Photo by Victoria Pickering on Flickr.

The Bowser administration has put the District’s streetcar plans on pause, and may even scrap the H Street “starter line” entirely. It’s important to think hard about the right transit approach, but whether it’s a streetcar, buses in dedicated lanes or something else, Mayor Muriel Bowser and her administration must keep enlarging the District’s transit infrastructure with projects they can deliver in the near future.

New transit service is a must as the District and the region grow. In the District, substantial development is coming to every quadrant: Walter Reed, Skyland shopping center, McMillan Sand Filtration site and Armed Forces Retirement Home, Hill East, the Southwest Waterfront, H Street and NoMa and many more.

People need to travel to and from these growing areas. Inaction by the District government will mean ever-worsening traffic. The simple laws of mathematics mean that roads of fixed size cannot move more people unless more people are in higher-capacity vehicles — such as buses and trains.

Read more in my latest column for the Washington Post.

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.