The big bad news story today is the Postal Service is in danger of being shut down. We have an emotional attachment to this issue, having once labored for the Postal Service. That is, if you count the days when college kids used to pick up handy change by working to back up the pros for the Christmas rush. The trick was to try to stay on the clock for 24 hours straight. That was possible, but rarely achieved because there was always some full-time party pooper who would find us sleeping in the basement around 4 in the morning. He would wake everybody up and make us clock off, but about an hour later the trucks would roll in with bags and bags of new mail, and shortly we would be out on the street with the first delivery.
That usually took a few hours, and each time you worked the same route it got a little faster. Then, if you chose well, which meant a route in your own neighborhood, you could walk home and catch a few hours sleep before you had to check the designated box and start out on the day's afternoon delivery. That took a few hours, and by the time you got back to the office, trucks were lined up bringing the next day's mail for sorting. If you had the right connections, and we did (Dad knew Mr. Loyons, the postmaster) then you could stay on the clock and help with the sorting. That lasted well into the night and was educational. You learned to use modern miracles such as a machine that wrapped string around bundles of mail. When that job was completed, you went into hiding, in the basement, with maybe a dozen other savvy guys – until the party pooper caught you and insisted on clocking everybody off. But 22 out of 24 hours wasn't bad. Especially when you knew what you were doing was important to people.
Alas, today's mail seems not so important. The combination of package delivery services, and the Internet have cut severely into Postal Service revenues, so much so that we face a question of whether this great institution can service, or should? Our vote is that it should, and a possible salvation combines two concepts we have covered in the past. The answer is one word. Trains. And specifically commuter trains. They are making a comeback, all over the country. You can now get from New York to Philadelphia in a little more than an hour. With that speed, the Postal Service could enjoy a new birth, with same-day delivery. That would not compete with the Internet, but it sure would compete with the package delivery companies, and we all know that is a big part of mail today. As state after state, including Florida, began to recognize the value of trains for short- and mid-range trips (say Fort Lauderdale to Orlando) it will be possible to make those trips in a few hours. Going back to the old system of sorting on trains, made infinitely faster by the lights of technology, it should be possible to off load delivery vehicles at various stations (perhaps 20 miles apart), which can reach the destinations before the sun sets.
There is clearly a market for fast delivery. Anybody in business knows that speed counts. Sales people have the urge to get things out immediately, and not worry about the cost. The package delivery services, offering next-day delivery, have proved it for years. Which is why commuter, and the growing number of mid-range trains, connecting cities within a few hundred miles, offer such opportunity. Not only could same-day delivery produce the revenues to make such trains less of money losers, and possibly even profitable in high-traffic markets, they are positioned to serve the areas where most packages and high-priority mail is headed.
This idea of meshing two needed services, fast passenger rail and fast package delivery, is not unrecognized. A proposed inter-city service in the Midwest has factored the idea into its proposed operating plan. And not long ago we had a conversation with an important Tri-Rail figure. It was an informal meeting, so his name should not be used, but when we threw out the idea of using Tri-Rail for same-day package delivery, his response was immediate: "That," he said, "is an interesting idea." Is it interesting enough to save the Postal Service?
A federal judge has killed the Florida law prohibiting doctors from asking if patients have a gun at home. Docs vs. Glocks, the wise guys called it. That’s a blow, but not all is lost. The state of Florida, a subsidiary of the National Rifle Association, may appeal and that would be good because it provides a way to spend all that extra money which is lining the lanes of Tallahassee.
Washington, D.C. – The young woman was kneeling in the small yard in front of the small but charming house, planting flowers. She seemed happy, and said hello to the strangers walking along the brick sidewalk in front of her home. Her yard was very pretty, filled with flowering plants, yellow and pink and blue, some in buckets, most in natural soil. There was nothing unusual about this scene, nothing you could not see this time of year in countless places in the northern states. But what made it different was that this was an old neighborhood in Washington, D.C. and you would not likely have witnessed this scene five years ago, certainly not 10. For this was Capitol Hill, a neighborhood risen from the dead.
Florida, as we have noted in the past, had something to do with it. In fact, more that something. In 1972 Rhea Chiles, wife of then-Sen. Lawton Chiles (later Florida governor), noticed an abandoned building virtually in the shadow of the Capitol. It was definitely in the afternoon shadow of the Supreme Court, directly across from Second Street. Its windows were boarded and an upper floor was falling in. Homeless occupied the basement. But in 1972 it was not unique. Much of the Capitol Hill neighborhood in the southeast quadrant of Washington, an old section on the opposite side of the famous mall, was a disaster.
Prudent people did not go there. The streets were unsafe. More than a few houses were so neglected as to be uninhabitable. It was a national disgrace. Rhea Chiles may have shared that view, but she also saw opportunity. She had been thinking about a state embassy ever since her kids asked where Florida’s embassy was. She raised the money to buy the dilapidated property, which dated to 1891 and was designed by a famous architect, and in short order an eyesore was restored to a modernized version of its original dignity.
She began the first, and still only, state embassy – Florida House. Gold Coast magazine wrote about it in the late 1970s; it already had a reputation as a convenient place for Florida business people to drop by – an office away from home, as well as a classy place for Florida legislators to hold receptions, and for families touring the capital to get their bearings. By then it had an important side effect in calling attention to its neighborhood as a redevelopment project begging to happen. By the late ‘70s it had already begun, and it goes on as this is written. Within a few years the blocks adjacent to Florida House began to recover. And so it has gone on, almost 40 years now, block by block to the east, all the way to RFK Stadium, roughly 20 blocks from Florida House on the edge of the Anacostia River.
The trend has accelerated in recent years as members of Congress and thousands of government workers have looked for comfortable housing close to the capitol and surrounding government buildings. Commuting from outside Washington has become a nightmare. Every main approach is like a bad day on Interstate-95 in Florida, and that of course includes the same I-95 north and south of Washington. Even the existence of the Metro, an excellent modern subway system, has done little to relieve auto traffic into the city. What Metro has done is accelerate redevelopment of old city neighborhoods convenient to stations. Workers can get to downtown jobs in minutes instead of an hour or more from outside the city.
Most of those buying, at very high prices, and restoring old homes are young people. These are people who love, but could not afford the charm of the old Georgetown section, but they are bringing the Georgetown style to Capitol Hill. The sidewalks are busy with mothers pushing carriages and people walking dogs. The newcomers improving properties often have formidable challenges. One couple bought a house that had been foreclosed on. The floor of the house, including the supporting joyce, was rotted and had to be ripped out. There was no basement and in the dirt below the floor they found old whiskey bottles obviously left by the workers who built the place in the 1880s. This couple spends much time debating what subtle shade to paint their brick front wall and figuring out how to top their neighbors with the contrasting color of doors and decorative shutters. The effect of all this energy has been to stimulate all aspects of urban life that had been in trouble in Washington. Schools and churches that in a different locale might have closed are surviving and growing. Capitol Hill is alive with restaurants and the Eastern Market, not long ago surrounded by a neighborhood where one would venture with caution, has become a tourist attraction.
And those visitors spread without fear into the neighborhood, admiring with awe the renaissance of a city, and exchanging pleasantries with a young woman planting flowers in a front yard.
