Tag: D.C.

Saving the DC Metro

The DC area rapid transit rail system (called ‘the Metro’) is facing something of a budget crisis this year.  They need to close about a $180 million budget gap for the next fiscal year; the gap itself has many causes but a major one is the reduced travel due to the recession.  Last week, the interim GM of WMATA (the agency in charge of Metro) presented a solution to the problem that features widespread fare increases but minimal service cuts.  I don’t want to go into specifics because other sources have done a great job at analyzing the various options open to Metro but I do want to comment on how open people have been to fare increases.

The worry seems to be the similar for many who speak up against service reductions in place of fare increases; to reduce service to a level such that metro does not fulfill almost all of people’s transportation needs would in fact destroy the entire system.  Many people (including myself) depend on Metro as a main source of transportation.  For many it is not simply a supplementary method but something that is a requirement of normal living and to curtail it would be to breach a certain trust.  People have modeled their lives around the persistence of a robust Metro, therefore limiting that system would also limit their ability to live normal lives.

People are willing to pay a lot to keep Metro healthy because it is, in many ways, a primary method of transportation for much of DC.  I find it unlikely that this aversion in service cuts would take place in many metropolitan areas in the US outside of New York.  Unlike most rail systems in the US, Metro is far more than a commuter system; rather, it is a legitimate transportation system by itself.  Just as with highways, once this is the case it is very difficult to take such a system away from people.

And we have a winner…I guess

So, I have been in DC for a few months and after a good amount of research (both on the webs and in person) I feel confident that I know the best place for espresso (and more specifically a cappuccino).  If you want something good, go to Perigrine Espresso near eastern market; trust me.  After several samples of both their cappuccino and that of their only real competitor Chinatown Coffee Co. (along with a bunch of other places around the area that simply don’t stack up) it became rather obvious that they are the best around.  However, I have to say that they still don’t match Bradbury’s in Madison, WI; now maybe if they start serving crepes….. (though there is a crepe cart at eastern market, so a start)

Oh and a side note, Eastern market is a pretty sweet place to be; I want to live there.  Now if only I made that sort of money…

And we will miss you Nick Cho!  Seriously.  When you get all those taxes payed please come back and save DC from its (good) coffee drought.  Maybe open something up in Takoma Park too.

Silver Spring – a pedestrian’s nightmare

Last week I visited the Washington DC area for the first time.  I might have some more comments about my experience in the future but I want to start out with some comments about Silver Spring, MD.  I will be living near downtown Silver Spring, so I wanted to get a feel for the area.  In recent years, Silver Spring has undergone an urban revival of sorts.  Before this time, the area was a typical (somewhat rundown) suburb of DC but a large amount of residential and commercial development along with its access to the DC subway system has made it a very walkable area on paper.  There are a number of grocery stores, shops, cafes, restaurants (though most of these are of a chain variety), so that one doesn’t really need a car in order to live in this area.  Again, on paper, this seems like a very happy place for a pedestrian.

However, when one gets down into the streets it becomes obvious that this city is still controlled by the car.  Several wide and busy streets (highways really) bisect the downtown area bringing with them a ton of through traffic.  At cross walks, this means that a pedestrian must wait for an extremely long time to cross most streets; preference is obviously given to traffic flow along these corridors.  There also seems to be very little thought (or enforcement) of coherent and contiguous sidewalks.  You will be walking along a sidewalk (The east side of Eastern Ave. in front of the Blair’s apartment complex comes to mind) and the sidewalk will simply end for no reason.  I can’t for the life of me understand why this is acceptable.  This trend gets even worse in other locations; there were many instances where a sidewalk only exists on one side of the street and the ‘sidewalked’ side will change as the street progresses.  This means that one has to continually cross a typically busy road simply to walk down the street.  In another instance a sidewalk would degenerate into a curbless extension of a small parking lot, so that there was nothing between pedestrians (squeezing next to parked cars) and traffic than a small line on the pavement.  That sucks.

Update about my real life

The last few months have been quite hectic, so I haven’t really updated this much.  There are a few coffee shop reviews that I have yet to write up, but those should be coming soon.  Also, I’m moving to the Washington D.C area by the end of summer where I’ll be starting in the philosophy PhD program at the University of Maryland.  So, the entire admissions process is over for me and I’m quite happy with how it turned out in the end.  However, the waiting process was probably the most stressful period in my life and I’m very glad for it to be over with!  I’ll probably post more about my experiences later; I did learn a few things as I went through this admissions cycle and perhaps it may be of some (limited) help to others.  And maybe I’ll have some thoughts about philosophy eventually…who knows.