I was skeptical. After all, the interstate highway system hadn't even been built in 1956 -- Eisenhower signed the crucial legislation that summer. So I ferreted out an old Statistical Abstract of the United States and compared the 1956 numbers with those in the most recent DC DMV Annual Report. Then I made a little chart for your viewing pleasure:
DC population
|
licensed drivers in DC
|
vehicles registered in DC
|
|
1956
|
831,000
|
336,977
|
196,000
|
| 2012 |
633,427
|
368,667
|
284,905
|
With a significantly higher population than we have today,
DC had fewer drivers in 1956 and fewer registered vehicles. It was also a society in which people traveled fewer miles. I couldn't find state-level
statistics on vehicle miles traveled, but both the Statistical Abstract (p. 556) and FHWA’s Highway Statistics 2012 provide national vehicle miles traveled
(VMT). The total VMT in 2012 was over
4.7x the VMT in 1956 – and that’s with
only an 87% increase in population over the same period. Which means that per capita travel in the US was about
2.5x as many miles in 2012 as it was in 1956.
So if we really were living in a time warp, and DC's current zoning code reflected 1950s realities, then it would assume a less car-dependent society than the one we actually live in now. In fact, last month public transit advocates trumpeted the fact that in 2013 the US experienced record levels of transit usage -- the highest since 1956! But, alas, the benchmark that we matched was the total number of trips made using public transit in a year --- so, in per capita terms, we're using transit only about half as frequently as people did in the mid-1950s, despite the fact that, overall, we're traveling much more.
In general, I think that the whole invoking-the-spectre-of-the-1950s move is basically just a distraction in debates over the zoning rewrite. After all, our current zoning code, as Harriet Tregoning acknowledged, has been modified a thousand times since it was adopted. And, as Tregoning also acknowledged, the proposed "new" code would retain 90% of the provisions in the existing code. So the "eew, retrograde" vs. "shiny! modern! new!" dichotomy that GGW is trying to set up is a false one.
But if we ARE going to talk about the 1950s, let's at least get the facts right.
So if we really were living in a time warp, and DC's current zoning code reflected 1950s realities, then it would assume a less car-dependent society than the one we actually live in now. In fact, last month public transit advocates trumpeted the fact that in 2013 the US experienced record levels of transit usage -- the highest since 1956! But, alas, the benchmark that we matched was the total number of trips made using public transit in a year --- so, in per capita terms, we're using transit only about half as frequently as people did in the mid-1950s, despite the fact that, overall, we're traveling much more.
In general, I think that the whole invoking-the-spectre-of-the-1950s move is basically just a distraction in debates over the zoning rewrite. After all, our current zoning code, as Harriet Tregoning acknowledged, has been modified a thousand times since it was adopted. And, as Tregoning also acknowledged, the proposed "new" code would retain 90% of the provisions in the existing code. So the "eew, retrograde" vs. "shiny! modern! new!" dichotomy that GGW is trying to set up is a false one.
But if we ARE going to talk about the 1950s, let's at least get the facts right.