Aerial view of Washington, D.C. Photo by adam79.

Editor’s note:
TheCityFix.com is going local. Stay tuned for our online expansion, which will include local editions of our coverage in cities across the world, including Washington, D.C., where our offices are based.

Washington D.C. is the nation’s 9th largest metro area and for those interested in sustainable transportation, one of the most interesting. The D.C. area has some of the best and worst in transportation piled right on top of each other.

On the one hand, the D.C. Metro is one of the most extensive public transit systems in the country, having provided 215.3 million rail trips and 133 million bus trips in 2008. The area is a model for transit-oriented development, with successful nodes of development around many subway stations and a high density of LEED certified neighborhoods. On the other, the roads throughout the region are notoriously clogged with automobile traffic—the D.C. metro area has the second longest average commute time in the country—and freeways from the days of urban renewal still scar the city.

Read more at The City Fix DC…

A new Brookings report points to policies in Germany that encourage compact, mixed-use development, suitable for walking or cycling, like this space in Freiburg. Photo by redskunk.

The Brookings Institution just released a new research report comparing sustainability in Germany and the United States: “Making Transportation Sustainable: Insights from Germany.” 

From Brookings:

This report examines the key differences and determinants of travel behavior in Germany and the United States. Americans travel by car twice as much per year as Germans and use transit only a sixth as much. Differences in car reliance between the United States and Germany are not solely due to income or residential density. Germans in the highest income quartile make a lower share of their trips by car than Americans in the lowest income quartile. And Germans living in low density areas travel by car about as much as Americans living at population densities five times higher.

The result is a transportation system in the United States that is less sustainable than in Germany.
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Just another day on the Capital Beltway. Photo by mindgutter.

One week after President Obama’s inauguration, the unprecedented crowds are all gone. The trains are back to their regular schedules. And roads and bridges have re-opened for business.

But, surprisingly, gridlock is back.

“We woke up this morning to a new president but the old reality that we have some of the worst gridlock in the country,” said John B. Townsend II, spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, according to the Washington Times.

The reason? Everyone’s getting back in their cars.
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Washington prepares for Obama’s inauguration. Photo by martinstelbrink of Flickr.

Plans for President-Elect Barack Obama’s inauguration, scheduled for Jan. 20, have caused local transport groups in the Washington, D.C. area to consider new and flexible options to help travelers commute downtown for the historic swearing-in ceremony, which is expected to draw at least 2 million people to the nation’s capital.

Obama himself will be taking the train, following in President Abraham Lincoln’s footsteps, from Philadelphia. [USAToday.com]

The Washington Area Bicyclist Association proposes setting up two valet stations (locations to be announced) where cyclists can park their bikes. The group gained financial support from America Bikes, a national cycling advocacy group in Washington. And Minneapolis company Dero Bike Rack Co. plans to lend its bike racks. The District Department of Transportation has expressed support for the bike valet proposal, but has not yet granted final approval for the sites. [DCExaminer.com]

But it’s not just D.C. folks that are getting in on the transportation action.
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HAPPY FRIDAY! ENJOY THE COMMUTE HOME!

(Thanks to Rich Kassel from NRDC’s Switchboard for sharing this video. It originally came from USPIRG’s 21st century transportation video contest.)

Love,

TheCityFix.com

Photo of Golden Gate Bridge congestion in San Francisco by Sonja_Boeckmann from Flickr

The second-most congested city in the nation is considering a plan to charge motorists to drive on local roads in an effort to relieve traffic woes.

A top transportation official in San Francisco recently said that charging motorists to reduce congestion is “totally doable,” but the city has yet to gain public and political support for the plan, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

This Wednesday, December 3 at 6:00 p.m., the Citizens Advisory Committee of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority hopes to “adopt a motion of support” to further analyze congestion pricing scenarios. (Read the full memo here.)

Currently, San Francisco transportation planners find that “a congestion pricing program for San Francisco would be both technically feasible and effective,” but the various options still “require further development and analysis before determining whether and when to implement the program.”

If a formal program is adopted, this would put San Francisco in the same realm as other major cities, including Stockholm, Singapore and London, that have already implemented similar congestion pricing plans.
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Most streets in New York bring to mind urban warfare instead of urban renaissance, but on the Upper West side, residents, businesses, and advocates have recently launched a blueprint to revitalize their community and create more livable streets to their area. The video by Robin Urban Smith and Street Films presents the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign
Some highlights of the blueprint are:

• Longer pedestrian crossing times
• Curb extensions
• Chicanes and other measures to slow traffic on side streets
• Bike lanes, bike boxes, and segregated bike lanes all in green paint
• Extend bike lanes through intersections
• Increase bike parking
• Increase the price of car parking as to discourage cars
• More public benches, works of art, and planting

Flickr photo by code_martial.

There was news this week that India’s Tata Motor’s is facing a number of hurdles as it works to release a $2,500 car for sale on the Indian market.

Tata’s planned Singur plant is apparently being closed, and, while the factory is expected to move to Sanand, Gujarat, land acquisition problems there need to be solved before production can begin. The big question, however, is once these hurdles are overcome, will the Nano be a transport revolution?…The answer is yes and no.

Yes, because a number of Indian families will now be able to afford a four-wheeler, thereby meeting their transport demands in a safer and higher quality manner than on two-wheelers.

No, because, even at the low price the car is supposed to sell at, $2,500 is still exorbitant for many poor Indians, and so a relatively small percentage of Indians will actually be able to pay the full cost of the Nano.

And no again, because individual mobility (in the form of private automobiles) is no solution to growing transport and environmental concerns. More cars on the roads — even low cost, low emission ones — will only increase congestion, pollution and accidents. Solutions to these problems will really only come in the form of better public transportation and non-motorized infrastructure, which serve the needs of the majority of the population, as well as protect the global environment.

As Dr. Dinesh Mohan rightly points out in a recent editorial, TATA can also help in this area, by mass producing high quality, low cost, low emission buses – instead of focusing solely on the Nano.

Beijing Traffic. Photo by Proggie

Listening to NPR last night, I was caught by surprise by a story describing the unexpected popularity of the temporary traffic restrictions Beijing implemented during the Olympics. Conventional wisdom holds that citizens usually view such regulations (which in Beijing’s case prohibit motorists from driving more than every other day) as onerous. But as yesterday’s piece by Mary Kay Magistad of “The World” notes, “many Beijingers like the [resultant] improvements in air quality and traffic, and they’d like the restrictions to become permanent.”

This somewhat surprising response is probably a direct result of the fact that 80% of Beijing residents still do not own a car. This often silent majority is thus forced to suffer the negative aspects of the city’s increasing motorization (such as traffic congestion and air pollution), while missing out on the benefits of private cars.

Despite their popularity, however, these new traffic regulations are expected to be rescinded after the Olympic hype subsides. Now the question is whether or not policymakers will take this broad support into account and make the traffic restrictions permanent. Let’s hope they do, because without these and other interventions, Beijing’s environment, public health, and general quality of life will continue to take a back seat to cars and car infrastructure.

>> Listen to the podcast
>> Read more of WRI’s coverage of the Olympics
>> Listen to a series of stories on urbanization in China done by “The World” this summer

TransMilenio started operations in December 2000, and after more than 8 years it is still regarded as the gold standard for Bus Rapid Transit. Cities as diverse as New York, Delhi, Jakarta, Johannesburg, Beijing and Mexico, to name a few, have all drawn inspiration from Bogotá. But still there is no BRT system that matches its performance - at least not yet.

Why is TransMilenio so special? The clues could be in its “rail like” capacity and travel speed – not seen before in bus systems, and its ability to transform traditional bus operations with an interesting public-private partnership model. The most interesting aspect is that it has shown that it was possible to innovate, transform, and improve transport conditions in a very large city with profound transport challenges. It proved that cities can think outside the box, and bring solutions to the people without costing a fortune or taking decades to build. Kudos to Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who started it from scratch, and the following administrations, which have continued and expanded it.

After 8 years, 76% of users rate the system as being good or very good. While TransMilenio is still far from solving all the mobility problems in Bogota, it has been a turning point that reversed a downward trend of traffic congestion and urban chaos. TransMilenio’s implementation, along with Bogota’s other sustainable transport initiatives, has resulted in a reduction of private automobile use and increase in non motorized transport in the city, while keeping the transit use stable with a 60%+ share (traditional public transport plus TransMilenio). These trends are quite different than similar ones in other developing cities where auto use increases and transit use declines.

For those interested in facts and figures, you can find this information after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »