Breakfast links: Alexandria’s turn

Potomac Yard planned

Alexandria has approved a plan for Potomac Yard, with 7.5 million square feet of development and a new Metro station paid for by a combination of private contributions and special tax districts around the area. Some residents of adjacent communities aren’t happy about the tax districts, however. (AlexandriaNews, Christy Goodman/Post)

Slightly higher, flat parking rates

Alexandria also approved raising meter rates to $1.75/hour, which will now be a flat rate instead of varying the rate by area or demand. A few currently-unmetered blocks on King Street will also get meters. The money will initially go to buy new multispace meters. (Examiner)

Lake no longer?

VDOT cleared debris blocking storm drains along Route 1’s “Active Transportation Lake” after Froggie pointed out the problem. They have also been working on new grates that are less likely to clog. (Froggie’s Blog)  (Tip: Froggie)

“Best” high schools

Newsweek published its annual ranking of how hard high schools push students to take AP and IB tests, which they call the “Best High Schools.” The top 100 includes all 7 Montgomery County regular

high schools as well as 2 from DC and 5 from Northern Virginia. The larger list of 1600 included 7 from Prince George’s, 8 from DC, and too many from NoVA to quickly count. (Newsweek, Dave Murphy)  (Tip: Dave Murphy)

Have some transportation ideas?

Slate is inviting readers to submit sensible or crazy ideas for urban trasportation, and vote on others’ ideas to identify the best through crowdsourcing. (Tom Vanderbilt/Slate, Stephen Miller)  (Tip: Stephen Miller)

Gambling yes, bikes no

Black Hawk, Colorado allows gambling, but has prohibited bicycling. Why? Because with all the cars, “there’s really not a lot of room for bikes,” and city officials think it’s better for the casinos to keep bikes out. (Nelson Garcia/9NEWS Denver, Jaime Fearer)  (Tip: Jaime Fearer)

Raze houses for a highway? In Brooklyn?

New York State is contemplating razing some historic townhouses in Brooklyn Heights to “modernize” (i.e. speed up cars on) the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. This would be unthinkable in DC both for historic preservation and political reasons, and rightfully so. (Brooklyn Paper via Streetsblog) Update: NYSDOT doesn’t actually plan to recommend that option, but TSTC thinks they still are focusing too much on big construction instead of, say, road pricing.