Breakfast links: Students getting around

Elementary public works

A Montana third grader organized a petition for a sidewalk and bike path in her town, so kids could “viset friends and go to school.” Missoula County officials, eager to find a good stimulus project, quickly approved the plan. (The Missoulian)

Fairfax teens can use the bus

Vienna mom (and Fairfax Transportation Advisory Commission member) Jenifer Joy Madden recently taught her teenage son to ride the bus, along with his friend. The experiment worked, and now they have more independence and their moms don’t have to drive so much. It’s too bad, though, that after they missed a bus, they had to wait 30 minutes for the next one. Also, Madden spends about half the article explaining the steps they took to get bus information on the wmata.com trip planner. Sounds like that was the toughest part of the project. (Post)

Even underground isn’t good enough

Purple Line designers are now looking into burying Purple Line wires through the University of Maryland to reduce electromagnetic interference that could affect delicate instruments. But the university administration still opposes running the train through campus, saying trains can’t drive through without running over students. Do they not realize that buses and cars drive on the same road today? Have they seen light rail before? (Diamondback Online)

Mean streets and tracks

A woman learning to drive in a parking lot drove over an embankment and killed a pedestrian in Arlington on Saturday (Post) … A 13-year-old crossing the Amtrak tracks in Elkton was stuck and killed by an Acela train (WTOP) … At least two drivers hit and killed a man crossing the BW Parkway on the New York Avenue exit ramp, making this the third fatality in the area. Time to redesign the ramp to facilitate pedestrians crossing? (Post)

Is congestion pricing bad for the environment?

Green Metropolis author David Owen argues that traffic jams are good and congestion pricing bad, because traffic drives people to transit. It does, but he misses the important point that pricing also does, by creating an economic incentive to try alternatives. Traffic imposes a cost on commuters; congestion pricing just imposes that cost more directly and efficiently and, if designed right, steers the cost directly into funding transit alternatives. (WSJ, merarch)  (Tip: merarch)

New MDOT chief more focused on transit?

Is new MDOT chief Beverley Swaim-Staley less enthusiastic about widening I-270 than her predecessors? In a recent interview with the Baltimore Sun, she said MDOT was mainly focused on transit in that corridor, and when listing her and Governor O’Malley’s priorities, she included the Purple Line, Corridor Cities Transitway, and Baltimore Red Line, but not I-270. (Getting There)

Register your car already

The Post looks at the phenomenon of drivers that don’t register their cars in DC even after living here for years. Commenters on the Post’s site are unsympathetic to those who don’t switch registrations. (Michael P, Joey)  (Tip: Michael P)