‘comfy’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’
Stimulus and the Silver Line
The passage of the Stimulus Package has been a source of significant criticism from the Right, and some unnatural crowing from the Left, but it represents $90 Billion dollars of federal investment in transit systems all over the United States. The DC Metro area stands to pick up a bunch of those dollars to help out with various transit projects. Currently slated are $29 million to help with the Dulles Rail corridor project, which would be welcome assistance to get the project underway.
Supervisors in Fairfax approved the design of two of the new Silver line stations: Route 123 in Tysons, and Route 7 in Tysons. While there are four stations in the confines that need approval, the vote on the other two will take place on March 9th.
Nextbus
Greater Greater Washington and DCist picked up on the fact that there was some preliminary access to NextBus information for the District bus routes, but, no good deed going unpunished, the site was pulled under orders from Metro.
Metro suggests that the site will be back this summer, and available for public use at that time. It’s sad that Metro felt the need to clamp down, despite the fact that according to all reports, the system was working “like a charm,” and providing full functionality. Of course, David Alpert nails it: “At Metro, it’s better not to provide any information than to risk giving any wrong information.”
Poor McGruff
You might’ve read our story on the bus driver who beat up McGruff the crime dog, but as with every good story, there’s an epilogue. The bus driver, Shawn Brim, has been charged with assault,and placed under review by WMATA. The Examiner reports that Brim also has a history of arrests in DC, including Prostitution (2006), possession of a firearm (1990) and possession of PCP (1994).
I live and work in the District of Columbia. I write at We Love DC, a blog I helped start, I work at Technolutionary, a company I helped start, and I’m happy doing both. I enjoy watching baseball, cooking, and gardening. I grow a mean pepper, keep a clean scorebook, and wash the dishes when I’m done. Read Why I Love DC.
1) So this means the Silver Line is finally going to move forward? I mean, I want to be optimistic, but in the past three years that I’ve lived here I’ve seen several false starts and failure-to-launch situations from this already. How likely is it that this finally is going to happen?
2) How exactly did our dear Mr. Brim get a job driving a city bus with drug, prostitution, and firearm convictions on his record like that? o,O
It does look like the Silver Line is moving forward, even if I have my doubts about it.
As for Mr. Brim, the Examiner piece says, “All Metro Transit employees go through background checks when hired, Smith said. The agency will not hire candidates with felonies unless the conviction occurred more than 10 years before.”
Brim was hired in 2003, though, only 9 years after his 1994 PCP Possession charge.