September 22, 2008
Morning Roundup: Car Free Edition
Good morning, Washington. It's Car Free DC day, and we're sure many of you participated this morning by choosing to ride a bike or take public transportation to work -- hopefully, that includes a lot of people who normally drive into the city. Let us know if you actually ditched your personal motor vehicle this morning and took an alternate method to the office.
BOEE Mishandling Primary Vote Investigation: The Post paints a picture this morning of the job that's being done by the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics since the questionable primary election results that doesn't look at all good. The four-member team investigating what went wrong on Sept. 9 is made up of three people who work for the board itself and one outsider who told the newspaper he has very little idea what's going on in terms of the investigation. It's an embarrassing story for the city, and we're guessing some members of the D.C. Council will be forced to make a big ruckus about it over the next couple of days to make sure residents feel like someone responsible is monitoring the situation.
Three Dead in Four Separate Car Crashes: Speaking of going car free... If helping the environment isn't a good enough reason to ditch your internal combustion engine, perhaps this story will give you one. A series of four scary car accidents around the city left three people dead and many others severly injured in the early morning hours of Saturday. Cars: not just hazardous to the planet, but also hazardous to your health and safety.
Briefly Noted: DC man dies in PG County shooting ... Book thief makes off with 150 titles from Fairfax library ... Tracking bracelet leads to NW shooting suspect ... Arrest made in teen's shooting death ... Catoe to outline billions in infrastructure improvements needed for Metro.
Photo by NCinDC
| 
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
[ report this ]
Yeah, but those crashes happend right before or after Metro closed.
[ report this ]
From what I could tell this morning on my usual morning walk, there were plenty of cars about. Maybe they were thinking that car free meant for just the people in DC and not those in VA or MD.
[ report this ]
I drove my bad, evil car to work today (forgot all about the whole car-free thing), and traffic definitely seemed heavier, not lighter than usual.
[ report this ]
Looking 10 years into the future, Metro has a huge list of projects -- some which it considers urgent -- that it says it does not have the money to fix.
Catoe is expected to deliver a sobering assessment about just how critical it is that local jurisdictions and the federal government make due on the promise of dedicated funding for the transit system.
As much as I hate to say it, maybe there needs to be a Metro-free day to show the idiots in Maryland and Virginia how much they rely on Metro to get everyone to and fro.
[ report this ]
Yeah, but those crashes happend right before or after Metro closed.
That's not the point. The point is, had those three dead drivers been sitting around the Metro station after it had closed, they'd still be alive today.
Unless they chose to wait at the Suitland Metro. In which case, their corpses would even now be floating down the Anacostia. BUT they would NOT have been contributing to global warming.
Lesson learned: execution-style gang slayings reduce your carbon footprint and gridlock.
[ report this ]
metro failed on car free day. the orange crush was bad enough that people were leaving to go get their cars today.
[ report this ]
In honor of Car Free Day this morning, Metro scheduled an enormous delay on the Orange and Blue (and, from what I heard, Red) Lines.
Nothing makes you want to go "Car Free" like being stuck on an immobile Orange Line train for 30-40 minutes, then being told the train is going out of service when we arrived at Foggy Bottom, exiting to a packed platform and long lines up the escalators, and ultimately having to walk across town.
(though, in fairness, Metro is fine most days... and I can't really picture driving being that much less stressful)
[ report this ]
With any luck, I will be selling my car after work.
I'm taking Car-Free Day to the next level.
[ report this ]
Sommer, you need to do a bit of investigative reporting and find out which members of the Council and the higher-ups in the Mayor's office drove to work today and which ones commuted via mass transit...I'm going to bet that a certain volkswagon beetle convertible driving CM drove to work today instead of walking the 2 blocks to the bus stop....
[ report this ]
I found driving in DC is a lot less stressful if you're on the road by 4am, high on crystal meth, and you're rocking out to "I'm Your Captain/Closer to Home" at the top of your lungs.
This also works on bicycles, on foot, and during sex.
[ report this ]
I regularly bicycle to work down town, and I arrived to work to find an empty bicycle rack in my building.
[ report this ]
The bike rack at work was no more or less crowded than normal today.
[ report this ]
About 2 weeks ago, Catoe was eating dinner at Kanlaya 2 tables down from me, and I kept mentioning to my dinner partner how aggravating it was to make a Metro transfer after rush hour, just missing the connection to wait 20 minutes, when the train could hold for just one minute and everyone would make their connections...And that buses seriously need GPS trackers...but I don't think he overheard me.
[ report this ]
"As much as I hate to say it, maybe there needs to be a Metro-free day to show the idiots in Maryland and Virginia how much they rely on Metro to get everyone to and fro."
As a former longtime District resident and now Arlington resident, I can assure you that this approach is misguided. The 'idiots' are those lunkheads in Richmond who block attempts to fund NoVa transportation (and who have no constituents in NoVa), not folks who live in the DC suburbs who rely on Metro every day and are consequently well aware of the importance of public transportation.
[ report this ]
"Let us know if you actually ditched your personal motor vehicle this morning and took an alternate method to the office."
No.
[ report this ]
Ok what if we go car free...then what will we live in if the economic Hail Mary fails to connect?
[ report this ]
I didn't notice any uptick in bike traffic on my ride out to "lovely" Springfield, VA this morning. I did however get buzzed by three drivers (including a school bus) ... things are looking up!
[ report this ]
I drove into work with my Hummer and parked it on top of a Prius, a bicylist, and a mime. It was fun to hear the Prius scream.
[ report this ]
Does anyone know why Metro has not signed up with Google Transit [www.google.com/transit] ?
[ report this ]
More cars than usual on Rock Creek Pkwy today.
[ report this ]
Did I ditch my car? Hahahahahahahhaahhaahhahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
Sorry, I commute from suburb to suburb, so it's not an option. Worse, I commute from inner suburb to outer suburb, so I don't even travel the same way as everyone else.
Ok, I could BMW (Bus/Metro/Walk) it to work, but my Evil Polluting Machine on 4 Wheels[0] takes 30 mins. to get there, versus the 90+ mins. it would take on transit.
Maybe I could add a bike into the mix. . . Nope, not unless I take metro during off hours, since they won't allow bikes. Never mind that I'm on an empty train going to Shady Grove. . .
Sorry, I have a case of the Mondays.
~EEE~
[0] I drive a Civic, but apparently all cars are evil.
[ report this ]
gosh darn, i thought today was 'care free' day today!? oh well...
[ report this ]
So much for car-free DC day. One hour and twenty-five minutes from Vienna to Metro Center. The toy train reminds us why all those folks drive in every day.
[ report this ]
"Let us know if you actually ditched your personal motor vehicle this morning and took an alternate method to the office"
I'm a little torn on whether I should be proud or not. I didn't ditch my personal motor vehicle this morning, but in my defense, it's a Metro car. But I should mention that I reserve an entire Metro car to myself. It's beautifully upholstered, with a tended bar, a snooker table, and opium den. It sits empty in my station most of the time and gets towed by the hoi polloi's car when I need to strike out on the town. I normally call ahead, since it takes about 15 minutes to hook up the car to the back of the train, and I'm not sitting around waiting for that. My accountant estimated that 85% of all Metro's delays last year were somehow connected to the attachment and/or detachment of my rolling private club. He's a genius, of course, because he figured out a way to turn that into a tax write-off. God bless the green-eye-shades!
[ report this ]
I drove my bad, evil car to work today (forgot all about the whole car-free thing), and traffic definitely seemed heavier, not lighter than usual.
I celebrated my Car-Free Day a little differently this year. I rented the biggest SUV I could get my hands on, picked up as much fast-food trash as I could find in my NE neighborhood, then drove out to a residential street in Maryland (which will remain unnamed), and dumped all my shit out on the side of the road.
Very pleasant!
[ report this ]
Car Free day? YEAH RIGHT.
Normally I take the Orange line to work. Except today it was not functioning properly. After standing on the platform for 10 minutes realizing that no trains were coming and that when they did arrive they would be backed, I exited the metro, walked to my apartment to get my car keys and drove my SUV to work.
I got to work in 30 minutes in heavy traffic. This is the same amount of time it would have taken on the metro. Now I am seriously considering driving to work everyday. Metro does suck.
[ report this ]
i agree with boomhauer. we need a day completely without metro to make the idiots who refuse to give it a proper funding source how hard it would be to live without it.