District officials are spending more than $13 million to build streetcar tracks along major roads in Northeast, although there’s no timeline for when a trolley could run down them, nor even any certainty the city would be allowed to run streetcars powered by overhead lines on the bases being built.
Meanwhile, delays to another streetcar line in Anacostia have cost at least $860,000, and the line is still at least three years away from operating.
The problems with the streetcar lines have left some in those neighborhoods frustrated, especially along H Street where new businesses have been counting on the line to bring customers.
“Certainly it has not been a front-burner project,” resident Bob Morris told city officials at a community meeting on the streetcars last week. “Can you get it on the front burner? There are businesses who really need this.”
Many of the approximately 100 people who attended the hearing at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street also wanted more communication on when streetcars would return to the District.
The city ran into problems negotiating with CSX to use the freight company’s right of way, District officials said, so officials opted for a different route along the Anacostia line. Those delays meant the city has had to store the three rail cars it bought for $25 million from the Czech Republic. As of April, a Metro report said, the overruns from the storage and other delays were slated to cost an additional $860,000.
The line along H Street and Benning Road, meanwhile, faces problems because the National Capital Planning Commission has said the city cannot run overhead lines to power the cars in the heart of the city.
But the city is building the tracks because it is redoing the road for another project and does not want to tear up the streets twice.
“We’re hedging our bets,” said District Department of Transportation Director Gabe Klein.
He said he disagreed with the commission’s interpretation of an 1889 statute on the overhead lines, calling it a local issue, not a federal one.
“There are innovations out there that may make this is a nonissue,” he added, describing a hybrid-battery version of streetcars.
Klein said transportation officials were assembling a team headed by his chief of staff. Still, the Anacostia line isn’t slated to begin running until at least fall 2012. The H Street line doesn’t have a start date.
D.C. streetcar costs
Anacostia line: $54.9 million
» $43.7 million for building the first 1.7 miles and buying three streetcars
» $11.2 million for the second 0.8-mile section, not yet funded
H Street line: Price tag unknown
» $13.4 million for initial laying of tracks
» Additional money needed for streetcars, land for maintenance and storage facility, turnbacks and power substations
Source: District Department of Transportation
