Overhead streetcar lines proposed for the new 11th Street Bridge threaten to obstruct views of the historic capital city and should be avoided, a key regional planning body tells the District in a new report.
The National Capital Planning Commission, the federal government’s planning agency, is scheduled Thursday to review D.C.’s $300 million plan for a new 11th Street Bridge, a project that will connect the Southeast-Southwest Freeway with Interstate 295 in all directions, and Historic Anacostia with its west-of-the-river neighbors.
The new bridge won praise from commission staff for the prospect of “reducing traffic in Historic Anacostia, improving vehicle circulation, replacing structurally deficient bridges and improving public transportation and pedestrian and bicycle access across the Anacostia River.”
But the D.C. Department of Transportation’s plan to install light poles and overhead streetcar wires across the bridge, to eventually connect with a streetcar network east and west of the Anacostia, left the group cold.
“The anticipated infrastructure would introduce an element into streetscapes that has been intentionally avoided and prohibited for over a century,” according to the report, issued in advance of Thursday’s meeting.
Overhead lines are prohibited by 120-year-old federal law inside the historic L’Enfant City — generally bounded by Georgetown to the west, Florida Avenue to the north and the Anacostia River. Outside those boundaries, hanging wires are fair game.
“Where they’re permitted the plan is definitely to use overhead lines,” said John Lisle, DDOT spokesman.
The commission’s staff advised DDOT against developing a streetcar system powered by overhead contact wires anywhere within the L’Enfant City and Georgetown. In the report they expressed concern “that implementation might also disregard or preclude emerging streetcar technologies that might better suit Washington’s unique natural, cultural and historic landscape.”
The overhead wires planned for the bridge, for the Anacostia streetcar line now under construction and for Benning Road, Lisle said, are “not the old criss-cross wires that they used to be and are “not as obtrusive as some may think.”
DDOT also is laying tracks on H Street Northeast, but that corridor is within the L’Enfant boundaries and will require a different propulsion system. The city is looking at “innovative new technology,” Lisle said, including a streetcar that switches from overhead to battery power.
“We’re not going to ignore the law,” he said.
