1990s Metro fantasy map

When I interviewed Councilmember Jack Evans, upon learning of my interest in Metro, he dug up and showed me this map. It dates from the mid-1990s, back when the airport on the Potomac was officially called National, the proposed development to its south was called PortAmerica, and Evans served on the WMATA board.

It’s a proposal for Metro expansion with two new lines: one circumferential line running around near the Beltway, and one along Columbia Pike in Arlington, past the Pentagon to the Kennedy Center/State Department area, then to Georgetown, Tenleytown, and to Wheaton. It also contains extensions at the ends of most lines as well as the Dulles corridor line.

Compare this to today’s WMATA expansion proposals.

Unfortunately, I was only able to get a black and white copy. I don’t know how serious this was—probably not very serious because most of the connections seem poorly thought through. The circumferential line should definitely go through Bethesda, Silver Spring and College Park (as today’s proposed Purple Line would) instead of White Flint, Wheaton and Greenbelt.

This would provide service to Georgetown and the Connecticut and Nebraska (Politics and Prose) area, but misses today’s big opportunities for development and revitalization which the new Blue Line would reach, like NoMa, the Mount Vernon Square/Triangle area, and H Street. It doesn’t especially go to places where people work, except the Pentagon, or to major transfer areas, like Union Station. And the western DC line on this map is totally a rich white people’s line. (I should add that Evans didn’t give this to me as an endorsement of this plan; he just had a copy of this map lying around).

In the late ‘90s, though, other areas seemed a lot farther away from being developable. Now that the action is in Southeast and Northeast, fantasy proposals look more like this or this (the latter containing the same Georgetown-to-Chevy Chase segment, but then going to Brightwood and Northeast).