Typical P.G. County government thinking. When I lived in College Park, it was shocking to see how anti-pedestrian many of the state and county roadways are. That's why people drove everywhere; they didn't want to die!

by Eric F. on Nov 20, 2009 9:47 am  

@ the College Park intersection. I am sure quite a few people use that intersection to commute to/ from UMD and the college park area. College students also tend to be somewhat dumb and not look before crossing intersections.

by Matt R on Nov 20, 2009 9:47 am  

The New York Times article doesn't delve very deeply into Providence's new project. The new plan's perfectly good, with a quite reasonable street grid, though the blocks are a bit large.

It's also entirely lacking in vision. It squanders a chance to address large-scale issues, particularly when it comes to connectivity across the city. The plans' authors seem not to have recognized the opportunities that redevelopment of this scale presents. The plan just kind of fills in the street grid; it pretty much ignores the river, squandering a chance to reuse bridges and rights of way for much-needed local streets, and barely acknowledging the potential value of waterfronts.

by David Ramos on Nov 20, 2009 10:03 am  

But the chance to change the plans' gone. It went a few years ago. I'd want to be careful about the lessons I draw from Providence. I'll be happy to see the new land built out, and it will benefit the city greatly - but I'll still be saddened to think of how much more good the plan could have done, with just a little more imagination and ambition.

by David Ramos on Nov 20, 2009 10:08 am  

I notice that at least part of the no-parking area on 5th has been cross-striped. That would help a lot on 15th.

by Tom Coumaris on Nov 20, 2009 11:15 am  

for a really effective innovation for the US (common in Europe), once bike traffic increases how about devoting a few streets to bikes (two-way) and resident parking only. I'd volunteer S where I live since R and T are already one-way and the residents hate the volume of auto traffic here. There's bound to be a similar north-south street.

Residents rarely use their cars in rush hour and it would get a combination of resident and bike support.

by Tom Coumaris on Nov 20, 2009 11:35 am  

How, pray tell, would ever enforce the alternating street system, if local residents, visitors and deliveries could still drive on the bike streets? Position a cop on every other street in the city?

Has an urbanist ever once considered costs before writing a nonsensical letter to the editor? Ever?

by metronic on Nov 20, 2009 12:33 pm  

Note the great wide staircase in the photo of the Los Angeles metro station. Nice to see a transit authority that's looking at what is most convnenient for passengers (as opposed to WMATA's blind refusal to save money and improve passenger flow by replacing those disgusting escalators).

by CP on Nov 20, 2009 12:42 pm  

Do you understand the concept of a lease-back? The summary you gave was very misleading and the article from BW was equally poorly written. It is a tax loop-hole used by cities, including DC, to lower taxes on depreciating assets (in DC's case: metro train cars). This allows cities to deduct the full lease amount as a business expense as opposed to only interest and depreciation if they owned the assets.
Too bad our city directors don't read contracts they sign and don't realize that there are insurance conditions. Many cities used AIG as payment insurance because of their own lack of cash. And when AIG went belly-up, they failed to secure a contingent insurer.
Wall Street provided a legal tax loop-hole to cities and now you want to get angry at banks when cities default on insurance because they failed to read the contract?! Are you serious?! This frustration should be directed at our politicians and the board's of transit agencies that use our money so recklessly and don't understand the multi-million dollar contracts they sign. Don't get angry at banks for collecting money that is due to them. If the terms were so outragous, cities could have said that BEFORE they signed the lease-back agreements! It's a very unfortuante situation but you completely misplaced the blame.

by Pat on Nov 20, 2009 1:17 pm  

metronic- i'm hardly a wild-eyed urbanist, i'm very pragmatic, like things well-planned beforehand, and this isn't novel or re-inventing the wheel. in Europe and some US cities this works well. a local example that comes to mind is Queens Chapel road in Hyattsville around former Governor Glendening's home. there's simply a "no-thru-traffic sign in the middle of the road. when i drive there i've never been tempted to test enforcement. there are plenty of ways cities use to stop thru auto traffic and it would only be a couple streets.

a few years ago when 13th was one way with no parking during rush hour people said it was too drastic to change to 2-way with parking all day taking away two rush-hour lanes. but 13th has worked well. it seems like we've become more timid since then about decreasing highway speed streets as evidenced by only taking one lane off 15th.

while i both bike and own a car, my primary interest is in making residential streets more livable and if that improves bike traffic, pedestrian safety, and decreases pollution even better. but we've got to be willing to try alternatives that have proven successful in other places and that generate overwhelming resident support. residential streets in the l'Enfant city were simply never intended for the amount of auto thru traffic they now have.

by Tom Coumaris on Nov 20, 2009 1:42 pm  

Many european cities use retractable bollards. The bollard is always up, but when a resident with a tag approaches, it lowers to let them pass. Bikes of course, can simply go around them.

by J on Nov 20, 2009 5:32 pm  

We have retractable bollards right here in DC, on the closed section of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.

by BeyondDC on Nov 20, 2009 5:50 pm  

I've mentioned this (often) on WashCycle, but that location in College Park is a classic location for a HAWK signal.

by Froggie on Nov 21, 2009 10:05 am