DDOT Director and alternative transportation guru Gabe Klein just announced he will not be welcome in the Gray administration, and will be leaving. Klein has been a major champion of streetcars and especially bicycling projects in the city, so his departure will be a major loss for progressive transportation policy. It is also a significant warning sign that mayor-elect Gray doesn’t intend to continue pushing forward as vigorously on transportation as did his predecessor.
This decision makes Gray 1 out of 3 on supporting a progressive DDOT. He kept streetcars in the budget, but fired Klein and eliminated the ‘Unified Fund’, which was used by DOT for quick fixes to a variety of issues. Taken together there is a clear pattern: Gray will continue policies that have been on the books for a long time, but will obstruct DDOT from moving quickly on just about anything.
Washington, DC has taken a step backwards. It’s not a good day.
Average Rating: 4.5 out of 5 based on 173 user reviews.
Good news: The open gash through downtown that is the Center Leg Freeway will soon be capped by a large multi-building air-rights development. Developers will deck over the highway and construct 2.3 million square feet of new mixed-use buildings, with office, residences, and retail. With this hole filled, no longer will Union Station be cut off from the rest of downtown. The central city will be continuous.
Bad news: The proposed buildings absolutely stink. They’re banal glass boxes straight out of 1970. It’s possible they had to be value engineered because of the cost of decking the highway, but considering the otherrecent buildings in the city from the same architecture team, it seems more likely they’re just not well conceived. Note to the architecture world: No matter what you say on your website, when you design a glass box you are not being “futuristic”, “state-of-the-art”, or providing an “example of the very best office building design in Washington, DC”. You’re also not building “of our time”. On the contrary, you’re designing buildings for 40 years ago that aren’t interesting, aren’t unique, and just plain aren’t good.
I love this project for what it accomplishes with regards to the highway, but I hate it for its utterly hackneyed, monotonous architecture.
Update: Apparently, in response to community opposition to such banal architecture, the buildings are being redesigned. Yay!
Average Rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 177 user reviews.
The Autumn Streets photography series is a special feature BeyondDC is running this season exploring some of Washington’s more famous or important streets. Thanksgiving is past and the weather in Washington is rapidly turning from comfortable to chilly, so this will be the last Autumn Streets post this year.
Wheaton has the potential to be a pedestrian downtown as good as Silver Spring or Bethesda, but for years redevelopment there has been slow to catch on. That may no longer be the case, thanks to what could be a game-changing new development there.
Montgomery County recently approved plans for a 17-story mixed-use building at the corner of Georgia Ave and Reedie Drive on the site of an existing Safeway grocery store, directly across the street from Wheaton Metro. The plan calls for a new, larger Safeway to occupy the ground floor of a 486-unit, 195-foot-tall apartment building. It will be almost twice as tall as any existing building in Wheaton, and will be the most notable Transit Oriented Development in Wheaton’s history.
Capital Bikeshare has quickly become ubiquitous in the District’s central neighborhoods. Bikeshare riders are all over, pretty much all the time. But one thing that hasn’t yet become a common sight is the redistribution van.
Since some stations are naturally used more than others, the system requires a crew to redistribute bikes on a periodic basis. They drive around in a van, picking up bikes from congested stations and carting them to empty ones. The goal is to provide a balance of rent-able bikes and open docks at each station.
I saw the van for the first time this morning, pulling up to the 17th and Corcoran bikeshare station. For those curious, here it is:
Average Rating: 4.8 out of 5 based on 300 user reviews.
