Transportation roundup

1. The Commuter Page Blog and Steve Eldridge's column in the Examiner ("FlexCar, ZipCar offer area an alternative to owning") report that Flexcar has a special promotion this month--one year free membership, a $35 value.

Check out their webpage for more details. Offer expires 1/31/2007.

2. Speaking of WMATA getting a handle on costs, overtime costs are sky-high. As mentioned in this blog entry, "What do we do about funding our transit system? (Updated)," part of the problem is that pension benefits are based on wages including overtime, so workers are encouraged to game the system and they do. See this article, "Metro seeking answers to overtime problem," from the Examiner for more.

3. The Virginia Republicans propose transportation funding by borrowing rather than increasing taxes. Is it better to tax and spend or spend and borrow? Too soon to see how this develops.

4. Governor O'Malley commits to "smart" growth, which was repudiated to a large extent by Gov. Ehrlich. (When top political executives change, they tend to ascribe particular political initiatives to "the party" and "ideology," which is unfortunate.) See this AP story,"O'Malley to revive Smart Growth: Glendening initiative returns to favor under incoming administration."

From the article:

"O'Malley plans to revive the Office of Smart Growth, and he will create an office to plan for military growth, spokesman Rick Abbruzzese said. O'Malley also plans to look into more mass transit, including the possible extension of Washington's subway system to Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. 'It's important that the state play a role with local jurisdictions in planning for growth,' Abbruzzese said."

Still, my take is a little different. I mean, it's good for regional transportation to extend the green line to BWI. Is it smart growth? I guess so, compared to the alternative of building out there without it. But in the context of focusing on compact development and the utilization of extant infrastructure, it's not where transit investments should be directed, at least right now.

5. The Post writes that WMATA safety is better than its peers, in the article "How Safe Is Your Ride?" subtitled "Metrorail Holds Its Own Against Other Systems." But that misses the point. At least the WMATA system is well managed, but an aging system will have an increased number of problems unless we continue to invest in maintenance of the system. WMATA planners raised this as an issue more than 10 years ago. Click here for a Post graphic comparing safety records among transit systems.

6. Check out the comments on this blog entry, "How do we encourage people to use different forms of transport?." People are writing great stuff.

Index Keywords: transportation