CommuterPageBlog

Save Two Birds With One Starbucks - Fixing Washington's Traffic

Last week was a tough week for Washingtonians as we experienced Metro's saddest crash in the agency's history and all of the transport-related consequences, including major delays throughout the Metrorail system; a newfound wariness about using the system, and even some commuters getting into their cars, thereby creating and experiencing more congested streets. It's a vicious cycle time and time again: lack of sufficient funding for transport options, problems, traffic congestion, time wasted, everyone's stressed.

I’m writing with a proposal which would both improve downtown D.C.'s congested streets and the regional corridors that lead to them, while providing more funding for transit, cycling, walking, and streets through better management of our collective resources. How to do this? Through congestion charging and using the revenues to improve downtown D.C.-based commuting options throughout the region.

Congestion charging is a fee that motorists would pay to enter downtown D.C. (not inner adjacent neighborhoods in D.C.) during the work day. Whereas a toll is at one location on a street, such as at a bridge, a cordon congestion charging plan, which is what I'm proposing, would create a boundary around D.C.'s Central Business District (map). All motor vehicles entering this zone during the work day would pay the charge, regardless of which state they live in - VA, MD, or DC.

The purpose of this fee is to limit downtown traffic congestion while encouraging use of transit, carpooling, vanpooling, telework, and biking; and limit greenhouse gases. For a few dollars to enter downtown D.C. during weekdays 6AM - 7PM, the revenues generated by such a fee could be regionally applied towards improving and creating new transit service before the congestion charge begins, constructing improved bikeways, and improving the region's streets. Jurisdictions from the inner to the outer suburbs and D.C. too would each see a piece of the pie. Motorists would save lots of time and stress due to the improved traffic flow. Stanchions placed on streets along the boundary of the zone would read license plates to see who has entered the zone. Motorists could then pay the charge either on-line or at downtown D.C.’s multispace parking meters.

The charge amount would be a reasonable fee which would discourage auto trips into downtown D.C., and encourage transit, carpooling, vanpooling, telework, and cycling. The charge, let's say in the $3 - $5 range, would be the price of a Starbucks coffee, hardly a large fee when considering all the time commuters would save with better flowing traffic.

Congestion charging is being used in cities like London, Stockholm, and Singapore. A report by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute on London's congestion charging program states, "During the program's first few months automobile traffic declined about 20% (a reduction of about 20,000 vehicles per day)." Also, "[t]his has significantly increased traffic speeds within the zone. Average traffic speed during charging days (including time stopped at intersections) increased 37%, from 8 miles-per-hour (13 km/hr) prior to the charge up to 11 miles-per-hour (17 kms/hr) after pricing was introduced. Peak period congestion delays declined about 30%, and bus congestion delays declined 50%. Bus ridership increased 14% and subway ridership about 1%."

Is this idea pie-in-the-sky? Yes, if you don't like pie. But who wouldn't want to pay the cost of one Starbucks coffee to fight less traffic, save money on gas, decrease your personal stress level, and get home earlier every day to spend more time with family and friends?

I’ll take the pie.

by Paul DeMaio

image credit: DCist

The Bike is King (and Queen) in The Netherlands

Following up on my earlier post "Making Cycling Easy - the Dutch Experience", I wanted to share more of my experience biking in The Netherlands. The Dutch have created their bike-friendly culture through years of prioritization of the bicycle as a mode of transport and accordingly have invested time and funding in this philosophy to make it a reality. The same can happen here in Arlington. Building the cycle tracks, bike lanes, 4-story bike parking garages, etc. is the easy part. The hard part is changing the mindset to allow it to exist.

The street scene below of a typical rural neighborhood in The Netherlands depicts this philosophy quite well. The street is narrow so it's designed to allow for bike lanes (in red and striped) on the outer portions of the street with one lane in the center for motor vehicle traffic. With the two bike lanes and one motor vehicle lane, it's a strong statement towards who gets priority on this street.

When two motor vehicles approach each other, they pass each other by both driving with half their vehicle in the center lane and the other half in the bike lane on their side of the street. However, when a cyclist is in a bike lane and two motor vehicles are approaching each other, the motorist moving in the same direction as the cyclist must wait behind the cyclist until the other motor vehicle has passed. Then the motorist may pass the cyclist in the center lane.

The suburban street below is wider and has more traffic of both motor vehicles and cyclists. By separating the cyclists from the motorists with a green buffer, it's creating an environment that most individuals on a bike would feel comfortable with as they don't have the noise, heat, dust, and fear of a motorist passing close to them at 30 mph. Below, cyclists are protected from motor vehicles with a soft buffer filled with trees and grasses.

We can learn a lot about how to recreate our transport networks in our cities, suburbs, and rural areas from the Dutch. We can also create healthier communities, limit obesity, and decrease carbon emissions at the same time.

Paul DeMaio, BikeArlington

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.

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

All We Need is the Air That We Breathe

The Northern Virginia Transportation Commission has voted to discontinue its Code Red RIDE FREE program. That's right, read it again because I had to when I first got the release: The Northern Virginia Transportation Commission has voted to discontinue its Code Red RIDE FREE program.

The program has been around for ten years and was launched when the Washington region was at serious risk of not being in conformity with the federal requirements for air quality and losing millions of federal transportation dollars as a consequence. The counting methodology for determining what is and what isn't a Code Red or a Code Orange day has changed and there just haven't been that many "Code Red" days around here of late. Some will say that the counting process was a cheap way to avoid facing the cold reality that we have serious problems here. There were also those who questioned how much of those emissions originated here and how much came in on the jet stream from the Ohio Valley.  Nevertheless, the NVTC and other local and regional transit bus services came up with the neat idea to have people leave their vehicles at home when Code Red for air quality was in the forecast.

It sounds though like the reason pushing the NVTC into this decision is that it ties up some money that it could use elsewhere. In a statement the NVTC says: "The remaining $2.6 million that was originally slated for the 2009 RIDE FREE program will be allocated to other transit projects within the FY 2010 CMAQ program. Recently the FY 2010 CMAQ program in Northern Virginia was reduced due to a lack of federal funds. The elimination of the RIDE FREE program will help to address the funding shortfall."

By the way, "CMAQ" stands for Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality. Improvement Program.

It will now be interesting to see how long the other suburban jurisdictions continue to subsidize the free rides on Code Red and, in some cases, Code Orange, days. The action by the NVTC could be big enough to lead the others to at least consider following suit as a way to save more money (but not the quality of our air).

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Our good friends over at APTA liked what President Obama has in mind almost as much as I do: "The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) and its nearly 1,500 members applauds President Barack Obama for his vision in developing much needed high-speed rail in the United States, which will change the way Americans travel.

" 'The public transportation industry applauds President Obama and his Administration for looking to the future and providing a vision of a better transportation system that will offer people greater travel options,' said APTA Chair Dr. Beverly Scott. 'High-speed rail will not only be good for mobility, but it will be good for reducing our nation's carbon footprint, for attaining energy independence, and for creating economic prosperity.' "

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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.

Street Widening Ad Infinitum

Put your thinking caps on kids, because today's lesson in transportation planning is brought to you by the letter I and number 6.

A new report by Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute titled Generated Traffic and Induced Travel - Implications for Transport Planning is about something called "generated traffic". Forgive the geeky transport talk, but according to the paper:

"Traffic congestion tends to maintain equilibrium. Congestion reaches a point at which it constrains further growth in peak-period [i.e., rush hour] trips. If road capacity increases, the number of peak-period trips also increases until congestion again limits further traffic growth. The additional travel is called “generated traffic.” Generated traffic consists of diverted traffic (trips shifted in time, route and destination), and induced vehicle travel (shifts from other modes, longer trips and new vehicle trips). Research indicates that generated traffic often fills a significant portion of capacity added to congested urban road."

After years of street widening construction, the street is much better to drive on because it's wider and traffic moves. But then have you ever noticed that a short time later, maybe just a couple of years, the street gets so congested again and traffic is nearly as bad as it was before the widening. What gives?! This is because others figured out the street was less congested and started driving on it too. But there were too many of them who did this. What to do? Expand it again! Then again! And again (ad infinitum)! It's only money and more congestion we're talking about. The benefits of widening I-66, or the "spot improvements" misnomer the project has been given, would only last a short time.

There's a choice and it's making itself clearer than ever before. Transportation demand management looks at lowering the demand for a street, not increasing its supply by widening it. Lowering the demand of a street includes providing increased transit service, creating bike and walk infrastructure so people have safe places to ride and walk, telework, and downtown congestion charging. These could be less expensive to do than street widening with the results lasting much longer.

Paul DeMaio, BikeArlington

County Official Caught In the Act

I witnessed it literally moments ago... I spotted Arlington County Board Vice Chair Jay Fisette commuting to work... on his bike!

Mr. Fisette is a huge supporter of biking, and of our walkable/bikeable community in general. He's an ardent champion of our Fresh AIRE (Arlington Initiative to Reduce Emissions) program... and he's promoting green efforts across the Commonwealth, in a campaign he launched: "Go Green Virginia."

Ain't it great when elected leaders walk the talk?! Check out our Car-Free Diet to learn how you can occasionally use alternate ways to get around.

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Diana Sun is Director of Communications for Arlington County, a walking commuter, bicylist, and happy resident of the urban village of Clarendon.

April Cycling Classes Ride On

The cold weather has finally broke and now it's an ideal season to ride your bike. If it's been a while since you were last on your bike or you'd like to brush up on your knowledge on riding safely, this is your golden opportunity. BikeArlington and the Washington Area Bicyclist Association are offering two FREE beginner adult bicycle safety classes in April.

Confident City Cycling 1 is a classroom-only event. Participants will be provided with a written curriculum and will be taught bicycle selection and fit, gearing, nutrition and hydration, use of accessories, bike handling, hazard avoidance, traffic law, and simple bike maintenance. Whether weeknights or weekends are better timed for you, we've got both.

On Tuesday, April 7 from 6 - 9 pm at the Lee Community Center and Saturday, April 18 from 1 - 4 pm at the Shirlington Library, Confident City Cycling 1 will be offered. Registration is limited, so sign-up before the classes fill-up.

For more information on the free classes and to register, visit BikeArlington.com.

Paul DeMaio, BikeArlington

Our Camry Hybrid: The Latest Update

We purchased our 2007 Toyota Hybrid Camry in March of 2007 and I have previously written about it four times (first, second, third, fourth postings).  I want to re-emphasize what I highlighted in my most recent post: if you live in Arlington and are shopping for a new car, there are significant tax advantages to buying a hybrid--significant enough to potentially pay for the entire incremental cost.

Back in October we paid our 2008 personal property taxes on our car.  In Virginia, as you may know, we have what is called the "car tax."  The car tax is a 5% tax on the value of your personal vehicle. Arlington has reduced this tax for owners of hybrid vehicles by exempting the first $20,000 of value from the tax.  So for 2008 instead of paying $1068 personal property tax, we paid just $68.  That's a lot of savings!

In fact, since we purchased the car, we have saved $3050 in taxes: a federal tax break of $1300 (more information on the federal tax break here), a 2007 Arlington County personal property tax reduction of $750 and this year's $1000 reduction (more on the Arlington tax break here).  Wow, that was enough to pretty much pay for our entire summer vacation to Yellowstone this past year: flights, hotels, rental car, food. . . .  Or thinking another way, in a couple more years, the tax breaks will have completely paid the extra amount we paid to get the hybrid instead of the regular Camry.  All the gas savings are gravy.  One caveat, though, the Arlington break is dependent on an annual approval process by the county, so it may go away in the future.

Want to learn more about hybrids?  Here are some links:

Hybrid Cars site

Green Hybrid

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Steve Offutt, Arlington resident and proud hybrid Camry owner

Going Multimodal: Rails and Trails

I didn't try any new transit during the four days that were "Try Transit Week," but I made up for it earlier this month by making a multimodal trip by light rail and bicycle from my house in Baltimore to my brother's house in Severna Park, Md. Even though the entire trip was well outside the Capital Beltway, it inspired some thoughts that I hope are worth mentioning in this blog.

One thing the trip reinforced is how important access to information is in getting more people to use public transportation. I had never been on Baltimore's light rail, much less taken a bicycle on it. I'd never seen the station where I planned to board the train, or the bike trails I planned to use at the Severna Park end. So I had to figure out where the rail lines go, what the policy is regarding bikes, how to get to the station by bike on the Baltimore end, and how to get to the bike trail on the Serverna Park end.

The whole thing worked out fine, and having done it, I really think that's a good way to make a trip down that way. (Or all the way to Annapolis if I want to go that far.) It would be pretty easy to do it the SECOND time. But that learning curve is definitely an obstacle, especially for making a one-time trip as opposed to figuring out a daily commute to work.

It wasn't difficult to find information online about the light rail system, run by the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA). I had some first-time jitters, picking my way along unfamiliar streets to the train station, figuring out the farecard machine, wondering if there was going to be enough room for the bike. (MTA allows bikes on the system "except on crowded trains.") I had to figure out where to put myself and my bike on the train. There's no designated place that I could see. On my trip southward, I figured out a way to do it so that people could get by and I was using two seats. On the way back, an MTA employee directed me to a different spot, but there I was taking up three seats and crowding two others. It could be there's a more clever way to do it -- I didn't see any other bicyclists I could learn from -- but I felt very much in the way. I'm glad that bikes are allowed at all, but it would be an improvement if there were a designated place to put them. Perhaps they could take some of the seats out of the last car on each train and configure it in a way that several bicycles would fit efficiently. Having a place that bikes belong would also eliminate the anxiety of wondering if a train meets MTA's  definition of "crowded," or what should happen if the train gets more crowded as it goes along. WashCycle recently had a post about bikes on trains that touches on this, and also a post about bike on transit rules in the DC area.

Despite the uncertainty, the rail portion of the trip worked out fine. Likewise, once on the the bike trails south of the city, there was no problem. The biggest problem was the "multimodal" part -- connecting between the two.

As I now know, there are at least two easy ways to make that connection. I knew I eventually wanted to be on the Baltimore and Annapolis (B&A) Trail. "Baltimore and Annapolis" is a bit of an exaggeration. It may go to Annapolis on the southern end, but the northern end is in Glen Burnie, Md. There's an easy-to-follow connector to the BWI trail, a loop circling BWI airport. That will get you closer to Baltimore, but still far from downtown. I'm sure it's possible to bike to the city from there, but it would mean sharing the road with urban traffic.

That's where the light rail comes in. The southernmost light rail stop, Cromwell Station, is less than a block from the northern end of the B&A trail. If you want to spend less time on the train and more on the bike, you can connect at the Linthicum station, which is a block or so from the BWI Trail.

I tried both ways. On the way south, I got off at Linthicum. Going back, I went to Cromwell Station. Even though both stations are so close to major bike trails, you can't actually see the trails from the stations or vice versa. And if there's any signage, I didn't see it. At Linthicum, there's an asphalt trail beginning at the platform and leading in the right direction. I had hopes that it would connect with the BWI trail, but it ends at a road, with no signage. I continued in the same direction on the road, keeping my eyes open, and soon saw another asphalt trail. That turned out to be the BWI trail, but again, no signs. Luckily there were some bicyclists there getting ready for a ride, and they set me straight. It's the same situation with the connection at Cromwell Station. The station is a major transit hub, less than a block from a major bike trail, but there's no signage either at the station or on the trail to indicate the other is there. (I knew where the station was, more or less, because I had researched it.) I was surprised that there was no bike rack at the station, although there are plenty of railings to lock a bike to. I didn't see any other bikes there on the Monday morning I returned.

I wonder how many bicyclists use those trails and never realize the connection to rail is there, and how many people drive to the light rail stations without realizing they could easily bike. My brother rode out to the station with me on my way back, and he said "Hey -- Diane [his wife] and I could easily bike here and take the train to Baltimore!" He's lived there for about twenty years, I think, and rides on that trail regularly. By the way, if there were no need for the bike on the Baltimore end, he and Diane could lock up the bikes at the station and avoid the bike-on-train stress. A $1.60 train ride would take them to Camden Yards, within walking distance of the Inner Harbor, and to shopping areas downtown.

So there's a lot of room for improvement in getting the word out about how to make multimodal trips. It's certainly not as easy as getting driving directions from Google or MapQuest, or plugging a destination into the car's GPS navigation system. Hopefully, the tools for planning biking, walking and transit trips will get to that level soon. On a positive note, I was pleased to see proposed designs for Metropolitan Branch Trail signage, including very clear signage at Metrorail stops indicating where the trail is and what it is. That's the direction we need to go to get the most out of transportation infrastructure we already have.

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Joe Chapline is web manager for Arlington County Commuter Services