The first Capital Bikeshare station was installed today at 18th and Bell Streets in Arlington, adjacent to Crystal City Metro.
With 19 bike docks, the station will be the largest in Arlington as well as the first. The components all came pre-fabricated and just had to be unloaded and pieced together. It took workers a little over an hour to perform the job, which they did with the help of a small crane.
In addition to bike docks, the station includes panels for paying and maps, and solar power collector. Bikes will come in a couple of weeks when the system is closer to launch.
See below 41 photos showing the installation process from start to finish.
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CommuterPageBlog has a nice set of images from Capital Bikeshare’s warehouse, which is busy with activity in preparation for the September launch. BeyondDC won’t duplicate the entire photo set, but here is one showing frames for maps that will be part of each completed station.
CommuterPageBlog also reports that installation of the station components is set to begin in Crystal City tomorrow, August 31.
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This image (which was taken from the inside of a moving Orange Line train) shows the ongoing construction of the Silver Line turn off near West Falls Church station. Visible are the piers that will carry the elevated track over I-66 and into the median of the Dulles Access Road, on their way to Tysons Corner.
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Ten years ago, when the urbanist movement was in its infancy and supporters were few and far between, we liked to say that better cities and better transit were non-partisan issues. The thinkers out in front of the movement included both liberals and conservatives, so everyone involved hoped that the urban agenda could be furthered without becoming a partisan wedge issue.
It hasn’t really worked out that way. Since then, generally speaking, Democrats have more quickly embraced urbanism and transit than Republicans. Maybe because more Democrats live in cities, maybe because conservatives are naturally slower to adopt different ideas, or maybe because ostensibly conservative organizations like Cato poisoned the debate. For whatever the reason, urbanism and transportation have needlessly teetered on the brink of partisanship, at the very least.
But take a look at this:
The perception that conservatives do not use public transportation is only one of the mistaken notions that has warped the Right’s position on transportation policy. Another is that the dominance of automobiles and highways is a free-market outcome. Nothing could be further from the truth. Were we to drop back 100 years, we would find a dense, nationwide network of rail transportation. Almost all of these rail systems were privately owned, paid taxes, and were expected to make a profit. But they were wiped out by massive government subsidies to highways. Today’s situation, where “drive or die” is the reality for most Americans, is a product of almost a century of government intervention in the transportation market.
That paragraph was written by William Lind, the director the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation. He published it as part of a pro-transit series on transportation being hosted by American Conservative called Keep America Moving. The series is in anticipation of the launch of a new pro-transit conservative think tank by American Conservative parent company, The American Ideas Institute. The think tank will, in its own words, “work to showcase conservative arguments for a balanced transportation system in which rail and roads complement one another”.
This is wonderful news. The arguments for transit are clearly non-partisan, so it would be fabulous for the movement to return to its non-partisan roots.
I’ll be following this new institute with great interest.
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Union Station’s Great Hall is one of the city’s most fantastic public spaces. It is beautiful, engaging, and lively. And somebody wants to tear a couple of giant holes in its floor.
Earlier this week, Washington City Paper reported on a proposal to cut holes in the Great Hall’s floor in order to provide better access to the basement food court, and to replace the Center Cafe with a new larger and more modern version.
Yes, holes in the floor. To access the food court.
Why, exactly? Nobody knows. It’s not like that food court is hurting for customers. On the contrary, it’s uncomfortably packed most of the day.
On the other hand, there are very good reasons why there should not be a couple of holes in the floor.
Most important, that such a successful public space should not be torn up on a whim. Union Station is the most visited destination in Washington. By any measure it is a place that is working tremendously well already, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Unnecessary changes that don’t benefit anything important threaten to make things worse rather than better.
Beyond that, there are good preservationist reasons not to change the Great Hall in this manner. The hall’s elegant classicism is fundamentally incompatible with a mundane food court. They’re both valuable and worthwhile spaces, of course, but making the Great Hall more like the food court inherently intrudes upon the elegance of the Great Hall.
Finally, there’s the small matter of this having been tried once before, and having failed miserably. In the late 1970s Congress spent more than $100 million on a pit in the middle of the Great Hall. It was so unpopular that it was filled in by the early 1980s. While that 1970s boondoggle is only barely comparable to the current proposal, it is nonetheless instructive: Turns out magnificent classical spaces are not appropriate places for large holes in the ground.
In the City Paper comments thread, some responders suggest that opposing changes to Union Station is just like opposing overhead streetcar wires. Nothing could be further from the truth. The streetcar plan promises to greatly benefit the city by virtue of better transportation and revitalized neighborhoods. This Union Station plan offers no such benefits, and as described above, it involves real risk. I oppose it for the same reason that I support streetcars: I want the city to be vital and prosperous. Streetcars would make Washington more so; ripping a couple of holes in one of the city’s best spaces wouldn’t.
At best, this proposal is a solution in search of an imaginary problem. Even if you think it’s harmless, it doesn’t solve anything that needs to be solved. At worst, it could ruin one of Washington’s most magnificent public gathering places.
When Capital Bikeshare launches later this year it will have about 1, 100 bikes. That’s going to be great, but how much better does a 3, 600-bike system sound?
On Friday the Transportation Planning Board (TPB) submitted a grant request through the TIGER II program to dramatically expand Capital Bikeshare. In addition to the 1, 000 bikes in DC and 100 in Arlington that will launch the system, TPB’s proposal would add approximately:
Another 1, 000 new bikes to the District, for a total of 2, 000
900 new bikes in Arlington, for a total of around 1, 000
150 bikes in Alexandria
100 bikes in Reston
250 bikes in Montgomery County, in and around downtowns Bethesda, Silver Spring, and Rockville
50 bikes in College Park
In addition to bikesharing, the proposal requests funds for new bike stations in Reston and Silver Spring
Bikesharing has the potential to revolutionize intra-urban travel. Cities that have rolled out large networks have seen dramatic increases in cycling as transportation. But the size of the system really matters. SmartBikeDC was clearly far too small, and while Capital Bikeshare’s 1, 100 bike system is a good start that will have dramatic effects in a few key neighborhoods, we’re going to need a much larger system if we want to see Paris-like results. This TIGER grant, if we get it, would be a fantastic step towards that goal.
Last year the TPB submitted a much larger multi-modal TIGER request that included bikesharing, but was only awarded funds for bus improvements. This year’s submission is focused completely on cycling.
The Cato Institute is one of the leading Libertarian think tanks in the country, but they have long had a big problem. Their foremost writer on transportation and urbanism, Randal O’Toole, doesn’t actually believe in Libertarianism. Although he never uses these exact words, his basic position on all things urban is that ‘a large portion of the market prefers auto-oriented suburbia, therefore the state should mandate and heavily subsidize auto-oriented suburbia‘ (here’s a recent example). It’s a profoundly anti-Libertarian position, and it has tarnished Cato’s reputation in the field for years. How can they be taken seriously in discussions about cities when their senior fellow on the subject is such an obvious hypocrite?
It is gratifying, then, to find other Cato writers speaking more reasonably about the subject. On Tuesday, Cato published a blog post by writer Timothy Lee titled Free Parking and the Geography of Cities, in which Lee makes the well-founded point that government regulations requiring large amounts of parking in every development inherently make walking impractical, which discourages people from walking, which encourages car use, and that therefore such regulations manipulate the free market. Progressive blogger Matt Yglesias agrees, and notes that such manipulations instigate a “feedback loop” in which every car-oriented development increases the impracticality of walking, which in turn begets more car-oriented development.
These ideas are a key part of contemporary urban planning. It has long been a mystery to planners why, at least on this issue, Libertarian groups like Cato should be opponents rather than allies. Lee’s piece is just one blog post, but hopefully it is representative of a shift at Cato away from O’Toole-style reactionism against change, and towards a more intellectually honest assessment of what a genuine free market would actually mean for our built environment.
Why not add murals to this tunnel at Court House Metro?
One of the most basic tenets of good urban design is that walkways should be lined with things to look at. Blank walls discourage walking because they make a walk seem boring and therefore longer, and because empty and lightly maintained spaces feel less safe. Detailed, colorful places are inherently more pedestrian friendly than dismal, blank spaces, and therefore urbanistically superior.
So, given that, why do we accept so many blank spaces in our cities?
Take a look at the photo at right. It shows a walkway under Wilson Boulevard leading to Court House Metro station. The walkway isn’t much longer than the street is wide, but walking through it is a pretty dismal experience. It feels like such a long and dangerous walk that few people use the tunnel. Sprucing it up would almost certainly increase usage, and could potentially lead to higher Metro ridership. Better lighting and some mirrors would help, of course, but what about a little art? Why not cover each wall with a series of colorful murals?
There is no need for any such project to be expensive or logistically challenging. Every high school in America is filled with art students who would love a chance to show off their skills publicly. Metro could work out a deal with a local school: Give each art student one concrete panel and let them go wild, as part of a class project. Coordinate with teachers to make sure murals turn out appropriate to the public (and if one doesn’t, 10 minutes and a bucket of white paint solve that problem). For practically no cost, Metro would dramatically improve the user experience at this station. If it leads to even a modest rider increase, the project would pay for itself.
How many other places around the region would benefit from a similar project? Any city resident can probably think of 10 blank walls somewhere in their neighborhood. It seems the only reason they can’t be improved is that nobody bothers to do so.
Of course it is true that Metro and the city at large have bigger problems than a few blank walls, but this is low-hanging fruit. It will take long, hard work to solve Metro’s systemic maintenance and safety problems, but this is something that would positively influence the system and could be accomplished with nothing but a few hours of coordination and the cost of paint.
