Transit on Thursday: Coburning Down The House
Where have you gone, Louie Gohmert? Way back, you said that "Washington, D.C. is also the only city in the entire country that every senator and every member of Congress has a vested interest in seeing that it works properly, that water works, sewer works, and no other city in America has that."
The only reason we ask is to see if you could kinda tap on Sen. Tom Coburn's office door and sorta ask him to see it the way you do - that'd be great. Because without Metro funding, this city certainly isn't going to "work properly."
Sen. Coburn (R-Okla.), whose most recent notable contribution to the Senate floor was attempting to take a bill allocating federal lands to many states and amend a rider that would allow people to bring loaded firearms into any National Park, this week accused Metro of trying to steal money from American children. WTOP quoted the senator as saying he'd be "happy to roadblock" a bill which would provide $1.5 billion in federal funding for Metro over the next 10 years.
Luckily, it seems like his fellow members of Congress see Coburn as that guy who you have to avoid in order to invite everyone else to the party, but ends up showing anyway and drinking all your good booze. And breaking your furniture. Sometimes, the best way to deal with those people is in numbers. Both Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) lay the verbal smackdown, Cardin stating that "to have one senator say that we won't be able to vote on it, is an abuse of that senator's prerogative." Davis was a little bit more firm: "One senator can get rolled, but we prefer to do this amicably."
Of course, it's plenty ironic that Cardin feels as though he can criticize a fellow senator for holding up the District's business, but we'll take his support on this issue nonetheless. Nearly half of Metro's rush-hour passengers are federal workers, so it only makes sense that lawmakers on Capitol Hill ought to be fighting to help make the Washington transit system work properly.
Photo by Samer Farha.
Hurrah For Maps: On Sunday, The Post's Elizabeth Razzi highlighted a new web tool from Chicago's Center for Neighborhood Technology, which has a) fancy maps, and b) an absolute goldmine of delicious transit information, including "housing and transportation costs for 52 metropolitan areas, including the Washington-Baltimore area. You can zoom in on individual neighborhoods and pull up U.S. Census information on the percentage of neighborhood residents who use mass transit, their average monthly spending on transportation, the number of wage-earners and cars per household, and other data." Yum. We highly recommend checking out the advanced maps if you have two or three hours to kick around. CNT says you should be spending about 15-18 percent of your income on transportation. So how's your transportation expense jive with the rest of your neighborhood?
Guess You Can File This One Under 'D'oh': Metro head John Catoe really wants to cut down on drivers who block bus stops, going so far as to try to give Metro personnel the power to ticket offending vehicles. That's a good idea. But hopefully, Catoe doesn't mind levying such fines against the same people he wants to empower. The Examiner reports that "a Metro service truck was blocking a bus stop in front of the Archives-Navy Memorial station Monday, and two Metro vans were parked in front of a bus stop by Metro Center," while "Metro vehicles also were parked in front of bus stops at L’Enfant Plaza over several days last week." Oops. We here at ToT can absolutely empathize with the Metro drivers inability to find downtown parking - but their timing certainly leaves a lot to be desired.
Engines and Cabooses: Very few taxis are ready for the meter switchover. Unbelievable! You can read the final meter rules while you wait for the actual meters, we guess...Forbes names D.C. the #1 most congested city in the country, notes CommuterPageBlog...Metro forced to set aside $43 million for accident claims...Virginia to spend $1.7 billion to replace aging Beltway bridges and ramps.