I thought I would post a short note commemorating two anniversaries, one significant to the nation and the other the city of Washington. Forty years ago today Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. That event sparked civic disturbances in over 100 cities including Washington, D.C. This map, published in the book […]
Obama: Congestion Pricing ‘Thoughtful’ and ‘Innovative’
In an exclusive interview with a New York television station, Senator Barack Obama described congestion pricing as a thoughtful and innovative approach to the problem of congestion. In the interview he described it as a way to reduce congestion, reduce pollution, and invest in infrastructure and mass transit. With an April 7th deadline approaching, New […]
A Better Solar Power
Huge amounts of American electricity is generated by polluting coal-fired power generating plants. Electric cars and solar cells on private homes are nice, but what technology exists to replace these antiquated workhorses of the electrical grid? The answer may lie in a new technology that’s already generating power for 380,000 homes in California and sparking […]
Metro’s Underperforming Stations
The Washington, D.C. Metrorail system is a massive investment in regional infrastructure. It’s construction and maintenance requires billions dollars of tax money, but few would question it’s importance to the region. It has shaped growth and kept hundreds of thousands of cars off the road daily, improving the quality of our air and city. Although […]
Is PostPoints Worth It?
The Washington Post company recently launched a rewards program called PostPoints. The launch included strange television ads featuring people exchanging anthropomorphized blue point chips for things like pizza. I recently signed up to see how the program worked and whether I too could get some free pizza out of it. Since I am not a […]
Taking the Train in Dallas
Before very recently, I knew very little about Dallas, Texas. That changed for two reasons. First, it’s the location of the site used for this year’s Urban Land Institute Hines Student Urban Design Competition. I was a member of a team at the University of Maryland that submitted an entry, creating a land use and […]
Calling for a New Eisenhower
In the 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower championed a program to construct a nationwide network of highways to connect the nation. As a young soldier he had personally experienced the poor condition of American roads, and had seen first-hand on German autobahns how important a system of modern roads was for national defense purposes. The […]