Monday Evening Commute - Expansion

The holidays take their toll

• DDOT releases the proposed locations for 54 new Capital Bikeshare stations to be installed this winter in DC. DCist coverage. It represents a 40% increase in stations. Installation starts in January and will end in March. 
• BicycleSpace wins a Brickie.
• There is a 1.2 mile long bike tunnel under the Bay, but most of us will never get to ride it " a 1.2-mile-long, six-foot-wide underwater tunnel through which workers bicycle to get from shore to the receiving dock"
• "Federal Realty is one of nearly a dozen developers with major plots of land in the 430-acre White Flint section of Rockville Pike, nearly all of which coalesced around a plan to replace strip shopping centers with more-dense development, create a new grid of streets and add new public transit, sidewalks and bicycle lanes."
• "I enjoyed and profited from my association with Lance when he was on top..." but if you want more about Sally Jenkins on Lance Armstrong I'll point out that she's complaining about due process - an issue which the courts have already weighed in on and that there was cheating in cycling before Lance...so she's not willing to accept his own guilt in all of this. And she's OK with him cheating, because no one is a saint. 
• David Alpert on scapegoating bike lanes "certainly, bicycle facilities are not the top priority for most in [Ivy City]. But remember that such infrastructure is dirt-cheap compared to other transportation infrastructure. More importantly, the neighborhood’s own plan includes these bicycle lanes, which is ironic given that some critics have tried to turn bicycle infrastructure into a symbol of apathy toward Ivy City. In two recent columns,Courtland Milloy suggested that bike lanes directly crowd out other investments, such as job training...., blaming bicyclists lets off the hook those D.C. leaders, including on the D.C. Council, who aren’t especially interested in spending money on the real needs of our most vulnerable residents, or in making transportation changes for residents’ health that interfere with shopping trips to Maryland. Instead of really solving problems, it’s much easier to scapegoat one of the cheapest and chronically underfunded transportation programs."

Comments

[SJE]

Federal Realty's plan on making things more livable sounds great. But, count me cynical. Do these guys have a history of doing this sort of thing? Or, is this just pie in the sky to get support from urbanists but will get forgotten at the end of the process as "too expensive."

[Paytonchung]

Federal Realty not only built Bethesda Row, but did so beginning way back in 1993 when the idea of "livable communities" was in its infancy.

[SJE]

OK, I'm starting to believe!