How D.C. spent $200M over a decade on a streetcar you still can’t ride

PS: I don't live in DC in large part due to traffic issues, but also giving up the right to vote bothers me deeply. So, this is from someone that lives close to, but not in DC.

It boggles the mind to think how any work gets done in DC when the public transit system is so terrible.

Oh, wait...

I used to be a daily metro rider.

Washington DC has some deep issues with a legacy of discrimination and urban decay that created a highly disadvantage population in the cities poor neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, they've tried to use government employment to fix these issues by turning certain agencies, especially the metro, into jobs programs for poorly educated and socialized locals.

This is the primary problem with the DC metro. It's staffed by a croneyist union who holds none of the employees accountable, and who simply pass any and all wage increases onto riders without even trying to attempt to find cost reductions via efficiency. It's an awful, awful system.

Nice thought, but not realistic.

Firstly, $200 million for full metrorail construction is way low. The NoMA station cost over $100 million, and was an above-ground infill station that required no new track. That was just the cost to build a new station. The Potomac Yard station in Virginia is budgeted in the $210-$270 million range, and is also infill and above ground, but will require a slight track rerouting. An H Street station, if it were even possible (and I'm skeptical because the whole area is riddled with other rail infrastructure) would involve new underground track through newly bored tunnels, and a new underground station. I bet $200 million is off by at least a factor of two.

Secondly, even if the city did want to spend the money on it, they wouldn't be able to. DC can't unilaterally spend money on Metro; all new construction has to be divided amongst eight different jurisdictions according to a legislatively pre-determined formula, and the WMATA board (which has representatives from all the jurisdictions on it) has to vote to approve it. This basically never happens for new construction in the city, because DC is a minority on the board and none of the suburban jurisdictions want to pay for core infrastructure, only extensions. DC has taken to replicating more and more of WMATA's services under its DOT umbrella just to avoid having to deal with the bureaucratic nightmare and mismanagement of the transit authority. The (wildly successful) Circulator bus system is an example of this, as it in some cases directly overlaps with WMATA bus service. The streetcar would have been another such attempt.

Third: if by some miracle DC could get agreement on justifying new underground metrorail construction and pull the funding together for it, H St. would be nowhere near the top of the list of priorities. Metro has major rush-hour capacity issues that are in dire need of addressing, and a random spur out to H St. wouldn't help with any of them. New construction should go towards an additional Potomac crossing north of Rosslyn, and a separated Blue line running north of the current blue/orange/silver shared track. This has been proposed to run along M, and could conceivably eventually serve Georgetown, Logan circle, and Union station.

(None of this is to say the streetcar project isn't a clusterfuck. It is. WMATA just isn't the answer.)

A lot of cities have built street cars in the middle of the road, or they place concrete edge between parking and the street car's lane to stop exactly that from happening. Why didn't DC?

This seems incredibly dangerous and poorly thought out:

http://i.imgur.com/WbWrf9l.jpg

I understand that civil engineers are sometimes handcuffed with what they can do. But the city really needs to decide how seriously it is about this project, and either design the city around the streetcars or just eliminate them completely.

It just looks like they tried to half-arse it and it blow up in their face.

Honestly Salt Lake City is a map of where the US needs to go, not DC. Cycling lanes everywhere and streetcars with dedicated space and priority. It isn't perfect (cycling lanes need more protection, like Copenhagen, actual concrete to stop cars driving or parking in them) but it is darn good by the US's standard.

Is this an example of Poe's law? Isn't "the construction industry" "incredibly corrupt" pretty much everywhere?

PS: I live in a city with an extensive streetcar network which is still expanding (Zurich)

* Bus - Super flexible, cheapest, similar capacity to street car. However, because of its inherent flexibility, buses can be rerouted or cancelled. Therefore there is less incentive to invest in the corridor because a customer group can easily vanish.

* Buses with dedicated lanes - A good compromise between bus and street car, but drivers sitting in traffic will see the nearly empty bus lanes and complain why the road isn't being used.

* Street Car - Cheaper than subway, but because the tracks are laid, it's much less likely to be rerouted or cancelled, creating more incentive to invest in the corridor.

* Subway - Most expensive and least likely to be rerouted or cancelled; creates most incentive to invest in the corridor.