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The District Department of Transportation is moving ahead with the installation of streetcar slabs and tracks along H Street NE, despite the fact that the streetcars themselves still have several planning hurdles to overcome before they'll be cleared to start running. But the laying of tracks will cause two intersections on H Street to be temporarily closed this week.
On Wednesday, August 26, the intersection of 4th and H Streets NE will be closed from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. In addition, the eastbound curb lane on H Street NE between 3rd and 5th Streets will be closed to traffic. Traffic on 4th Street will be redirected to 5th Street NE during this time.
Then on Friday, August 28, the intersection of 7th and H Streets NE will be closed from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., as well as the eastbound curb lane on H Street between 6th and 8th Streets. Traffic on 7th Street will be redirected to 8th Street NE on Friday.
Metrobuses along H Street will also detour around the closures.
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heck yes!
Desire
So. They haven't decided whether they can power these streetcars via underground conduits or via some sort of hybrid underground/aboveground system, and Congress hasn't done anything about the overhead wire ban, yet they're still going forward with construction along a fairly busy transit corridor?
I should expect no less from the agency that orders multi-million-dollar streetcars then pays for them to sit idle in their European factory. For years.
Monkey-
Much of the track is laid, along with the center median infrastructure it resides in. Most likely, it will be overhead lines- most places in DC do allow this- if I recall only the L'Enfant places do not.
It's far too late to turn back on this.
Oh, I'm not saying turn back. I'm saying they're taking a multi-million-dollar gamble with taxpayer money. It doesn't make sense to me for them to be laying track on a streetcar line before they figure out how to reliably power the trains. It's like delivering cars to a dealership sans engines.
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.
The issue with the overhead wire ban downtown hasn't been resolved, or even begun to be addressed by Norton et al, and the alternative (underground and hybrid power systems) are expensive and subject to serious design issues (DC's penchant for salting the $h!t out of roads in the winter? Corrosive road salt tends to do a number on power systems.) Why aren't they testing an underground system on the Anacostia line first before bringing this downtown? If you thought manhole explosions were fun, wait until you get a load of arcing streetcar power lines. Chudville will be lit up like a goddamn xmas tree.
I want to see streetcars return to downtown, but it's like that old engineer adage: you can either have it done fast or done right. Take your pick.
Good points.
My sense (imperfect but informed beyond media reports) is that, where necessary, the lines will be underground. The tracks and trains will be on raised dedicated medians.
The whole overhead wires in the L'Enfant city thing is so complex as to be a non-starter. Just think of what the utility companies would do if that door was cracked open.
The obvious solution is to power the streetcars the old-fashioned way: teams of horses.
Sounds like an idea to be studied for the route from Union Station to the Canal Towpath in Georgetown.
Monkey's right-- it's a huge gamble. At the recent H St NE streetcar meet at the Atlas Theater, DDOT's director had no idea how they would be powered, and concerns were raised that the method they're using to lay would prevent underground conduit being used the future. DDOT also has to acquire land for power substations, turnaround spots, and a maintenance facility.
There are huge hurdles left, and they're laying the track to appease the citizens into think they're progressing.
Does anyone see the irony in the fact that the cars are made in Prague and run on tracks with overhead wires in a city that is centuries older than DC. I say if overhead wires are okay for Prague then they are good for H street.
Once that route is in can the city start putting in more routes throughout the city?
Would be nice. I'm thinking K street downtown linking to Union Station, and up Georgia, and 18th into Adams Morgan.
But the overhead wires are a problem. Federal standards for the L'Enfant city frown on them.
And they're ugly. Just my opinion.
Mention Prague and you remind me of the wonders of free flowing absinthe. Any chance these streetcars come over covered in vintage absinthe posters?
In any event, they should rename the H St line 'the Green Fairy' and let riders get a taste; experience H St NE in its pre-1968 glory, psychoactively.
Then convert underground metro stations into opium dens. Chase the dragon rather than the Red Line. Our infrastructure is crumbling around us - we might as well medicate ourselves to ease the blow.
Lara.....
conduit power is only required in the core part of the city. DC would probably be able to avoid a battle in congress by not trying to overturn that law.
Modern ground-level current collection was pioneered by the recent Bordeaux tramway in France. The public had assumed that the new system would use a traditional conduit system, like that of the Bordeaux trams which ran prior to 1958, and objected when they learned that it was not considered safe, and that overhead wires were to be used instead. Facing complaints both from the public and the French Ministry of Culture, planners developed APS as a modern way of replicating the conduit system.
APS was developed by Innorail, a subsidiary of Spie Enertrans, but was sold to Alstom when Spie was acquired by Amec.
There are 12 km of APS tramway in the three-line network of 43.3 km as of 2008. Sources suggest that APS adds about €100,000 to the cost of the trams, whilst the infrastructure is about 300% more expensive than overhead wires. Bordeaux Citadis trams use pantographs (device that collects electric current from overhead lines) and electric overhead lines in outlying areas.
Bordeaux has experienced problems, with APS being so temperamental that at one stage the Mayor issued an ultimatum that if reliability could not be guaranteed, it would have to be replaced with overhead wires. Although things have improved, in October 2005 it was announced that 1 km of APS tramway is to be converted to overhead wires.
Problems have included water-logging, when the water does not disperse or flow away quickly enough after heavy rain.
In summer 2006 it was announced that two new French tram systems would be using APS over part of their networks. These will be Angers and Reims, with both systems expected to open around 2009/2010. A couple of months later another French city was added to the list, this being Orléans, which will use APS on a section of their second tram line. The planned Al Sufouh Tramway in Dubai will use APS.[3]
Other cities to propose the use of APS include:
Nice (abandoned in favour of nickel metal hydride batteries)
Barcelona, Catalonia
Florence, Italy
Marseille, France
Melbourne, Australia
Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Reims, France
Washington, D.C, United States
Brasília, Brazil
Al Sufouh Tramway in Dubai, United Arab Emirates
The Tramway de Nice was originally to use the Alimentation par Sol (APS) third rail system as used by the Tramway de Bordeaux. However, this was abandoned in favor of the more conventional overhead power supply cables providing 750V DC, except when the tram crosses the Place Masséna and Garibaldi, when it lowers its pantograph and relies on its onboard nickel metal hydride batteries to cross these large open spaces, where overhead wires would be an eyesore.
APS Conduit TRACK
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bordeaux-aps%2Bisolation%26joint.jpg
NMH Batteries used in NICE with grassy rails
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tramway_de_Nice_004.jpg
And by the way the reason congress has been trying to keep the overhead wires banned since 1896 was because it's a major eyesore in an otherwise grand looking city. They even tried compressed air engines (a failure) and batteries (still too early). The ended up using horse-drawn TRAMs downtown for quite a while because it was prettier than overhead wires, until they finally had the conduit system completed.
However now it is possible to run the TRAMS on nickel metal hydride batteries. Lithium Ion batteries might be even better at this point.
Monkey,
Their explanation was that they had scheduled road work on H St NE for this year and it made sense to go ahead and lay down the tracks now, rather than dig up the expensive road work to lay them down later.
There is nothing currently "Grand" about H St. The DC government should take a picture of H st and bring it to congress and ask, "Where is this?" I don't think anyone in Congress would guess right. They should lobby just to have them make a special zone that is exempted from the rule for H street.
I want to see streetcars return to downtown, but it's like that old engineer adage: you can either have it done fast or done right. Take your pick.
I thought the saying was you can have it fast, cheap, and right. Choose two of the three.
Well, according to Monty Hall, you can either have what's behind the curtain or what's in this box.
[Don't tell anyone, but there are junkpunches behind both.]
Monorail!
Is there a reason we can't have diesel light rail like they have on that Trenton-Camden line? Other than
a) diesel sucks
b) Trenton sucks
c) Camden sucks
d) we already built a streetcar that runs on electricity, so suck it.