Bye DC Streetcar | Too small to reshape DC policy, Big enough to spur $1 billion in economic development

Flickr photo by Ted Eytan.

Yesterday, DC shut down its streetcar ("D.C.’s Streetcar is making its final stop, leaving a mixed legacy," ).  My joke is that DC and Seattle started planning for streetcars in 2003.  Seattle got its first segment in 2007.  DC in 2016.

The streetcar never got a chance to succeed.  Dan Malouff at Greater Greater Washington has written some good pieces about it ("Eight big-picture lessons from the DC Streetcar," "How DC’s mayor and council chair thwarted every effort to better the streetcar," "To the death of a dream: RIP DC Streetcar"). 

He makes three key points.  (1) Settling for a start with a "minimum viable segment" is a mistake and (2) success of the streetcar was dependent on it being but one segment of a larger network (3) but that was actively stymied by elected officials, in particular Mayor Bowser and Council Chair Mendelson.

Minimum viable segment means you start it, and hope to expand it incrementally, by building on the expected success of the first segment.  But that never happened.  The minimum was too minimal to have much effect on getting other areas of the city to want streetcar service.  

Imagining a streetcar on Georgia Avenue.  This is in Petworth.

(Even though the economic development benefits ought to have convinced many areas of the city it would be a great lever for improvement.)

And people committed to opposition don't ever stop opposing (even if not helped by the city's top elected officials).  It makes for an almost insurmountable hill.

OTOH, the minimum viable segment was enough for DC's development community to offer to the city an unsolicited proposal to manage, create, build out, and operate a streetcar network for the whole city, not just the itty bitty part it was currently serving.

DC's elected officials don't see transit as a core competitive advantage. DC's elected officials mostly come from car-oriented areas of the city ("DC as a suburban agenda dominated city").  The current generation is not known for visionary thinking.  

Despite the massive success of the city's revitalization centered around the creation of Metrorail and intensification of development in its wake ("Today WMATA Metrorail's 50th anniversary from the start of service | Part 1: many lessons can be found, if you look")--ironically the 50th anniversary of the start of the system was last week--the current generation of elected officials don't accept that without Metrorail the city would be s***.  Even Councilmembers who have served on the WMATA board.

Streetcar westbound on the 500 block of H Street NE.  Photo by Dan Malouff

Resident opposition.  And I have never understood resident opposition to the streetcar or light rail projects proposed for DC, Maryland, and Virginia.  DC was served by streetcars until 1962.  In fact, the H Street Line, Rte. 20, was one, although it was abandoned in 1949.

Media opposition.  While this Washington Post editorial is recent, "A streetcar no one desired," it's not a whole lot different from op-eds from 10 years ago ("Mayor Bowser should shut down streetcar operation, concede it was a bad idea").  

Although Washington City Paper disagreed ("H Street NE May Not Need the Streetcar. Benning Road Does").  WRT the City Paper's point, it was economic development misfeasance to not continue the streetcar to Benning Road Metrorail station, serving the Minnesota Avenue corridor.

This ad we created for H Street NE shows we understood the value of transportation access as one of the neighborhood's competitive advantages relative to the rest of the city.  This is at the corridor's "100%" intersection, 8th Street and H Street.

They act as if the metropolitan area has zero experience with successful fixed rail transit.  Sure Metrorail is the best--as advocates in Toronto used to say, "Subways are for everyone," but light rail and streetcar have their place within a robust transit network.

The fact is the city has 42 Metrorail stations.  At the core it has 31 stations, and for the most part, the commercial districts and neighborhoods served by every one of those stations have experienced massive economic improvement.

WRT the streetcar, it's not just that the city didn't do a good job planning network expansion.  Attempts to do so got bogged down in neighborhood opposition.  Which were seized on by elected officials to use appropriated money for other things.

At Whole Foods.  Photo by Dan Malouff.

Lesson One:  In economic development terms the Streetcar was a big winner for H Street NE.  I wrote about the cancellation last May ("DC makes yet another bad decision about streetcars: will replace the one line with a so called "fancy" bus | The Vision Thing") and last fall in "Streetcars: transit, economic development levers, source for discontent in local politics | Milwaukee HOP streetcar."  

My point all along is despite the planning and operational failures, which Dan does a better job explicating than I did, it's been a wild success from an economic development standpoint.

More than $1 billion of new development has been sparked, mostly outside of the catchment area of Union Station, which gets its ED oomph from Metrorail ("DC and streetcars #4: from the standpoint of stoking real estate development, the line is incredibly successful and it isn't even in service yet, and now that development is extending eastward past 15th Street," "Update/revision of H Street transit oriented real estate development table").

And in an area not directly served by Metrorail, H Street, because of the streetcar, has more intense development than any other area of the city similarly not immediately connected to Metrorail.

Revitalization didn't come about solely because of the Main Street commercial district revitalization program.  In 2002, a group of stakeholders got the corridor officially sanctioned as a Main Street improvement area.  The approach links historic preservation and business development and marketing, based on a model developed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  It's now called Main Street America.

It brought attention to the district when it had been ignored, but can't take credit for the large number of new buildings on the corridor.  That's on real estate developers, and the streetcar as a "priming action."

H Street Land Use and Transportation Plans and Programs.  The designation and funding and technical assistance associated with it were complemented by the creation of an area plan for the corridor in 2004 (Revival: The H Street NE Strategic Development Plan), and a streetscape improvement plan (Great Streets Framework Plan: H Street NE – Benning Road).  Interestingly enough, a new plan is being developed ("H Street NE Land Use and Market Study Underway," H&K).

Other city investments in facade improvements, business development, etc. contributed to the improvement.

Sure, I'd like to take credit for it, given I was a key organizer of the Main Street program there ("The community development approach and the revitalization of DC's H Street corridor: congruent or oppositional approaches?").  

The 2004 economic development plan didn't foresee the streetcar, it aimed to leverage the economic energy of Union Station, so how the corridor developed, and how they anticipated it would develop became very different from what happened.

More than anything this change, especially further east from Union Station, was because of the streetcar.  Although having a land use plan when DC was at an inflection point--post Marion Barry--when urban areas not just DC were attracting new residents and new businesses, was key.  Big real estate consulting firms mapped all the opportunities on the corridor and started marketing them.  This intensified with the commitment to the streetcar. 

The whole district gained thousands of new units of housing, not just by Union Station, with new ground floor space with high ceilings better suited for modern retail.  Whoever would have anticipated that a Whole Foods Market would have opened on H Street?  And that's just one example of significant change that never could have been anticipated when were organizing to be designated a Main Street district.  

Originally the building on the left had been an ugly small modular single story library.  It was redeveloped as affordable housing.  I wish it were taller with more units, but I guess they built what they could fund. They did a great job with the facade in terms of historic architectural design and building materials.                                                                                                                                        I do wish they had kept the library function as a public use on the ground floor, as a way to maintain the presence of civic assets in the corridor.  Photo by Dan Malouff.                                                                       
Although more so the retail and restaurants developed were not chains, but with great identity and branding systems ("Independent retail businesses can succeed and thrive"), not so much chains, although Giant Supermarket came first ("360 Apartment building + Giant Supermarket vs. a BP gas station, which would you choose?").  And now even Aldi wants to be in on the urban action.

Separately the rehabilitation of the Atlas Theater into the Atlas Performing Arts Center helped to anchor the eastern end, still with a lot of smaller historic buildings, as a night life district ("Joe Englert, DC nightlife impresario, dies | Lessons about nightlife-based revitalization," and "H Street NE nightlife district, failing").

DC's streetcar is another example, even if done so wrongly, that return on investment for economic revitalization may be best from significant improvements to transit infrastructure.

Counter examples: Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Tucson.  And despite complaints about the streetcar Kansas City ("12 transformative projects drive growth along the KC Streetcar in 2025 and beyond," Kansas City Star) and Milwaukee (cites above), the streetcar there is again, sparking significant economic development.

And Tucson ("Smaller than Jax, but I have rail: Lessons from Tucson’s Sun Link system," Jacksonville Today).  From the article:

According to research published in the Harvard Law & Policy Review, half of Tucson’s population and housing growth between 2014 and 2021 occurred along the streetcar corridor. Real estate investment surged by $2.5 billion, and annual city tax revenues jumped 30%, adding $13 million each year.

Rendering, a new Commanders football stadium as the anchor of a mixed use entertainment and housing district.

What about transit service to and within the RFK campus?  It's also short sighted to drop streetcar service when it can be leveraged to provide additional service to the new campus being developed around the Washington Commanders football stadium and all its touted ancillary development.   

A streetcar loop could serve the interior of the campus, with cars leaving from the Stadium-Armory Station as well.

SF Muni light rail/streetcar service at Oracle Park, home to the San Francisco Giants baseball team.

DC is so full of missed opportunities.

Lesson two: a streetcar is intra-district transit not inter-city transit.  These days most pundits are criticizing "Obama era streetcar projects" as not having much effect ("Out of Favor," Governing).  

Part of the issue is whether or not the places served were the right ones, whether or not the streetcar is an isolated mode or integrated more broadly into the area's transit networks, inadequate frequencies, slow speeds, the focus on "minimum viable segment," and being street running.  From the JT article:

The success of Sun Link wasn’t about density; it was about connecting the right destinations with reliable, visible infrastructure that people trust. If Jacksonville wants to move forward, it must learn from cities like Tucson, not fear them. Innovation doesn’t mean chasing gimmicks, it means investing smartly in what works.

At the streetcar line scale, street running versus dedicated lane was the biggest criticism of the streetcar ("Sign In Subscribe Live TV Markets Economics Industries Tech Politics Businessweek Opinion Video More US Edition CityLab Transportation Hey, Streetcar Critics: Stop Making 'Perfect' the Enemy of 'Good'," Bloomberg).  

Or that they are more about economic development than transit ("Why Streetcars Aren’t About Transit: The Economic Development Argument for Trams," NextCity).  While the criticisms are reasonable, they miss the point about what kind of transit a streetcar is supposed to be.   

A streetcar should be transit + economic development.

My response to that article was "DC and streetcars #2: STREETCARS ARE ABOUT TRANSIT, just in a different way from how most people are accustomed to thinking about it."   

But I realized people were judging it wrongly.  A streetcar line is about "intra-district" transit ("Making the case for intra-city (vs. inter-city) transit planning").

Sure it gets people between districts along the line, but it also provides multiple stops within a neighborhood and its commercial district.  But people are judging it as if it is supposed to be a metropolitan area service, where people travel relatively long distances, and speed matters at lot more.  

Riders wait for the Cincinnati Bell Connector on the opening day of the streetcar following opening ceremonies at Washington Park. The 3.6 mile long route goes through downtown and Over-The-Rhine has been 10 years in the making. The Enquirer/ Liz Dufour

Although like as implemented in Cincinnati, streetcars in dedicated middle lanes would be optimal.  But if not could be addressed by aggressive traffic enforcement ("While progress has been made, Sun Link blockages still an issue," Arizona Daily Star).

For me, getting from the Metrorail station home, or to and from the grocery store, etc., would be a huge gain.

Lesson Three: Effects on the transit network/you need a streetcar network.  Plenty of streetcar stubs don't do much for the transit system overall.  There are many more examples than mentioned here, like Tampa.  But ones that are lines like Little Rock or multiple lines like San Francisco and Toronto, less so Philadelphia, have a great deal of success.

Adding fixed rail transit in the form of streetcar to a community without it can be transformational in reaching new audiences, and serving as a rolling marketing campaign.  For example, the KC Streetcar generates 30% of the area's total transit trips.  Yes, they are low generally, but from a marginal increase standpoint, not insignificant.

And DC did have plans for expansion (DC Streetcar System Plan: H St/ Benning Rd and Future Segments and Extensions).

The streetcar network that wasn't.

Lesson Four: Opportunity to reposition a community's economic development and transit messages.  I don't think it's communicated enough or right.  Cities other than DC recognize the economic development value of streetcars.  I think like I have written about light rail ("Using the Purple Line to rebrand Montgomery and Prince George's Counties as Design Forward") it's an opportunity to position a transit system and the business district and community more broadly as "design forward."

Portland streetcar as a mobile public art installation.  Art by Bobby Fouther.

Although in places that are very much car centric, it just might not matter so much.  People are committed to the car and can't see viable alternatives. 

Lesson Five: Expansion takes way too long.  DC never expanded.  Other streetcar projects have like in Portland, Seattle, and Kansas City.  This gets back to the minimum viable segment point.  It takes so much community and organizational capital to get a transit infrastructure project launched, that it's hard to keep raising the same level of organizational, community and financial support for expansion.  

So I say, plan for extensions while constructing the initial segment, and move forward to design and engineering as soon as possible.  Kansas City's first extension opened nine years after the initial launch ("KC Streetcar Now Open at UMKC," UMKC).  

Cincinnati's considering it now, nine years later ("Streetcar expansion study? Most key Cincinnati City Council candidates open to it," Cincinnati Business Courier).  If they get the go ahead, it could be another ten years before it happens.  As these quotes from the article confirm, Cincinnati's had the same problems other places have had, with skepticism and opposition, as well as difficulties getting funding, etc.

The Cincinnati Connector streetcar has set new highs for ridership in every year since 2021, but the city, which opened the project in 2016, has never developed a plan to expand and extend the route, should funding ever become available. At the same time, two of the region's Midwestern competitors, Kansas City and Milwaukee, have expanded their streetcar lines.

... Streetcar supporters have never given up on expanding the project even though the political will at City Hall has been nonexistent. A previous council made the streetcar fare-free in 2021, which boosted ridership that has kept growing.

... “It’s an economic development tool,” Cramerding said. “We need to look at transit as an economic development tool to grow the city, not just move low-income people from point A to point B.”

Former Councilman Steve Goodin, who is Charter Committee endorsed, said the city does not have the money to study an extension and is against it. “It’s an amusement park ride, not transit,” Goodin said.

... Former Councilwoman Laketa Cole, who is Charter Committee-endorsed, described the current project as a failure. “They should have had the train go from Uptown to downtown,” Cole said. “To have it go around a circle, you set it up for failure.”

The project originally was supposed to extend to the University of Cincinnati, but then-Gov. John Kasich, a suburban Columbus Republican, killed state funding for that phase of the project. Then-Mayor Mark Mallory and City Manager Milton Dohoney declined to let the project die, securing more federal funding to complete its current iteration.

Conclusion: Comparing and contrasting systems.  Research by a professor at the University of Kansas compared two successful systems, Kansas City and Tucson, to two less successful systems, Atlanta and Cincinnati and ("Place-Making or Place-Taking? The Relationship between Goal Tension and System Performance of U.S. Modern-Era Streetcar Systems," Journal of Planning Education and Research). 

Interviewees were asked what influenced decisions that shaped the streetcar systems in their respective city. Mendez found that systems that prioritized economic development in decision making tended to perform poorly. The most successful systems were in cities that emphasized system performance and placed streetcar systems in areas where people lived, worked and wanted to go for entertainment, recreational and personal reasons.

“In cities that prioritized economic development, decisions reflected that focus,” Mendez said. “For example, if you look at corridors where poor performing systems were placed, you will find twice the number of vacant parcels and properties. Such placement can maximize the economic development impact of the streetcar, but it limits its ability to serve the immediate needs of the public.”

He makes a good point.  But I look at this a bit more nuanced, and should have earlier in my writings as well.  An economic development focus is fine, so long as the district or the city is in a strong real estate market.  H Street--close to Downtown and Union Station, in a city regaining population, is an example of this.  Aiming to spur development in a weak market is difficult, as the example of the Miami heavy rail Metrorail shows. 

I think Atlanta is somehow different.  It's not a weak market overall.  It may be because there while there is a lot of new development, much is in the suburbs ("A wrinkle on corporate headquarters: leaving the city as buildings age") or in what may as well be a suburb, the Buckhead District. This is seen in how the Braves baseball team moved to Cobb County, while every other baseball stadium redevelopment project has been city focused.  

Clearly, Atlanta had other issues.  Atlanta also has the separate Beltline project, although I wonder if transit will ever be added to it--it is experiencing growth because of the reposition, civic investments in trails, etc.  

If it had been linked to the Beltline, and at least of the portion of the Beltline got transit service, comparable to Maryland's forthcoming suburban Purple Line, which as built will be less than 20% of the initial concept) then it would be different ("Atlanta’s Beltline rail debate: To build or not to build?," ACPC).

DC as the supra outlier.  Being the only city in the era of modern streetcars shutting it down, DC is the foremost outlier.  Despite the clear economic success.  I'd argue DC's weak leadership by elected officials doomed the streetcar, even though overall the city until the new Trump Administration, had been experiencing a great deal of growth, construction of new properties, infill development, and population growth.

As discussed in the parallel series on Metrorail's 50th anniversary, it also suffers from many of the same problems ("Today WMATA Metrorail's 50th anniversary from the start of service | Part 1: many lessons can be found, if you look"). 

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A shout out to Joe Fengler.  Joe Fengler was the chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6A, which covers a good chunk of the commercial district's geography.  

It occurred to him that it would be wasteful to tear up H Street for streetscape improvements, only to tear it up again for streetcar tracks.

He created a lobbying and advocacy campaign to install the tracks at the same time, instead of separately.  

He also thought--at the time Anacostia was being considered for the first line--having tracks in the ground would increase the likelihood the project would move forward on H Street first.

He got other ANCs along the corridor to agree, and the city decided to do what he suggested.  Some people, like in Dan Malouff's assessment, said this created problems down the line, when what would have been the best option was already constrained by the track layout.

Nonetheless, Joe was a visionary and he doesn't get much credit for it.

To bad he didn't get on City Council.  He would have been a great advocate for streetcars both for transportation and economic development.

The city let all his hard work go to waste 

Vis a vis the WAMU article, "As the DC Streetcar shuts down, leaders wrestle with H Street’s transit future."  

“We need to have a bold vision,” said Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who represents much of H Street and chairs the council’s transportation committee. “One that is more than just a segment, but one that actually is a connection that really connects neighborhoods, connects the city and works as part of an entire transit network…It’s got to be a bigger vision than just one segment or else we’re just repeating the mistakes of the streetcar.”

Now they're concerned?  They've had decades.