Driving is dangerous, and Virginia is hatching a plan to make it less so. What will it look like — and will it work?
In Langley Park, tenants of an apartment complex have been accusing their landlord of neglect for years. Now they're suing.
Another lawsuit, this one in Baltimore, deals with sidewalk accessibility. From curb cuts to obstructions, the plaintiffs argue the city isn't doing enough to bring sidewalks to ADA standards.
Finally, after a truck sent a pedestrian bridge over DC-295 crumbling, DW Rowlands offers two deep dives into the neighborhoods cut off by the highway and how they got cut off in the first place.
By Wyatt Gordon (The Virginia Mercury ) • July 19, 2021
To reduce the danger of driving, Virginia state officials are now planning a new comprehensive road safety campaign to slow down drivers. However, controversies around equitable enforcement and the political unpopularity of speeding cameras means that no one can say at the moment what the final program will look like when details are debuted this fall.
On Monday tenants at Bedford and Victoria Stations apartments in Langley Park, Maryland, escalated the fight to hold their landlord accountable for years of alleged neglect and deferred maintenance on the property.
Last month, Disability advocates filed a class action lawsuit against the City of Baltimore. The complaint asserts that just 1.3% of the city’s 37,806 curb ramps that were surveyed in 2019 met ADA accessibility requirements.
The Lane Place pedestrian overpass, which was destroyed when a truck driver collided with it last month, is one of a limited number of crossings of DC Route 295 that connect a set of neighborhoods along the Anacostia River in Northeast DC to the rest of the District of Columbia. While the bridge is slatedto be replaced, the collision has highlighted the ways in which long-distance transportation infrastructure isolates these neighborhoods.
The neighborhoods of River Terrace, Parkside, Mayfair, Eastland Gardens, and Kenilworth in Northeast DC are isolated from the rest of the District by the Anacostia River to the northwest and DC Route 295 to the southeast. While these neighborhoods are very isolated and contain some of the lowest-income Census block groups in the District today, they were sited to take advantage of direct transportation routes to downtown and built for higher-income professionals.
