DC Metro exists because ~70% of the capital costs were borne by the rest of the US, most of said citizens never saw, or will never see, any direct benefit. It

DC Metro exists because ~70% of the capital costs were borne by the rest of the US, most of said citizens never saw, or will never see, any direct benefit. It was an easy sell to the Feds as individual people who directly and personally benefited in hedonistic ways and who, unsurprisingly, secured funding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro#History But the Metro also was politically inevitable, given the position of DC as the political center of the very powerful 20th Century USA. It was a semiotic embarrassment not to have a prestigious functioning subway system in DC in the late 20th Century. Urban Europeans would stick their tongues out and make fun of the DC residents, and the Feds fixed that with the Metro. (Note that DC types still have a lingering inferiority complex with other European cities. The rest of the US, excepting maybe NYC and Boston, couldn’t have cared less.) But the Metro does makes it easier to see the sights if/when the rest of the US visits DC as tourists.