The way I understand it, MTA & WMATA weren't able to negotiate a SmartTrip revenue sharing arrangement. They will be using the same technology, so a unified pass is still possible if in agreement can be reached later.

by kreeggo on May 12, 2009 9:34 am  

How about driving the speed limit?

War on Cars! War on Cars!! :)

by ibc on May 12, 2009 9:45 am  

I actually used to live in Vauban so I am always pleased to see these articles. I wish I could go back :(

That said, the article errs in calling Vauban a "suburb." It's only about a half-hour walk from downtown.

by Phil on May 12, 2009 9:56 am  

Metro gets federal funding and MTA gets federal funding. Congress can force the two to play nice. :-)

by Adam L on May 12, 2009 10:03 am  

On the video: Nice clip, but 'preaches to the choir'. It does nothing to show that 'New Urbanism' is better than sprawl, other than give some flashy words.

It would have been nice if it had given some more numbers. It's nice so say that a million folks in a suburb take up 400 sq miles, but how much less do a million take up in a suburban setting?

by Jasper on May 12, 2009 10:10 am  

Not all cul-de-sacs are the same. There's cul-de-sac as symbol, and then there's cul-de-sac as actual design pattern.

An architect planner I once had as a teacher said that she used to dislike them. Now she thinks that short cul-de-sacs are fine, just so long as you can still see the entrance from the far end. This is someone who was involved in founding the CNU, and who served as the smart growth advisor for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

There is a legitimate need for quiet and escape from through traffic. It's possible to make cul-de-sacs work, and we've been doing them for longer than people seem to realize.

This is Radburn, New Jersey, a planned garden city community of 1929. It's built next to a commuter railroad station, and it's designed to accommodate both walking and driving. These are among the first cul-de-sacs in the US. But look at how short they are!

This idea of short, discontinuous streets goes back much farther, before the idea of the garden city and right to the first planned urban developments. The map above shows the Holland Park area of London. The street name "Close" in the UK refers to a one-ended public way.

This is Savannah, Georgia, 1733. No single-ended streets as such, but there are plenty of short streets that are of little use to through traffic. (I know; down there you stay off the squares and small streets if you want to get anywhere.)

by David Ramos on May 12, 2009 10:27 am  

Another thought on the clip:

This is how you do it:

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/50-cars-1-bus/

by Jasper on May 12, 2009 10:37 am  

Anybody that knows anything about the math behind traffic jams, knows that driving on cruise control is the best way to prevent traffic jams. If one person slows down, the next slows down a bit more, and if there are enough people, at some point, somebody will stop and start a jam.

And yet you talk to many, many people who take it as an element of faith that driving the speed limit increases congestion, gridlock, and, therefore, auto pollution.

I set the cruise control to 25 mph while driving through Rock Creek, because slower speeds are safer for park users, and because it gets folks used to driving the speed limit. I've actually had folks pass me on blind curves over a double-yellow because they just...couldn't...manage...to drive the speed limit.

by ibc on May 12, 2009 10:44 am  

BUT I GOTTA PEE!

by monkeyrotica on May 12, 2009 12:24 pm  

The math of traffic jams:

http://math.mit.edu/projects/traffic/

And a clip:

mms://media.sonoma.edu/Math%20Colloquium/mathcolloq_oct31_2007.wmv

(or http://tinyurl.com/pzysdr)

It's kinda shocking that so few people know this, because it's all basic calculus. If you know what a double derivative is, you know enough math to understand how traffic jams work. And given the enormity of calculus classes in college and even high school, plenty of people should understand this. I guess that the problem is that politicians aren't the best mathematicians (see: the state of the economy).

by Jasper on May 12, 2009 12:24 pm  

It's random and picky, but technically the way to refer to more than one cul-de-sac is "culs-de-sac" not "cul-de-sacs"

by Drew on May 12, 2009 1:03 pm  

People need to get over the false notion that just because you drive at the speed limit, you are automatically a safe driver. There are a LOT of people who drive like idiots because they're not paying attention to the road (too busy talking on their phone or eating or whatever). Sure they might be driving at 55-60, but I guarantee that I'm paying more attention to my surroundings at 70-75 then they are. Why else is it that I'm ALWAYS the person that realizes that me and another car two lanes away are about to hit each other while trying to change into the same lane on the freeway. These are also the same drivers that make the laziest lane changes (often without signaling) without any regard for who might be behind them. Let's not start with the left-lane cruisers...

by Reza on May 12, 2009 1:30 pm  

@ Reza:

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/wcm/road_safety/erso/knowledge/Content/20_speed/speed_and_accident_risk.htm

http://www.landtransport.govt.nz/research/reports/367.pdf

Etc. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=relation+between+speeding+and+accidents

People need to get over the false notion that just because you drive at the speed limit, you are automatically a safe driver.

You are correct, it's the other way around:

People who are driving over the speed limit are automatically a less safe drivers.

Also, it is not that because other people are driving dangerously - for instance by driving while texting - that you are allowed to also drive dangerously. By speeding.

Denying that speeding is dangerous ranks with denying global warming, denying natural section, etc. It is refusing to accept proven facts.

by Jasper on May 12, 2009 1:52 pm  

People who are driving over the speed limit are automatically less safe drivers.

Yep. But Reza's initial post was about interstate driving which is a different ball of wax, and completely irrelevant to driving in an urban setting.

(Pretty interesting, though, that the defenders of speeding automatically think in terms of an eight-lane superhighway--the Platonic ideal of the Motoring Lifestyle.)

by ibc on May 12, 2009 3:07 pm  

@ ibc: It doesn't matter where you speed. It is more dangerous everywhere.

by Jasper on May 12, 2009 3:09 pm  

@Jasper

Well, true enough. But from a purely selfish perspective I'd rather have folks doing 100 mph on I-66 than 35 mph on the little tree-lined one-way street outside my house.

;)

by ibc on May 12, 2009 4:09 pm  

@ ibc: It is a challenge to drive quickly passed a row of trees. They tend to cross without warning, and then bad things happen ;-)

by Jasper on May 12, 2009 5:00 pm  

German autobahns (which of course, have no speed limits in many places) have a substantially lower fatality rate than American interstates so at least for highway travel there's contravening evidence to the "speed kills, everywhere" hypothesis.

by Phil on May 12, 2009 5:03 pm  

yayy pro active non speeders!

by Bianchi on May 12, 2009 5:59 pm  

@Phil:

That statistic probably also relates to the fact that getting a driver's license in Europe is substantially more difficult than it is in the US. I would definitely be in favor of moving the US in that direction, incidentally.

by Nate on May 12, 2009 6:01 pm  

There is not that much unrestricted autobahn left. They do have electronic signs that change with conditions, a rather simple but good move. In the clearest conditions they have unlimited speeds where allowed.

by NikolasM on May 12, 2009 6:34 pm  

Jasper wrote: It doesn't matter where you speed. It is more dangerous everywhere.

Not necessarily. You are inherently safer going with the flow of traffic than you are going the speed limit, even if that flow of traffic is faster than the speed limit.

by Froggie on May 13, 2009 7:00 am  

"That statistic probably also relates to the fact that getting a driver's license in Europe is substantially more difficult than it is in the US. I would definitely be in favor of moving the US in that direction, incidentally."

It's true that it is harder to get a license, however Germany also has lower highway fatality rates than other European countries, and it's not particularly harder to get a license in Germany than, say, France (although German car inspections are famously strict.)

by Phil on May 13, 2009 9:35 am  

Maybe it's cultural, are the norms for driving in Germany different? Is distracted driving much more frowned upon not just in the law but also in society? Are the design standards for highways somehow better?

by Michael Perkins on May 13, 2009 10:18 am  

I think the unspoken assumption is, barring widespread lawbreaking, slower is better. If I, as a driver, am going with the flow of traffic, *I* am safer.

If I'm going slowly--particularly in an urban environment--the safety of non-auto road users is increased.

Case in point, I saw a guy bike commuting up N. Capitol Street near Irving. Speed limit: 35mph. Average vehicle speed: at least 45mph. It's madness, and the sooner the District cracks down on this behavior--rather than wasting time ticketing cyclists who roll stop signs--the better.

by ibc on May 13, 2009 10:56 am  

@ Phil: Come back to us when you've got your German driver's license. They are notoriously hard to get. The average 18-year old will spend a couple of thousand buck in driver's ed before even attempting to go up for a driver's test.

German highways are also safer because they are way better than American highways. The parts where there is no speed limit are perfectly paved, have wide curves, and are at least three lanes wide. There is a significant price tags to that. And furthermore, the cars that drive that fast as significantly more expensive, safer and sturdier than yee average American PT Cruiser.

Furthermore, German law has very severe penalties for reckless driving and speeding, which is checked by speeding cameras. The fines are thousands of euros, and you can loose your license fairly easily due to a strictly enforced point system. Insurance is also very limited if you cause an accident while driving recklessly. Germans also realize that while driving 120 mph, you are at a severe risk, and take driving at such speeds very serious. And don't even try to drive away from the police, because their Porches are faster than you anyway.

Last, even in Germany, the faster people drive, the larger the chance of an accident. The fact that Germans cherish their wonderful and expensive highways, does not refute the truth that driving faster causes more crashes.

Your "counter-example" is invalid. You might as well have said that in a certain state there are more crashes than in another, even though the speed limit is the same, so the speed limit can not be in influence. It just shows your refusal to understand the statistics.

PS: Oh yeah, the German Autobahn is totally awesome. My top speed is 120 mph, while I usually cruise around 100 mph. On the six-lane stretch between Frankfurt and Bonn, doing 100 mph gets you going in the second lane from the right, just next to the slow truck lane. The four lanes further left all go significantly faster.

by Jasper on May 13, 2009 12:13 pm  

Michael, to answer your question on road standards, here's a page I created some years ago based on contribution/E-mail exchange with someone from Germany...my attempt was to compare U.S. Interstate road standards with German Autobahn standards. The U.S. standards are from AASHTO. The German "standards" are empirical in nature.

by Froggie on May 14, 2009 5:57 am  

@ Michael: Driving in Europe tends to be more hectic than in the US. I am not sure why. Could be the higher speeds, combined with narrower lanes. There's also a large cultural difference in the sense that Europeans don't have the anglosaxon politeness.

In Europe, you are taught to be assertive (not aggressive). Literally, you are supposed to "take" your right of way, not wait until someone "gives" it to you. You will never see four Europeans at a 4-way stop waiting until someone goes. You will see a pile up and four cursing Europeans all claiming they were first.

Furthermore, getting a driver's license is so much harder, that everybody drives assuming everybody else is a good driver (too). Obviously, in the US, we have to drive assuming everybody else is a complete moron, as we all know that driver's ed is minimal here. The financial impact of an accident here is significantly higher than in Europe.

To summarize: driving in Manhattan is about comparable to driving in an *average* European town. Paris, London, Amsterdam and every city near the Mediterranean Sea are a different order of chaos.

by Jasper on May 14, 2009 2:09 pm