D.C. needs to get a lot more car friendly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If we ever get back to normal, L Street NW will be a parking lot. 20th Street also. in many places there is only one lane that goes through, where there used to be 3 or 4 lanes. I drive kids to school in the morning and then proceed to my office downtown. Metro and biking are not an option.

You should have school buses taking your kids to school. And metro and buses should be an option. Sadly, I've been in your shoes and I agree. They are not. This city is dysfunctional in terms of its public transit, which is a damn shame.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm for options. Bike lanes, ample parking, safe pedestrian crossings, good public transport. The bikers and the greenies (who the development bros sometimes masquerade as) are never for options tho. They're just for "their way" of getting around. Alienating and annoying.

Options are fine. But what we DON'T need is more lanes for cars.

And you’ve just proved the PPPs point.

You want to live in a suburban cul-de-sac you can do that.

Manhattan is the greatest urban area in the world and 36% of its land area is road. It’s this resilient street grid and a resilient transit infrastructure that has created the conditions for NYC to flourish.

The goal of transportation infrastructure is to move the most people the most quickly and efficiently. And when cities do that well, that’s what makes them vibrant.

Right now there are restaurants closing in DC and opening in Pike & Rose and the Mosaic district. Maybe some reflection on transportation infrastructure could inform why that is.

You think driving in Manhattan is an example of... good?? Did you visit once on Thanksgiving day???

A huge percentage of New Yorkers don't drive and don't own cars. A big percentage of the cars on NYC streets are taxis and ubers. NYC has robust mass transit.
And, I'm not sure why you brought up Mosaic district - that place can be a traffic mess

45% of NYC households own a car. Specifically for Manhattan it’s 22% of households who own cars and 8% of Manhattan workers drive to work, which is over 100,000 people. Lots of car ownership in NYC, lots of cars in Manhattan and lots of Manhattanites commuting with cars.

A person who has never lived in Manhattan, or never lived in Manhattan without a doorman and a parking garage points out that the 22% of residents who have range rovers parked in their parking garages to avoid the jitney and see the grandparents in New Jersey count as driving. The fact that only 8% of those cars are used daily tells you a lot more... If you were capable of hearing it.

You seem upset about something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we ever get back to normal, L Street NW will be a parking lot. 20th Street also. in many places there is only one lane that goes through, where there used to be 3 or 4 lanes. I drive kids to school in the morning and then proceed to my office downtown. Metro and biking are not an option.

You should have school buses taking your kids to school. And metro and buses should be an option. Sadly, I've been in your shoes and I agree. They are not. This city is dysfunctional in terms of its public transit, which is a damn shame.

DC will get its wish which will be less cars but the consequence will be less consumers spending money in DC, supporting the DC tax base with that 10% restaurant tax.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm for options. Bike lanes, ample parking, safe pedestrian crossings, good public transport. The bikers and the greenies (who the development bros sometimes masquerade as) are never for options tho. They're just for "their way" of getting around. Alienating and annoying.

Options are fine. But what we DON'T need is more lanes for cars.

And you’ve just proved the PPPs point.

You want to live in a suburban cul-de-sac you can do that.

Manhattan is the greatest urban area in the world and 36% of its land area is road. It’s this resilient street grid and a resilient transit infrastructure that has created the conditions for NYC to flourish.

The goal of transportation infrastructure is to move the most people the most quickly and efficiently. And when cities do that well, that’s what makes them vibrant.

Right now there are restaurants closing in DC and opening in Pike & Rose and the Mosaic district. Maybe some reflection on transportation infrastructure could inform why that is.

You think driving in Manhattan is an example of... good?? Did you visit once on Thanksgiving day???

That’s the whole point. You seem to miss it. Manhattan is the most successful urban area in the world because of good planning (1811 street grid) and resilient and efficient transportation options. The chaos, the crowds, the noise, the traffic, the people, all of it is what makes NYC such a vibrant and dynamic city. That’s the attraction. That’s what drives the economy.

You on the other hand want to turn a city into a suburban cup-de-sac and what I will tell you is that you may get your wish, but you will also lose the amenities that city living provided. You cannot have it all. It doesn’t work that way.

If you want to see Manhattan thriving look at early film of it full of pedestrians and without cars....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If we ever get back to normal, L Street NW will be a parking lot. 20th Street also. in many places there is only one lane that goes through, where there used to be 3 or 4 lanes. I drive kids to school in the morning and then proceed to my office downtown. Metro and biking are not an option.

If only we had more lanes there would be less traffic.

-not someone from LA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we ever get back to normal, L Street NW will be a parking lot. 20th Street also. in many places there is only one lane that goes through, where there used to be 3 or 4 lanes. I drive kids to school in the morning and then proceed to my office downtown. Metro and biking are not an option.

If only we had more lanes there would be less traffic.

-not someone from LA

If only there were zero lanes there would be no traffic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm for options. Bike lanes, ample parking, safe pedestrian crossings, good public transport. The bikers and the greenies (who the development bros sometimes masquerade as) are never for options tho. They're just for "their way" of getting around. Alienating and annoying.

Options are fine. But what we DON'T need is more lanes for cars.

And you’ve just proved the PPPs point.

You want to live in a suburban cul-de-sac you can do that.

Manhattan is the greatest urban area in the world and 36% of its land area is road. It’s this resilient street grid and a resilient transit infrastructure that has created the conditions for NYC to flourish.

The goal of transportation infrastructure is to move the most people the most quickly and efficiently. And when cities do that well, that’s what makes them vibrant.

Right now there are restaurants closing in DC and opening in Pike & Rose and the Mosaic district. Maybe some reflection on transportation infrastructure could inform why that is.

You think driving in Manhattan is an example of... good?? Did you visit once on Thanksgiving day???

A huge percentage of New Yorkers don't drive and don't own cars. A big percentage of the cars on NYC streets are taxis and ubers. NYC has robust mass transit.
And, I'm not sure why you brought up Mosaic district - that place can be a traffic mess

45% of NYC households own a car. Specifically for Manhattan it’s 22% of households who own cars and 8% of Manhattan workers drive to work, which is over 100,000 people. Lots of car ownership in NYC, lots of cars in Manhattan and lots of Manhattanites commuting with cars.

A person who has never lived in Manhattan, or never lived in Manhattan without a doorman and a parking garage points out that the 22% of residents who have range rovers parked in their parking garages to avoid the jitney and see the grandparents in New Jersey count as driving. The fact that only 8% of those cars are used daily tells you a lot more... If you were capable of hearing it.

You seem upset about something.

You’re going to need to provide a citation here. The streets were designed in 1811 when horses and carriages were popular form of travel. The first motor vehicles were called “horseless carriages” because they essentially took the chassis of a carriage and added an engine. So the city was designed for the precursor of the modern car. If you actually cared about being facts, you would know that motor vehicle uptake was facilitated by her fact that horses and horse drawn carriages were more dangerous than cars and they didn’t leave the city covered in poop, which was a public health crisis. And there is your history lesson for the day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we ever get back to normal, L Street NW will be a parking lot. 20th Street also. in many places there is only one lane that goes through, where there used to be 3 or 4 lanes. I drive kids to school in the morning and then proceed to my office downtown. Metro and biking are not an option.

If only we had more lanes there would be less traffic.

-not someone from LA

If only there were zero lanes there would be no traffic.

Wow. Clueless people keep completely missing the point. LA has TONS of lanes. And yet it has TONS of traffic congestion problems. More lanes does not solve the problem. We DO NOT need to turn DC into LA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If we ever get back to normal, L Street NW will be a parking lot. 20th Street also. in many places there is only one lane that goes through, where there used to be 3 or 4 lanes. I drive kids to school in the morning and then proceed to my office downtown. Metro and biking are not an option.

Where do you live that metro and bike are not an option? Why did you choose a school that requires you to drive your kids to school? Why did you choose a job that requires you to drive? Why did you choose to live where you have to drive to school and work? There are massive amounts of public transportation to get to near 20th and L; the city is not required to make it easy for you to drive there

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we ever get back to normal, L Street NW will be a parking lot. 20th Street also. in many places there is only one lane that goes through, where there used to be 3 or 4 lanes. I drive kids to school in the morning and then proceed to my office downtown. Metro and biking are not an option.

If only we had more lanes there would be less traffic.

-not someone from LA

If only there were zero lanes there would be no traffic.

Wow. Clueless people keep completely missing the point. LA has TONS of lanes. And yet it has TONS of traffic congestion problems. More lanes does not solve the problem. We DO NOT need to turn DC into LA.

And if it had zero lanes it would have zero traffic. Q.E.D.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we ever get back to normal, L Street NW will be a parking lot. 20th Street also. in many places there is only one lane that goes through, where there used to be 3 or 4 lanes. I drive kids to school in the morning and then proceed to my office downtown. Metro and biking are not an option.

Where do you live that metro and bike are not an option? Why did you choose a school that requires you to drive your kids to school? Why did you choose a job that requires you to drive? Why did you choose to live where you have to drive to school and work? There are massive amounts of public transportation to get to near 20th and L; the city is not required to make it easy for you to drive there

You don’t have kids in DC do you? Half of all kids in DC attend charter schools and about 10-15% of kids attend out of boundary school. For a huge number of parents of kids 12 and under in all DC neighborhoods, their day involves dropping their kids off at school in a car.

Your smug and condescending post belays a disturbing level of ignorance about the very thing you are discussing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we ever get back to normal, L Street NW will be a parking lot. 20th Street also. in many places there is only one lane that goes through, where there used to be 3 or 4 lanes. I drive kids to school in the morning and then proceed to my office downtown. Metro and biking are not an option.

Where do you live that metro and bike are not an option? Why did you choose a school that requires you to drive your kids to school? Why did you choose a job that requires you to drive? Why did you choose to live where you have to drive to school and work? There are massive amounts of public transportation to get to near 20th and L; the city is not required to make it easy for you to drive there

You don’t have kids in DC do you? Half of all kids in DC attend charter schools and about 10-15% of kids attend out of boundary school. For a huge number of parents of kids 12 and under in all DC neighborhoods, their day involves dropping their kids off at school in a car.

Your smug and condescending post belays a disturbing level of ignorance about the very thing you are discussing.

Here’s a pro-bike, pro-public transport Eckington resident trying to figure out how to get his kid to his out of boundary school in a reasonable amount of time without a car.

He concludes.

If you had kids or you knew anyone with kids you would already know this. Instead, here you are arrogantly posting your smug, ignorant nonsense here online to a me too chorus of morons.

Guess what? Different people have different needs than you do. Grow up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we ever get back to normal, L Street NW will be a parking lot. 20th Street also. in many places there is only one lane that goes through, where there used to be 3 or 4 lanes. I drive kids to school in the morning and then proceed to my office downtown. Metro and biking are not an option.

Where do you live that metro and bike are not an option? Why did you choose a school that requires you to drive your kids to school? Why did you choose a job that requires you to drive? Why did you choose to live where you have to drive to school and work? There are massive amounts of public transportation to get to near 20th and L; the city is not required to make it easy for you to drive there

You don’t have kids in DC do you? Half of all kids in DC attend charter schools and about 10-15% of kids attend out of boundary school. For a huge number of parents of kids 12 and under in all DC neighborhoods, their day involves dropping their kids off at school in a car.

Your smug and condescending post belays a disturbing level of ignorance about the very thing you are discussing.

DP - for middle school and high school my kid went to a charter in Penn Quarter (BASIS). We live in Southwest. Mornings, unless it was bad weather, I'd walk with him every day. Otherwise the green line or 74 bus worked just fine. A huge group of kids came from Capitol Hill, many walked or biked. But all in all there weren't actually all that many cars dropping off and picking up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we ever get back to normal, L Street NW will be a parking lot. 20th Street also. in many places there is only one lane that goes through, where there used to be 3 or 4 lanes. I drive kids to school in the morning and then proceed to my office downtown. Metro and biking are not an option.

Where do you live that metro and bike are not an option? Why did you choose a school that requires you to drive your kids to school? Why did you choose a job that requires you to drive? Why did you choose to live where you have to drive to school and work? There are massive amounts of public transportation to get to near 20th and L; the city is not required to make it easy for you to drive there

You don’t have kids in DC do you? Half of all kids in DC attend charter schools and about 10-15% of kids attend out of boundary school. For a huge number of parents of kids 12 and under in all DC neighborhoods, their day involves dropping their kids off at school in a car.

Your smug and condescending post belays a disturbing level of ignorance about the very thing you are discussing.

DP - for middle school and high school my kid went to a charter in Penn Quarter (BASIS). We live in Southwest. Mornings, unless it was bad weather, I'd walk with him every day. Otherwise the green line or 74 bus worked just fine. A huge group of kids came from Capitol Hill, many walked or biked. But all in all there weren't actually all that many cars dropping off and picking up.

Yes, but that's not much of a commute.

We moved to DC mid-year. Taking advice from these boards we selected a neighborhood with a well-regarded in-bounds elementary for our landing in the city. Guess what? It was a trainwreck for our kid. They came out of the year practically suicidal and so we played the charter lottery.

The school that we landed in (our seventh choice) turned out to be great. But to get there we had to take multiple buses. With wait times it took more than an hour one-way. I wasn't working at the time so that was my day. Take the kid to school, spend a other hour plus walking or taking the bus back, eating lunch at home and then repeating the cycle to be there by four. (I think it was four. Time has mercifully blurred the memory.) I got nothing done. It was excruciating. I have spent a lifetime on public transport. When I was ten and from then on I crossed an entire city solo to get to school. I'm not adverse to the concept.

But DC broke me.

And then the charter school moved. Moved to a location even farther from house, a location about seven miles and three different buses away. Oh, and get this: the buses didn't run in sync with school hours. To get home we had to stand for 20 minutes at one of the stops.

We did this once. Then we took Uber while I learned to drive and we got a car. I know a lot of families who didn't have that luxury. Most of the ones at our charter relied on Grandma or their aunt's car. No one was taking public transportation because it wasn't possible.

I've heard lots of excuses why DC doesn't have busses for its kids. Actually they do have busses. You just need an IEP for your child to access one. They spend a ridiculous amount of money on that system. I looked into it once. A journalist should look more. The truth is, DC spends a ton of money on facilities but very little on things that would actually make lifr easier for kids here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If we ever get back to normal, L Street NW will be a parking lot. 20th Street also. in many places there is only one lane that goes through, where there used to be 3 or 4 lanes. I drive kids to school in the morning and then proceed to my office downtown. Metro and biking are not an option.

Where do you live that metro and bike are not an option? Why did you choose a school that requires you to drive your kids to school? Why did you choose a job that requires you to drive? Why did you choose to live where you have to drive to school and work? There are massive amounts of public transportation to get to near 20th and L; the city is not required to make it easy for you to drive there

You don’t have kids in DC do you? Half of all kids in DC attend charter schools and about 10-15% of kids attend out of boundary school. For a huge number of parents of kids 12 and under in all DC neighborhoods, their day involves dropping their kids off at school in a car.

Your smug and condescending post belays a disturbing level of ignorance about the very thing you are discussing.

DP - for middle school and high school my kid went to a charter in Penn Quarter (BASIS). We live in Southwest. Mornings, unless it was bad weather, I'd walk with him every day. Otherwise the green line or 74 bus worked just fine. A huge group of kids came from Capitol Hill, many walked or biked. But all in all there weren't actually all that many cars dropping off and picking up.

Yes, but that's not much of a commute.

We moved to DC mid-year. Taking advice from these boards we selected a neighborhood with a well-regarded in-bounds elementary for our landing in the city. Guess what? It was a trainwreck for our kid. They came out of the year practically suicidal and so we played the charter lottery.

The school that we landed in (our seventh choice) turned out to be great. But to get there we had to take multiple buses. With wait times it took more than an hour one-way. I wasn't working at the time so that was my day. Take the kid to school, spend a other hour plus walking or taking the bus back, eating lunch at home and then repeating the cycle to be there by four. (I think it was four. Time has mercifully blurred the memory.) I got nothing done. It was excruciating. I have spent a lifetime on public transport. When I was ten and from then on I crossed an entire city solo to get to school. I'm not adverse to the concept.

But DC broke me.

And then the charter school moved. Moved to a location even farther from house, a location about seven miles and three different buses away. Oh, and get this: the buses didn't run in sync with school hours. To get home we had to stand for 20 minutes at one of the stops.

We did this once. Then we took Uber while I learned to drive and we got a car. I know a lot of families who didn't have that luxury. Most of the ones at our charter relied on Grandma or their aunt's car. No one was taking public transportation because it wasn't possible.

I've heard lots of excuses why DC doesn't have busses for its kids. Actually they do have busses. You just need an IEP for your child to access one. They spend a ridiculous amount of money on that system. I looked into it once. A journalist should look more. The truth is, DC spends a ton of money on facilities but very little on things that would actually make lifr easier for kids here.

DC is only 10 miles across. MOST of DC is not much of a commute. Yet with 7 miles plus, you somehow managed to yourself up with virtually the longest possible commute. Sorry for your situation, but your situation is not even remotely typical for most of the rest of DC residents.