Posts by Dan Malouff — Editorial Board

Dan Malouff is a transportation planner for Arlington and an adjunct professor at George Washington University. He has a degree in urban planning from the University of Colorado and lives in Trinidad, DC. He runs BeyondDC and contributes to the Washington Post. Dan blogs to express personal views, and does not take part in GGWash’s political endorsement decisions.

  • Open geographic data enables a wealth of maps

    The District’s GIS data catalog is a treasure trove of interesting information. I created maps from that data and posted some each day last week. They looked at DC’s land use, the Metrobus system, Zipcar locations, buildings versus open spaces, and city topography. Figure Ground The figure ground map is a silhouette of building footprints. The whole of DC and…  Keep reading…

  • TIGER III to come this summer

    The Metropolitan Washington Transportation Planning Board reported Wednesday that there will be a third round of the federal government’s TIGER transportation grant program. The popular and extremely competitive grants can be used for almost any transportation idea, provided applicants make the case that their projects deserve funding. The recently-passed…  Keep reading…

  • Morgantown’s PRT isn’t

    Personal Rapid Transit, or PRT, proposes to duplicate city street networks with new redundant elevated street networks for shared cars. It gets a lot of press, but after about 60 years of trying, has not yet been successfully implemented. The United States tried it once, in Morgantown, WV, in the 1970s. I’ve always been curious about the system, so when I passed through…  Keep reading…

  • America may have to accept shantytowns

    The government of Virginia destroyed a town Friday morning. It wasn’t an April Fool’s joke. The town wasn’t on any maps, and it didn’t have a mayor, but it was a town. For its 80-some residents, it was home. The problem: The town was made up tents, and was lived-in by people who would otherwise be homeless. It was, for all intents and purposes, a shantytown. When…  Keep reading…

  • “BRT creep” makes bus rapid transit inferior to rail

    Can the US make Bus Rapid Transit work as well as Latin America? Tanya Snyder asks that question in GGW and Streetsblog. BRT systems in places like Bogota and Curitiba have narrowed the gap between bus and rail, producing BRT lines nearly as good as subways. If they produce such great BRT, why should American BRT be considered the little sister of rail? The answer is something…  Keep reading…

  • The Temporium: An experiment in urbanism

    Have you ever looked at a storefront that’s been empty a long time and wondered why it couldn’t be filled, at least temporarily, by a small local business? After all, nobody benefits when a storefront sits empty too long. The property owner isn’t making any money, potential businesspeople aren’t operating their business, and neighborhood residents…  Keep reading…

  • Photo tour of the ICC

    The ICC is open, and while it may have been a questionable project, it is certainly one of the largest new pieces of transportation infrastructure to be constructed in the region in recent years. With that in mind, a friend drove me from Shady Grove Metro down the new megahighway to its temporary end at Norbeck Road, where we turned around and came back. The pictures from both lengths…  Keep reading…

  • How will Virginia brand its streetcars?

    Arlington is moving forward with streetcar plans for Columbia Pike and Route 1. How might the trains be branded once they start running? It seems unlikely they’ll be branded as Metro. What are the options? I created some potential concepts in Photoshop. These are not official branding proposals, just my own ideas for discussion. The DC Streetcar will look like a DC…  Keep reading…

  • Map shows most popular Capital Bikeshare trips

    Arlington’s CommuterPageBlog has an awesome map showing Capital Bikeshare usage. The darker the line, the more trips are made between the two stations that line connects.   Keep reading…

  • DC’s little-known infrastructure

    Every visitor from the Midwest knows about the Washington Metro and Beltway, but those well-known structures only scratch the surface of interesting infrastructure in the DC region. Here is a list of some fascinating, but oft-forgotten, pieces of Washingtonia. Each link provides additional information, including pictures: Photo by tormol on Flickr.The Capitol Subway:…  Keep reading…

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