Mayor Bowser gets shade for claiming every transit line serves Gallery Place | Capital One Arena and point about Downtown planning

Technically, Mayor Bowser is wrong because Galley Place is served directly by the green, yellow, and red lines, while nearby -- a few blocks -- Metro Center, has the blue, orange and silver lines along with red ("DC Mayor Muriel Bowser forgets which Metro lines service arena stop while defending keeping teams downtown," Washington Examiner).

But not many people seem to know it's easier and faster to get out and walk.  So they congest the red line between the two stations when going to games.

Although there has been talk for almost 20 years about creating an underground walkway between the stations (GALLERY PLACE / CHINATOWN - METRO CENTER PEDESTRIAN PASSAGEWAY TUNNEL STUDY, WMATA, 2006).

The last I remember the cost was going to be about $200 million and there wasn't the belief it was worth it.

HOWEVER, it does remind me of the late 1960s Urban Design Manhattan report by the Regional Plan Association, which called for more purposeful vertical and horizontal planning between Manhattan's transit stations, the street ground plane, underground entrances to buildings, and the first couple floors of buildings.

When MTA interlined a bunch of lines, they had the opportunity to build an integrated system of underground connections, comparable to Chicago's Pedway, Toronto's PATH network and Montreal's Underground City, but instead they just filled it in.

DC could have taken the opportunity with both a Metro Center to Gallery Place connection and a Farragut North to Farragut West connection, to begin to do a similar kind of pedway network, and strengthen the value of Central Business District.

Chicago Pedway

Other opportunities are presented by the proposed Downtown Maglev station ("DC, Transformational Projects Action Planning, and the Baltimore-Washington Maglev project") and in terms of vertical and horizontal connections, the NoMA station ("Public improvement districts ought to be created as part of transit station development process: the east side of NoMA station as an example," Revisiting creating Public Improvement Districts in transit station catchment areas").

DC hasn't been particularly forward on constantly planning and investing in maintaining the value and centrality of the Downtown Central Business District.  Given how voracious Northern Virginia is in recruiting DC based businesses, plus having other advantages (airport access, lower rents, cheaper and more land, but sprawl), this is extremely short sighted.