Posts about David Catania

Parking

Councilmembers ask UDC for more parking, student limits

by David Alpert   •   November 2, 2011 2:03 pm

Residents around UDC got 6 of their elected officials to push for parking that city agencies and their own ANC don't think is necessary, and further pressure on the university to keep students away from other people in the neighborhood.

Photo by rachaelvoorhees on Flickr.

Greater Greater Washington has obtained a copy of a letter sent to UDC President Alan Sessoms on September 29 by Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, Chairman Kwame Brown, and at-large members Michael Brown, David Catania, Phil Mendelson, and Vincent Orange.

The Zoning Commission approved UDC's campus plan back in June. Among other things, the plan calls for making UDC more of a residential campus, adding dorms and a student center. This will help DC's public university become a better school. However, neighbors still aren't satisfied, and got Cheh, Brown and the 4 at-large councilmembers to send a letter to UDC reiterating some of their demands.

Public Spaces

Tommy Wells explains how we can rethink streets as parks

by Eric Fidler   •   September 18, 2011 2:26 pm

On Friday people around the world converted street parking spaces into pop-up parks for the annual Park(ing) Day. The event inspired people in our own region to rethink how we can rearrange public spaces to improve our quality of life.

DC Councilmembers Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) and David Catania (I-at large) combined their parking spaces outside the Wilson Building to create an impromptu park. Washington Parks & People supplied the sod and shrubs while councilmembers and their staff cooked burgers and hot dogs for passersby.

Here is Tommy Wells explaining the event:

Across the river in Alexandria, a park popped up on St. Asaph Street in Old Town. Residents faced off with games of bocce.

Photos by Adam Froehlig.

With each Park(ing) Day we get to realize how street design influences public interaction. Places for people to sit, talk, and eat are far more rewarding than places to park cars all day.

The key to Park(ing) Day's success was more than just unfurling sod onto asphalt. The events and amenities—barbecues, benches, tables, and games— in each popup park supplied the infrastructure for community.

Public Spaces

Wells, Catania organize Park(ing) Day on Pennsylvania Ave

by David Alpert   •   September 15, 2011 4:43 pm

For Park(ing) Day tomorrow, DC Councilmembers Tommy Wells and David Catania will turn 2 of the councilmember-only spaces in front of the Wilson Building into a temporary park. Casey Trees will do the same in Dupont, and the Montgomery planning department in Silver Spring.

Photo by Eric Gilliland on Flickr.

Park(ing) Day started as a performance art project from Rebar Group, which made a park out of one San Francisco curbside space for 2 hours with a roll of sod, a small tree, a bench, and a sign. Now, every year people do the same across the nation.

The project illustrates the tradeoffs we make in our public space. For the amount of space devoted to one car sitting empty, we could have a small park. That's not to say all spaces should be turned into parks, or that converting even one space means a "war on cars," but to point out how we have a choice for how to use 150-200 square feet of space.

Government

DC officials tweet, but with varying enthusiasm

by Jamie Scott   •   June 24, 2011 10:45 am

Twitter can be a powerful tool for politicians and government agencies to connect with constituents. Many of DC's elected leaders are on Twitter, but they use their accounts to widely varying degrees.

Photo by William Hook on Flickr.

Their tweets also vary in frequency and quality, and some officials tweet personally while staff send out tweets for others. Which are the best and the worst?

Tommy Wells (@TommyWells) is the most active councilmember on Twitter and sends all his tweets himself. He often tweets about riding the bus, council hearing proceedings, and constituent issues in Ward 6. Washington City Paper recently named him "Best Tweeting DC Politician."

Parking

DC 2010 budget would end Saturday free parking

by David Alpert   •   March 24, 2009 10:12 am

Back in November, Councilmember Jim Graham suggested raising parking meter rates to restore some cuts in important housing programs like HPAP, which helps people get mortgages to buy homes. Graham suggested raising $1/hour meters to $2, and 50¢ meters to 75¢. He also proposed ending DC's policy of free parking on Saturdays.

Current meter rules. Photo by Adam Green.

The Council passed his bill in December, but first, they stripped out the Saturday portion. Councilmember David Catania introduced the amendment, and Carol Schwartz, in one of her last acts as Councilmember, valiantly argued for keeping parking free. Making it free, in fact, was Schwartz's achievement in 1997. Of course, in the 12 years since, downtown has gotten extremely popular, and parking is full on Saturdays. Keeping the parking free doesn't encourage people to go downtown; it just makes it even harder to park and deprives the city of revenue.

As it turns out, DC never restored any of the housing program cuts, because just after the Council passed the meter rate hike, new budget estimates came out that were even worse than before. Mayor Fenty and his staff recently released their 2010 budget to deal with these shortfalls. The transportation chapter takes the sensible step of ending this Saturday moratorium. That will net the city $4.5 million more for DDOT operations.

The budget also reshuffles money around, including the money from December's rate hike. For the hearing, I wrote that while spending meter money on needed programs was good for the short term, long-term we need to keep meter revenue dedicated to transportation. Charging for parking is a good idea, but to keep it from hurting shoppers and businesses, we need to also spend money from parking on improvements, like the Circulator or streetcars, that help people get to those commercial corridors by other means.

The new 2010 budget allocates the meter revenue to DDOT, but still produces $12 million for the general fund through some budgetary musical chairs. It moves $12 million from meters hike to a streetlight maintenance fund. Then, it takes $12 million of DDOT's budget out of the streetlight fund and allocates it to DC's Metro contribution. Finally, the general fund contributes $12 million less to Metro. In the end, instead of $12 million of meter revenue going into the general fund, all meter revenue goes to transportation, and the general fund still has $12 million.

The Council wants this general fund money to go toward critical affordable housing programs. In the budget, the Housing Finance Agency grows from the 2009 budget (which had cut the housing programs) by only $975,000. However, the agency section of the budget doesn't specify where that money will go. The housing program funding also could appear elsewhere. I've emailed people in that area of the Council to find out. They'll be spending much more time poring over this budget.

Parking

Have DC Councilmembers ever tried to park downtown on a Saturday?

by David Alpert   •   December 17, 2008 8:32 am

The Council passed Jim Graham's parking meter rate hike yesterday, raising $1/hour meters to $2 and 50¢ meters to 75¢, and restoring much-needed city housing programs. But to get enough political support from the Council, Graham and co-introducer Tommy Wells had to agree to an amendment from Jack Evans designating $1 million of the revenue raised to the O Street Market project in Shaw, and one from David Catania that retained our current, nonsensical policy of free street parking on weekends.

Are these people really here because of free parking? Photo by afagen on Flickr.

The parking increase will fund the HPAP program that helps low-income people afford a down payment, the Housing First program that moves homeless people from shelters to their own homes, and more. Councilmember Wells praised Graham's leadership on the issue as "very forward thinking," and Chairman Vincent Gray called the bill a "very proactive approach."

But Catania and outgoing member Carol Schwartz both spoke passionately about free Saturday parking as an incentive to draw suburban residents into DC to shop and eat, and to encourage DC residents to stay in the District on weekends to spend their dollars. It might be a compelling argument, except for one thing: there's never any available street parking downtown or in busy neighborhood retail districts on weekend afternoons and evenings.

Schwartz introduced and passed a ban on Saturday parking fees in 1997. "We get money when people come into DC to eat or shop, or DC residents stay to eat," she said. "I asked people, 'Why do you go to the suburbs?' They said, 'They've got free parking.'"

That might have been true in 1997, but not today. People go downtown because of the great restaurants, exciting nightlife, and walkable shopping streets. If you just want to drive to a big box store, the suburbs will win out every time. The nice restaurants downtown all run valet services. If free parking really deters so many people, why are these restaurants packed while the valets are charging $10 for parking during dinner?

And the free, on-street parking that does exist is constantly full. Making the parking free just swaps one suburban advantage, free parking, for another: available parking. As Tommy Wells explained, "How many people here believe they could get in the car right now and find a place to park down the street? ... That parking is all locked up. It does not serve small businesses" that benefit from turnover, not from free parking.

Yet Councilmember after Councilmember spoke up for this amendment keeping parking free on Saturdays, as if anyone really could find parking on Saturdays. Free parking is a "great incentive to bring people downtown," said Catania, "to visit shops and restaurants and our cultural life downtown." Marion Barry added, "we don't want to make it more difficult for people to shop downtown." I seriously started to wonder if any of these folks actually ever drive downtown on a Saturday. Perhaps their special Councilmember parking passes, which many use to park illegally, make them believe that anyone can easily park, with only $1-$2 an hour making the difference.

Phil Mendelson voted against the measure entirely. He argued that this measure is "piecemeal," but said that he "can support a comprehensive review of parking demand." Well, one day we will be discussing performance parking in more neighborhoods in DC. I hope Mendelson will support that program when it comes.

Muriel Bowser also voted against the bill, not because of the parking fees, but because of the earmarks, and particularly Evans' earmark for the O Street Market. "We're taking what should be transportation dollars and putting in human services, and now we're taking what should be transportation dollars and putting it into an economic development grant," she said. Bowser also praised free Saturday parking.

This measure will raise some valuable revenue for important housing projects. But it also revealed many of our Councilmembers' ignorance about the true dynamics of parking. It's not 1997 anymore, and downtown is booming. Keeping parking free only makes it harder for people to park downtown. Schwartz and Catania struck a blow against small businesses today, with the very act they claim will help.

Transit

Connecting communities (or not)

by David Alpert   •   July 14, 2008 8:55 pm

It was Councilmember Marion Barry (ward 8) who had the day's most relevant quote. "Streetcars are about connecting communities," he said, as he urged his colleagues to support the proposed 1.3-mile, $43-million Anacostia demonstration streetcar in his ward. There's only one problem: the proposed line doesn't connect communities at all.

Full system plan as of January 2008. Streetcars are red, express buses blue.

There's no community on South Capitol Street, with the 295 freeway on one side and Bolling Air Force Base on the other, and where the first of DC's streetcar lines is slated to be built. The originally proposed line would have run along the abandoned CSX tracks all the way to Pennsylvania Avenue, but failed negotiations with CSX killed that idea. Then DDOT proposed a line along Martin Luther King Jr. Ave between historic Anacostia and Congress Heights, but some residents objected to not being able to park on both sides of the street.

Ultimately, DDOT settled on an alignment down the very wide and low-density Firth Stirling Avenue, and then onto South Capitol, which has no buildings on it whatsoever, serving basically as a frontage access road paralleling the freeway alongside a military base. Firth Stirling itself is slated to become a dense, mixed-use neighborhood main street if Barry Farm is redeveloped and the cloverleaf interchange at Suitland and 295 is converted to a diamond, freeing up land. But the Barry Farm stop is a mere third of a mile from the Anacostia Metro, an easy walk (supplemented by bus service).

The real riders of this line will be federal workers at Anacostia Naval Station and Bolling Air Force Base. But the federal government is not paying a cent for what Tommy Wells (ward 6) says amounts to no more than a "shuttle train" for federal employees. And it connects no communities. In essence, Barry was asking the Council to support a streetcar project for reasons that argue against the project instead. This divergence between rhetoric and reality characterized the entire hearing, where supporters and critics seemed to be talking about entirely different projects. That's because they were.

To supporters, like DDOT Director Emeka Moneme, the reasons to build this segment have little to do with this segment itself. Instead, this project is about starting, at long last, DC's streetcar system. And we certainly should be building a comprehensive system throughout the region. East of the river, the benefits abound of providing reliable, economic-development-stimulating streetcar service past the Anacostia Metro, through Historic Anacostia, and down Minnesota Avenue all the way to Benning Road and the Minnesota Avenue Metro.

In his testimony, Moneme often answered a question about the South Capitol alignment by discussing instead the benefits of a streetcar in Anacostia generally. David Catania (at large), who decided to put the first line in Anacostia during his WMATA board tenure, spoke about building demand for Class A office space in downtown Anacostia. Unfortunately, the planned line doesn't go to downtown Anacostia.

Moneme's testimony made clear that, quite simply, DDOT is building this first segment in this location because it is the path of least resistance. Here, there is no argument about capacity on Firth Stirling (it is really two parallel roads separated by the abandoned tracks, with ample excess space), and no residents on South Capitol to complain about anything. The District owns land, currently partially used for garbage truck storage, that will serve as the new line's maintenance shop.

Yes, it's easy to build a line in the middle of nowhere. But is it a prudent use of funds? If this piece catalyzes the next one, maybe. Will it? Chairman Jim Graham argued that with CFO Gandhi's recent warning about debt for capital projects, funds are precious. Will DC be stuck with this little "shuttle train" for years and years?

Moneme thinks not. He believes that this segment will build public support for future streetcars. It will show people how smooth, quiet, and reliable a working streetcar can be, and how non-intrusive the overhead wires really appear. He's hoping this path-of-least-resistance project will make it easier to build the next segment in an area with some resistance today, such as an extension to the center of historic Anacostia.

That's possible. Or, perhaps the line will encounter some mechanical problems, suffer from low ridership (due to its failure to connect communities) and create opposition instead of support. Even if it does convert skeptics to believers, is it worth $43 million? How about a really nice video, or maybe we could just fly every resident of DC to Portland to see their streetcars firsthand.

This debate comes down to a strategic decision. The current line serves few DC residents and connects no communities, but is easy to build and passes by cheap land for a maintenance shop. Is it better to get a track in the ground as soon as possible, in the easiest possible place, to show people a working streetcar even if the immediate benefits are few? Or is $43 million too high a price? Should we wait longer to build a streetcar in an area which needs and wants one? Graham and Wells say, do it right and in the right place. Fenty and Moneme say, just build something now.

Meanwhile, Catania says build it now and, in fact, this is the right place too. Of all the opinions at the hearing, Catania's is the least plausible. He was the only one to firmly defend a line to Bolling, arguing that a streetcar will generate office demand in Anacostia among defense contractors doing business at those military bases. He also wants the line to continue to National Harbor to access the jobs there. As Wells pointed out, National Harbor is not designed for transit and competes with DC for business; a line (and my transit vision map contains one), but building such a line first, with DC money, is not the right priority.

Catania is stuck in a commuter-only mindset, like the one in force when Metro was designed. Streetcars aren't a way to more quickly shuttle workers to their jobs; buses do that more cheaply over short distances. Streetcars work best to open up run-down areas to development, creating new, mixed-use, mixed-income communities, like Portland's Pearl district (or the Rosslyn-Ballston Metro in Arlington). H Street, Minnesota Avenue, or the AFRH/Hospital Center/McMillan Sand Filtration area may be such places. An access highway to a military base, far from any people, with no parcels available for development along most of the route, is not.

But the engineering is done, the cars are waiting in the Czech Republic, and the administration is ready to go. Is it best simply to get this one built and then push for the next segment? Or are we wasting our money? Whatever will create the complete planned system, or better yet the original full system, I support. The approximately $1 billion price tag may come in large part from incremental tax revenues from development it spurs. The $400 million earmarked for the 11th Street bridges looks inviting; Graham called it a "Christmas goose," suggesting the Council might find it appealing to reallocate that money to streetcars. Most likely, to kick off the investment requires federal investment from a better FTA, which we can hope to get from a President Obama.

Pictures from along the route:

	South Capitol Street, looking north toward the beginning of the streetcar line.
	Approaching the maintenance facility. 295 is on the right, Bolling on the left.
	The future maintenance facility. South Capitol is to the left.
	Looking back south from the maintenance facility toward the end of the line.
	Layers of barricades between the street and the bases.
	The CSX tracks (which the line won't use) cross South Capitol near the maintance facility.
	Looking south as the tracks cross. The maintenance facility is on the left.
	Firth Stirling, looking back toward South Capitol. 295 is crossing overhead. The space in the center is the CSX right of way.
	Firth Stirling, with Barry Farm to the right. The streetcar will replace this bus.
	Barry Farm from Firth Stirling.
	Farther north on Firth Stirling. Note the two roadways which are both Firth Stirling; the CSX tracks are in the center. The buildings on the left would be redeveloped in the Barry Farm plan.
	Another block north on Firth Stirling. At left is the cloverleaf, which could be a site for redevelopment if the intersection becomes a diamond.
	Looking toward Barry Farm from the Anacostia Metro.
	Looking northeast from the Metro. Beyond these ramps and to the right is historic Anacostia; Poplar Point is on the other side of the freeways to the left.

Government

Labor successfully waters down noise bill

by David Alpert   •   June 3, 2008 2:21 pm

The DC Council just passed a revised version of the much-debated bill on non-commercial noise. Since I don't know all the arguments well enough to have a strong opinion, I'll just report the arguments that were made at the hearing.

Photo by Malingering on Flickr.

Originally, DC's noise law defined a "noise disturbance" as that which a "reasonable person" would find excessive. A few years ago, the Council exempted "non-commercial speech" between 7 am and 9 pm. But loud and annoying religious proselyter/protesters in the H Street area prompted legislation.

Last month, the Council approved a bill on first reading that would restore the "reasonable person" standard, limiting high-volume protests. However, that bill would still have permitted anything under 70 decibels in residential areas, 80 decibels downtown, or anything up to 10 decibels over the ambient noise level.

Today, Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr. (ward 5) introduced an amendment to change to a different standard. In residential-only areas, the rule would become 80 decibels (instead of 70), and only as measured inside a house as opposed to outside. Second, in non-residential areas, there would be no restrictions on non-commercial speech. Residential areas for the purposes of this bill are R-1 through R-4 zones; higher density residential areas, such as Dupont Circle, are R-5 zones and would also have no noise limits on non-commercial speech.

Unions have lobbied heavily for the changes. Since the first reading, they ran ads against many of the Councilmembers, a practice which some members roundly condemned for their harshness. But it worked, and by a vote of 9 to 4 the Council approved the amendment and passed the bill. David Catania (at large), Mary Cheh (ward 3), Carol Schwartz (at large), and Tommy Wells (ward 6, including the H Street area that triggered the debate) opposed the change and voted against the final bill, while all others voted for the amendment and the bill.

Supporters of the change argued that very few noise complaints have involved protests, with Jack Evans (ward 2) claiming that there has never been such a complaint in his ward. Opponents argued that the change does not sufficiently protect the rights of residents.

Tommy Wells made a last-ditch effort to adjust the standard downward, back to 70 decibels in residential areas and to measure the noise level from outside rather than inside the houses. That change also failed, with Marion Barry (ward 8) joining Cheh, Catania, Schwartz, and Wells on that modification but also supporting Thomas's amendment and the bill.