Do you own a car in Maryland? You can advertise your urbanist ways with a special license plate.

The plates are technically to advertise LiveBaltimore.com, which provides services to help potential home buyers in Baltimore.

Everyone knows about the dignified statues in places like Logan Circle and Lafayette Square, but do you know about Unicorn Lane? It’s in Upper Northwest, along Oregon Avenue, just west of Rock Creek Park (map).

Now if only we had a Hippogriff Street.

Unicorn Lane. Really.

 Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington.
 
 
 

Cool transit find of the week: This Capital Transit Company ticket from exactly 76 years ago, featuring robins and cherry blossoms.

For those keeping score at home, in 1937 it cost $1.25 for a week’s worth of unlimited streetcar and bus rides. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $20. For comparison, WMATA weekly passes today go for $16 for a bus-only pass, and a little under $60 for a rail pass.

1937 Capital Transit ticket. Photo by u/stampepk on reddit.

 Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington.
 
 
 

According to the latest trailer, the upcoming Star Trek movie will have a number of scenes set in 23rd Century Earth cities, including at least London and San Francisco. The trailer itself includes several quick shots.

On April 13, Trolley Pub Arlington will begin operating a bicycle bar. In case anyone wonders how much one of these 17-seat bikes costs, or wants to buy one for their own use, here’s the manufacturer.

It’s $40,000, by the way.

This was spotted on a bus in Manchester, UK, where apparently the phrase “war on cars” takes on new meaning.

Photo from reddit user Onoj.

Fun things happen on Twitter. John Lisle, the DDOT staff person who runs their account, is moving to DC Water and giving up @DDOTDC. Since he’s leaving, he let loose with some of the agency’s closely guarded secrets yesterday. They’re copied here, for those of you who missed them on Twitter.

1. Bikeshare was the brainchild of Al Gore. He sold it for $500M.
2. “DC Streetcar” is really just a model we keep around the office pic.twitter.com/I1ZmiU2f
3. There is a Metro station in Georgetown but it’s VIP only.
4. We threw out the L’Enfant Plan when we stopped eating French Fries.
5. We have no idea who designed the Dave Thomas Circle (but it smells so good!)
6. We have a fleet of red convertible Solaras our employees can use anytime they want to hit the open road: t.co/0fg1bqPt
7. There is 1 master switch for the streetlights and 1 for the traffic signals, but we don’t know which is which.
8. We don’t have a clue what our logo means, but we like it.
9. There is no @DDOTDC. This has all been a hoax.

Flickr user davidwilson1949 has a collection of over 100 historic transit pictures from the DC area, dating from the 1970s forward. Fun and fascinating stuff. Here are two of his images:

Articulated Metrobus, 1979.

Ride-On bus, 1979.

Oh sure, in 2012 we’ve got cycle tracks and bikesharing and all sorts of cool stuff, but in 1895 it was all the rage to race your pennyfarthing down the steps of the US Capitol.

And by “all the rage,” I mean I found one picture of that on the internet.

Original source unknown. Image sourced from imgur.

Flickr user channaher has made a hobby of using Legos to build models of DC-area buses and trains. I *so* want some of these.

See more in channaher’s Lego set.

Metrorail	VRE	MARC
Metrobus local	Metrobus express	Old style Metrobus
Fairfax Connector	ART	REX
Howard Transit	MTA (Baltimore)	Dash