What do commuters deserve? (Photo: flickr/ep_jhu)

To what extent is public transit a dimension of the civil rights debate?

Many people, after all, rely on public transportation to get to work, both here and all over the United States. They take buses, Metro trains, light rail, the MARC, and other options. Increasingly people dismiss the automobile and use Zipcar, Capital Bikeshare, and might be able to take advantage of other transit options like streetcars, if those ever do appear (the District hopes to debut the first functioning lines in mid-2013, last we've heard). In the D.C. metro area, nearly 200,000 households manage to get by without a car. Is a functioning, reliable public transit system not only wise for the reasons of reducing congestion and helping the environment but also simply a reflection of what people deserve?

At The Root, founder and CEO of PolicyLink Angela Glover Blackwell suggests that yes, a functioning, funded public transit system is a vital part of the civil rights debate and points to several cities around the country, from Detroit to Little Rock, that struggle with and seek to revitalize their transit options. She also identifies the way our Congress fumbles its way forward with the proper funding. What we need, according to Blackwell, is wisdom in our transit choices and funding.

Blackwell notes the following:

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Head back in slumber. (Photo: YouTube/MeanBlackDude)

The idea of sleeping at work is, universally, an attractive concept. An entire episode of Seinfeld revolves around the character of George Costanza attempting to craft a sleeping den under his office desk.

Yet most employers frown on the behavior — WMATA disapproves of such salary-funded slumber but its Metro station managers continue to run into trouble. Earlier this fall, two photos of snoozing station managers at Columbia Heights and Ballston first posted on Unsuck D.C. Metro caused WMATA to respond with a statement of condemnation. The transit agency successfully identified the two workers but both remained on the job. I spoke with WMATA chief spokesperson Dan Stessel about the incident and he told me that "appropriate action" was taken against them but that "we don't get into detail about exactly what action was taken" due to employee privacy concerns.

Another Metro employee, however, has apparently been caught in the act. A source has passed along the following video, showing the same condemned behavior just two months later. A Metro rider captured 41 seconds of video here, hosted on AccessTheDMV and uploaded by YouTube user MeanBlackDude (whom I've interviewed before and is the MetroAccess driver named Leslie) on October 27. The video alleges to show the Anacostia Metro station at 12:30 a.m. on October 23.

Here's the dimly lit video of a station manager sleeping on the job:

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(Photo: Ben Schumin)

Happy Halloween, D.C.! Or almost, anyway. The fear-filled holiday in honor of candy isn't until Monday, but most of the celebrations will be happening this weekend. I hope you've got your costume all ready. Here's some transit ideas if you're still struggling. Remember, WMATA has major track work planned for the Red, Orange, and Green Metro lines. I also hear we may be seeing snow, which is hardly a comforting notion.

Forget the fear, forget the snow, and simply remember the biggest transportation news stories from the past week here:

• Don't ignore the business going down with MetroAccess lately. The drama has been high, with drivers still struggling with 13-hour schedules from WMATA's MetroAccess contractor as passengers complain about scheduling problems, rudeness, and many other problems. It was a packed house at the first of three MetroAccess town halls this week. "I'm not a toy," one rider declared as she listed her concerns. Hear a fuller account of the many MetroAccess problems here.

• Are these the top 10 walkable neighborhoods in the District?

• Occupy DC keeps occupying Metro with fancy clothes, wine glasses, and funny accents. See the videos.

• What Gabe Klein is up to in Chicago.

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(Photo: flickr/dano)

Every good commute calls for a good playlist. Forget long waits for Metro trains, crowded jostling on the cars, walks that seem endless, and the bus stops to what feel like nowhere — this weekend, just sit back and enjoy the songs on your iPod or MP3 player. The right song kills all the travel stress, and in honor of that fact, TBD's On Foot blog offers you a weekly transit-themed track for your Metro playlist. The destination will come eventually, after all. In the meantime, just enjoy the ride and the music.

This week's traffic jam: "The Metro Song" by Caroline, Bill, and Bob, based on "I've Been Everywhere" by Geoff Mack and adapted for Hank Snow with U.S. place names. Recording by David O'Brien, Nomad Recording Studio (2011)

Hear more songs for your commuting playlist here.

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(Photo: Etsy/subwaycufflinks)

One of my TBD colleagues compiled a list of wonderfully D.C.-centric items from Etsy and I feel the readers of On Foot need to aware of what's billed as "Washington DC Metro 1973 Subway Token Earrings." Have you seen these? They're fantastic for any transit fans out there and cost just under $20.

The holiday season is coming up, D.C., and I recommend you seek these out immediately. I like the look, although I'm a little confused about the date. Metro officially opened in 1976, but these "subway tokens" are dated 1973. Were these tokens used for Metrobus? I've begun to get especially interested in old WMATA history and would love to dive into some good books on the time. Here, for instance, are some marvelous photos from the March 1976 opening of the first Metro line from Rhode Island Ave to Farragut North that I found myself eyeing the other day.  In any case, these earrings seem like a fun gift. Transportation lends itself to many cute little gifts, from toy trains to a porcelain Metro cup from the WMATA store to these earrings. Men, if you're not feeling the earrings, consider these 1982 Metro cufflinks or this student-focused pair from the '90s.

Here's how the Etsy user subwaycufflinks, who is responsible for many other transit-related products, describes the earrings:

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George Washington and WMATA's leader. (Photo: John Hendel)

Forget fancy ribbon-cuttings. WMATA officially wins the award for most entertaining press conference so far this fall. I briefly dropped by Metro's Farragut Crossing unveiling that happened today at noon. Details of the free transfer between the Farragut stations, which has been years in the planning and is also known as a "virtual tunnel," are here. But here's what you need to know about what happened earlier — Metro officials, Councilmember Muriel Bowser, Greater Greater Washington's David Alpert, and others did indeed come to the Farragut West Metro station at noon today ... and they were surrounded by multiple enormous mascots.

Mascots! (Photo: John Hendel)

Yes, giant mascots, representing our local sports teams and George Washington University. When I first arrived, they were hopping around the sidewalk outside the 17th Street entrance to Farragut West. Occasionally they posed for pictures, occasionally they would mock-harass passersby, occasionally they would sprint forward just for the hell of it. My personal favorite is the giant George Washington, all decked out in blue and white and bearing a passing resemblance to Sarles. These mascots, their oversized plastic heads bobbing above the fray, joined all the officials in front of the gray Metro station walls during their announcement about how wonderful the Farragut Crossing, which lets riders leave either of the Farragut Metro stations and walk to the other and pay nothing to do so (within 30 minutes), is for all D.C. commuters. WMATA had several people on hand ready to pass out information about the Crossing and had two staffers in yellow who were prepared to help any future customers learn the area. As you'd expect, there was a lot of thanking, a lot of talk about how many years had gone into this idea, and a lot of hope for how WMATA would continue to innovate using technology.

"Our best ideas come from our customers," Metro General Manager Sarles told the gathered crowd, "and the Farragut Crossing is certainly one of those."

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Free transfers begin at noon today. (Photo: flickr/mat_the_w)

Today marks the opening of what's called the "Farragut Crossing," which is really no more complicated than the ability to walk from the Farragut West Metro station to the Farragut North Metro station without paying extra money to exit and reenter the Metro system. The two stations are less than a tenth of a mile apart — about two blocks in total — but serve entirely different Metro lines (Farragut North serves Red, Farragut West serves Orange and Blue). What WMATA is introducing makes sense, although I'm not sure how much time it'll really save to walk between stations rather than just change to Red at Metro Center. At least Metro Center will be less crowded, which is likely the ultimate goal. You may have heard about this initiative under its initial name of "the virtual tunnel," which riders immediately reacted against.

And have you heard WMATA's holding a launch event at Farragut West today at noon? No worries if you haven't. The only mention I've seen of the event is an @WMATA tweet from yesterday and as of mid-morning, an e-mail notice announcing that Councilmember and Metro Board Member Muriel Bowser, DDOT directorTerry Bellamy, Metro General Manager and Chief Executive Officer Richard Sarles, and Riders’ Advisory Council member (and Greater Greater Washington founder) David Alpert will be there at 17th and I. Your event invitation in 140 characters:

What a nice, public gesture to celebrate the new feature, right? WMATA will release a press release on the opening a little later today, I imagine, with choice quotes about the convenience of Farragut Crossing and maybe even a sweet photo from the lunchtime gathering.

Seeing the invitation, I began to compare and contrast how the District Department of Transportation rolls out its new features with how WMATA does and the overall differences between the different (and often overlapping) groups of commuters the city and the transit agency deal with throughout a given year.

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Careful, commuters. (Photo: NBC Chicago)

Gabe Klein once represented a new vision of transportation for Washington, D.C. He saw the promise of bikesharing, the Circulator, streetcars, the idea of carsharing fostered by his own experience in the industry, and a way to grow the city's transit in smart, decisive ways. The District's former mayor Adrian Fenty had appointed Klein as the District Department of Transportation director a couple years back and he hit the ground running.

But Fenty was defeated in his reelection campaign, and Klein left the position as transportation chief late last year. Now he's joined Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Chicago as the head of the Windy City's Department of Transportation. Among his many activities is, this week,  the unveiling of 32 pedestrian-safety dummies throughout the city, one for each of the pedestrian lives lost in Chicago in 2010. He emphasizes how vulnerable pedestrian lives are in our overall transportation system.

"We want to remind people when you're behind the wheel that these are real people and real lives," Klein told local news broadcasters.

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We are the 1%. (Photo: YouTube/fallspring)

A few weeks back, Occupy DC proposed occupying our Metro trains as part of a mock 1% protest where they dress up in fancy clothes, monocles, and talk in accents to parody the notion of what upper-crust living must be like. Fun, right?

Videos have begun emerging of what these WMATA-riding elites are like down there underground on the Metro platforms and on the trains. The Post's Katie Rogers showcased the initial 1% Occupy Metro video on October 7, shortly after the Occupy DC protesters first proposed descending into the masses of transit. But this week a second video emerged, showing protesters in different but just as outlandish costumes and accents. A particularly long-haired and distinctive man appears to lead the elites through Metro in both videos. Even if these videos are from the same initial 1% march — which I doubt because the long-haired man has a beard in one video and no beard in this new one — they're worth seeing if you haven't set your eyes on them yet. In both clips, they carry an iPad announcing that they represent the 1%. Have you seen these aristocrats parading through the Metro system?

In the words of Occupy DC: "Jeeves! Stop the car."

Here's the first video of the 1%  Metro parody:

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Rosslyn after the suicide attempt. (Photo: Andrew Beaujon)

Metro's board is reviewing how the transit agency handles disaster this morning. Specifically, they're looking at how WMATA reacted to the suicide attempt from that 39-year-old man from McLean, Virginia, who died a week after descending onto the rail tracks at Clarendon and being struck by a train. Not surprisingly, WMATA reports that the greatest degree of fear surrounded the Rosslyn Metro station, where west-bound trains were being offloaded. The rush-hour frenzy created the packed, confused scene shown in the following video. The transit agency had to suddenly reroute buses in order to get shuttles running throughout northern Virginia, were single-tracking, and people were stuck in the system for a long time during these days. The Post presents a nice WMATA timeline of how the reaction unfolded.

How should WMATA have reacted?

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A DCA jet roars above cyclists four decades ago. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The District's skies are alive with the buzz of aircraft. In a city full of the wealthy and powerful, the travel-crazy, the military, and the dignified, planes and helicopters constantly move across the skyways far above our heads. How many times have we been in the midst of a conversation while walking through D.C. and found ourselves having to pause due to a jet roaring over us? It's happened to me more than a few times as aircraft races to the Pentagon, to Reagan National Airport, to Dulles, and elsewhere.

And the frustration over plane noise is nothing new — in 1969, an article in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists even advocated closing DCA and instituting rapid transit to connect D.C. residents with the Dulles airport.

The May 1969 article, aptly entitled "Environmental Noise Pollution: A New Threat to Sanity," blasts the ongoing problem of noise from cars and airplanes, trucks and motorcycles. Anti-noise laws had begun developing through the 1960s, such as in California where vehicles were limited to 86 decibels in 1967. "The future of our cities depends in no small measure on how successful we are in reducing traffic noise and congestion," The Bulletin boldly declares. Well, D.C., it's 42 years later. Have we succeeded?

But what really bothers the author of the piece is all the noise from airplanes. In 1969, there were, he reports, close to 1,200 jet airliners and around 100,000 private planes. The FAA had struggled to establish "noise control procedures at some airports" but couldn't quite figure out how to quiet most of them down. One such procedure affected the D.C. National Airport, at which the FAA required planes to fly 1,500 feet above the ground in order to alleviate all the noise. But as the Bulletin notes, this method simply "spread the noise around to other communities." "Central Washington is still bombarded by the constant roar of jets, and communities such as Georgetown are now directly under the flight path," the author laments. "Why should residents of Georgetown be subjected to this noise while congressmen on Capitol Hill [where no planes can fly over] are protected from this din?"

In 1969, here was the answer: "Close Washington National Airport." The article points that Dulles is rarely used because it's just too far. What do we need? High-speed rail service! Apparently the Silver Line was anticipated before Metro even opened its lines. If people could easily get to Dulles, the piece reasons, then there's no need to deal with all the roaring jets that bothered Washington, D.C. back in the halcyon days of 1969.

Oh, what a dream. Read the screed against our nation's terrible noise pollution here:

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Vehicles at WMATA's front door on Monday. (Photo: John Hendel)

On Monday night, MetroAccess vans lined 5th Street NW in front of WMATA's Jackson Graham headquarters in Chinatown. You've seen the vans all over the District — the long white vans with the big MetroAccess signs, part of a fleet comprising 600 vehicles. Dozens of people with disabilities had arrived on this dark, chilly evening for the first of three town halls to determine whether MetroAccess will continue to contract with MV Transportation, the California-based company that helps Metro transport the two-and-a-half million people in the D.C. metro region who rely on the service every year, beyond 2013. The paratransit service has grown enormously over the half decade and it costs more than $100 million to run every year. Yet no one seems happy with MetroAccess. The service is barraged with complaints from passengers, drivers, and others — and especially against MV Transportation, the contractor that's controlled the service since 2005 and is expected to continue as its contractor through June of 2013.

"They really don't know who they're playing with," one middle-aged woman told WMATA's Accessibility Advisory Committee Monday night in a packed room, wheelchairs and canes visible everywhere. "I'm not a toy. If they're kept on as contractors I will own Metro. Believe it ... I'm a gravely ill woman and I have had enough."

Perhaps a hundred people filled the modest WMATA room in what was called a "listening session," where each MetroAccess rider had two minutes to speak about their experiences. One after another listed off their problems with the service — the rides are never on time, the GPS system malfunctions, the fare system is confusing, bad equipment in the vehicles, the dispatchers are rude and don't know the area, and more. WMATA reports more a daily MetroAccess ridership of more than 7,000 as of last June, and the sheer size was apparent in the crowd. By my count, more than 35 speakers voiced their experiences, and of all those, despite multiple expressions of gratitude that such a service exists at all, only one speaker said she was happy with the service. These MetroAccess riders, some who talked of being cancer survivors and deeply struggling people, offered emotional testaments on the failures of MV. In light of these emotions, how has MV Transportation continue to be contracted for MetroAccess services?

"It's kind of fun to beat up on the paratransit provider," Patrick Sheehan, the head of the Accessibility Advisory Committee, told me today when considering whether MV deserved all the ire. "I think MV's doing a good job. I think there are things they could be doing better ... The overall growth of the system has just been phenomenal."

Sheehan is right, and MetroAccess's rapid expansion has absolutely had an effect on how MV delivers and how everyone interprets their service. But even despite this, the devastating reactions to MV suggest a failure of communication throughout the system. The perception issue affects drivers as well as passengers. A union of MetroAccess bus drivers protested the long 13-hour shifts MV forces them to work earlier this fall, marching in front of the Hyattsville MetroAccess headquarters. "What happens if, God forbid, there's a fatality?" union president Wayne Baker told me when I joined the protesting drivers on August 29.

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(Photo: BenBella Books)

Politcos, a new book will be hitting the shelves December 6 — Turn This Car Around: The Roadmap to Restoring America.

The author of this 288-page tome is former Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich, one of the few Republicans elected to high office in our neighbor state. He took the wheel in Maryland from 2003 to 2007 and now releases the following piece of writing that, according to its product description, "urges the American public to make a real change and address (with him) the issues of union strangleholds, Obamacare, a failed stimulus package, soaring energy costs and high unemployment, the race-card, the Living Wage war, bipartisanship and other heated topics." Sounds positively dramatic, no?

But I'm less interested in the content of the book and more drawn to the title. "Turn this car around," Ehrlich advises on the cover his book. He wants to provide with a "roadmap" for America's restoration. Now, I point to this language not because it's anything so unusual. These metaphors of transportation fill all our language. But what struck me as I considered the former governor's book title is how many of these titles unconsciously revolve around the automobile, that vehicle that so many transit-oriented folks want to steer us away from. How did our culture cruise to this point of so many casual car references? In part the reason goes back to what D.C. director of planning Harriet Tregoning alluded to when at Rail~Volution she brought up the billions in advertising the car industry purchases. Such advertising, kicked into high gear over the course of the 20th century, affects the frames with which we see our world. As a conservative, Ehrlich also evokes a broader tapestry of political battles surrounding transportation by tapping car metaphors for his title. As I've talked about before, certain Republicans such as GOP House leader Eric Cantor are less than enthused about the notion of public support for Capital Bikeshare and other transit-oriented, pedestrian-oriented projects. Will we ever hit the brakes when it comes to this car-central culture? Ehrlich's book title presupposes the idea of America itself as a car ... and it's hardly the first instance. It was Jack Kerouac who famously wrote, "Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?"

Beyond advertising, however, the dominant mode of a culture's transportation creates these omnipresent metaphors naturally. A hundred years ago, metaphors revolved around the saddle and trains. Where do you think "hold your horses" came from? That psychological power speaks both to how intimate and serious our transportation modes are to our everyday lives as well as raises the question of how it influences our thinking far beyond our commutes. Who knows what language we'll embrace in the future, though. The future is an open road.

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A true transportation obstacle. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Halloween is coming now in just under a week. Do you have your costume ready?

The October 31 holiday is a time of ghouls and fears and, perhaps above all, zombies. I thought Halloween would provide an appropriate occasion to remind you of some government advice. Our U.S. government recognizes the threat that a zombie attack poses and officially enshrined this concern on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's website earlier this year. "The rise of zombies in pop culture has given credence to the idea that a zombie apocalypse could happen," the CDC states. "The proliferation of this idea has led many people to wonder 'How do I prepare for a zombie apocalypse?'"

Exactly right, CDC. How do we do so? Envision the National Mall covered in staggering decaying zombies, their lifeless corpses lurching up through Chinatown and Dupont Circle and U Street. Even the White House and Pentagon could be threatened if zombies were to arise from their graves.

So as Halloween 2011 comes upon us, let's turn to the CDC's advice. They share tidbits on how you should have a stock of food, water, and other emergency supplies. Most importantly from a transportation perspective: "Once you’ve made your emergency kit, you should sit down with your family and come up with an emergency plan. This includes where you would go and who you would call if zombies started appearing outside your door step." The District has already endured both an earthquake and hurricane in recent months. We don't want to be caught off guard by another major problem like the undead. Such an attack would create innumerable problems on the Metro, on our roads, and amid our bike lanes and sidewalks. As the CDC encourages, your household should very well develop an emergency plan on where to meet one another so you don't get trapped in transit chaos — just in case.

The government wants you to do this, D.C. Get on it ... Halloween is coming soon.

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Is Georgetown a walker's heaven and Deanwood a walker's hell? They are according to a new tool that ranks all cities' neighborhoods in terms of edginess, residential, burbiness (i.e., how many chain businesses dominate the blocks), and other dimensions — including that holy grail of pedestrian friendliness known as "walkability."

Less than two weeks ago, Mapquest released a beta version of this tool, known as mqVibe.  Some buzz accompanied its arrival, but I haven't seen anyone dive into the District's neighborhood rankings and I couldn't resist taking a look. First reaction — wow, these are all D.C. neighborhoods? Many of the names are familiar but more than a couple eluded easy recognition. Still, the results are fascinating and fit with much of what I've observed in D.C. I focused specifically on walkability and have included the 10 most pedestrian-friendly D.C. neighborhoods in the gallery above as well as listed the 13 worst ones, all of which received a score of 0 in Walkability, below the jump. I also include each neighborhood's "vibe score," a composite assessment of all its different traits.

How accurate do you find mqVibes' walkability ratings? As much as some make sense, it's hard to see how Columbia Heights can rank in the top-10 most walkable while Petworth — like a half mile north — holds a measly walkability score of 5.1. I'm guessing the heavy retail of 14th Street bumped up Columbia Heights' position, but that's still quite a difference for places so close. MqVibe defines walkability as "a guide to how easy it is to access common daily amenities in the neighborhood without needing to drive anywhere or drive very far to a single spot" but fails to elaborate on exactly how it calculated the score. The Denver-based Mapquest says it's mapping upwards of 50,000 neighborhoods across the U.S. in real time.

Other metrics have also attempted to calculate cities' walkability. I first looked at Walkscore back in August, which gives cities overall walkability rankings as well as broke it down within the city (and showed how far you could get on foot). Introducing mqVibe is a smart move for Mapquest, which initially dominated the world of online maps after its Internet launched in 1996 ... only to be eclipsed by the rise of Google Maps. MqVibe offers flair and data for people to look at, and each neighborhood listing includes the major businesses and sites to see. Could this compete with Yelp? With Google Maps in any way? I expect the rankings will get a bit more attention once MqVibe releases its iPhone app later this year. These types of neighborhood rankings really lend themselves to mobile technology.

See the 10 most walkable neighborhoods above and check out the 13 worst neighborhoods, all of which received a score of 0 but ranked in ascending order of vibe scores, right here:

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Metro reimagined as a grand mixer. (Photo: D.C. Metro Connection)

One idea from the four-day national transportation conference Rail~Volution, which came to Washington, D.C. last week, is that public transit commuters need to find 21st-century ways to  get to know others who ride along their commutes. Why? To cultivate a pride and connection among people who share the experience every day on a bus or Metro line.

"We spend $20 billion advertising cars every year," said Harriet Tregoning, the director of the District's Office of Planning. People develop pride and take a sense of ownership in their cars and in their bikes. How can public transit compete?

At Rail~Volution, Tregoning suggested the idea of using social media to bring together people who ride the same bus routes. People need to break past the mental hurdle and sense of drear that, for some, accompanies the notion of taking the public bus, especially when it's convenient to do so. She and her husband dress up in formal wear for embassy events and don't hesitate to hop on the bus fully outfitted. The mode of travel just makes the most sense for the couple, but a stigma about riding the bus persists, according to Tregoning, and these tools of social media can "make all the difference" in convincing people to ride. Design a social network or social media vehicle to bring together these riders who sit alongside one another day after day. Why remain strangers if there's no need? Tregoning laughed and suggested the idea of T-shirts.

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One of the many District parks NPS oversees. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Cordiality filled the air of the Old Council Chambers when I arrived at 1:25 p.m. last Saturday for the National Park Service town hall organized by D.C. Congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. A welcome table full of literature sat outside the doors with multiple staff members. A man even ushered me into the chambers, pointing me toward available seats. At the front of the room were multiple posters promoting NPS activities, all colorful and bright. We received sheets with contact information for the many different officials, who sat facing the audience in a long table in the center of the room. Unlike my visit to the Old Council Chambers two days earlier for the D.C. Taxicab Commission meeting, on Saturday a large group had gathered to hear from NPS officials and voice their concerns — and for a first-ever NPS town hall, I thought the dialogue was a fantastic opportunity that did not go to waste.

"I hear on occasion that we’re difficult to work with," said Bob Vogel, NPS superintendent for the National Mall and memorial parks, "and I apologize for that,"

Vogel's conciliatory tone dominated Saturday's NPS town hall. NPS officials exuded keen awareness of how people have perceived them in the past. NPS is a critically important organization for anyone in the region interested in transportation, real estate, and big community events. The NPS manages more than 350 properties and more than 6,877 acres throughout the D.C. area, where 20% of land is park land. But as I pointed out on Friday, the national organization has angered everyone from bicyclists to evangelists. Norton was right to help organize such a discussion, and park officials showed extreme willingness to talk about what concerned the audience, which included multiple ANC commissioners, questions about pedicabs, about the end of Tourmobile, and about the complications people face when they want to hold community events or do anything on NPS land.

This engaged audience was most definitely not afraid to discuss past problems with the NPS. After a half dozen NPS officials offered introductory words, Norton opened the discussion to questions. "Who's gonna be first?" she asked. Multiple hands shot up into the air before even five seconds passed by.

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(Photo: Facebook/Accountability for MTA Police)

In case you hadn't seen last week, the Metro Transit Police officers who pushed the wheelchair-bound newspaper vendor Dwight Harris to the ground last May received no civil rights charges from the U.S. Department of Justice. Video of the incident spread all across the Internet and provided little comfort about the tenderness of Metro Transit Police. Amalgamated Local 689 received some of their first and most troubled questions about the incident in late June when they held their first public town hall. A Facebook group emerged demanding accountability and "Justice for Dwight Harris," which accumulated a couple hundred followers. The encounter between Harris and the MTPD reportedly involved malt liquor and resulted in being slammed down onto sidewalk grate near the U Street Metro station. 

Here's the video that caused so much concern:

Even Gawker noticed the news that these officers would not be charged over the weekend. Here's their unhappy reaction:

While the feds conducted their investigation, the cops were placed on administrative duty with pay. Now that they're off the hook, they'll be put back on the street. To serve and protect! To throw and to slam! Disabled D.C. residents should probably move to Takoma Park.

Is this what we want our transit police known for in national media? It's a shame. The Department of Justice investigation, according it an official statement, consisted of "reviewing all of the evidence, including training records, video evidence and medical reports, as well as independently conducting extensive witness interviews."

And what's unfortunate (depending on how you look at it) is the timing — WMATA is holding three town halls to discuss the treatment of the D.C. metro region's people with disabilities this week, starting tonight at the Jackson Graham Building. The big issue here is MV, the contractor who provides the MetroAccess paratransit service for about two and a half million people in the region. The first town hall begins tonight at 6:30 p.m. at Metro's Jackson Graham headquarters in Chinatown. See more details here. MV Transportation's contract with WMATA runs through June of 2013, and as you might recall, MV has inspired some serious anger this year among MetroAccess drivers. Can the news about how Dwight Harris was handled — and how his handling was handled — really help anything? Even if the Department of Justice acted correctly, the perception here is that Transit Police are more brutal than they should be and are officially permitted to act that way.

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(Photo: Ben Schumin)

Welcome to you weekend, D.C. Are you attending the National Park Service town hall today? You should! What else are you doing on this Saturday afternoon? Community engagement is important, and as this past week showed, good transit planning counts for a lot. We'll need it 50 years from now.

Let's review the biggest transportation stories of the past week here at On Foot:

• The 39-year-old man who jumped in front of a Metro train at Clarendon died this week. How can transit agencies better plan to deter impulsive rail suicides like this? They're as old as Anna Karenina.

• For that matter, how can our government better plan against our crumbling, structurally deficient bridges? DDOT's trying but still, there's a lot. Here's the 10 busiest ones.

• Let's plan better bike safety — here, see what one group is hoping to do with their Revolights, LED bike night lights attached directly to the bicycle tires. The creators are finalizing designs now and they'll potentially be on the market next year ...  the flashy and cool way to bike safely.

• "I find it so 20th-century to talk about drivers versus Metro riders versus bicycle riders." Right on, Harriet Tregoning. What will D.C. transit look like in 10 or 20 years? Maybe this.

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(Photo: flickr/dano)

Every good commute calls for a good playlist. Forget long waits for Metro trains, crowded jostling on the cars, walks that seem endless, and the bus stops to what feel like nowhere — this weekend, just sit back and enjoy the songs on your iPod or MP3 player. The right song kills all the travel stress, and in honor of that fact, TBD's On Foot blog offers you a weekly transit-themed track for your Metro playlist. The destination will come eventually, after all. In the meantime, just enjoy the ride and the music.

This week's traffic jam: "Midnight Train to Georgia" by Gladys Knight & the Pips (1973)

Hear more songs for your commuting playlist here.

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