Posts tagged Opinion
-
Three urban design rules to make playgrounds fun for kids
Playgrounds are great…but many can be greater. Choices and diverse play options can dramatically change how kids experience designated play spaces. Keep reading…
-
A Benning Road project without Streetcar will increase car dependence & environmental harms
Ward 7 was promised a transportation project that explicitly included the Streetcar extension. Removing the transit part would leave the area more car-reliant than ever. Keep reading…
-
I live with PTSD in DC. The city both helped and endangered me.
Housing, good transit, and kind neighbors helped Dave Murphy weather mental health struggles, but the District’s default crisis response actually made matters worse. Keep reading…
-
Opponents of a Spring Valley bike lane are singing a familiar, erroneous tune
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a group of residents is opposing plans to add bike lanes because they think it will lead to increased congestion, despite traffic counts that show the road is overbuilt. The latest iteration of this is unfolding in the Spring Valley neighborhood in Northwest DC along Dalecarlia Parkway. Keep reading…
-
Arlington is nonbinary
I am not a woman or a man. I am an Arlingtonian. In the 21st Century, gender is social limitation. Biological differences between sexes are irrelevant in the age of AC, GPS, and iPads for middle-schoolers. ‘Gender roles,’ we often say, are archaic and obsolete. Gender limits women’s salaries to four-fifths of men’s, and limits men to emotionally-stunted friendships and a suicide rate three times higher than women’s. Keep reading…
-
Did Bowser kill the Shaw bikeway? She won’t say.
DC Mayor Muriel Bowser says she is committed to eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries by 2024, the District’s goal under the Vision Zero initiative it adopted in 2015. Yet for more than three years her administration has quietly stalled an important safety project, a protected bikeway on 9th Street NW, and refused to give the public straight answers about why. Keep reading…
-
Why I stopped taking my kid to school by bicycle
It’s 8:30 on a weekday morning and I’m writing this from the Metro Red Line. Normally, at this time on a beautiful, 70-degree post-summer morning, I would be riding my Urban Arrow bakfiets cargo bike, motoring along R Street NW with my two dogs and nine-year-old son Oliver in the front cargo box, wind in our hair, barking at strangers, etc. But that’s over now. Keep reading…
-
On the Capital Crescent Trail, there’s a battle between safety and motorist entitlement
In October 2016, Chevy Chase resident Ned Gaylin was struck and killed by a driver while bicycling through the intersection of Little Falls Parkway and the Capital Crescent Trail in Montgomery County. The former mayor called safety improvements there an “intentional traffic jam.” Keep reading…
-
Why “paving” is the greenest option for the Palisades Trolley Trail
The Palisades Trolley Trail runs along the Potomac River from the Palisades neighborhood to Georgetown. The only issue? Right now it’s not much of a trail at all. The former Glen Echo Trolley line corridor is overgrown and few people use it, so DC is looking at various options to revitalize it. Keep reading…
-
Fifty years after the Apollo landing, we need to focus on survival of the Earth
For all I know, the old yellow mailbox was there on the porch on July 20, 1969. The Takoma Park homeowners must have gotten letters from relatives and friends afterwards, everyone explaining where they were when astronauts first walked on the moon in black-and-white TV glory. Keep reading…