With all the rain over the past few weeks, it looked as if it would be easier to get around some parts of downtown by boat. Turns out that that’s what Pierre L’Enfant had in mind — sort of. There was no Constitution Avenue under the original layout of the city. Instead, that east/west route was to be accomplished by the Washington Canal, which came out of the Tiber Creek
and made its way to the U.S. Capitol. L’Enfant originally designed a whole series of canals for Washington, but too many people used them as trash dumps. So, in 1872 the Washington Canal was filled in and became one of the most famous parade routes in the world. Imagine an inaugural parade where the new president is on a barge. By the way, the canal system was to be replaced by railroads but Washington officials missed some deadlines (some things never change) and the B&O Railroad was built instead of connecting Washington with points west.
Too much to drink?
I’m not sure how you plan to celebrate Independence Day, but I want to remind you all one more time of the free service that’s available if you find you’ve had too much to drink and shouldn’t drive.
SoberRide will operate from 4 p.m. today until 4 a.m. Wednesday and all you have to do is call 1-800-200-TAXI to get a cab to take you home, up to a $50 fare.
If you shouldn’t be driving, don’t. Call SoberRide and be safe.
Getting your weekend Alerts
Bob wrote early last week after the first round of storms: “I am signed up for Metro Alerts on my e-mail and, until yesterday, routinely received start and stop notifications for minor 10 minute delays at various stations.When I needed information regarding Metro’s status yesterday morning, there were no alerts about the closed stations, and then the system returned to normal later in the day. Was the system down yesterday?”
There were no problems with the system that anyone knew about. It seems that a lot of people didn’t get messages because of the way they signed up for the service. There are different messages that go to different people depending on what they asked for when they signed up for the e-mail alerts.
Of the tens of thousands who get the alerts only a small percentage ask for weekend information. Of course, the alerts on the weekend would have been the most helpful in this instance. It seems like this might be a good time to go into your Metro Alert account and make sure that it still fits your needs. If not, make some adjustments and modifications. I should warn you though, that if you go ahead and sign up for weekend alerts because of the potential of a Monday morning problem, you will end up with a lot of maintenance and delay alerts for the construction that occurs during the weekend hours.
Questions, comments, random musings? Write to [email protected].
