Tuesday Morning Commute - grand thoroughfares

Good morning. Hope everyone had a great weekend.

• Montgomery County has made a commitment to finishing the Capital Crescent Trail into Silver Spring. Unfortunately it's tied to state plans for the Purple Line, and there the commitment isn't as strong.
• Andrew Ferguson at Time does not care for the young people in DC or for their bike-sharing, which is clearly a sign of their ill-earned affluence. He also doesn't seem to care that much for facts. He writes: "Bike-share racks have sprung up downtown and in the close-in suburbs to take advantage of the newly painted bike lanes that have squeezed grand thoroughfares like 14th Street down to two lanes." Now we can argue about whether or not 14th street is a "grand thoroughfare" but nowhere am I aware of 14th Street being squeezed down to 2 lanes by bike lanes. 
• Thanks to WABA, the Advoc8te ends a 20-year hiatus from cycling. 
• More on CaBi's April statistics. Tpbpd were up to 4.5 from 3.7 last year. And there were 196, 800 miles ridden, also a new record for one month. 
• David Byrne writes about the coming of bike-sharing in NYC, and a GWU professor writes about how bikable, walkable neighborhoods are desirable. "People are clearly willing to pay more for homes that allow them to walk rather than drive. Biking is part of the picture, too. Biking and walking are part of a “complete streets” strategy that public rights of way should be for all of society — not just cars."

Comments

[MM]

For those with better things to do than read the Andrew Feguson article, here's the summary:

Andrew Ferguson hates young people, college graduates, college graduates with liberal arts degrees, happy hours, group houses, young people that go to parties, hooking up, bars, clubs, restaurants open past 8pm, restaurants that require reservations, cocktails, non-domestic beer, renovated houses, small businesses, organic food, people that don't smoke, people that go to the dentist, people that exercise, skinny people, people that eat vegetables, people with health insurance, people who are optimistic, people that don't own cars, people with jobs, Uber users, Metro, people that use Metro, bikeshare, bike lanes, Zipcar, people that haven't been foreclosed on, nose rings, Hill interns, elite universities, people that care about the environment, and irony.

Oh, and he thinks the government spends too much money.

[Brendan]

MM, you forgot contractors. He hates them the most. The rest of his complaints are side-effects of the Contractor-Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex.

[oboe]

Yeah, things were so much better in the 80s when people with jobs knew to live in the exurbs where they belonged.

[Michael H.]

Andrew Ferguson: "Get off my lawn!"