Alas, those of us who struggle to reignite a sense of
purpose and optimism in this country, and especially those of us in the
transportation field, took another hit recently with the announcement of the
end of the Columbia Pike Streetcar project in Arlington, VA (story here). County leaders took stock after the
re-election of an anti-streetcar member of the county board (his initial
election to the board in a special election was considered a fluke – my story
here) and threw in the towel.
This was a real setback for smart growth advocates. Arlington is the poster child for
transit-oriented development – at least in the Northeast – and Columbia Pike
looked to be an ideal setting for a streetcar that would promote transit,
leverage sustainable economic development, and enhance the region’s investment
in the Metro system (to which the streetcar would link).
No doubt the streetcar project had issues, being big and
complex, and expensive, and perhaps just too heavy a lift for a small
jurisdiction (227,000 people). And
when it comes to funding projects like this, the federal government is nowhere
to be found, doling out money to only a handful of projects around the
country. At this rate, it will
take us a century or more to build the projects that we ought to put in the
ground in one generation.
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