I should probably note about the Smartrip article that all it was saying was that using those other cards would be possible, it wasn't saying that it would be cheap or fast, or that WMATA would be interested in actually licensing (and paying for, probably) that technology.

Just that Cubic has licensed a technology that will allow a software upgrade to allow those other cards (and even cell phones with embedded smart chips) to be used with the smart card readers that WMATA has installed in all buses and soon to be installed in all rail faregates.

by Michael Perkins on Mar 18, 2009 9:45 am  

I think you can correlate the use of air conditioners and the number of TV channels to our movement of our lives from public to private space. Also, family size plays a part too.

by RJ on Mar 18, 2009 9:51 am  

There are 2 lines on that figure of sq. ft. The red line and the gray line below. What's the gray line indicate?

by Bianchi on Mar 18, 2009 9:54 am  

Avg Family size has gotten smaller since 1950.

by Bianchi on Mar 18, 2009 9:57 am  

The McMansion rise is simply a matter of our country becomming wealthier since 1950. Now I expect the square footage will decline as we become poorer. As for the social isolation, poverty ought to help on that front although my guess is there will be a backlash at some point against all the technological advancments that are the main culprit.

by Thayer-D on Mar 18, 2009 9:59 am  

@RJ, even looking at just the size, there's a substantial increase. But you can correlate that with wealth as well. Median household income has increased approximately 250% since 1950 (inflation adjusted), which is almost exactly the same percent by which the s.f. (overall) of the median home has increased.

(BTW, I don't think a 2400 sq. ft. house would meet most definition of a "McMansion"--sizable, yes, but not close to a "mansion")

Source: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/f07ar.html

by ah on Mar 18, 2009 10:00 am  

Bianchi: The gray line appears to be chartjunk. It looks like if you click on the chart that the grey line is supposed to be the "shadow" of the 3-D line that represents the data. Terrible!

by Michael Perkins on Mar 18, 2009 10:15 am  

McMansions are a specific type of house in my mind. Just as 'sprawl' is more complex than simply moving outward, McMansions are more complex than simply big houses. As the name implies, they are mass produced, usually on spec. They're big, they're autodependent, and they're usually flush with luxuries (granite countertops!) but not actual craftsmanship. Size alone isn't a good indicator. You need to factor in size, age, location, design, and financing.

by Alex B. on Mar 18, 2009 10:16 am  

On the subject of square footage, it's already been noted that new home sizes now are starting to be smaller than new home sizes even 6 months ago.

by Froggie on Mar 18, 2009 10:25 am  

This statistic reminds me how living in a city like DC can give me a distorted picture of the rest of the country. 1,000 square feet per person? That's enormous.

by Erica on Mar 18, 2009 10:29 am  

Wrong platform? Aren't there electronic signs that tell what the right track is? At F-Springfield, trains leave from a random site of the track. I think this is on most end stations, not?

by Jasper on Mar 18, 2009 10:31 am  

Jasper: yes, same thing happens with the Yellow Line in Huntington.

Off-topic, but looking at that CoolTown Studios site, I found this item of interest...

by Froggie on Mar 18, 2009 10:32 am  

@Jasper--true, but that's at end stations, where you expect to look for it. At a midpoint station, that's less likely, since most trains will be coming on the "right" side.

@Erica--That's true of any city. Think of how you'd feel if you were in New York. But there's plenty of cheap land outside of cities that make adding a few extra square feet about as expensive as supersizing at McDonalds.

by ah on Mar 18, 2009 10:34 am  

On the ICC -- too painful to think about directly for more then short spans of time. What can Marylanders do to stop it and cut the losses?

by Bianchi on Mar 18, 2009 10:35 am  

Re: public space and housing

Good point about air conditioning!

Moving activities from shared spaces into private ones is a trend across all levels of society, for all housing types in both urban and suburban areas, over the last 90 years or so. The spaces aren't so much public squares (not in this country, for the most part!) but coffee shops, restaurant/grills, and even bars.

Most large apartment buildings built before about 1955 would have had not only a dry-cleaner in-house, but also a grocery store, and usually a restaurant. Older, smaller, apartment kitchens aren't really designed for the preparation of full-scale meals. The extreme case is the residential hotel which, in its purest form, does not provide a means of preparing food. (Residential hotel did not always connote homelessness - they provided homes for the wealthy down to the indigent.)

For a meal, you go down to the restaurant downstairs, or to the coffee shop/diner down the block. Those casual modes of dining, offering convenience but lousy food, no longer really exist. We ask for more from our restaurants and coffeehouses today.

We see this in rowhouses as well. Just go into an alley and look at the additions on the back of the rowhouses - people are adding more private space. Activities that would have taken place in a bar/saloon down the street, or an air-conditioned movie theater, or on the front stoop, are now happening within the house.

by David Ramos on Mar 18, 2009 10:37 am  

Re: the ICC

What can Marylanders do to stop it? I think that the environmental group and homeowner lawsuits failed. You can always bombard Gov. O'Malley and the House of Delegates with requests to reconsider. Maybe, just maybe they will, in light of our changing world and (ya know) the Smart Growth policies. I don't see it happening, but the project got buried one time already.

http://maryland.sierraclub.org/action/p0095.asp

by David Ramos on Mar 18, 2009 10:43 am  

Thanks for adding that, David. I didn't know how much to write for the Smartrip blurb and I tend to be somewhat verbose (really?).

by Michael Perkins on Mar 18, 2009 11:25 am  

Re: Household size

A friend of mine with two other young professionals was denied renting a house because the three of them were not related. And there was a law in the books in that county in Maryland that only two non-related people could live together. Average household size may have dropped, but its also being enforced by laws that prohibit density in a residence.

by Erik on Mar 18, 2009 12:59 pm  

@ ah: Isn't Mt Vernon the end station of the yellow line? It isn't the only non-end-of-the-line station where trains turn. Perhaps somebody from the red line can shine a light on this?

And whether a train comes from the left or right also depends on whether your platform is in the middle or separated. anyway, it's not really important.

by Jasper on Mar 18, 2009 1:04 pm  

The Yellow lines goes to Ft. Totten during non-peak hours.

by Bianchi on Mar 18, 2009 1:09 pm  

A more practical issue then stopping the ICC now would be fighting for the western half of NCPC's proposed South Capitol Mall, given the downtown in the real estate development market with such projects as the stalled 1325 South Capitol Street which would infringe upon such space.

Saving this SW portion would be infinity more practical then stopping the ICC or saving the SE portion of the South Capitol Mall, as the latter requires moving the St Vincent De Paul Roman Catholic Church and Nationals Stadium!

by Douglas Willinger on Mar 18, 2009 2:09 pm  

i think driving a bus in any major-ish city is like being at war, so those who do it suffer from PTSD. they, like police officers, should only have to work very short hours - no more than 30 hours per week, and should get two months of vacation in the summer, at least.

many cops start off as decent, law-biding, fair-minded individuals -- but the job turns them into violent, domestic abusers, civil and human rights violators, with a propensity to go 'off the deep end'. it's completely predictable. the only question is, do we want to do anything about it, or continue to pretend the problem doesn't exist?

by Peter on Mar 18, 2009 3:08 pm  

"No word about the cyclist assault incident around the same time. (Post)"

Because it wasn't an assault.

by Boomhauer on Mar 18, 2009 5:15 pm  

Red Line Turn-Backs These are scheduled to happen at Silver Spring and Grosvenor. Both of these stations have a slip track. A Silver Spring train will discharge passengers on the northbound ("correct") side of the platform, then leave the platform continuing to move northbound towards Glenmont. It then switches to a piece of track between the two main lines. After the driver has switched cabs and changed the destination boards, it comes back out on the southbound ("correct") side of the platform. You can actually watch this happen at Silver Spring. The same thing happens at Grosvenor, although it is less obvious because the slip track is in the tunnel.

ICCThere is no federal stimulus money being used to construct the ICC. The $2.6 billion in construction is funded with $1.3 billion in revenue bonds to be repaid with tolls to be collected on the road, $0.8 billion in GARVEE bonds, to be repaid with future federal transportation revenue, and $0.5 billion other State and federal funds. As of December 31, $650 million had already been spent. A bill to stop construction has been introduced by Del. Frush (D-Prince George's) in the Maryland House of Delegates and by 9 State Senators (Pipkin, R-Baltimore County; Brochin D-Baltimore County; Colburn, R-Eastern Shore; Della, D-Baltimore City; Frosh, D-Montgomery; Harrington, D-Prince George's; Jacobs, R-Cecil; Pinsky, D-Prince George's, and Raskin, D-Montgomery). If this bill passes, the General Assembly's non-partisan staff agency estimates the State could save $71 million in FY10 (a total of $381 million through FY14), and be left with an unusable roadway that cost nearly $2.0 billion, no way to repay the revenue bonds that have been sold, and many more years of litigation.

by Stanton Park on Mar 19, 2009 4:09 pm  

A correction on ICC funding. The revenue bonds are issued by the Maryland Transportation Authority (MdTA, the initials MTA are used for the Md. Transit Administration) and are paid out of the authority's total revenues. The toll revenues from the ICC will be considerably less than the debt service on the revenue bonds issued to partially pay for it. The ICC will be subsidized by tolls from the Bay Bridge and Harbor Tunnel, which are the authority's big money makers.

As I recall (don't hold me to this), the original estimates were that the ICC tolls themselves would cover about $700 million of the construction cost. The recent decline in vehicle miles has already affected the MdTA budget, and could have a much more severe effect in the future. Current toll facilities have fixed tolls and (except for I-95) no practical toll-free alternative. A 3% drop in VMT therefore cuts their revenues about 3%.

But future revenues are likely to be much more sensitive to VMT. The two new toll facilities under construction, the I-95 express toll lanes north of Baltimore and the ICC, have toll-free alternatives and are planned to have tolls adjusted to the level that deters enough drivers to keep traffic moving. When VMT changes, tolls change. On the express toll lanes, a small drop in VMT could decongest the free lanes and drivers would no longer be willing to pay to use the toll lanes. The problem would not be as bad on the ICC, since the free roads are not as good a substitute, but it's a problem there too.

by Ben Ross on Mar 19, 2009 4:33 pm  

SP: so if I'm reading you right, it would cost the state more to stop construction now than it would to complete the parts of the ICC already under construction.

by Froggie on Mar 19, 2009 4:37 pm