Posts about Donna Edwards

Transit

Dinner links: Six feet under budget

by David Alpert   •   October 23, 2008 6:27 pm

"Hangover of America's romance with the car": Salon examines the paradox of governments cutting transit funding as buses and trains face record ridership, and the double standard in the way we think about funding new roads versus funding transit.

Next stop Saint Elizabeths: Plans for the Saint Elizabeth's campus in Ward Eight include an infill Green Line station, or possibly a spur off the main line. Just don't give it a new color. (Ryan Avent)

Brookanders win a burial: The DC Council has voted to require burying the power lines on Brookland's main streets during the upcoming streetscape reconstruction. Here's some background. (Examiner)

Edwards likes purple: Maryland's newest Congresswoman, Donna Edwards, places the Purple Line among her top priorities along with housing affordability.

"Digital public square": Apps for Democracy interviews DC CTO Vivek Kundra, who talks about DC's data feeds ready to be mashed up by sites such as EveryBlock.

Freako-discredited idea: Freakonomics resurrects the old and debunked canard that transit causes crime. Ryan Avent debunks.

Politics

Donna Edwards: for better buses, against National Harbor

by David Alpert   •   June 12, 2008 1:18 pm

There's a good profile of future MD-4 Congresswoman Donna Edwards in the Post. Edwards beat incumbent Al Wynn in the primary last spring, and is expected to win a special election Tuesday to finish the last few months of Wynn's term.

The article cites her support for better bus service stemming from her days as a struggling single mother.

"When I drive on the highway now, and I see women with their strollers out there and their young children waiting on the side of the highway, still waiting on the side of the highway, years later, without any shelter, I think, 'That was me,'" she said. "I just think surely we must be able to make an investment in mass transportation that actually works for people."

The bus stops in Prince George's are particularly awful, often sitting on a narrow shoulder of a wide six-lane highway without even a good bus shelter. And here's another personal reason for Edwards to support transit: her son, like many others, "doesn't go out on weekends because he cannot afford the price of gas."

The article also covers Edwards' opposition to the National Harbor development, built far from anything else (and now suffering because of it. Edwards fought for a convention center better integrated with the nearby communities; while she didn't get that, she did win more residential housing at the complex and a recreational trail along the river.

Edwards will be a terrific Congresswoman for the region.