Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Open Government in Arlington

I remember when I first saw the website kayak.com I thought to myself, "self, you didn't know you needed this, but you did." That's the same way I feel about this new (to me) discovery that was mentioned in the Examiner over a month ago:

Arlington County is now providing updates on county construction projects to the public via an online database. CAPTrack, a searchable list of more than 400 capital improvement projects, grew out of the county's own method of tracking construction progress.

If you're a local transportation policy nerd (and if you haven't noticed, I kind of am) CAPtrack is Paradise.  You can sort it for just Trails & Bikeways projects and get the latest update on all of Arlington counties projects. For example:

                       
Project Name CUSTIS TRAIL WESTOVER UNDERPASS @ I-66
SummaryREALIGN BIKE TRAIL AND PROVIDE NECESSARY DRAINAGE IMPROVEMENTS TO THE TRAIL @ I-66 UNDERPASS NEAR WESTOVER PARK & N. KENNEBEC ST.
Current StatusActive, currently in the Implementation phase   (4 of 5).
  [01/09/2006] Contractor is preparing a proposal for construction. Expected completion Winter 2006.

Jeffmem Besides the nerdy pleasure of having the latest 411, it also represents a movement toward open government, which I think is a pretty good thing, just like open code, open source and open content. DC, Alexandria, MoCo, etc...now you have someone to emulate.

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