Morning Roundup: Goodbye, Abe Edition
D.C. Police Seek Suspect in Series of Bank Robberies
Suspect in 9-Year-Old's Murder Found Dead in D.C. Jail
Photo of the Day: November 25, 2009
Ballou HS Rocks the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Good morning, Washington. Did you get down to see Sunday's St. Patrick's Day Parade? From the looks of the DCist Flickr pool, many of you did. D.C. doesn't have a traditionally Irish neighborhood the way some other cities like Boston or New York do, but the Examiner reports on a new Brookings study that shows our metro area has become a major center for immigrants from so many other places all over the world in the last two decades. More than 1 million immigrants from countries like El Salvador, Korea and Pakistan now call the D.C. area home, although the vast majority of these communities have settled in the suburbs, particularly in Fairfax and Montgomery Counties. Could we one day soon see Washington hosting a full-scale El Salvadoran Day Parade or Korean Day Parade, the same way New York plays host to the Puerto Rican Day Parade? We think that would be pretty great.
For Whom the Tolls Toll: The Post has the early word on a report to be released Wednesday from regional transportation planners and officials that recommends adding tolls, and lots of them, to the metro area's major roads and bridges as a way to curb traffic congestion. The planners say creating an extensive network of tolls on the bridges into the District, the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, George Washington Memorial Parkway and major District thoroughfares like New York Avenue, is the only option to improve the flow of traffic and generate the revenue needed for new roads and transit improvements. The report suggests the tolls should be deducted through an E-ZPass-like system that would allow vehicles to travel at normal speed.
Mt. Pleasant Fire Victims Struggle to Pick Up the Pieces: The Post follows up on how the victims of the five-alarm fire in Mt. Pleasant late last week are holding up. Congregants of the Meridian Hill Baptist Church have found a temporary home in Prince George's County. Residents of the Mt. Pleasant Street apartment building are having a much more difficult time finding a new place to live.
Briefly Noted: Pedestrian struck on Connecticut Ave. ... Police raid suspected brothel in Northeast ... Violence at Wilson High 'significant' issue to Schools Chancellor Rhee ... Drive-by shooting at 10th and F Streets NW ... Prominent cardiologist and teenage son killed in plane crash.
Photo by dbking
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i was watching the local news for the first time in forever last night, and saw something about a motorcyclist getting killed at connecticut and calvert. any follow-up on that?
Oh yeah. Korean Day Parade. Bring it on. My mouth is already watering at the idea of bulgogi carts and pongtigi vendors. mmmmm......foooood.
From the WP article on the toll ideas:
So really the report doesn't hope to significantly decrease traffic on the roads. It seems the main result is to generate revenue for the city's transit.Also, it looks like some people feel we're just spit-ballin' here:
Having found that there are Salvadorans in the DC metro area, Brookings will now publish a conclusive study documenting the relationship between water and wetness. Pending funding, a study on the color of the sky, long thought to be blue, also nears completion.
What no mention that there are 4 area Schools (granted UMBC is a little north) are in the dance? I am sure there is something coming out later….right?
imgoph-
i thought the same thing- i saw it on wjla last night but now there's no mention of it
IMGoph beat me to it, but I got an e-mail from the MPD-3D list yesterday that said there was a traffic fatality at Conn. and Calvert. But no other details.
come on novans and md's, don't you wanna pay that charge to visit dc? gotta admit, its a smart way to get around taxing people.
tax=tolls
The most comprehensive scenario, which has captured the imagination of planners and government leaders, would toll every regional highway, plus all the regional parkways, including the Baltimore-Washington, George Washington, Rock Creek and Potomac, Clara Barton and Suitland parkways.
In other news, "More Money Needed for Regional Planning, Say Regional Planners." Didn't these people learn anything from The Simpson's episode where Mayor Quimby setup a toll road to pay for de-snaking the town's fountain.
The tolls could generate more than $2.75 billion a year, according to the report.
And ALL that money is going to be used for transit, just like all that tobacco settlement money was used for "educating" people about the dangers of smoking.
Pardon me, but I seem to have a monkey flying out of my own ass.
As mentioned here in the past, DC had Irish neighborhoods. It was centered primarily around the hillariously named "Swampoodle" neighborhood, which is now only slightly less hillariously called "NoMa". I believe that's why Gonzaga is located there. (But don't tell the churchs and/or amplified street protestors that that neighborhood was once Irish, it ruins their whole argument that yuppies are moving into intrinsically Black neighborhoods).
Obviously the Irish left for the suburbs a long time ago. But does anyone know if there's any particular concentration of where they went (sort of like how the Jews of Georgia Ave. moved up to Silver Spring)? Are there any Irish enclaves out in Herndon or something like that? It would be a little odd if they were just scattered completely, particularly since it would be likely that they'd gather around one or two churches.
Is MoDo the only remnant of the Washington Irish Catholics?
do people really like parades? they just tie up traffic and cause a huge, stinky mess. "wow! look at those people..... walking!" not my idea of a good time.
anyway, where can i get some decent corned beef and cabbage for dinner without braving a crowd of hundreds of "kiss me im shitfaced" t-shirt wearing brosephs and shamrock cheek tattooed brosephinas?
Is there a taxi strike today? WTOP has a headline from Thursday that suggested there would be, and it did look kind of like a holiday out there this morning.
No cabbage, but the best corned beef in DC is at Deli City. This is where reuben sandwiches go when they die.
DCist didn't link to the other Post article claiming market driven solutions, not jet packs, are the solution to our transportation problems across the country (not just the region). While we should all be pleased that someone in the Bush administration passed microeconomics, this is bad news bears when privatization eats in to corporate tax revenue down the road (pun intended).
Re: the accident at Connecticut and Calvert, this is all Google is turning up as of now:
http://northernvirginia.cox.net/cci/newslocal/local?_mode=view&view=LocalNewsArticleView&articleId=3289988
That makes it sound as though the motorcyclist was at fault, but then speculates as to whether charges may be filed, so it's not really clear.
Monkey - STFU already about Deli City. Seriously, the place is too crowded as it is.
voteprime sez:
You're not counting the extra 1.3 million people and 1 million jobs. But it's not exactly clear from the article whether the revenue they're talking about is in the same timeframe as the expected increase in population and employment, so you could be right after all.
Given that we expect increased population and we also know that the money doesn't exist to widen or improve roads (really, it doesn't even exist to maintain them properly) putting tolls on the roads into DC is essentially the only option that could even remotely provide funding for any sort of solution to the endless traffic nightmare. Business flight to the suburbs isn't economically feasible either, if one considers how traffic-choked all the old state highways in Virginia have become in the past five or ten years as people have moved into Loudoun, Fauquier, Warren, and farther-flung counties, and how unpopular the ICC is among certain quarters in Maryland.
Unless somebody's got a workable plan for hovercars with automatic pilots (weren't we supposed to have those by now?) tolls, congestion pricing, and lots of buses are our only way out of this mess.
There used to be a neighborhood called Swampoodle? Cool. Martin Austermuhle get in a time machine and sneeringly inform the original inhabitants that their neighborhood, correctly named, would be “Marshoodle.” I mean, golly, the ignorance of some immigrants is just appalling.
Bah. I just read that other Post article boondoggle linked. I'm in favor of reducing government, but it's very sad that top people at the DOT are both smart enough to realize that tolls have to be part of the solution to traffic woes, and naïve enough to think that allowing corporations to take profits from the venture is a good way to get it done. Whenever you put a private company in charge of something like that, the public good necessarily does no better than a distant second place behind corporate greed. California blackouts, anyone?
Hey, I just noticed that 4-out-of-5 of the parkways to be tolled are owned and maintained by the National Park Service. Can a State authority make a Federally-run highway a toll road? HowTF is that even going to work? Seems about as workable as DC setting up tolls in lieu of passing a commuter tax.
swampoodle was the original home of the nats. so, take that, ballpark district/anacostia waterfront/the yards/whatever-the-hell name they're using for the area we should just officially title JDLand
Oh, let's be PC: Wetlandoodle
But seriously, all this money for transportation planning when oil will be at $140/barrel before you know it. I expect the transportation situation to improve when the number of people who can afford to drive to work is cut in half.
Oh, and the massive layoffs coming will be just the ticket to reduce congestion on I-66, I-270, Rt 50, 495---you name it. It's gonna be sweet.
These tolls are crazy talk. Does anyone envision a scenario where the addition of tolls wouldn't add another 20 minutes to the entire region's morning and afternoon commute? And even assuming you can build your way out of congestion, will this plan generate enough cash to do so?
I really think people still believe they can offset transportation costs by saving money on other living costs out in the suburbs. Yeah gas might cost $4/gal. but groceries and rent are marginally less so it works out!
There will never be enough people in the region willing to give up commuting by car to reduce congestion by any significant amount.
Regardless, if tolls for everyone else = Maglev trains for me then bring 'em on.
DC once had a large Irish population until the last time the meteors came. We thought the sky was on fire. Naturally, we blamed the Irish. We hanged more than a few. Back then we called Sauerkraut "liberty cabbage" and we called liberty cabbage "super slaw" and back then a suitcase was known as a "Swedish lunch box." Anyway, long story short... is a phrase whose origins are complicated and rambling...
So, for decades, the mayor and DC council have all been told: Commuter tax? Tolls? Sorry, no dice: it's in the constitution, you need Congress's approval. All the roads being repaved and the toilets a-flushing, that was on us. Now, as I understand it, the burbs are AOK with tolls (which amount to a commuter tax) so they can make the problem worse--i.e. widening roads, so they can jam more taxpayers into their districts.
And does anyone really think the economic barrier of a toll will actually decrease the number of cars coming into or out of the city? For that matter, does anyone really NOT think you'll effectively make all those currently congested areas look astonishingly like I-95 and the NJ Turnpike every Friday night (northbound) and every Sunday afternoon (southbound) in the summertime?
hillrat:
The tolls wouldn't involve actual fare gates. They'd either be collected via transponder (OMG the gubmint is tracking our every movement!) or, as in London, license plate recognition (OMG the gubmint is tracking our every movement!). I would presume for DC it'd be a bit of both, since many commuters already have EZ-Pass or Smart Tag transponders, and the plate recognition system would only fire off a bill if you didn't have a working transponder.
But then I never did get bills from Virginia when I drove through a few Smart Tag gates on a trip to the Outer Banks with my own transponder apparently dead, even though the once nonexistent cameras now supposedly exist. Presumably they'd improve that technology before implementing it across the DC area.
Typical transit planner mindset. In their world, everybody has an electronic Smartpass and everybody zips through except here on Planet Earth, it works a little different. Checkout Dulles Access Road during rushour sometime. For every person with a Smartpass you have five that fumble for change while they're babbling on their phone and texting their bitches and going 20 miles under the speed limit.
Then there are those undocumented software "features" where the E-Z Pass Skynet computer charges you the wrong amount so your double-digit bill is suddenly a couple hundred dollars and you have to jump through hoops and blow circuit court judges and practically join a goddamned tontine just to get your refund from "the Man."
Don't like gridlock in the morning? Do like I do: get up at 3am, smoke a lot of meth, and cruise into town in your Batman Underoos with your pants flapping out the window while screaming the Horst Wessel Song through a bullhorn. GUARANTEED to get those few morning commuters out of your way.
The most striking thing in this article was the defunding of mass transit and rail.
I know that most Bushies and super fundie Republicans loathe us big city snobs, but, really, cutting our transportation funds? That's just, well, shitty.
And, of course, it's one more step down the path toward allowing the EU and the Chinese to become our overlords maybe a couple years sooner. Like it or not, cities are a major part of the country, even if they do tend to vote blue.
There's a monster anti-city vibe from this administration, from their hatin' on gays to their refusal to fund mass transit.
What's next? A consumption tax on overpriced or ludicrously named coffees?
The Bushie / fundie hatred of cities is damn near visceral.
They could combine the toll program with an art program for the homeless. As you sit motionless in traffic inbound on 14th Street, instead of rubbing your windshield with a dirty squeegee the homeless guy would present you with a hand rubbing of your license plate. Pay him five bucks (tips encouraged for quality work) or he drops the rubbing in a special bin, it would be trucked to a prison facility, and you'd subsequently get a bill.
I propose commuting via catapults. The fancy-shmancy types can have trebuchets.
Is there any update on the pedestrian hit at Nebraska Ave? That stretch of Connecticut continues to be a problem for pedestrian safety.
Hillman, the gay thing has nothing to do with cities vs. rural, and to my knowledge the transportation funding thing is more a matter of local vs Federal responsibility. I could make a good argument either way, and I do think transportation is almost by definition a local issue and responsibility, but it often takes Federal funds to get large projects started, especially in multi-jurisdictional regions such as ours. But I definitely agree with keeping those funds under control and not supplanting state/local responsibility with taxpayer funds from people who will never benefit from it.
monorail......monorail.....MONORAIL!!!!!!
I've sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville, and East Haverbrook!