I perused the "Greater Washington 2050" report and was disappointed. It's full of obvious statements (sprawl is bad, traffic is bad, the area is too car-dependent, housing is expensive). Everyone knows that already!

The suggestions are too vague to result in anything.

by Eric Fidler on Nov 4, 2009 10:02 am  

From the jaywalking article:

Fourth, lower (and enforce) urban speeds. Cities like Barcelona and Amsterdam—pedestrian paradises both—are proposing limiting entire tracts of the city to 30 kph (that's 18.6 mph, folks), and in places like the "Skvallertorget," or "Gossip Square," in Norkkoping, Sweden, the legal right of way is shared equally, and safely, among pedestrians and drivers, without clear markings, because car traffic has dropped to human speeds. Fifth, stiffen penalties for cars that violate the rights of those legally crossing (which would provide ancillary benefits for those crossing in a more informal fashion). Pedestrian fatalities wouldn't exist without cars, a stubborn fact that the law should reflect.

Yep.

There's absolutely no reason why autos should be travelling faster than 20 mph in congested urban areas. Reducing the speed limit would have the side benefit of encouraging cycling, as well as reducing injuries.

Of course, we should never even enforce the current 25mph speed limit, much less lower it to 20, because....WAR ON DRIVERS!!!

Oh, well. With the changing makeup of the DC city council, we're slowly but surely getting there.

by ibc on Nov 4, 2009 11:22 am  

But if I speed up to the next light maybe I can get there before it turns green!

---

The 2050 plan is pretty milquetoast, but I'm going to go and ask them about the role of personal unsolicited schemes, like metro fantasy maps, the McMillan Two, and other private operations.

by цarьchitect on Nov 4, 2009 11:46 am  

...
Because private plans seem to show more vision than the politically addled plans of the NCPC.

by цarьchitect on Nov 4, 2009 11:47 am  

But if I speed up to the next light maybe I can get there before it turns green!

Don't start. Next we'll have Lance coming by to tell us that that higher posted speed limits mean that everyone gets where they're going faster, which reduces pollution!

by ibc on Nov 4, 2009 12:53 pm  

Jaywalking. I had a guy in a wheelchair jaywalk(?) on 12th in front of me yesterday evening. I've got the green, he has a red traffic light and a Don't Walk hand and he launches off the curb into traffic. As I do drive 20-25 on the grid streets in the Distict (there's just too much going on to safely go much faster), I could stop in plenty of time, but the thought that he could just "dash" across two lanes of oncoming traffic is funny.

by ksu499 on Nov 4, 2009 1:00 pm  

@ibc:
If you lower the speed limits beyond the point that a majority of drivers consider reasonable they will just be ignored (even more then they already are) since people know that consistent enforcement is not possible. A great example of this is the interstate highway system where the vast majority of drivers consider 55 to be too slow and consequently the actual flow of traffic is closer to 75.

Another example would be Connecticut Ave just north of Chevy Chase Circle where the speed limit is 30 and people actually drive around 45. Speed camera were installed to enforce the limit and the result has been that most drivers go about 45 till they are close to the cameras, slam on the brakes and then speed up again as soon as they pass them creating a situation that is almost certainly more dangerous then it was before the cameras.

Short of some Orwellian scheme like putting a gps black box in every car to automatically ticket speeders it is simply not possible to enforce speed limits below the levels naturally enforced by common sense, the flow of traffic and street conditions and changing the numbers on the signs won't really change how anyone drives (and will likely make things worse for pedestrians as some drivers take the attitude of "If I'm going to risk a ticket anyway I might as well go 50 instead of 35."

by Jacob on Nov 4, 2009 2:59 pm  

Why so pessimistic about freight rail? At least it can get trucks off the road.

by Zac on Nov 4, 2009 3:32 pm  

I don't agree that our laws should be governed by what the common sense of drivers is. At least not until drivers stop killing 35,000 people a year. I have no problem with simply putting up more and more speed cameras.

From 2000 through 2006, there were only about 25,000 terrorism-related deaths in the entire world. That works out to only 3,500 a year. So our cars kill more people by March than terrorists do in a whole year.

But yeah, guess we just have to let drivers do as they want since they'll just go on killing us anyway.

by Reid on Nov 4, 2009 3:35 pm  

I'm not sure Buffett is betting against strong environmental regulation. He may be betting that even with limits on carbon, we'll decide that coal is what we want to "spend" our carbon rights on. So if we eliminated oil from the equation and switched to electric cars, we'd lower carbon creation but use more coal. Or we could sequester carbon or offset the carbon by seeding the oceans with iron, etc... Coal is very cheap and when carbon becomes expensive coal might just go from very cheap to cheap.

by David C on Nov 4, 2009 4:13 pm  

Isn't some of BNSF's rail right of way going to have to be bought out if some of the high speed rail initiatives are going to go through? Perhaps that also influenced his way of thinking.

Secondly, I think it's funny that when MoCo had a computer problem, drivers got stuck in traffic, but when WMATA had a computer problem, people got to ride the bus for free. Perhaps another reason public transportation is better? :-P

by Teo on Nov 4, 2009 5:11 pm  

He's probably on the right side of the bet. Western coal is cleaner (sulfur-wise) and higher BTU than coal from West Virginia. We're going to keep burning coal because (a) power plants are configured to burn it and (b) it's available domestically, thereby supporting american workers. In addition, it's likely to be more western coal, because (a) it's cleaner and (b) Robert Byrd is on death's door, so protection for eastern coal is likely to decline.

As for rail more broadly, for long distances it's more efficient than trucking, so again, right side.

by ah on Nov 4, 2009 5:40 pm  

just curious what the various 'bets' would be if Buffett decided to buy Ryder, or JB Hunt (the trucking companies)...?

a bet against rail? a bet against an increase in the national gas tax? a bet for cars? a bet against environmental legislation? a bet against humanity?

the guy knows Obama's not allowed to do anything in Copenhagen -- still, i think the 'bet' phraseology is overblown. we have a crisis of democracy, with the entire political system now completely dominated, perhaps as never before, by corporate interests. let's not worry about coal as much as we worry about getting corporations, including Buffett's, under our control -- stakeholders, not just shareholders.

by Peter Smith on Nov 5, 2009 2:18 am  

@ah: Western coal while being lower in ash and sulfur content is actually less efficient than Eastern coal, producing fewer BTUs for a given volume. http://www.wsgs.uwyo.edu/coalweb/WyomingCoal/vs.aspx

by ksu499 on Nov 5, 2009 9:53 am  

A great example of this is the interstate highway system...

You might as well draw parallels between air travel and surface street travel. The two have almost nothing in common. But the fact that drivers feel comfortable going 45 mph on residential stretches of Connecticut Ave has nothing to do with what the maximum safe speed is. They do 45 there because they ignore the safety of pedestrians and cyclists. The sooner drivers learn that city streets are not some closed system whose sole purpose is to get them from Point A to Point B, the better off everyone will be.

[I]t is simply not possible to enforce speed limits below the levels naturally enforced by common sense, the flow of traffic and street conditions and changing the numbers on the signs won't really change how anyone drive...

The problem is that "common sense" is, in general, that it's a chimera clung to by ignorant people to justify their ignorance. More cameras, more "dummy" cameras, more traffic-calming roadway improvements, more enforcement, more education, more cyclists, and more pedestrians aggressively pursuing their rights.

That's what will educate drivers, and we'll suddenly see "common sense" change as well.

by ibc on Nov 5, 2009 9:54 am  

Another thing to consider about the Buffett BNI deal and coal is this: it may also be a bet on wind and solar. T. Boone Pickens just had to scrap a big wind project because he couldn't put together the ROW to run power lines where he needed them. If the power grid is going to be upgraded to add more wind and solar to the mix, only railroads have the ROW to make it work. That could add up to a nice chunk of rent in the future.

by David C on Nov 12, 2009 2:11 pm