Last Wednesday, January 18, the Council Committee on Libraries, Parks, Recreation and Planning, chaired by Tommy Wells, held a Public Roundtable on two nominations to the Historic Preservation Review Board. There were twelve witnesses, including 6D Commissioner David Garber whose statement CM Wells rightly called “extraordinary”. Well worth reading.
Tagged Historic PreservationAndrew Cadmus, a traffic engineer, PE, and Capitol Hill resident, provided the most recent meeting of the ANC6B Transportaion Committee with a very informative and knowledgeable discussion of a range of traffic calming methods. Note the caveats at the start.
The meetings of the Transportation Committee have been consistently interesting. It does, however, lack a Resident Member for my single member district and I would urge anyone interested in joining in to contact me (normanmetzger@gmail.com) and I can tell you more about it.
Tagged Traffic CalmingCouncil Member Wells has called a special meeting for this Thursday night, January 5, at 6:30 pm at the Hill Center. As my fellow Commissioner, Kirsten Oldenburg, noted
December 2011 was not a Merry Month, crime-wise. We had a very unusual spike in robberies: a total of 14 in December 2011 Fortunately, only one in December was with the use of a gun. In comparison, December 2010 had 2 robberies and in November 2011 there were 3. All but one of the December 2011 robberies took place at night time; 1 occurred at noon. In all but one, pedestrians were the victims. The 845pm robbery of the Radio Shack store on 12/23 by perpetrators with gun(s) was the exception.
Other than those robberies, keeping the total for December 2011 higher than normal (at 49 total crime reports), we had 14 thefts from auto and 17 thefts. The bulk of the latter occurred in stores and restaurants. The total number of both thefts and thefts from auto were slightly below the totals in November 2011. Details on all are in my excel file, attached. For those who care not to bother opening the excel file, there were 2 house burglaries, 1 assault with a deadly weapon, and 1 stolen auto also reported in December 2011.
Details on recent crimes in this Excel file.
Tagged Crims, PoliceSee this map of both existing trees and those to be planted in our neighborhood. You can zoom in and out and may have to click on a location a couple of times to have the information come up. Also, the addresses for new plantings may not be accurate, judging by one datum: a pagoda tree is listed for planting in front of “512 G, SE” but located on the 600 block.
The information comes courtesy of Commissioner David Holmes, chair of ANC6A
Tagged TreesThis agenda for the January meetings actually embraces not only the regular monthly meeting of the full ANC but also, somewhat confusingly imho, the meetings of the several committees — Planning and Zoning, ABC, Transportation, and Outreach — not all of which have the same meeting site but all start at 7 pm. Stay alert!
This is promises to be very useful in providing quick access to information on emergencies, traffic, weather, utility status for the National Capital region.
ANC 6b will have a special meeting to consider legislation proposed by Councilmember Tommy Wells regarding Eastern Market:
Monday, December 19, 7 to 10 (!) pm, The Theater Church (Formally The Peoples Church), 535 Eight Street, SE . Here are a couple of documents for pre-meeting “homework”:
The proposed legislation.
A summary of the legislation.
More to come.
Tagged Eastern Market, Tommy WellsCSX this week publicly unveiled 11 alternatives for substantially increasing the freight that can move through the existing tunnel or wherever it is moved to. The alternatives are:
1 – No Action. Do not rebuild Virginia Avenue Tunnel (VAT).
2 – Rebuild VAT with Temporary Track to the South
3 – Rebuild VAT with Temporary Track to the North
4 – Rebuild VAT with Serpentine Temporary Track
5 – Rebuild VAT with Second Permanent Tunnel
6 – Rebuild VAT within Current Tunnel
7A and B – Rebuild VAT and Temporarily use Existing Railroads and/or Trucks
8 – Reroute through Deep Tunnel
9 – Reroute Outside DC using NCPC Indian Head Alignment
10 – Reroute Outside DC using NCPC Dahlgren Alignment
11 – Reroute Outside DC using Existing Railroads and/or Trucks
You can examined details for these concepts at CSX web site for the project. And for a splendid report on the meeting and some very pertinent commnents see the reporting by the inimitable JD (Jacqueline Dupree).
For my part, I think the realistic options will turn out in fairly short order to be 2, 3, , and 5. As one of the questioners pointed out,the south side option may pose more issues for the Capital Quarter residences and while the north side option offers more assurance to to Capital Quarter, it may requires special measures — read expensive – to reinforce the highway pillars. [Although some of us muse that if it fell down....but I digress.]. Option 5, as another resident pointed out, offers an opportunity to use current technologies in building a new tunnel and may make it easier to stage the construction, with less wear and tear for everybody.
On to meetings in January and February when choices will certainly be narrowed and perhaps one option selected as “preferred.”
Tagged CSX