Georgetown Metro

[TigerHoya]

www.wtopnews.com/?nid=689&sid=1390942

[strummer8526]

"Eh, I don't know. I'm pretty wealthy, and despite hating college students and poor people, I moved to a city's college town. I don't know if I'm willing to accept this influx of street urchins that a Metro stop will bring. I already have to deal with this kid peeing in my bushes."

[TigerHoya]

www.wmata.com/board_gm/board_docs/042408_RailCapacitypresentation.pdf

[hoyatables]

It's not a bad idea -- M Street through West End is already populated by 90 foot buildings and is pretty dense. Sending a Metro line down M Street to basically Farragut North has some logic to it. Would make even more sense if they would keep going down M Street straight to the convention center.

[rosslynhoya]

There was a Metro expansion plan published back in 2001 that would have been just perfect, but obviously flawed (click the graphic to see how incredible it would have been).

www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18340-2001Oct18?language=printer

The Blue line would have continued north past Rosslyn to the Georgetown station, hung a 90-degree right turn to head toward Dupont (throwing down two new stations in between) and then ultimately connecting over to Mount Vernon Square, Union Station, and Stadium Armory.

Only $6.3 billion if they had gotten started on it then.... What a shame.

[DFW HOYA]

The money isn't there for such a project, even for the above ground light rail line once proposed for Georgetown to Union Station. If they can't build the Orange Line to Dulles they won't be digging under M Street anytime soon.

One stop-gap idea: split the Blue Line trains at Pentagon and run downtown traffic up through L'Enfant Plaza.

[theexorcist]

Metro has no money, or they have money and constantly plead poverty. Every so often, however, they throw out these boneheaded proposals that have no basis in finances whatsoever. It's like talking about whether to tile the new on-campus arena in tile, granite, wood, or the still-beating hearts of Syracuse fans. It's a non-issue.

Metro does need to fix the Rosslyn chokepoint. A proposed solution has been to reroute the blue line as an entirely all-Virginia line. I think that this is worse rather than better, as the majority of commuting in from the west and south is towards D.C.

[jgalt]

If you cant tell by my handle, i am completely against the idea of public transportation systems (among many other public services and facilities), but i will put that aside for now and consider this proposal.

If the Metro is going to exist, and it is, and if they are going to spend (my) tax dollars, which they will, then they ought to do it right. It was stupid of Georgetown residents to reject the proposal originally (when first building metro) and this situation should be remedied, along with several other areas that are not serviced by the system. The most recent proposal, in my opinion is the best of the two. Along with creating the imfamous, purple line and a connection to tysons corner and dulles this would greatly aid the usability of the metro.

Regarding money, yes the metro probably has no money to do anything with (but has this ever stopped publicly funded projects? there for the greater good right? right??), but lines to Dulles, Gtown and Around the Beltway would provide a huge rise in income (ironically a dulles line would ultimately increase ridership and we will end up with this same problem in a decade or two). thousands of people would take the metro each weekend just to go to Georgetown, and thousands more would take it each week to take flights from Dulles. But the metro must look to others ways to increase income other than fares. They own blank spaces that tens of thousands of people see each day that go un-plastered with advertisements- this ultimately comes down to a battle between the upper classes of DC who wish to keep this space clutter free to respect some sort of absurd idea of culture and the lower classes who will be unable to ride the metro because they have to pay higher fares. Metro must be run like a private business if it wants to succeed. I will not go into the merits of such a private system because they are vast, but i will say the private sector would have never created such and asinine system that is impossible to expand efficiently.

[DFW HOYA]

A quick note on this topic--the oft-discussed rumor that the Georgetown residents blocked a Metro station is false.

There is a Web article which discusses that when planners envisioned a high speed transit system in the 1960's, they sought potential stops with lots of workers heading back to the suburbs, and Georgetown did not have enough of a labor force to generate much interest.

And if you think Metro overcrowding is an issue, it's a big one out here in the Midwest as well. Dallas has a three-line light rail system that runs two lines along a downtown street. The problem is that two more suburban lines go online in 2010--all along the same street. That's as many as 30 3-car trains an hour--great for commuters, bad for cars using the intersections to get downtown.

www.dallasobserver.com/2008-04-24/news/dart-needs-to-build-a-subway-downtown/

[theexorcist]

Apr 24, 2008 21:43:11 GMT -5 jgalt said:

If you cant tell by my handle, i am completely against the idea of public transportation systems (among many other public services and facilities), but i will put that aside for now and consider this proposal.

If the Metro is going to exist, and it is, and if they are going to spend (my) tax dollars, which they will, then they ought to do it right. It was stupid of Georgetown residents to reject the proposal originally (when first building metro) and this situation should be remedied, along with several other areas that are not serviced by the system. The most recent proposal, in my opinion is the best of the two. Along with creating the imfamous, purple line and a connection to tysons corner and dulles this would greatly aid the usability of the metro.

Regarding money, yes the metro probably has no money to do anything with (but has this ever stopped publicly funded projects? there for the greater good right? right??), but lines to Dulles, Gtown and Around the Beltway would provide a huge rise in income (ironically a dulles line would ultimately increase ridership and we will end up with this same problem in a decade or two). thousands of people would take the metro each weekend just to go to Georgetown, and thousands more would take it each week to take flights from Dulles. But the metro must look to others ways to increase income other than fares. They own blank spaces that tens of thousands of people see each day that go un-plastered with advertisements- this ultimately comes down to a battle between the upper classes of DC who wish to keep this space clutter free to respect some sort of absurd idea of culture and the lower classes who will be unable to ride the metro because they have to pay higher fares. Metro must be run like a private business if it wants to succeed. I will not go into the merits of such a private system because they are vast, but i will say the private sector would have never created such and asinine system that is impossible to expand efficiently.

A Dulles line will expand ridership. But - and it's a big one - Metro can't handle it. They are already limited by the size of the tunnel between Rosslyn and Foggy Bottom, and the Orange Crush is already packed. Imagine adding three more stations with more people.

In addition, Tyson's is an awful place to put Metro stops. It is an area designed to be accessed by car - walking is dangerous, and buses don't run constantly (buses also retain a social stigma). Tyson's will never be Wilson Boulevard.

Finally, the Dulles expansion is a white whale. From Vienna to the city center is usually about thirty minutes. Adding more stops makes a trip from Dulles at least an hour. Yes, other major cities have light rail transport, but London's takes twenty minutes. At a certain point, cabbing or the West Falls Church link is more price-reasonable.

If Metro wants to spend money like a drunken sailor, I would propose two other options rather than rail to Dulles. Option A is slowly constructing three-rail tracks in further-out stations to reduce the impact of delays. Option B is Metro to Fort Belvoir, which is already shaping up to be a piece of transportation horror of epic proportions and which needs all the help it can get.

[Boz]

I ride Metro most every day and I think these capacity figures they list in that report are understating matters pretty dramatically.

It won't take another several years for Metro to meet or exceed capacity. They're there now.

The Orange and blue lines need to be separated before any additional expansions take place on the Orange line (if they do this as a combined project, that would be OK, I guess). At least that's my opinion. You have one of the highest density lines sharing a track with a (relatively) low density line and they still alternate the trains one for one, for the most part (recently they have started running two Orange for every Blue sporadically during rush hour & it's helped a bit, but it's not enough).

Additional 8-car trains, as noted in the plan, will help a bit as well.

Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing the Omni Consumer Products taking over the whole damn system.

Put a couple of ED-209s in the stations and you'll eliminate a lot of the really dumb behavior that goes on pretty much every day.

[TigerHoya]

Apr 24, 2008 21:59:42 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

A quick note on this topic--the oft-discussed rumor that the Georgetown residents blocked a Metro station is false.

There is a Web article which discusses that when planners envisioned a high speed transit system in the 1960's, they sought potential stops with lots of workers heading back to the suburbs, and Georgetown did not have enough of a labor force to generate much interest.

And if you think Metro overcrowding is an issue, it's a big one out here in the Midwest as well. Dallas has a three-line light rail system that runs two lines along a downtown street. The problem is that two more suburban lines go online in 2010--all along the same street. That's as many as 30 3-car trains an hour--great for commuters, bad for cars using the intersections to get downtown.

www.dallasobserver.com/2008-04-24/news/dart-needs-to-build-a-subway-downtown/

I also read that the tunnel from Rosslyn to Georgetown would have been much deeper and more expensive than the tunnel to Foggy Bottom.

[The Stig]

Apr 25, 2008 7:26:25 GMT -5 theexorcist said:

Finally, the Dulles expansion is a white whale. From Vienna to the city center is usually about thirty minutes. Adding more stops makes a trip from Dulles at least an hour. Yes, other major cities have light rail transport, but London's takes twenty minutes. At a certain point, cabbing or the West Falls Church link is more price-reasonable.

London's rail connection isn't light rail, it's a high speed train. That's why it only takes 20 minutes. That would be the best way to get to Dulles, but it'll never happen because building a high speed rail line makes building a subway line look like a piece of cake, and because Union Station is on the wrong side of DC.

Taking the Tube from Heathrow to central London takes about an hour. The Dulles Metro link will increase ridership, but I think it will be used more by airport employees than by travelers.

[moe09]

Even if it took 45 minutes to an hour to reach Dulles I'd probably take it.

[jgalt]

Apr 25, 2008 13:06:02 GMT -5 moe09 said:

Even if it took 45 minutes to an hour to reach Dulles I'd probably take it.

me too, if the flight it cheaper then ill always go to BWI and it take between 45 and an hour to do that so i would be willing to do the same for dulles.

I think that no matter how you think metro can best expand it is clear that they are incredibly poorly run and they didnt have much for thought when first designing it. we can all agree on that, right?

[rosslynhoya]

Metrobus 5A takes about 35-40 minutes to get to Dulles from Rosslyn. It's the bus directly in front of the little blue bus in front of the GUTS bus. Leaves every 40 minutes (hourly on Sat/Sun). Prices have skyrocketed though, now a whopping $3 each way.

www.wmata.com/timetables/dc/5a.pdf

[TigerHoya]

I only wish public transit in Baltimore was at the same level of inefficiency and bad design as WMATA though.

[hoyatables]

Plenty of people take the El out to O'Hare in Chicago and it is a solid 35-45 minute ride from downtown.

I'm not even going to dignify the post about "public transportation systems are bad" with a response.

[HoyaLingus]

As someone intimately involved with related development centered around portions of the dulles rail project, I can state that it is very much not a white whale, and is 99% going to happen.

Developers aren't risking multi-billion dollar 'transit oriented developments' if the transit is not going to happen.

[theexorcist]

Apr 28, 2008 9:16:05 GMT -5 HoyaLingus said:

As someone intimately involved with related development centered around portions of the dulles rail project, I can state that it is very much not a white whale, and is 99% going to happen.

Developers aren't risking multi-billion dollar 'transit oriented developments' if the transit is not going to happen.

The prevailing attitude among everyone prior to DOT laying the smack down was that this was 99% going to happen. Everyone in western Fairfax and Loudoun has sold this as a fait accompli, despite the facts:

1. Tyson's as is is not designed for walking and people hate riding buses for transit.

2. Traffic to the Rosslyn tunnel is already choked. The Orange Line at Rosslyn is already running 8 car trains and those trains are already full.

There are about 19,000 jobs that the federal government keeps on threatening to send to southern Fairfax in two years, and there is precious little transportation infrastructure there to support it. Addressing this seems a much better use of tax dollars than trying to rejuvenate an area whose transportation problems are significant and which can't be addressed in the short term with public transit.