The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority will adjust several D.C. bus routes as of Sunday, June 24, and one more a week later on July 1. These changes, some of which will make life harder for Metrobus riders, reflect one longstanding Metro bias and two relatively new wrinkles in the agency’s muddled approach to bus planning.

The June 24 shifts affect slightly such major lines as the 42 and the 50s; the most significant cutbacks will be on the S and 90 lines. One route, the X6 shuttle to the National Arboretum, will be eliminated. The July 1 adjustment is that the 98, which links Adams Morgan and the U Street Metro during party hours, will get 50 percent more service.

It’s hard to argue against the X6 cut. I’m one of the few Washingtonians who’s ever taken a Metrobus to the Arboretum, and even I have never been on an X6. But the 90 and S changes are another matter. They will increase waiting and travel times, as well as crowding, on two heavily used lines.

The S cutback is modest in scale, but devastating in effect: During evening rush hour, the northbound S4 will leave from 13th and I Streets NW, not 10th and Pennsylvania. (The S2 will continue to run the entire route.) This means riders on the line’s southern section face a 50 percent service cut—and at rush hour, no less.

The reduction reflects a decades-old Metro penchant for removing bus service to downtown. On the theory that such lines duplicated Metrorail, many bus routes that once served the F Street corridor or the Federal Triangle have been cut back or routed away from the area. Most infamous of these changes was the 1995 retrenchment of the 42, once one of Metrobus’ busiest routes. The line used to run from Mount Pleasant to Stadium-Armory via F Street and Union Station—a true downtown “Circulator.” The eastern part of the route was erased, and the F Street section moved to K Street, a change that was expected to suppress ridership, and did.

The 90-line changes are an example of one of Metro’s newer obsessions: truncating routes in order to improve on-time statistics. As of June 24, all 90, 92, and 93s will end at the Duke Ellington Bridge rather than McLean Gardens. The 96, which begins at Capitol Heights Metro, will be extended to McLean Gardens; it will be the only 90-line bus to go there. Statistics may improve, but service will decline.

Meanwhile, the little-used nighttime 98, whose route is duplicated by the other 90s, will run every 10 minutes, instead of every 15. A three-month test of the expansion, pushed by the Adams Morgan Partnership, will be subsidized by $70,000 in D.C. money.

Thus the “privatization” of city bus planning, but not funding, continues. Heavily used routes are trimmed, while little-ridden shuttles devised by business groups are increased. (The prime example of this is, of course, the underperforming Circulator, routed by the Downtown and Georgetown Business Improvement Districts but largely bankrolled by D.C. taxpayers.) If you want better bus service in your neighborhood, it seems, don’t call your councilmember—organize a BID.

Photo courtesy of WMATA

A boggling exploration of dreams, nightmares, and Japan’s collective unconscious, Paprika is the latest anime feature by Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers director Satoshi Kon. The 43-year-old animator visited D.C. in April to promote the movie, which opened here today. He laughed when asked if he considered the film akin to a hallucinogenic drug experience.

I didn’t think about that possibility at all. I have never done psychedelic drugs, so I wouldn’t really know. I’m not able to imagine that what I conceived in my mind would be the same as the images one might get from taking psychedelic drugs.

It’s not so much the images themselves as it is blurring of the line between reality and illusion.

That was the intent. I don’t believe movies should offer safe territory, where the audience sits and watches from a distance. I think what happens between the screen and the viewer is important. The goal is to force the audience to participate in the movie.

Your films, like so much anime, are full of transformations.

I don’t think that’s unique to Japanese animation. Animation is where something that’s immovable, and seemingly not alive, comes to life and moves. It’s the idea of animism, life forces being breathed into things. One of the strengths of animation is that it shows metamorphosis can take place.

But Japanese folklore is full of stories of shape-changers.

Yes, indeed. Japanese animation is very much influenced by those folk tales. I feel that changing the shape of a thing, or how it appears, is interesting to watch.

In the film, the surreal parade that courses through the city is full of traditional totems, like Shinto gates and Buddhist statues.

These are things that were thrown away, that are now returning. A hundred years ago in Japan, there were was much religiosity. In these modern times, it’s become rare. Go to a Shinto shrine, and you might see the gates. Go to a Buddhist temple, and you might see the statues. All of these things are now coming back. It’s as if they’ve all returned from the unconscious.

Your surname, “Kon,” is written with the character meaning “now”—the same character that begins “konichiwa” (good day). Is that a common name in Japan?

There aren’t too many of us. It seems that our ancestors originally came from China. If you look me up on the Internet, you’ll see my name written as “now.” However, in my family register, it’s written a little differently.

Red platform lights, which were installed on the upper level of the Gallery Place Metro Station in March, have now arrived at L’Enfant Plaza as well. Metro has announced that Fort Totten, Metro Center, Smithsonian, Union Station, Stadium-Armory, and Eisenhower Avenue will get the LEDs (light emitting diodes) soon.

The effect is not subtle. When at half power, the red lamps give the station vault a horror-flick vibe. And when a train enters and the lights begin blinking at full power, the place feels like a nuclear power plant’s control room as a meltdown looms.

There are two arguments for the lights. They will save money, because they use less electricity and need to replaced less frequently. And, believes Metro General Manager John Catoe, they will improve safety.

Writing in the Examiner, “Sprawl and Crawl” columnist Steve Eldridge complains that the lights “make everything look cheap,” but accepts them because they will cut Metro’s expenses.

In fact, the red LEDs do cost less than white ones: $63 apiece as opposed to $108, according to a Metro press release. But the cost of the bulbs is a minor part of the savings, most of which comes from reduced electricity use and decreased labor costs.

As for safety, the argument is even thinner. “When they see the red lights, I’ve observed that customers stop, and keep a safer distance from the edge of the platform,” Catoe has said.

In other words, no study has been done on the lights’ role in increasing safety. It just happens that the general manager, who was already inclined toward red platform lights, thinks they might change riders’ behavior. Even if this is true, the red LEDs are a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist: Metro trains don’t hit people standing on platforms. In the 31 years that Metro has operated, the only recurring cause of trains’ colliding with riders is attempted suicide. (The stations’ bloody new ambiance might even encourage that.)

Metro is Washington’s most significant work of postwar architecture, deftly combining aesthetic and safety concerns. Designed at a time when most Americans associated subways with New York’s system, and New York’s system with danger, Metro was meant to both appear and be safe. Such features as the open station design, platforms that subtly slant away from the tracks, the granite edge with blinking lights, and overhangs under the platform to provide refuge to anyone who fell on the tracks all make Metro the safest transit built at the time. Yet architect Harry Weese and his team were careful to also make the system elegant, and not a scary-looking industrial site with barriers and warning signs—or blinking red lights.

The addition of the red LEDs indicates how profoundly Metro’s current management doesn’t understand the system’s design. And that probably means that more assaults on it are to come.

One of the favored myths of D.C. officials is that the Frank D. Reeves Center, which opened at 14th and U Streets NW in 1986, resuscitated the area. According to this fantasy, it was the government office building—not the 1991 arrival of the Green Line, nor the expanding gentrification of the Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, and Adams Morgan neighborhoods—that brought clubs, restaurants, and other businesses to the U Street corridor.

The Reeves Center legend is so popular, in fact, that it’s used to justify moving other government offices to ever more remote locations. Following his predecessor’s lead, Mayor Adrian Fenty has even proposed forcing Metro, a regional agency, to relocate its Judiciary Square headquarters to the vicinity of the Anacostia Metro station.

Yet even as the Reeves fable is used to justify further decentralization, the city’s Office of Property Management is seeking to redeem the fairy-tale building. On Tuesday evening, OPM Director Lars Etzkorn convened a public meeting to discuss ways to save the structure that supposedly saved U Street. “Finally, I can actually do something about this building,” Etzkorn announced.

Actually, the parley was called only to discuss the building’s first floor, a retail graveyard that currently holds a convenience store, a gallery, a bank, a D.C. Lottery redemption center, and lots of unleased space. Other problems, such as the perennially leaking roof, were not on the agenda.

Etzkorn was followed by consultants, two retail and one architectural, and then a OPM staffer who led an “audience participation exercise.” Unlike most such drills organized by D.C. government agencies, this one was not structured to drive people toward a preordained decision. The discussion was so free-form that the approximately 15 attendees, most of them from the neighborhood, were free to offer ideas that were largely detached from reality.

They proposed adding a supermarket, a “food hall,” or an Apple Store. People suggested that the revamped Reeves should resemble Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market or Seattle’s Pike Place Market—both of which are much bigger than the center’s first floor, and in far more heavily trafficked and architecturally attractive locations.

A “food hall” would be possible in Reeves only if, at considerable expense, the entire first floor were converted to retail and the entrance and security-clearance functions for the offices above were somehow moved to the second floor. Much simpler, and just as a beneficial to the adjacent streets, would be to reconfigure the existing retail space so that it’s more conspicuous and appealing, and make all of it accessible from the street. That, plus a cafe or other outdoor business on the U Street side, would be enough to fix what local resident Scott Pomeroy called “the major dead zone” the building creates.

Ironically, though, the Reeves Center shows more urbanistic promise than the other government centers planned to disperse city functions to far-flung locations. But more on that later.

Until recently, activists have carefully watched the assemblage of private property in their neighborhoods, anticipating the next major bid for a midrise office or condo building. That’s still prudent, but lately much of the redevelopment action has involved city-owned land. Anyone scouting for the next major development would be well-advised to pay close attention to schools, libraries, firehouses, and police stations.

A new scheme by Eastbanc, a Georgetown-based developer, would involve three of those four institutions. The project would replace the police department’s Special Operations building at 23rd and L, the West End Library directly to the west (both are on Square 37), and the fire station nearby at 23rd and M (on Square 50). A new firehouse and library would be built as part of two structures that would also include residential and possibly retail space; the police facility will leave the area permanently.

The plans, which Eastbanc has been presenting at a series of small meetings with neighborhood residents, are still tentative. At a Monday evening briefing at the West End library, about 20 people learned of the proposal from Eastbanc vice presidents Joe Sternlieb (a former employee of the city and the Downtown Business Improvement District) and Mary E. Mottershead. The drawings they displayed showed only basic massing, not full design.

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After a series of well-publicized pedestrian deaths, walkers’ safety is a hot local topic. So the fact that only about 40 people attended Thursday evening’s public meeting on the citywide pedestrian plan probably reflects inadequate publicity for the event, not a lack of interest. Still, there was a significant gap between the planners and the walkers.

Part of the misunderstanding stemmed from the consultants’ reliance on jargon. Representing the Toole Design Group, Colleen Mitchell referred to “sidewalk deficiencies” (that means there aren’t any), “work zones” (construction sites), and “deliverables” (whatever the consultants get paid to produce). But the fundamental issue was that the pedestrian plan, whose final version should be ready in October, emphasizes engineering fixes, while the citizens’ priority was enforcement of existing traffic laws.

Called at the new Columbia Heights Recreation Center, the meeting began about a half-hour late, with Adrian Fenty’s arrival. The mayor read a few “talking points” he admitted to not having seen before delivering them, demanded applause for new Transportation Department Director Emeka Moneme, and then headed for the door. It was left to three consultants and a few DOT employees to explain further.

Essentially, the meeting presented some survey data and four citywide maps. The latter depicted those sidewalk deficiencies, recent vehicle-pedestrian collisions, about 25 “pedestrian study areas,” and dangerous sites where large numbers of walkers regularly encounter “high deficiency roadways.” The last map’s top six problem areas, depicted in bruise-colored purple: Maine Avenue SW, Washington Circle NW, Florida Avenue NW near North Capitol Street, East Capitol Street near Benning Road, and two sections of Minnesota Avenue, one near the Metro station of the same name and the other near Howard Road.

When the subject was opened to questions, the planning vernacular vanished. People just wanted to talk about how hard it is to cross the street, which a online survey done by the city had already indicated as pedestrians’ top concern. As if on cue, Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham arrived to say that the D.C. Council plans to transfer 43 traffic control officers from the police department to the transportation department, add another 20, and give them all the power to ticket traffic violations. This may not change anything—how will people on foot catch errant motorists?—but it drew more applause than Moneme.

In the ongoing rewrite of downtown Washington’s recent history, the Town Theater just got an upgrade.

An April 22 Washington Post piece on the National Museum of Women in the Arts, written by Ann Hornaday, described the building’s former tenant as a “kung fu movie house.” That’s not exactly true, but it’s closer to fact than the usual putdown, which is that the theater (always unnamed) was a porno dive.

In fact, during its final years the Town was an “urban house,” which means it showed films of interest to African-American audiences. Those included some kung fu, a lot of horror, and a pinch of by-then-shopworn blaxploitation. But the theater also featured lots of mainstream Hollywood stuff. The Town was by no means one of those grotty “grindhouses” that exist so vividly in Quentin Tarantino’s imagination (and maybe nowhere else).

The Town closed in January 1984, the last downtown cinema to be swept away by the gentrification plotted by the city’s Redevelopment Land Agency and the federal Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation. The 1984 date alone is significant, since it’s often claimed that the last downtown movie house closed in the 1960s. (If the fabulist is on a roll, he or she will note that the cinemas were displaced by “the riots,” which actually didn’t touch downtown D.C.)

The last movie I saw at the Town was Doctor Detroit, a largely forgotten 1983 Dan Aykroyd comedy. In its final six months, the theater also ran such standard suburban-multiplex fare as Superman III, Sudden Impact, and Escape from New York. And while the bookings did include “grindhouse” titles like Death Mask of the Ninja and Bloodsucking Freaks, even most of the horror offering were widely distributed stuff, such as the Stephen King adaptations Cujo and Christine. The Town may have shown trash, but it was middle-of-the-road trash. (Where did I find the Town’s 1983-84 schedule? Back issues of the Washington Post, of course.)

Most commentators who dismiss or condemn downtown Washington, circa 1960-1990, don’t mean anything by it. But there is an agenda here, even for people who haven’t realized they’re following it: Downtown’s redevelopment was something of a botch, so describing the area’s previous incarnation as a wasteland of porn houses and other gamy spots retroactively justifies what was done.

It’s just not that simple. The National Museum of Women in the Arts is a beautifully renovated and adapted building. But the Town Theater was kind of cool, too.

“The Old Convention Center Site Redevelopment represents an over 30-year effort to create an exciting ‘living downtown’ in Washington D.C.,” explains a brochure that was distributed at yesterday’s public meeting on the project, sponsored by the development team of Hines/Archstone-Smith and the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.

Well, that’s the official spin. But the proposal for the 10-acre site—between 9th, 11, and H Streets and New York Avenue NW—also represents a last-ditch attempt to establish a sliver of vitality after the failure of the city’s half-hearted 30-year plan for a “living downtown.”

That phrase has been evoked at least since the early 1980s, during Marion Barry’s first term as mayor. The idea was to redevelop the area between 7th and 15th Streets and Pennsylvania and New York Avenues NW—then a lively but not predominantly upscale shopping district, with some offices and a few apartments—as a vibrant mix of commercial and residential.

Whenever there was conflict over this vision, however, city officials sided with office developers. The downtown retail and residential components required by the Zoning Commission in 1990—already too late in the redevelopment process—were quickly undermined by the D.C. Council.

The Old Convention Center site offers a last, if inadequate, opportunity to compensate for the city’s failure of nerve. The property is owned by D.C., and is a blank slate, since all its historic structures were demolished in the late 1970s for the old center (which opened in 1983 and quickly proved obsolete). That may be why there’s little apparent opposition to the plan, which includes 450,000 square feet of office space but also 665 residential units—both condo and rental, some of them “affordable”—and up to 300,000 square feet of retail.

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Yoko Ono embraces peace, health, prosperity, and wishes, but she can do without sunlight. Descending to the Hirshhorn’s sculpture garden for a press event this afternoon, the petite conceptual artist and rock-star-by-proxy was protected by an umbrella, carried by a factotum of her “Imagine Peace” and “Wish Tree” projects.

Ono’s wish trees arrived in Washington for the Cherry Blossom Festival, which has designated 10 blossoming cherry trees around the Tidal Basin as places for people to attach small pieces of paper containing their written wishes. An 11th wish tree, a white Japanese dogwood in the sculpture garden, is a permanent addition to the Hirshhorn collection. According to Hirshhorn curator Kerry Brougher, who spoke at a press conference following the event, “It’s a major piece.”

Before today, it was a tree, but Ono made it a “piece” by writing a wish and attaching it to a branch. (What did she write? At the press conference, she invoked a “don’t tell” policy.) Others will be encouraged to add their wishes, which will “harvested” by Hirshhorn staff. Ultimately, the hopes and pleas from all of Ono’s designated trees will be stored at the library of the Imagine Peace Tower in—where else?—Reykjavik.

Dressed all in black save for a shiny silver jacket, Ono looked like an art star but acted more like a schoolgirl. As Hirshhorn Director Olga Viso explained the wish tree concept, the artist giggled, shrugged, and nodded. Her own comments in front of the tree were largely inaudible and over in about a minute.

At the press conference in the museum’s auditorium, Ono had the benefit of a microphone, and discoursed at more length on war, peace, and the wish trees. “I never thought this was going to be my ‘hit record,’ ” she said of the project.

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Georgia Avenue’s rush-hour express buses have finally arrived, six months late and with a different name, but otherwise as promised. When announced in June 2006, the service was called “Rapid Bus” and was slated to begin that September. It actually started running on Monday, dubbed “Metro Extra.” The important thing, though, is that the line does indeed cut traveling time on Georgia Avenue, whose 70/71 Metrobus route may well be the slowest major one in D.C.

Where the 70/71 can make up to 54 stops per trip, Metro Extra serves only 15 between the National Archives and Silver Spring Metro. (Wisely, the planners ultimately decided against terminating the line at Eastern Avenue, which would have stranded passengers short of a major transfer point.) This express schedule was projected to cut nine minutes from a trip from one terminus to the other. To judge by a ride I took on Wednesday, it does better than that.

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D.C.’s underperforming Circulator bus service has found a way to increase ridership: Swallow the competition. As of March 26, the Georgetown Metro Connection “Blue Buses” that run from Foggy Bottom to upper Georgetown will cease operation, and passengers will be directed to a rerouted Union Station-to-Georgetown Circulator route.

This is officially a “six-month pilot project,” but don’t expect the blue (or sometimes white) buses to return to that line, regardless of the experiment’s outcome. Georgetown Metro Connection’s Dupont Circle to Rosslyn route will continue, at least for now.

The Circulator revamp offers one enhancement but several drawbacks. The bus will not stop directly at the Foggy Bottom Metro stop—Metro passengers are advised to catch it at Farragut Square—and will no longer use K Street to enter Georgetown. Since buses will now travel on congested Pennsylvania Avenue and M Street, and then up Wisconsin Avenue as far as the Georgetown Safeway, the trip will be longer and slower. (More vehicles will be added in an attempt to maintain 10-minute headways.)

The principal improvement is that service will no longer end at 9 p.m. Buses from Georgetown will run to Farragut Square until midnight on weeknights and 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. The after-9 buses will not continue to Union Station.

The blue buses are underwritten by the Georgetown Business Improvement District, which also contributes a small subsidy to the Circulator. Other BIDs also fund the Circulator, but most of the money comes from D.C. and federal funds.

According to Erik Linden, spokesperson for the city’s transportation department, the Circulator’s east-west route is averaging about 5,000 riders per day. Total ridership for the entire three-route system in February was 142,000, which means 5,071 a day. That number indicates that the Union Station-Georgetown line is providing the bulk of Circulator riders, and yet the buses traversing K Street are rarely even half-full.

Passenger levels should increase on the Mall loop with warmer weather, but the 7th Street line is irredeemable; it would be approximately as useful to halt the buses and just burn the taxpayer cash it takes to run them.

In a e-mail providing the ridership numbers, Linden wrote that, “We are thrilled with the response to the Circulator thus far” and that “We think the ridership numbers are growing at a healthy rate.” Yet the number of passengers doesn’t seem to be growing at all.

February is a slow month, but at its peak Circulator ridership isn’t much higher than 5,071 daily. In April 2006, during prime tourist season, the Circulator carried an average of 6,062 people a day, a number that dipped to 5,899 in May.

In fall 2005, Circulator planner Joe Sternlieb predicted that daily riders on the first two routes would reach 10,000 to 11,000 by the end of 2008. It will take a lot more than sidelining a few blue buses to hit that number.

For several years now, the Gallery Place Station has been Metro’s equivalent of the Devil’s playground. But now it really looks the part.

Recently, Metro began a six-month test of new lights along the platform edge. The latest models use light-emitting diodes, which draw substantially less electricity than the original yellowish-white incandescent bulbs and are supposed to last about 40 times as long. This will save money and be less disruptive, since the LEDs shouldn’t have to be replaced nearly so often.

So far, so good. But the lights along the lower platform, which serves the Yellow and Green Lines, are a garish yellow-orange that clashes with Metro’s trademark earth tones. And the ones on the upper platform, where Red Line trains arrive and depart, are a vivid red that gives the station a house-of- blood vibe. (Too bad Metro is so reluctant to let filmmakers shoot in the system; horror-flick directors would love this new look.)

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When the West Falls Church Metro station was built, it was configured to allow a spur to the northwest—toward Tysons Corner, Reston, and Dulles. Twenty years after the station opened, it looks as if that feature will actually be used. A planned extension, tentatively labeled the Silver Line, would offer service to Tysons by (perhaps) 2012 and Dulles by (maybe) 2015.

But Silver Line advocates haven’t specified where the inbound trains will go after reaching West Falls Church, which is no small issue. So a skeptical Washington Post reader, Tony Battisti, asked Dr. Gridlock what will happen. For his Feb. 25 column, the doctor consulted Steve Feil, the chief of Metro’s rail operations, who said that trains would run from Dulles to downtown D.C. This could work, Gridlock wrote, “with a more sophisticated system of train management than Metro has now.”

Really? Any hint that Metro is anticipating a more sophisticated train-management system is good news, but the Silver Line planners don’t simply mean to add trains to a busy segment. They want to increase traffic on Metro’s busiest rush-hour line, the Orange, sending the additional trains through the system’s acknowledged “choke point,” the tunnel between Rosslyn and Foggy Bottom stations.

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The headquarters of the Rotterdam Film Festival is in De Doelen, which is the city’s rough equivalent of the Kennedy Center. It’s an ugly building, but of the motley postmodern style, not of the KC’s monumental neo-neo-classicism. What makes De Doelen appealing is that it’s tucked tightly into the city fabric, and its exterior is studded with businesses, mostly restaurants. From a distance, the building has a whiff of failed grandeur, but at street level it’s more concerned with function than form. That seems emblematic of Rotterdam: It’s a city that works, and doesn’t obsess on appearances.

With a dozen or more screenings happening at once, strategies for choosing the right film range from the intuitive to the arbitrary. Sometimes, a sold-out screening is aggravating; other times, it’s useful in reducing options. I generally went for films by directors whose previous work I’ve liked, ones that look interesting and seem unlikely ever to show in D.C., or are from countries whose cinema particularly interest me. I generally skip retrospectives, although I toyed with seeing movies by this year’s featured director Johnnie To. Thanks in large part to the Freer’s annual Hong Kong series, I’ve seen a lot of To films, which are wildly variable.

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Stroll away from the “centrum” of Rotterdam and you’ll encounter coffeeshops, usually named for reggae stars, where cannibis is the whole point of the menu. There’s probably a red-light district, too, although I haven’t encountered it. Still, no one could confuse this pragmatic port town with hedonistic Amsterdam, an hour by train to the north. The city’s principal aesthetic indulgence is its annual film festival. For 12 days in late January, the center-city cinemas fill with audiences eager (or at least willing) to see the sort of international films that are increasingly unlikely to be shown in the U.S. Since central Rotterdam doubles as the city’s Chinatown—that means lots of Chinese, Japanese, and Indonesian restaurants, mostly tucked into characterless modern buildings—it’s fitting that one of the fest’s strengths is Asian film. Read the rest of this entry »