Good morning. We start out this morning asking a question that Steven Pearlstein asks in his Post column: “Can someone explain to me why the capital of the richest and most powerful country in the world needs to be shut down by the mere threat of an eight-inch snowstorm?” Are we weather wimps? We think the answer is yes, but we grew up in a lake-effect snow belt, so we’re naturally critical when we see weather reactionaries wearing huge Gortex galoshes to ride metrorail. Check out Capital Weather for all your weather news, including the possibility of a major storm ready to hit us next week.
But first, here’s a list of today’s post-storm closings! How was your commute?
Longer Trains, Longer Waits: A panel of outside experts has zeroed in on the systemic causes of metrorail’s historic delays and breakdowns, offering as a principle solution the use of fewer, yet longer trains at rush hour. As the Post reports, the panel said that the “idea should be tested on the Red Line and expanded across the system if successful.”
The panel, made up of transportation officials from New York, Boston, London, Atlanta, Toronto, and Philadelphia, found that spotty operations management, incomplete training and a shortage of qualified “track walkers” to inspect the 212 miles of track for cracks were to blame for the spate of mid-tunnel hold-ups metrorail was well known in the past year. After a “year of hell” in 2004, WMATA chief Dick White asked for the review, which cost $12,000, or in metrorail terms, 8,889 base-fare trips.
More of the Same … District Property Values on Rise: Property values in the District rose 14.6 percent last year, with the largest increases coming in the neighborhoods of Trinidad (over 32 percent) and Columbia Heights (25 percent). Civic activists are concerned that the increasing tax burden of more and more expensive property will hurt the poor and elderly the most, and D.C. councilmembers are proposing a variety of schemes to mitigate the increases, ranging from tax relief to cutting property tax rates.
Briefly Noted: District police have finally cracked down on crime where it’s most desperately needed — the four block radius surrounding Georgetown University — giving much needed attention to the problem of open containers and public urination while 19 people have been killed and 509 firearms recovered so far this year in the city … Club U fights for its social life once again today, trying to stay open after a rash of stabbings, shootings, and assaults outside its doors … Major League Baseball has hired 18-year D.C. Council veteran John Ray to make sure that the new stadium for the Washington Nationals isn’t once again, to use D.C. political lingo, “cropped.”
(DCist contributor Martin Austermuhle contributed to this report.
