CommuterPageBlog

Ch... Ch... Ch... Ch... Ch... Ch... Ch... Changes

It is amazing how small percentage changes can impact our infrastructure but it is sure happening in this region. Have you noticed how much more crowded things seem on the buses and on the trains? As I understand it, the increases have been relatively small but the impact felt has been great because we have been at a tipping point (at least on Metrorail) for some time. A small increase to an already full glass causes the thing to overflow rather quickly. The same thing is happening on the roads but in the other direction. A small percentage decrease in the number of people who are driving has resulted in backups that are not as severe as they once were and that clear out a lot faster than they once did. A small decrease in this case makes a big difference.

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For those who are regular bikers this is not news but for those whose bikes have been hanging from the ceiling in the garage for four or five years this may be your chance. Bike to Work Day will be held on Friday, May 15 and I promise that you will not have more fun than participating. This is a chance to ride around town like more people should; in large numbers and with regular relief stations. Many local jurisdictions will have set up various stopping points where you can take a break, get a bagel and some juice and catch your breath. I am not a person who regularly rides my bike in the business districts of the city but I have done this a few times and really had a good time. I also got to meet some really interesting people and got some good tips on bike maintenance and hydration. Give it a try. You've got two weeks to plan for it and if you need some help in advance the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) is offering free classes to adults where they can learn the basics of bike safety.

WABA's "Confident City Cycling" classes will teach things like bicycle selection and fit, gearing and cadence, nutrition and hydration, proper use of accessories, bike handling, hazard avoidance, traffic law, proper lane placement, and simple bike maintenance. The classes are free to the public because WABA has received grants from the District of Columbia, Arlington County, and the City of Alexandria. You can get more information by going to www.waba.org.

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I don't know about you but I'm getting a little tired of turning on the local radio news station and hearing nothing but stories about the swine flu. I know that we need to be prepared and I hope that we are but couldn't you just tone it down a little? The thing that I haven't heard much about is using teleworking as a way to fight the spread of this virus. By allowing employees to work at home and yet still be in contact with the office, business and government entities could do a lot to slow down any spread if and when if hits our area. I know that many businesses and governments have listed teleworking as part of their Continuity of Operations plans but this might be a good time to dust them off and start thinking ahead.

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Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.

Pedestrians and Cyclists Count

Arlington County transportation programs BikeArlington and WALKArlington are looking for volunteers to help count bicyclists and pedestrians in Arlington County on May 7th and 9th.  This regular data collection is fundamental research, part of a national project to document walking and cycling as modes of transportation.  Building long-term support for walking and cycling requires collecting regular, high-quality data on usage and demand.  More information about the national project can be found at http://bikepeddocumentation.org.  Think of them as traffic counts - without the traffic.

Observations are made at shared-use paths, along sidewalks, and at on-road bike lanes.  Many of the sites are easily accessible by Metro, and Arlington will provide materials and easy-to-follow training.  Shifts are two hours long, morning (7-9 AM) and evening (4-6 PM) on Thursday, May 7th, and noon to 2:00 PM on Saturday, May 9th. In addition to tracking cyclists and pedestrians, volunteers may choose to record additional observations, such as the percentage of cyclists wearing helmets, or those wearing "normal" clothes.

To express interest in helping with this study, email David Patton at bikearlington@arlingtonva.us.

David Patton is a Bicycle and Pedestrian Planner for Arlington County.

Progress of Sorts

A few weeks ago the District's Department of Transportation and its police department announced that they were initiating stiff new rules relative to drivers not allowing pedestrians the time or space needed to cross the street. At the time I was skeptical because the Metropolitan Police Department doesn't have the best record when it comes to enforcement of basic safety laws. Yesterday was an eye opener.

I was driving my car in the left lane as we approached a traffic signal for a one-way street that was going right to left in front of us. The queue was only about five or six vehicles waiting to make the left turn and there were a number of people in the crosswalk. Sure enough, some guy who was far too busy to wait for those five or six cars to make their turn, comes up in the center lane and started to make a left turn.  The problem was that he really couldn't see all of the pedestrians in the crosswalk and he ended up very close to them AND in the crosswalk itself. This is the definition of what city officials were trying to avoid when they passed these stiffer penalties. But this guy was in for a surprise.

Sitting in her police cruiser on M Street within full view of the intersection the officer saw everything. As the driver made if through the crosswalk (without striking anyone) she turned on her lights and bleeped her siren and told the driver via her PA system to pull over to the side of the road. At the time I though this was great but that she was probably going to do little more than give him a stern talking to and that would be the end of it. Nope. She pulled out her ticket book and proceeded to write him up. I really wanted to pull up next to her and thank her for the effort but figured that I'd just let it go.

Walking across the street shouldn't be a death-defying act.

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There is an interesting piece on the website of the Environmental Defense Fund called "The Case for Investing in Transit." The opening states that our transportation system is at a crossroads because car travel has started to decline and transit ridership has increased dramatically. As we knew from some recent studies this is not just a response to four dollar a gallon gasoline although the general economic downturn may have an impact. People are taking a serious look at where their money is going and are trying to figure out where they can make cuts in their budgets.

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Highway deaths are down. In fact, 43 states showed improvements in the number of fatalities they experienced on their roads. Here again, one might think that the high price of fuel last summer and the economy would be keeping people off the roads but, according to a study by the Governors Highway Safety Association, the number of vehicle miles traveled during 2008 declined less than the percentage decline in fatalities.

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Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.

Painting the Air Cleaner

What if the paint on the road could make the air cleaner? It sounds crazy but that is what's going on in the United Kingdom. Road crews are using a special "smog-sucking" paint for lane markings on M60 near Prestwich. This town is part of an air-quality action zone because the levels of nitrogen dioxide are at 73 mg, or almost double the safety target. This paint, called Ecopaint, was trialed in Milan where it is reported to have improved the air quality by 60 percent near a busy highway interchange. I haven't heard of this sort of thing being considered on the this side of the ocean but if it works as well as it did in Milan I imagine it will become wide-spread (pun intended).

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Here's another item from the UK (starting to sound like the Star Newspaper aren't we?) that has a number of implications: A system is being designed there that could make speed cameras useless. Car makers and telecommunication companies are partnering with the UK government to develop a device that would fit inside a vehicle and transmit data to sensors set up at regular intervals. These devices would send out the signals like a heartbeat containing information about the vehicle's location, speed and direction of travel.

According to the Daily Mail, European Union officials believe the technology will reduce crashes, congestion and carbon emissions. Engineers say the system will be able to track vehicles to within three feet or so and that it is much more accurate than current GPS technology.

As you might (well I do) imagine, civil liberty groups across Europe are up in arms. They tell the Daily Mail that it will have profound implications for privacy by creating a Europe-wide system of Big Brother surveillance.

Oh yeah, this system will also be able to levy tolls and can be used for systems not unlike our High Occupancy Toll lanes.

Manufacturers suggest this concept could be up and running as soon as 2013.

If you travel to Oxfordshire, England that spinning sound you hear under the All Saints' Churchyard tombstone of one Eric Arthur Blair is actually George Orwell who didn't know how accurate his description of the future would be.  He just missed it by 17 years.

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I'm sure many of you may have already seen this but for those who haven't I think there is some valuable advice. For the many of us who ride bicycles in the region there is a great sense of freedom and independence and physical well-being. Many of the region's biking paths and trails take us very close to, if not over, railroad tracks. Operation Lifesaver states that more than 880 people were killed or injured in the United States last year while illegally walking, bicycling, or otherwise playing on railroad tracks or property. The use of the word "illegally" comes from the group's website and without definition. I would think that a set of railroad tracks that crosses a road or path is not and in fact could not be deemed private property but I'm not a property rights lawyer.  Anyway, Operation Lifesaver offers the following tips for safety near train tracks:

• Be alert -- always expect a train any time at any crossing on your route.
• Bicycle wheels can get caught in train tracks. Always try to cross at a 90 degree angle to the tracks. If your approach is at less than a 45 degree angle [always take a compass and a protractor with you], dismount and walk your bike across.
• Look both ways before crossing train tracks – one train may have passed but another could be behind it, or coming from the opposite direction on the next track.
• You can't accurately gauge the speed of a moving train. An optical illusion makes trains appear to be farther away and slower-moving than they are.
• Trains are wider than their tracks. To avoid being struck by anything hanging from the train (or dragged by anything hanging from you), keep yourself and your bike at least 15 feet from the tracks and behind any gates or "stop lines" marked on the pavement.
• It is not only dangerous; it is illegal to go around lowered railroad crossing arms, whether you are on foot, in a car, or on a bicycle.

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Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.

Now Showing -- "Arlington's Smart Growth Journey"

I had the opportunity to view "Arlington's Smart Growth Jouney" today. It's a 52-minute video that chronicles Arlington's growth and development over the last forty plus years. The documentary, produced by AVN, took over a year-and-a-half to complete due to the extensive research required. The video provides a great history lesson on smart growth development with interviews of current and former County Board and committee members (unfortunately, a few of the interviewees have passed away since the video was completed), smart growth experts, community leaders, and citizens. There are also great archival photos and film. It was very impressive to hear these leaders talk about the obstacles and issues they had to overcome to make their vision of Arlington a reality. These leaders invented smart growth before they or anyone even knew what it meant.

I am not a planner, but I appreciate the foresight and efforts of these leaders to make Arlington the place we know today. It didn't happen overnight and it's not over yet. But because of their work, Arlington is a model for smart growth in the United States and beyond. I would encourage you to view this documentary.

Bobbi Greenberg is the Marketing Director for Arlington County Commuter Services with the Department of Environmental Services.

Hybrids, Jurisdictionalism, Alcohol Awareness and Tricycles

I was a little surprised that Virginia's governor signed off on a continuation of the bill that allows hybrid vehicles bearing clean special fuel vehicle license plates to use the High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes. Even though it seems that every other car on the road these days is a hybrid (this region has one of the highest uses of hybrids in the nation) the numbers of those able to use the HOV lanes has not increased because no more of the special tags are being handed out. Even still, I think it's time that this special allowance comes to an end. We need to be encouraging people to leave their cars at home or in a park and ride lot and taking transit or carpools. Remember that hybrids only run on electric power in stop and go driving conditions; when traffic is moving at 55 mph those hybrids are running on an internal combustion engine just like the rest of the cars and trucks out there. If you're interested in reading the bill as written and amended, click here.

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Surprised as well that the District would be the one local jurisdiction to hold up the federal funding for Metro. As you will recall, the bill that made its way through Congress promises Metro one and a half BILLION dollars (it seemed like so much more before all of these various bailout programs came to be) over ten years if the participating jurisdictions of Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C. could come up with dedicated funding sources. When this all started I felt confident that either Maryland or Virginia would be the spoiler with the smarter money leaning toward the west side of the Potomac because of the historic problems between the north and the south side of the commonwealth. But the District wants the fed to guarantee that it will pay the money and not just that it will promise to pay the money. It seems like a ridiculous thing in that the fed has the ultimate power to decide what it's going to do but it is something that District officials want to have included. In the meantime, it just becomes one more bump in the funding road for Metro although I feel confident that it will be resolved.

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April has been designated Alcohol Awareness Month and I take this sort of thing very serious. The Century Council, an association of distillers and importers in partnership with groups like the International Association of Chiefs of Police, is taking the opportunity to launch an educational campaign geared toward a younger audience. In working with middle and high school age students the first thing they stress is that it is illegal to consume alcohol under the age of 21. Of course, adults over 21 who choose to drink should do so responsibly and in moderation.

The program also addresses parents who wield enormous influence over a youth's decision to drink — or not to drink — alcohol. Ask, Listen, Learn: Kids and Alcohol Don't Mix, developed in partnership with Nickelodeon, recognizes that the key to stopping underage drinking is communication early and often between parents and youth. During Alcohol Awareness Month, and throughout the year, The Century Council will host Ask, Listen, Learn events in middle schools across the country. They have also recorded television and radio public service announcements that include Olympic gold-medalist Misty May-Treanor. I believe that this is the type of program that can reach kids and do so at an age when they are formulating decisions. I also appreciate the fact that these distillers and distributors have gotten together under a banner that is not self-promoting, thereby making the message more pure. 

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I have to say that I am not a big fan of the tricycles being launched in Arlington as a way of giving employees an optional mode of transportation. It's bad enough when people drive bicycles on sidewalks already full of people. Adding these gigantic three-wheelers, driven by people who are not used to navigating them, is a recipe for disaster. Since less than five percent of Arlington County employees have registered to use one of the six trikes I guess the problem will be minimal until the volumes increase.  Even still, was there something wrong with the good old two-wheeled variety of self-transporters?

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Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.

Doing It the DC Way

The District's Department of Transportation (DDOT) has been doing maintenance work on the tunnel that takes K Street under Washington Circle. For many weeks this work was done at night on the inbound lanes of K Street where and when the volume of traffic is relatively light. They were able to shut down the lanes that would go into the tunnel and divert the traffic onto the service roadway that fed into the circle without huge tie-ups. Now that that work is done they have turned their focus to the outbound lanes of K Street and the results are much different.

Maybe DDOT sent out an announcement to the news media or maybe they didn't. It was apparent in the first night of the closure that groups like the city's police department and the DC Circulator didn't get the memo. I was caught up in the mess on the first night and couldn't believe that a DC Circulator bus had to navigate the very narrow service roadway on which it had been sent without option. I watched as dozens of cars and taxis and delivery trucks tried to merge from three lanes into one at the closure point at 21st Street. It should be noted that this was also the first game of the Capitals' NHL playoff series against the Rangers and the Caps fans were already in a rather poor frame of mind because their team had lost. You could tell by the incessant horn blowing. Of course, anyone who would drive to an event at the Verizon Center probably doesn't really get it anyway.

The problem was that, advanced notice to the media or not, there was nothing set in place to really assist these motorists and service vehicles. As is so typical of the District they simply close off a road and let the drivers figure out what to do. Most important, there were no Metropolitan Police Department officers directing traffic or overriding the "No Left Turn" restriction that is in place on K Street at 21st because that would have enabled drivers to get down to Constitution Avenue where a right turn would have put them in the direction of the Roosevelt Bridge if Virginia was their destination.

Please don't tell me that the MPD officers on duty that night had better things to do... I saw two cruisers parked on 21st just south of Pennsylvania Avenue; the officers assigned to them leaning against them as they chatted up a couple of attractive young George Washington University students. Trust me, this was NOT an interrogation, this was laughter and good times and "what's your sign, baby" conversation. Yet, from their vantage point these officers were sure to be able to hear the honking horns and even some of the profanity just two or so blocks away.

Nothing had been done to adjust the traffic signals in the circle or in the service roadway, each of which were carrying significantly more volume than they are designed for. No, the city just blocked the road and let everyone fend for him or herself without any assistance. Would it be too much to ask that when a major road is blocked off that someone at DDOT or MPD think about the potential impact? Is there some risk of at least trying to make things flow a little better? After all, public transportation vehicles were as impacted as anyone by this mess.

Oh yeah, the big backups were not just a result of the new workzone or the fact that a hockey game might have added a few extra cars to the road. Things looked just as bad the next night and the night after that.  Maybe this is the sort of thing that we might call "roadrage by design" thanks to a lack of forethought or consideration on the part of the city departments that are supposed to keep things moving.

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Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.

Efficiency Good: Hyperbole Bad

The Monday, April 20 Washington Post included an 8-page "advertorial" insert called Environmental Leadership--presumably in anticipation of Earth Day (not available on-line). It included about a dozen guest articles on a wide array of environmental topics. Great! (although one of the advertising supporters is the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which promotes the oxymoron "clean coal." You can read more about my opinion of carbon capture and storage here.)

One of the guest writers is Nancy Sutley, the new Obama administation Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Her column, "Now is the Time to Switch to a Clean Energy Economy" runs the gamut, touching on a wide array of environmental issues--the normal rhetoric one would expect.  But I stopped when I read this line: "We plan to put a million plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road, dramatically increasing the fuel efficiency of our nation's fleet of vehicles with batteries built in the U.S."

"Dramatically increasing?" Let's do a quick back of the envelope. In 2006 there were 234 million cars and light trucks on the road representing an average fuel economy of 20.30 mpg.

Let's make some optimistic assumptions:
- Plug-in hybrids are the equivalent of 100 mpg
- All 1,000,000 new hybrids replace SUVs (average 18 mpg)

If we use 2006 as a proxy, replacing 1,000,000 SUVs with plug-in hybrids, then the new fleet economy rises to 20.38 mpg, an minuscule increase of .08 miles per gallon. Or put another way, an increase of about 425 feet per gallon.  Another way to achieve the exact same reduction in fuel consumption would be to reduce the distance each car drives by about 50 miles per year--a 0.4% decrease.

Now don't get me wrong: I am totally in favor of transforming our economy to more environmentally sustainable technologies and systems, but I think a hyperbolic statement like this sugarcoats the magnitude of the challenge in front of us and overstates the benefits.

Let's put those million vehicles out there, but it's just a down payment. I think it would have been much better to say, ""We plan to put a million plug-in hybrid vehicles on the road, a small but important first step in transforming our nation's fleet of automobiles"
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Steve Offutt - Arlington

Transit Cuts Meet Facebook Era

As a fan of transit AND Facebook, it was heartening to see how the social media web site is being expertly used to take on WMATA, Alexandria and Arlington officials in an effort to save beloved Metrobus and DASH bus service. Alexandria resident, Kim Herter Kaplan started the Facebook Group page to champion the cause of the Metrobus 10A, which according to the page says the City of Alexandria is proposing to eliminate evening trips after 9pm and trips on the weekend or 120 weekly trips in all. Says Ms. Kaplan: "The 10A bus provides a vital link between the Pentagon, Pentagon City, Pentagon Row, and Crystal City in South Arlington and Arlandria, Del Ray, Old Town, and Hunting Towers in Alexandria." The City proposed the cuts to help close budget gaps. The Facebook group also takes on DASH budget cuts.

As of this writing, there are 85 members of the page and among the ranks of joiners are Council Members Krupicka, Wilson and Gains. One group member reports that the City has indicated that perhaps someday DASH bus service could pick up some of the lost trips but not right away. I've lived in the neighborhood since 1994 and can attest to the fact that the Metrobus 10 buses are always crowded. Seven days a week. Rush and non-rush hour. It's just nuts that the City would cut the service back like this. And having DASH fill in some of the service someday isn't good enough either.

We are building vibrant, urban, transit-oriented communities in places like Alexandria and encouraging people to live, work and play without use of a car. And that isn't just for commuting. People need to do things (including work) after 9pm and on weekends too. Its good for our economy, our environment and our quality and life when people choose to take transit. Taking away that choice is the kind of backward thinking I'd expect of other communities, not the smart, progressive community I call home.

Lets hope new media tools like Facebook can help the average Joe (or Kim) bus rider take on City Hall and win!

Chris Hamilton is the Commuter ServicesChief for Arlington County in the Transportation Division of the Department of Environmental Services, manager of CommuterPageBlog and a Metro/biking commuter from Rosemont in Alexandria

Let's End Air Travel of Less Than 500 Miles

So says Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell speaking to the 2050 American Conference in NYC last week (Ed Rendell: Let's END Air Travel of Less Than 500 Miles, April 17, 2009). We learn this from our good friends at the always informative Greater Greater Washington, who pointed us in the direction of a very cool new site called The Infrastructurist - American Under Construction.

What an interesting idea. Of course he advocates that in order to replace short haul airline trips we'd need to build out a modern passenger rail system in the U.S. Something that is very much needed. Good for Governor Rendell. Enjoy the article and the interesting new site.

Chris Hamilton is the Commuter ServicesChief for Arlington County in the Transportation Division of the Department of Environmental Services, manager of CommuterPageBlog and a Metro/biking commuter from Rosemont in Alexandria