Transit

From left to right: Gabe Klein, Director of DDOT; David Alpert of Greater Greater Washington; and Stewart Schwartz, Executive Director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth

It was standing room only last Thursday evening in David Alpert’s Dupont Circle rowhouse.  The Greater Greater Washington blogger, jointly with the DC-based Coalition for Smarter Growth, was hosting an evening with Gabe Klein, the new director of the District Department of Transportation.  The crowd was a mix of students, local transit and urban planning activists, and interested third parties.  But everyone in attendance had one thing in common – to them, Gabe Klein was a star.

Before his appointment to DDOT in December 2008, Klein was the entrepreneur famous for helping start On the Fly, the company that has dispatched its seemingly ubiquitous food vending, eco-friendly smart karts across DC.  Before that, he was the local regional vice president of Zipcar, which has helped reduce DC’s dependence on non-transit transportation.  He was also previously the operations director for Bikes USA.  Klein was already well-known in the transportation and business communities for his environmental and transit efforts, so when Mayor Fenty announced his intent to appoint Klein to DDOT, it signaled a major commitment to moving DC’s transit initiatives toward new transportation solutions.

Klein’s vision is to turn DC into a leader in the field of alternative transportation—public bike systems, ride sharing, etc—and eventually convince people to think of alternative transportation as standard transportation.  He’s certainly got no shortage of ideas.  A strong proponent of DC’s Bicycle Program, he wants to expand access to public bikes throughout the city.  He also mentioned a new initiative to partner with Metro, Pepco, and automobile companies to lay infrastructure for electric cars along with new SmartBike locations.  Klein didn’t provide many details about the program, but if successful, DC would become one of the nation’s earliest adopters of this type of electrification.   Continues after the jump (more…)

Image courtesy of BeyondDC and Greater Greater Washington 

“PoP, the following was posted on GGW (Greater Greater Washington) and BeyondDC this morning — I thought you might be interested in posting a thread to ask people for their thoughts on whether the Petworth Metro should be renamed, and if so, what the new name should be (Tivoli East? j/k!):

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=1783”

GGW writes:

“It seems a good time to look at the whole system. The map below illustrates a possible station renaming scheme. In some cases I renamed stations that are too long, or have too many acronyms attached at the end. In other cases I renamed to focus on a specific neighborhood or landmark. Where possible I’ve tried to stick to the two word maximum, but in a case or two have gone to three.”

I think it’s a brilliant question to ponder. They have suggested the Petworth-Georgia Ave. metro be renamed Park View. There are some other interesting suggestions like, upper northwest and beltway north among others. Personally, I’d be crushed if Petworth lost its name… Any metro names you’d like to change?