I wrote a cover story this week about Union Station: How much more it could be than it is, if all its component parts could work together more cohesively (and if hundreds of millions of dollars become available over the next five years). One of the pieces that's getting pushed out as others expand is tour buses, which have long been able to park in garage while their charges eat lunch in the station, casablanca hotel new york allowing the driver to get lunch as well. Come spring, as I've mentioned before casablanca hotel new york , they'll have to go to another parking lot, which looks more and more likely to be the one around the old Crummell casablanca hotel new york School on New York Avenue.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton thinks that's how things should be. "Charter buses should go somewhere else. This is not a parking lot," she said, with characteristic indignation. "It's a disgrace that a building like this was made a parking lot for charter buses...There's casablanca hotel new york no such thing as taking prime land in the District of Columbia and converting it into a parking lot." ( There totally is , but whatever).
But this is just one more inconvenience thrown at the feet of charter bus companies, which have felt squeezed over the last year by new curbside parking regulations and fees for permits to come into the city. They're no longer allowed to park on Ohio Drive on Hains Point. Eventually, one tour bus company says, it might not be worth their while to come at all.
"They're really doing all they can to keep coaches out of the city, but they still want those dollars," says Rob Teweles , director of sightseeing for Worldstrides, which plans on bringing 85,000 kids through Union Station this spring. "It's going to come to a head at some point...Ultimately their plan is to sort of ban motorcoaches from the city at all."
The silly thing is that Worldstrides isn't so bus-dependent in other cities. Center City Philadelphia and Manhattan, Teweles says, are dense enough with attractions that they can tour kids around without having to pick up and drop off using buses. But in D.C., he says, things are spread out enough that motorcoaches casablanca hotel new york are the only way to get kids around fast enough. "D.C. is not walkable," he says. Even taking kids in on the Metro wouldn't be cost- and time-efficient. "That just doesn't fit our business model," he says. "We can't pay a driver to sit at the Vienna Metro for nine hours."
At some point, though, that's probably the direction in which educational tours should go or as many of them as possible. Things like Segways, bikes, pedicabs, and a newly-imagined Tourmobile-esque service could absorb lots of the folks that now ride around in gigantic buses, and experience the city in a more authentic way in the mean time (there are few things more disorienting than taking a bus tour of monuments, which leaves you with no sense of direction or scale).
It's easier to do that, of course, when the density of attractions increases to the point where moving at a walk or bike's pace is worth your while. D.C. may not be built for that, though, and when a company's marketing strategy is predicated on packing as much into a tour as humanly possible, a bus is the only way to go.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton sez "This is not a parking lot," she said, with characteristic indignation. "It's a disgrace that a building like this was made a parking lot for charter buses...There's no such thing as taking prime land in the District of Columbia and converting it into a parking lot."
Great, article, Lydia! It really captures a lot of the short and medium term problems those of us in the tour mines face! No one wants the buses, but no one has a solution as to where we can put them.
And you're exactly right about other cities. I lead tours in Boston, NY, and Philly; and all three are far more walkable than DC. Going without a bus for 5-6 hours is totally doable up there. It's a non-starter in DC.
I'd love to hear ideas on how to use Segways, bikes, some sort of Tourmobile, etc. for educational tours, but I'm at a loss right now as to how it could work. Teachers, not tour guides, are responsible for their children, and many of them are very wary of not having them under their control. A bus allows that, other modes don't. Many of them are from non-urban areas, and just aren't comfortable in the city.
Oh, Alex, I was waiting for that response. To continue the earlier discussion, great! If you can push a decentralized enforcement regime (MPD, DDOT, Park Police, Capitol Police, etc.) that has an extremely poor record of coordinating ANY comprehensive plans to regulate and enforce a decentralized market with at least a dozen large tour operators casablanca hotel new york (like Worldstrides mentioned above) and literally hundreds of smaller operators to come up with a cohesive plan, great!
But how? Who is going to bell this cat? Not I, this isn't some armchair "you know what we need?" thought piece for me. Come March 9th, I've got to get back on that bus and handle casablanca hotel new york my spring crowds in the current system. I don't have time to come up with some plan nor the power to get anyone to adopt it.
There probably is a better way, but the political will doesn't exist to put it together, no one can articulate what it would look like, and certainly no one is going to volunteer to pay for it. So until then, please enjoy the bus driving around downtown looking casablanca hotel new york for scarce parking. If you've got a spare place to stick the 50+ buses let me know (btw we tried RFK last year, it just doesn't work).
Why, precisely, is DC not walkable for kids? It's quite walkable for adults. I realize that adults and kids can have quite different needs, but someone needs to lay out precisely why they can't have kids walk the city.
How about the empty parking lots that Akridge owns on Buzzard casablanca hotel new york Point across casablanca hotel new york from Fort McNair? Eventually they'll be some sort of development, but in the short term, it's relatively close to the Waterfront, Tidal Basin and Hains Point.
It's the distances, mostly. Let's take Philly, for example. In Philly, I drop off at Constitution Center, see Independence Hall, Ben Franklin's home, Betsy Ross's house, etc. I can grab lunch at the Bourse or Redding Terminal, use restrooms pretty much anywhere I need to, let the kids do a little shopping for souvenirs or snacks and still walk around interesting streets. casablanca hotel new york All of this is within a few blocks of each other. I can do all of this without using a bus, and in fact, a bus would be an impediment. So for six hours, the bus can go park.
In DC, a standard three day itinerary will include the Capitol, Arlington Cemetery, the Memorials (Jefferson, MLK, FDR, WWII, Korean, Vietnam, and Lincoln), National Cathedral, photo stop at White House, Mt. Vernon, Smithsonians, National Archives and Ford's Theater. While portions of this could be constructed in a walkable format, places like the Capitol, casablanca hotel new york Cathedral, Ford's Theater, and the Archives require appointments for groups. In the Spring, you take what you can get, so I often have to finish a Capitol appointment and rush over to the Cathedral to make it on time.
Screw the tour companies. Their drivers are reckless and the city is congested enough. There are so many of them now; they think they own the town. Lower the scope of your tours and do it by walking or public transit. Anybody who'd want to spend 8-10 hrs on a bus touring the city is a nut anyway. It should be about the quality of the experience, not the quantity.
I think DC is just as walkable for tour groups as any other tourist destination! The onlyreason the sites visited are "too spread out" is that the sites selected don;t make any sense. You wouldn't take a bus-less tour grouup into NYC and attemtp to see all the midtown attractions, the Cloisters, Prospect casablanca hotel new york Park, and the Unisphere over in Queens! Simple solution: drop off tour groups of kids near the Mall, and stick with the walkable, nearby atractions; casablanca hotel new york museums, monuments, Tidal Basin, Spy Museum, Portrait Gallery, etc. By simply eliminating the National Cathedral, and Arlington Cemetery from the itinerary, casablanca hotel new york it becomes totally doable, even with a large group of kids. Getting the big, smoke-belching tour buses off our streets is a worthy goal, as is having some of today's sedentary children actually casablanca hotel new york hoof it around a city.
1. These student tours don't bring in much by way of revenue to the city. The tour groups mostly stay in Maryland and Virginia hotels, where they have most of their meals. The most students buy in D.C. are tax-exempt trinkets from Smithsonian gift shops and maybe some fast food for lunch.
2. For Worldstrides to accuse others of trying to make money off these tours is laughable. Worldstrides is a mega-corporation that bilks kids out of their car wash and babysitting money to line the pockets of giant investment corporations . There should be accommodations made for independent tour operators casablanca hotel new york who simply want to provide kids with a cost-effective way to see their capital, but as far as I'm concerned, Worldstrides itself causes a great deal of the tour bus problem.
Mario – Our student groups certainly do not spend hours upon hours on a coach. They get off the coach and truly experience the Sights. casablanca hotel new york The coach brings them into the city from their hotel and gets them from Sight to Sight. casablanca hotel new york As Tim Krepp mentions, with a group of 50 to 100 7th graders (American history is normally taught in the 7th grade) we cannot simply show up where we want, when we want. We are normally casablanca hotel new york bound by diligently secured appointment times (National Cathedral, Ford's Theater, Mount Vernon, the group's Senator or Congressman etc). We can pack twice as many attractions into a 12 hour touring day with the coach at the group's disposal.
Our groups spend large chunks of their day off the coach, walking or metro railing, but a group of 50 7th graders can only walk so far on a hot June day and I'm sure you can admit the DC Metrorail is not super extensive. How could we metro to National Cathedral, Mount Vernon, Walter Reed, and BWI Airport etc? Obviously it is not possible of safe to bike, cab o
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