Regarding the comparisons with California and New England to explain growth in Virginia, the assessment is wrong. California, largely as a result of Prop. 13 which limits property taxes, relies heavily on sales taxes to finance local government. This leads to the 'fiscalization of land-use' where cities take a zero-sum approach to zoning and local development and are eager to approve car dealerships and big-box stores to capture sales tax before neighboring cities do. The Public Policy Institute of California has a report about this: http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_799PLR.pdf . Additionally, California is more like New England because towns and cities are more numerous compared to the county government system in Maryland and Virginia.

by Ben on Jul 7, 2009 9:28 am • link • report

@ David: I wish I could take credit for that awesome tip. I don't think I was one of those who sent that one in (but I might have been and don't remember). Ack!

by JTS on Jul 7, 2009 9:49 am • link • report

The system is already closed for 5 hours each night. Why Metro feels the need to disrupt service at 8pm in order to perform this kind of maintenance is beyond me. We would never consider closing roads at 8pm in order to perform maintenance. There always seem to be enough highway funds to make sure work is completed late at night, not right after rush hour.

by Adam L on Jul 7, 2009 10:27 am • link • report

Saratoga Springs seems to be encouraging childhood obesity and they are also buying into the child predator witch hunt hysteria whole hog.
What a bunch of losers.

by w on Jul 7, 2009 10:37 am • link • report

Adam: could be because the type of work being done requires a longer period of time. Can't exactly make an apples-to-apples comparison to highways in the way you did, either, since highways often have multiple lanes and closing one or two lanes doesn't result in "single-tracking".

by Froggie on Jul 7, 2009 10:39 am • link • report

Noah Kazis' commentary on New England's town-centric development vs. California's sprawl-oriented development was interesting in that it revealed his biases. Where you don't have a concentrated city center with everyone living in little boxes in high rises, you can instead have the sprawl model (California) or the town-centric model (New England). The New England model works better because everything is fairly evenly distributed everywhere. You don't have everyone heading in one direction at one time ... as you do with the California model. In the New England model everyone is heading everywhere ... even if it is at the same time (e.g., rush hour). Kazis doesn't like the fact that people are heading anywhere. He'd rather see them all packed and stacked like rats in a cage ... to 'lessen the environmental impact'. (I.e., he's forgotten that the environment is here to serve us and not vice versa.) So, even though the New England model works far better for situations where people aren't packed like rats in boxes, he prefers the California model because he thinks it is more easily changeable into a 'packed like rats' model. (I.e., where we are caged into a high density area ... so that the animals can be let free to roam the open country side around us left unused by humans. Interesting 'turn the world on its head' theory).

This reminds me of a post from yesterday was equally interesting because of it (also) faulty logic. Someone estimated the extra costs incurred 'by everyone else' for you to drive your car into a specific part of Manhattan. Using the same rational he used for calculating these car costs, one could come up with a figure for extra costs incurred 'by everyone else' caused by the birth of a baby. No difference in calculation would be required. Like in the car example, under that person's 'logic' the resources used by the baby become 'costs' to others. Of course, the other side of the equation, i.e., what the baby AND THE CAR contribute to others and society in general is ... surprise surprise ... completely left out of the calculation!

They say statistics and numbers can be used to prove any point. I suspect that is especially true when one's ideas don't hold much real basis to begin with.

by Lance on Jul 7, 2009 10:45 am • link • report

Didn't Saratoga Springs used to be a little upstate resort town with all sorts of famous artists living there? When did it turn into a traffic-choked mess with sexual predators assaulting children on their way to school?

by tom veil on Jul 7, 2009 10:55 am • link • report

I thought that WMATA released the data in GTFS format. Why isn't is on Google Transit?

by eriks on Jul 7, 2009 11:09 am • link • report

@Lance: Try driving on the Boston Post Road in the MetroWest suburbs of Boston, during the morning or afternoon rush, and tell me that "You don't have everyone heading in one direction at one time."

by Simon on Jul 7, 2009 11:41 am • link • report

@Simon,

Boston is the exception in New England. It's the sole semi-'sprawl city' organized more around the lines of the California model (and has recently extended its reach to places like Providence). In general, the cities are smaller than elsewhere and very spread out ... with many many towns in between. Each town and city has its own bases of employment, residences, and everything else to be self contained ... WHILE having easy access to other such towns and cities. In that way millions and millions of people make their homes in what is still a very pristine environment (e.g. Connecticut is still two thirds forest). I'd say they've hit on the way to have sustainable development that is most efficient ... and makes use of the most efficient mode of transporation, the personal vehicle. I.e., Kazis was looking at the situation with an outsider's eyes and trying to find a problem (based on his own prejudices) where there is none.

by Lance on Jul 7, 2009 11:54 am • link • report

^
Lance, I agree that New England is a very good built environment.

But it never could have been built that way if it were built around cars. The cities of New England were built solidly around walking and transit. If they had been built with cars in mind, they'd look more like California.

New England is a great example of how cars can be valuable and useful tools, but how we shouldn't design the world around them.

by BeyondDC on Jul 7, 2009 12:03 pm • link • report

Phoenix is also not on Google Transit. I'm not sure if Philly is, either. I understand that WMATA has released the GTFS data for general public use, but hasn't signed the agreement with Google.

by pvg on Jul 7, 2009 12:10 pm • link • report

@pvg, that's exactly right. Comparing Phoenix to WMATA, WMATA serves approximately 10 times as many unlinked passenger trips and operates a heavy rail system. I obtained data from the APTA, and based on Q4 2008 data, only 14% of passenger trips are on systems that are not supported by Google Transit.

by Michael Perkins on Jul 7, 2009 12:16 pm • link • report

Yeah, New England exurbia is such a model of personal freedom and family values, that's why the kid in Saratoga Springs got his bike confiscated for riding it to school...

by Steve on Jul 7, 2009 12:22 pm • link • report

@ Adam L:

DOT's routinely close all or parts of major streets when doing construction. This Red Line project will be replacing the rails on the oldest stretch of track in the system. That's not unlike resurfacing a road or rehabbing a bridge.

Just look at the construction out in Tysons for both the HOT lanes and Metro. They're closing lanes on 123 during off-peak hours to do work, and re-opening them during the rush.

Consider what Metro has to do to make this kind of track work possible: They have to re-route trains onto a single track, then shut off the power to the other track, then get to work. Then, they've got to make sure everything's back in place when they're done to resume 2 track operation.

The alternative would be to simply single track through the area constantly. The work would get finished faster, but service at all hours would be greatly reduced. Personally, I think the late night option is far more palatable.

by Alex B. on Jul 7, 2009 1:11 pm • link • report

@ Adam -- Metro needs more than the 5-hour closing window to do some repairs because they have to bring equipment in and out of the specific area. If they had only 5 hours, by the time they got everything in, they'd have to start taking out out to prepare for reopening.

by ah on Jul 7, 2009 1:44 pm • link • report

@ Steve -- last I checked, New York (Saratoga) was not part of New England.

by ah on Jul 7, 2009 1:45 pm • link • report

@ Beyond DC and Lance -- If by "built around. . . transit" you mean "horse and buggy" then okay, but the pattern of towns in New England was based on horse trails and such from port cities and other industry. Cars and transit came later--the subway was downtown streetcars and commuter rail was based on where freight railroads had located.

As for commuting in different directions--not really. Boston is still the core area for work, with lots of commuters. And then there are the tech areas (plus other things now) out on Route 128 (Boston's beltway). So really it's not terribly different than here, except that the roads are somewhat less hub and spoke.

by ah on Jul 7, 2009 1:48 pm • link • report

Now that Michael Jackson is dead, it's safe for kids to ride their bikes through the woods.

by LaToya on Jul 7, 2009 2:45 pm • link • report

Metro needs to have 3 tracks instead of two in all new subway lines to have redundancy for emergencies and for express lines. Anything less in such a busy and heavily used system is nothing short of asking for trouble.
We are all witnessing and experiencing this lack of planning right now in the aftermath of the recent red line accident.

by w on Jul 7, 2009 3:05 pm • link • report

BeyondDc. I couldn't agree with you more. I also don't think we should be building around the car. The walkable environment (i.e., an environment built at the human scale) is a better environment in all respects in my opinion.

by Lance on Jul 7, 2009 3:06 pm • link • report

@ah, Boston, though New England's largest city in not representative of New England in general ... just like NYC, though the US's largest city, isn't representative of the US in general.

by Lance on Jul 7, 2009 3:11 pm • link • report

True, Lance, but if you exclude Boston and the NYC suburbs in Conn., then the rest of New England looks a lot less urban, so its comparison to the DC area is totally inapt, and should be compared instead to, say, western Virginia.

by ah on Jul 7, 2009 3:30 pm • link • report

w, sure, 3 (or 4) would be nice. You going to pay for it? Part of the issue in the US (vice other countries) is the labor cost is so high. People wonder how in other countries they're able to do such massive projects quickly - the answer is that the labor is just so cheap in China, India, etc, that you can simply hire a whole load of people to get it done quickly. We have a high standard of living.

It's not so much "lack of planning" as it is "finite amounts of money".

by Aaron on Jul 7, 2009 5:12 pm • link • report

In defense of Saratoga Springs, in many jurisdictions the courts have held that the school's responsibility for the safety of the student begins when the child leaves his front door, and not when he arrives on the school grounds. If a student is hurt in any way while walking, biking, etc to school, in many parts of the country, the school district can be, and has been, held liable. I worked in a small town school district for a few years and we basically had to ban walking/biking to school under orders from our risk-management people.

The problem is this, if a kid gets a ride to school in a car, and is in an accident, no matter how bad, the parents will not think of suing the school. But if the kid is walking or biking to school and is somehow hurt, they will not think twice about putting the school on the hook, in some cases for serious money.

So, policies like the one in Saratoga end up being set by the insurance company or district's risk managers.

Welcome to the modern world...

by sedan on Jul 7, 2009 5:27 pm • link • report

Thanks for using one of my pictures, but I really wish someone had left me a note on my flickr account so I could know it was being used at all.

by BabetteKD on Jul 7, 2009 10:01 pm • link • report

Stuart Byrne was a dink when he was my principal and he's a dink now. And as to why people would want to ride to Maple Ave, I don't know, because it's in the sticks compared to the High School and the drivers going down Maple Ave and Broadway go warp speed making it fairly dangerous.

Also, Saratoga is an awesome town to grow up in. There's a lot of good smart-growth oriented planning going on there.

by Stating the Obvious on Jul 7, 2009 11:31 pm • link • report

BabetteKD: Your images on Flickr are listed with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. That means that you are telling others, in advance, that it's ok to use pictures as long as people 1) give you credit, 2) aren't making money off the picture, and 3) don't change it.

I appreciate that you have these listed this way, since it makes it a lot easier for me to find pictures to illustrate various posts. However, if you don't actually want to tell people that this is okay, you can change the license to require people to ask you ahead of time.

There isn't an option to select a license called "Attribution-NonCommercial-AlsoPutANoteOnMyFlickrPage," though.

by David Alpert on Jul 8, 2009 7:53 am • link • report

Sedan, What about parents who are concerned about a) the fact that kids who propel themselves to school perform better then those driven and b) kids who propel themselves to school are greatly more likely to achieve the recommended amount of physical activity per day (1 hr for kids) and c) are much less likely to suffer chronic disease risk factors from inadequate physical acyivity-which can affect kids' health outlook for their lifetime. ? Many schools who uunderstood the correlation between self-propelled and performance have embraced "Safe Routes to School".

by Bianchi on Jul 8, 2009 10:20 am • link • report

@tom veil In the summer time when the track is open, and the schools are closed?

(Do Channels 6 and 10 still have on-location reporting on the Social Season? Oh, Steve Caparizzo, I miss you sometimes. Topper just can't compare.)

Even back in the early 80s when I was a kid living in the sticks, my mom had to personally fight the school administration and board to get me permission to walk.

by ajw93 on Jul 8, 2009 10:40 am • link • report

David Alpert: See, if I knew my image was being used, I could add a link from the image page to here. It's nice to KNOW my image is being used, rather than coming upon it by chance and going "oh, ok then". I don't care if they're used or not, I'd just like to see where it's being used.

by BabetteKD on Jul 8, 2009 6:34 pm • link • report

I thought I had put an 'all rights reserved' license on all my images, but my older ones don't have that license. Since one is already here, I'll leave it with the creative commons license and let whoever reads your article to see it.

"Attribution-NonCommercial-AlsoPutANoteOnMyFlickrPage" is funny. I'll end this now so nothing escalates anymore than it needs to and i won't comment again on the matter.

Moving on, back when I lived in Saratoga as a kid (early 90's), it was perfectly fine to ride a bike anywhere. I cut through the park and never had my bike confiscated and no one ever talked to my mother about it. It's weird to think how it changed since I moved.

About 3 years ago I went to New Zealand and Australia, and they have some really radical safety advertisements. I never heard of a 'bleeding billboard', but I'm sure if it's as effective as stated, it must be very interesting.

by BabetteKD on Jul 8, 2009 6:58 pm • link • report

LaToya- Now that Michael Jackson is dead, it's safe for kids to ride their bikes through the woods.

me- I knew it; most people that hate highway building/widening for MD are not only Maryland haters but Closet Racist Devil Worshipers.

by mike on Jul 12, 2009 4:02 am • link • report