The Georgetown Metropolitan

Photo by Jason Pier.

GM walked by the Wisconsin Ave. CVS last night and noticed that there was a no parking sign up along O St. The sign indicated that the reason for the restriction was “Bikeshare” and the date was April 24th, today.

This location was one of the locations identified by DDOT for the next round of stations. This will go a long way towards filling the need for residents to have better access to bikeshare stations. There are, of course, already four stations in Georgetown, but they’re on the periphery of the residential sections of the neighborhood. This one will bring the service all that much closer to many residents’ front doors. Continue reading →

Photo courtesy of BYT.

Last weekend was the phenomenal French Market on Book Hill. It was the event’s tenth anniversary and was the best one yet. With luck, an innovation from this year will point the way towards more street fairs in Georgetown: wider sidewalks.

If there’s one thing most people agree on it’s that Georgetown’s sidewalks on M and Wisconsin are far too narrow. GM would love a permanent fix whereby most, if not all, parking on M is taken away to widen the brick sidewalks. But that would be a huge and expensive project, possible someday perhaps but not anytime soon.

The French Market demonstrated, however, how we can temporarily widen the sidewalks with fantastic results. As you can see above, the city removed parking on Wisconsin Ave. and set up fences between the pedestrians and the traffic. Thus essentially doubling the width of the sidewalk.

Crowding was always a problem with the French Market, but extra space substantially reduced that. Continue reading →