Go solar in DC...

From email:

The Capitol Hill Energy Co-op is helping homeowners find out how to get started with solar energy.

Did you know that DC and Federal incentives can pay for up to 70% of the project cost? Did you know that many systems will pay for themselves in less than 5 years?

Come to our meeting on December 8th at 7pm at the Capitol Hill United Methodist Church located at 421 Seward Square SE, Washington, DC 20003 to have all your questions answered and sign up for solar site assessments. This meeting is specifically for those that are just starting to explore solar energy. Come learn how to lower your energy bills and your carbon footprint.

The first set of co-op members are moving forward with solar panel installations on their roofs this Spring. The co-op has worked with the DC Department of Environment to streamline the application process for getting renewable energy rebates, and has also formed a partnership with several solar companies to provide competitive bids and preferred prices for co- op members.

To sign up for email updates on the project, join our google group by going to our website and joining from the "Solar Roof Project" pages.
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Also see:

- RETHINKING THE ROWHOME (from Baltimore's Urbanite Magazine)

- Greening Buildings - Rowhouse to Empire State Building from the Enchanting Challenge Blog on Social Entrepreneurship

- "Where the jobs are greener" from the Allentown Morning Call (originally from the LA Times)

In this May 8, 2009 photo, Len Bicknell walks from his house to his garage where his solar energy panels are mounted on the roof in Marshfield, Mass. Bicknell's home is fitted with both thermal panels for hot water production and electric solar panels for energy production. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)

Inter-city bus services

While I do think every day bus service, even if sexy "bus rapid transit" is not likely to compete very well for choice riders, the Chinese buses have spawned branded competitors (Megabus, Bolt Bus, others) that are competing against Amtrak in the Northeast.

Plus, Megabus started off with a similar kind of service in the Midwest, based out of Chicago, before moving into the Northeast-Mid-Atlantic market. See "Bus service offers options, fare deals" from the Wisconsin State-Journal.

I always figured it was a service that appealed to people mostly concerned about price. But with the addition of wifi service, electricity outlets, etc., the Bolt and Megabus offerings (among others) become a kind of premium service.

The problem with regular "mass" transit on the train is that for two or more people, it's typically cheaper to drive. With Megabus/Bolt it isn't, especially if you manage to score one of the limited number of extremely cheap seats. And you can multitask--read or use the computer--rather than sit in the car (I can't read in cars or on regular buses, but I can on motorcoaches, subway cars, or railroad cars).

Megabus-Bolt and similar services bring regularity and "legibility" to the bus trip in a way that the chaotic "Chinese" bus services do not. See "In Chinatown, a $10 Trip Means War; Weary Owners Struggle to Stay Afloat" from the New York Times.

And I was surprised to look at the line up at the Bolt Bus stop adjacent to Penn Station in Baltimore last Wednesday and see many "older people" (in their late 50s and older), not just hipsters and youth.

See "Cheaper prices, free access to the Internet, driving local, US ridership higher" and "Megabus builds up buses on busy route," the latter which discusses the use of double deck buses, from the Boston Globe.

PG County "Envisioning" process

1. Remember that people in Prince George's County don't like it when you refer to the County as PG...

2. They have a visioning process going on now. See "Residents lend a hand in planning the future of Prince George's" from the Gazette. (It's similar to the Growth Policy process in Montgomery County.)

3. Interestingly (and worth going to just to observe), one of the sessions is just for youth. Forums still to be held are scheduled for Dec. 1 in Oxon Hill and Dec. 3 in Landover. A youth forum will be held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Dec. 5 in College Park.

4. Residents interested in participating should visit the website, Envision Prince George's or call 301-952-3594.

5. From the website, which includes a blog and a comment section for residents and stakeholders:

Envision Prince George’s is a call to action to develop and implement a vision for our county with a vibrant economy and high quality of life for all. Envision Prince George’s will mobilize and empower county stakeholders to be directly involved in creating their future as the County continues to grow and prosper over the next two decades and beyond. Through a series of community forums and other activities, Prince Georgians will develop a shared vision for the county and take action to make that commitment real. To review our in-depth guide to the Opportunities and Challenges facing the County, please download the Envision Participant Guide.

Balancing land use conflicts, especially over industry, can be very difficult

Image from the Broken Sidewalk blog.

It happens that I have walked past the Swift hog butchering plant in Louisville's Butchertown and I can attest to the fact that it smells "earthy." At the same time, the plant has been there for 43 years and employs 1,300 people directly, probably another 700 people are employed indirectly (employment multiplier), the plant generates property taxes, etc.

But according to "Trendy District Roasts Hog Plant" in the Wall Street Journal:

The Butchertown Neighborhood Association wants JBS to move the plant -- and its $47 million annual payroll and nearly $100,000 in yearly real-estate and property taxes -- somewhere else, preferably in the Louisville area. "It's been an ongoing nuisance for people in the area," says Jonathan Salomon, a 34-year-old Butchertown resident and attorney representing the group. "We don't want to see anybody, especially during these times, put out on the street. But...we have to look at what kind of economic growth is good for the neighborhood."

People don't seem to fathom that moving the plant is neither a simple nor an inexpensive process. To force the plant to move, in all likelihood the City would have to pick up the costs associated with it. That likely would be tens of millions of dollars.

So decisions have to be made about costs and benefits. It's not like the Louisville Metropolitan region is growing like gangbusters. To make that up via increased investment within Butchertown will take decades. And can $30 million to $50 million be spent differently and generate a greater return on investment?

If I lived there, I would probably not want the plant there either. But it has been there for 40+ years. Therefore, I wouldn't have chosen to live there maybe. But maybe not. Many people have invested there figuring the plant would eventually move.

For the pro-neighborhood perspective, see "Land Use And The Future Of Butchertown" and "Swift Battle Affects More Than Butchertown" from Louisville's Broken Sidewalk blog.

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Note that while for most of the time I have lived in DC and the environs (for about 2 years total of 22 years here I lived at different times in different parts of PG or MontCo) I have lived near railroad tracks--mostly by Union Station--and could hear train whistles.

But I have to say that I wouldn't want to live too close to an outdoor subway station because the noise due to braking and acceleration of the trains is pretty loud. And I don't live on major bus routes (any more) because I don't like the noise and the vibrations (old rowhouses with limited foundations and no basements are subject to serious vibration from the weight of the buses, which I know from personal experience). I make those choices.

An example of why even generally good Councilmembers ought not to be legislating transportation routes

(buses, streetcars, etc.)

Will sends us a link to this story in Voice of the Hill, "City Officials map out streetcar plan." Councilmember Tommy Wells of Ward 6 is generally pretty damn good on transportation issues. But all councilmembers tend to waffle when it comes to making cost-benefit decisions on bus routes* and other transportation issues, especially parking, when it comes to facing the potential wrath of voters, funders, and other constituencies, especially the well organized long-time groups.

From the article:

Some neighborhoods might entirely reject the prospect of a streetcar. Wells himself has already voiced opposition to the two lines proposed for 8th Street SE (Barracks Row), instead suggesting that they should be moved farther east to 19th, 15th or 14th streets to promote development in Hill East, where an enormous mixed-used complex is planned for the site of the old D.C. General Hospital.

DC streetcar being prepared for shipment to the U.S. DDOT photo. Also see "D.C.'s Streetcars Finally Being Shipped from Czech Republic" from DCist.

Why else would Councilmember Wells suggest that a streetcar route not be placed on 8th Street SE--where there is a business district that needs more patrons--else why would Capitol Hill Bikes being going out of business, at least temporarily, and the retail as opposed to the entertainment-tavern-restaurant establishments continues to shrink--and there is a major activity center (Navy Yard) a subway stop (Eastern Market) and the ability to continue the route to the Baseball Stadium--and instead be placed on roads that do not serve "activity centers," although the addition of development to "Reservation 13" could justify the addition of streetcar service there some day, when the development is close to happening.

Note that given the number of foreclosures of major developments such as Senate Square, located two blocks from Union Station, it will be many many years before development in Reservation 13/the RFK Stadium/Armory area is substantively realized. Make them pay for streetcar hookups (called "proffers") and meanwhile be concerned about assisting the improvement and success of the commercial districts that already exist.

There is a major problem in "urban revitalization" in that developers and elected and appointed officials often focus on developing "new" places--I call this intra-city sprawl.

Intra-city sprawl usually comes at the expense of "old" places like H Street and 8th Street SE and Pennsylvania Avenue SE--places that already exist--but need help to be able to compete with an ever increasing number of destinations.

* 1. The H Street shuttle duplicates service provided by the X buses and is service for hipsters afraid of regular bus service.

(But I never minded living a few doors down from the H Street commercial district, nor the noise of the delivery trucks serving the stores. And while yes, often I was one of the few whiteys on the bus, the reality is that the X bus line provides a great deal of service for about 22 hours/day. But yes, often there are issues with service, such as bus bunching. We'll see if the improvement process will result in actual improvements. See the Metrobus Benning Road/H Street Line Study website.)

2. The old Navy Yard shuttle bus (N22) had fewer than 3,000 riders/day. Instead of junking this bus (which mostly duplicates service but did provide a connection to Pennsylvania Ave. from Union Station but is indirect because of security restrictions limiting street access in the U.S. Capitol area), instead DC replaced it with a 100% paid for DC bus service, the Circulator, and instead of reducing service due to limited use, service was doubled.

I call these kinds of services political bus services, designed to respond to merchant requests for more service, but generally "more service" especially in areas with a lot of bus service already, complemented by subway service in part isn't the real need.

What is the real need?

Having a better destination, providing people with more reasons to come to your commercial district instead of going somewhere else.

See:

- It's the Reilly Law of Retail Gravitation (stupid)
- The "soft side" of commercial district competition

Transit-mobility stuff

1. Placemaking Institute calls our attention to this September article from the Toronto Star about a condo building constructed with no automobile parking for individual units, but including 315 spaces for bicycles and 9 carsharing spots. See "'Car-free' condo: 42 storeys, no parking: University Ave. project with 315 bicycle spots touted as green model."

I suggested something similar for construction on the land that WMATA wants to sell at the Takoma Station--constructing a multiunit apartment or condo building with no parking for individually owned automobiles, only for shared cars like Zipcar, plus structured parking to support the subway station (ugh) and the commercial distict in both DC and Takoma Park, Maryland. Instead the proposal is to build rowhouses with one to two spaces each for automobiles. (See the 2006 testimony in this blog entry, "Comments on Proposed EYA Development at Takoma Metro.")

Maybe we'll start to see developments marketing their access to bicycle trails and routes? Also see the AP story,Realtors peddle homes to bike-happy clients."

2. The Toronto Star map project has updated its maps on commuting behavior. See "Map of the Week: How we commute, redux," with maps of driving, transit, walking, and bicycling trip data, based on the Canadian Census. Of course, walking and transit use is highest in the core of the city, and driving is more typical the further people live from the core of the Toronto region.

3. If such maps were produced for Seattle, they would likely demonstrate why the idea to pull Seattle transit services out of the King County Metro system might make sense, without changes on the part of King County Metro. According to this entry from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, "Do we need to pull Seattle Transit out of Metro?":

If the King County Council, dominated by eastside and southside conservative members, insists that Seattle take the lion's share of service cuts, even though in-City buses are already stuffed to the gills, the City of Seattle needs to look seriously at pulling its assets out of Metro and re-establishing Seattle Transit to run in-City (non-suburban) transit service.

As the Toronto maps show, the highest incidence of walking, bicycling, and taking transit to work is in the core of the city. In Seattle's case, there is no question that the bulk of riders on the bus system are Seattle residents. So it doesn't make sense to cut bus service in the places where it is most used, in favor of areas with comparatively less use. The King County Council should make the right decision, based on use, not a political decision that misuses limited public resources.

4. Hip city transportation officials and politicians in Seattle led a "Pedestrian safety dance" (from the P-I) to the song "Men Without Hats" to promote pedestrian safety. See the entry for video from the event.

5. Montgomery County Maryland has three very nice bicycling-sustainable transportation maps for White Oak, Silver Spring, and the Medical Center (National Institutes of Health and the Bethesda National Naval Hospital). These maps are models for promoting bicycling and optimal mobility in key destinations.

6. Although the NoMA Business Improvement District in DC is also doing a nice job of promoting bicycling.

7. I did my first presentation on biking and walking and the County's bicycle and pedestrian planning process for my job. I am positioning the study process along the lines of civic identity and quality of life, rather than bicycling and walking per se. Some points from my presentation outline:

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How to Do it/Citizen involvement/A more robust planning process

a. Defining your civic identity and sense of place. Question: What kind of community do you want to live in? Making choices. Fred Kent from PPS: “if you design communities for roads and traffic, you get lots of cars and traffic. If you design communities for people and places, you get people and places.”

b. Focus on Placemaking (Access; Comfort & Image; Uses & Activities; Sociability). [Based on Project for Public Spaces ideas, e.g., "Qualities of Great Streets."}


For this PPS diagram and more information, see Four key qualities of a successful place from the Metropolitan Planning Council of Chicago initiative with PPS, Placemaking Chicago.

c. Triangulation: considering needs from at least three vantage points. Multiple perspectives ensures a more accurate assessment of community needs and helps to make choices and set community priorities. (This is a concept applied by David Barth of Glatting Jackson in best practices park planning. See "Parks System Master Plans: Tools for Sustainable Communities.")

d. Active Citizenship. Civic engagement, building support organizations, and the county commitment to walking and bicycling (and transit and transportation demand management and sustainable transportation) by involving concerned and interested citizens more directly.

e. It is important for citizens to not only improve their own household's mobility behaviors while advocating for neighborhood improvements while at the same time simultaneously supporting and advocating for improvements in the walking and bicycling environment throughout the County, and expansion of a connected regional network of recreational trails/greenways.

f. Necessary for residents, elected and appointed officials, government agencies to be on the same page in terms of focusing on placemaking and the importance of bicycling and walking in terms of extending the quality of life and livability in the community, making the County more attractive to investors, businesses, students, and visitors.
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This is designed to get away from the idea of bicyclists and walkers as "the other" in a County where probably 95% of households have cars, and fewer than 7% of trips to work are made by walking, bicycling, or transit. (In DC, it is over 50%, in Montgomery County, it is.)

(See the past blog entry, "Deja vu all over again: the "other" as trail user" which describes a general problem of perception that I have to deal with in the planning process I am managing in order to achieve the goals that I have set out for myself.)

And it is an opportunity for me to shape the planning and public participation process in ways that I wish similar processes had been conducted in planning studies that I have participated in as a citizen or as a stakeholder in DC, but where I wasn't able to shape substantively the scope of work or organization of the study or process.

8. Interesting article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Freewheelers," about the "Old Spokes" bicycling club made up of residents of the Normandy Farms Estate retirement community in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. I intend to use this when dealing with the "cyclists as criminals" arguments that people raise.

9. And I like what Rails to Trails Conservancy did (they have a contract from DC DOT) to do promotion in association with the Metropolitan Branch Trail in DC. See "Children journey into a new world: With 40 free bikes, Rail-to-Trail Conservancy encourages youths to explore eight-mile path" from the Post about how RTC has distributed bicycles to children in neighborhoods abutting the trail.

Reprint of Crime Time (July 2006 blog entry)

AP photo by Evan Vucci.

[The July 18th, 2006 issue of] the Washington Post has three pieces on the front page of the (DC edition) Metro section about DC's crime emergency. One, "Mayor Unveils Emergency Legislation," is about proposals to hire more police officers, fund more officers to work overtime, and legalizing surveillance cameras (given the city's history in violation of civil rights for demonstrators, I have some concern about this).

Another is by the columnist Marc Fisher, "D.C.'s Reaction to Killings Misses the Point," and he writes:

Never mind that crime has been dropping for years, and homicides are actually slightly down from this time last year. No, the city must take action. So Police Chief Charles Ramsey declares a crime emergency.

And in parts of the city where people swallow hard every time they step out of their houses, where every day feels like an emergency, resentment bubbles anew. Across Washington, we fall into another round of competitive suffering, an ugly sport that pits rich against poor and white against black.

Finally, the article "Police Had Suspects' Address," discusses something just as serious, that apparently a previous robbery victim had reported information to the police about the location of the suspects eventually arrested for the subsequent murder:

The information came from a 24-year-old Georgetown woman who was held up June 11 -- three blocks from the place where Senitt later would be slain. She said she provided the address on Robinson Place SE after learning that her credit card was used to make a purchase that was shipped there. ...

Police responded by telling her they could not get an arrest warrant without first doing surveillance at the apartment building and then conducting a lineup to determine whether she could identify suspects. She said she was sure she could identify her attackers and was waiting for a call from the police.

Instead, she said, on July 9 she saw the faces of the men who robbed her flash across a television screen because they had been arrested in Senitt's slaying.

Perhaps one of the biggest problems in dealing with crime in the city comes from a lack of sense of urgency on the part of investigators.

But the article also includes a quote from one of the leaders of the police officers' union, which shows that the average police officer appears to know little about the etiology of crime, especially murder. From the article:

The police work on the Senitt case also is drawing criticism of another sort from the union representing the department's officers. A document obtained by The Post shows that officers from each of the department's seven districts were called to respond to Georgetown the night of the slaying to set up a 20-block perimeter in hopes of catching the suspects.

That is highly unusual and rarely, if ever, happens when homicides occur in other, less affluent districts, said Officer Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the D.C. police labor committee for the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 1.

Most murders in the city are crimes of anger and rage and occur between people who know each other. This number is as high as 70-80%. Police can have very limited impact on these types of murders--other than catching people for other crimes, convicting them, and putting them in jail, therefore reducing their ability to commit subsequent crimes, including murder.

The kind of murder that happened in Georgetown is of the type that can be immediately impacted by policing. If Officer Baumann doesn't understand this, he needs either more training or retraining.

You know how it used to be in vogue that cities had campaigns where everyone was supposed to read the same book and have a community conversation about it? Well, if I were mayor, one of the first books I would have people read would be Cities: Back from the Edge, which is one of the best books about bottom-up urban revitalization.

Maybe the second book, and clearly the Metropolitan Police Department needs to have a similar campaign, where every member of the department reads this book and discusses it, is Fixing Broken Windows.

There is a lot of controversy and misinformation about the policing strategy outlined and called for in this book. There are two basic points:

1. How the environment looks communicates to people about what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Disorder increases in unkempt areas.

2. The kind of criminals that commit big crimes also commit "small" crimes. So if you don't ignore small crimes, you can have significant impact on the crime rate, because catching people for "small" crimes ends up yielding people who also commit big crimes.

But it's not just the physical order, but the social and cultural order of the community that must be addressed.

A brief in The Atlantic Monthly, where the strategy was first developed in a few articles over a 15 year period, they write in the January 1997 issue:

"We used the image of broken windows to explain how neighobrhoods might decay into disorder and even crime if no one attends faithfully to their maintenance." 'Broken Windows' was a congent argument for emphasizing 'order maintenance' to prevent crime; the ideas it contained became the template first for the NYC Transit Authority's efforts to restore order to the subway and then for the NYC Police Department's new community policing strategy.

The Transit Authority achieved success only after a frustrating ordeal of persuasion and step-by-step implementation [which is described in the book]. The transit police were skeptical. "Where in the hell did you ever get the crazy idea that disorder was police business?" one patrol officer shouted at Kelling, "Our job is fighting crime."

Fighting crime is a lot of things, and the political culture in DC hasn't been supportive of looking at the real issues, some of which Marc Fisher touches upon in his column. Instead, most elected officials are quick to criticize Chief Ramsey, who does have some failings (especially on civil liberties) but who is working diligently to change the race-charged atmosphere of the police department, and get it focused on addressing the fundamental need for change within the department and within the city in which it works.

Or Ward Six City Council Candidate Leo Pinson, who calls for "regime change" in the department, according to this recounting of a recent candidates forum in the Common Denominator, "Council candidate says 'regime change' needed to fix MPD". Pinson, who was a PSA Citizen Coordinator, and is an MPD Volunteer Reserve Officer, reflects the sentiment of the officers, and it appears to lack the grounding in criminology that I would like to see in a City Councilmember.

Most officers grouse that the department makes it very difficult to be effective on the street, that they lean overboard towards perpetrators--e.g., it is easy for someone to file a complaint against an officer for the over use of force, and this leads to many officers becoming quite cautious. But the top echelon of the department merely responds to the political climate in the city. I guarantee you that Chief Ramsey wants criminals in jail...

Pinson is right that a regime change needs to occur, but in two respects the change that is required goes far beyond the department, to: (1) many of the elected officials and (2) within segments of the community that see police as the enemy rather than people working to make our city livable and safe.


---------------------- [added -- at the time of the original entry, the Broken Windows wasn't freely accessible online]

Also see the article "Broken Windows" from the Atlantic Monthly.

This article is from 1982!!!!!!!!!! After 27 years, you'd think it would be possible to have adopted such a focus within many police departments and communities, rather than it still being considered a novel technique!

Planning applied to crime reduction

As a planner, I easily fall into the trap of believing that the best way to address problems in a systematic fashion is to have a plan, even though I was admonished at a meeting at the Office of Planning last week that just because a plan might exist doesn't mean that it will be executed the way that was intended by the planners who wrote the plan.

(The example of Montgomery County and the Silver Spring Urban Renewal Plan was used, with regard to the library issue and how the County Executive wishes for their to be a bridge connecting a parking structure to the proposed library, which defeats the overall walking orientation that the streetscape-urban design elements of the plan are supposed to foster. See "Residents debate library design" from the Gazette.)

My response is always based on this line:

when you ask for nothing, that's what you get. When you ask for the world, you don't get it, but you get a lot more than nothing.

In short, maybe a plan isn't always implemented or it is not implemented or executed properly, but when you have a plan you have the opportunity to accomplish a lot more than if you never had the plan to begin with.

I think about this almost every time I read a story about systemic crime in DC.

Clearly, there needs to be a focused plan to attack crime in specific ways in Columbia Heights. See "'He was innocent. He did nothing to anyone.': As a D.C. mother mourns, a suspect is arrested in the fatal shooting of her 9-year-old son" from the Washington Post about the murder of the 9 year old boy shot through the door of his apartment, in a building where the front door lacked locks, in an area with frequent robberies.

Or there should be "security" plans for every school in the city (see "D.C. charter schools put out a call for protection: Officers should be helping to derail area's spillover violence, NE principal says" from the Post about problems at the Friendship Collegiate High School on Minnesota Avenue because of its location in an area of significant crime activity) or for areas around transit stations (see "Rock-throwers meet indifferent Metro employee" from Greater Greater Washington).

Or even Eastern Market on weekends. I am on the board of the Market, and during discussions about crime and other problems (vendor vehicles parked on the street while the vendor is working his/her booth are easy targets for criminals) made me realize that there needs to be a security plan for the greater market area on the weekends, it's a special event every weekend, and needs to be managed as such.

The most basic execution of the techniques of "crime prevention through environmental design" address evident risks in neighborhoods where crime exists in significant ways.

But you have to adopt the techniques of CPTED and have plans to execute the techniques before you can have any success. Also see "Architecture as Crime Control" from the Yale Law Journal.

Plus, the whole point of identifying persistent crime networks ("gangs") and perpetrators doesn't require advanced anti-terrorist military techniques from the Navy Postgraduate School (see "Iraq's lessons, on the home front: Volunteer veterans help California city use counterinsurgency strategy to stem gang violence" from the Post) as have been applied in Salinas, California.

I have been writing off and on for four years about anti-youth violence and crime programs in places like Boston (see "Straight Outta Boston" from Mother Jones Magazine) or the anti-gang programs spearheaded by David Kennedy (see "Crime: David Kennedy's Obsession With Drug Dealers" from Newsweek and "Don’t Shoot," from the New Yorker).

It is a matter of applying anti-gang techniques, focusing attention on areas of persistent crime, and applying the appropriate techniques -- anti-criminal and pro-environmental design -- not passing some law to put increased penalties on perpetrators.

See "D.C. Council proposes transit stop 'safety zone'" from the Examiner about the proposed legislation by to impose stronger penalties for crimes committed at bus stops. The issue is design (see the work by UCLA professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and others such as "Journeys to Crime: Assessing the Effects of a Light Rail Line on Crime in the Neighborhoods" and "Measuring the Effects of Built Environment on Bus Stop Crime") as well as anti-criminal techniques, not to mention successful prosecution of criminals.

It's about focusing on what needs to be addressed, with a plan, and organizing resources of all agencies, not just the police department, in these focused ways, in order to achieve fundamental reductions in criminal activity and improved safety for neighborhoods.

It's very frustrating that proven techniques such as these are very very very slow to be adopted in DC.

Maybe because it means fewer opportunities for politicians to talk to the press and go to crime scenes and feel important.

In the meantime, people suffer or die unnecessarily.

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Also see these past blog entries:

-- Crime Time (7/18/2006)
-- Crime Time #2
-- Crime Time #3
-- Crime Time #4 (7/31/2006)
-- Crime Time #5
-- Crime Time #6 (Baltimore)
-- Crime Time #7 (8/13/2006)
-- Crime Time 2008

Light rail in Phoenix and Maricopa County

Light rail in Phoenix and Maricopa County
Originally uploaded by rllayman

Today's Arizona Republic reports on the value of connectedness via light rail, in "Light-rail corridor in Tempe fuels increase to businesses." When I was out there in October, I set up a meeting with the City of Tempe Transportation Department (they are as progressive as the Arlington County, Virginia operation) and in talking with them I was surprised to learn that the Mesa (I wrote Scottsdale originally, incorrectly) light rail station is the busiest in the system, with lots of retired people getting on the transit line and going to places like Tempe and Phoenix to shop.

According to one of the business owners in Tempe, who is quoted in the article, business is up, both because of riders from the light rail system, and from the improvements that are happening as a result of the light rail investment, which in turn has fostered residential development and other improvements.

From the article:

Raveen Arora doesn't need a researcher to tell him that development along Apache Boulevard has been a success in the wake of light rail's opening last year.

Arora has owned India Plaza, near Apache and McClintock Drive, since 2002. Since light rail's opening in December, Arora has seen his business increase by nearly 10 percent despite the recession.

He attributes much of the increase to the residential projects that have opened on Apache in the past year and to the light-rail commuters who have spotted his shopping center and decided to stop by for Indian food or groceries.

The area has experienced a major makeover since the days it was known to draw prostitution and nightly police sirens, he said.

"Crime has reduced. There were streetwalkers . . . they're gone," he said. "We're getting a lot more upwardly mobile people who are using light rail, and they are not shunning Apache."

Curved escalator

Curved escalator at the Wynn
Originally uploaded by jonknee

There is a big problem at Union Station with "articulation" between MARC and VRE trains and people transfering to the subway, because of the number of people moving from the train platform to the subway, and the capacity of the escalators.

(One way to deal would be to add one stairway, which I mentioned years ago. WMATA planners promoted the selective addition of stairways to this and other stations to improve throughput but it was shot down by the Board of Directors.)

By putting in a curved escalator at the First Street entrance (the first floor of Union Station, going down) it could be possible to drop lots of the passenger railroad riders to the other set of gates opposite the elevators, which are hardly used. This would allow for better egress of passengers up the escalators.

Not being an engineer, I am not sure this would work, and it is important to not block the elevators. It could require the re-siting of the kiosk for the station manager in a fashion that would focus on throughput.

Again, if these escalators are ever rebuilt, and/or the fare gates rebuilt, additional wide gates should be added, and wider escalators could be installed, to ease mobility for people with scads of luggage (although train riders are likely to have less luggage than airplane passengers).

Right now there is a scrum getting up and down the escalators if you are going against railroad passenger traffic. A refiguring of the escalators (plus stairs), the fare gates, and the location of the manager's kiosk could significantly fix things. DK if this was considered as part of the Union Station Intermodal Transit Center Feasibility Study. The Final Report is available but I haven't had a chance to read it.

15th Street NW contraflow bicycle lane

Sunday
Originally uploaded by myriadian

This has been in the news, in the blogsphere ("Seven future improvements for the 15th Street bike lane" from Greater Greater Washington, the entry includes links to previous articles, and in Washcycle) plus the Washington Post, "D.C. bike lane worth pursuing but could stand some tweaking" as the Dr. Gridlock column, and an earlier article, "No doubt about it -- this lane is for bike traffic."

While I agree with GGW and the Post that this project should be looked at in terms of the power of experimentation, I do think that it might have been the wrong choice.

Apparently one of the options, and one that I had recommended years ago (before this project was even considered) was to revert 15th Street NW in this section back to a two way street.

Currently it is a one way street between Rhode Island Avenue to just a bit past W Street NW. It's very very wide, and it is what we would call "seriously underutilized." I don't know what the traffic counts are but they have to be low.

Were 15th Street once again a two way street, the overall street grid would become more robust, prevailing speeds (which can be high) would likely drop, and it would allow for some rebalancing of traffic between 14th, 15th and 16th Streets, making the overall road network function better.

And bicycle lanes could have been added on each side of the street, one for each direction. Possibly, some parking would have had to have been removed in this scenario. But DDOT chose the experimental contraflow bike lane instead, because it is cheaper.

(Note that the Washington Area Bicyclist Association supported the two way option. I didn't go to the public meetings in the process. I would surmise that residents were opposed to changing the street back to bi-directional.)

It's not all that much money to restrip and add signs. (Somewhere I have a link to a road improvements cost calculator, but I can't find it and I haven't yet added it to the links on the sidebar. Data I have that's five years old says it costs about $60,000 to restripe one mile of road, including bicycle lanes. But that presumes the road is already two way and wouldn't need additional traffic signals. A traffic signal costs at least $150,000, plus installation.)

But having to add equipment to the traffic signals on the street--as a one way street, there aren't signal lights in the westbound direction--apparently was more money than DDOT budgeted.

But I think in terms of building a more robust street network, and a better overall environment for bicycling, the harder, more expensive choice should have been made.

Today's Post has a letter to the editor on the subject, "Bike lanes should be two-way streets." He argues for making this contraflow bicycle lane two way, because bicyclists are "confused" by the sharrow line on the southmost side of the street. (Sharrow signage and markings mark a traffic lane that is used by both automobiles and bicycles.) And they are using the contraflow lane as a "flow" lane and riding in the eastbound direction.

But a lane this narrow to be used for two way bicycling would be a serious violation of the design standards for bicycle lanes. (The default standard is a 5 foot width for each direction, although some DC bicycle lanes are narrower.)

This is an indictator of a design flaw... a bad choice. Too bad DDOT didn't make the optimal, but more expensive, decision.

Theater in DC

Last summer, I was part of a panel discussing the topic of theatre and urban revitalization at the annual conference of the organization Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. The paper I prepared for that event is in the blog entry "Art, culture districts, and revitalization."

And last weekend, Wooly Mammoth Theatre Company, which has been in operation in the city for 30 years, had a private conference to which I was invited, as part of a "strategic planning" process they have chosen to embark upon to grapple with the issues of what do they want to be now, now that they have a permanent and beautiful facility located just off 7th Street NW and a couple blocks from the National Mall.

I think what Wooly Mammoth is doing is a really gutsy move. It's not a typical formal strategic planning process involving consultants and lots of Powerpoint presentations, but a messy process involving actors, patrons, board members, staff, and audience. The presentations and discussions convinced me that I was on the right track with the presentation in the summer.

In the summer presentation, I called upon theater professionals to do five things (even if in the entry I said it was four things):

1. Create your own discipline-specific cultural plan/Write a theater plan for your community.

2. Come up with a sustainable facilities plan for your community

3. Create anchoring institutions (to support the discipline, organizations, and artists)

4. Networking/rethinking about how to work together to develop the arts community as a component of the community’s cultural infrastructure and as a force to represent artists and artist organizational interests in land use, capital investment, public finance, cultural, tourism, education, and other local policy matters.

5. Figure out how organizations can share and maximize the value of audiences.

But where the paper didn't offer any guidance was in discussing the question of local and regional theater vs. what we might call national theater being presented locally, as well as the how to better support local theater specifically, and the differentiation between presenting vs. producing theatre organizations.

In their new facility, Wooly Mammoth has repositioned and is focusing less on what we might call general community/neighborhood outreach, and more on supporting local theater by hiring local actors, working with academic theater programs at the local universities, and developing and/or working with local playwrights.

The idea of a local/regional versus a national theater, as well as building local audiences and local institutions is being discussed in other places such as the blog Theatre Ideas; in the entry, "Welcome, New Readers" the author lists five key points:

1. Decentralization.
2. Localization.
3. Solidification of the Relation to the Audience.
4. The Improvement of Society.
5. Revisioning of the Business Model.

And the discussion in the New Colony blog ("Goals for Chicago Theater Series - the new colony blog!") about five goals for theater in Chicago:

1) Produce MORE, MORE OFTEN and TOGETHER
2) Theater Companies: Show Some Balls When Programming Your Season!
3) Jeff Awards: Expand to Include Foreign Language Theater.
4) Theaters Should Work Together to Produce More Theater More Often
5) We, As an Industry, Need to Start Educating Our Audiences

To have a thorough "theater plan" as part of a community's arts and culture master plan, these kinds of issues must be discussed in a direct fashion.

This is demonstrated to be true given the news in today's Post, "The lights go dark at Catalyst Theater," about how the Catalyst Theater Company is closing down, having failed to make a go of it in the much bigger quarters of the Atlas Performing Arts Center, and how the Atlas itself is having some difficulties, and is refocusing towards more of a rental facility (this is happening in Bethesda too, see "Bethesda Theatre To Try It as a Rental" from the Post), not to mention the clamoring for a regularized funding stream on the part of arts organizations generally (see "Arts funding source sought in D.C." from the Washington Business Journal).

Not to mention the other failures discussed previously (see the past entry "Cultural resources planning in DC: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king).

Even though failure is part of the innovation cycle, the reality is that systematic and regular failure is an indicator of deeply rooted problems.

That's where we are here in DC, in terms of support of the artistic disciplines.