Breakfast links: News not to overlook
Get your SmarTrip history
WMATA has launched Phase 1 of their SmarTrip self-service Web site, showing your SmarTrip history and allowing reporting of lost and stolen cards. You can create an account with the information on your SmarTrip, though Jaime Fearer and Matt Johnson ran into some problems. Has it worked for you?
Street vendor patron?
Do you buy food from street vendors in DC? Might you if there were more? DCRA wants your input to improve their upcoming regulations.
Most of us don’t exist to POLITICO
It’s no surprise, but media outlets that follow national politics continue to act as though nobody lives in DC except people who work in national politics. City Paper mocks the latest example, from POLITICO, which talked about how great the economy is… if you’re one of “227 Washington, D.C. Elites.”
Overlooked site for Latino museum
Philip Kennicott suggests a better spot for the proposed National Museum of the American Latino: on the Banneker Overlook at the end of L’Enfant Promenade. A museum there would have great water views, and could anchor extending Mall activity down this promising but underutilized corridor. (Post)
Both exits are pleasant
Metro has added signage in Columbia Heights Metro pointing to Mount Pleasant and Pleasant Plains, at Jim Graham’s request. It’s better than renaming the station “Columbia Heights-Mount Pleasant/Pleasant Plains,” though DCist wonders if it could confuse some visitors by not including both street information and neighborhoods in one sign. Should Petworth get a sign pointing to Park View? (DCist)
Bicycle “superhighways” nice but not so super
London has opened some “cycle superhighways,” welcome additions to the city’s infrastructure though more like just bike lanes and with some gaps and other issues. (TheCityFix, Cycling Weekly, Erik W)
New meaning of “airpark”
Berlin turned a huge but unneeded Nazi-era airport into a park. They didn’t have money to redesign it, but locals have made good use of its open and forested spaces anyway. (LA Times)