Breakfast links: Keeping up appearances
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Photo by M.V. Jantzen on Flickr.
Were fancy new libraries worth it?
DC has spent a pretty penny building highly designed new libraries and renovating old ones, but was it a good investment? Some say yes, some say no, but the buildings are winning awards and, it seems, attracting more visitors. (City Paper)
Fake meters go in Shirlington
People are parking at the Shirlington Harris Teeter for other purposes than to shop for groceries, so they’re adding meters but plan not to enforce them in hopes they will just scare others off. What happened to simple parking validation? (ARLnow)
Councilmember Gabe Klein?
Gabe Klein is considering running for DC Council at-large in the April special election for the seat where Sekou Biddle was recently appointed as interim Councilmember. (Post)
No Ellwood Thompson at DC USA
Ellwood Thompson organic grocers finally announced yesterday that it will not occupy a space in the DC USA shopping center in Columbia Heights. In November, Jim Graham told the press the store would not open, but the company then insisted it was still negotiating. (TBD)
LaHood listens to ped/bike advocates
Ray LaHood writes about a meeting with bicycle advocates, and appreciated seeing the recent report that ped and bike projects create more job growth than roads per dollar. Unfortunately, LaHood doesn’t directly control spending on ped and bike projects. (The FastLane)
Potomac Mills cuts commuter parking
The Potomac Mills Mall in Prince William County is reducing the amount of parking it makes available to commuters down to the county-required 275 spaces, to make way for new businesses that may build on part of the massive parking lot. (Dr. Gridlock)
State avenues make up a nation
A really cool graphic builds a map of the United States out of photographs of streetsigns for the 50 state-named avenues. (DCist)
DC streetcars on the web
The DC Streetcar project now has it’s own website and Twitter account from which to tweet about ongoing construction. (Frozen Tropics)
And…
Michael Brown wants to get Congress’ attention about DC voting rights by renaming part of Pennsylvania Avenue. (BeyondDC) … WMATA will eliminate most of the more than 1,000 pay phones remaining in the system. (Transportation Nation) … Governor McDonnell wants the Virginia Legislature to designate a portion of state sales tax revenue for road projects in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia. (WUSA)