Posts about Streetcars

The proposal would repurpose the existing Government Printing Office buildings on North Capitol Street and add a new extension to the west. The new building would be over 2 million square feet, and would cover multiple blocks from New Jersey Avenue to North Capitol.

Ideally an employer as large as the FBI should have its offices downtown, but the FBI isn't just any employer. Its building is likely to be a security fortress, which means it won't be very good for pedestrians, or have ground floor retail. H Street is an important pedestrian and retail spine. Giving up a long stretch of it to the FBI would be just as bad there as it is on E Street, where the FBI is a sidewalk dead zone.

Actually, a dead zone on H Street might be even worse. Walmart is building an urban format store directly across the street from this site. And love Walmart or hate it, it's going to be one of downtown's biggest retail draws. That means this exact block of H Street is about to become one of the busiest retail main streets in the city. It should have retail on both sides.

One advantage of this FBI proposal is that the federal government already owns the land. That does mean it's already less likely to get retail on it, but putting the FBI building on it would cement that, literally.

There are other questions. DDOT's proposed crosstown streetcar would run along H Street. The FBI has never weighed in on streetcars, but would they throw up security-related roadblocks? It's unknown.

According to Washingtonian, the FBI would close G Street entirely to traffic, as well as obliterating a block of 1st Street. That further cripples the L'Enfant grid at a time when other projects are trying to restore the grid nearby. And would the FBI forbid pedestrians and cyclists on G Street as well as motor vehicles?

Finally, the existing GPO buildings are among Washington's most prominent historic red brick buildings, and were designed by a prominent architect at the time. The FBI concept renderings show a courtyard in the middle of the GPO building, but aerials show no such courtyard currently exists. That suggests the buildings will have to be completely gutted to fit the FBI. Is that a worthy tradeoff?

Any proposal that keeps the FBI downtown merits serious consideration, but given the FBI's security requirements, and given the potential for this location to be redeveloped with something even better, it may be preferable to let the FBI go. Putting the FBI on this block might be better than having it remain a parking lot, but almost any other building would be more ideal.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

3. Purple Line: Bethesda, Silver Spring, Langley Park, College Park, New Carrollton. That's a serious string of transit-friendly pearls. The Purple Line will be one of America's best light rail lines on the day it opens.

4. Baltimore Red Line: Baltimore has a subway line and a light rail line, but they don't work together very well as a system. The Red Line will greatly improve the reach of Baltimore's rail system.

5. Silver Line Phase 2: The Silver Line extension from Reston to Dulles Airport and Loudoun County is one of the few projects that was earmarked in Virginia's bill, to the tune of $300 million.

6. Arlington streetcars: The Columbia Pike and Crystal City streetcars both have funding plans already, but could potentially be accelerated.

7. Route 7 transit. Leesburg Pike is the next Rosslyn-Ballston corridor waiting to happen. Virginia is just beginning to study either a light rail or BRT line along it.

8. Corridor Cities Transitway: Gaithersburg has been waiting decades for a quality transit line to build around. BRT will finally connect the many New Urbanist communities there, which are internally walkable but rely on cars for long-range connections.

9. MARC enhancements: MARC is a decent commuter rail, but it could be so much more. Some day it could be more like New York's Metro North or Philadelphia's SEPTA regional rail, with hourly trains all day long, even on weekends.

10. Alexandria BRT network: This will make nearly all of Alexandria accessible via high-quality transit.

Honorable mentions: Montgomery County BRT network, Potomac Yard Metro station, Virginia Beach light rail, Southern Maryland light rail, and VRE platform extensions.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

The program will slightly resemble the very successful BRT in Eugene, Oregon, which runs in dedicated lanes and highway medians. However, Arlington's system cannot run in a dedicated lane, as an agreement with the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) prohibits Arlington from reducing the number of general traffic lanes.

"I never realized the picture of a Eugene bus, prominently plastered across websites, wasn't what we could get here in Arlington if we built BRT," said ArlNow commenter "Piker," who opposed the streetcar plan. "I don't like this new BRT plan either. Everyone who came up with it should be fired."

Group forms to oppose new BRT plan, says it's too expensive

Following the news, the group Arlingtonians for Sensible Transit changed its name to Arlingtonians for Sensibler Transit (ASerT) and immediately blasted the new bus plan, saying that it would be "too expensive," had not undergone enough analysis, and that a regular bus would be more cost-effective.

"The so-called 'modern BRT' alternative that Arlington County is now considering is a waste of taxpayer dollars," said Paul Rousselittle of ASerT. "The low-floor buses, off-board fare payment, and signal priority which AST recommended are unnecessary as they do not add capacity along the Columbia Pike corridor."

Board member Harvey Glibbey also criticized the BRT plan as unrealistic. "A number of these [BRT] lines are not performing as advertised," said Glibbey. "In many cases, ridership is much lower than anticipated, costs are much higher."

In response to the pushback, officials promised to conduct a fourth study to determine whether rapid buses are the most cost-effective mode. That study will analyze whether to scrap the BRT plan and replace it with a set of regular buses along Columbia Pike with their own branding, tentatively dubbed "Pike Ride."

"That is a good start," said Glibbey, "but I question whether we need the separate branding, as that brings extra marketing and painting cost. This new study is a good step, but needs another alternative where the buses have no names or identifying marks at all and riders simply ask the driver which bus it is when the bus arrives at a stop."

Glibbey also recommended the county save on costs by not printing any maps.

Capital Bikeshare: The mayor is funding 10 more Capital Bikeshare stations beyond the ones that area already supposed to be going in. In December, DDOT announced 78 locations, of which it had funding for 54 and was going to install those by March. Unfortunately, it's late in installing most of those. That list also identified 24 future locations, so this budget funds 10.

Buses: The budget office's presentation did not discuss the Circulator or other bus projects. I will follow up to find out whether any Circulator expansion in that master plan have funding. Streetcars are important, but they are one of several modes we need, and for many neighborhoods, better bus service is the better way to help people get around.

Bridges: The South Capitol "racetrack" project and new Frederick Douglass Bridge gets $622.5 million, which would fully fund the project.

Taxes: The budget imposes no new taxes or fees, maintains DC's fund balance, and keeps the debt cap at 12%. The administration also wants to get rid of the tax on out-of-state bonds, which they say primarily impacts seniors and is far and away the biggest complaint they get about taxes. Gray chief of staff Chris Murphy said they "always felt it was ill-conceived."

Affordable housing: As promised, the administration is putting a one-time $100 million into affordable housing. $86.9 million goes into the Housing Production Trust Fund, ($20M in FY 2014 and the rest in FY 2013). The rest, $13.1 million, goes to other smaller initiatives that the recent Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force recommended. He is also promising to keep the 15% of the Deed Recordation and Transfer Tax, which is supposed to go to the HPTF, in there; previous budgets raided that to fund other programs.

Parks: The capital budget provides $50 million for parks (likely a few different small parks) in NoMA: $25 million to acquire land, and $25 million for development. DC made a mistake when it upzoned NoMA without any plan for parks, which is why this is going to be expensive. However, NoMA is generating a lot of tax revenue.

Other parks capital spending includes $20 million fro the Fort Dupont ice arena, $26.4 million for Barry Farm, $2M to renovate and improve athletic fields and parks, $18M for the Southeast tennis & learning center, and funding to modernize 32 play spaces in 8 wards including Fort Greble, Palisades, Macomb, and Takoma which will start in April as well as already-underway work at Noyes, Raymond, and Rosedale.

Libraries: Gray is expanding funding for DC Public Libraries so that every library can be open 7 days a week. Most will be open until 9 pm Monday to Thursday as well as afternoons on Saturday and Sunday. They also get $2 million for books and e-books.

Further, the budget provides $103 million to renovate and, as part of a public-private partnership, expand the MLK Library. There is $15.2 million to renovate the Cleveland Park library, $21.7 for the Palisades library, and $4.8 million for Woodridge's library.

Trash: Residents who want to replace their trash cans are in luck: the administration wants to replace everyone's trash cans over 5 years, for free. If there is money available, they also hope to let people replace stolen or damaged cans without the fee residents have to pay today.

Flooding: Bloomingdale residents hopefully will see some relief from their flooding problems with $1.5 million in the budget to pay for recommendations from the task force studying those problems.

Police and fire: The public safety budget pays for 4,000 sworn officers, replacing police and fire vehicles, cadet training programs and maintaining domestic violence programs that are seeing federal cuts. In general, the budget officials say, they are replacing all federal from sequestration across the board, even assuming sequestration will continue throughout the year.

Raises: DC employees will get their first pay raise in 4-7 years, spanning both union and non-union employees, and DC will fully fund its pension obligations.

We'll have more analysis and further details in upcoming posts.

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The neighborhood plan covers much more than affordable housing. It deals with zoning, transportation, open space, schools, parking, preservation, and more. The plan is comprehensive and ambitious because it is a plan by the county to preserve 100% of the "Committed Affordable Units" (CAFs) currently in the planning area of the Neighborhood Plan. This is much higher than the county-wide requirement to retain 50% of CAFs in any redevelopment project.

We're talking about two types of affordable housing

There are two types of affordable housing in the plan. CAFs are housing owned by a non-profit organization or subsidized at some level of government.

"Market Rate Affordable Units" (MARKs) are housing units that are not subsidized in any way, but whose market price is low enough to be affordable to families or individuals making below the Area Median Income (AMI). For MARKs, there is no obligation for the landlord to keep the price below the market rate.

Critics of the Columbia Pike Streetcar usually contend that the streetcar is meant as a tool to gentrify the corridor and eliminate affordable housing on Columbia Pike. This ignores the county's commitment to preserve and expand CAF's throughout the corridor. Moreover, when critics speak of the loss of affordable housing, they mean the loss of MARK's that the private sector isn't obligated to provide.

Actually, absent the fixes prescribed in the Neighborhood Plan, all of the MARKs located in the corridor will disappear regardless of whether the streetcar is built or not. That's because, due to Arlington's location just outside of Washington, DC, Arlington is a very popular place to live.

The staff report on the Neighborhoods Plan has a table that lays out what county officials expect to happen. By 2040, Columbia Pike will not be able to retain MARK's affordable at a level of 60% AMI. Apartments at 80% AMI will likely increase with the number of overall units.

To counter this, the county aims to triple the number of CAFs at 60% AMI from the current (as of 2010) 1,120 units to 4,730 by 2040. This is a huge part of the projected 14,000 new units by 2040.

So while the number of apartments today compared to 2040 is expected to grow three times its current size, the number of affordable apartments will also grow to twice its current number. Arlington County believes it will be able to achieve that growth through both financing incentives to developers to keep and add CAF's and through the adoption of a Form-Based Code that will allow for greater and mixed-use density along Columbia Pike and its commercial areas.

Moreover, proposed buildings can get density bonuses if they provide more housing that meets the target of 80% AMI. Projects that share land with historic properties can also get density bonuses to preserve the older buildings.

Currently, the area defined in the Columbia Pike Neighborhood Plan only has 19% percent of the county's total number of CAF's. Meanwhile the county is planning on increasing the number of CAF's in the area more than other areas of the county. This includes providing housing that is priced at 40% of AMI where no units in the planning area currently exist.

The county is also redeveloping its own facilities as the Arlington Mill Recreation Center which will provide 122 new housing units for families making below 60% AMI.

Affordable housing concerns go beyond the streetcar or other development issues

Arlington County is a geographically small county located in the middle of a fast-growing area. Many other jurisdictions effectively provide affordable housing by allowing development farther from the core, but that is not an option for Arlington. This has forced the county to look at new ways of providing affordability. It wants to do so to preserve the county's diversity.

Critics of the streetcar plan contend that the streetcar will eliminate MARKs along Columbia Pike, but that fails to recognize that much of that housing would be lost regardless, even with no streetcar, because of the overall market pressures on the entire region and the desire to live both closer to work and in more urban settings.

Trying to prevent any and all development would not help the area's affordability either. Instead, it would eventually work against affordability by restricting the number of places for people to live. This is why it is important to lay out strategies to preserve the existing affordable housing and provide opportunities to plan for more. The Neighborhood Plan is a good start toward this goal.

A community "lifeline" is born

"Following the original horsecar line in New York in 1832, a number of more progressive American cities—New Orleans, Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Chicago—all had horesecar systems in 1859," writes LeRoy O. King Jr. in the definitive 100 Years of Capital Traction: The Story of Streetcars in the Nation's Capital. "Yet in 1860, Washington's public transit consisted of one line of horsedrawn omnibuses. The omnibuses were nothing more than urban stagecoaches, and, given the condition of early Washington streets, were indeed primitive transit."

During the Civil War, in 1862, the streetcar was introduced to Washington. Nearly 2 decades later the easternmost terminus of the line was at M Street near the Navy Yard, just before the foot of the Eastern Branch Bridge. Those living east of the river had to walk the rest of the way home or catch a carriage ride.

Thus, before Griswold subdivided his Anacostia property in what would become known as Griswold's Addition, he knew that he first had to build a streetcar over the river, ensuring a critical lifeline to the neighborhood to spur growth.

In February 1875, a prospectus of the Anacostia and Potomac River Railway Company (A&P), chartered by Congress, was distributed throughout Washington and in Griswold's native state of Connecticut. The line began running within the neighborhood later that year.

The A&P grows but hits an obstacle

When Frederick Douglass and his family moved to Anacostia in the waning months of 1877, the neighborhood gained an advocate of national consequence. Douglass was an investor in the streetcar line and lobbied Congress on Griswold's behalf. In 1880, Douglass sent a letter to Senator George F. Edmunds, an advocate of the city's development, adding his support for the an extension of the Anacostia route.

The A&P ran 2.9 miles of track over the Eastern Branch Bridge, rebuilt in 1874, then horizontally back and forth past the Navy Yard to the Southwest waterfront. There, it connected with the Metropolitan line, which ran vertically up and down 7th Street Northwest. Other lines reached the city limits in all directions with the 3 other extant street railway companies of Washington & Georgetown, Capitol, and Columbia.

By 1887 the A&P had run for 8 years from 7th & M Streets SW to the grounds of the US Government Insane Asylum, now the planned headquarters for the Department of Homeland Security at St. Elizabeths. Griswold now sought to expand his route into the heart of the city, but the District Commissioners worried about "the unnecessary multiplication of railroad tracks" downtown.

The commissioners sought increased oversight and influence over streetcar lines. In a letter, they said:

[T]he commissioners should have some lawful jurisdiction and direction of the operation of the roads; that the affirmative petition of property-owners upon the line of the proposed routes should be obtained; that a certain proportion of the proceeds of the business of the roads be paid into the District treasury, and that the details of construction, including the pattern of rail and the method of paving the inner-train and inter-rail spaces, should be subject to approval of the commissioners.

Using facts, figures and a chart, Griswold went before the city commissioners in the summer of 1890 to advocate for an extension of the A&P route. Flush with cash after the company carried more than an estimated 800,000 passengers the previous year and a "rapidly increasing population" along the A&P route, Griswold wanted the line to connect "with other companies in the center of the city, so as to transport their passengers to such parts as the City Hall, the Center Market, and the business houses on F Street and Pennsylvania avenue between Sixth and Tenth streets northwest."

Circulating throughout the city in the spring of 1893 were ten thousand illustrated pamphlets Griswold printed and mailed promoting places of interest in Anacostia and the surrounding neighborhoods. Each pamphlet held a coupon for one free ride over the Anacostia road. At the time the A&P had 52 cars and 230 horses running over 8.5 miles of track which now extended through Capitol Hill.

In the coming years investors would favor electrification over the horse-drawn system. "As the decade wore on, the argument turned from the idea of equipping each car with two horses to the idea of compressed air motors and finally to an underground electric system," King writes in Capital Traction.

Griswold maintains control

When Frederick Douglass passed away at his Anacostia home on February 20, 1895 Griswold lost both a friend and long-time business partner. Douglass held considerable stock in the A&P at the time of his death. Less than a month later, Griswold denied reports that a syndicate of the Philadelphia Traction Co., Baltimore Traction Co., and local Belt Company and Eckington Soldier's Home line was making an offer to buy the A&P and its valuable charter which included rights to extend west to 14th & Pennsylvania Avenue and as far east as the Maryland border.

Griswold continued to maintain control of the A&P despite labor unrest, citizen complaints, and a preponderance of fare evasions. In January 1897 he submitted a report of the receipts and expenditures of his company to the US Senate. In the previous year the road carried 1,127,562 passengers amounting to revenue of $164,762.06. Salary and wages totaled more than $23,500 along with $12,205.59 for hay, feed, and straw, $1,796 for track maintenance, $832.54 for shoeing horses, and other costs including interest payments of nearly $1,900.

Griswold's last years & legacy

Griswold finally ceded control of the A&P in an equity suit in 1899 to the Washington Railway and Electric Company. Under new management the A&P fully began the process of electrifying its route from Florida Avenue to the foot of the Insane Asylum. (A shuttle then continued up the hill to Congress Heights.) On May 26, 1900 the A&P's electrification was complete.

Griswold had by now disposed of his property and retired to his mansion on Mount View Place in Anacostia. In late March 1909 Griswold reportedly told a neighbor (whose home was demolished last year) that he was feeling ill. After shopping downtown Mrs. Griswold returned home in the late afternoon on March 30. Her husband was nowhere to be found in the house.

The body of the former president of the A&P was discovered in a disused attic. He had been shot through the heart and had been dead for some time, a local physician concluded. Police on the scene found mysterious circumstances, but the coroner eventually ruled the death a suicide.

By the dawn of the 20th century, Griswold was the principal businessman in Anacostia. He served as postmaster, developed entire blocks with new housing, and lobbied Congress for his neighborhood's interests which included more police, paved streets, and a firehouse. Before his untimely self-inflicted death at the age of 63, Griswold was instrumental to growing the city's first subdivision, guiding its cross-town streetcar for more than 2 decades in the last quarter of the 19th century.

Today, with a new report, Thinking Big, Planning Smart: A Primer for Greater Washing­ton's Next Generation of Transit, the Coalition for Smarter Growth wants to engage residents in a campaign to win a new transit vision and the funding to implement it.

Regional leaders have expressed strong support for transit-oriented development in their Region Forward vision and in recent state of the county addresses, but our regional transportation plans are dominated by a never-ending list of new highways and road expansion projects, with a few disconnected transit projects.

Just two weeks ago, the Virginia Department of Transporation (VDOT) added a number of new road projects to the regional plan, but not a single transit project. While the road projects march forward, transit projects are forced to beg for funding.

So, our report is both a call to action and a baseline resource. It offers the first compilation of the region's many transit and transportation plans, briefly summarizes the many benefits of transit to the DC region, and features and compares the metrics for six major transit projects or systems that are under construction or reasonably far along in planning, including the Silver Line, Purple Line, DC Streetcar, Arlington Streetcar, Alexandria Bus Rapid Transit and Montgomery Rapid Transit System.

A CSG volunteer, John Peck, worked to create a base map of all of the current rail transit lines and the six systems featured in the report. We gained a respect for the GIS professionals!

While we are encouraged by the new transit systems being proposed, we are very concerned that the region has no plan to interconnect the systems nor to ensure operational coordination including common fare card use and real time information, not to mention who should operate each system. We also found that the studies for these systems don't share a common set of performance measurements. So we owe it to University of California engineering student Haleemah Qureshi for creating the first comprehensive, comparative table of metrics derived from the technical reports for each of the featured transit systems.

How do we get there?

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized." Daniel Burnham's quote is perhaps overused, but nevertheless, we need a regional commitment to a new transit plan, the funding to support it, and a hardnosed commitment to implementing it.

We are recommending extensive public involvement and modern crowdsourcing. We believe that a joint committee of elected officials who serve on the WMATA and Council of Governments boards, should oversee the process and complete a plan within two years. WMATA staff, who have been leading the PlanIt Metro analyses and the development of the Momentum program, should provide the lead technical support, and be assisted by COG staff and local transportation and land use planners. Your thoughts on the process?

Finally, our report includes a recommended set of principles to justify and guide the development of a new transit vision. Do you agree? What might be missing?

Principles to guide a next generation of transit

High-capacity public transportation is the most important investment for supporting a sustainable region of livable, walkable centers, and neighborhoods.

Several factors make public transportation investments critical:

• High energy prices and the high cost of auto transportation
  
• Climate change
  
• Air and water pollution
  
• Failure of road expansion to effectively manage traffic, due to induced demand and related inefficient patterns of auto-dependent development
  
• The significant number of residents who cannot drive, cannot afford a car or do not own a car. This includes lower-income residents, the disabled, the young and elderly, and the growing sector of our population seeking to live in communities where they do not have to be dependent on a car.
  
• The benefit public transportation provides in supporting compact, efficient development, lowering per capita infrastructure costs and saving land.

Rehabilitating and improving our Metrorail system must be our first priority.

Major public transportation investments must be tied to good land use: well-designed, compact, mixed-use, mixed-income, walking and biking-friendly neighborhoods with interconnected local street networks - both transit-oriented development and traditional neighborhood development.

Supporting build-out at our existing Metro stations should be a priority, and together with mixed-use development at all stations, will ensure that our Metro trains have high ridership in both directions all day.

New high-capacity public transportation corridors must include the region's commercial/retail corridors. Given the strong commitment to preserving the character of existing suburban neighborhoods, these commercial corridors offer the best opportunity to absorb regional growth while protecting suburban neighborhoods.

We should be flexible and not locked into one public transportation mode as the answer. We should ensure we match the public transportation mode, design and service plan to the land use densities and levels of service we are trying to achieve.

Public transportation planners should ensure that each public transportation study considers all modes and the necessary mixed-use, walkable, and transit-oriented urban design essential to maximizing ridership and the value of the public transportation investment. Safe and robust access to public transportation by promoting walking and bicycling and supportive local street networks must be a part of any public transportation and funding plan.

Continuing to debate the mode after a final vote by an elected board or council isn't constructive. It delays and even harms the advancement of much needed public transportation investments.

We can be proud of our region's success with transit and transit-oriented development. But without the commitment of the public and our elected officials, we'll fail to make the investments in the next generation of transit that are necessary to support the demand for transit-oriented communities, to offer an alternative to sitting in traffic, and to fight climate change.

With this report and the engagement of CSG members and GGW readers, we aim to spark a new transit plan for the region. In the coming weeks, we'll be speaking to local elected officials, the WMATA board, the Council of Governments, the Northern Virginia Transportation Commission, transportation and land use planners, and the public. Stay tuned.

UPDATE 3/5/13: CSG has launched a Next Generation of Transit feedback catalog, where we'll be cataloging feedback, comments, ideas and suggestions. Keep the conversation going in the comments below, but we also encourage you to check out and contribute to the catalog.

Residents might be more able to keep up on what's going on with a website DDOT launched today for the project.

Oh, and does the above screen capture mean that DDOT has selected "District At Your Doorstep" as the streetcar tagline?

The website includes a presentation from last night's meeting. It includes updates on the work to construct the western turnaround at Union Station, a power substation at 12th and H, a pocket track on Benning Road, and the eastern turnaround at Oklahoma Avenue this year.

Also on the matter of communication, DDOT has withdrawn the car barn designs from tomorrow's HPRB meeting. In a letter to preservation staff, DDOT Director Terry Bellamy writes:

It came to our attention over the weekend that several individuals, including Area [sic] Neighborhood Commissioners and other key neighborhood stakeholders were unable to view the presentation/application submitted by DDOT to the Board. In immediate response to the inquiries received we posted the concept drawings on the DDOT and DC Streetcar Program websites for review on Monday, February 25. We feel that appearing before the Board on Thursday, February 28, will not provide the stakeholder community with adequate review time.

Therefore, in an effort to allow for sufficient review time, we respectfully request that a hearing on the concept drawings be moved to the next regular Board meeting currently scheduled for March 28, 2013. Our goal, as an agency, is to be forthcoming with our community partners as we move through this process and we believe postponing our review date will assist with these efforts.

It did seem odd that DDOT has shown two sets of renderings to the federal Commission on Fine Arts and HPO but had little public outreach about the designs. They have met with a number of ANCs and community associations, though. The new design looks fine and should go ahead, but public input is an important component as well.

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) showed earlier concept designs to HPRB and CFA in November. CFA recommended "a more urban and civic condition of a public building," while HPRB wanted it to be as small and unobtrosive as possible.

Therefore, DDOT has developed 2 concepts. One has more vertical architectural elements designed to give the building a "civic" look, while the other has a more horizontal feel dubbed "podium." Both are the same height, but the "horizontal/podium" design sets the 3rd floor back from the front façade, while "vertical/civic" does not.

These designs look much better than the previous ones. Historic Preservation Office staff, in their report, say that the architects have better related the building to Spingarn High School by using a brick veneer, preserving certain sight lines to Spingarn, and creating a border of green space around the perimeter.

It's too bad DDOT wasn't able to locate the building on the nearby RFK parking lots. Streetcar planners should have started pursuing this option with the federal government sooner, but there's no guarantee they ever could have gotten permission; the National Park Service is fairly jealous about keeping "recreational" land free of buildings even if that "recreation" right now is just empty parking space for a stadium.

At the MoveDC kickoff forum, Meg Maguire of the Committee of 100 made the sensible suggestion that DDOT plan locations for other car barns early, so that other communities have more chances to participate in designing them, and so that there's time to work more thoroughly to pursue the most appropriate sites.

HPRB members will be tempted to block the building because they wish it could be elsewhere, but that's not their standard. This building is compatible with the adjacent historic ones and should go forward, though if HPRB members have suggestions to improve the design, it's certainly worth getting the best example of a civic building that's practical to build here.

DDOT is holding a public meeting Tuesday to update the community on the streetcar's progress. It's 6:30-8 pm at Miner Elementary, 601 15th Street, NE.