A lot of people will tell you a war on cars is being waged in the District. It's not really true, of course, but there is a heated debate over transportation in the city, and the most contentious topic is parking. The city has been accused of waging war for the

I missed both presentations earlier this week by Jeff Tumlin, one of the nation's leading sustainable transportation planners as a consultant at Nelson-Nygaard, and author of Sustainable Transportation Planning: Tools for Creating Vibrant, Healthy, and Resilient Communities. On Monday, he presented to the Partnership for Smart Growth in Richmond, to about 80 attendees, including a couple of City Council members and the city's bike and pedestrian planner. The Richmond.com website, affiliated with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, published a thorough summary of the talk, "10 Things Every City Can Do for Sustainable Transportation."

The McDonnell administration has unveiled its vision for a north-south highway and other improvements to Virginia’s newest Corridor of Statewide Significance. The McDonnell administration has unveiled a recommended alignment for a limited access highway to be built as the backbone of the North-South Corridor of Statewide Significance in Northern Virginia. The 45-mile circumferential highway would start at Interstate 95 in the south, swing west of Dulles International Airport and terminate at Route 7 in the north. The route would following existing highways, roads and projects contained in the comprehensive plans of Prince William County and Loudoun County. In a brief presentation of the proposal yesterday to the Commonwealth Transportation Board, Deputy Secretary of Transportation David Tyeryar justified the project on the grounds that it would help Dulles airport compete in the air cargo arena and would serve an area on the fringe of metropolitan Washington whose population is expected to grow by hundreds of thousands over the next three decades.

Parking policy guru Jeff Tumlin will outline sixteen ways to tailor parking policies to meet parking demand while reducing some of the negative effects of current policies. D.C. Department of Transportation’s Associate Director Sam Zimbabwe will present the city’s latest thinking on how to take the lessons learned from around the country to craft parking policies that support community goals. Join us to learn about best practices and what D.C. government is planning to do to get parking right.

Rockville Pike can be an unpleasant place to walk. The six-lane, highway-like road along the strip malls and parking lots of White Flint is heavy on traffic and light on the type of streetscaping in Bethesda Row or even Woodmont Triangle. Montgomery County and the developers behind the many mixed-use projects planned for the corridor would like to see that change. On April 27, the group leading the charge for smart growth initiatives will offer a glimpse of what that future might hold.