A great newspaper article about St. Paul Minnesota's options for revenue generation | How about Packaging, Marketing, and Branding them into a Program?

 -- "How might St. Paul boost its tax base and stabilize property taxes?" in the St. Paul Pioneer-Press

One of the ideas is what's called a Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILOT, by nonprofits. This is done by cities to help to cover the cost of services to nonprofits not paying property taxes.  It's a voluntary program and most places feel they aren't getting enough--which is probably true.  

Boston's probably the best example.  To get around an unwillingness to agree, Providence proposed a "capitation tax" per college student, since so much of the city's property is owned by Brown University.

Interestingly, there was an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "O’Connor’s partnership approach brings millions to Pittsburgh from tax-exempt nonprofits, corporations," about PILOTs which has been a big issue there because the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Allegheny Health System, the University of Pittsburgh, and Carnegie-Mellon University control so much of the property.

Rather than focusing on negotiating a broader PILOT, which could include funding for annual operations, he has moved to getting various institutions committed to putting money towards capital projects.  For example, UPMC is paying for new ambulances--some of the trips the new ambulances make will end up at one of their facilities.  The Heinz Foundation, a strong supporter of the city and region, gave money to the city to finish its stalled new Comprehensive Land Use Plan.  Etc.

Map of St. Paul from Etsy.

In St. Paul, it turns out almost 60% of the nonprofit land is government owned, where no PILOT would be derived.  And the rest of the organizations are generally much smaller than those in Pittsburgh.

Making it harder, St. Paul is small, about 315,000 population, while the rest of Ramsey County is only 226,000 more.  Plus, the county has lost population since 2020.

Building the tax base through capital investment.  The article goes on to describe various options.  Some are what I call investment oriented, in that "you need to spend (invest) money to make money."

One of the items discussed is Tax Increment Financing, where you sell bonds to support development based on the idea that the new development will raise tax revenues.  So you get the loan against future benefits, which pay off the bond.

According to the article, a number of groups oppose more TIF, even though the city has the capacity for more, because they see it disproportionately benefiting developers, which I suppose it does.

Neighborhood TIF, Minneapolis.  But I couldn't help but think of the counter example of Minneapolis, which created a TIF system to fund neighborhood improvements.  Called the Neighborhood Revitalization Program, resident associations worked with the city, school district and parks district to make physical improvements with long term positive effects (case study, "Empowered Participation in Urban Governance: The Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research).

Perhaps St. Paul could look at multiple approaches to TIF, neighborhoods as well as more traditional development projects.

Some MPAS4 projects.

Metropolitan Area Projects, Oklahoma City.  Another program, although more in terms of packing, is the MAPS program in Oklahoma City.  

It's an add on sales tax, which in different phases each with a preapproved capital projects plan, has funding major projects, from a sports arena, to a streetcar, to canal and river improvements, and physical improvements to schools ("Big League Cities: Small Cities," "Change isn't usually that simple: The repatterning of Oklahoma City's Downtown Streetscape"). 

From the Daily Oklahoman article, "What MAPS projects will start in 2024? Everything to know about ongoing OKC projects":

For three decades, Oklahoma City’s Metropolitan Area Projects program, better known as MAPS, has played a key role in ongoing development of the city.

The debt-free MAPS program is funded by a one-cent sales tax, approved by voters and currently expected to raise more than $1 billion between 2020 and 2028. The funds are used for capital projects, neighborhood improvements and job-creating initiatives.

Various projects for MAPS 4, the program’s current iteration, are underway, with all of them in different stages of development. Passed by voters in 2019, MAPS 4 encompasses 16 projects that address issues like homelessness, post-incarceration programming, youth and senior well-being, along with traditional MAPS projects like the fairgrounds coliseum and updates to the NBA Thunder's arena.

Note that the current MAPS4 program is less focused on big capital projects, and includes a number of social service facilities, transit development, and  "beautification" projects, as well as providing operating funding for some programs  ("Some OKC MAPS 4 programs will receive annual operating funds. Here's how that will work," Daily Oklahoman).  Operating funds will be provided long term, through a creation of a trust funded by MAPS. (Although I think that many of the funding commitments should instead be paid through a larger property tax.)

MAPS might not work that well for St. Paul as it's small, whereas OKC is as large physically, as many US counties.  A city exclusive tax wouldn't generate enough money.  But could the city and county develop a similar program, jointly?

Hennepin County Community Works.  The county next door to St. Paul (which is in Ramsey) is the home to Minneapolis.  In the 1990s Hennepin County realized that population leakage from Minneapolis as a result of suburban outmigration would also hurt its revenue stream.  

It studied the areas of the city that best retained their value, and found them proximate to lakes, parks, rivers, and trails.  So it created a program to make investments in the city to extend those qualities of livability to more places, both to retain population and to gain it.

This journal article, "A COUNTY AND ITS CITIES: THE IMPACT OF HENNEPIN COMMUNITY WORKS," Journal of Urban Affairs (2006), describes the program.   

Faced in the nineties with a growing imbalance between the declining prosperity of its core city (Minneapolis) and suburban municipalities, Hennepin County, Minnesota, pioneered a different path. In 1994, Hennepin County launched an urban redevelopment program, “Hennepin Community Works” (hereafter HCW) that clearly supplemented the more common models of county activity. HCW devised an entirely new redevelopment role for the county, and has consequently had a major impact on Minneapolis and its suburbs. 

Since its inception, Hennepin County commissioners have committed close to $200 million of infrastructure spending into a targeted redevelopment program with five goals: (1) to enhance the tax base; (2) to reshape troubled neighborhoods; (3) to improve transportation within the county; (4) to protect and develop green space; and (5) to create new jobs. While much of the U.S. urban past since the eighties has featured decreasing levels of public sector funding and involvement with urban affairs, Hennepin County voluntarily took on substantial additional financial and political commitments with this program

... HCW began here in 1994 as a public works program initially intended to address declining property values. Since then, HCW has significantly transformed portions of the county through major housing, transportation, parks, and environmental restoration investments. Through 2008, HCW launched nineteen projects, totaling $197.5 million in investments.

Later they added creating a light rail transit system as part of their overall investment program.

The city's peak population was 522,000 in 1950.  From 1980 to 1990 it was about 370,000.  It grew to 382,000 in 2000 and today is 435,000.  They have a ways to go to equal their peak but at the same time Hennepin County's population in 1950 was only about 150,000 people outside of Minneapolis.  Today the non-city population is almost 850,000 people.

Allegheny County Regional Asset District.  The Regional Asset District in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania is funded from a county-wide sales and use tax ("How the Regional Asset District rode to the rescue of Allegheny County attractions," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).

Historically, the City of Pittsburgh paid for and provided regionally-serving cultural assets (museums, zoo, etc.) without support from other area jurisdictions.  As cities lost population and business activity, funding such facilities became an increasing strain.  The RAD, also supporting cultural assets in the County, was a way to spread out the cost.

Business Revitalization District Zoning Overlay, Cleveland.  This calls for an extra level of review, including design, in designated zones where the city has already been investing, to ensure that each new project adds value to the whole, rather than diminishing it.  The classification has been subsumed into a broader category of design review.

"Outlines of a plan."  To me, St. Paul has had a relatively high turnover of mayors.  So some programs that have been introduced, like "Vibrant Places and Spaces":

• Ensure Saint Paul puts people first
• Encourage vitality through investment, private and public alike
• Create accessible places where people want to connect and spend time
• Promote healthy living
• Celebrate the city’s cultural diversity

get dropped when a new administration takes office.  

Plus, while I am contradicting the conclusion in the entry about Pittsburgh and the NFL Draft Day Event and many small projects versus one or two large ones ("Big events as priming actions: Pittsburgh and the NFL Draft | Go big, medium, or little? Go for a few projects or many?"), the placemaking focus on the Vibrant Places initiative improved places on the margins, but didn't contribute to a larger whole.

St. Paul has focused on leveraging the light rail, greening initiatives, and projects converting large vacant industrial properties ("Why hasn't light rail revitalized the Midway neighborhood of St. Paul | While it has for the Prospect Park neighborhood of Minneapolis").  And a soccer stadium ("Sports facilities and the reproduction of retail space often doesn't work for the locals").

St. Paul also has the Grand Round, a parkway system conceived of before Olmsted.  It's connective capacity ought to be leveraged in the same way Hennepin County focused on rivers, lakes, parks, and trails in Minneapolis as a way to stabilize neighborhoods and add population.

Conclusion.  These programs show various ways St. Paul could work with Ramsey County to develop a long term investment approach for the city and county based on creating a package of programs and funding sources.   

(Every Day Should Be) Local News Day

Local News Day is today.  

It's sponsored by various modes of community-serving media.  

There should be scads of participants--metropolitan newspapers, community newspapers, public radio and public television programs, I guess local television station news, although it tends to not be in depth, and digital only news sources.

There aren't that many member newsrooms so far.

======

-- "Inside the crisis facing local TV news" (2026)
-- "Davis Kennedy, a one time force in local community newspapers, dies at 87" (2026)
-- "Washington City Paper community media project" (2026)
-- "Another media tragedy: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is shutting down" (2026)
-- "New Jersey loses largest published newspaper: Newark Star-Ledger" (2025)
-- "Newspaper acquisition as an element of a conservative agenda" (2024)
-- "The impact of local radio news in England" (2022)
-- "Newspapers as public media: WBEZ, radio, an NPR affiliate, to merge with the Chicago Sun-Times" (2022)
-- "Louisville Courier-Journal mobile newsroom initiative and Salt Lake Tribune Innovations Lab" (2022)
-- "Orange County Register coronavirus tracker graphic is a great model" (2021)
-- "Local music used to define communities: today with radio chains and national music distribution systems, not so much" (2021)
-- "Newspapers, community media, and knowledge about and engagement in civic affairs" (2020)
-- "Revisiting community radio" (2020)
-- "Thinking anew about supporting community radio" (2019)
-- "Culture planning and radio: local music, local content vs. delivery nodes for a national network" (2019)
-- "One more blow against community media: Washington Post drops Thursday "county" news special sections" (2017)
-- "The ongoing tragedy of dying print media, the latest being community newspapers in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties, Maryland" (2015)
-- "Grassroots communications capability in the city" (2015)
-- "Protest as Civic Engagement and the role of the media" (2007)

Big events as priming actions: Pittsburgh and the NFL Draft | Go big, medium, or little? Go for a few projects or many?

My first big professional conference that I attended was the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Cleveland in 2002, and it was simultaneous with an architecture and urban design conference.  I went on a bunch of tours and saw some amazing projects, and it seemed like many were timed to be ready by the time of the conference. 

I have past entries about big events like when the MLB All Star Game was in DC and the missed opportunity to move forward with more velocity some necessary infrastructure improvements ("Urban design considerations for the area around Washington Nationals Baseball Stadium in advance of the 2018 All-Star Game," "Sadly, DC won't show so well during the Baseball All-Star Game"), and the same about the Super Bowl, such as in Minneapolis ("Minneapolis Super Bowl: Urban Revitalization and Transformational Projects Action Planning") and the Olympics.

The reason special events like the All Star Game or the Super Bowl don't work out so well for the locals is that out-of-town visitors no longer are that interested in consuming the local experience outside of the event, and most of the money they spend: on transportation and accommodations in particular doesn't stay local because the firms aren't locally-based; although these visitors do spend money on food and drink, which tends to be the most benefits reaped by locally-owned businesses.  

The challenge is to convert the claims ("An All-Star Game in your hometown offers memories to last a lifetime," Washington Post) into reality.

But in terms of visionary projects, in my writings the problem is the difference between big and little.  This blog has a pretty expansive vision, e.g., at the scale of cities like Bilbao, Liverpool, Helsinki, Toronto and even Edmonton as discussed in a process I call "transformational projects action planning" ("Updating the best practice elements of revitalization to include elements 7 and 8 | Transformational Projects Action Planning at a large scale").

As well as the International Building Exposition (IBA) and the International Garden Festival process in Germany, where a region commits to an "international exposition" in ten years or so, planning, developing and implementing projects on a massive scale.  

IBA Hamburg Dock Building exhibit hall.

I saw some of that in Hamburg and Essen, but even in Hamburg, after ten years there were still projects to do.  Among Hamburg's projects were efforts in ten neighborhoods to do major, but holistic, development projects ("IBA Hamburg, a German approach on sustainable urban development," Construction21).

-- The contemporary International Building Exhibition (IBA) : innovative regeneration strategies in Germany, MIT thesis

The reality is that my expansive vision slams into the reality of project planning and financing on the ground.

Even ten years might not be long enough to achieve implementation--e.g. one such project in Hamburg was rebuilding a highway along side major rail lines, in order to recapture space and reknit communities that had been ripped apart by highway building decades before.

And that's one project.  Imagine working on several big projects simultaneously.  Competition for labor and materials drives up costs.

And with the time frame presented by the event owner like the Olympics or FIFA--they don't provide enough time to build major projects in democracies, which require a public process although they seem to have an easier time of it with autocracies.

Even the Milano-Cortina Olympics found them still building the hockey arena days before the Opening Ceremony (and interestingly, the Washington Post had an article, "The biggest sporting event in Milan on Saturday wasn’t the Olympics," about how soccer there still mattered a lot more.

Anyway, maybe I should compromise amongst three choices:

1.  Think IBA and IGF and minimum of 10-15 year time frames that can extend  even further (Hamburg converted its IBA project into a community development corporation charged with finishing all the projects IBA had conceptualized.).

2.  Maybe a big project or two, but mostly small ones.

3.  Small projects only.

But definitely, if you don't do much in response to the opportunity you won't get much real economic return  ("Panini Chowdhury: Pittsburgh can use the NFL Draft to change the city").

Mega-Events, Modest Returns. Independent research finds that projected windfalls routinely overshoot reality, with the spectacles having little sustained effect on metro employment or fiscal trends. The pattern of short-term visitor spending and long-term budget hype repeats from Super Bowls to All-Star Games to drafts.

Leading sports Economists like Victor Matheson find that while host cities often project hundreds of millions in windfalls from mega-events, the actual net gains are usually only 10 to 25% of forecasts, with little to no long-term impact on jobs or regional GDP. In reality, host cities rarely recover the full costs of staging an event like the NFL Draft, once expenses for public safety, public works, infrastructure upgrades and staff hours are accounted for.

That’s why Pittsburgh must look beyond the party. The city (and the region) must make changes in policies and practices that will improve the Draft event but have a positive long-term effect on life here.

Crowds fill an area outside of the draft stage during the second round of the NFL football draft, Friday, April 26, 2024, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Definitely (3) is the case for the NFL Draft.  I am still skeptical of the reports about how it is an economic boom ("San Francisco is not Santa Clara: How Santa Clara/San Jose are poorly represented by Super Bowl programming, even though it's home to the event").

I mean, is Pittsburgh really going to have 700,000 visitors from it ("As NFL Draft in Pittsburgh gets closer, registration for fan experiences opens," "How the NFL Draft exploded from hotel ballrooms to a massive outdoor spectacle," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "NFL draft attendance record set with more than 775,000 fans attending the event in Detroit," AP).

The reality is that my job isn't to be skeptical (well it is) but to figure out how to best leverage the revitalization potential of such events.  

It it helps a community to bring about inward investment on improvements to infrastructure and placemaking, you would be foolish to not take advantage of the opportunity.

That's what Pittsburgh is doing.  The NFL Draft Day Event is April 23-25.  

In the meantime, projects like a 100 foot fountain at Pointe Place Park ("Point State Park fountain reaches over 100 feet — just in time for the NFL Draft," PPG), refurbishment of downtown parks ("New riverfront park completed, the first of several Downtown projects to wrap up ahead of NFL Draft," PPG) and a number of other improvements are coming on line ("Pittsburgh unveils branding and color strategy for 2026 NFL draft").

From the park article:

Riverlife broke ground on renovations in April 2025. Over the past year, the group has replaced the park’s weathered surface with new, bluestone pavers, removed struggling plants and planted 35 new trees. Riverlife also expanded open areas to create space for small pop-up events and upgraded the park’s lighting.

“What you're seeing is a space that is now truly accessible,” Riverlife President and CEO Matthew Galluzzo said, flanked by the Andy Warhol and Rachel Carson bridges at the front of the new space. “It's more resilient and more welcoming.”

The $5.4 million renovation is the first in the park’s three-decade history. The space was once a “6-foot concrete sidewalk,” said Laura Solano, a partner with the New York-based architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates. Working with the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Ms. Solano helped transform it into one of Downtown Pittsburgh’s first riverfront parks in the 1990s. “Do-overs in life are just so rare, and yet here we are in the reimagined and incredibly beautiful upper level park,” she said.

The article also discusses other projects.  Maybe I can criticize them as being small and ephemeral.  After all, I argue that all projects need to be conceptualized as part of a bigger whole, creating and connecting and building a larger path of improvement.  For example, the park project is part of a larger project aimed to fill in open space gaps across the Downtown.  

In a few weeks, Arts Landing, the new outdoor venue, will open to the public behind the Allegheny Riverfront Park. Crews on Thursday filed in and out of the construction site, where an arched, white canopy hovers atop a bandshell at the tip of the 4-acre complex.

Soon after, a revamped Market Square will be unveiled, with expanded space for outdoor dining and a new open-air pavilion.

And across the Golden Triangle, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership will complete more than 100 different “vibrancy” projects before the end of the month, including new, pop-up retailers, window displays in vacant storefront and sidewalk repairs.

... The park’s completion comes just over a month after Riverlife and the city of Pittsburgh launched a new initiative to provide different organizations with resources for riverfront trail and park maintenance. Through the program, several riverfront trail cleanup events will be held before the NFL Draft, focusing on areas expected to see the most foot traffic during the event, Mr. Galluzzo said.

"Railroad trestles at Strip District entrance will be painted black and gold for NFL Draft"

Conclusion.  Pittsburgh might disagree but I'd argue that they chose the "small projects only" route.  The thing is that all the small projects contributed to a greater plan, so that the cumulative impact is greater than evaluating on a project by project basis.

Going forward, the trick is to sustain, build upon, and continue the momentum ("The NFL Draft gave Downtown a deadline. Now, leaders are eyeing the future," "Editorial: Pittsburgh prepares for its Draft Day close up").  From the editorial:

But if the last weekend in April is to be worth the effort and resources that are going into it, the extravaganza will also have to be a beginning. The Pittsburgh that emerges on the other side of the draft cannot be the same city that was chosen two years ago. Projects, programs and policies designed to make the city ready for tourists and television cameras should, if successful, be made permanent. And the national limelight must be leveraged for long-term gains to the city’s economy and reputation.

Like the title of the The The song, "Life is What You Make It?"  Pittsburgh shows that you can leverage such events for long term improvements.  

“It gave us a deadline,” Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato said at the meeting. “It helped us meet goals we didn’t know were possible.”

Other places and past experience show that not doing taking that approach fails to generate multiplicative improvements, inherently reducing the return on investment.

Multiple paths to success.  Although big multiple projects for places like Bilbao, Liverpool, and Edmonton have also been good approaches.  And the "Metropolitan Area Projects" approach in Oklahoma City ("Change isn't usually that simple: The repatterning of Oklahoma City's Downtown Streetscape").

It shows that there isn't "one best approach, one best fix."

WRT the plethora of projects in Pittsburgh, also see:

-- Litter reduction: "New initiative — dubbed the ‘Immaculate Collection’ — aims to clean up Pittsburgh ahead of the NFL draft"

-- Outdoor vending: "As NFL Draft nears, city adds new outdoor vending locations in Downtown"

-- Draft beer bar crawl: "PicksBURGH is cranking the NFL Draft to 11 with a music crawl and more"

-- Road and public space improvements: "Pittsburgh begins $16.3 million street paving with NFL Draft focus: Downtown streets around Market Square, Arts Landing get first attention" and "Ahead of the NFL Draft, Pittsburgh is getting a facelift — and officials say changes are here to stay"

-- Speculation about special out of sight out of mind approaches to homelessness: "NFL Draft in Pittsburgh could be 'incredibly difficult' for those experiencing homelessness, advocates say"

-- Free transit sponsored by the Scheetz convenience store chain: "The T will offer free rides during NFL Draft weekend in Pittsburgh with a boost from Sheetz," also "PRT gets $350,000 to expand bus and light rail service for NFL Draft weekend" and "How Pittsburgh transit and city leaders plan to move 500,000+ visitors around the NFL Draft"

-- Ongoing development in the stadium district: "Ahead of the NFL Draft, Pittsburgh's North Shore is changing rapidly"

-- Leveraging the event: for running "Course map for 5K during NFL Draft in Pittsburgh released" and improvement of the presentation of history, "Fort Pitt Museum to close for upgrades ahead of the 2026 NFL Draft"

WMATA's 50th anniversary from the start of service, Part 5: Making a better transit network | Connecting heavy rail + light rail + railroad -- a concept for New York City

This last entry in the series was prompted by a recent Substack post (below)

-- "WMATA's 50th anniversary from the start of service, Part 2a | The Original Approved Metrorail System (1968-1970)"
-- "WMATA's 50th anniversary from the start of service, Part 2b | Lessons learned: Proposed expansions and the Metrorail system we don't have"
-- "WMATA's 50th anniversary from the start of service, Part 3 | Stations"
-- "WMATA's 50th anniversary from the start of service, Part 4 | Buses"
-- "WMATA's 50th anniversary from the start of service, Part 5: Making a better transit network | Connecting heavy rail + light rail + railroad -- a concept for New York City"

Benjamin Schneider, in his "The Urban Condition" Substack, has a two part series on how the original proposal for a TriboroRX by the Regional Plan Association in 1996--now separated into two projects, one a Metro North rail project called Penn Station Access, adding four stations in the Bronx and a connection of the Harlem Line to Grand Central Station, and the Interborough Express (IBX) for Queens and Brooklyn--could still come to a kind of fruition, through making better connections between the various modes.

In "Unlocking the full potential of the IBX" he makes the point that network connection planning doesn't happen very well, because planning tends to be mode specific (in silos).

These two projects, the IBX and Penn Station Access, were once envisioned by the RPA as a single line within a grand regional rail system. Now, they are on totally separate tracks, literally and figuratively. Though these two services come within about a mile of one another, passengers will not be able to transfer between them. This outcome is a reflection of the region’s siloed approach to transit network planning, and its limited ambitions with each individual transit project it pursues.

In the first piece in this series, I did make the point about creating a regional transport association and using transit infrastructure projects as a way to drive improvements across the transit network.

And in the stations piece, I discuss planning and implementing for access before a station/line is opened, not afterwards, to put transit's best foot or visage forward, from the start, rather than sometime far after the opening.

Past entries on the Purple Line, Silver Line, and Blue Line make similar kinds of points, not just about access but driving necessary improvements forward, leveraging the power of new infrastructure, etc.

-- "Codifying the complementary transit network improvements and planning initiatives recommended in the Purple Line writings," (2022) 
-- Setting the stage for the Purple Line light rail line to be an overwhelming success: Part 1 | simultaneously introduce improvements to other elements of the transit network (2017)
-- Part 2 |   the program (macro changes) (2017)
-- Part 3 |   influences (2017)
-- Part 4 |   Making over New Carrollton as a transit-centric urban center and Prince George's County's "New Downtown" (2017, originally 2014)
-- PL #5: Creating a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District"
-- Part 6 |  Creating a transportation development authority in Montgomery and Prince George's County to effectuate placemaking, retail development, and housing programs in association with the Purple Line (2017)
-- Part 7 | Using the Purple Line to rebrand Montgomery and Prince George's Counties as Design Forward (2017)
-- Revisiting the Purple Line article series after one year: Part 1 | a couple of baby steps (2018)
-- Revisiting the Purple Line (series) and a more complete program of complementary improvements to the transit network (2019)

-- "Using the Silver Line as the priming event, what would a transit network improvement program look like for NoVA?," (2017)

-- "A "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for the Metrorail Blue Line," (2020)

Schneider offers a number of recommendations for connection.

As I wrote in part one of this piece, the IBX will have a transformative impact on mobility in Brooklyn and Queens from the day that it opens, largely because of transfers to express subways that will quickly get riders to popular destinations like Midtown, Downtown Brooklyn, and the JFK Airtrain at Jamaica.

With a few complimentary transit projects, the mobility benefits of the IBX could be extended to the Bronx and beyond, as envisioned by the RPA thirty years ago. With a handful of more ambitious initiatives, the benefits of the IBX could reach even further, to Long Island and New Jersey; as well as to air travelers landing at LaGuardia and intercity train passengers on the Northeast Corridor.

This piece lists those projects in order of difficulty and expense. Most of the following ideas are speculative and have not been formally proposed by a government agency. However, they follow transit planning best practices as reflected in white papers from advocacy groups like the RPA.

The central premise of these conceptual projects is to better integrate the IBX and the rest of the New York City subway system with what is now called the “commuter rail” system. These projects seek to make the most of existing infrastructure as much as possible, rather than building expensive new lines. And they embody the notion that travel to and from the downtown core is no longer the central, overriding purpose of transit planning.

More connections, more access, faster trips.

His list:

• Add high-frequency ferry service between Brooklyn Army Terminal, Staten Island and New Jersey
• Make the LIRR Atlantic Avenue Branch a super-express subway line
• Extend the G Subway, which serves Queens and Brooklyn exclusively, on the north and south to connect to the IBX
• Build an IBX-LIRR infill transfer station near 51st Ave. in Queens
• Extend the IBX one mile to connect with Metro North’s Penn Station Access project, providing a link to the Bronx, Westchester and Connecticut
• Extend the IBX to LaGuardia Airport
• Upgrade the IBX-Metro North transfer station into an intermodal Northeast Corridor rail-air hub
• Build the Harbor Tunnel for passengers and freight

I've written a piece like this about Baltimore ("More remonstration about the molasses of change: Transit planning, Baltimore County, Maryland and Towson," "Transit agenda for Greater Baltimore"), merging the VRE and MARC "commuter railroads" into a 24/7 passenger rail system like the S-Bahn ("One big idea: Getting MARC and Metrorail to integrate fares, stations, and marketing systems, using London Overground as an example," "A new backbone for the regional transit system: merging the MARC Penn and VRE Fredericksburg Lines,"  and leveraging the once proposed, since cancelled Maglev system ("DC, Transformational Projects Action Planning, and the Baltimore-Washington Maglev project ).

The second entry in this series:

-- "WMATA's 50th anniversary from the start of service, Part 2a | The Original Approved Metrorail System (1968-1970)"
-- "WMATA's 50th anniversary from the start of service, Part 2b | Lessons learned: Proposed expansions and the Metrorail system we don't have"

provides a framework for the heavy rail part.  Some of the recommendations in the Purple Line series do for Maryland-side commuter rail:

• Integrate MARC and VRE fare payment into the SmarTrip/ CharmCard fare media system (note that with their regular tickets, MARC and VRE provide reciprocity, and include free rides on Baltimore local transit)
• Introduce bi-directional passenger rail service between DC and Frederick on the MARC Brunswick Line
• Consider charging DC-Montgomery County trips on a bi-directional Brunswick Line using the Metrorail/Purple Line tolling/fare schedule. That would treat mileage from railroad trips in the context of a complete (linked) trip on railroad+subway+light rail as a single fare
• The White Flint Sector Plan calls for an infill MARC station. Plans to build that station should be accelerated as part of this proposal.
• Build an infill train station in DC on the Penn Line, serving the New York Avenue corridor
• Set the opening of the Purple Line as the deadline for the integration of the MARC Penn Line and VRE Fredericksburg Line into one combined railroad passenger service
• + the Baltimore area recommendations in "Transit agenda for Greater Baltimore"
• + the Eastern Shore ("Letter to the editor in the Washington Post about passenger railroad service to the Eastern Shore")

Dan Malouff's proposed passenger rail system.  He didn't include Southern Maryland because at the time they were planning a light rail line to Charles County.  It also doesn't have a line from Baltimore to Frederick, nor the Penn Line to Delaware.

I don't have a handle on what to recommend on the Virginia side.  

Many years ago, at the BeyondDC blog, Dan Malouff provided a couple of schematics of how an integrated passenger rail system could provide service deeper into Virginia, connections to Pennsylvania, and an extension of the Penn Line to Delaware.

His framework provides a pretty good agenda for Virginia.  It complements various rail passenger expansion efforts throughout Virginia by the State, through its Amtrak Virginia program, support of VRE and exploration of other rail service options, and acquisition of right of way from CSX ("Virginia to build Long Bridge and acquire CSX right of way to expand passenger train service," Washington Post). 

Chicago, Inglewood, Minneapolis and commercial corridor redevelopment | Stadiums, arenas, and downtown transit malls

I was reading an article about Minneapolis' transit (bus) mall, Nicollet Mall ("Nicollet Mall tries to look beyond retail in latest attempt at reinvention," Minneapolis Star-Tribune), and I was struck by this paragraph:

The Downtown Council is creating a “Nicollet Mall prospectus” for prospective investors. It will include an inventory of vacancies, points of contact, any relevant incentives or financing tools and outline civic leaders’ priorities and ideas for the mall.

I made such a suggestion, that commercial district revitalization programs needed all this information at their fingertips for each property in their district, when I was doing consulting in Pittsburgh in 2008!  

This image makes Nicollet Mall look prety fun.

And considering all the articles over the past ten years about Nicolett Mall (e.g., "Revamping Nicollet Mall as a 24-hour district is one idea for downtown Minneapolis," "Frey’s plan to take buses off Minneapolis’ Nicollet Mall next year meets resistance") it should have already occurred to them.

(WRT the bus proposal idea.  It's true.  A bus mall is not a congenial places.  Buses are loud.  And that was my experience with Nicolett Mall quite some time ago.)

Similarly, when I first got involved in Main Street commercial district revitalization c. 2002 at some point I came across an article by Neal Peirce, "Main Street Niches in a Mass Sales World," making the point that revitalization is a process that takes a couple decades, and never really ends.

I wrote about that at the onset of covid, "From more space to socially distance to a systematic program for pedestrian districts (Park City (Utah) Main Street Car Free on Sundays)," making the point that commercial districts should have been planning for multi-modal access long before the distancing requirements arising from covid best practice.  Also see "A point about pedestrianizing streets: Boulder; Alexandria, Virginia, Cleveland Park, DC."

Lots of empty space around SoFi Stadium.

The LA Times has an article about Inglewood's Market Street commercial district, "Inglewood’s downtown still struggles. Can it spark to life before World Cup, Super Bowl?," and how it languishes despite its proximity to SoFi Stadium and Intuit Dome, home to the LA Clippers basketball team.  From the article:

The sports and entertainment corridor along Prairie Avenue has become a major economic driver for the city of Inglewood, with SoFi Stadium grossing over $175 million in revenue and bringing in 1 million visitors in 2023 alone, according to Billboard.

And yet, on most nights, Inglewood’s downtown is subdued and inactive. While a few longstanding businesses have managed to attract regular customers on the otherwise empty street, many others have closed due to rent hikes and eminent domain to make way for planned transit centers.

SoFi had the Super Bowl in 2022 and the Washington Post had an article, "A home Super Bowl is good for the Rams. But is SoFi Stadium good for Inglewood?," about how the rest of the city didn't seem to be experiencing improvement in the face of the stadium.

My criticism is that you shouldn't be allowed to build such facilities without adjacent access to high frequency rail transit.  Inglewood now is planning various surface transit improvements including a couple of bus hubs on Market Street ("Project Overview -- Inglewood Transit Connector").  Ultimately they were supposed to get a People Mover mode to connect to the LA Metro--at least ten years after the stadium opened.  But that doesn't seem to be happening (" A $2.4B Rail Project For The 2028 L.A. Olympics Has Been Suspended—Here’s What’s Happening Instead," Secret LA).

My thought was um, why don't cities develop mitigation/improvement plans in association with stadiums and arenas before they open, including funding from the team owner as a condition of the contract?

Not having such plans is why I've developed "Framework of characteristics that support successful community development in association with the development of professional sports facilities" as a way for a community to try to get the best possible outcomes from sports facilities deals.

From the Axios article, "Renderings: New project looks to transform United Center, West Side."

I don't know if Chicago is getting funding from the owner of the Bulls basketball team, but in association with the construction of a new arena there, they are preparing an improvement plan for the adjacent district ("Chicago seeks to make the West Side's Madison Street shine again," Chicago Sun-Times).  From the article:

... the thoroughfare is the focus of a city study aimed at helping bring new retail, housing and other activity to three miles of Madison Street, stretching from the shadow of the United Center to the heart of K-Town.

“Madison [is] probably the most visible and historically significant commercial corridor on the West Side,” Chicago Department of Planning Supervising Planner Brian Hacker said of the Madison Street Corridor Study. “We’re looking at the levers that we can pull as a city planning department — zoning, regulatory, environmental ... to facilitate development.”

Madison Street could see a rebirth, according to plans being developed by the city and and West Side community groups.Pat Nabong/Sun-Times 

It’s not a bad time to rethink Madison Street, particularly within the study’s boundaries that include the Near West Side, East Garfield Park and West Garfield Park.

East of the study area, construction will soon begin on the 1901 Project, a $7 billion effort by the Reinsdorf and Wirtz families to turn those barren parking lots around the United Center, 1901 W. Madison St., into a new neighborhood and entertainment district.

(Of course, the question is why didn't the basketball team owners do such a project to begin with, instead of making barren an area already distressed.)

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"). 

========

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.