Anything the TTI says is pretty much garbage.

According to their numbers, that comes to being "stuck" in traffic for about 10 minutes a day.

They are partnering with IRNIX to get real time data, but I suspect IRNIX is geared towards commercial use -- I know it doesn't capture close-in congestion and slowdowns very well.

That all being said, a useful reminder there are two Greater Washingtons: one that rides in on metro rail to work, and another that is primarily commuting intra-suburb. The second is the one that is really suffering. It isn't freeways, it is secondary roads and a few freeway choke points.

ARLnow posted something about Arlington's plan to do better traffic management and light timing, and little steps like that make a huge difference --- not new roads.

by charlie on Jan 20, 2011 9:12 am • link • report

Unfortunately the shipping container hosting the Museum of Censored Art is on the south side of the Portrait Gallery. They should have placed it on the north side of the building so they could also upset the anti-gay Family Research Council located at 8th & G Sts NW.

by Eric Fidler on Jan 20, 2011 9:38 am • link • report

The other part of the Urban Mobility Report that you missed is that public transit saved 34 million hours of delay in DC, that's 13 hours per peak auto commuter.

@charlie:

Why do you think the UMR is garbage?

Also, the 70 hours of delay doesn't mean "stuck" in gridlock. It's the difference between how fast your commute would be at free-flow levels vs. what the reality is.

by MLD on Jan 20, 2011 9:54 am • link • report

The "Museum of Censored Art" looks like a construction trailer. I walked past it a couple of times without even noticing it.

by OX4 on Jan 20, 2011 10:06 am • link • report

@charlie:

ARLnow posted something about Arlington's plan to do better traffic management and light timing...

Not to start a fight, @charlie, but I think when congestion reaches a certain point, the idea that optimal "light timing" will have a positive impact becomes a bit of a pipe-dream. when the number of vehicles on the road reach a certain point, the complexity of the system goes asymptotic*, and there's simply no way to impose order on the chaos.

You hear this when folks talk about DC all the time, "If only the lights were timed." Of course, when you look at a single road in isolation, that seems to be an obvious solution. When you have dozens of arterial roads intersecting one another, and each intersecting dozens of other roads, along with various choke-points, circles, etc, etc... it just seems to me you might as well predict how the vortices from the wingtips of a South American butterfly might affect the course of a hurricane developing off the coast of West Africa.

Obviously there are parts of the suburbs that are less congested than the urban core, with less complex networks of roads, but still...

*Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist, and am using the term in the poetic sense.

by oboe on Jan 20, 2011 10:14 am • link • report

If the purpose of the "Museum of Censored Art" is really "showing the art the Smithsonian won't," then it's going to be a pretty small museum. I guess it will have that ants-marching video. And . . . hmmm, not sure what else.
Unless of course they define their mission as including art the Smithsonian rejects because its worthless crap, as opposed to art actually "censored" because of controversy and protests. If the former, I have some lovely paint-by-number masterpieces I will be donating to the Museum of Censored Art.

by Mike on Jan 20, 2011 10:16 am • link • report

Does anyone know if I can vote at any special polling place in my Ward or do I have to go to a particular one?

by Kate on Jan 20, 2011 10:16 am • link • report

Is Congress Heights really in?

Interesting article, but I think they're conflating "hip neighborhood" with "neighborhood most likely to experience gentrification". Don't you need to have a sit-down restaurant (e.g Argonaut, Granville Moore's, etc...) before you can be "hip"? Capitol Heights is like the H Street corridor circa 2005. I think it still has a ways to go.

It's only "hip" in the sense that real-estate speculation is likely to occur there in the near future.

by oboe on Jan 20, 2011 10:20 am • link • report

@Mike,

You should flesh this out further; I'm betting some of the more thoughtful art-crit journals would love to publish a piece titled "Ha! You Call That Art? My Kid Could Paint That!"

:)

by oboe on Jan 20, 2011 10:22 am • link • report

oboe: I agree that once the roads reach a certain saturation level, signal timing won't do much. But we have too many hours of the day where that isn't the case, and far too many instances where one light turns green and before you can even accelerate to the speed limit, the next signal down (often *NOT* at a crossing arterial) is turning red.

by Froggie on Jan 20, 2011 10:24 am • link • report

Will there be parking at the Ward 2 polling place? Given there's only one polling place for all of Ward 2, they ought to be sure it's accessible to everyone. Many of our polling places don't have parking. That should be a minimum requirement. Not everyone can bike or walk to the polls.

by Lance on Jan 20, 2011 10:28 am • link • report

@MLD; the TTI is measuring "congestion", not your total travel times. Let's say I drive to work. It takes me 15 minutes, and I spend 5 of them waiting on one light (That is about the average "delay" for a Washington commuter according to TTI). Oh no! end of the world! DC is terrible! Then throw in the fact the rest (10 minutes at 2 miles) means I am traveling at 12MPH instead of the posted 35 or 45.

The important number there is I am only spending 15 minutes traveling.

@Oboe; you're right, you're not a scientist. Being a scientist means sometimes you have to contest common sense and conventional wisdom. More importantly, you can't read. The point I am making is there a large population in the suburbs (and to a much smaller extent in DC) that drives from suburb to suburb and has zero chance to take a metro or transit. All our talk about "metro-friendly" ignores that -- probably on purpose as this is a urbanist blog.

Combine the two, and what do you have:

1. Commute times in DC, even in the suburbs, are not as long or as bad as TTI says.

2 Where they are bad, and what TTI isn't measuring, is on secondary roads.

3. Local politicians and newspapers love to talk highways, because the feds pay for that; what we really need is better secondary roads where the delays really are. And stop blaming VDOT. Fairfax doesn't want to take control of their roads because it is expensive.

So TTI gets used for 1) highways construction and 2) buck passing. Great. Just what we need.

by charlie on Jan 20, 2011 10:30 am • link • report

CEO's for Cities had a comprehensive takedown of the flaws in TTI's Urban Mobility Report.

Streetsblog has a summary here:

http://www.streetsblog.org/2010/09/29/report-want-to-ease-commuter-pain-highways-and-sprawl-wont-help/

The CEOs for Cities report concludes that the UMR not only measures the wrong things, it also measures things the wrong way.

The full report is available here:

http://www.ceosforcities.org/work/driven-apart

by Alex B. on Jan 20, 2011 10:32 am • link • report

17 candidates, 13 of them in a single primary, and only 16 polling places. Welcome to the Capital of DemocraZy.

by Jasper on Jan 20, 2011 10:37 am • link • report

Kate: Under the BOEE plan, anyone can vote at any polling station. I assume that means huge numbers would vote at Judiciary Square.

Jasper: There won't be primaries. The 13 Dems out of the 17 are just running in the same election as everyone else.

by David Alpert on Jan 20, 2011 10:39 am • link • report

@charlie,

Kind of an odd response, don't you think? Since you accused me of not reading your post, then went on to flay me for every point other than the one I touched on.

The point I am making is there a large population in the suburbs (and to a much smaller extent in DC) that drives from suburb to suburb and has zero chance to take a metro or transit.

Well that was *one* of the points you were making. Buried in your comment was also the assertion that signal-timing will have some sort of positive effect on highly-congested roads. As Froggie said, on some less-congested roads poor signal timing can be an irritation, and even contribute somewhat to the overall chaos, but I haven't seen any compelling evidence that it would have any effect on highly-congested roads--though this seems to be an article of faith (i.e. "conventional wisdom") among a lot of commuter types.

...you're right, you're not a scientist. Being a scientist means sometimes you have to contest common sense and conventional wisdom.

See above. Anyway, sorry to have broken the prime directive of GGW comments, which is to never admit the only real wisdom is knowing you know nothing...

by oboe on Jan 20, 2011 10:47 am • link • report

I thought some of the lights in DC were purposely untimed as a traffic calming measure, but I can't find any proof of that. Anyone know if it's true?

by jcm on Jan 20, 2011 10:52 am • link • report

Not to nitpick, but the west Ward 2 polling station is in Burleith, not Georgetown.

I don't think it matters how far you are from a polling station in your ward. What matters is how far you are from a polling station period. People in eastern Ward 2 are probably the best off on that account. If anyone should have reason to complain, it's Ward 3 residents. I think they should move the Palisades location to somewhere more central like Tenleytown.

by TM on Jan 20, 2011 10:52 am • link • report

The TTI report shows we're number one in auto congestion per auto commuter.

20% or so of us in this region do not commute by car.

If the indicator were auto congestion per commuter (all modes), I'm guessing other cities with less public transit would rise to the top.

by Just161 on Jan 20, 2011 10:52 am • link • report

@Lance, there's no parking lot at the Duke Ellington location, but typically street parking is easier around those blocks than in other parts of Georgetown (outside of school hours especially, except when there's a musical/concert at the school).

by Jacques on Jan 20, 2011 10:56 am • link • report

@oboe, I thought it was an odd way to look at what will happen in CHeights. I don't think it will be "in" but agree that it will become more exposed to gentrification.

by HogWash on Jan 20, 2011 10:56 am • link • report

DC always ranks in the most congested cities (and most ozone polluted) because of the incredible sense of entitlement here. People have multiple cars, often multiple SUV's. I often see single suburbanites get in their oversize SUV's to drive a very few blocks. (And they often get free on-street parking at both ends).

$5/gal gas has shown to work but politically it's impossible.

Tolls work but again politics makes them impractical for all but new highways.

Europeans use those and bans on vehicles in center cities. But DC keeps the center leg freeway open and enlarges the SW freeway bridges so that suburbanites can cross DC instead of using the WW Bridge.

It's become apparent we're not going to get a national mass-transit mandate. Complete gridlock could be our ultimate salvation. When it becomes virtually impossible to drive. Rush-hour DC is close to that. But mostly we hear demands for more and bigger highways.

At some point we have to have the courage to tell people they do not in fact have a right to drive as big a vehicle as they want wherever they want whenever they want cheaply. Of course this is branded as anti-business.

by Tom Coumaris on Jan 20, 2011 11:03 am • link • report

I thought some of the lights in DC were purposely untimed as a traffic calming measure, but I can't find any proof of that. Anyone know if it's true?

Don't know if this is true, but if so, it's incredibly counter-productive. I'd say that reckless driving in many parts of town is driven by poorly timed signals. Capitol Hill would be markedly safer if they tore out the signal lights and put up stop signs everywhere. Almost everyone drives +5 or 10 mph over the speed limit, but the folks driving 15-20 mph over the speed limit are all trying to "beat the light."

Of course, this would be viewed as Fort Sumter in the War on Drivers, so it must never happen. Plus, getting back to the topic of "conventional wisdom", *everyone* knows traffic signals are safer than stop signs, which in turn are safer than yield signs and traffic circles.

by oboe on Jan 20, 2011 11:05 am • link • report

@ David Alpert: The 13 Dems out of the 17 are just running in the same election as everyone else.

Ah, great. A 17 way split vote. Which means weyou're gonna be lucky if the final candidate has the support of 1 in 4 of the select group of voters that can find it's polling place. Great news nevertheless :-S

by Jasper on Jan 20, 2011 11:26 am • link • report

New residences and offices on 14th Street have been filling, but the ground-floor retail has remained mostly empty.

My boyfriend and I walked from Logan Circle to Columbia Heights last night and commented on this... Seems like part of the problem is that rents are too high for small retailers. Does anyone know if there is some sort of coalition that matches local would-be retailers so that they can share retail space (and leases)?

by Laura on Jan 20, 2011 11:56 am • link • report

DDOT gave approval for the museum/trailer thingy? Wow. But there's no way that trailer meets the requisite building and safety codes. Do they also have generators on public space? Did they get the environmental approvals for that as well?

I'm guessing that the average Joe would not be allowed to take up a chunk of public space for an extended period to put up a trailer and use it as a museum. Must be nice to be special so that the normal laws don't apply.

by Fritz on Jan 20, 2011 11:58 am • link • report

Do you have a link to the BOEE? I clicked the link to the 16 voting locations map and got only a map spanning a large area, with Washington DC at its center, and no markers. And on BOEE's website, I see only a list of more than 100 polling places:

http://www.dcboee.org/election_info/pollplaces/

by Turnip on Jan 20, 2011 6:17 pm • link • report

Thanks David for the info on polling places. I see a long wait at Judiciary Square in my future.

by Kate on Jan 20, 2011 7:32 pm • link • report