I generally like the “36 Hours in XXX” series of travel articles that runs weekly in the New York Times. Depending on the featured city’s distance from Washington, the article provides me with either some good ideas for my next visit or a tantalizing glimpse of a city I am unlikely to ever get to visit.

This week, the featured city was Istanbul. A I scrolled though the slide show of photographs that accompanies the article, one photograph caught my eye. It is a photograph of Istiklal Avenue, one of Istanbul’s most prominent streets. The Wikipedia article on Istiklal Avenue describes it as:

one of the most famous avenues in Istanbul, Turkey, visited by nearly 3 million people in a single day over the course of weekends. Located in the historic Beyoğlu district, it is an elegant pedestrian street, approximately three kilometers long, which houses exquisite boutiques, music stores, bookstores, art galleries, cinemas, theaters, libraries, cafés, pubs, night clubs with live music, historical patisseries, chocolateries and restaurants.

This famous, historic, vibrant and beautiful street also features, you guessed it, a streetcar. And yes, that streetcar runs with overhead wires. What’s more, as this montage of Istanbul images clearly illustrates, the streetcars that run on that route are considered as symbolic of that historic city as the Topkapi Palace and the Galata Tower. (Istanbul also benefits from a network of modern trams.)

The article and my research on Istiklal Avenue got me thinking about other famous streets that feature streetcars. It is a long list — here are a few.

Bahnhofstrasse, Zurich
The Wikipedia article on this street that connects Zurich’s central train station with Lake Zurich describes it as “one of the world’s most expensive and exclusive shopping avenues.”

Ringstrasse, Vienna
A beautiful street that is a tourist attraction in its own right. One site dubs it “a jewel among the streets of the world.”

Maximilianstrasse, Munich
One of Munich’s four “royal avenues,” Maximilianstrasse is home to museums, the Bavarian state parliament and a long stretch of Line 19 of Munich’s extensive streetcar network, which is just one part of a comprehensive network of subways and suburban trains.

La Canebiere, Marseille
The Champs Elysee of France’s second city hosts part of Marseille’s growing streetcar network.

Avenue Louise, Brussels
One of the nicest streets in Brussels, this Haussmannesque boulevard hosts three of that city’s streetcar lines and is crossed by several others.

Princes Street, Edinburgh
This famous and beautiful historic street in the heart of one of the world’s most beautiful cities will soon feature streetcars;.

These examples all clearly illustrate that not only can streetcars coexist with beautiful, vibrant and historic streets, they are often one the main ingredients that lends those streets such character.

Benning Road isn’t the only Streetcar construction underway in DC–the “Anacostia Operations & Maintenance Facility & Initial Line Segment” is underway along Firth Sterling Street SE and South Capitol Street SE, adjacent to the Anacostia Metro.

Between South Capitol Street and the Suitland Parkway, Firth Sterling street is under construction: this is looking west:

The tracks are in place on the south side of the street while construction continues on the north. Looking back east from South Capitol Street:

At South Capitol Street and Firth Sterling Street, we see the official sign for this project:

Interestingly, the portion of the CSX tracks, which early in the planning were going to be used for streetcars, that used to cross South Capitol street have now been removed:

This break in the CSX tracks joins several similar trackage removals inside the Navy and Air Force complexes that make the last industrial purpose of this line–moving chlorine tank cars to the Blue Plains sewage treatment plant–impossible.
The new tracks continue across South Capitol Street:

Some of which are set in concrete:

The tracks continue several hundred yards to the south, but end far short of the main entrance to Bolling Air Force Base.

I find it somewhat interesting that the tracks have been laid on the west side of South Capitol Street. There is a pocket of industrial-ish land between 295 and South Capitol Street–on the east side of the street–that DC presently uses for maintenance vehicles and commercial drivers’ license testing which one might have thought would be a reasonable location for the maintenance facility. There is not very much space between Bolling Air Force base’s fence and South Capitol Street–presumably the tracks under construction here are intended to go all the way to Bolling’s main gate.
One final view, looking north at the end of the tracks. Note the extant CSX tracks on the left.

The Committee of 100 on the Federal City has issued a petition against streetcars in the District of Columbia and is asking neighborhood and citizen organizations to sign on. Before doing so, all organizations should be aware that the petition and its supporting document are full of falsehoods and misleading insinuations. In a previous post, I countered the biggest falsehood — the claim that cities around the world are installing streetcar systems that do not use overhead wires. To date, only one city has done so: Bordeaux, and that system proved so problematic that the vast majority of that city’s system, including all future extensions, uses overhead wire.

Today we address the issue of the overhead wire and urban street trees. The Committee of 100 petition calls for the District Department of Transportation to study the impact of overhead wires on street trees along streetcar routes. By calling for a study, the Committee of 100 petition falsely insinuates that streetcars with overhead wires cause harm to urban street trees. I do not oppose such a study, even though the Committee of 100’s call for it is surely a red herring. Indeed, I welcome it because in some of the world’s most attractive, most livable, most vibrant, most visited and most beloved cities, streetcar networks with overhead wires coexist with healthy and lush tree canopies. Many of the cities I am thinking of have much healthier and denser street tree canopies than the District. (Indeed, those expressing such deep concern about the impact of a single overhead streetcar wire on DC’s street trees appear incredibly unconcerned about the impact of diesel bus exhaust on DC’s street trees and even less concerned about the impact of the exhaust and leaking oil and other fluids from their personal cars on DC’s street trees.)

So, study away. In the meantime, though, here are the results of my own, admittedly unscientific, survey, which consists of pictures of streets with streetcars and beautiful street tree canopies.

Here are two photographs I took of Schweizerstrasse in Frankfurt. Schweizerstrasse is the main street of one of Frankfurt’s most attractive and pleasant neighborhoods. (Note the campaign poster in the second photograph.)

Here are two street scene photograhs I took in Brussels near Place Montgomery — one of the most attractive and desirable neighborhoods in Brussels.

Finally, here are two photographs of the Avenue Louise, the most exclusive street in Brussels — note that if anything is ugly in the first scene, it is not the streetcar, its tracks or its wires, but the cars and trucks on the right!

The Committee of 100 on the Federal City recently issued a petition against streetcars with overhead wires in DC (which essentially amounts to a petition against streetcars in DC) and a call for neighborhood organizations to sign it. Their petition includes many inaccurate statements plus several insinuations about streetcars and overhead wires that are false, including this whopper:

“Around the world, cities are installing systems that are not powered by overhead wires.”

To date, only one city runs electric streetcars that do not use overhead wires: Bordeaux, which uses the APS technology developed by Alstom. However, even in Bordeaux, the bulk of the system, 30 kilometers out of 44 kilometers, uses overhead wires. Indeed, the APS system proved so problematic and costly that Bordeaux city leaders nearly abandoned it entirely in its early days! Those kinks were eventually worked out, but all new extension built since then use overhead wires and all future extensions of the Bordeaux system will use overhead wires.

In addition, for a variety of reasons, Alstom has no interest in exporting APS technology to the United States. Even if they agreed to sell APS to DC, that would leave our city stuck using expensive and often unreliable proprietary technology, unable to seek competitive bids for new streetcars.

One part of the Committee of 100 quote is accurate: cities around the world are installing streetcar systems. But they are almost exclusively using overhead wires. The list of historic, attractive and livable cities that benefit from streetcars that use overhead wires is long. Even the list of such cities with new or recently expanded systems is long. Off the top of my head, the following cities have added or expanded streetcar networks with overhead wires over the past decade:

* Paris
* Strasbourg
* Nice
* Bordeaux
* Marseille
* Lyon
* Orleans
* Grenoble
* Dublin
* Barcelona
* Bilbao
* Vienna
* Prague
* Melbourne (home of the world’s largest streetcar network, which is much beloved by that city’s residents — do DC residents feel the same way about Metrobus?)
* Toronto
* Portland
* Seattle

* San Diego

And there are many more!

(Future posts will counter other falsehoods and misleading insinuations included in the Committee of 100 petition.)

As many of you may have read or heard by now, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced a major policy change that will generally make it easier for rail transit projects to qualify for funding under the New Starts Program. The policy change rescinds a Bush Administration policy that restricted New Starts funding to projects that received a cost-effectiveness rating of “Medium” or higher. (The cost-effectiveness rating measures project cost per number of hours saved by riders each day.) Under the new policy, projects receiving an overall rating of “Medium” or higher will be eligible for New Starts funding.

Many congressional leaders and transit advocates hailed the change, saying it will loosen the noose that has choked off federal funding from countless rail transit projects and bring project evaluation in line with statutory framework outlined by Congress. Perhaps no one expressed the joy and relief of transit advocates more succinctly than The Overhead Wire, which featured the great headline “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.” (The Overhead Wire often features fun headlines, including this favorite.)

As an advocate of rail transit and of cities, I share that joy. Though touted by the previous Administration as a way of directing scarce funding to the most worthy projects, the general result, and probably intention, of the policy was to bias the New Starts Program towards less expensive Bus Rapid Transit and commuter rail projects that focused on moving suburban commuters to central cities as opposed to light rail and streetcar projects that improved intra-city mobility. The policy also elevated one evaluation criteria over all other evaluation criteria.

Thus, under the Bush policy a project that scored poorly on cost-effectiveness was dropped, no matter how strong its potential to reduce congestion, cut air pollution or promote economic development. In addition, the Bush policy often forced ill-advised changes to rail transit lines as project backers removed rider amenities or even whole stations to bring down costs or reduce travel times in an effort to garner the all-important “Medium” cost-effectiveness score. As outlined by Yonah Freemark on The Transport Politic, this scenario most commonly played out in medium-density cities, where planners were forced to choose routes less useful to central city neighborhoods in order to speed travel times for suburban commuters. Quoting Freemark:

“The cost-benefit analysis is heavily biased towards the number of annual hours commuters will save by using the new transit system. This means that people who already have longer commutes are seen as more valuable for the FTA than those who choose to live in in-town locations with shorter distances between their residences and workplaces. As a result, transit networks are encouraged to extend out into the suburbs, rather than be densified and reinforced downtown. “

So, sounds like good news for DC Streetcars, right? Though Local coverage of the decision, such as the story in the Washington Post focused on what the policy change will mean for the Purple Line in Maryland and the K Street Busway, concluding that the change is good news for those projects, the short answer is yes. However, the more nuanced answer, as both The Overhead Wire and Freemark outline, is not entirely. Though the policy change removes a major obstacle to receiving federal funding for rail transit project, a bigger obstacle remains in place: money. SAFETEA-LU, the previous surface transportation bill, provided approximately $8 billion for New Starts over five years. However, a study released by Reconnecting America estimates national demand for new rail transit projects at $250 billion. According to that report, even if SAFETEA-LU’s successor doubled New Start funding, that would be just enough money to meet the demand for new rail transit in Maryland, with perhaps a few dollars left over for another state.

Transit advocates and their allies on Capitol Hill are working hard to increase the New Starts pie in the next federal surface transportation bill and this policy change makes DC Streetcars more competitive for federal funding. But given how competitive New Starts remains it is little wonder that many cities are choosing to go it alone.

On a brighter note: unlike other cities, the District of Columbia does not have to grapple with a state DOT: the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) is a state DOT, with the power to flex federal highway money to transit. So, keep the pressure on DC elected leaders and officials to make investments in transit improvements that increase mobility and opportunity for District residents.

The District Department of Transportation announced on the agency’s Facebook page yesterday that D.C.’s three streetcars arrived at the Port of Baltimore yesterday.  The’ve posted photos and video of the streetcars being loaded onto trucks for the final journey to Metro’s Greenbelt yard for storage and maintenance until until they can be put to use on D.C.’s streets.

DDOT announced on its Facebook page on Tuesday that the three streetcars owned by the District of Columbia are now en route from the Czech Republic to D.C.  DDOT posted several photos of the streetcars being loaded onto trucks in Ostrava, Czech Republic on November 13th and then being tranferred from the trucks to cargo skids in the Port of Hamburg, Germany, on November 17th for their trans-Atlantic voyage by ship.  According to a source at DDOT, the streetcars are scheduled to arrive at the Port of Baltimore on December 10.  Sometime thereafter they are expected to be on display a location in D.C., perhaps at Union Station.

D.C. streetcar being loaded on truck in Ostrava, Czech Republic, where D.C.’s streetcars were manufactured and stored by Inekon.

D.C. streetcar being loaded on cargo skid at Port of Hamburg, Germany.

Much of H Street NE and Benning Road NE remains a construction zone.  However, work completed to date is starting to reveal what the “Great Streets” version of this arterial will look like.  In addition to streetcar tracks, the new and improved version of this long-neglected corridor will feature wider sidewalks, curb bulb-outs and new lighting.   In addition, work on two streetcar stops at 20^th Street & Benning Road NE and at Oklahoma Avenue & Benning Road NE are nearing completion, giving us a good idea of what streetcar stops at the eastern end of the corridor, where streetcars will run in the center lanes, are going to look like.  Here are some photographs (cell phone - please excuse the quality) of the Oklahoma Avenue & Benning Road stop, in front of historic Langston Golf Course.  

 Looking west on Benning from Oklahoma: note the raised curbs, which are presumably located where the streetcar doors will open.

 Looking east on Benning towards Oklahoma:  the streetcar platforms are in the median beyond what will likely be a raised planting bed.  The Orange & Blue Line tracks are in the distance.

Looking east on Benning toward Oklahoma: raised planting bed and streetcar platform.  Note the left turn lane for westbound traffic turning south on Oklahoma.

Streetcar platform from southwest corner of Oklahoma & Benning

On Thursday night, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) kicked off its two-week blitz of streetcar open house meetings across the city with its first meeting in Ward 6.  In a brief presentation, Scott Kubly, who is leading DDOT’s streetcar project, unveiled a map of a proposed 37-mile network of streetcars across the city and spoke of the many benefits streetcars would bring to the District.  DDOT Director Gabe Klein, told attendees that since DDOT reinvigorated the streetcar project over the summer, the agency has been working 3-4 times faster on this project than it was previously.

Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells, who has been the leading proponent of streetcars on the D.C. Council, called streetcars the “next generation” of transit.  He said streetcars would be a vast improvement of our transit network and would be much better for the city than simply making incremental improvements to existing bus service.

DDOT is holding meetings in the other seven wards between now and November 4 (Beyond DC has a handy map of all the meeting locations).  The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, October 26 from 7:00 to 8:30 pm in Ward 1 at the Columbia Heights Education Campus, 3101 16th Street, NW.

The Ward 6 meeting also was covered in a thorough blog post on Greater Greater Washington (which includes a good map) and in a brief segment on WAMU radio this morning.

In an October 14th press release, the District Department of Transportation announced that over the coming weeks the agency will launch a “public outreach tour,” holding open houses in all eight wards to “engage residents and businesses in the implementation of improvements proposed for the transit system for the city, including streetcars.”

At these meetings, DDOT will present its DC’s Transit Future study, which studied short- and long-term transit improvements to enhance the District’s existing transit network, including streetcars, bus rapid transit (BRT) and limited-stop rapid bus such as the Metrobus Express routes already running on Georgia Avenue/7th Street, 16th Street, and on the 30’s line.  DDOT will also update residents on construction of the first two streetcar lines on H Street-Benning Road NE and in Anacostia, which is already in progress.

According to the press release, the program for the open house meetings will consist of “display boards, maps, information about the proposed system, and opportunities for participants to speak individually with and ask questions of project team members.”

Open House Schedule:

Ward 6: Thursday, October 22, 2009, 7 pm – 8:30 pm

J.O. Wilson Elementary, 660 K Street, NE

Ward 1: Monday, October 26, 2009, 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Columbia Heights Education Campus, 3101 16th Street, NW

Ward 4: Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Brightwood Elementary, 1300 Nicholson Street, NW

Ward 2: Wednesday, October 28, 2009, 7 pm – 8:30 pm

NEW LOCATION: Hyde Elementary at 3219 O Street NW

Ward 7: Thursday, October 29, 2009, 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Thomas Elementary, 650 Anacostia Avenue, NE

Ward 8: Monday, November 2, 2009, 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Savoy Elementary, 2400 Shannon Place, SE

Ward 5: Tuesday, November 3, 2009, 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Luke Moore Academy , 1001 Monroe Street, NE

Ward 3: Wednesday, November 4, 2009, 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Stoddert Elementary, 4001 Calvert Street, NW

For more information about the streetcar project and the upcoming open house meetings, you may visit DDOT’s Streetcar webpage or call the project hotline at 703-682-5060.