BeyondDC

Crystal City streetcar rendering

Arlington has two streetcar projects in planning. Columbia Pike has been in the works longer and received more press, but Crystal City is no less important.

One key difference between them is that the Crystal City line will run in its own right-of-way, meaning it won’t have to share lanes with cars. Much of its transitway is already in place, and will open as a BRT line before the streetcar is ready.

Here’s the first rendering of streetcars in Crystal City, released in the project’s November newsletter.

November 30th, 2012 | Permalink | {num}Comments
Tags: BRT, lightrail, streetcar, transportation

Jason Ledesma

Doesn’t having its own right of way mean that it’s actually classified as light rail? Or are the distinctions interchangeable?

http://twitter.com/beyonddc BeyondDC

There’s no formal classification system. Arlington is calling it a streetcar, therefore it’s a streetcar. But yes, the presence of a dedicated ROW is often unofficially used as a marker separating streetcar from light rail. Whether or not vehicles are coupled into trains is another (something that Arlington probably will not do).

NikolasM

I think there are a few stretches where that isn’t the case? Also, it crosses streets at street grade all over the place so maybe that is why they are using that vernacular.