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Amid a City's Woes, Visions of Trolleys and Bike Paths

Imagine a Metro line extending from Georgetown to Fort Lincoln, water taxis plying the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, a trolley line down Georgia Avenue to the Southwest Washington waterfront and bike paths throughout the city.

Expensive pipe dreams? Maybe. But all are part of the Barry administration's transportation plan for the District during the next quarter-century. At a time when the city's attention is focused on the here-and-now problems of crippled schools, crumbling streets and failing services, the plan -- four years in the making -- is an attempt to envision a brighter day.

Mayor Marion Barry (D) intends to officially reveal the document Wednesday. And even if the financially struggling city never builds any of the nearly $3 billion worth of projects included in the transportation plan, D.C. officials say that defining them is necessary if the District is to once more attract jobs and middle-class residents.

"The approach we took is the same that well-run businesses take," said Cell Bernardino, acting director of the D.C. Department of Public Works. "What kind of city do we want to be? . . . And then you ask, what kind of transportation improvements would help you get there?"

Federal law requires states and the District to come up with long-term transportation plans, and city officials decided to base their plans on what they hope the District will become, rather than on current projections.

"Obviously, the forecasts for D.C. were very bleak. If we depended on forecasts, we would just fill the potholes and go home," said Michele Pourciau, a D.C. public works staff member who headed the project.

The new plan, which cost the District about $500,000 in consulting fees, concentrates on moving people and goods within the city, rather than moving suburbanites into and out of it.

The report, commissioned by the D.C. Department of Public Works, recommends:

A $1.13 billion, 6.5-mile subway link between Georgetown and Fort Lincoln that would run beneath M Street and out New York Avenue. Georgetown rejected Metro in the early years, and more recent proposals to build a station there have gone nowhere.

Whether this version gets built depends on "the region being able to secure federal funding," said D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who is chairman of Metro's board of directors and favors expansion of the subway system.

"I always like to point out that Paris opened its first Metro station in 1900, and their most recent in 1996," Evans said.

A new $20 million Metro station at New York and Florida avenues, to serve a large entertainment arena such as a baseball stadium.

About $425 million in above-ground trolley lines that would run the entire length of Georgia Avenue and continue south along Seventh Street to the Southwest Washington waterfront. Lines also would go through Adams-Morgan, along the waterfront from Georgetown to the Navy Yard and east along H street from Seventh Street NW to Minnesota Avenue SE in Anacostia. The report doesn't specifically address what would happen to the traffic that uses those streets, but trolleys and cars share the same roads in other cities.

The addition of about 40 buses to link more than a dozen D.C. neighborhoods to major bus, rail or trolley routes. To help buses make better time on city streets, special bypass lanes would allow them to pull out of traffic and activate green lights at intersections to speed them through. This plan would require building separate bus lanes on some streets.

Water taxis that would stop at nine docks built along the Potomac and Anacostia rivers at locations such as Georgetown, the Kennedy Center, the Southwest Waterfront, the Tidal Basin and the Navy Yard, where jobs or tourist attractions are concentrated.

Replacing the city's directional signs to make it easier to find highways and major thoroughfares.

Posting signs that would direct people to new garages built at 15 locations around the city's edge to encourage incoming drivers to park and use public transit or bike paths. The District's parking philosophy would be changed to de-emphasize ticketing and encourage parking at garages.

Converting some downtown on-street parking places to loading zones for delivery trucks to eliminate many of the bottlenecks that occur daily as delivery trucks double-park.

A web of bike paths that would crisscross the city, linking paths and serving the city's various university campuses. Some local streets also would be fitted with bike lanes, and speed limits on those routes would be reduced to 15 mph.

The plan has gotten mixed reviews during presentations by Bernardino. Some critics say it does not appear to be a product of rigorous thought.

"It's a bunch of ideas that are sloppily cobbled together," said Chris Niles, an analyst for the Washington-based Surface Transportation Policy Project, who got an early look at the plan last fall. "What they needed to do was decide: (A) what are the problems, (B) what sort of money is needed and (C) what action is necessary to solve these problems?"

However, Niles praised the emphasis on public transportation.

Last month, Bernardino showed the plan to some Metro directors, including board member and Fairfax Supervisor Gerald W. Hyland (D-Mount Vernon), who praised the plan as identifying that "getting people around within the jurisdictions has become a bigger issue."

"We can at times preoccupy ourselves with present, smaller issues -- the potholes, this bus route and that bus route -- but to not have a vision and a long-term objective is a grave mistake for any jurisdiction," Hyland said. "So I commend the District. It puts a target up there to work toward."

The District's approach to long-term planning is decidedly different than that taken by most states. Virtually every state has based its plan on demographic statistics and development forecasts and extrapolated what their transportation needs will be, but the District chose to envision what it wants to be in 25 years.

"These are the possibilities that support the city we want to become, that support revitalization, people moving back into the city," Bernardino said. "If everything doesn't happen by such and such a date, that's not a tragedy."