The last time University officials discussed the transportation aspect of the 2010 Campus Plan back in May, they said they were tentatively planning to send the Dupont GUTS bus through the Canal Road entrance, meaning the shuttle route would be extended to the experimental 4.7 mile test route permanently. At last night’s meeting presenting the University’s first draft of its transportation plans, University officials made it clear that the rerouting isn’t just tentative—it’s now part of the University’s preferred draft plan.
Vice President for Facilities and Student Housing Karen Frank, who presented the University’s transportation plans to neighbors last night, explained that Georgetown would like to build a loop road on the west side of campus (as illustrated above) which would allow more buses to use the Canal Road entrance.
When the University requested the rights to build the Canal Road entrance in its last ten year plan it promised neighbors that the new entrance would be used for GUTS buses. Georgetown students, faculty and staff have been spared from the extended route thus far thanks to the fact that the current set-up of the parking lot near McDonough makes it nearly impossible for buses to turn around on campus.
The other problem is that between 6:15 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. on weekdays—prime rush hour time—drivers are not permitted to make left turns off of the Canal Road entrance. If the University could get the left-turn prohibition lifted and build the loop road, all buses besides the Wisconsin Avenue route would be able to enter and exit through Canal Road.
The potential roadblock for the plan is the Park Service, which owns the land west of campus that abuts the proposed loop road. While the road would be on GU property, the University has an agreement with the Park Service to only use that part of campus for service vehicles. Frank said she is pushing for the definition of “service vehicles” to be any vehicle “dedicated to the University,” which would include GUTS buses. However, Frank said, the Park Service is “not real easy to work with.”
For the second installation of Vox Talks, we asked people on campus their feelings about MTV’s reality stalwart, the Real World, coming to Dupont Circle for its 23rd season.
Greater Greater Washington, a blog about smart growth in the D.C. Metropolitan area, tackled the GUTS bus question yesterday and concluded that everyone would be better off if we just relied on the D:
Why does Georgetown need a shuttle from campus to Dupont Circle at all? Right now, there’s a bus that goes right from the Reservoir Road side of campus to the same intersection of 21st and Q that GUTS uses: the D3 and D6 buses. The route is identical, except the D buses stop on Reservoir instead of looping around Lot A just inside campus …
We could improve transit for all if Georgetown applied the money it spends on the Georgetown-Dupont route to WMATA to add service to the D3 and D6, and subsidize students’ rides on them. If the D buses stop too often along the way, we could even create a D9 express bus … Besides, the GUTS schedule estimates a 15 minute trip from Georgetown University to Dupont Circle, while the WMATA schedule actually claims it’s even less than that.
It’s an interesting idea in theory, but there would be some major hurdles. Setting aside concerns about how mind-numbingly complex and the occasionally unreliable D.C.’s bus system is, would the University really be able (or willing) to negotiate with WMATA to create a suitable express route?
And, if we managed that, how would bus rides be paid for? Would the University provide SmarTrip cards to everyone and, if so, how would it be administered? If the stalled Student Metro Discount campaign is any indication, negotiating large-scale deals with WMATA isn’t quite as easy as it might sound. And if the University doesn’t subsidize the trips, would riders have to pay out of pocket?
If the University eliminated GUTS buses but worked with WMATA to augment the D line, would that do anything to pacify the neighbors? Also, GGW’s suggestion doesn’t take into account any GUTS lines besides Dupont. Even if we could work something out for that route, what about the others?
But what say you—would expanded D line coverage be an acceptable GUTS substitute?
The absurdity of the new, potentially permanent Dupont GUTS bus route, discussed at the 10 year campus plan meeting, caught the attention of Greater Greater Washington, a wonky, “smart growth” blog about D.C. The issue, mentioned briefly at the top of a list of links, has provoked a 57-comment debate. Here are some of the more interesting ones:
Most commenters, like Jasper, agreed that the neighbors are being unreasonable, saying the proposed route would add to congestion and create a parking nightmare:
Oh, you’re objecting to the a private university offering free transportation to its students, employees and visitors? Would you rather subsidize WMATA through your taxes? And where exactly, would all those cars be parked? Do you realize that there is a two-year waiting period before employees can actually apply for a (ridiculously overpriced) parking permit?
A few weeks ago, Voice News explained that the GUTS buses to and from Dupont were using a new weekend route. The longest route, currently being tested in the weekends, is over twice the length of the shortest Dupont route. Even after a lobbying effort by the Georgetown University Legislative Advocates, the University has continued testing this new route, as they did this past Saturday.
I was planning to catch the 6:45 Dupont bus back to Georgetown on Saturday, and I arrived at the stop at 6:40. By 7:00, I was considering taking a cab, until the bus rolled in at 7:02. I quickly realized that the driver was taking the long way home after we rounded Washington Circle and merged onto Whitehurst Freeway. At 7:20, we made it below the Canal Rd. entrance where three loud bus riders demanded to be let off. The drive motioned that there was nothing he could, and although I didn’t look at my watch, I would venture that we made it back to the front of Darnall at about 7:30.
Vox’s previous calls to action haven’t done much good, apparently, but it’s important that students (and any of the many other members of the University community who rely on the GUTS bus) make their concerns known to the Office of Transportation Management—send your angry emails to otm@georgetown.edu.
Who’d have thought that the Dupont Circle Metro stop was not only Georgetown students’ closest transportation hub, but a house of ill repute? Undercover police officers arrested a station manager and a custodian for “arranging sexual encounters from inside the station” (insert “ride it” joke).
The sexiest public transit crime in recent history went down when station manager Sharon Walters offered to arrange meetings with prostitutes for an undercover cop. And by prostitutes, she meant a station janitor.
Police set up the sting after seeing Walters’s name on a flyer for sex trips to Brazil. Who brings someone to Brazil to have sex? I thought that one of Brazil’s selling points was that the sex was freely available there.
There may not have been 967 attendees, like Facebook had promised me, but no small number of people showed up today in Dupont Circle to take part in D.C.’s Pillow Fight 2008 (part of World Pillow Fight Day). That is, if you include not just those participating in the pillow fight, but also those just there to watch and the countless people there to document it with their video recorders and slick SLR cameras. (I, regrettably, am forced to count myself among this last group.)
When I arrived in Dupont Circle just after 2 p.m., people were milling about in clusters, awkwardly clutching their pillows. One of the organizers blew a whistle and the 50 or so people who had come to rumble gradually formed a mob on the northeast side of the circle, squinting their eyes and slamming away at each other. The participants ranged from young high schoolers to college students to self-consciously hip 20-somethings.
Some of the comments I heard from these hipsters regarding how uncool yet cool they were to be fighting with high schoolers: “I hope college is going to be this fun! We should organize it a pillow fight in college too! We could have it on the quad!” and “Is it illegal to hit a seventeen year-old girl with a pillow? I’ll ask Bill—he’s a lawyer.”
It wasn’t all fun and games, mind you. World Pillow Fight Day, part of the “urban playground movement,” according to their website, has loftier ambitions than that.
One of our goals is to make these unique happenings in public space become a significant part of popular culture, partially replacing passive, non-social, branded consumption experiences like watching television, and consciously rejecting the blight on our cities caused by the endless creep of advertising into public space.
So it’s hip and socially conscious! Looks like the only ones losing out were the birds who donated all that lovely down.
Georgetown neighborhood is going to start sharing its Metro cops with more of the city if Police Chief Lanier gets her way. Her plan to organize police districts would re-zone higher crime Dupont Circle, part of downtown, and some of U Street into the more genteel Second District, which includes Georgetown.
Of course, people in the old Second District aren’t pleased about having to share. “Most concerning is that there will be a de facto drain of resources away from us,” Spence Spencer (!), the president of a neighborhood association in the 2nd District, told The Washington Post. Obviously, the change should be done responsibly. But don’t think Georgetown is defenseless, or ever resigns itself to sacrificing for the rest of the city.
Last year, I went to an Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting when the commission discussed a resolution to buy protection from off-duty police officers. After one of the commissioners talked about how concerned he was that we were using our money to buy better treatment than the rest of the city gets, the measure passed unanimously. Check out this Voice article from January to see more about local residents’ mercenary hiring practices.
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, a weekly newsmagazine at Georgetown University. Opinions expressed in posts are those of their author alone unless otherwise stated.
The proposed loop road and new GUTS routes
Could GUTS be a thing of the past?
We know. It’s INSANE.
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