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DC proposes closing 14th Street bridge nights and weekends to close budget gap

by Matt Johnson

This article was posted as an April Fool's joke.

Mayor Fenty's proposed FY2011 budget, released today, calls for a complete closure of the 14th Street bridge on evenings and weekends to save maintenance dollars.

DDOT estimates that closing the 14th Street Bridge would save approximately $10,000 per day. Spokesman John Truthle says people will still be able to get to DC by transferring to the George Washington Parkway to Rosslyn and crossing the Potomac on I-66 or the Key Bridge.

"If Metro can get passengers to do that on the Yellow and Blue Lines, surely they'll do it in cars," said one driver on Shirley Highway. Others disagree. Wanda Jones, who commutes from Woodbridge to L'Enfant Plaza, was livid: "what kind of crazy idea is this? Any politician who makes us go halfway around the city just to cross the Potomac is going to have a tough fight in November."

When asked whether she supported higher gas taxes to support better roads, Jones said, "Of course not. Every year they ask for more money at the pump and the quality of our roads is still declining. Why should I have to pay more?" Charlie Green, who commutes daily across the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, thinks he has a solution to the funding mess. "Why not just take the money from Metro to fund roads. I hear no one rides it anymore because it's too crowded."

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Pump price to top $3 a gallon this spring and summer,

The attached article is about the upcoming price shock of filling up your tank with gas and hints at the problem that higher gas prices means less driving and less money for car centric projects and the negative economic impact that will cause. Which leads too many to conclude that we have to keep America driving at all costs.

But notice the states that are the least vulnerable to this price increase are states with alternative transportation options other then just the family car. So it is transportation options and not car centric development that helps stabilize a local economy.

I'll note next that there is no guarantee that gas will not reach $5 a gallon in the next 20 years but all our long range 20 year plans assume it is going to business as usual and car centric transportation is still the top priority. Seriously we need to get people heads out of the sand, a change is a coming.

I seriously have to ask how many gas price shocks will it take for America to get that the best option is not to put all your eggs into one basket but to start supporting options. And this goes double for Maryland cutting mass transit in favor of car centric development and tax breaks for new cars is not a recipe for success, it is a recipe for "lower income levels" per the article. There is something terribly wrong with Maryland's "because people are driving less and took mass transit more we need to cut mass transit to build more car centric roads" type of thinking.

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Gas Prices and Consumer Behavior

By Robert Puentes and Emilia Istrate
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Empirical evidence from 1980 to 1990 found that a 1 percent increase in the price of gas is estimated to reduce gas demand by 0.3 to 0.35 percent in the short run and 0.6 to 0.8 percent in the long run. More recent research estimates the short run effect of gas prices on the demand for gasoline is much smaller: about -0.06 percent at the end of the 1990s and between -0.03 and -0.08 during 2001 and 2006.
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Also, these studies on the price elasticities of gas demand and VMT are based on data up to 2001 or the latest 2006. Therefore, they do not reflect the recent slump in VMT or the enormous spike in gasoline prices to over $4 a gallon or the rapid drop back to historically average prices. (A recent Harvard paper suggested that what are really needed are gas prices up to/above $8 per gallon to reduce emissions by 14 per cent from 2005 levels.).

The literature is also not broadly reflective of transportation alternatives within metropolitan areas. Intuitively, the elasticity for gasoline should be different in Manhattan than it is in Manhattan, Kansas, right? Examining driving trends in a dozen metropolitan highway locations in California, the CBO found gas prices do impact driving on metropolitan highways that are adjacent to rail systems (light rail and subways), with little impact in those places without. Further, they found that the increase in ridership on those transit systems is just about the same as the decline in the number of vehicles on the roadways.

This suggests that freeway traffic volume is responsive to changes in gasoline prices and commuters will switch to transit if service is available that is convenient to employment destinations.
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MTA and The Sun Are Still Wrong About MARC and Bikes

By Michael Byrne

The Baltimore Sun's Getting There blog posted a response from the Maryland Transit Authority to all the hullabaloo about bikes not being allowed on MARC trains generated by a Greater Greater Washington post a couple of weeks ago. No surprise, but it's not exactly satisfying.

The MTA's Henry M. Kay notes in the Sun post that MARC's Penn line is the fastest commuter railway in the nation. But it's also worth noting that the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority's regional trains, which do allow bikes, hit a top speed of at least 100 MPH, nipping at MARC's 100-plus-MPH heels. In any case, the solution MTA studied was removing two rows of seats for bike stowage—which, heavens, would take away seating for four passengers. Without explanation, Kay says the two rows would be per car, but it only seems necessary to have perhaps two or so cars per train with bike capacity, as do many other commuter rail systems in the country.

Kay is really only explaining Penn Line rush hour trains, however, in his response. And, again, I don't think anyone is suggesting that allowing bikes on Penn Line rush hour trains is a good idea. What about non-rush hour trains when rows of seats are sitting empty, or far lower-speed and lower-capacity Camden and Frederick line trains? In fact, just allowing bikes on those lines seems an easy stopgap solution—and neither the MTA nor Getting There columnist/blogger Michael Dresser have come up with a reason, good or not, for not allowing them on those trains. One suspects there just isn't one. As I mentioned before, bicycles are a rapidly growing part of commuting habits and, sorry, buying a second bike, transporting it somehow to your destination, and stowing it there full-time is not a solution.

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U.S. Transit Trips Hit 10.2B in 2009, With Light Rail Up in Nine Cities

The nation's transit systems hosted 10.2 billion trips last year, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) reported yesterday. While that figure represents a 3.8 percent decline from 2008, APTA's data showed light rail ridership rising in nine cities and the long-term increase in transit use continuing to outpace growth in population and vehicle miles traveled.

APTA President William Millar portrayed the new ridership figures as a win for transit, given the economic recession and the fact that fuel prices declined last year relative to their 2008 highs.

"Considering that nearly 60 percent of riders take public transportation to commute to and from work, it is not surprising that ridership declined in light of the many Americans who lost their jobs last year," Millar said in a statement.

Since 1995, APTA has reported a 31-percent increase in transit ridership nationwide, compared with a 15-percent increase in population over the same period and a 21-percent increase in highway miles traveled.

Nine cities reported light-rail ridership increases to APTA: Baltimore; Oceanside, CA; Memphis; Seattle; Philadelphia; Tampa; San Francisco; Portland; and New Orleans. Heavy rail networks in Los Angeles, D.C., Chicago, and Philadelphia also saw more riders last year.

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A Driving Problem, Not a Texting Problem

I’ve always thought that most people really do not like to drive, or at least drive all that much. Why would they otherwise be so constantly engaged in non-driving activities?

Clive Thompson makes this point in an interesting new column at Wired.

"Texting while driving is, in essence, a wake-up call to America. It illustrates our real, and bigger, predicament: The country is currently better suited to cars than to communication. This is completely bonkers."

Thompson has an idea for a technological solution to the problem:

"So what can we do? We should change our focus to the other side of the equation and curtail not the texting but the driving. This may sound a bit facetious, but I’m serious. When we worry about driving and texting, we assume that the most important thing the person is doing is piloting the car. But what if the most important thing they’re doing is texting? How do we free them up so they can text without needing to worry about driving?"

The answer, of course, is public transit....

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On the Road Again: Driving Decline Ends

Oh great, driving is up, mass transit being slashed, more congestion, funding for car centric roads coming from general funds and Senator "Car Tax Credits While Transit Burns" Mikulski is seeking reelection. What more can an American want?
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Economic recovery is good, but increased driving and congestion is not. How can we have both at the same time? Photo: A*censored*er Village Newbie, flickr.

It’s official – the historic decline in driving we’ve seen for the past two years has ended. From 2007 up to a few months ago, the economic crisis and high gas prices combined to produce some of the largest decreases in driving since the 1970s. We know that recessions lead to reduced driving, but still, these numbers along with the increased transit ridership we saw gave sustainable transportation advocates hope that we were witnessing a paradigm shift. The drop in miles driven even continued as gas prices plummeted in the fall of 2008. As the Boston Globe reported at the time:

“The fact that the trend persists even as gas prices are dropping confirms that America’s travel habits are fundamentally changing,” Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said.
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While driving declined, subways, buses, commuter rail, and light-rail systems have reported record increases in ridership. Amtrak, the nation’s intercity passenger railroad, said it carried the highest number of passengers and brought in the most revenue in fiscal 2008 in its 37-year history.

The hope of a fundamental travel behavior shift faded a little with the release of INRIX’s 2009 National Traffic Scorecard today.

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Library-a-Go-Go


Recently, while taking the Bart, I found a new type of public library in the Cerrito Station. It is a book vending machine called Library-a-Go-Go which caries about 400 popular titles. You just have to be a member, swipe a card and your commute becomes more pleasant. This library system operates in transit stations, shopping malls and under-served areas in the suburban landscapes.
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Pedestrian Safety after Snow

By Nancy Floreen

Although we are getting back to normal in many ways, visibility is still limited by large snow banks, and many sidewalks are still hidden under mounds of snow. Please continue to be very careful when driving and walking. Here are some more safety tips to keep in mind.

For drivers:

• Slow down and obey the posted speed limit.

• Stop for pedestrians at crosswalks and intersections- it's the law.

• Don't block crosswalks when stopping at intersections.

• Take extra care around schools, playgrounds, and neighborhoods.

• Always look out for pedestrians, especially before turning at a green light or making a "right turn on red."

• Obey signs, signals and markings--and never run red lights.

• Be careful when passing stopped vehicles. They might be stopping for pedestrians.

• Share the road. It is your responsibility to look out for others.

For pedestrians:

• If you must walk in the street, face traffic so you can see the vehicles coming toward you.

• Stay visible after dark and in bad weather with reflectors or retroreflective clothing. • Cross the street at marked crosswalks and intersections whenever possible.

• Stop and look every time before crossing streets, even when you have the right-of-way, and especially at intersections with “right turn on red.”

• Before crossing, look left, right, then left again, and over your shoulder for turning vehicles. • Begin crossing the street on “Walk” signals – never on a solid or flashing “Don’t Walk.”

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