Thursday, March 5, 2009

washington post gets lazy on purple line

I'm sure Katherine Shaver has been covering the Purple Line long enough to know that, if she writes a story for the Montgomery Extra called "Silver Spring Frets Over Purple Line," she'd probably want to interview the many local people who are for the Purple Line on Wayne Avenue, not just the representatives of a neighborhood association that voted to oppose an above-ground route there. She should know this issue is not cut-or-dry and couldn't be further from it, so why not actually put both sides in your effing story?

Doesn't help that the article also runs a photo of Route 450 in New Carrollton (at the eastern terminus of the Purple Line) and labels it "Riverdale Park," but I wonder if that many people even know the Purple Line would go there to begin with.

1 comment:

Thomas Hardman said...

Dan, in case you hadn't noticed, the Post is rapidly descending into being a primarily-online outlet, and their print edition is now offered at 75-cents a copy outside of subscriptions, and is so thin compared to the size two years ago that you can barely wrap a fish in it.

It's also developing a tendency to be little more than a cheerleader for whatever certain political types tell it to say.

That being said, the Post still has a very long and comprehensive institutional memory, even if it is otherwise left doddering about at the streetcorners looking for work.

I remember quite well -- as does the Post -- the immense destruction wrought on the 14th Street NW Corridor and down around 7th and U Streets NW. Columbia Heights was practically a warzone and the U Street Corridor was in shambles. This lasted most of a decade. It's true that since the tunnel was completed, the economic revitalization was astonishing but that has as much to do with the Revitalization Act as it has to do with the sudden provenance of tunnel traffic.

Considering that the main function of the Purple Line is to provide rapid transit end-to-end, accept the damage that comes with tunneling, and the delays in completion that will result. If you want a trolley car line in DTSS, agitate for a trolley car line in DTSS, just agitate for it separately from issues to do with the Purple Line.