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 two cities have 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 and Nice, where batteries power streetcars for less than one kilometer through a central square, with the rest of the system using overhead wires.

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 two cities run electric streetcars that do not use overhead wires: Bordeaux, which uses the APS technology developed by Alstom, and Nice, where batteries power streetcars for a (very) short stretch through a downtown square. 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.