Em Hall of Metro-Venture shares some first impressions from the D.C. Streetcar showcase at the Old Convention Center, where the District Department of Transportation invited the public to take a first look at a prototype streetcar over the last few days. As you can see from the photos above (culled from the DCist photo pool), DDOT is going for the same visual branding it employed for the popular Circulator line. Presuming some so-called preservationists drop their opposition to overheard wires along the streetcar lines, these things could be on the streets by 2012.

Sommer already posted photos when the showcase opened, and be sure to take a look at that more extensive gallery. Especially the picture of the supremely vintage-looking conductor’s booth, which could be the cab for Kraftwerk’s “Trans-Europe Express”. (The streetcars do hail from the Czech Republic, after all.) Still, it’s worth revisiting the showcase, now that the District and the streetcar have had some time to get acquainted.

Hall observes that one fundamental flaw to the D.C. streetcar program is that it is run by DDOT — while Metrorail and Metrobus are run by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. This exposes logistical problems: You can’t dial up Circulator results from the WMATA Trip Planner page (or vice versa) because the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. That’s a drag now, but throwing 37 miles of streetcar in the mix might expose this divide as a fatal flaw. What use are two trip planning sites that fail to consider the full schedule of Washington’s transit options?

Then again, could WMATA have implemented a Circulator program by itself? Would the city have a streetcar program in the works were it up to WMATA alone? Fixing the trip-planning program would take effort, but it seems doable. (There may be entrenched problems, like data sharing, that specifically stand in the way of a joint website, and these problems might be hard to solve. But there is no reason to think that DDOT and WMATA could not get on the same page if that were their goal.) And if DDOT is delivering Circulator and streetcar service, then a DDOT that acts independent of WMATA is a good thing.

Hall observes that it’s not obvious from the prototype how (or whether) riders will pay. She also sagely notes that D.C. drivers like to race around Metrobuses by making right turns from the center lane. How are those drivers who fail to muster any patience around Metrobuses — drivers who pose a daily menace to pedestrians and bicyclists — going to react when streetcars begin moping along their lines at 13 miles per hour? My guess is it makes them cranky!