Greater Greater Washington

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/12102686/14-mill… http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/33880/dcs-libraries-have-far-… I hope no one here is surprised by this decline...

People will certainly not be able to move around in cars after they use up all the oil. BTW, there are 14 million people in Tokyo (or maybe 40 million) and probably never more than one car per family. They don't seem to have a problem, maybe because they can actually afford to build train lines and don't have commercial zoning over there. http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/29291/if-we-lowered-transit-c…

All true. Also important to note that it would be dangerous if the car was completely silent. Even if the car is autonomous and has a crazy smart AI, there can be accidents if people outside don't notice the car. Also, any car will spin up dust from the road that people outside breath up. I think, the only way to truly increase quality of life for pedestrian and bikers is to have zones and streets which are banned for cars, like many European city centers. Relevant illustration: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/24948/to-a-pedestrian-a-roads…

Though I agree that NYC's number of four-track lines makes it unique, I do not think it surprising that other systems do not have many four-track lines. Given a choice between a four-track line and two two-track lines, the latter is often preferable. A piece discussing this in the context of the DC Metro: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/30817/metro-doesnt-have-four-…

This 10% figure seems to originate on this blog post: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19848/musks-hyperloop-math-do… The guy makes assumption of single 28 person pod leaving every 30 second to get 3360 passengers/hour throughput. But these parameters are not set in stone. Pods could be joined into platoons that move together to form "trains". With 10 pod platoon you get 33600 passenger/hour -- neary 3x throughput of California High Speed rail when it's built. Pods could also be made wider to accommodate multiple people along cross-section.

In defense of those "lazy people," there are escalators and then there are escalators. Here in Washington, DC, for instance, our Metro system has several escalators that are 200 feet or more in length (http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/23038/what-are-the-10-longest… The longest one, in the station in suburban Wheaton, Maryland, is 230 feet long and climbs 115 feet vertically over that length. (Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheaton_station#/media/File:Wheaton_esca… Long, steep escalators like that make a challenging climb even for the young and fit.

Arlington, Virginia. VA. code § 46.2-1078 is the relevant statute. https://vacode.org/46.2-1078/ I work in DC, so DC and / or Federal law would also be relevant. I believe the distracted driving statutes in DC would also apply to bikes, so headphones would fall under that I believe. DC, VA, and MD also have contributory negligence. You can read more about that here: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/24312/what-is-contributory-ne… TL;DR you can receive no damages if you break the law in any tiny way while on a bicycle or on foot. Wearing headphones might be said to have contributed in some way, so you might get nothing.

I'm saying that a Metro stop in Georgetown was obviously desirable, but technical constraints prevented its construction. There's an urban legend that community opposition forced Metro to cancel plans to build a stop there, but there's no evidence that's true. See e.g. http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/423/georgetown-never-blocked-…

> Wear a helmet. They not only save you from dangerous environmental situations, but they save you from yourself. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/do-bike-helmet-l… http://www.californiahealthline.org/insight/2015/bicycle-helmet-bill-c… http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19036/feds-will-stop-hyping-e…

Yes, the commuter railroads are already at capacity in the DC metro area. Simply increasing the old fashioned rail capacity by adding more tracks to the MARC trunk lines would provide far, far greater bang for the buck. See: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/20426/marc-backs-away-from-al…

I'm not sure about "necessary" but dash cams make even more sense for bikers. The default response for police in car-bike traffic accidents is to assume the biker did something stupid and let the driver go or worse, issue a ticket to the biker without any evidence at all. See: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19284/it-must-have-been-your-…

There may be some valid points in there, but I don't consider it very productive to get this kind of info from this source. I'm not sure what their agenda is, but it clearly doesn't have anything to do with economics or transportation. From the authors recent articles, I have my doubts he would approve of anything that isn't initiated by government. Consider this article http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19330/supreme-court-limits-co… Since I lack the expertise to know myself whether the numbers are plausible or will work out, I need to rely on the expertise of others. And one of my ways of evaluating the expertise of others is if they appear to be guided by facts or by an agenda.

I believe Joel Garreau was the guy who said that a company's new location will be as close as possible to a CEO's house without affecting his property value. A recent article on the topic: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19239/ceos-want-faster-commut…

I was responding to the idea that it is obvious who is at fault, when in fact the bicyclist is usually blamed. (Yes, my insinuation is that the bicyclist is not usually at fault.) As for "police routinely pull video ... to establish fault" -- this is just one example, but recently in DC there was a bike-and-car crash in which a surveillance video proved the cyclist was not at fault, but the police refused to even look at it: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19284/it-must-have-been-your-…

Probably. The New York system uses the same technology and operator as the DC system, which has been around for several years and has released lots of data. http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/13327/capital-bikeshare-relea… is a blog post about the DC system's initial anonymous data release.

These awesome new services are threat to the current monopoly providers, who are in league with the city and protected from competition by city laws. I guarantee that that many jurisdictions will attempt to outlaw, control, or license these services. They will claim the need for "safety regulations" or similar. And a lot of cities do restrict private car and bus services-- try setting up a regular bus route in your hometown. Where I live, the major Dulles Airport even limits outbound cab service to a single provider! http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/2920/time-to-ground-the-washi…

Cars and trucks are relegated to the 2d grid of streets. They consume an inordinate amount of space, and require that all travel occur in series down a road. When an accident occurs, this disrupts the flow of traffic down that path, and also frequently disrupts the flow of surrounding roads as drivers seek alternate routes around the problem. Roads wear down over time, and require maintenance to repair. Salt and chemicals placed on roads to melt ice and snow can have adverse impacts on the local water tables and have other negative ecological impacts. Air-travel doesn't have those same constraints. Travel could be more point-to-point. An accident by one or two aircraft doesn't need to inhibit the travel of all other crafts flying in the general vicinity. Air space, while regulated and crowded in some urban areas, is largely under-utilized and expansive. It's also not a space that is shared with foot traffic, so pedestrians could reclaim some of the space currently allocated to roads since the volume of vehicular traffic would likely drop. That's not to say that personal air travel doesn't introduce an entire set of new problems and challenges - it absolutely does, but there are many problems that cars and roads cause which air-travel avoids by-design. Think of air-travel in the context of this cartoon: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/24948/to-a-pedestrian-a-roads…

"Cities owe it to their citizens to try and work with these platforms and focus on solving the real issue: finding parking in an ever more crowded city" I disagree. That's only one aspect of the issue. Another is the surplus of free parking, as discussed in the 2005 "The High Cost of Free Parking", and brought up here in HN many times. Look elsewhere for the details. If parking prices are set appropriately, then there should nearly always be available parking, and the city gets all of the profit, instead of sharing it or giving it to third parties. A few cities have started this. See http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/13019/prices-affect-parking-l… and http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2014/06/does-san-franciscos-smart-par… for preliminary numbers. In that solution, there is no need to work with this platforms, as the available third party market will be small. If a city works with these platforms then the correct market interpretation is that they are using taxpayer owned property - the city streets - to channel funds into private hands, possibly in opposition to the stated reasons for certain zoning requirements. I wonder if it may even mean the city is open to zoning challenges based on a conflict of interest.

Here, try reading: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19962/when-we-lost-the-war-on… Roads didn't "belong" to vehicles--in fact, it was generally considered that the driver of the larger vehicle in an accident was at fault, which is common sense. As for cigarettes, consider the old ads: http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1848212_1777633,00.h… As for piracy--look, taking my keys (even to make a copy) requires the temporary loss of access to them, whereas with files it does not. Arguments against copyright infringement cannot hang on stealing, because it is plainly not stealing: instead, you have to construct them as being about the infringement on somebody's right to control access to their works (which is a bit more subtle, and far from settled). You need to read more and talk less, and maybe you'll learn something. I don't blame you for being brainwashed by the societal norms these days, but if you want to be taken seriously you need to google your way to success.

scratch off point d. Helmets don't really do anything to protect you unless you practically fall off your bike standing still. I've seen brains on the street from at least two low-speed bike accidents where the cyclist was wearing a helmet. Also, it's not that all cyclists are disobeying the law. Those are just the ones you choose to see. Drivers and pedestrians alike just aren't looking. I always obey traffic laws on my bike. Edit: All these anecdotes are great and all, but it's not like we're going to be reading stories from all the people with brain injuries or who died. Cycling lanes and infrastructure do significantly more to make riding safer than helmets and helmet laws do. http://www.bicycling.com/sites/default/files/uploads/BI-June-13-Helmet… http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19036/feds-will-stop-hyping-e… http://bicyclesafe.com/helmets.html

For a counterargument, see http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/19848/musks-hyperloop-math-do… I'm all for innovation and pursuing alternate forms of transportation, but I don't pretend Musk's claims are above criticism. As for the jerrygangi.com article, it grossly misrepresents Warrent Buffet's investment strategy: >Here’s a piece of news: real investors don’t care what industry they invest in. Warren Buffet has invested in railroads, furniture companies, insurance companies, and hundreds more. This is in direct opposition to what Buffet has actually said about investing [1]: "Never invest in a business you cannot understand." Using Buffet's actual statements and not some misrepresentation of his ideas, it seems clear that Buffet would require a great deal of due diligence to validate Musk's ideas before considering any investment. [1]http://www.socialphy.com/posts/off-topic/9789/Warren-Buffett-Quotes-On…

It doesn't really matter that much, if your city wasn't destroyed during the war, it was destroyed during the 70's or 80's (in a process continuing to this day) when the communists governments decided to ruin every larger town in a same manner as the Americans did 20 years before them, massive tear-downs, urban freeways (right through the city center, see Prague), uniform large scale housing projects on the periphery. Admittedly, the scale was not that large, but it was the same kind of destruction. Krakow's greater center is just gorgeous, I really loved it. But it was a similar experience, to a certain degree, as well. On a train from Katowice, the first sight was something called "Krakow Business Park", disgusting office park, a place that doesn't belong anywhere, I work in a similar project and it is almost the same. Glass blocks surrounded by an endless parking lot. Then some recent suburban development, complete clusterfuck under all circumstances. And looking from Kazimierz across Wisla, what I saw on the other bank was also very disappointing. Or this https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-dO_Cw7ayCQk/Tx2LuPNmF0I/AAAAAAAABzY… seen right from the castle Wawel. And this was not built by the soviet engineers. Not much has changed after 1989. Maybe nothing at all. This sums it all. You don't need a war. http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/4967/houstons-cars-vs-rotterd…

No, only cars benefit from this. The idea is to remove people from the streets to allow more cars to move. This has the effect of making that area less desirable. Look around the world. Desirable places strongly correlate to people walking at street level, because this allows people to pass shops, cafes, etc. and easily go in. It's the core of city life. Crystal City is one of the least nice places close to downtown DC. Above ground it has huge streets, little street life and few people walking around. Compare that with Dupont Circle, where the city is full of life (this is where I work). Raised or underground walkways are a great way to kill a city. Skybridges are a very 1970s idea and they are being torn down. Where I live, Downtown Silver Spring (not far from Crystal City), sky bridges are expressly forbidden in the CBD. There are some areas way up North (upper Midwest, Canada) where there are underground walkways due to the weather in the winter. Most places, including the DC area, are fine in the winter. There is a lot of writing about Skybridges out there. Here is a start: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/654/skybridges-dont-make-the-…

First, you're making an argument I didn't make. I didn't say, "the GOP thinks Amtrak is bad because it is subsidized more than roads" (though clearly some do think that, like the Cato libertarians). I said "the GOP thinks Amtrak is bad because it operates on the brink of insolvency mitigated by direct cash subsidies". Secondly, go read the actual source cited by that Economist blog post. It's another blog post: http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/12208/funding-amtrak-is-more-… The cost breakdown in this blog post is ad hoc, and the biggest "wins" for Amtrak come from parking and "resource consumption". Parking is taxed, not directly subsidized. The blog post dips into studies that (rightly) excoriate free parking, and scales the external cost of free parking across all parking, thus conflating the total cost of driving with the subsidized cost of driving. For "resource consumption", the blogger found a study that attributed the entire cost of our military presence in the gulf to oil prices, simply averaging the military budget across oil prices per barrel. This just isn't credible. I am not anti-Amtrak, but I am anti-oversimplified-arguments and anti-demonizing-viewpoints. A counterpoint from Cato, which I also do not buy outright: http://www.cato.org/pubs/bp/bp107.pdf

Two-track subways have inherent maintenance problems. New York is mostly four-track, so sections of track can be shut down for total replacement. They also have a huge number of track switches and interlockings, and can reroute onto alternate tracks easily. NYC can also run trains 24/7. Two-track systems can't do that. One of the legacies of the Tammany Hall regime is that the infrastructure from about 1900 was way overbuilt. But the real reason NYC is four-track is that the subways replaced elevated lines that were at capacity with two tracks. Few other subways are four-track. The Broad Street Line in Philadelphia is four-track, but is underutilized. A few sections of the Chicago MTA are four track. The London Underground has the two-track problem. (Worse, that system is older and has undersized tunnels. They have to build special maintenance machines that will fit in their tunnels.) In the US, there are probably two systems that could justify four-track - SF's BART and Washington's Metro.[1] But it took both a long time for each to build the traffic to justify it. BART has a lot of elevated sections, and four-track elevated lines roof over an entire street. (NYC used to have some; getting rid of them was one of the reasons the subway system was built.) In practice, two-track systems do heavy maintenance during weekends and holidays. This takes careful planning, special equipment, and lots of competent, hard-working people. But it's done routinely by the big…

Resisting Arrest, or Assaulting a Police Officer. In many cities, (I believe DC, for example, is promenantly know for this), many people are charge solely with assaulting an officer. One would be led to believe that there are thousands of wreckless citezens wantonly assaulting the police, if one did not realize that this was a euphemism for declining to censent to be searched, or "getting lippy". EDIT: Why the downvote? Can't handle the truth? Here's some evidence that, at least in DC, the law is used to effectively arrest people for resiting arrest, with no other charge: "Nearly two-thirds of those arrested [in the District of Columbia] for assaulting an officer weren’t charged with any other crime, raising questions about whether police had legal justification to stop the person."[1] "In Coghill v. United States, 982 A.2d 802 (D.C. 2009), the court upheld a conviction for misdemeanor APO. Mr. Coghill was stopped by police while driving a car, and refused to let police search his car. He then got out of the car at their instruction, but at some point got back in the car. Officers tried to drag him out of the car, but he braced himself against the floorboards and gripped the steering wheel."[2] "On Tuesday, Ward 3 DC Councilmember Mary Cheh introduced a bill to reform some elements of criminal justice procedure. It would change the law around "assaulting a police officer," strengthen prosecutors' duty to turn over evidence to defendants" [3] [1]…

There's been fairly interesting data piling up about mandatory helmet laws. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/business/a-bicycling-mystery-head-in… > The number of head injuries has increased 10 percent since 1991, even as bicycle helmet use has risen sharply, according to figures compiled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. But given that ridership has declined over the same period, the rate of head injuries per active cyclist has increased 51 percent just as bicycle helmets have become widespread. ... > Many specialists in risk analysis argue that something else is in play. They believe that the increased use of bike helmets may have had an unintended consequence: riders may feel an inflated sense of security and take more risks. Cars are more reckless around bicyclists and drive closer to them when they see they are wearing a helmet: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10bike.html We also see here that bicycles are the lowest risk of head injury while traveling streets and sidewalks: http://www.howiechong.com/journal/2014/2/bike-helmets Turns out you're much more likely to suffer a head injury in a car, or walking than on a bicycle. Should helmets be mandated for driving and walking? Evidence suggests it would make more sense for those activities. Wearing helmets increases the likelihood of neck injuries: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457500000488 Feds had to stop claiming bike helmets prevent 85% of…