Transportation Nation

Street Art, On View Through October (Abbie Fentress Swanson Photo)

On Friday, the New York City Department of Transportation unveiled a new temporary outdoor exhibit on a 50-foot corrugated fence under the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge at the junction of Vernon Boulevard and South Queens Plaza in Queens.

The show, called When it opens like this, up is not over, exhibits six large-scale color photographs by New York artist Rena Leinberger.

To make the works, Leinberger first shot photographs of scenes behind the fence along Vernon Boulevard, which is an area normally not open to the public. Then she suspended pieces of cut-up emergency blankets and blue latex gloves over the photographs and re-shot them, giving the works a confetti-like effect.

Leinberger's exhibit is part of the Department of Transportation's Urban Art Program and the International Studio & Curatorial Program, which is a non-profit, residency-based contemporary art institution for emerging to mid-career artists and curators.

When it opens like this, up is not over will be on view through October 31. Check out photos of the exhibition here.

Hundreds of minibuses get commuters around Pakistan’s bustling port city Karachi.

Ladies ride in the front section of Karachi's minibuses. (Photo by Mansoor Khan)

Since there is no other viable means of public transportation, the buses get packed fast and can be risky to ride since they don’t stop for passengers to get on and off and riders often have to pile up on top of the buses if there's no space in the bus cabin. These turn many Karachi locals off. But the vibrant good looks of the buses coupled with the fact that they are made by local artisans make Karachi buses the coolest form of public transportation I’ve seen to date.

This bus, made in 2008, has seen a few trips. (Photo by Abbie Fentress Swanson)

Karachi's minibuses  take months to decorate before they hit the road. First they are painted a base color. Then artisans cut eye-catching red, orange, blue, green and yellow plastic reflector sheets (chamak patti) into shapes -- like hearts, diamonds and flowers -- into small pieces with scissors. The shapes are then made into patterns, pictures or natural scenes -- waterfalls, mountains and peacocks are popular -- and affixed onto tin sheets that cover the bus exteriors.

Popular motifs include peacocks and stars. (Photo by Umair Mohsin/Flickr CC)

The names of bus operators or artists who decorated the buses -- Brothers, Princ Khan, VIP -- are often found on the vehicles, as are eyes that look out at passengers coming from behind. Other decor, such as chains with amulets, dangle from the front and back bus bumpers. Icing on the cake is flags, tassels and strings of beads.

This 2001 bus is operated by Brothers. (Photo by Abbie Fentress Swanson)

After you've seen the buses by day, take a drive through Karachi at night: that's when tiny lights on the buses are all lit up.

The Karachi W11 by night. (Photo by Mansoor Khan)

Nissan Leaf charging (Photo (cc) Washington State DOT via Flickr)

(Michael Grabell, ProPublica) [1]This story was adapted from "Money Well Spent?: The Truth Behind the Trillion-Dollar Stimulus, the Biggest Economic Recovery Plan in History [1]," which will be published Tuesday by PublicAffairs.

A common criticism of President Obama's $800 billion stimulus package has been that it failed to produce anything – that while the New Deal built bridges and dams, all the stimulus did was fill some potholes and create temporary jobs.

Don't tell that to Annette Herrera. She was 50 when the auto supplier she worked for in Westland, Mich., closed its factory and moved the work to Mexico. Then, after being unemployed for 2½ years, she got a job in October 2010 with A123 Systems, which had received $250 million in stimulus money to help open a new lithium-ion battery plant in nearby Romulus, Mich.

"The first thing I did was call my husband and tell him, 'You're never going to guess! I got a job!'" Herrera recalled. "And then it was like celebration time."

One success the Obama administration can duly claim is the rebirth of the electric-car industry in the United States. Automakers have unveiled a number of mass-market electric cars, which have seen small but rising sales. Battery and parts manufacturers are building 30 factories, creating thousands of new jobs. A123 has hired 700 workers at Herrera's plant and a second one in nearby Livonia, and plans to hire a couple thousand more people over the next few years.

If it wasn't for the stimulus, the companies say, they would have built these plants overseas.

It was all part of an effort to promote "green" manufacturing and put a million electric cars on the road by 2015.

The question is: Will it last?

Elkhart, Ind., once believed it would. It saw electric vehicles as its salvation after watching its unemployment rate hit 20 percent. Eager to seed a new industry, the county witnessed electric-vehicle ventures sprout out of nowhere as the stimulus took off in 2009.

But by late summer 2011, what had sprouted were weeds. The parking lot of the Think electric-car plant was full of them, some more than a foot high growing from the cracks. Out front were two pickups and a motorcycle.

Hundreds of laid-off factory workers were supposed to have found jobs churning out the Norwegian company's bug-like, plastic-bodied cars, which ran solely on electricity.

Today the Elkhart factory employs two. Its parent company filed for bankruptcy in June. Its largest shareholder and battery maker, Ener1, which received $118 million in stimulus money, did the same last week.

A second life

Electric cars began appearing on California roads in the mid-1990s after state regulators mandated that a certain percentage of automakers' fleets include zero-emissions vehicles.

But within a few years, they were deemed a failure by car companies, which stopped making them and took back those they had leased.

Much had changed in the eight years leading up the stimulus package. The lead-acid and nickel-metal hydride batteries that weighed as much as 1,200 pounds were replaced with lithium-ion batteries that weighed as little as 400 pounds.

In the early 2000s, gas hadn't even passed $2 a gallon. Less than a decade later, it was twice that. Toyota had proven the demand with its long waiting list for the Prius hybrid.

Government policy had changed, too, with a 2007 energy bill that increased fuel-efficiency standards and provided $25 billion in loans for automakers to upgrade their plants.

But until the economic stimulus package was passed in 2009, the manufacture of electric cars and their batteries in the United States was nearly nonexistent.

The United States had only two factories manufacturing less than 2 percent of the world's advanced batteries. Most were made in Korea and Japan. In America, only Tesla manufactured an electric car — which sold for a cool $100,000. Across the entire country, there were a mere 500 electric charging stations.

But as the stimulus kicked in, there was suddenly no better environment for the electric car to thrive.

With more than $2 billion in federal grants, matched by another $2 billion in private investment, the Obama administration was supporting electric cars from the mine to the garage.

Chemetall Foote Corp., which operates the only U.S. lithium mine, received $28 million to boost production at its plants in Nevada and North Carolina. Honeywell received $27 million to become the first domestic supplier of a conductive salt for lithium batteries. More than $1 billion was spent to open and expand battery factories, many of them in hard-luck towns across Michigan. Through a separate federal program, automakers received loans to retool their assembly lines.

Customers could receive a $7,500 tax credit for buying an electric car. The stimulus provided funding for 20,000 electric charging stations by 2013. In many cities, drivers could get a home charger for free.

Although electric cars would not make up for the generation-long loss of manufacturing jobs, at least not yet, it was novel to see companies creating jobs in the Rust Belt instead of outsourcing them.

In July, Johnson Controls opened the first U.S. factory to produce complete lithium-ion battery cells for electric vehicles. Compact Power is building a $300 million factory in Holland, Mich., to produce batteries for the Chevy Volt and the electric Ford Focus. A123 now supplies the luxury electric carmaker Fisker Automotive and the manufacturers of electric delivery trucks used by FedEx and Frito-Lay."Quite simply, if we didn't get that grant, we wouldn't have built [the factory] in the U.S.," A123 spokesman Dan Borgasano said.

The battery grants have created and saved more than 1,800 jobs for assembly workers, toolmakers and engineers, according to a ProPublica analysis of stimulus project reports filed by the companies. That number doesn't include the workers who constructed the plants or those hired by the matching private investment the companies had to make to get the grants.

Killed again?

The problem: Consumers have been slow to embrace the electric car.

The price of the battery is still too high, and the price of gas is still too low, the Government Accountability Office warned in June 2009 before the grants were awarded. The starting price for the all-electric Nissan Leaf is $33,000, while the hybrid Volt sells for about $40,000 before tax credits — far more than many middle-class families can afford.

About 40 percent of drivers didn't have access to an outlet where they park their vehicles, the GAO noted.

"Although a mile driven on electricity is cheaper than one driven on gasoline," the National Research Council reported, "it will likely take several decades before the upfront costs decline enough to be offset by lifetime fuel savings."

Perhaps the biggest obstacle, though, was what the automobile represents in the American psyche: the freedom of the open road. While most people drive less than 40 miles per day, consumers want cars that they can also take on summer vacations — and they don't want to have to constantly worry about looking for a charging station.

The Leaf's range is just 73 miles, according to the official government rating, well below the much-advertised 100 miles.

By the end of 2011, fewer than 18,000 Leafs and Volts had been sold in the United States.

A report by congressional researchers last year concluded that the cost of batteries, anxiety over mileage range and more efficient internal combustion engines could make it difficult to achieve Obama's goal of a million electric vehicles by 2015. Even many in the industry say the target is unreachable.

While the $2.4 billion in stimulus money has increased battery manufacturing, the congressional report noted that United States might not be able to keep up in the long run. South Korea and China have announced plans to invest more than five times that amount over the next decade. Even A123 had to lay off 125 workers in November — though Borgasano says the company plans to rehire them all by June — because Fisker reduced orders.

Dick Moore, the mayor of Elkhart, had hoped the area known for its recreational-vehicle factories would one day be not just the "RV Capital of the World" but the "EV Capital of the World" as well.

Navistar International had received $39 million in stimulus money to build 400 electric delivery trucks in the first year. But by early 2011, it had hired about 40 employees and assembled only 78 vehicles.

Think had rallied into 2011 with plans to start production in Elkhart earlier than expected. But in April, assembly work suddenly stopped as the plant awaited parts from Europe.

In June, Think's parent company filed for bankruptcy. The decision left the Elkhart plant slouching toward extinction until the American subsidiary was purchased by a Russian entrepreneur who promised to restart production in early 2012.

But on Thursday, its battery maker, Ener1, also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, reporting that the demand for electric vehicles "did not develop as quickly as anticipated."

Elkhart's dream of becoming the EV capital?

Moore put it this way: "The fact that this hasn't moved very quickly, that doesn't bode well for that idea."

The future

The fate of the electric car depends greatly on whether sales take off soon.

There are other factors, such as the price of gas and whether Congress approves proposed standards requiring automakers to raise the average fuel economy of their vehicles to 55 miles per gallon by 2025.

The electric car has always struggled with a chicken-and-egg dilemma: Automakers have been reluctant to build electric cars without consumer demand. But consumers won't buy them until automakers develop cheaper, longer-range batteries.

One of the goals of the ongoing stimulus spending is to solve this problem. By 2015, the 30 battery and component factories will be able to produce 40 percent of the world's batteries, according to the administration.

The investments would help manufacturers increase the batteries' life from four years to 14 and cut their cost from $33,000 to $10,000, the administration said in a report on innovation. That would make the electric car more competitive.

Herrera noted that many people at the A123 factory believe they will never be able to afford the cars powered by the batteries they make. But, she says, "you never know."

"When the flat-screen TVs first came out, they were way expensive, and now they're reasonably priced," she said. "I think that's going to be the same thing with electric automobiles. This is a new product. It's going to take time."

The cyclists opted to stay in the right lane, and car commuters largely gave them a wide berth as they crossed the Frederick Douglass bridge. (Photo by David Schultz/WAMU)

Many cyclists and pedestrians in the District say the Frederick Douglass Bridge over the Anacostia River is unsafe to cross, and some of them set out to prove it.

A narrow sidewalk leads across this bridge in Southwest D.C., uneven in spots due to wear and tear. Around two dozen cyclists, organized by D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells, gathered Thursday at the foot of the bridge. At the tail end of rush hour, they crossed it at once to make a point.

"A lot of us were thinking we would go across in the right hand lane, which can be scary," said council staffer Jonathan Kass, speaking to riders as they prepared to cross the bridge. "You'll go over some grates. And you've gotta not be intimidated if you get honked at." Kass led the cyclists over the bridge. Some cars honked, but everyone makes it across in one piece.

Given that the bridge serves as a direct connection between lower income neighborhoods in Ward 8 and Nationals Park, one of the cyclists, Alphonso Coles, said it needs to be more user-friendly. "Most of these are commuters who've probably never seen any bicycles in the street, so they seemed like were giving us a wide berth," he said . "It should be such that if you're a casual biker, if you're in a motorized wheelchair, if you're a child, you should be able to go across this bridge and go to a baseball game," he added.

The District has plans to demolish this bridge and build a new one, but no money to carry that out.

For more photos of the ride -- and to listen to the story -- go to WAMU.

Dulles Airport (photo by Bobby Hidy via Flickr)

(Washington D.C. - WAMU) The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has reversed its controversial decision to build an underground Metro Station at Dulles Airport.

Everyone on both sides of the battle over this decision --- the Airports Authority and Virginia's political leaders -- agree an underground station would be more convenient for travelers. And yet, with the Authority's vote today, that won't be happening.

"I will be embarrassed that the international gateway airport for the capital of my country has a slipshod station like this, says Bob Brown, a federal appointee to the Airports Board. "This is an embarrassment and an outrage, I'm sorry to say that."

The underground option that the Airports Authority chose in April would've cost almost half a billion dollars more than an above ground alternative, and the Board was under tremendous political pressure to reverse course.

Tom Davis, a Airports Board member and former Congressman, voted against the underground option in April, but says he understands why Brown and his other colleagues pushed so hard for it.

"Bob is looking at this from a visionary point of view -- where do you want this airport to be in 50, 75 years," says Davis. "And I think, all things being equal, I would've been with him."

However, Davis says in this financial climate, and in an election year in Virginia, it was just not possible to win over the political leaders who'd have to pay the extra cost. The underground station, Davis says, is just a victim of circumstance.

But now that the matter of where the Metro station should go has been decided, the negotiations are far from over. In fact, you could say the negotiations have only just begun.The Airports Authority agreed to drop its plans for an underground Metro station only on the condition that Virginia contribute an additional 150 million dollars to the Dulles Metrorail project. Without this money, Authority officials say they can’t make the project’s financial ends meet.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell says he won’t even discuss contributing more money until the Airports Authority makes changes to its labor agreement, passed in April. It requires all contractors working on the project to conform to union-level standards for wages, benefits and skills.

The Authority says this will streamline the project's operations, but McDonnell says the agreement might violate Virginia’s right-to-work laws.

For more, visit WAMU News.

Photo Courtesy Flickr

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has reversed its controversial decision to build an underground Metro Station at Dulles Airport.

In a 11 to 1 vote, the Authority’s Board agreed to a proposal from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, that includes an above ground option for the new Metro station at Dulles.

Just months earlier, the Authority angered many by choosing the underground option, which -- while more convenient for travelers -- would have been hundreds of million dollars more expensive.

Had the Authority not reversed course, Fairfax and Loudoun Counties would have likely withdrawn their shares of funding… something that almost certainly would have been a death blow for the entire Silver Line project.

Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff says there was no plan B for saving the project, had the Authority rejected LaHood’s proposal today.

The Authority's decision earlier this year to build the station underground at a cost of some $300 million more than one above ground was widely criticized by local political leaders, who would be responsible for paying the extra cost.

Ray LaHood, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, stepped in with a compromise in June that would effectively eliminate the underground option.

LaHood's compromise, which includes an above ground station but would make the localities responsible for the cost of several parking garages in the plan was reviewed by board for the past several weeks.

A group of pedicabbers at impromptu vigil outside U.S. Park Police Headquarters near Haines Point in Southwest D.C. (photo by David Schultz/WAMU)

(Washington, D.C. - WAMU) D.C. pedicab operators are once again calling attention to their treatment by the U.S. Park Police after they say one of their own was unfairly arrested and subdued with a Taser on the National Mall.

The pedicabbers say an officer with the U.S. Park Police confronted pedicab driver Charles Guillon, as he was picking up customers in his bicycle-drawn rickshaw Friday afternoon.

Tyler Clark, a law student driving a pedicab this summer, saw the whole thing.

"It was like an episode of Cops, where the officer screams, 'you're resisting arrest!' when it appeared like the guy wasn't resisting arrest," Clark said. "And the officer was just being way too forceful for anyone to comply with what he was asking them to do."

Clark said Guillon began to reach for his glasses in his shirt's breast pocket, when the officer un-holstered his Taser, pressed it against Guillon's ribcage, and fired.

"The pedicab driver dropped to the ground, was writhing and screaming in pain and agony," Clark said. "And the police officer shot him with the Taser one more time."

Pedicab drivers on the National Mall say Park Police officers are using brutal tactics this summer in a crackdown on their fledgling industry. One of them, Sarah Roberts, told WAMU last month that she was injured by a Park Police officer after refusing to provide identification.

The Park Police didn't respond to our phone calls and emails, but officials from the agency have previously denied the existence of a crackdown.

Listen to the story here.

(Washington D.C. - WAMU) In a few years, Metro is getting rid of a quarter of its old rail cars, the ones that crumpled like telescopes in the 2009 Red Line train crash and were deemed unsafe by federal investigators. And in their place will be a fleet of all new train cars.

Officials say their goal is to develop something sturdy and safe, but also something comfortable and inviting

"The design has a physical aspect, as well as a psychological aspect," says Masamichi Udagawa, an industrial designer Metro brought on to help design the aesthetics of the new cars.

He says the interiors will be a dark blue color, rather than the traditional orange and brown Metro riders are used to.

Udagawa says the reason for the change is that brown isn’t a very popular color.

"People really didn't like seeing the brown again," he laughs. "The color is a very subjective thing. It's very, very context-sensitive. So in the context of the D.C. system, people are a bit tired and maybe bored with brown."

The Kawasaki Company, based out of Japan, is building the train cars and could have them ready by 2013. But Metro says they might be delayed because of the recent earthquake and tsunami.

At a Metro focus group, a facilitator asks randomly selected riders what they think of the current station names. The riders give their opinions, and then the facilitator repeats them back. One complaint crops up so often that the facilitator begins to sound like a broken record.

"Uh huh, they're long," says one facilitator. "They're very long. On the shorter side of things? Uh huh. Too long."

In some riders' opinions, one of the worst ones is the U Street-African American Civil War Memorial-Cardozo stop.

Riders also say landmarks should not be included in the name of a station, unless the site is within walking distance

"Like if I'm a mother with two kids and a stroller, and I can't get there easily, don't put it in the title," says one rider.

Another poorly names station: Woodley Park/Zoo/Adams Morgan.

"Oh yeah!" exclaims another rider. "That's the worst."

"I feel sorry for people who think they're going to be in Adams Morgan when they get off there," chimes in another rider.

Metro says it wants to use the public's opinions in shaping its new station names and, by extension, its new identity.

But what riders want is often at odds with what the neighborhoods around the stations want, especially neighborhood businesses, which see station names as a marketing tool.

(Washington D.C. - WAMU) Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell may be pitching in more money to the Dulles Metrorail project, despite his recent complaints that its cost has grown too high.

Leaders at the local and state level in Virginia say they're worried the rising cost of the project will force fees on the Dulles Toll Road to rise painfully high. Money from tolls is paying for a large chunk of the plan to build a new Metro line to Dulles Airport.

Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff says, in the past few days, the McDonnell administration has told him it would contribute an additional $150 million to keep the tolls down.

McDonnell's transportation secretary, Sean Connaughton, won't confirm the offer, but he says it is one of the options under consideration.

Rogoff and other federal officials are working to mediate a dispute over the cost of the project between Northern Virginia's elected leaders and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Rogoff says if the dispute isn’t resolved soon, it could kill the plan.

Tunnelling under Tysons Corner (photo courtesy of Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority)

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has proposed a compromise to end the bitter feud between the partners building a new subway line out to Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia, a more than $5 billion infrastructure project that's one of the costliest currently under construction in the country. But, as of right now, it's unclear if the partners will agree to it.

For months, disputes over the rising cost of the Dulles Rail project have raged between the two partners. On one side has been the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which is in control of operating the Dulles Rail project. It wants to build an underground train station at the airport that could cost more than $330 million dollars more than an above-ground alternative.

On the other side are local elected officials, who are responsible for allocating the money to pay for the project. This bipartisan group of local supervisors, state legislators and members of Congress have expressed outrage at the Airports Authority's choice of a more expensive rail station option, and have demanded they reverse course. The Airports Authority says an above-ground station would be twice as far from the terminal as the underground alternative, thus making the new subway station inconvenient for travelers, and have refused the elected officials' demands.

LaHood has been mediating discussions to get this massive infrastructure project back on track, and this weekend the head of the Federal Transit Administration sent the project stakeholders a proposal (pdf). The compromise would strip several elements of the Dulles Rail project from Airports Authority control and eliminate the underground station from the project. Among other things, these alterations would shave around $1 billion off of the cost the project, according to a letter laying out the details of the compromise that LaHood's office sent to the partners this weekend.

The Board of Supervisors for one of the local jurisdictions in on the project, Virginia's Loudoun County, is meeting this morning and is expected to approve the compromise. The Board of Directors for the Airports Authority has also met this morning, but according to an Authority spokesman, the issue of the LaHood compromise did not come up. As of right now, no Airports Board members have returned our calls.

UPDATE: Airports Authority Board member Mame Reiley, the chair of its Dulles Rail committee, says the Authority is considering the compromise proposal and that "all options are on the table." Also, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors chose to defer a vote on the LaHood compromise to a later day.

(photo by Kate Hinds)

(Washington D.C. - WAMU) The board of directors that governs Metro, the D.C. area's public transit agency, is too involved in day-to-day decisions and doesn't have proper oversight, according to a Government Accountability Office report released today.

The GAO investigated Metro's governance structure after a string of safety and reliability problems, including a rush-hour train collision two years ago that killed nine people and injured dozens more.

It found that, unlike many corporate and public sector boards, Metro's board was heavily involved in the minor details of the transit agency. Board members made decisions about "hiring and firing employees," approval of "minor personnel policy," and detailed decisions such as "station tiles, bicycle facilities and transit car seat colors."

This micromanagement, the GAO report states, is a result of inadequately defined roles and responsibilities for the board.

The GAO also found that, unlike most other big city transit agencies, Metro's Inspector General doesn't have the authority to investigate board members for allegations of wrongdoing.

In the aftermath of the 2009 crash, nearly every aspect of Metro came under intense scrutiny, and the board of directors was no exception. The National Transportation Safety Board criticized it for contributing to a deficient safety culture. And several regional leaders - including Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, and D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray - are currently in talks to make radical changes to the board's structure.

Metro's board is trying to preempt that, and it's currently in the process of changing its own bylaws. “This new board is hard at work meeting multiple parallel demands, including improving safety and system state-of-good-repair to better serve our customers,” said current chairman Catherine Hudgins. It will "continue to embrace change and advance many governance improvements that substantially strengthen our role as a regional policy and oversight organization."

To read the full GAO report, click here.

(David Schultz, WAMU -- Washington, D.C.) A long-anticipated federal audit of Metro will be released to the public Thursday, according to a spokesman at the Government Accountability Office.

We've reported on Transportation Nation in the past about several Metro governance criticisms and scandals. The GAO says it expects to complete the audit of Metro and its governance structure by Thursday and may release it to the public then, or it may allow Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski to review the report or 30 days before making it public.

Mikulski requested the audit nearly two years ago after the deadly Red Line train crash.

Since then, the GAO has been looking into the way Metro makes decisions and governs itself. Many prominent local leaders, especially Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, have been calling for sweeping changes in Metro's governance, and this report could provide them with the momentum needed to enact those changes.

To listen to the radio version of this story, go to WAMU.

(photo by David Schultz/WAMU)

(Washington D.C. - WAMU) Riding a rickshaw strapped to a bike - something that's also known as a pedicab - is not an easy job. Pedicab operators often transport three or four people at a time, up hills and often in sweltering weather.

But for pedicabbers in Washington D.C., especially those that operate around the National Mall, their jobs are even harder now. This summer, the U.S. Park Police - the law enforcement arm of the National Park Service - is embarking on what it calls an "education campaign" designed to remind pedicab operators of the laws they have to follow. Park Police spokesman David Schlosser said his department has concerns that these vehicles block the roads, and that some of them are unlicensed and unsafe.

Pedicab operators, however, say "education campaign" is a euphemism for what Park Police officers are actually doing.

They said the officers are needlessly pulling them over, writing them tickets for things that they could do freely in previous summers, and - in some cases - telling their customers not to pay them. "They'll be like 'Oh, whatever he's told you its going to cost, its free,'" pedicabber Ismael Balderas said. "'When you get there, don't give him anything.'"

Sarah Roberts is a college student earning some extra money this summer driving a pedicab. She said she had a particularly ugly experience with a Park Police officer last week.

She had just dropped a customer off at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, she said, when an officer approached her and demanded to see her ID. She refused, and then the officer slapped his handcuffs on her.

"I was just trying to understand the situation and he put a handcuff on me and kind of dragged me over to the hood of his car," she said, leaving a quarter-size mark on her shoulder.

Roberts, a petite 22-year-old with long dark hair, was yelling for help as hundreds of museum-goers stood by and watched. She said another plainclothes officer emerged from the crowd and joined in the arrest. Roberts said the plain clothes officer forced her to the pavement by putting his knee on the back of her thigh.

"I asked the guy 'Why are you helping him? Do you even know what's going on?' she recalled. "It seemed at that point that I'd already been criminalized."

Later on, Roberts said the officers were preparing to search her person and she requested that this be done by a female officer because, she told them, she had been the victim of sexual abuse and didn't feel comfortable being frisked by male police officers. However, Roberts said the officers ignored her request and searched her themselves.

Roberts said she ended up getting charged with resisting arrest and assaulting an officer, charges which she described as preposterous since the officers who arrested her were almost twice her size. "I definitely did not strike or go to strike the police officer at any time," Roberts said. "I would never do that."

As a female pedicabber in a largely male-dominated industry, Roberts says she now wonders if it's still safe for her to ride around on her bike-drawn rickshaw alone. "In the last few days when I’ve been out at work I’ve definitely preferred to not be by myself," she said.

Schlosser didn't return our phone calls requesting comment on Roberts' story.

When I spoke to Roberts about the incident, it was clear she was still very shaken up. She looked toward the ground during our entire interview, avoiding eye contact, and her voice was low and shaky.

Yet, when I asked if I could take a photograph of the mark on her shoulder, Roberts readily agreed. Without any prompting, she pulled up her shirt and flexed her arm in a 'Rosie the Riveter'-style pose, thrusting her pockmarked shoulder directly at the camera.

For more of Roberts' story, click here.

UPDATE - 6/28: Park Police spokesman David Schlosser spoke with Transportation Nation this morning. He says the officer approached Roberts to inform her that her pedicab was parked illegally in a crosswalk and that she refused to move it. He says Roberts was charged with resisting arrest/assaulting an officer, which is a misdemeanor, and failure to obey a lawful order, relating to her refusal to move her pedicab. Transportation Nation also spoke with Roberts again this morning. She acknowledges her pedicab was parked illegally, but says at no time did the officer inform her of this. She maintains that the officer approached, asked for her ID and then arrested her when she refused to provide it. Roberts also says that afterward, while she was in her holding cell, the officer tried to get her to sign on to the version of events Schlosser described. She says she refused.

(Washington, D.C. - WAMU) Metro's board of directors is scheduled to cast its final vote on the transit system's budget this morning, and that may include a cut for its Police Department - the first such reduction in at least six years. But while Metro's crime fighting resources might be going down, its budget for terrorism prevention is going up.

A person was stabbed here at the Petworth Metro Station, just weeks before Metro announced its random bag check program. (Photo by David Schultz/WAMU)

Late in November, on a Sunday evening, news broke that a person was violently attacked at the Petworth Metro Station. The victim had reportedly been stabbed in the throat. Just a few weeks later, there was another big Metro security story leading the news: Metro was going to start doing random bag searches.

Providing local security on a tight budget

The random bag checks and the stabbing at Petworth are perfect illustrations of the different kinds of threats Metro is dealing with, even as it tries to do more with less.

"Should we ever want to have more police officers? I think every chief of police would say, 'Yeah, bring me more police officers,'" said Metro Transit Police Chief Michael Taborn. "But, in light of the budget, we have to do everything within our means."

One way Taborn is providing security is by collaborating with other law enforcement agencies in the D.C. region.

"This system belongs to everybody in the region, it's not just a Metro situation. So if a bus is patrolling in Prince George's County, in the District of Columbia, if their police officers could hop on the bus, say hello to the bus operator, ride it a block. Or if they're patrolling in and around our stations, in the parking lots, if they could swing through," he said.

Taborn said his counterparts from across the region told him they will be able to help out. And in that, Taborn is very lucky. Police departments across the country are facing serious budget cuts.

Jon Shane, a criminal justice professor at John Jay College in New York, said the recession has brought on an unprecedented downsizing of state and local governments, and that's fundamentally changing the way law enforcement works. "More with less" is a common phrase heard in police stations everywhere.

Federal funding for law enforcement

But what's the role of the federal government in all of this? Not much, Shane said.

"We kind of frown on the fact that we might even suggest that there's a national police force of any kind. The federal government's not going to say, 'Take our money and do what you want with it,'" he said.

But there is one tiny corner of the federal government designed to do exactly that: give money to local law enforcement agencies. Bernard Melekian runs the Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, also known as COPS.

"In my 37-year career in law enforcement, I've never seen layoffs and resource reductions at the local level that have occurred in the last two or three years," he said.

And yet, Melekian's office can only do so much. His office's budget this year is around $250 million, only a quarter of what it was in 2009. Compare that with the Department of Homeland Security's Preparedness Grant Program, which gives out more than $2 billion a year to local agencies for terrorism prevention and response.

Melekian said, ultimately, this can help communities too -- because officers on patrol looking for bombs also deter other types of crime.

"Fighting crime and fighting terrorism are not mutually exclusive," he said.

That's the philosophy Metro has adopted as well. While money for crime fighting dwindles, Metro's status as a high-value terrorist target opens the door to a wealth of Homeland Security dollars. DHS is paying for Metro to beef up its chemical detection capabilities and install a new air vent system that can detect an intrusion.

It's unclear, though, if air vent detection can also help prevent someone from stealing your iPod or from stabbing you in the throat.

Police presence

In the case of the stabbing in the Petworth station, Metro won't release any information, so the public doesn't know if the suspect was identified or caught -- or if the victim even survived.

Six months later, crime is still on the minds of Metro riders. Teri Lott said she actually witnessed a recent assault.

"The other night I was at Deanwood, and some young kids beat up an old lady and the cops came," Lott said.

Despite that, she still feels safe riding Metro because she sees more officers on the platforms and in the trains, she said. But while Lott thinks those officers are there to protect her from being robbed or assaulted, there's a good chance they're actually there looking for potential terrorists. It's the difference between Homeland Security and hometown security.

Metro employee union leaders listen to riders during a town hall meetingm (photo by David Schultz/WAMU)

(Washington D.C. - WAMU) The second anniversary of the Red Line train crash that killed nine people at Fort Totten Metro Station is this week, and the occasion has Metro's employee union trying to bridge a gap between workers and passengers.

In the two years since the crash, Metro has faced a litany of problems -- everything from faulty track circuits to federal reprimands to broken escalators.

Metro's employees union has come under fire during that time. But local union president Jackie Jeter said reports of conflict between riders and workers are overblown.

"It's projected that there's this antagonistic or combative type of relationship and I don't believe that," she said. "I truly, truly don't believe that."

A train operator was one of the nine people killed in the crash. In the months that followed, a string of workplace accidents killed several more Metro front line employees.

Union official Jim Madaras says he believes there's a natural alliance between riders and workers.

"We all are in the same boat. The employees want to go home to their families," he said. "The passengers want to get to and from where they want to go safely."

Since the Red Line crash, Metro has undergone a major management shake up. The agency has hiring new CEO and its board of directors has almost entirely turned over since the 2009 accident.

Listen to the story here.

(Washington D.C. - WAMU) The pedicab, a sort of rickshaw attached to a bicycle, is a popular way for tourists to get around the National Mall. But now pedicab operators say they're being harassed by police.

"After working yesterday I got on the bus and both my legs started spasming," he said. "But it's cool. Its a fun job.

What's not fun, he said, is getting attention from the U.S. Park Police. Several pedicab drivers say that recently Park Police officers around the National Mall have been pulling them over, demanding to see their IDs and writing them expensive tickets.

College student Ismael Balderas said sometimes the cops approach him right after he picks up a customer.

"They'll be like 'Oh, whatever he's told you its going to cost, its free,'" he said. "'When you get there, don't give him anything.'"

In interviews, several pedicabbers said that officers are now writing them expensive tickets for things they let slide in previous years.

Mike Potter said he's been stopped by the police several times this summer. "They just come up and, say, ask for our IDs, run a background check on us, and then they tell us to move on or they’re going to arrest us for public nuisance," Potter said.

Park Police spokesman David Schlosser said he can't confirm whether officers are telling pedicab customers not to pay or threatening them with public nuisance arrests, but he does say the Park Police are embarking on an "education campaign" this summer to make pedicabbers aware of the laws governing where and how they can operate.

But it's not a crackdown designed to harass the drivers, Schlosser said. "We’re not focusing on any specific enforcement campaign. We’re mostly working on an education thing," he said. "So at this point, if there’s thoughts that there’s increased enforcement, there’s really not."

The Park Police are mainly concerned with the safety of the drivers, and making sure they don't block the roads, Schlosser added.

Listen to story here.

Courtesy of Matt Bush

(Washington D.C. - WAMU) The U.S. Open golf tournament is set to begin next week at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md. - just a few miles outside of the nation's capital. Thousands of fans are expected to attend, but as WAMU's Matt Bush reports, the tournament's organizers are providing them with a strong disincentive to use public transit.

For other large events in the D.C. region, Metrorail is usually the preferred option for attendees because of its convenience. But next week, that may not be the case. In addition, taking Metro will actually cost you more.

Metro fares will be the same, but if you take the train you also have to pay for a shuttle bus to the golf course. Reservations must be made for the buses, which will run from the Grosvernor-Strathmore station on the Red Line. They're $8 for a day or $35 for the whole week.

"Metro is not as convenient for this event as it is for other events, such as those down on the National Mall, where Metro stations are right there," says Emil Wolanin, chief traffic engineer for Montgomery County.

Wolanin says using the public parking lots in Gaithersburg is the best way to go, adding that if fans can, they should carpool. Parking and shuttle buses are free to and from those lots. All fans will have to undergo security screening, and Wolanin says it will be easier to do that at the public parking lots.

But if driving or Metro is out of the question, Wolanin says there are other options.

"There are some RideOn and Metrobus routes that go by the area. If you're inclined to come by bike, you can't take your bike into Congressional Country Club, but there will be some bike racks where you can lock up your at the taxi and limo drop off," Wolanin says.

As many as 50,000 are expected to attend each day of the four-day tournament.

Wolanin saw firsthand what the tournament can do to a congested area when he attended the tournament two years ago at Bethpage State Park on Long Island, in New York.

Wolanin and other county officials went to that Open to get a head start on preparations for 2011. Rainy weather marred the tournament, and taught Wolanin and others the importance of parking.

"There was a lot of mud, a lot of wet fields that parking was on," he says. "The USGA looks for paved parking. If you lose the field, you lose the ability to park people."

That's why the main public parking lot for next week's U.S. Open, Crown Farm in Gaithersburg, was laid with crushed stone to prevent the problems seen on Long Island. The lot that was used the last time the U.S. Open was at Congressional is now the Universities at Shady Grove.

Wolanin says that won't be the only change from 1997. There will be more people in attendance here this time around, but not necessarily fans.

"What they call the 'outside-the-ropes' footprint," he explains. "The media, the concessions, the corporate sponsors -- all that has about doubled since 1997." Hundreds of employees and volunteers are being shipped up to Congressional for the event. Predicting the event's attendance is difficult, but officials in California estimated that 275,000 people attended last year's tournament in Pebble Beach, Ca.

But the man most responsible for golf's increased popularity since then -- Tiger Woods -- won't be there. He decided this week not to play this year because of injuries to his left leg.

-Matt Bush

For more on the U.S. Open, listen to stories at WAMU by clicking here or here.

(Washington D.C. - WAMU) US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood met yesterday with the partners behind the faltering Dulles Metrorail project, a nearly $6 billion venture to build a new subway line out to Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia. And according to several sources involved in the meeting, LaHood told them that a federal loan they were hoping for isn't likely.

(Washington D.C. - David Schultz, WAMU) Metro, the public transit agency here in D.C., is facing a problem familiar to Twitter users everywhere: it needs to shorten the names of its train stations so they fit within a defined character limit.