Steve Burns
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) Even after the Arlington County Board signaled it was backing away from the project, the D.C. Council today is set to approve money to continue studies and planning for a gondola line to cross the Potomac River from Rosslyn to Georgetown.
“It’s a small amount of money, but it’s enough to keep us going,” Georgetown Business Improvement District CEO Joe Sternlieb told WMAL. “We’ve always had very strong support on the D.C. side of the river for this.”
The gondola line would connect Rosslyn’s Metro station with the District’s most vibrant and populous neighborhood without a Metro station, and take with it people who right now are forced to take the long walk or slow drive across the Key Bridge.
“We need to do something to make Georgetown more accessible to the regional transit network,” Sternlieb said, with more roads and another Metro tunnel both equally unlikely.
The Council’s money totals $250,000, a portion of the money needed to start an environmental impact study, Sternlieb said. The funding is also needed to continue the process of determining where the gondola would land on the D.C. side.
In February, the Arlington County Board signaled it wanted to back out of further planning for the time being, but Sternlieb said he didn’t take it as a death sentence for the project.
“What the Arlington county folks that I spoke to said was, ‘Look, we’re not saying that we’re against this, we’re just saying that we don’t have the funding or the staff capacity to work on it as this point,'” Sternlieb said. “We’ve gotten a lot of support in the private sector, in the development community, the property owner community in Rosslyn, and we’re working closely with them, and at some point they’ll approach their elected officials and say it’s time to reengage.”
The biggest challenge, Sternlieb said, is convincing people of the feasibility and usefulness of the project. 99 percent of people, he said, have a first reaction of laughter and rejection. But after explaining it in more detail, they start to change their mind, he said.
“The overwhelming majority say, “Oh my gosh. I never really understood what this was. And now that I understand it, it makes a lot of sense.”
The D.C. Council is set to do battle today over expanding another District transportation project, the D.C. Streetcar, but Sternlieb said the gondola is even more viable, with 6,500 riders projected to hop on every day. That would be more riders per day than about 20 Metro stations.
“The gondola would be about twice the ridership (of the streetcar) and about half the cost to operate.”
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