Breakfast links: Nothing in life is free

Germantown parking district

Montgomery County Council staff are recommending creating a parking district in Germantown, to pay for regular cleanup and maintenance of the streets and encourage transit use (if, eventually, they get transit). Councilmember Mike Knapp, who represents the area, supports the concept. (Gazette)

Valet park for class?

Florida Atlantic University is instituting a valet parking service, which costs $5 per hour or $20 per day. Is this a way to “extract surplus” from the students who are late to class? Soak richer students? Ideally, they’s use the money to improve transit access to the campus. (Marginal Revolution)

Not so brotherly on TV

Philadelphia allowed A&E to create a reality show, “Parking Wars,” about their parking enforcement officials. But the show is giving a bad impression of the city, making officials seem ruthless and unforgiving while drivers cry and plead over tickets. “They have an incentive to be as sensational and ridiculous as they can be so people will watch,” said a mayoral spokesperson. “If they did a show about what it was really like, it would be boring.” (NY Times)

“Panhandling meters”

Some cities have installed “panhandling meters” in popular panhandling areas. They look similar to parking meters but let people contribute to homeless services organizations instead of giving money directly to the homeless. Homeless advocates worry that it’s just a way to get the homeless off the streets but not really solve the problem. (End Homelessness, dano)  (Tip: dano)

Dupont row house saved!

DCRA has decided to save rather than demolish the row house at 16th and T whose owner was letting it fall down. DCRA is bidding out its own contract and will charge the owners for the cost. (Examiner, Prince Of Petworth, JTS)  (Tip: JTS)

You get what you pay for, but safer anyway

A rare voices of reason in the blame-Metro press coverage, Post columnist Doug Feaver reminds readers that we can’t expect Metro to buy all new cars while we chronically underfund the agency, and that despite the tragedy, rail remains far, far safer than driving. (Post, Cavan) … BeyondDC also ran some back-of-the-envelope numbers on relative safety stats.  (Tip: Cavan)

The unusual vs. the mundane

Matt Yglesias laments the lack of press coverage of car fatalities. The Post even had touching profiles of each of the victims of Monday’s crash; that’s wonderful, but wouldn’t it be great if they also ran profiles of the drivers, passengers, cyclists and pedestrians killed on area roads?

Federal safety grants?

Senators Rockefeller and Boxer suggested a $50 million grant to improve rail safety technology. That wouldn’t bad (if it ever became reality), though the real problem isn’t so much a lack of technology as a lack of money to buy the existing technology. (Streetsblog Capitol Hill)