Let's Get Moving

Maybe the reason I am having a hard time writing this morning is that I have a migraine bearing down behind my right eye. Or perhaps it's because the only topics that come to mind are school system related and I am just bound and determined not to give them more "air time" today. Come on, folks, try to keep yourselves out of the news, already!

Some food for thought this morning--this article which touches on the need for transit as the Downtown Development Plan continues. We must invest in better transit in Howard County. And we need to look at it as something more than what the people who have no choice are forced to use. If we want all of this other massive investment to succeed, we need public transit which is appealing, convenient, and easy to use. It needs to run when and where people need it to run. It needs to be useful to more than one segment of our population.

At the state level we keep seeing decisions which favor more individual automobiles over effective and affordable public transit. I'm disappointed in this. We need to conserve fossil fuel and we need to take steps to reduce our collective carbon footprint and this does not feel to me like the way to do it.

At the local level, we talk about Walkability and Bikeability and being able to park once and get around Downtown Columbia easily. What concrete steps are we taking right now to make that a reality? I think it was hocolocal James Howard who has stated that Columbia will never have the density needed to make successful public transit possible.

He's an extremely smart guy. I still hope he's wrong.

And by the way, I'm still waiting for forward motion on Bridge Columbia and a transit connection between Oakland Mills and Downtown Columbia...