I understand you
You've got a problem
Now understand me
It's your problem not mine

—Dag Nasty, “All Ages Show"

Last summer, several teenagers were shot (though none fatally) outside a matinee go-go show at Market Lounge, a venue at the Florida Avenue Market. In fact, shootings and stabbings in (or, more often, outside) clubs are not uncommon in D.C. They can happen late at night or in mid-afternoon, and whether or not alcohol is being served. But when 17-year-old Taleshia Ford was killed last weekend, apparently the accidental victim of a conflict between a patron and a bouncer at 9th & U's Smarta/Broadway, Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham quickly announced that “this has got to stop.”

By that he means that he hopes to ban under-21s from some establishments that serve alcohol. Exactly what he has in mind is not clear; presumably, he doesn't intend to bar kids from restaurants, or from such booze-peddling entertainment venues as, say, the Kennedy Center. But Graham's broad-brush approach could affect clubs like the Black Cat and the 9:30 Club, which still (largely) respect the early-’80s tradition of the all-ages show.

It's illegal to serve alcohol to minors in D.C., of course. Yet there's no requirement that under-21s be barred from bars and clubs, many of which are technically restaurants. In the late ’70s, live-music venues often excluded minors, even though the drinking age then was 18 for beer and wine, and all clubs were classified as restaurants. (The “tavern” license is a subsequent addition to the law.) When a lively, teen-oriented punk scene developed, circa 1980, some of the savvier local clubs responded with “hardcore matinees” (at which alcohol was not served) and all-ages shows, which continue to this day.

Washington didn't invite the all-ages music venue. In fact, it was in San Francisco that such D.C. musicians as Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye (now of the Evens) first saw X's scrawled on the hands of under-age patrons. But the all-ages show became associated internationally with Washington's dynamic punk scene, and was quickly adapted into a local insignia: two bars and three X's, in emulation of the D.C. flag. A few years later, Dag Nasty began performing “All Ages Show.”

Graham has announced a “public roundtable” today [Thursday] to discuss changing the law and possibly banning alcohol-serving all-ages venues. Yet Monday's Washington Post article on the killing at Smarta/Broadway suggests that laws already on the books could have closed that trouble spot. Open since September 2004, the club had been fined for selling alcohol after hours and had its license suspended for five days. Subsequently, the Post reports, the business was cited for “additional violations,” including allowing patrons to leave with alcoholic beverages in hand.

In other words, Smarta/Broadway had a problem. But solving that problem need not involve changing any city laws, or ending a local tradition with a largely trouble-free history. The gap between Washington's diverse culture and the D.C. Council's narrow perception of the city has long been substantial. Let's hope it's not wide enough to drive counterproductive new legislation through.

The D.C. Public Library Board of Trustees is among the more opaque of the city's many nontransparent entities. The board convenes in private before its monthly public meetings, so its decision-making process is largely hidden from view.

Certainly things weren't fully explained at the board's Aug. 9 meeting, when board president John W. Hill blandly made a controversial announcement: The president of the Federation of Friends of the D.C. Library, an umbrella organization for the groups of volunteers and donors who support neighborhood libraries, would no longer have a seat at the table with the board.

The change, Hill noted cryptically, was made after a study of “best practices” at other library systems.

Even though the Federation of Friends’ position on the board was a nonvoting one, some members of the group were angered. Federation President Richard Huffine called the move “blatantly illegal” and “against their by-laws.” Two days later, Hill said the board would reconsider the action.

At the Jan. 17 trustees meeting, it did. Hill introduced a motion to restore the federation's nonvoting seat by recommending that “we as a board state our intentions to work very closely with the Friends on matters that come before the board.” The brief discussion that followed was without substance, and the motion passed on a unanimous voice vote.

There's still no word on what constitutes “best practices.” But whatever they are, apparently they've changed.

Jan. 1, 2057—The nation's capital got a new name today, when the city of Washington was redesignated “Penn Quarter.” The term, which originally applied to a mere 20-square-block area, became so popular that local residents stopped using “D.C.,” “the District,” and “Washington” altogether.

“I'm thrilled at the change,” said Mayor Christopher Barry. “It's great to give our city a name that was chosen the American way—by a marketing group—rather than by our Congressional overseers. Now if we could only get a vote in the House of Representatives, our long march to self-determination will be complete.”

That change is not gonna come, of course. It's not likely that the citizens of Georgetown, Anacostia, and other storied neighborhoods will accept a whole new city name. Yet the Penn Quarter tag has partially swallowed “Downtown,” and largely consumed “Chinatown.” What hope do weak formulations like “East End” and “NoMa” have against such a juggernaut?

The confusion actually began in the 1960s, when a new office district fleshed out the spines of K Street and Connecticut Avenue northwest of Lafayette Square. Before then, everyone knew where Downtown was: between 15th and 6th Streets and Pennsylvania and New York Avenues. To some, this area became the “Old Downtown,” as opposed to the “New Downtown.” The latter also became known as “Midtown,” on the Manhattan model.

Both areas have been in a continual state of redevelopment since the late ’70s, and real-estate-industry terms came to apply: The new downtown was called the “Golden Triangle,” a crass nomenclature now enshrined in the name of the precinct's business improvement district (BID). And the original downtown was dubbed the “East End,” implying that the city's center was to the west.

Despite the heroic myths of late-20th-century Washington development, very few of the changes to downtown happened organically. That brings us to “Pennsylvania Quarter,” which was devised by the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation (PADC), a federally chartered agency, and five developers the PADC solicited to create a mixed-use community around the intersection of 7th and Pennsylvania. The developers “were every skittish about developing housing” there, recalls Jo-Ann Neuhaus, then the PADC's director of project development, and wanted to redefine the area.

To support the new instant ’hood, the Pennsylvania Quarter Neighborhood Association (PQNA) was founded by PADC and the developers of such buildings as Market Square and the Lansburgh. Neuhaus became PQNA's executive director, a part-time position she retains today. The new district's original boundaries, she says, were 5th, 10th, and G Streets and—oddly—Constitution Avenue.

The precinct's new moniker was ultimately (if not officially) abbreviated to Penn Quarter, and even found its way onto the name of the Archives/Navy Memorial Metro station. When the PADC perished in 1996, Neuhaus became a consultant to the National Capital Planning Commission, a federal oversight group with offices in, of course, Penn Quarter.

Today, the PQNA defines its turf as stretching all the way from the Center Leg Freeway tunnel west to 15th Street, and north to a jagged line defined by Massachusetts and New York Avenues. The growth wasn't the result of an expansionist vision, says Neuhaus, but of acknowledging new members outside the original borders, and of adoption of the Penn Quarter tag by developers far from 7th and Pennsylvania.

“I kept seeing what people were calling Penn Quarter,” she says. “If people are buying apartments in what they think is Penn Quarter, then it's Penn Quarter. We weren't a leader in that. We were just following.”

They've followed so far that Penn Quarter's footprint has become virtually identical to that of the area native Washingtonians still call “downtown.” But, Neuhaus notes, the BID that covers the area stretches to the southeast corner of 16th & K Streets, several blocks beyond Penn Quarter's reach—at least for now.

The burgeoning Penn Quarter may someday colonize that block, and beyond, but for longtimers there's some consolation in what the BID covering the southeast corner of 16th and K calls its territory: Downtown.

The Metro fare increases floated on Thursday will not be instigated, at least not in their entirety. Some of the $116 million budget gap the hikes are designed to close will be eliminated by cost-cutting, and the most onerous provisions will yield to public outrage. Still, the proposal reveals the mindset of Metro's current management: Riders are pests, and the more they use Metro the bigger nuisance they are.

To recap Metro's proposal: It would penalize riders for using any form of payment other than SmarTrip, the embedded-chip card introduced in 1999. Rush-hour rail riders would pay from 50 cents to $1.30 extra for using a paper farecard, while bus riders would be docked 75 cents for paying in cash. In addition, riders using any of 19 stations in central D.C. and Arlington (even some that are never busy) would pay a 35-cent tariff for their effrontery.

Metro is unusual, if not unique, in maintaining a fare system that punishes riders for Metro's own route structure. In particular, people who switch from bus to rail must pay two full fares. While passengers who use either rail or bus regularly benefit from passes that allow unlimited ridership, passes for those who use both were eliminated several years ago.

Essentially, Metro's fares establish a class structure. Currently, people who accept that they are proles and promise to use only the bus can have unlimited rides for $11 a month. Rail-only passengers can ride as much as they like for $32.50 weekly, or restrict themselves to unlimited short trips during peak hours for $22 weekly. Those who use both bus and rail—as if Metro were a transportation system or something—can't get a break.

Ironically, the answer to this inequity is right there in the chip that makes SmarTrip cards work. Metro was the second major transit system (after Hong Kong) to introduce a smartcard for fare payments, but it has yet to take full advantage of its technology.

London, for example, inaugurated its Oystercard in May 2003; by February 2005, it had programmed the card so it can function as a long-term or daily pass that rewards rather than deters frequent ridership. If someone uses a Oystercard repeatedly in a 24-hour period, the system will deduct only the cost of a paper one-day Travelcard or bus pass, minus 50 pence. Meanwhile, Metro's SmarTrip still can't offer a bus-to-rail transfer. But then London is trying to encourage transit use, while Metro just wants those pesky riders to go away.

That's particularly clear from the idea of the 35-cent “congestion charge,” designed to depress Metro ridership in the area where it makes the most sense: downtown D.C. and a sliver of nearby Arlington. London also has a congestion charge, but it applies to private cars, the least efficient mode of travel, especially in urban areas. Incredibly, Metro's scheme would encourage people to drive downtown. (As such, it is clearly an affront to the Clean Air Act and could be vulnerable to a lawsuit on those grounds.)

Although some passengers grouse, Metrorail is not that crowded for that long every rush hour. (Metro's peak hours are a breeze compared to those of transit systems in any major Asian or European city.) The stations are quite roomy and much of the difficulty in boarding and debarking is the result of riders who block the doors. Besides, the fixes for peak-hour congestion—eight-car trains, a new crosstown line—were proposed years ago. It's not the riders’ fault that the Metro board and the agency's management failed to plan for increased patronage.

Perhaps the “congestion fare” proposal is just another example of the M.B.A. worldview, which sees everything in terms of “yield management” and other such formulations that exclude human nature and common sense. Washington's planners have labored for years to create more office and condo buildings in the central city, where traveling by foot, bus, and rail is an attractive option. Now Metro wants to fine the people who took the city seriously and committed to downtown. Silly commuters—get back in your cars! It turns out that Metro isn't running a transit system, just a fare-collection operation that happens to operate buses and trains on the side.

“What's the urgency?” asked Councilmember Marion S. Barry Jr. That was one of the many unanswered questions the evening of Tuesday, Dec. 5, when Barry's lame-duck colleague Kathy Patterson tried yet again—and failed yet again—to win D.C. Council approval for a plan to build a new central library on the old Convention Center site.

Over the last year, the library scheme has been peddled vigorously by outgoing Mayor Tony Williams and the Board of Library Trustees and the Federal City Council, both of which are headed by John W. Hill. But the need for a new library is questionable, the financing plan shaky, the proposed location controversial, and many of the proponents’ arguments so dubious that they've gradually evaporated over the course of the debate.

Legislation to abandon the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 901 G St. NW and authorize a new library seemed to have died on Tuesday, Nov. 21, when the D.C. Council's Education, Libraries, and Recreation Committee voted to table it. Yet Patterson and her allies decided to keep pushing, even though they clearly didn't have the nine votes necessary to pass the authorization as an emergency bill. Instead, they tried a rarely-used gambit: a full-council vote to discharge the bill from committee. That required a simple majority of the 12 members present, but even that wasn't doable: Only six voted for it.

In addition to Patterson, the aye votes were Linda Cropp, Vincent Orange, Adrian Fenty, Jack Evans, and Phil Mendelson. (The first three of those will leave public office with the next term.) Aside from Barry, voting no were Kwame Brown, David Catania, Jim Graham, Vincent Gray, and Carol Schwartz.

The supporters of a new library mostly reiterated arguments made by Williams and Hill, and generally seemed unfamiliar with the issue. A distracted Fenty commended the mayor's “blue ribbon task force” on the library, which recently published a report that's an embarrassing goulash of cliché, boilerplate, and irrelevancy. Orange floated by on a cloud, comparing MLK unfavorably to Paris’ Bibliotheque Nationale—which is, of course, the French equivalent of the Library of Congress, not a city library.

The opponents’ remarks were more pungent. Barry termed the claim that a new D.C. library would become a tourist attraction “idiocy"; Brown said the arguments for a new library are “foolishness"; and Schwartz called expectations of major federal funding “just craziness.” It was Barry who nailed the weakness of the case for a new library. It was apparent, he said, that advocates of the scheme just decided they wanted the library “and then went back to try to justify it.” A 6–6 vote says they didn't.

On Tuesday, Nov. 21, the D.C. Council's Education, Library and Recreation Committee voted to table legislation authorizing the construction of a new central library. Prominent supporters of the new-library proposal were clearly shocked by the 3-2 vote but were quick to suggest that the bill still might move forward, perhaps as emergency legislation.

A week later, on Nov. 28, the committee eliminated that possibility by a 4-1 margin. The second vote guarantees that the library proposal is comatose until after Mayor Tony Williams, the most powerful elected official to advocate the scheme, leaves office at the beginning of 2007.

At issue was a proposal to build a new central library, at an estimated cost of $275 million, on the old Convention Center site, which is due for major mixed-use redevelopment. Under the plan, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 9th and G Streets NW would be leased to an as-yet-undisclosed entity. Opponents of the scheme argued that MLK is a significant building that should be preserved for its original use and that it could be renovated for far less than the cost of a new structure.

After they voted to stop the legislation, Councilmembers Marion Barry, Carol Schwartz, and Vincent Gray were left with a procedural anomaly. The committee report, produced by the staff of Committee Chairperson Kathy Patterson, strongly endorses the legislation that failed to pass. The 113-page study raises nine questions and answers them all in favor of the plan for a new library put forth by the Board of Library Trustees and the Federal City Council, both of which are headed by John W. Hill. (The report was written by Patterson staffer Jason Juffras, who is a friend of Hill's.)

The committee's solution was to reclassify the document as a “special” report rather than a committee one. Since it was not adopted as a committee report, it cannot be the basis for legislative action. Even that was not enough for Schwartz, who voted against accepting the report at all.

The library scheme will no doubt be back on the council's agenda next year, but on Tuesday both Gray (who in the next term will be council chairman) and Schwartz expressed doubts about the expense. Schwartz noted that Montgomery County's brand-new central library cost less than one-tenth the estimated price of the proposed D.C. facility.

An irregular feature pitching urban ideas big and small

II: The Great Dupont Cover-Up

On a clear day, the Q Street portal to the Dupont Circle Metro station is the most dramatic in the system. The circular opening offers a vast, beckoning slice of blue sky. But Washington isn't San Diego, and the sky isn't always blue. It rains and snows here, and winds whip down that wide opening and straight through the unguarded tube of the Dupont station. And all that weather is tough on machinery, which is a principal reason the Q Street Metro escalators are so often out of order.

As fall turns to winter, this is an apt time to consider covering the Q Street entrance. Fortunately, the portal's unique shape precludes one of the tackily modernistic canopies that have been retrofitted elsewhere in the system. The circular opening requires a different sort of lid, one that can be integrated into a larger structure. Which is fine, since that building could fix several other problems on that block.

Back at end of the 1980s, when Jack Evans was on the Dupont Circle advisory neighborhood commission and still a defender of neighborhoods, Riggs Bank had plans to build an out-of-scale office structure on the parking lot that covers about half that block. (The “square,” which is actually a trapezium, is bounded by Connecticut and Massachusetts Avenues NW and 20th and Q Streets.) Then-Mayor Marion Barry came to Dupont and walked, with Evans and other neighborhood residents, on a tour of several sites that were targeted for development. Barry agreed that the development plans were excessive, and the Riggs plan died.

Instead, the bank evicted the shops and restaurants on the 1500 block of Connecticut and converted the space to offices. Dupont activists had prevented a large new office structure but at a cost to street-level vitality. (A retail frontage requirement for major streets in the city would have prevented that misfortune, but the D.C. Council, then as now, is too timid to impose such a provision.)

Riggs is defunct now, and Pittsburgh's PNC, which took over the bank, probably doesn't need all that office space. The storefronts should be restored to retail uses, with a bonus to PNC: A new building on the parking lot that would contain any office space the bank needs, as probably leave some additional square footage that PNC could rent. There's just one problem: That parking lot has to stay.

Parking lots in urban areas are, to put it mildly, an abomination. They're an inefficient use of space and a breach in visual and actual continuity. But this one is transformed every Sunday into a farmer's market that's become an essential swatch of Dupont's urban fabric. And there doesn't seem to be any other open space in the neighborhood that could accommodate these market, at least in its full-blown incarnation. (Only a few merchants use the site during wintertime.)

The answer is a complicated structure that requires design and construction finesse, as well as an architectural style that suits both the pre-modernist buildings that neighbor the site and a contemporary function. Or, rather, functions: The new building, cantilevered over the parking lot, would incorporate office space and a mezzanine leading from the entrance on the Massachusetts Avenue side to the northwest corner. There, a transparent cover would overhang the station entrance, protruding like a magnifying glass extended from its leather case. A walkway could lead from the mezzanine to a pathway around the circular cap. (Actually, the cover could be constructed so that people could walk on it, but that might be a little too eerie, for people both on and below the projection.)

Nearby, elevators and escalators (sheltered from the elements, of course) would carry people from Mass Ave. into the new office block, much as they do at the building erected over the Friendship Heights terminal. A direct internal entrance into the new structure could also be constructed from the existing PNC (ex-Riggs) building at the intersection of Dupont Circle and Massachusetts Avenue.

Technical difficulties aside—and I concede that aspects of the proposal as sketched here may simply be unbuildable—the PNC/office/market/Metro project would be expensive. But it doesn't involve abuse of eminent domain, evicting small businesses, or any of the other demerits of the city's most aggressive redevelopment schemes. It would shelter the Metro escalators, preserve the farmers’ market, restore retail to that block of Connecticut, and add to the tax base. Plus, it would retain the view from the upward Metro escalators, and create an architectural landmark that might even draw tourist dollars.

Those seem like a sufficient number of benefits to justify bestowing some of the various subsidies the city dispenses to all sorts of dubious projects. And perhaps—given a sufficiently brilliant design—the neighbors might even allow to the new building to rise as high as the Riggs proposal that was spurned almost 20 years ago.

Immodest Proposal I: Putting China Back into Chinatown

In 2003, the Williams administration made some noises about replacing the Tenleytown library with a mixed-use structure that would include a new library as well as residential and possibly commercial space. The neighborhood reacted skeptically, and the trial balloon was deflated.

It now turns out, however, that the concept wasn't abandoned; it was just quietly moved across town. The city has been sketching plans to replace the Benning Library—which, like Tenleytown and two others, has been closed since the end of 2004—with a mixed-use building that would pair a new library with artists’ work/live apartments.

At an evening meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 4, dozens of community members reacted strongly against the plan, and the scheme's exponents were clearly on the defensive. But they were also prepared. After a reportedly stormy meeting just a few days before, on Sept. 30, the planners introduced a structure devised to minimize critics’ opportunities to speak.

The meeting took place in the board room of the Marshall Heights Community Development Organization, the partially city-funded nonprofit that is the developer of record for the remake of the Benning Library as a mixed-use building. The group, whose office borders the shuttered library, is technically independent of the city but has clearly worked closely with D.C. officials on the Benning plan.

The meeting was moderated by Connie Spinner, who was director of the D.C. State Office of Education until 2004, when she resigned after city auditors found improper travel expenses and misuse of federal grant money. (She was promptly rehired to run the Mayor's Adult Literacy and Lifelong Learning Initiative.) Identifying herself as a “facilitator,” Spinner set “ground rules” that were part kindergarten, part psychobabble. She then used these guidelines in an attempt to limit questioning of the principal presenters: D.C. Public Library Capital Construction Director Jeff Bonvechio; Derrick Woody, coordinator of the Great Streets Initiative for the Office of Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development; and Jair Lynch, the developer hired by the Marshall Heights CDO (on what he called “a fee-for-service” basis) to get the structure planned and possibly built.

Carrie Thornhill, president of the Marshall Heights CDO, also spoke briefly, apologizing if she misjudged the community's level of interest in the project. This misjudgment was a major part of the controversy, since the Oct. 4 event had been billed as the last public meeting on a proposal that many in the neighborhood had just discovered. Speaking for Thornhill, Spinner promised that “this is a continuing dialogue.”

It became clear, however, that the dialogue had begun long before local residents were allowed to have their say. The most revealing presentation came from Woody, who disclosed that mixed-use redevelopment plans are in consideration for several library sites, and that “the policy direction we were given is to look at a mix of uses.” He argued that the Shaw community is “coming around” to a plan to redevelop the closed Watha T. Daniel Library as a multi-use structure, and revealed that Tenleytown “will probably come up again as well.”

The library redevelopment process can apparently sustain itself for some time without ever coming into the glare of D.C.'s sunshine laws. Woody said that the R.L. Christian library kiosk on H Street N.E.—a tiny facility without a professional librarian—is well on the way to being replaced by a mixed-use building. But in response to a question, Bonvechio that the D.C. Library Board of Trustees has yet to hear a formal presentation on the R.L. Christian plan.

Later, Lynch claimed that “at no point has the library done more than just listen” and that the Marshall Heights CDO's “process is running in parallel with the library's.”

Several local artists extolled the Benning Library multi-use proposal, but most of the audience seemed dubious. After the official presentations, Spinner reluctantly allowed Eddie Rhodes, the local advisory neighborhood commissioner, to speak. Neighborhood residents “just don't want housing on top of their library,” he said. “I've polled over 1,000 people, and only about five people approved.”

That may not be a scientific poll, but it's clear that there's a lot of neighborhood distrust of the city's plan. Ironically, some of that doubt probably would have been dispelled if the city and its allies had started with the sort of open dialogue that Thornhill contends will now ensue.

The future of the Avalon Theater, D.C.'s only nonchain cinema, got a little more secure earlier this month. The Avalon Theater Project, the nonprofit group that rescued the Chevy Chase moviehouse in 2002 and reopened it in 2003, has bought its building from local developer Douglas Jemal for $3.5 million.

Jemal had only recently purchased the 1923 building, which he had leased with an option to buy from John Kyle, who owned the theater when Cineplex Odeon abandoned it in 2001. Bill Oberdorfer, executive director of the Avalon Theater Project, says he doesn't know when Jemal bought the structure, which also holds a Ben & Jerry's outlet. But the maverick real-estate magnate, who put an estimated $300,000 to $400,000 into theater renovations, was still leasing from Kyle when the Avalon reopened three years ago.

There are two advantages to owning, Oberdorfer explains. “Basically, the mortgage is less than the rent,” he says. “The other element…is that we filed for an exception from property taxes, which you can do in the District as a nonprofit owner, but not as a nonprofit lessor.”

Although ownership doesn't directly give the nonprofit more flexibility to operate, Oberdorfer says it does “just in the sense that it's less expensive for us. What it allows us to do is free up more funds for programming and the like. More staff to do more things than we were doing before.”

The Avalon shows independent, foreign, and offbeat Hollywood films on its two screens and also hosts special events and regular repertory series, including “indieWIRE Undiscovered Gems” and “Asian Cinevisions.” Oberdorfer says the project's organizers are considering additional ventures, including some sort of film education program for children. “But that's very much in the idea stage,” Oberdorfer notes. “We have do a feasibility thing on it to figure out basically what the community would like to have.” After all, the Avalon is now a neighborhood theater in every sense of the term.

On July 13, the anniversary of the D.C. Circulator's first run, the D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT) issued a press release labeling the bus service the “Coolest Ride in Town” and calling it an “ongoing success.” But what's the definition of success? Well, there isn't one, which is why boosters of the shuttle-bus operation can claim to have achieved their goals.

The original consultants’ report that endorsed the Circulator concept projected 40,000 daily riders on four lines. But in an interview last fall, Circulator godfathers Dan Tangherlini and Joe Sternlieb explained that those numbers were obsolete—and had not been replaced by any new ones. (At the time Tangherlini was the director of DDOT, which provides most of the Circulator's $6 million annual budget, and Sternlieb was deputy director of the Downtown Business Improvement district, one of four private organizations that kick in a total of $600,000 a year. Tangherlini has since become acting director of Metro, and Sternlieb has gone to work for local developer EastBanc.)

Currently, the system is said to be carrying 7,000 riders daily on three lines, with a goal of 11,000 daily by the end of 2008. But the claim of 7,000 riders a day appears to be overstated. While detailed ridership numbers are available only through the end of May, those statistics indicate that in its best month, April, the Circulator attracted an average of 7,176 passengers per weekday. Overall, daily ridership was only 6,062, a number that declined slightly to 5,899 in May.

In addition, according to DDOT spokesperson Karyn LeBlanc, the ridership studies do not address how many Circulator riders have switched from Metrorail or other Metrobus routes. It's possible that much of the Circulator's paltry ridership is being diverted from other services—and thus decreasing Metro revenue. Some unmeasurable, but perhaps significant, percentage of the Circulator's funding is simply increasing Metro's need for subsidy.

One aspect of the D.C. Circulator has been an unqualified success: the public relations campaign. Aside from my skeptical feature on the service in City Paper last fall and a July 24 article in the Common Denominator, the local press has greeted the bus service mostly with puff pieces. The Washington Post has been particularly flattering, perhaps because—as Sternlieb testified at a June 7 roundtable before the D.C. Council's Committee on Public Works and the Environment—"so many Circulator riders were not bus riders until they were attracted to the new service.” In other words, the Circulator has snob appeal.

Only one person testified against the shuttle bus service at the lightly publicized June 7 roundtable (which was supposed to be a public hearing, but had to be downgraded because insufficient notice was given for it to be a legal hearing). Kerry Stowell, who lives near a K Street Circulator stop, argued that “the numbers just do not work.” Noting that she had never seen more than five riders per bus, she calculated that based on fuel costs alone the Circulator costs “$42,336 per passenger per month.”

The estimate of five riders per bus is a little low, at least on the Union Station to Georgetown route, which is the most popular of the three. But even the Circulator's supporters admit that the buses are nowhere near full. The Post's new Dr. Gridlock, Robert Thomson, inadvertently damned the buses while offering much more than faint praise. On Aug. 13, he wrote that he had tried the service and found it “a model” with a “distinctive” look that offered “a swell trip.” He rode for the first time on July 28, when the Circulator offered free rides all day to commemorate (a little late) its first anniversary. Thomson noted that he later took several more Circulator journeys, on all three lines, and reported happily that “it's never been crowded.”

And that's the story. Not that the Circulator is innovative, cool, or swell. It's that ridership is low, well below projections, and—to judge from the latest available numbers—no longer growing. The 7,000 daily ridership that the transportation department touted in July shows no increase over April.

Of course, different lines are performing differently. In May, the Union Station to Georgetown route carried 128,599 passengers, while the 7th Street line carried only 42,049. (Ridership on the Mall loop was a mere 12,222, but that service had just been introduced in March.)

Sooner or later, the ridership figures will sink in, and much or perhaps all of the service will be cancelled. For the 7th Street route, that can't happen soon enough. Almost entirely redundant with the 70/71 Metrobus line, the 7th Street Circulator is an unmitigated flop. It's a favorite of the BIDs, because it's supposed to move Convention Center visitors to other parts of town, but it is clearly not doing that.

Logically, the Circulator “brand” would be redefined for tourist areas that have little transit service. Thus the Mall loop should survive, and perhaps be expanded. (Currently, it goes only as far west as 17th Street NW.) Maybe the proposed fourth line, the White House–Capitol Hill loop, should be given a tryout, although it would cover areas that already have substantial Metrorail and Metrobus service.

And what about the 5,899 (as of May) daily riders on the Union Station–Georgetown line? They can be accommodated with some juggling of Metrobus service, which would likely produce higher ridership overall. The D2 and D6 lines could be rerouted to run the Circulator's more direct route: from Union Station via Massachusetts Avenue and K Street to Wisconsin and K, then up Wisconsin and onto to Q Street to complete their current routes to Glover Park and Sibley Hospital. Of course, the new routes would have to be adequately publicized and marked, but that's an enduring problem with all Metrobus routes. And there's no reason that the buses’ electronic signs can't provide more information: “Glover Park via G'town and K Street,” say.

The re-routing leaves parts of the D2 and D6 lines unserved, but that can be fixed by expanding two lines that were cut back years ago, principally for budgetary reasons. Frequencies should increase on P Street's G2, offering better service from Dupont and Shaw to Georgetown, and compensating for moving the D2 and D6 off Q street east of Wisconsin Avenue. And the 42 should be restored to Stadium-Armory either via its old route through downtown and across Capitol Hill, or via the roughly D6 parallel route.

Would these changes be as cool as the Circulator? Perhaps not, but they would carry more riders, which is one reasonable definition of success.

It was supposed to be a coming-out party for new D.C. Public Library director Ginnie Cooper, who started work last month. Instead, the Aug. 9 meeting of the library system's Board of Trustees turned into a showdown with citizens at which—according to several observers—Cooper, board president John W. Hill, and board member Richard Levy all lost their tempers.

The catalyst for the confrontation was a series of five questions posed by Peter Fay, the former head librarian of the Library of Congress's Performing Arts Library at the Kennedy Center and a panelist on WETA's “Around Town.” But the tension started hours before the trustees convened at the Chevy Chase Library's meeting room, when Hill privately informed Richard Huffine that he was no longer a member of the board.

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Motorists regularly curse D.C.'s traffic circles, but these ceremonial features are an even bigger affliction for people on foot. Most of the circles make little or no accommodation to pedestrians. And even the ones that do—notably Dupont—require dodging multiple lanes of traffic to enter or simply cross.

One roundabout, however, has just gotten a whole lot friendlier. Thomas Circle has been remade, offering pedestrian access to its interior, as well as a simpler and safer path from one side to the other. The work is not complete, but transportation department spokesperson Karyn LeBlanc says the work, including reconfiguring the traffic lights, “should be done by the end of next week, weather permitting.” July and August aren't conducive to planting grass and trees, so the landscaping won't be completed until fall.

Previously, Thomas Circle was a barrier island between downtown and the residential neighborhoods to the north. It was flanked by two concentric roadways, with no pedestrian cross-passage at all. The roads were separated by curbs and low but thick hedges, which made a shortcut on foot complicated—though certainly not impossible, as was demonstrated regularly.

Now, two pedestrian paths lead to a circular walkway within the park, which centers on a statue of Civil War Gen. George Thomas. Substantial pedestrian islands consolidate the routes from four thoroughfares—14th and M Streets, and Vermont and Massachusetts Avenues—into two, and make crossing the automotive flow much less of a heroic saga than at Dupont or other circles.

The $7 million project was funded largely with $4.5 million in federal transportation funds. More importantly, it received the cooperation of the National Park Service (NPS), which controls the interiors of most (but not all) of the city's traffic circles. This is significant, because the NPS previously hasn't shown much consideration for the pedestrians who approach its circular greens.

Other D.C. circles that allow pedestrian access are arranged to favor the avenues, even if those are not the streets that carry the most walkers. Thus 23rd Street, thick with people moving to and from the Foggy Bottom-GWU Metro Station, has no crossing of Washington Circle. When pedestrians burned their own path across the circle along the 23rd Street axis, the Park Service simply erected fences to stop them. The redesign of Thomas Circle, however, acknowledges that 14th Street is the major foot route to the circle, and doesn't insist that design symmetry take precedence over pedestrian safety.

All the city's circles are different, and some—tiny Scott, for example—may never be made more people-friendly. LeBlanc says her agency has “ongoing plans” for other traffic and pedestrian improvements, but she knows of no other circles on the agenda. But if and when it does remake other ones, the newly humanized Thomas Circle would make a fine model.

The redevelopment of downtown Washington was (and is) a political process, guided by political decisions made by elected officials, city planners, and zoning administrators. This statement is well-supported by the facts, and yet is continually denied by opinion pieces published in the Washington Post. (Also by its news articles, but that's another story.) Instead, such essays usually advance magic narratives in which everything can be explained by a single alchemical force.

One such bewitchment is the city's height limitation, which is the focus of a piece that appeared in Sunday's Outlook section, “D.C.'s Fear of Heights.” According to author Michael Grunwald, the height limitation “has promoted suburban sprawl, boxified the city's architecture, and deadened Washington's downtown,” as well as “inflated office rents, deflated the municipal tax base, limited affordable housing, contributed to the region's hideous traffic jams, and generally helped keep Washington a second-tier city.” This is some powerful voodoo.

The underlying thesis here is that there are two kinds of cities: sleepy low-rise ones like D.C., and vibrant high-rise ones like New York. In American terms, this might appear to be right. But it doesn't explain why such cities as Rome (no skyscrapers), Paris (only one), and London and Tokyo (which have some high-rises, but are not dominated by them) are so active. Clearly, tall buildings are not essential to produce bustling high-density districts.

If they were, then the mostly three-to-four-story D.C. downtown that survived into the ’70s would have been deader than the 12-to-15-story one that exists today. In fact, it was much livelier, because it had more shops and more small buildings open to the street, rather than full-block white-collar fortresses that are oriented inwardly.

Grunwald writes that the downtown “shopping downtown is so lame” because under the height limitation, developers “can't afford to sacrifice two stories of office space for one quality store.” This doesn't quite make sense, since the rents for upscale retail space are higher than for office space. But the argument is irrelevant, since downtown's redevelopers didn't forgo top-rent shops for medium-rent offices—they sacrificed them for no-rent lobbies. It was the vogue for grand, multi-level atriums that eliminated most retail from the downtown office buildings erected since redevelopment began in earnest in the early ’80s.

Other cities don't allow this, understanding the importance of a busy downtown shopping district to both urban vitality and the tax base. Indeed, D.C, understood it, too. For decades, its planners called for a “living downtown,” and in the early ’90s, the city's zoning commission finally instituted regulations that would encourage that goal. But the city's leading developers didn't want to be bothered with the new zoning's retail and housing requirements and lobbied heavily to overturn the regulations. That's just what the D.C. Council did, and quickly.

There's no question that D.C. would be a very different city without the height limitation. It's even fair, if oversimplified, to say that the restriction has “boxified the city's architecture.” (Zoning and inadequate design review are also factors in the rise of the downtown box.) But most of Grunwald's other arguments can be refuted simply by comparison to that most high-rise of American cities, New York.

If the height limitation is responsible for suburban sprawl, high office rents, lack of affordable housing, and major traffic jams, then the New York region shouldn't have any of those problems. But, of course, it has them all.

As for what makes “Washington a second-tier city,” there are many issues, most of them, again, political: D.C.'s lack of full home rule and congressional representation, the dearth of regional land-use and transportation planning, longstanding federal policies encouraging suburban development, and the fact that D.C. (unlike every other major American city) has never been allowed to grow by annexing territory.

And there's one more thing: the way some local publications neglect to cover the politics of D.C. redevelopment, preferring instead to search for the magic beans that somehow sprouted into block upon block of downtown office cubes.

There are many frustratingly inefficient Metrobus routes in D.C., but the worst of the major ones is probably the 70/71 line, which runs along the 7th Street/Georgia Avenue corridor. The D.C. Department of Transportation—which insists on calling itself DDOT, as if Columbus hadn't been credited with discovering North America—estimates that buses on the route average 8 mph and that a trip from the National Archives to Silver Spring takes 58 minutes. The latter is the scheduled time, not the actual one; when Georgia Avenue is clogged, which is much of the time, the journey can easily take 90 minutes or more. So a new system that would cut the trip to 49 minutes would be a significant boon for the corridor's regular riders.

Yesterday, DDOT and Metro invited riders and other interested citizens to Brightwood's Emery Recreation Center for a “workshop” on a proposed “rapid bus” line that would supplement the 70/71. As with so many of the “listening sessions” and other community meetings the D.C. government holds these days, public involvement was being sought only after the decisions had already been made. DDOT has already committed to rapid bus, an idea it borrowed from other cities, notably L.A. The buses are supposed to start running in late September, initially only during rush hours. The fares would be identical to those on regular Metrobuses, and service on the parallel 70/71 would not be reduced. Although the buses would be distinctively marked, they would be operated by Metro.

The rapid bus proposal includes a few technological refinements, but it's essentially a standard express-bus system. Where the 70 makes a maximum of 54 stops between Archives and Silver Spring, the rapid would have only 14 between Archives and the intersection of Georgia and Eastern Avenues—15 if it continues to downtown Silver Spring, which is the only material issue still under discussion. Metrobuses pick up and discharge every block or so; rapid stops would be one-third to one-half-mile apart. There would be no express lanes or other significant changes, although on 7th and 9th Streets downtown the buses would use the lanes already established for the Circulator route (generally ignored by motorists).

The rapid would benefit from a “signal priority” system that will automatically hold a green light for a few seconds longer when the added time would allow a bus to clear an intersection and keep moving. That's expected to decrease travel times by “more than 10 percent,” according to DDOT mass transit administrator RoseMary Covington.

The other technological refinement would be real-time information about bus arrivals, expected to be in operation by fall 2007. Each stop would have an electronic sign, similar to those on Metrorail, indicating the arrival times of the next several buses. DDOT has previously committed to adding such signs at a few major Metrobus transfer points, but the Georgia Avenue rapid would be the only route to offer arrival information at every stop.

The current timeline for expanding the Georgia Avenue rapid calls for full-day service by fall 2007, followed in early 2008 by the construction of “bulbouts” at selected stops. The latter would allow the low-floor buses to simply pull to a stop—without pulling over—and unload and load quickly.

Covington says the annual operating subsidy for the rush-hour service will be a mere $1 million—$1.1 million if the buses travel all the way to Silver Spring—which of course they should, since the latter is a major transfer point. DDOT is also considering rapid service on Pennsylvania and Rhode Island Avenues, and the H Street/Benning Road route. Expect citizens to be invited to “workshops” to plan those routes as soon as DDOT has already decided to implement them.

An irregular feature pitching urban ideas big and small

I: Putting China Back into Chinatown

The D.C. government has long practiced a sort of trickle-down approach to development, focusing on the individual large project rather the overall tenor of the surrounding neighborhood. One problem with this is that the touted development frequently doesn't materialize; a related difficulty is that the megaproject, unsupported by a comprehensive strategy, often unravels. Take, for example, such downtown “festival marketplaces” as the Pavilion at the Old Post Office and the Shops at National Place; both thrived for a time, but lost their vigor after the city declined to institute zoning that would have required a critical mass of downtown retail around them.

One downtown redevelopment area that's livelier than most—at least so far—is Chinatown, which has two megastructures (Verizon Center and the Gallery Place mixed-used project) and also benefits from historic-preservation requirements that saved numerous small-scale buildings; the latter are far more amenable to retail uses than is the standard downtown office building, which usually just provides tiny spaces for luncheonettes and copy shops. Yet despite the landmark arch and a profusion of new businesses with bilingual signs, the neighborhood's ethnic character is quickly evaporating. Slapping Chinese pictograms on Starbucks and Fuddruckers is beside the point if the adjacent Chinese restaurants and shops close.

Night market in Qingdao, China
(Photo by Mike DeBonis)

The city should have made plans years ago to compensate for the development pressure on established neighborhood businesses, but it's not too late. There's still one—and only one—street that can save Chinatown: the 600 block of I Street NW, which runs parallel to the block of H Street that was once the neighborhood's heart. By day, it could be a bustling retail strip, and in the evening it could become one the liveliest possible urban spaces: a Chinese night market.

There's no other place for Chinatown to go. H Street is rapidly changing, 7th Street is basically redeveloped, and 6th Street—although it retains a strip of small Asian restaurants in the 600 block—is yielding to new office blocks. To the south is the recently remade “Penn Quarter”; north is the barrier of Massachusetts Avenue and more redevelopment. But I Street's 600 block is close to ideal: low-rise, adjacent to what's left of Chinatown, and ripe for some sort of remake.

There's actually one Chinese eatery on I Street now, and there used to be more. A modern two-story structure, currently for rent, held a upper-level restaurant before it yielded to a now-closed sports bar, a failed attempt to capitalize on the nearby arena. Newly built or renovated commercial structures sit at the 7th Street end of the block, and a recently reclaimed synagogue anchors the southwest corner of 6th and I. In between is a string of three and three-and-half-story 19th-century rowhouses, most of them apparently used for offices. (Bargain bus companies are among the tenants.) Three of the townhouses are boarded up, and there are four vacant lots. These alone constitute enough blank canvas to paint a new Chinatown.

With a package of zoning incentives, tax abatements, low- or no-interest loans, and simple information-sharing, city planners could fill I Street with Chinese retailers and restaurants. Those who can no longer afford H Street—such as the recently closed China Doll restaurant—would be a priority, but other businesses should also be encouraged, notably some sort of Chinese or Asian market (to replace the Da Hua that vanished from H Street). Low-rise retail buildings would fill the empty lots, and converting the lower floors of the existing houses to eateries and shops would be encouraged.

Such a redefined street would certainly do well at lunchtime, attracting workers from nearby office buildings. But I Street might seem a block too far from the Verizon Center to attract crowds at night. The answer is to create an area whose appeal is as much theatrical as it is also serve as a pedestrian mall—would be opened to vendors. The newly assembled array of restaurants would set up food stalls, serving Asian street fare to browsers who don't want to commit to a sit-down meal. It remains to be seen if the sort of discount vendors who flourish in Chinese cities would draw sufficient business in downtown D.C., but noodles, skewers, and other simply prepared foods would surely do as well as at any local street fair.

At first, the night market would operate on Fridays, Saturdays, and nights when the Verizon Center is booked. That might be enough to establish the 600 block of I Street as the new Chinatown, but perhaps the market would become a nightly occurrence; maybe it would even draw crowds in the colder months, as such markets do in northern Chinese cities. However often it operates, however, the night market will always require the city's attention. Much like a suburban mall, the I Street bazaar would need continual fine-tuning. Unlike the megasolutions D.C. has long indulged, true urbanism is an ongoing process, not a one-shot product.