Flapjake Fenty: Anyone wondering what Still Mayor Adrian Fenty will be doing for a living when his title changes to Former Mayor Adrian Fenty can wonder no more. Turns out the IHOP uniform suits him fine. The only problem will be when the obsessive triathlete has to take orders from customers eager to try the chain's "Bacon 'N Beef Burgers," which are made from ground beef and ground bacon. And sometimes, as in the case of the Bacon 'N Beef Bacon & Egg Cheeseburger, also topped with bacon. (And egg, and cheese.) +1

Buses Won't Shut Up: Get used to being yelled at by the buses on your street. Metro officials say a pilot program in which buses shout warnings at pedestrians—"Bus is turning!" "Look both ways!"—will continue for about a year. Might the program produce better results if if also included a loudspeaker that yelled at the bus drivers? "Pedestrian is crossing!" "Don't run them over!" -3

Turkeys on Layaway?: Cultivating an image as a politician who helps constituents out isn't easy. Especially not for politicians like D.C. Councilmember Marion Barry, whose reputations tend to precede them into just about any deal. The latest proof: Giant Food wouldn't hand over the 2,000 turkeys Barry had lined up for needy Ward 8 residents until the former mayor actually coughed up the $26,000 in private and corporate donations the supermarket chain demanded for the birds. Giant relented, in the end, but will the turkeys thaw in time to cook? +2

Missing in Action: For 30 years, Vietnam War veterans manned a booth between the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, selling souvenirs to raise money to support their protests on behalf of nearly 1,800 soldiers who were never accounted for in the war. Late last night, though, an apparently accidental fire burned the booth down. Which makes the booth's nickname—"The Last Firebase"—sadly ironic. -1

No Flights for You: Don't even bother hustling off to the airport tomorrow if you're running late to catch your flight. Chances are, you won't make it through security, because a protest against the Transportation Security Administration's new body scanners and groping pat-downs will mean massive delays. Then again, driving won't be much more fun, thanks to Delaware. We may have overpaid for our Amtrak tickets, but at least the train means no traffic and no one has to touch your junk. -1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 46 Today's score: -2 Today's Needle rating: 44

As foodies, reality TV fans and Padma Lakshmi devotees probably already know, Top Chef DC premiered last night. Washingtonian's Best Bites Blog has an episode recap (they had to cook for a Cherry Blossom Festival cocktail party—how touristy!) as well as predictions about the season from local Top Chef alums.

Virginia is adopting a six-year, $7.8 billion plan to improve transportation. It's unclear whether threatening to ruin the federal funding agreement for Metro is part of that plan...

The end of D.C.'s Apple-less days is nigh: The Georgetown Apple store will be opening tomorrow at 5 pm and giving out free shirts to the first 1,000 customers.

Photo by David Shankbone/Creative Commons Attribution License

If you type in a trip, making sure that you use a date that is after June 27, you will be able to see your new fare.

Catching the 8:15 a.m. train from the Takoma Metro station to Dupont Circle, for instance, will cost you 35 cents extra, rising from $2.65 to an even $3. (Sleeping in 'til 10 or so still pays off, it seems, cutting the hike hit to just 15 cents, from $1.45 to $1.60)

"My position would be, if we need to pay a little more, that's fine, but is this really paying for Metro to be upgraded? The cars are a sweatbox. They're crowded, especially when crowds come back from a game on weekend nights. Are higher fares going to improve anything? I don't see it."

Wasson may have to wait up to six years to see much improvement sweatbox-wise.

Metro's board also approved an $886 million contract to buy 428 new rail cars, including 300 replacements for the subway system's oldest models, which federal investigators have long described as "uncrashworthy," the Examiner reports:

Metro staffers in the board room clapped when it was approved, in an unusual step from the usually staid crowd.

The new cars won't arrive until 2013, however, and won't be in service until 2016.

Video courtesy of WJLA-TV

Neither Here nor There, May 6

"It is certainly possible that in certain areas of the city it would be free," District Department of Transportation Director Gabe Klein tells WTOP.

City officials yesterday unveiled a 66-foot-long, 168-seat Czech-designed prototype of the streetcars planned to one day shuttle Washingtonians to and fro. (Our own Lydia DePillis was on the scene.) The city's proposed 37-mile streetcar system will cost a reported $1.5 billion to build. But, at this early stage in development, the price of a fare seems harder to pin down:

"We could also design something where you pay once per day, or it could just be inexpensive — it could just be a dollar," says Klein. "So we will structure it in such a way that people feel very comfortable using it at will, anytime they need it."

Klein points to Portland's "fareless square" as a model of what might be possible in terms of free transit.

Closely examining the streetcar prototype on display, the, um, Examiner yesterday couldn't help but notice the metal arms atop the car that would connect to overhead power lines, noting:

A law dating from the 1890s bans overhead wires in much of the District.

DDOT's Scott Kubly told the paper the city "hasn't given up on changing the law. But it is working on creating the nation's first hybrid system to use overhead wires in portions of the city, then switch to an alternative power source for areas with views of the Capitol, the Washington Monument or other landmarks."

I unfortunately had the awful experience of being hit by a car on my commute home this evening. The details are as follows: Around 5:50 PM I was riding along First St. NW with other commuters. We crossed over Florida Ave and a car came in behind me, horn continuously on, and accelerated into my rear wheel knocking me to the ground. The driver then got out of the car and yelled some obscenity at me. He got back into his car and left the scene.

I ended up with a few bruises and bumps but luckily no serious injury, but my rear wheel was destroyed along with my saddle, still not sure about the frame. Although there were seven plus witnesses, we were only able to get a partial license plate. We did get a great description of the car. The police arrived on the scene and took all the witness statements, etc and the incident will be filed as a hit and run.

Kennedy Street NW, March 22

H Street NE, March 12

John Catoe had to go.

Right?

Over the past year, and certainly after the June 22 Red Line tragedy, an undeniable chasm developed on the subject of Catoe's performance as Metro's general manager.

The people who use Metro and comment on it from arms' length—those not engaged in day-to-day reporting on the system—have been scathingly critical of Catoe, blaming him for a degrading system, if not the accident itself. Folks with more knowledge of Metro operations—journalists, politicos, administrators, and, of course, WMATA's own board members—more or less stood by Catoe, arguing that he did awfully well with the lousy hand he'd been dealt. Plus, they invariably argued, who else would take the job?

Well, now they have to find someone else to take the job, and that divide bodes ill for the system's next general manager.

So allow LL to ponder the headhunting challenge of our time: Who in the hell would want to take this job?

Consider what the next Metro GM will have to deal with: (a) the worst fiscal crisis in Metro's history, necessitating drastic fare hikes and service cuts; (b) aging infrastructure coupled with pressure to tap the capital budget to cover operating deficits; (c) no solution in sight to the system's funding quandaries (the $300 million in federal/state money helps, but it doesn't solve the dedicated-funding problem); (d) broad rider satisfaction and distrust, not to mention local politicians and senators breathing down your neck; (e) a board dysfunctional by design, constructed in a manner that both indulges regional parochialism and inflames interjurisdictional strife (soon to be heightened by the addition of federal representation).

Today in an phone interview with NewsChannel 8's Bruce DePuyt, Metro board chair Jim Graham said this about WMATA's next general manager: "It's going to take an extraordinary human being. It's going to take somebody who's seasoned in terms of transportation issues but who also has a proven track record of dealing with the types of major challenges that John and the rest of us have had to deal with."

Setting aside the question of whether such a person even exists, LL doubts that person would jump at a Metro job.

Say you're a talented transit manager. You're running a mid-sized system or perhaps you've got a senior post in a large system or government. You're in your 40s, maybe early 50s. You've got kids in school, mortgage and college tuition to pay. You're doing a good job, your bosses are happy with you, but you're itching for a new challenge.

Do you give all that up to move to Washington given (a) through (e) above?

The truth is: If Metro finds a talented leader, it will be the result of luck more than anything else.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, in a statement on Catoe's departure, has it pretty much right: "[C]onsidering the perfect storm of a recession, decreasing ridership, increasing capital costs and the need for new revenue, Metro will be fortunate, indeed, to find a new General Manager not only equal to the task, but desirous of taking it on."

Using insightful analytical phrases like "bunch of BS" and "that kind of crap," Sarah Palin made her debut on Fox News as a commentator last night! Sorry to say: missed it. But Bill O'Reilly, on whose show Palin appeared, said later the whole thing was really "no different from interviewing Chuck Schumer." Hmm.

On the home front, D.C. has been picked as a possible host city for soccer's World Cup in 2018 or 2022. (That sounds exciting, if you care about soccer, but so have Baltimore and Philadelphia and Boston and Los Angeles and Seattle and 12 other cities. Even Tampa Bay.)

A D.C. Council committee has voted to run the city-funded Circulator bus across one river—the Potomac—but not another—the Anacostia. At-large Councilmember Kwame Brown says he'll fight the fight to get a new route that runs down Pennsylvania Avenue SE to Southern Avenue SE. In a news release, he explained he could not "in good conscious" vote to extend the bus into Virginia while D.C. residents are still waiting.

Metro is holding its third and final day of a "right-of-way" safety workshop today. “Last year we had two employees die as a result of accidents on the tracks and last month we had a train miss a safety inspector because the train operator violated safety procedures,” says Michael Taborn, Metro’s acting chief safety officer. “It is imperative that we strengthen our safety procedures for the thousands of Metro employees who have access to our tracks. Their lives are on the line each and every day.” Is three days enough?

Amen to this sentiment in today's Washington Post: "Let's stop praising Mark McGwire to the skies for finally revealing the world's worst-kept secret—that he used steroids during his storied major league career." No Hall for you!

The Pew Research Center released some interesting survey results yesterday showing that African-Americans are upbeat about African-American progress. Thirty-nine percent of blacks say the "situation of black people in this country" is better than it was five years earlier—compared to 20 percent who said the same in 2007. Fifty-four percent of blacks also said that Barack Obama's election has improved race relations (note: among whites, about a third thought his election had improved race relations, while 45 percent said it has made no difference).

I wonder: What would the survey have shown in the District?

According to DDOT spokesman John Lisle, this “difficult decision” stems from budget constraints: Although the upper leg carries 2 percent of the Georgetown Circulator’s riders, it is responsible for 15 percent of the overall cost.

After the service is discontinued,  Lisle says, Georgetown residents should make use of Metrobus' “enhanced and improved” 30 lines, which have “eliminated the need to layer additional Circulator service.” The DDOT is also looking into extending the 31 route downtown. The bus currently runs down Wisconsin Avenue but stops short at Foggy Bottom.

The Citizens Association of Georgetown is having a hard time seeing any "enhancement" about it; the group's members have argued that eliminating the upper Wisconsin Circulator route will leave only two buses, the 32 and the 36—half the number available two years ago when the 34 and the Circulator were also running. CAG also says that the two schools now served by the route (Hardy Middle School and the British School) require a transportation link, and traffic will increase after the opening of the newly renovated Safeway supermarket at 1855 Wisconsin Ave. The market's renovations include abolishing the "congested" parking lot, likely increasing the need for public transportation.

More potholes ahead...

We Need the Bus: Hazel Denton of the Citizens Association of Georgetown [CAG] says cutting the Circulator will leave upper Wisconsin residents high and dry: "Eighteen months ago, the mayor said they were going to enhance and streamline transportation, but [if the bus is cut] our service will have been halved in just two years. We feel outraged by this." Some want the Circulator service to extend even farther, to Glover Park.

No, You Don't: Take the 32 or the 36! Asked about the proposed cut, DDOT had no "official response" for now. But according to CAG, it comes down to budget constraints. Drew, commenting online earlier this year, also suggested that probable explanation: "I've never seen one with more than one or two riders. Just what we need, more riderless buses clogging the streets."

Next Step: If you want to keep the route, write the mayor or DDOT and complain. If you don't care, go back to surfing the web.