Steve Burns
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) One day before the D.C. Council takes a final vote on its budget, there is still one glaring issue – the future of the District’s streetcar. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson has been defending a cut to the streetcar’s budget, while officials in Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office are pointing out the potential consequences of delaying an extension to the current line further.
The streetcar’s initial 2.4-mile stretch opened in February 2016 after years of delays and cost overruns, and Mendelson said that factored into his decision to divert some streetcar money into funds for school modernization.
“What this government has demonstrated is a complete inability to build a streetcar system at a decent amount of money,” Mendelson told reporters Monday. “Let the government prove that this streetcar actually lives up to what people say it will.”
Mendelson claims his cut does not spell an end to a proposed eastern extension of the line across the Anacostia River to the Benning Road Metro station, but instead only delays it. Those delays could be problematic, according to City Administrator Rashad Young.
“You do run the risk that it’s going to become a protractedly difficult, more complicated, and long process,” Young told reporters. “A delay will escalate the cost.”
The Bowser administration has been trumpeting its achievement in opening the streetcar after a tumultuous development process, and casts the eastward extension as an issue of fairness and equity, going into an area of town that needs more transportation options and economic development opportunities.
“You have seen, across the country, where streetcar has been invested in, the economic development tail that follows,” Young said. “We need greater options for residents and families that live east to travel downtown and west.”
In his argument for cutting funds, Mendelson said he’s only heard complaints around the city about the money sunk into the project. Young disputed that, pointing to how many people are riding the existing line.
“I don’t think you can make that argument,” he said. “There’s more than 3,000 trips being taken a day on the streetcar, and it is surpassing our expectations for ridership.”
Copyright 2017 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (photo: DC Streetcar)
