DC Elites Say: Get Your Car Out of My Way
Washington DC has proposed an anti-auto transportation plan that is ironically called “MoveDC” when its real goal is to reduce the mobility of DC residents. The plan calls for reducing auto commuting from 54 percent to no more than 25 percent of all workers in the district, while favoring transit, cycling, and walking.
This strikes me as just incredibly elitist. There is no way the politicians and lobbyists who are writing this stuff are going to by cycling and walking or even riding a bus. They are going to drive (or be driven). This is about getting the hoi palloi off the roads and out of their damn way.
As Randal O'Toole points out, congestion pricing, if done correctly, could actually improve capacity, but he is skeptical it will be done correctly.
rst1317:
Unfortunately this sort of thing is part for course in far too many cities.
Maybe it's a bit over the top but it strikes me that most any type of pricing is better than the current model.
June 6, 2014, 10:37 amSam L.:
I can see random acts of unkindness to those official vehicles. I recommend the American Graffiti one, using a tire valve tool to loosen the valve a couple turns.
June 6, 2014, 11:06 amslocum:
Well, it's a bad idea, of course, but it's hard to be TOO critical of a plant that will make DC a less attractive place to live.
June 6, 2014, 1:42 pmrandian:
This is also a sop to the public transportation unions. Public transit is far more expensive than autos per passenger-mile, and buses pollute (real pollution like NOx) much more than cars do.
June 6, 2014, 5:05 pmFred_Z:
Soon, soon, the nomenklatura will sweep to their offices in their Zil limousines from their dachas in Virginia, using dedicated lanes from which the peasantry are banned. All for the creation of New American Man.
Sound familiar?
June 6, 2014, 8:59 pmDavid:
Unless you are one of the folks who already live here. This sounds like a little bit of creeping unpleasantness.
June 7, 2014, 8:17 pmbobby_b:
The DC powers that be are taking that big final cleansing plunge that everyone has been expecting for years.
Note that they're not doing much to increase access to the public transit they're mandating. Mostly they're making car use more expensive.
Guess which strata this hurts most?
A. {Mid-rich}-to-rich government and lobbyist staff, managers and owners?
Or, B. The working poor who all happen to be black?
Yep! The Dems have decided that the blacks are no longer a viable clientele - they've pumped that well dry - and so they're dumping the whole "we're the compassionate ones who live cheek to jowl with the poor urban youth" and finally turning DC into the Young Lib's Disneyland that they feel they deserve.
June 8, 2014, 12:11 amanon:
Re: congestion pricing - needs to be more than just noise above the cost to park ($20/day or $250+/month with contract for most private office buildings).
June 8, 2014, 6:13 amReticulator:
DC will soon surpass the USSR's Moscow in the race to block traffic to make way for govt motorcades.
June 8, 2014, 8:40 pmCorky Boyd:
In the late 1970s Washington DC went through the same scenario. The solution then was to cease all new road construction going into DC, which was done. The result was intolerably long commutes. The upshot was massive office development in the suburbs, both in Maryland and Virginia just off the the Beltway. And many government operations built new facilities there too.
If you want to see a disaster about to happen, try driving on the elevated, no shoulders Whitehurst Freeway (K St.) in rush hour with a cyclist doing 12 mph. If the Feds and DC want to drive commuters out, they will lose them to the more convenient suburbs. Tyson's Corner (VA) is what happens when DC squeezes down on commuters. These dreamers never learn.
June 9, 2014, 7:54 am