Dan Malouff

Foggy Bottom 💪
Hill East 🫤

Seems like this will be my last story for the Washington Post. A handful of my colleagues will still be covering local news in the DMV and I know they’ll do great work, but they and this region deserve so much better.

Water dripping in rapid streams off the Rhode Island Ave Metro station canopy

Look at this glorious melt happening!

Snowy DC as seen by astronaut Chris Williams on the Int'l Space Station!
www.instagram.com/p/DUQkuuFlASE/

AntiRender - Reality Hits Different Transform idealized architectural renders into what they'll actually look like. No sunshine. No happy families. Just cold, honest reality.

Ok this is clever. Convert those shiny renderings into realistic photos
antirender.com

Isn't all of Tatooine one big pothole?

Star Wars landspeeder

The chief benefit of the Star Wars landspeeder was local governments didn't have to bankrupt themselves building roads.

Delegate from Virginia Beach seeks study of extending light rail to the Oceanfront Voters rejected extending light rail into Virginia Beach nearly a decade ago, but a lawmaker from the city wants to explore The Tide’s future here.

Rumblings to reconsider Virginia Beach's decision not to extend Norfolk light rail to the beach.
www.whro.org/local-govern...

Kind of a repeat of the elevated downtown people mover bust of the 1980s.

Among the many things that doomed modern streetcars in America, the concept of "minimal operable segment" is underdiscussed.

Maybe it was a bad idea to push policy that built the shortest possible version of everything.

H Street streetcar if it had a full median transitway. AI rendering.

This would have been (and still would be) glorious.

You've probably seen this thread today. If not, buckle up and dive in.

Richmond, VA widened bus stop spacing to nearly 1300 feet a few years ago as part of a redesign we did. Des Moines and Louisville are doing the same as part of projects of ours rolling out soon.

Bigger cities -- where the benefits of respacing are even greater -- should study these examples.

Hello it me.

US government's policy toward the Big 3 automakers—encouraging them to invest in massive, US-only SUVs & trucks, now encouraging them to underinvest in EVs—has reinforced their global irrelevance.

Ford sold 33% fewer vehicles worldwide in 2024 than 2015! GM sold 40% fewer vehicles!

I kinda think it depends on context.

In gloomy NY subway stations, turning trains into billboards makes it all look cheaper, agreed.

But in monotonous & spacious DC stations, I'm always glad to see the life-imbuing color.

Not sure about buses.

Hard to believe the prose from The Memory of Whiteness and Aurora came from the same person.

Wherever the Hudson crossing lands on the Jersey side. Ft Lee makes more sense than Edgewater.

Alon has a northern Hudson crossing on that map! Alon's is probably better but these are similar ideas both connecting northern Manhattan. So what's the problem?

Not saying this would be anywhere near my NY Transit Top Ten Wishlist, but I do think "NJ/NY demand is CBD centric" is a response to the network moreso than inherent, and if this were coupled with Jersey City-like highrise upzoning and we had normal costs, it would be justified & a great outcome.

Do any US cities have big urban windfarms like Antwerp here?

Not just 1 or 2 windmills, and not way out in the sticks or sea. Big windfarms with several, reasonably "in the city."

📸globalphotos.org

These aren't even things from the distant past. These are things we are currently in the middle of canceling, and very recently canceled.

"Spend a decade planning, cancel it at the 11th hour, then start planning again for the same thing" is untrustworthy stuff. We're supposed to fall for it again?

IDK man maybe we shouldn't've canceled the plan to give our existing rail line there a tramway, and then stopped running it entirely.

And maybe we shouldn't've canceled the plan to connect it with an awesome downtown transitway?

What will do here that we haven't already planned & then canceled?

New Baltimore Metro railcars are in service!

In what universe is this remotely acceptable?

The indoor part is actually for the parents, who deserve a comfortable place to sit in a world where road & car bloat have made it unsafe to send little kids out on their own.

Public rec centers should have indoor playgrounds. They don't need to be big. Some foam climbing equipment would be fine.

Outsourcing winter playgrounds to fast food & shopping malls is an unnecessary blind spot in our public infrastructure.

Google Maps screencap with Pigeon Forge displayed as one of the largest cities in the country.

Does anyone else get the thing where occasionally Google Maps decides Pigeon Forge is a major city?

Map of fountains getting fixed

Oh, wow. NPS is fixing *several* broken DC fountains. Not just Meridian Park. Also Columbus Circle, Rawlins Park, Freedom Plaza... more
washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...

Cost control is hugely important but we were making the fast-lines-through-nowhere mistake long before costs spiraled out of control.

It is a massive historical error to ignore the decades the US spent doing exactly what you're calling for, and the terrible results it produced.