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Last week, the Washington Post featured a lengthy profile of WMATA’s head architect, the man behind the concepts in Metro’s recently unveiled ‘station of the future‘ concept. The article offers some insight into the thinking behind the proposed re-design of the Bethesda station, as well as some of the pushback Metro has received already from the Continue reading What’s wrong with ‘Metro Brown?’ This week, WMATA unveiled a concept for their “station of the future.” The press release and accompanying video flythough of the pilot station (Bethesda) for these improvements lists the reasons for these changes, including “improved lighting, better information and improved customer convenience.” And who would be against those things? All three have been criticisms of Metro Continue reading Metro’s ‘station of the future’ – why mess with what works?
Brookland Metro Station – photo by author. While in the midst of repacing the old terra cotta tiles at the Brookland station (the most colorful of all Metro stations) with the newer concrete tiles for outdoor stations, Metro was kind enough to build some temporary wood benches for customers. This week, Greater Greater Washington highlighted WMATA’s latest iteration of their new bus map (as post on the first iteration is here), which opts for a diagrammatic representation of the bus network, highlighting frequent, all-day bus services over infrequent and irregulat coverage bus routes.
The new map is a huge improvement of the old Continue reading Metro highlights frequency in new bus map VRE train at Franconia-Springfield. CC image from nevermindtheend DC’s existing (yet fragmented) commuter rail network is a huge low-hanging fruit for expanded and improved transit service (see this previous post). Writing at Pedestrian Observations, Alon Levy makes the statement that nobody likes riding North American commuter rail. Alon compares two locations in New York that Continue reading Towards a DC S-Bahn, part 2 S-Bahn logo. From wiki. This week, Greater Greater Washington has run a series of posts on the hurdles to implementing through-routed commuter rail services in DC. The technical reasons include many basic incompatibilities between the region’s two commuter railroads (MARC and VRE), ranging from type of locomotion to platform height, as well as the infrastructural Continue reading Towards a DC S-Bahn WMATA’s recent service change, branded as Rush Plus (probably over-promising things just a bit as “rush hour reinvented”), involved deviating from Metro’s fairly straightforward delineation of lines and services via color. Metro’s increasingly complicated service pattern is getting to the point of requiring a similarly robust nomenclature for services. When a rider speaks of the Red Line, they Continue reading Wayfinding challenges for WMATA’s Rush Plus Paris T3 – image from wikipedia – note the seven-segment vehicle, dedicated right of way, and grass tracks. Last month, Yonah Freemark’s post on the rapid expansion of tramways in France caught my eye. These systems offer several key lessons for the streetcar projects popping up across the US, as well as here in DC. Continue reading Streetcar lessons from France Via the Streetsblog Network, I came across this Salon piece from Michael Lind praising our future driverless car overlords. Angie Schmidt at Streetsblog did a nice job to take down some of Lind’s loaded language, particularly the bits about “rigging markets” (which rings just as hollow as the cries about “social engineering” – as Timothy Continue reading Driverless cars don’t change geometry Downtown Seattle. Photo by author. On land use procedure: In the same line as my previous post about procedural hurdles to adding density, a similar discussion is happening in Seattle. Within the larger realm of procedural hurdles, this focus picks up on the idea of a ‘density’ party. While party organization is a part of the Continue reading More thoughts on density, procedure, and neighborhood opposition |
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