Recent Posts
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Parks, including downtown, get attention and funding
DC’s budget for next year has some great news for fans of parks, including people clamoring for better parks and playgrounds in the growing, and increasingly residential, downtown area. The DC Council Committee on Libraries, Parks, Recreation and Planning, which Tommy Wells chairs, unanimously passed its budget this morning and gave funding to several key priorities,… Keep reading…
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Start Montgomery BRT today with priority corridors
Montgomery County’s Bus Rapid Transit task force will soon release its completed report. Montgomery County can immediately start moving toward BRT by setting up limited-stop, express bus service along WMATA’s bus priority corridors. The task force envisions building a BRT network in phases. Ultimately the county may build new dedicated busways, but it can… Keep reading…
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Breakfast links: Sharing
MD funds bikeshare; Holds now barred; Give up cars; Baltimore’s green line; Protests need permits?; More diamonds diverge; A little goes a long way; And…. Keep reading…
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Restoring funds for homeless services makes fiscal sense
Yesterday, dozens of homeless families came to the John A. Wilson Building to take part in the budget process. They asked the DC Council to restore money for homeless services that was cut in Mayor Gray’s proposed budget for next year. Their argument was simple: There are more and more kids and parents in our city who have no place to sleep, and without a safe place to rest, our… Keep reading…
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West Wing actors show benefits of walking (and talking)
EveryBody Walk, a national campaign funded by many companies and nonprofits, brought much of the cast of The West Wing together to talk about soemthing they did all the time on their hit show: walking. Keep reading…
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MARC listens, improves draft Brunswick Line schedule
MARC proposed a disastrous schedule for its Brunswick Line in December. Fortunately, they’ve created a new schedule proposal that is a huge improvement over the first one. It adds service to Montgomery County stations, which now account for half of all Brunswick Line riders. Still, the proposal will not make everybody happy. People who now take the westbound super-express… Keep reading…
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WAMU missteps with one-sided Outer Beltway story
WAMU’s Metro Connection aired a sadly one-sided story on Friday about long-debated, oft-rejected proposals to build an Outer Beltway across the Potomac, far from the region’s core. Positively, Metro Connection agreed that the piece wasn’t up to their standards, and the reporter has already added some of the missing side of the story. The original piece… Keep reading…
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Breakfast links: Seat filler
Ethics just got real; Silver Line in peril; Higher prices, not Sundays; Sidewalk cafes grow in number, not size; Some parts of Ward 5 vote; MDOT loses head; GeekEasy wasn’t so easy; Parks from parking lots; The road to ruin; And…. Keep reading…
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Parking minimums undermine Montgomery zoning changes
Montgomery County is rewriting its zoning code, but the proposed draft leaves old minimum parking requirements largely in place. This obstructs the very growth the county wants to encourage. Outside downtowns with parking districts, almost all new housing will still need 2 off-street parking spaces per dwelling, even in mixed-use or multi-family residential areas. Parking… Keep reading…
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Are smarter bikes in the future for bike sharing?
Capital Bikeshare has been a huge success since its debut in 2010, but its system, which provides simple, sturdy bikes backed by sophisticated technology at stations, is no longer the only option. Might some cities, suburban jurisdictions, or even Capital Bikeshare in the future, consider a new technology: smarter bikes? Like many other cities with mature and successful bike… Keep reading…