Virginia Congressman Jim Moran argues that the Defense Department ought to step up and pay for the increased traffic BRAC is about to bring to his district:

The latest round of BRAC (Base Realignment and Closing) moves is poised to create a daytime nightmare of traffic congestion for Northern Virginia.

Over the next two years, the on-base population at Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County will double, to more than 47,000 people. In a location difficult to reach by bus and impossible by rail, the addition of approximately 24,100 personnel is poised to grind the region’s already notorious traffic — consistently ranked second-worst in the nation — to a halt, adding hours of backups on Interstate 95 and Route 1.

This outcome could be avoided, or at least mitigated, if transportation upgrades were part and parcel of the BRAC relocations. Unfortunately, the Office of Economic Assistance, the Defense Department agency that is responsible for aiding communities affected by BRAC, can only help hire planners and consultants to perform studies identifying infrastructure needs, not fund the projects they identify. At Fort Belvoir, they have done neither.

The other way to meet federally imposed transportation needs is through the Defense Department’s Defense Access Road program. The program can and does pay for roads in communities affected by BRAC, but only if the projects meet very narrow criteria. One such requirement is that traffic on any given roadway must double because of specific federal activity, measured over 24 hours. But when the “roadways” in question are I-95 and Route 1, the principal north-south highways on the East Coast, this is an impossible qualification.

The Pentagon’s narrow application of Defense Access Road eligibility, however, is not what Congress intended. The program was created to provide a means for the military to pay its fair share of the cost of highway improvements related to the post-World War II buildup of domestic military installations.

Presumably, the point of the op-ed is to get recognition from his constituents for fighting this fight. As a practical matter, there are two U.S. Representatives directly interested in this issue (Full disclosure: I’m in the neighboring Congressional District and the Fort Belvoir/Rt. 1 corridor is quite literally the dividing line) and several other Representatives and United States Senators live in the area and are personally effected by this issue.  I’m actually befuddled that they haven’t stepped in before now, since the BRAC announcement on Fort Belvoir came out several years ago.

Moran’s argument is rather weak, however:

It’s common sense for the military to help pay for these improvements. For our men and women in uniform, and the civil servants and the contractors who assist them, time spent in traffic is time not spent providing for our country’s national security.

That’s not how it works. These people will have to put in as much time as it takes to do their job and then waste a lot of time sitting in traffic.  The more logical response to the traffic issue, frankly, is that Fort Belvoir should be closed and its activities moved to a larger base in a much less densely populated area.  It would be much cheaper for the taxpayer and provide an economic boom for some part of the country that almost surely needs it more than the National Capitol Region.

Since that appears not to be an option — indeed, the Powers That Be are doubling down on the base — then it seems perfectly reasonable to have the DoD pay a large part of the cost of transportation upgrades (perhaps extending the Yellow or Blue Metro lines to Belvoir, a Rt. 1 bypass, or the like rather than simply widening Rt. 1 as Moran suggests).   Then again, since I’d directly benefit from this (my house is less than 1/4 mile from Rt. 1 and less than 3 miles from Ft. Belvoir) my analysis is biased.

Matt Yglesias points to a recent IBM study trying to map much people hate commuting to work and points to this interesting chart:

From this, Matt concludes that all manner of government policies could be framed as a way of reducing the pain of commuting: higher gas taxes, congestion pricing, and so forth.

I simply don’t believe the numbers.   Matt’s commenter Paulie Carbone encapsulates my objection nicely:

I think people are radically overstating how much they dislike traffic. 18% are willing to pay over $30 to save 15 minutes? If you commute to and from work, and work 5 days a week, 50 weeks per year, that’s at least an extra $7,500 per year.

And who really values their time that highly? If you think 15 minutes is worth $30, that’s $120/hour. Would these same people not work for anything less than $120 an hour?

I make a decent living and insisted on the ability to work from home at least one day a week before taking my present job.  I find driving 45 minutes average each way a ridiculous waste of time.  But I wouldn’t pay $120 a day  ($20 x 3 x 2) to avoid it.

The problem with these surveys is that most people are innumerate.  (Which explains, for example, why a significant number of people spend more on child care, commuting costs, lunches, dry cleaning, and the like than they actually net from an unsatisfying job because the family “needs the money.”)

Matt Yglesias notes that bloggers and others who write for the Web lack a luxury of those who write for print: “nobody has any idea who’s reading them.”  Whereas there are detailed metrics about pageviews on the Web, all print has to go on is circulation figures.  So they can blithely assume that their long features and hard news and the like are being widely read, whether it’s true or not.

Some time back, Steve Graham touched some raw nerves by pointing out that:

Most blog traffic is trash. I’ve written about it before, and it’s not exactly news. Everyone knows it. If you look at your stats, you’ll learn that half of your traffic–or a lot more than half–comes from search engines. People type in things like “nipple schoolgirl goat priest molasses,” and they end up at your site for ten seconds, and they leave, hopefully disappointed. Those people aren’t “visitors,” no matter how much you like to think they are. They’re just lost. And they don’t click ads. Even worse, you may be getting traffic because big bloggers link to you. That doesn’t make you a success. It makes you a pet, living on table scraps. When the scraps stop coming–when you say the wrong thing and stop toadying–those tasty scraps can stop coming, instantly, and then you find out how much readers really care about you.

This morning, Henry Copeland pointed out that Huffington Post has changed the display settings on its “Most Popular” widget to hide the fact that much of its traffic comes from salacious junk.

Apparently embarrassed by the importance of sex-driven stories in powering its traffic, Huffpo has recently changed its “most popular stories” feature to obscure how many page impressions each story gets.

The stories now seem to be ranked according to # of comments (see example of the new format at the bottom of the post) but earlier this summer, you could see the number of raw impressions each story was getting.

While serious policy-related “politics” stories, which Huffpo pretends are its bread and butter, got 50k impressions, stories like “When your Boob tape is showing” and “Women’s Iconic Swimsuit movie moments” got millions.

But, alas, that’s what people are interested in.  I’ve written more than 35,000 blog posts over the past six-and-a-half years and gotten a lot of satisfaction from getting traffic and commentary to substantive commentary.  All too frequently, though, those pieces get ignored and crap posts that took ten minutes to write go viral.

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.

Tyler Cowen passes along a reader comment that,

The difference in life expectancy between the US and Netherlands is often referred to as an example of how superior semi-socialized health care increases life expectancy. At birth, someone living in the Netherlands can expect to live 2.35 years longer than someone born in the US, but at age 65, the difference is reversed, and someone living in the US can expect to live 0.4 years longer than someone living in the Netherlands. This difference can be explained by assuming that semi-socialized health care is better for young and worse for old people, or, at least as likely, different policies are not the main cause of the difference.

Cowen merely observes that, “One interesting feature of this data is that it can be used to argue for a number of different points of view.”

His readers immediately pounce to point out that, at age 65, Americans in fact have semi-socialized medicine.  Indeed, the Medicaid system is arguably less semi and more socialized than that in the Netherlands.

Moreover, health care isn’t the only factor in life expectancy since all manner of things can kill you:  crime, war, accident, diet and exercise behavior, etc.  And, sure enough, a commenter points to an interesting post over at “slightly left of center” Angry Bear this morning pointing out that, when we control for traffic fatalities and homicides, “The US jumps from 15th on the list with a life expectancy of 75.3 to 1st with a life expectancy of 76.9.”

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.

Over at his other digs, Dave Schuler muses,

Is it my imagination or do things become very, very quiet on Fridays these days? I know that traffic at this blog drops sharply on Fridays which suggests to me that a lot of people read blogs from work and that they aren’t at work on Fridays.

In the DC area, at least, it’s not uncommon to have flex schedules.  Some work 10 hour days four days a week and takeMondays or Fridays off.  Others put in 9 hour days and take every other Monday or Friday off.  And a bold few work 8 hour days while claiming 10.

Beyond that, people tend to treat Fridays more casually, both in their attire and their pace of work, often skipping out quite early.

My blog traffic tends to go down to weekend levels by early afternoon and has for years.

Photo by Flickr user slworking2 under Creative Commons license.

Not sure this is BREAKING NEWS, as CNN does, but it’s amusing nonetheless:

How many people does it take to break the Internet? On June 25, we found out it’s just one — if that one is Michael Jackson.

The biggest showbiz story of the year saw the troubled star take a good slice of the Internet with him, as the ripples caused by the news of his death swept around the globe.

“Between approximately 2:40 p.m. PDT and 3:15 p.m. PDT today, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson,” a Google spokesman told CNET, which also reported that Google News users complained that the service was inaccessible for a time. At its peak, Google Trends rated the Jackson story as “volcanic.”

As sites fell, users raced to other sites: TechCrunch reported that TMZ, which broke the story, had several outages; users then switched to Perez Hilton’s blog, which also struggled to deal with the requests it received.

CNN reported a fivefold rise in traffic and visitors in just over an hour, receiving 20 million page views in the hour the story broke.

Twitter crashed as users saw multiple “fail whales” — the illustrations the site uses as error messages — user FoieGrasie posting, “Irony: The protesters in Iran using twitter as com are unable to get online because of all the posts of ‘Michael Jackson RIP.’ Well done.” The site’s status blog said that Twitter had had to temporarily disable its search results, saved searches and trend topics.

Wikipedia saw a flurry of activity, with close to 500 edits made to Jackson’s entry in less than 24 hours. CNET reported that by 3:15pm PDT, Wikipedia seemed to be “temporarily overloaded.”

And so forth and so on.  It’s amazing that even robust servers can go down with too many simultaneous queries.  One would think that the advent of cloud technologies and redundancies would have ended that by this stage in the Internet’s maturation.  Apparently not.

Richard Florida passes on this poster and statistics from Münster, Germany to illustrate “the different amounts of space taken up by different kinds of transit.”

• Bicycle – 90 sq. m for 71 people to park their bikes.

• Car – 1000 sq. m for 72 people to park their care (avg. occupancy of 1.2 people per car).

• Bus – 30 sq m for the bus.

So, it takes more space for each person to have his own means of conveyance with the freedom to travel where he pleases rather than being crammed into a single, smelly bus that probably isn’t going where you want to go any time soon?  Imagine that!

It’s a good thing, I guess, that Münster is 302.89 square kilometers and contains only 272,951 people.

Tom Vanderbilt passes on and summarizes a new study by researchers at the Delft University of Technology that estimates the effects of “rubbernecking” in adding to traffic congestion after an accident at about 50 percent of free-flow capacity.

As pictured above, a light truck overturned near the city of Apeldoorn. One lane (in the ‘bottom section’ in the photo above) was closed for the sake of emergency response. Not surprisingly, given that a lane was missing, and two lanes had to merge, the researchers a large drop in “outflow capacity” in the section closest to the overturned van.

But what is striking is the airborne researchers observed a sizable effect — roughly a 50% capacity reduction — in the opposite bit of highway, in which no lanes were blocked. The video of this is rather amazing: At roughly the position that affords the best view of the crash, the traffic begins to bunch, as it does in stop-and-go congestion, even though the road ahead is otherwise clear. One vehicle, the “leader” is essentially slowing to look at the incident, creating in essence a backward “shock wave” that everyone else drives into. Once in the slowing wave, their curiosity is no doubt aroused and so they too continue to creep along for a look. At the exact point of the wreck, the traffic again begins to accelerate.

Vanderbilt notes, too, “Thomas Schelling’s description of rubbernecking in the classic book Micromotives and Macrobehavior: Because they’ve already been made to wait because of everyone else’s look, each individual driver feels they too have the right to look themselves. Each person’s five seconds adds up to incremental delays (”it is a bad bargain,” he wrote). If everyone could only agree not to look, the congestion actually would not form.”  But, alas, there’s no reason to think others won’t look so, if you’re curious, you might as well.  Gresham’s Law and all that.

People in Matt Yglesias‘ neighborhood have petitioned to increase the amount of time pedestrians get to cross New York Avenue at 5th St. NW from 20 to 45 seconds and they’ve been rejected.  The rationale:

DDOT is concerned that changing the walk time at this intersection may negatively impact pedestrian safety at this intersection further, in addition to negatively affecting traffic flow.  We would like to share these two impacts with you.

Signal and pedestrian timing at this intersection is set as a standardized actuated signal, which is in agreement with the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). Further, this standard is consistent with the requirements of Americans with Disabilities Act.  The MUTCD is the national standard for traffic signals and other infrastructure  matters.  In following these standards, the signal is designed to display visible countdown time only during the “do not walk” flashing time.  Therefore, the viewable walk time on this signal is only 20 seconds. The total time for pedestrians to cross however, is 30 seconds. The breakdown for the signal’s walk time is as follows:

5 seconds of walk time as background time (not seen)

3 seconds of yellow as background time (not seen)

2 seconds of all red signal as background time (not seen)

20 seconds visible walk time (viewable)

Although ten seconds are unseen, 20 seconds are still present for pedestrians to cross.  Thirty full seconds are documented as walk time in this signal.

If the signal is changed, even in a small increment, the total cycle signal length of the entire intersection will be altered and the allowable green time for traffic will be reduced.  This could result in additional traffic delays further along New York Avenue.  An overflow of traffic may adversely affect pedestrian safety as gridlocked traffic could occur through the intersections and crosswalks.

Matt summarizes: “beneath all the verbiage in their reply, what they’re saying comes down to the basic point that if you gave pedestrians more time to cross New York Avenue, that would slow New York Avenue traffic.”  Readers can decide for themselves whether that’s a fair reading.

This, though, strikes me as odd:

Management of a city involves hundreds—if not thousands—of these little decisions. Do we do what’s best for people on foot, or what’s best for people in cars? Since tilting policy on behalf of pedestrians rather than drivers is distributively progressive—the poor are less likely than the rich to own cars, especially in a place like DC—and environmentally beneficially and good for public health, I don’t see it as a very difficult choice. But not only did DDOT not make the pro-pedestrian choice, they don’t even really seem to see it as a choice. They just take it for granted that their job is to maximize the flow of vehicle traffic along New York Avenue. The rest of us just live in the neighborhood.

First, people are people regardless of whether they’re in a car or walking at any given moment. So, the question is “what’s best for people,” period.

Yes, there are tradeoffs here but they’re more complicated than who has to wait longer at the intersection.  DDOT is right that making cars wait longer results in backups, which create ripple effects.  Further, 30 seconds is more than long enough to cross the street.

Most of us who are driving are doing so because we’re going a long way — usually between DC and its suburbs but sometimes between far-flung parts of the District — not because we’re too lazy to walk.  Driving in DC is sufficiently inconvenient as it is that most of us will walk for many blocks rather than attempt to drive.

Because cars tend to move faster than pedestrians — although not always given DC traffic — there’s more likely to be a number of cars ready to go through an intersection at a given time than there is to be a queue of people waiting to cross.  Cars stopped at a light have to wait for the cars in front of them, one by one, to move through a light before they can do so themselves; this is known as the “accordion effect.”  Contrariwise, a gaggle of pedestrians waiting at a light can travel as a pack across the road in smart fashion, clearing the pent-up demand within the 30 seconds allotted without problem.   Indeed, I’ve never not made it across the street in one iteration of the light in pedestrian mode whereas I frequently have to wait through multiple iterations as a driver.

It’s worth noting, too, that the cultures of driving and walking are different.  I frequently drive into DC.  Once there, I become a pedestrian.   When I’m driving, I invariably stop for red lights and stay stopped for the duration of said lights.  When I’m walking, I stop at Don’t Walk signs and promptly cross as soon as I deem it safe to do so.   The vast majority of drivers and walkers act in this manner.  That means that longer lights are a far greater nuisance to drivers than pedestrians.

Finally, if one’s desire is to reduce the environmental impact of automobiles, creating longer periods of idling time is decidedly not the solution.

Photo by Flickr user Sara Richards under Creative Commons license.

Matt Yglesias explains why public transit should be free through an analogy:

Say there’s no road between Washington, DC and Frederick, Maryland. You can go from the one place to the other, but it involves going way out of your way even though it could be a pretty quick trip on a direct road. What you need to ask yourself about building such a road is what would it cost and would it be worth it? You don’t build the road expecting to turn a profit. And you shouldn’t really build it expecting tolls to finance it. You should build it because you want to encourage people to drive from DC to Frederick. But if you build the road and it comes to pass that it’s choked with traffic during certain periods of time you don’t respond by making the road wider. Just like with building the road in the first place, you make it wider if you want to increase the number of people driving. If you want to eliminate the congestion problem, then you charge people to drive on the road during the peak times. The transit situation is similar. If you don’t want people to take the Metro from Bethesda to Gallery Place, then you shouldn’t build the Metro. But if you do want people to take the Metro from Bethesda to Gallery Place then you shouldn’t charge them to ride. But if it turns out that your route is too popular at certain times of day, then you want to charge them in order to prevent overcrowding.

But, if the public policy goal is to get the benefits that come from getting people from point A to point B, I’m not sure this makes much sense.

For one thing, trying to prevent overcrowding by raising prices during popular times imposes the burden entirely on the poor.  The Tim Geithners and Tom Daschles of the world will travel when they damned well please but plumbers named Joe have to either fork over a meaningful chunk of their income or waste a lot of time arriving to places, including their workplaces, very early and leaving very late.   (There is, after all, a reason certain times are more popular than others.)

Beyond that, if we want people to drive from Bethesda into DC, then we should make it as convenient to do so as practical.  Indeed, I avoid driving to Bethesda, which is a perfectly nice place, like the plague because it’s not worth the hassle of getting there.  Give me more traffic lanes or faster, more pleasant public transit and I’d adapt accordingly.

UPDATE: Alternatively, we could replace people with ants and solve all the problems.

Photo by Flickr user Sagebrush Photography, used under Creative Commons license.

The Secret Service motorcade carrying 7-year-old Sasha Obama departs Sidwell Friends School after dropping off her sister Malia, on the first day of school on January 5, 2009 in Washington, DC. The incoming first family are staying at the luxury Hay-Adams Hotel, with a view of the White House before moving to the president's official guest home, Blair House, on January 15. AFP PHOTO/Karen BLEIER (Photo credit should read KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)

One of the side discussions over the Blair House brouhaha has been that having the Obamas stay at the Hay-Adams Hotel would pose a major inconvenience for those who drive through that part of the District of Columbia, as roads around the hotel would be closed for security reasons.    With the hotel only three blocks from the offices of the Atlantic Council, I can personally vouch for that much.

Here’s what DC’s NBC station has to say:

Drivers complained of gridlock on I Street, a major east-west thoroughfare through downtown D.C., on Monday, due to street closures in the area. City officials advised advised motorists to stay away from the area for the next 10 days, saying there isn’t much they can do to ease the congestion until the Obamas move out of the hotel.

[...]

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) has put the following limitations into effect, starting at 1 a.m. on Sunday, January 4 until midnight on January 15:

• 16th Street, NW, between I Street and H Street, will be closed to vehicular traffic and parking will be restricted.
• Connecticut Avenue, NW, between I Street and H Street, will be closed to vehicular traffic and parking will be restricted.
• H Street, NW, between 17th Street and Vermont Avenue, will be closed to vehicular traffic and parking will be restricted.
• Parking will be restricted on I Street, NW, between 14th and 17th Streets.

This is a massive and ridiculous inconvenience to protect against a theoretical threat.

I don’t blame President Bush (or whoever it was that decided to deny the Obamas early entry into Blair House) for this.  Nor do I blame President-elect Obama, even though he could have surely started his kids a couple days later in their fancy private school if he cared about us plebes.    No, I blame Bill Clinton.

I’m being mostly tongue-in-cheek but it is true that, after decades of the Secret Service begging to shut down the part of Pennsylvania Avenue nearest the White House to traffic, Clinton finally acceded to their wishes in 1995 following the Oklahoma City bombing.   While the action was almost universally derided as a ridiculous overreaction, achieving a modest gain in the safety of the First Family in exchange for a massive inconvenience for DC residents, workers, and tourists, the precedent was set.

Now, there’s seemingly no concern at all for the burdens security puts on ordinary folks, so long as the Big Shots are protected.   So, when Obama was at home in Chicago running his transition from there, streets were closed around his neighborhood.  At the same time, streets were closed around his transition headquarters in southeast DC even though he wasn’t there personally!

• D Street, NW between 5th and 6th is closed to vehicular traffic and parking is restricted.
• Northbound 6th Street St, NW, between Indiana Avenue and E Street, is reduced to one lane of traffic. The other 2 northbound lanes are blocked off.
• Indiana Avenue, NW, between 5th and 6th Streets, has been temporarily converted to accommodate two-way traffic until the traffic restrictions are lifted on D Street.
• No parking is allowed on the west side of 5th Street, NW, between Indiana Avenue and E Street.
• No parking is allowed in the curb lane on the south side of E Street, NW, between 5th and 6th Streets.
• The east side of 6th Street is closed to pedestrian traffic.

Now, they’re closing down the busiest part of working DC to protect his hotel.

And it gets better:  In an unprecedented move, they’re shutting the city down entirely for the inauguration.

The U.S. Secret Service and regional transportation officials unveiled a plan yesterday to ban personal vehicles from all Potomac River bridge crossings from Virginia into the District and from interstates 395 and 66 inside the Capital Beltway on Inauguration Day.

The plan would also cordon off a large section of downtown Washington from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m. to help manage the unprecedented crowds expected.

Some bridges and main thoroughfares with access to the city will remain open, including New York Avenue and the Sousa, Whitney Young and Benning Road bridges. But Northern Virginia drivers will be able to reach the District only from the Beltway in Maryland, and officials are urging people not to attempt to drive into the city.

The bottom line, officials said, is to keep the Mall, the Capitol and the parade route clear of traffic. Even people who live in the District or can get in from Maryland or Virginia can’t get anywhere near the inaugural events or the surrounding downtown area by car. Walking, biking and mass transit — which is expected to be jammed — will provide the only access.

I attended the last inauguration (an experience I would not recommend to others) and we managed to drive in from Virginia with only minor inconvenience. Yes, the roads around the parade route were closed. But cars could certainly get in and around the city.

The Inauguration Day closures are less annoying than the ones for the transition office and the Hay-Adams, since it’s just a single day and it’s a major national civic occasion. Besides, federal workers in the National Capital Region get a paid holiday every four years and most offices (including those of the Atlantic Council) follow suit out of practicality. But the daily closures to protect against theoretical dangers to one citizen are outrageous.

It’s long past time to quit treating presidents like kings. Yes, there are people who would do them harm and it’s a major national trauma when one gets killed. So, provide them with bodyguards and armored limousines and take caution when selecting their routes and releasing their schedules. But don’t shut down half a city for their benefit.

Megan McArdle argues that drivers who exceed the speed limit in their cars have no right to get angry at bikers who run stop signs and red lights, weave in and out of traffic, and otherwise ignore traffic laws.  Plus, because bikes are smaller and slower, they’re not going to cause any harm:

The reason cops don’t ticket bikers when they fail to observe stop signs at uncrowded intersections, etc, for the same reason that they don’t ticket people going 5 mph over the speed limit–those people do not cause many accidents. That’s because a bike going down a one-way street does not crash into cars. A bike passing through an intersection has neither the mass nor the velocity to hurt a car. A bike running a stop sign is maintaining a speed too slow to kill a pedestrian. Moreover, the fact that bike/pedestrian or bike/car crashes are at least as likely to hurt or kill the rider makes bike riders much more cautious than car drivers are likely to be.

Of course, cars that roll through stop signs at uncrowded intersections generally don’t cause accidents, either. Conversely, a biker who rolls out in front of a car illegally can not only severely damage the car but get himself seriously injured, to boot.

And guess who’s likely to get ticketed and have to pay the medical bills?  Why, the person operating a licensed motor vehicle for which he’s carrying insurance.  The numskull on the bike will inevitably be seen as the tragic victim that the driver of the heavy automobile should have been looking out for.

Making my exit from DC during the early part of rush hour, I frequently encounter bicyclists weaving in and out of very heavy traffic (southbound on 14th or 15th street) and running through red lights.  Cars are constantly forced to brake and have near misses with said bicyclists.   Why?  Because we’re expecting that those we’re sharing the road with will conform to certain norms.  If I’m changing lanes, I’m looking out for other vehicles (generally inching along on clogged roads) that are using the normal traffic lanes, not bicyclists who suddenly emerge in a lane that they’ve invented.

Even worse are the morons riding their bikes or Segways on the sidewalk who want to alternately be pedestrians or motor vehicles, depending on which is convenient at the moment.  These yahoos will come flying down the sidewalk and then cross the road at an intersection.   Again, drivers of vehicles are looking for 1) other motor vehicles in normal traffic lanes and 2) pedestrians who are walking at a snail’s pace.  So, when some yahoo comes flying across the road from the sidewalk at 25 miles an hour, we’re not expecting you.

Bicycling is a convenient, environmentally friendly mode of transportation and we should do a better job of creating bike paths and otherwise making it safe.  But driving on busy metropolitan streets isn’t like peddling along in a suburban neighborhood.   If you’re going to use the road, you’ve got to observe the norms that everyone else is expecting or you put everyone in danger.