Over the past week, we've had a couple of readers telling us that taxis around town had been altering notices for the in-place $1 fuel surcharge, replacing the July 26 end date with November 12. A case of rogue cabbies? Nope, it's above-board. more ›

Greater Greater Washington reports that DDOT has at last installed "quick curbs" at one corner of the intersection of 15th and W Streets NW, where a pedestrian was killed in May. The intersection is famously dangerous and confusing for pedestrians and drivers alike, as it also meets Florida Ave. in a jumble of diverging one-way traffic patterns. The "quick curbs" are plastic markers designed to steer traffic farther away from pedestrians. Other work that's been completed at the intersection includes a "Turn on Green Arrow Only" sign to prevent drivers from turning right on red onto W Street. GGW also says DDOT tells them that more quick curbs for the remainder of the intersection are scheduled to be installed, as are signal improvements for pedestrians. more ›

Metro posted its track maintenance reminder this morning, and it looks like Orange and Red Line riders will bear the brunt of delays this weekend. more ›

Do you have trouble getting a seat on Metro in the morning? On Monday, that could get at least a little bit easier. Regular Red and Green line passengers will find additional eight-car trains running during peak hours, thanks to the 20 additional rail cars Metro plans to put into service next week. more ›

Metro's latest weekend track work schedule, which covers the month of April, is now up on their web site. What sorts of delay-tastic shenanigans are in store for us in the coming month? We've posted the basics below. more ›

There were long delays, petition drives, and some final technical hiccups, but WMATA has finally released its schedule data in the Google Transit Feed Specification format. What does that mean? Well, most obviously it means that Google Transit will soon be adding D.C. to its list of supported cities (UPDATE: or perhaps not — see below for a comment from Michael Perkins of GGW, who explains that there are lingering complications surrounding WMATA's legal relationship with Google). But far more exciting is the opportunity this dataset represents to third-party developers. You can bet that geeks across the region were feverishly importing schedule data into databases last night (I certainly was). So what's in a GTFS file, anyway? You can read the full spec here if you'd like, but the short version is actually pretty simple: a bunch of text files are zipped up into a single archive, which can be downloaded from the transit agency's website — in WMATA's case, the file clocks in around 20 megabytes. These comma-separated text files have names like routes.txt, stops.txt and stop_times.txt, and they can be opened in a text editor or spreadsheet program. The setup is pretty simple to understand: for example, stops.txt contains a list of bus and rail stops, complete with information like name, latitude and longitude, and assigns each one an ID. stop_times.txt, on the other hand, has a bunch of entries that assign arrival and departure times to individual routes, linking back to the stop information via each stop's ID. more ›

We've been pestering DDOT for more details on the two new Circulator routes the city has planned, one that would travel through Adams Morgan, Mt. Pleasant, Columbia Heights, U Street and McPherson Square, replacing the 25 cent 98 bus that used to go between U Street and Adams Morgan, and another that would run from Union Station, through Barracks Row to Nationals Park, replacing the N22 bus. Last week, the Washington Business Journal's Jonathan O'Connell dubbed the new routes "Party Lines,", and offered up a homemade Google map of the proposed Adams Morgan route. But with no official routes or stop listings yet announced by DDOT, only vague dates for when they'll begin running (sometime this spring?), and zero information about them available on dccirculator.com, reliable details on the new Circulator lines are still hard to come by. more ›

We warned you about this at the beginning of the month, but it's a good time to remind you that the Green and Yellow lines are going to be a big mess this weekend thanks to switch replacement work at the Mount Vernon Sq-7th St Convention Center station. Starting tonight at 10 p.m. and lasting through Sunday, March 15 at midnight, riders should expect 30-minute delays while trains single track between the Convention Center and the U Street/African-Amer Civil War Memorial/Cardozo station. In addition, Yellow Line trains will not go all the way to Fort Totten during the entire weekend, meaning old-school Green line off-peak wait times will be in effect along the entire upper corridor of the line. Yellow Line trains will only travel between the Huntington and Mt. Vernon Sq/7th St-Convention Center stations this weekend. more ›

Metro released its March track maintenance schedule earlier this week, with some big delays to take note of this coming weekend and beyond. more ›

WMATA put out a press release this afternoon announcing that Metro's board has finally given the go ahead on a plan to build a new network that will allow companies besides Verizon to offer cell phone access in stations and tunnels. A contract has been awarded that will allow Verizon, Sprint Nextel, AT&T and T-Mobile to build a new wireless network inside the Metro system over the next four years, which would also eventually include wireless internet. In order to comply with rules written into a $1.5 billion funding package passed by Congress last fall, 20 of the busiest underground rail stations will have "expanded cell phone service" by the end of 2009. more ›

By now we've received dozens of tips and reports from readers as they made their way away from the National Mall. Some people told us about how they never made it inside an area where they had tickets—both at the Swearing-In and along the parade route. Others expressed relief at having had an easier time than they expected. There was word of pushing and shoving as crowds trying to leave the National Mall at 14th Street were crushed together. And there was tale of incredible kindness and good spirits as strangers tried to help each other find their way out of the throng. more ›

We told you the other day about Mayor Fenty's introduction of pedicabs as an additional mode of transportation for inauguration. And the pedicabs in fact, have arrived. We've seen them on U Street, in Adams Morgan and around Chinatown. What we haven't seen much of so far, however, are pedicabs with passengers in them. When he couldn't find a regular taxi, DCist's Sriram Gopal took one home from a gig last night at Bossa Bistro & Lounge in Adams Morgan. "I believe the last time I rode in one of those was in 1986, in India," Gopal said. more ›

• This morning both the Post and the Examiner had stories about how hardly any charter buses have requested to park in Metro's lots. As a result, Metro has decided to open up thousands of spaces for private cars at all but one Metro station parking lot on January 20. Previously, the transit agency had only planned to offer public parking at a handful of its lots, reserving the rest of its spaces for charter buses.
• The additional parking is really good news, because it's looking like no one will be able to drive into the District from Virginia on Inauguration Day. On the heels of this morning's news that the Key Bridge will be closed to traffic, the Post reports that they're waiting on an expected announcement from the U.S. Secret Service on plans to close every single Potomac bridge crossing to private vehicles on January 20. Drivers will still be able to reach the city from Maryland via the Sousa, Whitney Young and Benning Road bridges over the Anacostia, and from New York Avenue, but given that it will also be virtually impossible to park inside the city, officials are discouraging everyone from attempting the drive.

Just like November 5 saw a run on post-election editions of the Washington Post and New York Times, Metro says it is doing brisk business with their commemorative Barack Obama inauguration SmarTrip card. more ›

WMATA updated its web site late Monday afternoon with a new menu option where customers can find temporary bus detour information. The agency added the option in response to customer concerns about the Metrobus detours associated with Secret Service activity and road closures around the Hay-Adams Hotel, where President-elect Obama and his family are staying until January 15. more ›

You've been asking, so here's the answers so far. Yes, many Metrobus lines are being rerouted around the street closures announced over the weekend for the area surrounding the Hay-Adams Hotel, where the Obama family is living until January 15. Metro spokesperson Steven Taubenkibel pointed us to the Bus alert notice on WMATA's web site noting that the following routes are on detour around the street closures "until further notice": all of the 30 buses, plus routes 42, 11Y, G8, P17 and P19, L2, W13, S2 and S4, and X2 and X3. more ›

A handful of Metrobus route and service changes took effect on Sunday, the most notable of which is an increase in the frequency of the 5A line, which travels between L'Enfant Plaza and Dulles Airport. Three westbound and three eastbound buses have been added every weekday, which is good news for anyone who regularly uses the often very crowded 5A. more ›