Results tagged “unionstation”

Admittedly, it's been quite a while since I was in the lower level of Union Station, but I was pretty surprised to read in this Washington Post story that the Union Station 9 movie theater only finally closed on Oct. 12. Weren't we talking about this place shutting down over a year ago? I honestly didn't realize it was still open up until this month, but like I said, I really haven't been down there in a while. I'm sure regular denizens of the downstairs food court will happily tell me all about it.

We finally have an exact date for the official opening of the $4 million Union Station Bike Transit Center: October 2 will mark the grand opening for the long-awaited (and somewhat delayed) facility, a spokesperson for Mobis/Bikestation confirmed today. The Bike Transit Center, paid for by the U.S. Department of Transportation and DDOT, will offer secure bike parking, a changing room, lockers, bike rentals, repairs and a small retail shop selling bike accessories, for about $1 a day. The facility will be the first of its kind on the East Coast, and cyclists all over the metro area have been anticipating the opening of the station for some time. See this story from the Washington Post last month for more background on the BTC.

D.C. Fire and EMS responded to a call about a possible explosion at Union Station at about 11:45 a.m. FEMS units are on scene investigating, but have yet to determine whether an explosion took place.

The good news: Metro says it is busy installing 300 additional bike racks at stations across the system in time for Friday's Bike to Work Day, adding up to a 20 percent increase in bicycle storage options for commuters. The bad news: The Examiner is reporting that the opening of the long awaited Bike Transit Station at Union Station has been delayed once again, this time until July. “It’s a delay related to the construction,” District Department of Transportation spokesman John Lisle told the newspaper.

Tackling an issue near and dear to our hearts, Steven Colbert ran a segment last night about photographers getting "nailed" for the (non)crime of taking pictures in train stations. He follows the story of a deeply scary, cat-walking photographer who was arrested after shooting some "shiny" trains in New York's Penn Station. For his terrorist plot? No, for the Amtrak photography contest, of course.

President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden arrived at Washington's Union Station and emerged from the "Obama Express" at just after 6:40 p.m. this evening. The "whistle stop tour" began earlier today in Philadelphia, then stopped in Biden's home of Wilmington, Delaware, and also in Baltimore for a public event at the War Memorial Plaza.

Vice President-Elect Joe Biden is a well-known train geek, so we have to assume he was involved in the decision for him and President-Elect Barack Obama to arrive in Washington on Jan. 17 via Amtrak. Sure, the Lincoln-loving Obama says he's replicating his presidential hero's journey to Washington by starting out in Philadelphia and stopping in Baltimore on his way, but Biden made the fact that he rides the train between D.C. and Wilmington almost every day one of his talking points during the campaign, so the symbolism works for both of them rather nicely.

In case you hadn't heard, Union Station is celebrating 100 years this week, along with the 20th anniversary of its restoration in 1988. The AP trotted out a boilerplate history of the station to mark the occasion, and Amtrak is throwing what sounds like will be a nifty party this weekend. All the details about the event can be found here, but rail nerds should know that they'll be displaying a bunch of historic locomotives and coaches, and regular passengers should consider stopping by to enter to win free train tickets. The Centennial Celebration goes on Saturday, October 4 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday, October 5, from noon to 4 p.m.

The Post reports that the body of an adult male was found on the tracks near Union Station shortly before 8 a.m. today. At the time, MARC reported that trains on the Camden and Brunswick lines had come to a complete stop in both directions due to the police investigation. Both lines were reopened by 10 a.m., but those caught in the morning commute mess had to take Metro in to D.C. after MARC trains were sent back to Greenbelt and Silver Spring stations, respectively. The death remains under investigation. On Sunday, an apparent double suicide in Baltimore County resulted in two deaths on a set of CSX train tracks there.

In the ongoing saga of Union Station's confusion over their own photography rules, we have an update for you: nothing has happened. Last month, D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, chair of the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Managment of the U.S. House of Representatives, held a hearing regarding those rules, listening to both reps from Union Station and photographer Erin McCann. During the hearing, Del. Norton soundly admonished Union Station managers handling of the situation as "pathetic."

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We've chronicled photographer harassment in the D.C. area, most recently at Union Station, where amateur photogs have encountered great confusion as to who owns which portions of the station and shops, where those sections end, and what rules apply to photographers in each one. Tomorrow, the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Managment of the U.S. House of Representatives, chaired by D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, will try to find answers to those questions in a hearing at 10 a.m. Representatives from the Union Station companies will testify, as well as the Director of D.C.'s Department of Transportation, and notably, one of our Flickr contributors who has pursued this issue relentlessly, Erin McCann (PDF). The hearing will be webcast live; you can also catch a report afterward by Flickr user LightboxDC, who will be in attendance.

This is pretty good: Fox 5's Tom Fitzgerald decided to do a report on the ongoing harassment of photographers inside D.C.'s busy Union Station, a topic we've written about and heard about from our own Flickr contributors many times before. While he was there interviewing Amtrak's spokesperson on the subject, who in fact told the reporter that photography is absolutely allowed inside the Amtrak portion of the station, a security guard came up to the Fox 5 crew and told them turn their cameras off. You can watch the report here.

We've reported a few times on the issues that photographers run into with security around the D.C. area. In fact, stories of photographers being wrongly told that they're not allowed to take pictures happens so often that there's a whole group on Flickr dedicated to fighting against it.

In addition to the long list of anti-war protests planned throughout the city today (we'll have some photos up from some of them later on), around 200 activists staged a "Freeze-In" protest at Union Station on Tuesday. In the video above, you can see several dozen people who "froze" in place for about a minute at 5 p.m. yesterday to mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war. The group, situated in the middle of the busy station at rush hour, then chanted "end the war" and other anti-war slogans. (h/t Nikolas Schiller)

The Christopher Columbus memorial fountain at Columbus Circle in front of Union Station is, like so many of the monuments in D.C., under appreciated. When we asked a man leaning against the marble what he thought about it, if he liked it, all he did was shrug his shoulders and say, “Eh.”

Good morning, Washington. Supporters of Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Barack Obama are riding high off their caucus victories in Iowa last night, but locally, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty continues to suffer some bumps in the road after one year in office. Just weeks after the resignation of Attorney General Linda Singer, Fenty's former deputy chief of staff, Neil Richardson, has also resigned. Richardson, who was a key Fenty aide during his mayoral campaign, had been moved out of Fenty's "bullpen" in October and placed in an office called Serve DC, where he was tasked with creating a volunteer program to help the school system. Yesterday Richardson decided that the demotion, which came, according to the Post, after Richardson complained to the mayor that he was not listening enough to the public on key decisions, wasn't worth sticking around for, and tendered his resignation. WTOP has excerpts from Richardson's resignation letter, which reiterates complaints heard from others about Fenty's dictatorial governing style.

Good morning, Washington. Well, this is it: the holidays are finally, tragically over. You're once again sitting at your desk. And now we begin the slow, terrible death march toward spring, with only brief, inadequate celebrations of Presidents' and MLK Day to sustain us. Stay strong, D.C. — we'll get through this. Can You Hear Me Now? Hello? Hello?: The ball dropped, the phones came out and... nothing. "Y2K8 Bug" doesn't sound very catchy, but that seems to be what Verizon Wireless customers experienced in the first few hours of 2008, as WTOP reports. A software glitch affected some calls and text messages until around 4 a.m. on New Year's Day. Virginia Considers Mining Uranium: Walter Coles' family farm in Pittsylvania County sits atop what is thought to be the largest deposit of uranium on the East coast — enough to power the nation's reactors for two years. But up until now he hasn't been able to do anything about it: as the Post explains, uranium mining has been banned in Virginia since 1982. Now Coles is undertaking a lobbying effort to have that changed. Although the landowner claims that he's avoided selling the land so that he can ensure the mining process proceeds safely and with a maximum benefit to the community, critics say that Coles is motivated solely by money and that uranium mining can't be conducted safely in Virginia's moist environment. String of Stabbings in Virginia: The Post reports on three separate incidents that occurred yesterday and overnight in Northern Virginia. A man was found stabbed in Falls Church; another in Reston; and three people sustained knife injuries after a man was barred from a party in Franconia. The Falls Church incident resulted in the victim's death. Police say the incidents aren't related. Briefly Noted: Maryland property assessments rising despite falling home prices... Third Democrat considers running for Tom Davis' seat... Union Station was briefly evacuated yesterday due to a french fry fire, lower level will remain closed today... Arlington chairman pledges to support affordable housing, pursue smoking/trans-fat ban and keep county pro-immigrant... This Day In DCist: One year ago Mayor Fenty was taking office, Washington was paying its respects to Gerald Ford, and the Post was cozying up to local bloggers. Image posted to DCist Photos by Flickr user Oblivious Dude

A happy Friday to you, Washington. Hopefully you all made it in to work on time despite Metro having reduced the speed of their rail cars in several areas this morning. Speed restrictions were in place until 8:10 a.m. along portions of the Orange line in Maryland and Virginia, the Red line from Union Station to Silver Spring and from Shady Grove to Grosvenor, and the Green line from Branch Avenue to Congress Heights...

It was only with intense patience and a deep well of courage that Samer Farha was finally capable of trapping the long sought after Land Shark in his wide-jawed f/4 aperture shutter. Though the creature has become more elusive these days, now that it has seized a fleet of Segways for its nefarious purposes, it finally emerged once prey ran low in the back alleys of Pennsylvania Avenue and Union Station's gift shops.... considered...

The rush to get out of D.C. to family Thanksgiving celebrations has already begun, but if you're still reading DCist, you're probably still at work and planning on leaving within the next 72 hours. Whether opening up that military airspace will really make a difference at Washington area airports remains to be seen, but WMATA has announced a special Thanksgiving weekend schedule that could stand to help out many of you trying to take public...

>> D.C. Council members have rejected a plan to give a developer city-owned land worth $6 million on which to build a new Radio One headquarters. [WJLA] >> Five new restaurants are coming to Columbia Heights. [Prince of Petworth] >> Traffic was temporarily halted at Union Station this afternoon as Amtrak Police investigated a report of a suspicious package near Gate A in Union Station. Regular service had resumed by 4 p.m. [WaPo] >>...

FRIDAY: >> Local comic book store Fantom Comics is celebrating the grand opening of their new Union Station store tonight with a party from 6 to 10:30 p.m. They'll be serving up free pizza on the early side and the comedy stylings of the Geek Comedy Tour during the second half of the night. There will also be a trivia contest with $500 gift certificates up for grabs. The party is inside the Union...

The folks over at Dulles Metro extension are breaking out the construction tools … and the credit cards. $900 million of the $2.83 billion price tag of the initial 11.6-mile leg is in that Transportation Department spending bill tied up in Congress and under threat of veto by President Bush. But with or without the money, officials plan to start work, reports The Examiner. Is it just us, or does this violate everything you ever...

We knew it was just a matter of time, but sure enough, there in our inbox this morning was the first announcement of an online petition begging D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty to change his mind about the $4 taxicab flag drop fee. A group calling themselves D.C. Residents for Reasonable Taxi Fares claim that the fares proposed by Mayor Fenty will mean that taxi fares in D.C. will be the highest in the country--higher than...

Good morning, Washington. It's Friday, and the city is still reacting to yesterday afternoon's announcement about how our new taxi meters are going to work. We already told you about the $4 flag drop, which many people are already saying is too high, and the fact that taxi roof lights will go on and off automatically to indicate whether a cab has a passenger, which everyone seems to agree is long overdue. One more thing...

Ten hours in to the 24-hour D.C. taxi strike, it's looking like a large percentage of drivers in fact stayed home. As people make their way out of offices to head home and tend to children anxious to begin trick or treating, what will they find? Based on streets we've seen around town virtually devoid of D.C. cabs, we'd say that if you have your own car, your drive will most likely be a lot...

>> It's Halloween! Spooky, Scary! Despite the taxi strike, SoberRide is still offering free taxi rides for people who have had too much to drink celebrating the holiday: If you need a ride home between 8 p.m. tonight and 4 a.m. tomorrow morning, call 1-800-200-TAXI and you should be able to get a free ride home of up to $50. How long you'll have to wait for that ride is an open question, but...

Happy Tuesday, Washington. The news broke early this morning that Judge Roy Pearson will reportedly lose his job, according to sources cited by the Post. Pearson, who infamously sued the owners of Custom Cleaners first for $65 million and then later for $54 million for misplacing a pair of his pants, is a District administrative law judge who has continued to draw a paycheck despite being taken off of his case work since the...

>> Sure, meters are great, but what about getting D.C. taxi drivers to use their rooftop lights like cabs in every other city? [NotionsCapital] >> The Quest for Dog Parks: A very rigid search. [Intangible Arts] >> Some D.C. Cab drivers hate Halloween! [WaPo] >> All MARC commuter service out of Union Station on the Brunswick Line has been shut down because of a gas leak in Kensington. [AP/WTOP] >> Vietnam Memorial Visitor Center...