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Two suburban DC streetcar projects cancelled
Penny wise and pound foolish. Light rail lines have a proven record of redevelopment as an investment in the future. If these same penny wise officials are not reelected and wiser heads prevail, it will come as no surprise the cost will have significantly increased. Saving money? Only on the surface of the matter.
Well said, Mr. Deunsing. Not too far into the future, the voters in D.C. will wish they had the chance to build a streetcar system for a mere $550 million.
Silly voters. Here in progressive Wisconsin we spend 3/4 to a billion dollars to redo a highway interchange. Nothing to it.
Finally, some common sense is starting to prevail. Most of these street car projects are boondoggles that only enrich the union construction workers and later the operators. If you don’t build it you’ll find that you don’t need it.
Finally someone said wait a minute, why are spending money we don’t have on something we don’t need. There may be light at the end of the tunnel after all.
Glen Echo has private right-of-way.
Interesting set of opposite opinions in the comments, and I find myself agreeing with both sides. What we need to do then is determine exactly what the best economic and overall livability benefits of a street car system is. A successful street car system must go where people who will use it want to go, and it needs to get them there faster than the alternative at a cost that is reasonable. All these factors (and probably many more I’m not thinking of) need to come together for the ideal situation, and that isn’t the case in all situations. Consider a street car system built in an empty desert. Theoretically, that alone should be enough to establish a city big enough to make the system worth building. On the other extreme, even if you built a street car system to every address in America, there would still be many times most people wouldn’t be able to use it.
I see the comments against the street car system and yet in many parts of the country areas have turned around once light rail transit shows up. Then again you are right when you complain about costs. Let’s see the Woodrow Wilson Bridge which is I-495 . I-95 cuts right through this area. When they wanted to replace the aging bridge the choice was 900 million for a new bridge or 1.2 billion for a tunnel. They went for the cheap option of a bridge. Then the price of the steel came in at 3.2 billion and the final cost was over 5 billion. All for a bridge over the Potomac river. Just down the road is the “mixing Bowl” of I-95 . I-395 , I-495 and they wanted to reconstruct it to save 10 minutes getting through there. Projected cost was 68 million dollars but 11 years later they project was complete at 1.1 billion dollars. Next was HOT lanes on I-495 the Capitol Beltway on the West side of DC from the Mixing bowl to the Dulles Toll road. They took out hundreds of homes and busineses to add 4 lanes and move the beltway and it cost 14 billion. All of this to fix traffic backups that still get a grade of D for traffic backups. Yep your right we don’t need a trolley car system to move people around the area because it would cost to much.
A lot of comments by people obviously not familiar with the area - Columbia Pike is a very busy road with many large apartment/condo buildings already on it which goes to the Pentagon/Pentagon City - the road has buses which run at least once every 6 minutes which are always packed to standing room only and often are unable to pick up riders do to being full. The capacity for streetcar use is definitely there and the cost is a fraction of additional roads. Property values along Columbia Pike has been dramatically increasing in value in anticipation of the construction and it is already a high density corridor that largely depends upon public transportation. And contrary to what is implied by the article (and often believed by people in the area with prejudicial views based upon the Columbia Pike corridor being largely Hispanic in population) it is not a depressed area - housing and apartment prices are high and commercial development is heavy - it is true that property in Fairfax County remains lower but it also has a major commercial area.
The County of Arlington is being foolish here for not funding this - while the increased bus frequency is nice, it is subject to traffic problems and can often take a long time (indeed, when I lived along Columbia Pike, I would walk home from the Ballston Metro station rather than taking the bus from Pentagon City because even at over two miles it was faster to walk). The bus capacity is always going to be limited by the road capacity and the road capacities are already overflowing. Traffic on I-395 often is so heavy that it overflows onto Columbia Pike (which runs parallel to I-395) and there is little room to expand I-395 and even bringing I-395 up to current Interstate standards and fixing several extremely dangerous interchanges is likely cost prohibitive, The rail system would have served transportation needs to one of the most densely packed corridors for several years - the heavy development of property along the Orange Metro Line in Arlington shows tha
Mr. McGuire and Mr. Withorn: Would either or better yet both of you care to rebutt Messers.Armstrong and Devore? C’mon, out with it.
I’m sure both of you are are conversant with and understanding of the towns, neighborhoods, job and retail destinations, and traffic patterns of the citizens in these northern VA communities and you undoubtedly know what’s best for them.
I’m sure you guys have as thorough a knowledge of the road and highway and interchange network Mr. Devore describes as you do the neighborhoods and roads in your respective parts of Michigan and Maine.
I am sure you guys could drive through the entire region Mr. Devore describes making interchange arterial to interstate and back again with complete confidence and without maps, GPS, or any. other navigation aids.
Or maybe it’s just that publiclly funded passenger rail and transit anywhere is a socialist threat to good ole pure 'Murican values. Better to be stuck in miles long traffic jams, crawling at five mph, and taking two to three times longer to get where you are going than it would have taken riding a well-planned, well executed LRT system.