Another example that something "unique" isn't necessarily "exceptional"

I hate exceptionalism and most everyone's desire to declare their situation and community unique--of course their places are unique but the systems and structures undergirding places are similar and therefore not exceptional. ...

I first wrote about this in the context of what I call the tyranny of neighborhood parochialism. But parochialism appears to be an endemic problem that transcends neighborhoods (but not municipalities). Note to WMATA:

Railroad _systems_ are not unique even if specific transit systems are in fact "unique" because they are place-based artifacts. Railroads are supposed to be run the same way, regardless of place.

In "Sister Transit System Took Steps to Counter Hazard: BART Saw Circuit Problem At Center of Metro Probe" from the Washington Post, writers Lena Sun and Lyndsay Layton tell us that:

Metro officials said the malfunction that appears to be at the heart of last month's deadly Red Line crash was traced to "flickering" in a track circuit that seemed to be a "freak occurrence" they had never before encountered or knew was possible.

But that type of transient, intermittent failure is known to experts who work with automated transit systems and was flagged as a hazard by the Bay Area Rapid Transit system in San Francisco. Officials there installed a separate system as a protection against flickering track circuitry.

BART is considered a sister system to Metro because it was built about the same time using similar designs, technology and suppliers. Metro never installed the backup system, known as the sequential occupancy release system, that is used by BART.

Metro's rail chief, Dave Kubicek, said through a spokesman last week that he was not familiar with the BART system. ... Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said that every transit system is unique and that it is difficult to know the "intricacies of everybody else's system and how they compare to ours."

Also in the story:

Willard Wattenburg, an electrical engineer and inventor retired from the University of California at Berkeley, said intermittent failures were frequent on BART in the early 1970s.

Wattenburg analyzed BART's initial design for the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates transit systems, and crafted some corrections. BART officials at the time said the failures were flukes, but regulators insisted on the design changes.

In the old days of DC Transit, the streetcar system was overseen by the DC Public Service Commission. But apparently there isn't the same level of regulatory oversight of WMATA by the three jurisdictions (DC, MD, and VA) today that there was in days past.

Just because an agency is a nonprofit or governmentally-controlled doesn't mean that significant oversight is not warranted.

If you use transit, walk, or bicycle, does traffic congestion on a freeway 10 miles away really matter?

This is in response to the annual release of traffic congestion data by the Texas Transportation Institute. See "Traffic Eases Nationwide -- Except in D.C., Study Finds" from the Post and "Traffic increases, along with Post traffic reporting quality" from Greater Greater Washington.

And note that the TTI studies are of a Metropolitan Region, not of the Center City within these regions.

The problem with most traffic congestion studies is that they focus for the most part on driving on freeways. DC proper has limited the amount of freeways in the city. And therefore you can argue that this induces congestion. There is no question that are major roads into the city, such as New York Avenue (US Route 50), there is significant congestion.

Yesterday morning I was riding down North Capitol Street to a meeting on Capitol Hill, around 7:50 a.m., and while waiting at the intersection with New Hampshire Avenue I joked to myself about how shocked I was to see a Jeep Cherokee with 3 occupants instead of how all the other cars and trucks rushing by had only one occupant. (And why did all those turning vehicles in the far right lane have to veer into the pedestrian crosswalk anyway?)

But how much does that impact DC residents on a daily basis?

Face it, the roads aren't designed to move scads of cars anyway (in the best of circumstances one mile of freeway lane can move about 2,000 cars per hour). And people who choose suboptimal ways of getting around aren't really my problem.

By bicycle--and I don't bicycle very fast (especially because I have wider, but not the widest tires but I admit to occasional envy of riders with racing tires)--I live about 25 minutes from Downtown and from Capitol Hill. The traffic doesn't affect me. And it shouldn't affect others who make smarter choices about mobility and choosing to live where non-automobile mobility is relatively efficient.

Yes, we need to add more transit (and often, additional density to make transit expansion financially efficacious), but more roads? No.

DC's competitive advantage rests upon non-automobile centric mobility. Commuting times for DC residents are close to the national average, while with the exception of Arlington residents, times for residents of other counties in the region can be significantly greater than for residents of the core of the region.

At the same time, in order to better handle mobility demands efficiently and effectively we must expand transit.

The speed and use restrictions on the Red Line that have been imposed since the terrible accident last month shows how the system can be strained significantly and how redundancy and additional capacity is needed. Photo of full platforms on the Red line subway at Metro Center, DC by Linda Davidson, Washington Post.

That means adding to the fixed rail system, which moves far more people, from 15,000 people per hour (light rail) to almost 40,000 people per hour in one direction, vs. standard or rapid transit bus systems, which move from 6,000 to 10,000 people per hour--if we can provide dedicated bus ways, which in many places in the region, is unlikely.

While some argue that freeways connecting I-270 and I-95 should have been built into the city as was planned in the 1950 Comprehensive Plan, I think that it is proven that highways built primarily for non-residents help cities very little. DC is better off without the freeways.

(Plans were for what is now I-270 to be extended into DC, along both sides of the Metropolitan Branch railroad tracks in Northeast DC. And I-95 was to be extended from College Park to around Fort Totten in DC, connecting to the planned I-70.)

Metropolitan Washington Freeway Plan, 1950.

A good example of how flawed system design usually leads to failure: the U.S. House bicycle sharing system.

The Hill reports that the U.S. House bicycle sharing system may be scrubbed because it is barely used. See "Capitol bikes gather dust." From the article:

The Chief Administrative Office (CAO) spent $23,000 to lease and maintain 30 bicycles beginning last July. Eight months later, the bikes had been used by less than 3 percent of the House’s staff.

The 175 people signed up for the program have used the bikes a total of 300 times. That means some people have likely used the program only once, and each bike has been ridden about 10 times.

This makes sense because the bicycle stations are in locations far from where workers work, and not close to places where non-drivers come into the area, such as adjacent to the Capitol South Metro Station, or Union Station.

When we first heard about this proposal, see the past blog entry "Institutional memberships in DC bicycle sharing programs" we suggested that instead of creating their own system, the House of Representatives should "pay into" the SmartBikeDC program by outfitting additional stations on the U.S. House campus (and at Union Station), leveraging the value of the extant system and further extending it.

This is a simple concept, based on the concept of innovation diffusion and creating a network or system that supports the new behavior.

The failure of the House bicycle sharing system is comparable to the failure of the Betamax videotape system vs. the VHS system, which succeeded because the 3 hour tape length was superior to the one hour length of the Beta system, and there were fewer impediments to licensing.

More on the Hine Development (Capitol Hill, DC)

Correction -- from a comment to the blog:

That turns out to be incorrect. The Deputy Mayor’s office will take the next step in the evaluation phase (not the selection phase) early next week, likely issuing a request for Best and Final Offers (BAFO) to more than one of the bidders. The BAFO process is expected to take a few weeks, after which the Deputy Mayor’s office will review and evaluate the revised proposals, before announcing a final selection."

-------------------------------------------
Therefore this is revised...
-----------------------------

This morning there was a presentation of the various Hine School site redevelopment proposals to "business and professional groups" on Capitol Hill, at a meeting sponsored by the Capitol Hill Business Improvement District, the Capitol Hill Association of Merchants and Professionals (CHAMPS) and Barracks Row Main Street.

The presentations of the four finalists are online (listed alphabetically) here:

- DSF/StreetSense/Menkiti Group
- National Leadership Campus/Western Development Group
- Seven Penn Partners
- Stanton-EastBanc Part I, Part II

Note that public comments are due by the close of business on Friday June 10th.

Now 3 of the 4 proposals are in my opinion, fine -- DFS, 7 Penn Partners, and Stanton-Eastbanc all have decent proposals, while I believe that the DFS and Stanton proposals are better than the 7 Penn proposal, any one of the proposals will do well by the neighborhood, the business community, and Eastern Market.

The National Leadership Campus is an interesting idea, but is more focused on city-national interests in supporting nonprofit development, and not so much on Capitol Hill. It would be a fine addition to the city, but in a different location. At another public meeting, Washcycle and I were kicking around ideas from mine (on the parking lots at Fort Totten or at the Armed Forces Retirement Home campus, post streetcar or separated yellow line transit service) or his, on the land that Catholic University owns west of Harewood Road adjacent to their campus, or somehow closer to the Brookland Metro Station.

It would be worrisome if this plan were picked.

My general problem with the process is that it has proceeded without a master plan for the Eastern Market area, and so some "bad ideas" got included as part of the required conditions for the RFP. Here's something that I wrote as part of an email:

My biggest problem with the whole process has been centered on the reality that "an RFP isn't a plan." There needs to be a master plan for the area, and while Councilmember Wells' process for developing a community vision was very good, it was still ultimately limited, and missed key factors.

E.g., why there is to be public open space on this site makes little sense to me, given that there are four underfunctioning public spaces within 1.5 blocks of the site--the Metro Plaza across the street, the allied green space between 8th and 9th north of Pennsylvania Ave., Turtle Park, and Seward Square. This will merely create a well programmed public space that will compete with and trounce the other spaces.

While it is great that Stanton proposes extensive space for Shakespeare Theater, I wish that a master plan would have determined the best way to meet cultural needs overall and set community priorities. E.g., I advocate that arts uses should be re-sited away from North Hall and that North Hall should be converted to food uses, in order to extend the variety of foods available at Eastern Market, and allow its competitive position to be shaped to better meet demands for greater variety as well as new competition (i.e., Harris Teeter, etc.).

And I think there should have been more direction and a better plan for realizing parking on this site. I am well aware of the Lexington market allied parking structure in Baltimore and there are a variety of parking scenarios that could have been developed but won't be because there is no master plan.

Furthermore, a transportation management district should be created in Capitol Hill in order to reconcile and make congruent all the various mobility issues, which include the matter of parking, but should not be limited to the consideration of parking, nor the use of parking as the lens within which to view all possible mobility issues.
----------
And so, a once in a generation opportunity will not be fully realized...

The issue of weekend closing of 7th Street SE adjacent to the Eastern Market

There was a meeting last night about this, convened by Councilmember Tommy Wells of Ward 6. (Currently the street is closed on weekends as a result of an Executive Order by Mayor Fenty, and he shows no desire to revoke the order. However, various camps in the community question either the decision or the lack of community input into the decision.)

It was a civil meeting, not widely attended (more than 50 people, maybe not 100 people). The sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor, but some merchants were opposed and some residents.

1. The merchant opposition has to do with the perception that people need to be able to come up to the market with a car to pick up items they've purchased, because they are too heavy to carry. (And the discussion in part focused on creating short term pick up zones.)

One of the things that bothers me about this discussion, although I understand and appreciate the sentiment, is that it only recognizes the value of automobile owners as customers. 40% of DC households, such as mine, don't have cars. Creating a pick up zone is for the convenience of automobile owners. That's fine, it's an important segment of the market. But where is the planning for the segment of the market that doesn't own a car.

For a couple years I have advocated for a shared delivery service, renta-bicycles, etc., and this seems to fall on deaf ears. At least I don't think I have ever heard it acknowledged or considered...

At Ikea stores in Denmark, you can borrow a bicycle and trailer to take your purchases home. Velorbis photo.


UPS delivery bike by Workcycles, Amsterdam.

2. Another thing that most of the pro-car camp fails to acknowledge is that for the past few years, there hadn't been metered parking on Saturdays, so most of the spaces on the block of 7th Street SE from C Street to North Carolina had been used by people parking all day. The spaces for the most part didn't turn over.

3. A lot of the discussion took for granted the centrality of automobile ownership, the desire to park in front of your house, the increased demand for parking in the area, as Eastern Market becomes more of a destination.

4. Many people stated that they feel much more comfortable with the street closed on weekends, especially if they have children or dogs, because before it was more dangerous, with cars rushing through, and all of the parked vehicles, especially adjacent to the Farmers Line Shed, blocking visibility.

5. But other people worried that making Eastern Market more of a festival could make it harder for the food sales, both outside by regional farmers, and inside by the merchant-vendors, to succeed.

6. Some businesses ("brick and mortar") on the east side of the street have been fighting the street closure, saying that it negatively impacts their business.

Now I don't think I have ever met a business proprietor who doesn't believe that parking is the biggest issue for them, impacting their business. But often this is an excuse or a misreading of concerns expressed by customers. A lot of times, businesses aren't doing enough to promote their business, to make their merchandising exciting.

A perfect example is the lack of merchandising by Market Row businesses, a failure to capitalize on the vitality of the street, and to connect their business to the sidewalk and street, to lure customers in. For example, The Forecast is a clothing and gift store. They have some very nice items (we have bought gifts there, and Suzanne has bought clothes from them), but you would never know it, looking at the outside of their building.

Forecast, 7th Street SE.

Part of the problem with the Forecast building is that it was designed to ward off the street, rather than connect to it. The store windows are hidden behind a projection of the facade. This is typical of buildings built in Capitol Hill in the 1980s. (And categorically, the buildings are failures for the retail stores within.) It's also a problem with the Georgetown Park mall in Georgetown, which for the stores on the interior of the mall, pedestrians have to leave the excitement of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown for the artificial light and deadness of the bowels of that shopping center.

This store on 11th Street NW in Columbia Heights, Franklin's, a street not known as a retail destination, does a far better job in trying to reach out to customers who might be walking by, to leverage the little pedestrian activity there is, to draw customers inside.


7. In a side conversation with Councilmember Wells, I discovered that he has become far more informed about the nitty and the gritty of transportation/mobility issues and politics. It's a very good sign. At the end, unlocking our bikes, the three bicyclists (including Councilmember Wells), traded tips on riding at night and the best place to get lights -- Councilmember Wells is a fan of adaptively reusing items sold at Fragers Hardware, located on Pennsylvania Avenue SE, as they tend to be less expensive than the gear sold at bike stores...

San Antonio River Walk

'F.I.S.H.' gotta fly: The river under the I-35 bridge, once a wasteland, is now a civic treasure. San Antonio Museum of Art terminates the view. Image from the Incident Light blog.

It's been a long time since I've been to San Antonio (I missed the relatively recent American Planning Association annual meeting there a couple years ago), and this blog entry, "Placemaking at its best: In Urban Segment of Museum Reach, designers, artists, craftsmen extend Hugman's vision for River Walk," alerts us to the expansion of the River Walk there.

The San Antonio Riverwalk is an excellent example of harvesting assets that you already have, but perhaps have seen as impediments rather than as assets. Waterfronts are a key asset of communities in the Chesapeake Bay region, and especially for DC proper, which has both the Anacostia River and the Potomac River.

-- Anacostia Watershed Society
-- Anacostia Riverwalk Trail (DC DDOT)
-- Potomac Riverkeeper
-- The Future of the Anacostia (article from the Hill Rag)

In the report that I worked on for Cambridge Maryland, we discussed the necessity of linking the downtown to the waterfront as well as listing a number of ideas on how the community could better leverage its waterfront access as a revitalization asset.

Since working there, I have become a lot more conscious of Chesapeake Bay issues and the vastness of "the water" and its centrality to the identity of the Eastern Shore.

-- Chesapeake Bay Foundation

In the old days, travel in the region was fastest by boat, and there was steamboat service connecting communities throughout the region. One of my crazy ideas is to re-create a kind of Maryland-Virginia-DC "cruise" using a steamboat or two, comparable to the cruise operation that runs on the Great Lakes.

-- A Great Lakes Cruiser Makes a Stop in Rochester from R News (Rochester, NY)

Steamboat at the C. & O. (Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company) piers, Newport News, Virginia. Library of Congress photo.

DC's Eastern Market: closure of 7th Street SE on weekends

Eastern Market reopening, with a closed to traffic 7th Street SE, Saturday June 27th, 2009
Originally uploaded by rllayman

Image: Eastern Market reopening, with a closed to traffic 7th Street SE, Saturday June 27th, 2009

From email:

Ward 6 Councilmember Wells is hosting a community meeting on the continued weekend closure of 7th St., SE at the Eastern Market and invites all members of the community to come out and share how the closure has affected your life. This forum will be tomorrow July, 7, 2009, at Tyler Elementary School at 1001 G St., SE from 6:30-8:30. Please help us spread the word and invite your neighbors.

Put transit where the people are

is an op-ed by Ed Glaeser, the urban economist, in the Boston Globe.

From the article:

MASS TRANSIT needs mass to work: enough people must live and work near train stations and bus stops. Densely populated Eastern Massachusetts should therefore be a prime location for public transportation. Yet the MBTA faces budget woes and has threatened to close train stops. Despite the difficulties trains face in urban Boston, the Obama administration is pushing a new transportation agenda that promises high-speed rail in unlikely spots like Alabama and Oklahoma.

I do think that there is a problem with Prof. Glaeser's piece in that he equates what we might call national and regional (multi-state) transportation planning with metropolitan transportation planning. We need to have plans and transportation networks at each of these levels. Planning planning for both a revived passenger railroad network and local transit needs shouldn't be an either-or. Financial support needs to be provided for an integrated transportation network that is not dependent on either gasoline or automobiles

From "Second iteration, idealized national network for high speed rail passenger service":

... thinking about transportation networks in five overarching dimensions:

1. International -- connections between countries. (The map above shows a couple connections between the U.S. and Canada, and one connection from San Antonio to Monterrey, Mexico through Laredo.)

2. National -- anchors of a national transportation system, current anchors are the Interstate Highway system, the freight railroad system, and airplane travel. We do not have a national passenger railroad network presently.

3. Regional -- multi-state connections -- for the most part these don't exist for transit, but do for freight railroad, airplane travel, and the Interstate highway system. The Northeast Corridor railroad passenger service offered by Amtrak is an example of such a transit network.

4. Metropolitan -- transit systems like the WMATA subway and bus system, the combined railroad, subway, bus, and waterborne transit services in the NYC or Boston regions.

5. Sub-metropolitan transit systems (in the DC region, locally provided services such as RideOn in Montgomery County Maryland or the Downtown Circulator in DC are examples of services within the subnetwork category of the Metropolitan Transit Network).

For a delineation of the metropolitan transit network and the constituent subnetworks, see "Thinking about the transit network."

But I do agree with his criticism that federal transit funding and transportation funding isn't focused where it would have the most impact, in dense places. From the article:

So far the Obama administration’s transportation spending has gone overwhelmingly to highways in states with plenty of roads relative to people. Per capita federal transportation spending in the 10 densest states, which include Massachusetts, is less than half of spending in the 10 least-dense states. This policy follows an established formula, but it makes little sense. Congestion problems are most severe in the dense areas that get less funding.

Tearing down center cities

Recently, I wrote about the allegedly great proposal by the treasurer of Genessee County in Michigan to assist declining cities in demolishing and refocusing on smaller parts which may be sustainable. See "Shrinking Cities."

Kaid Benfield of the Natural Resources Defense Council, has an incredibly authoritative and thorough response to this issue in the NRDC Switchboard blog, "They are stardust. They are golden. But are they right about “shrinking cities”?."

The entry reminds me that I wrote about this kind of idea a couple months ago, in response to some other blog entries out there about urban decline. They were good entries, but in my opinion, missed the most basic reason for urban decline--suburbanization and outmigration from the center city, which is sometimes called "sprawl."

Note about this, I had a conversation Sunday after a Community Forklift board meeting with a planner-colleague and he was talking about the sprawl in the far suburbs, places like Prince William and Loudoun County, Virginia, and how they didn't do anything.

I told him that the planners knew, in the late 1950s, but they were powerless to stop it. I found at a used bookstore, a Fairfax County land use report from 1962, called The Vanishing Land, all about leapfrog development and its pernicious impact on open space and farmlands. But they were powerless against the Growth Machine--especially developer-lawyers like Til Hazel.

This is from the April entry "(Housing) duplication and revitalization":

A couple of blog entries elsewhere, "Detroit and the Limits to Urban Decline" from Goodspeed Update about Detroit, and "Cincinnati: Agenda 360" from Urbanophile about Cincinnatti are good, discussing urban decline, but I think they miss perhaps the most basic point about center city decline.

Disinvestment in center cities resulted from outmigration to the suburbs.

The development of massive tracts of suburban housing beginning in the 1950s created a large supply of new housing at the expense of extant housing, housing that was mostly located in the center cities. This would be called "oversupply." (This is discussed more succintly in Understanding Neighborhood Change: the role of expectations in urban revitalization by Rolf Goetze, published in 1979.) As a result of the oversupply, the value of extant housing was reduced significantly.

As of 2006, this bungalow in Detroit was valued at $59,450. It is roughly equivalent to "my" bungalow in Washington, DC, which cost $370,000 (and is less than one mile to the Metro, has a 90 foot long backyard, a full basement, and an attic that can be finished). The Detroit bungalow has 4 bedrooms (we have two), 1 bathroom, and a two-car garage. (We have a garage too, but it is termite infested.) From the USA Today article "Detroit: Thousands of homes swamp the market."


This image of a stripped, abandoned bungalow in Detroit comes from Zillow and this article, "The Remains of the $1 Detroit House." That's what happens when housing oversupply is created at the expense of the center city.


Levitttown, Pennsylvania. Photo source unknown.

As population declined in the city, property and sales tax revenues declined. This trend accelerated as industry and retail, for a variety of reasons, began to locate in the suburbs as well.

In areas where metropolitan population growth was relatively stagnant, this means for the most part that it is very difficult for the center city to "revitalize," because in a relatively weak market, it is hard to build demand for center city housing, especially if major businesses continue to decamp to suburban locations and without a high quality fixed rail transit system able to add significant value and demand back to urban neighborhoods.

Revitalization can occur but it has to happen on a district by district basis. You can't improve the whole city, at best you must "triage" and work to improve the neighborhoods (and the downtown) with the most potential, more of the characteristics that people want when choosing a neighborhood in which to buy a house.

(One of the problems with Cleveland's fixed rail transit system is that it isn't a complete system, and the newest line, the Airport Line constructed in the 1970s, abuts neighborhoods more than it serves neighborhoods. This resulted from the use of extant railroad lines rather than the creation of a new neighborhood-centric system. Cleveland's metropolitan population has not grown over the period from 1960-2000, hence the city's continued spiral downward, despite attractive neighborhoods and other assets.)

From 1960 to 2000, the population in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties in Michigan (Detroit is located in Wayne County) grew by only 200,000 people. (Although the metropolitan area did expand somewhat to include parts of Livingston, Washtenaw, Genessee, and Monroe Counties.) This meant that 1.1 million people moved out of Detroit, leaving their housing behind. And all that "deaccessioned" housing crumbled.

Similarly, the Cincinnati metropolitan area grew by only about 350,000 people from 1960 to 2000. Without significant growth in the region, the stage was never really set for urban revitalization. (Cincy also has some issues I think with a more urban renewal like focus, rather than an assets based approach typical of historic preservation based methods. See Cities Back from the Edge by Gratz for more on this general approach.)

The Washington region is significantly different from either of these areas. In 1960, the population of the region was about 2.1 million (defined as DC plus the inner counties and cities in Northern Virginia--Fairfax, Arlington and Alexandria, but not Prince William or Loudoun Counties, and PG and Montgomery Counties in Maryland). In 2000, the population of this same area was 3,566,275.

At the same time, the broader metropolitan region has expanded to include many additional counties in Maryland (e.g., parts of Howard, Frederick, and Anne Arundel Counties) and Virginia, and even Baltimore, according to the definition of the region by the US Census -- the combined SMSA had 7.5 million residents in 2000.

Sure DC continues to shrink in relationship to the region's entire population, but because the region continues to grow, housing stock in the city is no longer redundant, unlike weak market regions like Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland, or Pittsburgh (etc.). Therefore, DC is able to compete, based on the values of place--location and livability--for new residents.

It wasn't always so. The addition of the subway system, which at the current time favors the city with 29 stations at the core of the city, and 11 more stations in other locations in the city + two on the border, shared with other jurisdictions, made many neighborhoods locationally attractive.

Combine that with quality historic building stock, and in some neighborhoods, functioning commercial districts and quality schools (not enough local schools are quality, which has led to the charter school movement as well as the current operation to "fix" the schools), as well as improving municipal management, which started under Mayor Williams, and moves forward in fits and starts (for a comparison to Philadelphia, see this op-ed from the Philadelphia Daily News that I wrote in 2003, "An outsider's vision for saving Philly.")

Compare Baltimore and DC and you see the difference that having a good fixed rail transit system makes in terms of making inner city neighborhoods more attractive to people with choices. On the other hand, DC has another advantage that Baltimore will never have, the main employment engine--the federal government--is not going to leave the city. Meanwhile, major corporations continue to leave Baltimore. That being said, the Baltimore region continues to grow, and Baltimore is with 45 minutes commuting distance to DC (although commuting stinks) so it still has great potential, if it can get it together in terms of better urban transit.

Redevelopment of the Hine School site on Capitol Hill, across from the Eastern Market Metro Station

The public school deaccession program in DC has led to a number of school sites being put out for bid for redevelopment. The Hine School is a well-located eyesore across the street from the Eastern Market Metro Station. The parking lot is also used for flea market activities for Eastern Market.

It's a well located site that if redeveloped, can strengthen the overall commercial district on 8th Street SE (Barracks Row) and on Pennsylvania Avenue SE, the streetscape and design of the area, the Eastern Market and its allied commercial district on 7th Street SE, and add housing across the street from the subway station. And more residents help activate the neighborhood and provide more customers for local businesses helping the businesses to thrive and broadening the potential of the retail mix. Plus they generate property, income and sales tax revenues for the city government.

Greater Greater Washington has a post on the subject, with links to the various plans on the DC Government website. See "Compare the Hine redevelopment proposals."

I didn't comment, nor did I write a blog entry about it, because I sit on what passes for a board of directors for Eastern Market, and there are some complicated issues.

(I attended the presentation a couple weeks ago, and there will be another presentation, that Eastern Market will likely co-sponsor. And two of the four groups are displaying their proposal in front of buildings on 7th Street SE and lobbying-advocating for their proposals. Neighborhood groups are being lobbied or weighing in as well. And there are even ads in local newspapers like the Hill Rag and Voice of the Hill.)

Displaying the Stanton Development-Eastbanc proposal for Hine School on the Saturday Festival Day for the grand reopening of Eastern Market last Saturday.

For example, while it is fair to say that I could never be considered a proponent for parking, it is reasonable to consider developing the associated underground parking in the redevelopment of the site, but in a shared parking scenario, so that it also supports the broader commercial district, as well as Eastern Market.

As I have recounted here, the Eastern Market merchants are vociferous in demanding parking (this makes "sense" as most don't live in the city and they drive here so they interpret the world in terms of automobility). In a special task force on Eastern Market/Capitol Hill parking issues that met last year, I kept arguing for the creation of a "transportation management district" to manage parking, but not just parking, also transit, as well as other mobility improvements. That idea didn't go too far. Most of the other participants couldn't get their heads around the concept.

And for a couple years I have been arguing for a shared delivery system for Eastern Market--I'd rather one panel truck make 15 deliveries than have 15 cars drive to the market--but not just vehicle-based delivery, even considering bike rental type options--and for parking wayfinding systems to better direct people to the parking that exists but is underutilized.

This is an issue because there are three different types of retail groupings, and each has a different trade area and customer base (although there is some intersection), and many of the people in certain trade areas are likely to want to drive.

Anyway, of the four proposals, I thought one was not relevant to these kinds of issues, the National Leadership Campus proposal, although I'd be fine with them building it elsewhere, perhaps as part of some of the land across Harewood from Catholic University, on part of the Armed Forces Retirement Home property (especially with the addition of transit there), or next to a subway station such as Fort Totten.

The other three were basically good to excellent, but if any of the three were chosen, eventually the end project will be fine. I liked the Stanton-Eastbanc proposal the best, but thought that the DFS proposal, in part because it includes Street Sense, the retail consultancy, was still quite good. The third proposal, 7 Penn partners was ok. Their presentation wasn't that good, but they could still pull it out in the end.

While I am not on Capitol Hill e-lists, some of the discussion was sent to me, and it sparked a thread of private e-discussion. The comment started by saying the Stanton proposal was the best, because the other proposals didn't provide enough parking.

So this is what I wrote:

While perhaps for different reasons I think the Stanton/Eastbanc project is superior, it is a mistake to ding the other projects vying for the land strictly on the basis of parking. A residential building located ON TOP OF A METRO STATION DOESN'T HAVE THE SAME DEMAND FOR PARKING AND AUTOMOBILITY compared to a similar building located far away from such transit service.

Frankly, I'd consider making the building 0% resident parking except for a phalanx of shared cars IN ORDER TO ATTRACT PEOPLE WHO WANT CARLESS LIVING. If you're worried about people driving, think out of the box and build housing for people who don't want automobile-centric housing. This would allow them to pay less for housing anyway.

And, because the site is at a Metro station, I'd rather have it be a little denser, with more population (therefore more housing units) in order to better leverage the billions of dollars invested in the subway system, and because more population can be accommodated in a manner that generates comparably fewer automobile trips compared to other locations.

DC hasn't adequately studied parking issues in the city. There are cases of buildings in northwest DC where upwards of 80% of residents do not own cars. Similarly, Seattle, in a very thorough study of parking issues found that as the size of multiunit buildings increased, the number of cars per capita and per unit dropped. In what Seattle defines as urban centers within the city and in transit station areas, there are no minimum parking requirements at all, because the policy is to promote transit.

I will try to track down some data on multiunit buildings in the Wilson Blvd. corridor in Arlington, where transportation demand management practices work to limit automobility as the primary transportation mode.

And this led to some back and forth, but mostly car-centric discussion, which is somewhat insidious because typical DC residents are often incapable of recognizing and acknowledging how much they are imprinted by automobility/automobile-centricity and a land use paradigm that is focused on deconcentrated and disconnected land use (what we call "suburban").

I won't list the back and forth, but Michael wrote this as part of the thread, and it is worth repeating as it is succinct and well-thought out. The sections denoted by > are the comments that Michael is responding to specifically:

> but we can't GUARANTEE that the people who move in won't have cars

True. But you could guarantee that they don’t get permits to park them on the street, by defining a parking district that takes in only the curbs immediately adjacent to the Hines site, which should consist of metered parking spaces and loading zones only. People who move in, who own cars, can rent parking from private providers.

> The transit offerings in the metro DC area are, by comparison, very limited, and after living in London I would never consider transit as a way of life HERE..

As long as free parking is mandatory, transit options will be inadequate. Most people won’t take transit if they can park for free. And most builders, for economic reasons, will reduce development densities and put required parking on the surface, making transit even less viable. No realistic level of subsidy can make transit work in a low-density, ample free parking environment.

> In other words, trying to force what you call "transit as a way of life" on the NEW residents is one thing, but forcing it on the CURRENT residents is another.

Non-drivers, and would-be non-drivers, have had driving as a way of life forced on them for decades, as the driving majority has voted for free parking, and redesigned our communities in a way that makes life without a car nearly impossible. The parking subsidy is not a trivial one – a typical parking space costs as much as a typical car.

We subsidize transit and nonmotorized modes because they are less environmentally harmful than driving. But given the negative environmental consequences of driving, we should certainly not force the carless to pay for free parking for motorists.

> But if there's limited parking to start with, the risk is high that the current residents will be penalized for this lack of planning in the development.

Drivers who park on the street, as I do, are enjoying a major benefit at public expense (local streets are not paid for by gasoline taxes or vehicle fees). A “tragedy of the commons” often ensues, as cheap or free street parking provides an incentive for residents to own more vehicles than there are available parking spaces.

The most efficient and environmentally sound solution would be to abolish free public parking altogether. Parking permit fees and meter rates should be raised to a market-clearing level, with the proceeds earmarked for neighborhood improvements and services rather than disappearing into the general fund, so the neighborhood as a whole doesn’t suffer.

Given that most communities waste colossal amounts of money on excess and duplicative parking, and parking for which market demand is not sufficient to cover costs, any community which stops subsidizing parking can expect to generate substantial new development and increases in property value. Housing units built without parking cost 20-30% less to build than units built with parking. Similar calculations apply to commercial space.

To promote this, a "pedestrian and community paradise," you have to focus on all the development policies that currently exist which promote automobility at the expense of complete places. You have to know that this type of discussion makes up the majority of what I write in the blog.

Eastern Market reopening, with a closed to traffic 7th Street SE, Saturday June 27th, 2009.

I don't think a congestion fee is the right direction for DC or congestion fees are sexy, but there are better policies, at least right now

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Revised with significant additional content at the end.
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Flickr photo of a congestion charge sign by KZ08.

Arlington's CommuterPage blog has an entry proposing a congestion fee for DC, "Save Two Birds With One Starbucks - Fixing Washington's Traffic." And this has been discussed for a couple years. And some people think it's a good idea.

I am not on the bandwagon.

To be honest, I don't think traffic is that bad in downtown DC, although some streets, such as New York Ave., I Street (especially since PA Ave. is closed), K Street and others have comparatively heavy traffic and are in fact, very much congested.

But even at the same time, many other downtown streets are not congested, and even during rush hour I can ride through intersections on my bike, through stop lights, because there isn't oncoming traffic.

And the reality (granted most regional congestion studies focus on freeways) is that most of the highest congestion areas in the region are not in DC proper, and it's unlikely that assessing a congestion fee in DC would have any impact on those problems.

Furthermore, we can't trust the suburban jurisdictions--which includes Arlington, which happily picks off organizations from DC for relocation to their fair burg as it is--to not use the existence of a congestion fee in DC to urge presently DC-located organizations and businesses to relocate to the suburbs in large part for their car driving employees to avoid a congestion fee.

More important to DC's transit financing agenda than imposing a congestion charge would be to:

(1) impose a transit withholding tax, comparable to how it's done in Portland and Lane County Oregon (or soon for the MTA in Greater NYC) -- in a paper I wrote a couple years ago, I estimated this could generate $200 million/year. And it would be applicable to everyone who works in the city, whether or not they drive. Since 70% of jobs in DC are held by non-DC residents, it could be considered a commuting tax, on the other hand it would be fully justified and the use targeted.

(2) impose an annual personal property tax on automobiles registered in the city. I came to this position in a roundabout way. The annual fee for a residential parking permit is $15. The value of using a parking space on the street is worth upwards of $2,000 year, but people still whine about proposals to increase the fee.

But there are really two aspects to raising the rate, one has to do with the value of the parking space, but the other has to do with recovering more of the costs of paying for roads as typically, automobile taxes and fees cover no more than 55% of the cost of roads.

And increasing parking permit fees solely doesn't address the need to recover more of the costs of paying for roads for people who have off-street parking spaces, and therefore don't require residential parking permits.

I haven't costed this out. But the annual registration fee in the city is pretty low, from $72 to $155/year, depending on the weight of the automobile.

(3) but still, it is necessary to raise residential parking permit fees, in order to send the proper message for how much these spaces are worth, and to discourage people from buying larger vehicles or multiple vehicles and expecting to be able to store the vehicles on the street.

This is what I wrote in last year's The revised revised People's Transportation Plan/2008 Transit-Transportation wish list:

[C]hange the residential parking permit system in DC to one that emphasizes the privilege, rather than the right, to park. 40% of the people in DC do not own cars. Why should the 60% that do be privileged with practically free parking spaces?

a. Residential parking permits should cost a lot more generally. As you probably know, Prof. Shoup estimates that the value of the public space on the street is about $1800 annually.

b. There should be a limit on how many residential parking permits can be issued per household. Only one car can fit in front of a typical rowhouse. Multiple cars per household should be discouraged.

c. The rate for residential parking permits should go up considerably for each additional permit per household address.

d. Parking permit rates should be weighted according to how large a car is, and its carbon footprint (maybe). One of the big problems I'd say anecdotally is that people in the city may only be buying one car, but it is much much larger than it used to be (an SUV). This further reduces available parking inventory for residents.

A SmartCar on East Capitol Street, Capitol Hill, DC

Note that the various plans for "improvements" of parking policies in residential districts are really further prioritization of resident demands for parking preferences, i.e., such as that being considered in Ward 1. The proposals provide additional protections for resident parking (which further privileges car owners at the expense of people who don't own cars) without adequately charging for it.

See "Night-time Public Hearing/Ward 1/Protecting Residential Parking" from the Councilmember Graham website and the proposed legislation.

It shows the absolute necessity of having a Master Transportation Plan comparable to that possessed by Arlington County and having an element on Parking and Curbside Management like they do.

It's not that the Comprehensive Plan doesn't address this issue. Here's what it says in the Transportation Element:

T-3.2 Curbside Management and Parking 415

Long- or short-term parking is part of almost every car trip, and parking—especially when free—is a key factor in the mode choice for a trip. The availability and price of parking can influence people’s choices about how to travel to work, shop, and conduct personal business. The District’s challenge, like that of many other major cities, is to manage limited curbside space to accommodate ever increasing parking demand. 415.1

There are approximately 400,000 parking spaces in the District of Columbia. The majority of these parking spaces (260,000) are on-street parallel-parking type spaces. About 6 percent of these on-street spaces (16,000) have parking meters. Another 140,000 parking spaces are located off-street in parking lots and garages. The majority of the off-street spaces are located in Downtown parking garages. 415.2.

And then this action

Action T-3.2.C: Curbside Management Techniques
Revise curbside management and on-street parking policies to adjust parking pricing to reflect:

a. the demand for and value of curb space;
b. adjust the boundaries for residential parking zones;
c. establish parking policies that respond to the different parking needs of different types of areas;
d. expand the times and days for meter parking enforcement in commercial areas;
e. promote management of parking facilities that serve multiple uses (e.g., commuters, shoppers, recreation, entertainment, churches, special events, etc.);
f. improve the flexibility and management of parking through midblock meters, provided that such meters are reasonably spaced and located to accommodate disabled and special needs populations;
g. preserve, manage, and increase alley space or similar off-street loading space; and
h. increase enforcement of parking limits, double-parking and other curbside violations, including graduated fines for repeat offenses and towing for violations on key designated arterials. 415.7

Action T-3.2.D: Unbundle Parking Cost
Find ways to “unbundle” the cost of parking from residential units, allowing those purchasing or renting property to opt out of buying or renting parking spaces. “Unbundling” should be required for District-owned or subsidized development, and the amount of parking in such development should not exceed that required by Zoning. Further measures to reduce housing costs associated with off-street parking requirements, including waived or reduced parking requirements in the vicinity of Metrorail stations and along major transit corridors, should be pursued during the revision of the Zoning Regulations. These efforts should be coupled with programs to better manage residential street parking in neighborhoods of high parking demand, including adjustments to the costs of residential parking permits. 415.8

This sentence bears repeating:

These efforts should be coupled with programs to better manage residential street parking in neighborhoods of high parking demand, including adjustments to the costs of residential parking permits.

Parking for residents is the "third rail" of local politics and the City Council does everything it can to avoid addressing this.

David Alpert of Greater Greater Washington rightly called me to task in the earlier version of this entry because I equated performance parking policies (better, market pricing of street parking, mostly in commercial areas) with residential parking policy initiatives.

One of the reasons though that some of the performance parking policies bug me has to do with restrictions on parking on side streets (remember that I do commercial district-retail revitalization consulting) and that the residents are getting almost a complete free ride on the cost of these spaces.

WMATA circuit failure

Apparently, the Frederick (Maryland) News-Post, in "Source: Metro circuits were malfunctioning for five days," reported one week before the Washington Post, about the nature of the circuit failure on the subway's Red Line, which led to the Monday June 22nd crash and nine deaths.

Reading the original article:

The documents show what is known as "flip-flopping," with the circuit alternately reporting the track as "occupied" and then "vacant." The report for track circuit number B2-304, where the stopped train was located, starts at 4:45 p.m. and ends at 5:38 p.m., about 40 minutes after the crash.

Throughout the time period covered by the report, the circuit shows the track either occupied or vacant as often as every couple of seconds.

At 4:57:03 p.m., about the time of the crash, the report shows the track to be vacant until 5:37:44, when it reports the track is occupied. Less than a minute later, the report again states the track was vacant, even though train wreckage was on the track. One second after that, the track was reportedly occupied again. The circuit flip-flopped again before finally showing the track to be occupied at 5:38:40.

and reading the Post article, "Metro Failed to Detect Hazard Before Deadly Crash," it appears as if WMATA leaders understate the significance of the problem:

Five days before last week's deadly Red Line accident, a Metro crew replaced a key piece of equipment designed to prevent crashes, but the circuitry malfunctioned and no one at Metro detected the problem, investigators and transit officials said yesterday. ...

n the aftermath of the crash on the Red Line between the Takoma and Fort Totten stations, Metro officials analyzed track circuit data and found that one circuit in the crash area intermittently lost its ability to detect a train. The circuit would report the presence of a train one moment, then a few seconds later the train would "disappear," only to return again.

The problem started shortly after June 17, when a Metro crew replaced a device known as a Wee-Z bond, a crucial part of the system that maintains a safe distance between trains, said Dave Kubicek, Metro's rail chief.

Instead of completely failing, the track circuit "fluttered" on and off so quickly that, Kubicek said, the failure would not have been obvious in Metro's downtown operations center, where controllers monitor real-time movement of trains by watching an illuminated graphic depiction of the 106-mile railroad.

"It was happening so fast, you would just blink and miss it," he said. "Realistically, you had to be looking at the exact area at the exact place" at the exact time.

It seems that at some point over five days, this problem should have been detected. It wasn't. And that newly installed circuits should have been rigorously tested after installation...

The Greatest generation, beaten generation and the blank generation and urban revival

I have spent about 10 years as a heavily involved urban advocate, specifically in DC, starting with land use, realizing the value of historic preservation, moving into commercial district revitalization and then recognizing the primacy of the importance of transit. As a person committed to good government, civic engagement, and participatory democracy I care about that too. And about the quality of and the knowledge that undergirds our participation in local civic affairs.

When I first came to DC I worked for a consumer group that had Nader lineage, so I spent a fair amount of time thinking about and observing the process of effecting social change. (In college I also became enamored with the field of organizational development.) And I also learned about marketing, direct marketing, social marketing, and publishing. (And I had begun learning about community organizing in college.)

All this and more (including a childhood off and on spent living in Detroit, then its suburbs), every place I visit, every book and report I read, every conference or meeting I attend, and every planning process I am involved in has shaped my thinking.

I spend a lot of time thinking about organizations and processes and structures and systems, with the belief that strong systems yield, albeit not uniformly, superior outcomes. And I think a lot of time about the difficulty of working to effect change, and the frequent failures to do so.

For many years, I've said that the problem in many neighborhoods is a leadership deficit, and backwards looking leaders. Sometimes I call this a problem of legacy leadership, which is often stultified and fails to think broadly and about the future.

Neighborhood involvement is typically focused on keeping things the same, especially if things are relatively good, but even if they are not.

So my shorthand thinking about the state of organizing and involvement in DC at present is organized along this typology.

1. Greatest Generation or Legacy Generation (using the term from the title of Tom Brokaw's book)

These are the people, including the beginnings of the historic preservation movement, who stayed in the city or moved to the city during the many decades that the city declined, when living and commercial trends favored the suburbs and when businesses and residents abandoned the city (even without riots or desegregation) as part of these trends.

These people saved the great urban qualities of the city, especially through the use of historic preservation policies, and stabilized the city when it was shrinking in population.

But they definitely are shaped by the automobile and don't see their way towards more urban optimal mobility methods.

A 1965 Pontiac GTO unveiled at an automobile show. Photographer unknown.

2. The Beaten Generation (using the title from the song "The Beat(en) Generation" by The The) is my generation, probably people in their 30s and 40s and 50s, people who have been working on community issues for awhile.

For the most part, while pro-urban, most of the people in this cohort are shaped by the suburban development and planning paradigm. They think uses should be separated and that people for the most part do and/or should travel by car. Even though they live in the city, they think auto first. But they may use the subway system even if they can afford to own a car...

(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Given my music references, you can tell this is my generation. But for the most part, people make distinctly nonurban choices, especially concerning local land use and transportation decision making, because they don't understand how deeply imprinted they are by suburban-appropriate (a/k/a urban-inappropriate) decision making structures and paradigms.

Some of the people in this generation are fully happy to reap the benefits of the hard work of the Greatest Generation while denigrating and not understanding their contribution. (To this I attribute some of the opposition to historic preservation.)

3. The Blank Generation (based on a song entitled BLANK GENERATION by Richard Hell and the Voidoids) are the younger people of today, in their 20s and early 30s up to 40, enamored of technology and technocracy and thinking they know everything (I probably had this problem when I was that age, but I always paid attention to evidence and had and have a kind of academic approach to knowledge and objectivity), but often lack the wisdom and the depth to really know what they are talking about, and therefore provide incomplete if not "crippled" solutions when they offer/write solutions. The jury is out about the maturation process.

(This is the age group of many in the current municipal government administration in DC. Us old people are out of luck.)

Cities (!) (?)

It's not news (e.g., this Post article from 2007, "Growth Cooling in D.C. Suburbs, Census Data Show") that given the housing crash, center cities in strong real estate markets are seeing population increases. See today's AP story "Census: Big cities now growing quicker: Housing crunch, recession and gas prices have slowed migration to suburbs."

From the article:

"Cities are showing a continued vitality as hubs of activity even as some suburban and exurban areas go through tough times," said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. "It emphasizes the buoyancy of large established cities with diverse economies and populations." ...

Transit helps growth
Robert E. Lang, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, predicted that upscale, inner suburbs with developed transit systems will see bigger gains in the future. He noted that while far-flung exurbs have been steadily losing population, closer-in Virginia suburbs such as Arlington and Alexandria just outside Washington, D.C., jumped 3 percent and 2.9 percent in 2008, respectively, to rank among the 20 fastest-growing cities.

"In Arlington and Alexandria, we're seeing hints of a new growth model," Lang said, citing changing demographics in which there are fewer U.S. households with kids. "These were places that were losing population. But they tore down the shopping malls, developed the transit system and put up apartment housing to accommodate singles and childless couples," he said. "They're a decade ahead of Lakewood, Colo., Tempe, Ariz., and other Sunbelt regions that now have transit."

That being said, the housing market in relatively strong center city markets has still declined, especially for multiunit condominium and/or apartment buildings, and there are still plenty of foreclosures in cities. And the center cities need to continue to improve their offer as well, in order to remain competitive with other in-region locations that also enjoy high demand and some of the same positive market conditions.

But in terms of holding value, cities, especially if they are on the coasts, or have other market strengthening aspects (i.e., being the state capital) are increasingly able to hold their own.

Also see:

-- "Leinberger at Urban Land Institute" (Philadelphia Business Journal) about the book, Option of Urbanism
-- Who Lives Downtown? (Brookings)
-- Get Urban!

So it is interesting, that Fairfax County is thinking "urban" according to today's Washington Post article, "Fairfax Executive Suggests Dropping 'County'," that the County is thinking of reorganizing its government as a city. This would change its relationship with the state. Virginia has a "weird" law where cities and counties are legally separate entities. (This by the way makes it impossible for sharing sales tax revenues across jurisdictions, which is something that kills Petersburg in relation to Colonial Heights and the county in its part of Virginia south of Richmond.) City residents, such as in Fairfax City, pay city taxes and vote for elected officials for the city, but they do not vote for County officials or pay County taxes. (It's different in Maryland.)

From the article:

It might not be known for its nightlife or cosmopolitan flair, but Fairfax County Executive Anthony H. Griffin suggested yesterday that it might be time for his urbanizing community to become a full-fledged city.

Griffin told the Board of Supervisors that city status would allow Fairfax greater autonomy over taxes and transportation. But it would also turn the tables on the nearby capital city: With 1 million residents, a new Fairfax City would dwarf the District of Columbia, which has fewer than 600,000. (Set aside for a moment that the county already surrounds a smaller Fairfax City.)

But Fairfax County is big, just about 400 square miles. In fact, DC's population of about 600,000 is on 61 square miles of land, while Fairfax has slightly over 1 million residents, who are vastly more spread out.

Washington Post graphic.

So as an urban county-city in Virginia, Fairfax would be more modeled after Houston, Texas (600 square miles) than Arlington (23 square miles) or Alexandria (15 square miles). Richmond is 60 square miles and Virginia Beach is 248 square miles. However, two cities, Chesapeake and Suffolk, merged into their respective counties, so the county is a city, technically, and they are 341 and 400 square miles respectively, close to the size of Virginia's Fairfax County.

(Note that when I do commercial district revitalization framework planning in other places, which tend to be small, I think often that the local city and the county should merge, such as how Louisville and Lexington Kentucky have merged with their respective counties, and how Pittsburgh should merge with Allegheny County. On the other hand, I can see the value of having local and responsive government too, i.e., places like Mount Rainier and Hyattsville in Prince George's County get their trash picked up, the streets plowed quickly when it snows, and more responsive and quicker policing...)

Big digs, tunnels and DC's New York Avenue

We all know about Boston's Big Dig project, which removed I-95 as a scar across the city of Boston, and tunneled it, although the project wasn't perfect and there were serious cost overruns. (See the Boston Globe special webpage "Beyond The Big Dig" and the AP story "Boston's 'Big Dig' finally opens to public.")

Inga Saffron, the urban design writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote a long piece about how Philadelphia needs to consider a "Big Dig" of their own. See "Deep Deep six for I-95 by Penn's Landing? Boston's Big Dig has gotten planners here thinking about tearing up a riverfront section. Traffic experts fear a big snag." (Note also that urban planner Joseph Passonneau around 2000 suggested that the Southeast-Southwest Freeway in DC should be converted to a street level boulevard. See "HISTORY OF THE SOUTH CAPITOL STREET STUDY AREA: HOW THE STUDY AREA CAME TO EXHIBIT ITS PRESENT CONDITIONS.")

DC's New York Avenue functions in part as a freeway connector between I-95 and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in Maryland and I-95, via I-395 in DC and Virginia, in Virginia. Much of the traffic on the street is "through" traffic going to Virginia or Maryland, while a significant amount is traffic of people coming to and leaving DC specifically, and it also functions as a local road for people within DC.

From time to time I forget that DC's New York Avenue Corridor Study did propose to tunnel New York Avenue in part. But for cost reasons, they didn't make the recommendation that New York Avenue, be tunneled from the DC-Maryland border to the connection with I-395. Instead, they proposed that a tunnel start around the Union Station railyard (North Capitol Street) and from there to downtown.

New York Avenue, DC, Average Daily Traffic Volumes (2000). DDOT image.

There needs to be a true re-do of that corridor, and a tunnel from the border probably is in order, although how to pay for it is another question. One way in part would be to create a massive urban renewal district from the DC-Maryland border to the New York Avenue-New Jersey Avenue NW connection to I-395.

At the eastern end, there are two 17 acre parcels (Abdo, Hecht warehouse), plus property as part of Fort Lincoln that had been slated to become a big box shopping center, and other development opportunities. At the western end, the land currently occupied by I-395 between K Street and New York Avenue could be recaptured and developed, and there are parcels abutting City Vista at 5th and K also, among others.

Bonds could be let against future increases in tax revenue. But all the bond money should go to building a tunnel and surface streetscape improvements, and maybe some transit improvements.