Transportation Policy

We're nearly a couple of weeks into baseball season, and fans of the Washington Nationals are enjoying their new transit-, bike- and pedestrian-friendly stadium. The DC complex, with its transit links, shuttle buses and valet bike parking, is so accessible -- and city efforts to encourage fans to get there by alternate means so successful -- that on Opening Day its relatively few parking lots weren't even full, reports Greater Greater Washington:

Now that the Legislature has said "no" to pricing streets, attention has turned to pricing curbside parking. It's no secret that meter rates are ridiculously low. This is because the DOT has been told by generations of mayors to keep the price down in an effort to appease motorists. The cost of this ill-considered gesture is a plague of cruising traffic, rampant double parking, congested streets, and motorists with nowhere to park paying $600 million a year in parking tickets.

 

This Monday the Washington Post ran a long feature on page A1, "Letting the Market Drive Transportation," about the Bush administration's attempts to shift financing for roads from the gas tax to user fees, and starve transit in the process. The cast of characters includes a pair of conservative ideologues, Tyler Duvall and D.J. Gribbin, high up in U.S. DOT, as well as Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who earned the enmity of alternative transportation advocates last summer when she said bikes aren't transportation.

Though it was buried by another story, the City Council made news this week by passing legislation that will require identification and inspections of dangerous locations for pedestrians and cyclists, and action to correct hazardous conditions.

An aide to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn sent this message late last week concerning new legislation that could bring improvements to dangerous locations for pedestrians and cyclists:

Congressman Blumenauer works the room

On Monday US Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa introduced "The Complete Streets Act of 2008," a bill "to promote the design of streets that are safe for all of those using the street -- including motorists, bus riders, bicyclists, and pedestrians, including people with disabilities."

We didn't do it.