Briefly noted, 'urgent recommendations' Wednesday;

The NTSB has sent urgent safety recommendations to Metro. Yesterday the federal agency sent safety letters to Metro, the Federal Railroad Administration, the Federal Transit Administration and Alstrom Signaling. In the letter sent to John Catoe, NTSB chairwoman Deborah Hersman makes the following recommendations:

Examine track circuits within your system that may be susceptible to parasitic oscillation and spurious signals capable of exploiting unintended signal paths, and eliminate those adverse conditions that could affect the safe performance of your train control system. This work should be conducted in coordination with your signal and train control equipment manufacturer(s). (R-09-15) (Urgent)

Develop a program to periodically determine that electronic components in your train control system are performing within design tolerances. (R-09-16)

The NTSB has not yet released an accident report on the 6/22 crash, but if anything is clear, it is the fact that the current signaling system is susceptible to failure, and those failures can have horrific consequences. Metro has responded saying they are already taking appropriate action to identify failing track circuits.

Council passes ethics regulations, Segway rules. Yesterday the DC Council passed its first-ever unified code of ethics. This is temporary, emergency legislation that will expire in 90-days. We'll see if the Council follows up on this, and introduces a code of ethics that has some teeth and enforcement. The Council also made it legal for disabled people to ride Segways on the sidewalk downtown. Like bicycles, it's illegal to drive a Segway on the sidewalk in the downtown business district. A disabled resident complained, and Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) introduced emergency legislation to legalize the "personal mobility devices" for people with disabilities. The best part of the whole thing is that Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) believes that Segways are a "matter of great concern." Priorities, Jim, Priorities.

11th Street Bridge Project gets the greenlight. The DC Council approved a $365 million reconstruction project for the 11th Street Bridge. This will be the largest capital improvement plan ever undertaken by the District Department of Transportation. The aim is to alleviate traffic to/from Anacostia and simplify access to other freeways and bridges. I enjoy that the "opponents" the Post talks with mention how the $365 million could have been better used for other highway projects. I prefer to imagine what $365 million could have done for transit.

Some jackass wanted to stop the H Street Festival. Frozen Tropics has the scoop on a local resident who tried to get the festival's permits revoked. The Trinidad/H St NE area blog calls out resident Bobby Pittman by name, detailing the controversy. An interesting read, and provides a bit of insight into neighborhood politics and possible pushback to gentrification. Or a pushback to anything fun or nice.

The blogocalypse is nigh. Professional blogger Prince of Petworth now offers a "Smell of the Day."