Posts about Cleveland Park

I already had a long-standing addiction to their wasabi-roast beef sandwich on freshly baked flatbread. So, good news! I'd get another lunchtime option, plus a place to meet someone over good coffee, or to work when I need to get out of the house.

That's when I learned about Cleveland Park's anti-restaurant zoning overlay. A couple of decades ago, the neighborhood lobbied for a cap on the number of restaurants. Specifically, no more than 25% of the linear footage fronting the Connecticut Avenue commercial strip could hold any kind of food establishment—including restaurants, bars, takeout, delis, coffee shops, or sandwich shops.

Così, after briefly floating some creative legal arguments that would have exempted them from the cap, decided a zoning fight wasn't worth the trouble and pulled out.

To summarize, we had:

• a sandwich shop that wanted to sell me sandwiches;
  
• a landlord ready to rent space to the sandwich shop;
  
• citizens ready to take jobs as making sandwiches; and
  
• me, a customer, willing to buy sandwiches on a regular basis.

The neighborhood would have gotten another "third space", a comfortable and informal local gathering place. The city would have gotten tax and licensing revenue. Così's vendors, suppliers, and contractors would have made money, and so on—a cascade of voluntary, mutually beneficial economic transactions that would have left everyone involved better off.

But no. Instead we got a shuttered storefront for two full years. No jobs for anyone, no sandwiches for me, a landlord losing money on a vacant space, and an increasingly depressing-looking commercial strip.

Why?

At this point it would be very easy to turn dismissive and snarky about Cleveland Park's comfortable, out-of-touch, selfish residents who oppose everything. But here's the thing: Since that time I've gotten to know these people. They are among my neighbors and my friends. They're good and generous people, and they're not fools or cranks. They're proud of their history of local activism and they're trying to do what they think is best for the neighborhood.

They deserve a fair hearing for the strongest arguments they've made for the restaurant cap. I still think this is still a bad law. More broadly, this provides a good case study in how neighborhood politics can go wrong, and what we can do about it.

The original rationale for the restaurant overlay involves two main arguments.

1. Cleveland Park's commercial strip should provide first for the needs of the neighborhood. Restaurants can pay higher rents, so they crowd out small and diverse neighborhood-serving retail and services. Typical quote: "We have enough restaurants, what we need is a bookstore and a hardware store."
2. Restaurants are more likely to bring in people from outside the neighborhood; a critical mass of restaurants would turn Cleveland Park into a drinking and dining destination, creating traffic and parking problems. Typical quote: "Removing the cap could turn Cleveland Park into another Adams Morgan that lacks a neighborhood feel."

To the first point, the overlay hasn't worked. It hasn't given us the retail landscape we imagined, but has instead given us empty storefronts and tanning salons. To the second point, I'd suggest that these fears are exaggerated and not realistic. There are better ways to address parking problems than keeping amenities out of the neighborhood.

Most importantly, though, it's fundamentally unfair to allow a minority of neighbors to use the government to impose their consumer preferences on all of us. The District of Columbia doesn't want the restaurant cap, and neither does Cleveland Park. It's time to get rid of it.

It isn't working

We all want a lively, diverse retail landscape. The problem is that zoning laws are a blunt instrument: They can only say "no." Zoning can prevent business, but it can't create business. The overlay has been around for 23 years now, Cleveland Park is still waiting for that hardware store and that bookstore, and neither one is ever going to come.

It's not hard to see why, now more than ever: We're halfway between two legendary local bookstores, Politics & Prose and Kramerbooks. Established independent bookstores and big corporate chains alike are going out of business in droves. As much as we might wish the world was otherwise, the economic rationale for retail bookstores has been nearly destroyed by the one-two punch of Amazon Prime and the Amazon Kindle.

A hardware store isn't much more likely: there's also competition nearby and the retail hardware sector is still subject to the economic forces that are leading us to the End of Retail As We Know It.

The long-term future of neighborhood retail, in Cleveland Park as everywhere else, is in products, services, or experiences that people can't obtain over the Internet or receive by UPS. If we don't allow more restaurants, cafés, bars, or delis, what does that leave? We have a couple of grocery stores and a CVS and a Walgreen's. And there are shops that are doing well by offering unique and carefully curated selections (like Wake Up Little Suzy) or advice from helpful specialists (like Potomac River Running).

But that still leaves a lot of space to fill. After years of empty storefronts, that void has now been filled by an abundance of nail salons, tanning salons, cellphone shops, and the like. That's not exactly the sort of "diverse retail" anyone had in mind.

I do wish we had a bookstore and a hardware store, and there's nothing wrong with you and I indulging in wishful thinking. But there is something wrong with building public policy on a foundation of wishful thinking.

We've made it illegal to add any more food establishments, in the hope that that would magically produce lots of charming independent retail. But no sane entrepreneur is going to give us the stores we say we want. The unintended consequence is that we're filling our storefronts with the dregs of the service sector.

It's a solution to a nonexistent problem

The second argument stems from fear: Fear of more traffic, fear of changing the neighborhood's character, fear of becoming "the next Adams Morgan."

Let's not flatter ourselves. That's not going to happen. Adams Morgan isn't even the new Adams Morgan any more; the district's hipsters have long since moved on to U Street and H Street and 9th Street. What those neighborhoods have in common is the energy that comes from cultural and economic diversity. How do I say this nicely: Cleveland Park's respectable citizens are ... boring. No one goes out of their way to party in a neighborhood full of middle-aged white lawyers and minivan-driving families.

Anyway, Adams Morgan's weekend crowds never went there for the fine dining, for the cafés, or the sandwich shops: They were going for the bars and nightclubs; and the liquor licensing process gives neighbors all the tools they need to keep those kinds of establishments in check.

One last thing about the "not-another-Adams-Morgan" trope: I lived in Adams Morgan for years, and while the twice-weekly onslaught of drunken kids was a big nuisance, the entertainment venues didn't crowd out neighborhood retail.

To the contrary, the neighborhood has a diverse and vibrant retail scene that puts Cleveland Park to shame: A slew of trendy women's clothing stores, shoe stores, home decor shops, music stores, ethnic groceries, and gift shops. And the best running store, the best frame shop, the best bike shop, and the best florist in DC. And standard neighborhood amenities like grocery stores, pharmacies, dry cleaners, and convenience stores. And, yes, a hardware store and a bookstore.

None of us wants more congestion or more cars parked on our side streets. And none of us wants teenagers from the suburbs puking on our lawns. But allowing more food establishments in the neighborhood will do none of those things. Restaurant, cafés, or delis are not more likely than other businesses to cause traffic or parking problems. People can always take the metro or walk to eat out; but they're more likely to use their cars to get to a hardware store, a grocery store, a wine store, or a vacuum cleaner repair shop.

It's not fair

The most important argument for getting rid of the restaurant cap is that it's not fair. It's not fair for consumers, and it's not fair to our local landlords and merchants.

The restaurant cap imposes the economic preferences of one group of consumers on everyone else, and that's not right.

Some people eat out more than others. And there's been a generational shift in dining preferences: For our parents' generation, restaurants were for rich people or for special occasions. In contrast, my wife and I eat out all the time, sometimes with our boys and sometimes without, and we rely on neighborhood take-out for the occasional weeknight meal. The market is perfectly able to sort out those preferences and figure out the "right" number of restaurants for the demographics of any given location.

The 25% cap is also unfair to landlords and merchants. If you happen to already own space occupied by a restaurant, you're "grandfathered in" and you can replace that restaurant with another as a matter of right. All else being equal, the retail space right next door is worth less, for the arbitrary reason that it doesn't happen to already house a food establishment.

When a food establishment leaves the neighborhood for whatever reason, their landlord has every incentive to turn away retail or service tenants, even if that means keeping the space vacant for years. When McDonald's left Cleveland Park in 2004, the 2-story space—one of the most beautiful and valuable spots on the strip—remained empty for 7 years.

People wouldn't start restaurants if people didn't want to go to restaurants. The fact that so many people want to open food establishments in Cleveland Park is a reflection of the desire of the people of Cleveland Park and the people of the District of Columbia for more food establishments. And yet here we are using the coercive power of the government to keep those food establishments from happening. That's not right.

The neighborhood doesn't want it

The Office of Planning would lift the restaurant cap if were persuaded that Cleveland Park doesn't want it. And it's not what the neighborhood wants, at least not any more. The Cleveland Park listserv held a survey on the question in 2008 and again just recently. In both cases voters expressed about a 2:1 preference for allowing more restaurants.

This is a classic example of one of the most frustrating aspects of local politics: A highly motivated minority can easily end up overruling a passive majority. A handful of angry people shouting "No" can often carry the day, even if the predominant sentiment is "Yes" or "Sure, why not?"

We've all seen this happen in Cleveland Park and elsewhere in DC. We saw it with the Wisconsin Avenue Giant controversy, and I worry that the same phenomenon will hamper the current effort to bring DC's zoning code into the 21st century.

So if you're OK with allowing more restaurants, cafés, diners, delis, ice cream parlors, sandwich shops, and other food establishments, you need to speak up. If you want lively and walkable neighborhoods, they're not going to just happen as long as leaders only hear from an outspoken minority.

If you agree, and you're a DC resident, please sign this petition to send a message to key local officials.

Cars take up space when they're moving and they take up space when they're parked, and even though they can't be simultaneously moving and parked, you have to plan for both states and plan for peak demand; so you have to set aside some multiple of the real estate actually occupied by the car at any given time.

That's just a practical observation about the spatial geometry of cities that doesn't bow to my ideology or yours. And it would still remain true even if cars ran on nothing but recycled newspapers and emitted nothing but rainbows and unicorn tears.

In the past, our policy response has been to just set aside more and more space for cars: More freeways, more roads, more lanes on existing roads, more parking garages and surface lots. This approach hasn't worked, and there are two very practical reasons why:

First, you can never build enough. There's a phenomenon called "induced demand" that is very well understood by now. A new lane or a new freeway never reduces congestion in the long run: People respond to new capacity by driving more or by living or working in previously remote places, and you're very quickly back where you started and have to build still more. The same phenomenon applies to increases in the supply of parking. It's a game you can't win.

Second, when you do make more space for cars you quickly start to crowd out any other potential mode of transportation, especially walking. All those parking lots and freeways and roads spread everything else out so that the distances become too great for walking. And the more you optimize any given space for cars the more hostile that space is for pedestrians. Very quickly you get to the point where it becomes impossible—or prohibitively depressing—to get things done on foot.

And this last fact has huge quality-of-life implications for human beings—not just because driving to a distant strip mall for a gallon of milk is less pleasant than walking to a corner store, but also because for many people driving simply isn't an option.

Some people can't drive because they're not old enough, others because they're too old. Some people are blind. Some people don't know how to drive. Most of all, plenty of people can't afford a car. And it's really, really not fun to be in one of those categories and live in a place where you have to drive to get anything done.

The District government has very belatedly come around to the realization that instead of focusing narrowly on cars, we need to focus more broadly on mobility. Cars will always a big part of that, but one third of DC residents live in households that don't own one, so it can't be the only part.

Some drivers have reacted to that shift with outrage that they're no longer the center of the universe, like only children who have acquired a baby sibling. That's not a mature or reasonable or productive reaction. As DC's population continues to grow, the population of cars can't keep growing at the same rate. Not because cars are bad but simply because we don't have room for them.

So we have to take steps to increase the market share of non-driving modes of transportation. That's not a pro-car policy or an anti-car policy, it's just a sensible response to the way the world is.

What does this have to do with zoning? Well, you don't take "everyone drives" as a starting point or as an end point. As a matter of fact, not everyone can drive; and as a matter of principle, we want people to have other options. So we allow corner stores so people can run simple errands without driving. We allow alley dwellings and garage apartments so a few more people can live in walkable neighborhoods and near metro stops. And we stop forcing developers to build more parking than the market demands. These are very modest but obvious common-sense steps.

Meanwhile, I'm going to keep driving when I need to, and so are you, and that's fine. Nevertheless it's in all of our best interests for DC to make sure that that's not the only choice we have.

However, the staff report says that according to current preservation guidelines, solar panels are okay but only if nobody can see them from a street. If they can, no solar panels.

In fairness to historic preservation staff, they seem to be trying to follow their written guidelines. Preservation decisions are already so subjective, and the more preservationists can make them predictable, the better.

However, these guidelines are still very vague and leave lots of room for staff or the board to come out differently on similar cases. For example, staff recommended against letting the building replacing the Christian Science church at 16th and I have a penthouse level with occupiable space, and most board members agreed. But, ANC members pointed out, in 2007 staff supported a penthouse roof terrace for the Hay-Adams hotel, right on Lafayette Park.

Listen to any meeting of the Historic Preservation Review Board, the appointed body that makes the ultimate decisions, and few members on either side of the issue talk about how a case fits with similar cases elsewhere or how a project lines up against guidelines; instead, you hear a lot of very personal opinions about whether members "like it" or not.

A bigger problem is the one Matt Yglesias pointed out: The preservation process narrowly excludes every single factor except for historic "compatibility." In most public decisions, officials weigh a variety of factors against one another. Here, the board must ignore the value of environmental sustainability, the economic impact, and even the owner's hardship or religious freedom.

At the previous HPRB meeting, where the board landmarked the 1960s urban-renewal Tiber Island project in Southwest, preservation chief David Maloney noted that there was "not yet public support" for a wider historic district in the neighborhood. As long as the preservation process holds that "compatibility" is the sole factor and overly restrictive guidelines define it so narrowly, it's unlikely there will ever be public support for another historic district.

Anyone who'd rather see no more preservation at all would probably appreciate this conclusion. So, perhaps, do those who only care about blocking development in a select few already-designed neighborhoods and who care little about the rest. Everyone else, however, ought to hope our preservation process can reach a better balance in keeping with the broader priorities and needs of the city.

Update: The Montgomery County Historic Preservation Office followed up with a tweet about how in their county, they're okay with visible solar panels when done tastefully and when it's the only option. A store in Glen Echo Heights got permission to add the panels. DC would do well to follow suit.

Update 2: The board voted 4-3 today to reject the solar panels. In an initial vote, members Andrew Aurbach, Maria Casarella, Graham Davidson and chair Catherine Buell voted to allow the solar panels, while Rauzia Ally, Nancy Metzger, Gretchen Pfaehler and Joseph Taylor voted no. Buell then abstained in a subsequent vote to allow the board to pass a motion.

Now, an example, namely Porter Street/Klingle Road between Cleveland Park and Mount Pleasant. This looks like a bit of interstate highway plunked down in the middle of the city, evidence of a long-forgotten plan to make Piney Branch Parkway into an inner-city crosstown highway. It's a four-lane divided roadway, limited access, no residences, no businesses, no crosswalks, no cross traffic, and it's no wonder that drivers speed up at this point, not because they're crazy speedsters, but because the road is clearly built for higher speeds.

The 85th-percentile speed for this road is 41 mph, as indicated by the 2006 Speed Study Map. Hence, the speed limit should be 40 mph, or maybe, if we're being conservative, 35 mph. But in actual fact, the posted limit is 30 mph, which is more than "slightly lower" than the 85th percentile. It comes as no surprise that the speed camera placed at this location has been a bountiful source of speeding tickets.

The MPD belatedly argues that "there is a lot of pedestrian and bicycle traffic accessing the park" here. But there's no bike lane, no sidewalk on the north side ("Pedestrians Prohibited" is posted), and the sidewalk on the south side is virtually covered by vegetation. These are indications that pedestrian access is, to say the least, discouraged. As for bicyclists, as one of that tribe, I can say that this is one of the most bicycle-hostile locations in the city, and not because of traffic speed, but because of road design.

So, is the 30 mph speed limit appropriate? There's no apparent justification for such a large deviation from the 85th percentile speed. In fact, just to the west of this location there are apartment houses and parked cars and driveways, and traffic speed there might be expected to be a greater concern than down where this "highway" opens up. But that's not where the speed camera is pointed, suggesting that the MPD is not really interested in the safety of residents, but in issuing lots of $125 speeding tickets.

The speed camera wouldn't matter if the speed limit were reasonable. Nobody can complain about a ticket for going much over the 85th percentile speed. The problem is not the speed camera, but the unreasonable speed limit, such that that 85th-percentile driver would, in this case, be exceeding the posted limit by a solid 11 mph.

So one has to wonder about other speed-camera locations in the District. The question is not the speed camera, but the appropriateness of the speed limit where the camera is located. Anyone defending a speed camera at a certain location should begin by confirming that the speed limit at that location is reasonable.

Some suggest that the businesses on this strip can't survive without the service lane and its 25 parking spaces. But every other commercial strip on Connecticut Avenue is able to thrive without a service lane. These businesses are just steps away from a Metro entrance, and are served by a rear alley that would allow people to drop off and pick up heavy items. The nearby Sam's parking lot almost always has space available. Making this area appealing and walkable would attract people in larger numbers, benefiting all of the businesses in the area.

This service lane was a big mistake, but it can be fixed. Imagine what a beautiful and vibrant public space this could be, with room for walking, sidewalk cafés, shade trees, flowers, and benches.

Sign the petition now to ask our elected representatives to restore this vital piece of the Connecticut Avenue boulevard to its original state.

What are the options?

This stretch of Connecticut Avenue was originally designed with broad, pleasant sidewalks on both sides.

Option 1: The status quo (cars first, people second)

In the early 1960s, Washington DC was being hollowed out as people fled for the suburbs. City planners were committed creating an automotive utopia. Cleveland Park's citizens had to fight off a proposal to run a freeway down Reno Road, which would have razed a wide swath of the neighborhood; other neighborhoods didn't escape that fate. Throughout the city, graceful mansions were replaced with parking lots. The streetcars that once ran up and down Connecticut were shut down permanently in 1962.

The service lane was created at the behest of local merchants. This was before Metro, during the heyday of the suburban strip mall; and convenience for drivers was everything.

So the wide sidewalk was dug up and replaced with a service lane, a second row of curbside parking, and a median separating the lane from the avenue. The vestigial sidewalk that remained is so narrow it hardly deserves the name.

This may have seemed like a good idea at a time at a time when public transit was poor or nonexistent, but it's completely inappropriate for what's become a vibrant urban neighborhood served by a metro stop.

• It's unsafe. Pedestrians often step off (or are forced off) the sidewalk, sometimes into the path of oncoming traffic. This is a particular problem for older or mobility-impaired persons. The anomalous traffic pattern created by the service lane is confusing. There's an extra set of stoplights where cars leave the service lane that's disorienting for drivers who are unfamiliar with the area.

• It's unappealing and hostile to pedestrians. The strip is drab and ugly; it feels crowded and unwelcoming. The only shade trees are on the median on the other side of the service lane, so there's no shade or shelter. The whole block feels like a parking lot, not like a place designed for humans.

• It's a waste of space. The median, the parking spots, and the access lane combine to occupy well over three times the space actually used for parking 26 cars at most. This is some of the most valuable real estate in DC, and it's terribly underutilized.

• There's no room for pedestrian amenities. A recent streetscape project conducted by Cleveland Park citizens along with DDOT has provided for beautifying the larger commercial area, with park benches, bike racks, and other amenities. There's no room for any of this along the service lane, nor is there room for any of the 12 excellent restaurants and eateries along the strip to provide sidewalk seating.

Option 2: Angled parking

A frequently proposed option is to replace the row of parallel parking alongside Connecticut Avenue, along with the median, with back-in angled parking. This approach would result in roughly the same number of parking spaces and a much wider sidewalk for pedestrians - seemingly a win-win.

Unfortunately, this proposal would be very expensive to implement (more than $3 million according to DDOT). Why? Because there's a lot of infrastructure embedded in the median that would have to be relocated at great expense: Metro vents, streetlights, a fire hydrant, and so on. And there are a number of mature trees that would have to be cut down.

DDOT has been unenthusiastic about the angled parking approach in the past, and for good reason. It's not really appropriate for a busy thoroughfare just outside downtown of a big city. And it's not exactly been a resounding success where it's been tried elsewhere; the city recently replaced back-in angled parking in Adams Morgan with more traditional parallel curbside parking.

Option 3: Shared road

Another possibility was proposed on the Cleveland Park listserv:

In a shared road, our sharply defined curbs on either side of our service lane would be replaced by a very graduated decline from the sidewalk level to the road level. There is not a hard boundary between what is walking space and what is vehicular space. ...

One would imagine that this creates dangers for pedestrians, but in practice cars naturally slow down to accommodate the pedestrians. There need not be any loss of parking spaces if this concept is applied to our service lane, the designated areas for parking could remain.

Shared roads make sense in cases where you need to provide occasional vehicle access to otherwise pedestrian-only areas; many college campuses have spaces that are configured this way. Some European towns have deliberately blurred the boundaries between pedestrian areas and roads in their historic centers, primarily as a traffic calming device.

In this context, though, this idea doesn't make a lot of sense. According to DDOT, it would be expensive. It doesn't solve any of the problem's we're trying to address. And imagine walking down that block with a family, trying to corral little kids while cars are trying to parallel park on the sidewalk they're "sharing" with us. For that matter, do you want to be the driver looking for a spot to park on the sidewalk while zoo-bound kids swarm around you? Sounds like a nightmare for everyone involved.

If the whole cars-and-trucks-on-sidewalks thing is a good idea, maybe we should let cars and delivery vehicles park and drive on the Uptown's sidewalk, or in front of Medium Rare and Cacao? Or on the sidewalks in Woodley Park or Dupont Circle, or on Columbia Road or Pennsylvania Avenue?

The service lane is already unusual and confusing. This scheme would take the weirdness to a whole new level, at the cost of millions of dollars, without improving anything.

Option 4: Cut-ins

Another proposal is to replace the off-peak parking along Connecticut Avenue with all-day parking by cutting spaces into the median. This would respond to the demand for parking in front of these shops during rush hour.

Unfortunately, it would be expensive for the same reasons as option 3—all the median's infrastructure would have to be relocated.

Alternatively, we could work around the existing trees, vents, etc. But this would yield at most a dozen or so spots along the entire block, resulting in a significant reduction in the number of spaces available.

Option 5: Just restore the sidewalk

Sometimes the simplest solution is best.

We all know what a wide sidewalk looks like—we don't need consultants or drawn-out studies when we can just cross the street and see how this sidewalk was intended to be. This option isn't expensive, either; the sidewalk could probably be restored for less than has already been allocated to study the issue.

All of us in Cleveland Park want our local shops to thrive. Restoring the sidewalk would eliminate just one parking spot per business on this strip, and would more than make up for it by being more attractive to people. For a commercial strip that's right on top of a metro station, delivering more pedestrians to merchants is a smarter strategy than delivering more drivers. We can only accommodate so many cars, with or without this service lane; whereas the number of pedestrians we could accommodate is practically unlimited.

The commercial strips in Woodley Park, Dupont Circle, Kalorama Triangle, and other comparable neighborhoods thrive without surface parking lots. There's no reason why ours can't as well. In the end, the question is whether we want this to be the kind of neighborhood where people drive up, do their business, and leave—the Rockville Pike strip-mall model that results in alienating, unfriendly spaces—or the kind of urban neighborhood where people come and spend time because it's fun and beautiful and accommodating to humans.

Cheap and abundant "Shop-N-Go" parking will never be this business district's comparative advantage, nor should it be. Let's leave that to the suburbs, and focus on making this a lively, walkable, and human-centered place where people actually want to be.

If you agree, please sign the petition now to ask our elected representatives to restore this vital piece of the Connecticut Avenue boulevard to its original state.

Monday, Sept 13:

1. As I am about to enter the crosswalk at Upton/Connecticut (walking south), a car heading west on Upton drives through the crosswalk without slowing down and turns northbound onto Connecticut. This happens all the time. People, there is a stop sign here, not a merge or yield sign.

2. Walking south on Connecticut at Woodley Park, I am nearly run over by bicyclist heading northbound on the sidewalk who dodges me and other pedestrians without slowing down.

Tuesday, Sept 14: A motorcyclist runs the red light at Porter/Quebec.

Wednesday, Sept 15: Amazing: nothing to report.

Thursday, Sept 16: Makes up for yesterday.

1. As I am actually midway into the crosswalk at Sedgwick/Tilden, a car on Tilden angles towards Sedgwick without slowing down and finally stops abruptly right in front of me. The driver is enraged when I shake my head in disbelief.

2. A taxi turns right from Reno Road onto Van Ness as I am about to enter the crosswalk with the walk signal. He does not yield or apparently even see me.

3. Later in the afternoon, waiting to cross Wisconsin and Western Avenue, a car waiting at the intersection pulls directly in front of me and other pedestrians once the light changes and we have the walk signal. It misses us by about a foot.

Friday, Sept 17:

1. Around 11 am on Connecticut Avenue across from the Giant/CVS, I take a mini 5-minute survey of cars driving southbound and see 6 drivers talking on hand-held cell phones. I actually thought there would be more.

2. An hour later, walking southbound back to CP, I proceed (with walk sign flashing) into the crosswalk at Van Ness/Connecticut when a car heading south on Connecticut cuts across northbound traffic to make a left turn and stops inches from me.

3. Late afternoon: Cars are stopped at red light, Porter/Quebec, poised to proceed westward. The walk signal given, I and other pedestrians start to walk. One of the stopped cars drives through the intersection while the light is obviously still red.

Saturday Sept 18, early morning: Crossing Connecticut at Tilden on walk light, when a car making turn from Tilden onto Connecticut northbound doesn't see me and nearly hits me. This is outside my one week window, but it was the closest call, so I've included it.

That's the results of my informal survey, and it's not pretty. Please bear in mind that these are the most dangerous examples. I didn't keep track of all the cars that blocked crosswalks or went through yellow or "pink" lights.

It really does seem that once I strap on my backpack and hit the streets, I become either invisible or a target. Must we double or triple fines for moving violations and use the funds to hire a sufficient number of police to actually enforce the traffic laws? I'm definitely not your classic "law and order" person but that's the only answer I've come up with, since right now drivers clearly think the risks of suffering any consequences for driving recklessly are minimal.

And, finally, while I'm on my soapbox, one last request to all you drivers: Please come to a stop when I have the right of way and am walking in a crosswalk. Rolling, coasting, or inching your way past me is just plain intimidating, and makes me feel like you're trying to see just how close you can come to scraping my kneecaps without actually doing so.

Cleveland Park was recently excluded from the areas categorized as "premium demand zones" for parking meters. As a result, while parking rates have increased to $2 per hour in Tenleytown, curbside parking is priced well below the actual demand in Cleveland Park.

In the article, ANC Commissioner Leila Afzal suggests another way to address Cleveland Park's parking problems: make the Residential Parking Permit (RPP) privileges only apply to actual residents of the area, rather than residents from as far away as the Maryland border. The original intent of RPP was to stop people from driving to a Metro station and parking on nearby neighborhood streets, but in Cleveland Park and Woodley Park, that's still endemic.

As area ANC Commissioners have often suggested and David Alpert discussed last year, creating sub-zones in certain areas like Cleveland Park could reserve more of the area's parking for residents and shoppers instead of distant drivers looking for free commuter parking.

Better alternatives than using taxpayer money to subsidize driving include extending the Circulator bus to Cleveland Park. Currently, the Circulator ends at Woodley Park. Assuming the proposed parking garage contains 30 spots built at DDOT's estimate of $26,000 per spot, this would cost the District $7,800,000 $780,000, plus ongoing maintenance costs which parking fees might not cover.

Similarly, another alternative that deserves consideration is extending the proposed streetcar from Woodley Park to Cleveland Park. It is only 0.8 miles between the two Metro stations. At the estimated cost of $40 million per mile for the streetcar, this extension would cost $32 million. The amount saved from not building a parking garage and revenue gained from a performance parking district in Cleveland Park can be used to fund this potential extension.

Finally, the District could help struggling businesses in Cleveland Park's commercial corridor by allowing greater density in that section. Moderate-sized residential buildings line Connecticut Avenue to the north and south of Cleveland Park, but the main commercial strip, especially the Park and Shop, is almost entirely just one and two story buildings. Building 2-3 levels of new residential units above these retail establishments and restaurants would bring new residents to this area, immediately next to the Metro station, and adding more built-in customers for the restaurants and shops of Cleveland Park.

Ben Thielen is the founder and spokesperson of the Wisconsin Avenue Streetcar Coalition.