Results tagged “transportation”

It's an awkward truism of urban politics that a snowstorm can be the undoing of an elected official. Take too long to get the snowed cleared off the roads -- like Marion Barry in 1987 when the city struggled for a week after a snowstorm, which he missed because he was in California at the Super Bowl -- and you're an out-of-touch executive leading an inefficient government. Respond quickly -- like Mayor Adrian Fenty was credited for doing after the December 2010 2009 storm -- and people will applaud. more ›

For those of you who managed to get into work today, we're curious, what was your mode of transportation? And if it differed significantly from your usual method, feel free to note the relevant switch in the comments. more ›

Laughing at those suckers with airplane tickets because you're holding an Amtrak reservation? Uh, you might want to rein that in a bit. Due to the heavy snow, downed trees and power lines on the tracks in Virginia, the Carolinas and over most of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, Amtrak has canceled some trains. But DCist has also been hearing accounts of sterling Amtrak service, so be sure to check your train status before you head out to Union Station. more ›

Naturally, we highly recommend taking public transportation on New Year's Eve to avoid (and not become one of) the drunk drivers on the road. Metro announced today they'll have extended service on New Year's Eve, opening at 5 a.m. like a regular weekday and staying open until 2 a.m. For the walk-of-shamers, stations open again at 7 a.m. and close at 2 a.m., running on a modified Sunday schedule since ridership is usually pretty low on New Year's Day. more ›

The Washington Post has all the details about the $300 million that Montgomery and Fairfax counties stand to receive from the federal government to alleviate soon-to-be major traffic problems. As part of the government's BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) decisions in the past year, Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Bethesda Naval Hospital were consolidated, adding thousands of personnel to the Bethesda location and doubling the number of visitors to a million per year. In Virginia, thousands of employees are being moved from near the Pentagon out to Fort Belvoir, which Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va) said, "will generate rush hours of three to four hours longer." more ›

Oops, scratch that whole "news is looking up" thing we put in the last post about today's holiday travel. If you're headed to New York City via Amtrak today, be prepared for a wait. The AP is reporting that power issues have halted all trains on the Northeast Corridor, among other lines. Trains are stuck on the tracks going both in and out of the city, with some stuck outside Penn Station and others in between NYC and Newark. Good luck, train travelers. UPDATE: The AP now says that power has been restored since 11:30 a.m., though since the outage affected trains all the way from D.C. to Boston, it's unclear how long delays might continue to get everything back into service. more ›

If you're holding out to the last minute to get out of town, the news is looking up. The Virignia Department of Transportation plans to open all lanes on major roads and highways starting at noon today through Sunday, then again from Dec 31 to Jan 3. They'll suspend maintenance and repair work in the meantime -- which we assumes come with a caution that these are lanes in need of maintenance and repair work to some degree, so please be aware and drive safely. more ›

It's no longer snowing outside DCist headquarters, and a hefty dose of sunshine is doing some good work -- but boy, is there still plenty of white stuff on the ground. An update for those of you who are looking forward to getting back to reality: getting around, locally and in the wider sense, will definitely still suck today, oh yes. more ›

After Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) went off on WMATA for lax safety standards and endless excuses at a Senate subcommittee hearing on Thursday (C-SPAN's got the video here, Mikulski shows up around the 40-minute mark), suddenly Metro Board Chairman Jim Graham is talking about firing some people. The Washington Post reports this morning that Graham claims that "very substantial management changes at Metro" were already in the works before Mikulski spoke her mind, and that the changes are going to happen soon and quickly. more ›

The popular free shuttle that serves the up and coming H Street NE corridor will be forced to cease operation on Sunday, Dec. 6, thanks to its funding from the city having dried up. more ›

Earlier this month, we told you about a new discount bus service that planned to start offering non-stop service from D.C. to Wilmington, Philadelphia and Boston. Originally, TransportAzumah planned to launch all of its new D.C. lines by today, but an ominous message has since appeared on the company's web site reporting that all trips from D.C. have been canceled until further notice. That's bad news for folks who had been hoping to take advantage of the new service for the holiday weekend. more ›

On Tuesday, the District Department of Transportation released the above images of the city's three streetcars being loaded up for shipping. That's good news, considering D.C. taxpayers have been paying to store the streetcars in the Czech Republic for over four years now. DDOT says these images show the streetcars being loaded onto flatbed trucks in the Czech Republic and then arriving in Hamburg, Germany. They are expected to make it to D.C., by ship, in mid-December. more ›

Law-breaking, wasting public funds and an elected official who's increasingly unpopular -- the story had everything you would want in an exposé. So when WTOP's Mark Segraves reported Monday that D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty used a police escort and clogged up area roads on his daily bike ride, everyone jumped on it. Including us. more ›

The authors (and dare we say, the readers) of this web site often get pretty exercised over pedestrian and cyclist safety issues, especially when so many of these kinds of accidents seem to involve city bus drivers. But a new study of relative pedestrian safety finds that D.C. is actually one of the safer cities in the country to be traveling through without an automobile. According to Transportation for America, a transportation advocacy group, walking in Washington is less dangerous than in 31 other metro areas in the U.S. more ›

New York businessman Joel Azumah wrote to DCist today to let us know that his discount bus line, modestly dubbed TransportAzumah, will be launching several new routes servicing D.C. this month. Refreshingly, these routes will not be servicing New York. Instead, Azumah plans to offer non-stop bus service from D.C. to Wilmington, Philadelphia and Boston. more ›

The District Department of Transportation is busy installing a new contraflow, south-bound bicycle lane on 15th Street NW, which will extend from U Street NW to Massachusetts Avenue NW. Initial work began on Monday, and DCist spotted the work crew out just above P Street this afternoon as they put down the directional bike lane symbols. more ›

The District Department of Transportation on Wednesday announced the ten projects that have been selected to receive funding through DDOT's Transportation Enhancement Program. The funding includes grants ranging from $50,000 to $579,500 that go toward making improvements on a variety of transportation related projects. Funding for the program is provided through the Federal Highway Administration. A full list of the selected projects from the DDOT announcement is after the jump. more ›

The Post has a story today reporting the installation of touch-screen video credit card machines inside 200 area taxi cabs, the first we've heard of such devices being adopted by a local cab company. Granted, it's a Maryland cab company, Barwood Taxi, but we've gotta be willing to start somewhere, we suppose. By all accounts based on the experiences of other cities, like New York and Philadelphia, that have mandated credit card machines in taxis, the devices are a win-win for drivers and passengers alike. The self-use machines have a tendency to increase tipping, and drivers no longer have to carry around so much cash to make change, something any semi-regular D.C. taxi customer can tell you is often an issue inside this city. more ›

Did you know that Segway riders are banned from riding on sidewalks within the Central Business District? What about that some small fraction of disabled people regularly ride Segways? These are the true and exciting facts that can be learned from this Examiner story today on a little bit of D.C. Council business that went down yesterday. See, it turns out that Miles Groves, the president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, is a chronic pain sufferer and a Segway rider. Groves uses a Segway to get around the city easier, and was recently given "a polite warning" by a police officer that he wasn't supposed to be riding on the sidewalk. Not included in the Examiner story: the phone call Groves presumably placed to Tommy Wells, champion of alternative transportation. And Wells came to the rescue yesterday, convincing the Council to pass emergency legislation to give disabled Segway riders a pass on being forced to ride in the street. more ›

We've heard from several readers who spotted fliers around town in the last week advertising a taxi cab strike in the District today. The strike is reportedly to protest the effect the current taxi meter rates have on cabbie income (many argue they now make less money). WTOP has also heard about the strike, but they say participation is spotty, so you can still get a cab if you need one. Given the unique nature of D.C.'s taxi business, it's almost impossible to account for all the different taxi driver alliances and groups out there, let alone the independent, unaffiliated drivers. So you tell us: were there fewer cabs on the streets this morning, or did you not even notice? more ›

Metro is hosting a public meeting tonight to gather input from riders on how to improve bicycle and pedestrian access to Metrorail. If you walk or bike to Metro or have even just thought about doing so, WMATA encourages you to show up at Metro Headquarters (in the Lobby Level Meeting Room at 600 5th Street NW) from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. tonight to offer your feedback. They are especially interested in hearing from cyclists, as one of the main purposes of the bicycle and pedestrian study they're conducting is to look at how Metro can make improvements to bicycle access. Tonight's public workshop comes at a difficult time to be gathering public opinion on Metrorail, given the latest news on the reliability of the system's track sensors. more ›

In case you missed this nugget in Sunday's Examiner, Kytja Weir reports that the Tri-State Oversight Committee responsible for oversight of WMATA would like to see some proof that Metro's decision to move its older, 1000-series rail cars to the middle of its trains is really making things any safer. The newspaper got hold of a letter sent to Metro on Friday which noted that the committee had previously requested that the agency perform a study to determine whether moving the older rail cars would be prudent way back in November, long before the June 22 crash, but WMATA failed to act on the request. Since no formal study on the effectiveness of moving the rail cars has yet to be performed, the committee is scolding WMATA for going ahead with the plan without enough information. more ›

Metro will close the Takoma Metro station today from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and again on Saturday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. as part of the ongoing NTSB investigation. From WMATA: "While the Takoma Metrorail station is closed, the Red Line will be divided into two segments, with trains running between the Glenmont and Silver Spring Metrorail stations, and between the Fort Totten and Shady Grove Metrorail stations. Shuttle buses will take riders around the accident investigation work, and make stops at the Fort Totten, Takoma and Silver Spring Metrorail stations."
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One day into to the official relaunch of WMATA's Next Bus service, and we've heard a lot positive feedback from bus riders about the usefulness of the system. But some problems with the real-time Metrobus arrival tool are already apparent. more ›

We didn't get this quote down during this morning's press conference, but City Desk provides:

NTSB’s Debbie Hersman this morning confirms that the the striking train was a 1000-series car and that the struck train was a mix of 3000- and 5000-series. She notes that the NTSB has "long been on record" about the crashworthiness of the 1000 series. "We recommended to WMATA to either retrofit those cars or phase them out of service," she says. "Those concerns were not addressed."

UPDATE: City officials are sticking to seven confirmed dead, despite earlier news reports that nine people died. The two additional reported deaths may or may not have been due to confusion about the two critical patients -- we'll continue to monitor reports. more ›

The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board voted unanimously today to add the Purple Line to its long-range transportation plan, a key approval in the lengthy process to build the new line. Whether the proposed 16-mile line connecting Bethesda to New Carrollton will be light rail or bus rapid transit is still an open question, but a decision on that could happen as early as the end of the summer, assuming the next step, an environmental review process, doesn't drag on and on. more ›

Pretty great news for those of you who regularly travel between D.C. and Baltimore: transportation officials say they've reached an agreement that will allow SmarTrip users to use the cards seamlessly on the Maryland Transit Administration system in and around Baltimore, WTOP reports. more ›

Written by former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent more ›

The Examiner ran an interesting piece this morning on the results of a 2007 survey that suggests that Metrorail riders in the D.C. metro area are wealthy (they have a whopping median income of $102,110) and college educated (80 percent!), while Metrobus riders are less well off: their median income is $69,620, and 59 percent have a college degree. First things first: the most obvious point to be made here is that even Metrobus riders in the D.C. area appear to be very, very well off according to this survey. I mean crap, I realize that figure isn't an average income, but I now feel like one of the poorest people on the bus. more ›