Tyler Cowen points me to an interesting discussion on the subject “Why So Few D.C. Residents Are Married.”

Washington City Paper’s Amanda Hess cites a Pew survey finding that “Only 23 percent of women and 28 percent of men and in D.C. are married, compared to 48 and 52 percent nationwide. The rates in D.C. are so low that they lie entirely off the Pew map’s color key. The closest states to D.C.’s numbers are Rhode Island, where 43 percent of women are married, and Alaska, where 47 percent of men are married.”

While Pew’s D’Vera Cohn attributes this to D.C. residents getting married later than those in any state,  Hess argues that an overlooked factor is that D.C. has the nation’s highest concentration of homosexuals, who are not permitted to marry.

Newsweek blogger Katie Connolly retorts that “Both those explanations are plausible, but they give the data short shrift.”  Instead, she thinks the answer lies in the “nature of race and class in D.C.”

Anyone who’s lived in D.C. is aware of the city’s dirty secret: it essentially operates under an unwritten form of apartheid. In general, affluent, college-educated white folks with decent, steady incomes are clustered in the northwest quadrant. Their needs are serviced by a massive underclass, consisting largely of underprivileged immigrants, African-Americans, and Hispanics, that inhabits the remaining three quarters. Visitors to the city rarely glimpse this side of the city because there’s little reason to venture beyond the fancy hotels, restaurants, and attractions.

[...]

But only around a third of D.C.’s population is white. African-Americans make up 56 percent of the population, and marriage rates among African-Americans have been steadily dropping since the 1960s. The last census found that just 36 percent of African American women were married, down from 62 percent in 1950. Marriage rates for white women also declined over the same period, but only from 66 percent to 57 percent. A large proportion of D.C.’s African-American community is low income or underemployed, both of which are often indicators of low marriage or high divorce rates.

All those explanations strike me as contributors to the puzzle.  All of them, though, miss one crucial issue:  Suburbanization.

The vast majority of those of us who work in the District actually live in Virginia or Maryland.  Some even commute from as far away as West Virginia, Pennsylvania, or Delaware.   Those of us who are married — and especially those of us with children — are much more likely to be in that category.

If you’re young, single, and affluent, D.C. proper — or at least, a handful of gentrified neighborhoods therein — is a great place to live.  It’s not Manhattan but there’s a decent nightlife, a plethora of restaurants, and plenty of things to do.  But unless you’re very well off financially, you’ve either got a roommate, live in an incredibly small space, or both.  And there’s essentially no such thing as a single family home in the District.  (Note for non-urbanites:  A “single family home” is  a “house.”  In places like D.C., even wealthy people tend to live in condos or townhouses.) Let alone a yard.

Oh, and unless you can afford to send your kids to Sidwell Friends, the schools are simply awful.

UPDATE:   Commenter Ugh observes, “I think the problem here is treating the District of Columbia as a state, and then comparing it to real states, each of which is infinitely more rural than the District (even Rhode Island). A more proper comparison would be to the marriage rate in Baltimore proper, or San Francisco, or Oakland, or Manhattan, etc.”

Yes, that’s exactly right. The Pew piece footnotes that point and Connolly uses it as a throwaway line but it’s really important.  Indeed, it’s really another way of making my point about suburbanization:  The same is more or less true in most of our major urban centers but, since the unit of analysis for the other 50 entities is a whole state, the impact is different.

Time for the Monday OTB Caption Contest^TM

(AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Winners will be announced Thursday PM

Last Thursday Contest winners will be announced Tuesday PM

Matt Yglesias notes that Shanghai has a long-term plan for expanding their subway system and laments that we’re not so forward thinking here in America.

What’s striking is the extent to which we don’t operate like that here in the United States. I think everyone believes that over the next couple of decades the Washington, DC metro area will continue to add population. And people likewise clearly envision there being additional square feet of office space in the District and they’re also envision an increase in the District’s population. On top of that, we’re also trying to envision a less carbon-intensive future. All this pretty clearly implies that there ought to be some sort of plan in place for building additional Metro capacity through the central city.

My initial reaction was that, yeah, authoritarian states run by Communist parties tend to be better than democracies at producing long-term plans. After all, it’s easier to plan if you are going to be in office for the foreseeable future and don’t have to worry about public reaction to your policies.

Amusingly, however, his commenters have already pointed out that:

• The Census Bureau [Excel spreadsheet] actually predicts a significant decline in DC’s population over the next two decades.

• U.S. metropolitan areas with subway systems, including DC, in fact have plans locatable in seconds via the Internet.  LA.  NYC.  DC. Seattle.

As I understand it, you can also get good Chinese food in those cities.

John Cole points to a new law in Colorado making it illegal for motorists to throw objects at bicycles.  Previously, it has only been a citable offense if one’s aim was good.

Cole wonders, “What kind of twisted jackass throws something out of a car at a biker?” and several of his commenters note the high degree of hostility bikers face from those in cars.

It is indeed amazing that people would intentionally try to harm a stranger merely for riding a bike.  Then again, the concept of “road rage” has been around for years, so it’s not surprising that bikers get their share of the abuse.

More generally, because we’ve designed our roads for motor vehicles, having bicycles mixed in naturally promotes frustration.  It simply doesn’t work to have people in spandex peddling along at 15 miles an hour next to half-ton vehicles driving at 65 competing for space.

My daily drive out of DC into the Virginia suburbs is often frustrating because of the confluence of high volumes of traffic, tour buses, commuter buses, taxi cabs, and vending trucks.  Lanes are frequently blocked by buses and venders, causing people to unexpectedly change lanes.  People drive aggressively to avoid being run over or cut off.

Adding bicyclists to the mix is insane.  While they always seem to think they’re the aggrieved party, the fact of the matter is that few of them obey the rules of the road.  They weave in and out of traffic unexpectedly. They hog lanes rather than driving to the right.  They run stop signs and stop lights.  They’re alternately vehicles and pedestrians as suits them.

It’s hard enough to make a right turn in DC because of the buses, which often seem to ride in convoys that amount to a moving road block and/or force their way into the lane.   So, drivers of normal vehicles have to make snap judgments — if it’s clear, you go.  And then some idiot on a bicycle darts in from the sidewalk or a non-existent lane of traffic.   It’s truly a wonder more of them aren’t killed.

The answer, of course, is more bike lanes so that bicyclists can ride on their own terms.  But, unless or until we do that, motorists and cyclists are going to be at odds.

Waiting at DC’s Reagan National Airport yesterday evening for a flight to Minneapolis, we caught a photo of this baby biting Al Franken’s nose:

Okay, so it was our baby.

Franken was very gracious and accommodating. One of the joys of being a United States Senator, apparently, is that one can not read a magazine — or for that matter, sit down — when flying back to one’s home state because fifty people are lining up to chat with you about one thing or another. Ditto the lavoratory line on the airplane. Thus far, at least, Franken is taking it all in stride.

Megan McArdle reports that she has had a fourth bicycle stolen since moving to DC, all of them locked, all of them at her home, the most recent inside a stockade fence.  In frustration, she observes, “I think I’m done with bike commuting. I’d rather just hand out $100 bills to random people on the street; at least I wouldn’t be rewarding theft.”

This is followed by a remarkably heated exchange in the comments section, numbering 60 as of this writing, wherein readers lambaste Megan for being a dingbat and each other for various transgressions.

Freddy Mercury and company offer some related thoughts:

Aaron Brazell passes along word that DC and Baltimore are the most dangerous driving cities, as calculated by Allstate Insurance.  Bengt Havorson has the list:

The Safest Driving Top Ten

1. Sioux Falls, SD
2. Fort Collins, CO
3. Chattanooga, TN
4. Cedar Rapids, IA
5. Knoxville, TN
6. Fort Wayne, IN
7. Lexington-Fayette, KY
8. Eugene, OR
9. Boise, ID
10. Colorado Springs, CO

Bottom of the List – Riskiest Driving Cities

1. Washington, D.C.
2. Baltimore, MD
3. Glendale, CA
4. Hartford, CT
5. Newark, NJ
6. Philadelphia, PA
7. Elizabeth, NJ
8. Providence, RI
9. San Francisco, CA
10. Los Angeles, CA

I’ve lived and driven in Chattanooga and now live in the DC suburbs and commute into the city most days.  While I found both aggravating, mostly because constant construction projects added to traffic congestion, there’s not much doubt in my mind that DC is a worse place to drive.

Looking at how these are calculated, though, I’m a bit dubious.

To arrive at its lists, Allstate, which has about 11.3 percent of U.S. auto-insurance policies, analyzed its claim data for all collisions resulting in property damage claims. To help reduce the chances of influences like weather or construction, Allstate looked at a period of two years from January 2006 to December 2007. The figures were calculated toward “average years between collision” for drivers, and though they might represent an element of relative risk they’re not being used to determine rates.

Let’s presume that Allstate has representative policy holdings across the states.  Wouldn’t “accidents per mile driven” or “accidents per hour driven” by more useful than “years between accidents”?

UPDATE:  Steve Bainbridge thinks it may be no coincidence that DC is both the most dangerous city to drive in and that “DC also has more red light and speed cameras than almost any metro area in the country. Indeed, DC has nearly 10% of all the traffic cameras in the United States.”

Meanwhile, Stacy McCain has some, um, interesting suggestions on how to solve the problem.

NYT urban planning professor Mitchell Moss has taken to the pixels of something called New Geography to point out what most of us already knew: Washington, DC thrives during bad times for the rest of the country.  His historical discussion of the District’s evolution from swampy backwater to major city is interesting.

But this, I think, goes too far:

Washington has always been a one industry town: that’s why it has an intrinsically self-absorbed monotonic culture. Everyone there depends on government for their livelihood. It is fundamentally not a city of competitive industries, but a giant taxpayer-funded office park, surrounded by museums and memorials.

That’s pretty much what I thought, too, before moving to the area seven years ago.  There’s no doubt that DC only exists because it’s the seat of national power and that lobbyists, lawyers, contractors, and others are employed in lucrative jobs serving or seeking to influence government.

But the vast number of people here, as in most major cities, are employed in the service economy.  I’m not sure why dry cleaners, car salesmen, restaurant managers, pet groomers, golf pros, auto mechanics, gardeners, HVAC technicians, barbers, or whathaveyou who work in a metroplex where government is the chief employer are any different than those in towns where banking, manufacturing, or some other line of work is central.

Now, it is true that those of us who work in the general public policy nexus are more absorbed by national and international politics than the average Joe.   There’s a veritable army of think tankers, journalists, and activist types who derive little or no money directly from government but who are nonetheless deeply engaged in wonkish activity.  And wonks tend to hang out with other wonks and talk about wonkish things.  I don’t know that this amounts to being “self-absorbed” but it’s somewhat monotonic.

This one, though, is bizarre:

There is one unambiguous measure that signals the growth of business activity within a city. Until recently, taxi fares in the nation’s capital were based on zones. These made it very inexpensive for members of Congress to go to and from the Capital. Today, every DC taxi has a meter and the old-fashioned zone-based system has been abolished. Both the municipal government and taxi drivers understand that there are more dollars to be made from those seeking to influence government than those who actually make the laws.

Apparently, Moss doesn’t read the Washington Post and has never ridden a DC cab.  The taxi companies fought metering hammer and tong, going so far as to engage in strikes over the policy change.  The zone system was hated by tourists and other infrequent users because two trips of identical distance could have wildly different charges.  Locals would have the cabbie stop a couple blocks away from their final destination to avoid going into another zone; others had no clue.

Photo by Flickr user Kevin H under Creative Commons license.

Investigators and officials continue to work at the scene of a rush-hour collision between two Metro transit trains in northeast Washington, D.C., Tuesday morning, June 23, 2009. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

At least nine people have died and dozens injured in a crash of two Red Line trains on Washington, DC’s Metro subway, by far the deadliest in the system’s history.  The investigation is still ongoing but operator error is suspected.

WTOP:

“This is a tragedy beyond belief,” Metro General Manager John Catoe said on WTOP. “My heart is heavy with the weight of this grief.”

An inbound Metro train smashed into the back of another at the height of the Monday evening rush hour, killing at least nine people and injuring dozens on the Red Line.

“We are still removing remains from the train,” Catoe says. “This is still a recovery effort.” “Our teams have been working through the night, and we’re trying to make sure we document and collect all of the perishable evidence,” National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman tells WTOP.

WaPo:

Experts familiar with Metro’s operations focused last night on a failure of the signal system and operator error as likely causes of yesterday’s fatal Red Line crash.

These systems were supposed to make yesterday’s crash impossible. Metro was designed with a fail-safe computerized signal system that is supposed to prevent trains from colliding. The agency’s trains are run by onboard computers that control speed and braking. Another electronic system detects the position of trains to maintain a safe distance between them. If they get too close, the computers automatically apply the brakes, stopping the trains.

A system failure occurred in June 2005 but alert train operators averted disaster.  “It was unclear last night whether they ever found a cause” for that incident.

In yesterday’s crash, it appeared that the operator of the train that crashed did not apply the emergency brakes, also known as the “mushroom.” Experts said the train appeared to be traveling fast before impact because the force pushed the first car of the train on top of the train ahead. Witnesses on the train that crashed also reported that the train did not brake before impact.

There was no reason to think that the operator did not spot the train ahead of her yesterday. The weather was clear, and the trains were not in a tunnel.

“It doesn’t look like she hit the brakes,” said a train safety expert, who asked not to be identified because the crash is under investigation. “That’s why you have an operator in the cab. She should have been able to take action. That’s what they’re there for.”

Other possible factors in the crash include a medical emergency that incapacitated the operator or a catastrophic failure of the braking system.

The operator was killed in the accident.

I found out about the accident shortly after it happened via Twitter; a lot of those whose feeds I follow live in DC. I don’t know yet whether anyone I know was on board the trains involved.

Andrew Sullivan links an amusing blog devoted entirely to complaining about DC interns, who are depicted as stupid, rude, and annoying.  I’m sure a large contingent of them exist that are some or all of those things.

The fact remains, however, that many DC offices couldn’t function without a large contingent of interns, most of whom are unpaid or receive only nominal stipends.  Certainly, the Atlantic Council couldn’t.  We rely on our unpaid interns — whom we employ year round on a rotating basis, with classes roughly corresponding to the Fall/Spring/Summer academic cycle — to do most of the grunt work so that our paid staff can concentrate on coordination, writing, and the like.  All for a line on a résumé, experience in the field, and some contacts.

I’m not sure how ours behave on the Metro or otherwise out on the town but they’re almost invariably polite, well dressed, and professional at the office.  While we’re fortunate to have a wealth of strong candidates to choose from and can thus be picky, that’s likely the case for Congressional offices and other major nonprofits, too.   So I’m guessing the kids who irritate the writer of that blog are either atypical or just young folks who are there precisely for the purposes of learning how to fit in at a professional setting and making the mistakes that are the essence of learning.

UPDATE: I’m informed by one of our former interns (who was subsequently hired by us for a paying gig before moving on to greener pastures) that the site in question is plagiarized from a book called Look at My Striped Shirt.

To illustrate that US professional sports have a lot of “hilariously anticompetitive interferences in the market” compared to the English Premier League, Daniel Davies constructs an artificial sports league based on all major professional teams in “Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington DC” in order to achieve a comparable population and economic basis to compare to the UK.

The Mid-Atlantic region has 7 NFL teams (Ravens, Bills, Jets, Steelers, Giants, Eagles, Redskins), 4 NBA teams (Nets, Knicks, 76ers, Wizards), 6 Major League Baseball teams (Orioles, Yankees, Mets, Phillies, Nationals, Pirates) and 7 National Hockey League teams (Devils, Islanders, Rangers, Flyers, Penguins, Sabres, Capitals). That’s a total of 24 major sports teams, split up as seven each for New York and Pennsylvania, four each for DC and New Jersey, two in Maryland and none for Delaware, Virginia and West Virginia.

Using this league, he notes that the teams rarely play each other and that they’re overly concentrated in huge metropolitan areas as compared to the Premier League.

Despite the fact that I absolutely agree — indeed, take as self-evident — that drafting, salary caps, and other mechanisms to achieve parity are indeed anticompetitive, this thought experiment doesn’t buttress the argument.  It’s simply not useful to make up a league and then compare how its teams play outside the league.

As Davies himself notes, “When making any such comparison, though, one has to remember that the USA is not the size of the UK; it’s roughly the size of Europe.”  So, it’s ridiculous to construct an artificial Mid-Atlantic All-Sports League while ignoring that fact.

Of course Delaware and West Virginia lack teams; they simply don’t have a sufficiently large television market to sustain one.  Virginia doesn’t, either, although Northern Virginia has DC’s Redskins in their market and southern and western Virginia is likely in the market for the Charlotte teams (as is West Virginia).

Similarly, it would be odd for the NFL teams in the imaginary Mid-Atlantic region to play most of their games against one another when they play in an actual League that’s spread across a giant continent.  And, of course (as Davies concedes) basketball teams seldom play baseball and football teams, what with their being different sports.

It is noteworthy that the Premier League’s 20 teams for 60 millionish people is a greater concentration than seen in American team sports.  Largely, though, that’s a function of scalability.  If the NFL were to have a team for each 3 million people in the United States, it would have 100 teams.   Even with the present 32 teams, several years may go by without a team playing a given team outside its conference.  With 100, it wouldn’t be a “league” in any meaningful sense at all.   And the playoffs would either have to become NBA-interminable or 70 percent of the league would be eliminated from competition very early in the season. Neither would be workable.

To be sure, there are quirks in the system that are partly a function of monopoly power.  Most obviously, Los Angeles lacks an NFL franchise.  As recently as 1995, it had two but refused to fund a decent stadium out of taxpayer funds and was outbid on that score by Oakland and St. Louis.   Otherwise, though, there are very few metropolitan areas without a team who could sustain one over the long haul without seriously jeopardizing the survivability of a current team.  Indeed, the most recent rounds of expansion and/or relocation have put teams in places like St. Petersburg, Oklahoma City, Columbus, San Jose and Nashville; it’s not at all certain that’s wise.

Freddie Mac CFO David Kellerman has killed himself, DC’s WUSA9 reports.

David Kellermann, Acting Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Freddie Mac, was found dead this morning.

Fairfax County Police officials tell 9NEWS NOW they responded to his home around 5 a.m. after his wife alerted them to his suicide.

Kellermann was 41 years old.

According to Freddie Mac’s website, Kellerman was with Freddie Mac for more than 16 years and named Acting Chief Financial Officer in September.

Whether this was related to the stresses of the job, mental illness, or some other factor is unknown.  A shame, in any case.

via Josh Marshall

The Boston Tea Party of 1773:

On the cold evening of December 16, 1773, a large band of patriots, disguised as Mohawk Indians, burst from the South Meeting House with the spirit of freedom burning in their eyes. The patriots headed towards Griffin’s Wharf and the three ships. Quickly, quietly, and in an orderly manner, the Sons of Liberty boarded each of the tea ships. Once on board, the patriots went to work striking the chests with axes and hatchets. Thousands of spectators watched in silence. Only the sounds of ax blades splitting wood rang out from Boston Harbor. Once the crates were open, the patriots dumped the tea into the sea.

The Washington Tea Party of 2009:

It was a great idea, really. Take a million tea bags and dump them in Lafayette Park to protest government spending. Hip, hip, hoo-ray!

But a funny thing happened en route to a visually pleasing Tax Day protest. The National Park Service said the tea party protesters didn’t have the proper permit to dump their bags. So instead of a raucous visual demonstration, all that was left were images of the tea party packing up their boxes of tea on a cold, soggy day in D.C.

Doh! “We have a million tea bags here, and we don’t have a place to put them because it’s not on our permit,” said Rebecca Wales, lead organizer of D.C. Tea Party.

Now, as I understand it, the Sons of Liberty were doing something slightly more illegal than dumping tea bags in a park without a permit.   Is the National Park Service that much more threatening than the Redcoats?  Or have our liberty fighters lost a bit of their moxy over the years?

Tim Lee does Google maps for three neighborhoods he’s lived in and one he’s thinking of moving to and notes the incredible range of compactness (as visually demonstrated from many more streets showing up in comparable map grids).

It’s amazing how many people you can pack into a small area. It’s also interesting to note that that St. Louis neighborhood, the Central West End, is among the densest in the St. Louis metro area. There aren’t any parts of St. Louis that are like the heart of DC, to say nothing of Philadelphia.

Then again, if there were, it wouldn’t be St. Louis.

I very much enjoy visiting Manhattan or Chicago or some of DC’s more densely packed neighborhoods.  There’s something to be said for having a huge variety of restaurants, bars, shops — even museums — within walking distance.   For some, they find it so enjoyable that they want to live that way all the time, even though it means paying much more for rent and/or living in a much smaller place than they’d otherwise have.  For others of us, not so much.

Personally, I’m glad that the variety exists and we don’t all have to live in densely packed neighborhoods or sprawling suburbs but rather get to choose.

Brian Knapp has a good roundup of critiques of protest rallies and concludes that they have outlived their usefulness.

Another problem with public protests is that fact that they are generally annoying.  Protests, rallies, and other outdoor events that are organized to accommodate large swaths of people also must accommodate their bathroom breaks.  They also tend to eat up civic resources with an additional police presence, trash pickup, and the occasional cleanup of graffiti or fixing of broken windows.  Then, there are traffic congestion issues and the impedance of free travel by uninterested parties.  This is all besides the fact that passers by often are subject to ridicule, humiliation and intimidation.

All of this is easily avoided with the new digital media revolution.  Where large mainstream media networks once held a monopoly on what people learned of and became aware to, individuals have a much easier time sharing ideas and commenting quickly and quite effectively now with the advent of blogs, tweeting, text messaging, social networking sites and email.

That’s quite right.

Protests reached their zenith during the civil rights movement of the 1960s when a group of literally disenfranchised people were able to demonstrate their grievance in a very visible way.  People dressed in their Sunday best quietly marched, listened to speeches, and questioned why the country wasn’t living up to its creed that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  Their dignity contrasted with the brutality with which they were sometimes met and shocked the nation’s conscience.

Eventually, though, this device was expropriated for niche causes and by more radical elements.  They became a nuisance and, sometimes, violent.   Mostly, though, they were silly and generally attended by the usual suspects, who would show up to protest whatever.

Now that I’m working in downtown DC, I find them even more inane since they’re so ever-present. Some gaggle of folks are within earshot of my 11th floor office at least once a week, banging drums, blocking sidewalks, and protesting somethingoranother. Usually some sort of “unfair” labor practice, I think, but I’m never sure.

These protests remind me of car alarms, which still produce noise but no longer get people’s attention.  Now, when one sounds, most of us think, “Will somebody turn that damn thing off!” rather than “Somebody’s car is being stolen.”

Photos (top to bottom) by Flickr users kathy doucette, lil’ el, and kathy doucette under Creative Commons license.