news rodeo - April 29, 2007

We here at PHG have been busy as of late (or at least busy procrastinating from getting any 'real' work done). So to catch you all (all two of you!) up on what's been going on here is the first ever PHG news rodeo!

story: Ad on Bus Mocks Bus. In Grand Rapids, Michigan there will be an ad on the back of buses that openly mocks the transit system in Grand Rapids. According the news article: "The political ad shows a Rapid transit bus that has morphed into a pig. It's eating money and spewing pollution." The ad proclaims This Pig Stinks! in bold letters. A group paid $290 to place the ad for a month, and it is in opposition to an increase in revenue to expand service in Grand Rapids.

PHG take: This is exactly the opposite approach that CBS took when MoveOn.org and PETA tried to pay for advertisements during the Super Bowl two years ago. Even though these groups were willing to pay $2 million for a thirty second ad, CBS denied their ads stating that they refuse to air political ads. Grand Rapids certainly didn't have to accept this ad, but should be given some credit for accepting this controversial ad. I think the real story is: $290 for a 21 inch by 72 inch ad! PHG should scrape together some money, perhaps by selling Rice Krispy treats, to take our message of hope, transit, soccer, and transportation planning songs to Grand Rapids.

story: 'Gated Communities for the War-Ravaged." The Washington Post ran a story earlier this week with this precise headline! The article reports: "The U.S. military is walling off at least 10 of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods and using biometric technology to track some of their residents, creating what officers call 'gated communities' in an attempt to carve out oases of safety in this war-ravaged city."

PHG take: The war must finally be taking a turn for the better if Iraqis are getting their own gated communities! The picture that the Washington Post ran of Iraqi children playing soccer in their new 'gated community' does in many ways resemble Belmont Country Club in Loudoun County, Virginia.


story: Russia Plans World's Longest Tunnel, Link to Alaska. I found this story on the Transportationist blog. The 64 mile tunnel connecting Siberia to Alaska would be primarily used to transport oil, natural gas, and electricity but would also contain a highway and a high speed railway.

PHG take: Finally, the land bridge across the Bering Strait returns! This world is getting increasingly smaller by the day. If this thing is built, you could technically drive from New York to London by car. This is a different route than suggested by Google Maps, which encourages people traveling from New York to London to "swim across the Atlantic Ocean."


story: Other new from Russia - Boris Yeltsin dies.

PHG take: Yelstin was the first ever popularly elected president of Russia, and a leader during the very critical time of transition out of Cold War politics. I don't know if the Washington Post has anything against Yeltsin, but this was the photograph they were running on the front page of their website after his death.

the intersection of soccer and transit

one of my favorite things in life is taking the Metro to a DC United game at Estadio RFK (in Goffer's parlance). This is especially magnificent if it is one of those beautiful summer evenings in Washington, DC where you are finally getting a break from the mid-day heat and humidity.

Major League Soccer has a new team this year and it is good old Toronto FC. As part of the promotional push for their new team, Toronto has decorated one of its streetcars to honor Toronto FC. Awesome!

transit makes density possible

The New Wembley stadium opened in London on March 24, 2007 with a soccer match between the under-21 squads of England and Italy. When everything is finalized, the massive stadium will hold over 90,000 people. Even with this large number of spectators, there will be no general parking at New Wembley. What makes this density possible? Transit. During soccer matches, the stadium will be served by over 100 trains an hour. 3 Tube lines and 2 national rail lines serve the stadium, and have the capacity to transport a whopping 70,000 persons per hour. The stadium is also served by an extensive network of buses.

In other news, the Tube carried more than 1 billion passengers last year! The Mayor of London, Ken Livingston, maintained that this strong transit ridership reflected the health of London's economy: "This new record of one billion passengers shows the strength of London's economy and how crucial the Tube is to that economic success."

Bush and The Google

another ardent supporter of Google Earth!

Cavalier Daily Letter

I wrote a letter to the UVA paper based on a previous blog entry of mine. Although I have to say, I very much prefer my headline: "a people's history of the University of Virginia" to their headline: "Whitewashing history."

Google Earth maps atrocities in Darfur

CNN is reporting that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in conjunction with Google Earth is providing a geospatial map of the atrocities in Darfur. We live in a world increasingly connected, and we can no longer hide from our responsibility to stop genocide.

Sara J. Bloomfield, Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, states: "Educating today’s generation about the atrocities of the past and present can be enhanced by technologies such as Google Earth. When it comes to responding to genocide, the world’s record is terrible. We hope this important initiative with Google will make it that much harder for the world to ignore those who need us the most."

a people's history of the University of Virginia

The University of Virginia has a recently revamped website. One new feature of this website is a section called U.VA. for Kids. In the history section, the University has a very interesting hypothesis for its more than a century of discrimination against women and minorities.

"In the days of Thomas Jefferson, no one thought that black people would want to attend a university. No one thought women would want to go to a university, either. One hundred years later, though, both black people and women made it clear that they wanted to be students at the University of Virginia, too."

U.VA. for kids makes no attempt at explaining Mr. Jefferson's connections to slavery. Or that it took, not 100, but 150 years for the University to admit women. For the first time UVA "would admit students without regard to sex in the Fall of 1972."

Greenland when it's Africa's size

the best cartography song ever written

upside down from here by Atom and His Package

from Antartica to the polar cap
try to fit a big orb on a little flat map
I'm not going to drive this time
I love Greenland when it's Africa's size
north is not up and east is not right
except for Milwaukee, Wisconsin that night
so take a look at a map and learn where you live at
learn where you live at, learn where you live at

I know what feels like to be upside down from here

charlottesville rules!

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has recently named Charlottesville as one of its dozen distinctive destinations for 2007! Now I like Charlottesville, but I think it is pretty amazing that whenever an organization is compiling lists of best places to live or visit that Charlottesville is consistently cited as a top location.

When visitors come to Charlottesville I hope they take some time to tour Route 29 North, which is an eight+ lane road with miles and miles of underutilized strip malls. The majority of the Charlottesville metro population lives in this section of Albemarle County, which is a much wealthier area than the City of Charlottesville.


UVA professor Tim Beatley in his recent book Native to Nowhere has a picture taken within Charlottesville city limits very similar to the one above. So when people visit Charlottesville they can be both in a distinctive destination and nowhere at approximately the same time! Given the vast amount of suburban sprawl and automobile-dominated landscape I would say that the Charlottesville metropolitan area is much more typical rather than distinctive in terms of predominate land use.

If I were recommending a distinctive destination in Virginia I would suggest South Boston. I happened to visit this small town while getting lost on the way down to Chapel Hill two weeks ago and was charmed by the place. South Boston, to its credit, won an award from the Virginia Chaper of the American Planning Association in 2006 for its restoration of the Prizery: a Community, Fine Arts, and Welcome Center. Now this is a distinctive destination.