Streetsblog Network

Weekend reading

Excuse my timing on this, as this doesn’t leave much weekend to play with – but here are some items worth noting from the previous week or so:

Streetcars bridge the gaps: Yonah Freemark has an excellent post on DC’s evolving streetcar network and its ability to fill the gaps in Metro’s network.  Yonah’s excellent visuals

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Value capture & private transit financing

NoMA Development. CC image from bankbryan.

Jarrett Walker’s weekend links post directed me to this article in The Atlantic by Chris Leinberger, asking if we might return to the days when private interests invested in transit as a means to facilitate real estate development.  Our own urban history is one of linked transportation and

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Briefly noted

Some items of note today:

Matt Johnson (GGW, Track Twenty-Nine) takes a closer look at Metro’s new 7000 series railcars.  The ‘America’s Metro’ logo seems to have disappeared, and there are opportunities for a longitudinal seating arrangement.
Ed Glaeser looks at the role of historic preservation in limiting development in New York, and looks at the degree

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A day in the life of Metro

Metro’s definitely seen better days.  The Washington Post had a lengthy piece in Sunday’s edition documenting the massive problems facing the system: aging infrastructure, missing leadership, a broken safety culture, amongst others.  Metro’s been trimming the fat to balance budgets for a while, and it now looks like they’ve been cutting into the bone and

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On profitability and privatization

CC image from AMagill on Flickr

Given Metro’s current and future budgetary issues (and the plethora of ideas to fix them amongst various comment threads at GGW and other places), discussions of profits and priorities are certainly topical.  With that in mind, Jarrett Walker has an excellent post up on the fundamental goals of transit

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Station cleaning – the end product

Today’s snow storm means Metro’s been limited to their underground service map only.  Given that buses are out of commission, this low level of service is the only real way to get around town.  It also means there’s plenty of time to spend in the stations waiting for trains.

So, while waiting at Potomac Avenue, I

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Metro snow operations

Given the heavy (and ongoing) snowfall, Metro is only operating rail service in select underground locations, in order to prevent trains from getting stranded as accumulating snow makes it difficult to maintain contact with the third rail, and also to use existing tunnels to keep rail cars dry and operable, rather than buried in snow

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Snowpocalypse updates

Venturing into the white abyss…

Some random observations and links, since we’re all stuck inside:

Snowball fights – the new kickball?

Travel by train – “as God intended.” Heh heh.

Some photos I snapped today:

Tree down at Meridian Hill, took out the streetlight on the way down.

Dirfting on steps – U St.

U st.

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Metro’s new board members set the bar…

….and other assorted links

Board games: Greater Greater Washington notes that the Feds have filled two of their four slots on the WMATA board, naming Mort Downey and Marcel Acosta to the positions.

Downey is a former executive for the US DOT under the Clinton Administration and is currently a transportation consultant.  Acosta is the Executive Director

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Lighting, again

I had a chance to stop though Judiciary Sq’s north mezzanine today, the one with the new lighting scheme.   My concern from the initial photos was that the lighting along the escalators, where the coffered vault has less headroom, requiring direct overhead light rather than the indirect lighting in the rest of the system, was

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