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Unless you can figure out a way to deliver all the things that people who live and work in DC need to survive, things like gas for the gas stations, and food for the stores and restaurants, and building materials for the new construction, by Metro or "streetcar," you better have some freeway capacity into the city. You think a freeway destroys a neighborhood? Try thousands of commercial vehicles on narrow neighborhood streets.

Oh yeah, and lets not forget the construction workers who build this city. They almost all are immigrants and almost all live outside of the city, in many cases far, very far outside. By the time Metro is up and running they are already on their second cup of coffee on the job. What about the thousands of people who keep DC running at night, again, when Metro does not run? Nurses and techs at the hospitals, janitors, building cleaners? etc. Again, they don't live in condos in DuPont or townhouses on Capitol Hill. They scrape buy in an apartment complex near Leesburg. How are they going to get to work without a freeway system?

And of course this doesn't even factor in the many DC residents who commute into VA for work. Downtown is not the only job center in this area. What about Tysons and the Dulles Corridor. Good, high paying, white collar jobs accessible only by car. Should people who work out there not be allowed to live in DC?

One more thing, I always like when bloggers and "urban planners" who have rarely, if ever, ventured into SW DC (and no, the Nationals Stadium is not in SW) talk about what a "failure" the neighborhood is and how much change in needed. Meanwhile, those of us who choose to live in SW see very few vacancies, houses on the market for days not weeks, and a quiet residential neighborhood that is both accessible to the rest of the city (and Northern Virginia) and separated from it.

by SWDCman on Feb 14, 2012 5:01 pm • link • report