Metro’s safety problems are serious, but as BeyondDC noted last year the statistics show it is still overwhelmingly more safe than driving. Statistics don’t tell the whole story, though. They don’t account for things like this:

“My name is Penny Everline. I live in Arlington. I cannot drive due to a visual impairment, and I ride ART and Metro bus and rail to work, to shopping, to appointments, to classes, and to social activities. I grew up in a small town with no transit and moved to the DC Metro region as an adult. I know it sounds corny, but I believe transit saved my life… or at least helped me get a life.

“Before I had access to transit, I wondered how I would be able to do the basic things—go to work, pay my rent, go shopping, meet up with friends, etc. Now I do all of these things with great ease. I can honestly say that Metro and the other transit providers in our region opened doors for me and, hopefully, will continue to do so.”

Penny is a member of WMATA’s Riders Advisory Council. She started SaveMyTransit.org to provide a place for people to tell their stories, so our elected officials know just how important it is to have reliable, safe transit.

If you have a story to tell, give her site a visit and put it on the record.

Michael Perkins of Greater Greater Washington live-tweeted WMATA’s meeting about the budget. You may recall that in order to balance the budget, a series of service cuts have been proposed. Presumably Michael will do a write up at GGW soon with more details, but in the mean time here are some of his most important tweets:

@perkinsms Catoe: 20 cent fare increase would eliminate service reduction

@perkinsms Graham is really concerned about 20 cents as compared to 10 cents.

@perkinsms Graham lone vote against 20 cent fare increase amendment

@perkinsms Graham: we should not needlessly agitate the riders with our proposals.

Dear Mr Graham,

Transit is how we the residents of your city get around. Good transit is not a luxury for us; it is a requirement. Every minute we lose waiting for transit that comes infrequently is money out of our pockets. If service cuts go so far that the transit doesn’t come often enough, it will mean we’ll all have to buy cars or use taxis, which is much more expensive and much less efficient. Every time you cut service or raid the capital budget for operating money, you make our transit system worse, which makes our lives worse.

Please stop trying to do our pocketbooks a favor. In the long term you’re not helping them anyway, because it will cost us more to get around if the transit system sucks. We’ll pay the 10 extra cents, for goodness sake.

In conclusion, IT AGITATES US TO LOSE SERVICE!

Hugs and kisses,
BeyondDC

Update: GGW writes about the meeting in post Graham blocks giving riders choices for budget, with the main point being that Graham didn’t only oppose the fare hike, but in fact opposed even holding a public hearing to get feedback on the idea. GGW asks readers to email Graham at grahamwone@gmail.com (as well as DC’s other representative on the WMATA board neil.albert@dc.gov) and “ask them to stop treating riders like children”. BeyondDC thinks some emails are a great idea.

Governor-elect McDonnell announced over the weekend that the next Virginia secretary of transportation will be Sean Connaughton.

Connaughton is a former chief of the U.S. Maritime Administration, and Chairman of the Board of Supervisors of Prince William County. While serving in the latter capacity he was a member of the Metropolitan Washington Transportation Planning Board.

What can we expect from him? Connaughton has been a centrist, extremely popular while in Prince William but not conservative enough to win a GOP party primary for major statewide office. He heartily supports the concept of Northern Virginia raising new sources of revenue specifically to be spent in Northern Virginia, and even as a Republican was a major advocate for the 2002 transportation tax hike referendum that eventually failed.

We can expect Connaughton to support more spending on transportation in general. He will likely continue road capacity expansion projects, probably including HOT lanes and the widening of I-66, but he will also likely support transit expansions. He is not considered to be hostile to transit in any way. No word so far on how he feels about bike/ped projects. Long story short, Connaughton may not be a dream candidate for urbanists, but he’s probably as favorable a choice as we could reasonably expect given a Republican governor. It seems unlikely he will be any worse – and he could be better – than outgoing secretary Pierce Homer.

One specific question that comes to mind: How will a hometown guy with a specialty in maritime transportation affect Prince William County’s proposal to run a ferry service up the Potomac? Seems plausible that project just got a whole lot more likely.

Dear Jim Graham,

If you are going to take an active interest in transportation projects in the District that is wonderful. Your comments, and comments from your constituents, can be very helpful. Really.

But for the love of God, please stop butting in at the 11th hour.

Everyone appreciates your involvement in the streetcar planning now, but your insistence on becoming involved only after years of planning had already happened delayed construction. You had three years to voice your concerns about the Anacostia streetcar, and didn’t do so until it was well past the appropriate time.

Now you’re pulling the same act again, with the 15th street bike lane. DDOT proposed the project a year ago and sent residents a letter informing them of the impending construction last month. The proposal has been widely known-about and anticipated by the transportation activist community. Yet today you’re claiming the project is a surprise.

Here’s the deal, Jim. If you expect to be taken seriously as a voice of authority in these matters, you’ve got to do a better job of knowing about them. You can help, but you’ve got to start getting in early. Throwing a fit after all the decisions have already been made and after anyone paying attention has already had plenty of opportunity to be involved just isn’t good government.

Dear Congressman Brady (R-TX),

Thank you for your recognition that Metro (it’s not an acronym, there’s no need to capitalize all 5 letters) does not perform as well as it could. This is due to the fact that WMATA, as well as other transit agencies around the country, is chronically under-funded.

The Washington, DC area is most pleased that despite your reputation as an opponent of government spending, you now recognize the importance of funding for transit. We look forward to your future legislative support in all funding matters concerning WMATA.

Sincerely,
BeyondDC

Cyclists (including NYDOT boss Janette Sadik-Khan) enjoying the ciclovia on Park Avenue. Click to enlarge.

It has been pointed out to me that the woman on the far left side of this image, which was featured on the BDC home page earlier this week is actually none other than Janette Sadik-Khan, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation and the mind behind many of New York’s recent pedestrian and bicycle initiatives. Small world.

“The word in Washington is that the administration believes it has enough on its plate with health care, climate change, and other daunting issues, and that it doesn’t have an appetite at this point for a knock-down, drag-out battle over long-term transportation funding.”

– Finance and Commerce newspaper on the fight between President Obama and Congressman Oberstar regarding the timing of the Transportation spending authorization bill.

Dear President Obama,

You cannot address climate change without addressing transportation.

Hugs and kisses,
BeyondDC

Gaithersburg: Not so bad, but they still mandate a lot of driving.

After last Thursday’s post about Gaithersburg I was contacted by City Council members Cathy Drzyzgula and Jud Ashman, who claimed that their characterization in the linked-to Gazette story and subsequent BeyondDC post was inaccurate. At their request I watched the video of the public hearing in question. With more complete information, I have some thoughts to add to last week’s post:

1. The characterization of the Council as a whole and particularly Ms. Drzyzgula was indeed inaccurate. To the Council’s credit, they seem to recognize the importance of planning, value the principles of Smart Growth, and agree that the city should revisit its formulas for minimum parking. To Ms. Drzyzgula’s individual credit, she seems to be one of the Council’s stronger proponents of good urbanism, and I didn’t hear the statement attributed to her about Gaithersburg’s future as a car-driven community at any point in the meeting.

2. That having been said, the Council still exhibited plenty of examples of car-centric thinking. At one point the Mayor said “parking is one of those issues that really is quality of life; you need to have a parking space close to you.” Council Vice President Michael Sesma said he is “not sure we have the transportation resources necessary to convince people they don’t need the number of cars they have now” and later argued that parking minimums were important, lest neighborhoods near larger developments be burdened with overflow parking. A cars-first bias showed through even when Planning Commissioner Matt Hopkins voiced support for Smart Growth by saying that lower parking requirements would support the “social engineering” efforts by the city to increase walkability and transit use. The message in all of these statements is that driving for most trips is the natural way of things. In truth, there is nothing at all natural about driving everywhere; that only seems to be the case because regulations supporting (and funding) cars to the detriment of other living/transportation arrangements are so entrenched in law that overcoming them is extremely difficult. That brings me to my final point:

3. Despite the progressiveness of some on the Gaithersburg City Council, and despite 20 years as a center of New Urbanism, BeyondDC’s headline last Thursday was absolutely correct – Gaithersburg (and just about all of its peers in the world of local government) continues to legally mandate congestion by continuing to uphold laws that result in a driving-first community. Gaithersburg has gotten rid of some of those laws and is ahead of a lot of places in this region and nationally, but it still has a very long way to go. The good news is at least one person on the Gaithersburg City Council recognizes that – in an email exchange Councilman Ashman asked if I could identify places in the Gaithersburg code that unnaturally encourage driving. Watch for that in a future post.

President Obama seems to have put most of the legislative agenda on hold for the summer in order to focus on health care reform. While there hasn’t necessarily been a whole lot of movement from HUD or the President’s Office of Urban Affairs, news about staffing and the direction he will presumably take continues to be positive.

Today’s example comes from the Seattle Times, which recently ran a story about Ron Sims, former King County executive and currently the new second-in-command at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The two key points to take from the article are that:

1. Sims record as a proponent of Smart Growth came up during his interview process with Obama and was a major reason for his selection for a job in HUD leadership.
2. When deciding where to live, Sims choose a home in one of Arlington’s famous TODs in part because of its history as a Smart Growth model.

Infrastructurist interviews William Lind, conservative champion of transit.

This does not have to be a partisan issue.