It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's that special week of Washington, DC limbo - the deserted space between Christmas and New Year's when everyone who's not from here has gone back to wherever they're from and left the city to the locals. Especially on Christmas night - I was walking down my street at 9pm and it was emptier than 3am on a Monday morning. Parking spaces as far as the eye could see and not another soul on the sidewalks.

Then walking to work this morning, I found the city cloaked in an soothing calm. Light traffic, no blaring of horns, just a few folks walking around. And it's deathly quiet at work.

This is the best week ever. I've got the city to myself. I just wish I could keep it longer. But as they say, if you love something, let it go...

Bah, Humbug!

I hate the Christmas season. Not only does work get busier for reasons unrelated to the holidays but also we have to take time out of the day for a series of inane parties. On top of that, half the people I know have December birthdays. Why so many people be fuckin' in March? There's so much gift shopping stress. And hence, I go back into debt every December, just when I'm about to get ahead.

Then I have to walk home, thinking about all this, amid the blaring horns of those who are probably even more stressed out than I am. Tonight, in particular, was bad. The traffic was bad, the tempers were bad. There's nothing jolly going on. It all sucks. And I have no time to blog.

It's the antithesis of everything that Hollywood tells us Christmas should be.

DC's Got Attitude

Yes, when it comes to crosswalk culture. See DCist's post regarding Council member Cheh's proposal to increase fines tenfold for motorists failing to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks. For me, the most true-ringing part of the post was the quote from an unnamed ANC commissioner on the last line: "You are asking that drivers engage in a quantum shift in their attitudes towards pedestrians and bicyclists...no small task."

You can't change a culture very quickly, even with bigger fines. There would need to be some kind ongoing and sustained public service announcement advertising blitz. Enforcement, as mentioned in the article, would be key - such that word-of-mouth tales of paying steep fines might spread among the suburban office workers that drive into the city. But I fear that the DC police force won't or can't make this a priority with everything else that goes on. The city needs to hire some kind of Blackwater-like contract security force to sit at crosswalks and have the authority to pull people over and issue tickets. But my other fear is just this - that in order to change a culture (quickly) only drastic measures work. Like having jack-booted thugs patrol our crosswalks. Otherwise, we have to get MD and VA to modify their driver's ed curricula and DMV tests to emphasize the laws in their neighboring District. And then wait for kids to grow up in a new driving culture. I guess that's pretty far-fetched.

Anyway, not the mention the plethora of DC-plated cars I see failing to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks. It's really an all-around driving culture here that suffers from a large transient population not invested in local communities and not sympathetic to other people's ways of wanting to do things ("this ain't how we do it in NY, NC, TX, OH, etc."). I think it's the curse of being the Federal City. We don't get voting rights, we don't get to dictate how people can act when they come here for business because DC belongs to everyone and no one.

The Ice Age Returns (for now)

Watch your footing out there - the sidewalks are nothing but ice. At least in the neighborhoods. But instead of condemning people for not shoveling the public sidewalks in front of their houses, I urge everyone to enjoy this early December icing. Because if we are all lucky enough to reproduce and then have offspring able and willing to do the same, we can tell our grandkids these great stories like:

"I remember back in aught-seven when we got four inches of snow December - early December! And you know there was ice all over the place - frozen water, I tells ya! It was all over the sidewalks and you could slip and slide on it... Boy, those were the days! Now, sonny, get in the canoe and row down to the market - I need you to trade this Anacostia 'gator meat for some bourbon!"

First Snow

Since the last straggling and unusual snowfall that occurred last April, I have been awaiting this day. The day on which nature's muted beauty descends upon the city and silences the lingering rage of summer. I love the snow. I am lucky enough to have a window to look from here at my job. And I'm watching the snowflakes thicken into drifting clumps, covering the hard edges of the concrete and metal surfaces within my view.

Outside, the sidewalks and streets are still clear. This isn't yet one of those magical moments when the snow falls so heavy and fast that the snowplows can't keep up and all the man-made pathways are coated with a uniform layer of frozen white. Those are the times when pedestrian, motorist and cyclist are all the same. When people emerge from their burrows after the storm and they all share the street. We gather on the broadway and walk and ski and sled and throw snowballs.

I'll never forget the story I read once about a rare snowfall in Israel. The Israeli soldiers and the Palestinian children, who normally exchanged volleys of rocks and gunfire, instead laughed and threw snowballs. Snow is the great equalizer.

Sorry, I'm a cheesy romantic. Hopelessly optimistic.

DC Ranked #1 Most Walkable Metro Area in Nation by BCS-like Formula

Somehow New York lost to Pittsburgh in an upset, Denver beat out Portland with a last-minute sidewalk pouring and Boston ran the table on San Fran, Seattle and Chicago to make Washington, DC the surprise number one walkable metro area in the country!!! National Champs, baby! We're number one!!!

But seriously, here's the report by Christopher B. Leinberger of The Brookings Institution that lays it all out. The methodology appears sound, the terms are well-defined and the author openly admits one weakness of the study is that the size of walkable areas included in the study are not taken into account (i.e. Manhattan is given the same weight as Reston Town Center). Hence the BCS-like formula used to reach the conclusion of the report. The study counts "walkable" areas and evaluates them based on population, links to mass transit, etc. So essentially, the DC area gets high marks for Metro connectivity among various neighborhoods, "town centers" and suburbs that are, in themselves, designed to be walkable.

Whereas NYC is essentially one giant contiguous walkable area, the DC region is (as I see it) a collection of "walkable islands" linked by Metro. And since we have a lower population than the NY area, the ratio of people to walking space is lower, giving us the "W." Although I do question the walking behavior within these various town center-type areas. I lived in the Kentlands in Montgomery Co., MD for a time and, while it is technically "walkable" (you can walk to all the shops and restaurants if you wanted to), it still had vast parking lots - most people would make the 2 minute drive rather than take the 10 minute walk. I'm not sure if the author included Kentlands in this survey and I'm not familiar with, say, Reston Town Center - it may be a much more walking-oriented place. But I still suspect that a lot of people drive there in order to walk, which I think will continue to be the case even as Metro comes in.

I also take issue with the inclusion of Frederick, MD as "Suburban Town Center" of the DC area (see the chart on page 7 of the report). Frederick is the second largest city in Maryland and is about as far away from DC as is Baltimore (which is included as a separate metropolitan area in the report). So I don't know that DC should take credit for Frederick as part of its metro region when you're talking about walkable areas. (Although Frederick may be the last-second field goal that won us the championship)...

There are also the questions of pedestrian safety which, ironically, have again come to the forefront just in last few days. But for now, I'll take the victory and take this line in the report as our trophy:

"Washington, DC, Could be the National Model of Walkable Urban Growth"

Wait... What? Are you serious???

This just off the AP wire:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jYu62ezibC6RaA4x4KABdRInsCPAD8TAKD981

And just after I finished reading this and this. And this.

A Crosswalk Cross-Section from Ireland

Here's a typical pedestrian-activated crossing signal call box. I'm sure there's a better name for it but anyway - this thing makes an electronic ticking sound until the walk signal turns green. Then it emits a spacey shooting sound and the ticks speed up to indicate the crosswalk is open for business.




Another, more instructive, crosswalk call box.











This one has some real live Dubliners!











This busy crosswalk was found at a tourist site outside the city. (Click to enlarge and check out the "chopper" sign in the background.






I like the fancy-boy look of the pedestrian silhouette on this sign. Not sure what "GMC" stands for in this case though.