Posts about Nationals Ballpark
Sustainability
Nationals Park falling behind in green standings
When Nationals Park opened, it was the first LEED-certified ballpark in Major League Baseball, achieving the "Silver" standard. Four seasons later, the once-groundbreaking green ballpark is in danger of being bumped out of the top tier of sports venues.
Photo by The Ardvaark on Flickr.
With Ryan Zimmerman, Stephen Strasburg and Jordan Zimmermann on the field and Bryce Harper on the way, the Nationals have dramatically upgraded their on-field product. Nats Park amenities have been spruced up as well, with an expanded scoreboard pavilion and new food stands like Shake Shack.
But in a new video by CSN Washington, the Nats are touting the same green features as when the park opened in 2008:
From green roofs to efficient lighting to water filtration to the bicycle valet, the Nationals' efforts are all valuable And all of those stadiums have been outdone by a college facility. The University of Florida's Heavener Football Complex is LEED platinum-certified, the highest possible rating.
So how can the Nats get back to a leadership position?
Renewable energy. If the Boston Red Sox can put solar panels on Fenway Park, there's no reason why the Nats can't have some as well. Even the Washington Redskins, whose owner is no friend of the environment and who manage to screw up almost everything else, have installed a sizable solar array at FedEx Field.
Put the players out front. Nationals pitcher Collin Balester is part of Players for the Planet, speaking out on the need for recycling & climate action. Why not include him in these clips along with the front office staff?
Tear down the awful parking garages. Not only are they eyesores that block views of the Capitol, not only do they sit empty most of the time, but they encourage driving to a park that's next to one Metro stop and a 15 minute walk from several others. Imagine how much revenue the Nats could recapture from The Bullpen across the street by turning the garage space into an inviting area to eat, drink, shop and socialize. Yes, DC paid tens of millions of dollars to build the garages Get serious about reducing fans' trash. Nats Park only recycles plastic bottles and aluminum cans, while the District's municipal recycling service takes all kinds of plastics, as well as glass, aluminum and paper. The red-helmeted recycle bins aren't marked well enough as such, and trash is often discarded in them. The Nats should also require their vendors to use only biodegradable food packaging.
Stop selling ads on everything to polluters. It's not quite in the same league as Pittsburgh's "green" arena selling its naming rights to a polluting coal company. But the Exxon Mobil-sponsored left field wall billboard, Exxon Mobil-sponsored 7th inning stretch, Exxon Mobil-sponsored organic cotton hat, and Exxon Mobil-sponsored stadium replica really distract from the Nats' efforts to show they care about the environment & public health.
Finally, how's this for a headline: "Nationals Sign Local Environmental Blogger as Left-Handed Reliever"! Think about it, Mike Rizzo.
Transit
"Navy Yard-W" is worst of new station name proposals
Southwest and Near Southeast's ANC 6D voted Monday night to support changing the Navy Yard Metro station to "Navy Yard-
." Yes, with a logo in the name. This is just one of the craziest of the many proposals to add nearby attractions to Metro station names.
Photo by Scott Ableman on Flickr.
The ANC's action actually just amends their previous resolution, which supported the too-long "Navy Yard-Capitol Riverfront-." If Metro doesn't allow a logo to be part of a name, they now support "Navy Yard-Ballpark"; the previous backup was "Navy Yard-Capitol Riverfront-Nationals Park."
When WMATA was discussing guidelines for station names, it didn't even occur to me (or, probably, to most people) to even consider requiring names to actually use regular letters. This idea resembles the 1990s antics from the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince.
A strange symbol in a station name would cause untold confusion. How will people talk about the station in text messages? There isn't a key for "Curly W logo" on any smartphones. Many apps contain lists of stations. What would they do? Does the GTFS data feed specification include a mode for a name to contain an image? Should it be vector graphics or raster?
In reality, what would really happen is that the station will be called "Navy Yard-W" in many places. And inevitably, some will assume that it was named for our 43rd President. This comes just 10 years after this region fought against Congressional meddling that forced the name of a locally unpopular President on a station.
A lot of organizations and jurisdictions are jumping on this opportunity to ask for name changes. Alexandria just voted to recommend changing King Street to King Street-Old Town. Holy Cross Hospital has officially asked Montgomery County to support adding it to the Forest Glen station.
The Golden Triangle BID wants one or both of the Farragut stations to bear the name Golden Triangle. The Capitol Riverfront BID also wanted some recognition, but it's pretty clear its name is way too long to be a part of a station, even if such a change were desirable.
ANC 6D also unanimously supported changing Waterfront to "Waterfront-Arena Stage," or alternatively "SW Waterfront." A proposal to add "Banneker Park" to L'Enfant Plaza didn't even come to a vote, though.
Most riders have consistently argued that shorter names are better. As Kurt Raschke pointed out, in most cities the station names don't name the neighborhoods but rather the station locations. That's why New York has five 23rd Street stations and doesn't call them Chelsea, Murray Hill, and so on. They do, however, have their major stadiums in station names, and a few major centers like Times Square.
In the Washington region, though, station names have generally come to reflect neighborhoods. In fact, some areas like North Cleveland Park have actually taken on the names of surrounding Metro stations to identify the area in common parlance. Therefore, as long as names stay short, adding a commonly-used neighborhood name to a station might have some merit.
"Navy Yard" doesn't represent the way people talk about the neighborhood today. They do call it the ballpark area, so "Navy Yard-Ballpark" seems acceptable, as does "King Street-Old Town." "SW Waterfront" would only add 2 characters (and the "SEU" has to come off anyway), though I wonder if that's necessary. Have people been confused about whether Waterfront station was the one in the Southwest Waterfront neighborhood?
The one change that makes the most sense is changing New York Avenue-Florida Avenue-Gallaudet U to NoMA-Gallaudet U. That's the only one which will shorten a name, and one of the more unwieldy at that. Plus, the station actually has no entrance on New York Avenue.
This change actually polled poorly with the WMATA focus group, perhaps because NoMA is also something of a contrived name, but there really isn't an alternative. The neighborhood has no other commonly-used name. It's just not going to be "Swampoodle-Gallaudet U."
I understand the BIDs' desires, but just having a BID isn't a good enough reason to add to or change the name. Heck, the Downtown BID doesn't even have its name on any of the 6 Metro stations in its area, and that name is unequivocally the name of the neighborhood. People don't really call the areas north west of the White House "Golden Triangle" in everyday conversation. Changing the station name would likely lead to them starting to do that, but why is this a public policy goal? If it's so important, why not just rename the BID to the "Farragut North BID"? Then Jurisdictions should avoid adding the names of adjacent arts and hospital venues. They shouldn't have done it for Strathmore, either. We don't have Archives-Navy Mem'l-Penn Quarter-Woolly Mammoth, or Foggy Bottom-Kennedy Center. Previous WMATA boards made a mistake in allowing so many things to be tacked on to station names years ago, and with subtitles we've finally found a way to move in the opposite direction.
Local jurisdictions and the WMATA Board will need to stand up against bad ideas. They should reject the repetitive and confusing Silver Line names where 8 stations all start with only 3 words. They should reject adding hospitals, theaters, and BID names to stations. And certainly they should speedily reject any logos.
Parking
Ballpark area leaders push for walkable rather than car-dependent neighborhood
At Wednesday's Ward 6 performance parking meeting, community members and particularly Councilmember Tommy Wells demonstrated a real commitment to building a pedestrian-oriented neighborhood.
Recreating Crystal City? Photo by Jacqueline Dupree.
Right now, the wide roadways and fairly cookie-cutter new buildings aren't delivering that kind of neighborhood experience. Reverend Brian Hamilton of Westminster Presbyterian in Southwest said that right now, "big cavernous roadways" characterize Southwest Waterfront, instead of the walkable neighborhood that the baseball stadium was supposed to bring.
Hamilton added, "An urban community is urgently needed, not just for the high-income residents who are going to live here seeking a new quality of life which I wish on all of us, but for lower-income residents in our community ... who are vital to the diversity which we should seek to preserve." He called for improvements to "create a more pedestrian-friendly environment where we can get out of our houses, get our of our cars and get into public space."
Wells, too, worried about the development direction of the area. He said,
There are buildings in Near Southeast where if someone placed you in front of the doorway of each building, you wouldn't know where you were. They look all the same. We are recreating Crystal City at a rapid pace and not understanding that the reason people are moving back into the city is for the quality of the pedestrian experience, the multimodal experience. They're using Circulator, using Metro, using bikes and moving back into the city for a higher quality of life.
With the money from ballpark performance parking, leaders like Hamilton and Wells hope to make the neighborhood more than another Crystal City. Wells noted that some communities have places to tie up dogs outside stores, with water for the dog, so shoppers can walk the dog and shop at the same time. Sharon Bosworth of Barracks Row Main Street expressed excitement for the possibility of having electronic signs telling shoppers and diners when the next buses will arrive, and benches for people to wait for those buses.
Chuck Bergman, a board member of Eastern Market and Barracks Row, talked about using signs to make the area feel like one neighborhood and help people find and support local businesses instead of driving over to Virginia.
Most leaders were also positive on the meters themselves, including the Washington Nationals. VP for Government and Municipal Affairs Gregory McCarthy noted that 50-60% of fans take transit to Nationals games, the most in MLB, which has made DC's ballpark a nationwide best practice. He even suggested adding more meters in Buzzard Point, where many blocks now have no meters, no signs, and even in many cases no curbs. (DDOT's Damon Harvey said that DDOT was reluctant to put up signs which would give the impression it was okay to park there, but they are studying the area now to determine a longer-term parking policy.) Bosworth claimed that businesses in Barracks Row "suffered" when meters went in, and both suffered and benefited from the higher traffic associated with baseball.
One resident, Jerry Lee, wasn't so pleased with the meters. He currently lives in the Onyx and is buying a unit at the Velocity. Residents of these buildings can't get RPP stickers, and some are frustrated that parking meters require payment until 9:30 pm. Lee noted that he has an off-street parking space, but wondered about other residents who can't afford one. Lee suggested a parking policy more like that of Georgetown where parking is free starting in the evening.
Lee's reaction is common among people who haven't analyzed parking issues in much depth. It's hard for some people to park, so let's make parking free. However, as he noted, this doesn't impact him, and residents with less money are more likely to be the ones not owning cars who most benefit from DC focusing more resources on the Circulator and Metrobuses instead of more parking.
More importantly, making parking free and unrestricted isn't the only solution, and not a particularly good one; it would just create jam-packed blocks where nobody could find a space, especially around the ballpark. This is certainly a problem in Georgetown, which is a good reason not to copy their current parking policies. In fact, Georgetown is considering implementing its own performance parking system.
Fortunately, Wells has thought a lot about parking, and suggested a fair but much better solution. Right now, outside of game days, blocks around the Onyx and Velocity are fairly empty. That means meter rates are too high. Instead of making parking free, Wells suggested programming the multispace meters to allow people to park all night for a single, relatively low rate. This would especially solve the problem for visitors, which was Lee's biggest issue. They could drive to visit him, pay at the meter once, and not have to worry about a ticket as long as they left before rush hour the next morning.
Harvey also agreed that it may make sense to lower meter rates in some other blocks where parking is currently underutilized, including M Street, where Michael Perkins' analysis in March showed an occupancy rate of 40-50% instead of 85%. DDOT is also considering taking the meters off Virginia Avenue, which has very low utilization. Allen Greenberg, who works at USDOT in the area and , asked if perhaps the low utilization just meant the rates were too high, but Harvey replied that unlike on M Street, they believe that there is just very low demand and that the multispace meters would be better allocated elsewhere. Instead, he hopes to use time limits to limit commuter parking on Virginia Avenue.
Ideally, though, we would retain metering on every block. The pay-by-phone systems DDOT hopes to pilot soon could make this possible without the high cost and maintenance problems of multispace meters. Then, if as on Virginia Avenue the demand is very low, the pay-by-phone rates could simply be low as well.
What about the flip side, raising meter rates? Harvey said that based on their analysis so far, there aren't any blocks that need to have higher rates in the ballpark zone. But there are in Columbia Heights. Next, we'll look at the data for Columbia Heights and what DDOT should do to make that performance parking zone as successful as the one in Ward 6.
Parking
Talk about choice and freedom for parking policy, not "jacking up" and controlling
Some people believe that performance parking is about "jacking up" parking prices to "discourage people from parking" in metered spaces and "make it even tougher" to find parking. That's totally incorrect. In fact, performance parking makes it easier to find parking by ensuring that the parking spaces aren't all filled up. That's a tough point to get across, and it becomes even tougher when the person in charge of running the performance parking pilot and speaking to the press and the community couches his explanations in bad frames.
Photo by mayhem.
Last night, DDOT's Damon Harvey presented an update on the Columbia Heights performance parking zone to residents and business owners in that neighborhood. Already, the program has raised $14,293.96 for local improvements and paid back about a third of the cost of the multi-space meters. And that's without setting market rates at all. According to Harvey, the commercial streets in Columbia Heights have 95% parking occupancy, which means that most of the time, there aren't any spaces available for shoppers who'd like to park and quickly dash into a store, instead of going all the way into the DC USA garage.
Columbia Heights was supposed to be the easy case. There's no shortage of parking. There's a whole garage that's almost always practically empty. It's really cheap, too, and it's right in the center of the commercial district. Managing curbside rates to ensure availability only makes it easier for short-term parkers to use the on-street spaces, without really hurting longer-term parkers at all, who have such an easy and cheap alternative.
According to the performance parking legislation, it's time to set a rate to ensure that people can find a street space if, for whatever reason, they really want it. Maybe they have an injury that makes walking even a block or two difficult, or are in a particular hurry. Today, those folks are stuck, since there aren't spaces for them at all. Performance parking is supposed to help them, and help the businesses who want them to want to drive to Columbia Heights. It's about giving people more choices, not fewer: choices between parking for a higher price on the street, or at a lower price in the garage.
But if you listen to DDOT's Damon Harvey, adding choice isn't the point, it's removing choice. He told FOX 5, "we want to make sure that folks utilize the curb space in what we consider to be the correct way." That sounds awfully Big Brotherish for a program that's actually giving more choice. Of course, Harvey isn't entirely wrong; he was trying to explain that DDOT wants to reserve on-street spaces for shorter-term use. But it sounds punitive.
At the meeting, too, Harvey's language unwittingly reinforced the negative perceptions of the parking pilot. In talking about the 95% occupancy, he said that it might be time to "jack up" the price. Harvey kept using that term, "jack up." That carries an enormously negative connotation. When your corner bakery has to make a bagel a little pricier to account for higher wheat prices, they don't put up a sign saying they're "jacking up" the bagels.
In explaining why higher prices might be appropriate, Harvey cited "the literature" which suggests an 85% occupancy rate. However, he never explained to people why the literature recommends 85%. (Answer: 85% is about the rate where there's a space on each block, so most of the time, you can park on the block you want.) 95% doesn't mean much to people. But if you say that most of the time, there are no spaces at all on that block, that makes much more sense.
Harvey even said that he thought perhaps it wasn't a good time to adjust the rates, because the Columbia Heights streetscape is interfering with businesses, and they can't take any more. He probably meant that there's already significant political controversy in Columbia Heights, and maybe it's better to wait for a calmer time. But he didn't talk about it that way. Instead, he talked about how we have to be careful not to hurt businesses. A properly implemented program won't hurt businesses, it will help them. Plus, it's already taken forever to collect data. If DDOT moves slowly and waits until all stars align to do what's clearly the right policy, the pilot will expire before DC ever actually tries performance parking.
One attendee talked about how parking is a problem for the businesses. But when asked whether the bigger problem was too-expensive parking or not-available parking, he replied that availability was the main obstacle. A rate adjustment would fix the bigger problem, availability. It would allow a driver interested in stopping to buy food at one of the ethnic takeout establishments to do so, where today they cannot.
Part of the problem is that at the ballpark, the parking policy really is about discouraging driving. DC is being very up-front: we want people to take Metro. And they are. It's working. Making it hard for baseball fans to park isn't what's lowering attendance at Nationals games. But that's not performance parking at all, it's just anti-parking. The way officials frame that program leaks over into programs like Columbia Heights.
When Michael or I talk about performance parking, we never talk about "jacking up" rates or "forcing" people into garages. We talk about making parking easier. Because that's what it is. Parking is too hard in DC. Even the lede to the Fox 5 story says it. "It's tough enough to find parking in the streets of DC." But then, they add, "This may make it even tougher." That's a common reaction, but it's wrong. Performance parking would make on-street parking change from "virtually impossible to find" to "conveniently available, for a reasonable price." However, journalists and community members aren't going to see performance parking this way unless DDOT frames it this way. And right now, with the "jack it up" and "what we consider to be the correct way" language from Harvey, that's not going to happen, and performance parking isn't going to succeed.
Transit
Breakfast Links: Fe Fi Fo Fum
Wisconsin Giant site plan
Transit
Afternoon links: Don't fall into the tunnel
Conceptual rendering of the new Wheaton
Parking
Michael Brown: quality of life for whom?
As most news articles explain, Michael A. Brown has run for many political offices in DC, including mayor (in 2006), Ward 4 Council (in the 2007 special election), and now Council At-Large. The son of former Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Michael Brown is the least convincingly a non-Democrat, as he served as Finance Vice-Chair for the DNC and a surrogate speaker for Clinton, Gore, and Kerry's Presidential campaigns. In DC, he's running largely on his work with disadvantaged African-American youth; his name similarity to incumbent Kwame Brown and his resume don't hurt.
Michael A. Brown. Image from his campaign site.
On many issues, Brown seemed reluctant to articulate specific beliefs. He kept talking about sitting down with members of the community to build consensus around what a community wants. That's great, of course, but what if a community doesn't speak with one voice? Most of the time, residents don't all agree, and the most vocal residents may not share the views of the majority.
It took several questions of pushing to get an answer about when, as an elected official, Brown would exercise leadership to make a decision. For example, I said, what about development around Minnesota and Benning, or at the Brookland Metro? Then, Brown admitted, "the interest of the city is important too," and wouldn't leave fallow "major acreage ... where nothing has been done on it for years."
Brown would only push development with great hesitation; even in the "major acreage" cases, he would demand traffic studies and hesitate to do anything that might inconvenience others, saying that "quality of life will be affected if takes you 10 minutes more to get to the grocery store" (by which he means, to drive.)
Likewise, Brown wasn't so confident in a position on inclusionary zoning, where he "would like to learn more" and "doesn't know if it fulfills its purpose." He supports Fenty and Rhee "100%" in their school reform efforts... except, he wants to see more "due process" for firing people. He may be right, but that doesn't sound like 100% to me.
In one area, Brown had no trouble taking a stand (rather than planning to just listen to the community): road capacity. He always came down firmly on the side of more lanes over fewer lanes, more car capacity over less. Without hesitation, Brown would vote to rebuild Klingle Road. Brown's platform extols his work pushing for weekend closures of Beach Drive in Rock Creek Park, but when I asked if he'd close the rest of Rock Creek Parkway on weekends, he wasn't sure, saying he "would err on side of how the current system is." And he's absolutely opposed to any weekday restrictions.
Brown does like transit, and wants to expand transit options, including bike-bus lanes. He's a supporter of streetcars. He thinks the Convention Center plans could have had at least a small park, and would restrain a bit the city's enthusiasm for developing every single available parcel to allow a few parks as well.
As for stadiums, Brown thinks the city got a bad deal on baseball. "I studied municipal finance in law school," he said, and "the terms of the deal weren't great." He's like to keep DC United in the city, but doesn't feel the city ought to "be the ones on the hook" to pay for a stadium. "For a city that has one of the worst school systems in America, one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world, and the highest poverty rate in the world," he said, "to have three stadiums doesn't seem like the right priority."
I asked his three top specific objections to the baseball deal. Number one was bad financing, number three the way DC doesn't control its own ballpark (for example, we can't put a "taxation without representation" sign on it." But number two? Insufficient parking. He'd have built a lot more parking, and at the convention center as well. Brown held up Montgomery County's large, cheap municipal parking garages as an example to emulate, such as on upper Georgia Avenue: "We have the opportunity there to do some heavy municipal parking."
Isn't parking working well around the ballpark, I asked? After all, most people are taking Metro. Wouldn't more parking stop that? I got the sense he'd never really thought about this issue that way. Like many people and politicians, he hadn't considered transportation policy as a tradeoff between more land for parking and more land for housing or retail, or between more car trips and more Metro trips. Instead, he just sees that there could be more parking, and thus concludes there should.
In politics, it's not possible to make everybody happy. We can't solve our development problems by sitting down together, holding hands, and all agreeing. Either the Wisconsin Avenue Giant will happen as is, irritating some people who want less development, or it'll get smaller, upsetting the people who want more housing and vibrant retail at that corner. Building housing at Takoma Metro will please those who can live there, and those who don't want more auto commuters choking North Capitol Street instead, but it'll displease those who want a quieter, lower density neighborhood. Closing roads through a park makes the park more usable for recreation and less for high-speed transportation.
Given that Michael Brown is currently favored to win, I hope we can educate him on these issues. He wants a good quality of life in DC for all residents. At the moment, though, he sees quality of life in terms of the needs of suburban-style auto commuters. That's common in his neighborhood of Chevy Chase DC, but uncommon east of the river (where less than half of people own cars) and in the dense and growing mid-city area, where recreation space is precious and traffic creates pollution, noise and hazards. If he is elected, we should work with Brown to help him see the beyond the classic suburban conception of the city, and if he doesn't, work to replace him. In the meantime, I'm voting for Patrick Mara, who already gets it.
@ggwash
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- Amid scandal, don't lose sight of Gray's policy achievements
- Montgomery plans 160-mile, "gold standard" BRT system
- VDOT ignores own data, pushes widening I-66
- DC's parks are 5th best in the nation, says "Park Score"
- Bethesda gets new but terrible bike racks
- DC's divide need not be black and white
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