Tuesday, August 29, 2006

walking the purple line: update

BUT FIRST: Steve Silverman is for punks? So says Sprawling Towards Montgomery. I think it goes well with the Stop Emo and corresponding Bump Emo taggers that have struck everywhere from Kensington all the way down to Takoma Park. If anyone knows about the "Stop Emo" tags, tell me! The whole county wants to know.

I received an e-mail on a Silver Spring listserv about MTA officials taking the Purple Line walking tour through East Silver Spring. It looks like MTA is considering a tunnel instead of the more destructive surface or cut-and-cover proposals along Silver Spring and Thayer avenues - which may have emerged as their route of choice - but only as a way to get through the CBD, not the neighborhoods. Also: doesn't novelist George Pelecanos live in East Silver Spring? I think it'd be interesting to see what happens if he used his [relative] notoriety to push for or against the Purple Line or specific routes. I mean, if he lost his house . . . where would we get our D.C.-centric crime fiction?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for mentioning the plight of the East Silver Spring with the proposed purple line route. What has got me worried is that the Thayer route will have two tunnels near East Silver Spring Elementary School. What the public doesn't know is that light rail can be dangerous as noted by this list of fatalities by city:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/2003-01-07-rail-fatalities.htm
It should also be noted that these statistics are really much higher, because do not count "trans-modal" fatalities, which means "accidents by cars (killing pedestrians and people in other cars)which avoid hitting the train:
http://www.globaltelematics.com/pitf/nilestestimony-saferoutes.pdf#search='Light%20Rail%20Fatalities'

These numbers don't seem to occur when the trains go underground (most Metro fatalities are generally suicides and not very frequent). People need to realize what they are getting into, especially when children's lives are at stake.
Elliot
http://sstop.org

Anonymous said...

Do you believe we should ban motor vehicle traffic in residential neighborhoods?

A car is more dangerous than a light rail vehicle -- at least you know that the light rail vehicle will be on the tracks, while the car can swerve to the side. Both are equally fatal if you hit it.

Silver Springer said...

This is true! People walking their dogs, racoons and squirrels can be dangerous too!

Montgomery Slacker said...

That's Silverman "4 Punk".

The office of "Punk" must have been added to the county charter in one of those Ficker amendments last go around.