Hello,
Arlington County Board, Arlington County Manager, and Arlington Chamber of Commerce are pulling out all the stops to keep the local media, (including news blogs) from featuring, or even mentioning, articulated buses on the Pike and in Crystal City, which would save Arlington taxpayers at least $400 million versus the anticipated cost of the County Board's trolley folly.
Special recognition to County Board Member Chris Zimmerman, County Manager Barbara Donnellan, Arlington Public Information Director Diana Sun, and Chamber of Commerce Executive Committee Member Scott McCaffrey for intimidating the local media into profound silence regarding the real and only transit alternative for the Pike, articulated buses. Nothing like telling local media editors that they will lose ad revenue, lose access to elected VIPs, and lose advance information from elected VIPs if they provide ANY information about articulated buses, to ensure silence from the local media.
Cindy
39 comments:
Folks, that's NOT a photo of a streetcar on rails on the Vegas strip, it's a photo of the articulated ACE bus.
Totally Awesome.
Three large doors, level boarding from curb. What's not to like?
Wonder if the Royal Corps of Editors and Journalists at the Post will cover this controversy involving commoners and their mode of public transportation?
Cindy, I e-mailed my comments to Pike Transit yesterday regarding the huge waste of $$$ for Zimmerman's trolley folly.
Washington Post closed its office in Alexandria years ago. Few Post editors and staff writers live in Virginia.
It's been my experience that the local blogs fill their sites with pro-gentrification, pro-development PR, press releases generated by Diana Sun's staff at 2100, and lots of restaurant openings and closings, dog stories, accidents, and special events. There's little or no investigative journalism or criticism of any elected or other VIP. So it would not take much to make them keep silent about Vegas ACE buses.
Then there's AIM and AVN ;~(
Then there's Arl Now $:-)$
You mean Arl Friends-and-Family Now?
Local Media have to keep Their AAA Performance Rating: Advertising revenue, Access to VIPs, Advance information from VIP sources.
Local Media share Chris Zimmerman's 'vision' for the Pike, Crystal City, EFC, Lee Highway: Party Zones for federal employees and contractors who are TDY to NOVA.
Yes, we need more Penrose Squares and 5500s. Have to be prepared to house the warplanners before we invade Iran.
Arl$Now, Patch, $un Gazette, Mercury, and almost all the other local news media profit by keeping educated and intelligent residents ignorant. Bunch of f-ing Yuptards that want the entire County to be Clarendoned.
Worst by far is Arl$Now. Bunch of dumbasses who think they are wise guys.
Thanks for this blog, Cindy.
How about the 'poll' Arl$Now is taking about transit alternatives for the Pike, featuring artist renditions of streetcars on the Pike and censoring comments related to state-of-the-art articulated buses?
Arl Now? They're a bunch of wise guy Yuptards who hate members of minority groups except for the nice Latina ladies who clean their $2300 / month apartments subsidized by Mom and Dad.
YES...time for the truth to be told. Purpose of local blogs is to keep us ignorant and distracted with stories about $2 million dog park renovations and backyard chickens.
Polling? Showing me an artist's rendition of a couple of minivans on the Pike and then ask me if I like SUVs?
Thanks for showing us what a cool articulated bus looks like.
Speaking of streets, guess whose street is being repaved?
Der Reitsfuhrer's?
Ja
Libby's neighborhood streets are getting a complete makeover.
I resent tax dollars being spent to promote one transit mode over others without a fair alternatives analysis. This is what Public Information Director Diana Sun and her bloated staff do in the County Manager's office, when they aren't producing AVN videos and press releases touting smart growth urbanization / gentrification. Like Barbara Donnellan, Diana Sun doesn't live in Arlington, last I heard.
FYI, pissed off people who have seen the Vegas ACE Bus Youtubes, and the video clip of the ACE and Deuce buses in operation that the Green Party showed at the last County Board meeting (agenda item 44), are contacting the USDOT Inspector General.
The people who are benefiting and will benefit in the future from smart growth urbanization-gentrification are a) Not Arlington Residents and b) Arlington Residents who will be retired and living in dumb growth or no growth communities within 5 years.
ALL the County Board will be at or past retirement age (55-65) within 5 years, So will most of the other VIP decision makers, like County Manager Barbara Donnellan.
Do you have any proof or are you just expressing your own biased opinion?
Yes. Except for Wilbur Romney and a few others the Boomers are retiring when they reach 65. Leaving their kids, like me, to clean up their parents' messes. My Dad is a tax-borrow-spend Liberal and recently retired from the school system. There was never an APS program that he didn't want to fund.
Big bunch of over 50's looking for a big payoff from smart growth gentrification before they retire to some depressed dumb growth community. Near a major medical center, of course, constructed during their parents' and grandparents' heyday of tax-borrow-and spend based on the growth of American manufacturing.
Biased opinion? Do you attend County Board Meetings? The 60-something and 70-something advisory commission members who produced the smart growth 'planning' for the County Board to rubber-stamp are outta here for dumb growth retirement opportunities far away from Arlington County.
They are looking for TWO low cost, low real estate tax retirement residences, summer in the frost belt, winter in the sun belt.
How many of their pet advisory commissioners have retired the last few C.B. meetings? About 20? Replaced by?
From the Twitter: @psullivan1
Full Wapo story coming tonight on Columbia Pike streetcar; meanwhile, here is what #ArlingtonVa residents think. http://wapo.st/Q5zv6f
Why is Arlington County signing on to an expensive and unsafe streetcar system with the local media getting along and going along? Where is the Washington Post?
Post ran a front page report today about insider trading by Members of Congress in advance of the Recession - 4 years after the trading occurred.
Post Metro Section ran an article about the trolley folly today without providing any information about articulated buses, let alone the Vegas ACE bus.
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