Sigh
- Posted by ryan on July 7th, 2008 filed in In the News, Transit
The Examiner reports:
D.C. Councilman Jim Graham is putting the brakes on plans to install a streetcar system in Anacostia until transportation officials explain why it is worthy of District money.
“My concerns run pretty much the gamut from A to Z,” Graham said. “As best I can determine, we have never really had a focused oversight hearing on this rather large expenditure of funds.”
Graham has issued a resolution to disapprove a budget request that would shift $11 million from the long-planned 11th Street Bridge project to the streetcar project to fund initial construction of the line this fall.
If you’d like to tell Mr. Graham why, given high gas prices and the incredible success the District has had attracting investment near its transit stations, it might be a good idea to extend our transit options to include a very underserved part of the city, and would certainly deliver more bang for the buck than the 11th Street bridge project, which would attract traffic and little else, please feel free to email the confused councilman at this address.
July 7th, 2008 at 9:58 am
So Jim Graham has moved from shutting down nightclubs to shutting down transit investments? They don’t call it “Grahamstanding” for nothing.
Isn’t Graham on some kind of Metro oversight board? What’s the relationship between Metro and the streetcar line? This smells like yet another power grab from the Councilmember from Ward 1.
July 7th, 2008 at 10:08 am
Look at the location. There’s much better locations for the first new streetcar line in the District. Try the H Street Corridor or perhaps Georgia Avenue, for starters. We need this streetcar line to be nothing other than a glowing success, and you need to pick the best location for that to happen.
DC originally tried to cheap out by expecting to build the line on already existing CSX track. Turns out that’s not possible, but they’re going to build it anyway?
I’m with Graham on this one, partially. Repurpose the money to build a different line and I’m sold.
July 7th, 2008 at 10:34 am
I’m of mixed opinion on this. The Anacostia Starter line was never a very good idea. DC thought initially that it’d be relatively easy to just refurbish the nearly-abandoned CSX tracks and get a streetcar running. The location isn’t subject to the overhead wire ban, and all the officials involved would get brownie points for doing something East of the River.
The original plan was to go all the way to Pennsylvania Ave, but that sort of quietly got dropped in what were perhaps 4 or 5 revisions of the plan. At some point it became clear that taking over the CSX tracks wasn’t going to be as easy as they thought, and that really started the blunders: the original project involved scores of meetings with Ward 8 officials and community groups, but once the trackage takeover was doubtful they decided, without consulting anyone, to run the tracks in the streets down MLK Ave. Which is a better alignment, but a PR disaster.
I’ve always thought that, contrary to getting people excited about a streetcar, the starter line would not get very many riders, would not be seen as a success, and therefore would make it much harder to build out the much-needed 50-mile streetcar network.
The starter line might be stupid, but it isn’t nearly as stupid as the 11th street bridge project, which will expand the bridge by 50%, from 8 lanes to 12 lanes, put in place a Cheverly-to-Shirlington freeway shortcut through DC, encourage more driving, take away parkland, and make the tear-down of the SE/SW freeway less likely. It’s a project entirely for the benefit of suburban commuters, and DC should not spend one dime on it.
July 7th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Ditto everything thm said about the problems with the Anacostia starter line not, but I am starting to get tired of Graham’s anti-tranit, pro-car bias. For crying out loud, he represents Ward 1, which is the densest, most transit-dependent part of the city. Could he be any more out of touch with the daily lives of his constiutents, who have to deal with the overcrowded and often unreliable 42 and S buses and a subway that suffers from deferred maintenance because local officials, with Graham at the lead, regularly fail to provide the it with the funds it needs? I think a transit advocate needs to mount a primary challenge to Graham next time around, if only to get him to focus on that issue. I know Graham serves on the WMATA board and he brandishes that service as proof of his support for transit, but he needs to do more than just sit on a board. The councilmember for Ward 1 should be the city’s leading transit advocate. (Maybe we can get Chris Zimmerman to move to Ward 1 and run. It’s sad that the public official most supportive of transit in our region hails from the suburbs.)
July 7th, 2008 at 10:50 am
Here’s a PDF of the proposed line. As you look at it, ask yourself:
1. Who will ride this line? Look at the barriers to pedestrians on both sides of the line at the Bolling AFB stop, and the Navy Annex Stop.
2. What economic redevelopment can this spur? Where is the property that can have its zoning upgraded based on this streetcar’s existence?
July 7th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Is Anacostia the first best place to build a streetcar line? No. And the initial stations don’t promise to deliver huge results, in terms of development and increased density. On the other hand, an extension of the line to the Benning Road metro station, where it would link up with the H Street line, would provide big benefits to the city and the neighborhoods east of the river. That, to me, is that natural next step, and building this first leg is a move in that direction.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:20 am
My take: Why is he asking now and not two years ago?
July 7th, 2008 at 11:32 am
My guess is that a lot of Graham’s constituents, like Graham himself, own cars. Anything that gets more suburban folk into DC so they can leave their money behind is aces in his book. But with congestion pricing creeping downtown, widening briges doesn’t seem to me a really wise investment.
They should be pushing streetcar lines on routes where they used to have streetcar lines. There’s a reason why they were there in the first place. Those transit corridors still exist: H Street, K Street, Florida Avenue, Georgia Avenue; it’s just that they’re choked with cars. But then, they’d have to deal with the whole “overhead wire” historical crap.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Ryan, I respectfully disagree.
Building this particular streetcar line is likely to be used as fodder by the anti-transit or pro-BRT advocates as “evidence” that streetcars are a waste of money. Build a line where there’s already high transit ridership (as evidenced by a bus line at capacity), as well as potential for even more (undeveloped or underdeveloped land), and an urban setting.
Georgia Ave NE and H St NE meet these criteria and will be great demonstrations of what streetcars can really do.
I think the only thing this line has going for it is there’s a site where you can put a car maintenance facility.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:44 am
In case any are interested, I emailed Graham, and he got back to me inside of an hour. The indication he gave was that he merely wanted to conduct oversight. I’m not in a position to rate his sincerity, but I just thought I’d bring it to everyone’s attention.
July 7th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
regarding the 11th Street Bridges. I live in DC, in Anacostia, and they provide me the most convenient route into downtown and Capitol Hill. I think the 11th Street Bridges project is actually a good thing… as long as they design is right — which they are working hard to do.
July 8th, 2008 at 2:49 am
I think if streetcars are going to be built, they should be built right.
Anacostia has been developed so irresponsibly that often I feel it hardly resembles the Capital City.
I think perhaps the Poplar Point project should come to a successful fruition before we build the proverbial Red Line of streetcars through there.
July 8th, 2008 at 2:53 am
It’s late, and I realized my last comment was full of non sequiters…
I believe Anacostia needs transit, but I don’t believe a trolley line will be a successful until Anacostia has an attractive destination (i.e., the Poplar Point project) that will get more folks over the river. Otherwise, it would be a horrible precedent to set for the trolley system and would likely bring lots of criticism from anti-transit types.
Hopefully that was clearer
July 8th, 2008 at 8:06 am
What’s the construction window for streetcars nowdays? The biggest criticism of Metro on U Street was that it took so long and so many businesses went under in the meantime that, by the time it opened, there was nothing there but Ben’s Chili Bowl. Similar situation with the Convention Center; now it’s built, there’s pretty much nothing in the neighborhood except a vegetarian restaurant and a LOT of churches. Then there’s the P Street “restoration” that took forever and didn’t do much for the struggling businesses on the west side of Dupont.
Can a place like H Street sustain a decent level of business in the current economic downturn while streetcar construction progresses?
July 8th, 2008 at 9:00 am
The Anacostia corridor makes sense for transit as a link in the chain - i.e. if you can extend it south to National Harbor (and perhaps over the Wilson Bridge into Alexandria, too) and north to the other Metro lines and the H Street streetcar.
Monkey - streetcar construction would be somewhat disruptive, but not nearly as much as cut and cover metro construction as we saw on U street.