capital Crescent Trail is a disaster in the Maryland section, with lots of ice, and basically unusable for bike commuting. Rock Creek's roadway is OK, but the parallel bike/ped path still has a lot of ice, as far as I could see from my driving commute. Do you have any information on these items?
And here's another question from reader Kathy in Arlington:
My son, who is in middle school, is doing his science project on traffic calming (his idea, not mine!) and is looking for experts to interview.If you know a bunch about traffic calming and are willing to talk to Kathy's son, email info@ggwash.org and I will put you in touch.
Links
Afternoon links: Ending the year, beginning construction
Twinbrook Metro parking lot. Photo by M.V. Jantzen.
@ggwash
- Bikeshare is a gateway to private biking, not competition
- Judge denies injunction against closing schools
- Long-term closures: A solution to single-tracking?
- Metro policy for refunds after delays falls short, riders say
- PG planners propose bold new smart growth future
- Prince George's County struggles to get trails right
- M Street cycle track keeps improving, draws church anger
Greater Washington
District of Columbia
