Lunch links: Get serious

by David Alpert • September 22, 2011 12:33 pm

Photo by rutty on Flickr.

Who's seriously for ethics?: A lot of DC Councilmembers are proposing ethics measures, but which of them are serious and which are just trying to feed voter anger? Vincent Orange is evidently grandstanding, while Tommy Wells and Muriel Bowser seem most serious. (Loose Lips)

90s Metrobuses will work like Circulator: Instead of running on a schedule, which can lead to bunching when one bus gets delayed, Metro will run its 90s Metrobuses on 7-8 minute headways regardless of specific times, as the Circulator does. (Huffington Post)

Senate slightly saves HSR: The Senate appropriations committee restored a tiny bit of funding, $100 million, for high-speed rail. It's far less than the $8 billion the Obama administration wanted, but more than the $0 the House wanted. (Streetsblog)

Germantown, the "satellite city": In the 1960s, Germantown was planned as a small self-contained community 20 miles from the city, where people would work in the small downtown and live in adjacent villages. (TBD)

Incomes in central DC, Loudoun soar: From 2007-2010, area incomes stagnated or declined. Two notable exceptions are Loudoun County and the central core of DC, where incomes soared. (Post)

How about an underground park?: 3 New Yorkers want to turn an old underground trolley terminal into a park, using fiber optics to get sunlight into the subterranean space. (New York Magazine) ... Could something similar work for the Dupont tunnels? Though Dupont doesn't lack for park space like the Lower East Side does.

Baltimore cancels Cyclovia: Baltimore has canceled their Cyclovia event for this weekend, which would have closed an avenue for people to walk and bike. The permit cost was too high. (Baltimore Sun)

O'Toole just a rabid anti-urbanist: Prolific anti-transit and anti-urban planning commentator Randal O'Toole claims to be a libertarian, but that doesn't hold water; in responding to Ryan Avent's book, he shows he just hates cities. (Forbes)

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12 comments

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David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.

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But will Nextbus still work with the 90s buses? I use them all the time but live 4 blocks from the stop. Nextbus is a lifesaver.

by John on Sep 22, 2011 12:58 pm • link • report

NextBus/90s: I expect it will. At some point, NextBus started working for the Circulator too, though the route names are non-intuitive.

by HM on Sep 22, 2011 1:04 pm • link • report

Great to hear about the 90 buses -- the frequency issues on that line are literally absurd -- often times a 40 minute wait followed by a bunch of 4-8 buses (no joke).

Unfortunately, I don't actually ride the 90s during daytime hours, and would hope that Metro extends these better hours at least to 9PM.

by andrew on Sep 22, 2011 1:13 pm • link • report

Germantown wasn't invented in the 60's. Germantown was a Hessian encampment during the Revolutionary War and continued as a town until today.

Get the history right or fix the wording.

by jkl on Sep 22, 2011 1:22 pm • link • report

@jkl, when was Germantown a Hessian encampment? I can't seem to recall off the cuff when a British army came through here during the Revolution.

Also, is it really a "town". It's not incorporated, is it?

by Tim Krepp on Sep 22, 2011 1:31 pm • link • report

@John, yep! NextBus is super cool.

I sorta chuckled at the blurb and wcp article painting Orange as a grandstander and "Saint Wells" as someone serious. HA! The WCP suggests that Wells is also doing a bit of grandstanding of his own since he does have "political aspirations beyond his current station."

On this, I imagine that Wells is no less a grandstander than is Orange though.

by HogWash on Sep 22, 2011 1:33 pm • link • report

I guess by "90s bus" what's meant is the 90/92/93 line. My poor 96 bus gets lost behind the glamour of those Florida Avenue busses.

by Steve S. on Sep 22, 2011 2:48 pm • link • report

@Tim Krepp how many towns are actually incorporated in the whole state of Maryland? Not that many. I think I heard somewhere that Ellicott City and Towson go back and forth as the largest unincorporated county seats in America.

by JQ on Sep 22, 2011 3:54 pm • link • report

I wonder how the 90/92 monitoring will work in practice. Unlike Circulator routes that have the same end points on both sides, the 90 and 92 have different end points on the south end. In that frame, how does the supervisor working the south end of the 90 and sending buses out at even 15 minute intervals know how to coordinate buses with those on leaving the south end of the 92 so that they operate along the spine at an even 7/8 minute headway?

by Adam on Sep 22, 2011 4:03 pm • link • report

Tommy Wells votes to close Council meeting! Can't wait to see the posting to following slamming him! Bring it, David!

by heavyd on Sep 22, 2011 4:06 pm • link • report

@HogWash:

Weird definition of "grandstanding":

Wells gets points for addressing issues his colleagues wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, but he’s certainly not exempt from a little grandstanding of his own. “I don’t want to be doing all this ethics stuff. I’m pissed off about it. It really is not why I ran for office,” says Wells, who also has political aspirations that reach beyond his current station.

In other words, he's introduced good legislation, and exhibited political bravery by "addressing issues his colleagues wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole", but because he says he'd rather be concentrating on actual legislation to improve the city rather than policing a group of ethically challenged mugwumps who should be able to rein themselves in...he's grandstanding.

The definition of "grandstanding" is engaging in lip-service which has no point other than to raise your profile. This is just uncharacteristically sloppy writing on the part of LL.

by oboe on Sep 22, 2011 4:26 pm • link • report

Weird definition of "grandstanding

I believe that LL is using the common tactic of using words outside of their original meaning. I don't think that makes his writing here necessarily sloppy. That is unless we're going to assume that anyone who uses a word out of context is sloppy.

I also don't think it's hard to believe or worth disputing that the Wells considers the PR involved in whatever he does. I believe that could be "part" of where LL is going but chooses to call it grandstanding. They don't call him GGWElls for nothing. :)

by HogWash on Sep 22, 2011 5:30 pm • link • report