Original agenda image from Shutterstock.

Former Chevy Chase mayor and longtime Purple Line foe David Lublin provocatively wrote that “the Greater Greater Washington agenda” is “a fading dream” after a year of bad news for transit in our region. While we appreciate his compliment in choosing us to pick on, he’s wrong.

Lublin notes that Arlington canceled the Columbia Pike streetcar, the DC Council cut its streetcar budget, and Maryland governor Larry Hogan is “reviewing” the Purple Line after campaigning on the idea that it’s too expensive.

Lublin claims that this shows “the region isn’t following” this site’s transit vision. Indeed, the first two are significant setbacks. It’s too early to call the Purple Line, though as a leader in the town which has vociferously fought the line since 1989, Lublin is hoping for its demise.

But has Washington really turned away from transit?

2014 was a bad year for transit… except it was one of the best

Lublin adds one important caveat: he says all this happened “since the high point of the opening of the Silver Line.” That was a pretty high point. This was the first new track mileage for Metro since the Blue Line to Largo in 2004. The Silver Line route has been on maps since at least 1968.

Virginia also opened the region’s first Bus Rapid Transit, Alexandria’s “Metroway” around Potomac Yard. These were big wins, and they matter.

It’s very, very hard to build transit projects in America. The original Metro came a time when the United States wanted to invest in infrastructure, to compete with the Soviet Union among other reasons. We believed we could achieve great things together; we went to the moon, we built great highways and bridges and trains. Now, Asian nations are doing that while we nitpick the cost of every project.

Unlike road money, federal transit funds are competitive. The Federal Transit Administration chooses projects based on cost-effectiveness, and there are far more worthy projects than available dollars. It took a sustained, bipartisan campaign from Fairfax and Virginia officials, local business groups, and landowners to win the Silver Line. The airports authority also had the power to raise tolls to bring in a little more money and get the project over any obstacles.

There were big setbacks for transit

Lublin lists three “key components of GGW’s vision” which, he claims, “the area has begun to reject.”

It’s worth pointing out that “the GGW agenda” goes far beyond just transit. Walkable development and “main streets” are getting built instead of malls and sprawl subdivisions. There are bike lanes and protected bikeways everywhere, including in Lublin’s mostly-suburban Montgomery County. Walking is getting safer. There are more retail choices in many neighborhoods. Cities are working hard to expand affordable housing.

Still, let’s look at the real transit setbacks this year.

1) The Columbia Pike streetcar. Arlington had enormous success building dense development around transit stations, but it wasn’t getting any new Metro lines. There’s no way to fund a Metro line under Columbia Pike. A dedicated transit lane would also be excellent, but the Virginia Department of Transportation said taking any lanes away from cars was out of the question.

It’s tough when there isn’t money to build the best transit and politically you can’t inconvenience drivers. Arlington leaders concluded that even a streetcar in mixed traffic would move many riders than buses and generate enough economic incentive to build more densely and fund considerable new affordable housing.

But they had to choose a deeply imperfect alternative, which many reasonable pro-transit people still opposed. It was far from a slam dunk. Leading opponents also blatantly lied about whether “BRT” was a realistic alternative.

Meanwhile, BRAC made office vacancy rates skyrocket and kneecapped Arlington’s budget. Add in complacency and political tone-deafness from the sitting county board, and it created an opening for a new set of politicians to tell voters, especially ones in wealthy suburban North Arlington, that their tax dollars were being wasted.

Once, Arlington had one political party. Now, it has two. One is finding big success encouraging wealthy taxpayers to resent public works that benefit others. It has plenty in common with Town of Chevy Chase Purple Line opponents.

2) The DC streetcar. It’s important to note that to this day, most DC politicians continue to insist they favor streetcars. Maybe it’s just posturing, for some, but DC is not anti-transit. Rather, the problem is simple: the streetcar was terribly, horribly, miserably mis-managed under the Gray administration.

There had been mistakes before, too, but over the last four years, DDOT streetcar officials continually lied to the public about when the streetcar could open, completely failed to plan for a maintenance facility, and dropped the ball entirely on coordinating with WMATA to keep buses and streetcars interacting smoothly.

They even have absolutely no system right now to collect fares if and when the streetcar does open, and avoided telling almost anyone about this for years.

It’s no wonder that when one of the councilmembers who most opposed streetcars in the first place tried to take the money away, almost nobody put up a fight. Who would stick his or her neck out amidst such failings?

The streetcar still has a lot of promise, especially if officials can muster the political courage to give it dedicated lanes (which is already part of the plan for the congested K Street segment). But DDOT will have a long road to rebuild confidence before elected leaders or the public will just hand the agency a big chunk of money.

3) The Purple Line, on the other hand, has none of these flaws or missteps. It is an absolute slam dunk of a transportation project. It will run in an old railroad right-of-way between Bethesda and Silver Spring, two massive job and housing centers, and then in dedicated lanes over to the University of Maryland, a huge activity hub, and New Carrollton, a significant transit center.

It would blow past the ridership levels of nearly any other light rail line in the nation. It would make the existing investment in Metro vastly more valuable as well and add significant ridership at the less crowded ends of lines. It will make parts of Prince George’s County much more desirable for new office and retail.

Unlike the DC Streetcar, it has been well-planned and well-managed (in large part by the man who now has taken over DC’s department of transportation and has the job of cleaning up the streetcar mess). It has passed all of the federal competitive grant processes and been found worthy, and has additional federal money attached.

There are only two reasons to oppose the Purple Line, neither good. One is Lublin’s: you live in a leafy little rich town in between Bethesda and Silver Spring and don’t want a train to run along its edge, no matter how valuable that is to other Marylanders. The other is the rural voters’, many of whom helped elect Larry Hogan: you just don’t want a big chunk of “your” tax money (even though the denser jurisdictions pay more in taxes) to go to things you won’t use in a part of the state you don’t live in.

The nation we were is gone

The Purple Line will bring economic growth whose benefits far outweigh the costs. It will move a lot of people very effectively. America used to invest in such projects because we believed in building great things. Yet our nation has grown more fiscally conservative since the days of building Metro.

Lublin writes,

Project after project promoted by GGW has gone by the wayside in some among the most liberal jurisdictions in the country, so it’s difficult to blame the shift on the Tea Party. Moreover, most of these projects have had frequent and unremitting support from the establishment Washington Post.

Don’t dismiss shifting political winds so readily. Even in our Democratic-dominated region, more and more voters just want a politician who will cut taxes and spending. There was real waste in those headier days, sure, but also real investments we no longer have the political will to make.

Despite its transit support, the Post’s editorial board consistently supported conservative candidates this cycle. The editors endorsed John Vihstadt, the anti-infrastructure Arlington candidate, partly the grounds that he would “reevaluate other expensive projects” other than the streetcar, which they supported. (They also argued his election wouldn’t kill the streetcar, which was entirely wrong.)

They endorsed Hogan in the primary with a fervent anti-tax statement, then tepidly supported Democrat Anthony Brown in the general election while continuing to complain about state spending. And they helped Muriel Bowser, who was one of the most fiscally conservative members of the DC Council, break out as the anti-Vincent Gray candidate and ultimately win the mayoralty.

Many people now speak of infrastructure more as “spending” than “investment.” Even most press articles about any project lead with the top-line dollar figure in the headline and bury any analysis of the project’s economic benefits, and one of the first commenters always shouts, “Boondoggle!”

Communities increasingly look inward and resent projects that benefit someone else. We want to do less together as a society. We don’t want to build big things. Those who have want to jealously guard their advantages instead of bettering the whole. Even people who consider themselves liberal on national issues want to build virtual walls around their own communities to keep the other out.

Lublin is right that things have changed. More wealthy enclaves in the Washington area are adopting the Town of Chevy Chase’s brand of tight-fisted, self-interested narrow thinking. I just don’t think it’s something to be proud of.

Correction: The initial version of this post said the Washington Post had endorsed Larry Hogan for Maryland governor. In fact, it endorsed Hogan only in the primary, but its general election endorsement for Anthony Brown still took a fiscally conservative tack. The appropriate paragraph has been modified.