Posts from December 2011

The incandescent home is located at 513 Newcomb Street in Southeast Washington, a quiet residential street.

Thomas' yard, which lights up from 5:15 pm to 6:45 am, houses many decorations. There's Santa riding in a NASCAR, Santa flying in a hot air balloon, Santa leaning back in a recliner reading a book, a six foot inflated Tigger wearing Santa's ubiquitous red stocking cap. Thomas estimates more than 30 pieces of Christmas-themed ornaments adorn her front lawn.

"I would love to keep it up all year," Thomas says, laughing. "But I haven't got my electric bill yet."

Appreciation has come from both neighbors and local police, who have recognized Thomas with an award. "The police say they like it because it lights up the block," said Thomas, retired from the DC government.

Thomas says people in the neighborhood begin asking her, "Is it time for the yard to go up?" as early as September.

The display that includes a five foot inflatable snow globe, a fleet of reindeer, multiple Frosty the Snowmans, and Disney characters takes about three days to put up according to Thomas' daughter, Terry.

Throughout the years hundreds of children and their families have asked to take pictures posing by the decorations. Thomas always welcomes them. Anytime you're in the neighborhood, you'll be welcomed, too.

A version of this story appeared in the December East of the River.

Bike lane striping under the Gray administration has ground to a halt. Almost none of the promised 2011 additions to the bike network were delivered. And while DDOT promises to stripe new bike lanes as soon as the weather warms up, they are clearly falling behind.

Meanwhile, the most significant proposed bike projects, the L and M Street cycle tracks, remain mired in study. DDOT has said it won't commit to building them until it has completed a study of the existing 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue cycle tracks. That's a little odd, because DDOT already completed a similar study in 2010. Why do we need another one to tell us the same thing? And how long is this study supposed to take? It's already been six months.

No doubt Mayor Gray hears a lot about bike lanes. It must seem that half of his constituents want more of them, and the other half don't want them at all. Putting off the decision in order to avoid upsetting anyone must be a tempting solution. It's hard to know for sure, but the longer these studies drag on, the more likely this possibility seems.

But the delay-by-study strategy can only work for so long. Ultimately voters in Maryland saw through Ehrlich's Purple Line scheme, and it contributed to his defeat by Martin O'Malley.

When Gray was elected I said we should give him a chance to prove that he really will continue urbanist policies. After one year, the jury is still out. It is still too early to judge him. It is still too early to conclude that he is trying to study the cycle tracks out of existence. But if he hasn't decided to build them in another six months or so—a year after the study began—then we'll have our answer.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

Some highlights include requiring councilmembers to file an annual affidavit in which they certify they paid all of their taxes and have not "been offered or accepted any bribes" or engaged in any "pay to play schemes." Really?

In the words of the teenagers I work with: "C'mon Son!!!"

The law fails to address or enact any real protections against "pay-to-play."

On November 30, Councilmember Tommy Wells (Ward 6) introduced two amendments to the bill. The first amendment would close a loophole that allows corporations to give numerous campaign contributions through subsidiary Limited Liability Corporations (LLC). Wells' amendment would limit corporations to just one contribution.

The second amendment banned companies with city contracts from giving directly to political campaigns, because councilmembers often vote on contracts for those same companies.

The Council rejected each of Wells' amendments by 12 to 1 votes. Wells seemed to have support from Cecily Collier-Montgomery, director of the Office of Campaign Finance, who said, "It certainly would make it a lot easier to enforce in terms of corporations and subsidiaries sharing a single contribution limit.

William Sanford, General Counsel of OCF went further, saying, "We agree that bundling should be prohibited and perhaps it could be more specifically addressed in this or other legislation."

Even Councilmember Jim Graham (Ward 1) openly stated during debate that every time a councilmember takes a check from a corporation, there is a string attached. Astutely, Mr. Graham has touched the heart of "Pay to Play."

When it became obvious that no other member of the council was was willing to ban subsidiary corporations from giving multiple contributions, Wells regrouped and offered a compromise for the final vote on December 20. He proposed sunlight provisions that would require LLCs to disclose their controlling interest, and require corporations with contracts with the city to disclose those contracts when contributing to local political campaigns.

Every councilmember talks about the importance of disclosure, transparency and sunlight, making this an obvious compromise. Don't ban a corporation's ability to bundle, just make the disclosure more transparent. As a friend of mine likes to say about the DC Council, "It's all about getting to 7 votes."

One would think this a no-brainer. Wells' office went back to Sanford, the OCF General Counsel, to ask for advice. He responded by saying, "The language you have suggested appears to require clarification of the relationship between subsidiaries and parent corporations which may have controlling interest. Therefore, from an enforcement standpoint it would result in a greater degree of transparency."

Armed with support of OCF and a willingness of the Council to create stronger "open government" laws, Wells brought his two sunshine amendments to the floor. Each amendment still fell 12 to 1.

And with that, the council punted on a golden opportunity to show the residents of DC that they are serious about ethics, committed to ridding our government of the corrupting influence of money, and that DC will no longer be the butt of jokes on late-night talk shows.

It is heartbreaking that in the capital city of the world's greatest democracy, the effort for transparency and accountability—values that people are giving life and limb for around the world—would fail so miserably and so anticlimactically.

Big money diminishes accountability, transparency and inclusiveness in our government. It determines who runs for office and where those candidates stand on the issues.

Money should not determine how our elected officials spend their time in the Wilson Building. Issues facing the city should do that. Problems facing the residents should come first.

The DC Council would do well in recognizing they still have some serious work to do if they are going to be taken seriously by voters.

Each evening, 2 people from the editing team look at posts that have been submitted and whip them into shape to run on the site. We are looking for folks to join this group who can devote either every Thursday evening, or every other Thursday evening plus backup duty at a few other times, to this editing. Editors are asked to make time to edit up to 3 articles, then write back to the authors with a summary of their changes.

In addition, we need some additional daytime editors. These editors double-check what the night editors have done and actually schedule posts to run on the site. Matt Johnson and I currently do this day editing, but our time is limited, and we would like a few other folks who can at least fill in sometimes. All you need is to either have free time during at least some days, or a job which is okay with you doing a bit of Greater Greater Washington work here and there during business hours.

If you're interested in volunteering for either of these and being a part of our blog endeavor, please email info@ggwash.org to let us know, along with any pertinent information like what kind of writing or editing you've done before and what your schedule looks like.

Thanks for helping to make Greater Greater Washington greater!

Access points to the Rhode Island Avenue Metro. Image modified from Google Maps.

Today, there are only 3 ways of accessing the station:

• The bus bays next to the former parking lot (labeled 1 on the map)
  
• A winding pedestrian bridge (labeled 2)
  
• A (temporarily closed) four-story staircase from Rhode Island Avenue (labeled 3)

Plans are in the works for an additional pedestrian and bicycle bridge (labeled 4), which will connect the station with the Rhode Island Avenue Center mall and the Metropolitan Branch Trail. Although this will improve station access, another connection is needed for the areas southwest of the station.

Riders from nearby Eckington must trek up Rhode Island Avenue, under an overpass on a narrow sidewalk where cars speed by, then go up the ramp or stairs to reach the station. Even for residents closest to the station, the circuitous walk can take up to 15 minutes and makes rail a less-appealing option for riders.

A ramp should be built from the station, across the CSX tracks and down W Street to better connect the station with Eckington (labeled 5 on the map). This will enable residents to access the station more readily and will lay the groundwork for future improvements along 5th Street NE.

In its vision for the Rhode Island Avenue corridor, the DC Office of Planning suggests turning the area around the rail overpass and 5th Street into a mixed-use district, containing shops, offices, and new residential structures. The report also calls for a new connection to the station, running along the 600 block of W Street NE (which is currently used as an alley for nearby warehouses) toward the station (labeled 6 5 on the map).

Making another pedestrian connection to the station would create a sense of neighborhood cohesiveness that does not currently exist, and help surrounding neighborhoods grow and prosper.

Capital Bikeshare is a successful example of how to do this right. CaBi has its own website, which is perfectly nice. But it doesn't do everything. It doesn't tell you if show visibly on the map which stations are empty or full, and it's not on your smartphone. Nor is it on a digital screen on the wall of your neighborhood bar.

A company called 8D has a relationship with CaBi and other Bixi-based bike sharing systems to create an app, SpotCycle, which provides many useful functions, but one app can't do everything either. What if someone else can do better, or do more than just that app can do?

Fortunately, there's a computer-readable XML file for Capital Bikeshare (and all other Bixi-based systems) which lists the real-time status of all stations in the system. The availability of that data allowed Daniel Gohlke to create CaBi Tracker, arguably a better system map than the official one. Many other mobile apps exist using the same data, each trying to be better than the next.

At the Mobility Lab, we're creating real-time digital displays that show buses, rail, and Capital Bikeshare all on one screen at the same time. That's never going to be something Capital Bikeshare funds itself, but it's potentially a very useful tool, and it's possible thanks to the feed.

It's great that Capital Bikeshare offers this, but not every service does.

As one of many examples, the USDOT and local governments have funded a research project at the University of Maryland to create a real-time traffic information site for the I-95 corridor. It's a good start, but very limited.

UMD could evaluate even more ways to assist travelers if someone could make an app, screen, or site that showed this information in even more ways. Unfortunately there appears to be no feed. The utility of this project is therefore drastically limited, and its funding is not going as far as it could.

Montgomery County spent a bunch of money for a web tool that lets riders to see the location and predictions for Ride On buses, but didn't include a feed or API (Application Programming Interface). The MARCTracker tool to see the location of MARC trains doesn't appear to have an API, either.

Now, no other apps can integrate the information and present it to more users. We can't put Ride On or MARC on the real-time screens, and mobile app developers can't add it to their tools. Plus, the Ride On tracking website already looks clunky and out of date, and it's still in a beta test phase. The county put their money into buying something that's already behind the curve and which can't accommodate future improvements.

Meanwhile, WMATA, DC Circulator, and ART all have feeds or APIs that allow apps and other services to retrieve their real-time information and show it to riders. This has all sorts of advantages, not the least of which is that their data can all be combined into a single website. For example, Transit Near Me, Mobility Lab's recent transit app, is only possible with the data from these transit services, but can't include Ride On.

These transit services are run by public agencies, but open data is equally important when the public is paying a private company for a transportation service. Governments should require open data in every contract with private providers.

For example, the one-way car sharing company car2go offers an API for integrating with other apps, but Zipcar and many other car sharing companies do not. When the city dedicates on-street parking spaces to car sharing companies, they are giving away a valuable resource. In exchange for that resource, the city should demand the company open its data, and require that feeds or APIs remain public in the future.

Open data offers absolutely tremendous opportunity for transportation providers to improve their service to users, and it is essentially free. All they have to do is put their data out there, and someone will take advantage of it to produce a useful tool.

Disclosure: I am leading a team at the Mobility Lab that is building Transit Near Me, real-time screens, and potentially other tools which take advantage of feeds from transportation providers.

In late 2008, DDOT submitted a request to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to de-designate I-295 north of the Anacostia side of the 11th Street Bridge, and to extend I-695 across the 11th Street Bridge to meet I-295 and DC Route 295. DDOT said the purpose was to "rationalize the freeway system in the District."

Image from DDOT.

But people are asking, if I-695 has existed all these years along the Southeast Freeway, why hasn't it been signed?

Not even DDOT knows for sure, but one possible reason is that it was intended to go farther.

I-695 South Leg proposal, from 1970 study.

This image, from a 1970 study, shows one of the alternatives for an extension of I-695 as part of the DC Interstate system. Dating in some form back to the mid-1950s, I-695 would have continued west from the 3rd Street Tunnel, diverged from the Southwest Freeway at Maine Ave, and continued northwesterly to meet I-66 at Constitution Ave NW. The ramp configurations at I-395/Maine Ave SW and at I-66/Constitution Ave NW are remnants of this long-ago plan, officially killed by then-mayor Marion Barry in 1980.

This segment might have been partially signed before it was cancelled. There's an empty space on the sign bridge on westbound I-66 just north of the E Street Expressway that might have housed an I-695 sign, and an associate of mine has reported that he recalls an I-695 sign on the inbound Theodore Roosevelt Bridge back in the 1970s. Any such signage has long since disappeared, however.

1971-proposed Inner Loop freeway system.

This map, from the 1971 DC Interstate System study by DeLeuw, Cather & Associates, shows how the longer I-695 would have fit into the context of the freeway system proposed for the DC core. As it connected I-66 with I-295 around the south side of the core, it would have been long enough to warrant signage. Since the South Leg was cancelled, plus the lack of connections between the 11th Street Bridge and DC 295, there was less of a need to sign I-695 after the freeway cancellations.

So why sign I-695 in DC when there's an I-695 around Baltimore, some ask. Wouldn't that just cause confusion? It might for unaware drivers and tourists, but there's precedent for signing nearby Interstates with the same number. We already have that in the DC area: both DC and Baltimore have I-395. An example with even less intermediate distance can be found in New England. I-291 exists in both Springfield, MA and suburban Hartford, CT, separated by only 22 miles. By comparison, over 31 miles separate DC's and Baltimore's I-695.

Now that DDOT plans to remove the Southeast Freeway spur to Pennsylvania Ave and is building connections between the 11th Street Bridge and DC 295, the agency has decided to reintroduce us to I-695. To reduce driver confusion, DDOT should install consistent signage all along I-695 and at the interchanges at both endpoints. Only time will tell if drivers can adjust to the "great route experiment."