9 ms·

How Washington DC Got Its Metro

58 points by vwoolf 3y ago

aimor 3y ago
"The Architect of the Capitol, George Stewart, wouldn’t allow a station to be built under the Capitol, requiring it to be moved a few blocks away. The University of Maryland rejected a proposed station on campus, forcing “a complicated redesign that later caused commotion in College Park.” The most difficult government agency proved to be the National Park Service. WMATA had originally planned many station entrances in the city’s downtown parks, like Farragut Square, McPherson Square, and the National Mall. A planned station at Farragut Square that would have required moving the statue of David Farragut was rejected, resulting in two separate stations – Farragut North and Farragut West – just a few hundred feet apart." This part is great, answers some questions I've had for a long time. Though there's at least one mystery unanswered: why is the Woodley Park station nearly half a mile from the Zoo?
- xg15 3y ago
  > The Architect of the Capitol, George Stewart, wouldn’t allow a station to be built under the Capitol, requiring it to be moved a few blocks away. The University of Maryland rejected a proposed station on campus, forcing “a complicated redesign that later caused commotion in College Park. It boggles the mind that those institutions would actively resist having direct access to the subway system. I wonder if this is a hint to how deeply rooted car-centric sentiment is in the US.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    I believe so. Just look at how much resistance there is to anything non-car in other parts of the country, like in Culvert City CA where they removed cycling lanes. Also, Portland OR where the local government is trying hard to make biking more dangerous by putting the bike lane between parked cars and fast-moving traffic, all because some hotel and business owners want street parking to be more convenient. Even today in DC, there's still no convenient public transit access for wealthy Georgetown, because they resisted building a station there. M Street is horribly crowded with both cars and pedestrians.
    - sp527 3y ago
      > like in Culvert City CA where they removed cycling lanes That's likely unrelated to anti-car sentiment and more so because bicyclists are (on average) complete assholes on the road, since there is no accountability for their behavior. I'd be fine with bicyclists if we could use cameras/facial recognition to issue fines and arrest warrants, thereby finally domesticating them.
      - midasuni 3y ago
        What’s the annual death rate of incidents caused by cyclists. And the rate by incidents caused by car drivers?
      - DonHopkins 3y ago
        What causes so much danger and suffering and pollution and death are the vengeful sociopathic un-empathic car drivers who combatively view bicyclists as "complete assholes", and go around posting their ignorant, asinine, toxic opinions on social media to justify injuring and killing so many of them, and voting for ill-conceived, short-sighted legislation that makes it so dangerous and impossible to ride bikes safely, instead of providing safe, clean, green bike infrastructure and public transit, all because of their violent, childish misconceptions and greedy, narcissistic, bullying laziness, plus their complete lack of care and empathy for their fellow human beings and the environment. Medice sp527, cura te ipsum, because your own recent post applies perfectly to you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37671630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37671630 >sp527 1 day ago | parent | context | flag | favorite | on: Rethinking the Luddites >> 'Some with sociopathy may not realize that what they’re doing is wrong while others may simply not care. And sometimes, Dr. Coulter says, it can be both. >“There’s just a total lack of empathy or recognizing that what they’ve done has hurt someone or it’s only benefited themselves,” he says. “And sometimes they might recognize what they’re doing is wrong, they just don’t care or they justify it to themselves.”' > https://health.clevelandclinic.org/sociopath-personality-disorder/ https://health.clevelandclinic.org/sociopath-personality-dis... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physician,_heal_thyself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physician,_heal_thyself "Like an unskilled doctor, fallen ill, you lose heart and cannot discover by which remedies to cure your own disease."
  - yongjik 3y ago
    If it makes you feel better(?)... The National Assembly (= Capitol) Station of Seoul's line 9 also almost got moved to a different corner due to the lawmakers' demand, and Seoul isn't exactly known for its car culture. I guess politicians being asshats are universal. Amusingly, the Seoul Metropolitan Council (which would correspond to a US State Congress/Senate) said fuck you, it's getting built in the place, so that's how the station kept its place.
  - crooked-v 3y ago
    For this case I would assume it's the security concerns that go with a publicly-accessible subway line directly under the building.
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      This was in the ‘60s when there were significantly less security issues. There’s still a fairly large train station complex underneath the World Trade Center.
    - mixmastamyk 3y ago
      Probably not in 1960—Russian nukes would come from the sky. Also the Capitol already has a few tunnels underground.
    - ta1243 3y ago
      Cities like London and Madrid actually have had bombs on trains. It's not a "security threat" to buildings above. What is a security threat to infrastructure are roads, where you can drive massive vehicles into people, transport and explode bombs, etc. The Manchester bombing for example was a truck exploding parked on a public road.
    - cowsandmilk 3y ago
      If it was security, those concerns certainly weren’t shared at the Pentagon where the Metro entrance and exit were into the building for decades.
  - palmfacehn 3y ago
    Car-centric is a bit of a stretch. Capitol Hill politicians have their own subway system and other underground spaces. The Metro stop is directly behind the Cannon House Office Building. Lobbyists send documents and gifts by bicycle courier. Biden famously commuted in from Delaware by Amtrak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Capitol_subway_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Capitol_subway_s... https://www.washingtontunnels.com/capitol-hill-map https://www.washingtontunnels.com/capitol-hill-map >Biden made Amtrak trips between Washington and his home in Delaware on most days as a senator when Congress was in session so he could help raise his sons. The Amtrak round trip is actually 220 miles or 354 kilometers, not over 260 miles (418 km) as he described it. https://apnews.com/article/ap-fact-check-biden-amtrak-e79af0cd7015ea3d559609817cceb144 https://apnews.com/article/ap-fact-check-biden-amtrak-e79af0...
  - CPLX 3y ago
    Racism is very deeply embedded in these discussions. There’s a school of thought that sees subways as a conveyor belt of undesirable people into a neighborhood that bring crime and “problems”. As ridiculous as it sounds the phenomenon is very real.
epistasis 3y ago
I recently spent a lot of time in downtown DC with two toddlers, and the headways were absolutely amazing. Never waited for more than 3 minutes for a train. Almost felt like the US was a fully developed country. I would love nothing more than to move my family to such a situation full time. I have immense thanks for the architect and executors of the DC metro, and whatever operational genius has restored amazing service levels post-Covid, when most transit agencies have anemic service and are now in a death spiral.
- yuppiepuppie 3y ago
  I grew up in the DMV area, and the Metro was notorious for its long waits, single-tracking, and super expensive tickets. The last time I took the metro was about 7 years ago, and at that time there was lots of political turmoil in the Metro leadership. I hope it has changed as I loved the concept and design. But like most things that go wrong, execution is what spoiled it for me.
  - nosefurhairdo 3y ago
    DC Metro was great when I lived in nova a few years back. Huge upgrade from riding Bart in the SF Bay Area.
    - Klonoar 3y ago
      I grew up in the DMV region and always get annoyed when people cite NYC/Chicago as the (mostly, only) functioning local train system(s) in the country. The Metro definitely has points where it gets annoying, but for the most part it connects things really well and it's the biggest thing I miss when living on the west coast.
- angled 3y ago
  How nice are headways compared to timetables? I realise a lot of behind the scenes programming occurs to make it all just work, but as a commuter, that little bit less effort spent planning v. using makes such a huge difference. Last year our bus switched from running every ten minutes to every fifteen minutes, but it matches our ferries better.
xg15 3y ago
> Knowing that the project could easily get bogged down in bureaucratic delays and debates from WMATA’s board, the manager of WMATA, Jackson Graham (a former brigadier general of the Corps of Engineers) adopted a cynical, realist strategy of project management: "...we want to get as much under construction as we possibly can, so it would cost more to cover it up than it would to finish it. Always we wanted to give the board…an unacceptable alternative, so that we would take them down the road we wanted to go. If we hadn’t done that, everything would have bogged down into bureaucratic debate, and quibbling, and so forth that goes on all the time." ... > But Metro proved hard to kill. The financing bust inspired another round of studies, but these tended to find that paring down the system based on what was already under construction was surprisingly difficult. The individual lines were “like colored wires on a B-movie time bomb: clip one and the whole thing explodes”: "Deleting any route would provoke the affected jurisdiction to demand tens of millions of dollars back from the Authority, with interest. It was easier for WMATA to keep borrowing, especially since each cut would only save a small percentage of the system cost." Looks like the general's plan actually worked!
- vlovich123 3y ago
  That’s really clever
  - tough 3y ago
    I'm reminded of the theory that in airplane food menus you only get one semi-passing decent option like chicken or whatever and 2-3 horrible ones so there's no much thinking about it but you felt you at least had the choice
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      Be comforted by the fact that in the case of a water landing, your airline food can be used as shark repellent.
- imgabe 3y ago
  That was also Robert Moses' main strategy in New York. "Dig a really big hole, so they have no choice but to finish the project to get rid of the hole".
js2 3y ago
> The second period of subway building began in the 1960s. The downsides of the car and the infrastructure it required were becoming apparent, and some cities turned to subways to address the problems of traffic congestion. Metros built in this period include Atlanta’s MARTA in 1979, San Francisco’s BART, and Los Angeles’ Metro Rail. Miami's Metrorail deserves a mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrorail_(Miami-Dade_County) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrorail_(Miami-Dade_County)
bluecheese452 3y ago
I live in DC and have travelled to Asia, Europe, and South America. The dc metro pales in comparison. All other ones were cheaper, had more frequent trains, and were more modern. Asia and Europe also had more extensive coverage. Still even a worse metro is a lot better than driving on the beltway and I feel fortunate that it exists.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
Wish us luck. Metro has a projected $750m budget shortfall next year. Very unclear what's going to happen next. https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/09/26/dc-metro-budget-cuts/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/09/26/dc-...

58 points by vwoolf 3y ago

"The Architect of the Capitol, George Stewart, wouldn’t allow a station to be built under the Capitol, requiring it to be moved a few blocks away. The University of Maryland rejected a proposed station on campus, forcing “a complicated redesign that later caused commotion in College Park.” The most difficult government agency proved to be the National Park Service. WMATA had originally planned many station entrances in the city’s downtown parks, like Farragut Square, McPherson Square, and the National Mall. A planned station at Farragut Square that would have required moving the statue of David Farragut was rejected, resulting in two separate stations – Farragut North and Farragut West – just a few hundred feet apart." This part is great, answers some questions I've had for a long time. Though there's at least one mystery unanswered: why is the Woodley Park station nearly half a mile from the Zoo?

xg15 3y ago
> The Architect of the Capitol, George Stewart, wouldn’t allow a station to be built under the Capitol, requiring it to be moved a few blocks away. The University of Maryland rejected a proposed station on campus, forcing “a complicated redesign that later caused commotion in College Park. It boggles the mind that those institutions would actively resist having direct access to the subway system. I wonder if this is a hint to how deeply rooted car-centric sentiment is in the US.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  I believe so. Just look at how much resistance there is to anything non-car in other parts of the country, like in Culvert City CA where they removed cycling lanes. Also, Portland OR where the local government is trying hard to make biking more dangerous by putting the bike lane between parked cars and fast-moving traffic, all because some hotel and business owners want street parking to be more convenient. Even today in DC, there's still no convenient public transit access for wealthy Georgetown, because they resisted building a station there. M Street is horribly crowded with both cars and pedestrians.
  - sp527 3y ago
    > like in Culvert City CA where they removed cycling lanes That's likely unrelated to anti-car sentiment and more so because bicyclists are (on average) complete assholes on the road, since there is no accountability for their behavior. I'd be fine with bicyclists if we could use cameras/facial recognition to issue fines and arrest warrants, thereby finally domesticating them.
    - midasuni 3y ago
      What’s the annual death rate of incidents caused by cyclists. And the rate by incidents caused by car drivers?
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      What causes so much danger and suffering and pollution and death are the vengeful sociopathic un-empathic car drivers who combatively view bicyclists as "complete assholes", and go around posting their ignorant, asinine, toxic opinions on social media to justify injuring and killing so many of them, and voting for ill-conceived, short-sighted legislation that makes it so dangerous and impossible to ride bikes safely, instead of providing safe, clean, green bike infrastructure and public transit, all because of their violent, childish misconceptions and greedy, narcissistic, bullying laziness, plus their complete lack of care and empathy for their fellow human beings and the environment. Medice sp527, cura te ipsum, because your own recent post applies perfectly to you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37671630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37671630 >sp527 1 day ago | parent | context | flag | favorite | on: Rethinking the Luddites >> 'Some with sociopathy may not realize that what they’re doing is wrong while others may simply not care. And sometimes, Dr. Coulter says, it can be both. >“There’s just a total lack of empathy or recognizing that what they’ve done has hurt someone or it’s only benefited themselves,” he says. “And sometimes they might recognize what they’re doing is wrong, they just don’t care or they justify it to themselves.”' > https://health.clevelandclinic.org/sociopath-personality-disorder/ https://health.clevelandclinic.org/sociopath-personality-dis... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physician,_heal_thyself https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physician,_heal_thyself "Like an unskilled doctor, fallen ill, you lose heart and cannot discover by which remedies to cure your own disease."
- yongjik 3y ago
  If it makes you feel better(?)... The National Assembly (= Capitol) Station of Seoul's line 9 also almost got moved to a different corner due to the lawmakers' demand, and Seoul isn't exactly known for its car culture. I guess politicians being asshats are universal. Amusingly, the Seoul Metropolitan Council (which would correspond to a US State Congress/Senate) said fuck you, it's getting built in the place, so that's how the station kept its place.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  For this case I would assume it's the security concerns that go with a publicly-accessible subway line directly under the building.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    This was in the ‘60s when there were significantly less security issues. There’s still a fairly large train station complex underneath the World Trade Center.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    Probably not in 1960—Russian nukes would come from the sky. Also the Capitol already has a few tunnels underground.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    Cities like London and Madrid actually have had bombs on trains. It's not a "security threat" to buildings above. What is a security threat to infrastructure are roads, where you can drive massive vehicles into people, transport and explode bombs, etc. The Manchester bombing for example was a truck exploding parked on a public road.
  - cowsandmilk 3y ago
    If it was security, those concerns certainly weren’t shared at the Pentagon where the Metro entrance and exit were into the building for decades.
- palmfacehn 3y ago
  Car-centric is a bit of a stretch. Capitol Hill politicians have their own subway system and other underground spaces. The Metro stop is directly behind the Cannon House Office Building. Lobbyists send documents and gifts by bicycle courier. Biden famously commuted in from Delaware by Amtrak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Capitol_subway_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Capitol_subway_s... https://www.washingtontunnels.com/capitol-hill-map https://www.washingtontunnels.com/capitol-hill-map >Biden made Amtrak trips between Washington and his home in Delaware on most days as a senator when Congress was in session so he could help raise his sons. The Amtrak round trip is actually 220 miles or 354 kilometers, not over 260 miles (418 km) as he described it. https://apnews.com/article/ap-fact-check-biden-amtrak-e79af0cd7015ea3d559609817cceb144 https://apnews.com/article/ap-fact-check-biden-amtrak-e79af0...
- CPLX 3y ago
  Racism is very deeply embedded in these discussions. There’s a school of thought that sees subways as a conveyor belt of undesirable people into a neighborhood that bring crime and “problems”. As ridiculous as it sounds the phenomenon is very real.

epistasis 3y ago

I recently spent a lot of time in downtown DC with two toddlers, and the headways were absolutely amazing. Never waited for more than 3 minutes for a train. Almost felt like the US was a fully developed country. I would love nothing more than to move my family to such a situation full time. I have immense thanks for the architect and executors of the DC metro, and whatever operational genius has restored amazing service levels post-Covid, when most transit agencies have anemic service and are now in a death spiral.

yuppiepuppie 3y ago
I grew up in the DMV area, and the Metro was notorious for its long waits, single-tracking, and super expensive tickets. The last time I took the metro was about 7 years ago, and at that time there was lots of political turmoil in the Metro leadership. I hope it has changed as I loved the concept and design. But like most things that go wrong, execution is what spoiled it for me.
- nosefurhairdo 3y ago
  DC Metro was great when I lived in nova a few years back. Huge upgrade from riding Bart in the SF Bay Area.
  - Klonoar 3y ago
    I grew up in the DMV region and always get annoyed when people cite NYC/Chicago as the (mostly, only) functioning local train system(s) in the country. The Metro definitely has points where it gets annoying, but for the most part it connects things really well and it's the biggest thing I miss when living on the west coast.
angled 3y ago
How nice are headways compared to timetables? I realise a lot of behind the scenes programming occurs to make it all just work, but as a commuter, that little bit less effort spent planning v. using makes such a huge difference. Last year our bus switched from running every ten minutes to every fifteen minutes, but it matches our ferries better.

xg15 3y ago

> Knowing that the project could easily get bogged down in bureaucratic delays and debates from WMATA’s board, the manager of WMATA, Jackson Graham (a former brigadier general of the Corps of Engineers) adopted a cynical, realist strategy of project management: "...we want to get as much under construction as we possibly can, so it would cost more to cover it up than it would to finish it. Always we wanted to give the board…an unacceptable alternative, so that we would take them down the road we wanted to go. If we hadn’t done that, everything would have bogged down into bureaucratic debate, and quibbling, and so forth that goes on all the time." ... > But Metro proved hard to kill. The financing bust inspired another round of studies, but these tended to find that paring down the system based on what was already under construction was surprisingly difficult. The individual lines were “like colored wires on a B-movie time bomb: clip one and the whole thing explodes”: "Deleting any route would provoke the affected jurisdiction to demand tens of millions of dollars back from the Authority, with interest. It was easier for WMATA to keep borrowing, especially since each cut would only save a small percentage of the system cost." Looks like the general's plan actually worked!

vlovich123 3y ago
That’s really clever
- tough 3y ago
  I'm reminded of the theory that in airplane food menus you only get one semi-passing decent option like chicken or whatever and 2-3 horrible ones so there's no much thinking about it but you felt you at least had the choice
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    Be comforted by the fact that in the case of a water landing, your airline food can be used as shark repellent.
imgabe 3y ago
That was also Robert Moses' main strategy in New York. "Dig a really big hole, so they have no choice but to finish the project to get rid of the hole".

js2 3y ago

> The second period of subway building began in the 1960s. The downsides of the car and the infrastructure it required were becoming apparent, and some cities turned to subways to address the problems of traffic congestion. Metros built in this period include Atlanta’s MARTA in 1979, San Francisco’s BART, and Los Angeles’ Metro Rail. Miami's Metrorail deserves a mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrorail_(Miami-Dade_County) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrorail_(Miami-Dade_County)

bluecheese452 3y ago

I live in DC and have travelled to Asia, Europe, and South America. The dc metro pales in comparison. All other ones were cheaper, had more frequent trains, and were more modern. Asia and Europe also had more extensive coverage. Still even a worse metro is a lot better than driving on the beltway and I feel fortunate that it exists.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

Wish us luck. Metro has a projected $750m budget shortfall next year. Very unclear what's going to happen next. https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/09/26/dc-metro-budget-cuts/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2023/09/26/dc-...