Posts about Overhead Wires

Further, there is a strong likelihood that DC will contract with a private company to design, build, finance, operate, and maintain (DBFOM) the streetcar in exchange for annual payments and oversight power. If that happens, a separate entity already will be making the more micro-level decisions; would an authority just be an extra layer?

Having a separate authority for WMATA is necessary because it crosses regional lines, but it has some drawbacks. Perhaps in part because the mayor doesn't control WMATA, often city leaders have sought to advance their transit aims with programs they can control, where they can better ensure success.

Someone's missing from the task force

Besides Lew, who chairs the task force, there are 7 public officials or their designees: the budget director, CFO, and heads of DDOT, DCRA, DGS, DMPED, and OP. There are also 5 people from business and development organizations (Co-chair Jair Lynch, Rich Bradley from the Downtown BID, Akridge president Matthew Klein, Ginger Laytham of Clyde's Restaurant Group, and developer Charles "Sandy" Wilkes), and Rob Puentes of Brookings.

Where are representatives of transit riders and residents who have been pushing for the streetcar? What about Jason Broehm, who led multi-year campaigns to build resident and business support for the streetcar on H Street when DDOT was dropping the communication ball? Or the new Sierra Club transportation leads? Or the Coalition for Smarter Growth? For that matter, where is a representative of Mary Cheh?

If private sector organizations who will benefit from the streetcar are going to make a significant contribution, over and above the regular taxes they would pay from having the value of their property skyrocket, there's some logic to having meetings specifically between those who would pay and city officials, though still no reason to exclude community streetcar supporters.

However, a stronger "value capture" mechanism doesn't seem to be in the plan at this point. A streetcar's primary value over a rapid bus is that it stimulates economic development (and has higher maximum capacity if you have maxed out the number of buses you can run, like on Columbia Pike, but that's not the case for most DC streetcar corridors).

The economic development should mean that a streetcar line brings economic growth larger than its cost over and above a rapid bus. If it doesn't, a streetcar might not be what you want to build. If it does, then it will bring a big windfall to landowners along the corridor. For its money, the public should get some benefit.

That could be that those landowners chip in extra to help pay for the streetcar, perhaps with an extra assessment on commercial and large-scale residential property values beyond their previous levels. Or, if the concern is that the streetcar will gentrify a corridor, the contribution could be affordable housing instead (either a requirement to have some or payments into a fund).

More on wireless technology, and public meeting tonight

DDOT Director Terry Bellamy said that the agency is looking at wireless streetcar technologies. Current technologies allow them to run cars for about a mile without wires, but the technology is advancing quickly and they are keeping an eye on new developments.

He said they will be presenting more about wireless technology at the next meeting on the Union Station-Georgetown streetcar study, which is tonight. The meeting is 6-8 pm at the Carnegie Library in Mount Vernon Square. That streetcar segment will cross many significant avenues with viewsheds from major DC sites, so going without wires across at least those viewsheds has always been part of the discussion.

On the other hand, wires can also be a big negative, both visually and fiscally. Installing and maintaining overhead wires adds so much to the cost of running a transit line that very few cities in the US use them.

But what if it were possible to run an electric bus without the wires? You'd lose that permanence advantage, but the environmental, comfort, and noise advantages would all still apply. And if, after all, wireless streetcars are being developed, why shouldn't a wireless bus be possible too?

It turns out General Motors is working on one, along with a company called Proterra. Their EcoRide BE-35 model bus is fully electric and runs on lithium-ion battery packs that give it a 40-mile range for every 10-minute charge. The 35-foot, low floor bus design is basically comparable to normal city buses otherwise.

The website doesn't include details such as whether the bus can run air conditioning (certainly a requirement in a muggy place like Washington), but if they can make the idea work it has potential to revolutionize urban busing.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

DDOT expects 4 or 5 streetcars to serve H Street, providing service every 10 minutes. One car will run the Anacostia segment providing service every 15 minutes. Since the District already owns 3 streetcars, one will go to Anacostia and two will go to H Street. The District will purchase 3 additional cars for H Street.

The fleet size of 6 cars complicates H Street's ability to provide 10-minute headways in rush-hour traffic. Rush-hour slows on-street transit, often necessitating the temporary addition of rolling stock to compensate for slower speeds. DDOT would like to buy a seventh spare streetcar to fill in for broken-down streetcars, which will help, but they may be cutting it close.

Fares and payment

DDOT proposes a $1 fare, placing the streetcar on par with the Circulator and cheaper than Metrobus. Transfers will be free for SmarTrip customers and the system will honor Metrobus passes. The streetcars will follow a proof-of-payment system, a practice that Michael Perkins recommended a year ago. Riders will have to pay for their rides, but won't have to prove payment until prompted by a random inspection by the MPD. Eliminating the individual fare purchase at the front door speeds boarding by allowing riders to enter at all doors without having to wait in a line with the insufferable passenger who digs for change.

The System Plan explicitly states the desire to minimize cash transactions. The best way to do this would be to charge a higher fare for cash transactions, say $2, and to require that cash purchases be made at machines at the streetcar stops.

The Union Station Connection

The western terminus for the H Street line is complicated by the fact that the District does not own the land under the eastern approach of the Hopscotch Bridge that carries H Street NE over the rail yard. In April Geoff Hatchard reported that DDOT plans to cut a portal in the eastern approach of the bridge and allow streetcars to pass through at ground level. The streetcars would pass below the bridge and through an existing tunnel below the elevated rail yard to stop at 1st Street NE, just a tad north of Union Station.

A quick, convenient connection to the Red Line, Metrobus, CaBi, and the Circulator is essential in ensuring the H Street segment is a success. The better the integration with other transit modes, the better the line's practicality, ridership, and ability to spur economic growth.

When the Union Station terminus opens in 2012, passengers will have to walk a short distance down 1st Street NE to Union Station's side entrance.

Here's where it gets interesting. Shortly after the line and tunnel open in 2012, DDOT will start construction on a pedestrian passageway to connect the western terminus to the Union Station Metro mezzanine.

The streetcar stop will also include elevators to connect passengers to the Circulator stop two levels up near the bridge deck.

In 2015, DDOT will start reconstruction of the Hopscotch Bridge with the goal of carrying the streetcar line onto the deck of the bridge permanently. The elevators will then ferry passengers down from the streetcar stop to the passageway to the Metro mezzanine. The original track will become a non-revenue access track to the storage and maintenance facility that will remain under the bridge's western approach.

DDOT's aim is to stage the bridge's reconstruction so that it won't disrupt the nascent line. Since the planned Burnham Place development will abut the northern edge of the bridge deck, and itself will deck over the rail yard, the later streetcar stop on the bridge will resemble any hilly city block instead of a rail yard overpass.

Ridership projections: A tale of two lines

The System Plan predicts that 1,500 passengers will ride the H Street/Benning Road line daily and that an additional 4,300 will ride the Benning Road extension over the Anacostia daily. That's a healthy number that may grow considering streetcar fares will beat both Metrobus and Metrorail.

In contrast, the Anacostia line's numbers are anemic. The initial segment stretches only 3/4 of a mile to deliver people to the Navy Annex, which already provides ample parking to employees free of charge. It's no surprise that only 150 riders are expected to ride it daily.

WMATA initially planned the Anacostia segment as a "demonstration line". When DDOT took over the project, the alignment changed to serve Anacostia's main streets rather than skirting them. Even still, the initial Anacostia segment appears to be more of a face-saving measure than a practical transit line and could become the poster child for streetcar opponents.

Power substations and wires

Since DC repealed the century-old overhead wire ban in the L'Enfant City, DDOT has chosen to install one aerial wire for each direction and one "feeder" wire under each concrete track slab. This minimizes the visual impact of the overhead wires. The System Plan does not state whether the ground wire was already installed under H Street or whether it will have to be inserted later.

After the District expands its current streetcar fleet from 3 to 6, future streetcars will be required to operate for a mile without wires. This gradual shift to a hybrid wire-wireless system is the compromise that allows us to get the streetcars rolling sooner, while adopting hybrid wireless streetcars in a few years, after they become technically feasible in a mid-Atlantic U.S. climate.

Streetcars need power substations every mile for reliable service. For the H Street/Benning Road line, DDOT will install the western substation under the western approach of the Hopscotch Bridge. They will also install a mid-point substation at the southeast corner of 12th and H Streets NW, by that poorly-designed AutoZone store. The eastern substation will go behind the library kiosk at Benning Road NE and 26th Street NE.

Operations

The hourly operating cost for $130 per Metrobus and $80 per Circulator bus. Though the System Plan budgets for an hourly operating cost of $216.81, DDOT expects the cost will come out less than that. Also, those figures are per vehicle; since each streetcar can haul 168 passengers, the cost per passenger will be closer in line with Metrobus.

DDOT intends to solicit bids to contract out streetcar operations to WMATA or any qualified private firm. The agency has not yet settled on the term length or operator responsibilities, but will do so in the coming year. A few days ago I wrote that this arrangement, that is, DDOT oversight and outsourced operations, has the ability to enshrine a greater level of accountability into the system.

Economic benefits

The System Plan reiterates the link between "high-capacity and high-quality transit service" and economic development in the corridors served. Since the document doesn't belabor the point enough, I will: the Streetcar system is more than a transit mode; it is a serious public investment that guides and catalyzes further private investment in the city.

The H Street/Benning Road corridor is ripe for this investment for two reasons. H Street NE after decades of disinvestment has plenty of room to grow to accommodate the new and existing residents. Furthermore, the X1, X2, X3, and U8 buses that currently run along the corridor already carry 18,000 passengers daily, making it one of the heaviest traveled transit corridors in the District.

The excitement behind the H Street NE project indicative of something larger; it will translate to increased reinvestment in a neighborhood that needs economic growth. In a few years, the H Street line has the possibility of transforming a neighborhood people used to avoid into a neighborhood people envy.

As a result, transit and streetcars are natural extensions of Georgetown's historical landscape and layout. The current Metrobus line through Georgetown, which inherited the '30' name from its streetcar predecessor, is accordingly the most traveled in the city.

Reducing ugly, non-historical blights with streetcars

Because Georgetown's layout, unlike that of L'Enfant City, does not have a grid of major parallel streets that distribute traffic, the growth in car traffic over the past 75 years has taken its toll on Georgetown's historic character. Our neighborhood has become blighted with ugly gas stations, surface parking, and growing congestion and collisions, not to mention innumerable traffic lights, signs and signposts, despite a decline in population.

Streetcars may be essential to preserving Georgetown because as the city grows, Georgetown will have to absorb a growth in population density. Without effective transit, cars will only continue to proliferate.

Some argue that increasing traffic cannot be stopped. But research shows the opposite. As the cost of driving goes up or the cost of transit goes down, people drive less. In fact, Washingtonians have driven less and registered fewer vehicles the last couple years, despite our growing population, due to the rising cost of fuel.

Streetcars have been an essential means of preserving historical landscapes and vistas while absorbing greater density in historic towns across Europe and can do the same for Georgetown and all of Washington. As studies have demonstrated, 30-40% of streetcar riders would have otherwise driven, whereas only 5% of bus riders would have otherwise driven.

Overhead wires and streetcars

Streetcars would introduce non-historic features to our streetscape, however. Today's streetcars require overhead wires, which have been banned in L'Enfant City and Georgetown since the turn of the century. While the DC Council has the authority to overturn this ban, it should do so only if the benefits outweigh the costs.

Opponents argue that the overhead wires required for most of the route of today's streetcars would tarnish Georgetown's historic vistas. The wires, in addition to obstructing views, may require additional poles and street signage to be erected.

Washington's distinctive feature of unobstructed vistas, from the Mall to its grand avenues, reflects the value of transparency in a democracy. As a result, opponents argue, overhead wires should be opposed on streets with historic vistas, such as M, Wisconsin and, possibly, K Street. The Georgetown ANC and the Citizens Associations of Georgetown have passed resolutions taking this position.

Proponents argue that such historic views have been tarnished far more by traffic, surface parking and other ugly blights created by the demand for automobiles. They contend that reducing the intrusion of the automobile is well worth a single pair of overhead wires the diameter of a pen. What is more historic to Georgetown, after all, than streetcars?

Besides, residents of equally if not more historic towns across Europe have not found overhead wires to obstruct vistas, but to preserve their neighborhoods and quality of life by restraining car traffic.

What do you think? Are the benefits of streetcars worth the costs?

Such incidental conflicts can be easily avoided with existing, inexpensive battery technology, while still allowing the most affordable and efficient power system (wires) to be used throughout most of the system. It's a win-win.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

In her usual diplomatic yet effective style, Tregoning wrote,

As you may know, I was very much looking forward to your leadership of the Commission and based on my own experience working with you (recently and when you were part of Governor Kaine's Administration), I had complete faith in your good will and candor. I particularly relied on your representation in your communication to the Commission in mid-June:

I am aware that each Commission member has his or her own thoughts over streetcars. Therefore, in discussions with other parties, we are being mindful not to suggest that the Commission has agreed to anything at all. ...

Thus, I was particularly disappointed and concerned about the letters that went out under your signature this past week.

Items that impact the Mall and views of major monuments are generally agreed to be part of the federal interest, and the Council's initial legislation clearly offered those protections while the final emergency overhead wire legislation went even further. All new streetcar purchases will be required by law to operate for one mile without wires, and the Council will need to approve any new segments including a plan detailing the potential impacts on view corridors or historic districts.

However, when the Council declined to expand NCPC's approval authorities beyond the powers granted by federal statute (which it cannot do in any event), the seemingly petty response was a letter to the FTA. ...

I especially regret the loss of comity and the potential harm to the heretofore excellent working relationship between the District and the NCPC, but this is an issue of democracy and home rule and thus a matter of principle for the District.

I hope we can endeavor to get beyond this disagreement and regain a state of mutual respect and cooperation, but the path forward will not be via one of us seeking to restrict the funding of the other.

Klein also points out that the Benning Road segment, the one the FTA grant would cover, would "serve a highly transit-dependent community, experiencing a 20 percent unemployment rate." This is, as Tregoning noted, "an area of the District in which the Commission has historically shown limited interest."

She's being too kind; NCPC, like the Committee of 100, seemed very unconcerned about what goes on east of the Anacostia until it became politically expedient to suddenly want to protect views all across the city from the pesky wires that would interfere with looking at all the freeways, power plants, and aboveground power lines that nobody had objected to before.

Commission members are slated to discuss the wire issue today in executive session. I realize there are legal opinions involved, but it's ironic that NCPC will now be talking in secret about their position on wires given that one of Bryant's arguments for a stepped-up NCPC role was to ensure public participation. Did they really want public participation or just their own?

Miller's letter was in the body of an email, which I have reproduced below; here are Harriet Tregoning's and Gabe Klein's letters.

From: Miller, Robert (COUNCIL)
Sent: Mon 6/28/2010 1:27 PM
To: Bryant, Preston; Commission Members
Cc: Young, Deborah B.; Acosta, Marcel C.
Subject: RE: streetcar issue - update #3

Preston,

A direct response from Chairman Gray to your 6/24/10 letter to the DC Council may be forthcoming, sometime after consideration by the Council of the pending legislation discussed in your letter, which would amend the existing law regarding overhead wires in the L'Enfant City.

However, in the meantime, I must strongly object to your 6/24/10 letter to the Federal Transit Administration, opposing the District's $25 million federal grant application. The purpose of this application has nothing to do with the existing law that would be amended by the Council's pending legislation. Rather, the purpose of the grant is to extend the tracks on the H Street-Benning line from Oklahoma Avenue to the Benning Road Metro - an area of the city not even affected by the existing overhead wires prohibition. These grant dollars are critical to the District's efforts to extend economic revitalization and transportation connections to one of the most underserved areas in the city located east of the Anacostia River.

I also must object to the statement in your letter to FTA that "NCPC maintains Council's legislative action is contrary to a legal opinion issued by NCPC's General Counsel." As you well know, no vote has been taken by NCPC to date on the legality of the pending legislation, and for you to have characterized that as the NCPC position in your letter to FTA—as opposed to your position or the NCPC General Counsel's position—is misleading. The cited legal opinion has not even been shared with me as vice chair of NCPC, nor I believe with any District members of NCPC (although it was verbally summarized and discussed at NCPC's June 2010 executive session), despite the fact that the District has been open in providing NCPC with two other legal opinions (one by the DC Office of Attorney General, and one by attorney Andrea Ferster) which each concluded that the District has the authority to enact the proposed legislation.

Regarding your substantive concerns about the legislation, it is my understanding that the current draft of the bill includes several accommodations to federal interest and historic viewshed concerns, and the District executive and Council continue to work with NCPC on processes going forward to ensure that federal interests and historic viewsheds are protected, which I hope would be incorporated in a Memorandum of Understanding between the executive and NCPC. However, I am sure you would agree that the Council has no authority to provide NCPC with approval authority over any matter, as had been proposed by NCPC staff to Councilmember Wells' staff.

I respectfully request your withdrawal of the 6/24/10 letter to FTA, which I would characterize as a form of bureaucratic blackmail that is contrary to the best interests of residents, workers, and visitors in the District of Columbia.

Rob

Robert Miller
Legislative Counsel to
DC Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray
The John A. Wilson Building
1350 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Suite 504
Washington, DC 20004

The full Commission didn't even approve these letters, despite their appearing on official NCPC letterhead. According to people who've spoken with various NCPC representatives, some members don't personally like wires, or aren't convinced that streetcars are worth the money. Some commenters here share some of these concerns.

However, appointees of the President, the Park Service, DoD, GSA, and Congress should not be deciding what individual DC neighborhoods should look like or what is or isn't a prudent investment of capital dollars. That's why we have a democratic political process of home rule, and that's what democracy is about. People get to decide for themselves instead of having some "king" decide for them.

Bryant also expresses concern that the public be involved in the streetcar planning. That is important, but since when is this NCPC's responsibility? They haven't done the same for other, not so federal items in the past.

H Street wants the streetcar. Downtown businesses want the streetcar. Georgia Avenue wants the streetcar. It doesn't affect the federal government if there are streetcars there, even ones with wires, except right past the national parks and on the view corridors. The NCPC members should stop trying to be the Mayor of DC and worry about the real federal interest instead of their personal interest.

We're working on a page for you to reach out to NCPC members about this, but in the meantime, feel free to email your Councilmembers and the Mayor. Thank them for their streetcar support so far and encourage them to stand up for our right to home rule.

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