Will HOT lanes in Virginia curb rush hour traffic? Photo by Mr. T in DC.

More than 60% of D.C.-area workers over the age of 16 drive to work alone.  This means that on the Capital Beltway, rush hour commutes often – and unpredictably – turn into hours-long, soul-crushing rides. It’s bleak. But people still take their cars. So in the next few years, Virginia is putting in four High Occupancy/Toll (HOT) lanes on its side of the Beltway to see if that makes a difference. At TheCityFix, we’re following the debate about whether it actually works to reduce congestion and encourage carsharing.

You may remember us talking about HOT lanes before: here we discussed HOT lanes while comparing the separate transportation policy proposals of 2009 Virginia gubernatorial candidates Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds; and here we talked about the pros and cons of using tolls to try to get more people to carpool.

On Sunday, the Washington Post published a “primer” for HOT Lanes, clearing up some of the murky details in the discussion about the new project.

A computer simulation of the 2013 HOT lanes. Image via The Washington Post.

Procedure

The Beltway’s new lanes will be free to any car with three or more people, along with buses, motorcycles, and emergency vehicles. 18-wheel trucks won’t be allowed on the HOT lanes, and all other vehicles will have to pay the toll to gain access. Hybrid cars, previously exempt from such tolls in the state, will abide by the same rules as all other vehicles. And to use the lanes, drivers will need to have a transponder; an EZPass will work for individual drivers, but carpoolers will need to get a new transponder with a “carpool” switch, which is still being designed.

Price

Officials representing Fluor-Transurban, the consortium of two private companies that will run the HOT lanes together with the Virginia Department of Transportation, will not set fares based on the time of day; rather, the toll will rise as traffic rises, and vice versa. This makes the pricing scheme different from Maryland’s Intercounty Connector, which sets tolls based on the time of day.

Promise

The HOT lane promise is 55-mile-per-hour, free-flowing traffic at all times.

A computer simulation of the 2013 HOT lanes. Image via the Washington Post.

Sustainability?

Unfortunately, in spite of putting a price on congestion, HOT lanes don’t seem to change people’s driving habits, so they’re not great for sustainability. In addition, HOT lanes – and tolls in general – have an important equity question attached to them, which we have discussed before: they can create a two-tier road system where only richer drivers can afford to pay for less congested roads and faster travel time. In some states, revenue expenditure has been structured to invest in alternative benefits or compensations for those who cannot afford the toll. However, the Virginia HOT lane website has not indicated any such plan, as yet. Revenues from the HOT lanes are set to go toward paying for and repairing the lanes.

A view of the U.S. Capitol from Pennsylvania Ave SE. Photo by fletch37.

One of D.C.’s busiest corridors is getting a touchup. The Great Streets Pennsylvania Avenue initiative, kicked off a couple of weeks ago by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, will seek to enhance the street’s physical landscape as well as its transportation use. But will it improve sustainable options for city commuters?

The answer may depend on the city’s budget priorities and transportation needs. The $30 million initiative is, after all, funded by the District’s portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). TheCityFix reported last month that stimulus funds have the potential to promote sustainable transportation options but face obstacles including budget cuts and project delays.

Fenty said the renovations, which focus on a southeast segment of Pennsylvania Ave., would attempt to alleviate heavy traffic conditions and improve the quality of life in the area:

“This project, through its comprehensive design, is strongly focused on reestablishing historic neighborhoods and will create a unifying place where neighborhoods from north and south of the corridor can come together to shop, visit, play, learn and live without being separated any longer by extreme traffic conditions.”

The District Department of Transportation said the changes would improve alternative mobility and reduce the street’s environmental impact:

“The project is designed to create a safe place where residents, visitors and regional travelers can travel over, across, to and through the corridor on foot, bus or car with ease and comfort while developing a street that is kind to the natural and human environment with majestic trees, enhanced park spaces, and reduction of the environmental impact of the corridor.”

The renovations will include:

• A traffic lane reduction from 5 lanes to 4 lanes
• The addition of a landscaped median,
• Turn pockets that protect pedestrians and resident vehicles,
• Integrated transit facilities to promote public transportation,
• An expanded sidewalk network along the full length of the corridor.
• Three rain-gardens, a method that uses soil and plants to capture pollution from runoff.

The project may rebuke the theory that sustainable transportation will suffer under the recession. In fact, the District’s actions may point to another trend: that green design is the favored method for renovating and developing infrastructure in today’s economy. TheCityFix reported recently on the spike in sustainable practices on U.S. college campuses despite a drop in endowment funds. Capital investment in green transportation technology also increased in 2009, a trend fueled by government support for green projects and because of the failing car industry.

The Pennsylvania Ave. project itself is part of D.C.’s Great Streets Initiative, a comprehensive program that seeks to renovate six major corridors through local business development, public space improvement and the reduction of heavy vehicle traffic. Promoting pedestrian and mass transit options is one of the major goals of the initiative.

The project also follows a growing list of mass transit projects enacted (or waiting to be enacted) under the Fenty administration. Construction began recently on a 1.5 mile streetcar line in Anacostia, a mass transit option expected to open by fall 2012. Plans are also underway for a new stimulus-funded K Street layout that will feature bus-only lanes. ARRA funds will also go to the city’s Smartbike program, an initiative that will install 40 Smartbike stations and 480 Smartbikes across the city.

A full list of D.C.’s ARRA projects can be seen here. It’s worth noting that the city received a total of $123.5M in stimulus dollars for transportation related projects, but more than $80 million of this total package must go to state highway funds. Regardless, D.C. officials seem to be making an effort to add in as many sustainable amenities as possible into renovation projects.

Thus, we’re learning more about how stimulus funds can be used for sustainable transportation projects. D.C. is one urban region that is taking the opportunity to enact mass transit and pedestrian-friendly solutions, even in areas not often frequented by tourists (i.e. SE Pennsylvania Ave). Ultimately, the nation’s capital may become a model for effective urban sustainability and inspire other cities to do the same.

Photo from ICC Photo Gallery.

News flash: Most Washingtonians drive alone to work.  This is no surprise, but the Census Bureau’s 2006-2008 American Community Survey, just released, confirms that 63.7% of our region’s workers who are over 16 drive by themselves to the office.

Despite years of efforts to convince commuters to take transit or carpool, as well as a relatively good public transportation system, residents of the DC metro area cling to their SOVs.  What else can we do to change this?

The answer that’s been in the news lately is tolling. Tolls are planned for the Intercounty Connector (ICC), an 18.8-mile highway under construction between Gaithersburg and Laurel. To cover the road’s $2.56 billion construction cost, the Maryland Transportation Authority’s board has proposed rush-hour tolls of $.25 – $.35 per mile for 2-axle vehicles from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. on weekdays.  Off-peak rates for 2-axle vehicles would range from $.20 to $.30 per mile.  The price tag would be around $11 roundtrip for the many drivers expected to use the ICC to commute between I-95 and I-270.  The ICC tolling plan is getting a lot of press for proposing some of the highest rates in the country.

However, proponents argue that it’s not kosher to compare the ICC with older toll roads, whose construction costs were lower and may have been paid off years ago.  They claim that the proposed tolls are about average for newer roads.

Tolls are also planned for the HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes on part of the Capital Beltway in Virginia, and for the HOT lanes to be opened on Interstates 395 and 95 in Northern Virginia.  A more comprehensive (and controversial) vehicle miles traveled-based tolling system is even being explored, where GPS, cell phone towers or other mechanisms would be used to charge drivers per mile.

This scheme has been touted by the National Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission created by Congress, and is now under study by the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board and the Brookings Institution. Issues being examined include the feasibility of garnering public support, privacy concerns, cooperation between jurisdictions, and how revenues could be shared within the area and between roads and mass transit.

Overall, tolls and private sources are expected to account for 7% of Washington’s total transportation costs over the next two decades, up from 1% in 2003.  That’s a jump of more than $400 million per year (from a National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board analysis. This shift in how we finance our transportation infrastructure translates into a new set of rules for D.C. drivers.  The only tolled highways that exist now are the Dulles Toll Road and its extension, the Dulles Greenway.

On paper, the argument for road tolling is strong.  By charging motorists directly for driving, tolling at once addresses congestion and raises much-needed revenue for road construction and maintenance.  The gas tax is generating less revenue than it used to, and this downward trend will continue as more people shift to hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars.

However, in reality, road tolling is no easy sell.  Essentially, it requires lawmakers to ask the public to pay for something they currently do for free (not counting the costs they impose on society in the form of congestion, sprawl and environmental pollution.)  Critics point out the equity issues involved in tolling schemes as well.  Tolls can create two-tier road systems, where more affluent drivers enjoy faster travel times on so-called “Lexus Lanes” while those who can’t afford the tolls are forced to take slower, more congested routes. (Although, according to testimony by Michael A. Replogle, former transportation director for Environmental Defense, “Real-world HOT lanes look more like ‘Lumina Lanes,’ used by people of widely varying incomes who occasionally need to bypass traffic delays that disrupt their social, family, or work life.”)

To avoid the political difficulties inherent in tolling, some leaders have focused on tolling newly constructed lanes rather than applying tolls to existing lanes.  This often results in free lanes alongside tolled lanes.  As Streetsblog points out, the existence of faster-moving toll lanes next to clogged free lanes may make the connection between tolling and free-flowing traffic clear to motorists.  On the other hand, this strategy makes the implementation of tolling a challenge, as governments face high start-up costs.  New, tolled lanes cost much more than adopting tolls on existing lanes.

We’ll be watching this debate as it unfolds.  The first public hearing on the ICC tolls, held Wednesday night, was quiet.  The second one is going on right now (Thursday, 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.) at Shady Grove Middle School, and public comments will be accepted until November 23.   The Maryland Transportation Authority board is scheduled to vote on a final toll structure on December 17.  No matter what happens, it is clear that decision makers need to address the equity issue.  An adequate portion of the revenue raised should be invested in public transit, specifically targeting modes and routes that serve as alternatives for those impacted by the tolls.

It’s sometimes said that the stimulus bill was the first transportation bill. That’s basically correct; you can’t go anywhere in the transportation world without hearing how a given project was, will be, or hopefully might be a stimulus grant recipient. While most stimulus spending has gone to status quo projects, some stimulus money, particularly DOT’s discretionary spending, is going to what might be truly transformational projects.

The K Street transitway here in D.C. has the opportunity to be one of those. DDOT is proposing redesigning K Street NW between Washington Circle and Mt. Vernon Square to include dedicated bus lanes. Last night, I attended the open-house style public meeting that is part of the Environmental Assessment process.

There are three alternative plans being assessed, which are summarized in the following table:

The two build alternatives each take the center of the road and give it to dedicated bus lanes. The extra room for those lanes comes from space currently used as service lanes, narrowing of lanes and, in alternative 3, taking away parking spaces. For more detailed information on the three plans, check out David Alpert’s very good explanation of the three plans.

The more important question is why this particular plan is so important. K Street is one of the most heavily trafficked streets in the District, on all modes of transport. Currently, between 6 AM and 9 AM on weekdays, 134 different public buses travel east on this section of K Street while 89 buses travel west. This includes 26 different bus routes, including Metrobus and the K Street Circulator but also MTA and Loudoun County commuter buses. Additionally, 18 different bus lines cross this section of K Street. Accordingly, this corridor is a particularly important one to get right.

The effects of the busway are striking. According to DDOT’s projections, travel times on buses will drop quite significantly, as shown in the following table:

Given that one of the consultants on the project advised me that these numbers are probably all optimistic, due to the model they were using, these numbers are best understood as percentages, which shows very significant decreases in travel time by bus. Given the sheer quantity of bus transit operating in this corridor, those travel time reductions are, if nothing else, significant quality-of-life increases for many, many people. Nikhil Nadkarni, a Chinatown resident who takes the Circulator to work, expressed his excitement about Alternative 3 due to its faster bus times. Looking comparatively, Paris’ Mobilien project has been met with rave reviews.

More importantly, a major K Street transitway has the possibility of really reshaping our transit connectivity, if done correctly. My only criticism of the plans was that when detailing the transit infrastructure of K Street, the public hearing noted only one Metrorail station: Farragut North. This is because Farragut North is the only station directly on K Street. Of course, Foggy Bottom, Farragut West and McPherson Square are one block south, on I Street. Mount Vernon Square is two blocks north, on M Street. DDOT has emphasized the impact this will have on buses, but it could really affect our Metrorail system as well. David Alpert’s fantasy Metro map has a separate Blue Line running along M Street, partly because it’s important to increase redundancy, as we learned after the Red Line crash.

If, and only if, the K Street transitway is well-integrated not only with Farragut North but with the Blue/Orange and Yellow/Green lines in a two block radius of the transitway, it can serve some of that function. Someone coming from Arlington to Mt. Vernon Square might transfer to a rapid bus line on K Street rather than to the Yellow or Green lines. I’m not sure how you can shrink those distances of a block or especially two blocks, but if there is a way, that is the step needed to change this project from incremental to transformational.

With or without proper integration into Metro, the important thing is to do everything in our power to make sure that this transitway becomes reality. Barbara Hoage, one of the consultants working on the project, told me that because this project’s future was entirely dependent on stimulus money, public comments during this period were incredibly important to the project’s future. Before the end of next week, August 7, e-mail Kstreetcomments@rkk.com. Tell them that you support the K Street transitway. Because they are not submitting a preferred alternative at this point, you don’t have to state a preference between Alternative 2 and Alternative 3.

Alternative 3 does seem like the more sustainable option. It increases the width of the sidewalks for pedestrians, offers buses faster times and is the only plan that offers a bike lane. Some cyclists are skeptical that this bike lane, which isn’t physically separated from traffic like in Copenhagen, will be good enough. However, cyclists I spoke with at the hearing, such as J.T. Stinson, who bikes “hundreds of miles every week” and “hasn’t walked in this city in two years,” suggested that a bike lane would be better than none. As long as a bike lane on K doesn’t preclude a cycle track on, say, H, I tend to agree with them. You don’t have to suggest Alternative 3, but please, please send an e-mail to kstreetcomments@rkk.com and let them know how important it is to build a transitway on K Street. You could help reshape D.C.’s central business district with just an e-mail.

Transit-Oriented Development at Ballston Metro Station in Arlington. Photo by faceless b.

The Coalition for Smarter Growth is one of the preeminent activist organizations dedicated to sustainable transportation and smart land use policies in the D.C. area. Over the last ten years, the Coalition has fought for inclusionary zoning in D.C., for transit-oriented development around Metro stations across the region, for building a high-quality Purple Line and a smart growth Tyson’s Corner, and for better local zoning and better regional planning. Where we want to see change, the Coalition for Smarter Growth is fighting for it.

Cheryl Cort is the policy director for the Coalition and the former head of the Washington Regional Network for Livable Communities. She leads CSG’s campaigns for equitable development and mandatory inclusionary zoning in D.C., as well as all policy work on transit-oriented development, complete streets and parking reform. As such, she is one of the region’s foremost experts on smart growth. As such, TheCityFix DC sat down with her to discuss the state of smart growth in the region and possibilities for the future.

Cort ended up focusing on three different levels where change was most needed. At the level of design, Cort called for a renewed focus on the first quarter-mile around our Metrorail stations as the primary locus for regional growth. Moving out to the level of policy, Cort identified form-based zoning codes, in which neighborhood type is regulated rather than building uses, as a particularly encouraging trend at the local level. In her words, “Form-based codes make sure that what is happening on private land supports what we are trying to do on public land.” Finally, at the broadest level, Cort argued that our constant ability to find large sums of cash for greenfield development and highway expansion while existing communities and transit are constantly starved for cash reflects wasteful and misguided priorities, reminding us that “We can’t build it all.”

An edited transcript of my interview with her below:

Noah Kazis: I want to start by asking how you define smart growth. It’s a term that gets thrown around a lot and can mean very different things to different people.

Cheryl Cort: Smart growth, I think, is directing growth, in terms of jobs and households, to existing communities focused around transit service and creating walkable, bikeable communities. As a part of that, smart growth means building mixed-use and mixed-income communities so that everyone has an opportunity to live in these convenient places. That’s the community side of smart growth. The other side is environmental protection: protecting open space, forests and farmland, and undeveloped areas.

NK: If you could redesign the D.C. area—with practicality as no limit—what would it look like?

CC: It means first focusing on building great walkable mixed-use, mixed-income communities around our Metrorail stations. Far too many of our Metro stations are either underdeveloped or have a poor mix of uses. Maybe they have the right mix of uses but create a very unwalkable environment. If we just focus growth on the half-mile walk, the quarter-mile walk to our Metro stations we could accommodate most of our region’s growth.

And then the second part is focusing on our existing communities inside the beltway and along our Metro corridors. We need to direct growth to the inner suburbs and city. That’s where something like the Purple Line comes in and a bus priority network comes in.

NK: Just to dig deeper on that question, how dense does the District get? What does a place like Bethesda start to look like? What does a place like Tyson’s Corner start to look like? Does it start to look like Portland? New York? Paris? Tokyo?

CC: It looks like D.C. and Bethesda. How we build out communities and mixed-use districts, it’s specific to the place that we’re in. But we want to focus more growth closer in to Metro stations and other high-capacity transit and build in a market for retail that can be served by walking and bicycling rather than longer-distance travel.

Different stations would have different characteristics. Some Metro stations would be more neighborhood scale, like Takoma for instance. You want to focus more housing and some businesses next to that Metro station, but you’d be transitioning into the surrounding lower-density housing. For other places, like say Prince George’s Plaza metro station, that’s a place that has pretty sizable amounts of new development in terms of apartment buildings, office buildings and commercial development. Prince George’s Plaza is on a larger scale and should be on a larger scale than a neighborhood station. Generally, though, there should be more happening within the quarter-mile of the station than in the surrounding area.

One of the clearest examples of that is how the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor was planned out by Arlington Country. They decided to run Metro through an old, dying, inner-suburban strip commercial corridor and bury the Metro line rather than keep it on cheap highway right-of-way. They simultaneously protected the surrounding low-density areas. So Rosslyn-Ballston has built out with the first key quarter-mile walk of each of those Metro stations focused more on density, but quickly tapering down into pretty low density neighborhoods.

NK: You talked a lot about design in that answer. How does design interact with policy on this?

CC: Well, that’s actually an interesting question. Rethinking our Euclidean zoning has emerged as a popular topic and the response has been form-based codes. By Euclidean zoning, I mean American land use zoning predicated on the need to separate uses, like separating the slaughterhouse from nearby residences. It certainly makes sense to separate noxious uses from where people are living, but the downside is that it separated everything from everything else. It made walking and cycling impractical modes of travel.

We’ve since realized that the built environment–what happens on private property–has a profound effect on our travel environment. So the role of public interest in what happens in private development isn’t just saying “here’s a setback line” and “we’re going to be very specific about what uses you can’t put in there.” In form-based codes, we say what we really care about, as the public, is making sure that the building supports the public realm. Although the use is relevant, we don’t need to get hyper-specific about it. We just need to make sure that we don’t put a tannery in the middle of a mixed-use district. We can then get more specific about how buildings behave in an environment. Rather than saying you just need to push back the building so many feet from the right-of-way, form-based codes say we might want to have a build-to line, so that commercial buildings are relating strongly to the street and creating a friendly environment for commerce and pedestrians, so there’s a sense of enclosure for the pedestrian, so they feel in contact with both the public realm and the buildings they might want to use. That’s in contrast to putting a parking lot in front of a building, where the pedestrian might feel very much lost in space. Form-based codes make sure that what is happening on private land supports what we are trying to do on public land.

NK: So where is form-based zoning happening, if anywhere?

CC: Arlington has done a very good job of this on the Columbia Pike. They have developed a form-based code for the road and have been building out in conformance with that plan. Prince George’s County has been working on some of those ideas for the last year or so. They are calling it the mixed-use zone.

What’s interesting is that many jurisdictions—Montgomery County, Prince George’s County and D.C.—all are in the midst of rewriting or updating their 1950’s zoning code. DC’s zoning code was first written in 1958 and this is the first time that the city has undertaken a major updating of that code. It’s been tinkered with along the way, but never fully rethought. The city is looking at these form-based approaches. It might be a little less specific about where you can have a telegraph office, for instance. One of the things that’s going to be eliminated from the code is archaic uses that no longer exist.

NK: You always read about Arlington as the place getting things right. Everywhere else it seems like it’s one step forward and one step back. They’re putting in transit but they’re also putting in a highway. Do you have any sense of what political process or logic leads to this total jumble?

CC: Arlington is just 25 square miles. That has a lot to do with its success. It’s an urban jurisdiction that didn’t feel like it had space to waste. It felt it had to do everything well, not just approve giant new projects as developers pitched them. I think that a lot of other jurisdictions suffer from thinking they have lots of land to do things with.

NK: You often hear people saying that no bus will ever spur development in the way that rail will. How do the different pieces of a transportation system fit together in your mind, particularly in a region that is becoming more and more multinodal, rather than just centered in D.C.?

CC: You have to look at applying the transportation technology to the land use. One technology is not suitable for all uses. For example, maybe enhanced bus service might not have the same impact on land use. But bus service is still essential to connecting existing communities. Not everyone lives within a five minute walk of the 100-odd Metro stations. It’s about investing in the right kind of transit.

NK: One critique I always have of smart growth advocates—and I’m horribly guilty of this whenever I wear my advocate hat—is that it’s portrayed as a free lunch. It saves money, it saves the environment, it lowers commute times, and on and on. What are the costs of smart growth? Even if it’s mostly winners, but who are the losers?

CC: I think we see the costs of sprawl and endless widenings of I-270 in terms of further dispersion of jobs and pollution the consumption of more land. Smart growth is the response to the way we are pouring our resources into driving through large-scale roads. It’s the response to the undermining and abandonment of existing communities. For example, in Capitol Heights and District Heights, Prince George’s County is currently closing 8 elementary schools, 7 of which are inside the beltway and the eighth is just over the Beltway. At the same time, it’s planning to build a bunch of new schools on greenfield sites outside the Beltway. That’s a great example of how we’re wasting resources to subsidize new freeway interchanges while abandoning older communities and homeowners. I see smart growth as the response to the problems of our current system.

NK: What do you see as the biggest obstacle to enacting smart growth policies?

CC: What’s striking is that with the spike in gas prices last year, we had a decline in VMT for the first time in decades. Now the recession is influencing how much people are driving as well. When people found it very expensive to drive, people were flocking to transit – everything from commuter buses to carpooling to regular buses. What would have been better for everyone is if those alternatives were better to start with. As a society, we are starting to run out of all of the natural resources and public subsidies that have spread out jobs and forced families to own two or three cars. The cost of energy is starting to make families ask for better choices.

The other thing is the demographic shift towards an older population. Folks need transportation choices that don’t involve driving for every trip. There’s demand for more urban style housing because there’s more choices of transportation options and you don’t need to do so much to take care of the house. So there’s energy trends and demographic trends driving us towards a smart growth future. And then climate change. People are deeply concerned about our climate and recognize that we need more environmentally friendly communities.

NK: In terms of the environmental movement, any environmental group gets tagged with the “elitist” smear. The Coalition for Smarter Growth cares a lot about equity. Why does your organization feel it’s important to include equity stuff when many environmental groups don’t do so, and why can’t you shake the elitist label?

CC: Smart growth is more than an environmental movement, although many of its roots are there. There are other strands as well, though, such as the New Urbanist movement. In terms of equity, one of the big challenges is that we have a deficit of these great places that have transit and walkability. You pay a premium to live in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor. There aren’t enough of these places, so they cost more. If we don’t build more great places—until we build them—we’re going to have to work very hard to make them affordable so that people of all incomes have the ability to live there. Arlington has made a lot of efforts in that area, though they’ve had a lot of challenges being in the Commonwealth of Virginia, which is a very strong private property rights state. Now they require—they don’t require, but they strongly incentivize—development in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor to come in with affordable housing.

In D.C. we’ve seen a complete recovery of the housing market. In 1996, there was no new housing permit issued in the District of Columbia. Now things have really changed. In the last few years we were looking at 2,000 units a year being created. The District’s lost a tremendous amount of population over the years, so a lot of underutilized land and parking lots and vacant lots have been used to accommodate this growth, but it’s also put a lot of pressure on home prices and rents.

The City has a number of policies in place to protect low-income renters, like rent control and tenants first right of refusal when a building goes up for sale, but it’s a challenge to faithfully administer these programs. The District didn’t really have a cohesive housing policy, so the Coalition for Smarter Growth has been working with the D.C. Affordable Housing Alliance for nearly a decade on these issues. We worked on securing a housing production trust fund as a reliable source of funding, creating a comprehensive housing strategy, and increasing the amount of development on publicly owned land committed to affordable housing from a 20% set-aside to 30%.

The other thing is inclusionary zoning, which Montgomery County pioneered. Private developments are required to set aside a certain percentage of units at below-market rates in exchange for a density bonus. In D.C., our campaign kicked off in 2003 and we got it through the zoning commission, which was the key body, in 2006. The City Council signed off on it, but no regulations were issued between 2007 and 2009, when the mayor finally issued the last regulations. We now expect it to go into effect in August. It’s an important tool for integrating affordability into every development in the city. It’s existed for over 30 years in Montgomery County and in a less robust form in Fairfax, although Fairfax has been improving its law. A form of it was incorporated into the Tyson’s Corner redevelopment plan. We’ve been particularly involved with inclusionary zoning in the District because we are land use planners and we bring some expertise to the table on that particular technique.

NK: Just to close up, what is the one thing that absolutely no one in the region is talking about that they should be?

CC: We really need to rethink how we go about identifying billions of dollars in public funds for these giant roadway projects when we neglect to get the details right on transit and walkability. We can’t build it all.

Via Planetizen, here’s a mostly fun and I think actually educational game from the University of Minnesota where you have to serve as traffic engineer, setting the red and green lights to keep traffic moving smoothly. As has been said, you don’t get to do anything like put in buses, which would really reduce congestion, but there’s no reason for fans of sustainable transportation not to support smoothly functioning cars, insofar as they exist, or transportation-related flash games.

A Transmilenio bus rolls smoothly into Bogota. Photo by adrimcm.

I hate to do another round on BRT with The Overhead Wire, but I can’t help myself. It’s an important discussion, particularly with BRT gaining momentum in D.C.

The latest discussion started with Streetsblog making what seems like a very modest claim. Ben Fried argued that the latest delay in the Second Avenue Subway construction timeline makes BRT seem more attractive, writing that: “Eight years is a long time to ask people to wait, especially when a viable alternative like physically separated Bus Rapid Transit can be provided much sooner, at much less expense.”

The Overhead Wire did not agree. He begins by writing that:

“Streetsblog is at it again with BRT. When do we get a streetfilm on Berlin or London’s or Tokyo’s or Hong Kong’s or Moscow’s or Paris’ or Helsinki’s or (name amazing world city with a subway here) Underground? Probably never because we only take good ideas from third world countries. (insert joke about becoming one here)”

The bulk of the substance of his argument comes in this section:

“Then how about talking about these issues:

Paying union wages for 30 second headways
Fumes that come from the buses because they won’t electrify
Using more oil for IC engines
Roadway damage that will occur along the way
Replacing those buses every 12 years or sooner
Crowding that is acceptable in Curitba and Bogota
Speeding buses and pedestrians
Bus traffic sewers on the streets
Actually taking lanes from drivers when you can’t even get road pricing

You want less people to ride transit? Then build inferior transit. In all actuality though, this country needs more Metro Subways. You know, the kinds of things they have in first world countries on the European continent.”

Ryan Avent came for the assist, arguing that not investing in rail is ignoring rail’s history of success in generating investment. Avent’s point is well-taken, though I don’t think he addresses why permanent bus stations and other features of full BRT don’t fix the problem. There is good research showing the capacity of BRT to stimulate development.

The Overhead Wire’s comments, though, need addressing. I think that The Overhead Wire’s commenters do a good job of making two important points: that there is no sinister BRT agenda and that the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good (that latter point is the most important one, I’d say). An anonymous commenter also does a good round of point-by-point critiques.

I want to start at the level of detail and then move to a broader critique of this argument. First, the environmental effects of bus versus rail, whether in fumes or oil, depend on both the bus and the power source. It’s far from clear that hybrid buses are less clean than coal power plants, and a number of studies have shown BRT to be cleaner than LRT (and others have not, the point is that this is neither settled nor conclusive).

Second, The Overhead Wire is trying to have it both ways with the 30-second headways and the crowding. He knows perfectly well that the number of people on each bus goes down as the number of buses goes up. At the point where you have 30 second headways between 60-foot articulated buses, there will not be crowding. Now I don’t expect to see 30 second headways. But honesty would be nice. It’s things like this that make The Overhead Wire seem so dogmatic about it.

Third, the comments about buses and pedestrians or “bus traffic sewers” reflect what I think is actually going on here. These comments, to my eye, are a way of associating buses with cars. There’s a famous image that shows the amount of space it takes to move the same number of people by car, bus, or bike:

Yes, you will still need crosswalks and a proper pedestrian infrastructure. But BRT obviously makes streets more, not less, pedestrian friendly as compared to using the same lanes for cars. Also, the “bus traffic sewer” line is just ugly. It’s exactly as persuasive as an anti-streetcar advocate talking about “rail traffic sewers;” it’s content-free.

But the thing that really rankles me, that made me need to respond, is the attitude that The Overhead Wire takes towards the developing world. To dismiss innovation that happens in the third world as only good for the third world and innovations that happen in Europe as the only ones worthy of American consideration is problematic at best. Is it so hard to imagine that Brazil and Colombia may have made an innovation that the developed world did not?

To claim that “For a fraction of the cost you get a fraction of the ridership and a fraction of the service” or “you get what you pay for” is to argue that there is no innovation in BRT at all, that it is merely one more step on a linear function of quality that ends at subways. That is plainly false. Bogota and Curitiba have figured out how to get more bang per transit buck and we should be not only willing but excited to learn from them. That doesn’t mean that BRT is always the answer; that would be crazy. But the dismissal of BRT as cheap and Third World is offensive.

On the merits, NYC should put in BRT if it thinks it can’t get the subway quickly enough or if it thinks Albany is going to get in the way, but should have a subway if they can pull off now what they’ve been trying to do for 70 years. Here in D.C., I’d say something similar. Where we can have new subways lines that are integrated with the Metro heavy rail network at something even approaching cost-effectiveness (not the FTA version!), that should be the goal, but in the absence of that full-investment BRT is often going to be an attractive solution.

Beltway traffic. Flickr photo by derang0.

Dr. Gridlock received an e-mail with a set of suggestions for how to reduce congestion in downtown D.C. He responds by giving his own list, which basically consists of enforcing double-parking laws, not building more parking downtown and then implementing congestion pricing, bike lanes and priority bus service.

The ease with which he can provide these suggestions beautifully illustrates one of the stranger dynamics in transportation today. We are in a moment of paradigm shift where sustainable and urbanist transportation ideas have reached near-consensus among the intellectual community, have basically won the public discourse in large sections of the country, but have not penetrated the technocratic community that still runs the transportation bureaucracy. This is why Dr. Gridlock, who is far from a radical—his main job is letting you know where there is a traffic accident—can support bikes and buses over parking and lanes without raising a stir but the collective efforts of the entire local environmental movement may not be able to stop the widening of I-270.

Maybe the best analogy is farm subsidies, another policy where policy elites generally agree that the effects are harmful but where the political system is perfectly designed to keep the policy in place for many years to come.

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. Photo by Washington State Department of Transportation.

Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood gave a talk today at the Center for National Policy  (great name for a think-tank, no?) about the economic impact of transportation. In other words, he spoke about how awesome the stimulus is. According to LaHood, it’s been very awesome. ARRA has had a “tremendous impact” and is “the most sweeping and complex” domestic package in years. This wasn’t really the interesting section of the talk, though—was LaHood going to say that the stimulus wasn’t going as smooth as butter? Perhaps the one really unexpected statistic is that in half the states, DOT stimulus is heavily concentrated in those counties with the highest unemployment.

The questions, which took up the majority of the time, were much more revealing, though. I’ve got my full real-time notes at the bottom of the post, so look through those for the source material, though please ignore typos and unclear remarks. I’m pulling important points and commentary up here, though.

LaHood believes that because DOT works so closely with states and local government regularly, it has been able to spend its stimulus money more effectively than any other department. In his words, local officials know what works best and they’re not afraid of sharing that information with DOT. It’s good to see a federal bureaucracy that, at least at the top, believes in local knowledge rather than rationalized uniformity. It’s very different from how DOT normally runs (and still to a large extent does below the top levels).

When LaHood was asked about the transportation bill reauthorization, including from a Blumenauer staffer, he was ruthlessly on message. His answers were shorter and more direct than at any other time. There was a lot of “We support an 18 month reauthorization” and other such statements.

We learned in response to a question from Fairplay magazine, a maritime-related journal, that a large portion of the $1.5b in discretionary ARRA spending will go to ports, partly because port infrastructure had no other way of being funded in the stimulus bill. The other priority that LaHood mentioned for the discretionary spending was intermodal plans. I’d refer you back to Roy Kienitz’s (the Under Secretaroy of Transportation for Policy) remarks at the TPB priority bus conference for a greater sense of how those intermodal dollars will be spent, particularly in the D.C. region.

Elana Schor from Streetsblog Capitol Hill asked where the administration stood on CLEAN-TEA, a proposal to spend revenue from cap-and-trade auctions on transportation. In the Senate, the number is at 10% while the House had only 1%. LaHood answered that the Administration didn’t want to get involved in the Senate’s work, but would certainly be weighing in during conference.

I was really impressed with the way that LaHood spoke about livable communities. When asked specifically about it, he was visibly more animated than with any other previous question. Now LaHood is a professional politician, so you have to be careful. But I definitely noticed a qualitative difference in the way he answered that question. I also liked his framing, that this is not the DOT or anyone else telling people what they want but that there is pent-up demand after years of not investing in most modes of transportation. In his words, “The idea that an hour of congestion to go to the doctors – people are tired of that… People want to be able to ride their bike to work, walk to work, take a light rail, take a bus, take a streetcar.”

DC residents should also be very heartened by his response to a question about the Red Line Crash. He began by definitively stating that WMATA is “America’s Metro system” and proceeding from there. He also spoke eloquently about the work that WMATA did in enabling 2 million people to gather on the Mall for Pres. Obama’s inauguration. When he said that the federal government had a special responsibility to WMATA, I believed him.

Finally, I got to ask him a question – very exciting. I asked how in stimulus spending DOT had balanced the short-term economic need for speed and jobs with the long-term economic need for livable communities and a reshaped transportation network. What did they do when the highway repaving was the fastest? The answer was very disappointing, though. LaHood dodged it by listing the dollar amounts that ARRA had allocated to transit, high speed rail and AMTRAK. That’s all well and good, but doesn’t really address how that’s different from pumping money into business as usual.

Even so, I’m still quite convinced that Ray LaHood is one of the very most innovative and important Secretaries of Transportation that the country has ever had. Of the entire list, only Neil Goldschmidt jumps out as obviously important. Good choice, President Obama.

Ray LaHood Notes

Intro: DOT was founded in 1967. Under 15 preceding secretaries, has any had more important moment for transportation?

Focus on “tremendous impact ARRA is having.” “The most sweeping and complex” domestic package.

ARRA designed as 18-month roll-out, using well-established procedures. Now we are only 6 months in. “We don’t want the dog to start barking” – Biden. No earmarks, boondoggles, special projects. Not one serious abuse of funds, so far.

Difficulty of measuring, since we don’t know what would happen without it. Also don’t know how next year of spending will help.

Transp. Is 10% of US GDP. DOT has $48b in stimulus – 2/3 of normal budget. Today, $21b is available to states. FAA has already spent its full stimulus amount. Highways have done 2/3. $1b in AMTRAK approved. $3.2b for transit, with $5b in the works. About to announce shipyard program. Money moving out door twice as fast as normal (and remember that outdoor construction season is just ramping up).

Lower bids mean that have more projects than expected.

Hundreds of proposals for HSR.

Next year is the multimodal $1.5b (is that TIGER?).

MDOT has recalled all of its laid-off employees b/c of stimulus.

Are stimulus projects in the areas that need it most? Half of funds going to 40 PA counties with worst unemployment. Cities are benefitting too: congestion, emissions, mobility. 90% of transit funds go to cities large and small. Conclusion: “It’s working and it’s on track.”

Q: (Peter Kovler, CNP board chair) Is there a lessons learned system? Yes, it’s VP Biden and Sec LaHood talking to state and local officials. They know best and they’re not shy of saying when it’s not working. Thinks that b/c DOT has best relationships with states and local officials, they’ve had the most effective stimulus spending of any department.

Q (congressional staffer) How close is DOT involved in Auto Task Force? A: LaHood is member of Task Force and gets to participate in the discussions. No president has taken more of an interest in supporting American auto industry than Pres. Obama. Chrysler making cars again, GM out of bankruptcy, cash for clunkers. DOT also involved in setting CAFÉ standards – proud to have worked with EPA for the 35mpg CAFÉ standard.

Q: (Am. Soci. Of Civil Engineers) 18 month extension of transportation bill. Are you looking at reauthorization as Stimulus 2?  A: Doesn’t think Congress could possibly have a new bill on Obama’s desk by Sept. 30. Happy to see that Boxer’s committee passed 18 month extension today.

Q (Meredith Singer, IBM) What can you do to make “intelligent” transportation systems? A: Real commitment to research at DOT – stepping it up. How do we get to livable communities? RITA is research arm. “Research is about the future.”

Q (Cong. Blumenauer aide): What about the Voinovich 12 month extension? A: It was defeated, and we want 18 mo.

Q: (engineering news record magazine) How fund the 18 mo. Extension? A: we’re working with OMB.

Q Susan Meyer, Spokane transit CEO. Gushing about impact of stimulus, b/c sales tax revenue down. And using hybrids.  A: “I didn’t plant her.”

Q Fair Play Magazine: Given that imports/exports move through metros, shouldn’t more money go to port complexes? A: Look at the $1.5b in discretionary and what we do with it. We expect intermodal and port applications. Emphasis on Marine Highway to relieve congestion. Innovative approach to moving a lot of freight.

Q Elana Schor: CLEAN-TEA – 10% of allowances in Climate Bill to Transit (1% in House) What do you think? A: We’re going to let the Senate have their debate. Admin. Will weigh in in conference.

Q: Motor equipment manufacturers association: tax incentive for safety features for commercial vehicles. How do you feel about tax incentives vs. mandate for safety? A: Safety is always #1, in all our modes.

Q: Japan Broadcasting company: What is Japanese role in building new RR system? A: Has met with ambassador. Wants to take a trip over there to see the HSR. President wants to add another $5b on top of the $8b for HSR.

Q Washington Trade Daily – What is status of Mexican trucks conflict, re: NAFTA? A: Program terminated in bill that passed Congress this year. He’s personally talked to 28 members of Congress about their safety concerns. Proposal pending at the White House – thinks program should be restarted.

Q Alexei Mostros, WaPo Half states still haven’t spent their stimulus money on high-unemployment areas. What more can you do? A: Sent a letter to the governors. Conference call with state DOT directors around the country today. But blames it largely on paperwork. “There’s no disagreement.”

Q US Resources (?). California county is building transfer facility with plug-ins and park-and-ride and affordable housing. How can you make sure that rural counties who do the right thing get rewarded?

Q: (FTE.org)How stimulus funds will be used to create more livable communities? How connect workers with existing jobs? A: Livable communities is the top of the list of five priorities? “Idea that an hour of congestion to go to the doctors – people are tired of that.” “Portland is the model for this.” Can be at neighborhood level, not just city level. “People want to be able to ride their bike to work, walk to work, take a light rail, take a bus, take a streetcar.” He really does seem to mean this – he totally just lit up. “This is what the people want.” You can create a lot of jobs.

Q PRTN Red Line crash and calls for investment in local infrastructure. Any special local projects? A: “This is America’s Metro system.” “When I saw 2 million people gathered on the mall” for inauguration… We believe obligation to be helpful to WMATA in providing resources in terms of safety.

Q: Me! Balance of shovel-readiness and long-term livable communities? A: There should be a Title for Livable Communities in next authorization. In economic recovery part – HSR, 8b in transit money. Some has gone to Portland streetcar program.  Thinks they’ve taken the ARRA to jumpstart livable communities.

Q Howard University: Is there any provision for language access in ARRA? A: Not in the DOT portion.

Q Joan Lowey AP: HSR manufacturing is in the other countries where they have that expertise. Do you expect contracts to be foreign or domestic? A: These people are coming to America. They get to decide if they want to partner. I think regions are going to want extra investment in US – foreign investor should take old car factory in Midwest and build things there. Not DOT’s decision.

Q President of US Maglev Development Corp: what are other three priorities? Safety, research, HSR, livable communities and NextGen.

Q John Crowley Reuters: Do you have a good sense of where private investment will come from, given economy, and what are the expectations from companies? A: Almost all of Las Vegas plan is private-invested money, when that comes out. You’re also going to see private investment for laying down national broadband once they know that they don’t have to do the entire investment. (In follow-up, Reuters reporter calls Transportation bill the “highway bill.”

Transmilenio. Photo by sicoactiva.

For a BRT advocate, it was really exciting to wake up this morning to a front-page, above-the-fold article in the New York Times, with Transmilenio as the central picture. Reading Elisabeth Rosenthal’s article, though, I must say that there were a lot of things that it needed.

I’ll start with the good news, though. That picture is worth each of the 1,262 words of the article. It says it all: dedicated lanes physically separated from the congested roadway, full and permanent stations, large crowds, and special branding. Rosenthal should also be complemented for describing the immense importance of curtailing transportation emissions, the overwhelming success of Transmilenio in terms of gaining riders, reducing emissions and becoming deeply popular, and the spread of BRT across the developing world.

The framing is a mixed bag. It’s an article that focuses almost exclusively on the environmental impact of BRT. I think it’s basically non-controversial that in the short-term (before changing our electricity generation to renewable and ignoring land use), BRT is the most environmentally friendly way of moving people, excluding walking and cycling and it’s good to see the Times publicizing that important finding. That said, an article about transportation and the environment that doesn’t describe land use impact at all is an article that didn’t do its job all the way. I think there’s plenty of evidence that high-quality BRT has promoted TOD in places like Bogota or Curitiba does promote TOD, but that’s a less settled question.

Now, for the inevitable quibbling. The first is the completely silly last paragraph, with the argument that “for the moment the real challenge is overcrowding.” The problem is that too many people use Transmilenio? Now that can’t be right. It’s true, of course, that the system needs to be less crowded, if possible. As Dario Hidalgo, a TheCityFix contributor and much more importantly, the former Deputy General Manager of Transmilenio, told me today, “the ultimate challenge of the bus system will be to prevent the users from shifting to motor vehicles when they have the income to do so.  The bus system needs to be comfortable, not just fast, reliable, safe and clean.” But that’s just a question of more money for more buses.

Then there’s the equally silly paragraph just before it, talking about Transmilenio’s “efficient engines.” As Hidalgo reminded me again, these were not particularly clean vehicles. In his words, it wasn’t that “we need these clean buses. We need not-cars. That’s what’s clean.” And he’s quite right. I contacted Lee Schipper, EMBARQ’s founder and now the EMBARQ fellow at Stanford (who Rosenthal quoted in the article), and he noted that “the rather important savings in Mexico (almost 50,000 tonnes/year out of 500,000 tonnes emitted in the Metrobus Corridor) were ‘free’: there were no measures specifically undertaken to save fuel or CO2.” The physical technology of the bus doesn’t matter particularly compared to the engineering of the system to get people out of cars and into larger buses moving faster and stopping less.

Finally, I think there’s just something very problematic about the whole tone of the piece with regards to the relationship between the developing world and the developed world. The headline starts it off right: “Buses May Aid Climate Battle in Poor Cities.” Then it lists the other countries that have BRT: “Versions of these systems are being planned or built in dozens of developing cities around the world — Mexico City, Cape Town, Jakarta, Indonesia, and Ahmedabad, India, to name a few.” You make it much of the way through the article thinking that there weren’t BRT lines across the United States (I think the best system is the South Boston side of Boston’s Silver Line), Canada, and Europe and even in sustainable mobility Mecca Paris. It’s a really odd omission, but its attempt to rectify that omission is perhaps stranger.

Rosenthal writes, “But bus rapid transit systems are not the answer for every city. In the United States, where cost is less constraining, some cities, like Los Angeles, have built B.R.T.’s, but they tend to lack many of the components of comprehensive systems like TransMilenio, like fully enclosed stations, and they serve as an addition to existing rail networks.” When you think about it for about one second, this seems to imply that US cities aren’t able to build as comprehensive BRT systems as Bogota because we have more money to spend. That doesn’t quite make sense. And Rosenthal also claims that “with its wide streets, dense population and a tradition of bus travel, Bogotá had the ingredients for success.”

What’s happening here is that Rosenthal is correctly identifying trends that lead to the success of BRT systems, whether it is wide streets or fully enclosed and permanent stations, but somehow identifying these as specific to the developing world. It’s quite possible to transfer this model from Brazil to Mexico, but not to Washington D.C. After all, it’s not like we have high bus ridership rates, wide streets, and a dense population! And we’d couldn’t possibly build fully-enclosed stations with fare prepayment! I have to assume that part of what’s going on here is the combination of a domestic prejudice that buses are generally for low-income communities with an international prejudice that the developing world is supposed to learn from us and not the other way around. BRT isn’t a magic solution that should be implemented everywhere. But Transmilenio is an unbelievable success and we shouldn’t be too blind to learn from it.

So thank you New York Times for using what is probably the most valuable newspaper real estate in the world to praise BRT; that’s an unbelievably important action. Hidalgo was blown away to see that level of recognition for Transmilenio. But it’s important to set the record straight: overcrowding isn’t a problem, BRT isn’t about cleaner engines, and BRT certainly isn’t just for the developing world.

UPDATE: Treehugger’s response here.