How many are there? I calculate:

The 28 intersections that appear in all 4 quadrants are:

14th & D, 9th & G, 7th & I, 7th & E, 7th & G, 7th & D, 6th & C, 6th & G, 6th & D, 6th & I, 6th & E, 4th & M, 4th & G, 4th & E, 4th & D, 4th & I, 3rd & M, 3rd & C, 3rd & K, 3rd & D, 3rd & G, 3rd & E, 3rd & I, 2nd & E, 2nd & C, 1st & M, 1st & C, 1st & N

Plotted on a map:

Color coded map of intersections in DC.

Update: Here’s a larger PDF version.

Here’s how I made the map and did the calculations:

I started with the same Street Centerline file that I used in my first post on GIS with Mathematica. The elements of this file are lines representing street segments between intersections, so the first and the last point defining each line lie at intersections. First, I take from the rather unwieldy raw data and make a new list where each element corresponds to one street segment, and within each of these elements, the geometry is followed by all the other data:

dcstreets=Import["StreetSegmentsLn.shp","Data"][[1]];
dcstreetdata =
Transpose[Join[{dcstreets[[2, 2]]}, dcstreets[[4, 2, All, 2]]]];

Then I wrote two functions to pick off the data I need: for each of the first and last points, representing the locations of the intersections, I need the street name, type (e.g. Street or Avenue), and quadrant:

nodeFunction = Join[{#[[1, 1, 1]]}, #[[6 ;; 8]]] &
tailFunction = Join[{#[[1, 1, -1]]}, #[[6 ;; 8]]] &
nodelist =
Union[Join[Map[nodeFunction, dcstreetdata],
Map[tailFunction, dcstreetdata]]];

Map applies the specified function to each item in the list of street segments, and the resulting lists of beginning and ending intersections from all the segments are put together with Join. Of course, most streets run through numerous intersections, and the second intersection of one segment will be the first intersection of the next segment. To make sure we get the beginning and ending of each street, we do need both the first and second intersection from each, and we use Union to remove all the duplicates from the middle.

We now have a list in which each element contains a location and street name. We now need a list of all the intersections–when two streets share the same point. Fortunately, Mathematica 7 introduced the GatherBy function, which groups a list depending on the value each element returns from the specified function. In this case, the specified function is just the first element, that is, the location:

intersections = GatherBy[nodelist, #[[1]] &];
In[]:= BinCounts[Length /@ intersections, {1, 6, 1}]
Out[]:= {901, 7015, 491, 20, 2}

The second line tells us that there are 901 end-points with only one street (the majority, I believe, are where the streets lead outside the District boundary), 7015 points where two streets come together; 491 points where three, 20 points where four, and 2 points where 5 streets come together. Which are these? With

Select[intersections, Length[#] == 5 &]

We find that the first is the intersection of 15th Street, Benning Road, Bladensburg Road, H Street, and Maryland Avenue NE, while the second is the intersection of 51st Street, Doewood Lane, Eastern Avenue, Mann Street, and Meade Street NE.¹ For our purposes, we want to consider all these as pairs, so we break all intersections with three or more streets into their respective pairs:

intersectionPairs =
Flatten[Join[Subsets[#, {2}] & /@ intersections], 1];

Since I’m using the Street Centerline File, the streets that serve as quadrant boundaries–North Capitol, East Capitol, and South Capitol streets–are not given a quadrant but given the designation “BN” for boundary. Actual addresses on these streets are given a quadrant depending on which side of the street they’re on. In this scheme, you’ll get intersections such as 17th Street NE and 17th Street SE, where they intersect East Capitol Street. I’m ignoring those for this exercise, and then using GatherBy again to find all the points where the intersection street names are the same:

quadrantPairs = Select[intersectionPairs, #[[1, 4]] == #[[2, 4]] &];
multipoint =
GatherBy[quadrantPairs, {#[[1, 2 ;; 3]], #[[2, 2 ;; 3]]} &];

Looking at the structure of this we see a little more work to be done:

In[]:= BinCounts[Length /@ multipoint, {1, 7, 1}]
Out[]:= {6287, 741, 101, 36, 7, 1}

Which tells us that there are 6287 unique intersections in DC, appearing in only one quadrant; 741 that appear in two quadrants, and 1 that appears in 6 quadrants???

This happened because Stanton Square is considered to be a giant median for C Street NE, so there are actually three distinct points that could be considered the corner of 6th and C Streets NE, all along one block. There are also intersections of 6th and C streets in NW, SE, and SW, giving a total of 6. For this, though, I want to treat all the locations in NE as the same, so I make my lists of quadruply, triply, and doubly-redundant intersections depending on how many quadrants appear, which I count with Length and Union:

quads = Select[multipoint,
Length[Union[Flatten[#[[All, All, 4]]]]] == 4 &];
triples =
Select[multipoint, Length[Union[Flatten[#[[All, All, 4]]]]] == 3 &];
doubles =
Select[multipoint, Length[Union[Flatten[#[[All, All, 4]]]]] == 2 &];

Giving lists of intersections, the lengths of which were quoted above. Relatively simple graphics commands made the figure, to which I added the DC Boundary polygon from another .shp file.

Figuring this out took far more lines of code than the modestly few lines that I can reproduce this exercise with. The keys were learning to use the new GatherBy function and getting used to the idea of Union as a list management tool, as opposed to simply part of the set theory functionality. And as usual, knowing how to use Map and pure functions are necessary for doing almost anything elegantly in Mathematica.

1. Doewood and Mann are actually the names of 51st and Meade Streets when they cross Eastern Avenue into Maryland, however I believe DC responsibility actually extends 50 feet or so beyond Eastern Avenue, hence the inclusion in the GIS data.

A friend, in town and staying with us for the inauguration, and I left the house at 7 in the morning, somehow thinking that would be early enough. The station platform at the Brookland Metro was crowded when we arrived, and the inbound train that arrived was so full that only a handful more could board. We instead rode outbound one stop, thinking that either we’d catch a slightly less full train, or could get on one of the special presidential bus routes. Miraculously, there was just enough space for us on the next inbound train, which otherwise looked as crowded as the first.

We managed to meet a bunch of my friend’s friends downtown, at their hotel, at 8. We were north of the mall. Since all of the parade route along Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House was walled off, we had to choose a route south.  Among the many roads closed to motor traffic that day was 395, the freeway in a tunnel that goes under the Capitol reflecting pool. It was open as a pedestrian route, and in part because of the novelty of walking it, that’s were we went. Later, we heard that the handful of crossovers through the parade route became impossibly backed up. We entered at about 3rd and G NW and exited at E Street SW. We made our way along E, then up 7th to D, then along D to 14th, where we crossed into the Mall, finding spots at the base of the Washington monument by about 9am.

And then we waited, in the cold. A half hour of relative stillness was enough to take away the warmth that physical movement generates, and I was reminded how much colder it is when you’re not moving. I knew this, but hadn’t really thought about how long we’d be out there. As was widely recommended, I had layered, and soon wished I had layered more. Perhaps what one should do is to subtract ten degrees Fahrenheit from the actual temperature for every hour you’ll be standing in the cold.

We had a decent view of a Jumbotron, and we could see the Capitol, but even with binoculars I couldn’t see any individuals. (Our view was partially blocked by trees.) What was significant was to be a part of the 1.8 million assembled, and of the 1.12 million Metro rides that day. It occured to me, standing there, that one had to understand what was going on in order to get anything out of the experience. I was glad that my son was safely and warmly at home; to be able to tell him in later years that he was there would have been a useless gimmick.

So what did I understand the experience to be? On the one hand, under the former administration, I (in chronological order): earned my Ph.D., got a permanent research job, got married, bought a house, had a child. Am I better off than I was eight years ago? Unquestionably, yes. Not bad for living a few miles from the epicenter of what was quite possibly the worst administration in United States history. But of course I was out there in the cold, celebrating with everyone else.

The president has called upon Americans to rise up to our nation’s challenges. He is not the first to call for service to our country and to others, but unlike the mawkishly sanctimonious appeals of virtually every other public leader, his carry a sincerity and gravitas that is convincing. This is perhaps because of his extensive service as a community organizer. As hope and competence replace fear and cronyism as dominant motifs in the administration, I expect that the appeal of satire and detached irony will fade in popular culture: these are for those who are comfortable, detached, and powerless. Anger and self-absorbed drama are out; hard work and careful planning are in. Does this signal an ascendancy for The University of Chicago? The President taught there, of course. David Axelrod, chief campaign stategist, went there, as did Nate Silver, whose reality-based analysis beat all the other pundits this time around. 

Four years ago, the progressive blogosphere wanted everyone to read Don’t Think of an Elephant, and now we have a progressive President that has intuitively understood framing and the use of language longer and better than anyone else on our side. Democrats should now be done with Triangulation. And Mark Penn and Terry McAuliffe, too.

On energy and environment and global warming and scores of other policies, Obama can already be said to be turning things around. Although Obama is not the first to mention science in his inaugural address, his reversal of the previous administration’s anti-scientific outlook is heartening. Perhaps our nation can be done with the celebration of anti-intellectualism. Perhaps patriotism will no longer be associated with flag-waving belligerence, but will be understood instead to be a celebration of those extraordinary characteristics of our nation that made our President’s story possible.

This was my hope, as I stood in the cold on the National Mall last Tuesday.

As you may know, there is a street in DC for every state in the union. Pennsylvania Avenue is probably the most famous of these; the White House sits at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW. I used to live on Massachusetts Avenue. So my first idea was to make a street map of DC in which the state-named streets were colored red-ish or blue-ish depending on their vote in the recent election.

Here it is:

Read on to see how I made it:

I imported election returns from Wikipedia, but the process of picking the data I wanted out of the whole Import was so ugly that I’m not going to step through it here. I was inspired, though, by this similar post on the Wolfram blog. If anyone at Wolfram is listening: it’d be really great if we could import data from the web by, say, clicking on a table of a web page displayed in a browser, instead of picking out which item in some nested list is the one we want.

From the raw vote data, I computed the (approximate) percentage of the vote that Obama got:¹

ntrs[x_] := N[ToExpression[StringReplace[x, "," -> ""]]]
percentData = {ToUpperCase[#[[1]]], ntrs[#[[2]]]/(ntrs[#[[2]]] + ntrs[#[[3]]])} & /@ votedata

Which gives a list of things like

{"CALIFORNIA", 0.622799}.
The conversion to uppercase is to match the way the DC street names are recorded.

I’ll need a list of states, in order to match the street names. I get this from Mathematica’s curated CountryData data set, using a Regular Expression to insert a space any time there’s a lowercase letter followed by an uppercase letter, to change, for example, “NewJersey” into “New Jersey”:

states = StringReplace[#, RegularExpression["([a-z])([A-Z])"] -> "$1 $2"] & /@ CountryData["United States", "Regions"]


And the street datafile itself. When Mathematica imports SHP files, it returns a list of layers; with only one layer in this file, we get a (long) list with one element. So I specify in the Import that I only want this first (and only) element of the list:

dcstreets=Import["StreetSegmentsLn.shp","Data"][[1]];

And this gives a list of 4 replacement rules, some of which are very long:

In[]:=dcstreets[[1]]
Out[]:=LayerName -> StreetSegmentLn
In[]:=dcstreets[[2]]
Out[]:=Geometry -> long list of graphics primitives defining the data elements
In[]:=dcstreets[[3]]
Out[]:=Labels -> list of the names of metadata fields
In[]:=dcstreets[[4]]
Out[]:=LabeledData -> list of (long) lists of metadata for each data element

For this data file, the data elements are segments of streets between intersections, so the graphics primitives are lines defined by two (or more, for curved streets) points. There are 25 metadata fields, including the name of each street, the address range covered by the segment, the quadrant, and the type of road (e.g. Local, Principal Arterial, etc.). The FullForm of Mathematica replacement rule, such as lhs -> rhs, is Rule[lhs,rhs], so we access the data in each of the four rules as the second element of another list. Thus we can get at, say, the graphics primitives for the 27th street segment as

In[]:=dcstreets[[2,2,27]]
Out[]:=Line[{{396233., 138045.}, {396233., 138132.}, {396233., 138142.}}]

For ease in working with these data, I combined the geometry and metadata into one table for the 13414 street segments:

dcstreetdata = Transpose[Join[{dcstreets[[2, 2]]}, dcstreets[[4, 2, All, 2]]]];

I separate this into two groups: state-named streets, and the rest:

statestreets = Select[dcstreetdata, MemberQ[ToUpperCase[states], #[[6]]] &];
nonstatestreets = Select[dcstreetdata, ! MemberQ[ToUpperCase[states], #[[6]]] &];

The 6th element of each entry in dcstreetdata is the name of the street. From this, I create two graphics:

nonstatemap = Graphics[{Gray, nonstatestreets[[All, 1]]}]


statemap = Graphics[Function[x, Tooltip[{Directive[Thick, RGBColor[.5 + 2 (.5 - x[[2]]), 0, .5 + 2 (x[[2]] - .5)]], Transpose[Select[statestreets, Function[y, y[[6]] == x[[1]]]]][[1]]}, x[[1]]]] /@ percentData]

I’ve packed a lot into statemap, using nested pure functions: it makes a Tooltip with the state/street name popping up upon mouseover (it works better in Mathematica than in the export HTML). For each state from the list of election returns in percentData, it finds all the street segments named after that state and makes a graphic element out of the geometry of that street segment, of a color that ranges from pure blue to pure red. The red-blue divide is stretched so that pure blue corresponds to the percentage of Obama’s highest percentage (Hawaii, 72.99%) and pure red corresponds to Obama’s lowest percentage (Wyoming, 33.43%). The final map is created with Show:

votemap = Show[statemap, nonstatemap]

So far, so good. I’ll write more on Mathematica and DC GIS data soon.

1. really, it’s Obama’s percentage of the combined Obama/ McCain vote, ignoring votes for other candidates

Broadly speaking, these technical documents attempt to quantify the decision-making process in order that every subsequent decision have justification. The process obscures the study biases by shifting them into the methods of quantification, and ultimately confuses quantifiability with importance.

Setting the Stage

The formal program of the study was documented in the Project Work Plan, in January 2003. One of the first of the study documents was the short Quality Assurance Program, an eight-pager released in November 2003. It establishes the tedious tone in which all further study documents will be written with empty management-speak such as “All DMJM Harris staff performing tasks on the project will utilize the appropriate implementing procedure for the work being performed.”

Two reports were finished in August 2004: The Needs Assessment and the Evaluation Framework. These followed the extensive series of community meetings in late 2003. The Needs Assessment was the only technical document that was published on the (now-defunct) study website. It examined population, employment, and overall destination patterns across the city in relation to existing transit service. The Evaluation Framework brought together all the input–from DC agencies and from the community–about routes and goals and needs and defines what sort of analysis is to be done. A structure of seven routes is proposed, two of which have alternative routings, but the stops along those routes are not defined yet. The project goals are laid out, and the measures and criteria used to evaluate choices in terms of those goals are defined. The general work plan for several documents that follow is laid out.

Route and Mode evaluation:

Screen 1, released September 2004, evaluates seven potential transit modes (streetcars, “bus rapid transit,” light rail transit, diesel multiple units, automated guideway transit, monorail, and heavy rail), and ends up recommending only streetcars and “bus rapid transit” for further evaluation.

The Definition of Alternatives, released in November 2004, analyzed the routes given in the Evaluation Framework for the two chosen modes. Station locations were assigned and propulsion technologies are considered. For each route, a “service plan” was developed, including the headways between successive runs and calculations for route travel times. Although there are separate calculations for streetcars and for “bus rapid transit,” no details are given about the assumptions that went into the calculation of the travel times.

Screen 2, released March 2005, takes the service plans and route structure from the Definition of Alternatives and tries to evaluate how well each would fulfill the project goals by applying a set of “Measures of Effectiveness,” which are defined in the Evaluation Framework. Claiming that “the operational characteristics of BRT and Streetcar are similar at the level of detail” under study, it lumps both into a “premium transit service option” to decide whether a particular corridor should have “premium transit,” or whether it should only receive some bus service enhancements. Corridors were ranked (high, medium or low) based on a few criteria for each of the four project goals, leading to a composite score. Further analysis on meeting corridor deficiencies and operational considerations, and concluded by recommending some routes for “premium transit” and relegating some to get only “local bus enhancements.”

Screen 3, released May 2005, takes the “premium transit” corridors of Screen 2 and applies further “Measures of Effectiveness” to determine whether each corridor should be Streetcars or  ”bus rapid transit.” Each corridor is broken into segements, and the effectiveness criteria are applied to the segments individually. Where applicable–which isn’t as frequently as one might think–Streetcars and “bus rapid transit” are evaluated separately. The scores from these evaluations are totaled, to come up with proposals for streetcar routes, “bus rapid transit” routes, and “rapid bus” routes.

And onwards

Further study documents, released May–September 2005, looked at the finances of the proposed system and put forward the timetable. All the study findings were summarized in a final report, published in October 2005. Future posts in this series will look in detail at some of these technical reports.

The study finishes

The final project newsletter, Fall 2005, and an “Executive Summary“ of the whole project were presented to the public at a final meeting, held September 29, 2005. For transit enthusiasts following the project, the end results were disappointing and frustrating. Instead of a visionary transformation of mobility in the District, the final recommendations proposed a meager streetcar buildout that, despite its modest size, would take 25 years to build. The report was frustrating because it relied on tortured reasoning that bordered on downright dishonesty, it used self-contradictory and mutually inconsistent reasoning, and offered little more than poorly-defined chimeras wrapped up in wishful thinking.

Added to the project was “Rapid Bus,” as a lower-class technology mode, joining streetcars and “bus rapid transit.” Modes were assigned to routes. The newsletter used separate streetcar and “bus rapid transit” assignments, while the executive summary lumped these together as “premium transit.” In the newsletter, streetcars got a handful of routes: the crosstown Georgtown to Minnesota Avenue route; the north-south Georgia Avenue route, which would end at K street; a Union Station to Anacostia via Eastern Market route; an M Street SE/SW route, and a short Bolling AFB–Pennsylvania Ave route. A bit of “bus rapid transit” was added: mainly Woodley Park to Eastern Market via Florida Avenue, while the rest of the 50-mile route structure developed over the course of the study was designated “rapid bus.”

On the face of it, we’re being asked to believe that there is a significant difference between “bus rapid transit” and “rapid bus,” yet no clear description of the features that differentiate “bus rapid transit” from “rapid bus” is given. “Rapid bus” is supposed to have: limited stops, fancier shelters, real-time arrival information, and signal prioritization, as is “bus rapid transit.” They’re both supposed to use “large vehicles,” with those for “rapid bus” being “distinct” and those for “bus rapid transit” supposedly “recalling the design of streetcars.”  Even though “rapid bus” vehicles “could be” 60-foot articulated buses, the largest buses used anywhere in the United States, “rapid bus” vehicles “tend to be smaller” than “bus rapid transit” vehicles. One feature that was mentioned for “bus rapid transit” but not for “rapid bus” was off-vehicle fare payment.

“Bus rapid transit” is said to run “either on mixed traffic or on dedicated rights-of-way,” and several of the “bus rapid transit” examples cited do make use of dedicated rights-of-way. Boston, Ottawa, and Pittsburgh are explicitly called out as examples of “bus rapid transit,” and shows pictures of the system in Rouen, France. Both Ottawa and Pittsburgh rely on massive, exclusive and grade separated rights of way for their systems, built on abandoned railroad rights-of-way. Rouen’s TEOR uses several sections of exclusive right-of-way with optical guidance. No similar opportunity for constructing such facilities exists along the corridors proposed for DC, and surely such rights of way would be as incompatible with neighborhood scale as light rail would be. The documents make no mention of the heavy criticism that Boston’s Silver Line has received. Incidentally, neither Boston nor Pittsburgh use off-vehicle fare payment. I find it a little dishonest to cite systems whose success (such as it is) relies on features that are not under consideration for DC.

The proposed timetable for transit buildout is galling. All lines are supposed to start as “rapid bus.” Of the meager streetcar and “bus rapid transit” network that’s proposed, the newsletter states “Naturally it will take time–two decades, in fact” to get it built. The system would not be finished until 2030, even though the need is immediate and growing, as was illustrated in the Needs Assessment. And the executive summary mentions Mayor Williams’s goal of adding 100,000 residents by 2013 is cited: presumably, we don’t want to make them wait 17 years for adequate transit.

Similarly frustrating is the lumping together of streetcars and “bus rapid transit,” as if it’s possible to create a bus-based system that could be considered equivalent to a rail based system. Although it’s been quite clear in all the public outreach that there are lots of people who are excited about streetcars, there is no evidence that anyone is excited about more buses. This is not to say that everyone is excited about streetcars, but the opposition to streetcars does not come from an enthusiasm for buses. Streetcars offer better ride quality than buses, and the investment in infrastructure required for streetcars gives other investors confidence in the civic commitment. Indeed, while there are dozens of examples of rail-based urban revival, there are no examples of bus-based revival. Rail has shown itself to be far more attractive to riders: whenever a bus service is replaced by rail, ridership grows; whenever rail is replaced by bus, ridership drops. 

If the final output of the study was underwhelming, what happened next was breathtaking. Once the study was over, absolutely nothing happened. The study documents seemed destined to gather dust on someone’s shelf. It did not help that the DDOT Mass Transit Administrator, Alex Eckmann, left in February 2005, before many of the reports would be released and decisions would be made. The position would remain vacant until the study was nearly complete. The DDOT director who pushed to get the study underway, Dan Tangherlini, left DDOT in February 2006 to become interim general manager of WMATA. Because this was near the end of then-mayor Williams’s term, DDOT was left in the hands of the deputy director; no high-profile appointment was made. This left a leadership void from which no push to move forward with the transit project was made.

So how did the study team arrive at its conclusions? Part 3 of this series will examine the detailed technical documents produced by the study team.

Bringing a 50-mile streetcar network to Washington DC is the top priority for the DC Chapter of the Sierra Club. I have been following this issue with the Sierra Club since 2002, and it was recently suggested to me that I write down a brief history of the effort, to provide context for those new to the subject. Current progress on the issue is blogged at streetcars4dc.org. 

The DC Transit Improvements Alternatives Analysis gets underway.

The last time streetcars ran in DC was the early morning of January 28th, 1962, after which all lines were converted to buses. Such was the state of public transit in the District until March 27, 1976, when Metrorail opened. Metrorail, of course, has been a tremendous success, but it does not serve all areas of DC, and was designed primarily to move suburban commuters to their jobs in downtown DC.

The District government has, in principle, been planning to bring streetcars back to DC for some time now. My involvement began in September 2002, when I testified on behalf of the  at a joint oversight hearing of the DC City Council. A relatively small, two-year study had recently been completed (DC Transit Development Study), and then-DDOT director Dan Tangherlini, and then-DDOT Mass Transit Administrator Alex Eckmann went before the council (read their presentation) to ask that a more expansive study be funded. Plans to expand transit in the District stretch back further than that, and are generally said to have begun with the Barry-era DC Vision Study of 1997, itself 2 years in the making. And after more than ten years of talk and study, there are still no streetcars.

DC Vision had proposed four light rail corridors and a new crosstown Metrorail line. The Transit Development Study had looked at nine potential routes, and from that, DDOT proposed what amounts to five corridors for further study. Three were crosstown routes, converging in the east at the Minnesota Avenue Metro and crossing the river together. Two of these followed a northern route, heading west to Union station, from which one would go northwest to Woodley Park and another would head to Georgetown. The third crosstown route headed south to the Navy Yard, and continued to Waterfront. A north-south route followed Georgia Avenue/7th Street from Silver Spring to Waterfront, and an east-of-the-river route that went from Minnesota Avenue, to Anacostia, and finally to National Harbor.

The study that did go forward, formally the DC Transit Improvements Alternatives Analysis, was indeed quite extensive. A joint effort between DDOT and WMATA, most of the actual work of the study was done by transportation engineering firm DMJM+Harris. Numerous public meetings were held, fancy full-color newsletters and brochures were produced, and scores of meetings with community groups were held, including one with the Sierra Club in October 2003. Tangherlini and Eckmann both spoke enthusiastically about the plans for the 2002 Rail-Volution conference, which was held in DC that year. 

Throughout 2003, a series of semi-public meetings were held: nobody would be excluded, but they were advertised primarily to civic leaders. In July I made it to the meeting in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood, at which, it turned out, I was the only attendee to show up. From a public outreach standpoint, this is not so good, but for a transit wonk like myself, a detailed, hour-long conversation with the project leaders was something of a treat. In the fall, the project released the first of what would be five project newsletters (Fall 03, Spring 04, Fall 04, Spring 05, Fall 05).

By Spring 2004, the list of routes under consideration had grown, and in addition, the route lines were drawn as narrow lines following actual streets, instead of broad bands indicating a general route. A route up Wisconsin Avenue was added, as was a Brookland-Columbia Heights-Woodley Park crosstown route. Alternate alignments for the southern route from Woodley Park were added: one that headed to New York Avenue and then went south to Eastern Market, and the other going to Union Station and snaking across the Capitol to Eastern Market. By the Fall of 2004, a Foggy Bottom-Waterfront route, hugging the Potomac, had been added, a a spur East of the River was added. The map presented in the Spring of 2005 backed off of showing lines along particular streets to re-work the routes into nine “proposed corridors.”

The newsletters, and other project documents, were available on a well-publicized, but regretfully, now defunct website called dctransitfuture.com (archived on the Internet Wayback Machine), and many of them are now on DDOT’s website. In conjunction with the public meetings and widely distributed newsletters, some substantial analysis analysis of transportation services and demand was being conducted, which culminated in the Needs Assessment, released in June 2004. Not surprisingly, it found a great need for expanded transit in the city. One of the most telling parts (Fig. 6, p. 17) shows a map illustrating the density of households with no car available: this quite clearly shows the need for high-capacity transit along Georgia Avenue and along H Street NE. Nearly all of the corridors from the 2004 newsletters were identified in the Needs Assessment as “recommended priority transit corridors” (Fig. 20, p. 43).

The project team met with the Sierra Club for the second time in June 2004. I recall asking if there was some thing we could focus on that could help move the project forward; the project team demurred, assuring us they had everything under control. The Fall 2004 newsletter announced that the technologies chosen for further study were streetcars and “bus rapid transit.” Through spring 2005, all the route maps presented in every facet of the study treated all the routes equally–they were drawn with the same thickness of lines with no distinguishing features–and no association of routes with technology had been yet indicated. The graphics had emphasized streetcars, modern and historic. Small features in the newsletters highlight the benefits of bringing a streetcar–and not a bus–to a specific neighborhood. 

The point made in Fall 2004 about streetcars was first that they were not considering more Metrorail, but also that it would not be the type of light rail one sees in Sacramento or Dallas or Denver. That is, it would not get dedicated rights-of-way, and would probably not be designed for long, multi-car trains. This makes sense: in these cities, the light rail is the only rail transportation and performs both suburban commuter and urban mobility functions. In DC, the transit is to be overlaid on top of Metrorail, which performs the suburban commuter function quite well.

The Fall 2004 discussion of “bus rapid transit” uses the subtle dishonesty which I’ve found to be typical of bus advocacy: it’s said to “combine the best of rail and bus,” begging the question of whether buses can ever provide service equivalent to rail (to which I answer “no”). Also mentioned is the fact that buses running on dedicated rights-of-way can be much faster than ordinary buses, which is a red herring: it’s already apparent that a dedicated right-of-way, for any sort of vehicle, is not being considered.

At any rate, those following the study at this point had reason to be optimistic.

Part 2 of this series will look at the conclusion of the study, in the second half of 2005. Part 3 summarizes the technical documents produced as part of the study. Further parts will look at the Anacostia Starter line and the issue of overhead wires.

I visited Peregrine for the first time Saturday. The space has been remodeled to look much cleaner–in fact, nothing from the old Murky remains. Their blog has several pictures. The chalkboard menus are gone, the walls are painted, the floors are freshly finished. The menu has been simplified, to the point where each drink comes in only one size. The brewed coffee offerings are given more prominence. 

Peregrine gets its coffee from Counter Culture Coffee, the same supplier that Murky uses. Their milk comes from Trickling Springs Creamery, a relatively local dairy in Pennsylvania that sells milk in re-usable and returnable glass bottles. This is one step beyond Murky, which as far as I know used ordinary supermarket milk. 

I had a cappuccino–regrettably, to go, as there were no free seats. Even in the (appropriately sized) to-go cup, the barista poured a small rosetta. It had been months since I’d had a “third-wave” cappuccino: the way-beyond-starbucks, hand-crafted expression of exactly how amazing coffee can be. Delightful.

Coffee lovers in Washington do owe much to Nick Cho, owner of Murky. That his business skills are sloppy is unfortunate, but he planted the seeds of coffee culture in DC. That a former employee is able to open a cafe that improves upon its predecessor reflects both the technical training and the enthusiasm for coffee that Nick imbued his employees with.

To keep the house habitable–which has meant keeping the (upstairs) bedrooms at or below about 81 degrees, I have to keep the downstairs at about 76. Such is life when your house is under-insulated, and your central air system is grafted on to early 1940s ductwork that was put in place presuming the house would only be heated.

This evening brings a chance of thundershowers: if they’re big enough, we will get cooling, but if they’re too small, then all we get is an increase in humidity.

To do this summer: install ceiling fans, and upgrade the insulation.

As a progressive, and with my student days behind me, I’ve come to feel that civic engagement shouldn’t be considered optional. I’ve looked to local organizations for involvement: while in DC, I’ve volunteered with three organizations, plus one political campaign,  and will probably work with others as my priorities nd responsibilities evolve. 

In every setting that involves a group of volunteers–or more generally, a group of people in which the individuals each decide how they will invest their time–the words “we should” are a sure path to inaction. What the words really mean is “I won’t but hope someone else will,” but without the candor to admit that the speaker, in fact, won’t do whatever it is he is suggesting. 

These words are usually spoken in meetings, gatherings that many people claim to disdain. The fact that nothing actually gets done during meetings compels some to ask if everyone shouldn’t really use their time to actually do something. Someone might suggest meetings every other month, instead of monthly.  If a project does require the input of more than one person, however, you need meetings. In the case of volunteer groups, in which everyone has a myriad of other obligations and interests, the truth is out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Nobody’s time is so carefully managed that he could take the time that would have been spent in a meeting and use it on a project: there are plenty of other things that rush in to fill the temporal void. One might read a few more threads on Daily Kos, or watch the television program that comes on after your favorite program, or skim through catalogs you get in the mail instead of sending them straight to the recycle bin. The way things get done in a volunteer organization is through mutual accountability: we agree to take on tasks, and follow through because we value the value of our word.

Meetings are necessary: the trap is to think that meetings are sufficient. I think that even the complainers like their volunteer meetings, perhaps secretly. For one, it’s a chance to hang out with like-minded people for a few hours. There is also a sort of perverse satisfaction from attending a meeting: you get to feel that you’ve accomplished something but you actually haven’t had to expend much effort. You’ve spent a few hours getting updates and making plans for next steps; you’ve thought about the issues at hand, so it seems like you’ve done your part. 

And truthfully, for many, that’s all they do, as the meeting is the only space they’ve made in their schedules for the issues at hand. Of course, we’re all so busy, and it’s tempting to just be thankful that they care enough to show up, but if everyone at the meeting is like this, nothing will get done. Some would do well to re-evaluate their own priorities–they do so much, they get nothing done.¹

Calling out the “we should”s, and insisting on “I will”s is one tool with which to separate the do-ers from the rest. Perhaps meeting organizers should keep tallies of each phrase. Each time “we should” is uttered, put the utterer on the spot, and ask if he’s volunteering to do the task he suggests. Now, this is not to say that someone can’t have good–even inspiring–ideas that he can’t carry out himself,² but in such cases he should simply say so.

A particularly pernicious form of “we should” are the obstructionist “we should”s–that when person A volunteers to take on some task, person B pipes up with an impractical pre-condition that “we should” do before beginning on person A’s task. More than just a waste of time, this could actually derail a real action. In physics, we are occasionally encouraged to “make mistakes as fast as possible.”³ That is, you won’t learn anything, and you won’t get anything done, without doing something. So do something. Say that you will do something, and do it, and if it turns out to be not quite the right thing, then you can do something else.

1. One of Paul Sally’s graduate school advisors apparently told this to him, when in his early grad student days he wasn’t getting much mathematics done.
2. One idea I’ve had for the organizations I’ve worked with, but can’t do myself, is to create a coloring page based on your organization’s work, so that if you’re tabling an event, and a parent comes by with his or her child, you can let the child color the coloring page (supply crayons) while you talk to the parent about the organization.
3. A sentiment attributed to the late John Wheeler.

Nick, through his store and his through his efforts in the specialty coffee industry, has done wonders for the local coffee scene. I’ve been a coffee enthusiast since receiving a coffee grinder for my birthday while in high school. I soon picked up Kenneth Davids’s Coffee: a Guide to Buying, Brewing, and Enjoying—my first in what is now a collection of many dozens of books about coffee—and Sacramento, fortunately, had a good number of respectable coffee shops.

Out of high school, I didn’t really keep pace with the specialty coffee industry. Chicago’s coffee scene was comparatively underdeveloped when I was at college, so although my collection of books grew, my coffee experience stalled (although a friend of mine and I did experiment with roasting our own coffee). The coffee shops in downtown Ithaca (but not on campus) were an improvement, but I didn’t have much opportunity to hang out in them. What I hadn’t realized, during this decade, was that a new movement in coffee was taking shape, calling itself the “third wave.” In a sense I kept missing it: Intellegentsia Coffee opened in Chicago just after I had left, and Gimme Coffee opened in Ithaca just as I was entering the intense dissertation-writing last year of my graduate school career.

Characteristic of third-wave coffee firms a never-ending pursuit of sensory quality, a bean-to-cup acknowledgement and appreciation of everyone in the coffee industry, and an ideal that everyone along that chain, from coffee farmer to barista, can make a comfortable living and have a successful career in their crafts. (Whether that last one is actually feasible remains to be seen.) Barista competition, travel “to origin,” direct-trade relationships, and critical cupping are part and parcel of the third wave. It seeks to move beyond the diversions that plagued the specialty coffee industry that I grew up with, such as flavored coffees and “sell-by” dates on coffee beans that are months after the roast date. It stands in marked contrast to the strategy adopted by Starbucks, which in order to keep up its relentless pace of expansion, replaced its La Marzocco espresso machines, which need a trained barista to operate, for push-button super-automatics, that any fool can use. That’s my take, anyway, on the third wave.

Nick brought third wave coffee to Washington. I met him once, when I took the espresso skills class he taught at his Arlington shop. Nevertheless, like many coffee aficionados, I feel as if I know him well, primarily because I listened to his portafilter.net podcast.¹ The podcast, which Nick does with friend and Baltimore-area coffee shop owner Jay Caragay, is aimed at those working in the coffee industry. It’s heavy on insider gossip, often long and rambling, reliably entertaining, and occasionally brilliant. In part because of the podcast, Nick has (had?) been a rising star in the specialty coffee business, notably including a successful run for a seat on the board of directors of the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

Murky coffee was first closed by the DC government for failure to pay taxes, then evicted by the landlord. A controversy has erupted in online forums: is this, as Nick claims, the result of financial mismanagement spiraling out-of-control, or is murky trying to cheat on its taxes?

I’m convinced Nick is being honest. The picture one gets of him, from the podcasts, is of someone completely committed to quality coffee, with a purist streak that often puts his vision of great coffee ahead of business sense. He won’t, for example, sell you a straight espresso to go, and he wasn’t interested in selling the big-name soft drinks that the previous incarnation of a coffee shop had sold. And one also gets the sense that he’s prone to bouts of bad judgement: see portafilter.net podcasts 64 through 70 to see what I mean.

But please, don’t let those be your only sample of portafilter.net podcasts. Some of the most interesting ones:

53: An interview with Temple University historian Bryant Simon, who is working on a book about Starbucks.

27: Once you get past the first hour or so, which is mostly insider gossip, there’s a fascinating interview with Dean Cycon of Dean’s Beans, revealing why Fair Trade is a far more complicated subject than one might think.

26: Interview with Rob Stephen, then ascending president of the SCAA board of directors, on his vision for the SCAA and his experience working on Dunkin Donuts’ coffee program.

56: Interview with the directors and producers of the film Black Gold, which examines Ethiopian poverty in the context of coffee.

I suspect that the next portafilter.net podcast will go into tremendous detail about the shop closing; Nick has never shied away from discussing his personal difficulties. While his account of the events might leave a few things out, I really do think he’s being honest.

1. The “explit” warning on the podcast is an understatement: several episodes become vulgar in a manner reminiscent of An Evening with Kevin Smith.