The Weekly Feed: Experimentation Edition
Morning Roundup: Change Edition
Former Blade Staffers Launch 'DC Agenda'
D.C. Unemployment Rate Reaches 11.9 Percent
D.C. Insurance Dept. Denies Birth Control Coverage Meddling
Written by former Editor-in-Chief Ryan Avent
If you’ve been over to H Street NE recently you’ve no doubt noticed that it’s a complete and total mess. As part of an effort to repair and upgrade the thoroughfare the District has basically ripped up the entire street, with the exception of two tiny lanes set off by Jersey barriers and orange barrels. Makes for an exciting and swift drive.
The fun part of the project is that the District is taking the opportunity presented by the gutting to install streetcar rails for the planned H Street line that will one day connect Union Station with the Benning Road Metro Station, along H Street and Benning Road. In a sight that warms the heart of transit nerds like myself, the rails can be seen piled alongside Benning Road this very moment. As BeyondDC notes, this means that the District owns and is installing tracks, and owns fully functioning and operational streetcars. So surely it’s a mere matter of months before folks can hop a trolley at Union Station and trundle down to the H Street Country Club, no?
No. There are planning problems to address – where to put a turnaround and maintenance facility – but the big hang-up for the H Street line is that unlike the Anacostia route, it travels through the L’Enfant City. And in the L’Enfant City, overhead wires are verboten. There are technologies available to power streetcars through a source embedded in the road, but for modern systems these technologies are expensive or unproven.
One might imagine that the District government would respond to these impediments by either pushing forward with producers of in-ground technology to develop a workable system or, you know, changing the law about overhead wires. It’s not as if the presence of such wires in places like San Francisco and Vienna has dimmed tourist enthusiasm for photographing the sites. Instead, it seems that the Council has focused on conflicts over baseball tickets, in the meantime hoping the wire situation will solve itself.
That’s an understandable response, but given all this stimulus money floating around, record high demand for transit in the Washington area, and the fact that we’ve already purchased cars and rails it seems like a little expeditiousness on the whole streetcar powering thing might be warranted.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
The DC Council can't change the overhead wire restrictions. Congress implemented that restriction, and it will take an act of Congress to remove that restriction... and allow overheard wire in the L'Enfant City in places like H Street, NE.
But don't intoduce a bill to overturn that ban, less some dick congressman from Utah adds an amendment making automatic weapon purchases mandatory or banning premarital sex.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I'm still kinda confused. Maybe one of you transit eggheads can enlighten me. They're laying track for a rail system where they don't know whether they'll be using underground or above-ground wiring to power the thing? So you get tracks, but no power. In the meantime, you've got piles of rails sitting around Benning Road while the streetcars WE'VE ALREADY PAID FOR THREE YEARS AGO sit idling around in the Czech Republic. And instead of going someplace people actually want to go, the first line will be running to Bolling Air Force Base? The one next to Blue Plains Sewage Treatment Facility? I suppose that's apropos, since this whole bureaucratic fustercluck stinks like a wall of raging manure, and everybody in charge of this fiasco already has their head so far up their a$$ their earwax is brown and covered in corn.
Tell you what. Just give me the thirty million dollars and I'll provide the bestest mass transit sewage trebuchet/ski lift gondola system the world has ever seen. That way, you still get the stink but the system is up and running NOW. And I don't see any Congressional bans on overhead catapulting, do I?
Monorail !
Mass transit sewage trebuchet/ski lift gondola systems have put towns like Ogdonville, North Haverbrook and Brockway on the map!
What's it called....?
Monorail !
What's it called!?
Monorail!
If that new trapeze school is successful, overhead catapulting might be the future of transportation for DC.
Not only that, but the Association for Irresponsible Statistics reports that catapults, trebuchets, and ballistas actually reduce both a region's greenhouse gas production as well as its carbon footprint by killing their passengers. Mounds of organically decaying corpses stacked like cordwood is a small price to pay for both a greener environment and more efficient transit options. And yet Old Time Liberals® like Jim Graham would have us believe that medieval siege engines and Jumbo Slices contribute to crime! It's truly a shame that someone on the Metro board is so out-of-touch with both the self-defense and transit needs of the community, as well as the needs of late night drunken douchebags.
They should ride the District Government out of town on those rails.
Did Harriette Walters draw up this plan? DC has to be the laughing stock of the world. We hire a shifty computer techie to rig up our tax computer and she rips us off. We purchase a LEGO TROLLEY CAR system. We aren't allowed legally to carry guns yet some local yocal idiot thugs manage to shoot up the town every night. We outlaw JUMBO SLICE PIZZA. CHUDS and MORLOCKS aren't allowed to marry.Ben's Chili Bowl is considered Haute Cuisine. The subway stops around midnight on weekdays. Our mayor is a possible lycanthrope. We have more CASH CHECKING places than BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS...and our Baseball team can't spell.
"in the L’Enfant City, overhead wires are verboten"
somebody should tell mci verizon center about this.
I don't understand why this is an issue at all. Capital Traction, later Capital Transit used underground conduits for power in the downtown core of Washington, DC for decades. The system worked well, with pre-WWII technology. Surely, similar-but-updated underground conduits could be used for power for the streetcars today? Why even bother trying to get permission to use overhead wires? Just go ahead with the underground option.
I vaguely recall some dingbat on the Capital Planning Commission claiming that underground power systems pose too much of an insurance liability for the city. She was worried that our delightful cadre of plucky street urchins would be shoving crowbars down the third rail and electrocuting themselves.
As far as power sources for our new street cars, I think the best bet is definitely going to be overhead wires. DC (via Pepco) hasn't really had much success in maintaining the undeground wiring that's already in place to, ya know, power the city.
Tourist Friend: I've already been to the Smithsonian, the Zoo, the White House, and the Giant Poo-Slinging Trebuchet/Catapult on H St. Anything new and cool to do?
Me: Have you seen the exploding manhole covers in Georgetown?
TF: Is it worth fighting the phalanx of hiptards and drunken GW sluts in denim miniskirts?
Me: Ummm, not really.
Has anyone used the H Street Cooperative's shuttle service from Chinatown? I seem to remember DCist reporting on it a few months back, but haven't tried it out yet nor heard anything further.
Yeah, I took it once at around 7pm on a Saturday. We got off the Metro at Gallery Place and it was already sitting right there. It took us right to the Atlas. The downside is that it runs so sporadically (a half hour to do the round trip between Chinatown and Minnesota Ave). We just missed it when we wanted to go back so we just took a cab to Union Station.
I am still waiting for someone to explain to me why a streetcar is better than the Circulator.
People who wouldn't consider stepping on a bus will use a streetcar. You can see where the track is going and you're on a fixed route so you can't get lost, and there's no schedule to decipher. No matter how simple the Circulator is, it'll never be simple enough for some people.
Additionally, street cars have a certain appeal to them that buses never will. It's a novelty, touristy, nerdyt hing; but street cars remind us of times past and yet represent the future at the same time.
Buses polute, even the most eco-friendly; they're slow, more bound by traffic constraints, and just generally less convinient.
To me, the real question is, why H street? Maybe I haven't seen all that H-St has to offer; but the few blocks I have seen were pertty sleezy and I didn't feel like going back for any reason.
I'd like to see a street car connecting Fort Totten to Friendship Heights; or other types of 'spoke connectors' so that people living on one end of a line don't have to go through downtown to get to stuff on the other end of the line (most commonly from one red spoke to the other).
No matter what happens, we've got rail cars sitting over there in Czech Republic burning up money! Somebody needs to get the gears moving so we can get those cars over here and put them to work. If the H-St line is going to hit delays fine, let's start with the Anacostia line!
True, I guess Yuri Zhivago clutching his heart and gasping "Lara..." as he lurches out of a Circulator just doesn't have the same appeal.
Also, streetcars will allow hiptards to feel like they live in Gothenburg or Budapest.
You see...with the old fashion 3D movies you need special glasses....ahem!..with the Circulator buses, you need a driver and a road. A Streetcar Named Desire is a heartwrenching film starring Marlon Brando. Our streetcar has no tracks in which to run them on. Hows that? You're welcome.
People feel more comfortable investing along a light rail line because they know that it's much less likely that the government will shut down an existing rail line than that they'll change the bus route.
I'd like to see a street car connecting Fort Totten to Friendship Heights
The Purple line will start going from Silver Spring to Bethesda in the next 5 to 600 years.
How many more circulator lines can they create before they have a whole alternate citywide bus system going? That being said, replacing the X2 with a circulator would pretty rad for all residents-- who's going to turn down a nicer, cheaper and more reliable ride?
I'd like the H street corridor to have the same makeover as the New Chinatown area. Bright lights and pizzaz!
just think of all the new craigslist missed connections possibilities with a new mode of public transportation
Ummm, San Francisco *cable cars* run on an underground *cable*.....
The overhead power lines, like those in Cambridge, MA are for the electric buses to eliminate diesel exhaust pollution. Another enlighted concept that the city should consider....
San Francisco's cable cars run on an underground cable, but San Francisco's light rail and streetcars use overhead wires. San Francisco has a lot of different types of rail.
Anyway, here are five benefits streetcars offer over buses, in no particular order:
1. Streetcars have higher capacity than buses. Not only does that mean they can carry more people in real terms, but since one rail vehicle with one driver carries many more people than a bus, and since streetcars can be coupled, the cost to operate per rider is lower for streetcars than buses (once you cross a certain ridership threshold).
2. Streetcars run on electricity rather than oil or natural gas. Electricity is not only cleaner, but with oil prices continuing to skyrocket, the long term cost savings are potentially enormous.
3. Streetcars have a better image. Many middle class Americans look down on buses as “loser cruisers”, but are willing to ride trains.
4. Streetcars are MUCH more comfortable to ride than buses. It is simply a fact that trains run more smoothly than buses. This isn’t frequently brought up, but it’s a big reason why people have such negative opinions about buses. Gliding along a rail is noticeably smoother than rumbling along on big tires over rough streets.
5. Rail investments spur real estate development in a way that buses do not. Rail stations become nodes for development.