Transit on Thursday: Trolleys and Tribulations Edition
But let's face it. Though it's among the nation's best and most extensive transit systems, Metro is just not very well-designed for travel within the city. The rail network's hub and spoke design is clearly geared toward suburban commuters. The bus system struggles to play a dual role with its long, straight commuter lines and winding neighborhood routes. The result is that many areas of the District are fairly isolated from significant transit access. Spotty bus service and no rail service affect both affluent areas like Georgetown and Chevy Chase, and less well off sections of the city such as Trinidad and much of Southeast.
What's more, as the city continues to grow, the demands commuters place on Metro will continue to grow, further frustrating local neighborhood travel. The Silver Line extension to Dulles, for example, is great for folks in far-off Tysons, Reston, and Herdon. It'll give them a much-need transit option, and help relieve congestion on suburban roads and highways. But it'll also dump a significant number of riders into downtown Orange Line stations, making local Metro travel increasingly more complicated.
D.C. needs another public transit option that is focused on providing local neighborhood service -- an option like streetcars.
Photo by Telstar Logistics
Streetcars are a relatively inexpensive way to provide top-notch local transit service that pulls from the best features of both bus and rail. Their slower pace and frequent stops are perfectly in sync with a resident who needs to pick up groceries, visit the doctor, or make a run to the hardware store. Discrete routes along metal tracks and a distinctive appearance integrates a streetcar line into a neighborhood in a way that makes a bus route seem generic. This can create economic development and neighborhood character that the S or X Metrobus lines could only dream of.
The benefits of streetcars have been clear to District transportation officials for a while now. Working from the city's emerging development patterns, they've planned a network of seven lines that fill in the gaps that Metrorail leaves and Metrobus cannot adequately serve. Looking at their plans, it's not hard to imagine how streetcar service would round out D.C.'s transit system. Going cross-town from Northwest to Northeast would be a cinch. Much of Northeast, including H Street, Benning Road, and Minnesota Avenue, would be connected with Union Station. American University students would finally get a direct transit link, and the two wards east of the river would be connected to each other along a northeast-southwest direction that makes a lot of sense. Though the details are up in the air, and funding is not yet especially forthcoming, the streetcar network envisioned by DDOT has real potential to increase residential mobility, reduce car usage and congestion, and open up new areas of the city to business and development.
That's why we found it odd when Examiner transportation guru Steve Eldridge took a recent trip to New Orleans as an opportunity slam the streetcar idea as an inconsequential novelty.
...on first blush these trolleys seem to serve a very similar purpose as the Circulator buses. They carry a large number of out-of-towners on a fix route through a busy business district for one set price... It occurs to me...that the Washington region has accomplished what it set out to do and has in fact replicated the service of the trolley with the D.C. Circulator. The question yet to be answered is whether that is enough and what else a trolley such as the one down here in Na’ Lins can provide.That opinion stoked quite a bit of controversy. Eldridge gave a sampling of reader responses later that week, with one reader suggesting Eldridge look to Portland, Oregon's famed streetcars for a better idea of what such a system could offer. Other letters holding Portland up as a model followed (some more forcefully than others, apparently), and Eldridge took umbrage.
My goal is not to defend or promote any one system over the other. I thought it might be interesting to look into the trolley system since I was going to be in the town for other reasons. I am certain that there are wonderful examples of trolleys in Europe as well in Portland. Sometimes those who advocate for one position or another do so with such passion that they forget things like being polite and accepting of other person’s positions.
The local chapter of the Sierra Club, which is currently pressing the District to move forward on their streetcar plans with all due haste, was not pleased with Eldridge either. In a letter to the Examiner, the Club points to some of those "wonderful examples" which Eldridge allows for, asserting that in D.C., streetcars would be far more than "...a nostalgic toy for moving tourists."
However, just as D.C. isn't New Orleans or Portland, neither are we Toronto or Melbourne or San Francisco. While we can learn lessons from the success of other streetcar systems, ultimately, we need to evaluate our own city's needs and decide whether streetcars make sense. Building a quality network would require a serious commitment (and investment) from the city. On the other hand, the neighborhoods newly linked by an added transit option could definitely help the city achieve its much-vaunted goal of attracting 100,000 new residents by 2013. And as the Sierra Club notes, it would also help ensure that those 100,000 residents wouldn't come along with 100,000 new cars.