Posts about Beltway

Bicycling

Visualize Metro rides, CaBi trips, and Beltway travel times

by David Alpert   •   March 6, 2012 10:43 am

MV Jantzen has created another neat Metro-related visualization. This one lets you see the pattern of trips on Metro from a given starting station, based on data from 2007 (unfortunately, the only data available).

Metro trips from Brookland. Click for interactive version.

Mouse over a station to see the trips from that station. The blue circle shows the magnitude of trips starting at that station, and the red circles show the relative number of trips ending at each station.

Rahul Nair, a faculty research assistant at the University of Maryland, has created some great visualizations as well. One shows Capital Bikeshare trips from one selected station. It's displaying the same type of data as the MV Jantzen app, origin-destination pairs for a single origin, though it uses arrows instead of bubbles.

CaBi trips from 17th and Corcoran. Click for interactive version.

Nair also built a tool showing travel times on the Beltway, using data from INRIX for 2011:

Inner Loop (clockwise) traffic on Monday at 8 am. Click for interactive version.

Roads

Highway departments set on HOT lanes

by David Alpert   •   May 8, 2009 1:06 pm

VDOT and the Commonwealth Transportation Board have made up their minds to add high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes to I-395. Arlington and Alexandria, through which the lanes will pass, aren't so sure, and claim VDOT hasn't provided answers to their questions about the impact or benefits of the lanes. As a result, they are taking formal steps to oppose the plan.

Photo from Washington State Department of Transportation.

Arlington deputy manager Marsha Allgeier told the Arlington Connection, "We have not to date received a response to our request for data. We continue to be concerned about the impact this would have on our streets, and we continue to press for answers." VDOT's conduct in this case sounds very similar to the I-66 battle, where VDOT jumped to the conclusion that more lanes was the only answer, then ignored their promise to look at other possibilities.

Meanwhile, VDOT's project manager Young Ho Chang showed a typical blindness to transportation solutions other than more lanes. "Wouldn't it be better for people in the inner jurisdictions to have people in outer jurisdictions to be in a carpool or transit?" he asked. "That's what this project has been designed to encourage."

Actually, it would be better for the inner jurisdictions, the outer jurisdictions, the state as a whole, the environment and our society if Virginia's transportation policy promoted other means of mobility besides more cars driving more miles. HOT lanes might encourage more carpooling than regular lanes, but also far more driving than spending the same amount of money on transit or helping people live closer to work. Meanwhile, Virginia is still under-investing in VRE, which could potentially move a lot more people with less land, less energy, and less pollution.

There's also no real reason to believe HOT lanes will accomplish what highway boosters claim. California's SR-91 HOT lanes only ever made a profit because they replaced an existing median, which made construction extremely cheap. Beltway lanes will cost more money and bring in less. They're a better alternative to just adding lanes, period, but still cost money, increase driving and pollution, and move mobility in the wrong direction.

Maryland, too, is all hot under the collar for HOT lanes. Limited housing opportunities in western Montgomery County are pushing more people into Frederick County, and instead of adding housing closer to jobs and beefing up rail transit like the MARC line to Frederick, Maryland SHA is set on adding more car capacity to I-270 one way or another.

"We were asked to take a look at ways that we can put improvements out in the corridor, but find some way to pay for those improvements, and ETLs is what's come through from MDOT," consultant Brian Horn told the Frederick News-Post. The way he describes this makes it sound like MDOT's a sausage machine, where you put a transportation problem in one end, turn the crank, and a recommendation to widen freeways comes out the other end.

There's an alternative. We already have a rail network that could be transporting an order of magnitude more people than it does today. When discussing Berliner's suggested Red Line stop, some commenters asked about creating an express Red Line. We could have one that reaches planned new development from Gaithersburg to Fort Belvoir, and reaches Frederick, Baltimore, Richmond and Charlottesville. All we have to do is fully exploit the existing commuter rail infrastructure or even expand it further.

Building out the commuter rail system contains challenges, which would cost money, but so do new lanes on 395 and 270. Sadly, VDOT and MDOT look at the region's mobility, see a lot of traffic, and conclude that we need more lanes. In VDOT's case, they seem to see the inner jurisdictions as obstacles to clearing more room for outer jurisdictions' cars instead of as partners in a better system. The future of our region depends on some more creativity from the state transportation chiefs and their top people, or the political courage of regional leaders.

Parking

Breakfast links: upset neighbors edition

by David Alpert   •   June 24, 2008 9:03 am

Yes, Virginia, widening means more asphalt and fewer trees: In addition to the constantly rising public subsidy, Northern Virginia communities are discovering that the Beltway HOT lane construction will consume more land and clear more trees than residents had anticipated. Maybe some of the Fairfax Supervisors should have paid more attention to the project before it was approved? (Post)

Photo by derang0 on Flickr.

Looks fine to me: DC isn't the only place thwarting free enterprise on parking. Local businesses near Six Flags over New England rent their unused spaces to parkgoers for less than the amusement park itself charges. It gives people a choice and better utilizes available parking. But Agawam, Massachusetts wants to "do something" about this "problem". (Parking Today)