Build Transit Where It’s Most Needed: In the Core

Reps. Gerry Connolly and Jim Moran, both good transit folks from Northern Virginia, have introduced a bill to study Metro expansion. This is a good idea and a welcome development, exactly the sort of thing I was hoping would come from Connolly getting elected. One problem, though, is that as Ryan Avent points out their priorities seem too focused on expanding lines further out rather than strengthening Metro’s core. What we really need is something like this plan that makes sure to increase the number of lines running through the central portion of the metro area:

In part, this is a natural consequence of DC—physically located at the core as it is—not having representatives in congress. The congressmen from Northern Virginia are, naturally, focused on getting more service for Northern Virginia.

But there’s a genuine failure to look clearly at the issue here, and not just parochial politics. At the moment, the Blue/Orange line track through the central city already runs at maximum capacity during rush hours. And it’s quite crowded. We’re also in the midst of building the Silver Line in Northern Virgina. That’s a good idea. But it means that if the Silver Line is a success, it’s going to wind up overburdening the existing Blue/Orange tracks through the city. Or perhaps to put it another way, the capacity constraint on the Blue/Orange track is going to limit the extent to which the Silver Line can really be a success since not that many additional Virginians can possibly ride Metro into downtown DC at rush hour (Silver Line will still be useful for intra-Virginia commuting and reverse commuting from the center to the Tyson’s job centers and for airport access, not trivial functions).

More broadly, any well-functioning metropolitan area benefits from having strong transportation links into and through its core. Sound regional planning needs to take into account the fact that a peripheral node is useful to the residents of the immediate area, but core investments benefit a wider circle of people.