For those of you tracking the status of the I-395/95 HOV corridor as the Metropolitan Washington region looks ahead toward implementing HOT lanes, two pieces of legislation currently before a subcommittee in the Virginia General Assembly might interest you:
HB-494
Prohibits imposition of tolls on HOV facilities. This would ensure that any HOT lane proposal would allow HOV vehicles to pass without charge, unlike the current situation in Southern California, where HOV vehicles now pay half-price tolls after originally being promised a free ride. The maximum possible incentive is needed for carpooling because only carpooling actually takes cars off the road and helps relieve traffic.
HB-717
Prohibits conversion of existing HOV lanes into HOT facilities. This legislation is crucial to saving the I-95/395 HOV corridor in Northern Virginia and the massive network of informal carpooling (slugging) it has spawned. Allowing people to pay their way into these lanes would destroy one of the largest mass carpooling success stories in the country.
These pieces of legislation are currently before the
House Subcommittee on Transportation #1. Click on the link and see if your legislator is one of the subcommittee's members. And no matter who your legislators are, if there were ever a time to write them, this would be it.
When it comes to funding, Metrobus has been left behind. The front-page article of today's Washington Post, according to
Wonkette, "uncovers a motherload of obviousness" – probably referring to the article's focus on the fact that bus riders are more likely to be minority and low-income than subway riders.
The basic premise of the article is that, in the shadow of the more well-known Metrorail system and its more affluent users, Metrobus has been the subject of neglect and decay, the sole highlights of the system being universal installation of SmartTrip fareboxes and the takeover of some busier routes by local governments for better management. The article found that the average age of buses in the Metrobus fleet is 10 years, compared with the normal 5 years of other system. The article also showed that some less-used routes get heavy subsidy while more frequently used routes suffer overcrowding for lack of new buses.
While I'm sure we all can agree Metrobus needs more funding and more buses (especially in the Dulles corridor where only one once-an-hour route connects the airport with D.C.), I don't think cutting service from less frequently used routes is the answer. One of the routes cited, the Kings Park line, connects George Mason University with the Pentagon Metro station, an important link between the Fairfax suburbs and downtown (though arguably the route could more cheaply bring passengers to the Vienna/Fairfax-GMU Metro station, which is closer). The other route, to Burke Center, showed a low usage rate, but the 18P buses I've seen leaving the Pentagon at rush hour are packed (the low usage may actually have come from the 18R and S routes, which leave from the Franconia-Springfield Metro).
One of the reasons cited in the article of why people don't use the bus is because schedules and routes remain largely an unsolved mystery to the general public. Unlike the ubiquitous Metrorail system map, a similar map unifying Metrobus routes is much less common. As an example, the article showed one route in Arlington County jumping 30 percent in ridership after colorful maps and timetables were added to the route. In my internship with a regional commuting agency, I noticed Arlington had the best consistent marketing practices.
Frequent service, clear information, newer, cleaner buses. That's how to get people to ride. Buses may not run so empty if the marketing is done the right way.
Could your morning habit be contributing to our region's traffic woes?
This April 2005 Washington Post article explores the issue. (April 2005 seems to be a big month for transportation reports based on the Washington Post Web site; articles from this month will be a subject of discussion on this blog for a while, it seems.)
The problem is that traffic forecasters assume that people use the shortest, fastest route to work when in fact many of us will make the occasional, or daily, detour to pick up that cup of coffee at Starbucks or that breakfast sandwich at McDonald's. As the Department of Transportation's Nancy McGuckin puts it, "If you see people replacing an in-home activity like brewing your own coffee with an activity that requires a new [car] trip, that's not exactly the trend we're looking for."
Each additional mile driven in your car adds to the pollution levels that EPA regulations are trying to limit, and it adds traffic to roads that are harder for traffic experts to predict. Traffic aside, I think the biggest inroads on the pollution front will be realized as more and more people switch to hybrids in the face of higher gas prices. Any decent hybrid shuts off its gas engine entirely while moving at low speeds – or, say, idling in a fast-food drive-thru.
Some interesting solutions were offered at Governor-Elect Kaine's transportation town hall in Manassas on Tuesday, among which were extending Metro's Orange Line to Gainesville and building Japanese-style double-decker highways. Extending the Orange Line beyond its current Vienna/Fairfax terminus makes sense because of the traffic that plagues the I-66 corridor, but adding a second level of freeway doesn't really make sense unless one portion is dedicated for bus and carpool use, with at least a restriction of three people so that it can encourage the kind of informal carpooling ("slugging") we see along the existing dedicated HOV-3 corridor on I-395 and 95.
Kaine, as he said in the debates, reiterated his support for extending Metro to Dulles Airport, as well as widening portions of I-66 inside the beltway using the highway's existing footprint. What wasn't mentioned in the article, however, was the need for extending Metro's Yellow Line southward from Huntington to Fort Belvoir to cover the congested Richmond Highway corridor and accomodate the 30,000 office workers moving south out of Arlington due to the Defense Department's base closure plan. Another alternative to provide Metro to Fort Belvoir using fewer track miles would be to extend the Blue Line from Franconia-Springfield along Backlick Road. Still a third alternative would be to build a light rail line using dedicated pavement surfaces. In any case, expect traffic to get worse in Southern Fairfax County until a consistent, reliable Metro connection is built.
If you're carpooling to work, you should be rewarded. Register your carpool, and earn great benefits from retailers in the Washington, D.C., area using a system that works something like frequent flyer miles. How does it work? As the
program overview will tell you, there is no catch. Companies are eager to provide their marketing to carpoolers in their targeted zip codes, so they pay NuRide money to give you special offers and free rewards just for sharing the ride to work and helping to reduce congestion and clear the air.
Helping solve the problems of traffic and pollution, while altruistic, shouldn't have to be your only reward for sharing the ride to work. This is a well-known company featured in area media, and when I was an intern these folks came to do a presentation for our organization. I had almost forgotten about them until I stumbled across their Web site thanks to the new Google ads I've put up. Check it out. It's one of the rare examples of the private sector coming in to promote something good for society where government can't necessarily act on its own, and you can be a part of it.
