Posts about Near Southeast

Photos posted earlier show the construction in progress, 10 years later, as the freeway moved into Near Southeast.

Under the process laid out by WMATA for station name changes, the jurisdiction containing that station needs to first request a name change and identify someone willing itself be willing to pay for the cost of changing signs, pylons and more. The WMATA Board then approves or disapproves each proposal.

Various organizations including Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) and nonprofits have asked DDOT for station renames. The NoMA BID wanted its name on the station in its area, for example. The National Park Service and the Trust for the National Mall requested the name change for Smithsonian.

The Golden Triangle BID also asked to add its name to one of the Farragut stations, and Capitol Riverfront wanted to be on Navy Yard, though DDOT didn't advance those requests. ANC Commissioner Kent Boese has been pushing to change Georgia Ave-Petworth to Georgia Ave-Petworth/Park View or Petworth-Park View.

Of the proposals DDOT accepted, only "Navy Yard-Ballpark" conforms to WMATA's naming policy, which calls for a maximum of 19 characters including subtitles. As Matt Johnson wrote, subtitles should not be an excuse to add more to names.

DDOT has withdrawn adding Kennedy Center to the Foggy Bottom stop since there was no organization willing to front the $100,000 or greater cost of changing a name. That must mean the Kennedy Center couldn't or didn't want to pay for the change. If that's not getting added, is it appropriate to add Arena Stage? Was it appropriate to add Strathmore, currently the only private non-educational organization on a station name?

The important principle is not to let station names become "the Yellow Pages," as one WMATA Board member put it, advertising nearby organizations and attractions. The purpose of a station is to help people find their way around the system, not to promote things to do.

But if Kennedy Center is not going on and Arena Stage might be inappropriate, is it right to add Ballpark? To me, it does seem appropriate somehow, but should we be promoting organized sports (owned by a for-profit entity that's acted fairly rapaciously toward the District) and not a nonprofit and donor-funded arts organization that's contributed a great deal to its neighborhood?

(Disclosure: I am a member of the board of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, which isn't part of a station name, and may in some ways compete with other theaters or with other entertainment such as baseball.)

Concerning the station near Gallaudet, I find it baffling that anyone wants to keep New York Avenue on the name. The station is not on New York Avenue. No entrance to the station is on New York Avenue. The platform stretches from Florida Avenue, well south of New York Avenue, to M Street NE, even farther south.

New York Avenue also runs very close to McPherson Square and Metro Center, and tourists in downtown hotels do get confused and take Metro to this station by mistake. "NoMA-Gallaudet U" would be short and appropriate.

As for Smithsonian, does anyone not know how to get to the Mall? This proposal seems unnecessary. Additionally, several stations, not just the Smithsonian stop, serve the Mall. Naming one stop ignores the usability of other nearby stations, like L'Enfant Plaza.

Already, many tourists use Smithsonian to get to Smithsonian museums when other stations would work better, such as L'Enfant for Air and Space. When major events come to the Mall, Smithsonian can face severe overcrowding, and Metro tries to encourage visitors to use other nearby stations. Adding National Mall could exacerbate these problems, leading visitors to use Smithsonian to get to rallies at the Capitol end of the Mall when they really should be getting off at Federal Center SW or Judiciary Square.

Finally, each name is something of a hodgepodge that contains 2 elements both in the primary name, or has a subtitle. I continue to believe WMATA missed a big opportunity by not moving into the subtitles all pieces of names after dashes or slashes. Why should "West Falls Church-VT/UVA" become "West Falls Church" with a subtitle, but "Brookland-CUA" not become "Brookland" with a subtitle of "CUA"?

If the new policy is to use subtitles, then all stations with multiple pieces in their names should use the subtitles for all but the first piece. In this case, Navy Yard-Ballpark could be an acceptable name, but Navy Yard with a subtitle of Ballpark is even more appropriate; if Arena Stage is indeed added to the nearby station, it should likewise be in the subtitle to avoid making the name on pylons and signs, and spoken by conductors, even longer and more confusing to riders.

If you want to convey opinions to the WMATA Board about these changes, you can email boardofdirectors@wmata.com.

Construction may require temporary closure of the 295 Eastbound on-ramp at 8th Street and Virginia Avenue. This would force drivers heading across the 11th Street Bridge to use the on-ramp at 11th and N Streets.

As part of the NEPA process, CSX and DDOT will hold several public meetings, and this first one was billed as a "scoping meeting." Here's the presentation.

While CSX provided plenty of nametagged people to talk to members of the public and address questions, the open format left more that a few people scratching their heads. A number of attendees expressed their disappointment that CSX didn't begin the meeting with some kind of general presentation about project basics, like tentative designs and schedule, need and potential impacts.

"I don't even really know what's happening," said one nearby resident. "Is this tunnel only one option? I'm not a shy person, so I have no problem asking questions of these people, but I could see how a lot of people can get intimidated."

That may indeed have happened. The organizers boasted about 100 attendees signing in, but it appeared that only half of those were in any way engaged in asking questions of submitting comments, with many others quickly scanning past the placards before heading off into the night.

What's more, the meeting had a decidedly superficial feel to it. The placards scattered about the room contained very little information beyond introductory NEPA facts, a very basic project scope, and a lot of pro-freight rail propaganda, including some nifty computer animations about the National Gateway project.

As David Garber, ANC Commissioner for the affected neighborhood, pointed out, the meeting was lacking in answers to residents' most important questions: what happens during construction and what does the community get out at the end? "Virginia Avenue is not a great public space currently," Garber said, "so there's an opportunity here to change that."

So while many residents were left wondering why they should be made to endure huge, several year long disruptions to their daily lives, there was no sign anywhere of CSX's proposed community amenities.

CSX is clearly making significant efforts to reach out to the community. They're going to need it to overcome an earlier snafu in which the railroad and its consultants used old satellite images for preliminary planning. The old photos left planners unaware that Virginia Avenue was no longer a strip of vacant parcels, but instead a burgeoning neighborhood of new row houses and a senior apartment building.

Still, this event did little to answer residents' questions or quell their fears that the project would be a major disruption to their daily lives. While asking for comments, questions and alternatives is a laudable effort, it is difficult for the public to make reasonable suggestions if they no so little about the actual impacts they can expect.

If you live or work near Virginia Avenue or frequent the SE-SW freeway, DDOT and CSX want to hear your concerns. The NEPA process requires a 30-day comment period, leaving interested members of the public until October 14th to submit their comments. Comments can be submitted via email to contact@virginiaavenuetunnel.com or via the project website.

Update: The boards from the meeting are now posted online.

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—presto—it has a station named for it.

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.

By allowing cars to park alongside one or both sides of a street during rush hour, that effectively narrows the street by one lane permanently. Not only does this provide more space for parking, which could help local businesses, it also allows DDOT to design the street with bus bulb-outs, intersection extensions, or other changes in the balance of space between that devoted to cars and other users like pedestrians.

Eliminating rush hour parking restrictions would also simplify parking signs, improving the legibility of signs so that drivers are less confused about whether they can park. Allowing parking would provide the District with more revenue from parking meters.

On the flip side, some streets are congested long after the official sign-mandated rush hour periods are over. For those streets, DDOT should consider eliminating street parking altogether, and devoting the space to dedicated cycle tracks, bus lanes, or other non-automobile uses.

Sure, some streets have so much traffic that eliminating a whole travel lane is not possible at this time. But there are many streets that have rush hour parking and virtually no traffic, and DDOT should start assessing which restricted streets could be opened up for parking and which could have parking eliminated.

A good place to start would be M Street SE. They've already done it with one block. Why not the rest?

Mike DeBonis explained the primary motivations at work here. In short, Barry probably wants Near Southeast redistricted into Ward 8 to give him a role in the booming development in that area.

But Barry is right about one thing: The Redistricting Game was not scientific. It's not an opinion poll which tries to accurately estimate the views of all residents. But since when does the Council ever use opinion polls to make decisions?

They don't. Instead, they listen to people who testify, people who schedule meetings with them, and to a lesser extent people who email, call, or write letters.

Barry did listen to those present. He brought in a number of people to testify about extending Ward 8 west of the river; some, as it turned out, didn't even live in DC. Far fewer than 100 people from Ward 8 testified at this hearing, but Barry didn't claim their testimony was "flawed" because it's not scientifically representative.

Later, he noted that nobody from Near Southeast had yet testified at the hearing, and therefore there must be no opposition. Is that scientific?

About 30 people testified at the hearing, and their views should be listened to. But they're not necessarily representative either. The people who filled out the Redistricting Game are also a set of residents who expressed their preferences, and the Council should consider them as it would any other set of suggestions from any other not-necessarily-representative group of 4,000 residents.

It's easy to take potshots at Barry, and regardless he's unlikely to get his redistricting wish. But there's a larger point. Why do we accept our current model of civic engagement as the right one?

It gives a much louder voice to people who want to take the time to attend hearings, which are often in the middle of the day. It gives priority to those who can afford to spend 4 hours or more on a single development project, a single bill, or a single zoning change.

That favors people who are retired, or people paid to lobby for issues, or people who feel particularly strongly about a single narrow subject.

The Zoning Commission has been holding many, many hearings on the zoning rewrite, with few participants at some of the hearings. Geoff Hatchard, Ken Archer, CSG's Cheryl Cort, DC Sierra Club's Bradley Green, and I testified recently for accelerating the parking location zoning change, and Zoning Commission member Peter May complimented everyone on attending. I'm glad we could, but this also points out how such a turnout is somewhat unusual.

Few people can go to all of the zoning hearings, or even more than a few. It's tough to get people to go to a zoning hearing on, say, changing waterfront zoning when they have no objection to the changes, when the changes won't have much of a visible effect on development, and they are likely to sail through.

The people who testified at last week's HPRB hearing on the Hine school represented those who felt so strongly they wanted to take an entire afternoon off to talk about the project. HPRB hearings happen in the middle of the day, and typically take all day. Items have start times on the schedule, but those are very approximate. I've spoken at the HPRB and had an item come up hours after it was scheduled.

I've gone to testify at the Board of Zoning Adjustment, another board with daytime hearings, and seen the mid-morning item I was there for moved to the afternoon (or moved to another day entirely). DC Council hearings have started hours late. Sometimes the chair of a council committee has moved the government witness to the beginning, instead of at the end as is usual, and talked to that witness for 2 hours or more while the public witnesses waited patiently.

Many residents of Capitol Hill think the Hine project doesn't need to get shorter, or should even be taller, but they didn't go to the hearing. Some had jobs which prevented it. Does that mean their views don't matter?

There are some advantages to a process which favors those who care about an issue. If you just poll people, a lot of folks don't know much about an issue at all and are making snap judgments on little information. Decisionmakers shouldn't necessarily hold every resident's opinion exactly equal.

But the current system goes much too far. There's little value in giving a voice only to people who can spend 4 hours in the middle of the day waiting to speak for 3 minutes.

What to do? One step is for decisionmakers to listen to other channels as well. Montgomery County at-large councilmember Hans Riemer does by listening to people on Facebook, and found drastically different views there versus in person at a hearing on the Silver Spring skybridge. DC councilmember Tommy Wells uses Twitter, sending his own tweets and reading his own Twitter feed.

That's a step, but not the end of the story either. These channels privilege people who spend a lot of time sitting around on Twitter and Facebook. That's not representative either, though when combined with people testifying in person, it adds breadth.

It'd be great to develop a good channel for leaders to hear more views from poor and minority communities, and add that to their cognitive understanding of what residents want. Wells took a meaningful step by conducting a "listening tour" about bus service in wards 4, 5, 7, and 8, but there's much more that can be done.

Elected officials try harder to hear more views because they want the votes. Unfortunately, not only do our formal boards and commissions not generally use these channels, but many can't. You can tweet @TommyWells during a hearing to suggest questions, but there's no @CatherineBuell account for the HPRB chair.

Even if there were an @AnthonyHoodZC account, the Zoning Commission chair would be breaking rules against "ex parte" communication. Just like judges, Zoning Commission and BZA members are not allowed to hear comments on cases except through the official hearing or formally submitted letters of testimony.

Sure, there are reasons for this. A body making a legal determination is required to do so based on a public record, and so the comments have to go into that record. But these rules also mean that the commission is limiting its input in ways that result in an incomplete view of residents' opinions.

Could the Zoning Commission legally set up a @DCZoningCmsn Twitter account, where messages appear on commissioners' smartphones or on screens behind the dais during the hearing, and which also go into the official public record, for example? To get people on the other side of the digital divide, are there ways to make it easier to submit comments on cases beyond sending formal and time-consuming letters or faxes?

The boards should be seeking more ways to get input while still keeping their responsibility to have a public record, and elected officials should look for opportunities to hear from a broader range of people. As a first step, both elected officials and appointed board members should acknowledge that while holding hearings is a valuable part of getting input, relying on it alone is very much "flawed."

The legislation to create the performance parking districts requires that DDOT periodically measure occupancy and adjust prices if blocks are too full or too empty. In the past, DDOT has been reluctant to follow through, but in this new round, they will. Some crowded areas are getting parking meter price increases, and some crowded areas will stay the same.

DDOT found that the parking lot underneath the Southeast Freeway on 8th Street SE in Barracks Row only collects about a dollar a day per space, and proposes reducing the price to 75¢ per hour. This is an appropriate change, and should allow people parking in the area a cheaper option than parking on the main commercial street.

DDOT should also consider increasing the time limit for this lot to four hours until 5 pm and unlimited afterward. That would encourage people with longer anticipated stays to use it, thus leaving the more convenient spaces for people with shorter term needs.

Although many areas in the performance parking zone had measured occupancy above 100% (made possible because of illegal parking and smaller than average cars), DDOT does not propose increasing the meter rates in many areas where the occupancy is high.

For some blocks near the ballpark, between M, South Capitol, and 2nd streets and the Southeast Freeway, DDOT proposes increasing the rate. This is a big improvement from the last performance parking report for this zone published in 2009, where DDOT recommended raising prices for blocks having high occupancy, but specific blocks were not identified and the prices were not adjusted.

The report lists this area having maximum occupancy only at 86% during Nationals ball games, but that is actually the figure for all blocks, including resident permit parking. To improve understanding of their recommendation, DDOT chould list in a separate table the metered blocks and their occupancy, and whether they have been included in the proposed price increase.

For some areas with very high parking occupancy, such as 8^th street and Pennsylvania Avenues SE, DDOT is not raising rates. An official responsible for parking policy told me that they wanted to avoid adverse impact on District businesses during the economic downturn and had attempted to use other means such as time limits to manage occupancy rather than adjusting price.

It appears that using time limits is not having the desired effect, because the blocks are all showing excessively high occupancy, and my visits to the area during the busiest times have confirmed that parking is very scarce in the area. DDOT is working on building community support for performance parking so that price adjustments can be implemented.

The local stakeholders are concerned about the effects performance parking is having on local resident permit parking blocks. The DDOT official pointed out the importance of being sensitive to the local community's opinions, and I understand that, but I'll also note that right now the visitors looking for parking on residential blocks are those that don't want to pay for parking combined with those that are willing to pay but cannot find a metered space.

If DDOT increases the prices on crowded blocks, at the very least the people willing to pay can find a space, and the extra money collected can help fund enforcement on local resident blocks. Once pay by cell is implemented more fully in the city, the closest resident permit blocks could be changed to resident permit blocks with visitors also paying by cell or walking to the main street to obtain a pay and display receipt.

In the Columbia Heights performance parking zone, DDOT found that all the multispace meter blocks had occupancy rates above 85%, which should lead to higher meter prices in the zone. DDOT proposes extending the meter hours in the zone to 10 pm, and increasing the prices on some blocks to $2.50 for the first hour, and $3.00 for each subsequent hour, with a two hour limit before 6:30pm and three hour limit after 6:30pm.

This would be the highest street parking rate in DC. In the last performance parking report for this zone, DDOT recommended increasing the parking meter rates and hours, but the recommendation lacked specifics.

At a public meeting in 2009, DDOT's Damon Harvey stated that the adjustment would happen only after the streetscape project was complete, which it now is. The current report calls for making adjustments in April 2011. For the Columbia Heights performance parking zone, DDOT should be commended for now following through on adjusting rates according to occupancy, as the performance parking pilot legislation demands.

The report lists occupancy for each block as a number of spaces, number of cars parked on average and the maximum number of cars. This is a big improvement, which I recommended after the last performance parking report came out. However, to the extent that DDOT can communicate more information about parking, the occupancy should be reported as an average and a 90th percentile occupancy, which eliminates that problem that reporting a maximum might cause if the maximum is an extreme outlier.

Based on high occupancy, DDOT plans on expanding multispace meter installation to the waterfront area on Water Street and Maine Avenue. DDOT will also look into adjusting the rates based on curbside occupancy as it does elsewhere in the zone.

DDOT is getting closer to performing all the actions required by the performance parking legislation. They're measuring occupancy, reporting the data, recommending rate changes, and spending the money locally. However, in many areas with high demand, prices are not increasing as they should.

Compared to the previous performance parking reports, I would say this report is a big improvement. Reporting the data on a block-by-block basis is tedious but important. The money is being spent on local improvements which help the pedestrian and cycling environment, and everybody becomes a pedestrian once they've parked. Unlike the previous report, which called for vague increases in prices, this report specifies what blocks will have changes and what the prices will be.

It should be noted that DDOT is running one of the only parking systems in the US where the occupancy is measured and reported, and the prices are actually being adjusted. The other such program is in San Francisco, and that program is supported by a fairly substantial federal grant.

Here are some recommendations for the next report:

• Reinstate the table showing the revenue collected and how it is being spent
• Separate out the occupancy table between blocks that have multispace meters and those that have other parking controls
• Make a recommendation concerning the price for every multispace meter block
• Obtain community buy-in to follow the variable price policy on very crowded commercial streets like 8^th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

The limit was lowered to 25 mph last year in response to a series of pedestrians—this is literally true—getting killed hit crossing the street at New Jersey Ave and M St, SE, ironically right in front of the headquarters of the US Department of Transportation. That's also why the camera is there, not to entrap drivers but to actually get them to slow down.

Update: In fact, minutes after this article first ran, DC Fire and EMS tweeted about a pedestrian being struck on the 500 block of M Street, SE—on this very road we are discussing.

This road, heavily used by pedestrians traveling around the neighborhood or going to and from the Metro, should be more of a neighborhood main street than a high-speed raceway to bypass the SE-SW freeway. But years ago, traffic engineers using the "move traffic as fast as possible" mindset built the road as a raceway anyway.

Just two lanes each way would be sufficient for the traffic volume west of South Capitol, and one lane each way on the east, according to DDOT metrics. If the road is 50% to 200% too wide for the traffic, no wonder Weingarten thinks of hippopotami when he drives there.

The solution is to redesign the road. If it feels like typing with mittens, make it a touch-screen iPad instead where you don't need to type so much. Fortunately, a well-respected road design firm, Toole Design, already analyzed this road for us.

Toole's plan would give M Street a "road diet" from 3 lanes each way to two. A narrow median would go in the center to create small pedestrian refuges, and each side would get cycle tracks.

Tommy Wells tried to promote this idea, but a few of the very residents of the Southwest Waterfront and Near Southeast whose walks to the store would become safer objected. Opponents focused on some elements of the plan that would encourage cycling, while giving short shrift to its pedestrian enhancements.

Meanwhile, however, David Garber won election to the ANC for 6D07, which encompasses all of M Street SE, and Grace Daughtridge, one of the most strident critics of the plan (who claimed neighbors were "bad parents" for biking with their kids to school or the store) lost a bid for an ANC seat in Southwest.

Maybe it's time for the ANC to take another look at this plan, especially if the commissioner for the eastern half will support the concept. Not only can it make the neighborhood safer and more pleasant for residents, it could help Gene Weingarten drive slower and feel better doing it.