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Public Outcry Saves D.C. Streetcar Funding
Friday, May 28, 2010
Early Thursday morning, Vincent Gray, the chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia—the capital city’s elected legislative body—removed $47 million from the District’s fiscal 2011 budget that had been set aside for the completion of the city’s first streetcar line since trolley service ended in 1963, divvying up the money amongst other government programs. The Council voted mid-morning to adopt the change, but word got out quickly on the widely-read local blog DCist, as well as through Facebook and Twitter, and the local chapter of the Sierra Club and the advocacy group Streetcars for DC sent out action alerts. As a result, Council members’ offices were inundated with calls and emails from constituents in protest.
In the face of this public outcry in an election year, the Council quickly reversed course and reallocated the funds, taking $10 million from this year’s budget and placing $37 million from the 2011 budget in reserve, meaning further council action will be required before it can be spent.
Some of the credit for the public backing can be given to the administration of Mayor Adrian Fenty, whose intitative led to the laying of track for two streetcar lines and the purchase of several vehicles from the Czech Republic, one of which was put on public display earlier this month with great fanfare. The city has also generated well-received video conceptualizations of the future streetcars in operation.
But what’s really driving the push for streetcars is that Washingtonians—along with majorities of Americans elsewhere—understand the need for better transportation that is built around people, not cars. Cities that have built and extended rail transit systems—including Washington with the Metrorail—have seen development gravitate towards areas around train stations, making urban living more accessible and attractive, while curbing the environmental impact of population growth. As one Washington-area blogger explains, bus routes just don’t have the same impact on communities that streetcars do.
Yesterday’s developments in D.C. were a fine example of democracy in action, spurred by ordinary citizens and aided by the Internet. This type of success can easily be replicated if rail and transit advocates make the best use of the tools available.
—Malcolm Kenton
Posted by Malcolm Kenton
Tags: adrian fenty, blogs, budget, dc council, democracy, outcry, rail, social media, streetcar, transit, vincent gray, washington dc,Can a lost rail connection be regained?
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
The following was written for Greater Greater Washington, a blog focused on smart growth, transit, and enhancing livability in the national capital region—and is reprinted here. The original is here.
Have you ever wondered why the H Street/Benning Road NE corridor is wider, flatter and straighter than most surrounding streets? The answer lies in a little-known chapter of mid-Atlantic railroad history that may also point a way towards a better transportation future for our region.
The Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railway (WB&A) provided passenger and freight service on an electrified route between its namesake cities from 1908 to 1935. The line provided a third rail route between Washington and Baltimore, complementing (and competing with) the Pennsylvania Railroad (which is now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor) and the Baltimore and Ohio (B&O, now the MARC Camden Line).
Long-gone WB&A station at the “starburst” intersection in Northeast DC. Image from rockcreek on Flickr.
The WB&A entered Washington from Seat Pleasant, MD, via Benning Road NE, which was widened and graded to accommodate the trains. It originally terminated at its own station (misnamed “White House Station”) at the “starburst” intersection of Bladensburg, H & 15th Streets and Maryland and Florida Avenues. Hechinger Mall on Benning Rd. NE in Carver/Langston was built on the site of the WB&A’s rail yard and maintenance shop.
Eventually, the line was extended west on H Street all the way to 15th Street NW at the Treasury building, sharing infrastructure with Capital Transit streetcars. At one point, the current site of the Greyhound/Peter Pan bus depot in NoMa was also a WB&A station.
The WB&A also offered direct train service from Baltimore to Annapolis, and riders from DC could disembark at Naval Academy Junction, near Odenton, and connect to Annapolis-bound trains (which also connected with the Pennsylvania at Odenton, and with the B&O at Annapolis Junction, the station for which is now called Savage).
Despite that a trip from downtown DC to Baltimore took an hour and 20 minutes on the WB&A, versus 50 minutes on the B&O, the WB&A remained popular for its cleanliness, lower fares, half-hourly service and better downtown terminal locations than the other two railroads. Imagine being able to hop on an electrified train in the heart of downtown DC and ride directly into the heart of downtown Baltimore.
The former WB&A right-of-way northeast from Seat Pleasant is mostly intact. It roughly paralleled what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Highway through Glenadren. Electric Avenue and Railroad Avenue in Glenn Dale are named for the former rail line over which they were paved, as is WB&A Road in Severn, near BWI Airport. Parts have been retained as a bike trail, with plans to extend the trail along the entire right-of-way from Lanham to Odenton.
The federally-funded construction of Defense Highway (U.S. 50) in the early 1950s, combined with improved service on the competing railroads, doomed WB&A’s service to DC, though the Baltimore-Annapolis section continued passenger service up to 1950, and freight service into the 1970s, as the Baltimore & Annapolis Railway (B&A). This right-of-way is now used by Maryland MTA light-rail trains as far south as Glen Burnie, and exists as a bike trail from there to Arnold, across the Severn River from Annapolis.
Today, by contrast, downtown-to-downtown service between the capital city and Charm City is offered only at weekday rush hours, while faster, more frequent daily Amtrak trains serve Penn Station, a fair hike from Baltimore’s downtown core (though now connected to it by light rail). If you want to take a train from either city to Annapolis, you’re out of luck.
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From Baltimore, you can take light rail as far as Glen Burnie, then change for the number 14 bus, running on a roughly half-hourly schedule, with hour-and-a-half headways on Sundays.
But Washington’s only connection to the Maryland capital’s walkable downtown, universities and state government buildings — aside from changing at Baltimore or BWI Airport — are rush hour-only Maryland MTA commuter buses 922 & 950, and two daily Greyhound round-trips (one direct, one via Baltimore) that continue to Ocean City.
The Odenton-Annapolis WB&A line, which passed through the middle of what is now Westfield Mall on its way into Annapolis, is mostly lost. Restoring light rail service along either this right-of-way, or the old B&A south of Glen Burnie, would be less expensive than building a new one, but is likely to encounter significant NIMBY opposition.
Other options are to put rail in the median of U.S. 50 (not so conducive to walkability, but less likely to face the ire of NIMBYs), or to extend the Blue Line east from Largo, paralleling Central Avenue and Riva Road or Solomons Island Road. Via this alignment, the rail distance from Metro Center to Annapolis is only 5 miles greater than the rail distance from Metro Center to Dulles Airport via the Orange and Silver Lines.
The Maryland DOT should seek federal assistance to study options for rail service roughly paralleling heavily-congested U.S. 50, which would better connect the Annapolis area with the job centers on the Washington-Baltimore corridor. Some form of rail transit serving these communities would be a wise investment in a future where rising travel demand and more expensive gasoline will lead people along this corridor to seek a better travel alternative — and the walkable communities that would come with it.
Special thanks to NARP Director Ken Briers for his research assistance.
Posted by Malcolm Kenton
Tags: annapolis, baltimore, bike trail, electrification, interurban rail, light rail, maryland, rail history, rail transit, washington dc,Real-Time Train Tracker Developed for Google Maps
Monday, December 06, 2010
DCTransitGuide.com has developed a module that displays, within a Google Map, the real-time location of Washington, DC, Metrorail trains based on train arrival predictions publicly available through the transit agency’s Website. Check it out:
Click on any station to see the anticipated arrival time of the next several trains that are due.
NARP member John B. developed a similar live-status map for Amtrak trains, which is updated as Amtrak’s Website reports each train’s departure from each station. The next step is for Amtrak and all transit systems, and perhaps airlines as well, to be integrated into one display to aid passengers in connecting seamlessly between modes.
—Malcolm Kenton
Posted by Malcolm Kenton
Tags: amtrak, metrorail, passenger train, status map, train status, transit, washington dc,The Debilitating Aspects of Auto Dependence
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
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Here are excerpts from Erik Weber’s excellent piece for the DC-area smart-growth blog Greater Greater Washington, challenging the notion that an automobile-based transportation system increases freedom of mobility. The havoc wreaked on the nation’s midsection by the latest blizzard underscores the necessity of intercity passenger train service to keep people moving when cars and planes fail. The more people have the train travel choice available to them, the less we will be crippled by the hazards of increasingly severe weather (thanks to climate change), gas price fluctuations, and congestion on the roads and in the skies.
—Malcolm Kenton
Residents of Washington’s outer suburbs struggled Wednesday night with horrendous traffic on the city’s commuter routes. At the same time, many DC residents were enjoying happy hours, snowball fights and otherwise carrying on with their lives. By the time people in the central city were fast asleep, many suburbanites were still fighting to get home.
People often say they prefer driving over transit because a car allows you to go where you want, when you want. Events like last week’s storm or the week-long blizzard last February highlight problems with this strategy.
Even under normal circumstances, though, how many of us drive to work at 6 am “to avoid traffic” or forgo a shopping trip “because the parking lot is too crowded” or take a detour on a trip because “the football game is letting out?” As Carla Saulter, the Seattle Bus Chick, has said, driving a car doesn’t necessarily mean being in control.
Posted by Malcolm Kenton
Tags: auto dependence, development patterns, lexington ky, natural disasters, public transportation, smart growth, suburbia, transportation and land use, walkability, washington dc,Mostly good news from high-level presenters at D.C. membership meeting
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
NARP members from Maryland, D.C., Virginia and West Virginia gathered at Washington’s Union Station on Saturday for a very informative 5-hour annual meeting. NARP Director and Mid-Atlantic Division Leader Jim Churchill and Outreach Director Malcolm Kenton put together this report:
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Our first guest was April Maguigad, head of operations for commuter train operator Virginia Railway Express (VRE). Her presentation covered the smooth transition from Amtrak to Keolis as the contractor operating VRE trains, improved on-time performance, new cars and locomotives being delivered, and planned station improvements including allowing passengers to board a train from either side boarding.
VRE remains challenged by growing ridership running into limited capacity, adding service to Stafford County on the Fredericksburg Line (Stafford just became part of the compact that manages VRE). VRE is considering additional reverse commute service on both Manassas and Fredericksburg lines (there is currently one reverse-commute Manassas Line trip and none on the Fredericksburg Line), partly to alleviate crowding of stored equipment in Washington. VRE is also improving track at L’Enfant to facilitate storage of trains there, and building a direct pedestrian tunnel between Alexandria’s VRE/Amtrak station and the King Street Metrorail station.
Michael Testerman, President of the Virginia Association of Railway Patrons and Vice Chair of Rail Solution, presented an overview of the work of the North American Steel Interstate Coalition. Rail Solution’s mission is to vastly expand and upgrade Norfolk Southern’s Shenandoah Valley line to take trucks off of I-81, one of the country’s most heavily-used freight corridors. The Steel Interstate Coaltion wants to expand this concept to other corridors designated by the U.S. military during the 1973 energy crisis, but that have never received major federal investment. The vision includes elecrtifying many main lines to accommodate longer, faster freight trains as well as 110 to 125-mph passenger trains.
Posted by Malcolm Kenton
Tags: amtrak, dc streetcars, jim churchill, joseph boardman, marc, narp membership meeting, rail solution, ross capon, union station, vre, washington dc,Transit Benefit Cut Defies Evident Trend Away from Car Dependence
Thursday, December 22, 2011
This morning’s Washington Post features a cover story noting that Washington, DC’s population has grown tremendously while most places in the US have seen shrinking numbers of residents. Perhaps most significantly, the Post says “Three in four newcomers [to DC] in recent years have been between the ages of 18 and 34. They have zero interest in the suburbs.”
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| Downtown San Jose, CA. [Image: Sean_Marshall on Flickr] |
This reflects a growing and highly evident preference for urban living amongst those of us of the next generation, combined with the increasing prevalence of teenagers waiting longer to get their first driver’s license, once considered a rite of passage into adulthood. “Millennials” such as myself would rather not be tied to needing a car to get everywhere, along with the stress, danger and great expense driving entails. Being able to use electronics or read while traveling, having easy access to a multitude of activities, and being able to enjoy bars and parties without worrying about getting behind the wheel afterwards are all good reasons to live in a place where a car is not a necessity.
Combine that with my generation’s increasing awareness of the great social and environmental costs of the automobile’s disproportionate dominance of America’s transportation universe—oil dependence, homogenous suburban sprawl eating away at farms and open spaces, air pollution, etc.—and you have growing demand for human-scaled neighborhoods connected to one another by trains, subways and streetcars.
Yet many of our elected leaders aren’t getting the message. Just when more and more professionals are moving into cities and relying on public transportation to get to work, Congress’s lack of action on an extension of provisions in the 2009 Recovery Act means that the maximum pre-tax transit benefit allowed to employees will be cut in half come January 1—while the maximum parking benefit will increase. At the same time, decreased revenues and state and local funding cuts due to the recession are forcing many transit agencies to raise fares. For many Americans, my generation especially, this will be a painful double-whammy. It will encourage some commuters to switch to driving—precisely the wrong message to send when we’re also trying to ease congestion and pollution in our urban areas—but for most transit commuters, it will make the struggle to make ends meet harder and force difficult tradeoffs.
It’s up to all of us to maintain pressure on our Senators and Representatives. Remind them that the plethora of public policy goals that are achieved when it is cheaper and easier for people to use transit than drive are worth more than the miniscule additional tax revenue resulting from the reduction in the transit benefit cap. It’s also good to know that our biggest opportunity to tell Congress how we feel is coming in 11 months.
—Malcolm Kenton
Posted by Malcolm Kenton
Tags: car dependence, commuting, population growth, transit benefits, transportation policy, urban living, us cities, washington dc, washington post,©2010 National Association of Railroad Passengers | » NARP website
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