For those unfamiliar with the concept, a leading pedestrian interval lets pedestrians go for at least a couple of seconds before the signal for cars turns green. This is a ridiculously cheap intervention that measurably improves pedestrian safety through increased visibility in crosswalks. I'm not sure if it's been implemented District-wide, but it's at a ton of intersections now and at least in my experience, it definitely feels safer. Sometimes DDOT can do stupid things, but I'm real glad they made this change and wish it was more common across the US.

Bruh

Nice!

And if you're taking the train up there, you might as well go check out the B&O Museum. The roundhouse is spectacular and the stuff they've got in the repair shop can be just as cool. The Allegheny is an absolute monster that needs to be seen up close to be believed.

Perfect is a bit of a stretch but it was certainly miles better than sitting in gridlocked traffic for hours on end.

https://twitter.com/thesierrafox/status/1640096861783556097?s=20

Also several parking lots normally open are closed due to Metro staging construction equipment on them for the Yellow Line rehabilitation.

Nice! Any fun facts or anecdotes you'd like to share given you're this subreddit's resident Metro expert?

Riding a bike to actually get to that road however was not fun. The entrance to East Potomac Park was absolutely packed with cars and you had to ride in between the gridlocked cars since there was no space on the road or the sidewalk.

"Historically significant strip mall" still gets me. What a joke.

That headline could've used a different word. Even though it's in quotes, "attacked" sounds like she was physically assaulted when it actually seems like people just yelled at her for being an asshole.

The water rights situation in the Southwest is all kinds of fucked up. Got there first? Than you can use all the water you want! The agriculture sector out there is unsustainable and needs to be cut back asap. Lake Mead drying up is bad, but the Great Salt Lake becoming rhe Aral Sea 2.0 is horrifying to think about. As much as it sucks that the Mormon Church basically runs Utah, I would think they care enough about Salt Lake City to exert some of their power to save the lake before it turns into a toxic basin.

Ah yes, grandfathering in older buildings with less stringent regulations and time frames is always a great idea. /s

I was kind of surprised when I saw the new Modo building at Georgia Ave Station has only three bedroom apartments. I guess everyone else is ignoring that market and there is a (small) niche.

Rowhomes/rowhouses/terraced homes. They don't get built because in 95% of America it's literally illegal to build homes like this due to all sorts of zoning regulations, (minimum lot size, setback requirements, etc) that came into existence after WWII. More locally, DC doesn't have that much non-developed land, so developers want to max out returns on their investment with big apartments instead of more modest rowhouses. Newbuilt rowhomes do still happen (see Navy Yard and NE) but they're very rare in DC itself.

https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/discriminatory-housing-practices-in-the-district-a-brief-history/

I highly encourage you to read this. "The city turning toxic" is not the reason white residents left. Massive subsidies for suburban and segregated development (GI Bill, urban freeways, racial covenants) and resistance to desegregation in schools were the primary factors white residents left. The pattern of large sections of the tax base fleeing to the suburbs repeated itself all over which is why most American cities were faced with crippling budget shortfalls and racially motivated disinvestment in the 70s and 80s.

That's a rather charitable way of describing white flight and systemic disinvestment.

Personally I think this is a bad design that doesn't do much to address the real issues with safety at Hains Point, or properly accomodate the varied ways people use Ohio Drive. As a reminder, two pedestrians were killed by a speeding driver last April (and on a somewhat related note, it took a year and Representative Norton personally intervening to get NPS/Park Police to actually provide the name of the driver to the two families since they weren't arrested). The problem wirh Ohio Drive is that its design is too accommodating to speeding. A roadway that long and straight subconsciously influences regular drivers to go faster than the posted speed limit, and does nothing to dissuade bad drivers from treating it as a drag strip (see this video for more info on how the environment affects traffic speed).

To remedy the danger NPS is proposing some paint and nothing else. For a start, paint provides absolutely no protection if a driver veers into the bike/pedestrian space, and you can look up countless examples of this exact scenario playing out across the nation, causing injuries and fatalities. Unfortunately though, even if the bike/pedestrian space was protected by curbs or bollards, it still wouldn't be a good design. Hains Point is incredibly popular with capital C Cyclists (the kind in lycra) who use it for training rides at high speed. Asking them to share space with people biking at a normal pace and pedestrians is a recipe for conflicts and collisions, to say nothing of including a contraflow bike lane in such a narrow space.

If I were designing the changes instead, I would implement traffic chicanes at regular intervals and build a separate sidewalk for pedestrians. With chicanes, there would be physical barriers forcing drivers to slow down, while still allowing cyclists to maintain their speed unimpeded and casual bike riders to go their own pace. It'd definitely cost more, but it would show NPS actually cares about addressing this problem. Unfortunately, given NPS's shoddy track record when it comes to dealing with things they manage in DC outside of the big monuments (see the Park Police example above, neglect for parks east of the river, trying to put cars back on Beach Drive) this half measure is par for the course.

TL/DR: NPS's design is bad and it needs revisions.

Those don't even help that much. Half of drivers just ignore them

Quincy and New Hampshire is the fucking worst for this

Seeing all the people salty over FTX's collapse and Crypto.com's liquidity crunch (and also imminent collapse) is hilarious. These entities deal in something that has no inherent value and is marketed on its lack of regulation. What the hell did you think was going to happen?

It's an issue at Mt Vernon Square too

I would highly suggest finding parking elsewhere outside of downtown and just taking the Metro to the Mall.

This is in Petworth