Phil Boname over at Urbanics Consultants sends along a couple of interesting notes on Washington’s Metro and streetcars:
Your last PriceTag was fascinating – on several levels. Firstly, our Toronto office in the 1960’s participated with Washington DC associates in planning some of the Metro station. The biggest breakthrough (which the Socred government foolishly resisted in the 1980’s planning and development of the Expo line) was the leveraging of entitlements related to many of D.C.’s station impact areas (e.g. upgraded land uses, increased densities, purchasing land at wholesale, etc.) and thus using real estate as a significant means of paying for the subway system’s capital costs (land would be sold by the transit authority to competing developer interests at its highest and best use, re-zoned value).
Secondly, during the latter part of WWII, I rode the Washington DC streetcars all over town not realizing that I would be in the same streetcars in Toronto in the 1960’s (purchased by TTC when DC shut down its trolley system)!!
Just of interesting note – and clarification. DC (residents) actually had little say on the trolley system. Congress, through some rather strict reading of the US Constitution, still pokes a finger in the eye of DC from time to time since the House of Representatives has ultimate control over the entire city (750,000 residents, many of which are NOT working for the government).
Such was the case with the trolley system which was shut down by an act of Congress (literally). I guess the highway lobbyists really did have the fun of things then – and still do in many ways.
Though the metro is nice, I’d love to have the streetcars back. A small, demonstration line is planned for SE Washington – here’s hoping it success.
One last note, the DC metro (subway) system that is in place now primarily came about due to successful efforts of residents in fighting highways in the vast majority of the city. Funds that would have created ribbons and circles of expressway through the heart of the city were erased, with the funds instead going to the core metro system we enjoy today. Only the SE (a relatively small portion of the city since the original diamond shape was shaved when Virginia re-acquired their minority portion just prior to the Civil War) got a pretty ugly highway, and even there efforts are underway to re-connect the newly built 60’s urban renewal neighborhood with a new urbanist pedestrian strip along the Potomac waterfront.
Cheers!
One correction – the waterfront is in SW Washington, not SE as I indicated above.
G’day.