Posts about Opinion
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Montgomery County’s Planning Board will recommend relaxing single-family zoning
This week, Montgomery County’s Planning Board will recommend relaxing single-family zoning. Chair Artie Harris and planning director Jason Sartori explain why it’s time to give everyone a chance to call the county home. Keep reading…
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Coming soon to Columbia Road: More public space, and bus and bike lanes
DDOT will start building bus and bike lanes on Columbia Road in July 2024. Removing residential permit parking will enable faster transit and make it safer to bike and walk. Here’s how you can support the project. Keep reading…
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The DC Council should insist on a true multi-modal design for Connecticut Avenue, or defund the project
It’s not just the missing bike lane: the District Department of Transportation’s revised plans for Connecticut Avenue are worse all around. The Council shouldn’t let the Mayor toy with $26 million. Keep reading…
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Six big ideas to improve Metro and regional transit
WMATA has created a task force to identify sustainable funding solutions, which meets for the first time on June 10. However, the opportunities go beyond funding: our regional transit system needs big ideas about improving services, operations, finances, and governance. Improvements in each of these areas can help the others. Here are six approaches to consider. Keep reading…
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DC’s 2025 budget is an opportunity to show up for climate. Don’t lose it.
The District adopted powerful climate goals in recent years, and our technocratic experts came up with practical, effective plans for achieving them. Are some leaders suddenly getting cold feet with this year’s budget? Keep reading…
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Not just downtown: DC needs more rapid transit between neighborhoods
In the wake of the Covid pandemic, public transit should follow people’s needs and shift away from the downtown-centric paradigm. That means creating rapid transit services to and from activity centers outside of the core. Here are a few windows of opportunity. Keep reading…
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Express MARC service can help Maryland grow more equitably
Express trains between Baltimore and Washington, DC would cut the travel time between the cities in half, putting hundreds of thousands of jobs within reach for Baltimoreans and helping Washingtonians escape one of the most expensive housing markets in the country. The trains, the tracks they run on, and all the other necessary infrastructure already exist. Keep reading…
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Keep Beach Drive car-free on the weekends
Since 2020, Montgomery Parks has been running the wildly popular Open Parkways program on Beach Drive and in two other locations – Little Falls Parkway and Sligo Creek Parkway. Over the last year, the open parkway on Beach Drive was used more than 135,000 times. Earlier this month, Montgomery Parks leadership announced that they would like it permanent. Keep reading…
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The Circulator is dead. Long live the Circulator!
At a time when bus service wasn’t thriving in the District, the Circulator was established with funds that had to be used by DC explicitly on bus. Key goals were to connect the National Mall to the soon-to-be-developed Southwest Waterfront, and to make bus appealing to a wider range of riders than before. 20 years later, its founders are ready to bid it a fond farewell (mostly). Read their reflections on the system’s history and aims. Keep reading…
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DC is ranked, again, as having the top park system in the US. That’s still a problem.
The National Parks Service owns most of DC’s famed parkland. That creates challenges for managing these amenities and maximizing benefits for the public, regardless of what national awards DC accrues. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Keep reading…