alex baca

9 July

Replying to @alexbaca.bsky.social

posts are mine and my opinion only and do not reflect those of my employer. it is embarrassing when you do a conflation and when i hear that you have i basically know you are acting in bad faith. however, when i link to something on my employer's website with my byline, you may assume overlap.

sixplexes 🌇

Janeese4DC@janeese4dc.bsky.social

We can and we must build more homes for all of us.

2 Aug

I’ve been reading Gans’ The Urban Villagers on and off since May, when I was in Boston (and went to the West End Museum), and there are consistently nuggets.

2 Aug

free response image for this website

I often posted on the old site about how communities are inherently exclusive.

My favorite part of this morning was how stoked our bus driver was. (I was also stoked.)

Alex Koma@alexkoma.bsky.social

For the DC Week Without Driving, @janeese4dc.bsky.social joined @ggwash.org organizers (and @elissasilverman.bsky.social) for a bus ride from Petworth to downtown. JLG emphasized her desire to get projects like the Georgia Ave dedicated lane done quickly: “We don’t need to study the study.”

And Elissa Silverman, who we just re-endorsed for the general, biked to the Petworth Metro station to get on the D44 with us. ggwash.org/view/105043/...

ggwash.orgFind yourself in our Fall Mixer photos!The Fall Mixer on Wednesday was something special. Here’s photographic evidence.

A nice morning after our fall mixer ☀️ ggwash.org/view/105042/...

My favorite part of this morning was how stoked our bus driver was. (I was also stoked.)

Alex Koma@alexkoma.bsky.social

@kaihall10.bsky.social has tried to get Bowser on a bus ridealong for Week Without Driving for years. No bites there :)

ggwash.orgNo Metro, Yes Problems: Can RFK’s transportation plan be saved?The new Commanders stadium needs to be served by hardcore bus prioritization and world-class walkability and bikeability if DC wants a chance at avoiding a traffic nightmare every Sunday.

Getting to RFK is probably going to be annoying at best, and on game days it is going to be totally miserable.

Nick Sementelli@nsementelli.bsky.social

In which @alexbaca.bsky.social and I once again ask for any one of the professionals in charge of this stadium plan to do some basic arithmetic

28 Aug

I’m constitutionally incapable of doing math, actually, but I know that we aren’t getting anywhere without building Big Number of homes, and I asked Nick and Payton to figure it out, which they did.

Nick Sementelli@nsementelli.bsky.social

@westnorth.com @alexbaca.bsky.social and I do the math on DC's next 25 years. Do we want to actually solve our housing crisis? Or will we let continued inaction drive hundreds of thousands more people out of our city - creating a fiscal and ecological crisis. #250Kx2050

25 Aug

be quiet my show is on

alex baca@alexbaca.bsky.social

Baths of Caracalla palate cleanser

15 Aug

I refuse to do the “haha nerrrrrrds” thing about zoning or trains or w/e (and I am *really* not a train person). The bizarre kneejerk reaction of people who are Into Built Environment Shit to marginalize it and make fun of themselves is ?????? Use the jargon. Be hype about literally creating it.

Justin Gundlach@justingundlach.bsky.social

Somehow, infrastructure -- its design, development, maintenance, monitoring, etc. -- is viewed as categorically boring. I don't think this is inevitable. I think we could talk about infrastructure in a way that better helped people grasp how much their lives literally depend on it.

15 Aug

Yes, yes, more outreach, better comms, better narratives—but caring about something, being willing to indulge others in questions about it, and just genuinely liking something is enticing and attractive, and is only going to become more so in world of slop. Infra. is really susceptible here.

ggwash.orgGGWash’s 2026 questionnaire for Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner candidatesCandidates running for Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner seats in the District of Columbia should fill out GGWash’s questionnaire by August 20, 2026.

6 Aug

GGWash's questionnaire for Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner candidates running in the 2026 general election is live, and due back to us no later than Thurs., Aug. 20, at 11:59 p.m. If you filed yesterday, you'll get an email from me about it shortly. ggwash.org/view/104405/...

5 Aug

bring back google reader 😭

Barred in DC@barredindc.bsky.social

Felt like local online DC news was dying with death again of DCist and the evisceration of Post Local. But now we have NOTUS, The 51st, City Cast DC, Axios etc in addition to Washingtonian and Post still doing good reporting and as a consumer seems a lot more to track/follow??

5 Aug

This is the correct way to read us. bsky.app/profile/aru....

Aru@aru.io

RSS readers are still outchea!

4 July

driving around glen burnie listening to weezer

10 July

walked from bethesda to friendship heights listening to tigers jaw

4 Aug

working in the college park wework listening to chapterhouse

alex baca reposted

e.w. niedermeyer

@niedermeyer.online

28 July

Replying to @niedermeyer.online

preying on the mobility anxieties of the elderly and disabled to prop up a decade-old scam is about as evil as it's possible to be

51st.newsMetro tried to make bus service better. Somehow, ridership and speeds are both downA year after Better Bus, reviews are mixed.

24 July

It was a revenue-neutral redesign!! Riders' experience was: Their route probably physically changed, and the route names *definitely* changed. Also, people be driving, and people need 2 b driving less: 51st.news/metro-tried-...

23 July

delet DoorDash but also…you were using DoorDash??

23 July

don’t know the last time i saw Kurt Vile, only remember the time i loaded some equipment out for him in year of lordt 2009 on good god what was that backstagery thing off Charles Street at that time in the whole world

23 July

new album is as special and important to me as the s/t

ggwash.orgThink outside the circle, DC OPIf it were the 1970s, this proposal from the DC Office of Planning would be cutting edge. Instead, it stands to seriously hold back housing in the District.

22 July

Me + @westnorth.com on why transit-oriented development is an outdated framework for building more housing in D.C. (The answer is, yes, sixplexes.): ggwash.org/view/104207/...

22 July

🙃

17 July

I saw Da Movie in 70mm and it ruled. I loved it. The Hades scenes were cray. Everyone acted the shit out of it. I cried at the end. Tremendous.

17 July

I also watched Dunkirk last week so I was primed for Things Happening on Big Beaches to emotionally impact me.

14 July

from the events store

Nick Sementelli@nsementelli.bsky.social

They're lying. These "hundred events" are small private rentals, not games and concerts. And the Commanders stadium is already supposed to be booking all these new events anyway. Where are all these supposed to come from??

I was considering livetweeting the AV hearing, which I came on down to da Wilson building for, but it’s all quite boring, actually. Season 1 of this show, Mr. Uber Goes to Washington, was goofier and more dramatic, and in the intervening 12 years we have not made people drive less here.

Things might go better for AV operators if they are regulated by the agency that *also* regulates taxis and TNCs. DDOT should be freed up to do ~DDOT things~, like CURBSIDE and CONGESTION MANAGEMENT, which it has not done. Yes, they should work together. MOUs exist.

Perhaps we are more invested in AVs working well here than their stans, even, bc we want ppl to have a good experience in them 🤔

docs.google.com20260713_GGWash T&E AV testimonyJuly 13, 2026 To the Committee on Transportation and the Environment, My name is Alex Baca and I am submitting this testimony on behalf of Greater Greater Washington, where I serve as D.C. policy di...

Here's testimony I gave on behalf of my employer saying, basically, cars ruin cities, which someone on the other website whose reading comprehension is not up to snuff is interpreting as us coming "out against legalizing autonomous vehicles in D.C.": docs.google.com/document/d/1...

It's true: We don't support the bill as written—but not because we are against legalizing AVs. It puts the regulation of autonomous carriers-for-hire under the District Department of Transportation, rather than the Department of For-Hire Vehicles. The latter *already regulates carriers-for-hire.*

Still going. I heard the hearing downstairs on rats is much spicier, and it is true that this has been a relatively sedate hearing. We are at the part where a number of public witnesses are requesting the council move faster than the legislative process will probably allow to legalize AVs bc safety.

(Safety does not really resonate with me in this conversation, fwiw. I have been hit by drivers and my near-misses have been just as frightening as anyone else's. I suppose AVs could do it better, but cars en masse are a bigger problem.)

So the innovation is going to be stuck in traffic. Like a car. Because it is a car.

Worst thing so far came from Tesla’s person, who said that AVs should be allowed to go over the speed limit in the event of some sort of exceptional event and also to keep up the flow of traffic. Much to his credit, CM Allen was not having it, and neither are my new faves, the trial lawyers’ assoc.

AVs are going to operate here. Their safety benefits are overblown and they are going to be really annoying—bc they are cars. D.C. has no comprehensive approach to curbside management, refuses to entertain any sort of demand-management or congestion pricing, and dropped its modeshift goal.

ggwash.orgThe other DC congestion pricing studyAutonomous vehicles mean more vehicle miles traveled on DC streets. Road pricing can help with that.

Bowser straight-up doesn’t care about AVs (they aren’t a stadium), so T&E has—as in the Uber War—been getting the most intensive “yOuRe aNti-iNnOvAtIoN” hammering. But neither the committee nor the mayor have done much to reduce trips by car, despite much telling them to: ggwash.org/view/amp/103...

This is a lot of words to say, “I, personally, prefer my politicians moderate, so I don’t like the way things are going.”

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social

How we’d do things if I was in charge www.slowboring.com/p/the-promis...

I hope the man accepts that he is allowing the world to make him unhappy and, thusly, finds peace. Probably too late for that.