Skip to main content

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...

 

 

 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...
1 comment
Read more

They Can Wait

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday.  Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was  "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018.  2018 .  But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest.  In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...
1 comment
Read more

Separate and Unequal

  Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in  broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not.  It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...
1 comment
Read more