Something that won't happen any time soon in the DC area: a green tax on cars

Image: car sales in the U.S. From the Washington Post, using data provided by Autodata.

In Europe, one of the ways that car use is discouraged is by charging tack on fees that help to capture some of the externality costs that are produced by automobiles but not otherwise captured in fees. Actually, the hated personal property tax on cars in Virginia is a form of this, although undoubtedly the tax revenues weren't directed towards transportation related projects.

I think the fee in the Netherlands is something like 20% of the sticker price of the vehicle.

Today's Post has an article, "SUVs lead U.S. auto sales growth despite efforts to improve fuel efficiency," about how despite a seeming focus on fuel efficiency, it is the larger cars and trucks that are selling, consideration of a green tax on automobile purchases is definitely in order, even though it is politically unlikely.

It's interesting that a couple days before, the Post ran a story, "China to raise sales tax on small cars Jan. 1" about how the government is instituting a variety of measures to reduce car sales and overwhelming automobile congestion in Beijing. From the article:

Exactly how China handles its rapidly growing demand for automobiles and the pollution they cause is of keen interest to environmentalists and automakers across the globe.

Last year, for the first time, there were more cars sold in China than in the United States, and the magnitude of the nation's demand has made it a key point of reference in discussions of greenhouse gas emissions and world economics. ...

Combined, the end of the sales tax break and the Beijing limit on autos are expected to put downward pressure on sales in China. But automakers said they expect that the market will nonetheless continue to surge in the rapidly growing country. ...

Last year, China cut in half the sales tax rate on vehicles with engines of 1.6 liters or less. The measure was viewed as a means of stimulating the economy and encouraging smaller, more fuel-efficient engines. But China will restore the sales tax on small cars to the full 10 percent beginning with the new year, the Ministry of Finance said Tuesday.

The limit on new cars in Beijing arises from a new traffic plan for the city. The plan involves miles of new underground highways, higher inner-city parking fees, a new bicycle-sharing plan, and, as its most controversial element, a limit of 240,000 license plates next year for the car-congested capital, or about a third of the new vehicles registered for 2010.

Beijing authorities defended their plan, saying Shanghai and Hong Kong have even stricter controls on the number of new vehicles allowed to be registered each year. Shanghai allows 10,000 and Hong Kong 1,000, Li Xiaosong, vice director of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport, said on the radio.

Meanwhile, "Ex-Shell president sees $5 gas in 2012" according to CNN.

Also see "A Green Detroit? No, a Guzzling One" from the New York Times.

Oregon Share the Road license plate, 600 block of A Street SE, Capitol Hill

Oregon Share the Road license plate, 600 block of A Street SE, Capitol Hill
Originally uploaded by rllayman

Such an initiative is overdue in DC and Virginia. Maryland has such a plate. WABA members are eligible to buy them.

This privilege should beextended to members of other bike-related groups in the state, such as Bike Maryland. Baltimore Bicycling Club has its own plate.

1987 report on Eastern Market, DC

1987 report on Eastern Market, DC
Originally uploaded by rllayman

At the December meeting of the Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee (on which I sit), one of the committee members brought to the meeting to give back to EMCAC two decades of meeting minutes and other materials, materials that he had recently organized.

I thumbed through the massive bound volume of a report on Eastern Market that was produced under the Barry Administration in the late 1980s (close to two inches thick), after earlier efforts had been made to convert the Market into more of a food court.

I was shocked to learn that (1) preliminary recommendations had been made in the deliberations to close 7th Street SE in front of the Market on Saturdays (it wasn't until the early 1990s that the Market began opening on Sunday, after the success of the Sunday Craft and Flea Market) and (2) that the local ANC had conducted an inquiry on parking (I'd like to think of this more broadly as "transportation" related) in 1977,

It's amazing that it took 20-30 years for the street to be closed on the weekends.

Since I've been on the committee, I have agitated for the creation of a master plan for the Market and the area (now I call for a Capitol Hill destination development plan) as well as a consumer market study.

Again, while a master plan per se wasn't created for the Market in the 1987 deliberations, a pretty good market study was conducted, and excellent recommendations made concerning broadening the retail mix there.

Of course, as local food and agriculture has become more trendy, these findings would need to be updated, but again, I was saddened to see that an excellent market study had been conducted 20+ years ago and has mostly laid fallow ever since.

Chevron Says: Oil companies should put their profits to Good Use

Chevron Says: Oil companies should put their profits to Good Use
Originally uploaded by rllayman

Methodology for determining transit expansion, Orlando (Lynx system)

Methodology for determining transit expansion, Orlando (Lynx system)
Originally uploaded by rllayman

I was at a holiday party and someone who claims he doesn't read my blog asked me why I didn't blog an entry against the expansion of the DC Circulator bus system into Anacostia/East of the River.

I told him it was a combination of (1) my giving up, because my arguments about the need for standards and metrics justifying this level of service have had no effect on expansion planning for Circulator bus service in DC, and (2) that it is possible, that like the service in Adams-Morgan/Columbia Heights, it's possible that the service is justified.

Now I have blogged a number of entries about the Circulator and neighborhood expansion. The Circulator bus service is designed to be high frequency. High frequency services are only justified when there is high ridership.

This concept is captured by a slide in the 2030 Transit (Lynx) Plan for the Orlando Metropolitan Area in Florida.

The slide lays out the three step process for determining areas where service should be provided, and where expansion is justified by travel demand. (Other slides discuss different types of transit services, the choice of which are based on capacity, speed, distance, and ridership projections.)

This is the kind of process we don't seem to have in DC, for DC-specific expenditures on transit service development and expansion. Instead, it's political, spreading around service to various wards (which is what happened with the Main Street program in its later years as well) to satisfy Councilmembers and their constituents, rather than being justified by demand and a consideration of the best use of scarce financial resources.

The Circulator bus lines serving Downtown and Georgetown have the type of higher ridership that justifies Circulator-type service.

For neighborhood services, the Columbia Heights-Adams Morgan route has closer to the kind of ridership necessary to justify high frequency, while the Capitol Hill-Navy Yard Circulator does not.

The Union Station-Navy Yard DC Circulator uses 30 foot buses, because ridership projections did not justify larger buses.

In my typology of metropolitan transit networks, there is a category for intra-neighborhood transit service (called the center city tertiary transit network), and this level of service justifies subway station and commercial district centric bus service. But that means that a Circulator in this area ought not to then go to McPherson Square, instead it should move people around the neighborhoods, the transit stations, and the commercial districts.

It could be that East of the River bus services need to be reconfigured to better serve activity centers and subway stations. That was suggested in a comment on a blog entry on this topic last January.

California Governor to live in a Downtown Sacramento loft

How cool is that? See "Brown's new digs close to the action – political and otherwise" from the Sacramento Bee.

HECTOR AMEZCUA, Sacramento Bee. Zak Battaglia walks his dog Kaya past the Elliott Building at 16th and J streets in downtown Sacramento where Gov.-elect Jerry Brown and his wife, Anne Gust Brown, will rent a loft-style apartment within walking distance of the Capitol.

Seattle also has a Music Promotion Initiative

From the Seattle City of Music website:

The City of Music initiative was created to celebrate and further enhance our renowned culture of music.

The music industry is at the heart and soul of our culture, and makes a huge impact on our daily lives. In 2008, music created 20,193 jobs in the region, with $2.2 billion in sales and $840 million in earnings, and generated $148 million in tax revenues in King County.

A group of music advisors to the City of Seattle decided to cement this effort, capitalize on our history, and envision a better future. From now to 2020, we see untapped potential to enhance music as an economic, educational and recreational catalyst. Our goal is simple: to create action over the next 12 years that enhances the climate for our music industry, and to propel Seattle's leadership role in music throughout the nation and the world.

The vision is organized into three categories: City of Musicians, City of Live Music, and City of Music Business.

A Music Commission was created to oversee the development and implementation of the plan and program.

-- Seattle City of Music: A vision for the future of music in Seattle (planning document)
-- Current Commission Workplan

The Seattle Nightlife Initiative is not what typical residents would expect

Bourbon Street photo on Flickr by wallyg. My experience with how people perceive night life issues is that they think even one place is the equivalent of Bourbon Street in New Orleans. But there is only one Bourbon Street (+ Times Square in NYC at New Years and other special events). No other city comes close. Still, residential and patron/merchants concerns need to be balanced, and strong management and operations systems need to be in place in order to maintain order.

It calls for extending the hours that bars are open, beyond 2 am. From "McGinn: Seattleites want later bar hours" in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

In issuing a report about the status of his Nightlife Initiative, the mayor said of the more than 2,200 people who took part in an online survey:

31.9 percent said they wanted a more active and vibrant nightlife scene in Seattle - the highest priority.
28.4 percent said they wanted later liquor service hours.
21.4 percent said public safety during nighttime should be improved.
It's the later drinking hours that get the most attention, and at a news conference at historic Washington Hall in the Central District McGinn said he would work with state officials in what could be a "years-long" process to try to extend the hours that people could get a shot and a beer at local watering holes. ...

McGinn said there was no concrete proposal to present to the state Liquor Control Board yet, but he envisioned a pilot program where certain businesses would be given a conditional license allowing them to serve alcohol past 2 a.m. Neighbors, business owners and regulators would then need to review how things were going.

Addressing the concerns of neighbors and bar owners has been a priority for McGinn and the City Council. In July, the mayor unveiled his 8-point plan for improving the safety of Seattle's night-life scene and reducing conflicts between drinking establishments and residents in more urban neighborhoods like Belltown. The plan called for allowing bars to serve alcohol after 2 a.m. But that would require the state Liquor Control Board's blessing. ...

McGinn said Seattle's push to encourage safe and active nightlife is about "public safety, there's economic reasons for doing this...it's quality of life (active nightlife) is why people want to be here."
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One of my earliest blog entries was about nightlife planning in Adams-Morgan in the context of the Adams-Morgan Transportation Study, comparing it to efforts in the United Kingdom, and my amazement that a Parliamentary Committee actually did a night time walkthrough in a nightlife district in London, as part of a report and response to government proposals to change nightlife regulations. Also of interest is the government report, Good Practice in Managing the Evening and Late Night Economy: A Literature Review from an Environmental Perspective.

Also the Greater London Assembly and the Borough of Camden did a study of Camden Town, which is also useful, as mentioned in the blog entry "Report on London's night time economy". From the summary of the report on Camden Town:

From the summary of Camden Town night time economy research study:

The Economic Development, Culture, Sport and Tourism Committee has carried out a scrutiny investigation into London's night time economy to find out what ideas and good practice exist to support the night-time economy and improve things for people who live side-by-side with London’s night life. Among the ideas that we found were:

-- The planning system makes it difficult for councils to have enough control over what goes on in London’s night-time areas, and there are fears that the new licensing laws will make this more difficult.
-- Londoners and business want the tube to run later, especially at weekends.
-- More needs to be done to attract a wider range of people into London’s town centres at night – this should include ideas such as later opening of museums and galleries and more non-alcohol related activities.
--There are good examples of how town-centre managers can help co-ordinate services and work with residents and businesses in London’s night-time areas.
--Good design is needed to make sure that new developments and refurbished properties in these areas include effective sound insulation.
--Design can also help by ‘designing-out’ crime through improving lighting and creating open spaces where people feel safe.
--Londoners and London’s businesses want the media to paint a more accurate picture of night-time London by not always concentrating on the problems.

Also see the article, "Governing Nightlife: Profit, Fun and (Dis)Order in the Contemporary City" from the journal Entertainment Law. The article focuses on how economic development concerns have trumped residential concerns and at the same time have standardized "acceptable" forms of entertainment at the expense of alternative forms.

On my list to read, but I haven't got around to it, is the edited volume The City as an Entertainment Machine.

I hate to pick on the Examiner but...

Its owner, Philip Anschutz (as I have mentioned before) is the recipient at least $300 million in tax incentive payments concerning the development of the Staples Center in Los Angeles. See "Anschutz forges glittering L.A. empire" from the Denver Post.

Again, it's not unreasonable to get tax incentives, if the development contributes in a variety of ways to community and economic development objectives. From the article:

The Staples Center, which draws nearly 4 million customers a year, contributed to a 30 percent increase in the number of visitors to downtown L.A. between 2003 and 2005, according to a study by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. "There is no question that Staples was transformative. I look at downtown and I refer to it as BSC and ASC - Before Staples Center and After Staples Center," said Carol Schatz, president of the Los Angeles Downtown Center Business Improvement District.

It's just that the Examiner is not so measured in consideration in its coverage of this issue concerning non-Anschutz interests. Also see "Los Angeles Corporate Welfare: Ritz-Carlton and AEG: Rich entities siphon taxpayer money while real communities struggle" from the Los Angeles Weekly. (AEG stands for Anschutz Entertainment Group.)

The way the newspaper rails against tax incentives in articles and editorials, while its corporate owner benefits from them, is hypocritical. At least when the Washington Post editorializes about issues (for profit education, broadcasting) in which the corporate owner is self-interested in, they disclose it.

Not unlike how the US Chamber of Commerce calls for federal investment in infrastructure, while simultaneously advocating for hyperlow taxes and spending campaign advertising dollars on candidates (Republicans) least likely to support this kind of spending.

Ad from the Examiner.

Navy Pier revitalization plans, Chicago

Navy Pier is home to a number of Chicago attractions, including the Children's Museum. (Antonio Perez, Chicago Tribune / May 13, 2008)

While the Urban Land Institute is in part a developer group, the fact remains that they have a great publishing program, and their "advisory group servcies" turn out some excellent reports. Usually, you have to pay for copies, but sometimes, the organizations that commission the reports also post them in downloadable formats.

The ULI report on the Navy Pier is online. Also see these articles from the Chicago Tribune, "Second crack at Navy Pier upgrade," and "A heroic, if unlikely, vision for Navy Pier" (this piece by Blair Kamin is a good summary of the ULI report), "An olive branch." Because there are machinations to move the Chicago Children's Museum from the Navy Pier to protected lands in Grant Park, this is an important report.

But generally, the report is interesting and makes me think about the opportunities that could be had at Poplar Point in DC. (It's always fun to read planning reports from other places. They are always full of good ideas and good for learning.)

(David Zentz, Chicago Tribune / June 25, 2005) The teeming masses on Navy Pier are a delight to behold, but some feel the commercialization is not.

The Washington Post editorial page comes around

AP photo, Lawrence Jackson

From time to time I notice that the Washington Post editorial page comes around to my considered judgement (on issues such as WMATA and safety, etc.) even if it takes them awhile. Today's editorial, calling for professional and objective development review in Prince George's County, is another example.

I had been critical in various blog entries (and emails to Post journalists) about their coverage of the issue. I can't claim any of it made any impact, but the editorial, "An invitation to influence peddling in Prince George's" is nice to see, regardless.

I expect more from newspaper columnists and too often I don't get it

Harry Jaffe has a column in the Examiner today, "No more D.C. tax breaks for developers," railing against incentives provided to developers and major corporations, because they are all rich! I wish the issue was so simple.

It's a pretty juvenile and unconsidered piece.

I used to have a similar kind of anti-tax break visceral response on this kind of stuff, until I heard a particularly good presentation in 2003 by Robert Gibbs (one of the nation's leading retail consultants, who got his start working with Alfred Taubman -- see "The Terrazo Jungle" by Malcolm Gladwell from the New Yorker to learn about Victor Gruen, Alfred Taubman and the art and science of retail) about retailing, retailer incentives, and why they seek incentives to begin with.

It made me realize that I was looking at the issue globally -- e.g., "Marriott is rich" -- rather than on the basis of specific projects, and in terms of DC and individual commercial districts and their respective positions in what I now call the regional retail landscape.

For example, convention hotels don't make that much money but are essential for landing large conferences. Compared to traditional hotels, conference hotels have to have lots of exhibit space, which can be costly and less profitable to maintain. It doesn't matter how much money Marriott makes overall as a corporation because from a development perspective each project has to stand on its own. (There's actually a nice article in a recent issue of Businessweek about hotel economics.) Note also that Marriott actually makes most of its money from licensing and management fees. They own few hotels.

With regard to supermarkets and retailers such as department stores (or big destination retailers like Bass Pro Shops), they expect tax breaks (and lower rents) because they serve as anchors in commercial districts, and they spend money, usually weekly, on print and broadcast advertising, and this advertising draws customers to commercial districts, and the people in turn shop in other stores--and these stores don't pay anything to the supermarkets/department stores, helping them to defray the cost of advertising.

In traditional shopping malls, it is not unusual for the department store to actually own their building, which costs the developer money in opportunity costs, but in turn the developer is able to and does charge more money for rent to the other tenants to make up for the "loss" on the anchors. The other retailers know that the anchors draw in customers that they sell to also. This is what happens with supermarkets in strip shopping centers too. They pay less rent, but the other tenants pay more and the developer makes more money overall.

The reason you have the incentives in the urban setting is twofold.

1. The retailers want some compensation for their advertising costs, because their advertising helps other businesses.

2. In the urban setting, when property ownership in a commercial district is divvied up among many other owners, individual property owners can't recover the cost of lower rents by charging other tenants more money, because they don't control those other properties.

I also realized that the issue is relative. For example, those of us in the city might question giving developers in Friendship Heights or Georgetown tax breaks, because compared to other commercial districts in the city, they are far more successful.

But the issue really is the fact that Georgetown or Friendship Heights compete regionally against other commercial districts and shopping centers (Tysons Corner, Montgomery Mall, Rockville Pike-White Flint, Reston, etc.). The fact that they are more successful than Takoma or Brookland is irrelevant, plus again we have to look at each proposal in terms of its specific project nature anyway.

In short, I am fine with providing department stores like Nordstroms tax incentives to open stores in DC. Such helps DC commercial districts compete regionally.

But we need to have a standard method for doing it. We don't really have one. Just the case by case free for all mostly initiated by developer requests submitted to individual DC City Councilmembers.

E.g., Trader Joe's required an incentive payment over $1 million to locate in Foggy Bottom. But DC Government didn't pay it. The Foggy Bottom Association, which received a community benefits payment in return for agreeing to extinguish a development-limiting easement on the old Columbia Hospital for Woman, paid for it, out of monies they received.

Similarly, Home Depot got incentives to locate in Brentwood. And all supermarkets have access to incentives and tax abatements to locate stores within DC.

But the key is to closely examine each project and see if the benefit received is worth it, and that benefits to one developer don't disproportionately come at the expense of other projects and other DC priorities. E.g., one problem with the chaos that we call a system now, is that the better connected developers will get benefits that may help their projects in ways that hurt other commercial districts (e.g., NoMA vs. H Street NE).

Having an open and transparent process for the consideration of tax breaks would make the system work better for the city.

I wish that is what Harry Jaffe would have written about.

The advocacy process, bicyclists and the road safety agenda

Swearing At Motorists, album cover, Along the Inclined Plane
Originally uploaded by rllayman

There is a hullaballoo amongst cyclists in the DC area because the Washington Area Bicyclists Association has blogged two entries regarding "WABA's Resolution to Ride Responsibly" and here.

Frankly, it's a pretty straightforward resolution, which seems somewhat innocuous:

WABA's Resolution to Ride Responsibly

In 2011…

…I resolve to be a more responsible bicyclist.

…I resolve to better respect the rights of other road users.

…I resolve to make a good faith effort to better follow the law.

…I resolve to yield to pedestrians.

…I resolve to help make bicycling safer and easier for all of us.

Washcycle has written about the issue in "WABA asks cyclists to ride responsibly" and "WABA responds to resolution blowback" and the first entry has quite a spirited comment thread.

What has gotten cyclists worked up is that it seems one-sided and WABA admitted the resolution was produced in response to "backlash" from DC elected officials who are complaining that bicyclists are rampant scofflaws and in response to the backlash in DC and in NYC, see "Expansion of Bike Lanes in City Brings Backlash" from the New York Times) against infrastructure improvements (bike lanes and cycle tracks especially) for bicyclists, which are seen as coming at the expense of motor vehicles.

I'll admit that the one-sidedness upsets me too and I commented in the thread, which I will amplify here.
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What's happened in NYC shouldn't be a surprise. I think from my reading of the press across the country, it pretty much happens everywhere. Look at the people who fought bike improvements in San Francisco (!!!!!!!!!!) through the strategem of saying that an Environmental Impact study was necessary. Bike lanes are frequently opposed by businesses in commercial districts in places like Portland and Montreal, according to coverage in local papers there.

The real issue is that automobilists are threatened by and will fight most any change in policy with regard to their dominance of the road network and their privileged position in the hierarchy of road users.

(A standard frame of analysis in studies of race, class, gender, and generally in cultural studies, is looking at behavior in terms of standing and privilege and the process of defining institutions within a privilege-based framework.)

Automobility and automobile use as the dominant mobility paradigm is so engrained in U.S. economic, mobility, and social frameworks, that people are almost completely unable to objectively analyze their attitudes and behaviors with regard to the automobile.

I think about automobility and the movement to adopt more sustainable transportation practices in terms of long periods of time (decades) in terms of broad social movements and social change processes, having worked in my first job in DC for a consumer group that possessed Nader lineage.

That job, and working on national health policy gave me some interesting perspectives on social change, how long it takes,the role of insiders and outsiders within the process, and at different points in the process. E.g., wrt Hillary Clinton's point during the primaries in the last Presidential Election cycle that "it takes a president to get it done" she failed to recognize the multi-decade process of social movements and social change to get change to the point where it can be legally enacted. (Think civil rights, or even the almost 40 year long process of creating the movement and demand for the creation of an interstate highway system.)

WRT sustainable transportation and the take up of bicycling, I agree with the people who say that this is a one-sided position/argument that is designed to make the automobilists happy.

But they will never be happy with a paradigm of balanced mobility ("complete streets"), because anything less than complete dominance of the mobility agenda by the automobile is seen as a significant loss of privilege and status.

It's no different than my experiences working on revitalization issues in the city, pushing for change against resistant people, when they expected all the compromises to be one-sided, to come from me/the positions I espoused. I asked "how is that compromise?"

The thing I learned at the semi-Nader group (by observation, it wasn't something that they taught), is about what I call the issue continuum.

At one end is the mealy mouthed position, at the other end is the hardest core position. There are a variety of positions all across the continuum between the two points, and different organizations depending on their interests and funders, sit at different points. If you take the hardest core position, while you never get all of your desires, there is a lot more movement in the end toward the ideal, than if you hadn't staked out the position to begin with.

While it means that technically, you always lose, you get way more than if you had been hyper quick to compromise from the outset.

The reason that this initiative sucks, is that nowhere is the ideal position laid out in the most complete and thorough fashion (think of the kind of overwhelmingly long blog posts that I write).

An ideal and complete road safety agenda would include:

- recognition of the connection between higher operating speeds for motor vehicles and traffic fatalities, especially of pedestrians and bicyclists, and a re-engineering of road design and traffic enforcement to bring actual and desired operating speed of motor vehicle traffic into balance -- REMEMBER THAT IN DC, MOST OF THE STREETS HAVE A 25 MPH POSTED SPEED LIMIT.

- recognition that motor vehicles, because of of their weights and speeds bear disproportionate responsibility for a safe road network

- recognition of how the rules of the road are written to favor motor vehicles and are often unfair to other users and therefore, traffic safety laws need to be rewritten to better balance the safety needs of all users, particularly those who are most vulnerable (pedestrians and bicyclists) (ALSO RECOGNIZE THAT IN DC AND OTHER CENTER CITIES, A SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF HOUSEHOLD TRIPS ARE TAKEN ON FOOT OR ON BICYCLE AS WELL AS PUBLIC TRANSIT, AND LAWS IN SUCH PLACES SHOULD RECOGNIZE THIS.)

- enactment of Idaho Stop for bicyclists. This allows bicyclists to treat stop signs and red lights as yield signs WHEN THERE IS NO ONCOMING TRAFFIC, which specifically means stop when there is oncoming traffic -- that means no weaving!

- driver responsibility for ped and bike crashes comparable to the Netherlands. This recognizes that motor vehicle operators, because their vehicles are significantly heavier and faster, much exercise a great deal of caution and responsibility when driving, unlike the passive system of motor vehicle safety in place in the U.S., which takes negligence and death for granted (see "Wrong Turn: How the fight to make America's highways safer went off course" from the New Yorker).

- serious penalties for motor vehicle operators for causing injury and death

- insurance and registration systems for bicyclists

- better training for police officers wrt bicycling as traffic, including traffic investigation

- posting in real time traffic accident data

- and the implementation of a Pedsafe/Bikesafe accident investigation and response system for the resolution of structural-design issues contributing to accidents

- refresher tests upon drivers license renewal on ped and bike issues

- mandatory training/complete curriculum developed in K-12 at the early and late elementary levels, in middle school/junior high, and in high school on pedestrian and cycling safety, maintenance (this is something I recommended in the Western Baltimore County bike plan) -- only by creating and delivering a complete pedestrian, bicyclist, and road safety curriculum throughout childhood and adolescence can we be assurred that we all know how to be safe, regardless of transportation mode.

- changes in the driver education curriculum to increase awareness of/safety pedestrians and bicyclists

- requirements on organizations operating heavy vehicle fleets so that their drivers are required to take and pass additional driver education with regard to operating heavy vehicles in areas with high pedestrian and/or bicycle traffic.

The problem that WABA faces is the classic one of the boundary spanner, where they have multiple stakeholder groups to satisfy, in this case at least four groups:

- elected officials who pass laws and who are lobbied by WABA
- appointed officials who enforce laws and also provide funds to WABA for technical training purposes
- members
- the general public, who the advocacy organization also seeks to influence.

Automobilists are quick to complain about loss of privilege and their seeming noticing of flagrant bicyclist road safety transgressions. They call and complain to both elected and appointed officials.

On the other hand, bicyclists rarely complain in a straightforward manner about flagrant road safety violations on the part of motor vehicle operators, especially speeding, failure to yield, failing to stop at stop signs, running red lights, reckless driving and road rage, verbal assault, etc.

WRT the above "master list" of a more complete and balanced road safety agenda, public officials aren't in the position of being able to call for most of those provisions, because it challenges the dominant paradigm concerning automobility.

I know that when I was the bicycle and pedestrian planner in Baltimore County, I only felt comfortable mentioning four of those provisions (curriculum, heavy equipment operator training, changes in driver education and licensing), and as it was three were eliminated from the draft between the time I submitted the draft and the posted version. I needed advocates to help me push the envelope.

Advocacy organizations have the luxury and responsibility for laying out full and complete agendas so that the process of building and passing and implementing new paradigms can occur.

WABA, in a follow up entry, "Resolve, to set the stage for even stronger advocacy in 2011" claims that the responsible biking pledge is a necessary foundation for stronger advocacy in the new year.

I hope that is true and that we will see advocacy for a rebalancing of responsibility on those with the most power (motor vehicles) and greater protection for the most vulnerable, in our policies, laws, and actions in 2011 and beyond.

The difference in a quality streetscape

A couple years ago, Ken Firestone worked on a pedestrian related research study as part of a class in the UMD planning program. His photos here are from the 2100 block of O Street NW in the Dupont Circle neighborhood in DC.

Like the photos I have of the 1700 block of L Street NW (north south) it should be no surprise that pedestrian activity is highest on the side of the street where there are storefronts/living quarters on the first floor, rather than garages.

Happy holidays

Residual religious training leaves me somewhere between agnostic and atheist, but I like religious architecture such as cathedrals and stained glass windows. I certainly believe that you can be ethical through humanism, without having to rely upon religion-based moral and ethical systems. Be that as it may, Christmas trees and holiday displays can be attractive.

Some of these images are from the Internet. The tree and the train display are at Union Station. The creche photo is from Massachusetts Avenue in SE Capitol Hill DC. The ice skating rink is in Silver Spring. The Schwinn Bell Choir will give you downloads of holiday songs produced with bicycle bells. I wish I could have photoshopped the "Give" poster (at Borders) to read spend. The house with the Christmas decorations is down the street.

Happy holidays!

Toronto Transit City issues

First prize in the Toronto Star Emerging Artist Cover Art contest: One of Kelly Turgeon's fondest memories was school trips where she took the street car. To her, the city's vintage street cars signify the romance of Toronto, especially during the holiday season. TANNIS TOOHEY/TORONTO STAR

Added: Note that it seems as if the winning entry depicted above is derivative of a photo by Brian Labelle, Portraits of Toronto. Here is the original photograph.

I have been very much influenced by Toronto's Transit City planning because its fundamental principle is social and economic equity: "That no one should be disadvantaged by not owning a car."

As has been previously discussed, the newly elected Mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, has repudiated the previous administration's "Transit City" expansion plans, which were based on light rail expansion, rather than subways, because of the cost and ridership numbers.

An interview with Mayor Ford in the Toronto Globe & Mail (which like the New York Times in the U.S. is closest to the national newspaper), "Rob Ford ready to let transit projects hold in favour of Sheppard subway," covers his repudiation of the Transit City plan to build four light rail lines in favor of building one subway line.

What I find amazing isn't the article, but the great comment thread. Typically, comment threads for newspaper articles quickly degenerate. But this one does not. Two commenters make particularly important points:

TOLatte:

Those of us who live downtown already have subways, streetcars and bike lanes. It's the poor, deluded shmucks in the 'burbs who are going to do without. The working poor can't afford to live downtown. They live in the suburbs where housing is cheaper and they are the ones who need better transit. How did they get fooled into thinking that cancelling Transit City would be good for them?

D_Barbour:

1. This transit policy is built entirely around pleasing car drivers who don't use transit rather than creating a transit system that will best serve the city. The goal is to clear roads of an LRT system, not move people on it.

2. Focusing on a small section of subway rather than a network of light rail systems will ensure that more people continue to be without transit options and that congestion on the streets will continue to grow because people will have no option but to drive, assuming they can afford it.

Mayor Ford has also come out against bicycle lanes for the same reason he favors the subway. He sees surface space provided to bicycles or transit as taking away from the automobilist. It's a profoundly anti-urban perspective. Which is why Toronto Star urban design columnist Christopher Hume suggested ("Why the 905 Needs Rob Ford") that Rob Ford should actually have been a mayor in a suburban jurisdiction, not the center city.

Two examples of the need for transparency in political processes

(This and other posts have been delayed due to intermittent computer problems that now seem to be solved.)

Flickr image of cogs in a machine by velcro monkey.

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!" -- Mario Savio, speech during the Free Speech Movement at University of California, Berkeley, December 2, 1964

1. Tax abatements in DC.

I wrote last week about the Good Jobs First report on the transparency of state-provided tax incentives. DC tied for last. See "DC is #51! (on tax subsidy disclosure)"

In the press, there has been a lot of discussion about a proposed tax incentive for a hotel in Adams-Morgan (see "The Adams Morgan Hotel Tax Break: Is it Worth It?" from the Washington City Paper) , Rhode Island Metro (see the Washington Post editorial, "The tangled tales of Harry Thomas," which alleges a conflict of interest on the part of Councilmember Thomas) and Union Station (see "Union Station tax break pulled, again" from the Washington Business Journal).

The problem with the process for approving tax incentives is that there isn't a standard, transparent and objective procedure for initiating and overseeing the process. (Which I have identified as an ongoing problem through the previous 5 years of blog entries.)

Tax abatements are most often initiated through legislation written and submitted by individual Councilmembers.

It's a system fraught with peril, back room deals, and special consideration.

The Current community newspapers (download the December 15th issue) also wrote about the Good Jobs First report, and editorialized against the Adams Morgan hotel deal--maybe they aren't against it, but they think more time should be spent evaluating the proposal, and they specifically commented that the economic impact analyses done for each tax abatement request can be insufficient.

The one objective requirement in the tax abatement request process is that the Office of the Chief Financial Officer is required to produce an economic impact analysis for each request, comparable to how the Office of Planning provides reports to the Zoning Commission and the Board of Zoning Adjustment with regard to matters before those bodies.

Some of the reports could be better, and there isn't a master tally, I don't think that there is an annual report on tax abatements, and there sure isn't a system in place for monitoring the impact of the abatements.

(1) we need a standard system, whereby all applicants for tax incentives go to one place to start the process. And that place shouldn't be City Council.

(2) Probably it should be the Office of Tax and Revenue, which could then publicly log each request and maintain a running tally of all the requests, perform and publish an analysis of each request, and (3) forward each analyzed request to the City Council's Committee on Finance and Revenue for consideration, creation of legislation for approval, and then forwarding on each request for a tax abatement/incentives to the full City Council for final consideration and approval.

The OTR is already required to do an evaluation of the actual economic impact of each tax incentive/abatement proposal. (4) An annual report on tax abatements/incentives, the process, the overall impact on the city, should have to be produced as well. The report could be partly produced by the OTR and partly by the Committee on Finance and Revenue, with support from the Office of Planning.

Sure, the process could still be gamed, but by requiring that the process starts at one particular point instead of at least 15 potential points currently (13 City Councilmembers, Mayor, Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development), and is a public and transparent procedure, the problems presented by the current system would be corrected.

2. Elected official shepherding of development proposals.

This is a problem throughout the State of Maryland, although it is not a problem in every county. It definitely is a problem in Prince George's County and is the root of much of the corruption and unethical behavior present in the county.

On Sunday, Post editorial writer Lee Hockstader wrote a piece, "What's behind the corruption in Prince George's County? In part, residents' apathy," commenting on his experience that most people running for office in Prince George's County didn't think ethics and corruption was a major issue. Of course they wouldn't. They are part of the Growth Machine and they are products of the current system, which is designed to support unethical behavior, not to correct it.

See the Molotch article "City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place" and the book Corrupt Cities: A Practical Guide to Cure and Prevention.

This comes up because the Post had an article yesterday, "Johnson loses voice on zoning matters," about how "Council member privilege" to run point for development projects within particular Prince George's County Council District's has been denied to Leslie Johnson, who was recently arrested for having payments from developers in her possession.

From the article:

The Prince George's District Council has stripped newly elected member Leslie Johnson of a long-standing privilege that allows county lawmakers to shepherd development projects through the political process, prompting some residents to question whether they are being denied full representation. ...

Council members use a practice called district courtesy to promote development in their communities. The District Council, which is the County Council when it hears zoning matters, gives deference to its members, allowing them to introduce a project and follow it through the process.

The problem here isn't Leslie Johnson per se. It's the process/system of corruption. In the most professionally managed communities, development approval isn't a political process as much as it is an administrative and legal process.

Sure there are points in the development process where politics matter, especially when the proposal may involve various government incentives (infrastructure, land, transit, tax, other funding, zoning changes, etc.), but for the most part, the process shouldn't be subjective, and that's what happens in situations such as those in Prince George's County (although it's a problem in some of the counties in the Baltimore area also).

And the fact that Councilmembers aren't supposed to get involved or use their intelligence with regard to evaluating projects in other Council Districts, that Councilmembers defer to the Members in the district where the development occurs, is a frightful problem with process. (This is actually a problem in DC also. And it's really the way it works in Chicago, usually to the city's detriment.)

This is a system designed deliberately to foster corrupt and/or unethical acts.

Change the system. Leslie Johnson is merely the latest cog.

76 year long property tax abatement proposed for Union Station

The Washington Business Journal reports, in "Union Station tax break on D.C. agenda," that the property tax break that Councilman Jack Evans wants to give Union Station refuses to die.

Tomorrow, the City Council will vote on legislation providing for 5 years of tax payments, and then no property taxes forever after.

Union Station has over 200,000 s.f. of retail space. It has sales per square foot numbers amongst the highest of retail centers in the Washington region. According to the Washington Post, in "Union Station Is Leased to N.Y. Firm for $160 Million," in 2007 the Ashkenazy Acquisition Corporation paid $160 million for the lease, which had a term of 84 years. From the article:

A New York real estate company paid $160 million for the 84-year lease of Union Station. The acquisition gives it control of the station's office and retail space, concourse and ticket counters.

"We look at irreplaceable assets like this," Ashkenazy President Michael Alpert said. "We have long-term horizons. It's something we wanted to own. It's a trophy asset. We see an opportunity to create long-term value given its location, as well as the opportunity to upgrade the tenant mix."

The lease attracted 25 bidders. Union Station is considered valuable because thousands of tourists, shoppers and commuters on Amtrak, MARC and Virginia Railway Express pass through every day.

The 130 retail stores and restaurants have sales per square foot of $700 to $800, and 29 million people visit the station each year.

The corporation wouldn't have paid $160 million for the lease if the cost of property taxes was considered uneconomic. It's hard to know how much they make off the lease each year. It's reasonable to assume that rental rates are at least $50/s.f., which means the lease is worth more, as the WBJ reported in "Ground lease for Union Station changes hands" that there is 213,000 square feet of retail space in the building, that space generates gross revenue of at least $10.65 million annually. I can't think of any reason why this space shouldn't be taxed.

(Well, I can, depending on the cost of upkeep. But that presumably that comes from the lease payment to Union Station from Ashkenazy.)

Email the DC City Council and tell them that this tax break should not be approved.

Exemplary information campaign on bus service changes

IMG_5093
Originally uploaded by tracktwentynine

Matt Johnson has a post at GGW, "Greenbelt advocates educate bus riders on changes" about the efforts of Transit Riders United of Greenbelt to create and implement a proactive and thorough communication program to let transit riders know about changes to bus service in a very specific manner, at the level of the bus stop.

Most transit systems fail miserably at communicating changes to bus service. I'd written before about what they do in Montreal, but this effort in Greenbelt (with Matt's design assistance) is much much better. Of course, in this case it wasn't done by the transit system, but by skilled advocates.

More thoughts on what gets measured gets done

This DC Government owned property on Florida Avenue NW has been vacant for decades.

Someone wrote to me and pointed out that DC Government does have a reasonably extensive performance measurement webpage, Track DC. I hate to admit I wasn't familiar with this offering (there is too much to keep track of). It's definitely a start.

For example, in the entry on the relative uselessness of the DDOT Dashboard, I mentioned that 5 of the 6 buttons on the dashboard do not provide the means to drill down more deeply to more detailed information, and that the 6th button provided inadequate and incomplete info.

So I just looked at the Parks Department tab on Track DC. I think the site is somewhat clunky, but it does provide some interesting information, and the ability to go down one level to a summary of each subcategory of the data (e.g., on performance indicators). But it doesn't go deeper than that. E.g., what about a master table of all the maintenance requests, and then the ability to look at the data say and determine all the individual requests of a certain duration, and make some of your own assessments, etc.

It's great you can download GIS data files on their assets, but for those of us without a GIS program, why not just have the map links?

The website doesn't mention current planning activities or the reality that the #$%^&* Parks and Recreation Department doesn't have a master plan (well one was done in 2005 and never released to the public). Maybe this should be an overall indicator on these pages, about the status of agency master plans, links to them, along with detailed data about capital improvement planning.

How they rate themselves on spending their budget is somewhat interesting.

My criticism of performance indicators during the Williams administration was that there were pretty "gross" and easy to achieve because they weren't all that significant in terms of what they measured.

Granted I don't know what I'd want to measure, the things that most citizens think are important.

I mentioned in the blog entry a database on road conditions.

Here's some indicators I think are important generally, and these kinds of indicators should be focused on overall, rather than providing "too much" information by organizing metrics the way they are organized right now, at the agency level, on the Track DC website.

Some performance indicators that probably matter to residents:

-- litter rates by block (we don't collect this information)
-- accident data for peds, bicyclists, and cars
-- pavement quality conditions by block
-- participation rates in recycling
-- crime statistics by police district and block, what's going up, what isn't

-- incarceration statistics
-- number of neighborhoods with plans (none, we don't do neighborhood plans)
-- use rates for parks and rec centers
-- statistics for transportation mode split (walking, biking, transit, car) by neighborhood (we'd need a good research program...)

-- number of automobiles in DC, by size and weight class

-- breakdown of parking spaces by neighborhood, commercial district, structure
-- vacant buildings, by neighborhood/commercial district, how long they've been vacant
-- nuisance property and environmental crimes (i.e., dumping)
-- number of ideas offered by citizens, and the take up rate, database listing of ideas
-- graffiti -- reports and eradication
-- sidewalk conditions and planting strip maintenance (e.g., I've shown photos in my blogs of things that don't get corrected for years)
-- school data (enrollments, success, etc.) + for private and charter schools too
-- graduation data for DCPS students
-- data on success rates of DCPS students in college

-- number of special education students in private school/costs

-- absenteeism rates in school

-- suspension/expulsion statistics, by individual school/grade level
-- snow removal -- not just from streets, but from pedestrian areas, bus stops and transit stations, public buildings, etc.
-- time to open a business (this is really hard, but would be interesting to measure)
-- business retention and failure rates
-- grass cutting records for various public sites/installations (such as schools and various public reservations)
-- status data on all publicly owned properties
-- status data on community development corporations and companies like David Wilmot's cash cow of group homes for the developmentally disabled
-- youth crime statistics and status
-- water main breaks and repair status

My issue with the DC Government call center (311/online) is I never see any reports on what people call about. Do they sift out stuff and identify (and address) structural problems?


A committed resident clearing the partially blocked crosswalk median on his block of Maryland Avenue NE.

Constraints vs. values, focusing on practical organizing opportunities regarding Walmart in DC

One of the reasons I can't get all that worked up about the Walmart issue is that the projects as proposed fall into the category of "matter of right." In other words, as long as the projects proposed meet the basic land use and building requirements of the zoning classification, they will get approved. That's the case despite all the reasons for not favoring the company and their business practices

-- Walmart Movie: The High Cost of Low Price from Brave New Films
-- Confessions of a Wal-Mart Hit Man

• Sure, DC has a large tract review process which provides "an additional level" of review, but the review process is pretty narrow, sticking to questions concerning building and transportation impact.

The Georgia Avenue site is zoned C3A. (See Chapter 11 of the DC Zoning Regulations.) It's possible that the LTR will mention how a single use project at the Missouri Avenue-Georgia Avenue site doesn't meet many of the stated objectives in the Georgia Avenue Great Streets program, but it probably won't, instead it will focus on adding destination retail at a key node on the corridor.

- Georgia Avenue Great Streets Planning reports

• Although the negative transportation impacts are likely major, because unlike say DC/USA where probably at least 50% of the customers come by transit (bus or subway), on foot, or by bicycle, the proposed Walmart location on Georgia Avenue is only served by bus transit (Walmart should be required to provide shuttle service from Petworth and/or Fort Totten Metro stations) and the neighborhood is not highly populated, meaning that foot traffic is likely to be minimal. That means thousands of additional car trips per day, in a congested location, and the possibility of through trips to the store via neighborhood streets.

Now, if DC had another zoning review process for retail projects larger than say 75,000 square feet, it would be a different story. We don't.

• But that is something to advocate for, in theory at least, going forward.

So I am not likely to be out there demonstrating at the house of Foulger-Pratt principal Dick Knapp this Thursday, because it's a symbolic act that can't accomplish much.

• Even though my big problem with the project to come on Georgia Avenue is that at least initially, it isn't mixed use. So the thing to lobby for with the developer is doing the Walmart project in a way that doesn't encumber other positive development opportunities on the parcels, as well as "on top of" the Walmart store.

• The big thing that I think various anti-Walmart Union organizations are forgetting is that by Walmart entering urban markets (Chicago, Baltimore, DC, and NYC to start), Walmart is presenting unions with the opportunity to organize their workers, in a way that stores located in suburban, exurban, and rural locations do not.

I'd be focusing on that. And just as supermarkets are hiring consulting firms like Saint Consulting to help fight off Walmart (see "Rivals Secretly Finance Opposition to Wal-Mart" from the Wall Street Journal), unions ought to be seeking out the most able resources to help them organize urban Walmart workers.

Although Walmart is notoriously anti-union. When a group of butchers in one store were successful in getting union representation, Walmart closed the meat cutting operation at that store (and many others to preclude further organizing efforts), and trucked in prepackaged meat. See the story from 2000, "Wal-Mart pins butcher reductions on consumer, industry changes" from the Oklahoma City Journal-Record.

Resource: Community Organizing Toolbox

From email:

The New Organizing Institute just released the Organizing Toolbox - a
resource of training materials for organizing.

Topics include: Creating a Theory of Change, Public Narrative, Relationship
Building, and Building Leadership Teams. The training materials include
participant guides, slide presentations, trainers notes and videos of others
leading the training.

The resource looks pretty good. There are videos, training documents, and presentations for each module.

Milwaukee protest against Governor-Elect's decision to tank high speed rail

Service Employees International Union Healthcare employee Alicia Treadwell holds a sign that declares, "Killing Talgo kills jobs" during a rally Monday at City Hall in support of high-speed rail. People gathered for a rally at Milwaukee's City Hall on Monday in support of high-speed rail. On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced it would pull nearly all of the $810 million in stimulus cash awarded to Wisconsin for a 110-mph line linking Milwaukee and Madison because Governor-elect Scott Walker had vowed to kill the project. Credit: Mike De Sisti, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

See "100 rally to protest Walker's rejection of rail money" from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Since we're talking about more public information on transit...

One thing that neither the Office of Planning nor the Department of Transportation do is a lot of what we might call "informed" public outreach. Sure there are tons of public meetings, so many that I am overwhelmed. And as the entry from yesterday discusses, often public meetings aren't really good venues to get informed.

DC's public libraries could be used as venues for displays on land use and transportation planning issues. For example, with the streetcars, there ought to be displays in libraries serving the areas where the streetcars are supposed to go. The same goes with "urban" design and placemaking, and the difference between urban and suburban land use paradigms.

I guess I never got around to blogging about a display about plans for light rail in Montreal. Some of Montreal's public libraries are augmented with added "cultural center" facilities. This was the case with the library in Frontenac, which also had a display on the proposed light rail line for Montreal.

Of course, when we were there, an old man came up to us and asked us if we believed in streetcars. He said cars were better...

------

Images are from boards about the proposed light rail in Montreal as displayed at the Frontenac Library and Cultural Center, Montreal.

While we are on the topic of public information: web redesigns should increase access to information not reduce it

The redesign of the DC Government website sucks.

At least, it sucks if you want to find plans and studies and reports, or easy links to agencies from the homepage.

Before, such would be listed in a very retrievable link, mostly on the front page of the agency website.

Now you have to dig and dig.

If you can find it, the link is graphicized and it can take forever to find the report you want.

If you can't find it, you have to resort to looking up an archived version of the agency website at Archive.org.

How does this help the public?

How is this forward moving?

Why should this change be heralded if in fact it reduces access to important public information rather than improving access?

For planning, you can use the "in your neighborhood" tab to eventually find reports, although the old version of the website was much easier. I haven't figured out how to find Thrive or Trans-Formation yet, except through archive.org:

• Thrive: A Guide to Storefront Design in the District of Columbia
• Trans-Formation: Recreating Transit-Oriented Neighborhood Centers in Washington, DC

For transportation, I have no idea how to find the reports (except through archive.org), although a couple weeks ago DDOT said that they would restore a link to these reports.

This is !@#$%^&*()_ frustrating.

DC DDOT transportation access portal doesn't really say anything

One of the problems with all the hype about Web 2.0 is that people too often focus on the attractive graphics, and not the depth and breadth of what is provided. Some apps are great. Some apps seemingly pump out and disclose data, but communicate little of substance.

Such is with the heralded DC Transportation Access Portal.

By publishing only a gross number/statistic, and not providing a way to drill down deeper into the data, little actionable information is provided.

In the DDOT TAP only one of the six buttons, projects (the other five are safety, roadway condition, transit, finance, and customer service), allows the ability to drill down for additional information.

What it provides is a start. It could be great, but there is no question that the data for active DDOT construction projects, organized by Ward, is incomplete. I know it's incomplete because on 3rd Street NW there has been a sidewalk and roadway improvement program going on (I have been meaning to write about it), funded by ARRA, and it isn't listed.

Plus there is an issue of quality of the finished project. For the most part, the ones I've seen are good. But there are other issues.

Still, this is a model for what should be happening with each of the other buttons. For example, with the roadway conditions button, you ought to be able to drill down into a master database of road condition information for every block of every street on which the data has been collected.

With safety, since one of the buttons is for traffic fatalities, there is no way to drill down to three different additional layers of vehicle fatalities, pedestrian fatalities, and bicyclist fatalities--actually the data should be for accidents overall, not just fatalities.

This information is collected, it's just not disclosed. And if there are places where multiple accidents occur, then it is likely that there are potential "countermeasures" that can be employed to address structural/design problems that may contribute to fatalities. That's the purpose of the FHWA Pedsafe and Bikesafe programs--used for analysis of particular types of categorizable accidents, with proposed responses.

DCist and GGW have been mapping this information, but it isn't actionable...

In the past I wrote about an online mapping project that was conducted by the Toronto Star ("Mapping bicycle-car and pedestrian-car accidents"). Sadly, they have discontinued the project, but it was quite pathbreaking, and a model for what DDOT could be doing with its dashboard, and for "Apps for Democracy" as well -- more data of significance and less fluff and hype.

-- Toronto Bike Accident Map, 2008


Toronto Star traffic death map

FWIW, I have been writing about this issue, the disclosure of information to the public, measurements and metrics, for longer than I have been blogging. Below is something I wrote in themail in 2004:

What Gets Measured Gets Done
Richard Layman, rlaymandc@yahoo.com

In the classic business book In Search of Excellence, the authors coined the famous phrase "what gets measured gets done" to refer to companies that outperform their peers because of a greater focus on what matters. Of course, being sure that organizations focus on what matters is always a problem, as is a focus on accountability. Today's Austin American-Statesman talks about how the City of Austin updates 4,000 different performance measures weekly, from library circulation statistics to how the city is meeting its goals, and it posts this data to the city website. This is an expansion of their public communication of such data, which since the mid-1990s had been published quarterly. (See http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/budget/eperf/index.cfm for the website.)

Similarly, the Citistat program in Baltimore is a finalist in Harvard's Ash Institute annual program highlighting governmental innovation. The program is written about by syndicated columnist Neal Peirce. Citistat marries data tracking and analysis with accountability for improvement, comparable to the CompStat program initiated by Jack Maple and William Bratton in NYC, a program which led to big change in policing strategies and tactics, and a concomitant reduction in crime. Peirce quotes Mayor O'Malley stating that “success comes only with constant and intense executive pressure, plus relentless follow-up with departments.”

I looked at the government services section of http://www.dc.gov, but I haven't been able to locate similar data sets. We need them