Breakfast links: Safer and more affordable

by David Alpert • March 18, 2010 9:34 am

Crash site. Image from Google Maps.

Hit, kill, run: Are hit-and-runs on the rise or is it just coincidence? A driver hit and run a pedestrian in Prince George's County yesterday, off Central Avenue near the Beltway. As with most PG crashes, it's at a fairly pedestrian-hostile intersection. (Post)

Cycle tracks in College Park?: Prince George's County wants cycle tracks on Route 1 in College Park, but removed language in the plan that would encourage replacing on-street parking with a cycle track, instead just calling for large enough "preferred cross-section dimensions" for US-1. (TheWashCycle)

Affordable housing activity: Alexandria is losing affordable housing, and big budget cuts could make things worse (Examiner) ... New Montgomery County Planning Board member, developer, and affordable housing advocate Norman Dreyfuss says he won't be predictable on the Board (Gazette) ... Three developers present very similar plans for building mixed-income housing on the former site of now-moved Justice Park in Columbia Heights. (DCmud)

Off the job for 9 years, come back, derail a train: The Metro train operator who derailed a train at Farragut North and was later fired turns out to have just gotten back from 9 years of medical leave. Other employees and the Examiner question whether such employees get enough retraining. (Examiner)

MV Square market unpermitted, but should be permissible?: Richard Layman has been following the closure of the Liberty Market at Mount Vernon Square. DCRA says they had no permit, and the rules for "farmers markets" require selling exclusively locally grown food, which that one didn't; the market says they had a contract, but appears confused about the difference between a contract and a permit. Layman argues that regulations ought to facilitate markets that aren't "farmers markets" as well. (RPUS)

After the flood: Would the Park Service ever let the GW Parkway look like this photo of the Mt. Vernon Trail after last weekend's floods? USDOT says bikes are transportation equal to cars.

How are Kenyan riots like the snowpocalypse?: Ushahidi, a crowdsourcing software tool developed to track violence in Kenya and used to coordinate disaster relief in Haiti and Chile, also helped map blocked roads and the availability of snowplows in DC. (NYT)

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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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How do you get 9 years of medical leave? I feel sorry for someone that needs 9 years, but why is WMATA keeping a job open for someone that long?

by SJE on Mar 18, 2010 9:45 am • link • report

Sorry folks, this is nothing more then placing a different spin on the story.

Running red signals is a prohibited activity for everyone.

by Sand Box John on Mar 18, 2010 10:06 am • link • report

@David: Does the Mt. Vernon Trail carry anywhere near as much traffic as the GW Parkway? If not, then that explains why it's not a Park Service priority. Solution: Rally several cyclists to bring some brooms and shovels and do for themselves what the Park Service has failed to do. Or ask the Omni Shoreham hotel if they don't mind sending some employee across the river to do it.

by Fritz on Mar 18, 2010 10:09 am • link • report

The GW Parkway was a mess on Sunday afternoon. Going from Gravelly Point to Old Town, there were 3 or 4 spots that were that bad. By my count the majority of the mess was wood, plastic drink bottles (equal number of soda and liquor) and styrofoam.

by RH on Mar 18, 2010 10:13 am • link • report

Did she get paid during that medical leave?

I would think that at some point well before nine years, the medical condition would, if legitimate, be considered a disability and be covered by social security, not WMATA's budget.

I remember reading an article a while back in the Post about abuse of medical leave policies in the MPD. These types of situations probably have no material effect on the respective budgets but are still terrible for public perception.

by Reid on Mar 18, 2010 10:21 am • link • report

@Fritz -

Just like when it snowed and the trail was buried under ice for weeks, I would venture to guess that the underutilized parking lots along the MVT are clean as a whistle right now.

by JTS on Mar 18, 2010 10:21 am • link • report

The Family and Medical Leave Act ensures unpaid leave for up to 12 weeks a year. Obviously 9 years is longer than 12 weeks, so I'm not sure FMLA protections applied here or if WMATA just didn't want to fire her.

by Gavin on Mar 18, 2010 10:39 am • link • report

The pedestrian accident was at 4:15 AM.

Very dangerous time to be on walking. And I wouldn't be surprised give that it St. Patrick's Day that the pedestrian might be intoxicated.

Is PG county pedestrian unfriendly -- yes. Do accidents occur at 4 in the morning -- yes.

And as much as I like to jump all over WMATA employees, we are walking about the Washington Examiner --- a paper just to the right of fox news. We don't have anything resembling a complete picture here.

by charlie on Mar 18, 2010 10:52 am • link • report

I'm not sure of the particulars, and it may not apply here, but if someone is off on disability retirement, the employer will usually monitor the person and try to work with them to return to work if possible--instead of paying them a pension for not working.

Sandbox John is correct. You do not pass a red signal on mainline without the explicit permission from central control and in the case of a switch like this, only after getting off the train and blocking the switch to insure it doesn't move.

I would say that two weeks training after being off nine years was not sufficient. It doesn't excuse personal responsibility, but WMATA is not off the hook either. With proper training, the operator would have been able to program the proper destination (or correct it after programming it wrong) for the train and not ended up in the pocket track to begin with. They also would know that you never, ever, ever pass a red signal without permission that has been confirmed.

by kreeggo on Mar 18, 2010 11:35 am • link • report

Has running a red signal with a train full of passengers has ever been permissible on the system? The article didn't explain.

When breaking an elementary safety principle causes hundreds of thousands of dollars in rolling stock damage, rescue worker costs, investigative labor, passenger injuries, and reduced economic activity due to delays to other passengers, I think there are overwhelming grounds for dismissal.

Was the medical leave paid or unpaid? Perhaps WMATA's policy merely maintains the position without pay after the 12-week FMLA term expires. I think DC's FMLA equivalent requires the position to be maintained without pay for several months--- though, still far less than 9 years.

by Eric F. on Mar 18, 2010 11:38 am • link • report

@Fritz. Okay, how about this. Take GW Parkway's maintenance budget. Multiply by the ratio of Mt. Vernon Trail users to GW Parkway drivers. Spend that amount on maintaining the trail. Happy?

Whatever that amount is, it'll be an improvement, because it's greater than ZERO, which is how much maintenance the trail actually got.

by Wh on Mar 18, 2010 11:39 am • link • report

re: WMATA. I agree that we don't have the full story in the Examiner. But who IS giving us the full story? So far, no one is disputing the facts printed in the Examiner, only blaming WMATA for not re-training the driver more.

by SJE on Mar 18, 2010 11:59 am • link • report

To all the Mount Vernon Trail naysayers (including David), I'd like to point out A) there were still some lingering flooding issues Tuesday morning, and B) the trail was cleared of debris by Wednesday morning.

by Froggie on Mar 18, 2010 12:08 pm • link • report

Also, Kytja Weir is hardly a right-wing firebrand.

by Reid on Mar 18, 2010 12:09 pm • link • report

A further note on training. The WMATA policy was described to me as a minimum of 1 week training when off work 1-3 years and a minimum of 2 weeks training when off 3-5 years. I don't know how much training the operator actually received although Weir says a few weeks.

The absence of any further notation in their policy suggests the operator should have gotten the full 13 weeks training if she had been off nine years. The article seems to suggest that the operator did not.

Once again, that doesn't relieve the operator of any personal responsibility, but it does indicate further laxness on WMATA's part when it comes to safety issues.

by kreeggo on Mar 18, 2010 1:24 pm • link • report

There are so many problems with Route 1 in College Park, that bike lanes would barely make a difference. College Park is now so bad that it really needs a complete redo, sort of like what UConn is doing to Storrs, CT. At this point, as a proud Maryland alum and former CP resident, I can't really find a single redeeming quality in the city.

Maybe the Metro stop? But the location is terrible.

by urbaner on Mar 18, 2010 6:04 pm • link • report