BeyondDC

Photos from the abandoned Dupont trolley subway

From 1949 until 1962, DC Transit trolleys ran in a subway under Dupont Circle. Those subway tunnels are still there, boarded up and unused. I got a tour of the old tunnels yesterday, and detailed the trip with a set of pictures.

You can preview the pictures using the slideshow below, but the best way to see them is on flickr itself, where you’ll get a full description of each one. If you use flickr directly, you can navigate to subsequent pictures using the thumbnails on the right side of the page. If you look at each picture in order and read each description, you’ll pretty much be getting the same tour I got in person.

December 13th, 2012 | Permalink | {num}Comments
Tags: galleries, history, streetcar, transportation

Josh

Thanks for these. I’m always really interested in the ‘secret’ places beneath our feet. It constantly amazes me that in an urban environment there can be all this space under us.
PM

Awesome
QuickBus

It would be nice if these existing tunnels could somehow be used to have the various bus routes (42, N2, G2, etc…) make stops beneath Dupont Circle to avoid the heavy traffic and slow travel on the Circle’s surface roads. Riding the 42 bus around the Circle with all the traffic lights, pedestrians and cars can take forever.
http://lucre.livejournal.com/ Lucre

Ugh, the value of unused underground space is that it can be reprogrammed without disturbing what people find attractive about the current surface environment. So why demolish a historic building and pave a tree-lined median? Particularly when what they propose to use the underground space for is not terribly exciting (or terribly clear).