From a walkability and the perspective of smaller scale buildings and businesses Silver Spring is grotesque

So using that as an example of how H Street NE should build parking lots to accommodate theatergoers from the suburbs is likely a mistake. See yesterday's letter to the editor by Fran Rothstein, "No Place to Park," in the Post:

I've been a subscriber to H Street's African Continuum Theatre Company for several years. Parking near the theater has never been easy, and the June 25 Business story on H Street's resurgence suggests it will only get worse. We can't even get to the theater early to park and eat dinner, because there are no restaurants, just fast-food places and bars.

Without a Metro stop and with no parking lots, H Street won't ever rival U Street, as the article claimed it does. Silver Spring is a terrific success story, yet even with a Metro stop its popularity is tied to the safe parking lots that are free on evenings and weekends.

Why not emulate that strategy on H Street?

Uh, because. Things will get better because what transportation researchers call "accessibility"--places to go and things to do--will increase, in close proximity, allowing people to travel on foot from place to place. And with a coming streetcar system, mobility--the ability to get to and from places efficiently and quickly--will only increase.

If Ms. Rothstein would take the bus she could take the 70 from Silver Spring and transfer to the X bus at 7th and H Streets NW--but it would take a long long time. The thing to do is to have shared parking systems. People are working on that. But Hechinger Mall is there with plenty of parking. Other places too. The real issue is accessibility. Likely someone like Ms. Rothstein doesn't think dinner at Cluck U Chicken is the be all and end all of a night out. Many of us have been making the same arguments for many many many years...

See "About H Street Main Street -- My opinion," originally written in August 2004.

This is interesting because a similar response happened on the HistoricWashington e-list in response to the article about testimony re: zoning (from the Current reprinted in a blog entry a couple days ago).

This was my response:

Re: In Europe people use public transportation because it is very convenient and available. It is not in the DC metropolitan area.

The whole point with transportation policy [in DC] is to focus on DC. My area of focus isn't the metropolitan area. The most significant part of my testimony wasn't recounted in that article. That is that transportation and land use planning and zoning must be intertwined into a linked paradigm. Without doing so, DC will become more like the suburbs. That has been happening for 50 years anyway because the zoning code is oriented to support driving rather than walkability and transit.

In other writings I make the pont that at the core of the city, which I define on the northwest to be from Van Ness and to Brookland on the northeast, down to Foggy Bottom on the west and to Stadium-Armory on the east, where there are 29 subway stations, that the transit system acts "monocentrically" rather than "polycentrically." The latter is a system oriented to the suburbs, the former is a transit system for the people within that 15 square mile area.

It's interesting for me because most of the time I've lived in the core of the city--in the H Street and Capitol Hill neighborhoods--which may not have amenities (the definition of accessibility in transportation research lingo means places to go) but has urban form and density. Now I work in Brookland, which is fundamentally automobile centric--having been developed originally as a trolley suburb.

In Capitol Hill many people don't drive, or drive rarely. And people walk to places. People walk to the subway, at distances that can be much greater than 1/4 mile. In the area north of H Street, things have changed considerably since the opening of the NY Avenue subway station, and much greater use of the subway station, and people walking on the streets to and from work, is happening there. In Brookland, people walk to the subway some, but mostly people drive. You rarely see bike riders in Brookland. The commercial district is mostly patronized by drivers.

Your suggestion of not doing anything, or supporting the car, only means that automobility will supplant foot-based urbanity. I choose to not go that route. Fortunately, the car lovers aren't the ones likely to go testify before the Zoning Commission.*
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* That's not really true. Most neighborhood-based testimony in cases before the Zoning Commission and the Board of Zoning Adjustment ends up being very pro car.
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Note that supporting neighborhood commercial districts and walking communities and urban form supports historic preservation in a city where most of the neighborhoods, especially at the core of the city, were constructed before 1920.

In 2002, DC Office of Planning released a very good report on "transit oriented development."

TOD is big amongst smart growth proponents.

But the reality is that TOD is merely gussying up for the 21st century the urban and development form of the walking (1800-1890) and transit city (1890-1920) eras.

A major point that I made in my testimony is that in the context of the region, because of the density of transit connections in the core, DC once again possesses competitive advantage around mobility--the ease and speed of getting around--because of transit, whereas the auto-dependent suburbs experience more and more congestion (on roads like Rockville Pike and Rte. 7 and other key arterials) which can't be addressed in fundamental ways because it is impossible to solve focusing on cars as the solution.

The reality is that cars are the problem.

The subway can move 21,000+ people/per hour in the equivalent of one lane mile of road. A freeway can move about 2,000 cars/hour in one lane mile of road. An arterial maybe 1,300 cars/hour.

As I said in the testimony, zoning should be about maintaining, strengthening, and extending the qualities that make DC a great place to live, work, and visit.

Strengthening the urban form and mixed use principles strengthens accessiblity and makes transit more efficient.

And that's what I advocate for, along with historic preservation, civic engagement, good government, commercial district revitalization, the development of independent retail, etc.