Posts about Inauguration

Press

The worst mainstream local articles of 2009

by David Alpert   •   January 6, 2010 2:03 pm

Yesterday, I highlighted reporters from the mainstream media who did a particularly good job of educating the public on urban issues in 2009.

Most of the time, the mainstream press either provides good coverage of local issues, or fills the rest of the space with fairly bland stuff that repeats press releases or each other's articles.

But every so often there is a real doozy of an article. A reporter or editor starts with some wrongheaded, ignorant, or even prejudicial idea, then runs way too far with it and fits every quote into a preconceived slant.

Here are 10 articles that rose to the top of the trash heap:

1. To Be or Not to Be Fairfax County? by Sandhya Somashekhar and Amy Gardner, The Washington Post, July 5 (article, GGW commentary). Cliche after cliche exalts the tennis clubs of Burke while casting walkable places like Merrifield as creepy and "blighted." It's an ode to sprawl that has absolutely nothing to do with the actual issue, whether Fairfax County should incorporate as a city to better control its roads and taxes.

2. Virginians See Bridge Closings As Dose of Northern Hospitality by Eric Weiss, The Washington Post, January 9 (article). The Secret Service closing bridges to traffic for the Inauguration was like the Civil War all over again, or at least so says AAA's Lon Anderson in a colorful quote Weiss is happy to turn into an inflammatory article. Weiss doesn't bother to note that the bridges would remain open to pedestrians and cyclists or the projections that large numbers of people would walk and bike to the Mall.

3. Ride At Your Own Risk by Mark Segraves and Adam Tuss, WTOP, October 20 (article, GGW commentary). Segraves and Tuss do some good investigative reporting to get years of Metrobus customer complaint data, then fit it into a preconceived slant about how bad buses are, when in fact complaints have declined in recent years. They also stake out a corner to catch a bus rolling through a stop sign while ignoring all the trucks that do it while they're waiting.

Parking

Lunch links: We're back

by David Alpert   •   February 10, 2009 12:08 pm

Our hosting provider experienced some problems with our server this morning. Sorry for depriving you of your regular dose of exciting livable and walkable communities news.

Darkness at the end of the tunnel: Tom Toles looks again at the irony of cutting Metro amid record ridership. Dr. Gridlock's readers debate budget cuts and float conspiracy theories that Metro's already cut service. Via Unsuck DC Metro.

Crowdsourcing in commuting: A Falls Church resident started MyCasualCarpool to help people create their own informal park-and-ride lots; Avego is trying to to create a market to fill empty seats in private cars on the daily commute.

Low parking enforcement? Deputize your citizens: Salt Lake City allows trained citizens to write parking tickets. The Salt Lake Tribune describes how a member of the "Mobile Neighborhood Watch" is allowed to take a photo and write a ticket for violations. The photo and ticket are sent to the local police for processing. By Michael Perkins.

Two wheels good, four wheels baaaaad? Bicycling to the Inauguration from Bethesda might have been the quickest way, though not the least sweaty; a rendering of a Wheaton apartment complex shows a Humvee driving around.

Huge parking garages worse: NYC's Mayor Bloomberg, who gets it on congestion pricing and complete streets but not at all on land use, wants to build a huge parking garage for the Bronx Botanic Garden. Streetsblog suggests making the pedestrian access and bus drop-off areas more inviting instead.

Not just strip malls anymore: The Triangle worries about City Vista's new corporate owners, who say they want to attract local retail like Busboys and Poets but otherwise only run "unambitious" strip malls in the suburbs.

Parking

Dinner links: cheap, plentiful parking spaces are like clean coal

by David Alpert   •   January 26, 2009 6:40 pm

I got a new way to park: WebUrbanist finds "15 Creative, Innovative & Hilarious Parking Solutions", from the giant VW factory cavern to falling into quicksand. Via Planetizen.

Just say no: Bloomingdale's ANC will consider a curb cut request on First Street, for a row house without alley access. All of the houses in the row have regular stoops; a front garage will seriously defile the house. Yet another reason for some level of historic preservation? Or will the new "no curb cuts" policy nip this one in the bud? Update: the curb cut will connect to the back, not the front, to add only two private spaces while removing one shared public one.

A performance park? A letter writer asks, how about paying for the Mall's needed improvements by charging for parking on Mall roads? (tip: Michael); NPS wants a National Mall iPhone app; Arlington's CommuterPageBlog agrees with GGW on the message we should take away from the inauguration.

And: Another Georgetown corner store might go residential; NYC ponders cab sharing (which DC abolished with meters (tip: Bryan); Prince George's closes inside-the-Beltway schools while building new ones in sprawling greenfield areas.

This page is a mermaid: Bloomingdale, For Now notices clever ads on the Washington Post's "page not found" error pages. It's part of the same ad campaign as the mermaid, alien, and sasquatch posters in the Metro Center station.

Roads

Over four times the people and no traffic

by David Alpert   •   January 23, 2009 4:47 pm

On a typical weekday, 400,000 commuters enter downtown DC. On Tuesday, 1.8 million people did. Yet there's heavy traffic every rush hour in and out of DC, just to move a small fraction of the people we moved on Tuesday.

The difference? On Tuesday, people didn't come in private vehicles, with just one person in a car. They came in public and private buses, Metro trains, commuter rail, carpooled, walked and bicycled. With almost all bridges closed to traffic, we actually accommodated four and a half times the typical traffic. On the typical weekday, 40% of commuters—160,000 people—drive alone.

Even AAA admits (in a way) that commuters in single-passenger cars are holding us back. A Washington Times article yesterday pointed out that roads returned to gridlock Wednesday. "There were few traffic problems Tuesday because there was one element eliminated—vehicles," said AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman John Townsend. Those are the vehicles whose exclusion another AAA spokesman stridently criticized last week.

If our region is to grow, we need to help more people reach their jobs. One approach is to add traffic lanes and parking garages at enormous cost, both financial and in lost urban vitality. The other solution is to move people as we did on Tuesday. More people rode the trains. Each vehicle coming into the downtown core carried far more people. Over 2,000 people used WABA's bike valet. And many more people started their days within walking distance of downtown. Those houseguests raised our population density enormously, enriching our neighborhood businesses besides.

WAMU played an editorial this morning from Cheryl Cort of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. "The inauguration showed us how we can grow our economy without growing traffic," she said. Yet our federal and local policies keep moving us in the wrong direction.

Many of [the 160,000 daily auto] commuters could be coaxed onto trains, buses and even bicycles if we make smooth, convenient, and safe trips a priority. But we don't. Instead, we are cutting transit service while letting bicycle improvements languish.

In the afterglow of accomplishment, Metro is cutting 900 positions to cope with a looming budget deficit. Public officials acknowledge the importance of transit, but our region's governments continue to find billions of local and federal dollars to expand or build new highways. Maryland is starting construction of the nearly $3 billion Intercounty Connector highway, shortchanging other state priorities. Virginia is bent on widening the Beltway from 8 to 12 lanes. At the federal level, public transit spending is being cut back in the stimulus bill while three times as much money is funneled to roads.

Our priorities are stuck in the 1950s. As President Obama ushers in a season of change, we must focus on what will work for our economy, environment, and communities in the 21st Century. Expanded Metro capacity, better walking and bicycling conditions, and rapid bus corridors should be immediate priorities for improving transportation choices and supporting an economic recovery for our region.

Listen to Cheryl's editorial on RealAudio or Windows Media.

Bloomberg's architecture critic says we need a better approach. "The six rail tracks that tunnel into New York's Penn Station haul as many people as 45 freeway lanes. ... Road projects do little more than rearrange the traffic jams, like the 23-lane extravaganza touted for Atlanta's suburbs."

What if our city saw even a third of Tuesday's activity every day, but with none of the security barricades? Imagine how many more fares Metro would collect, and how much more frequent bus and subway service we could support. Imagine how many more neighborhood hardware stores and restaurants our communities could support, and how much safer our streets would be with more eyes.

If we could get 1.8 million people in and out of downtown DC without any traffic, we can get 500, 600, or 700,000 people in and out every day smoothly with better transit, pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. All that's holding us back is our elected leadership and our ability to envision a better region.

Public Spaces

This hall isn't your hall

by David Alpert   •   January 22, 2009 4:33 pm

Union Station, built as a grand gateway to Washington DC, is today more of a beautiful big hall with a bland train station stuck on the back. A mall operator runs the station with an eye more toward shopping than transit. And inauguration planners saw it first as a great place for a ball, with its transportation role an afterthought. That's why Union Station was possibly the inauguration's greatest fiasco.

A Huffington Post article analyzes the debacle. Reporter Matthew Harwood quotes a Greater Greater Friend's parents who were stuck outside the station for hours, missing their VRE train home, while the Secret Service closed the station and food court hours before the Eastern States Ball.

Why would the Secret Service, the lead agency securing the Inauguration, allow an inaugural ball in one of the District's most critical transportation hubs during an day anticipated to bring record crowds flooding into the District? ...

In the end, average rail travelers using Union Station got the same treatment they always do when their interests cross those of our nation's elite: They were told to be patient and calm and to wait in line.

"And for what," asked the New York businessman, "so someone could have champagne tonight?"

If you were lucky enough to get into the Eastern States Inaugural Ball, according to the Boston Herald, you could see a few Kennedys, Congressman Barney Frank, and the Senator John Kerry's brother and sister, before the Obamas made their entrance.

Enthusiasts and critics of Obama are right: maybe this is the new Camelot.

Union Station is our city's grand entrance hall. It's not a private ballroom for Congressional leaders that we use with their forbearance until they kick us out when they need the room.

Eleanor Holmes Norton has been a great advocate for Union Station. She should take a close look at how the decision was made to take away our space for this ball. The station's policies should allow rentals only when the public isn't likely to need the space. As for future inaugurations, they can pick someplace else.

Transit

Early inaugural post-mortem: Nice job, Metro!

by David Alpert   •   January 21, 2009 8:40 am

As yesterday's inauguration smashed all records for cramming people into DC's core, many came away inspired, many frustrated at the disorganized crowd control in many areas. From the anecdotal evidence of my guests and friends and from early press reports, it seems that the inaugural event itself handled the crowds poorly, the bike valet ran smoothly, Union Station failed completely, and Metro, which easily broke its all-time ridership record, handled the day's crushes and crises admirably.

Most of all, communication made the difference. According to one friend, leaving the inauguration, crowds at the tops of escalators at one station became too dense. If more people ascended the escalator, they wouldn't be able to step off, creating a dangerous situation. Metro staff stopped riders from exiting, and most importantly, communicated clearly. A woman with a bullhorn stood at the bottom, explaining to people in a folksy way why they couldn't go and assuring them they'd be on their way shortly.

A woman fell on the tracks, but got under the platform safely to avoid an oncoming train. Metro had her off to a hospital to be checked out and trains running again within 45 minutes, partly thanks to Metro's training for just such an eventuality.

Sure, many parking lots filled up, but everyone expected that. Crowds built up at stations and many people had to wait a long time for Metro trains, but crowds filled up every facility (like the Smithsonian). At Union Station, those crowds crippled commuter rail. Friends who rode VRE to the inauguration couldn't make their 5 pm return train because the fire marshal had closed Union Station. Amtrak, MARC and VRE didn't effectively keep the swelling crowd informed about the situation for hours, until they finally conveyed news that the railroads would get everyone home and honor tickets for trains other than the ones riders had originally reserved. Closing the main room for a ball, as Union Station did, seems foolish for a day which needed every piece of transportation infrastructure.

Logistics for the inaugural event itself, in particular, left many disappointed. Those who simply decided to stand near the Washington Monument fared best, since they didn't have to pass through the excruciatingly slow metal detectors. The jumbotrons worked (except for an annoying ten-second video delay), and most of those without tickets who simply went down to the Mall to see what they could see and enjoy the ambiance had a pleasant, though cold, experience.

Many with tickets, on the other hand, never made it into their assigned sections (blue, purple, or silver). Silver and purple filled up entirely, turning people away, mismanaged crowd control, blocking the entrances and depriving many ticket holders of access to their sections. A power failure stopped the X-ray machines in the blue section, keeping many people out. Instead, people in the silver section, unsure if they could cross a low barrier near the Capitol reflecting pool, crossed over into the empty space in the blue and purple sections. People who'd worked hard to get precious tickets found concluded inaugural officials had given out too many because of the flow problems.

Inadequate communication by inaugural crowd control officials, too, created problems. Those volunteers deployed to give directions performed well, but were too few. At one area, visitors unable to get answers started asking a nearby paramedic team, placed in that spot to help anyone in need of medical attention. Not knowing the answers and swarmed with frustrated questioners, they decided to decamp to another location. Signs, which would have helped answer many questions, were scarce.

And some inaugural watchers reacted by becoming unruly. Crowds waiting to get into the overwhelmed blue, purple and silver sections started shoving as the swearing-in approached and people could still not see or hear. Just Up the Pike was trapped in the Waterside Safeway "where already disgruntled people had to wait over two hours to use a bathroom and others quickly resorted to stealing food." Others there pushed and shoved and some even "tried to pick a fight with me after I asked them to quiet down so I could hear Obama's speech," he wrote.

Many buses were diverted and became stuck in traffic, like the 3Y whose passengers staged a little mutiny to get off early. But Metro, DC and federal officials managed to get almost 2 million people to and from the Mall, then around DC for numerous balls, with few injuries and (as far as we know) no fatalities. The bike valet was packed. Millions witnessed this historic occasion. And our Metro system managed to cope with the record throng quite adeptly. Good work!

Public Spaces

Breakfast links: Stretch your mind

by David Alpert   •   January 13, 2009 9:56 am

Do cities hurt your brain? The Boston Globe writes that "Just being in an urban environment, [reserachers] have found, impairs our basic mental processes. ... While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting—that's why Picasso left Paris—this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so." The solution? Even just a few trees and some plant diversity in our parks can correct the problem. But big open lawn-type parks, says the Globe, don't work. Also, these researchers seem to equate suburbia with living among nature, while the article mentions nothing about the impact on the brain of a long daily commute in traffic.

Guess Metro's 1/20 ridership: Track Twenty-nine is running a contest to estimate Metrorail ridership on Inauguration Day. The "Wisdom of Crowds" would predict that with enough guesses, the average may come closer than any one individual guess. Will that happen?

Back to the BAC: WashCycle attended last week's Bicycle Advisory Council. Many businesses and organizations are eager for SmartBike expansion, and WashCycle thinks the next round of expansion could exceed 20 new stations. Meanwhile, Councilmember Graham may create a DDOT bicycle enforcement unit, which will focus on the lawbreaking that most endangers cyclists, motorists and pedestrians.

Optimism about Klein: Last week's Current writes that "Smart-growth backers hail Fenty's transportation pick", DDOT nominee Gabe Klein (article, continuation). "Klein noted shifting philosophies in urban transportation, with increased focus on public transit instead of car travel. He also said he "would seek to Hintroduce a culture of respect and learning" to the 150 staff members at the Transportation Department, briefly referencing "an ongoing training program" he has in mind."

Not really a charitable cause: Widely-read legal blog Above the Law picks up Action Committee for Transit's criticism of law firm Sidley Austin for taking on the Town of Chevy Chase's anti-transit case pro bono. According to ACT, "Sidley Austin's web site states that the firm's pro bono work is done 'to provide legal services to the poor and to charitable, religious, community, governmental and educational organizations that otherwise would be unable to afford legal representation.' The town can easily afford to pay for legal services. Its most recent financial statement shows it has $4.4 million tucked away in the bank—more than its entire annual budget of $3 million."

Georgetown trio: A columnist for the Georgetown student newspaper, the Hoya, endorses raising transit's priority in federal spending, including the Purple Line; a temporary bus-only lane in Georgetown might return in the future; Marc Fisher takes the anti-preservation stance on the Georgetown Apple store.

Roads

Let's declare war on calling transportation arguments "war"

by David Alpert   •   January 12, 2009 3:44 pm

Maryland Politics Watch has a roundup of the Purple Line debate with the inflammatory headline "MTA Declares War on Chevy Chase." In the lede, MPW's Adam Pagnucco calls the DEIS "a Declaration of War on rail opponents in the Town of Chevy Chase."

As far as I know, the MTA does not want to kill, maim, or take as prisoner any rail opponents in Chevy Chase, nor do they want to destroy the town or force it to sign a peace treaty. Instead, they simply want to build a train line. In fact, the residents of Chevy Chase are even allowed to ride it! Can we stop with the inflammatory "war" rhetoric please?

There's a word for not accepting the town's arguments: "disagreement." Is the Town of Chevy Chase "declaring war" on North Chevy Chase, because North Chevy Chase greatly dislikes the Town of Chevy Chase's Jones Bridge bus alternative?

In other war news, Virginian officials reacted with some understandable dismay to the closing of almost all Potomac bridges to auto traffic. Always eager to inflame the car-pedestrian divide, AAA's Lon Anderson and a few community email list participants trotted out the Civil War analogies. And always eager to play along, the Post's Eric "War on Drivers" Weiss wrote a whole article about it.

Reader Stephen Miller just submitted a post about AAA's reaction. He wrote,

The bottom line is that two million people are going to crowd the Mall for the nation's largest gathering ever and AAA thinks we should leave the bridges open for private auto traffic. The issue isn't, as AAA frames it, "security impinging on mobility." Sure, the security will restrict car mobility. But if it weren't, the traffic would even more severely restrict the mobility of the other 1.8 million people not in private cars. As Beyond DC notes, the issue is efficiency. With two million people cramming the Mall, where does AAA think the cars are going to go?

Think of it this way: 1.3 million people commute to Manhattan daily, and most of them don't drive because, if they did, the traffic and parking would be insane. Now imagine almost twice that many people cramming into a space the size of Central Park. Still, AAA thinks that everyone should be able to drive their own car to downtown DC, if they wanted to.

Obviously cars can be a useful and often necessary way of getting around, but this Inauguration is an extraordinary situation. Yet when faced with reality, AAA sticks to dogma about keeping as many automobile lanes as possible open at all times.

(And if you find AAA's stance unreasonable, there are alternative car clubs, competitive on cost and quality. Try Better World Club, which the Car Talk guys recommended over AAA since it doesn't lobby for highways.)

Roads

Morning links: watch out for the future

by David Alpert   •   January 9, 2009 10:34 am

Danger: falling budgets: Metro is just the latest transit agency nationwide to warn of a looming budget crisis. Metro staff proposed $176 million in cuts, of which $103 million would come from staff and expenses and $73 million in service cuts. The board promised not to raise fares until 2010, though they could change their minds. No word yet on which cuts will happen.

Inauguration update: Every newspaper and most other blogs are covering inauguration transportation plans ad nauseum, and Greater Greater Washington isn't going to try to beat them. But here are the most important points: Metro will run special express buses; forget about crossing the Potomac by car (Virginians are annoyed); all those overpriced rental offers are going untaken.

Oh look, yet another bike sharing program: American University brings it to four completely incompatible systems in DC. Via WashCycle.

Equity objection a "red herring": Freakonomics continues their series on congestion pricing. This installment rebuts the common objection that pricing hurts the poor.

Fantasy map of the day: цarьchitect blogger and frequent GGW commenter has his own interesting fantasy Metro map. Via Imagine, DC.

How about those old Georgetown street names? Georgetown Metropolitan looks at ideas for keeping something of the historic street names alive without actually renaming the streets back to their 1880 names.

Transit

Metro Inauguration prep mixing planning and prayers

by Michael Perkins   •   January 9, 2009 8:33 am

Metro's board presentation yesterday (PDF) on Inauguration Day preparations evoked in my mind the words of the Serenity Prayer: "Grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference." Metro clearly realizes that the Inauguration will be an unprecedented event for the transit agency, and they're doing the best they can to get ready for it.

The presentation summarized the inauguration planning, which up to now has been a pretty fluid process. I've been satisfied so far with WMATA's candor and the effort they're putting into this process. They took some shots for some of their decisions early on, from me as well as others, but it looks like they're willing to reevaluate those decisions, like free parking and reduced fares. More recently, they cut back on reserved Metrorail parking lots for charter buses, after the demand wasn't sufficient for the amount of reserved parking planned.

The big change announced yesterday is Metro's plan to run major express bus service in major corridors with 10 minute headways, as reported in the Washington Post. In addition to accepting cash and Smartrip cards, Metro will sell a $5 all day bus pass to speed boarding (more than three times a bus fare? what a deal!). There's a great summary in the presentation on what to expect each day during Inauguration Day weekend, including hours, fares, restrictions, and service enhancements.

Some of the highlights and surprises:  Bikes will be prohibited on Metrorail throughout the weekend.  Metro will run extra bus service to the airports (Dulles and BWI) on Saturday. Cars have to be out of WMATA lots by 10pm on Monday or be towed.

On another note, I'll admit when I was wrong. The Obama Smartrip cards were not as hot an item as I had originally thought. With crowds expected in the millions and apartments offered for thousands (though maybe not actually renting for that amount), I would have expected the market price for 35,000 commemorative Obama Smartrip cards to be much higher than $10. (In the comment on GGW I think I went crazy and guessed $100 or $200!) In fact, during the Board meeting when the cards were first announced, Board Chair Chris Zimmerman seemed to agree with me, reacting to the limited number of available cards by joking, "I think the price just went up!" But here we are, just a couple weeks ahead of the big day, and WMATA is still offering them for $10 (unloaded) on their website. There are dozens offered on Ebay for more than face value, but as far as I can tell there haven't been many takers. I picked up a couple of them when they were first offered, thinking that in case the prices on Ebay went crazy I could sell at least one of them. The backup plan is that they make great gifts for Obama-supporting friends. It looks like it's not so much that they're not selling that well, it's that the supply is much greater than expected.

Nobody really has any idea how many people will show up for the Inauguration, what the weather will be, or many other factors. Metro officials are working hard to plan for all contingencies, and then crossing their fingers.