DC closes streets pretty often. Let’s try doing so in a way that enhances our transportation system.

Mexico City's Paseo De La Reforma during the Mexican capital's weekly open streets event. (Photo by me)

Washington, DC’s H Street Corridor has developed into one of the city’s premier destinations for food and nightlife, and is one of my favorite places to hang out. But one Saturday each year, I stay as far away from the neighborhood as I can. The reason: the annual H Street Festival.

During the festival, the road closes to traffic for the day, allowing over 150,000 people to check out temporary on-street vendors by foot. I’m sure the event can be fun, but dealing with the transportation disruption it creates – for all modes – seems a major hassle. This year, the festival was initially scheduled for a September weekend during which I was in California – a safe distance away from the mess – but due to a hurricane threat (that didn’t materialize) the chaos was rescheduled for two weeks ago, when unfortunately I was stuck here in town.

The H Street Festival in Washington, DC. Notice the bus stuck in traffic on the bridge in the distance. (Photo courtesy of PoPville)

On October 13, DC Streetcar service was cancelled entirely for the day, four of DC’s most heavily used bus routes were detoured, and side streets normally pleasant to bike on became clogged with car traffic diverted off H Street – all on a day when transit ridership in the neighborhood was sure to be far higher than normal.

A row of Mobike bicycles in Bosque de Chapultepec during the weekly open streets event. The dockless bikeshare company left DC last summer, but is still operating in Mexico City. (Photo by me)

The weekend after the H Street Festival, I took a break from the U.S.’s federal district, missing out on every-22-minute Red Line service without congressional representation to pay a visit the Mexican capital, which recently gained state-level autonomy.

In Mexico City, I encountered a type of street closure that had a transportation impact much different than that of the H Street Festival: the weekly Sunday ciclovía. For the open streets event – a common feature of Latin American cities – a network of wide arterial roadways are closed to motorized vehicles and dedicated entirely to active transportation modes, allowing cyclists, joggers, and walkers to take over the pavement.

So when I woke up last Sunday and saw bikes streaming down the boulevard outside my hotel room, I rushed downstairs, got a day-pass for the city’s EcoBici bikeshare system, and started pedaling. I soon found myself headed westbound down Paseo de la Reforma, surrounded by the megacity’s skyscrapers and monuments, but no cars. At some major intersections, traffic directors occasionally asked us to come to a brief stop so Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) routes – and, yes, some automobile traffic too – could continue moving.

The Reforma ciclovía route took me through an expansive park – Bosque de Chapultepec – before coming to an end near the National Auditorium. I saw plenty of other streets temporarily devoted to moving people as I explored nearby neighborhoods, such as La Condesa, through the morning and early afternoon.

Ciclovía was a real-life display of the basic geometric realities that, as Jarrett Walker explains so well, make multimodal transportation so essential. A couple of days earlier, looking down from my plane during our approach into Mexico City’s Benito Juarez International Airport, I’d seen the city’s roads jammed with inching cars – if typical traffic congestion represents the freedom of the automobile, this was a full-on constitutional convention. 

When people were on bikes or their own two feet instead of in cars, at least as many traversed the streets. But instead of staring at taillights and honking their horns, they glided along comfortably. 

A Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) station in Mexico City. (Photo by me)

Mexico City’s transit system wasn’t completely untouched by ciclovía  – I felt a bit guilty whenever I entered the lane of Paseo de la Reforma normally dedicated to Line 7 of the city’s Metrobús BRT system, which endured a service change to allow for the event. But I also couldn’t help but notice that trains and buses I rode while ciclovía was underway were less crowded than at other times during the weekend, making rides a bit more comfortable. I didn’t conduct a scientific study to determine the cause for this, but it’s certainly possible that the open streets, in giving people more options to get around, took a little pressure off the city’s normally-packed transit routes.

A Mexico City bike lane. (Photo by me)

In addition to the positive effect ciclovía had on mobility for everyone, it made me more comfortable with general cycling in Mexico City. Due to the road congestion and aggressive driving I’d seen, I’d initially gotten the impression CDMX was a place where it’s best to stick to trains and dedicated-lane buses. But after my enjoyable morning ride, I started viewing the city’s transportation infrastructure in a different light, and began noticing quite a few wide bike lanes, even on streets that seemed hostile at first glance.

As a result, by evening, I felt comfortable putting my EcoBici day pass to further use and taking another ride up Reforma, even though it was now reopened to automobile traffic.

DC's Constitution Ave closed to traffic for the March For Our Lives rally earlier this year. (Photo courtesy of The Boston Globe)

U.S. municipalities occasionally permit open streets events, but they are rare, special occasions. I fear that if anyone were to propose a weekly ciclovía-style event in DC or another large American city, auto and oil-funded organizations, local news outlets, and much of the public would focus primarily on potential inconvenience for drivers, perhaps even framing the proposal as the latest campaign of the propaganda-manufactured “War on Cars.”

But we do close streets, quite frequently, for events like the H Street Festival that do little to enhance regional mobility. Here in DC, marches and rallies that take over roadways are a basic part of daily life, especially since early 2017. And tomorrow, we’ll experience our latest edition of street closures and bus detours that make way for a single, very specific type of active transportation trip – a 26.2-mile run. (Congratulations to my cousin for setting a personal best last weekend in one of those bus-disrupting runs, while I was lazily enjoying ciclovía!)

Drivers survive those street closures somehow. They even attend and enjoy the events that necessitate them.

So, why not give a weekly ciclovía a shot here, allowing people to traverse, explore, and experience our city in a whole new way?         

Saudi Arabia’s oppressive regime, funded by drivers, turns to transit to keep its subjects happy

Multimodal transportation is a foreign concept to many Saudis. Will this change in the near future? (Photo by me)

The disappearance and alleged assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi added to Saudi Arabia's long list of human rights atrocities. This sort of barbaric behavior was nothing new for the Saudi regime, whose résumé is headlined by beheadings of non-violent individuals and bombings of Yemeni civilians. Revenue from oil – including another $18 billion from the car-loving U.S. last year, despite the rise of fracking – continues to be the primary funding source for the regime’s activities. 

As with any autocratic regime, it takes sophisticated manipulation, not just simple brutality, for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (known colloquially as MBS) and company to sustain their power and stability. Specifically, the royal family must engage in a subtle, endless tug-of-war, keeping its subjects content, but not emboldened as they go about their daily lives.

When people are forced to drive everywhere, they’re a lot less likely to be content with the status quo, regardless of how much fossil fuel sits under their desert. 

One reason Saudis today could decide to resist their leaders: their country’s transportation situation.

Traffic congestion in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Photo courtesy of Arab News)

Though expanses of asphalt aren’t the best fit for a place where temperatures can rise above 120 Fahrenheit, mobility in the Kingdom was designed to benefit oil interests rather than to get people where they need to go. With only one transportation mode available for many trips and minimal infrastructure for non-car modes, traffic congestion reigns over all aspects of life and there is little people can do to avoid it.

The King Abdullah Financial District, a regime-funded suburban business park struggling to attract tenants, is surrounded by cars and asphalt. (Photo courtesy of Discover King Abdullah Financial District)

In a Washington Post column earlier this year, Khashoggi compared the problems plaguing Saudi Arabia’s auto-dependent cities to those America’s own Motor City has dealt with for decades.

In Khashoggi’s words, the urban cores of numerous Saudi metropolises are “miserable Third World slums that completely mock the oil riches of the Kingdom.” Yet the regime’s economic development projects seem to primarily promote sprawl, resulting in largely empty suburban business parks – or, as Khashoggi described, “cities in the sand” – like the King Abdullah Financial District on the outskirts of Riyadh.

Khashoggi contrasted Saudi Arabia's urban decay to Detroit’s recent renaissance, which has focused largely on renewal of central areas. He cited the city’s bustling QLine streetcar, which opened in 2017, as a primary symbol of that city’s revival.

The Saudi regime has done the unthinkable: devote some oil revenue to multimodal transportation    

A train on Saudi Arabia's Haramain High Speed Rail line. (Photo courtesy of Railway Gazette)

MBS may have been too thin-skinned to handle Khashoggi’s constructive criticism. But recent developments show that the regime may understand the threat that public dissatisfaction with oil-centric urban planning and mobility could pose to its iron grip on Saudi society.

The Haramain High Speed Rail, which opened just a few weeks ago, is the latest in a recent string of Saudi projects boosting transportation options other than cars. The rail line connects Mecca and Medina (via Jeddah) at 190 mph (300 km/h), on par with systems such as South Korea’s KTX, France’s TGV, and Italy's Frecciarossa, and faster than any American train. 

A metro train passes over a car-free road during the annual Hajj in Mecca. (Photo courtesy of SmartRail World)

Riyadh’s new metro system will follow hot on the heels of the high-speed trains. Revenue service on some portions of the six-line system may begin as soon as next year, with full operation set for 2021. Even the above-mentioned King Abdullah Financial District will get a station, albeit one that appears pretty difficult to get to on foot. 

Meanwhile, an elevated rapid transit line already operates in Mecca, connecting several major religious sites. During the annual Hajj pilgrimage, it’s one of the world’s most heavily used transit routes. 

More metro lines are under construction in Mecca, and urban rail is planned for three other localities. In addition, the country has imported thousands of buses for transit service expansions over the last few years.  

Will oil strongmen permit long-term transit success?

Top: a cyclist attempts to navigate fast-moving traffic as he passes the Saudi embassy (shrouded by trees on the left) in Washington, DC. Bottom: Interstate 66 separates the Saudi embassy from the rest of DC. (Photos by me) 

It remains to be seen whether the regime’s transit projects are part of a genuine effort to reform Saudi mobility, or instead comprise little more than a flashy initiative that provides nice propaganda fodder for the country's rulers, but lacks any real substance. Regardless of how advanced a transit system may appear at first glance, it will struggle to become a mainstream transportation option if it doesn’t offer frequent service and doesn’t take people where they need to go.  

If Saudi transportation culture has begun to change for the better, visitors to the Kingdom’s embassy in Washington, DC wouldn’t know it. The embassy is situated not on walkable Embassy Row, but instead in an isolated bubble cut off from town by an out-of-place freeway and oversized traffic circle. Michael Moore was questioned by Secret Service agents on the sidewalk across from the embassy during filming for Fahrenheit 9/11 15 years ago, and security guards with bullet-proof vests continue to intimidate passing pedestrians today.

For Saudi Arabia, this was business as usual, and it doesn’t bode well for the country’s people.  

The scariest aspect of Georgetown Prep: The roads surrounding it

Looking south down Rockville Pike, in front of Georgetown Preparatory School (Photo by me)

During Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, America learned more than it ever wanted to know about Georgetown Prep, the all-boys high school the judge attended. .

The campus may have two graduates on the nation’s highest court. But no safe transportation routes lead to it.

The Red Line soars over the Capital Beltway (Photo by me)

As my northbound train emerged from a subway tunnel just south of Grosvenor-Strathmore Station, the darkness of the concrete walls gave way to a panoramic view of something even bleaker: the interchange of infamous I-495 and equally infamous I-270. With asphalt expanses surrounding us, mirroring overcast skies on our country’s most controversial Federal holiday, we gradually slowed down and pulled into the station. 

Red Line trains make their scheduled stops at Grosvenor-Strathmore Station, near Georgetown Prep (Photo by me)

WMATA riders know Grosvenor Station not for the vaunted Little Hoyas, but instead for the rush hour trains that turn around there, leaving stations farther up the line with more limited service. (This is set to change in around two months). The station opened in 1984, so Kavanaugh was gone a year before he could have ridden a train to his campus. 

Top: Rockville Pike, west of the Metro station. Bottom: The park and ride lot, with bus stops in the foreground (Photos by me)

A large park-and-ride lot envelops the area east of the platform, while six-lane Rockville Pike blocks the way west. Thanks to this people-hostile planning it’s questionable whether the Red Line, or the bus lines that feed into the station, would have replaced the car trips to parties that we heard about during the hearings had it opened prior to Beach Week.  

The nearest entrance to Georgetown Prep sat to the northwest of the station. Thanks to an underpass, I didn’t need to cross Rockville Pike – yet.

My first view of Georgetown Prep (Photo by me)

A short walk north brought me to another wide arterial. With the edge of the campus across the way, I crossed the street and first walked west, then through an auto-oriented apartment complex.

Even if the gate were open, there's nowhere for pedestrians to walk (Photo by me)

The entrance to campus was gated shut – Georgetown Prep had the holiday-that-must-not-be-named off too – but there was no hiding what lay on the other side: a long driveway with no sidewalks.

I had to move to the far left of the Rockville Pike sidewalk to make sure the white truck in this photo didn't clip me. To the truck's left: an out of service Ride On bus (Photo by me) 

I then trekked to the main entrance to Georgetown Prep, situated back on Rockville Pike and farther to the north. As I walked, no buffer separated the sidewalk from automobile traffic, so cars whizzed by, inches from me, at 50 mph or so.

Do any bus routes that serve this stop even operate on I-495? (Photo by me)

I walked past a bus stop. I don't know which bus routes serve the stop, but Interstate 495's logo sure was clear. 

Top: A cyclist (visible in the distance, wearing a pink shirt) pedals away from Georgetown Prep. Bottom: The road she had to bike on. (Photos by me) 

As I approached the entrance, a person exited the campus on a bicycle, perilously crossed Rockville Pike and continued east on a bike lane-less road.

Georgetown Prep's main entrance. Don't try walking or biking! (Photo by me)

The main entrance consisted of another driveway, again sidewalk-less, that led up a hill to a security checkpoint with a cop car on hand.

They may like beer, but they don't like crosswalks! (Photo by me)

The south side of the intersection lacked a crosswalk, forcing any brave soul trying to reach the campus on foot to cross three times.

Was it this difficult for Georgetown Prep students to get to school in 1789? (Photo by me)

Georgetown Prep is an atypical high school, as some students live in on-campus dorms,while others live more typical teenage lives at home with their families. But the school’s auto-dependent surroundings are a disaster for all Little Hoya students, faculty, and staff.

Local students face the same daily peril as the four John F. Kennedy High students who were struck by a car and injured while heading to their school bus stop on Georgia Avenue, another Montgomery County super-arterial. One of those four students remains in critical condition.

Grosvenor Market's deli (Photo by me)

Meanwhile, the boarders are almost completely cocooned from the real world, like prisoners working on a rock pile. Thanks to the closed southern entrance, they would have had to take a circuitous route – via the terrifying sidewalks pictured above – just to go grab a sandwich at Grosvenor Market, the excellent neighborhood grocery store where I got lunch after my walking tour of the neighborhood.

Green space surrounded by apartment complexes, near Grosvenor Market. The path leads to the Metro station, via an underpass at Rockville Pike (Photo by me)

The dense residential area where the market is located was green and walkable, secluded from the hellish haven for roaring automobiles located just steps away. The park could even be a nice spot for an afternoon beer, if you like beer.

The Supreme Court hears plenty of cases related to transportation, so perspectives shaped by the asphalt surrounding Georgetown Prep’s campus may well affect mobility for all of us.

As support builds for increases to DC-area transit service, a doer seizes the moment on hostile turf

As transit expert Jarrett Walker presented at Cato Institute's Hayek Auditorium on Oct. 2, Randal O'Toole took some time to check his cell phone (Photo by me)

As the DC area continues its quest for better transit, there are signs that the region’s discussion is finally shifting toward the solution we all seek: more frequent, more reliable rail and bus service, seven days per week.  

The Washington Post, deviating from its typical focus on WMATA’s construction mistakes and bureaucratic dysfunction, published an article that makes it clear extensive service cuts in recent years are at the root of the system’s ridership problems. Also clear: that the onus falls on elected officials, represented in this case by WMATA’s board, to fix it.

***

This sudden change to DC’s transit rhetoric provided a perfect backdrop for transit planner Jarrett Walker’s visit to our region earlier this week.

I was fortunate enough to see him on two occasions. First, on Monday evening, he spoke at a Coalition for Smarter Growth (CSG) event about the spatial mechanics and complex decision-making integral to his bus system redesigns, dazzling a packed lecture hall at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies on Monday evening.

Then on Tuesday, he went into the Cato Institute and turned notorious transit opponent Randal O’Toole into a spectator on his home court. (Event video here)

Walker set the tone for the Koch-funded organization’s “Future of Public Transit” forum with his initial response to O’Toole’s opening barrage:

“I’m somebody who works every day to make transit better.”

For the rest of the afternoon, Walker was the doer in the room, while O’Toole was a political pundit trapped behind his desk. Mindful of Cato’s libertarian nature, Walker discussed practical, efficient solutions to issues such as the ridership-coverage tradeoff, local control over transportation funding and service (which he referred to as “urban federalism”), and the overwhelming demand for high-quality transit that housing market trends have demonstrated.

He made it clear that in places that take multimodal transportation seriously (citing Seattle as an example), “you’re not going to get off the ground” politically if you’re not “absolutely rabid about improving transit.”

Meanwhile, O’Toole flubbed two big opportunities to help further the libertarian quest to lower taxpayer costs. He fielded questions on:

• The exorbitant price tags of large-scale transit projects in America, such as New York’s Second Avenue Subway and San Francisco’s Central Subway, relative to other countries
• The recently enacted California legislation that will give BART greater control of development projects around its stations, giving the agency a chance to capture the economic value it creates

However, O’Toole demonstrated little knowledge of these important issues, in both cases resorting to his typical everyone-must-use-cars diatribe instead of providing insightful analysis.

In contrast to the packed house for CSG’s event the previous night, and even though Cato tapped its deep coffers of cash to provide attendees lunch, the Institute’s Hayek Auditorium was half-empty. (I politely declined the food, which looked a bit oily). The Q&A session revealed that most people who did make it to the event desired to get where they need to go, which must have made O’Toole feel like a U.S. soccer player taking on Mexico in a “home” game.

By the end of the day, Walker was begging for a “genuinely libertarian question.” Cato failed to provide him what he wanted.

***

For years, discussion of transit issues in DC closely resembled O’Toole-style data mining. Just as O’Toole’s opening presentation consisted of a string of numbers lacking any real context, people in the nation’s capital have been subjected to a confusing hodge-podge of information on government inefficiency, railroad anatomy, transportation taxes, and declining ridership. The large amount of highly technical evidence failed to tell a clear story, but many interpreted the shallow, endless string of negativity to mean that Metro is an unmitigated disaster that doesn’t deserve any public funding – just as O’Toole would want.

But following Faiz Siddiqui’s above-mentioned article for the Post last weekend, as well as his follow-up earlier this week highlighting an internal Metro document that describes potential strategies to increase ridership, the narrative has finally shifted to focus on the actual nature of the problem: inadequate levels of rail and bus service throughout the region.

Numerous factors, including track work, budget gaps, and the outdated alignment of the bus network, underlie this problem. To fix it, voters must elect leaders committed to making transit a primary way to get around our area.

Doers like Walker – not pundits like O’Toole – will be the ones who guide and inspire those local leaders, helping build a multimodal transportation system that provides freedom and opportunity to all.   

Three questions for Jarrett Walker and Randal O’Toole

Cato Institute's transit-oriented Downtown DC headquarters (photo courtesy of Clark Construction)

As DC holds its breath for the conclusion of Brett Kavanaugh’s supplemental FBI investigation, more mid-workday drama is in store for the city on Tuesday.

Jarrett Walker, the renowned expert behind bus system redesigns that have improved mobility for countless people around the world, will head into the catacombs of the Cato Institute (originally called the Charles Koch Foundation) and, at 11:30am ET, come face to face with Randal O’Toole, the pundit who wants to take away Whoville’s – sorry, Washington’s Metro system that many in the crowd will use to get to Hayek Auditorium.

Both men acknowledge the shortcomings of existing U.S. transit, but come into Tuesday’s forum with contrasting visions and goals. Expect Walker to focus on strategies to make it easier for people to get around, highlighting best practices in the transit industry. O’Toole, on the other hand, will try to turn the discussion into a debate about whether or not fixed-route transit should exist at all.

O’Toole’s evidence that we’re apparently about to turn back the clock to the 1950s: out-of-context numbers that actually result from American neglect of every ground transportation option other than the personal automobile. Yes, a high percentage of Americans use cars today, but this doesn’t mean their cars serve them well. In North Korea, Kim Jong-un enjoys strong approval ratings too.  

Cato moderator Emily Ekins, formerly of the Reason Foundation, will likely craft questions intended to limit the conversation to topics O’Toole is comfortable commenting on. In line with the cars-or-bust crowd’s typical approach, she will try to force Walker to spend the two-hour forum defending the very existence of bus and rail lines while avoiding discussion of what can be done to make it easier for people to get where they need to go.

But if Walker, people in the crowd, or anyone else gets a chance to ask O’Toole an uncensored question on Tuesday, I’d like to hear his (and Walker’s) thoughts on the following three topics:

Why is Cato’s headquarters building located in transit-rich Downtown DC?

Cato’s headquarters, located near Mount Vernon Square in Downtown DC, is located a quick walk from all six DC Metro lines, as well as numerous bus routes. As a result Cato’s workers enjoy the benefits of a mixed-use, transit oriented workplace, such as walkability, quick trips to outside meetings, diverse commuting options, and lots of great lunch places and happy hour spots within steps of their desks.

If O’Toole’s vision for transportation became a reality, central parts of DC – or any city – would never again be the same. More and more space would be paved over to accommodate cars, though thanks to science the cars would still be stuck in traffic

.

To make more room for cars, neighborhoods and parks would inevitably be bulldozed to plow highways through the city, ensuring the auto and oil industry’s mid-20^th century goals would finally become reality. The sliced-up urban core would become blighted and intolerable, and residents and businesses who could afford to flee to the suburbs would.

Presumably, O’Toole and his fellow Cato minds feel such a future would benefit our quality of life. Thus, it would be logical for Cato to move its headquarters to a suburban business park and tout the purported benefits of an auto-dependent workplace. I would like to learn why the Institute chooses not to pursue such a move.

Will neglecting transit now cost taxpayers more money in the long term?

Soon after our country allowed cars to become king, it became clear that many important transportation needs were not being fulfilled. As a result, we’ve had to spend billions to restore just a fraction of the transit we lost. 

For example, Los Angeles’s Expo Line, which largely follows the right of way of the former Pacific Electric Railway’s Santa Monica Air Line, cost $2.4 billion to restore. New York spent $4.5 billion to resume rapid transit service on a portion of Second Avenue in Manhattan.

 

If we take O’Toole’s advice and once again allow transit to disappear, get ready to experience déjà vu. As car congestion worsens, cities will decide that getting people where they need to go is their priority and will work to restore transit. But they’ll be forced to spend much more to do so than is required to sustain and improve multimodal options today.

O’Toole should explain how the high likelihood that abandoning transit would increase long-term government transportation subsidies aligns with Cato’s free market goals.  

   

Is a car payment any more voluntary than a transit subsidy?

Law-abiding citizens must pay taxes, meaning they help fund transportation infrastructure for both cars and transit.

But if they don’t have access to a viable multimodal option, they’ll also need to give money to the auto and oil industry if they want to go anywhere. Though the money goes to industry executives, rather than government agencies, the payments are every bit as mandatory and the corporations are perfectly capable of mismanaging and squandering them.

Some money spent on gasoline may even help fund transit – in Saudi Arabia.    

In the first 11 months of 2017, American spending on vehicle purchases and fuel totaled over $7 trillion. Where did that money go, Randal?