Ben Adler likes the idea and so do I. That said, it's absolutely impossible to discuss transportation or planning issues in the Greater Washington area without pointing out that it would be a really, really good idea to facilitate higher-density construction in the District.
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Congestion Tax for DC
09 May 2007 03:46 pm
Comments (21)
My impression fom visiting DC a number of times over the past few years is that it is fairly dense. Much of the city is zero-lotline, multistory construction, with lots of new apartment/loft/condo buildings going in at, say, 400 ground SF/unit. Are there extensive neighborhoods of single family detached housing?
It seems to me that (aside from all the boulevards, circles, and other trappings of a capital city) the density problem in DC comes from vast swathes of deteriorated neighborhoods with vacancies and, to be semi-blunt, housing that is not professional-friendly.
But I'm not aware of many cities that have reclaimed neighborhoods without gentrification, which means that if you open up SE to dense settlement by yuppies, the poor have to find somewhere else to live - outside the District?
"My impression fom visiting DC a number of times over the past few years is that it is fairly dense. Much of the city is zero-lotline, multistory construction, with lots of new apartment/loft/condo buildings going in at, say, 400 ground SF/unit."
JRoth, the thing is that those multistory buildings aren't that all - they're three floors of lofts instead of eight or twelve.
We already pay a congestion tax in DC - and a very successful too, btw, and it's called METRO.
I remember back in the day, sitting in a cab that took almost 10 minutes to get from Washington Circle down to the 17th and Penn - a distance of 5 blocks. And that was considered quite normal. And it would easily take 30-45 minutes just to get out NY Ave to the Maryland/DC line in evening rush hour.
Traffic downtown is nowhere near what it was like 30 years ago and it's totally due to Metro.
Ain't gonna happen of course.
Interesting there was a WaPo story the other day on changing the height restriction rules based on a report someone did for Brookings I think. While they talked in terms of commerical buildings, it would I guess apply to residential buildings as well. Of course the author of the study didn't seem to think any increas on height restrictions would happen.
The DC beltway and I-95 have the consistently worst traffic I have ever known.
The Metro is a good example of giving people an alternative to driving to work, which is an improvement. A tax might not provide that alternative, unless the money from it were spent on improving roads and adding more trains and buses.
Denser housing might mitigate the obscenely high real-estate prices in DC. An empty lot in a nearby suburb can cost half a million dollars. A ruined house in a rough neighborhood with holes in the roof and boards in the windows can cost more than two hundred thousand. Big, tall condos might help.
What about the city being run by congress rather than a real local government? It can't help that the ones in charge don't consider it their home.
I completely agree with you, although good luck trying to get Tenleytown residents on board. Damn rich white people.
Removing the insanely strict commercial/residential barrier in zoning would also be a huge step in the right direction.
As a long time DC area resident (20+) years, I have to agree with Scott, my neighbor to the north.
As soon as DC is able to fully control the apparatus of the city, we'll see a lot more in the way of positive and more thoughtful change.
You can see Fenty trying to get the ball moving in that direction, but without control, most of these initiatives won't make it very far.
Plus, a lot of the devlopment in DC was driven by the Republican Party having a firm grasp on the culture here for the last ten years.
Now that they're gone, a lot of the things that have happened here recently are going to stop making sense.
I dunno about a congestion tax, but the city always needs to find new revune streams. Worth discussing.
Why would our Overlords in Congress permit a congestion tax? Not one single member represents a constituency that would benefit. As a side note, metrorail is already operating near capacity during peak hours.
The DC beltway and I-95 have the consistently worst traffic I have ever known.
and this observation shows how unrealistic the idea of a congestion tax is. They are citing how MD and VA drivers have these long commutes. They point to how crowded the Beltway is. They don't point out that a huge amount of the traffic are suburbanites going to jobs in the suburbs. A congestion tax to further reduce driving in downtown DC isn't going to change that one bit.
And how is such a tax enforced? The only viable way is to arrange "pass" systems that reads and bills the account of each car that passes via an electronic device somewhere on the car. So what do they do with all the tourists who visit DC? Do they further encumber all of the Ma-and-Pa-Iowas and all their kids who visit each year by making them install the system in their cars for the length of their visit? Do the erect tourist toll booths for people who don't have scanner/reader system? The fact that they have to talk about this in terms of the "commuter tax" shows that it's not being thought of in terms of an actual traffic issue and is instead trying to tap into a revenue stream.
I live in downtown DC on a major commuter route. Each afternoon, there is no parking on my street until 6:30 pm to allow an extra lane for commuters. The hot dog stand lady's husband pulls up exactly at 6pm and they spend 15 minutes attaching her hot dog stand to his SUV - taking up a whole lane of traffic each day. In the 3 years I've lived there I've never seen ANY cop drive by and give them a ticket or do anything to enforce the no parking regulations. If they were really interested in traffic congestion, there are lots of ways they could enforce existing laws and use smart traffic policies (synchronize lights much?) to help with congestion. But you never see any of that done. Much easier to float stupid unrealistic schemes designed to tap revenue.
I grew up in Cleveland Park in the 1970's and '80s and remember when the Metro was being built - the Reagan Republicrats screamed bloody murder over this "Big Government" solution to traffic (I know this b/c I was a paper boy for the Washington Star and would read the tirades as I sipped coffee at the 7-11 next to the subway construction site).
There's a point here - most of DC is still, in fact, medium-density residential neighborhooods, and most of them, with a few exceptions, are well-served by Metro. The traffic problem isn't from DC residents, it's from the hideously ugly sprawl that has taken over in a 100-mile radius around the city in Virginia and Maryland.
Sprawl that was caused, in part, due to a backlash by developers and landowners against the idea that DC's, ahem, "majority" population would now be able to reach every neighborhood on the Metro.
The suburban residents of this nightmare are not to blame for this, but they are complicit in the fallacy of the white flight model of urban "planning"; folks who bought in the city limits during the weak real estate market that lasted from the riots in '69 til, oh, 1997 are laughing all the way to the bank. The burbanites in the bland, LA-worthy subdivisions are crying in their cars.
Tax 'em. Reward the long-term thinkers and planners for their long-term thinking, and punish the NIMBYs and "gotta have a four car garage" crowd for their selfishness. That's not just a good idea, it's good governance.
Scott from Baltimore: DC has a city council and a Mayor, though that hasn't always been a good thing ...
Man, that would really suck to be stuck in traffic driving a big-block V-8 at today's gas prices.
Or maybe it's just the 94% of us who aren't rich or well-paid who notice when gas goes to $3.50/gallon.
A big problem of course is that DC belongs to neither Virginia nor Maryland and as such neither state cares that much about it. They respond to the wishes of the suburbs and not whats best for the city. The fact that there are no Metro stops in Georgetown pretty much tells you that trying to get anything done against land owning interests in DC is very hard.
Do they further encumber all of the Ma-and-Pa-Iowas and all their kids who visit each year by making them install the system in their cars for the length of their visit?
The tax works just fine in London and I assure you no one has to install any sort of science-fictiony thing in their car whenever they come visiting. It's really not close to the impossibility you make it out to be.
"That said, it's absolutely impossible to discuss transportation or planning issues in the Greater Washington area without pointing out that it would be a really, really good idea to facilitate higher-density construction in the District."
Or how about here in Bethesda, MD (suburb bordering DC on the NW)?
Right across the street from the NIH, on a plot of land that looks like it hasn't held structures for at least along time, they're building...luxury condos.
What a freakin' joke.
The Washington Post had a very useful series in the past year or two pointing out that many (or most) counties surrounding DC deliberately restrict residential development (favoring commercial instead), because they view it as better in terms of tax revenue and budget costs. The result is that development leapfrogs out farther away from the metro center, exactly the way you wouldn't want it to.
sorry, "luxury condos" ==> "luxury townhouses"
Georgetown's lack of Metro is due to bedrock and grade issues on the bank of the Potomac. The myth of Georgetown residents wanting to keep the riff-raff out is a plausible myth, but a myth nonetheless.
The the "Transportation" section:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgetown,_Washington,_D.C.
The tax works just fine in London and I assure you no one has to install any sort of science-fictiony thing in their car whenever they come visiting. It's really not close to the impossibility you make it out to be.
I don't see the system in London working here - Americans have nowhere near the appetite for nor the toleration of constant pervasion video surveillance that the Brits put up with. The only system I could see working here would be an "E-Z Pass" like system - and yes, that would be incredibly cumbersome for visitors.
Higher density means more cars unless you live in a mahatten type city. There has to be better ways for people in condos to get around than cars, and most cities don't have that infrastructure in place. At least that was the case in Seattle. They really made an effort to up the desity and traffic got enormously worse. It's not all just commuters, it's people going out to eat, going to the store, going to thier friends house.
As a long time DC resident, I have to say that mateosf is the only one who seems to know what they are talking about.
1. Homerule: while it is generally a good idea and I favor it, I do not understand how it is going to result in better planning and a more liveable city. Let's face facts, there is a lot of incompetence in the DC Council and in most of the agencies. For people that live in Wards 1, 2, 3 and parts of 4, you don't experience the DC that I live in. I live in Trinidad and the situation is entirely different in these parts and most of Wards 5, 7 and 8. People should be hesitant to assume that once we get home rule, they're going to look after you or somehow make enlightened decisions. The best example I can use is the failure of the DC govt to monitor and enforce its' own laws to protect tenants from condo conversions that were all the rage a few years ago. That was disgraceful and solely the result of govt. officials being in the pocket of developers. Which we all evidence in the bribery and corruption trials we had in the fall. If we had full home rule, can anyone imagine the giveways to developers that would ensue? Does TechWorld tickle your fancy?
2. Lofts? I don't know if you just live around Logan Circle or Adams Morgan, but closer to my neck of the woods, huge and I mean enormous blocks of condos are being built right around H and Mass. Those will accompany the other recent huge apartment and condo developents already completed in the last few years, including Mass Court and a few others. For the most part, most of these buildings lack any architectural substance. They are massive and cheaply built, very much in line with new DC development model: build big, cheap and ugly.
You can also see wonderful examples in Columbia Heights. The area between Harvard and Monroe, from 14th to 16th streets is the most densely packed area of the city. While encouraging more retail is great, it is really the worst location in the city for a big box store. Traffic on 14th is always congested, particularly between Columbia and Irving. When that Target opens, it is going to be traffic hell for both shoppers and residents. In an area so densely packed, with so many children, it completely lacks in parks and recreation. I talked with the planning people about why they did not consider adding recreational park space and they said the did add a park, it is this triangle of gravel in front of the Tivoli. Increased traffic and congestion, increased noise and no recreational parks in a neighborhood full of kids? They don't not even have a pretense about being family friendly and that is a recipe for disaster.
When the DC govt is involved, it gets even worse because then the motto is build big, expensive and ugly (See the Convention Center, Baseball Stadium, etc.). If you have the honor of owning a home in a historic district, your local ANC and historic preservation clowns can dictate what improvements you can and cannot make to your home and the materials you must use. However, there are seemingly no architectural standards for developers of new construction. Can't wait for them to build the new library on the old convention center site, while cities like Seattle, LA and others build masteriece libraries, I just know it is going to end up a big prefab piece of crap that will resemble MLK in 25 years.
I forgot to add that our enlightended city council has agreed to give Abe Pollin $50million dollars right out of our high tax paying pocket for the sole purpose of performing renovations at the Verizon Center, a arena that he privately owns. In the mean time, local merchants had a fundraiser this week to pay for renovations to Eastern Market, which burned. Talk about priorities. The schools are a disgrace. The juevenile justice system is a disgrace. Parks and recreation areas are poorly maintained (in this end of town at least) and this is where my tax money is going? Abe Pollin's pocket?
As for the commuter tax, I think it is a bad idea. There is surplus office space right now in Virgina. In Crystal City alone, both the PTO and the EPA vacated their buildings and moved to new onesin the same area. There is also surplus office space along 66. All this proposal is is a revenue generating measure. They could care less about commute times. If they really wanted to help reduce commute times and traffic in the city, they should support building bigger garages at the metro stations in the burbs, adding more rail cars, creating express trains that don't make every stop (difficult to do without more tracks) and decreasing prices. If you live near the end of the line, taking the metro can cost $13 every day (including parking). Except for federal triangle/metro center/mcpherason sq/foggy bottom, you should be able to find monthy parking in a garage for $200/mo and less. Garages arond Thomas Circle have like $9 and $8 dollar early birds, without a monthly pass. So when the costs are rougly equivalent, a lot of people are going to continue to favor their cars.
Comments closed May 23, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
I'm vehemently opposed to a congestion tax. I mean, you already have to pay for the Sudafed, and you feel lousy to boot. Why should you have to pay tax on top of that misery?
Posted by Petey | May 9, 2007 4:05 PM