Tuesday, May 17 was all-streetcar-all-the-time day on GGWash. We reviewed the H Street streetcar’s operations, and reported on expansion issues both east across the Anacostia and west into downtown.

DC Streetcar on K Street Transitway. Image from DDOT.

Here’s a rundown of all the posts:

• Now that it’s open, 7 takeaways from the H Street streetcar
• DC’s streetcar may go to Georgetown with dedicated lanes
• West of Union Station, no overhead streetcar wires
• A streetcar to Georgetown could add a loop ramp under K Street and a pedestrian walkway
• Before going to Georgetown, the streetcar will go east to Benning Road

The DC Streetcar is drawing a decent number of riders, so far. Compared to other US light rail and streetcar systems, it ranks near the middle in terms of riders per mile of track. It’s slightly above average, neither horrible nor spectacular.

According to DDOT’s latest streetcar ridership report, the H Street line carried an average of 2, 285 passengers each weekday in April. It carries more on Saturdays, but weekday ridership is the standard measuring stick nationwide.

In raw terms, 2, 285 riders per day is pretty low. But for a line that only carries passengers for 1.9 miles, it’s actually not bad.

Middle of the light rail pack

Obviously, the 1.9 mile DC Streetcar isn’t going to carry nearly as many passengers as, say, the 90-mile-long Dallas light rail system. And if you rank all US light rail and streetcar systems by total ridership, DC’s 2, 285 passengers per day is indeed near the bottom, at 31st out of 37. Dallas is 7th with about 105, 000.

But to get a sense of how successful these lines are at attracting riders, we need to compare them on an apples-to-apples basis. To do that, divide the total daily ridership by the number of miles, to get ridership per mile.

And in those terms, DC Streetcar’s 1, 203 riders per mile is a respectable 18th out of 37. It’s just barely in the upper half nationally. And it doesn’t even go downtown yet.

Dallas is actually lower at 1, 164 riders per mile. Other regional light rail systems that are lower than DC Streetcar include Baltimore (691 riders/mile), Norfolk (784), Sacramento (1, 056), Saint Louis (1, 035), Pittsburgh (850), and Cleveland (467).

On the other hand, DC is far below the number one system on the list: Boston’s Green line light rail, which carries a whopping 7, 126 riders per mile. Other systems near the top include San Francisco’s Muni Metro (4, 370 riders/mile), Minneapolis (3, 275), New Jersey’s Hudson-Bergen light rail (2, 852), and the Portland streetcar (2, 723, which is interestingly higher than Portland’s MAX light rail at 2, 048).

Compared to H Street’s X2 bus

What about buses?

In terms of raw riders, the X2 bus on H Street is the 3rd busiest bus line in the WMATA system, with 17, 400 riders per day as of 2015. The X2 is almost exactly 5 miles long, pegging it at 3, 480 riders/mile.

So the streetcar is attracting about one third as many riders as the X2 was before the streetcar started, mile for mile.

But the X2 is a tall order to match. If it were light rail or a streetcar, the X2’s 3, 480 riders/mile would make it the third best system in America, after only Boston and San Francisco. That’s one of the reasons a bigger and nicer vehicle makes sense there in the first place.

Plenty of room for improvement, but riders are there

Clearly the streetcar isn’t perfect. Getting it open was a saga, and its lack of dedicated lanes or traffic signal priority continue to hurt. Future lines absolutely need to be better, and can be better.

And who knows what will happen if DDOT ever starts charging a fare. Atlanta streetcar ridership plummeted when it went from free to $1, but Portland’s streetcar ridership remains high despite adding fares after 11 years of free rides, so that’s hard to predict.

But in terms of attracting riders, DC Streetcar isn’t doing particularly badly.

You can help make sure the next extensions are indeed better by attending upcoming planning meetings, May 17 for the Georgetown extension, and May 19 for Benning Road.

 Comment on this at the version cross-posted to Greater Greater Washington.
 
 

Jane Jacobs was born May 4, 1916, 100 years ago today. She left the world in 2006, but in her 89 years of life she revolutionized how we think about cities. Here is what GGWash contributors said about Jane, the patron saint of American urbanism.

Today’s Google Doodle honors Jane. Image from Google.

Jane’s most famous book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is required reading for anyone interested in the form of cities. It’s helped generations of Americans understand what makes places like Georgetown so pleasant, and places like Boston’s City Hall so repulsive.

Even 55 years after its publication, urbanists continue to obsess over Death and Life, debating obscure passages like clerics feuding over a religious text.

Ben Ross went straight to the point, then warned of the next great problem afflicting our cities:

Jane Jacobs was a true genius who developed a new paradigm of city planning. Our best city neighborhoods now suffer from the “curse of success” that she foresaw as the consequence of a scarcity of urbanism. How to overcome that scarcity is a problem that she left to us.

Canaan Merchant summarized two big lessons Jane taught him:

Look at what is actually happening rather than relying on what is “supposed” to happen. A city’s beauty lies in its people rather than its buildings. Bring the people out and the buildings will take care of themselves.

Former contributor Abigail Zenner focused on how Jane successfully communicated ideas:

She introduced many people to the world of planning and gave us words to describe what we see every day in cities but have a hard time explaining in simple language. She was able to make a case that stirred peoples’ hearts.

Nick Finio took a contrarian position, quoting a 1998 critique of Death and Life from UC Berkeley professor Roger Montgomery:

Let’s not glorify her too much. Montgomery’s critique ends with this zinger: “Taken together, these themes do add up. Anti-government and anti-regulation beliefs, confidence in the existence of a nearly perfect competitive market, inattention to corporate power, denial of social class and race as determinative categories, taken together look mighty like the core belief system of liberatarian conservatism.”

But other contributors were quick to jump to Jacobs’ defense. They pointed out that while her views may not be a perfect guide to urban issues today, her work helped surface notions that needed to come to the fore, like defending the idea of the city against car-oriented places, and eyes on the street maintaining safety.

Jonathan Krall added:

Just because Jacobs had a healthy mistrust for government and for large projects doesn’t mean she was espousing neo-conservatism. I agree with Montgomery that Jacobs’ excellent and helpful descriptions of healthy city life and associated planning issues skip over some very challenging social and political issues. However, I disagree with his implication that Jacobs is suggesting her readers should ignore those challenges.

Payton Chung opined on Jacobs’ motivations:

Just like any “bible, ” there are bound to be contrary readings. There’s a fine line between libertarianism and anarchism, and I’d argue Jacobs’ overall oeuvre points to a mistrust of all large institutions, whether corporate or governmental.

When all was said and done, it may have been Brendan Casey who summed Jane up best:

The force was strong with that one.

What do you think of Jane, and of her impact on cities?

 Comment on this at the version cross-posted to Greater Greater Washington.