(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

D.C. lays claim to just six traffic fatalities this year as of May 11, according to the police department, compared to 14 traffic fatalities at this time last year. That's a drop of 57.1% and an encouraging sign, quietly spotlighted in the department's weekly newsletter among many other crime statistics.

This drop in traffic fatalities suggests that perhaps all our initiatives, from traffic safety officers to better biking infrastructure to signs warning against blocking the box and educating drivers about safety through concerted local campaigns and broader regional efforts like Street Smart, may have an effect. Last year there were 32 traffic fatalities total, 25 the year before that, and 33 the year before that. Those numbers are already much lower than the numbers of killed commuters in years past — like the 69 D.C. traffic fatalities of 2003, for instance. We're nearly halfway through the year, and six dead is, while obviously still unfortunate and a tragedy to be avoided, putting us on track for what may be a record low. It's less than half of the fatalities at this time last year, and if our streets stay as safe in the second half of 2012, we'll have the lowest number of fatalities as of at least the last 17 years. Will it be possible to one day end traffic deaths? Gabe Klein, former director of the District Department of Transportation, believes yes and hopes to achieve zero deaths within 10 years in Chicago, where he currently leads transportation initiatives.

Another more controversial tactic in D.C.'s broader strategy of traffic safety is the expanded use of automated traffic enforcement cameras. You all know the talk of speed cameras, red light cameras. D.C. Mayor Vince Gray has said he would welcome speed cameras all over our city to help ensure traffic safety. Earlier this month, the MPD announced another 20+ speed cameras that'll begin issuing tickets starting June 6, 2012, as the Post noted earlier today. Here's those locations and their speed limits:

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(Photo: flickr/elvertbarnes)

News flash — the U.S. Park Police and pedicab operators don't exactly get along on the National Mall.

Oskar Mosco, a manager for National Pedicabs twice arrested now, pretended to videotape Park Police officers in the moments preceding his second arrest in late March but now has begun truly recording moments of friction in the territory where dozens of his colleagues transport tourists and residents alike in a burgeoning industry that exists in regulatory limbo. Two days ago, one Park Police officer issued Mosco four citations that "appear to be retaliatory in nature for my shooting this footage of his interaction with another pedicab operator," he told me. The tickets were for distracted driving, not signaling, obstructing, and for parking in a no parking zone, according to Mosco, and amount to $255 ... but the pedicab operator isn't worried. He suspects these tickets, like countless others issued to pedicab operators, will be dismissed. Mosco has been outspoken in calling such behavior harassment for more than half a year now.

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(Photo: WMATA)

Tomorrow WMATA will open a new bike parking facility that it calls "a first-of-its-kind" for Metro and that will be instrumental to achieving the transit agency's larger access goals for bicyclists over the next two decades. Say hello to the Bike & Ride, a secure and enclosed storage facility for more than 100 bicycles in a 2,400-square-foot room on the first level of the College Park Metro station garage.

"Initially, we plan to charge users 5 cents/hour for most of the day, and 2 cents/hour during overnight hours," WMATA's Justin Antos of the Office of Planning wrote last fall when construction was underway. "The off-peak discount is designed for customers who want to park their bike overnight as a 'station bike.' This will work out to about 50 cents/day for most commuters."

BikeLink has partnered with WMATA to help run the facility, and you can review the initial details of setting up an account here. Any bicyclist looking to use the Bike & Ride will receive a BikeLink card, and when you first use the facility, WMATA will photograph your ID for verification purposes. This one-time step costs about $5, after which you'll only have to worry about the low amounts listed above: 5 cents an hour from 8 a.m. to midnight, and 2 cents an hour other times. The facility comes with security cameras and allows you to store your bike for up to 10 days. Given D.C.'s many fears about bike thievery, the security element of a Bike & Ride seems like the best incentive.

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(Photo: flickr/takomabiblet)

This morning at 11:30 a.m., Mayor Vince Gray will venture into a Columbia Heights alleyway to replace the last of about 1,360 old alley street lights with newer energy-efficient LED lights expected to save 591,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year as well as reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by 719 tons. Most street lights now last about four or five years, and these new ones will likely last about a dozen.

The contract first moved forward in the middle of last year. "LED provides better power, better color — it's a white color," Jama Abdi, an engineer for the District Department of Transportation, told me last July.

The first of the LED alley lights, as part of the million-dollar contract now concluding, was expected to have been replaced late last summer. Washington, D.C. has taken close to 10 months to complete the replacement of these 1,360 lights. Last summer, DDOT said it hoped to replace about 1,000 over the course of six months. The District government has also stated it's looking into how to integrate LED lights more broadly across the city's 68,000 street lights, nearly nine out of 10 of which are high-pressure sodium lamps.

But the alleys mark a good start. The public space is critical for a community's pedestrians, who rely on the spaces to cut through and circulate. Safe passage frequently calls for other residents using the alleys and proper illumination. Don't underestimate the transportation implications of a good, functioning alley in any town.

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(Photo: flickr/wwwShootJoecom)

How likely are you to survive if a car strikes you at 20 miles/hour? 30 miles/hour? 40?

The Chicago Department of Transportation, led by former DDOT director Gabe Klein, includes the following chilling and instructive chart in its new transportation priorities report, a reminder of what many already know but helpful to see again. Chicago is pushing to lower its residential speed limits from 30 miles/hour to 20 in the name of reducing traffic fatalities — the city hopes to lower the number to zero within a decade. Last year D.C. Councilmember Muriel Bowser suggested that D.C. lower its residential speed limits from 25 miles/hour to 15 but that never passed into law.

(Photo: CDOT)

Note: I've seen the exact percentages vary over the years depending on what sources you look at. Consider this stat from New York City's transportation department last year: "If a pedestrian is hit by a car traveling 40 m.p.h. or faster, there's a 70 percent chance that pedestrian will be killed; at 30 m.p.h., there's an 80 percent chance that the pedestrian will live." The same principle applies, but the chances differ considerably. In 1999, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration pointed to a classic collection of studies from the early '90s that together suggested "5 percent of pedestrians would die when struck by a vehicle traveling 20 mph, about 40 percent for vehicles traveling 30 mph, about 80 percent for vehicles traveling 40 mph, and nearly 100 percent for speeds over 50 mph." These numbers come close to what Chicago just released. These exact Chicago numbers appear to come from the U.K. Department of Transportation's 1987 analysis, entitled Killing Speed and Saving Lives and cited frequently enough by the federal government and pedestrian safety advocates ever since.

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(Photo: flickr/orijinal)

Just as I praise Mayor Vince Gray for his ambitious transportation rhetoric in D.C., Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his transportation lieutenants, including former District Department of Transportation voices such as Gabe Klein (our former director and now Emanuel's) and Scott Kubly, have done one better and unveiled their own set of ambitious goals worth noting.

Key among them — "Eliminate all pedestrian, bicycle, and overall traffic crash fatalities within 10 years."

Well, that's a nice idea now, isn't it? According to the city's transportation department action agenda, Chicago wants to cut bicyclist and pedestrian injuries by 50% each within a half decade and the total of all roadway crashes and injuries by 10% a year.

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Trips in millions. (Photo: WMATA)

Metrorail is by far the dominant mode of transit in Washington, D.C. The average weekday ridership is about 732,000 trips compared to the Metrobus's average weekday record of about 444,000 trips or so. There's a huge difference in favor of the Metro.

But the Metro has created new challenges for its riders in the past year, with breakdowns (offloads, friction rings, a derailment, even the gloom of suicides) along with what has lately been constant track work that often makes the Metro far less convenient, especially on the weekends. No one wants headways of 15 to 30 minutes. The rail system no longer seems as trusty and reliable as a way to get around outside of its weekday rush-hour windows and has, more and more, come to resemble a commuter rail as WMATA rebuilds. As these delays have become depressingly business-as-usual, have residents abandoned the Metrorail in favor of the Metrobus?

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(Photo: flickr/roryfinneren)

This summer New York City is launching CitiBike, its bikeshare system of 10,000 bikes and 600 stations, to a mixture of reactions, but one big effect is a renewed focus on how D.C.'s Capital Bikeshare, with more than 150 stations and more than a year and a half old, operates and charges both users and taxpayers. What philosophies guide the NYC bikehare system compared to D.C.'s and how do they match up to others around the world? Perhaps most important is pricing.

Consider the global comparison of bikeshare prices in this chart*, featured courtesy of WNYC's Stephen Reader (and hat tip to Transportation Nation for showcasing it). When looking at hourlong and 90-minute bike rides, New York's new system will cost more than other systems despite promises of "cheap" trips. CitiBike says it's "privately sponsored, privately launched and privately operated, with no public funding" whereas Capital Bikeshare runs as a public-private partnership of Arlington, D.C., and Alta Bikeshare. D.C., based on the times listed in the chart above, is comparable to most other systems and has the benefit of costing many members nothing for trips under 30 minutes, the same as the new CitiBike system. The crucial difference when considering these shorter, free trips is overall membership charges (a NYC annual membership costs $95 compared to Capital Bikeshare's $75, and CitiBike's 24-hour pass is about $3 more expensive than one in D.C.).

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(Photo: flickr/daquellamanera)

Several Congressmen, both Republican and Democrat, cheered on new survey results they're calling bipartisan and astounding this morning at the House Triangle near Capitol Hill. Why? The results, from a national Princeton Survey Research Associates International poll of more than 1,000 people, revealed that 83% of respondents support "maintaining or growing the federal funding streams that pay for sidewalks, bikeways, and bike paths."

These conclusions, of course, directly support the central issue for which the poll's sponsoring organization, America Bikes, advocates, which is worth noting. The survey consciously led respondents through a series of questions and detail before receiving their answers about increasing or maintaining sidewalk and bike funding. Here was the sequence of questioning, according to the full white paper on the poll:

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(Photo: John Hendel)

How much is not paying parking tickets worth to you? One transportation company valued the virtue at more than half a million dollars.

When Car2Go, the international car-sharing company that touts 38-cent-a-minute, blue-and-white smartcars and bases its U.S. operations out of Austin, came to D.C. this spring with its fleet of 200 vehicles, one of the biggest selling points was that its members would not have to worry about most parking restrictions. Meters? Forget about 'em. Car2Go members only have to pay attention to more serious restrictions such as rush-hour zones and street sweeping, according to the deal that Car2Go hashed out with the D.C. Department of Transportation over the past six months. Katie Stafford, the Car2Go communications manager for North America, said the agreement covers "metered parking and the zone 9 residential parking permit."

The deal's final cost? $578,000 for the first year of the parking agreement.

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(Photo: flickr/jessemillan)

May is National Bike Safety Month, and plenty of local events help celebrate the mode of transportation — tomorrow is National Bike to School Day, and D.C. children will gather at Lincoln Park to ride in bike trains to Capitol Hill schools; on Friday, May 11, the Washington Area Bicyclist Association is holding its annual Bikefest fundraiser in Eastern Market; Bike to Work Week is happening May 14 to 18 (and Bike to Work Day is May 18).

But what of bike safety? The need for proper education, infrastructure, and practices remains vital, which holds true across all modes of transportation whether walking, driving, or taking transit. Consider last Friday's report from AAA Mid-Atlantic that at least nine bicyclists have died in the last 12 months throughout the Washington metro area and Maryland. Here's the spotlighted incidents:

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(Photo: flickr/indydinawithmrwonderful)

Surprise surprise. If you spend a long time driving to and from work every day, you may end up less healthy as a result of being less active. One emerging health fear of recent years concerns sitting ourselves to death, and our commutes are a part of this sedentary pattern. A study published in the June issue of American Journal of Preventative Medicine found greater commuting distances by car are associated with "decreased cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), increased weight, and other indicators of metabolic risk," based on a review of 4,300 commuters in Texas. Bummer.

Drive more than 10 miles, worry about higher blood pressure. Higher than 15? There's a higher likelihood of obesity.

D.C. is infamous for its gridlock, and plenty of commuters spend countless minutes trapped in traffic. Even a relatively short commute of two or three miles can take far longer than it should if it's through the core of the District — and may have, consequently, some of the same adverse effects of longer commutes of greater physical distance. The Texas Transportation Institute ranked D.C. as the most congested city in America last fall, with an average of 74 hours a year lost to the road.

Luckily D.C. affords the opportunity for walking, biking, and transit, modes of commuting which may come with fewer harmful health effects. As The Atlantic Cities wrote, long commutes are "easy to loathe" as it is. Now we have even better reasons.

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(Photo: Jay Westcott)

WMATA's doors have created more than a few problems in the last few months, and the transit agency's latest Vital Signs report, which includes the statistics through March of 2012 and will be presented later this week to the Board of Directors, confirms the severity of the issue. During the first quarter of 2012, Metro experienced 17% more delays due to railcar issues than in the first quarter of 2011, and many of these issues relate to the Metro railcar doors.

Any D.C. commuter is familiar with some of the door concerns — rail doors that don't open, doors that close too fast, doors that malfunction after commuters try to hold them open or dive through at the last minute. Metro has about 1,100 railcars and most commuters have encountered at least a few that don't work properly. The Post identified door problems as the number-one source of Metro delays in a sharp mid-March piece on the topic.

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(Photo: flickr/pasa47)

Downtown D.C. has a parking problem — there's never any available spaces.

Last week the D.C. Council pushed forward plans to add performance parking to parts of the city beyond the pilot zones of Columbia Heights, the Ball Park, and H Street NE and emphasized downtown D.C.'s need for better parking management. Performance parking charges drivers based on the parking demand and time of day and is reputed to free up many spaces throughout the day (because who wants to pay even higher prices for parking, right?). When the District Department of Transportation considered how performance parking worked in Columbia Heights after two years, the city noted that only a little less than half the pilot blocks were 85% full or more, meaning there was typically still some available parking. The average rate, according to DDOT, fell below 85%. Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking, says that performance parking prices should aim to create a space occupancy rate of about 85%.

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(Photo: Joshua Yospyn)

A precocious young man named Max, who on Twitter describes himself as a "power ranger, rocket ship builder, pizza expert," has filmed a shaky but fascinating nine-minute video on D.C. bike laws that illustrates just how little people know of the specific rules that govern our city's bicyclists. He interviews about a half dozen random people about various relevant biking questions and receives a healthy range of answers.

Questions include: Are you allowed to ride on the sidewalk in all areas of D.C.? Do you have to ride in a bike lane? Is it legal to talk on a cellphone while riding? Max provides answers after giving people a chance to respond.

"This video," Max writes, "was intended to inform people about the bike laws and prove that nobody knows them in D.C."

Knowledge (or lack thereof) of biking law is one complication that the Washington Area Bicyclist Association and other bicycling advocates have observed in the past. WABA provides a pocket guide to D.C. bike law that addresses many of the same questions that Max brings up to these D.C. pedestrians. As Washington, D.C. expands Capital Bikeshare and embarks on many other biking projects in 2012, knowing these laws will be all the more vital.

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(Photo: John Hendel)

Earlier this week, I hopped on a Metro train during rush hour and encountered multiple noteworthy things. First, I quickly realized the best Metro announcer around was in charge of this train and was telling people, as per usual, to spread out along the platform. Second, this was one of the decked-out Rush+ railcars covered in promotional slogans spotlighting the rush-hour service coming to WMATA on June 18.

But then I looked closer at one of the Rush+ slogans. What the rush+ is this all about? the sign asks.

Underneath is another scrawl in dark black ink, one that initially looked professional and part of the display. This next line answered the first question. No hesitation in this answer: SCREWING OVER CUSTOMERS.

WMATA, with its Rush+ flair in stations and on trains, has tried to tell people to look forward to Rush+ and its purported expanded service for 110,000 riders on the Green, Yellow, Blue, and Orange lines ... but clearly a grassroots sense of doubt has begun to take hold.

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(Photo: flickr/helgaslobsterstew)

A Metro train hit a female rider sometime after 2 p.m. this afternoon at the U Street Metro station.

WMATA's homepage is announcing the title line above in a big red banner with the promise of details to follow. I saw the announcement first on the homepage, followed shortly after by a 2:25 p.m. announcement on the @WMATA Twitter account that the Green and Yellow line trains are single-tracking between Georgia Avenue and Mount Vernon Square and bypassing U Street. Shuttle buses are apparently traveling to and from Columbia Heights this afternoon.

Metro confirms that the incident appears intentional — a suicide attempt — and that a rescue operation is underway at this time. More details to come.

Update, 2:50 p.m.: Rotimi Oyewole shares a photo of what the U Street Metro looks like from outside, with police cars and emergency cones blocking traffic.

Update, 3:07 p.m.: WMATA reported just before 3 p.m. that trains have begun servicing the U Street Metro station once more but continue to single track through the stretch and experience some delays.

Suicide attempts, unfortunately, have continued on our transit system over the last year and Metro has long been in the midst of a program to train its employees to recognize suicidal behavior and to post suicide hotlines in its 86 Metro stations. The program has encountered delays. These attempts happen across many different rail systems around the world, all of which struggle with the response in different ways.

Update, 3:45 p.m.: The Green and Yellow line delays appear to be clearing a bit. WMATA spokesperson Dan Stessel tells me that as of 3:29, the singe tracking stretch has been reduced to Georgia Ave-Petworth to U Street. If the afternoon wasn't already hectic enough, over at L'Enfant Metro, two juveniles released pepper spray.

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(Photo: flickr/muohace_dc)

Finding parking tends to be a chore in any urban environment, especially in the popular neighborhoods downtown. Shouldn't technology have fixed the problem by now? D.C. has about 17,000 metered spaces overall and on some days, it feels like they're all full.

One helpful strategy may involve real-time parking meter data. The D.C. Council recommends the following in today's 87-page budget report in a section for the District Department of Transportation:

The Committee directs DDOT to provide an assessment of whether real-time parking meter usage data can be made available to the public on a real-time basis, including any reasons why such data should not be made available. DDOT shall also provide a strategy and timeline for making such data available. DDOT shall provide this estimate by October 1, 2012.

Real-time parking meter data would create a lot of potential opportunity for people in search of parking. Not only would a person at home be able to get a sense of how crowded streets are downtown, but down the road, there'd be potential for technology to identify open spaces for a person in the midst of traffic. Why couldn't a company use any real-time public data on meter usage to augment a GPS system to locate the open spaces? Urban transportation would be far easier. People already use real-time, GPS-based apps to help determine the crowding levels of bikeshare stations and to find the location of car-sharing vehicles. The same principles and real-time technology should one day be applied to the far more common and frustrating dilemma of finding a good parking space. Data from meter usage or from sensors (as some cities have considered) would help create a digital picture of how cars are utilizing the city's spaces.

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(Photo: TBD)

D.C. has finally begun making some important hires in recent months, critical to multiple transportation projects in the works. First the District Department of Transportation hired Carl Jackson in January to lead its progressive transportation initiatives, from the streetcar to the Circulator to biking. And last Monday, DDOT's new parking czar Angelo Rao began work. Both positions have a strong bearing on the District's multi-modal plans and future.

Parking in particular will play a crucial role as D.C. struggles to manage its gridlock and transportation priorities. Mayor Vince Gray identified parking as one of the short-term priorities in his Sustainable D.C. plans, which call for three out of four trips to be car-free within 20 years. Of the two short-term actions the city needs: "Reduce building parking minimums and increase the availability of on-street parking through citywide performance parking districts."

Luckily Angelo Rao's sensibilities seem to fit right into the direction that D.C. is heading — although they have apparently provoked controversy in the past.

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(Photo: Jay Westcott)

Yesterday Metro reported 27 problems on its rail system. Perhaps early morning Blue Line commuters noted a delay of nine minutes due to train hitting a deer at Van Dorn Street Metro just before 6 a.m.? Then there was the 3:46 p.m. brake problem that purportedly delayed Red Line riders around six minutes at New York Ave Metro. Exactly a half hour later, another Red Line train encountered delays at Rhode Island thanks to a door problem and was removed from service.

Yes, you guessed it. The daily Metrorail Service Reports are back. It's a victory for transparency in an agency struggling to avoid the impression that it's not.

WMATA restored the daily accounting of its delays and problems on Monday, April 30. The report is a simple tally: time, problem, and a calculated amount of delay. You can view yesterday's report here.

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