If you build it (streetcars) does economic development magically happen?

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I updated a link in 2021, and because of the Blogger "upgrade" it destroyed all of the formatting.  I did the best to fix it.

WRT to Anacostia and economic development, I wrote plenty of entries later:

-- "Wanted: A comprehensive plan for the "Anacostia River East" corridor," 2011

-- "DC has a big "Garden Festival" opportunity in the Anacostia River," 2014

-- "A world class water/environmental education center at Poplar Point as another opportunity for Anacostia River programming (+ move the Anacostia Community Museum next door)," 2014

-- "The Anacostia River and considering the bridges as a unit and as a premier element of public art and civic architecture," 2014

-- "Saving the South Capitol Bridge as an exclusive pedestrian and bicycle bridge," 2014

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Councilmember David Catania made the point that the reason to implement streetcars in the City should occur first in Wards 7 and 8 because these Wards lag economically compared to the rest of the city, and residents tend to be the most transit dependent. 

So by enhancing the fixed rail network there, economic revitalization can be jumpstarted both for the neighborhood and for individuals and households. I don't disagree with his beliefs. However, it isn't enough to hope and wish. The other connections have to be made directly, rather than expected to happen indirectly. 

This is the kind of trickle down thinking that has typified traditional urban renewal thinking, and despite what people say, traditional "urban renewal" thinking dominates the revitalization agenda in DC. 

1. One of the points made about the Anacostia streetcar line is that it can be extended southward to the National Harbor in Prince George's County, and that this is a potential job source for DC residents. This may be the case but... 

a. Shouldn't the value of this be costed out? Is this the best way to provide DC residents with access to those jobs? 

b. It was pointed out that likely the State of Maryland would pay for the cost of doing this between the DC line and National Harbor. Have any discussions been launched with Maryland's MTA or Prince George's County about this? I don't think so... 

c. Even so, shouldn't the developers of National Harbor pay towards this--even the DC part? 

There needs to be an economic analysis to determine whether or not this makes sense, and whether or not National Harbor patrons would take the streetcar into DC and in turn spend some money here. And rather than expect this to somehow happen in about 10 to 20 years or so, start the conversation and planning now--if you want it to happen. 

2. CM Catania is fine with the initial phase of the streetcar serving as a commuter line with federal workers because he sees the potential in attracting Defense contractors to office buildings that could be constructed in Anacostia. 

Actually, I have no problem with spending DC money on creating "commuter lines" for federal workers since it means fewer cars on the road. But there are other more important issues--starting with a very basic question, "what is the economic revitalization plan for Anacostia?" 

I don't think there is one. 

And that is clear from the great organizing campaign in Ward 8 by McFarlane Partners to get the people believing that having a soccer stadium is necessary to their economic future and the improvement of Anacostia and Ward 8. 

I have written other posts on this issue over the years as it relates to Anacostia, such as:

-- "Office buildings won't "save" Anacostia," \

-- "Enclave development won't "save" Anacostia" 

a. Office buildings aren't necessarily the preferred economic development that people ought to want. Crystal City was hardly a vibrant place when it served as a Dept. of Navy office and contractor ghetto. If it weren't for some housing and hotels, it would have been even more bleak. 

Similarly, M Street SE, the new destination for defense contractors locating near to their clients now housed at the Navy Yard, is equally bleak. It shuts down at 5 pm. This is because the office workers have little interest in the city beyond it being their place of employment. 

Despite everything that we are told by urban planners and elected officials, office workers support miniscule amounts of retail. 

The numbers per worker are 2 s.f. of retail and 5 s.f. of restaurant space. 

You need thousands and thousands of workers to support much retail (add it up yourself). And the type of retail they support is extremely limited--convenience retail like drug stores, convenience food, dry cleaners, wireless phone stores, along with quick service food, like sandwich shops, rather than full-service restaurants. 

Also see this piece from the Post in February 2007 "All Quiet on Carlyle's Retail Front," which I blogged about in "The retail numbers "they" don't want you to know"... lamenting about how the Patent and Trademark Office's locating by the King Street Metro in Alexandria hasn't led to a neighborhood and retail resurgence in that area. 

b. There isn't an economic and land use revitalization plan for Anacostia even though there are some plans for some areas. Look at the Ward 8 section of the Office of Planning's Neighborhood and Revitalization Plans and you'll see what I mean. 

And the old Anacostia Waterfront Initiative website, which had some planning documents, now merely redirects to the www.dc.gov website, as that development corporation was subsumed into the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development. You need a plan in order to have the revitalization that you expect. 

c. And there needs to be a "Build Out Analysis" in order to determine if it is even possible to build the kind of office ghetto that Councilmember Catania envisions. 

There is at Poplar Point, but to do so in the traditional Anacostia commercial district, which is historically designated not that the Ward 8 political and economic elites are committed to historic preservation, would mean that it would have to be torn down and rebuilt--just like Downtown DC was in the 1980s and 1990s. 

For some insight into this, see the blog entry, "Arson as a(nother) redevelopment strategem," which is specifically about Anacostia. 

Being a preservationist committed to historic preservation centric revitalization, I know that I wouldn't favor the destruction of the Anacostia commercial district in favor of an office ghetto. 

d. And we would have to decide if we want Poplar Point to be an office ghetto, and would such use be the best way to use that property economically and in terms of neighborhood and city livability objectives. 

3. One of the most amazing things to me about the proposal to build the streetcar first in Anacostia, and frankly, I agree with Councilmember Catania's beliefs and sentiments about it being the right and proper thing to do, is that many of the residents and political and economic elites don't seem to want streetcar service. 

Frankly, I don't understand it. Streetcars work. They are probably the best transit-based neighborhood economic development tool around. See "Trolley study is mostly praised," from the Augusta Chronicle for some interesting numbers. 

Even yesterday, testimony was read into the record by a staff member from the Anacostia Economic Development Corporation against putting the streetcar there, on the route that is proposed. 

Now I think the testimony is short-sighted. But it doesn't surprise me, because the AEDC is a very traditional "community" development corporation that fervently believes in the most traditional of urban renewal planning. See for example this blog entry from 2005, "Falling up -- Accountability and DC Community Development Corporations," where I discuss this particular problem at greater length. 

But as this City Paper article from 2005 demonstrates, "Exile to Main Street," even after getting a trip to Portland to look at how streetcars work, a trip that convinced Councilmember Barry and then Councilmember now Council Chairman Gray that streetcars "connect communities," many residents don't think that a streetcar could work in Anacostia on the city's streets. (This contradicts all my beliefs about the value of civic engagement and taking people on site visits.) 

I wrote this well-illustrated blog entry, "Streetcars, street widths, and Anacostia," showing that this isn't correct. Check out the entry for many photos. 

Just the other day, I came across a great photo in the Financial Times, in a story on Marseille, "A makeover in Marseilles," (note that there are no photos in the online version) depicting the light rail (bigger and heavier than the streetcars to be implemented in DC) on Boulevard Longchamp in a very surgical, concise and elegant fashion. This isn't the exact photo, but it shows the possibilities.  

Photo of a tram on Boulevard Longchamp, Marseille, by Edouard. 

4. So what do you do? The equity arguments for putting the streetcar line in Anacostia stall because of political-residential opposition. 

As a result, optimal siting of the line doesn't occur, making it hard to justify further investment, and more importantly, will it damage the willingness of the citizens of the District of Columbia to fund construction of streetcar lines elsewhere in the city when people will likely be able to point to a relatively unsuccessful stub streetcar line in Anacostia as the only example on which to base their judgement?  [Update: it did, pretty much streetcar expansion in DC is dead, although a short line was built on H Street NE but took 8 years after this blog entry was written to launch]

Sure the District Department of Transportation is right to focus on creating a streetcar system and say that putting this particular segment in is a first step, allowing testing, siting of a maintenance yard, and only a small part of the line that will be built for Anacostia. 

 Still, I think it's fair to say that this hasn't been marketed and planned very well, at least in Anacostia, or you would have the residents there clamoring for it. And they are not. And while I am not surprised that the AEDC doesn't see this line as a key augur for the economy, there are real problems when the presumed primary economic development actor in Ward 8 doesn't support the present alignment (and I bet AEDC is unlikely to support a street-based alignment either). 

 

First day on the new Seattle streetcar in the South Lake Union district. Seattle Post-Intelligencer photo. 

Also see "For better or worse, streetcars are back" from the SPI for more coverage. 

 I don't question the need for better surface fixed-rail transit in Wards 7 and 8, but if you don't route it properly it doesn't have the impact that is needed and expected from spending scarce capital improvement monies. 

A streetcar route should go along Martin Luther King Avenue north and south from the Anacostia station, not only to Poplar Point and over the river to the Navy Yard and Baseball Stadium, but east on Good Hope Road to Minnesota Avenue into Ward 7, over to the Minnesota Avenue metro station and providing connection to the proposed H Street-Benning Road streetcar line. 

5. More enlightened citizens are clamoring for the streetcar in other parts of the city. The UCLA urban planning professor Donald Shoup, one of the nation's experts on "the high cost of free parking," has a great line about spending scarce public resources -- "it makes sense to help people who are already helping themselves" -- matching with public investment the resources, money, and time that private entities are expending for community improvement (paraphrase, based on a presentation in January 2006). 

6. So where do you spend the scarce resources? Since planning is going forward on the H Street line, maybe H Street. I think that this line has a real problem, speaking of proof of concept, but not because of lack of local interest and support--it exists, and ANC6A specifically has worked very hard on getting the city to install streetcar tracks as part of the streetscape that is currently underway. 

Federal law prohibits overhead wiring on the streets of the L'Enfant City. This law could be changed to allow an exception for streetcars. But it could take a long long time to do so. Or it might never happen. 

The fact is that in-ground powering is technically difficult, and is especially difficult to do given modern public safety and building code requirements, which are much more stringent than they were in the early part of the last century, when in-ground powering of streetcars was much more common, including in DC. (I am not good on the technical aspects. But the Sierra Club streetcar initiative is preparing a document explaining the issues.) 

There is an underground powering system in place in Bordeaux, France. It operates for a short segment, much shorter than was originally planned, and still has many difficulties. The company has expressed no interest in exporting this system to North America, especially in cities where salt is used during the winter to maintain streets in the face of snow and ice. 

Other cities in France are using battery power for short segments, but the long routes proposed for various streetcar lines make this very difficult in DC--you would need huge batteries living little room for passengers. 

In the interim, I'd suggest building a streetcar line in a visible place likely to be quite successful, as a way to demonstrate the system can work, and can be powered with an infrastructure that is not unattractive, will build support for streetcar network expansion, and will achieve connectivity and development objectives, without having to get the U.S. Congress to change the law on overhead wires.  

Map from the DC Transit Alternatives Analysis final report. 

That's why I think it would be best to resurrect the plan for the Crosstown line, providing service from Woodley Park to Brookland, serving the Washington Hospital Center, which is the number one destination in the city lacking rail-based transit service. It could also be extended to serve proposed developments at the Armed Forces Retirement Home and the McMillan Resevoir. 

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Note that I think the Crosstown line could be further reconceptualized to what I call the "University Line." 

 If it were extended in two legs west from Woodley Park, service could start at Georgetown University on the west and American University on the east, going through Adams-Morgan and crossing Georgia Avenue at Howard University, continuing towards and serving Catholic University and Trinity University. 

Besides serving Howard University Hospital (the University could build its own streetcar loop) and the Washington Hospital Center, the streetcar could have a loop to Providence Hospital. 

And if the line were extended out Michigan Avenue it could serve the Hospital for Sick Children. It the line were further extended out Queens Chapel Road and Adelphi Road in Prince George's County, it could provide service to a small branch of PG Community College and could then continue to and terminate at the University of Maryland in College Park.

  

Image: Park Blocks at PSU, streetcar stop, by Miles Hochstein of Portland Ground.

Speaking of helping yourselves, Portland State University provided significant financial support to the development of the streetcar line in Portland, which serves its campus.  They sponsor a streetcar stop and the alignment goes onto the campus and through one of its buildings.