David Alpert

IT'S WORKING: Initial Data Show Congestion Pricing Has Stemmed The Tide of Years of Increasing Traffic - Streetsblog New York City Congestion pricing has led to a 7.5-percent drop in traffic in the Central Business District below 60th Street, the MTA said on Monday.

“It has been a very good week here in New York. There’s less traffic, quieter streets — and I think everybody’s seen it."

Travel times on bridges and tunnels into central Manhattan dropped 34%, and traffic volumes in the area 7.5% during the first week of decongestion pricing.

this is incredible stuff. most state DOTs would spend tens of billions on highway expansions to try and see numbers like this (that wouldn’t even pan out anyway thanks to induced demand lol)

Nature and infrastructure

Two knob UI is the best. Ovens in the 20th century worked great.

Ugh. When I was buying our oven (Dec 2019) some were advertising the color touchscreens. It took about 5-10 swipes to start baking including choosing temperature from a list. I got the prior year model that just had buttons to type the temperature.

However, I’d think it also can be easily “funded” by simply cutting the budget of DDOT’s engineering division by $x and then adding $x to the budget of the engineering division to fund this provision. 4/4 @maustermuhle.bsky.social

I was told DDOT/CFO considered this to have a fiscal impact and thus is unfunded so far. This is kind of BS as it just says you can’t do x (leave off a crosswalk) but offers an escape valve. Maybe it should just have said you can’t do x and then, no fiscal impact. 3/

“… marked crosswalk that complies with the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, unless DDOT has published a brief reasoning on its website describing why installing a high-visibility, marked crosswalk would reduce pedestrian safety." 2/

It’s a violation of the Vision Zero Enhancement Omnibus Act of 2020: “For a road segment that has a crosswalk that is not marked, road reconstruction or major repair, installation of a curb and gutter, or curb and gutter replacement shall include installation of a high-visibility 1/

Oversized intersection from the 50s, freshly rebuilt.

After a decade of work and half a billion dollars, the 6th & R is finally restored to its overbuilt and unsafe design—now made irrelevant by a road diet across the street.

DC Water said they couldn’t update the designs approved in 2014, a bitter reminder of our sclerotic planning system.

This is exactly how a bike lane network should be conceptualized…in the same design language and typology of that city’s public transportation network and with connectivity to subways, busses, LRT etc.

Once again, Paris is leading the way.

which I don't think actually apply in that specific area. I'm curious if you agree with his point when applied to places not granted to Native nations by treaties at some point?

Thanks for this! I do think most of his piece is reacting to the way people use land acknowledgments, as opposed to the nations-rights framework you are talking about.

I have seen ones for i.e. Washington DC where people are trying to figure out what tribes once lived here, not real treaty rights

Agreed. As you touch on at the end, I think, talking about how X may have been an unhelpful echo chamber even before its Musk-ification. (Personally, I left X months ago; mostly used Reddit and the occasional FB group; and then recently dipped my toe back because a lot of people are joining.)

There's certainly the question of whether being on any of these is actually good for one's health. If one is on such a platform, maybe Bluesky will have less abuse, but we'll have to see. I hope so.

The tenor of replies you are getting here isn't promising, unfortunately. At least I'm not being force-fed all the ads and junk as on X.

As for your article, you're talking about elected officials and issue activists and such. For regular people it might be a different story (or not).

Helpful article, thanks! I personally left X because I just found posting on it was making me more stressed, not happier, always refreshing to see if my post had gotten likes and such. Plus Musk didn't help. I'm still undecided if Bluesky is going to be worthwhile or not.

Take Metro to Dulles (and DCA) 🚇

And if you do choose to drive, skip the terminal traffic by going to Innovation Center and riding Metro one stop.

Reckless driving is often associated w/vehicles that have fake license plates/tags, long-expired temp tags or obscured tags. Approved in committee last week, my bill addresses an untenable status quo by allowing DPW to tow these vehicles immediately. wjla.com/news/local/p...

This is great! Are reflective license plate covers (the ones designed to stymie enforcement cameras or toll readers) included as well?

Right, but that doesn’t tell you the race of the riders. There might have to be a survey or something to actually get hard numbers about nonwhite people also increasingly using CaBi. My anecdotal observation is yes, but an article would need some data I think.

Is there data that has been released about that which reporters or columnists could turn into an article?

How Helsinki and Oslo cut pedestrian deaths to zero After years of committed action, neither city recorded a single pedestrian fatality in 2019

“They cut speed limits, changed street design, removed space for cars… Now it appears that work is paying off. #Oslo & #Helsinki are reaping the rewards of committed action on making their roads safer, reducing pedestrian fatalities to zero last year.” #VisionZero www.theguardian.com/world/2020/m...

Sounds about on brand for modern DDOT.

Good for you! Following you now

This would supercharge the Texas economic miracle. Build it!

Boulder’s explicit traffic safety signs are the latest real-looking fakes on Colorado roads Several of the signs were concentrated along 28th Street, a busy north-south thoroughfare that the city has identified as being particularly dangerous.

“We don't right now have any information about who put them up. We do know that they're very professionally designed signs. They're very large. They're very well done. So someone went to a lot of trouble to put these large signs up.”

Exciting! I haven’t seen this in Dupont (even though we have been asking for years). Is this a pilot? @capitaljeff.bsky.social do you know more?

Good/bad to know we were right!

Yesterday I told Bluesky I wanted less like some posts about national politics. Today I open it up and on my Discover tab - indeed the posts are not about national politics!