There are a lot of little things going on today, but I don’t have time to cover them in detail at the moment. Instead, quickie comments on a bunch of topics, rapid-fire like. If you follow on Twitter you may have already seen some of it.

• The ICC is already suffering traffic jams. They appear to be the result of a specific temporary bottleneck, but nonetheless I think it says something about the wisdom of trying to road-build your way out of congestion when a brand new multi-billion dollar highway jams up in less than a week.
• The 18th Street streetscape project has been going on for months now in Dupont, but it’s about to begin in Adams Morgan, where it will be much more visible since 18th is such an important street in that neighborhood. In addition to nicer sidewalk paving and street furniture, the most notable change will be conversion of on-street parking from the existing front-in layout to more traditional parallel parking. Sharrows will also be added to the street for bikes.
• Leesburg has rezoned a commercial/industrial area adjacent to downtown for urban instead of suburban-style development. The new form-based code focuses heavily on extending the character of Leesburg’s historic downtown.
• Earlier this week new developers acquired 675 H Street, NW, better known as the long-empty building right in front of the Chinatown gate. Hopefully with new ownership will come new development plans. It’s ridiculous that a prominent building on one of the city’s best corners has sat empty so long.
• Redevelopment plans are moving forward in Wheaton and North Bethesda. I’ll have more to say about the Wheaton plan next week, probably Monday or Tuesday.
• Alexandria is considering joining Capital Bikeshare. If ever there were a place perfect for bikesharing, it’s King Street between the Metro and waterfront.

It’s official. As of 1:15 this morning, after 50 years of debate and planning and one extra day of snow, the first segment of the InterCounty Connector opened for business. Thus ends the last of the Eisenhower-era highway battles.

The ICC isn’t exactly my neck of the woods these days, but I do want to try it out. The state won’t start charging tolls until March 6, so watch for a few pictures sometime before then.

In the mean time, happy motoring everyone! If you pretend it’s still the 1950s you won’t have to think about any of the ICC’s negative effects.

Arlington is moving forward with streetcar plans for Columbia Pike and Route 1. How might the trains be branded once they start running?

It seems unlikely they’ll be branded as Metro. What are the options? I created some potential concepts in Photoshop. These are not official branding proposals, just my own ideas for discussion.

DC has a unified Circulator/streetcar branding scheme. What about the same for Arlington Transit? ART’s wavy green livery is clean and unique. Extended to a streetcar, it might look like this:

Click all streetcar images to enlarge.

Pretty nice, but it probably won’t happen that way. After all, both the Columbia Pike and Route 1 lines will extend into other jurisdictions. Fairfax and Alexandria might not like their streetcars branded as part of ART.

How about mimicking the DC streetcar, so as to give the impression of a unified regional system. Starting with that paint scheme but substituting the red from DC’s flag with blue from Virginia’s, a streetcar might look like this:

That could work, but it’s certainly not the only option. There’s no reason Virginia streetcars need to be branded like anything currently out there. There are endless permutations. Here’s another:

In fact, streetcars don’t necessarily need special branding at all. The mere fact that they’re streetcars may be branding enough. Portland and Seattle each use a variety of solid colors, and it works just fine. Applied to Virginia, that might look something like this:

So there are a ton of options. What do you think the powers that be should consider?

Cross-posted at Greater Greater Washington.
 
 
 

Remember that proposal to eliminate late night Metro service? Earlier today on his radio show, Kojo Nnamdi asked WMATA GM Richard Sarles if closing Metro early would contribute to more dangerous, drunk driving, since lots of Metro’s late night riders are coming from bars.

Sarles’ response was that riders “getting on our train should not be drunk.”

Hallelujah! Problem solved! If only we’d thought of this sooner! But why stop there?

Remember those pesky bag searches Metro is implementing? Well you know, I really think that terrorists entering the Metro system should not be terrorists. It’s not very neighborly of them, after all.

Problem solved! No more bag searches necessary. I look forward to Mr. Sarles canceling the bag search program, since obviously wishful thinking is all it takes.

I don’t have much to say today. GGW is talking about late night Metro, Dr. Gridlock and Twitter are abuzz about Peter Benjamin leaving the WMATA Board, and the national blogs are talking about Florida high speed rail. All good topics, but I have nothing to add that hasn’t been said already (especially if you follow BeyondDC on Twitter).

Instead, here’s a pretty picture of central DC that I stumbled upon in flickr, taken by someone named Bill in DC who must have been flying out of National Airport.

Click the image to enlarge. Thanks Bill, whoever you are.

Since the popularization of Chinatown buses to New York, and the subsequent launch of BoltBus and MegaBus, intercity bus travel in the US has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years. Greyhound hasn’t received nearly the hype of its newer “competitors” (in quotes because Bolt is 50% owned by Greyhound), but the old standard is still out there, with routes going just about everywhere.

I’ve always been curious about where Greyhound goes, so I dug up their system map. Here’s a zoomed-in version of the national map, centered on DC. Click the image to download the full national map.

The different colors indicate whether routes are operated by Greyhound itself or a contracting service.

WMATA doesn’t have a White Line, but you might not realize it if all you had to go by were the platform signs at Vienna station. They’re so sun-damaged that orange now appears white.

I was angry yesterday. I was angry that WMATA’s leaders don’t seem to get that city residents are dependent on Metro for more than their daily commute. I was angry that we have to fight this same fight year after year, against people who should be allies. I was angry that after a half century of experience with transit death spirals, we still don’t understand that cutting service has much bigger and worse implications than near-term cost savings.

And I’m still angry, but I want to mention one more thing, in a more moderate tone: Track maintenance.

One of the purported reasons for the proposal to end late night service is that it would increase the time Metro’s workers have to perform track maintenance without disruption or danger from passing trains. Obviously, track maintenance is important, and has to be carried out or the system will fail.

I think there’s room for compromise on this point. Metro’s policy of closing maintenance zones during three-day weekends is, I think, a good policy. It allows crews to complete important work faster, and it doesn’t disrupt the overall Metrorail system to an unacceptable extent.

That’s the model we should be looking at for late night closures. If Metro needs to close a portion of a line early sometimes to work on a specific issue, I’m cool with that. Do it. As long bus bridges are there to provide the same connections, occasional closures at spot locations is a compromise that I’m perfectly happy to make in exchange for a healthier transit system.

But don’t close the entire Metrorail system early all the time. That’s an unnecessary overkill that pushes Metro closer to customer death spiral.

Apparently, WMATA is considering cutting late night and weekend service. Instead of running until 3:00 am on Friday and Saturday nights, trains would stop running at midnight (which in WMATA speak actually means 11:30).

This happens every time WMATA gets a new General Manager. In 2004 GM Richard White tried running two-car trains every 20 minutes at night. When John Catoe took over in 2007, he proposed replacing all late night rail service with bus shuttles. And now in 2011, under Richard Sarles, they’re considering eliminating late night rail altogether.

This is not acceptable. It exhibits a fundamental misunderstanding of what Metro means to this city. Metro isn’t a mere commuter operation. It’s the backbone of our transportation system. Without Metro, Washington doesn’t function. It doesn’t matter how much money might be saved by eliminating late-night service, that is simply not a negotiable option. It is not acceptable to the people of Washington, DC, and it should not be acceptable to WMATA.

It is part of Metro’s core service to provide urban mobility to the central city, including at night. If WMATA’s leadership fails to provide that core service, or fails to recognize its importance, then WMATA’s leadership will have to face serious questions about just what they think they’re supposed to be doing.

This isn’t a small issue. It’s not the place to trim costs. The answer is No. Find your money somewhere else.

Initial 2010 Census results have been released for 5 out of the 50 states, including both Maryland and Virginia. Some highlights from the data:

In Virginia:

• The big news is that Northern Virginia grew enough to affect legislative redistricting. Northern Virginia will soon have considerably more political clout, while the rest of Virginia (especially rural southwest) will see their clout decline. WTOP thinks the shift may tip the overall balance and, for the first time, give urban/suburban areas more overall political power than rural ones. Rural Virginia, as one might imagine, is freaking out.
• The basic trends we’re all familiar with continued. Outer suburbs grew the fastest, with established cities and suburbs growing more slowly but healthily. Compared to the 2000 Census several jurisdictions in Northern Virginia passed important thresholds. Fairfax County topped 1, 000, 000, Prince William County passed 400, 000, Loudoun passed 300, 000, and Arlington passed 200, 000.

For Maryland:
I looked at Maryland in a little more detail. For one, there’s no big picture redistricting story to dominate, because Maryland is already an urban-controlled state. Also, since most of the population centers are close to Washington, the detailed information is more pertinent.

• The big story is probably that Montgomery County is now minority-majority, meaning whites are less than half the total population. No single demographic group in the county forms a majority on its own.
• Montgomery County remains Maryland’s largest jurisdiction, but still hasn’t crossed that magical 1, 000, 000 person mark. At 972k, it is getting close. Prince George’s County probably won’t catch Montgomery, but at 863k it added to its lead over third place Baltimore County (801k). Baltimore city is 4th (621k), followed by Anne Arundel (538k).
• With a population of 99, 615, Columbia is on the cusp of becoming only the second community in Maryland history to cross the 100, 000 population threshold (the first is obviously Baltimore).
• After Baltimore (620k) and Columbia (99.6k), the next largest communities are Germantown (86k), Silver Spring (71k), and Waldorf (68k). However, all of them except Baltimore are “Census Designated Places”, which means they aren’t real cities, but merely convenient statistical groupings.
• The largest incorporated cities after Baltimore are Frederick (65k), Rockville (61k), Gaithersburg (60k), and Bowie (55k). After Bowie there’s a big drop-off to the 6th place city, Hagerstown (40k). It’s important to note that incorporated cities and CDPs really can’t be compared on an apples-to-apples basis, because CDPs are defined more liberally, meaning the populations of incorporated places are undercounted relative to CDPs. Nobody exactly knows what a Frederick or Rockville CDP would look like, but if such things existed they would definitely be larger than 65, 000.
• The densest communities with a population over 50, 000 are 1) Silver Spring, 2) Baltimore, 3) Gaithersburg, 4) Germantown, and 5) Dundalk. If you drop the criteria to 10, 000 population, then it’s 1) Langley Park, 2) Chillum, 3) East Riverdale, 4) Silver Spring, 5) Takoma Park. Savvy observers might notice that the Purple line hits all 5 of those latter communities, and that either the Purple line, the proposed Baltimore Red line, or the Corridor Cities Transitway hit 4 of the 5 in the first list.