LEED and "greenwashing"

Definition of greenwashing:

From "Some Buildings Not Living Up to Green Label" in the New York Times:

The Federal Building in downtown Youngstown, Ohio, features an extensive use of natural light to illuminate offices and a white roof to reflect heat.

But the building is hardly a model of energy efficiency. According to an environmental assessment last year, it did not score high enough to qualify for the Energy Star label granted by the Environmental Protection Agency, which ranks buildings after looking at a year’s worth of utility bills.

The building’s cooling system, a major gas guzzler, was one culprit. Another was its design: to get its LEED label, it racked up points for things like native landscaping rather than structural energy-saving features, according to a study by the General Services Administration, which owns the building.

Builders covet LEED certification — it stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design — as a way to gain tax credits, attract tenants, charge premium rents and project an image of environmental responsibility. But the gap between design and construction, which LEED certifies, and how some buildings actually perform led the program last week to announce that it would begin collecting information about energy use from all the buildings it certifies.

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Native landscaping is important. But a system of evaluation on environment- and energy- sensitive construction should be weighted towards energy consumption, not other glitz. Period. And should take into account the cost of losing embodied energy, i.e., demolition of buildings and replacement.

The best way to build in a manner that promotes energy conservation is compact development that promotes walkability and transit use. It's like health care, I read something last week that says 80% of people's health and wellness can be influenced by diet and exercise and not smoking. With energy saving in the built environment, build for long term use, in an energy efficient way, in a spatial pattern that isn't based on automobility.

As long as you drive to a "LEED certified" building, you aren't doing much for the environment, even if you drive a hybrid, you're still driving. And sure, while I support electric cars and recognize that we will be using coal to make energy (electricity) for a long time, it does have negative impact on the environment. So not driving, electricity or not, is even better...

Volunteer for National Public Lands Day, Sept. 26

From the AP story:

Some 130,000 volunteers are expected to spend National Public Lands Day, September 26th, working in parks, beaches and wildlife reserves to build trails, remove garbage and pull up invasive plants.

Many locations are also offering crafts, kid's activities, barbecues and campouts.

The event is a program of the National Environmental Education Foundation.

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(We have "public lands" in cities too.)

Provision of public services and recreational centers

Is something that I have had some important realizations about that have shaped my understanding about the need to build more robust planning processes.

For a few years I have been writing about municipal facilities planning, and the need to have a more coordinated process. (Often this is called co-location, where facilities and programs of at least two agencies are delivered in one place.)

For the most part, DC has separated facilities.

And for the most part, DC's separated facilities are the same everywhere.

One of my realizations is that cities like DC need to plan for programs and facilities on at least 3 levels:

1. City-wide;
2. Sub-city districts (in DC, you could do this by quadrants, the city has four, or by Wards, the city has eight, although the boundaries change after each Census, by "Cluster, the city has defined 39, or by "Areas," in the most recent Comprehensive Plan, 10 areas with fixed boundaries were defined, and replaced ward-based sub-plans); and
3. Neighborhoods

This doesn't necessarily mean plans for every cluster, although under the Williams Administration, budget planning was supposed to be defined at that level and one of the first steps of the Williams Administration in 2001 was for each cluster to do a plan.

I thought that the process was constrained, that by planning through the lens of DC government agencies and how they spent money, without being able to have much influence on those agencies, and without taking the time to state what mattered most, and without inventorying the various civic assets within "clusters" as part of these plans, that a lot was missed.

DC's 39 clusters. I think this process may be being abandoned. Plans, or "documents," because most weren't really "plans" the way I would define a plan, were released in 2002 and haven't been updated.

While for a different purpose, the way that the West End Visioning Process I worked on with the Foggy Bottom Association, the Dupont Circle Citizens Association, and the local ANCs there, was designed to look more carefully at the set of public assets within a community, and work towards a shared consensus and planning method that addressed the issues around these facilities in a coordinated and complementary fashion.

The Post had a story on DC recreation centers yesterday, "Recreation Funds Flow Freely in D.C.: Fenty Promotes New Pools and Playgrounds, but Can City Afford Them?."

The article doesn't say much that isn't already in the headline.

I have blogged about this issue a fair amount, in "Prototyping and municipal capital improvement programs,"Dispuptive innovation (once again)," "Chauvinism, mediocrity and robust systems," and "Social Marketing the Arlington (and Tower Hamlets and Baltimore) way," and "Another take on municipal capital improvement planning."

These paragraphs from the last entry summarize my argument:

I commented how under the Williams Administration, DC entered into a massive rehabilitation and expansion of recreation centers, but that the program of offerings was never really evaluated, meaning that each center is the same, and an evaluation of the recreation centers comprehensively as a set of offerings on a city-wide and sub-city "regional" basis wasn't performed, so needed facilities on a city-wide basis (i.e., indoor track, exposition center, etc.) were neither considered nor built, so a lot of money was spent but while better facilities were achieved, a significantly improved array of recreation programs weren't obtained.

(The Fenty Administration is doing the same thing.)

Seeing this article from the Boston Globe, albeit about a private facility, the YMCA in Marblehead, Massachusetts, makes me think about these examples again. See "New YMCA dazzles and delights with bells, whistles, and ballet." The new YMCA has a climbing wall, a wi-fi cafe, and ballet studios, among other facilities--making the point again about the need for expansive consideration when embarking on the construction of municipal facilities that serve the public directly.

Most capital improvement projects are generational--designed to last at least 30 years without significant change. So having the right planning process upfront is crucial to doing it right.

It's a shame that we spend so much money on facilities such as libraries, schools, recreation centers, and senior wellness centers, and don't achieve nearly what could be achieved, if we had more expansive and visionary thinking about what these facilities could accomplish for both the neighborhoods and the city as a whole.

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DC doesn't have a public waterpark, it doesn't have any public indoor tracks, or relatively low cost "exposition" facilities. Facilities to support artists are limited. Etc.

It has senior wellness centers separate from public recreation centers, even though the former buildings are most likely used during the day, and rec centers experience the greatest amount of use in the late afternoon and evening.

If first we set citywide goals of what we want--e.g., one waterpark, 2-3 indoor tracks, heated outdoor pools (see "D.C. Installs City's First Pool Heater at East Potomac Facility" from the Post), various artist and continuing education facilities, exposition type space (right now only the DC Armory or the Convention Center have this kind of space, and it is mostly out of the price range of community and civic organizations) based on our population and the number of facilities required to meet community needs--such programs and facilities could be provided, distributed across the city, but located within "neighborhood" recreation centers that serve DC residents more generally as well as neighborhood residents.

Collectively residents would be offered a wide array of facilities and programs, maybe not necessarily within their neighborhoods only, but within a reasonable distance from where they live--DC isn't that big after all.

That to me is one of the most damning aspects of DC Government, what agencies do and how they plan, and planning generally.

The city, by failing to plan and creatively use the plenitude of resources at its disposal, offers less to its residents than the nearby counties. Even Arlington, which is about 1/3 the size and population of DC, offers its residents more.

To me, this was a major failing of yesterday's Post article, which failed to compare to DC to the surrounding jurisdictions, and to look more carefully at how the planning is conducted.

And yes, it is a travesty that Mayor Fenty's name is pasted over a soccer field ("Mayor Unveils 'Fenty Field'" from the Post). Maybe we could start imprinting the names of elected officials in park grass cutting too.

It totally blows the opportunity of "diversity" (and compactness) that Jane Jacobs discusses in Death and Life of Great American Cities, where she writes:

To understand cities, we have to deal outright with combinations or mixtures of uses, not separate uses, as the essential phenomena. We have already seen the importance of this in the case of neighborhood parks. Parks can easily--to easily--be thought of as phenomena in their own right and described as adequate or inadequate in terms, say, of acreage rations to thousands of population. Such an approach tells us something about the methods of planners, but it tells us nothing useful about the behavior or value of neighborhood parks.

A mixture of uses, if it is to be sufficiently complex to sustain city safety, public contact and cross-use, needs an enormous diversity of ingredients. So the first question--and I think by far the most important question--about planning cities is this: How can cities generate enough mixtures among uses--enough diversity--throughout enough of their territories, to sustain their own civilization. (p. 144)

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Speaking of not prototyping nor learning from mistakes

North Michigan Park Recreation Center restrooms
Originally uploaded by rllayman

From email:

The Department of Parks and Recreation invites you to the North Michigan Park Community Meeting

Friday, February 11, 2008
6:30pm - 8:30pm
North Michigan Park Community Center
1333 Emerson Street, NE

This meeting will discuss the re-design of excessive bathroom space at North Michigan Park Community Center.

For more information, please contact Jackie Stanley, at 202-671-0420.

Image from the Washington Post article from 2006, "DC Recreation Center Rich With Restrooms."

Doing the right thing ain't easy

Earlier this week, the Examiner had an article about the redevelopment of a former problem commercial site at 15th and C Streets SE, "Condos replace loathed carry-out in Hill East." The site is on the corner of an otherwise residential block. The article reported that some residents appreciate the change but decry the condominium units that have been built in the above floors. (The ground floor unit is still reserved for retail.) From the article:

"You've created on this one block, condo alley," said Neil Glick, Hill East advisory neighborhood commissioner. "You've totally destroyed the character of a residential street of houses. I don't think it's progress at all."

Jim Myers, longtime Hill East activist, dubbed the redeveloped block "Condo Canyon."

This is odd.

While it happens that for a brief period in 1990 and 1991 I lived a block away at 14th and D Streets SE (and I remember a police helicopter, in search of criminals, landing on the grounds of the same Payne Elementary School mentioned in the story), it is insane to conflate one block of the Hill East neighborhood to all of Capitol Hill, or even to say that the block is completely changed by the addition of two condo buildings.

There is another condo building across the street and I do agree that the building isn't done very well, at least the top of the building (cornice area) is pretty damn ugly, but the overwhelming character of the block is single family attached rowhousing. How many condo units are on the block anyway, 25?


In any event, the block isn't destroyed and neither is the rowhouse character of the greater neighborhood. If the cornice/roof line of the building was decent, likely if I lived on the block the addition of this building wouldn't have bothered me.

Although I can't imagine this kind of neighborhood opposition bodes well for the eventual redevelopment of the Safeway supermarket site a couple blocks away. Unfortunately, I don't have easy access to complete building data ward-by-ward, this will have to suffice:

Census data, housing units, Ward 6, Washington DC, 2000 Census. This data does make clear that likely 1/2 of all housing units in Ward 6 are detached or semi-detached rowhouses. And probably as many as 3/4 of all residential buildings in Ward 6 are rowhouses.

(Disclosure 1: I know one of the principals in the firm doing the redevelopment. Disclosure 2: for a long time I've wanted to do an alley tour of that area, including Kings Court on the block across the street.)

It is true that this is change. But the way it is characterized reflects an incredibly strong parochialism, one that is pretty dismissive of providing a means for new housing to be added and different types of people to be accommodated within extant neighborhoods.

Basically what they are saying is that only people with the means to buy a single family house should be able to live in their neighborhood.

How not to do "transportation demand management"

I had forgotten about the Washington Redskins latest revenue generation technique, charging a fee for parking on every ticket (see "You'll pay a parking fee at FedExField - even when you don't come in a car" from the Washington City Paper) until I listened to last week's Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU-Radio show partially about transportation, which featured WRC-TV reporter Tom Sherwood and Arlington County Board member Chris Zimmerman, among others.

Sherwood talked with Kojo about how DC Government is still talking with the Redskins about relocating back to the city. One of the things that he said is that the Redskins stadium generates $20 million annually for Prince George's County. Other reporting, such as this article from the Post, "Md. Weighs Stadium for D.C. United: Study Will Gauge Pr. George's Benefits," from last year, says differently.

PG County nets $10 million in Redskins-related economic benefit, but 80% comes from the additional tax on concessions and tickets. Even $10 million annually might not be an adequate return on investment in terms of what was expended by the State of Maryland and the County to land this facility.

Without the tax on tickets, PG County would make only $2 million/year from the stadium.

But I digress....

Redskins stadium in the distance. Katherine Frey, Washington Post.

While I believe that stadiums and arenas should be required to do transportation demand management planning, the parking charge by the Redskins is a travesty (yes I know people tailgate). People should be encouraged to carpool or use transit, and the parking charge doesn't do that, since people pay regardless of how they get there.

From the City Paper article:

Area rock and soccer fans these days are feeling Snyder’s parking genius, right in their pocketbooks. Paul McCartney and Real Madrid v. D.C. United played at Snyder’s FexExField this month, and U2 is coming next month. For every ticket sold to these events, Snyder has tacked on a parking charge, from $5 to $10, in addition to all the other fees (Ticketmaster and the like). This is in addition to the advertised admission charge.

So, if you drove with five people to the McCartney show, you will have paid $60 for a parking spot in a Godforsaken portion of Prince George’s County. And if you took those same five people on the Metro with you, you will have paid $60 to not park in a Godforsaken portion of Prince George’s County.

In "The Stadium of the Future" (also see "HOK Imagines the Ballpark of the Future") Fast Company magazine reports that with proper planning, a significant number of fans will come to the event via public transit. From the article:

NO PARKING ZONE

Noticeably absent: parking. Last year, 53% of visitors to Washington's Nationals Park came via the Metro, a trend that's expected to grow. Ideally, residents park off-site and ride light rail (or maglev trains, in this rendering), allowing better -- and more revenue-generating -- use of space than parking lots.

Transportation demand management requirements, not just a parking charge benefiting the stadium owner, should be mandatory for stadiums/arenas and the events held within.

If Nationals or Wizards or Capitals tickets were each assessed a $10 fee for transportation demand management, there would be justifiable rebellion... But Verizon Center (and RFK) and Nationals Stadium abut transit, even if the power of transit connections vary (Verizon Center is served by all five subway lines without necessarily having to transfer--if you are willing to walk from Metro Center...).

McKinsey: Personal Changes that actually reduce global warming vs. perception

#1 should be using transit, walking or bicycling
and then the #1 on this list should be #2

From email:



Also, this was a fun back page feature in a recent issue of Fast Company, A Tongue-in-Cheek Guide for Green Gadget Buyers. Here's one of the entries:

Smartercar

Introducing the only human-powered, zero-emissions vehicle on the market! SmarterCar is based on proven technology handed down from 19th-century German artisans. Municipalities are adapting their infrastructures to accommodate this hot transport unit, which is out-of-the-box compliant with all major traffic laws.

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I need to put a brick in our toilet tanks...

Creative and business clusters

The New York Times reports, in "New York City Seeks to Shore Up Shrinking Garment District" of city plans to retain the Fashion District, by slimming it down to a smaller area and refocusing. This is necessary because manufacturing has for the large part moved off shore, and parts of the business cluster are hollowing out.

And the Chicago Tribune reports that the City of Chicago wants to seed new business development in the industrial space of old. See "Artists courted for idea factories: Old industrial district offers an affordable place to work."

As I have written before, most recently here, "Art, culture districts, and revitalization," DC people seem to have a hard time understanding the basic concepts of how innovation and economic development works, based on various ideas ranging from Everett Rogers on innovation diffusion to AnnaLee Saxenian on agglomeration benefits and industrial clusters, as well as the most basic ideas of Jane Jacobs, especially in Economy of Cities and Cities and the Wealth of Nations.

According to the Washington Business Journal, in "Report: D.C. must rethink economic development" certain quarters within DC are expressing concerns about the nature of our local economy, although I would argue that the "problem" is more complicated than the argument expressed by those quoted in the article. (I haven't read the original report yet, so I don't know whether or not I agree with its conclusions.)

The point made is that the DC government focuses on real estate development as its primary economic development strategy*. I guess that's true, but it's a tricky issue. From the article:

A strategic refocusing on job growth may be afoot. In recent weeks, Richard Bradley, executive director of the Downtown Business Improvement District, has been presenting the findings of a report he and Neil Albert, Santos’ predecessor, commissioned late last year to look at ways to craft a broader economic development strategy for the city and region.

Bradley said the message of the report, prepared by consultant McKinsey & Co., is clear: The Washington area can add jobs and improve their quality by focusing on industries primed for growth by the federal government.

“The city has been so focused on land development rather than on business development,” he said. “And we have been lucky because industries sort of naturally came to us. Well, we can’t rely on that anymore.”

Tops on the list are three sectors where the government is making or planning profound changes: finance, health care and energy. Some of this isn’t new. D.C. is already considering the possibility of adding “green” jobs, as many as 169,000 by 2018, according to an Office of Planning study.

But Bradley said the city needs to look at ways to become the place to be for companies and agencies addressing changes in other industries. For instance, D.C., home to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, could become the hub for the national movement to digitize medical records. And with the departments of Commerce and Treasury around the corner, finance represents a huge opportunity.

The reason that the quotes come across as a bit nonsensical is that the article reports that jobs based in DC have declined and that the Downtown DC BID is calling for a further focus on attracting federal government-related jobs in order to counteract this drop.

This is magical thinking. The federal government is based here already. Why are the number of jobs shrinking is the question that needs to be asked and properly answered.

It's for a number of reasons. Government jobs in DC are administrative for the most part, they are management-related jobs, they aren't jobs focused on creating or monetizing knowledge and product development and production.

Unlike universities like Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Stanford University (both universities are well-known for seeding their regions with engineering-related prowess and spinoff businesses), the universities located within DC are more focused on the social sciences. Yes, CUA and Howard do have engineering schools, and GWU, Howard, and Georgetown's medical schools also do some research, but none of these schools are known for seeding major businesses.

Except for the Naval Research Laboratory in SE DC, the big research agencies of the federal government (DARPA of the Dept. of Defense, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Science and Technology, National Science Foundation) are based in the suburbs.

Similarly, the telecommunications-related businesses that located here either because of DARPA (which funded what became the Internet) or proximity to the FCC (to which they had to lobby incessantly for approval)--MCI, XM Satellite, WorldSpace, Intelsat, ended up not having enough of a critical mass to be able to survive here (there are a myriad of other reasons for this also).

If you want "doing-related" jobs in the city, we need to focus on government agencies and organizations that help to "make things" rather than manage. And on having the kinds of spaces that these kinds of businesses need in order to develop. I think that groups like the Downtown DC BID and the DC Economic Partnership are pointing out issues, but I don't think they understand how to address the issues that they uncover.

Empty warehouses on Channing Street NE, abutting the Metropolitan Branch/red line subway tracks.

(Note also that Catholic University kicks around the idea of building a research campus-tech park on land that they acquired from the Armed Forces Retirement Home. Similarly, some of the land/buildings on the AFRH campus could be used to seed science-engineering related business development. Plus these places are located near the Washington Hospital Center, which could be better leveraged for medical-related research and business development.)

For example, the Washington Post's Virginia Extra editions reported recently on how a science cluster of businesses is developing in the Ballston area of Arlington, in part because of how the National Science Foundation has located there. See "Science Firms Find Company In Ballston: Like-Minded Businesses Give Area Specific Brand."

Similarly, biotechnology businesses have located within the I-270 corridor in Montgomery County, because of the proximity of the National Institutes of Health, located in Bethesda. (See "Lost promise: Can region's shrinking biotech sector bounce back after big hits?" [subscription required for access] from the Washington Business Journal.)

In other words, for DC to become a center for various technologies, it needs to have technologists.

Relatedly then, for DC to take a leading role in computerizing medical records (something I wanted to do a tv show about in 1994, back when I did teleconferences about enterprise computing issues), you need a strong center for computer and software engineering.

Given today's Post article about the failures of an enterprise computing system to manage student scheduling for the Price George's County Public Schools, in "Scheduling Flaw Known Before School Started: Pr. George's 'Ran Out of Time' to Fix It," it's fair to say that our region isn't quite that center of expertise at the present time.

Although I will say that my first response to this article in today's Post, about attempts to get the Food and Drug Administration to relocate to Prince George's County from Montgomery County, see "HHS Might Move From Rockville to Prince George's: Developers Propose Sites Near Metro," was why shouldn't DC try to get the FDA to instead relocate to the Walter Reed Campus on Georgia Avenue in upper NW DC, as the federal government is giving up more of the campus than originally anticipated.

The Post article states that the HHS is seeking about 1 million square feet of office space. It's not that much in reality, translating to about 4,000 to 5,000 workers, but it's something...
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* Elsewhere, I have argued that there is a difference between "economic development" as conceptualized within typical economic development elements within Comprehensive Land Use Plans and "building a local economy."

Often, typical ED elements are happy with anything, not really concerned about more nuanced and wide ranging consideration of the various aspects that contribute to a balanced and growing local economy.

Some day, maybe I'll write a journal article about it. I hope to get a crack at doing some community economic development/strategy plans, where these ideas can be further developed.

Eastbank Commerce Center, Loading Docks, Portland Oregon.

Portland revised its industrial zoning code to preserve this kind of space by broadening the array of acceptable uses, such as software engineering and graphic design, rather than merely let all the properties be converted into housing. See this article, "East-side awakening," from a 2002 issue of the Portland Tribune.

Also see:

- Projects: Central Eastside: Portland Development Commission

- Central Eastside Industrial Council

- No Vacancy! Exploring Temporary Use of Empty Space in the Central Eastside Industrial District (a Portland State University student project)

Flawed argumentation on transit and high speed rail

I've been meaning to write about Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson's screed on Monday against high speed rail ("A Rail Boondoggle, Moving at High Speed") all week, and in the meantime, many others have jumped in with excellent responses, in particular the Transport Politic's Yonah Freemark, in "Fighting Ourselves Over Funding for Intracity Versus Intercity Transportation."

I was going to focus on the irony of how the day before in the Post, they reviewed the book $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better by Christopher Steiner, in "What's The Big Idea?," and the author's point that as oil prices continue to rise, the newly higher price of gasoline will trigger significant changes in how we behave, our attitudes, and how commerce is organized.

What people take for granted is a belief that how things are today--current conditions we planners call this--will always remain the same, not recognizing that the post-WW II way of life in the United States was built on and remains dependent upon cheap gasoline.

Without cheap gasoline, the way U.S. society is organized--commerce, housing, spatial relationships, transportation--must change. From the review:

Each chapter forecasts our lives at a different price per gallon. At $6, public transportation becomes "the belle of the ball," with subways overflowing and new train routes proliferating. Driving deaths and obesity both plummet. Say goodbye to the little yellow school bus -- unaffordable.

At $8, "the skies will empty" as the airline industry contracts and ticket prices spiral upward. Vegas goes back to being just a desert.

When gasoline hits $10 -- a price Steiner believes is a decade away -- electric cars go mainstream. "Gasoline-slurping big boy toys," such as jet skis and snowmobiles, are out.

At $12, families abandon the suburbs and cluster in cities, sparking a renewal of commerce and culture from Atlanta to Cleveland.

A price of $14 per gallon of gas marks the death of Wal-Mart as global shipping costs become prohibitive. Manufacturing firms rediscover small-town America.

Onetime suburbs morph into farms for local markets when gasoline reaches $16, as the costs of transporting fresh food skyrocket. Eat your toro sushi while you can.

Finally, when gas prices top out at $18 or $20, high-speed rail takes over nationwide and nuclear power becomes "the clear choice" for most of our energy.

The last point, that eventually we won't have cheap oil to support cheap airplane flying, was one I made in an email to John McCarron, former Chicago Tribune journalist and now professor at Medill, in response to his July column "Slow down those fast-train dreams," in the Tribune. He snidly responded to my email with a jibe that I probably played with model railroads as a child.

I did, sure, but the point I was making is that his column made a faulty argument, that need for more investment in local transit in Chicago doesn't cancel out the need for more investment in national transit, along the lines of my proposed transit network typology.

... 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. We do have a interstate bus transit system.

3. Regional -- multi-state connections -- for the most part these don't exist for transit, but do for freight railroad, airplane travel, intercity buses, 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).

(From "Second iteration, idealized national network for high speed rail passenger service." For a delineation of the metropolitan transit network and the constituent subnetworks, see "Thinking about the transit network.")

To not plan for a future without cheap oil consigns the U.S. to a future of mediocrity. Meanwhile, the Chinese seem to understand the need to develop a national high speed railroad system, according to this recent article in Fortune Magazine, "China's amazing new bullet train." According to the article, the 70-mile trip between Tanjin and Beijing, usually a two-hour commute, now takes a half-hour on the high speed trains.

To mix up thinking between national, regional, and metropolitan transit networks, acting as if one cancels out the other, is a logic error of an almost incalculable dimension. To advocate strongly for not planning for the nation's future at all is just as scary. I don't feel good about those students at Medill...

Le T3 arrive ... (awesome light rail [tram] photo from Paris

Le T3 arrive ...
Originally uploaded by tofz4u

The real third rail of local politics is transportation-automobility, not parking

There is the joke that Social Security and Medicare is the third rail of national politics, that proposals for change end up electrocuting those who suggested the change. Typically, we say the same about parking, at the local level, but the more I think about it, it's not so much parking as it is changing the focus away from automobile dominance that is the third rail...

DC. E.g., I was talking with a DC Councilmember a couple months ago and s/he said that s/he wouldn't be dealing with parking issues any more until after the 2010 election, that dealing with it thus far (in a variety of matters) has been very very difficult, plus s/he pointed out the problems of Mayor Daley in Chicago, in response to his parking meter sale deal and the resultant rise in prices (cites in the previous entry). While I am a hardcore type, believing that we need to do the right thing, and that "leaders lead," at the same time, I understand in this arena, the need for some judiciousness.

Seattle. Of course, Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle just lost the primary election there (see "Mayor Nickels of Seattle Concedes Defeat in Primary" from the New York Times) and under his administration, Seattle has been doing some of the most innovative work with transportation and mobility issues at the municipal level of any government in the U.S., including New York City.

In part, he was brought down by failures to execute (they had a snow emergency which they didn't do too well at addressing), but also over the many years of proposals and counter-proposals of how to deal with the Alaskan Way Viadect, an above ground bridge/freeway that has to be addressed to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic failure in the face of possible earthquakes. He favors a tunnel. Others want an at-grade replacement. Etc.

London. I've mentioned that Ken Livingstone's loss for a third mayoral term was in large part a response to his plans to expand the congestion zone to more residential areas. (See the Bloomberg story "London Ex-Mayor Livingstone Plans 2012 Bid for Office.")

New York City. And now, we have Streetsblog reporting that two prominent candidates for Mayor have announced that they will not retain Janette Sadik-Khan, appointed by Mayor Bloomberg as Commissioner of Transportation, if they are elected. See "Thompson, Avella Pledge to Dump Sadik-Khan If Elected."

Janette Sadik-Khan bicycling during New York City's Summer Streets program, with no special entourage. Photo by Dan Malouff.

Some neighborhoods are pissed off about terrible changes to their world like adding bicycle lanes, and these candidates are showing their responsiveness to neighborhood parochialism.

Making the right choice and thinking about the future is very hard. Typically, people want to keep what they have, and they don't think too globally about making the best choices.

It happens that James Surowecki writes about this in the current issue of the New Yorker, in "Status-Quo Anxiety." While he is writing about the response to potential for changes in health insurance and health care delivery, as a result of proposals for changes initiated by President Obama and addressed by Congress, the points he makes are relevant to all issues involving substantive change. He writes:

In theory, the public overwhelmingly supports reform—earlier this year, polls showed big majorities in favor of fundamental change. But, when it comes to actually making fundamental change, people go all wobbly. Just about half of all Americans now disapprove of the way the Obama Administration is handling health care.

In part, of course, this is because of the non-stop demonization of the Obama plan. But the public’s skittishness about overhauling the system also reflects something else: the deep-seated psychological biases that make people resistant to change. Most of us, for instance, are prey to the so-called “endowment effect”: the mere fact that you own something leads you to overvalue it. ...

What this suggests about health care is that, if people have insurance, most will value it highly, no matter how flawed the current system. And, in fact, more than seventy per cent of Americans say they’re satisfied with their current coverage. More strikingly, talk of changing the system may actually accentuate the endowment effect. ...

Compounding the endowment effect is what economists dub the “status quo bias.” Myriad studies have shown that, even if you set ownership aside, most people are inclined to keep things as they are: when it comes to things like 401(k)s, for instance, people tend to adopt whatever their company’s default option is, and with things like asset allocation or insurance plans people tend to stick with whatever they start with. Just designating an option as the status quo makes people rate it more highly. Some of this may be the result of simple inertia, but our hesitancy to change is also driven by our aversion to loss. ...

Still, just because you can’t change human nature doesn’t mean you can’t change health care. The key may be to work with, rather than against, people’s desire for security. .... the endowment that insured people want to hold on to is much shakier than it appears. Changing the system so that individuals can get affordable health care, while banning bad behavior on the part of insurance companies, will actually make it more likely, not less, that people will get to preserve their current level of coverage. The message, in other words, should be: if we want to protect the status quo, we need to reform it.

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Re Surowecki's conclusion: The message, in other words, should be: if we want to protect the status quo, we need to reform it.

What people aren't willing to acknowledge is that the mobility status quo needs to change too, not just because of the likelihood of reaching peak oil and diminishing supplies of gasoline, but because it's impossible and inefficient to rely on a mobility paradigm that requires automobility to move us and connect us to and from pods of otherwise disconnected activity.

For one, you can't build enough roads and parking lots and parking spaces to accommodate all the cars necessary to move people around from pod to pod.

For another, cities weren't designed to optimize movement by automobile, they were designed to optimize walking and transit (and to some extent bicycling).

For cities to work best, walking, bicycling and transit must continue to be optimized, in order to maintain center city competitive advantages around mobility, economic agglomeration, and the relative ease of connecting.

That means strengthening the ability to get around by walking and bicycling and transit, and deemphasizing the focus on and fealty to the automobile.

In the meantime, that makes the position of most of the people who are at the forefront of pushing these changes forward very tenuous. (The elected officials of Arlington County, Virginia seem to be an exception.)

Revisiting the idea of a national infrastructure bank

In the run up to the Presidential election in 2008, there were a number of proposals for a "National Infrastructure Bank," that would sell bonds and use the monies raised to fund federal infrastructure improvements. (See the press release, "Dodd, Hagel Introduce Bill to Revitalize America's Infrastructure," the Slate article by Michael Lind, "Obama's single most important reform," this column from the New York Times, "Investing in America, and this not unfavorable response from the Reason Foundation, "A National Infrastructure Bank?")

This makes a lot of sense. Investment in the future requires big bucks, and for the most part the federal government is funded as "pay as you go."

Michael Lind writes:

Here the states can show the federal government the way. Most states, counties and cities, directly or through their agencies, issue municipal bonds to fund long-term, large-scale capital improvement projects like power plants, highways and school buildings. Usually these municipal bonds are tax-free. Most are either "general obligation" bonds, repayable from future general taxation, or "revenue bonds," repayable from a specific stream of income, like highway tolls.

When paying for expensive projects with long-term payoffs, it makes sense for governments, like corporations and nonprofits and ordinary individuals, to borrow the money rather than to pay the entire cost upfront out of current revenues. Raising money by means of tax-exempt bonds that are paid back over years or decades permits a government to spread the costs of roads, schools and energy grids among the beneficiaries over many years, instead of forcing today's taxpayers to pay the entire cost of a project that will mostly benefit future taxpayers.

He's right. But at the same time he overstates the case. States and localities have just as much difficulty funding infrastructure improvements as the federal government, even though they can sell bonds. At the same time, improvements require a lot of upfront investment that even large reasonably well functioning governments like the City of Chicago can't afford.

That's why state and local governments are doing these deals with the private sector, where they basically lease the infrastructure to the private sector in return for a payment, and an agreement for improvements to be paid for by the private firm.

This is the case with parking meter deals, bus shelters and public space improvements including bicycle sharing systems funded through advertising sales in the public space, speed cameras, and even "selling" toll roads and/or the creation of high occupancy toll lanes constructed by the private sector. The Macquarie Bank of Australia is one of the major participants in this field. (See "Toll Road Firms Continue to Lose Millions" from the Driving Newspaper and "Mayors Business Council Recognizes Best Practices in Public-Private Partnerships" from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, about Lockheed Martin's prowess in parking meter deals, and "Highway Upgrade Goes Private" from the Wall Street Journal.)

But as the fierce outcry to massive increases in parking meter prices in Chicago shows (see "Mayor Daley is sorry that we don't like the parking meter deal" from the Chicago Reader and the AP story "Daley to apologize for parking meter problems") this can come at a great cost.

And the reality is that there is no free lunch. The private sector does this because they can make money. The local governments do this only because they can't raise the upfront capital necessary to fund the improvements--disproving Michael Lind's point about the difference between state/local and the federal governments and their ability to fund infrastructure improvements). They leave money on the table--the profit made by the private sector--only because they can't otherwise raise the money to do the improvements themselves.

I think we need a National Infrastructure Bank not just for the federal government, but a bank that also lends monies to local and state governments, solely for infrastructure construction and improvement projects.

This isn't a stretch from what the WPA and PWA and other government agencies did during the Depression. Many of the public works projects created by the Federal Government in part as employment projects were in fact local projects, which contributed to the well-being and economic success of local and state governments for many decades after their construction. In fact, it is not a stretch to argue that part of the post-War success enjoyed by the U.S. was in fact partially a result of these Depression era investments, ranging from local roads and sidewalks to dormitories at state universities, public buildings, etc.

Estimate that 10,000 retail stores will close this year

See "Avalanche of store closings coming, study says" from the Chicago Sun-Times, which reports on a study by the consultancy Grant Thornton.

Over the past 10 or so years of involvement in commercial district revitalization, I have gotten a bit more nuanced and "sophisticated" in my understanding of how the process should work in traditional commercial districts.

1. When I first was involved, I believed in 100% independently owned businesses. While that's ideal in terms of generating the most local economic benefit, the reality is that the retail industry is quite concentrated and that it is very difficult for independent stores to be cost competitive in certain categories.

2. Even so, for the most part, chains aren't interested in "traditional commercial districts," with the exception of downtowns and other high value locations.

3. That means for the average commercial district working to lease up vacant space, that they must create a system for developing and nurturing successful start ups.

So a three part system/plan is required:

1. A retail attraction/recruitment plan for chain companies that might be interested. (People like the predictability of chain stores, and it helps lend positive associations and imprimatur to the commercial district.)

2. A retail and services entrepreneurship development program to link people, concepts, financing, systems, and available space.

3. A focused retail development and improvement program for extant businesses.

Add to this an overall commercial district revitalization framework plan (such as this one that I worked on for Cambridge, Maryland, Market Analysis 2009 for Downtown Cambridge, Maryland) including a good section on branding and image development and you're set.

The only thing is that for the most part, no one is doing this three part program anywhere in the country.

Also see:

- Retail and restaurant check up surveys
- Why ask why? Because (on store operations and systems)
- Indepependent retail businesses can succeed and thrive
- Store siting decisions
- Why the future of urban retail isn't chains
- (Why aren't people) Learning from Jane Jacobs
- (Why aren't people) Learning from Jane Jacobs revisited
- Data, not sentiment, drives retail site location decisions
- Why you must consider the regional retail landscape
- To get independent businesses you need to rebuild the supporting infrastructure
- Richard's Rules for Restaurant Driven Revitalization
- Creating the "new new" thing: commercial district revitalization
- The soft side of commercial district competition

Amazingly unusual website about urban design and urban life

Is really about model railroading, and how to appropriately and accurately model buildings, infrastructure, communities, etc., in model railroad layouts.

I was looking for some images of storefronts with awnings for a facade improvement project I am involved in, and lo and behold, I backed into this fascinating website, which turns out to be a great resource for urban design and placemaking, even though ostensibly it is about model railroading in the UK.

The website is Goods & Not So Goods: An overview of railway freight operations for modellers

Appendix One - Outside the Fence has voluminous sections on:

- Roads and road traffic
- Civic and Commercial Life/Public Buildings, Shops, Traders and Tradesmen
- Public and emergency services
- General Information

From the section on Shops and Shopping:

It can be argued that for somewhere to be considered a 'place' in Britain it required four things; a pub (the social hub of the local world), a post office (where you communicate with the government and the wider world), a church (where people contemplate the next world) and at least one shop (required to justify the other three). The shop could be a single 'general stores' type of business selling a range of goods but usually there would be at least two or three shops forming the core of a village. A lot of recently built layouts have plenty of housing but too few shops, although shops offer a range of opportunities for establishing the location and date of a layout.

Leon Krier presentation at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in September

Palazzo di Piazza Marconi, Alessandria
Originally uploaded by Liberty Place

Image: Palazzo di Piazza Marconi, Alessandria, by Leon Krier. Flickr image by Liberty Place.

From the Corcoran Gallery of Art:

Architect and theoretician Leon Krier will give a talk and book signing at the Corcoran next month:

The Architecture of Community

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 7 p.m.

"No architect has explored architecture's claim to universality better than Léon Krier, and it is this which makes him the most controversial figure of contemporary architectural culture." -Demetri Porphyrios

Leon Krier is one of the most influential and provocative architects and urban theoreticians in the world. In his latest book, The Architecture of Community, Krier offers a comprehensive theory on the making of sustainable, beautiful, and most importantly, livable communities. On this stimulating evening, Leon Krier will discuss his many noteworthy projects, including the town of Poundbury in Dorset, England which is now considered a model for contemporary ecological planning and building. Krier has taught architecture and urbanism at the Royal College of Arts in London, Princeton University, Yale University, and the University of Virginia, and has received numerous awards including the inaugural Richard Driehaus Prize for Classical Architecture. A book signing follows his talk.

Barcelona 1908

(Rebuilding) Local food systems

I had no idea that the Washington brand of flour and the Indian Head brand of corn meal that I have bought from time to time because it is less expensive than national brands is milled locally, in Ellicott City, Maryland (note the website doesn't work very well in Firefox, try these sub sites on corn meal and flour). This story, "Family Saga Is Hardly Run-of-the-Mill," from the Prince William County Extra section of the Washington Post, clued me in.

The next time you are at Safeway or Giant or other supermarkets, consider buying these products instead of the national brands.

2. And this article in today's Food section, "Farm to Hub to Table: New Nonprofit Feeds Appetite For Local Food, made me realize that this kinds of connective organizations, providing a means for small farmers to aggregate their production to reach the quantities necessary to fill large orders (note that the Santa Monica Farmers Market does a big portion of its business for growers selling to restaurants and other wholesale clients), could be created as part of community commercial kitchens and/or public markets, adding to them a "new" line of business to improve profitability, making more revenue and a better functioning local food system.

3. The other thing is to work more on training people on how to cook. Since people increasingly eat pre-prepared meals at home, as people leave home for college and then to start their own households, often they need to learn how to cook. And it's in the best interests of supermarkets, farmers markets, and public markets to teach people about preparing foods at home, otherwise they will continue to lose business to restaurants and other prepared meal sources.

I liked this article from Monday's Examiner, "Easy, healthy gourmet for the young and hungry," which gets at this, focusing on a cookbook for college students.

Freshman in the kitchen website

DC Preservation League conference coming this September, 9/25 and 9/26

(A first in a long time event.)

-- Conference brochure

I think these kinds of events are very important. If we don't tell people what is important about their house and why, and how to properly maintain their historic (eligible for designation or designated), then it won't happen. I don't think we can expect the home repair companies and HGTV/DIY Network etc. to do it in our stead.

I don't know how we get people who live in historic (eligible or designated) houses to subscribe to magazines like Old House Journal, Old House Interiors, American Bungalow, etc., if they aren't already interested. But they are great magazines for ideas and perspective.

In DC, the Capitol Hill Restoration Society has a series of publications on various aspects of historic/architectural preservation.

The Landmark Society of Western New York's volume Rehab Rochester is an excellent general item about historic preservation, maintenance, and the architectural history of that region.

The Philadelphia Rowhouse Manual is also useful.

As is the Old and Historic Districts of Richmond, Virginia Handbook and Design Review Guidelines and the Montgomery County Maryland historic preservation design guidelines.

(These are but a few of the examples of such publications published around the country.)

I wish I were able to travel freely and attend the:

- Historic Seattle 12th Annual Bungalow Fair (September 26th and 27th)
- Historic Chicago Bungalow and Green House Expo (October 17th)
- Pasadena, California Craftsman Weekend (October 16th-18th)

For whom the bell tolls?

This week's edition of the weekly online survey at the Washington Business Journal is whether or not Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority President and General Manager John Catoe should be fired, as a result of the June crash which killed nine people. See this entry.

I haven't listened to the recent Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU-Radio featuring the region's leading public official concerned with transit, Chris Zimmerman, from Arlington County, Virginia. On the show he advocated for Mr. Catoe's retention.

There are many changes that need to occur with WMATA, how it is structured, managed, and most important led and funded.

Part of the disconnect within WMATA comes from lack of quality leadership at the top (especially the board) and the failure of the three jurisdictions--Virginia, Maryland, and DC--to put an adequate supra-state regulatory structure in place, to make sure that the transit authority is doing the right thing and there is oversight.

Most of these problems long predate Mr. Catoe. (Which doesn't excuse what happened.)

See these past blog entries:

-- Will nine deaths lead to a better governance, oversight, and management system for WMATA? Or not?
-- The webpage of the California Public Utilities Commission oversight of rail transit systems
-- WMATA and transit marketing vs. crisis communications

for more on this broad topic.

Gutsy Montgomery County, their art fair and promoting quality public spaces

Park(ing) Day in San Francisco, 2007. San Francisco Chronicle photo.

Magical Montgomery is the equivalent of Montgomery County's Artscape, an art and crafts fair that also promotes local arts and cultural organizations, and is held in Downtown Silver Spring, on Ellsworth Drive. Here's a gutsy move, promoting the temporary conversion of using public space normally devoted to automobiles for people.

This was pioneered as a "performance art" project of the Re:bar group in San Francisco. I just can't see something this creative being promoted by a government related entity in DC...

From the Public Arts Trust, Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County:

Go green.
Create a PARK(ing) spot at Magical Montgomery!

To celebrate Park(ing) Day 2009, the Public Arts Trust would like to invite individuals, groups and organizations to create temporary "parks" in parking spots on Ellsworth Drive during Magical Montgomery Festival on September 26, 2009.

What can happen in a Park(ing) spot? You name it -- it has probably been done: sculpture park, a poetry reading, a finger-painting studio, a public back porch, a DIY lemonade stand, a lawn bowling course, a public beach, a worm composting demo, a public kiddle pool -- let your imagination run wild! The rules are that it all has to fit within a parking space and be open and free to the public!

AHCMC will have space for 3-4 Park(ing) spots alongside the booths on Ellsworth Drive. Funds are available to help with the cost of materials based upon the proposed parks.

Please visit Public Arts Trust or contact Susie Leong for more details.

And Park(ing) Day 2009 website for more information on the general event.

Street cleaning and city services (eating my words)

Street cleaning
Originally uploaded by rllayman

Ironically, in a meeting and in email today I discussed how typically cities lack the resources to provide a high degree of services to any particular street or subdistrict, that if you want your commercial district or block to look good, you have to step up and pitch in. And the fact is that it is true. Maybe once a year we get some of this kind of service on our street. In the meantime, I pick up trash virtually every day, when I am out and about between home and the subway station or the bus stop or while running errands.

Still, today the city DPW was out tending to our street.


My general point, especially regarding commercial districts, remains true. If you want regular cleaning comparable to a shopping mall, you better come up with a plan. It's one of the reasons why business improvement districts, funded with an assessment on property taxes, have been created.

In the case of special spaces, such as pocket parks and similar places, you better come up with your own plan and even a landscape plan, because you can't expect the Dept. of Parks and Recreation to regularly maintain the space, or to maintain it according to what's planted there, such as flowers. Expect clearcutting and plan accordingly. Or, develop a memorandum of understanding with the agency and take care of it yourself.

After all, it is your neighborhood or commercial district that has to deal with the consequences of poorly maintained physical spaces. At the end of the day, a failure to execute in your neighborhood or commercial district has little consequence for people who work for local government (at least in a city like DC).

Montreal, bicycling and the world class city

Charles Landry makes a point in his presentations and his latest book, The Art of City Making, that to be world class isn't only what the city does for itself, but how the city in turn contributes to the world.

Montreal's Bixi bicycling sharing system is a fascinating example of this, showing that the public sector can be transformative and innovative in ways that challenge convention. Also see the articles "Public sector innovation" from the Ottawa Citizen. and "Montreal Exports Its Bike-Sharing Program" from the New York Times.

Montreal launched 3,000 bicycles called " Bixi", available from May to November with the help of a subscription rate of 78 dollars a year, $28 for one month or $5 for the day. A combination of bicycle and taxi, the BIXI program offers 3,000 bikes for Montrealers to ride around the downtown core, from as far west as the Atwater metro station to as far east as the Prefontaine station. (AFP/Clement Sabourin)

For example, one of the biggest problems with the "traditional" bicycle sharing systems and their stations is that they require electricity. This is a problem not only in dealing with recalcitrant local utility companies (at least Pepco in DC is problematic, maybe this isn't the case in cities like Paris), but in finding locations where electricity connections can be made, and then in having to construct and make the connections. All in all this adds time and significant cost to the process.

The city's parking authority, Stationnement de Montréal, decided to create their own system rather than have to pay others for one. Typically bicycle sharing systems are developed through a kind of "ransom" as a city sells the privilege of placing advertising in public spaces in return for various benefits from the contractor, including outfitting a bicycle sharing system.

This creates a negative dynamic between the operator and the municipality, because the municipality wants to expand the system, while the operator wants to minimize costs to maximize profitability.

BIXI, the project of the parking authority in Montreal, has just won the contracts to provide bicycle sharing systems to Boston (see "Vendor selected for Boston area bike-sharing program " from the Boston Globe) and London (see "Serco wins race to run London hire bikes" from the Times of London).

Impressive.

Zero lot lines

DC Map screen capture, Downtown DC. Beige depicts buildings. Gray depicts city streets. White is public space or interior alley type space that is open.

Definition of zero lot line buildings:

• The construction of a building on any of the boundary lines of a lot, but usually referring to the building facade and lot line presented to the major street on which the lot faces.
  

From a past blog entry:


Cy Paumier writes in Creating a Vibrant City Center that the pattern of downtowns (central business districts) developed around pedestrian-scaled streets, blocks, and buildings because of:

Concentration and Intensity of Use: "The intensity of development in the traditional central area was relatively high due to the value of the land. Maximizing site coverage meant building close to the street, which created a strong sense of spatial enclosure. Although city center development was dense, construction practices limited building height and preserved a human scale. The consistency in building height and massing reinforced the pedestrian scale of streets, as well as the city center's architectural harmony and visual coherence." (p. 11)

Organizing Structure: "A grid street system, involving the simplest approach to surveying, subdividing, and selling land, created a well-defined, organized, and understandable spatial structure for the cities' architecture and overall development. Because the street provided the main access to the consumer market, competition for street frontage was keen. Development parcels were normally much deeper than they were wide, creating a pattern of relatively narrow building fronts that provided variety and articulation in each block and continuous activity on the street." (p. 12)

The street grid, transportation practices and construction technology of the times, and the cost and value of the land led to a particular form of development on city blocks that focused attention on the streets and sidewalks, creating a human-scaled, architecturally harmonious built environment.

As construction technology advanced and taller buildings could be constructed, and as the walking and transit city was supplanted by the automobile, the scale of block development changed significantly, with a focus away from the pedestrian and towards the car.


Typically in a central business district, a building is constructed at the lot line on at least three sides of the lot. If 100% lot coverage is allowed, then a building could be constructed to the lot line on each side of the building.

Southeast corner, 14th and G Streets NW, Washington, DC. Image from PQ Living.

In order for 14th Street to be widened, to meet the demands of Congressman James Moran of Alexandria and Arlington(Arlington!!!!!!!!!!!!), buildings will have to be torn down on both sides of the street.

Is Congressman Moran really that dense?

Aerial view of a traffic jam, 14th Street and the Mall, Washington, D.C., 1937.


14th Street NW in the evening...

Moronic beliefs

Moran addresses press conference with Washington regional delegation to announce $150 million for Metro in the FY10 Transportation Appropriations bill. Pictured from left to right: Rep. Gerry Connolly, D.C. Councilman Jim Graham, Rep. Frank Wolf, Rep. Jim Moran, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Rep. Donna Edwards. From the Congressman Moran website.

I try not to say bad things about the Congresspeople representing Virginia and Maryland districts because we need them to be kind to DC. And I've met Congressman James Moran, who represents Alexandria and Arlington, although it was years ago, and he wouldn't remember me.

But it is moronic to suggest that DC add lanes to the 14th Street bridge or tear down 14th Street buildings in order to add lanes so that more Virginians can drive into the city. See the WTOP interview with Congressman Moran by Mark Segraves, "Va. congressman upset at D.C.'s lack of communication." From the article:

As Virginia works to add hot lanes to I-95 and 395, Virginia Congressman Jim Moran says HOT lanes wont end the rush hour congestion if the District doesn't do its part.

"Once they get to D.C. it stops, so what D.C. should do is widen 14th Street Bridge, widen 14th Street and get some of the revenue that's coming from these HOT lanes," he said. "We've suggested it time and time again and they just won't listen, let alone act on it."

Now HOT lanes don't really reduce congestion, it is a financing mechanism to build new lanes of highways given limited budgets. Also see "Arlington Sues to Stop HOT Lanes on I-395/95" from the Post. And of course, writings on the concept of induced demand, that when more highway lanes are added, people take more trips, quickly "using up" the increase in capacity, negating substantive congestion reductions. (HOT lanes, or high occupancy toll lanes are popular amongst people advocating for privatization of roadways and other public infrastructure.)

This is a troublesome sentiment similar to that expressed by Post Metro columnist Robert McCartney in his inaugural column, when he wrote that one of the biggest problems in the region is that DC and Maryland aren't building more freeway lanes:

Of course, traffic congestion is the top example of this problem. Political gridlock leads to the highway variety. Consider this: Starting in three years, parts of the Beltway and I-395 in Virginia will be widened with the opening of newfangled toll lanes where you pay more when traffic is heaviest. Maryland and the District, however, aren't yet planning to add similar lanes on their sides of the American Legion and 14th Street bridges. Sound like a recipe for more bottlenecks?

The real problem is a lack of basic mathematical comprehension. The optimal capacity for one mile lane of freeway is 1,600 vehicles (more can be accommodated but with a greater likelihood of failure). No matter how many lanes you build for cars, it's a very inefficient way to move around.

Why is it that Virginia legislators believe in WMATA expansion in the suburbs to reduce congestion (see "Prince William Democrats Push Proposal to Extend Metro to Traffic-Snarled Area: Lawmakers Push Transit Extension" from the Post) while advocating not for transit expansion in DC to reduce congestion, but for more roadways?

This reminds me of the saying about Mexico: "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States."

DC has it bad enough with its own lack of leadership, let alone all the "help" it gets from various Congresspeople whether they are from Virginia or Maryland, or elsewhere in the country.

I joke that DC has 537 mayors: the elected Mayor of DC; the President of the United States; 435 members of the House of Representatives; and 100 Senators.

Collectively they are "the gang that can't govern straight."

----

But given that Arlington County is so progressive on transportation policy, maybe they need to step up and have someone run against Congressman Moran, in order to better represent their perspective on transportation policy at the national level, and within the policy agenda of their own Congressman.