Posts from June 2009
Transit
Where's My Bus?: NextBus for Circulator
DC just launched Where's My Bus, a NextBus-type service for the Circulator. Unlike NextBus, it won't predict how long it will take for the next buses to arrive; instead, it tells riders how far away the next buses are.
Photo by JLaw45.
This wasn't your typical, slow, expensive, complicated, closed government information system. According to the press release:
The DC Government developed the Circulator bus mobile application in house, completing the project remarkably quickly and at minimal cost ... As an "open source" application, any municipality with a similar bus system and real-time GPS data can adapt and implement the application at minimal cost ...DC is working on an iPhone application, which they hope to launch in late summer.All Circulator data is being made publicly available to encourage other developers in our area to build their own, better applications. The intention is that the tools made available by the District Government would be replicated by other transit agencies across the country, allowing it to transform the way transit information is shared.
Once Metro launches NextBus, it would be great to find ways to integrate the two. Can NextBus load in the Circulator data as well, or at least provide links from its interface? Most likely, that would take substantial inter-agency coordination and cost WMATA money in development costs. A better approach would be for Metro to create a simple Web services interface to NextBus, allowing other applications to query it for data. That would allow enterprising developers to build applications that show the fastest bus route from one point to another on Metrobus or Circulator.
History
Then and Now: The Old Dutch Market
Click on an image to enlarge.
Then (left): Photographed ca. 1920, the building on the southeast corner of 20th and P Streets, NW, was occupied by the Old Dutch Market.
Today: Surprisingly, the building is still there, though its use as a market is long gone. It's one of the few survivors that didn't get replaced by One Dupont Circle.
Links
Afternoon links: Raw deals
Photo by Smudgie's Ghost.
Budget
Living within our means
A $750 million public financing deal for a convention center hotel had scarcely appeared on the table before it was taken off again. One of the driving forces behind the fall of that proposal? DC's recently enacted debt cap. It's an early sign that this tool will help keep our leaders fiscally honest, especially when it comes to economic development subsidies.
Washington Convention Center. Photo by OZinOH.
Just last fall, the DC Council adopted legislation prohibiting the District from allocating more than 12 percent of its total annual budget toward debt payments. The additional borrowing proposed for the Convention Center hotel would have pushed our debt above the 12 percent cap.
Why put a limit on debt? Any debt the District issues creates a long-term payment obligation. When DC issues bonds, it pledges its tax revenue to pay it back Debt limits are also something that Wall Street pays close attention to. When a city or state's debt gets too high, it can lead to a lower bond rating. That in turn, means higher interest rates when it's time to issue bonds for things like schools or libraries. Managing debt well, by contrast, can lead to better bond ratings.
DC already has more debt than most cities and states, and there is pressure for more. The city is borrowing a lot to fix up schools and other public facilities. And we have authorized over $1.5 billion in debt to subsidize economic development projects over the past decade, like the retail center at Gallery Place. Until the debt cap, there's been no real limit on economic development subsidies.
That's why a cap is so key. Knowing we cannot issue an unlimited supply of debt, elected officials must make choices and set priorities over the infrastructure and development projects they want to support with public tax dollars.
With the new debt cap, a decision to publicly finance the entire convention center hotel project could have forced officials to scrap many long-planned developments around the city such as the Southwest Waterfront redevelopment. When faced with that decision, officials decided that the convention center hotel could not trump those already- planned projects and had to find another way to make the project go forward.
Hooray for DC's debt cap!
Meta
Friday meta-discussion: Number of posts per day?
As Greater Greater Washington has grown, the number of posts has increased per day. Part of this is because there's just a lot to talk about. We also have more contributors and guest opinions covering more topics. We've started some regular features, like Kent's architectural histories, and experimented with cross-posting important items from around the nation and in the federal government through Streetsblog.
Photo by kadj.
GGW has gone from averaging about 2-3 posts per day to 4-5 now. What do you think about this pace? Do the added posts make GGW more useful, since there's something new more often when you want to take a break at work? Or are we starting to have too many posts, so that some of them get lost? Would you rather see more content, less, or about the same?
I've debated whether to ask this question in a comment thread, because there's some danger of an Innovator's Dilemma situation: the opinions of current commenters reflect the most active readers who choose to comment, not necessarily all readers, and even the opinions of readers might skew one way while a different course could bring in even more readers. We might do a reader survey in the near future. In the meantime, let's give this a shot.
In your reply, please say whether you read GGW via an RSS reader, on the Web, or get the email digest.
Transit
Imagine a separate Yellow Line
Naturally, the terrible crash on the Red Line has generated a great deal of press attention and discussion. Had this been a nasty pile-up on the Beltway, we would probably would have stopped talking about it by now, and it certainly never would have been international news. The fact that service disruptions continue on the Red Line is another reminder of this horrible accident. After all, these disruptions have a far greater impact on Metro than a bad traffic accident has on area highways.
If there is an accident on US-29 in Montgomery County, I can drive on Georgia or New Hampshire Avenues. But the stations that were shut down the past couple days isolated eastern Montgomery County from the rest of the Metro system. Originally, I tinkered with a map showing a separated Yellow Line for the sake of greater capacity and more geographic coverage for the Metro System. This week's accident has shown that adding redundancy to the system can be just as valuable as adding capacity.
Separating the Yellow and Green Lines would add capacity to existing track, much like separating the Blue and Orange Lines. In the case of the Yellow Line, it would allow for increased capacity on its Potomac River Bridge. If separated, the entire Green Line and the Yellow Line north of Pentagon would have the same capacity as the Red Line.
Here's a possible separate Yellow Line:
View Separate Yellow Line in a larger map.
This alignment is not 100% original either. Bringing Metro to North Capitol Street and Georgia Avenue is in no way a new idea. In these cases, however, people seem to want it for the geographic coverage, and not the additional capacity or system redundancy. Coverage is good, it brings transit to a new area. Capacity and redundancy, however, improve the entire system.
Perhaps I added a few too many stations, but they are just suggestions. While this would add service to the North Capitol Street and Georgia Avenue corridors, it would add redundancy to both the Green and Red Lines via Silver Spring, Georgia Av/Petworth, Union Station, and L'Enfant Plaza.
If this line existed already, the station closures on the Red Line might only have meant an additional transfer for Montgomery County commuters instead of the shuttle services to which Metro resorted after the crash.
Cross posted on Imagine, DC.
Links
Dinner links: Skyscrapers and Oklahomans
Photo by CellPhoneSusie.
History
Lost Washington: The Broadway Theater
The Broadway Theater, once located at 1517 7th Street, NW, was built at a cost of $40,000 in 1921. It was built of brick and terra cotta with a Spanish tile roof. The building measured nearly 70 feet wide on 7th Street by 100 feet deep and was designed by the firm of Milburn, Heister & Co.
Parking
Underpriced parking is taking potential funds from transit
Councilmember Jim Graham is trying hard to make parking easy. He's proposed reserving one side of every block for resident-only parking. That would be a valuable element of a larger, comprehensive approach to parking. Just on its own, it will make parking easier for some and harder for others. We need to approach this problem holistically, rather than piecemeal. Fundamentally, our parking policy suffers from one consistent problem: we're giving it away too cheap.
Photo by iandavid.
A house with a private parking space costs up to $100,000 more per space. If you want to park in a garage, that's hundreds a month. But on-street parking is virtually free. Why?
Bus rides aren't free. Housing isn't free. Electricity isn't free. Why is parking free?
At the last parking hearing, Graham asked, shouldn't people be able to own cars? It can be fun to own a car. Yes, it can be fun. It's also fun to ride rollercoasters or own yachts or travel to Europe, but the DC government does not pay to make these things free.
Right now, it costs $2.50 a day to ride the bus (with SmarTrip). Yet if you live in the same ward as your workplace, or work near blocks not zoned for RPP, it's free to drive and park. Why? The proposed Mount Pleasant guest parking program operates on a simple premise: let people buy day passes to park on streets in the neighborhood that aren't full during the day, and charge just a little more than round-trip bus fare. And the revenue from permits could improve that bus service for the employees who don't drive
If you go to shop in Adams Morgan by car, it's either very easy to find parking (during the day), or just about absolutely impossible (in the evening). People drive around and around, creating substantial traffic and making 18th Street more dangerous. The garages aren't cheap, while parking all evening on Champlain Street, if you can find a space there, is free. Residents should park for free, but isn't there a better way to allocate the remaining spaces beyond luckiest or most circled, first served?
How about multispace meters that let drivers (neighborhood residents exempted) pay the same rate as the meters on 18th, and set those meter rates at the right level to promote turnover? It would become easy as pie to park in Adams Morgan, just not free. But why should it be free when it's not free to take the Circulator, and even more not free to take a cab? That revenue could make the Circulator cheaper, or more frequent.
Graham's bill proposes one free visitor pass for each household. Some residents have wondered whether that would just invite abuse, like people selling passes on eBay to commuters from Maryland. Do we really trust DC to enforce restrictions against that? Why not let visitors simply buy the same permits that employees would get under the proposed day pass program, and mail each household a book of them You can buy a resident parking permit for $15 a year, and another, and another, for as many cars as you like. Some households have three or four cars (or more). $15 a year is about four cents a day. Graham's bill contains a provision to charge higher rates for the second ($50) and third ($100) RPP passes per household. What about group homes and big families? At the previous hearing, Mount Pleasant's Gregg Edwards suggested giving each household one pass free or cheap, and if they have more than two adults, one more pass for each two adults. The next pass costs $50, then $100, and doubling thereafter. However, this would require a reliable way to verify where people live, as in many households the utility bills don't list every resident.
Imagine if we let employees or visitors park on underutilized streets in residential neighborhoods, as long as they paid a few dollars a day; let shoppers park on side streets, as long as they paid a dollar or two an hour; let residents park one car for cheap, but charged more for second and third RPP passes; and poured all that money into making transit, like Metrobus and Circulator service, cheap, frequent and reliable. Wouldn't Ward 1 residents be better off?
Transit
Metro crash roundup: Second draft of history
Press coverage of the Metro crash has evolved from blaming Metro officials for the crash to blaming local, state and national leaders for chronically underfunding the Metro system.
Photo by just_a_name_thingie.
Robert McCartney harangues elected officials for saying Metro needed more money, but not having pushed harder for more money. He also points out that Barack Obama's budget left out the promised $150 million in federal matching funds.
This morning, Metro announced its intention to move the 1000-series cars to the centers of trains (where possible). Many of you suggested this same measure. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer plans to ask for $3 billion in federal assistance to replace the 1000 Series rail cars.
Many immigrant-hating nutcases have been calling the family of crash victim Ana Fernandez, claiming that the family is exploiting the tragedy to get legal status. In fact, Fernandez was a legal immigrant, and her six children were born in the U.S. DCist shares our outrage.
@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
- Bikeshare and better health go together
Greater Washington
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