Greatest Greatest Hits: Your favorite posts of 2018

Dear readers, as this new year begins I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your support. In 2018, we brought you 1,157 posts (including 246 breakfast links). You wrote 30,030 comments on them!

The blog grew this year. We have more pageviews, more readers, and more new readers than the year before, and we launched a urbanist journalism fellowship in partnership with Island Press to boost more young journalists' voices.

We experimented with different types of posts, including Stephen Repetski's column Metro Reasons, Urbanist Hero of the Week, and GGWash Sandbox, while continuing old favorites like WhichWMATA and Ask GGWash. We also had some great bus series, including coverage of WMATA's bus transformation project and how to improve Prince George's TheBus.

We're also collaborating more with other organizations such as Street Sense Media and the People for Fairness Coalition to bring a wider array of voices onto the blog and to better cover the editorial priorities we outlined at the beginning of last year, including buses, equity, environmental sustainability, and local elections.

Here are our top-read and top-commented posts of the year:

Here are our most-commented posts from 2018

transit	equity	politics	housing	roads

Rank	Title
1.	Why won't Loudoun County's terrible zombie Potomac Bridge proposal die? by Alex Baca and Nick Finio
2.	Reston has two golf courses. Why not use that space for parks and homes? by Canaan Merchant
3.	A Rosslyn-Georgetown gondola would fill a real hole in our transportation system. Is it worth it? by David Alpert
4.	Breakfast links: Taxes on ride-hailing means higher fares and money for Metro by Matt Gontarchick
5.	A new report highlights the stark racial disparities in Metro fare enforcement by Eve Zhurbinskiy
6.	Eat the rich, Reston edition by Dan Malouff
7.	What's wrong with parking in bike lanes? A lot, actually by Stephen Hudson
8.	A small group just pushed through a historic district in my neighborhood. Here's what happened. by Bob Coomber
9.	Maryland is fast-tracking its plan to widen the Beltway and I-270 by Sean Emerson
10.	GGWash Sandbox: For HQ2 in Crystal City, build the “Metro Express” by David Alpert
11.	Bloomingdale is now a historic district, despite the ANC and neighborhood votes by Nick Sementelli
12.	Tell Mayor Bowser and Jack Evans: No secret Congressional deal for a stadium giveaway at RFK by Nick Sementelli
13.	Breakfast links: Why aren't the suburbs developing density like cities? by Liam Sullivan
14.	“Move to the cheaper area” is good individual advice, but not a solution to our housing shortage by Dan Reed
15.	Breakfast links: Trump may sell off local airports and parkways to fund his infrastructure plan by Linnea Champ
16.	Breakfast links: Are NFL stadiums a 'waste of land?' by Tom Neeley
17.	Montgomery County police and local media call pedestrians who were killed “lazy” by Julie Strupp
18.	Metro is a public service—its leaders need to run it like one by the Editorial Board
19.	Our endorsements for Alexandria mayor and city council by the Elections Committee
20.	Are dogs urbanist? Do they belong in cities? by Julie Strupp

Here are our top-read posts from 2018

We already republished the top 10 posts of the year; here's a look at the full top 20:

equity	transportation	roads	politics	Metro

Rank	Title
1.	Happy birthday, Metro! Watch Metro's evolution since 1976 in this slideshow by David Alpert
2.	Tolls could be coming to Fairfax County Parkway, and you can weigh in by Mike Grinnell
3.	It’s ok to critique dockless bikeshare. It’s not ok to be bigoted. by Kristen Jeffers
4.	Scooters are taking cars off the road, a survey says by David Alpert
5.	Five (mostly rejected) ideas for Metro expansion you've probably forgotten about by Mike Grinnell
6.	Most efforts to control traffic don't work. Here are four things that do. by Bryan Barnett-Woods
7.	Montgomery County says no new homes in Silver Spring because the schools are full by Dan Reed
8.	Here are 5 new infrastructure projects we'll likely get with Amazon by Chris Slatt
9.	Surprise! The Mortgage Interest Deduction is now even more of a handout to the wealthy by David Meni
10.	Rail in the region used to be far more robust. Here are all the railroads we had in 1921. by David Edmonson
11.	Why cities rarely build monorails, explained by Dan Malouff
12.	Metro Reasons: Yellow and Blue line stations from National going south require reconstruction by Stephen Repetski
13.	DC's 2018 primary matters, though the action isn't the race for mayor by Mark Rodeffer
14.	Why Marc Elrich is not the right choice for Montgomery County Executive by David Alpert, Rahul Sinha, Sanjida Rangwala, Sean Robertson
15.	Tysons East wants to draw the “creative class,” and get them to stay by Rita Abou Samra
16.	What the Metro could have looked like by Michelle Goldchain
17.	Are bad boundaries spurring inequality in Montgomery schools? by Tony Camilli
18.	GGWash Sandbox: For HQ2 in Crystal City, build the “Metro Express” by David Alpert
19.	A Rosslyn-Georgetown gondola would fill a real hole in our transportation system. Is it worth it? by David Alpert
20.	A tale of two 20003s: high rises or high rents by Payton Chung

Of course, we couldn't do this without our incredible volunteers. If you're interested in writing for GGWash, you can check out our contributor guidelines here.

Readers: What would you like to see more of (or less of) on the blog in 2019? What was your favorite story of the year? What did you learn?

There's a lot to look forward to in 2019. Help us continue to advocate for an equitable, walkable, affordable region, by joining the GGWash Neighborhood, our membership program. Your contribution keeps our blog going, helps us fund our advocacy work, and also connect you to our larger community of readers. Join today!