(Photo: flickr/mat_the_w)

Have you observed Farragut West Metro station's glowing spheres when you emerge onto the street lately? They're art! WMATA released a video Q&A with artist Michael Enn Sirvet about his inspiration and the materials used to craft the unearthly LED display. "Currently, I am producing sculptural art forms in metals, hardwoods and various other materials," the artist explains on his website, "and, in addition, capturing their still and moving images in interesting and complimentary settings."

At the very least, his latest creation provides a little more illumination for the District's commuters. Our transit may occasionally reek of fish and lack consistently functioning escalators, but let's not forget we have art and poetry at some of our stations, right? I had noticed the sight in the last few weeks and been curious. Are you a fan?

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(Photo: flickr/ep_jhu)

Call it the Summer of the Crunched Commuter. As if commuting wasn't depressing enough on its own, transportation costs have climbed across multiple forms in recent weeks here in Washington, D.C. Transportation is, quite simply, more expensive, which is unfortunate considering we're already living in a pricey city and scrabbling our way out of recession-era finances. Let's quickly review how our commute prices are rising as we move into mid-April.

Cabs? You knew this price hike was coming. It's up to $2.16 per mile from $1.50, among other changes, and will kick in on April 21.

Metro or bus lines? God knows that fare hike's been a long, painful way coming. The Metro Board will formally decide on the nature of the hike in less than two weeks and the higher prices will crush us beginning on July 1 ... to the tune of more than $150,000 additional rider dollars a day for the transit agency. Will that mean more escalators will work? Cross your fingers.

And then there's cars.

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(Photo: NPS)

Pedicabs, expect your freedom on the National Mall to disappear soon.

The National Park Service has, after months of deliberation, come forth with its proposed rules and regulations for how pedicab operators must operate on the National Mall. Up until now, no specific rules have dictated the life of a National Mall pedicabber despite citations, arrests, and alleged harassment from U.S. Park Police over the last couple years. The new NPS rules propose specific routes for pedicabs around the Mall as well as specific stops that operators must adhere to. Operators must, according to new rules, "negotiate all fares prior to departing on your trip" and feature a sign saying as much on their vehicles.

Pedicabs will not, under these rules, be allowed on National Mall sidewalks or be allowed to park in parking meter zones, residential permit parking zones, valet parking zones, bus zones, taxicab zones, and sightseeing zones. Passengers need to be seated and wear seatbelts. Operators, get a battery-operated head lamp now if you don't have one already. Oh, and make sure you have a government-issued photo ID, too, because you'll need one. And turn lights. And reflectors for your wheel spokes. And reflective tape for the sides of your pedicab and "a triangle shaped Slow Moving Vehicle (SMV) emblem." And operators will ostensibly need to carry a copy of these Commercial Use Authorization rules with them at all times.

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(Photo: DDOT)

Last night District government officials attempted to hold a quarterly update meeting on the progress with the first proposed line of the D.C. streetcar network, a 2.5-mile stretch from Benning Road down along H Street to Union Station. This debut line, we've learned, will be called "One City," reflecting Mayor Vince Gray's branding for the District. The mayor has committed $237.3 million in capital funding to the project over the next six years. But did anyone really want to hear from these officials?

No. By all accounts, residents from Ward 5 and beyond were not remotely happy or prepared to listen to the presentation about car barns or why Spingarn High School was chosen as a car barn site out of nine options or how more Capital Bikeshare stations will apparently be coming to H Street despite concerns. The car barn, officials explained, is vital for a launch in late summer or early fall 2013 and is intended as a 3-streetcar facility of about 15,000 square feet. "The District envisions a state-of-the-art training center, where DCPS students will be trained to join a dynamic and growing industry," the presentation notes. The next quarterly update meeting will be in early summer. Will that one feature less jeering?

Here's how the reaction played out online:

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(Photo: Jay Westcott)

WMATA wants to raise its fares to help close a budget shortfall in its 2013 operating budget of $1.576 billion. But here's the thing. The fare hikes, however they ultimately manifest, are expected to kick in on July 1 ... and WMATA will need to implement these fare hikes fast or will risk losing close to $5 million a month (an equally depressing outlook, from the rider perspective, is that once Metro passes these fare hikes, we'll begin losing an additional $5 million ourselves — eesh).

Metro will have 66 days from the board decision on fare hikes (April 26) to the moment higher fares begin (July 1). Historically, WMATA has allowed 90 days to pass between decisions and the implementation of fare hikes. Once Metro finalizes how it's hiking fares, it needs to change a lot throughout its 86 stations and along its 106 miles of track, and it has just over nine weeks to accomplish those tasks.

How's it happening? WMATA has a rough timetable for how it'll speed through the process.

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(Photo: DDOT)

This week, the District Department of Transportation released copies of its design criteria and standard drawings, which amount to hundreds of pages from January about how the proposed 37-mile, eight-line streetcar network will run. These documents provide a great peek into how city officials are imagining the network, the first line of which is supposed to open on H Street next year, but one big question remained as I looked through the pages — how the hell are these big clunky streetcars and their obtrusive tracks going to coincide with D.C.'s bike commuting population?

The H Street tracks (placed alongside multiple Capital Bikeshare stations) have already caused bicyclist accidents here in D.C. My conclusions after looking through all these documents, among others, is that while DDOT remains very aware of the concern, there's hardly any sort of silver bullet that'll fix the conflict between these two modes of transportation. Multi-modal is all fun and games until the modes start crashing into one another.

What of bike lanes? Many suggest those may solve the problem. Simply allow bicyclists to ride apart from the hard tracks, and transportation life will be easier for all. Except that idea of bike lane safety is not quite borne out by the critical documents that DDOT is basing its plans on.

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(Photo: flickr/elvertbarnes)

The right Metro train operator can make or break your morning commute. Why do all the best ones seem to land on the Orange Line?

"This particular WMATA Orange Line train operator enunciates perfectly and puts a charming accent on the second syllable of the word 'station,'" writes Paulo Ordoveza, who uploaded the video below earlier this week.

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(Photo: Courtesy of WMATA)

WMATA really wants its riders to understand Rush+, a rush-hour train realignment scheduled to start June 18, 2012. To that end, the transit agency has decked out 12 Metro railcars entirely with Rush+ advertisements.

You see all the Rush+ signs in that car above? Ads run alongside the car above the windows. It receives placement at the end of the car across from the map. WMATA is even including some Rush+ promotional spots on the ceilings of their cars to ensure there's nowhere you can look without getting reminded of the new train service to come, which promises "more frequent train service at 21 stations" that benefits 110,000 riders on the Blue, Yellow, Orange, and Green lines.

Here's what the ceiling spots look like:

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Workers prepare for the Silver Line. (Photo: WMATA)

Begin picturing the new Virginia Metro stations: Greensboro, Spring Hill, McLean.... Get used to the names.

Fairfax County has approved eight station names for the proposed Silver Line, a 23-mile stretch of Metro that will connect Dulles with Tysons, after public surveys and much discussion. Recall that survey? 16,231 people responded, according to a report. Here's the eight new station names along with their locations:

• McLean (1824 Dolley Madison Boulevard)

• Tysons Corner (1943 Chain Bridge Road)

• Greensboro (8305 Leesburg Pike)

• Spring Hill (1576 Spring Hill Road)

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(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

During today's morning rush hour, between 8 and 9 a.m., a train at Columbia Heights was offloaded. Was it thanks to door problems? An irritated train operator? Some other mechanical failure? Riders didn't know at the time and described losing valuable minutes of commute time on platforms that looked extraordinarily crowded.

But then the usual reaction happened. People documented the platform hordes with photos on their cell phones and by 8:45 a.m., the scene hit Prince of Petworth with the headline "Massive Metro Mess." And would anyone seeing the crowd photos deny it? The blog's comments suggest the offloading didn't create any major long-term issues, however. A commenter at 8:57 a.m. notes that the Columbia Heights Metro was now fine, "problem was fixed." Others reiterated Twitter rumblings that it was a door issue, that a rider blocked it. One commenter noted that another train was scheduled to come within two minutes of the offloading. "I got there around 8:45 and everything was absolutely fine," another wrote. "This doesn’t seem like a massive mess to me at all." At the U Street station, another reader remarked "the personnel at the station actually did a fairly good job of informing us of what was happening."

No one likes a train offload or any delay — whether 3 minutes or 30 — but I'd point to this as another case study in the power of these photographs. WMATA chief spokesperson Dan Stessel reiterated a point made in recent weeks and told me, "This is what an offload looks like." You see the chaos but you don't see the resolution 15 or 30 minutes later. WMATA confirmed that a door problem caused the offload. "I was there," Stessel, a resident of Columbia Heights, told me this morning and added that the offload was "not reflective of a major system disruption." He said two trains arrived back-to-back after the offload to help clear the crowd and said the delay amounted to seven minutes. Was that your experience this morning? His description seems to fit with the Prince of Petworth comments about how the offload was managed.

Meanwhile, here's how riders reacted on Twitter during the offload — and the photos that create such a stir:

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(Photo: flickr/SLOCountyBicycleCoalition)

Have you followed the bike news in the last week, D.C.? Spring has sprung for the District's bicyclists, with three major marks of biking progress.

First off, D.C. was selected as one of six U.S. cities (out of 42 applicants) to participate in Bikes Belong's Green Lanes Project — these cities, the 400-member bike industry organization hopes, "will become national leaders in creating comfortable spaces for people on bikes over the next two years," as it announced on April 3. The Green Lanes Project focuses on how to make biking easier in cities by making riders more comfortable. Bike commuting scares some people. The idea of biking amid car traffic and countless pedestrians is absolutely an obstacle for some who consider the option, and Green Lanes refer to bikeways "protected from motor vehicles by curbs, planters, posts, or parked cars." These insulated urban paths are also called cycletracks. The District Department of Transportation already has plans to install two on L and M streets NW later this year.

Bikes Belong will spend the next month or so coordinating with officials from its six chosen cities and hold a kickoff ceremony in Chicago in late May. Then will come "resources and technical assistance" to help create safe spaces for bicyclists. In D.C., where bicyclists have attempted to legislate over concerns about aggressive drivers, such a space may prove vital to cultivating cycling.

Second, WMATA has stayed just as busy.

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(Photo: WMATA)

Metro will begin its new reshuffling of train service known as Rush+ on June 18, 2012, and new signs will be coming soon.

WMATA released the new Metro map (with new station names, updated logos, and more) around the middle of last month. Metro's sell — "Rush+ will improve service for nearly 110,000 customers on the Green, Yellow, Blue, and Orange lines. Twenty-one stations will get more frequent service with six additional trains every hour of rush hour." But as Metro General Manager Richard Sarles explained last week, the agency will need to alert people to the changes over the next two months.

Now WMATA is looking at how to update more than 2,600 signs and more than 5,000 maps at its 86 stations and has released an RFP due Wednesday on how to create these Rush+ signs. The RFP states that Metro wants "135 hang-ready, site-specific vinyl on aluminum way-finding signs for Metrorail Rush Plus" for the first few of the stations: Largo Town Center, Morgan Boulevard, Gallery Place, Ronald Reagon Washington International Airport, Archives Navy, Fort Totten, and NoMa-Gallaudet. Get excited because we'll likely start seeing these soon enough. Metro wants the signs for these seven stations delivered between May 17 and June 7.

Perhaps what's most fun about this RFP are the design documents that show how WMATA is approaching the new signs. We affirm, for instance, that WMATA has settled on Helvetica for the Metro line letters. The transit agency also will change the directions of its Rush+ sign stripes depending on whether it's a horizontal sign (which will have vertical stripes) or vertical one (which will have horizontal).

Some stations will, according to RFP designs, feature a "Rush Only" stripe on their pylons to show which receive certain lines during rush hour:

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(Photo: John Hendel)

On March 13, transit unions from around the country gathered at Farragut Square to proclaim transit a human right and declare allegiance with the Occupy Wall Street movement. Prominent at the rally was Jackie Jeter, president of WMATA's ATU 689. Among their messages was a proclamation that April 4, 2012 would be Occupy National Day of Action for Public Transportation. This rally, they said then, was just the start in a call for more transportation funding.

Well, April 4 was last week. Did anything happen?

ATU's national office released the following video of rallies that happened in cities around the country, including Boston, Las Vegas, Denver, Seattle, Pittsburgh, and New Jersey. Here's a glimpse of what happened set to stirring music:

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No brains, all fines. (Photo: MPD)

The D.C. Metropolitan Police Department has a new word for distracted driving — brainless.

Our city's police and transportation department have come together to feature the above cautionary announcement and ask drivers to "shut the cell up." The timing fits well into U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's declaration that April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month. "The traffic safety community has a simple message for drivers: One Text or Call could Wreck it All," LaHood wrote recently. "DOT has worked hard for several years to end the deadly epidemic of distracted driving." The danger is real. One avid texter I know forget these warnings and, in mid-text at the wheel, found herself bumping into the car in front of her and creating a mess that LaHood would condemn.

The California Office of Traffic Safety continues the brainless branding with its own distinctive new Don't Be a Zombie PSA, which LaHood endorses as "terrific":

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(Photo: John Hendel)

Cars are so last century, right? The U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the Frontier Group have released a new report called "Transportation and the New Generation" that says basically that. One bit of good news, they say, is that people are riding the light rail and taking the subway more than ever — a trend bound to increase as more American cities invest in transit and create robust, reliable light rail and subway systems. Take heart, streetcar enthusiasts. See the graph below, with data from the Bureau of Transportation statistics, for proof of the trend.

"Between 2001 and 2009 the annual number of passenger miles per
capita traveled by 16 to 34-year-olds on public transit increased by 40%," the report says.

But equally fascinating is the way young drivers have stopped, apparently, caring about cars and the way they've begun driving less over the last decade. People take fewer trips and shorter trips than they did in the past. We may be able to attribute some of the recent trend, I'd strongly argue, to the recession. How easy is it for younger people to buy automobiles today? How do all these record-high gas prices influence drivers' decisions when they take to the road? Those are enormous factors, too.

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(Photo: DDOT)

D.C. has chosen Oregon Iron Works, Inc., headquartered in Clackamas, Oregon, to build the District's fourth and fifth streetcars intended for use on the debut 2.5-mile H Street/Benning Road streetcar line. This H Street line will be the first of eight proposed lines stretching 37 miles across D.C. and has been expected to open in mid-2013, a date the mayor, the District Department of Transportation, and others have attempted to stick to. But despite rejoicing yesterday, D.C. hasn't written a formal contract with the manufacturer.

"We really need to get that contract," said Chandra Brown, vice president of Oregon Iron Works when asked about a possible timeline. "I don't have a Notice to Proceed yet. The [D.C.] Council has to approve it."

How long will building two streetcars take? Until Oregon Iron Works has a formal contract, the company couldn't even begin to guess.

In yesterday's announcement, DDOT curiously avoids saying "mid-2013." DDOT says the H Street streetcar line will be "beginning in 2013" in contrast to phrases we once saw. Like this one, from last August: "to open no later than mid 2013." DDOT explains that the "proposed Cooperative Purchase Agreement sent to the Council utilizes an existing contract for streetcar vehicles between Oregon Iron Works and the city of Portland, Oregon" and on Twitter, DDOT adds that the $8.7 million proposed contract requires delivery within 545 days of a Notice to Proceed but that the agency will try to expedite the delivery. As DCist explains, this agreement cleverly sidesteps the mess that botched the contract from months ago (the Czech company that made the first three streetcars wanted to bid on the second two). Recall that contentious D.C. Council hearing from February? Councilmembers feared the streetcar would open with its three existing cars rather than the full five the city hoped to feature. Without five cars, the streetcars first customers would find themselves waiting at least 18 minutes, DDOT Director Terry Bellamy said then.

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A Costco station in California. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Costco, one of the world's 10 biggest retailers, plans to build Montgomery County's busiest gas station ever in Wheaton, Maryland, but not all residents are happy about having such an enormous fueling station so close to their homes. The 16-pump mega-station is expected to open in the Westfield Mall in early 2013 if Costco receives approval. The gas station, to give some perspective, is expected to handle 12 million gallons of gasoline a year, four times larger than a typical large station that serves about three and a half million gallons a year. Gas station dangers have not, a John Hopkins public health professor tells the Kensington Heights Civic Association, been "well studied" but there's cause to investigate.

"One of the signature compounds of concern is benzene a known human carcinogen," writes Professor Patrick N. Breysse in a March 5 letter. "A few studies have documented increased benzene and other compounds in the air around homes close to service stations. For example, a 2007 study in Greece concluded that gas stations are a significant contributor to the total benzene exposures and that this exposure increases leukemia risk from 3-21%. A more recent study in Spain found that elevated volatile pollutants (hexane and benzene) were detectable up to 75 m from service stations."

"Carcinogen" is a buzzword in any community, and that factor combined with the environment impact of such a busy location has residents worried. The station, which will be at the rear of the mall, will allow for dozens of idling cars across eight lanes and, as the neighborhood association notes, is a mere couple hundred feet from homes, a school, and (God forbid) tennis courts. "Gas stations can still pose significant hazards to neighbors, especially children," Scientific American observed in 2009. "Some of the perils include ground-level ozone caused in part by gasoline fumes, groundwater hazards from petroleum products leaking into the ground." Heavy traffic has been shown, according to a 2007 study, to affect how children breathe. Also of concern is the California Air Resources Board's recommendation to place gas stations at least 300 feet from "new sensitive land" and the professor's remark:

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(Photo: John Hendel)

Although I normally avoid pitting one mode of transportation against another (a la "bikes vs. cars"), the onset of streetcar tracks in D.C. may, I'd suggest, create a real obstacle for the city's growing bicycling population. The Washington Area Bicyclist Association has observed the challenges of biking alongside the metal tracks in the past, and I've talked to bicyclists who encountered difficulty in navigating the tracks laid for the first 2.5-mile H Street/Benning Road streetcar line set to open next year.

This week, Reddit user JayBeas shares an account of the danger — "The grooves in the tracks are just wide enough to eat your bike tire," he writes ominously. Read his tale here: 

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(Photo: Courtesy of Daniel Blackwell)

"Did he get tased?" asks pedicab operator Daniel Blackwell standing alongside the road in front of the Natural History Museum on Sunday afternoon, March 25, as a crowd gathers to stare at one of his fallen colleagues. "Did anyone see if he got tased? Did they slam him on the ground? Was he resisting arrest or anything?"

Two Park Police officers bend down to look at another groaning black-haired pedicab operator, his face against the grass and lying on his stomach on the National Mall. They talk into their radio. On the street is a little green pedicab, abandoned. One officer fastens handcuffs on the young man, a manager at National Pedicabs.

This pedicab operator calls himself Oskar Mosco and is the same one who was arrested last fall and formed the D.C. Pedicab Operators' Association to advocate for operators amid the evolving regulations and allegations of harassment that have come up in the last year. He was last arrested in November but the case was dismissed earlier this year. The National Park Service controls the pedicab territory of the National Mall, and Park Police enforce the rules. Yet the NPS is still developing its formal pedicab regulations, which will apparently mirror those the District Department of Transportation released last year. The Park Police note that D.C. traffic regulations apply, however, and regularly write tickets to the region's pedicabbers.

"You all right, man?" a Park Police officer asks Mosco. After moments of semi-conscious writhing, the operator has begun to sit up. "It was very clear. You disobeyed every order I gave you and then you resisted arrest."

Mosco attempts to ask what orders he disobeyed.

"We are no longer discussing this," the Park Police officer tells him. "You are under arrest."

The two officers pull Mosco to his feet and escort him to a police car, in which a second pedicab operator sits, as Mosco shouts that he was arrested for videotaping the police. "You should not get arrested for videotaping a police officer!" Mosco yelled to onlookers in front of the Natural History Museum. "This is a free country, not a police state!"

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(Photo: flickr/deborahfitchett)

Did you think D.C. government had forgotten? Dismissed the idea due to warm weather?

Nope. Get ready now, D.C., because the District Department of Transportation recently announced via their social media channels that Potholepalooza, a month-long pothole-killing event first held in 2009 and responsible for filling about 6,000 potholes that year alone, will return on the tentative date of April 17. Last year the city filled more than 5,000, with as many as 585 filled in a single day. Normally the event is already well underway, lasting from mid-March to mid-April, but the mild weather of the last 12 months has resulted in fewer potholes and a late start.

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