Breakfast links I: Peds, bikes, trees and parks

by David Alpert • November 10, 2009 9:16 am

Photo by T4America.

Don't walk in Florida: A new report by Transportation for America ranks metropolitan areas by pedestrian safety, weighing both the fatality rate and the numbers of people walking. The Post article has good quotes from local groups and notes that the Washington area comes in around the middle of large metros, the four worst of which are in Florida. Generally, post-WWII auto-centric areas especially in the Southeast rank worst, while older cities do better by pedestrians. (merarch)

Bike lane posted: DDOT has completed the 15th Street protected bike lane with reflective posts to keep cars from parking in the lane. From the pictures it doesn't look like there are posts in the areas cars aren't allowed to park for visibility near intersections; will cars and trucks park there anyway? Keeping that clear a vital safety measure for the lane. (ReadySetDC) ... DDOT has fixed the "Yeild" misspelling, but not yet the "Trun" error.

Fenty's training rides break various laws: Continuing their zeal to expose all manner of traffic lawbreaking by everyone except car drivers, WTOP filmed Mayor Fenty and his bike training group running red lights and stop signs and using roads not open to bikes. The important outrages are that police are blocking off roads just for the Mayor to train and, as the Examiner's Bill Myers wrote last year, costing a lot of money in police detail. Fenty also changed his ride to avoid reporters. As for the stop signs, would Fenty now support the Idaho Stop? (WTOP, Examiner)

Park View or just Private Golf Course View?: The Armed Forces Retirement Home development debate is back. The Park View blog called for considering AFRH in the new CapitalSpace plan, which used to be open to locals as a park but has been more recently closed. An AFRH consultant responded to Prince of Petworth about their plans, which involve selling off some land in the southeastern corner along North Capitol and Irving but not, at the moment, anything next to Park View, though it was part of an initial proposal.

Pepco's lumber subsidiary: Apropos of our wire debate yesterday, Pepco wanted to cut down a lot of trees in the Palisades, because falling limbs caused numerous power outages recently. But residents protested, Fenty intervened, and now Pepco is willing to just do some pruning. (City Paper)

Parking Depot: Home Depot has realized their parking lots are too big, often 12-15 acres per store. Needing money, they are selling off pieces of their lots to other stores. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Michael P)

Lots of stuff today. Stay tuned for some Metro and highway news.

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17 comments

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David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.

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That woman's face with the keyboard is totally creepy. When will it be removed from the front page?

Another blog maintenance question: I keep having to do the captcha every time I open a new browser. Can that be fixed?

by Reid on Nov 10, 2009 9:28 am • link • report

Reid: I just fixed the captcha (I think) yesterday. It should now be working. Now that you've commented post-fix, next time you open a browser, it should retain your cookie. Let me know if it doesn't.

by David Alpert on Nov 10, 2009 9:30 am • link • report

Hm, actually it might still not be working. Looking into it.

by David Alpert on Nov 10, 2009 9:33 am • link • report

The Fenty bike article is pretty ridiculous. To my knowledge, bikes aren't banned from Clara Barton and Rock Creek Parkways as they are from the GW Parkway, and his group seems to be riding 2-wide at the max. I imagine a reporter driving 20 miles an hour in an SUV while using a camcorder presents much more of a traffic threat than a group of bike riders.

That said, the police escort shouldn't be holding up traffic at lights to let the riders cross. Of course, if they didn't, the ride would take longer, rack up more man-hours of labor from the police, and WTOP would be writing about that instead.

by Brian S on Nov 10, 2009 9:38 am • link • report

Based on my experience driving home on 15th st the past few days, it appears that people are not parking in the space designed for visibility.

by Ugh on Nov 10, 2009 10:01 am • link • report

I watched the WTOP video and I didn't see anything that's even newsworthy. It was a bunch of cyclists riding on roads in the city. There was no footage of egregious blocking of cross-streets and I'm willing to believe that a police escort for the mayor, more or less all the time, is reasonable.

In the scenes with a whole bunch of cyclists, one could even say that they define the "normal speed of traffic at the time and place and under the conditions then existing" which would mean they're not restricted to riding as close as practicable to the curb. Although they're still not allowed to ride more than two abreast.

by thm on Nov 10, 2009 10:07 am • link • report

Looks like Bikes are Banned from the Clara Barton...

http://www.thewashcycle.com/2008/10/biking-on-the-1.html

by Local on Nov 10, 2009 10:24 am • link • report

I'm a bit dubious about that study involving pedestrian deaths. I read a book this weekend "The Lost Art of Walking" that quotes another DOT study that NYC is the deadliest city for walkers -- in terms of sheer numbers. The DOT study uses a census number on how many people walk to work as the baseline for their numbers, and that has any number of flaws.

by chARlie on Nov 10, 2009 10:27 am • link • report

12-15 acres? I find that hard to believe but the story says its true. You could build a minor league baseball stadium with less parking.

by Canaan on Nov 10, 2009 10:36 am • link • report

A few things:

1) I've noted quite a few cars parked in the "visibility space" along 15th street. Very disappointing. Those spaces are just marked as boxes like the rest of the parking. There needs to be diagonal stripes in them to really drive home that it is not a parking space.

2) All those leaves in the bikeway! I nearly lost it twice last night on my way down 15th to Whole Foods. How are they going to keep that lane leaf-free?

3) The ped-fatalities study is BS if it can't list deaths per capita or per walk trip. Raw numbers are worthless.

4) Fenty is an arrogant, imperious little child. He needs to spend more time working with the city council and less time training for bike races. Is he our mayor or our mascot?

by michael on Nov 10, 2009 10:42 am • link • report

Very lame intro about the WTOP story.

by Fritz on Nov 10, 2009 11:04 am • link • report

WTOP video is lame. No illegal cycling. One motorcycle cop, couple bike cops once in a while. If this was citizen journalism there'd be alot of screams to "Get a life."

As for 15th Street: leaves, acorns, parked cars, granite curbs. No thanks.

by crin on Nov 10, 2009 11:41 am • link • report

The Fenty bicycling/training story has just as much (if not more) to do with Fenty's apparent abuse of power, not to mention the additional cost to the city when the mayor already has a security detail...

by Froggie on Nov 10, 2009 11:51 am • link • report

1) I didn't see them running a red, really, other than continuing on after the green arrow had disappeared. If a cop signals you through a red light, that's not "running a red", although it may be inappropriate for the cop do be doing it for Fenty.

2) I agree, Michael, on the leaves. It's perfect for homeowners, though, since no parked cars to ruin the piles!

by ah on Nov 10, 2009 12:03 pm • link • report

How are they going to keep that lane leaf-free?

Cut down all the trees?

by Ugh on Nov 10, 2009 1:27 pm • link • report

@Michael and @chARlie

Do give the study an actual read if you have some time; I think you'll find your concerns are both addressed. You can actually just read the full summary online and view the tables without having to download and read the whole thing.

To answer your question @chARlie, NYC is the deadliest city based on the sheer numbers. Of all the traffic fatalities there, pedestrians make up more than 30%, which is staggeringly high. (And we have metros ranked that way in one table to show top 10 share). For the pedestrian danger index, which we calculated to compare metro to metro, NYC is much safer because of the huge percentage of people walking to work, the high population, and the relatively low frequency of pedestrian deaths. It's certainly much safer to walk all the time in Manhattan that is to walk everyday on the outskirts of Orlando. So we show it both ways so the NYC folks don't think "oh, it's no big deal." Because more than 600 peds died in the last two years there. And that IS a huge deal, though relatively safer than Orlando.

@Michael, the study does list deaths per capita, using our index measure (PDI) to show the relative danger based on percentage of people walking to work.

Unfortunately, there's no other reliable dataset measuring trips on foot other than the percentage who walk to work. Even the regular American Community Survey data has a huge margin of error and would make comparisons impossible.

Check out the methodology if you are more interested in the details. http://t4america.org/resources/dangerousbydesign/methodology/

Hit me up if you have more questions.

by Steve Davis on Nov 10, 2009 1:40 pm • link • report

Ditto on the keyboard face woman. I find it very disturbing.

And I love 15th Street, or i used to.

by Jazzy on Nov 10, 2009 8:12 pm • link • report