Posts about April Fool

Three pyramids suddenly appeared in Burtonsville, Dan Reed revealed, and DC Metrocentric broke the news about a million square foot development on Roosevelt Island, in the Potomac.

Besides the "passengerless cars" we reported on, Google took another step in their driverless car program by partnering with NASCAR to develop autonomous race cars.

Planetizen noted that a San Francisco pop-up store has qualified as historic. Cleveland, unable to afford a bicycle sharing program, launched a bicycle stealing program.

New York introduced a left-handed turnstile, says Transportation Nation, Project for Public Spaces started a new campaign to give public spaces rights just like people and corporations, and Philadelphia announced new sidewalk lanes for people texting.

In not-fooling April Fool news, DC's political Twitterati concluded that, as it happens, the 2014 primary election in DC will actually fall on April 1, unless the council takes action to modify the ridiculously early primary date they established beginning this year.

Did you see entertaining articles not listed here? Post them in the comments.

Escalator reliability reaches 100%: Metro has achieved a new milestone for escalator maintenance. They have now reached a reliability rate of 100%; all escalators are currently broken at the same time. (Examiner, Matt Johnson)

Hop on I-395 PE: With Virginia's new program to sell naming rights to roads, Sudafed has proposed sponsoring all of Northern Virginia's congestion. (WBJ, Steve Offutt)

LOV-0 coming to a road near you: Google is reportedly working on a new program to design "passengerless cars," which will transport no people at all. In anticipation of this breakthrough, VDOT announced a plan to implement "Low-Occupancy Vehicle" lanes for their exclusive use. (Wired, Neil Flanagan)

DC4D4Thomas: DC for Democracy has endorsed Harry Thomas, Jr. as a write-in candidate for the Ward 5 special election. Members cited Thomas' consistency in talking about revitalizing the ward's main streets without making anything happen, creatively moving around money dedicated to serve youth, and his plan to solve transportation problems by setting up a series of Audi dealerships. (Geoff Hatchard)

Norton targets Wyoming: After several unsuccessful efforts to lobby state legislatures to support DC statehood, Eleanor Holmes Norton announced a new strategy to try to remove statehood from Wyoming, as it is smaller than DC. (DCist, Nick Clark)

Governors Bob McDonnell and Martin O'Malley announced plans to spend $10 billion to build a new freeway across the Potomac River in order to accommodate the Metro riders, but added that funding is too scarce to contribute more to speed up the Metro repairs. "We think this is the best way to use our state transportation dollars to help commuters," said Virginia Secretary of Transportation Sean Proaughton.

In addition, MARC will add new service on the Brunswick Line. CSX announced that it would allow MARC to run more trains and actually tell its dispatchers to give priority to passenger trains on the line, as opposed to previous times when they claimed to have done so but dispatchers did not actually follow through.

Metro is launching a new public relations campaign around the closure, called "Red Line: Deal With It." Customers will see construction walls at Red Line station entrances with slogans like, "8 Months Isn't So Bad, Is It?" and "No More Delays. No More Red Line."

Organizers of large national events are also being informed. A national tea party convention has already modified its website to inform attendees driving to the region from points north on I-95 to take the Beltway to Vienna instead of driving to Glenmont or using any other station.

Metro will suspend all work on other lines, including Silver Line construction, in order to complete the work in 8 months. "We hope that by the time the Red Line reopens, we'll only have to single-track twice a month," said WMATA CEO Richard Snarles.

Dessel said Metro is working with Mayor Gray to hire thousands of unemployed District residents to help with the 24-hour repairs. The program is part of a new employment program called "One City, One Line."

A social media component of the program, called "Metro Fast Forward," will equip track workers with helmet video cameras and editing software so that they can produce videos of the work in real time.

This concept has actually been in the works for over a year. Previous WMATA spokesperson Lisa Dystone planned not to tell riders about the closure, arguing that nobody would notice. However, Michael Perkins noticed an obscure footnote in a WMATA Board presentation and encouraged officials to mount a larger campaign to inform riders.

Some have already criticized Metro's plan. The critical blog DeCrapify DC Metro said 8 months is far longer than needed to finish the work. Another blog and popular Twitter account, WTF WMATA, wrote that customers deserve better treatment and vowed to hold Metro accountable.

How will you adjust to the Red Line closing? Let us know in the comments.

The revolutionary app allows texting drivers to "see" bicyclists and pedestrians in their path, and promises to significantly cut down on incidents of drivers hitting these other road users.

Greenbelt Mayor Pro Tem Emmett Jordan, Dr. Allen Lim of Skratch Labs and author of the The Feed Zone cookbook, and cyclocross superstar Tim Johnson all shared their thoughts for the video. The product demos were done in conjunction with Tim Johnson's Ride on Washington and sponsored by Proteus Bicycles in College Park.

New Gaithersburg Heights: The blogger behind New Columbia Heights moved to Gaithersburg, learned to walk a dog while driving an SUV, and inaugurated a new feature, Chili's of the Day.

We want 3-D! Wheaton residents are outraged that a proposed plaza for Wheaton looks like a Sketchup model, and started a group "3-DIMBY" to push for a more 3-dimensional plan. (JUTP)

Too many ped-on-ped crashes: The New York DOT was alarmed to discover a high frequency of pedestrian-on-pedestrian crashes. Small children even get into such crashes intentionally. Fortunately, there are very few injuries. (Transportation Nation)

Planjokizen: Ben & Jerry's adds a new flavor, Janette Sadik-Pecan ... LA will add car racks to its buses ... After many Republican governors rejected high-speed rail money, Ray LaHood spent the $2.4 billion on a huge party in Las Vegas. (Planetizen)

Public spaces get better: The Project for Public Spaces, which always does great news coverage at the start of April, revealed that Brooklyn's Prospect Park West will new get new kayak lanes, Arlington, Texas will train riders to use ESP to find out when their bus is coming, a new iPhone app helps starchitects not listen to public input, and a newly-unveiled plan would solve New York congestion by replacing most of Manhattan with freeways. Once upon a time, that last one was not a joke.

Proposed Brookland development project. Photo by jaydrogers.

New bike cage at College Park Metro. Photo by Crystian Cruz.

Morning Orange Line at East Falls Church. Photo by Digi_shot.

Rock Creek Parkway as seen by the Park Service. Photo by notaboutwill.

15th Street cycletrack. Photo by James D. Schwartz.

Got a picture that depicts the best or worst of Washington? Make sure to join our Flickr pool and submit your own photos!

AAA Mid-Atlantic's John Townsend explained that the program aims to turn around the negative opinion that many in our region have of motorists. "The goal," he said, "is to show that motorists are responsible people who behave courteously and try to avoid endangering others."

These good intentions have created a storm among Washington-area motoring enthusiasts, as online message boards for "motorheads," as some call themselves, lit up. Writing on one local forum, "IWillNotBeMufflered" wrote, "Everyone knows there is a war on drivers out there. My baby is in danger of being scratched every time I take her down the street." User "Fast&Furious" added: "That pedestrian is a real threat to me. I do what I've gotta do to make sure my vehicle is protected."

Even other automobile advocacy groups are calling AAA Mid-Atlantic's tactics into question. Veronica Moss of the Automobile Users Trade Association said that AAA may have ceded too much ground in its advocacy efforts. "I see what they're trying to do," she said, "but the reality is that drivers are a small minority under siege on our streets. We are little lambs, and those nonmotorized road users are real wolves out to get us. We shouldn't just offer ourselves up to them like that. They could do real damage to us."

This blog disagrees with Ms. Moss's absolutist perspective. Despite its flaws, AAA's Resolution to Drive Responsibly embodies values we should all have, whether walking, biking or driving.

However, the motorists have a point. More must be done to make travel by automobile safe and convenient, including construction of dedicated lanes for cars, encouragement initiatives like "drive to work day," and reform of mobility education for high schoolers to include information about the rights and responsibilities of motorists. Pioneering cities such as Los Angeles and Houston have led the way in these initiatives. Washington should follow their lead.

Our region can do more. We encourage the "bicycular motoring" movement, which teaches motorists to operate their vehicles in a manner consistent with a world dominated by active transportation when there is no dedicated motoring infrastructure available. Even the radical "freeway" concept, which has been described as being like a Capital Crescent Trail for automobile use only, should be considered in our region's transportation plans.

Even as motorists make strides in making our region safer for high-speed automobile traffic, they must remember that they are still operating in an environment designed for nonmotorized users and must obey the rules. Being courteous is the least they could do to help their cause.

The report differentiates dedicated specialty cupcake stores from mere bakeries that also sell cupcakes. Advocates for underserved communities have long argued that cupcakes from shops making 50% or more of their profit from other confectioneries are usually inferior in design and taste. This gives residents of those communities a major disadvantage in their everyday need to enjoy a small, sweet dessert.

This shameful sugar disparity became the subject of a recent DC Council hearing catered by Georgetown Cupcake.

Councilmember Mary Cheh responded to this crisis with legislation mandating cupcakes in public school cafeterias. Jack Evans advocated tax breaks for cupcake stores, arguing that DC is losing cupcake revenue to Maryland and Virginia.

Not to be outdone, Marion Barry introduced legislation providing tax incentives to cupcake retailers who set up shop in underserved wards, and Harry Thomas, Jr. has a bill mandating diagonal parking and asking DC to analyze building municipal parking garages around cupcake shops.

To address the problem, one nonprofit is trying to turn a school bus into a mobile bakery which will travel DC's underserved areas selling cupcakes.

Due to the sweet success of the Redistricting Game, we will also launch a "Cupcake Desert Game." The public will get the chance to map their own locations for desired cupcake stores and share them with friends. We will then pass on these crowdsourced locations to the DC Council to consider as "Cupcake Enterprise Zones."

Dessert-equity advocates argued this should be the District's highest priority because of its deep effect on communities. The blog DC Devil's Food for All wrote, "It is a fundamental right for every resident to be able to walk 10 minutes to buy a $4 cupcake."

"Since it has been several years since Richard Reid, the notorious shoe bomber, attempted to bomb an airplane with his shoe, we don't want to give terrorists the idea that we have forgotten about this attack method," Taborn said. "We can't let them think that."

"In order to foil such a plot," Taborn continued, "we will randomly deploy officers to two or three of the 86 stations in the system, asking every 17th customer to remove one of their shoes and walk to the train in that manner. Experts say this will really keep potential terrorists on their toes."

The shoe-checking program will be instituted at the beginning of May. It will not be in effect on days with inclement weather, temperatures below 50 or above 75, or in any jurisdiction that requires shirt and shoes for service.

"While these new measures may raise questions with some customers about effectiveness or civil liberties," Sarles chided, "I've been told by various experts that they will reduce terrorist attacks by at least 100% year over year."

In fact, if Metro hears from national security experts that the threat level has reached a certain level, they have begun scoping more strict terrorism deterrents. Sarles told reporters, "Under certain circumstances, we may even choose random stations to shut down entirely or simply discontinue service for a period of months. Statistically, that is the most effective way to reduce the chance of attacks. Or at least so I've been told."