Transit on Thursday: The Future of Metro Edition
It might have made us say, "huh?", but Metro produced quite a hubbub with its recent presentation on future solutions to the system's capacity needs - turns out, the transit agency has some pretty major upgrades in mind. David Alpert, curator of the local development blog Greater Greater Washington and a former Google Product Manager, produced a map to display all the changes that WMATA wants to make. We took the chance to grill David on these changes and see what he thinks about the ideas the agency is floating around for the next 20 years.
Okay, so let's play along and say that in a perfect world, Metro gets to make all these changes by the year 2030. In your opinion, what change - if any - is going to make people stand up and say, "this changes the way I live my daily life"?
Within the scope of this map, the most influential single changes would be the Silver Line to Tysons, the Purple Line through College Park, and the Blue Line to H Street. Each of these enables getting somewhere that right now is much more difficult. Almost everyone drives to Tysons, and once trains go there, some people will start riding the train. More importantly, development will start shaping itself around Metro, including new residential buildings that cater to commuters into D.C.. That will significantly shape the way people live in Fairfax.
Likewise, the Purple Line will connect a lot of people to schools and jobs who have to drive today. It would clearly transform mobility for all Maryland students, cut congestion on the northern parts of the Beltway, and make it easier for Silver Spring and Bethesda to grow without building lots of parking. And a subway on H Street would stimulate development in that area and bring residents there much closer to the rest of the city.
Map created by David Alpert of Greater Greater Washington (click on map for larger). Used with permission.
Metro has a lot of changes in this map that would seem to be in the realm of street cars and BRT. Do you think that we're headed for a war between rail and alternative modes of mass transit? Are we already at the beginning of that war?
The situation is a little bit like the American Colonies fighting against Great Britain for independence. Right now all the modes of transportation are fighting against the big bully, highways. Ninety-seven percent of our federal money is still going to highways. As Maryland is working hard to get approval for the Purple Line, they're throwing billions at the Intercounty Connector which will only create more sprawl, and Virginia is widening the Beltway. We know highways only create more traffic, but our elected officials can't stop doing it, and that's partly because the Federal government currently makes it so easy to spend money on highways and so hard to build transit.
If you're in Metro's shoes - why a West End station in lieu of an H Street station? Isn't the West End almost inundated with stations already? Wouldn't a station with more TOD possibilities be a better option, money-wise?
If I had to pick one or the other, I would definitely choose a station on H Street NE over one in the West End for the reasons you mention. H Street is the last major commercial corridor to recover from the 1968 riots, partly because it's the one without Metro access. There are many undeveloped parcels and residents are eager for development. More stores would locate there if Metro could bring shoppers and diners in from around the city and region. H Street is perhaps the best spot in all of D.C. to put a new Metro station.
However, I wouldn't totally discount the value of a West End station. There are surely some visitors staying in hotels on M Street who would take Metro to their convention at the Convention Center or to Georgetown, but don't now and drive instead. There are also people who work there or even in Foggy Bottom and could take MARC or VRE to Union Station, but the extra transfer from Red to Orange to get from Union Station to that part of the city is an obstacle. A station there would certainly reduce some auto traffic. Is it enough to be worth the cost of a station? Knowing that would require a more detailed study that WMATA would certainly undertake if they were building the subway. While stations are pricey, if you're already building a line there, it's at least less pricey.
Of course, the most effective ideas are usually the least sexy ones, and going exclusively to eight car trains is a no-brainer - but, is it just us, or is the track connector idea probably the most useful way in the presentation to cut rush hour congestion?
In addition to eight-car trains, rebalancing the load between the Blue and Yellow Lines is the other obvious win. I have a map showing just this change. Right now, there is room for about four more trains per hour in rush hour to travel over the Yellow Line bridge, but no more room in the tunnel from Rosslyn to Foggy Bottom. Therefore, WMATA is planning to make some trains that leave Franconia-Springfield go over the Yellow Line bridge and continue on to Greenbelt (probably as Yellow Line trains). That will open up space for them to add a few more Orange or Silver Line trains. The new trains will go to Largo to replace the Blue Line trains that don't go there.
The track connectors would mainly help Metro ensure that service keeps running smoothly. Right now, if a train has any mechanical problems like a stuck door, they have to hold up the entire line while they clear out the train and get it out of the way. And if one train gets a bit behind schedule, like if someone holds the door while some friends walk down the stairs, then at each station it gets more and more behind because there will be more people on the platform waiting, until you end up with a big gap and then a bunch of trains. The connections will allow Metro to have some trains waiting in between where they can jump in as necessary, or let them reroute a train around a trouble spot. That can be very valuable to making sure riders have a good experience.
In the end, does this map have real steam?
Getting anything built is tough. The original Metro system took decades, and along the way Congressmen held up funding for petty reasons, people fought over where the put the lines, and everything ended up costing more than they expected. But it was worth it. In The Great Society Subway, Zachary Schrag quotes developers and scholars who believe that Metro essentially saved downtown D.C. Without it, we'd have some scattered office buildings with parking garages in between, few restaurants, and most businesses out around the Beltway in big suburban office parks. That's because there just wasn't anywhere to put more highways to get people downtown, and if we smashed them through our neighborhoods, most of the space would need to be used for parking. And Virginia and Maryland would be even more crisscrossed with overcrowded highways than they are now.
Building this will enable our region to continue growing without hugely painful traffic everywhere. Will our leaders have the fortitude to get it done? Governor Kaine and Virginia's Congresspeople seem to be pulling it off with the Dulles extension.
I created this map to show people how things could be, to make it easier to visualize a better future for Metro that we can all get excited about that. Hopefully our advocacy organizations will do a good job of organizing citizen energy and politicians will respond.
You can find more of David's work at his blog, which is updated frequently. Also, check out his very own conceptual map for Metro here, which was released in February.
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Engines and Cabooses: More CCTV cameras will be installed in Metro parking lots...Remember that Northern Virginia YouTube commute campaign? Well, it's not really working...Nats shuttle from RFK, on the other hand, is working quite well...Surprise! MontCo residents still don't like the Intercounty Connector...New options for Amtrak to southern Virginia are in the works.