Transportation
10 Amazing Things That Took Less Time Than the D.C. Streetcar
Plainly, building a streetcar line isn’t easy. But lots of things aren’t easy.
D.C.’s H Street/Benning Streetcar sailed forth on its inaugural 2.2-mile journey on Saturday. How long it has taken Washington, D.C.’s Department of Transportation to make this happen is a question that requires some unpacking. There were more false starts than stations in the build-out of the D.C. Streetcar.
Highlights include the time when the District bought three streetcars in 2004 from the Czech Republic, where they sat, unused and racking up storage fees, until 2009. (One of them was even lost to rain damage.) Or the day in 2010 when the D.C. Council nearly voted to strip $49 million in funding from the project.