Faab recently posted a story about one less car in Virginia and how Paul  made the choice to sell the family’s second car which echos the bike manufacture Trek‘s message of biking any trip under 2 miles with their 1 world 2 wheels program. They hope to increase the number of trips taken in the U.S. by bike from the current 1% to 5% by 2017.

When we look at other reasons why people have two cars, a common reason is to ferry their children back and forward to school.  20%  to 25&%  of morning rush hour traffic is attributable to parents driving their children to school. We should be looking at is how to create safe routes to our schools, especially for those living within two miles of their school where bike trains or creating a walking school bus is possible. This would also reduce our reliance on the need for the 1700 school buses in Fairfax county which is facing painful choices on how to cut it’s budget.

You can add value to the card at either a fare machine at a Metro station or using the fare box on a Metrobus. I am assuming that you can also add money to you card using the fareboxes on the regional buses that accept SmarTrip.

WMATA believes that the future of Greater Washington’s transportation rests on priority bus corridors throughout the region, like the MetroExtra (#79) bus from Silver Spring to downtown DC. With Metrorail running out of capacity by 2030 and serious core expansion costing billions, Metro sees rapid buses as the best chance for a real capacity boost.

This has been adopted in many countries include the UK where I grew up, and if the DC area can move away from a car focused transport policy, then rapid bus lanes might actually become a reality.

The trouble stems from leasing arrangements made years ago between transit agencies and lenders in which the banks bought transit equipment and facilities, such as railcars and stations, and leased them back to the agencies.

The transit agencies got much-needed cash, and the banks got tax benefits. In 2003, the tax benefits from those kinds of transactions were prohibited by the IRS.

AIG served as the insurer of many of those deals. The collapse of AIG downgraded its credit rating, allowing the lenders to demand full payment from the transit agencies if the agencies did not quickly find other insurers.

The Washington Post says the Washington Metro needs to pay back 43 Million.

In Metro’s case, the regional transit agency could face up to $400 million in payments, the system’s chief financial officer, Carol Kissal, said in an interview yesterday. One bank, KBC Group of Belgium, has told Metro that it needs to pay $43 million by next week. Metro officials confirmed the details but declined to name the bank.

This is a sad time when public transit is at a all time high.

For the first time in its history, Metro has figured out how late its buses are. They are off schedule more than 25 percent of the time, and some of the worst performing routes are late more than 50 percent of the time.

At least they know where the problems are

Other measures include coordination with regional transportation departments to set aside more dedicated bus lanes and traffic signal technology to help get buses through traffic, he said. There is a dedicated bus lane for the heavily used 70 and 79 routes from Silver Spring to downtown D.C., but other vehicles are often double-parked in the lane, he said.

Enforcing and ticketing cars parked in bus stops and bus lanes is a must to make Public Transportation work. I would also be in favor of reducing the number of bus stop on busy streets. They should should also look at how large the area for bus stops are. I frequently see buses loading and unloading from the main traffic lane instead of pulling into a bus stop.

This weekend, Metro will undertake a major track rehabilitation project on the Blue and Yellow lines that will heavily impact service between the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Braddock Road Metrorail stations. The stations will remain open, but the track between them will be closed, so customers using the Blue and Yellow lines should add 30 minutes into their travel plans to allow to transfer to a shuttle bus to get through the affected area.

A Metrobus crashed into an apartment building in Alexandria last night, rolling away while the driver was outside the vehicle trying to manually close its malfunctioning doors.

The transit agency is testing several different styles of overhead handles in rail cars to give riders something to hold onto for extra balance and comfort.

I haven’t tried them out in person, but some of the Fairfax Connector buses have spring-loaded stainless steel handles, which I have found to be next to useless on the buses, you need something solid to brace your self on as a bus swings round corners. So hopefully the straps will work out better.

After using the new 6000 cars I dislike that they have removed a number of polls that go from the floor to the ceiling, they are my favorite brace point for when you have to strand. it also always a natural hand grab for all heights.

Picked up from Greater Greater Washington