A roughly $120 million project to build a trolley down Columbia Pike has come under election-year fire from Arlington Board candidates who say the plan is too expensive and its approval was influenced by padded budget numbers.
The board last year approved — but did not fund — the plan to add a 4.7-mile streetcar route along the Pike from Pentagon City to Skyline. The trolleys would replace most of the buses in what is now one of the most heavily used bus lines in the entire Washington area. On Monday, board members voted to make the streetcar system one of the county’s top priorities for funding from regional and commonwealth sources.
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The initiative is being started at a time when the county is facing a deficit and has told the school board to curtail new building.
The board chose the trolley line over a less costly Bus Rapid Transit system using very large buses and an even cheaper approach using a mix of regular and transit buses — the later recommended by Arlington’s Transportation Advisory Committee.
Joe Warren, who is now a Republican candidate for the board, was a member of the transportation committee at the time. He said the pro-trolley vote came only after $28 million in road improvements was added to the rapid-transit alternative, making its $110 million to $120 million cost appear similar to the streetcar plan. The estimated cost for the bus/transit-bus system was $25 million to $40 million.
A mistake was made in that analysis, acknowledged Steve Del Giudice, Arlington’s transit bureau chief; who said the error was corrected before the board voted.
Warren, who was a transportation economist with the U.S. Government Accountability Office before retiring, was so disgusted by the trolley planning process, he said, he decided to run for office.
Proponents of improving Columbia Pike, including board member and candidate Walter Tejada and fellow Democratic candidate Mary Hynes, call the trolley essential to redevelopment. Developers are more willing to invest near permanent transit routes like rail or trolleys, Del Giudice said, adding the trolleys move more people with fewer vehicles.
The project will lead to gentrification of one of Arlington’s few areas of affordable housing, countered Green candidate Josh Ruebner.
It’s expensive, he said, and a “boondoggle for developers.”
