Breakfast links: White stuff

It snowed

In case you didn’t notice, the region got buried under two feet of snow. The Circulator is running, and all trips are free. Metro is limited to underground rail still, and just a small handful of Metrobus routes are running. There’s also limited service on ART, Ride On, Fairfax Connector, and MARC, and no service on DASH or VRE. There’s no information on TheBus.

DC schools were originally going to be the only ones open but changed their minds, thanks to the union? (DCist) … Oh, and it will snow again Tuesday.

Fight for the fountain

Thousands battled it out in a huge snowball fight in Dupont Circle Saturday. M.V. Jantzen was over at the fight in Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park.

Parking makes even counselors angry

Nobody pulled a gun on the snowball fight, but a Fairfax anger management counselor did last week. He got upset at two men in an SUV who were parking (though it’s unclear why from the article), and allegedly pulled a gun on the two, who turned out to be U.S. Marshals. (Post)

Bag fee refined

New regulations clarify details of the bag fee. Businesses that sell a small amount of food will still have to charge 5 cents for all bags, but bags that package most things that need bags, like newspapers or dry cleaning, are exempt. (Post)

Why four stations at Tysons?

A letter writer asks Dr. Gridlock why Tysons needs four Metro stations. The doc cites Zachary Schrag in explaining how clustered transit stops “shape communities.” (Post)

Vacant or blighted?

The DC Council is still wrestling with how to adjust its “vacant” and/or “blighted” property tax rates to promote using empty properties and punish those that let properties crumble without unfairly hitting property owners hurt by a bad economy.  (The Other 35 Percent)

Privatization makes street fairs costly

As with Virginia’s HOT lanes, people keep discovering more hidden gotchas in Chicago’s parking meter privatization deal. The latest: the city would has to pay the vendor any time they shut a street down, for construction, a street fair, and more. (CBS2 via Parking Ticket Geek, Michael P)  (Tip: Michael P)

Tokyo molded itself well

Researchers grew some slime mold around food sources arranged like the map of Tokyo’s rail stations, and discovered that eventually the mold coalesced into a network of lines resembling Tokyo’s. Many articles said “maybe this means mold is better than planners,” but what it really tells us is that Tokyo’s designers did a good job laying out their system. (MSNBC, Steven)  (Tip: Steven)