We need to build a transportation system that can take people out of the cars instead of building more and more roads.

And what about the fact that one third of DC households do not own cars? Do you think they should pay for these new roads?

Which homes are you going to tear down to build those freeways you’re adovacting for? In case you hadn’t noticed, we’d have to start tearing down buildings to build new freeways because we’re out of room.

Put your money where your mouth is and offer up your house first! Otherwise, you might as well get on the transit bandwagon with the rest of us!!

Washington, DC is a planned city. It’s based on a design by Pierre L’Enfant and it existed in the configuration that currently includes the walkable communities before there were streetcars, and those areas have continued to develop without streetcars.

I agree that people are more likely to take a rail line than a bus line, and that rail lines can help spur development. However, rail lines alone do not guarantee development, and Anacostia, the subject of this post, is a perfect example. It’s a war zone with a Metro stop.

There are plenty of walkable communities in DC, and elsewhere in this country, that are nowhere near rail service - Shirlington is a great example. There is a new trend in development to intergrate walkable town centers into the design.

There are also plenty of communities that have developed along interstates - Tyson’s Corner, Herndon, Reston, etc… they’re not necessarily walkable - but that’s a result of poor planning, not highways, and those places employ tens of thousands of people, so it’s flat wrong to suggest that we’ve gained nothing from the expressway building boom.

In fact, most of the successful walkable communities exist in negihborhoods with access to both metro and highways - indicating that having both would be better than one or the other.

I understand that DC wants to build a citywide system of streetcars, but my point is that when we already have metro and buses, this is redundant and wasteful.

We need to expand the existing systems and make them efficient before we put a nice-to-look-at solution in place. Streetcars carry about the same number of people as buses, and don’t do anything to alleviate the traffic problems that buses are a part of - streetcars use the street and only add another layer to the mix, making the whole problem worse.

As for the comparison of which pollutes more - that really depends on too many factors to acurately compare here. We’re not talking about one car with one person versus one streetcar with 40 people, we’re talking about all of the cars across the 11th street bridge all day and all of the people they carry versus all of the streetcars and how many people they carry all day. If every car carries four people, and the streetcars are empty, which they will probably be since they service Anacostia and Bolling AFB, then the streetcars will pollute more. The streetcars will have to be powered somehow, and the powerplant running them will be polluting, so whether or not they are more environmentally friendly depends on how many people will ride them.

I don’t think many people will be riding them until Anacostia is safer and better developed. Why would I currently want to go from Bolling AFB to Anacostia via streetcar?

The entire proposed line is 1.1 miles.

http://www.ddot.dc.gov/ddot/frames.asp?doc=/ddot/lib/ddot/masstransit/streetcar/dcstreetcar_systemplan_2006-06.pdf&ddotNav_GID=1746

It starts in downtown Anacostia and drops you off at the entrance to Bolling AFB. The base is almost twice as long from end to end as the whole streetcar line, so I can ride this thing one third the way to work? What do I do once I get to the gate at Bolling? Going the other way is just as stupid - Why would I drive a mile to park and ride the streetcar a mile? And why would I go to Anacostia in the first place?

The 11th street bridge project will help make the neighborhood more accessible to outsiders, which in turn makes it more enticing to developers, and that is the only thing that’s going to turn Anacostia around. If you really want a streetcar system in DC, Anacostia is the last place you should use as a test bed - try building the line to Shirlington - from anywhere.

I still maintain that we should really expand the existing mass transit we already have. Streetcars in this town are a tourist attraction - not a necessarry part of the mass transit system.

I’m confused about your comment. I didn’t mention the potential benefits for the neighborhood, but that’s not because I don’t think they exist. My main point is that in a toss up between a streetcar or the 11th street bridge for Anacostia - the bridge wins. It would be much better for the neighborhood.

Who would come to Anacostia to ride a streetcar? Until they start to bring money into that neighborhood and create businesses and jobs, that is going to be a poor, crime ridden area.

As for the Sierra Club - they oppose the bridge because they oppose any automobile infrastructure advancement. They aren’t concerned with the economic development of Anacostia one way or the other, they want transportation that they deem environmentally friendly.

I couldn’t agree with you more. Streetcars don’t add anything here, and will probably only make the traffic worse.

DC does NOT need streetcars- better would be improved bus infratsure, such as bus stops with useful info and painting some marks on the roads to show where the bus routes go.

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/09/washington-dc-big-dig.html

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/11/i-395-extension-superior-option.html

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesintransit/2070996707/

You don’t.