American Dream

washingtonpost.com
Not Measuring Up to Expectations
Wheaton Homes' 2-Car Garages a Tight Squeeze

By Miranda S. Spivack
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 20, 2005; B01

Quotes:

Residents of The Brownstones, a new townhouse development in Wheaton, were eager to be pioneers in the long-planned revival of the community. Their half-million-dollar homes were just steps from the Metro and the bustle of Georgia Avenue.

But as they unpacked, some made a surprising discovery: Many of the two-car garages of the 75 townhouses, promised in sales materials and described in documents filed with the county by builder EYA, were a very tight squeeze. Two cars will fit, but only if the drivers don't mind getting in and out of their vehicles through doors that barely open. Forget about trying to unload groceries or strapping a child into a car seat.

"When we pulled into the garage, we immediately realized we had a problem," said Diane Gubernot, a government scientist who with her partner, Linda Amendt, paid more than $600,000 for a four-story townhouse on Cobble Hill Terrace.

As Amendt, Gubernot and several of their neighbors found, just because a builder and the county say it's a two-car garage doesn't make it so. And Montgomery County's zoning code for Wheaton, aimed at discouraging cars, allows 17-foot-wide garages.

Which, they are, give or take an inch. But that isn't wide enough for many residents, who have told county officials that the garages are too small for two cars.

"It's really a 1 1/2-car garage," said Byron Derringer, president of the homeowners association. The builder's covenants for the homeowners association also require that homeowners keep trash and recycling cans indoors except on collection day, further crowding the garages.

County officials say that EYA met all the legal requirements for the townhouses it built. And that, some residents believe, is the problem: allowing a builder to present a 17-foot-wide garage as suitable for two cars.

They say the garages are an example of the complexities buyers encounter as they navigate the maze of regulations for new-home construction in rapidly developing Montgomery. After weeks of trying to obtain information from county officials and interpret multiple documents and site plans, residents of The Brownstones are still seeking to understand what they actually bought.

The issues in Wheaton involve two county agencies already under scrutiny for their roles in another troubled residential development: the Department of Permitting Services, which reports to County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D), and the county's Department of Planning, a quasi-independent agency that answers to the County Council.

When homeowners examined DPS files, they found that permitting and sales documents promised a garage width of 17 feet 1 inch.

Amendt, Gubernot and several neighbors took measurements, which showed that the usable width in many of the garages is about 16 feet 11 inches because of a two-inch-wide PVC pipe that runs along a wall in many of the garages. Yet even if the usable space in the garage had been 17 feet 1 inch, parking their Subaru Outback and BMW coupe inside is practically impossible for
Amendt and Gubernot. With the doors open, the vehicles have a combined wingspan of almost 20 feet, the width DPS informally recommends to builders for two-car garages.

The company's sales literature refers to "two-car garages" and shows them at 17 feet 1 inch, which they are, wall to wall. Letters to the Department of Planning written by the builder's attorney refer to "two-car garages."

"We build hundreds of these types of units around the D.C area. I can count on my left hand the number of complaints we have had about parking and maneuverability," he said. "There are a number of people who believe the trade-offs of higher density and more urban design justify the slight inconvenience of difficulty in maneuvering to have a location so close to Metro," he said.

The residents unearthed another area of concern as they examined architectural plans and other documents: The usable space in the alley behind their homes is narrower than that shown on builder plans. According to documents, the alley is 26 feet wide -- which it is. But Gubernot measured the navigable width as 19 feet 9 inches, because concrete bumps between each house jut into the alley. That tightens the turning radius.

Amendt, Gubernot, Derringer and others in the neighborhood say their goal is simple: They would like the county's help in finding alternative parking.

But as the residents boned up on the county's parking regulations, they realized they were still in a bind.

On nearby Amherst Avenue, the county recently reinstalled two-hour parking meters. On the opposite side of Amherst, residential parking permits are needed.

Residents of The Brownstones don't qualify because they are on the wrong side of Amherst, Derringer said.

On Friday, the residents received a letter from Duncan, encouraging them to consider paying for parking spaces in a nearby county-owned garage.

As for Gubernot, she's contemplating giving up a car.

"You should know," she said last week, "I went out and bought a moped."

It fits in the garage.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[Comments: This site is indeed near the Wheaton stop on the WMATA Red Line (heavy rail). But it is also indeed in Montgomery County, a jurisdiction that is profoundly suburban - not urban, and that means that transit station or no transit station, the residents are highly likely to want to own one motor vehicle per adult. And county efforts to chip away at auto ownership by not providing enough parking simply is doomed to failure - I know - I reside in a Montgomery County community that was developed in the early 1980's with the express intent of getting home purchasers to take transit buses to the rail station at Silver Spring - which most of my neighbors, for various reasons, did not do and do not do. And even if one or both adults do take transit, they are likely to want or to need two cars for non-commute trips.

And, there's the old, old line about densities and transit, which is especially relevant to Montgomery County - "densities don't ride transit."

See also Peter Samuel's take on this story at his excellent TOLLROADSnews Web site - Smartgrowthists fraud - 2 cars in 17ft garages.]

Aug. 19–25, 2005
Driver’s Education
by Dave Jamieson

Quotes:

How seriously did Richard Lafontant take local law when it came to stealing cars? He once walked out of a court hearing for auto-theft charges and hopped into a stolen minivan.

The Maryland couple thought they’d found a steal. The Honda Odyssey minivan they’d seen advertised in the Baltimore Sun classifieds was in fantastic shape. It was just 3 years old, fully loaded by soccer-mom standards, with relatively low mileage and hardly a scratch on it. The Blue Book would have valued the family ride at around $20,000, but the guy was asking only $12,500. And the price was negotiable, to boot.

The deal seemed so good that the couple probably would have been more suspicious if the seller hadn’t been so charming. He called himself Peter James, and he did them the courtesy of bringing the van out for a test drive near the Fort McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore. “He was chitchatting for a half-hour while we looked at it,” recalls the husband, who asked that he and his wife not be named. “He was very nice, very professional.” James seemed harmless enough, an affable, graying businessman in his 60s. He wore a nice suit. He said he’d just come from a game at Camden Yards, where his wife worked with the Orioles’ corporate office as a consultant. For any question the couple asked about the van, he had a quick answer.

The van performed perfectly well on the test drive, but James tried to sweeten the deal anyway: If the couple would pay him in cash, as his accountant recommended, James would be willing to knock the price down to $10,500.

They said they’d take it.

The wife worked in a bank, and she knew to be careful when handing over a pile of cash to a stranger. She had asked to see James’ license, which he produced for her, and she even had him sign his name on a piece of paper so she could make sure it was a match.

On May 9, 2004, her husband took a few thousand dollars out of his account and pooled the remainder of the 10 grand from his brother and father. At his Baltimore County home, he handed James the money in exchange for a District of Columbia auto title, a notarized bill of sale, and a fresh set of keys to the van. Both parties satisfied, the husband offered to give James a lift to the nearby Bennigan’s, where James said he was meeting his family.

But once her husband and James were on the road, the wife noticed something amiss with the title. When she held it up to the light, she saw that a name appeared to be whited out. On top of the white patch was the name Peter James.

She called her husband on his cell phone to tell him it was a scam, to tell him not to let James out of his sight. But her husband had left his phone at home and never got the message. Within minutes, Peter James was gone, and so was their $10,500. When they called the police, the cops told them what they had suspected: that the van had been stolen. It had been reported missing a week earlier, in Northwest Washington.

Peter James wasn’t who he claimed to be. In reality, he was Manuel Lopez, a then-64-year-old legitimate-businessman-turned-con-man from the District, who had probably met up with the Baltimore County couple only because they sounded Indian. Lopez had been reselling stolen cars to non-natives for months.

But as good a salesman as he was, Lopez merely served as someone else’s lackey. He was one of several pawns used in a sophisticated car-theft scheme allegedly orchestrated by Richard Lafontant, a 36-year-old D.C. native who’s now being held in jail in Maryland.

Through a scam that was part larceny, part document fraud, and part play-acting, Lafontant allegedly managed to lift roughly $300,000 worth of late-model sedans, SUVs, and minivans off Washington-area streets and resell them to unsuspecting auto shoppers. The scam bore many touches of criminal innovation, perhaps the most impressive of which was Lafontant’s apparent ability to pluck vehicles off the street without marring their windows or doors. The cars he allegedly stole showed none of the typical signs of auto theft, and they were in perfectly good condition for resale.

Lafontant was arrested at least three times on auto-theft-related charges over the course of two years, and each time, either the charges were dropped or he was given a suspended jail sentence and set free. The D.C.-area courts treated Lafontant’s transgressions as if they were isolated thefts rather than part of a widespread and lucrative scheme that stretched from western Virginia to Baltimore. In the end, he allegedly bilkedmostly working-class families—almost all of them born outside the United States—out of over $120,000 in cash.

“There were three or four levels of fiction to go through,” says Sean Bryson, a former Arlington County detective who worked the case. And yet for all its technical savvy and con artistry, Lafontant’s scheme ultimately relied on a basic fact of life in ethnically diverse Washington: that many immigrants are willing to pay for their necessities—even those as expensive as cars—with cash.

Around D.C. these days, car theft is handled a lot like public drunkenness. Cops haul the perp in, book him, and then have no choice but to set him loose. Because of the sheer volume of cases, charges are more likely dropped or reduced than pursued with zeal.

Lafontant had spread his scam across such a wide swath that no single county felt particularly stung. Arlington and Maryland’s Montgomery County each saw a handful of cases, nothing that amounted to an epidemic or warranted any serious resources. Still, it was the kind of phenomenon that would excite any engaged cop who was detailed to the often-mundane world of auto theft.

By November 2003, cops in auto units around the region had started working together in an informal Lafontant task force. The group included officers from D.C., Arlington, Montgomery County, the Virginia DMV, and the FBI. They got together whenever they could to brainstorm.

To see if Lafontant had dropped out of the car-theft game, members of the task force decided to tail him. Bryson and his partner, Detective Wayne Vincent, started following him on May 28, 2004, outside the Prince George’s County Courthouse in Upper Marlboro, Md., according to court documents. Lafontant had shown up for sentencing on grand-theft charges. He had received what by now was something of a trademark sentence—10 years, all suspended, as in Virginia—and walked out of the courthouse a free man. He was now on probation in three different jurisdictions, each with its own life-altering prison term hanging over his head if he slipped up. But Lafontant had no plans to go straight. When Bryson and Vincent followed him out of Upper Marlboro, he was driving a stolen gold Mazda minivan with stolen D.C. tags.

The following morning, the surveillance team followed Lafontant as he drove the stolen minivan from his Oxon Hill, Md., apartment into the District. Just before 10 a.m., he picked someone up at a boarding house in Northwest and headed north toward Maryland. It was the guy from the sketch—Lopez. He hopped into the van with some papers and a legal pad. The pair then took the van through a car wash.

Of 22 victims allegedly defrauded by Lafontant and his cohorts, 21 of them appear to have been born outside the United States.

When he appeared in federal court in Alexandria last September, Lopez made it clear to the gallery that he’d already begun his penance. His hands trembled when he rose to speak to the judge on his own behalf, and the white Styrofoam cup of water he raised to his lips shook as if it were going to spill over onto the podium. He said that he was taking nitroglycerin for a heart condition, in addition to other medications, and that he’d been attacked by other inmates twice since he’d been jailed. Clearly out of his element, he seemed vaguely to hope that a judge might have mercy on an old man. When it came to mitigating his crimes, he merely offered the fact the he possessed a bachelor’s degree. “I’m sorry,” he said weakly, “because I don’t want to be here.”

Currently held in jail in Prince George’s County, Lafontant has bided his time and watched as prosecutors with Anne Arundel, Prince George’s, and the federal government have wrangled over his custody for the last year. When he’s through with Maryland, Lafontant will have to finish his business with the feds in Alexandria, where he was charged with conspiracy last year.

As for the compensation of his alleged victims, they’ve received either a small percentage of what they originally paid or nothing at all. And with the alleged fraudsters behind bars and penniless, the victims aren’t expecting to see any money soon. “I haven’t gotten anything back yet,” says Tavafi of her $4,000. “It’s been almost two years. And that was big money to me.” CP

Copyright © 2005 Washington Free Weekly Inc.

Railroading Dulles

By Ken Cuccinelli
Published August 19, 2005

Quotes:

Given that the price of phase one of the Dulles rail project has jumped from $1.5 billion up to $1.8 billion before turning a single spoonful of dirt, it is time to re-evaluate whether this project is worth doing at all. I have been advocating a comprehensive Northern Virginia HOT-lanes network for three years, and with the most recent price jump in Dulles rail, it seems an appropriate time to compare the two alternatives. I have challenged various supporters of the project to debate the topic. All of them, including the two leading proponents, Fairfax Board Chairman Gerry Connolly and Delegate Ken Plum, have refused, saying that as far as they are concerned, there is nothing left to debate, it's a "done deal."

A "deal?" Yes, for a lucky few political donors. "Done?" Not yet. I will debate any elected official that actually thinks Dulles rail is defensible. Sadly, I doubt any will take me up on this offer because they know that Dulles rail is a bad deal for taxpayers and commuters alike. It is really more appropriate to view the project as a huge real-estate transaction than as a transportation project.

While congestion in our region will not improve with rail to Dulles, and in some areas it will get worse, the value of real
estate owned by Chairman Connolly's big political donors and his employer (SAIC) will skyrocket between $2 and $3 billion. Those property value increases are what's driving Dulles rail forward, not common sense transportation. Virginians should know that the recent price jump of $300 million is only the first. It will be paid for overwhelmingly by Fairfax County taxpayers, since the federal contribution is limited to $750 million. That means that our share of the Dulles rail project has gone up by 40 percent, from $750 million to $1.05 billion, and no one has yet proposed how to cover the $300 million increase (hint: watch your wallet).

Unfortunately, these massive costs won't end with construction. Fairfax and Loudoun taxpayers will suffer real-estate tax increases to subsidize every single trip on Dulles rail. These massive operating costs (over $100 million annually) have not been discussed. Indeed, when the subject is raised, proponents make up incredible performance figures for Metro that have never been attained anywhere in the Metro system in its 30-year history. For example, proponents have taken to saying that fares will cover over 90 percent of the cost of operating rail to Dulles. However, barely over one-third of Metro's current budget is met by fares. Why should we think Dulles rail will do any better?

The existing Metro system is falling apart, draining transportation dollars and demanding more money, even with its massive unaddressed mismanagement problems. The environmental impact statement on the project that WMATA (Metro) helped write shows that the Metro extension will make congestion on the Dulles Toll Road worse at Tyson's Corner.

Three years ago, I was the first elected official to begin advocating high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes to reduce congestion and air pollution while opening up new mass-transit options using bus rapid transit (BRT). BRT is like a subway on wheels. Phase one of Dulles rail costs $80 million a mile versus new HOT lanes which cost about $10 million a mile. The BRT/HOT lanes approach has the potential to be the fastest and most cost-effective increase ever in both our road network and our mass transit network, without wasting taxpayers' money and in half the time of building the rail.

Variably priced tolls will help us pay for new HOT lanes, as well as reducing congestion and air pollution. When time is at a premium, commuters can choose dedicated toll lanes, freeing up space in parallel "free" lanes. With Smart Tag technology, we never even have to slow down to pay tolls. Private companies have proposed HOT lane systems for 395, 495, the Dulles Toll Road, I-66 and I-95. By adding Route 28 to this list and working with Maryland to extend HOT lanes, we can achieve a worthwhile vision for our transportation system. Now is the time to pursue it.

Ken Cuccinelli, II represents the 37th State Senatorial District in Virginia, covering Western Fairfax.

Copyright © 2005 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

washingtonpost.com
Some Summer Air Is Cleaner, EPA Says
New Pollution Controls Are Credited

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 19, 2005; A11

Quotes:

New federal pollution controls have improved the summer air breathed by 100 million Americans, according to a study released yesterday by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Under rules that took effect last year, 21 eastern states and the District of Columbia must reduce regional nitrogen oxide emissions by 1 million tons between May 1 and Sept. 30. On hot, sunny days nitrogen oxides combine with pollutants called volatile organic compounds and form ozone smog, which has been linked to asthma and premature death.

Last year, nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants and other sources dropped by half compared with 2000, according to the EPA, and ozone concentrations fell 10 percent during that same period. Other sources of nitrogen oxide emissions include oil refineries, pulp and paper mills, and cement kilns.

EPA officials said it is too early to say whether 2005 will have fewer unhealthy air days than past hot summers, but preliminary findings indicate this summer has had less smog than 2002, which had a similar number of hot, dry days.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Compromise sought on west county

Tighter subdivision controls said to be at odds with owners' rights

By A Sun Staff Writer

August 17, 2005

Quotes:

In an attempt to quell a storm of opposition, county officials will seek a compromise on their proposals to further curb development in western Howard County.

The effort, though, will be a delicate balancing act because
the principles driving the two sides are diametrically opposed.

On one hand, officials believe it would be a mistake to completely abandon the principle of tightening controls on subdivisions in the rural region of the county, while critics view the effort as, in effect, land confiscation that could cost some property owners millions of dollars.

Hoping to resolve the controversy, Marsha S. McLaughlin, director of the Department of Planning and Zoning, will assemble a
committee that will seek to frame guidelines to mollify both sides.

"We're open to better ideas," McLaughlin said. "We need to
figure out a way to preserve more land in the west while
still acknowledging the concerns of the citizens."

Before the committee begins its work, though, McLaughlin said it is essential that the county's data on land preservation be verified or modified, if necessary. Many critics have said that the county is using selective figures, and claim that the county is far closer to achieving its land preservation goals than it believes.

The key changes would:
. Restrict cluster subdivisions in the RC district to one unit per 10 acres from one unit per 4.25 acres.
. Ban the selling of density, or building rights, from one RC property to another with the same zoning.
. Reduce over three years to 150 from 250 the number of housing units permitted on RC property.

Twice this year county officials settled, at least temporarily, the debate over expansion of Maple Lawn, Maryland, the luxury, planned, mixed-use community in Fulton, by embracing the concept that their commitments must be honored.

Further, County Executive James N. Robey has said he would not support "down zoning"- imposing tighter density controls - in the west, and the county's general plan, the basic blueprint on how and where development will occur, does not advocate changing zoning in that region.

Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun

washingtonpost.com
Radar Gun Captures Controversy in D.C.
Off-Duty Officer Finds Unlikely Target in Rush Hour: A Top Police Official

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 19, 2005; B01

Quotes:

Wendell Cunningham worried about cars hitting children or elderly residents in his Southeast Washington neighborhood, so the D.C. police officer decided to hit the streets with a radar gun -- on his own time.

He ticketed away for nearly two years, and then one morning, his off-duty work led him straight back to the office -- in pursuit
of a top commander.

That was April 19. Cunningham was writing traffic tickets along a busy stretch of Branch Avenue SE near his home in Hillcrest
about 6:30 a.m. when he spotted a dark-blue car hurtling down the street. His radar gun showed it doing 46 mph in a 25-mph zone.

So he stepped into traffic and motioned for the driver to pull over. Instead of stopping, the Ford Crown Victoria swung into the other lane and passed; emergency lights began to flash from the car's grill, and a siren sounded.

Through the car's tinted windows, Cunningham recognized Assistant Chief Willie Dandridge, a department veteran who supervises patrol operations east of the Anacostia River.

Cunningham followed Dandridge to the nearby office, where Dandridge refused to turn over his identification. Cunningham reported the incident to internal affairs.

Four months later, the incident in the 2400 block of Branch Avenue SE has resulted in a 15-page internal report.

Internal affairs officials recommended that Dandridge be cited for conduct unbecoming an officer because he did not stop or turn over his identification. "Assistant Chief Dandridge conducted himself in a manner that would not be tolerated by any other member of this agency or any citizen driving by a radar checkpoint," the internal affairs report concluded.

Dandridge, 42, said in an interview that he regretted not stopping but felt it wasn't safe to do so. There was not enough
room on Branch Avenue, and two cars were already on the side of the road, he said.

On the other hand, he said: "In hindsight, I know I should have stopped. . . . I am responsible for my actions."

He is the second top commander in recent months to be cited for conduct during a traffic incident. The D.C. Office of Police Complaints, an independent city agency, found last month that Assistant Chief Brian Jordan harassed a motorist and abused his authority in 2003, when he was accused of giving the motorist a traffic citation after a brief altercation. Jordan, who supervises patrol operations in the 1st and 5th districts, has denied any wrongdoing.

A decision about discipline for Jordan has not been made. What punishment Dandridge could face has not been revealed.

Cunningham, 40, who works for the department's emergency response team, last month received a letter of prejudice in the case, a mild form of official rebuke, for not completing the proper paperwork for his radar gun.

He was also cited for not having the explicit permission of supervisors to work off duty at that spot, a requirement under department guidelines, the internal affairs report states.

Cunningham disputes the report's findings, saying that the proper radar forms were not available and that commanders knew what he was doing. He had ticketed Dandridge in that same spot a year earlier, records show. The officer has filed a grievance, saying he is being punished for helping his community.

Some neighbors said Cunningham has made a difference in the area.

"I think we need more officers like him," said Jeanus Parks, 76. "He has made his presence felt here. For an officer to extend himself like that, it's commendable."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[Click title for more]

Commentatry: I know this neighborhood pretty well - Branch Avenue, S.E. does carry an extremely heavy volume of traffic. So much for the Metrorail Green Line, which opened near here in 2001, when it comes to "reducing traffic." This street also handles a relatively high percentage of heavy commercial vehicles [trucks] (at least by D.C. standards). And much of the passing traffic (based on my observations) does not obey the speed limit; and there have been several nasty wrecks along this street in recent years.

Branch Avenue, S.E. also happens to run through one of the most-attractive neighborhoods in the District of Columbia, in spite of being "east of the [Anacostia] River." Most of the homes along this street are substantial, solid single-family two-story brick structures with center halls and neatly manicured and generously-sized yards - which would not look out of place in a fancy D.C. suburb like Chevy Chase or University Park.

Metro Learns Expensive Lesson
Updated: Thursday, Aug. 18, 2005 - 10:31 PM

By HEATHER GREENFIELD
Associated Press Writer

Quotes:

WASHINGTON (AP) - In order to stop doing business with a company it believes ripped it off, Metro will have to spend even more money, board members learned Thursday.

The board reluctantly voted to lease office space in Silver Spring, Md., to allow a new contractor for its paratransit service to set up shop in October. Metro began seeking a replacement for Logisticare after an audit revealed cab drivers and others were billing the transit agency for trips not taken.

Board member Charles Deegan balked at the approximately $225,000 annual rent.

"We're making this a real complicated thing to take a phone call and dispatch a driver. I just don't see it," Deegan said. "This operation could be run out of Pakistan quite frankly."

Metro CEO Richard White said Metro has learned from other transit systems that transition time at a high-volume call center is needed to ensure good customer service.

"These things are very difficult to move from one center to another," White said.

The new office will be in the same building as the old office. Metro said it costs $1 million to install a phone switch for this volume of calls, making other space less cost effective.

Metro has leased three floors at the Colesville Road building since 1999. Metro's customer service department uses the two other floors.

About 14,000 disabled customers use the Metro Access service. Metro provides 1.4 million paratransit trips a year at a cost of $51.4 million in this year's budget.

The city of New London, which won the infamous Supreme Court decision in Kelo vs. New London, has announced that plans to pay the owners of the homes it wants to take by eminent domain what the homes were worth in 2000 -- when it first condemned the houses. On top of that, it plans to charge all of the homeowners "back rent" for their use of the property since 2000, which in at least one case supposedly amounts to $300,000.

Bottom line: because houses (and rents) have appreciated so much since 2000, some homeowners may end up getting little or nothing for their homes. This is sure to provoke more outcries against eminent domain.

Helsinki, Finland never abandoned its extensive tram (streetcar) network in the core areas of the city - a system that dates back over 100 years. Strangely, even though Finland's mainline railroads use Russian imperial (broad) 5 foot/1524 mm gauge (a consequence of Finland having been the Grand Duchy of Finland (under the Russian crown) from 1809 to 1917), the Helsinki trams have always used narrow (1 m) gauge.

This particular tram was retired from regular revenue service some years ago, and converted into the SpåraKOFF tram. "Spår" means track in Swedish (the "other" official language in Finland), and Koff is short for Sinebrychoff, the brewery that brews Koff, and probably the biggest such company in Finland.

Helsinki's "pub tram" celebrates 10 years (Helsingen Sanomat (biggest and most-influential daily paper in Finland) English-language Web edition)

The new and improved pub tram returns: SpåraKOFF celebrates its 10th birthday(Sinebrychoff's own corporate Web site)

Who ever said that rail transit can't be fun?

Property rights vs. battling blight
Lawmakers hear proposals to keep a lid on home seizures after a key U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
By Claire Cooper -- Bee Legal Affairs Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Thursday, August 18, 2005

Quotes:

A smorgasbord of proposals for protecting California homes surfaced Wednesday as the Legislature began examining the effects of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that has shocked private property owners across the nation.

The high court ruled in June that New London, Conn., was entitled to condemn well-kept private homes and then sell the land to a private developer to improve the city's tax base.

The decision has touched off a scramble to erect new legal barriers against such land grabs from Connecticut to California.

Because California allows property to be condemned where there's an official finding of blight, witnesses at the Senate Local Government Committee hearing disagreed about the significance of the Connecticut decision. Yet there seemed to be wide support for enacting something to shore up homeowner rights here.

The question was what. Concerns were raised about protecting the legitimate powers of local agencies to guard health and safety and encourage economic growth.

"It may be my home; it may be yours," Sen. Tom McClintock, R-Thousand Oaks, said, voicing the alarm being heard from people who fear their homes have become vulnerable.

McClintock has introduced a state constitutional amendment that would halt redevelopment as it commonly has been used in revitalizing blighted cities for a half-century. The amendment has dozens of co-sponsors but also has powerful opposition.

Copyright © The Sacramento Bee

August 18, 2005
Pricing Quirk Means New Jersey's Cheapest Gas Is on Its Toll Highways
By PATRICK McGEEHAN

Quotes:

BLOOMFIELD, N.J., Aug. 17 - Glenn Fletcher hopped down from the driver's seat of his green Lincoln Navigator with a question rarely heard this summer. "Why is this gas so cheap?" he asked.

Mr. Fletcher was genuinely pleased to be paying almost $56 to fill his tank Wednesday afternoon because he recognized that the prices on the pumps on the Garden State Parkway were unusually
low. He had caught on to an anomaly that many drivers never notice: The price of gas on New Jersey's two main toll roads changes only on Fridays, usually just before the morning rush.

That rule hardly matters to most drivers, except when gas prices are exceptionally volatile, as they have been in the past week. Since Aug. 10, the average price of a gallon of regular gas in New Jersey has set a new high - unadjusted for inflation - every day, hitting $2.49 yesterday, according to AAA Mid-Atlantic.

New Jersey already has among the cheapest gas prices in the country because of its low fuel taxes. But at the eight rest areas along the Garden State Parkway, which pump Mobil gas, and the 12
that line the New Jersey Turnpike, which sell Sunoco, the price was lower still, stuck at $2.38 since Friday morning. For Mr. Fletcher, that gap amounted to a savings of more than $2.50, or 11 cents a gallon below the state average.

"I just noticed the signs and I wondered what's going on up in here in North Jersey," said Mr. Fletcher, who stopped at the Bloomfield rest area on his way home to Marlton in Burlington County. "I'm surprised the line's not backed up and causing a traffic jam."

The price is the same up and down the two toll roads, the result of the contract the New Jersey Turnpike Authority has with its fuel vendors, said Joe Orlando, a spokesman for the authority, which also runs the parkway. Those terms allow the vendors to set the price once a week, but no higher than 3 cents a gallon above the average price charged by 100 stations that are surveyed weekly. When prices are rising, drivers on the toll roads are the winners. But when prices fall, they can find themselves paying more for gas than elsewhere.

On Friday, the statewide average was $2.35 a gallon, said Tracy E. Noble, a spokeswoman for AAA Mid-Atlantic, in Hamilton, N.J. Since then, it has jumped 14 cents, or 6 percent in five days, making a fill-up on the Turnpike a bargain, she said.

"You assume when you're driving on the Parkway and the Turnpike and you have nowhere else to go, you're going to be paying higher prices," Ms. Noble said. "In the past, under normal circumstances, their prices have been higher than your average local gas station."

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

2005.08.16
TORONTO ONTARIO
407ETR wins 2/1 in arbitration on base year dispute

An arbitration panel has ruled by 2/1 in favor of 407ETR in an important dispute with the provincial government over 2002 as a base year for calculating permissible toll rates or incurring congestion penalties under the terms of its 99 year concession. The majority of the arbitration panel James Redmond, an Alberta lawyer and George Finlayson, retired from the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that based on the facts of the case and the concession contract that 2002 was properly designated the base year. Moreover they said the province had accepted 2002 as a base year, and could not reverse itself. Another arbitrator dissented, siding with the province.

The case revolved around whether the concessionaire completed extensions to the tollroad in time for designating 2002 as 'base year'.

This is one of many quarrels which the leftist provincial government of Dalton McGinty has picked with the concessionaire since coming to power some 20 months ago. They had campaigned in elections saying they would "roll back" toll increases.

The province based their case for 2002 not being a valid base year on the fact that a single off-ramp at Mavis Rd - one of 197 entries or exits - was finished later than the extensions. Lawyers for 407ETR argued that this off-ramp was not one of the extensions themselves, and pointed out that the delay was caused by the government itself. Under agreements between 407ETR and the government, the government was responsible for acquiring right of way for the ramp. Government delays in delivering right of way to the concessionaire was the cause of the late opening the ramp.

Enrique Diaz-Rato, president and CEO of 407 ETR said in a press release this evening: "We have demonstrated our compliance with the contract in another dispute initiated by the province. We are very pleased with the decision, although we would have preferred to settle the existing disputes with the province amicably, rather than through litigation."

We asked for a copy of the arbitrators' ruling but were told under the terms of dispute resolution it cannot be released unless the arbitrators' decision is appealed. The government has previously appealed the arbitrators rulings, and taken them to higher courts when it lost in the first court. A slew of disputes are in arbitration or litigation.

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2005.08.15
FLORIDA
Making the connection helps - the case of the Seminole & Vets Exwys

For many years the Seminole Expressway tollroad dead-ended 10km (6mi) short of I-4, the maindrag. Opponents said filling the gap wouldn't attract extra traffic. Motorists would continue to use the free surface roads, they claimed. Eventually opposition to completing the pike was overcome, and the final 10km of road
opened Sept 2002.

The opponents were wrong. Traffic was an average 20k/day before the completion. In 2003 it grew to 25.8k and in 2004 to 29.1k. That's almost a 50% increase in two years. Revenue at $18.3m in 2002 rose to $23.3m in 2003 and $27.4m in 2004.

The Seminole Expressway (FL417) is operated by Florida's Turnpike Enterprise (FTE) in the northwestern part of the Orlando
area. Until the final leg was built traffic proceeding north exited the tollroad at US17/92 in Sanford. The new leg has one set of ramp plazas midway, no mainline plaza. At its far southern end at the Orange county line the Seminole Exwy links with the
Central Florida Greeneway (also FL417) which is something of a belt route operated by Orlando Orange County Expressway Authority (OOCEA).

Unlike the Seminole, an FTE pike to the east of the Orlando area, the Bee Line West Expressway has seen rather little growth in traffic: 2001 18.7k, 2004 21.8k.

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Misery Loves Company
08/17/2005

It's getting harder, not easier, to go from point A to point B. That's especially so in the nation's capital. Traffic is a mess, and the Metro subway system is falling apart.

I've consistently argued that the subway system needs to make it in the marketplace. Our transportation future won't be found in subsidies. If there's no profit in an endeavor, it's not sustainable. It will forever remain a drag on taxpayers -- while constantly in disrepair and frustrating to riders.

But let's learn from Metro's troubles. The first lesson is that Congress is stupendous at doling out money, but pitiful at requiring any accountability. Virginia Congressman Tom Davis -- head of the misnamed House Committee on Government Reform -- has offered Metro $1.5 billion in federal taxpayer money. A prize for mismanagement, I guess.

But wait. We're told that Congressman Davis has strings attached to the money. "Strings" is right, because they will be broken as easily as the thinnest strand of cotton. Davis says the money is there only if Metro will hire an inspector general to supervise the system and somehow magically make it work. The usual congressional solution: create yet another level of bureaucracy.

But there's more: Davis wants a permanent source of funding (read: a new tax) funding Metro.

So, federal taxpayers get the shaft, but only if local taxpayers get the shaft, too. Misery loves company.

This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.

[From the Americans for Limited Government Web site.]

washingtonpost.com
On the Road, No Vacation From Traffic
Backups Bedevil Trips To Favored Destinations

By Steven Ginsberg
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 18, 2005; A01

Quotes:

Vacations are all about getting away from annoying stuff. For B.J. and Meredith Martino, their stuff was a daily barrage of e-mails at work, stress about day care and volunteering at church. Meredith was even happy to escape her book club.

But they couldn't quite leave it all behind. Even as all the regular stresses of life faded as they left Alexandria for the mind-altering Outer Banks, one other loomed ahead: miles and miles of traffic.

Between real life and the easy living of Nags Head lay some 275 miles of pavement, filled with fellow vacationers stuck in one giant, slow roll to freedom.

"It put everybody in a bad mood at the beginning of vacation," Meredith Martino said of the other families who shared a house, all of whom spent the day stuck in traffic. "The first night was a big ventfest to grouse about traffic stories."

Some vacation.

When do Washingtonians, who suffer through the third-worst congestion in the nation, ever get to leave traffic behind? When do they ever get a vacation from traffic?

Pretty much never.

"When people go on vacation, they're trying to get away from their day-to-day hassles," said Frank R. Moretti, director of policy and research at TRIP, a Washington-based transportation research group. "Unfortunately, congestion follows people."

The favorite getaway spots for Washingtonians happen to include six of the 10 worst vacation drives in the country, according to a survey by TRIP and other groups that came out this summer: the Williamsburg-Virginia Beach area, the Pennsylvania Dutch and Amish country, the Outer Banks, the Maryland-Delaware shore, the New Jersey shore and Cape Cod.

Travel experts said late July and August are the height of vacation season for Washingtonians. School hasn't started yet, Congress is out of session, the president is biking in Texas for five weeks, and seemingly everyone else has left the swelter of the city for a mountain peak, sandy beach or some other version of paradise.

"It's called the Washington recess because many people who earn their keep and living in Washington go away in August," said John Townsend, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic.

More than 80,000 cars head out of the area on the southbound lanes of Interstate 95 on Saturdays in July and August, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation. That's about 15,000 to 20,000 more than on an average weekday, or an off-season Saturday, and enough to fill four lanes for nearly three hours.

In North Carolina, record numbers are heading to the Outer Banks. This year, more than 2.4 million motorists have gone through the toll booth at the Chesapeake Expressway, a road at the southern edge of Virginia that leads to the Outer Banks. That's 26,000 more than last year at this time, according to the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau.

Citizens complain Parole plan is kept under wraps

By Phillip McGowan
Sun Staff

August 17, 2005

Quotes:

Over and over, Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens has heard the accusations that her administration is hiding information about the redevelopment of Parole Plaza.

The morning after 50 community activists and other citizens challenged the Anne Arundel County Council to address more of Owens' "stonewalling" regarding the $400 million project, the county executive shot back yesterday that she has had enough.

"I don't have a lot of patience for this anymore," she said.

Skeptics of one of the largest redevelopment projects in county history feel the same way about Owens' planners, accusing them Monday night of concealing pertinent details of the 35-acre project from the public.

"Attempts by citizens to get information on Parole have been next to impossible," Scott Mobley, president of the Annapolis Neck Peninsula Federation, told the council. "The administration has shrouded Parole in a cloak of secrecy."

While supporting efforts to develop the vacant site near U.S. 50, community leaders criticized the speed of the approval process for the proposed Annapolis Towne Centre at Parole, and
the perceived lack of oversight by Owens and her planning director, Joseph W. Rutter Jr., as the project has nearly doubled in size - to 2.1 million square feet of residential, retail and office space - from what was first approved 11 years ago.

The growing scale has renewed residents' worries about traffic and environmental concerns, but they said their paramount concern is a perceived unwillingness of the Owens administration to reveal unfavorable details that could derail the project.

County Councilwoman Barbara D. Samorajczyk, a Democrat who represents the Parole area, has sought answers about the amount of open space to be included, traffic congestion and design changes to the project - including a recently added retaining wall that buffers it from Route 2.

But she said she has come up empty.

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Commentatry: For those that don't know Annapolis, Maryland's geography - there was, for many years (dating back to at least the early 1960's), a huge (and rather ugly, in my opinion) open-air shipping plaza here known as Parole Plaza.

It is several miles west of the State House (Maryland's state capitol building) and the quaint, colonial part of Annapolis, and is not even within the corporate limits of Annapolis itself.

The businesses in Parole Plaza moved away in the early 1990's, and the whole thing was torn down in the late 1990's. It is surrounded by arterial roads (which carry heavy traffic - and have long carried heavy traffic), and by other businesses. U.S. 50/U.S. 301, the John Hanson Highway, a freeway, runs a short distance north of this parcel, and there is ample access.

This is a highly appropriate place for new development of some sort - and intense new development, too. I wonder if these citizens are planning on compensating the landowner if the project is scaled-down?

Cruisin' together on a Friday night

Enthusiasts: Street Survivors gather weekly in the summer to stay in tune with a shared passion of vintage automobiles.

By Chris Yakaitis
Special To The Sun

August 17, 2005

Quotes:

At 6:15 p.m. on a recent Friday, Fred Vollmerhausen blasts Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs' 1960 hit "Stay" over the Brooklyn Park Shopping Center parking lot.

As president of Street Survivors of Maryland, he's the master of ceremonies and deejay for cruise night, a gathering of vintage automobile owners from Anne Arundel County and southern Baltimore. The group gathers every Friday night throughout the summer behind the KFC on Ritchie Highway, typically drawing dozens of cars and the gaze of passing shoppers.

With a soundtrack of 1950s and '60s rock 'n' roll singles in the background, the Street Survivors, their friends and curious Brooklyn Park residents stroll through aisles of gleaming metallic cars from the '30s through the '80s. They peer into popped hoods that reveal immaculately restored engines, from their original hose lines down to every factory-issued bolt.

Vollmerhausen, 65, is as colorful as the cherry red Chevys and baby blue DeSotos that surround him. He wears a bright blue shirt with striking red and yellow flames rising from the bottom, the top three buttons left open to reveal three gold chains -- one unadorned, one with a cross and one with Elvis Presley's "TCB" logo.

It's a wardrobe perfectly in tune with an informal event that speaks to personal pride, shared passions and nostalgia for a simpler time.

For every owner present, the cars represent something more than a set of eye-catching wheels.

"They've all got their own personal value," says Vollmerhausen, the retired owner of an auto repair shop. "So I never turn around
and say, 'Man, that's a piece of junk.'"

Seated among the Stingrays, Cobras and Mustangs are proud owners in collapsible camp chairs whose conversation topics range from a coming auto show to a child's progress in school or a relative's illness. The group's official membership hovers around 80, but cruise nights are open to anyone.

The Friday gatherings typically begin in early April and run until Halloween. The official time bracket is 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., but members often linger until close to midnight. On this particular humid night, convertibles and street rods pull in through the evening while the sun sets.

Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun

For the first time, the median price of condos is greater than the median price of single-family homes. Is this due to the much-heralded movement of empty nesters to the inner cities? No, more likely it is due to speculative bubbles, particularly in regions such as San Jose, Boston, and the San Francisco Bay Area where condo construction has been driven by land shortages caused by land-use restrictions.

As I've previously noted on this blog, the population of inner cities is growing, but that growth is insignificant compared with the continued growth of the suburbs. For example, one research paper from Fannie Mae found that the downtown areas of twenty-five cities grew by about 50,000 people during the 1990s, while their suburbs grew by more than 6.8 million people. So, except where smart growth has driving up land prices, condo demand is hardly more than a tiny blip on the real-estate radar screen.

Most European cities are getting warmer. Though this is blamed on global warming, the truth is that it is due to the urban heat island effect -- i.e., the lack of cooling greenery in ciites compared with the countryside.

One city that has suffered from this less than most is Dublin. Why? Because Dublin is more sprawling that most European cities. That sprawl has increased the share of urban land greenery and kept the city cool.

Will urban sprawl prevent global warming (if there is global warming)? No. But it will keep your city cooler.

Clay Rabbit House, named after a former potter's studio that occupied it until early this year

On Southeast Division Street and 26th Avenue, the 1904 home known as the Clay Rabbit House perches over landscaped gardens, on a corner where Rapaport hopes to one day live -- in one of 27 condos he's yet to build.

According to Metro's 2040 plan, tightly clustered communities along transit lines will be the model from Gateway to Beaverton. In Portland, Metro's plan means that main streets and corridors have been rezoned for higher density and commercial uses. Eventually, Sugnet says, most single-family homes on the city's major streets will be torn down or moved away

Store’s no-brainer: tax relief
Jay Seibert, co-owner of the Clay Rabbit pottery store at 2603 S.E. Division St., said the “punitive tax structure for small businesses in this community” has prompted the retailer’s move next month to Woodland, Wash.

A City in Oregon condemns farmland as urban growth boundary squeezes options.

Advocates battle to save Comsat

[From the Damascus, Maryland edition of the Gazette]

by Susan Singer-Bart
Staff Writer
Aug. 17, 2005

Quotes:

Efforts are being made on several fronts to save the Comsat building in Clarksburg, whether they will succeed is very much an open question.

One group filed a lawsuit to get the building declared historic, another met with county councilmen to ask for their help and a third has gone to the Maryland Historic Trust.

World-renowned architects, architectural historians and the Clarksburg community hope they can persuade the Planning Board to reconsider its July decision to not recommend historic status for the building or convince the County Council to consider the building's case without a Planning Board recommendation.

"Our concern is that this is an extremely significant site in the county and one of the most compelling recommendations we've had in years," said Julia O'Malley, chairwoman of the county Historic Preservation Commission. "It would be a loss not to have that icon that shows off the I-270 corridor so well."

The building, at the northern entrance to Montgomery County, signals the county's preeminence to the world, she said.

"It represents Montgomery County as an undisputed leader in the high technology industry nationwide," O'Malley said.

The county's Historic Preservation Commission determined in May that Comsat, which opened in 1969, was historically significant not only because of the early satellite work done there, but also because it was an early design work by Cesar Pelli, a master architect.

The building meets six of nine criteria for designation, according to the commission. It has character; exemplifies a cultural, economic, social and political heritage of the county; is distinctive in characteristic type; represents the work of a master; possesses high artistic value and presents a familiar visual feature of the county.

The Planning Board sided with the building's owner, Berwyn, Pa.-based LCOR, which argued against historic designation saying the building is too new and historic designation would be an economic hardship.

LCOR bought the Comsat property in 1997 for $45.5 million and wants to demolish the building and build a mix of townhouses, apartments, retail and offices on the 230-acre campus.

The Historic Preservation Commission said additions to the building and non-important sections of the building can be removed and the building's interior can be remodeled for other uses. Planning staff thinks the campus can be developed without demolishing the building. Pelli has offered to redesign the building free of charge.

"He's one of the top 10 architects in the world and [the Planning Board] didn't even discuss he was offering pro bono services to redesign it," O'Malley said.

Those who want to save the building fear the Planning Board decision was influenced by a letter County Executive Douglas Duncan sent to the board in May saying historic designation would stand in the way of technology development in the I-270 corridor.

Late last month O'Malley and other historic preservation commissioners met with County Council President Thomas E. Perez (D-Dist. 5) of Takoma Park and Council Vice President George L. Leventhal (D-At large) of Takoma Park to ask the council to consider the Comsat nomination.

The council has the final say in preservation matters but the Planning Board is not required to forward recommendations to the council. Planning Board Chairman Derick Berlage told O'Malley he was not forwarding the recommendation unless the council asked for it.

"The most important point is the county looks to this and really seriously recognizes what it would be losing by not designating [the building historic]," O'Malley said. "It's such a significant site for the county, we feel it's important for the council to look at it."

Price of Md. farmland is sixth in U.S.

Rapidly rising values seen as threat to future of agriculture in state

By Ted Shelsby
Sun Staff

August 15, 2005

Quotes:

Dairy cows and other livestock in Maryland graze on the sixth-most-expensive farmland in the country, according to a survey released last week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Fueled by the red-hot market for development, the average price of an acre of Maryland farmland, including farm buildings, is up nearly 38.6 percent from last year, to $7,900 an acre.

That increase compares with a rise of 11 percent for farmland in the contiguous 48 states - the biggest gain in nearly a quarter of a century.

"It's a scary situation," said state Agriculture Secretary Lewis R. Riley. "It is a major threat to the future of farming in the state."

As Riley was quick to point out, "these prices are for land that stays in farming. If a farmer sells his land for development, the
prices they get are incredible."

The USDA survey on land values was based on farmland being sold as farmland. "In Maryland, that is becoming increasingly hard to find," said Jeanne McCarthy-Kersey, deputy director of the USDA's statistics service for Maryland.

When the land stays in farming, she said, it is often the case of "a millionaire buying a farm on the Eastern Shore and building an estate. He doesn't want to be a farmer, but he wants cornfields around the property to create a buffer, so he rents the property to farm neighbors looking to expand.

"This way he can sit on his porch and look out on the
cornfields."

In neighboring Delaware, farmland value jumped 40 percent this year to $8,400 an acre. Rhode Island leads the nation with farmland selling for $11,200 an acre, followed by Connecticut at $10,800 and Massachusetts at $10,300.

The agriculture secretary said the trend also threatens the ability of the state and the counties to acquire property for agricultural land preservation, a program that seeks to maintain the open space and the picturesque landscapes that add to the quality of life.

"We have $50 million for ag-land preservation this year," he said. "That includes state, county and some federal dollars. Land prices have shot up so much that [that] money won't buy as much as it once did."

He said changes are needed to reverse this trend.

"We have got to find ways to help farmers," Riley said. "We have got to make farming more profitable. That's how we are going to keep our farms. Right now, the incentive for them to sell out is too great."

McCarthy-Kersey quoted the most recent census figures that show the changing face of agriculture in Maryland.

"Forty-three percent of the farmers in Maryland don't count farming as their primary occupation," she said. "They are lawyers or plumbers or some other occupation, who like living on a farm."

Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun

washingtonpost.com
Residents Decry Plan To Replace NW Park
Site Would Get Mixed Housing

By Lori Montgomery and Lindsay Ryan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 15, 2005; B01

Quotes:

D.C. planning officials are proposing to rip up a popular park on New York Avenue NW to build 98 townhouses as part of an ambitious plan to revitalize a poor neighborhood a few blocks south, around the long-troubled Sursum Corda housing cooperative.

Although the proposal is in preliminary stages, it is drawing fire from residents in the fast-gentrifying area around the park, known as the New York Avenue Playground. Many homeowners are furious about the prospect of seeing the tree-lined space replaced by densely packed housing.

In the District, where skyrocketing real estate prices often are blamed for driving longtime residents out of their neighborhoods and the city, the dispute over the park highlights an instance in which the government is trying to retain territory for poor residents.

Planning officials argue that the park, which occupies much of a city block at New York Avenue and First Street NW, is one of few vacant parcels available for the first phase of the Sursum Corda redevelopment project. That plan, part of Mayor Anthony A. Williams's New Communities initiative, calls for razing several low-income apartment buildings teetering on the brink of financial insolvency and replacing them with a
denser mix of new homes for people at all income levels.

In the Sursum Corda neighborhood, Williams (D) hopes to save the homes of 520 poor families who otherwise might be overrun by rising rents and high-end development. Many have lived in the area for more than 30 years. To make sure they don't have to leave during construction, the city wants to use the park as a site for townhouses, about 30 of which would permanently house the very poor.

The development plan grew out of four days of meetings in July with residents of Sursum Corda and of the surrounding neighborhood. City officials have yet to develop a financing package for the redevelopment, and planning officials said that construction is at least 18 months away.

"The irony is, if you go there in the day or the evenings, there are lots of problems with vagrants in the park, anyway," said Michael Downie, who is overseeing the New Communities initiative for the D.C. Office of Planning. "Our perception is the only people using the park are people who walk their dogs and vagrants. There's some use of the courts and fields by Little League teams, but it's not a very programmed, active space."

Nearby homeowners beg to differ. They say the park is filled each evening with people walking their dogs or out for a stroll. On weekends, they say, the baseball field and basketball courts are in constant use. On Saturday, for instance, the park's two basketball courts hosted a day-long tournament. Terrance Judge, founder and president of the Metropolitan Basketball League, said teams play there every summer Saturday. He said it helps relieve tension among groups of kids.

But longtime residents feel connected to the existing park: A few years ago, many of them helped to renovate the space they
call a rare oasis of green.

Mike Thiem, 30, a spokesman for a Defense Department agency, moved to the neighborhood from Arlington six months ago.

Thiem said he and others are "paying a half-million dollars for these houses. The last thing I want on my doorstep is displaced residents from one of the most violent housing projects in the city. . . . I didn't spend this kind of money to have drug dealers out on my step."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

[See also City Officials to Rethink Plan for NW Park, published on Tuesday, August 16, 2005.]

MARC ills test loyal riders' patience

Rails: Passengers complain of breakdowns, delays and poor excuses, but use of
the state's commuter service is growing.

By Michael Dresser
Sun Staff

August 14, 2005

Jim Akers has seen it all on the MARC line this summer: Crowded rail cars. Broken-down locomotives. Trains slowed to a crawl. E-mail alerts that arrive too late to be useful.

"It's been a rough time," said the Ellicott City resident, who commutes to Washington on MARC's Camden line.

Maryland transportation officials concede that MARC performance has suffered in recent weeks, mostly because of heat-related problems. In July, for instance, 82 percent of trains ran on time -- well below the state's 92 percent goal.

The problems have been especially severe on the Camden and Brunswick lines, where the company that owns the tracks restricts speeds for safety reasons when the air temperature exceeds 90 degrees.

But even with MARC's woes, its ridership is up and its riders remain loyal.

"It's still the best way. Even with those delays, you'll get there sooner than if you drive," Akers said.

Like many MARC riders, Akers is involved in a passionate love-hate relationship with the state's commuter rail service. It's a bond that's been tested by delays, cancellations and sometimes-lame excuses.

With its subsidy running higher than state law allows, passengers' patience may soon be further tested with a fare increase. But with gas prices at record levels, it's doubtful many riders would switch to cars.

"Overall, it is a good service. People recognize that it's a good value and they like it," state Transportation Secretary Robert L. Flanagan said.

MARC gives its passengers an estimated 27,000 rides a day on three commuter lines: the Penn Line between Perryville and Washington's Union Station via Penn Station, the Camden Line between Camden Station and Union Station, and the Brunswick Line between Washington and Martinsburg, W.Va., with a spur serving Frederick. Ridership is up from 24,000 in 2003.

In response to recent woes, MARC's management has adopted a strategy that combines profuse apologies with unabashed finger-pointing at its track-owning partners -- Amtrak and CSX Transportation.

"We would like to apologize to our Brunswick Line riders for Friday night's extremely slow trip," said a MARC e-mail to riders Aug. 4. After a long recitation of various CSX's lapses leading to long delays and the cancellation of one train, the MARC e-mail concluded: "We are sorry to have brought your weekend to such a poor start."

The same day brought apologies to Camden Line riders for delays caused by CSX work on the tracks between Baltimore and Washington and to Penn Line riders for a series of locomotive breakdowns. MARC's e-mail was careful to note that Amtrak is responsible for maintenance of the locomotives.

The state-run service, a part of the Maryland Transit Administration, depends almost entirely on the good graces of
CSX and Amtrak dispatchers. When the two big railroads' equipment malfunctions, the little commuter railroad's trains run late -- or don't come at all.

With all its problems, many riders say MARC is a terrific bargain and stress-reliever -- at least when it's running on time. But others interviewed on a recent round trip between Baltimore and Washington expressed bitter dissatisfaction.

Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun

No Drive to Mass Transit

Motorists are more likely to reduce gas consumption on the weekends than change their commuting habits, experts say.

By Catherine Saillant and Amanda Covarrubias
Times Staff Writers

August 13, 2005

Raul Mercado loves his 2002 eight-cylinder silver Mustang convertible but hates the high cost of operating it.

As gas prices hit record highs in recent weeks, the security guard has been shelling out $40 each time he fills the tank.

To save money, he bikes or walks to the beach instead of driving, switched from high-grade to medium-grade gasoline and forgoes big-chain gas stations for independents that offer lower prices.

But leave the Mustang at his Long Beach home and take the bus to work in Inglewood? No way.

"I have to pay," Mercado said. Public transportation "takes too long."

Mercado's situation underscores why so many motorists stick with their daily commutes even as gas prices approach $3 for regular. They might complain loudly about the high price of filling up but insist that other forms of transportation — carpooling, buses, trains and subways — are for someone else.

"The convenience factor is not there," said Mike St. John, who commutes from Oxnard to a firefighting job in Los Angeles. "I work differing shifts, and the train schedules don't fit."

Transit experts said high gas prices might prompt drivers to rethink that weekend trip to Las Vegas or a quick drive to the mall. But changing commuting patterns is another matter.

"That's a really difficult change to make for most people," said Genevieve Giuliano, professor of transportation policy and planning at USC. "If they take the bus, it takes twice as long to get to work and it affects everything else they do during the day."

Officials at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Metrolink say rising gas prices lure some new riders, but they don't always stay with the transit system for long. MTA officials said ridership on its rail lines rose 14% between June 2004 and June 2005.

A survey conducted by Metrolink two years ago found that 10% of new riders considered the trains a way to cut back on fuel costs. But six months later, only 50% of those respondents were still riding regularly, said Denise Tyrrell, a Metrolink spokeswoman.

"When gas prices are the reason, they don't stick with it," she said. "The changes that consumers make is in their vehicle choice. They'll buy a fuel-efficient vehicle before they'll ride the train or some other form of mass transit."

Riding a Metrolink train also is more of a "lifestyle choice" made by professional workers who have more flexibility with their schedules, she said.

Southern California's mass transit system is much less far-reaching than those in many Eastern cities, forcing people who want to use trains or subways to commute from their home to the stations. And even those who live relatively close to mass transit stops say bus and train rides usually take longer than driving solo.

Lars Perner, a marketing professor at San Diego State University, said many consumers also assume that gas prices will fall in the near future and that all they have to do is ride out the current wave of increases.

Though gas prices have fluctuated over the last five years, their long-term pattern has been to increase, according to averages tracked by the Automobile Club of Southern California.

In February 2000, the average price for a gallon of gas in Southern California was just under $1.50, the Auto Club said. A new record high of $2.69 a gallon was reached Thursday.

Grumbling abounds. But motorists interviewed in recent days said they weren't ready to give up the convenience and comfort of
their vehicles.

Times staff writers Natasha Lee and Jack Leonard contributed
to this report.

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

washingtonpost.com
Private Toll Roads, British-Style

Sunday, August 14, 2005; B08

Quotes:

The proposal by a consortium of road builders and operators to pay Virginia $1 billion to operate the Dulles Toll Road in return for the revenue generated during the next 50 years [front page, July 26] ups the ante in the debate about public-private partnerships. While the private sector has built and operated toll roads -- in this area, the Dulles Greenway -- this is the first proposed buyout of a successful public toll road.

It has been suggested that the $1 billion paid by the consortium to Virginia could be used to help finance at least a portion of the proposed Metrorail extension to Tysons Corner. However, Virginia policymakers should look across the pond to Britain's approach to building and operating roads before accepting this proposed deal.

Since the mid-1990s, under the banner of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), the private sector has been the major builder and operator of new roads in Britain. Unlike publicly funded road projects -- usually over budget and behind schedule -- more than 80 percent of PFI projects (more than 600 to date) have been built on time and on or under budget.

The British experience offers critical lessons for Virginia. For example:

· The private sector, which invests in the projects, should bear the risk of operating the roads. In that way, the investors have a stake in ensuring that roads are built on time, without cost overruns, and are run efficiently.

· The private sector should demonstrate expertise and access to technology to create "value for money" in building and operating the project.

· The government should define what is to be built in terms of what it wants to accomplish, but it should allow the private sector to design the most cost-effective solution for the life of the project, usually 25 to 30 years or more. Service criteria, such as lane availability and safety, should be spelled out in the contract.

· Payments from the government to the contractor should not commence until the project is complete and the services are delivered. Payments for operating a road should decrease if the operator fails to meet agreed-to performance indicators.

The Dulles Toll Road buyout proposal offers no sharing of risk, no demonstrated value for money and no performance benchmarks, all of which makes it look like a bad deal for Virginia taxpayers. However, the proposal might be restructured to bring in private investors and contractors in a British-style partnership.

If, for example, the private sector would commit to construct and maintain the Metrorail extension from Falls Church to Dulles International Airport in return for a designated revenue stream (which might include Metrorail fares, surplus revenue from the Dulles Toll Road or other sources), it would be possible to create a public-private partnership that could achieve value for money for the region's harried commuters.

washingtonpost.com
N.Va. Reduces Accidents With Simple Intersection Adjustments

By C. Woodrow Irvin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 14, 2005; C04

Quotes:

A new national traffic safety study concludes that car accidents in urban areas can be dramatically reduced by relatively simple, inexpensive fixes to the roadway.

The study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that simply adding a green-arrow left-turn signal to an intersection, extending a merge lane or moving a bus stop by a few hundred feet could trim the number of accidents at dangerous intersections.

Working with engineers from the Virginia Department of ransportation, the safety organization chose six intersections in the Tysons Corner area for which police reports revealed a pattern in the type of crashes -- such as left-turning vehicles being hit by oncoming traffic or rear-end collisions.

VDOT made fixes to the intersections, which then were monitored for two to 4 1/2 years. The type of crashes addressed by the changes decreased at all six intersections, some dramatically, although traffic increased during the period.

At Leesburg Pike (Route 7) and the entrance to the Tysons Corner Center, for example, there had been several crashes in which vehicles turning left were hit by oncoming vehicles. VDOT converted the left lane to what it calls a "protected lane," in which drivers can turn left only on a green arrow, with oncoming traffic stopped.

After the change, the number of such collisions fell from nearly nine a year to none in two years.

"To see reductions in the magnitude that we see in this study is very gratifying," said Richard A. Retting, a senior transportation engineer at the Arlington-based institute that directed the study.

The Washington area ranked 11th nationally in the number of fatal car crashes, according to the study by the institute, which is a nonprofit research and communications organization funded by auto insurers. The study said that while most fatal auto crashes happen on the nation's rural roads, about 8,000 deaths and more than 1 million injuries occur each year on streets in and around the nation's cities. In 2003, the most recent year for which data were available, 490 people in the Washington area were killed in urban crashes. Countless hours were lost in traffic jams that resulted from accident scene cleanups and investigations.

Retting said the study was looking for "patterns of preventable crashes." He said this was the first time that researchers set out to determine whether specific types of crashes -- ones that could be prevented easily -- turned up frequently in the crash statistics for certain intersections.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

2005.08.13
Case for Atlanta toll truckways "compelling" - state tollway says

Quotes:

Truck-only toll (TOT) lanes "hold substantial promise" in the Atlanta area says Douglas Hooker ED of the Georgia Tollway Authority (GSRTA) in an introduction to a study just released. The study titled "Atlanta TOT Facilities Study" conducted by Parsons Brinckerhoff was directed by a study steering committee comprising local officials and three trucking reps. Hooker says the truckers "positive reaction" to the proposal, and the importance of the city as a trucking hub provide "a compelling reason to pursue the concept of truck facilities in the region."

The study concentrated on a truckway backgone backbone of I-75 north and south of the belt route I-285, then using the western
and northern sections of the belt itself, and on I-85N. I-75 is a southeast to northwest trending highway. I-75S goes from Atlanta to Florida, I-75N from Atlanta to Chattanooga TN and is a major trucking route between Florida and the midwest and Ontario. It is also a route with the I-16 spur between Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia's major port. I-85 heads northeast out of Atlanta through the Carolinas and central Virginia where it converges on I-95. I-85 therefore constitutes a major link for Atlanta to the mid-Atlantic and the northeast.

These are some of the largest volume truck routes in the US - in the same league as I-80/90/294 (OH Tpk, Indiana TR, Borman, IL Kingery, IL Tristate Twy) and with the truck routes out of the ports of Los Angeles (I-710/CA60) according to Freight Analysis Framework data from the FHWA. I-285 the belt route runs 23k trucks/day out of total traffic of 160k or 14% and the FAF projects growth to 39k trucks out of total 244k by 2020, or 16% of the total vehicles.

Also from the FAF data, I-75 through the whole of GA runs 14k trucks/day out of total traffic of 99k, a high 14% for trucks. But interestingly the absolute truck numbers are similar in the Atlanta area to the rural areas, but of course the proportion drops precipitately within Atlanta. I-75 where it is cosigned with I-85 and is 2x7 lanes near the downtown last year showed an average daily count of 349k, likely the largest AADT in the country, and probably only exceeded worldwide by H-401 in Toronto.

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2005.08.14
HOUSTON AREA
Westpark Tollway opens in Fort Bend Co TX

Quotes:

The Westpark Tollway extension in Fort Bend County on the western fringe of the Houston area opened Aug 10. The extension in Fort Bend County takes the Westpark Tollway from central Houston at US59 and the inner belt I-610 out 32km (20mi) to TX99, the Grand Parkway. The Westpark Tollway of 23km (14mi) was completed within Harris County in three stages, heading west, the first opening May 1 2004 to a bit beyond the Sam Houston Tollway, and another to Highway 6 on Oct 9 2004. The third opened to FM1464 at the Fort Bend/Harris county lines Jun 8 2005.

The road is a striking demonstration of how Texans lead the rest of the U.S. in skill and economy of roadbuilding and willingness to embrace cutting edge technology.

The new extension in Fort Bend Co has no cash toll collection. It is full highway speed open road transponder tolling, like the HCTRA part of the Westpark Tollway.

Economy: for $70m they built a motorway standard pike of 8.9km (5.5mi), 2x2 lanes mainline, 5 sets of slip lanes to frontage roads, 4 interchanges with bridges long enough for those frontage road U-turns, the pavement all out of foot thick (300mm) fully reinforced concrete, plus toll systems. Cost per lane-mile of mainline: $3.14m ($1.97m/lane-km). [Here in Maryland, sadly, we have spent something like $70m on studies, permitting, public outreach on our new tollroad, the Inter County Connector, and that is before detailed design has been done, let alone construction begun!]

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washingtonpost.com
Amtrak Train's Interminable Journey
Riders on Florida to New York Line Weather 14 Hours of Delays

By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 15, 2005; B04

Quotes:

A ride home this weekend on an Amtrak train from Florida to Virginia left Deanna Weaver's 5 1/2 -year-old daughters begging to take a plane next time.

Train No. 92, which originated in Miami and ended in New York, was more than 14 hours late to Washington and other destinations yesterday after a slew of unscheduled stops.

The train, according to passengers and an Amtrak official, was delayed because of engine problems, the ouster of an inebriated passenger, the evacuation of a sick rider, repair work on track signals and a pedestrian who wandered onto the tracks between Jacksonville, Fla., and Savannah, Ga., and was struck by the train.

There were conflicting reports among Amtrak officials and passengers about the incident, but the man appears to have survived.

On the train, tempers flared, bathrooms reeked and food supplies dwindled, passengers said.

"I planned this as an educational experience for my girls," said Weaver, who lives in Fairfax Station and boarded in Orlando after visiting Walt Disney World with her daughters. "I wanted to teach them about the states and give them the experience of traveling on a train instead of a plane. It was an experience, all right."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company