DC’s Triangles of Doom
Last night I met Noah Kazis who’s writing a blog at dc.thecityfix.com (”sustainable mobility in the nation’s capital”) that those of you who don’t find my posts about urban planning annoying will love. Here a Bostonian talks about learning to love the straight lines of DC’s L’Enfant Plan.
I think there’s definitely something charming about metro Boston’s tangled web of streets. And there’s clearly also something good and practical about a regular grid. But I really don’t think there’s any case at all for what we’ve done in DC in terms of super-imposing diagonal boulevards on a basically rectilinear grid. It leads to lots of very weird intersections. This is right by my office:
And this is near my house:
These multi-focal intersections tend to have the unusual property of being both very slow for car traffic (since the light sequencing necessarily rotates pretty slowly) and also dangerous for pedestrians and especially cyclists since giant cars are flying around from many directions. But worst of all they create these horrible dead spaces when the wedges between the various streets are too small to put a city block on. Every once in a while this process results in a “triangle park” that’s actually nice and used for something (the part at 1st, R, and Florida has nice synergy with Big Bear Cafe and the Bloomingdale Farmer’s Market) but the typical triangle park isn’t really used for anything and many of them scarcely deserve to be called parks.
Green space and public space are good things, but they’re really only good if the spaces are usable and used in practice by the people who live and work in the area. That requires them to be located and sized for real reasons (”this would be a good place for a park”) and not just used to fill up awkward gaps in a street grid.
31 Responses to “DC’s Triangles of Doom”
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July 16th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
The diagonals look cool on a map though. I guess part of the idea was to make use of the triangle inequality.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I basically agree, but I must say that I live really close to Maryland NE and there are two parks one little and another a bit bigger that are really convenient for my kids. So that is something. But yeah, they are a mess for pedestrians and drivers.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
I’m of mind that the diagonal streets and triangles aren’t as much the problem as how they are used. This is why New York is experimenting with shutting down parts of Broadway, which is a diagonal avenue. I believe DC shouldn’t try to move so much traffic on its diagonal streets. I would turn them into one-lane in each direction parkways with bike facilities and pleasant streetscaping. The traffic can divert to north-south, east-west streets
July 16th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Well, I basically agree with your assesment of the area around your office (though the main reason for this that you fail to mention is that the White House isn’t far away), but I completely disagree in other areas. Take Mass. Ave for an example. I love it. Traffic circles (and certain underpasses below said circles) are very efficient in my opinion. I know you love European design, and, need I remind you the city is based on Paris. I think you’re overreacting to a limited part of the city that has been made into a bit of a douche (in my opinion because of closing off streets to the White House).
Further as a local, I love to drive the route in question as people–especially out of towners–don’t use it because it is so confusing.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I always forget that you commies work right around the corner from me.
Except for it seems that 80% of drivers have no idea how to navigate a traffic circle it seems. This is especially true for Chevy Chase circle up a the Conn/Western Ave interesection. Plus Dupont Circle is always a giant mess, it seems.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
The north side of Chicago is laid out in pretty much exactly this fashion: diagonal boulevards superimposed on a rectangle grid, and it works excellently there.
One of these days the various DC bloggers moaning about urban layout (it’s the diagonals! it’s the height restrictions! it’s the traffic!) are going to have to wake up and realize that these types of things are by far the least of DC’s problems, and not very significant at all by themselves.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
It’s the trapezia that I don’t like.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Heh, that’s right near Cafe Mozart. Have you ever been? “Piano with the young lady” is particularly interesting.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
That’s always been one of my favorites. Mmmm, heavy Austrian food. Although everytime I go there, they play Liszt all night.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
It’s all the satanic freemasons‘ fault. Duh.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Except for it seems that 80% of drivers have no idea how to navigate a traffic circle it seems. This is especially true for Chevy Chase circle up a the Conn/Western Ave interesection. Plus Dupont Circle is always a giant mess, it seems.
I don’t think Dupont Circle is a traffic circle. Sure, it’s round and has traffic in it, but in a traffic circle the traffic circulates freely inside the circle, with few or no stoplights. This is an extreme example, but that same general design principle can be found in a lot of places and Dupont Circle isn’t one of them.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
@ ugh. I kind of agree with you about DuPont Circle, but if the person is mutilating the intent of the circle they usually are obeying the stop sign before they attempt illegal turn. I couldn’t agree more with your assessment of Chevy Chase circle, but I sense that its problems lie in the fact that there are just too many spokes in the wheel and no thought about ‘primacy’ (i.e. @ DuPont Mass Ave. gets primacy or maybe Connecticut Ave. since it has an underpass).
July 16th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
@ Cyrus. Well, if that is your criteria then only Chevy Chase Circle and Westmoreland Circle immediately come to mind as the only ‘true’ traffic circles in DC. I think this is a bit riduculous though. My point was that Europe, and particularly Paris, does a lot of traffic circles. They do indeed have many of the ‘true’ variety, but they have many like DC’s version as well.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
The purpose of the diagonals — and of the horizontal and vertical streets on the grid –was to funnel enraged mobs to the traffic circles where they could be blown to hell by cannon.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Broadway’s diagonal run across Midtown Manhattan is great for the city–creating some of the best and most memorable urban spaces (Times Square, Union Square, Herald, Madison….)–but really terrible for traffic. Closing off the blocks immediately adjacent to the avenue intersections is one of those why-didn’t-they-think-of-this-earlier ideas–it’s great for pedestrians, and nothing but good news for drivers. Are there any blocks that would benefit from closing in DC? I’m thinking in particular of places where each road gets the green only one third of the time.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
@7 Njorl: “It’s the trapezia that I don’t like”
I agree. All my bad dreams involve roaming bands of metallic, man crushing trapezoids.
When I see triangles, however, I see green and friendly baseball parks, even if the space is so small it can only be used by hardcore wiffleballers.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Re MattB at 10: “It’s all the satanic freemasons‘ fault. Duh.”
————
The Christian rant at the link is full of shit. If you look down at the National Mall on a map you can see that it is laid out as the Christian cross — a little trick they pulled on the Jews.
Foot of the Cross is the Capital Building, head of the Cross is the Lincoln Memorial, left end of the crossarm is the White House, Right End of the crossarm is the Jefferson Memorial. Use Yahoo’s map to see what I’m talking about.
The Washington Memorial is near the intersecting center of the cross arm and vertical pillar, on the vertical line from the Capital to the Lincoln Memorial.
The precise center of the Cross is a largely forgotten marker established by Thomas Jefferson — the Jefferson Stone:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Pier . If you extend the cross marked on its surface outward, you get the 4 corners of the DIstrict of Columbia.
It’s kinda hilarious that millions of ignorant motherfuckers living in Washington DC and never recognized the physical pattern that shapes their daily movements– a pattern designed over 200 years ago.
But then the dumbshits don’t understand how the Constitution works either. Although those who read Issac Asimov’s Foundation series might have a vague clue.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Wow, there’s certainly a lot of misinformation about L’Enfant’s plan. For one, it’s not based on Paris–while L’Enfant was certainly inspired by Paris and researched other important European cities, he really wanted something sui generis. (And there’s no evidence of stonecutter-inspired imagery. And, while we’re at it, no record that L’Enfant hated John Jay.)
I’m just finishing reading Grand Avenues: The Story of Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the French Visionary Who Designed Washington, D.C. by Scott Berg. It’s a fantastic, readable account of the history behind the plan of our fair city.
One tidbit of fact in the book I had never heard: L’Enfant’s original plan had 15 circles so that one would be given to each state for free. He figured it would spur development because each circle would function as a state-specific neighborhood, attracting the politicians from that state, then the accompanying stores, restaurants, and services. And no state would want to have the shabbiest neighborhood, so there’d be pride for each circle and competition among the states.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I dunno–Pythagoras and I think that a few well-designed diagonals are not necessarily a bad idea.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
@ washingtonydc, I appreciate plug for the book and definitely have it on my library/Amazon list now. I also appreciate that you’re saying that L’Enfant claims he didn’t base the design of DC on Paris. I didn’t know that and thanks for correcting me. However, I’ve lived in DC and been to Paris and the similarities are striking. (And yes, DC is a very poor mans Paris, but please name an American city that it is more like Paris.) Saying DC is sui generis from Paris is like Michael Bay saying Transformers doesn’t have the same ‘Michael Bay’ feel as Armageddon or Pearl Harbor. It makes for great marketing, but everybody knows the over the top Michael Bay style when they see.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Agreed! And don’t forget the I-395/H/Mass/2/3/4 NW phantasmagoria, an intersection that seems to be designed as a form of population control.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
@Chappy, Ha! For the sake of L’Enfant’s legacy, I certainly hope DC is more akin to The Rock–perhaps over-the-top, but well-executed and always enjoyable, even if some aspects are grating.
And I certainly don’t want to underplay the importance of Paris as a foundation for L’Enfant–it is indeed easy to see echos of Versailles in the mall or the champs-elysées in Pennsylvania Ave. But to me, Paris’ oddly shaped blocks and narrow alleys seem organic, in direct opposition to L’Enfants labored geometry and angles. It’s harder to feel like Paris when you have a well-functioning (and certainly American) grid system incorporated into the plan. I’ve been lost many a times in Paris, from montmarte to the latin quarter to unknown banlieues. But I’ve never been lost in L’Enfant’s DC. Of course, I’m not sure whether that’s an advantage or not.
(Incidentally, I wonder how much of DC’s Parisian feel can be attributed to the height restriction–we can even point to Rosslyn as DC’s response to Paris’ La Défense.)
July 16th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
Hey Don Williams, just FYI, two points of your cross were in a tidal flat of the Potomac River until the early 20th century. This is information is clearly provided in your wiki entry, as well as in this map.
July 16th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
L’Enfantile!
July 16th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
The purpose of streets that cut across the grid is that they substantially reduce walking distances. This is simple geometry. Since all transportation in human history was based on walking right up thru the design of the Washington DC, it is only natural that they would have wanted to solve for it.
Because I am personally a fan of walkable cities, I continue to like diagonal streets. As was mentioned above, the problem with our diagonal streets it has been almost impossible to resist re-tasking them for optimized automobile traffic — even though they’re horribly suited for that purpose, owing to the irregularity of the intersections. Robert Heinlein once wrote that trying to teach a pig to sing both “wastes your time and annoys the pig.” This reminds me of that.
July 17th, 2009 at 1:57 am
“Since all transportation in human history was based on walking”
Perhaps for peasants or pre-Columbian American natives. Gentlemen were riding horses or horse-driven conveyances. Still, diagonals were useful for riders etc. too.
Is it true that DC plan is based on Paris? I would think that the opposite is more probable. Paris had quite disfunctional mediaeval plan until “revovations” ca. 1860-1870 directed by Haussmann on the orders of Napoleon III.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:16 am
I very much agree with nordy, n. 3: That’s exactly what they are doing in Barcelona, which is not a small town either. They are rebuiliding the “Diagonal”, which up to recent days consisted of a lot of lanes für cars, turning it into a boulevard resembling the Rambla: 1 car lane in each direction, the rest trees, pedestrian areas, cycling lanes. They do it because they want to reduce the “separating” effect such a “city-highway” has within the urban tissue, making it virutally impossible for pedestrians to cross them. They can do it since they have long been working on improving public transport.
July 17th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Gentleman may ride, but their horses are walking. I did ignore boats and birds, though.
But you make an excellent point about the Paris renovations. I always wondered that too.
July 17th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
I think, on balance, that the radials work and are a good way to avoid the inefficiencies inherent in grid travel.
If you’re stopped at light, although it’s frustrating, you have to consider that you’re intentionally stopped at the light to thin volume on a particular roadway segment.
Also, pedestrian safety can be addressed through a number of measures, such as user-activated lights, refuges, bulb-outs, etc.
July 18th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
Le Nôtre’s plan for the gardens at Versailles was likely the most direct inspiration for L’Enfant’s Washington plan. Two more (good) books on the development of Washington’s city plan are: Washington in Maps: 1606-2000, by Iris Miller; and Worthy of the Nation: Washington, DC, from L’Enfant to the National Capital Planning Commission, by Frederick Gutheim and Antoinette J. Lee. The earlier commenter was correct in stating that Paris’s boulevards (other than portions of the Champs-Élysées) post-date L’Enfant’s plan by 50-60 years.
I’ve often thought of DC’s plan (within the original city, i.e., south of Florida Avenue and east of Rock Creek Park) as a baroque plan of radial vistas and rond-points overlaid with a modern city. To me, although L’Enfant’s plan makes for some odd intersections and lots–to the despair of the poor, poor developers–the avenues add variety and interest to the grid plan, as well as allowing both pedestrians and drivers to cut across the grid. As a comparison, I like New York quite a bit, but the 1811 Commissioner’s Plan for the city makes for a relentless, foot-sore grid; walking east-to-west across the long blocks between the avenues is especially tiring.
July 19th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
You think that’s bad?
Behold downtown Dallas.