Washington, D.C., should have listened to Marion Barry. The late four-time mayor of the nation’s capital may have made problematic lifestyle choices—even if the you-know-what did set him up—but give him this: He was 100 percent correct about the city’s streetcar boondoggle.
For the last two years, Washington has operated a 2.2 mile, slower-than-walking mode of “transportation” along a busy nightlife corridor not far from Capitol Hill. The cost of this bauble? A scant $200 million. As Barry pointed out back in 2012, when the streetcar was still under construction, it had “not been well-thought out and [was] too expensive for the number of riders it [would] serve.” He was right: The system is ridden by, at most, a couple of thousand people a day. And they don’t pay even a nominal fare, so the system is simply a money-sink. Meanwhile, buses already traverse the route frequently.
Now comes news that a mere two years into service, D.C. is looking to replace the trolley cars. Two years is a bit short of their expected 31-year life-span, yes, but local news outlet WTOP reports that it’s increasingly difficult to obtain repair parts, because the original manufacturer went out of business. Come to think of it, shouldn’t that have sent a message about the viability of the streetcar scam?
