Here's our roundup of "must-read" posts from the week:
This week, as the region continues to adjust to life with our current pandemic, the news kept coming. Residents in Baltimore may soon get several miles of road opened for exercise and recreation, while the construction of a trail in Richmond may be delayed because of the financial fallout from the coronavirus.
Take a deep dive into the battle over mobility data collected from scooter companies, or finally figure out what it really means when a household is cost-burdened. Metro’s Rail Operations Control Center (ROCC) needs to provide answers for continuous safety and management issues, an oversight committee says.
Oh, and if you have an inkling to churn out interesting articles about Tysons, have we got a post for you. Enjoy.
By David Alpert (Executive Director) • May 20, 2020
Some city governments including Washington, DC and Los Angeles are finding themselves at loggerheads with a coalition of privacy advocates, civil rights groups, and Uber. They’re fighting over a new rules that require scooter companies to share information about trips, in real time, with the cities’ transportation agencies using a standard format called Mobility Data Standard, or MDS.
By Alex Holt (Maryland Correspondent) • May 19, 2020
A new bill passed by the Baltimore’s City Council Monday, and headed to the Mayor’s desk for his signature, could close at least 25 miles of road, spread out across all 14 City Council districts, for exercise.
By Wyatt Gordon (Virginia Correspondent) • May 20, 2020
Engineering crews have already begun surveying the site of the Lakeside Community Trail—a two mile walking and biking path in Henrico County just north of Richmond, but the fiscal uncertainty unleashed by the novel coronavirus threatens the timeline of its construction.
By Stephen Repetski (Editorial Board Alum) • May 19, 2020
In response to major, ongoing issues in Metro’s rail control center, the agency’s oversight committee is requiring solutions to problems that “pose unacceptable risks for Metrorail customers, employees, and contractors” if left unaddressed.
When housing advocates talk about the affordability crisis, they often focus on one important statistic: the share of cost-burdened households in a city. A household is said to be cost-burdened when it pays more than 30 percent of its income toward housing expenses. As a more extreme measure, a household is said to be severely cost-burdened when it pay at least 50 percent of its income toward housing expenses.
By David Alpert (Executive Director) • May 21, 2020
If Tysons were in many states, it’d be the largest downtown business district in the state. The nation’s largest “edge city” has a plan to become a “dynamic,” walkable place. How is that going? How does the coronavirus pandemic change the way Tysons will evolve? And do you want to write about that?
