Breakfast links: In the east and the south

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Breakfast links: In the east and the south

by David Alpert • July 23, 2009 9:39 am

Photo by jasonepowell.

Greenmonston: The town of Edmonston, just off Route 1 near DC in Prince George's County, will renovate it's main street into a cutting-edge, environmentally sustainaable and pedestrian friendly design. The street will treat 90% of the pollution that washes into the Anacostia River from Edmonston streets each year. The Mayor of Edmonston, Adam Ortiz, has an LBJ poster in his office that reads, "Let's keep building the Great Society." (Post, Bianchi)

Now the "rural until a developer shows interest" tier: Prince George's County's policy divides the County into a Developed Tier, a Developing Tier, and a Rural Tier which isn't supposed to be developed. But a developer wants to build a big shopping center on rural land in Accokeek, and so the County Council is moving toward rezoning the land anyway over the Planning Board's and neighbors' objections. Chair Marilyn Bland said "we have to be reasonable." Reasonable means letting land stay rural until someone wants to put a mall on it? (Gazette)

MARC-oriented development at Bowie State: Bowie State hopes to expand right at the MARC station. Some neighbors and leaders worry the development would "burden roadways," but at least development at MARC would burden them a lot less than somewhere else, something the County's "adequate public facilities" road-widening policies don't really take into account. (Gazette)

Not so minor: Whether MARC's delays are their own fault, Amtrak's or the weather, their website characterizes delays of an hour or more (and even longer) on multiple trains as a "minor" disruption. (Inside Charm City)

What are DDOT's streetcar plans?: DDOT Director Gabe Klein will speak at a public meeting about DDOT's streetcar plans. Streetcars for DC has been trying to get the meeting since November (before Klein was appointed). The meeting is Thursday, August 6th, 7 pm at the Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. (Tom A.)

DCPL in the now: DC Public Libraries picks the winners in its "Then and Now photo contest." I really like the first runner-up, which doesn't just depict a scene matching a historic photo, but includes the historic photo in the scene. (Amino, Chelsea R.)

Then and now, overlaid: Another artist overlays old and current photos of DC street scenes to create stunning intertemporal compositions. (Misha)

Atkins or South Beach road diet?: Let's give two roads in Arlandria the "Lawyers Road" treatment, converting two lanes each way into one each way, a bike lane each way, and a center turn lane, suggests the Arlandrian.

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2 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.

Comments

MARC alerts: This was one of the first things I noticed when I started commuting via MARC. All problems are "minor disruptions," no matter how severe. As I recall, even the watermain break in Halethorpe that flooded the tracks and halted all service a couple of months back was described as minor, at least at first. For those of us commuting from Baltimore to DC anything that adds time to our very long (1.5 hours one way) commutes is MAJOR!

by Benjamin Orr on Jul 23, 2009 10:13 am • link • report

The whole point of a rural tier is to keep it rural. Marilyn Bland must not have gotten the memo. I'm sure she went her own way on this, despite objections from the planners whom we actually pay to come up with ideas and the residents who have to live with the development that clearly isn't wanted, because she's not up for re-election next year. This is also the same council member who supported the soccer stadium in PGC and would not give residents (who were mostly against it) a chance to speak on it.

by Donald on Jul 24, 2009 10:01 am • link • report