I met David Yassky, my city councilman last night. (Warning: no content on his site yet.) He seems as much a geek as a politician. According to a Google cached document that may disappear, “As an aide to Chuck Schumer, David helped author and pass the Brady Bill, Violence Against Women Act, the federal hate crimes law and Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Law.” My kind of representative. I love my neighborhood.

This was at a TA meeting featuring him as the speaker. He talked about lots of great proposals he has surrounding downtown Brooklyn traffic calming and fuel-efficient taxis. The group also got into a debate about bridge tolls; David suggested we really need good data about who uses the bridges and whether it would disproportionately affect Brooklynites.

Most people just kept repeating the same arguments, but he’s absolutely right, though that’s tough data to gather. If you could write down license plate numbers, look them up, and then find information on the owners’ residences and workplaces, it could help a lot, though that’s not easy if you aren’t a government agency. The DOT is apparently quite reluctant to do any studies that might support things they don’t want.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.