Reply to Bowser urges Biden to end telework policies for federal workers

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Lol what? She needs to clean up the tent cities, crack down in crime, and eliminate the damn bike lanes everywhere first. It’s a traffic and crime ridden ****hole now. [/quote]

It's a chicken and egg issue. Homelessness has gone up as many businesses that used to employ people on the lower end of the economic spectrum have gone out of business or reduced their staffing. One reason those businesses are struggling is the loss of the commuter workforce into the city every day. This leads to more homelessness, more tent cities. That makes parts of the city less pleasant to be in, which further harms the businesses currently operating. Increasing homelessness and decreasing business activity causes more crime. Crime is already up due to school closures which left a lot of MS and HS students at loose ends. Now those kids are 3 years older and there are fewer job opportunities for them due to telework and increasing crime. So they are more incentivized to commit crime. Meanwhile, the city is losing tax revenue from both loss of businesses and people leaving the city due to telework and rising crime. Meaning less money for both police and social services that might disrupt the increase criminality, especially among young people.

Bike lanes are irrelevant to this conversation, and there's genuine demand for bike lanes among city residents -- that's honestly a different conversation that doesn't have a ton to do with federal telework. I know you think bike lanes have substantively worsened commute times into the city, but the data doesn't back this up -- the city part of most commute has sped up do to a reduction in overall commuting, and the time increases have occurred on and surrounding the beltway, as teleworking employees are moving within suburbs more throughout the day instead of simply driving into and out of the city.

Anyway, you can't just magically solve homelessness, clean up the tent cities, and fix crime while the economy is floundering due to losing tens of thousands of consumers who used to come into the city daily. That's the whole point. I don't even like Bowser, but the loss of workers to telework and the hundreds of large office buildings now sitting idle in the middle of the city are in fact a major problem, and if something could be done to address them, it will actually enable the city to do more to combat homelessness and crime.[/quote]
Bike lanes are not irrelevant if they are not increasing business in downtown DC, which is what proponents claim they are supposed to do because of “dozens of studies”.[/quote]

Oh yay, it's one-issue-Nick again.  I forgot you're still alive.[/quote]
I don’t know who that is, but please explain why this much touted economic benefit is not working in practice? Seriously, I want to hear the answer. Because I keep hearing this trotted out but here is a real world test and the mayor has not said one word about how bike lanes were going to stimulate the downtown DC economy. Why do you think that is?[/quote]

Maybe because the primary purpose of the bike lanes is not supposed to be economic development? Even the most ardent bike lane proponents don't argue that bike lanes are the key to stimulating the economy; they merely point out that the studies on the economic effects of bike lanes show that they have a (small) positive impact overall. You can run around pointing out that the bike lanes aren't fixing the economy all you want, but you're arguing with a straw man.[/quote]
Here is a “study” from New York that claims that installation of a bike lane increased business sales on a street by 9% over baseline.
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2022/09/30/business-grew-on-queens-street-after-controversial-bike-lane-installed-data-show/

Why wouldn’t the mayor want that for struggling downtown businesses?

If bike lanes are not for economic development, why are these “studies” being produced and touted as evidence of anything in the first place?[/quote]

Such studies are being done because every time anyone proposes putting a bike lane anywhere, people start shrieking about how it's going to kill all the businesses nearby. It turns out that isn't actually the case. But the point of bike lanes is to make biking easier and safer and to diversify transportation options (and to get bikes out of the way of cars, also, which you'd think most drivers would support). I have never seen anyone suggest that the primary point of bike lanes is economic development.[/quote]
So we shouldn’t rely on these studies after all? I’m confused because you seem to be saying that these studies are produced for the sole purpose of propaganda to justify bike lanes. Hmmmm.

What’s not propaganda is that when the policy is “reduced demand” traffic doesn’t evaporate. It just goes somewhere else. In this case, the traffic in the form of workers just stays in the suburbs, which DC should be happy with.

DC needs to decide what it wants.[b] Since the city has been clear that it doesn’t want commuter traffic,[/b] then it needs to adjust to the economic ramifications of that choice. [/quote]

DC doesn't want to make it easier for people to drive themselves from the suburbs into the city. Fortunately there are plenty of ways to get from the suburbs into the city that don't involve you driving yourself. I've lived in Maryland and worked in DC for 25 years, and I doubt I've driven into the city more than 10 times. Train, Metro, bus, and bike all work fine and don't involve the stress and expense of driving and parking.[/quote]
Exactly. DC doesn’t want suburban commuters and the feeling is reciprocated. So it comes as a surprise that DC demands that they be forcibly returned. The city wants its cake and to eat it too. It needs to get used to the fact that it doesn’t dictate terms anymore. People that are staying home are speaking with their feet.

The choice for DC is to either swallow some pride and improve the value proposition for these commuters or adjust to a new economic reality with a hollowed out CBD and lower tax base. There’s no free lunch. [/quote]

D.C. very much wants suburban commuters. It just doesn't want every single one of them to drive their own car to work. [/quote]
That’s the problem, because DC doesn’t seem to understand that suburbanites are no longer a captive market to subsidize their budget. If they want more suburbanites to commute to the city then it really needs to think long and hard about the value proposition and incentives that would convince them to come back besides thinking that they can force them back. They haven’t even come up with one tangible proposal that would convince anyone that this is worthwhile. In the meantime, people are being very clear about what they want the city to address to make it more enticing:
- crime 
- cleanliness
- homelessness 
- commuting burden (including safety, time and cost)

No one in DC government seems to care about the first three and for the forth, they are actively making it worse. Including supporting increasing the cost of Metrorail service in the suburbs while decreasing cost in the city. So intentionally make it harder to drive and then intentionally make it more expensive to take Metro at the same time there are serious safety concerns and service cuts.

Usually when people want something, they offer something in return that the other party wants. Since DC not only is offering nothing but actually things commuter will accept a sh*t sandwich in return it should surprise no one that people would not even consider coming back under those circumstances.

The whole thing is a joke and it’s going to require a serious humbling for this city to change course. It is obviously not ready yet. [/quote]

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