(Photo: DDOT)

Starting March 1, the D.C. government will begin enforcing their nearly 400 red top meters that were installed throughout last month. D.C. has 17,000 metered spaces overall, which in the past year have become more modern than ever with their ability accept credit cards and phone payments and now with several hundred reserved for, as DDOT announces, "persons with disabilities who properly display a valid placard or license plate to park." Drivers with disabilities will still have to pay for the parking: "Meter parking patrons with a valid disability plate or placard will be able to park for twice the time on these meters as long as they pay the established meter rate for that block face." These 400 new meters will be located in the Central Business District of D.C. as well as in Federal corridors of SW.

Consider February a warning month. D.C. will post traffic officers near the meters and issue warnings ... but no formal tickets will be issued until March. In a September 2011 presentation, DDOT noted the initiative was happening in part due to people who faked disabilities to park for free. The new system will purportedly result in "improved accessibility," the city says.

Keep your eyes open for these meters, drivers. Learn more at DDOT's page on the new red top meters.

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Welcome the new car-sharing competition. (Photo: Courtesy of Daimler)

The D.C. car-sharing monopoly is officially over. In 2012, both Daimler's Car2Go and the Hertz On Demand models of car-sharing have quietly established their groundwork for entering our city's streets and parking spaces. Little fanfare trumpets their arrival yet but I expect we'll see more flair from the two companies soon. They stand in stark contrast to the world's car-sharing king Zipcar, which touts more than 60,000 members in Washington, D.C. Hertz On Demand is officially launching its services this week, as Hertz spokeswoman Paula Rivera confirmed by phone, and Car2Go is finalizing operational agreements with the D.C. government as we speak.

Zipcar should watch out because these two new companies enter D.C. with distinct new features and attractive pricing that may begin to chip away at Zipcar dominance. First let's compare rates:

Zipcar's Occasional Driving Plan: Annual fee of $60, $25 application; Hourly rate: $7.75 to $15.25; Daily rate: $73 to $110.

Hertz On Demand (D.C. rates): No annual membership fee, no application fee; Hourly rate: $8; Daily rate: $76.

Daimler Car2Go (based on rates in other U.S. cities, not final for D.C.): No annual membership fee, $35 application; Minute rate: $0.35; Hourly rate: $12.99; Daily rate: $65.99.

Car2Go offers the more detailed Washington, D.C. website and has created a Twitter account, although Car2Go's communications manager Katie Stafford tells me these are "just being tested" until Daimler finalizes details with D.C. and formally launches later this year. Hertz On Demand now lists D.C. among its cities and features an interactive map that lists the location of several On Demand vehicles around the District.

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Waiting for Margo. (Photo: Jenny Rogers)

This photograph was snapped earlier this afternoon along the Blue Line. Notice anything out of the ordinary?

I mean, the L and the M keys are close enough, after all.

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(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

This morning the WMATA board is yet again discussing issues of budget and HR and training and all the multitude of issues that occupy their minds. But among their presentations is a chart I'd like to share with you. The chart breaks down the amount of revenue WMATA receives from the different transportation services the transit agency offers, the operating costs, and then, subsequently, how much of a subsidy each service requires. The numbers are illuminating for many people who might not know precisely how expensive and how subsidized their public transportation is.

See the 2013 fiscal budget breakdown here:

(Photo: WMATA)

What stands out to me is how the Metrorail is the only form of transportation that comes at all close to covering its operating expense — and even then, the rail operations require nearly $200 million in subsidies. The rail system costs $897 million to operate and earns back $713 million in revenue.

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(Photo: flickr/MrTinDC)

The District of Columbia has imagined resurrecting its streetcar system for awhile now, but as we approach the anticipated 2013 debut date, what becomes ever more clear is the need for careful planning, especially as our businesses, officials, and residents realize the economic implications of what 37 miles and eight lines of streetcar will bring. To get a sense for how the mere idea of streetcars kickstarts our communities, just take a look at the blocks of H Street. 

"We were really able to sell H Street with the potential of the trolley," said Anwar Saleem, executive director of H Street Main Street, to the D.C. Council at yesterday's roundtable discussion. "Tourist dollars are huge ... I think the potential is unlimited."

In the past three years, Saleem has seen 82 businesses emerge in the Ward 6 neighborhood as streetscaping beautified the sidewalks and streetcar tracks paved the way for the much-discussed cars. The District held a huge meeting in December to assure residents that the first three-mile line was coming. Mid-2013, Mayor Vince Gray assured, would be the time. Yesterday's talk focused on the D.C. Office of Planning's recently released land use study, which predicted that the $1.5 billion streetcar network will add $5 to $7 billion to our city's property values. Not a shabby verdict, especially considering the economic revival such value is bringing to places like H Street.

But such value is a double-edged sword, isn't it? Because more value also means rising prices in an expensive city already full of the rich. How to preserve affordable housing and accommodate the investment that may surge with new streetcar reports and plans? Councilmember Tommy Wells mused that the report's release itself was delicate since developers may have looked at "the deepest shades of color" on the streetcar map and gone after the implicit dollar signs with their investments. The nature of how values spike is also unpredictable because of how inconsistent and ongoing the streetcar planning has been.

"For the H Street line," Julia Robey Christian, executive director of the Capitol Hill Association of Merchants & Professionals, said to the Council, "we've had a 2010 start date, a 2011 start date, a 2012 start date, and now a 2013 start date. Deadlines can't keep moving."

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(Photo: flickr/elvertbarnes)

Perhaps those Metrobus drivers do need protective shields, after all. A new video has emerged via AccessTheDMV and vlogger MeanBlackDude showing the aftermath of an alleged robbery on a D.C. Metrobus. An older man accuses a younger of stealing his wallet and begins drawing the bus operator and other passengers into the dispute. What stands out to me is the enclosed nature of the Metrobus for all involved. In such tight quarters, it's not hard to imagine escalation of tempers.

Watch the unsettling and tense few minutes in the video here:

Between this and those recent horrifying WTOP bus camera videos, the world of Metrobuses hasn't seemed so peaceful lately.

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Central 14th Street. (Photo: Google Street View)

D.C., make sure you've checked out the Office of Planning's Central 14th Street Corridor Vision Plan and Revitalization Strategy plan, released in draft and available for comment this past month. The comment period initially was set to end on Feb. 3 but has been extended as the office translates the plan into Spanish/Amharic to enable more input. The Office of Planning will then take all these comments and submit a final draft to Mayor Vince Gray in the weeks to come.

You can see the 78-page draft plan here.

So what's potentially in store for the 1.3 miles of central 14th Street from Spring Road to Longfellow Street? We're talking the blocks in upper Columbia Heights and the western part of Petworth (including Red Derby and Thaitanic II), the corridor that runs, broadly speaking, east of Rock Creek Park, with around 50 small businesses and more than 2,000 households.

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(Photo: flickr/DCist)

Brace yourself, Dupont Circle transit-lovers. WMATA today closes the Dupont Circle's southern entrance in order to replace the three escalators. The current escalators stretch 188 feet long and rise 85 feet up to the surface, and WMATA describes them as "among the least reliable and most difficult to maintain" of the system's 588. They were first installed in 1997 and will know the step of District feet no longer.

The entrance isn't expected to open up again for more than eight months, sadly, and you can read more on the bleak news and alternate transportation options at WMATA's site.

Yet most unexpectedly, WMATA's social media manager Brian Anderson began tweeting out photos of the expiring escalators shortly after 10 p.m. last night along with lyrics to "I Will Remember You," Sarah McLachlan's classic song about loss, from the official @WMATA Twitter account. Hilariously strange as well as fun, Anderson's tweets provoked more than a few Metro riders. You have to see these tweets and photos to believe them:

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The head of our controversial Taxi Commission. (Photo: John Hendel)

In December, Mayor Vince Gray, Councilmembers Mary Cheh and Tommy Wells, and D.C. Taxicab Commission chairman Ron Linton all stood together in the Wilson Building to present a vision of modern taxis that we could achieve within a year — credit card readers, GPS, all of it. But take a look at yesterday's hearing and witness disjointed confusion. Three of the same officials were back in the Wilson Building and again talking about the taxicab industry's legislative overhaul ... but the front they presented was hardly the unified and polished full court press they offered a month ago and the details of our taxicab modernization are hardly smooth or settled.

Why? No one can decide how to move forward with the specifics of the overhaul and in no instance was that clearer than in Linton's two-hour grilling from Councilmembers Cheh, Wells, Bowser, and Council Chairman Kwame Brown. Hundreds of taxi drivers, hospitality leaders, disability advocates, media, and others packed the Wilson Building for a hearing on two major taxicab bills.

Transportation committee head Mary Cheh was surprised, for instance, that the D.C. Taxicab Commission issued an 89-page request for vendor proposals on Jan. 25, seeking vendors to provide the Taxicab Smart Meter System that would allow credit-card payment, receipts that feature trip details, and screens in the back showing riders the GPS-outlined path the taxicab is taking. This proposal assumes all D.C. taxicabs will modernize using this one government-mandated piece of technology and that D.C. would pay for the installation, operation, and servicing of the smart meter, with no charge to taxi drivers or companies and funded by a 50-cent surcharge applied to the District's taxi riders. Linton imagines this surcharge as an ongoing source of funds that would exist for as long as the government allowed, expected to yield $8 to $12 million a year.

Tommy Wells distinguished two paths — the city government could either establish "standards" about how taxicabs should modernize (implemented on the drivers' and fleets' terms) or follow a more "prescriptive" path, in which the government picks the vendor and runs the equipment with little room for market options.

"I'm not sure which way to go," Wells explained to Linton. "I'm more inclined to setting standards." To set standards would allow taxi drivers and companies more freedom "to change and modernize" as technology evolved and different ways of fulfilling those government standards emerged.

Yet then there's that 89-page RFP, with a deadline of March 12, that clearly opts for the prescriptive option.

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Our new carriages for the disabled. (Photo: John Hendel)

Washington, D.C. has tested just 20 wheelchair-accessible taxicabs in the last two years, part of a subsidized pilot program run by Yellow Cab and Royal Cab, but prepare to see more in the next few months. Yesterday afternoon D.C. Taxicab Commission chairman Ron Linton told the D.C. Council he hopes to have 300 wheelchair-accessible taxis on the road by the end of the year. The upgrades would conceivably be paid for and go to serve two prominent D.C. entities — WMATA and D.C. Public Schools.

“We believe there is a way to contract with taxicabs to save them millions of dollars," Commissioner Linton told Council Chairman Kwame Brown in the Wilson Building yesterday as part of a drawn-out and contentious exchange in which Brown sought to shame Linton for not doing more to promote wheelchair-accessible cabs.

Linton’s motive is as focused on business as on equality, as our transit system and public school system would serve as taxicab industry clients. In the case of WMATA's $100-million MetroAccess transport for riders with disabilities, contractor Battle Transportation will be ending its service on Feb. 10 for what WAMU called "economic reasons," and Linton raised this as a possible entry point into that transportation market. According to WMATA chief spokesperson Dan Stessel, Battle has provide for about 35 of MV Transportation's 300+ MetroAccess routes but says those will be "seamlessly absorbed into MV's operation" when Battle leaves. Meanwhile, our public schools spend $92 million to transport 3,500 special needs students, a cost the Council and Mayor Vince Gray have sought to cut. Could taxis be the answer to these dual transportation challenges?

Linton said that D.C.’s taxis could save WMATA about $10 million a year in their services, and he has already met with Metro General Manager Richard Sarles to discuss the possibility. First would come a 90-day study on how to integrate D.C. taxicabs into these transport systems for those with special needs, and then, potentially, big-deal contracts that would positions taxis to move whole new populations of District residents.

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(Photo: flickr/manwithface)

At 11 a.m., the D.C. Council will host a hearing on how our city's taxicabs should "modernize," which to our politicians means everything from picking one uniform cab color to accepting credit cards to featuring GPS to better driver training. When talking taxis in our city of more than 8,000 drivers, here's seven major issues you should consider:

How innovation is implemented: Should the D.C. Council force specific technological equipment on all D.C. fleets or issue broader mandates with many ways to fulfill them? The folks at Taxi Magic as well as certain industry officials don't see taxis as quite so stone-age as D.C. officials paint them.

How D.C. politicians coordinate with taxicab fleets and their drivers: Yes, stakeholders will weigh in this morning. But is there real conversation and coordination as part of the Council's legislation? In December, taxi drivers gave the impression that Mayor Vince Gray and other politicians weren't including them in the process.

A question of taxicab color: Councilmember Mary Cheh surveyed more than 4,000 people about taxis and found people would pick yellow as a uniform taxi color, yet the Post reports Mayor Gray will push red and white.

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(Photo: Jay Westcott)

Why didn't Metro let riders know what was happening last night until hours and afters after the system malfunctioned? WMATA doesn't have any one reasonable excuse. The transit agency apologizes, hopes you'll forgive, and promises to do better.

"That failure should not have happened," WMATA chief spokesperson Dan Stessel said, who despite that communication failure only received three hours of sleep last night. "We should have been tweeting independently of the systems."

 Riders strongly agreed as dozens lashed out about the silence. Why were all voices MIA? If Stessel wasn't awake and seeing these tweets, why wasn't some other individual doing so? No alternative communications plan appeared to exist or emanate independently from Metro's control center.

When Metro broke last night, it broke hard. Power throughout much of the system failed due to a piece of equipment called the switch, which monitors the power feed to the facility, according to Stessel. The "partial power failure" of these elements, which comprise the rail and bus control facilities in Landover, Maryland, caused the WMATA website to fail, the alerts system to cease, as did the PIDs, and train operators on the Red, Orange and Blue lines to hold for at least 15 minutes, WMATA reports, though some riders suggest far longer waits. Train operators had no idea what was happening, apparently. Radio and signals continued to operate ... but the control center relied on computers to coordinate all the data and did suffer from the breakdown. "Driver says he doesn't have any communications," one person tweeted (see all the frenzied reactions from late last night, from 11 p.m. till about 1 a.m., here). Stessel began responding to press inquiries at 3:30 a.m. and released a press release on the incident, in which "Metro apologizes for the inconvenience" and stated that the power outage lasted about 15 minutes. "Radio and signal systems are independent and remained online, but desktop consoles and computer systems were affected," he told me in the late a.m. hours last night. "Preliminarily, the cause appears to be linked to a particular UPS [uninterruptible power supply]." But given the outage and the single-tracking, Stessel believes the riders who speak of long, miserable rides on the system.

"I absolutely believe every customer who says they were waiting an hour or nearly an hour on the platforms," Stessel told me. Even before the outage, he said, the headway on parts of the Orange Line was 30 to 35 minutes thanks to single-tracking.

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Trains were delayed forever. (Photo: flickr/millerustad)

WMATA's website died, communications fell apart, train operators left trains to walk the tunnels, delays were staggering, and for hours no one heard a word from anyone at the transit agency. How can riders maintain confidence after January 26?

The nightmare began sometime around 11 p.m. and continued until the system closed. I sent WMATA chief spokesperson Dan Stessel a message seeking comment at 12:22 a.m. and as of 2:30 a.m., haven't heard anything back or observed any other communications response, whether press release, tweet, or alert. The website was down from before midnight until well after 1 a.m. I first saw WMATA.com return to life at 1:34 a.m. Yet no human voice supplied any insight into the baffling failure. The silence was, as one person said, deafening. "Hundreds if not thousands of tweets from across the region started flying in right after 11 p.m. on Thursday night," wrote Mike Rupert at his Local Gov Chat blog late last night. "Yet both the @wmata Twitter handle and the semi-personal Twitter handle of its chief spokesperson Dan Stessel @dstessel were absolutely silent. In just two hours, Metro has killed any goodwill they have earned over the past year. They’ll have to work twice as heard to earn all that back now."

(Updated at 8:38 a.m., to include Metro's answer) WMATA's Stessel replied to my message at 3:30 a.m., ultimately, and Metro does have a press release out on its operational website now. He ascribes last night to a combination of planned single-tracking on the Red, Orange, and Blue lines and a "power failure at our control center. He says:

As a result of this work, trains were already operating at roughly 30-minute intervals.

Then, due to a power failure at our control center, trains were held in stations for about 15 minutes on those three lines — due to the workers on the tracks. Green and Yellow continued to operate.

Trains were held at 11:54 p.m. for about 15 minutes. Systems came back online at 12:08 a.m.

Radio and signal systems are independent and remained online, but desktop consoles and computer systems were affected.

Preliminarily, the cause appears to be linked to a particular UPS.

But the rider reaction seems to suggest something a little more severe and longer lasting than this. Stessel says the system was offline for 14 minutes but some of the reports of communications failure seem to begin nearly an hour before that, and the website seemed out until after 1 a.m. Holding the trains on top of track work could create some of the 45-minute waits people talked about but doesn't speak to the extent of people's confusion I observed last night.

Here are the reactions as they played out in real-time, chronicled on Storify. Read through the night's chaos. The details are worth it and available after the jump.

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Keep it secret. (Photo: Jay Westcott)

Metro board member Tom Bulger raised a surprising question during this morning's WMATA meeting. The board was discussing Metro safety and the various incidents that snarl through our transit system, including some high-profile suicides in recent months. Nearly 20 people died of apparently their own volition between 2009 and 2011. Bulger was concerned. They seem, he said, to be happening more often. He's served on the board since July 2011.

"I have a Golden Gate Bridge suggestion — they don’t report them," Bulger said. "We need to talk about how we handle these suicides, which are related to a number of factors. Maybe the economy. I don’t know. ... We might be better off not knowing about ‘em." 

The immediate response was opposition. How could Metro hide suicides? When someone kills themselves on the Golden Gate Bridge, the impact on traffic is not similar to the delays we would see on the Metro, one person replied. Others quickly shifted the subject, emphasizing instead Metro's suicide prevention program and saying that Metro should address the status of the initiative at a coming meeting. No one else voiced support for hiding Metro suicides.

But once that portion of the meeting ended, the WMATA microphone continued to pick up the chatter, and people continued to discuss Bulger's strange idea.

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(Photo: John Hendel)

The results of Councilmember Mary Cheh's unscientific taxi survey are officially here, more than 4,000 responses later. These results come four days before she holds a Council hearing on taxi modernization and less than 24 hours after she checked out the expensive, sleek wheelchair-accessible taxicabs that the city has tested in the last couple years.

Among the many results, two things stand out. Our city's taxi passengers expressed a desire for two amenities at an extraordinarily high level and I suspect that implementing these two features alone would go a long way toward changing people's perceptions.

Should D.C. require credit card readers in taxicabs? 94% say yes. 

Should D.C. require "uniform cruising lights to signal if the taxi is available"? 92% say yes.

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(Photo: Jay Westcott)

Call it bad timing. This morning the WMATA board is discussing the recent safety report and how to make the system better. The numbers don't really inspire much confidence, particularly those involving rider injuries. They're up 35%, according to one page. I also like how WMATA, when referencing the 27 National Transportation Safety Board recommendations, refer to "the Fort Totten Incident." Fitting enough for a Powerpoint slideshow but it's a grimly sanitized phrase for "the worst accident in Metro history" when WMATA trains killed nine people in mid-2009. They're talking all the big hits of recent months, from friction rings to suicides to smoke and fire reports to 10-car trains.

Just as WMATA board members talked about how to make the safer and more secure, Metro rail cracked early this morning at Tenleytown on the inbound track, creating delays on the Red Line throughout the morning. "Trains are single tracking between Friendship Heights and Van Ness with delays in both directions. The disruption is expected to cause 20-30 minute delays throughout the morning commute." You can imagine the moans and blips of frustration throughout the last couple hours. The WMATA homepage is bright red with the announcement of single-tracking (I'll at least give credit for putting the news of the delay front and center). RED LINE SERVICE DISRUPTION, the WMATA homepage declares.

One rider even found himself literally in the dark. But WMATA, at the least, knew the situation — there were two cars where the lights went off, the transit agency told the rider on Twitter. Although cracked rail is a naturally reoccurring problem in cold winter months, it's ironic as well as fitting that the WMATA board are chatting about the very topic of rail safety as the delays happen.

 

edroso edroso

This morning's Red Line delay is handled with #wmata 's usual maladroitness. Plus the lights are off in my car.

Jan 26 Favorite Retweet Reply

 

in reply to @edroso↑

@wmata
@wmata @edroso are you on 5016 or 5017? If so, it's been identified. ^BA
Jan 26 via TweetDeck Favorite Retweet Reply

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Mary Cheh talks to the head of Yellow Cab D.C. (Photo: John Hendel)

Roy Spooner Sr. nodded and talked patiently with D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh this afternoon next to the Wilson Building. He's the general manager of Yellow Cab of D.C., she's the head of the D.C. transportation committee. Both have a thoughtful way about how they talk, standing outside in the chill air next to a 2010 Toyota Sienna taxicab. Cheh has talked a lot about taxicabs in recent months, from her technological overhaul of taxis planned for later this year (credit cards!) to her recent positions on Uber (she's a fan of options).

But today Cheh met with Spooner in order to learn more about and to see one of Spooner's wheelchair-accessible taxis, 20 of which are now out on D.C. streets as part of a program that started in February of 2010. Yellow Cab  and Royal Cab offer 10 each and have tested the $32,500 ADA-approved minivans to see about expanding our city's transportation options for people with disabilities. The program goes by the names "Roll D.C." as well as the drier "Wheelchair Accessible Taxicab Pilot" and we can thank the District, the Council of Governments, and the Transportation Planning Board for putting these first 20 vehicles into motion. The Federal Transit Administration provided a $1 million grant, which the D.C. Taxicab Commission matched with $200,000. Several others have helped in the last year, with the D.C. Office of Disabilities Rights sharing its advice and the Council of Governments providing professional training for the companies' drivers.

"They're not easy to acquire and they're not easy to maintain," Spooner told me about the unconventional taxicabs. "The biggest challenge was vehicle acquisition."

Spooner and Wendy Klancher, a transportation planner with the Washington Council of Governments, told me that the pilot developed out a longstanding demand for such wheelchair-accessible taxicabs and require significant coordination and treatment, such as dispatch services. But Klancher calls the 20-taxicab pilot a success and points to a response time of 30 minutes or less for trips that aren't booked ahead of time and a more-than-90% on-time response for those with appointments. The specially accessible taxicabs cost no more to the passenger than a traditional taxicab.

Spooner led me to the back of the Toyota Sienna minivan to show me the full size of the vehicle. I took a good look at all the space, equipped with straps and able to fit wheelcahirs and scooters easily as long as they're under 600 pounds and no more than 30 inches wide by 48 inches long.

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What Austin commuters talk about online. (Photo: TRB)

The Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting is this week in D.C. and I've been looking through the treasure trove of research papers that many different experts and academics have submitted on every topic imaginable.

Jennifer S. Evans-Cowley of Ohio State and Greg Griffin of Austin's Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization and adjunct lecturer at Texas State University-San Marcos have released a paper addressing how transportation planners and transit authorities have taken advantage of social media. They conducted a mixed-methods analysis of what's going on on Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking platforms and coordinated with the Social Networking and Planning Project to collect results. Among their conclusions they note:

The growth in use of location-aware social media, such as geo-tagged microblogging, has the potential to extend planning participation to citizens, who could digitally tag such planning issues as in this case the location of traffic congestions, areas where bike paths are needed or other transportation related issues. Smartphone technologies have the potential to further democratize planning by allowing participants to join the planning conversation from their regular locations and on their own terms. We contend that micro-participation provide new and valuable opportunities for public participation that should be integrated into a broad-scale participation process.

What these researchers are considering is a little phenomenon they call "micro-participation," something I've observed in D.C. in different ways.

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(Photo: John Hendel)

Half a century after the last D.C. streetcar stopped running, the D.C. Office of Planning presents its Streetcar Land Use Study, as City Paper shared yesterday evening. I've begun glancing through the 80 or so pages of the report and my first reaction is how much the narrative places us in the imagined future in which all 37 miles of the streetcar system are up and running.

Can you imagine? After all the fits and starts that have afflicted the D.C. street, here we have a document that fully examines the implications of having the streetcars everywhere. Mayor Vince Gray had reiterated his commitment to the streetcar in December, but the focus there inevitably focuses on the short term and the practical deadlines, on the couple miles of streetcar coming to H Street purportedly in 2013. But the Office of Planning imagines the age where more than 50% of D.C. residents live within walking distance of a streetcar. More than 50%! The report says this will transform the transit potential of about 72,000 households in the District and add $5 to $7 billion to the city's property values.

I never quite realized how much such a streetcar system has the potential to kickstart pedestrian life. The government notes that "streetcar service would increase pedestrian activity within the streetcar corridors." In turn that would have the potential to trigger more business activity and make people feel safer. As it stands, D.C. ranks as the number-two city in the U.S. for bicyclists and pedestrians. The government already has initiated many efforts to improve our roads with pedestrians in minds, adding medians and bike lanes and attempting to calm traffic, like with Maryland Avenue NE. Streetcars give people places to walk to.

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(Photo: Courtesy of Sam Adams)

The 48-year-old mayor of Portland, Oregon is named Sam Adams, wears hipster glasses, and has been in office since January of 2009. While he's not quite the same as Portlandia's Kyle MacLachlan-portrayed mayor, he seems like a charming enough politician ... all the moreso because he recently visited the corner of K and 17th Street in Washington, D.C. to try our "bikeshare machine," as he calls Capital Bikeshare in the video below. Adams was in town for the 80th winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, held from Jan. 18-20, and he uploaded this clip in the last 24 hours.

The Portland mayor studies the dock, explains the cost of the bikeshare system, and then takes to the handlebars.

We see the mayor ride around the streets of downtown D.C. very casually and apparently quite happily. Adams is in charge of a city that understands the bicycle, that is often elevated as a mecca of biking culture. Portland, after all, trumpets a stunning percentage of bicycle commuters, with around 6% of the population out on the bike lanes.

Although watch out, Mr. Mayor — you briefly bicycle on downtown sidewalk there in that video clip, and in the District, that's illegal. Don't underestimate the myriad dizzying biking laws and confusions in the capital.

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