Pedestrian Scramble aka Barnes Dance

The posting of transportation videos on YouTube is something that will make future engineers more innovative. Here's a great summary from DDOT and Wasim Raja, a colleague that I worked with (when he was with Arlington County, VA) in my previous endeavors.


This reminded me of the scramble I saw in Tokyo at the Shibuya District.

Bike Signal Video from DC

A came across this video this morning while the students were working on a project at the University of Rotterdam.  


Another great video on how detectors work can be found below.


UC Berkeley has a nice summary of bike detection and supporting reports here

Trip to the Climate Leadership Academy

I travelled to DC (Arlington, VA) to the Climate Leadership Academy with the Institute of Sustainable Communities. The first part of the trip was of course getting to the hotel and the Rosslyn Marriott, which is on the Potomac.
The following picture is of the Custis Trail which is an extension of the Mt. Vernon Trail that connects Virginia to the Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial. Arring near 6 PM on a sweltering day, the activity on the trail was actually quite high. A lot of commuters leaving the District and travelling into VA.

Transportation Research Board Meeting 2011

Woodley Park is the home to two of the three hotels
(Marriott and Omni Shoreham) that hosts the
Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in January.
Washington DC in January, a great place to be. 

I attended my 14th Transportation Research Board Meeting (the last one I missed was in 2000) and my 11th in a row. I am counting the 2004 meeting where I had a spontaneous pneumothorax (lung collapse) that is legendary among my friends and colleagues. It is an experience I wouldn't recommend to anyone.

The TRB Annual Meeting provides an opportunity to hear from so many different people. That's part of the allure of the meeting is the people and the relationships you can renew. It is also like any experience where you can look back on past meetings with nostalgia. Oh remember the snow storm of 1996 (that was the year before I started attending), and how about the snow of 2011! Yes, there was snow and the flights shut down from 1 PM on Wednesday to first thing Thursday night as the DC area had trouble with the 6-10 inches that fell. I was lucky to have a flight on Thursday night that didn't change. I did have a meeting on Thursday that was cancelled.

The experiences I have collected at TRB has been very positive. I have learned of the challenges that are facing our transportation system and the biases that people have towards traffic. I have strengthened my resolve to work towards a balanced transportation system.

I enjoy providing advice to new attendees to TRB. In this era of thinking out loud on the web through twitter, facebook, and blogs, I came across Brian Davis' post about his experience at the meeting that has been so much of my professional life. Here's the post: http://briandavispdx.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/lessons-learned-from-trb/

Reflecting on Brian's post, I was impressed with the insights he offers. I am happy to have had the opportunity to work with Brian and other students at PSU and hope that messages like these propel the students to enjoy the same sort of success and interest I have sustained at TRB through these many years.

DC Leading Pedestrian Interval

Very hard to make out in these pictures, but I stumbled upon a Leading Pedestrian Interval in DC at this intersection near Dupont Circle. it looks like the Walk is provided a 4 second advance based on my single cycle observation and delays the green from coming up in both directions to allow pedestrians to establish their presence in the intersection. DC uses a 100-second cycle length and this is a two-phase intersection, so it is an easy location to make this happen within the constraints of the intersection (which didn't seem that busy).

DC Bike Share has evolved

I posted awhile back about DC's first efforts with Bike Sharing.
I don't recall where I stood on the issue exactly, but I don't think I was very positive because it seemed to be putting people that might not be very comfortable on a bike in difficult positions (riding in traffic without good information on routes, aka unfamiliar territory).  The bikes originally seemed a bit clunky and the system seemed to be bailing wire and duct tape.

I had a chance to check out version 2.0 this week and with the upgraded pay stations, the real-time communication to the sensors that tell you where bike stations are and how many of the spots are full, the system is fully functional and as convenient as you can make it, where stations are provided.

I encountered this station outside of the USDOT headquarters building which is adjacent to the Navy Yard station of Metro. The station had a lot of bikes, enough to make rental bike retail locations out of business for all but the all day trips (the costs of rental at Capital Bike Share is expensive for trips longer than 2 hours).

Riding the bike around, I found the 3-speeds adequate for DC's flat terrain. The bikes aren't light but they are very comfortable and have all of the chain guards and other features that you would experience on a European bike.

For the casual rider, it is a great system to get you from A to B. In fact, they don't charge if you use the bike less than 30 minutes. There is a $5 24-hour charge for membership and that increases to $25 for a month and $75 for an annual pass. Very reasonable considering that you can take a bike to a station every 30 minutes and not pay a cent for rental. You have to be willing to check in the bikes.

I am very interested in the cost per trip and the comparison with transit, although that suggests that you could take away transit, which isn't practical.

As far as urban design elements, this isn't the nicest looking station. The bollards are there for the USDOT building and I am guessing are not actually tied to the bikesharing (I haven't confirmed that).

So, what can I say... I have changed my tune on bike sharing and believe it is something that should be more seriously considered then I otherwise believed. I can admit that I am a believer, pending the cost data.