Beautification effort on Connecticut Avenue

The GGW/BeyondDC entry "Could Longfellow Triangle be more of a real park?," reminds me that I meant to blog about the Golden Triangle BID's program, in association with DDOT, to add flowers and plants to the median on Connecticut Avenue.

I am not sure how many blocks they plan to go, e.g., it's between K and L Streets now and is supposed to be extended to M Street I believe.


This is the next block up (between L and M Streets) and not unlike what the block depicted above looked like before.


Atlanta's Buckhead District (called the Buckhead Collection) Greenspace Action Planning effort is a model of what DC's business improvement districts could be doing in terms of developing more robust plans and actions for a higher quality public realm.

-- Buckhead Collection Greenspace Action Plan
-- Livable Buckhead

DC doesn't have a master plan for parks and open spaces (although there is a parks and open space element in the Comprehensive Plan). Such a plan should drill down to areas/districts/sectors/neighborhoods, which isn't how DC does planning.

However, the Columbia Heights Public Realm Framework plan and planning DC Office of Planning has done for Mount Vernon Triangle, represented by the Mount Vernon Triangle Action Agenda gets closer to this.

Blog entries...

-- Another example of a need for a DC parks and recreation master plan

-- Parks and recreation planning best practices

-- Complete Places are more than Complete Streets

-- Investing in Place

The New York Daily News reports on Professor Mark Naison of Fordham's alternative ego, "Notorious PhD," and his rap about the potential challenge of gentrification in the Bronx, which he did at new student orientation this past week, in "'Notorious PhD', aka Fordham professor Mark Naison, raps against gentrification in Bronx." I think the issue is displacement and change, and the term "gentrification" doesn't fully encompass the nuances and implications of what is happening.

I can't say I like the "music." But it is a forward way to promote outreach.

The article quotes a local housing organization saying the problems aren't that bad. It's interesting because from a longer term Naison is likely right, that as other areas of NYC become more popular and expensive, as the supply of repositionable (revalorizable) land decreases, the Bronx is the next logical candidate for change. Not dealing with this potential for significant change now dooms people of limited means to maintain their access to affordable housing.

State vs. local control over land use: Maryland edition

Because the State of Maryland has been working on PlanMaryland, a statewide land use plan, there has been back and forth between counties and the state versus what is appropriate vs. "inappropriate" land use, and about the proper role of the state vs. localities, etc.

Columnist for the Gazette Barry Rascovar has a piece, "It's land use, stupid," which is a reasonable piece on the issue, but it still misses a key point. From the article:

The governor’s determined defense of his controversial land-use plan before the Maryland Association of Counties cut to the quick when he said his plan “is not going to prevent the counties from making stupid land-use decisions. They’re still free to do that. We’re not going to subsidize it.”

In other words, no more subsidies for stupidity.

Such a policy is 40 years late in arriving. But finding a way to put the policy into practice without generating furious protests that influence elections in 2012 and 2014 requires prolonged negotiations. ...

Once again, local opposition is growing against an effort to put some baby teeth in a state land-use plan. Local officials fear heavy-handed state control. They have nightmares of state bureaucrats usurping the traditional zoning and planning roles of local officials.

Who knows what’s best for Frederick, Montgomery or Carroll County? A pointy-headed policy wonk burrowed in a state office building in Baltimore or a local official with intimate knowledge and understanding of a county’s quirks and characteristics?

Can you imagine state planning officials further complicating the many decisions tied to the National Harbor development or adding more complexity to the zoning and planning process for the proposed Science City in Gaithersburg?

In fact, tough state land-use laws might have destroyed James Rouse’s dream of developing a new town on farmland in Howard County. Similarly, Baltimore County’s changes to its zoning laws that allowed for dense population growth in two town centers (White Marsh and Owings Mills) might have been deemed off-limits by earlier state planning czars.

Overcoming the fears of local leaders won’t be easy, particularly at a time when O’Malley also wants to outlaw new septic systems — a move that could have staggering negative implications for many of the state’s less-developed counties.

Still, it is sound policy for the state to tell counties that it will reward them for making sensible land-use decisions that keep population growth within designated areas already served by infrastructure. These counties will continue to get money for school construction, new roads and water and sewer systems.

But counties that insist on promoting sprawl and unchecked development will have to spend more of their own dollars on high-cost public services in those areas.

Rascovar criticizes the possibility of state controls limiting projects like Columbia (maybe an acceptable project), or the creation of growth areas in Baltimore County at Owings Mills and White Marsh, or what is now National Harbor in Prince George's County.

-- Images of I-795/Owings Mills Subway station (AA Roads)

The reality is that all of those developments are classic examples of sprawl and automobile dependence and come at the cost of improving existing areas, and make it that much harder to improve existing areas within Maryland.

They aren't best practice examples of good planning and zoning, but best practice examples of bad planning and the inability of counties to direct land use towards intensification.

While Owings Mills has a subway connection to Baltimore, none of the other places that Rascovar mentions possess significant transit connections and all are supra-reliant on the automobile for the most basic transportation.

E.g., there is all kinds of anguish over failures for smart growth to take at Owings Mills--but it's because it's miles away from other development, and because there is plenty of infill redevelopment and intensification closer in within Baltimore County. (2000 article from the Baltimore Sun)

WRT National Harbor, arguably, because it is located on the Beltway, it does leverage road infrastructure pre-existing in Prince George's County. On the other hand, there is plenty of infill redevelopment and intensification opportunities within the Beltway, served by transit, or future transit.

Instead, National Harbor and Konterra make it that much harder to improve existing areas within Prince George's County, especially at transit sites.

Also see:

-- "Maryland delays anti-sprawl plan in response to critics " from the Infrastructurist, which discusses the extension of the public comment period by the State of Maryland

-- "Counties cry wolf over development restrictions: Our view: Maryland needs new approach to stop harmful sprawl, protect the quality of life and save state taxpayers billions of dollars" Baltimore Sun

Note that Mitt Romney, as Governor of Massachusetts did some really smart smart growth stuff, creating the "Office of Commonwealth Development" to coordinate state government capital investment and to incentivize localities to do the right thing.

He'd probably disavow all that now, but it was an impressive course of action at the state level, taking what Maryland had started to the next level.

-- EPA write-up on Mass. OCD

Undergrounding utilities

This has been an issue in DC, in areas outside of the original "L"enfant City" where there is a ban on overhead wires.

While not perfect, generally the part of the city with undergrounded electrical infrastructure has more reliable service. Plus it looks better, which has been an issue in commercial districts such as Brookland.

In DC, PEPCO claims it costs about $22 million/mile to underground electricity service, although that figure is about 20 times higher than other studies from around the country.

Post-Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene the issue of undergrounding utilities has come up again in Virginia, and the Richmond Times-Dispatch ("Move to underground power lines unlikely") provides a link to a 2005 study by the Virginia Corporation Commission that is pretty definitive.

-- Placement of Utility Distribution Lines Underground, State of Virginia, 2005

The study states that the cost of undergrounding everything is exorbitant, and makes the point that while service is generally more reliable, the cost of maintaining underground infrastructure is 58% higher, plus it takes 5-7 hours longer per repair, compared to above-ground infrastructure.

It does point out that Dominion Power has a program where each year they focus on substantive improvement to the 10 most consistent power faults in their system, and the course of action for correction can include undergrounding.

Bus rapid transit as wishful thinking

In response to Montgomery County's planning efforts for bus rapid transit, as reported on in "Countywide rapid bus system proposed" in the Examiner. From the article:

Officials in Montgomery County are proposing a new rapid transit system that some say will be comparable to D.C.'s Metrorail or the county's planned
Purple Line.

The system will be based on buses running in dedicated lanes on major roads throughout the county. It would cost an estimated $2.3 billion to $2.5 billion and have at least 16 routes down major corridors such as Route 355, New Hampshire Avenue and Shady Grove Road, according to a report by consulting firm Parsons Brinckerhoff.

Those involved with planning have banned the word "bus," saying they want to differentiate the proposed system from existing bus systems like Ride On or Metrobus.

The vehicles in the system will resemble "trains on rubber tires," said Mark Winston, chairman of the county's Transit Task Force -- the group charged with designing the plans for the system.

Hype doesn't make it so...

In North America, people with choices, for the most part, do not ride buses. Even ones gussied up and all pretty.

As long as buses have to travel long distances, and parking, gasoline, gasoline excise taxes, and tolls (if they exist) are relatively cheap for motor vehicles, transit has a hard time competing.

The best executions of bus rapid transit service in North America, such as in Los Angeles, the York Region of Toronto (service provider; Wikipedia), Pittsburgh, and Cleveland, don't have particularly scintillating ridership numbers, with the exception of Los Angeles, the systems don't achieve ridership numbers comparable to the highest ridership lines in the DC region, although there is no question that it is cheaper to build a bus system _over long distances_ than a rail-based transit system.

The issue is one of providing long distance transit services to serve a polycentric (multiple centers) based system.

By definition, transit works best in a concentrated form.

Maybe it's all relative, that a bus rapid transit system is better than nothing. The real focus needs to be on infill development and transit intensification within the core of the region, where transit will have the most positive and effective impact.

-- Montgomery County Councilman Marc Elrich webpage on BRT

-- Montgomery County BRT study

-- Maryland DOT BRT webpage

Note that in North America, probably the best example of BRT is in Ottawa, the capital city of Canada, where 200,000 people ride the BRT system. However, it is the exception that proves the rule, that without a number of other complementary policy changes which were put into effect along with the bus service, likely the ridership would have been minimal.

Key policies include:

-- land use planning requirements that 40% of new jobs (office construction) must be located at BRT stops, along with retail and denser residential development;

-- limited provision of parking in Downtown Ottawa -- they have 300 spaces/1,000 workers where most North American downtowns have 600 parking spaces/1,000 workers

-- eliminating to the extent possible, the provision of free parking for employees downtown, especially for federal workers ;

-- encouraging flextime and other practices that time shift and extend the workday so that bus utilization can be maximized.

-- presentation by Ottawa Transit

-- master's thesis evaluation of Ottawa BRT by David James, University of Calgary

Bike stuff

Image: NDP Leader Jack Layton and his wife, MP Oliva Chow, rode a tandem bike down Yonge St. during the 2005 Gay Pride parade.

TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

1. Founder/publisher of Greater Greater Washington David Alpert has a piece in the Washington Post about bike sharing, "The future has two wheels."

His conclusions:

If we want to continue this cycle of encouraging people to cycle, we can take a few key steps.

Keep expanding. The District is adding 25 stations, Arlington 30, Rockville 20. More would be better, and Alexandria, College Park, Bethesda, Fairfax and others should join.

Add bike lanes and “cycle tracks.” Novice cyclists feel especially vulnerable on the roads. Bike lanes, especially the “cycle tracks” on 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, help. The D.C. Department of Transportation has wavered on adding similar lanes elsewhere downtown. It should move decisively to build them and to complete the 60 miles of lanes in the city’s Bicycle Master Plan. Other jurisdictions can do likewise.

Don’t cut federal bike (and pedestrian) funding. Twelve percent of all trips nationwide happen by bike or on foot, but states spend just 1 percent of transportation funds on bike and pedestrian facilities. Yet Congress is looking at eliminating dedicated bike/pedestrian funding entirely.

Add stations on federal property. Look at the Bikeshare map, and you see a giant hole amid Crystal City, Rosslyn and downtown D.C. It’s called the Mall and its associated parks. Yet the memorials are almost perfect places for stations.

I think the lesson from Montreal is that the creation of a cycletrack network is an absolute necessity for increasing bike uptake in a significant fashion. The emphasis should be on "network." A couple lanes or tracks here and there does not a network make.

I'd recommend more changes, but hey, I've written about that plenty. The big thing is to take bike and pedestrian planning to the next level, with integrated infrastructure and programming plans, for districts/sectors/neighborhoods.

2. It turns out that the recently deceased leader of Canada's New Democratic Party, Jack Layton, was an initiator of the pro-bike sustainable transportation agenda in the City of Toronto, beginning in the 1980s. See "Jack Layton saw the future and it was on a bicycle" from the Toronto Star.

Turns out he was one of the inventors of the "post and ring" device used on parking meters to provide bike parking. How many elected officials have actually created something so tangible and useful? And risen up to be the leader of their political party. Sure President Obama and President Bush ride bikes, but it's not the same.

Post and ring bike racks in Toronto. Photo: Richard Drdul, on Flickr.

3. There is pushback on biking in Montreal as all those damn bicyclists are pissing off motor vehicle drivers, and getting killed too. See "The Downside of Urban Cycling: We need to make it safer but we also need to ask if the public sanctification of biking is warranted" by columnist Henry Aubin of the Montreal Gazette. One response to the piece, "Paying for Convenience," made the very good point that providing higher quality bike parking would increase the use of biking.

The problems according to Aubin:

First, as this week's accidents underscore, bike riding in Montreal is inherently risky. Police say an average of 800 people are injured on bikes every year on Montreal Island. ...

Second, bike riding here is not as environmentally virtuous as it's cracked up to be.

One premise for creating the Bixi was to get people out of cars, but a McGill study last year found that the bikesharing service replaces only two per cent of trips by car. Very few commuters on non-Bixi bikes are also exmotorists. They're ex-transit customers.

Third, many cyclists behave as irresponsibly as Montreal's notorious drivers, perhaps even worse. ...

Fourth, urban cycling is no friend of the taxpayer. ... Consider, too, the way "little" things can add up: the cost of treating those 800 injuries a year, the Société de transport de Montréal's loss of fares from people who would otherwise travel on public transit, the loss of revenue caused by replacing hundreds of parking spots with the Bixi.

I can't imagine that there are more accidents involving bicyclists than motor vehicles in Montreal, but people don't call for driving to be banned. Similarly, transgressions by "the other" seem a lot worse than the transgressions by the not-other.

4. Tomorrow's New York Times real estate section makes the point that more people are asking about bike storage issues when looking for apartments and condominiums, "The Bike Muscles In."

5. The Times also has a long piece about electric biking in Switzerland, "Over the Alps on a Bike With a Boost." The between the lines piece is that they have a system that promotes bike tourism generally, and a system of electric biking rental too, to the point where you can switch out batteries if you're running low.

Certain places, such as Quebec in North America, have focused on developing bike tourism systematically. It's been done at the county level in the U.S., but not so much at the state level, although I guess Pennsylvania's Trail Towns initiative is an exception.

6. And two pieces in the Post over the past couple days mention biking, including on the Baltimore & Annapolis Trail ("Roads less traveled") and maybe a real estate story.

7. A letter to the editor in the Gazette claims that motor vehicle drivers are likely to be punished for hitting bicyclists, "Cyclists should have their own lanes." From the article:

Motorists and cyclists both break the law; unfortunately it's the motorist who will go to jail if the two collide. No wonder motorists are unnerved driving around cyclists.

This is bullshit. Pretty much only if a motor vehicle driver is driving drunk or under the influence of drugs will they "get the book thrown at them." Otherwise accidents are seen as unavoidable mistakes not deserving of consequences.

But, motor vehicle drivers should be held to a higher level of responsibility for accidents, concomitant with the power of the motor vehicle to damage, maim, and kill.

Engaged civic/planning efforts

I still haven't gotten around to writing about some projects involving students from the Maryland Institute of Contemporary Arts in Baltimore that I saw at Artscape.

1. Open City was a civic engagement planning project organized by the Senior Curation Class. Think of it--a museums exhibition class did a better job organizing a planning initiative than do many offices of planning.

2. A masters student in photography did his thesis on a part of Baltimore, Oldtown, that is an example of unsuccessful urban renewal. His grandfather had a store there. Interestingly, his thesis read like a planning document.

3. And another MICA project puts graphic design students together with various social marketing initiatives.

Collectively these projects intrigue me and make me wonder if MICA's community arts masters program ought to develop a joint program with an urban planning curriculum?

4. In June, we came across the Ghana Think Tank project, set up as an outdoor art type exhibit, at the Queens Museum of Art.

This kind of project can be done anywhere, in every big city for sure. They were asking people for feedback, to identify problems and opportunities for improvement within their neighborhood.

5. In Montreal there is the "Transit Kitchen" project, sponsored by the Goethe Institute there. From the website:

Take 700 km of bike paths, 20 medium-sized pedestrian zones, 400 bus routes, 8 subway lines, mix everything well and you get an improved concept for mobility for the city of Montréal.

The international art project "Transit Kitchen“ by Folke Köbberling and Martin Kaltwasser is an invitation for Montréalers to deal with the themes of public transit, bike paths, pedestrian zones and scenarios for the future for an increasingly mobile and climate-friendly Montréal.

Montréalers and visitors will be invited to present, in the form of an ingredients list, recipes, meals, cooking methods and gourmet tips for new possibilities of mobility and for an improved urban lifestyle in Montréal.

Transit Kitchen launched in Toronto, and they have a cookbook of solutions from the exhibit there.

Toronto Transit Kitchen in Union Station.

6. Rethink NYC is a project sponsored by the Guggenheim Museum and BMW, as part of a series of pro-city event-exhibits across the world. See "BMW Guggenheim Lab to Open as Pop-Up in East Village" from the New York Times. It lasts through mid-October.

Note that the Baltimore Open City project did the same kind of thing, using space to exhibit on North Avenue and downtown that wasn't being used "productively."

7. Conferences in Providence, the Providence Symposium, "Make no little plans" in September, sponsored by the Providence Preservation Society and the New England Bike Walk Summit on Friday October 7th, are ways to engage the public in a manner that also builds capacity and community.

8. And the winning submissions from Gowanus by Design’s inaugural competition Gowanus Lowline: Connections, along with the four honorable mentions, 20 thought provoking “idea leaders” and three winning student teams from the Brooklyn School for Collaborative studies will be on display at the SET Gallery, 287 Third Avenue, Brooklyn for two weeks in September. The show’s opening night is Thursday, September 15, from 6:00 to 9:00 pm.

Too many farmers markets?

The New York Times reports how with an explosion of farmers markets, farmers have to participate in more markets to make the same amount of money. See "As Farmers’ Markets Go Mainstream, Some Fear a Glut."

This does lead to increased costs and reduces environmental benefits.

Also see the past blog entry "The reason(s) why a farmers market is created shapes the type and mix of vendors allowed to sell."

Rating the quality of subway service

New York City's Straphangers Campaign has released their annual review of New York City Transit service data, and compiled their analysis.

-- State of the Subways Report Card, 2011

Also see "Group ranks C, 2 trains worst in NYC subway system‎" from the Associated Press.

Streetcar process in DC

Image of options for providing H Street streetcar connections to Union Station from H Street, from the Washington City Paper.

The City Paper has an online ("When Will the Streetcar Get its Own Agency?") and print story ("Slow Train: D.C. streetcars keep hitting speedbumps. How are they going to get where they're going?") about the state of streetcar planning for H Street, and the debacle over providing a direct connection to Union Station.

Basically, the city's equivocation f*ed up getting a reasonably direct streetcar connection to Union Station on H Street.

I would argue that there is still time to right this, but the city would have to step up and really work it. Given it has taken 8 years to get the various parties together on a restoration of the front plaza of Union Station (see "Columbus Plaza to Finally Get Its Facelift" also from the City Paper), if you don't take a hardcore and strong position, it's not going to happen.

(Note that I remember talking to Rachel MacCleery, then the Ward 6 transportation planner for DDOT about the need for this project back in 2004.)

Note that in fairness to DC, it took Portland about 11 years to get their first streetcar line in operation, although it took Seattle about 6 years ("Allen envisions streetcars serving South Lake Union" from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2002; wikipedia).

Streetcar service at Washington Union Station, 1957. Photo: Joe Testagrose Collection

Black social capital, positive deviance, and critical mass to build from: schools improvement

Jonetta Rose Barras has a nice piece in this week's City Paper opining on why public schools in traditionally black parts of the city lag improvement compared to say Capitol Hill, and she attributes this to a failure in community leadership on the part of the black community. See "Neighborhood Schooled: As parents in places like Capitol Hill embrace neighborhood schools, has D.C.'s black middle class given up on them?"

The article spends a lot of time discussing the efforts of Suzanne Wells, a Capitol Hill resident, to rally parents around schools in Capitol Hill, starting with a cross-school library improvement project, and building upon the efforts of the Capitol Hill Cluster schools, a school improvement initiative of the 1980s, that has helped to attract students to the local public schools (Peabody, Watkins, and Stuart-Hobson Middle School) from families with choices.

From the article:

It’s not just a tragedy that predominantly African American Wards 5, 7, and 8 have so few people like Wells. It’s also a disgrace.

“That’s one of the biggest issues we have,” says Jones. “We have got to get parents involved.”

Zapata says much of the problem is that many parents in her community don’t even realize their schools lack the basics. “We have been trying to educate parents and educate the community,” she says. “We have so many young parents. They don’t even understand these issues. They don’t understand what Deal and Hardy Schools are like. They don’t know what an IB program is.”

Few of these parents attend PTA and other education-related meetings, making it nearly impossible for them to fully understand what’s happening in their children’s schools. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle: With more middle-class parents sending their kids elsewhere, the parents who still have kids in the local schools are more likely to be the ones least able to make time for such meetings. “I’ve been to some PTA meetings,” says Jones. “Sometimes there may be less than 10 parents in attendance.”

But the real culprit is the flight-not-fight mentality prevalent in the black middle class. Experts have long complained that such departures lead to starving neighborhood schools of the brightest students. Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that test scores of children in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, like Wards 7 and 8, trail those of their counterparts in Ward 3. It didn’t mention, however, that many of those Ward 3 students are, in fact, upper- or middle-class African Americans from outside that Upper Northwest community.

While this is true, I think it's overly facile. The Capitol Hill initiative had some other advantages that were key to success:

1. I think it's important that Capitol Hill has a strong community ethos;

2. The neighborhood, constructed mostly of rowhouses, is relatively dense, with a fair amount of children and comparatively speaking, has high income demographics;

3. This matters, because relatively undense neighborhoods in other wards make it hard to generate enough student enrollment to adequately populate "neighborhood" schools;

4. Most importantly, rather than having to work to improve fully failing schools from scratch, a core group of schools, the Cluster Schools, were known to be relatively successful, and this success was built upon and extended.

In fact, this last point is key, and something that I have pointed out for years from the standpoint of the "Positive Deviance" theory.

When I first read an article about positive deviance in "Your Company's Secret Change Agents," from the Harvard Business Review, I had to re-read it a couple times as it seemed quite subtle, and I didn't fully get it. But in reality, the thesis is pretty simple.

As the editor of that article says, in an appreciation of Jerry Sternin:

Of all the HBR articles I've had the privilege of helping to birth, that one is my pinnacled favorite. The authors talk about what it takes to ignite deep, real, lasting transformation, even in seemingly impossible circumstances. You think implementing organizational change in your company is tough? Try stopping AIDS, hospital staph infections, starvation, or the ancient practice of female genital mutilation.

Most organizations and the personnel within them fight the adoption of best practices, finding excuses in differences in situations to justify not changing. But all organizations, even those that are the most dysfunctional, have pockets of high performance, of significant excellence.

Because these pockets of excellence function within the same organizational conditions, other parts of the organization can not justify excuses for not working to migrate and adopt those best practices.

Positive deviance builds upon excellence to re-position dysfunctional institutions on achieving excellence.

For all the bad things we hear, DC Public Schools have had a number of programs for many years--maybe not as many as we'd like--that are successful. I don't have children, so I don't know about all the programs, but three come to mind without thinking very hard at all:

1. The Capitol Hill Cluster Schools, including pre-K, elementary, and middle school education opportunities;

2. The Spanish language immersion program at Oyster Elementary School in Northwest DC;

3. Various Montessori elementary education programs across the city.

Using the idea of positive deviance, these clusters of excellence could and should have been expanded, to take over and reposition and recast schools that weren't succeeding.

For example, I suggested maybe 5-7 years ago, that the Capitol Hill Cluster Schools should be expanded by one or two schools on the north (such as J.O. Wilson or Ludlow-Taylor in the H Street neighborhood, and Maury Elementary) and one on the south (such as Brent).

Alternatively, around 2003 I suggested that an arts cluster could be developed in the H Street neighborhood, to extend the idea of an "arts" district (Atlas Performing Arts Center, H Street Playhouse and some bars...) into the neighborhood, beyond the commercial district. (This idea was sparked in part Vanessa Ruffin, who was on the H Street Main Street Promotions Committee, which I chaired, she was an artist and had graduated years before from McKinley Technical High School.)

So the idea was that the schools (i.e., Ludlow-Taylor, Wilson, Wheatley [in Trindidad], Miner, Webb, Maury, Eastern High School) could be repositioned around visual arts, performing arts, language arts (English and foreign languages, each school would specialize in a different foreign language) and writing, media arts (broadcast, print, digital), and graphic design. (Sadly, this idea was never taken up by people with school-aged children.)

Basically the success in reforming Capitol Hill area public schools described in the City Paper article has been built on the positive deviance concept, and by extending the successes that already exists.

The tragedy in the DC public schools educational reform effort has been in not taking the lessons of evident success and extending them to other parts of the city.

The key is to find out what "weirdness" allowed the Capitol Hill Cluster Schools to be created in the first place, and work to take those lessons to other parts of the city.

Nothing prevented the creation and expansion of the Cluster School concept to public schools in Wards 4, 5, 7, and 8.

But it never happened.

Instead, the kill the teacher as reform movement entered the District, along with the pro-charter school movement and in many parts of the city (Wards 4 and 5 especially), the DC Public School system is dying in the face of ever-expanding charter schools.

It's too late to fix the DC Public Schools. Except in places where public schools are still functioning, in Wards 6, 2, and 3 for sure, and maybe in Ward 1.

--------

The phrase "black social capital" is a reference to the book by Marion Orr.

Resources

-- "Bucking School Reform, a Leader Gets Results" New York Times (this school superintendent in New York City was not supported by the Bloomberg reform narrative, but schools under her supervision for the most part outperformed the rest)
-- "From Hunger Aid to School Reform"
-- "Your Company's Secret Change Agents," article from Harvard Business Review on positive deviance
-- Marion Orr, Black Social Capital. The Politics of School Reform in Baltimore, 1986-1998
-- Clarence Stone, "Civic Capacity and Urban Education"
-- Building Civic Capacity: The Politics of Reforming Urban Schools
-- Roy Strickland "Integrating Primary and Secondary Education with Community Life: Designing Cities of Learning
-- "Year Round Schooling," review, Education Week
-- National Association for Year Round Schooling
-- Baltimore County Capital Improvement Planning process

-- Leadership and the Role of Parks and Recreation in the New Economy

-- Montgomery County Maryland community planning unit

Expanding rail passenger planning without high speed rail: Western Massachusetts

Albany-Renssalaer Train station, Wikipedia photo.

While there are many railroad commuter services across the country, in the northeast, there are extant rail passenger systems in Greater Boston, Greater New York City (including Connecticut), New Jersey, Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware, in Maryland and Virginia, that for the most part are built on "legacy" railroad passenger services that had been first offered by for profit railroad companies decades ago.

As the for profit services declined, some but not all of the commuter services had been picked up by local and state government funded programs.

This left gaps in the services available, as the systems slimmed down to services focused on commuting-based services.

I have suggested, based on work originally laid out by BeyondDC, that a single regional railroad system serving DC, Maryland, and Virginia, with certain connections to West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Delaware makes more sense than the separate services that Maryland and Virginia offer currently.

Maps by BeyondDC.

Similarly, while New York State's MTA provides service as far north as Poughkeepsie in New York State and Danbury in Connecticut, and MBTA serves Greater Boston, the region north from Poughkeepsie up to Albany and west from Boston to Pittsfield was once served by rail and could be again.

The privately run Housatonic Railroad commissioned a study suggesting that provide service to Western Massachusetts from Danbury. See "Rails of gold for Berkshires?‎" from the Berkshire Eagle.

You can see how improving rail service in this area, and from north of Poughkeepsie, which wasn't part of the study, could help to revive these areas economically, and would be an economic development strategy worth considering for Upstate New York and Western Connecticut, and Western Massachusetts, even if the state governments are hard pressed for money, and while New York's MTA faces massive economic hardship. Also see this 2007 article, "Regional Passenger Rail Projects Await Green Light" from the Hill Country Observer.

For me the reason it is worth considering is that these areas are already familiar with rail passenger service. It isn't a new phenomenon, and it is something that people would likely ride, if they had the option.

Although it isn't forecasted that the service would have "transit oriented development" potential, as the plan called for station areas with large parking lots.

There are probably more of these opportunity areas within various parts of the country.

How car insurance underprices the risk to pedestrians and cyclists

Washcycle mentions an insurance case in Alaska, involving an accident between a pickup truck and a cyclist, where it was stipulated that the truck driver was at fault. The insurance policy limited liability to other parties to $100,000, even if the actual damages were much higher.

As commenter JeffB states

Every state's minimum insurance requirements are dreadfully too low. In this case the motorist had $100,000 liability (not insignificant) but his own insurance company valued the damages to the cyclist to be $375,000 - $475,000.

And this from simply pulling in front of a cyclist.

What I get from this is:
1) Minimum liability insurance needs to be raised several orders of magnitude.

2) Perhaps we should have a new liability insurance component that specifically covers damages to person(s) who are NOT motorists (and by virtue of not having several tons of steel protection suffer greater injury).

I would set a liability requirement for damages to non-motorists to be several multiples of the existing liability minimum limit.

Keeping in mind that a car - car collision at 25 MPH likely will not injure any of the occupants while a car - pedestrian collision certainly will). Actuaries could work out the correct multiple.

Crickey7 makes the key point:

... It's truly risk-shifting to the victims and an example of moral hazard in that the irresponsible pay less in insurance premiums and get away with it.

School reform...

1. There is a website devoted to debunking claims of greatness on the part of former DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee.

-- Rhee First

2. Historian of education Diane Ravitch has a Reuters piece, "The reform movement is already failing" about the failure of the current school reform effort.

From the article:

We are in the midst of the latest wave of reforms, and Steven Brill has positioned himself as the voice of the new reformers. These reforms are not just flawed, but actually dangerous to the future of American education. They would, if implemented, lead to the privatization of a large number of public schools and to the de-professionalization of education.

As Brill’s book shows, the current group of reformers consists of an odd combination of Wall Street financiers, conservative Republican governors, major foundations, and the Obama administration. The reformers believe that the way to “fix” our schools is to fire more teachers, based on the test scores of their students; to open more privately-managed charter schools; to reduce the qualifications for becoming a teacher; and to remove job protections for senior teachers. ...

Reformers like to say — as they did in the film “Waiting for ‘Superman’” — that we spend too much and that poverty doesn’t matter. They say that teacher effectiveness is all that matters. They claim that children who have three “great” or “effective” teachers in a row will close the achievement gap between the races. They say that experience doesn’t matter. They believe that charter schools, staffed by tireless teachers, can close the gap in test scores.

Unfortunately, research does not support any of their claims. ...

Research provides no support for Brill’s belief that the teacher is the ultimate determinant of student success or failure. Economists overwhelmingly agree that families, and especially family income, have a larger impact on student academic performance than teachers. Typically, economists estimate that teachers account for 10-15% of student performance; non-school factors influence about 60%.

And what about the reformers’ claim that three great teachers in a row close the achievement gap? It is a sound bite, not an actionable policy proposal. The reformers can’t point to a single school or district that has actually made this happen.

Nimbyism: Standing up for what's right or "nihilistic selfishness"?

In the UK, Planning Minister Greg Clark called opposition to changes in planning processes by the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England as "nihilistic selfishness." See "Minister criticises National Trust over planning reform" from the Financial Times.

From the article:

A government minister has criticised the National Trust, saying the charity is “not serious” and has made “risible” claims that planning reforms would lead to breakneck development across the greenbelt.

Greg Clark, a minister in the department for communities, said those who sought to “preserve in aspic” their towns were guilty of “nihilistic selfishness” because they would prevent young people from getting on the housing ladder.

The outspoken comments come amid a row pitting the government against the National Trust and the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England over a new “presumption in favour of sustainable development” that would make it harder for councils to reject projects.

Critics say the clause is a directive to build and flies in the face of the coalition’s localism drive. Some fear it could lead to thousands of homes being built across the greenbelt.

The National Trust said it believed in growth but not at any cost. A spokesman said: “For the last 60-plus years planning has been used to guide development to the places that need it while preventing sprawl, protecting open countryside and safeguarding designated areas and historic buildings . . .  Whilst we believe in growth, that’s a fundamental change that puts all of the above under threat .”

2. There is an interesting video done in 1986, featuring Paul Newman as narrator, about the potential for negative impact of adding high rises to neighborhood areas of Manhattan.


3. "Nimbyism" is a pejorative, true, and mostly true, in that people tend to not be able to have a more nuanced approach. It's all or nothing, usually nothing because people tend to be against change.

My line about development is that I am not against development, but I am against s****y development.

And I am continually flabbergasted at how much bad development there is.

What do you do when the Planning and Zoning Regime lets you down?

People think that the planning and zoning laws are written to ensure positive contributions to the city, but for the most part, that's not actually the case.

Regulations "balance" community interest with property rights. That's fine.

But the execution of property rights is often more about minimizing outlays by the developer rather than ensuring quality or even a potential maximization of revenue--this seeming contradiction is the result of the difference in time frames concerning the land--a community has to deal with a property forever while the property owner only for the time they own the property.

When your time frame is short term, your decision calculus works to maximize your benefits while minimizing your costs. Usually this comes at the expense of quality.

A case in point is the Walmart issue in DC.

Walmart strategically chose locations in DC which limit the ability of community input into the program. Only 1 of the 4 sites allows for extraordinary input into the process. One site doesn't even require any approval at all, while two sites have a review process, but a process that is built upon a bias for approval.

The plans for development at these locations show the limits within DC planning and zoning regulations in terms of promoting better practice.

The willingness to push developers to do better is dependent on how willing elected officials are in standing up for broader concerns. All along I said that regardless of the particulars, the Office of Planning would come out in favor of the development because virtually all of the city's elected and appointed officials came out in lockstep in favor.

While I am not surprised, I am extremely disappointed in how the DC Office of Planning (and to some extent the DC Department of Transportation) have wimped out with regard to the evaluation of the building application for the Walmart store proposed for Georgia Avenue NW in Ward 4.

-- WARD4 LTR REPORT 2011-03 5929 GEORGIA AVENUE NW LARGE REVIEW REPORT

I would say that the findings are "derelict" on at least 5 points:

a. They said it was out of the scope of the Large Tract Review procedure to consider economic impact as a neighborhood impact. I disagree. This could be litigated but I am hardly in the position of initiating a lawsuit, especially one that could lose because Courts typically give a lot of leeway to government agencies in terms of defining how they respond to matters within the context of regulations.

But I don't see how "economic impact" isn't a legitimate "neighborhood impact" that the LTR process is supposed to manage and mitigate.

b. By not saying that there is potentially negative economic impact on the retail environment in Ward 4, specifically Georgia Avenue, prevents the development and funding of focused mitigation programming.

c. The proposed development is a single use project at a location where DC planning documents state that mixed use should occur.

Zoning regulations are not set up to promote the preferred or best or highest value development, but the minimum type based on the regulations. Planning documents "encourage," they cannot require.

While this is the case, the LTR document could have strongly encouraged that the site be developed over time to maximize the benefit to the city.

Developers do try to satisfy the concerns of elected and appointed officials because they do business with them in an ongoing fashion.

But the city didn't bother pushing on this point, likely because Walmart has already been welcomed with open arms and bear hugs, greased in part by donations by Walmart Foundation and other interests.

d. The proposed development is at a badly designed street intersection (Georgia and Missouri Avenues NW). Increased traffic for the store will further stress the intersection, as well as future redevelopment at the Walter Reed site.

Rather than address the problems in a significantly comprehensive fashion, for the most part, the structural problems were ignored.

Likely there will never be a fix made of this intersection (at least within my lifetime), while this is the best time to do so.

e. Most of the transportation demand management initiatives undertaken by DDOT were ordinary.

The city had the opportunity to push Walmart to adopt an extraordinary urban-appropriate measure, which would have been to have a delivery service, and to deliver purchases say above $50.

They didn't pursue this.

Additionally, while it is not uncommon in other jurisdictions for shuttle services between transit and stores to be provided as part of a development agreement (e.g., this is done in the East Carson district in Pittsburgh, at the Ikea development in Red Hook, Brooklyn, etc.), the city did not attempt to pursue this with the Walmart development on Georgia Avenue, which is about 2 miles north of the Petworth Metro station.

4. You can talk all you want about how the city is great, committed to placemaking, focused on complete streets, is developing its creative economy, etc., but every time you fail to defend the quality of place, sustainable transportation, and the building of a resilient, local economy, you are failing the city.

The real nihilists are the ones who fail to take the responsibility for allowing those characteristics that define and extend the quality of the city to be diminished.

The "nimbys" take solace in their opposition, because it's not like the elected and appointed officials fulfilled their duty of acting in a nuanced fashion protecting both the rights of the property owner and the needs and desires of the city and community in terms of building stronger and more resilient and successful communities.

If you want to fix the public schools, focus on the public schools: charters schools as a distraction

This is in response to today's Post article, "For D.C.'s charter schools, a new day: With supportive mayor, nontraditional facilities wield growing influence," which has the subhead "Mayor hopes D.C. charters spur changes in traditional schools."

(Also see the Valerie Strauss column, "D.C.’s move toward charter-centric school system," and the AP story "Gray administration hires consultant with ties to charter school movement to study DC schools.")

Wishful and foolish thinking.

In Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs discussed how people would justify urban renewal practices because "it gets rid of rats." She countered (paraphrased), why not focus on getting rid of rats directly? (because tearing down "old" buildings and building new buildings doesn't get rid of rats, it just displaces them for a time).

While I understand the allure of public charter schools as a way for parents to have input into schools and opportunities for their children in the face of underperforming and disconnected public school bureaucracies, it's foolish to believe that somehow "competition" from charter schools will force the public school bureaucracy to change.

The focus should be on fixing the public school system in all of the ways: personnel; plant; bureaucracy; culture; organization; etc., that it is dysfunctional.

Sadly, the "reform" effort has mostly focused on demonizing teachers, and not building the necessary support systems for teachers, classrooms, students, parents and families, principals, and schools.

The biggest problem with the disparate "school reform" movement in DC, split between proponents of traditional public schools, charter schools, and even private school vouchers, is that the social, organizational, and community capital available to be directed to school improvement is dissipated amongst all of these separate movements, and the massive amount of capital that is necessary for the improvement of the very much dysfunctional traditional public school system cannot be obtained as for the most part, the most able parents and families have been diverted away from the public school system.

I also think it's ironic that key support groups for Mayor Gray's election were public school teachers and other groups affiliated with traditionally schooling.

They got "schooled."

(Technically, much of Vincent Gray's career outside of government was for human service agencies that received significant funding through government contracts. Therefore, charter schools as a concept aren't something foreign to him.)

is the title of a piece by the Project for Public Spaces.

In Great Cities…

• Community goals are a top priority in city planning
• The emphasis is on pedestrians, not cars
• New development projects enhance existing communities
• Public spaces are accessible and well-used
• Civic institutions are catalysts for public life.
• Local economic development is encouraged
• Public spaces are managed, programmed and continually improved.

Each factor has 2 to 6 items, for example, under "local economic development is encouraged":

• There are many locally owned businesses-markets, mom-and-pop stores, street vendors, and larger independent stores; these local businesses are encouraged by the city; people know their retailers by name.

• The mix of locally owned businesses is such that at least some of them are “third places” -places where people can just spend time.

• Local businesses work with schools to provide internships or part time jobs.

While I don't consider the list to be exhaustive, it is a good start.

I do believe that most communities likely are found wanting when evaluated against this list.

Too few elected officials have a vision for what a city should be, let alone what it could be, and I believe that many of the things they end up working on or pushing for actually reduce quality of life or destroy wealth and value.

A bicycle contraption

Notion's Capital caught this image on the 700 block of 8th Street SE in DC's Capitol Hill.

Transit stuff

Protest sign against the Tide light rail system, Norfolk.

1. Washcycle reminds us that the light rail system in Norfolk, Virginia opened yesterday. See "30000 people ride the Tide> opening day" from WAVY-TV. It's been controversial, partly because of cost overruns, leading to changeovers in leadership for the agency.

Plus, rather than include both Virginia Beach and Norfolk in the original service, eventually the transit agency figured out that it wasn't worth the time and energy necessary to get Virginia Beach to commit, so they went ahead without including VB, figuring that seeing the service in operation increases the likelihood that Virginia Beach will end up participating.

Washcycle points out that they have bike racks in the light rail cars.

2. I didn't realize that Jerusalem has launched a light rail line as well. See "Jerusalem's little train that almost could" from Haaretz.

A pedestrian looks as a light rail tram passes by in Jerusalem August 21, 2011. After numerous delays that have plagued the project since Israel began building it in 2002, Jerusalem's light rail system started running on Friday. Travel on the train will be free of charge for the first two weeks. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

If light rail can be integrated into as historic a city as Jerusalem, we can probably manage to figure out how to do it for streetcars and light rail in the DC region, without unduly ruining it for motor vehicle drivers...

3. Awhile back, people in the vicinity of the Linthicum light rail station in Anne Arundel County called for the station to be closed, because of crime problems. See "Shut Linthicum light rail station, most tell MTA at hearing: MTA is proposing to cut back service at station, but other users call it a lifeline" from the Baltimore Sun.

In Gresham, Oregon, Tri-Met has been playing classical music at a station that has had problems similar to those in Linthicum.

The TriMet light rail stop at 162nd Avenue is shown Wednesday, March 30, 2011, in Portland, Ore. Since November, at this light rail stop the regional transit department has approved the playing of classical music in an effort to ward off the kind of crimes that happen when people just hang around. A bill making its way through the Oregon Legislature would expand the program to all light rail stops in Clackamas, Washington and Multnomah counties deemed high-crime areas by police or residents. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

(This still gets to my point that far more crimes are committed in association with automobiles, but we don't ban automobiles.)

4. The Los Angeles Bus Riders Union continues to make the case that transit resources made available to bus riders continue to diminish in the face of expansion of the fixed rail transit network. See "L.A. transit activists rally for a federal probe: Cutting back on bus lines hurts L.A.'s low-income, nonwhite residents, the Bus Riders Union says at a forum where participants share their experiences and concerns" from the Los Angeles Times.

5. There is a statewide campaign in Rhose Island to preserve transit service there. Save RIPTA: RIPTA Riders for Public Transit.

6. The American Public Transportation Association reports that "80% of transit systems faced with further cuts, fare increases" according to Metro Magazine. From the article:

Public transit systems are faced with implementing new service cuts and fare increases on top of cuts and increases enacted during the past budget cycle, according to a new study released by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).

The report, Impacts of the Recession on Public Transportation Agencies , noted the top three causes of stress in operating budgets among public transit systems were local/regional funding, state funding and increasing fuel prices.

Nearly 80 percent of public transit systems have already implemented fare increases or service cuts in 2010 or are considering them for the future because of flat or decreased local and/or regional funding, with 71 percent of responding agencies seeing flat or decreased local and/or regional funding and 83 percent seeing flat or decreased state funding. The decreases are on top of an already stagnant funding situation in 2010.

USPS mail delivery by bike

Washcycle noticed a Postal Service press release ("Green Mail Delivery Saves Postal Service Millions") mentions that the USPS does deliver mail by bike in a handful of communities.

It turns out that the USPS delivers mail by bike in only three places – Sun City, Arizona, St. Petersburg, Florida, and Miami Beach, Florida.

USPS Mail Delivery Bike, St. Petersburg, Florida. Flickr photo by cobrabyte.

See the entry "Mail Delivery by Bike" from the Utility Cycling blog for more, including the history of mail delivery by bike, a discussion of United Parcel Service using bikes during the holiday season, and experience overseas.

Biking as a social change movement

The City Paper cover story this week about biking, "Sometimes a Bike is Just a Bike: On the symbolism—and politics—of bicycling in D.C.," doesn't really say anything new, but it is an extremely well-written article. For me, the best parts are the quotes from Andy Clarke, President of the League of American Bicyclists, as he is one of the most articulate advocates on the issue nationally.

While the article calls bike lanes an indicator of "gentrification":

There are a few easy signs that developers, real-estate brokers, new residents, city planners, and other agents of gentrification have their eyes on a particular neighborhood. A new condo building pops up, for instance. A bar suddenly seeks a change in its liquor license to set up a sidewalk patio. Or, out of nowhere one day, a bike lane gets painted on the street, like on 25th Street SE. (And, thanks to the incremental nature of the District’s bike-infrastructure projects, it not only appears out of nowhere, but it seems to lead to nowhere, ending mysteriously a few blocks down the road.)

I don't think that accurately depicts how biking infrastructure is created. The article does go on to make the point that maybe it's about car owners fighting changes.

It's because biking questions the dominant mobility paradigm of automobility, and people with cars don't like very much any perception of their giving up what they see as their "rights" (not "privileges") to the road.

By quoting Andy Clarke, the article makes a point that I do frequently, that bike lanes and other infrastructure are opposed virtually everywhere, including progressive cities like San Francisco and Portland and New York City, at least initially. From the article:

Any city moving forward with bicycle infrastructure faces a battle, according to Andy Clarke, the president of the League of American Bicyclists. Look at New York, where transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan has been vilified in Park Slope (where brownstones sell for nearly $2 million) and Staten Island (a stronghold of the white ethnic middle class) alike for installing lanes. There will always be opposition to bike lanes, and Clark says it’s nearly impossible to characterize or typify those who don’t want them—save for one kind of mind-set.

“I think it’s probably fairly predictable in being that whoever feels threatened, you’re taking stuff away from. If you’re taking away parking, or a travel lane, or a street corner, or an old rail corridor, whoever feels they’re losing something is going to get bent out of shape,” he says. “You’ve got high-class opponents and areas where people have complained about bike lanes going through poor neighborhoods. I don’t think race or class or income is the issue. I think it’s fear of the unknown and fearing losing something that you’ve had is the most common denominator.”

Cycletrack, Prospect Park West in Brooklyn. Photo: Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times.

2. This week, the Courts upheld the Prospect Park West bicycle lane in Brooklyn, which was opposed by rich people including Sen. Charles Schumer and his wife, Iris Weinshall, the former transportation commissioner for NYC who doesn't like it that one, she was succeeded by Janette Sadik-Khan, and two, that Khan has a different mobility agenda. See "Judge Rejects Groups' Effort to Remove Bike Lane" from the New York Times.


Photo by Matt Stone, Boston Herald. ‘A PREVIEW OF WHAT WILL COME’: Eric Berger stands on the edge of Massachusetts Avenue in Arlington, where the town is proposing adding more bike lanes.

3. And the Boston Herald reports in "Activist seeks to hit brakes on bike lanes," about how Arlington, Massachusetts resident Eric Berger claims he has spent $100,000 fighting the creation of bike lanes on Massachusetts Avenue. From the article:

Eric Berger claims he has spent more than $100,000 on a legal team, a civil engineer and a historian to fight Arlington’s plan to take away drivers’ lanes on both sides of busy Massachusetts Avenue and designate them . . . bike-only.

“And I’m not a wealthy guy,” the car-rights activist said. “People are saying, ‘Why are you doing that?’ It surprised me. I’m doing it because to me this is an example of government waste at its worst.”

Call him an internal-combustion-engine hugger, but Berger worries reducing travel lanes to make way for bike lanes will create traffic jams, hurt local businesses and jeopardize public safety. ...

Berger noted the heavily used Minuteman Bike Path already runs the length of town. A Toyota Camry driver, he rides a bike and insists he’s no hater. But he said he’s convinced pro-bike extremists are intent on creating a “cycling utopia,” and warned if you give them a lane, they’ll take the whole road.

“What’s happening in Arlington is a preview of what will come elsewhere,” he said.

For the most part he's wasting his money. Generally, by increasing bike traffic and reducing automobile traffic, especially in denser areas, mobility throughput is improved.

But automobility advocates refuse to be data-driven, because the data is not favorable to their position.

4. This letter to the editor in the Seattle Times captures the automobility sentiment perfectly:

Automobile Mondays

How considerate of the city to provide bicyclists exclusive use of a major street for five days each year so they may cruise down Lake Washington Boulevard “without having to worry about cars competing for the roadway” [“Bicycle Sunday: No cars allowed,” Your Thursday, Aug. 18].

I thought the endless, expensive, everyday Burke-Gilman Trail was built just for that purpose.

If Cascade Bicycle Club members — who don’t pay a penny for the right to pedal over roads — are granted this luxury, how about rewarding motorists — who must pay for the privilege with car and drivers licenses, insurance and ever-increasing license-tab fees — with a few bike-free days on selected Seattle thoroughfares?

“Automobile Monday: No bikes allowed” has a nice ring to it.

— Dean Trier, Redmond

360 days of virtually exclusive use for the car isn't enough...

a. Note the use of the word "right" to refer to use of the road.

b. Most drivers believe that somehow, their gas taxes and registration fees pay for all of the roads. Nope, especially for local roads. On average, 50% of the cost of roads comes from general funds, not "user fees and taxes."

c. Fwiw, if the average car is driven 12,000 miles/year and gets 22 miles/gallon, the person would use about 545 gallons of gas each year. With state and federal gasoline taxes, the total expenditure on gas taxes would be about $310, which doesn't pay for much.

d. Bicyclists likely pay as much or more as anyone else for the road network.

5. Washcycle's piece on the City Paper article, "Bike lanes, race and politics in DC," has some good comments about how it is fact that a clear majority of people in DC bicycling are white. I made this (edited) comment:

WRT biking being a whitey phenomenon, while I would argue it is somewhat bimodal (very poor, especially Hispanics, and people with money), this isn't a surprise.

Social change/Behavioral change (and the early adoption of new behaviors and attitudes) tends to be a function of economic status and educational attainment.

Just as I argue that African-American perceptions about the value of urban living lag more recent trends that favor urban living, it shouldn't be a shock that the same goes for sustainable transportation, in particular biking.

People talk about bicycling "culture" but I argue against the belief that somehow there is some kind of bicycling culture that makes Portland or Copenhagen unique.

Culture is constructed. In those places, they've made many decisions, both over the years, and in a complementary fashion, to support sustainable transportation at the expense of automobility.

For cities, this makes sense, because cities were created to optimize mobility on foot, by bike, and on transit.

The problem in most U.S. places is that policies aren't complementary. E.g., in Amsterdam I think, it takes two years to get a parking permit to be able to park your car in the core of the center city. And it isn't cheap.

In DC, the cost for a residential parking permit is $15/year.

Similarly, gasoline excise taxes are so much higher in Europe, which not only discourages driving, but "encourages" new development to be located and designed in a way that minimizes driving.

These kinds of differences between the U.S. and European countries when it comes to transportation policy make it much more difficult to induce mode shift to biking more rapidly here, especially because biking infrastructure is usually constructed not in terms of demand and the likelihood of use, but on the basis of what road reconstruction projects are happening. While this is done to minimize costs, it makes it harder to show significant gains in a timely fashion.

6. The always great urban design writer for the Toronto Star, Christopher Hume, has a piece comparing Quebec and Ontario as it relates to biking, "What goes around in Quebec comes around in Ontario."

From the article:

If you haven’t been to Quebec in a while, prepare to share the roads — and even more amazingly, the highways — with the two-wheeled. Everywhere you turn now, bicycles are part of the traffic mix. In addition to separated lanes in Montreal, highways are marked and divided into bike lanes and vehicular lanes. Even routes that aren’t marked have signs that make it clear the two — bikes and cars — must share the road.

In Toronto, by contrast, bikes have become a cause for panic, a wedge issue exploited by elected leaders for their own benefit. It is a topic on which municipal elections can be won or lost, at least in part. That’s not entirely new, of course, but it is another indication of how the politics of Ontario — and Toronto — are becoming sclerotic. So frightened are we of change that we buy into the promise that the province’s glorious yesterday will never end.

It already has.

Who could forget Mayor Rob Ford’s first utterance upon being elected last November? “The war on the car,” he said, “is over.”

Such silliness. Regardless of what His Worship may think, the war of the car has only just begun. Whether or not Torontonians realize it, we will be seeing many more bikes on the streets here and around the world.

This isn’t a matter of right or left, but of right and wrong. Due to circumstances well beyond the city’s control, this is the direction we are headed. For any number of reasons — climate change, fuel costs, congestion and diminished resources — the heyday of the car is over and alternatives are needed.

Unlike Ontario, Quebec has embraced change, and turned it to its own advantage. Anyone travelling through rural Quebec will find the roads alive with cyclists. Look in the parking lots of the auberges, hotels and inns; they are full of bikes.

The issue is whether or not you want to be the change, lead the change, or be behind.

New D.C. government agency will oversee real estate, capital projects

is an article in the Washington Business Journal, and it discusses how DC is combining its property management and real estate activities for agencies into one supra-agency, modeled after the federal government's GSA.

But given how badly many DC government agencies are at property management, for years I've joked that DC's primary property management strategy is "demolition by neglect," and how badly the government seems to be at running big agencies, and how bad the government seems to be at running services that ought to be relatively manageable ("Report: D.C. special-ed bus system is unsafe" from the Washington Post), I have some concerns that this is the right step.

Allen Lew, now the City Administrator, gets lots of props from the connected ("An ode to Wilson High School" from the Examiner), for his management of the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization, but auditor and inspector general reports found many problems (e.g., "Lew disregarded contracting rules, audit says" from the Examiner).

This article from the Post, about 5 years ago, is worth re-reading, "The Price of Neglect." It discusses how most of the facilities modernization projects handled by the US Army Corps of Engineers for the DC Public School System starting in the late 1990s ended up being destroyed through lack of maintenance.

In the past, Council Chair Brown has commented that the city does a pretty good job with maintenance, judging by how the Dept. of Real Estate Services handles maintenance of City Hall.

Hmm, don't you think that DRES pays extra attention to that building, considering that all the elected officials are based there?

I think the city did a fine job with the restoration of Eastern Market after the fire. In fact, I think the city's program manager for that project (Curtis Clay) deserves massive commendations.

But I look at various school grounds, DPR facilities, other demolition by neglect situations, and I get scared.