{"id":2274,"date":"2009-01-12T18:42:29","date_gmt":"2009-01-12T23:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=2274"},"modified":"2009-01-12T18:42:29","modified_gmt":"2009-01-12T23:42:29","slug":"metro-youre-making-it-really-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2009\/01\/12\/metro-youre-making-it-really-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"Metro, You&#8217;re Making It Really Hard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m a big defender of the DC Metro system.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes I think it&#8217;s because I came from a city with a pathetic public transport system (hi, Atlanta!), and other times I think it&#8217;s because I can&#8217;t stand the sound of one more twit from New York talking about how great the system is back home.\u00c2\u00a0 But mostly I defend it because it&#8217;s a system that does a pretty good job &#8211; given its resources &#8211; of serving as circulation system for DC and its surrounding communities.\u00c2\u00a0 They&#8217;ve got a really difficult funding situation, though &#8211; they essentially have to go begging four masters on a regular basis (the Fed, DC, MD, and VA gov&#8217;ts) and suffer all the risks and political vagaries that go with that.\u00c2\u00a0 So, when faced with the rare chance to put their hands on some serious capital project spending power?\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/yglesias.thinkprogress.org\/archives\/2009\/01\/wmata_stimulus.php\">They flub it<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Unfortunately, when WMATA sat down to talk about what kind of projects they had that fit the criteria for economic stimulus, they <a href=\"http:\/\/greatergreaterwashington.org\/post.cgi?id=1571\">only came up with $529 million worth of stuff<\/a>. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s better than being dishonest and trying to get their hands on billions of dollars worth of money to go waste.<\/p>\n<p>But it also reflects a failure of vision, planning, and leadership. A well-run agency ought not become so cowed by the narrow horizons of conventional political wisdom that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s left with this little to ask for when the situation changes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh, I could think of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tysonstunnel.org\/index2.htm\">something<\/a> . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m a big defender of the DC Metro system.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes I think it&#8217;s because I came from a city with a pathetic public transport system (hi, Atlanta!), and other times I think it&#8217;s because I can&#8217;t stand the sound of one more twit from New York talking about how great the system is back home.\u00c2\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6,8,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dc","category-policy","category-politics","category-virginia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2274"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2275,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2274\/revisions\/2275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}