DaninDC

A 1200 sf house is a heck of a lot more affordable than a 4200 sf monstrosity on the same land. What happens to the younger or less affluent people in such a neighborhood--should they be forced to move because wealthier people want their land? ...and if you think housing is always affordable somewhere, it's obvious you haven't left Ohio lately.

But those "antiquated" houses are like, you know, affordable and stuff. I guess everyone is rich these days, huh?

The Metro is NOT 2 miles away from Adams-Morgan. The Woodley Park station is a 15 minute walk from Pizza Mart. Dupont Circle and U Street stations are both about six blocks away. There are cabs or the 90 buses too, ya know. You obviously don't want a jumbo slice that badly.

Can we please ban the term "lifestyle center"? I happen to live in a lifestyle center--it's called a "neighborhood" (how quaint!).

Now, if you need an expert witness on drugs and hookers, Charlie Sheen might be your guy.

Pizza Mart

There is a little family-run restaurant in the North End of Boston that has some of the best pizza on earth. I have no problems putting away a large pie when I go there, although I can't remember the name of the place. I do know it's on Hanover Street, though. Any place that makes their own Italian sausage is okay by me (anyone ever have Danny's on Turney in Garfield Heights???).

Of course! "Pop" refers to the guy who never gave you any money as a kid.... I put it this way--I can order a soda in Cleveland, and I'll get what I want. You can order a "pop" on the East Coast, and people will just look at you funny.

Oh yes, the Jumbo Slice is definitely New York style, but the size is all DC! For what it's worth, I consider the Pizza Mart the home of the "true" jumbo slice--often imitated, never duplicated. Best damn $4 slice of pie you'll ever have. Aside from the "gourmet" pizza and the Jumbo Slice, pizza here is crap.

Well, the validity of the answers depends on how much you believe in science. I'm quite satisfied. Plane parts went into the building. The plane telescoped--collapsing on itself--as it entered the building. You have to remember that we're talking about an aluminum tube striking a reinforced concrete building with five floor diaphragms. The shear forces on the shell of the plane must have been incredible. Due to the telescoping, the back sections of the plane were found near the A/E road inside the Pentagon, where the blast pressure was relieved upward. A co-worker of mine tripped on the black box near the A/E road, and this is also where the landing gear and tail sections were found. Temperatures likely exceeded 1500 degrees F--enough to sufficiently weaken the concrete--so it is likely that much of the plane simply burned up. As for the bodies--there were plenty. I was told that there were Pentagon employees who were sitting at their desks, as if they were merely asleep. I was at the site two weeks hence and witnessed 18-year-old privates hauling several bodies out of the building within an hour's time. Every time you saw a refrigerated truck backing up to the building, you knew they were about to come out with another body. The lawn of the Pentagon wasn't touched because the plane didn't hit the lawn. The plane struck and entered the building, and the explosions ripped through the building until they were relieved by a vertical channel (the A/E road) in between the "C" and "B" rings. Guess all you want. To me, it's a bit more meaningful than something that just happened on TV that day.

That NY BS is entirely too small for me. I need a Jumbo Slice--overlapping two paper plates, where the slice flops around even after folding it in half, requiring the full-use of two hands while eating.

And as for the Pentagon.... I have seen the marked-up floor plans indicating which columns were damaged, and which were completely eliminated. Needless to say, it was consistent with a plane flying into the building. On average, Americans are so illiterate in science that there is no way they could possibly understand the causes of building collapse, hence the proliferation of the conspiracy theories. Note how the conspiracy theories are all conveniently devoid of any kind of rational scientific explanation for anything.

I'm not an actor, and Charlie Sheen is no engineer. The explanations make perfect sense to anyone who knows what the hell they're talking about. The armchair engineers are hopelessly ignorant about what they speak. If this profession was so easy, there wouldn't be so many English majors in college. ...and anyone who has paid any attention to this Administration knows what a poor decision-maker George W. Bush is in the heat of the moment.

The market here in DC is crazy too, although not nearly as expensive. Starter slums go in excess of $300,000 for a 1000 sf rowhouse in a not-so-great location (or you can try to get a studio apartment for that price). How are people currently in their 20s and 30s ever expected to be able to buy into real estate with those kinds of prices? And when you consider that property taxes have been increasing at 25% a year, the only people who can afford it are the people already in the game and the trustafarians. I've developed a theory that really, the high prices all come down to one thing: greed on the part of the baby boomers.

From the front page of this morning's Washington Post: Vision for Transit-Friendly Tysons May Slam the Door on Dealer Row By Alec MacGillis Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 20, 2006; Page A01 Down the street they stretch, their banners cracking in the wind, the roll call of signs evoking distant Saturdays of kicking tires and clasping new keys: Koons Chevrolet, Cherner Lincoln Mercury, Moore Cadillac. For generations of area residents, buying a car has often meant a trip to a mile-long strip of Leesburg Pike in Tysons Corner, home to more than a dozen dealerships sprawling over 80 acres of blacktop. The dealers, as much a part of Tysons Corner's landscape as its malls, have been hugely successful; Koons Toyota, to name just one, is among Toyota's top-selling dealers nationwide. More at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/19/AR2006031901221.html

No doubt, ODOT will dictate a cable-stayed design like they're doing everywhere else in the state.

That's pretty funny. I've heard noted transportation "expert" Wendell Cox say the same thing about St. Louis. If it's such a great idea, and so much more economical, then why have there been exactly zero cities to implement this brain fart?

Oh, you don't mean people like House Speaker Craig DeRoche of Novi who proudly says, "I represent sprawl", but can't figure out why the heck all the roads are terrible, or why jobs are leaving. Gee, it certainly isn't because half your major metropolitan area looks like "Office Space", and the other half looks like "Escape from New York". I lived in Michigan for 5 years, so I'm familiar with some of these types. Most of the people I know who live there, though, would love nothing more than to be able to ride a train to get somewhere. They do it when they come to places like DC, and they certainly rode the buses en masse during Super Bowl week, no matter how flawed that system was. From what I understand, the Big 2-1/2 are fully behind better public transportation in Detroit. They tend to feel that the lack of it is preventing them from recruiting talented people, who often run away to Chicago at the first opportunity. Recall that Ford benefitted greatly from the DSR lines that terminated at the Rouge Plant!

How so?

If park and ride will alleviate traffic during construction, then why not do it permanently, and you know, save a few hundred million bucks? Allow me to bang my head on my desk. Repeatedly.

MGD, how exactly did they justify suburban park and ride lots in a discussion about the Innerbelt? Are we to believe that a widening and easing of the Innerbelt will make people want to ride the bus to work???

Agree to a point, clvlndr. The Howard Street section of the Baltimore light rail is painful, and it's completely inexcusable that there isn't a direct connection to the Metro Subway. But complaining about a 3 block walk??? I walk 6 just to get to the subway from my home (<10 min). RE: Ann Arbor / Detroit commuter rail. Unlike previous proposed transit projects, this one wouldn't even touch Oakland County, which would certainly derail it. Along the proposed corridor, there is great demand--especially with regards to getting to Metro Airport. There's also $100 million in federal money in the bank, which could likely cover most of the design and construction costs. Whereas a subway would require a substantial number of daily riders to be successful, a commuter rail line could be deemed extremely successful with as few as 2000 daily riders. If you don't think that's possible, then you obviously don't know how many people commute from Ann Arbor to Detroit!

Don't forget tax evasion, either.

Another big problem I have with RTA, though, is they seem to develop each of their projects in isolation. For example, a great way to exponentially enhance the usefulness of the BRT line would be to plan for commuter rail, with major stations at Tower City and University Circle. You would certainly get a heckuva lot more bang for your buck than some nice-looking trees.

Michigan also has a constitutional cap on the percentage of transportation funds that can be used for transit. By law, the State may spend no more than 10% of its transportation budget on transit. Back in the late 1990s, the gas tax was increased, but it was all dedicated to highway construction, so Michigan actually spends only about 8% of its transportation budget on anything other than road-building.