The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) is planning to implement a 37-mile streetcar system to connect all eight wards of D.C. A route along H Street and Benning Road is already underway and officials hope to open it up for operation in mid-2013.

This small 2.2-mile section is a small part of a bigger 22-mile priority line that will eventually connect Georgetown to the rest of the district, thus increasing the amount of easily accessible transportation for Georgetown residents and students. The route will be similar to that of the Circulator, going from H Street to K Street and then under the Whitehurst Freeway.

The DDOT cites many benefits to the streetcar program on their website. The main issue with the current metro rail system is that while it provides good transportation throughout the city, it does not adequately connect neighborhoods. They believe streetcars are the remedy to this situation. There are also environmental benefits to the system as it will ideally decrease the amount of short, inner-city car trips taken, traffic congestion, and overall air pollution.

In June, DDOT released a Request for Information (RFI) in order to solicit feedback from industry experts about the most effective way to construct the system.  They have received twenty responses from different organizations and are planning to begin looking over them in the next few months.

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It’s finally happening, folks. On September 1, D.C. Circulator will replace the Dupont-Rosslyn Metro Connection “blue buses.”

But don’t despair, ye olde nostalgics, because the buses are practically the only thing changing, according to the Washington Business Journal.

Circulator buses will follow the same Georgetown-to-Dupont route, while running every ten minutes. Fare will be $1, although, riders transferring onto the connector buses will only pay 50 cents.

After the D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT) takes over the program from Georgetown BID, electronic fare boxes will be incorporated into the system as well.

Let’s chalk one up for streamlined efficiency, Georgetowners!

Is there any reason not to love the Circulator? Their buses are clean, frequent, and cheaper than most other forms of D.C. transportation, and they follow pretty convenient routes.

They’re so reliable, in fact, that they’re probably the last form of District transportation that needs to provide a way for riders to check when the next bus is coming.

But you can do that, too, even in an age where a recalcitrant WMATA still has not worked out a deal with Google to provide real-time updates for its trains and buses, because the Circulator is so awesome.

Using Google Maps, you can see approximate arrival times for the next two Circulator buses for any given stop in the route—just click a blue bus icon when you’re zoomed enough to see them.

For regular WMATA buses, you’re still stuck with NextBus, which is seldom helpful.

Via Georgetown Metropolitan

Fans going to the Nats stadium this summer to watch their home team trounce the Washington Nationals are in for a treat: soon, they may be able to get to the park on a water taxi run by American River Taxi, JD Land reports.

Anne Tabligan, a representative from American River Taxi, said that ART hopes to have a new taxi line up and running by mid-June connecting Georgetown, the Gangplank Marina near the Mall, and the marina at Nationals Park. Ticket prices aren’t set in stone, but they will probably cost $8, she said—which Vox thinks is a fair increase over the price of a Metro trip, since it comes with a lackadaisical trip down the Potomac.

Only two boats will service the route at first. A map on ART’s website shows they intend to expand their service to Poplar Point and Reagan National Airport.

Georgetown Metropolitan did some nautical math and estimated that water taxi might actually be a faster way to get to a Nats game than public transportation. The total trip, he wrote, will probably only take about fifteen minutes if the line goes straight from Nats Park to Georgetown.

Via Georgetown Metropolitan

Photo by Flickr user Oblivious Dude used under a Creative Commons license

In effort to close its daunting $189 million budget gap in 2011, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is exploring a host of fiscal measures that involve raising fares, cutting rail service, and cutting bus service in 2011, including cutting buses to the Georgetown neighborhood (pdf, page 46).

Local blogger Georgetown Metropolitan is reporting that WMATA has proposed cuts which, if enacted, will eliminate eight late night buses that go to and from Dupont on the weekends. The following lines could be affected:

• G2 – The G2 would experience a 33 percent reduction in weekend service. All Westbound service from Howard would end at 11:44 p.m. on Friday night and 11:47 p.m. on Saturday night. Service from Georgetown would stop at 12:18 a.m. on Friday and 12:22 a.m. on Saturday.

  WMATA would also space out all weekend buses by 40 minutes (currently, they run every half hour). On weekdays, it would lengthen the time between buses in morning peak hours from 10 minutes to 11 minutes, and the time between buses from 15 to 18 minutes during evening peak hours.

• D2 — The D2 would stop running after 12:44 a.m. Friday night and after 12:55 a.m. on Saturday night—cutting a total of four buses a night.

• 31 — Cut six westbound and four eastbound buses from the early morning weekday lines, and cut four buses from early weekend morning lines.

GM makes the excellent point that G2 buses are so frustrating to wait for on weekends already that the ten minutes of added headway on their Saturday and Sunday lines could render them almost useless. Between this, and the maddeningly long new routes GUTS buses will be taking under the 2010 Campus Plan, future Georgetown students may find themselves sealed even more tightly in their Georgetown bubble.

The District Department of Transportation is undertaking a massive effort to install 37 miles of streetcar tracks in D.C. That includes uncertain plans to run a streetcar line up Wisconsin Avenue, connected to the line that will run down K Street and Benning Road to the H Street NE corridor, shown in red on the map at right.

A group of Georgetown residents, however, are trying to turn the potential line into a sure thing. They’re called the Wisconsin Avenue Streetcar Coalition, and they want DDOT to make firm plans to route a streetcar through Georgetown.

Of course, as with any local ambitious project, there’s a lot of anxiety surrounding this issue.

Ben Thielen, who is heading up the Coalition, wrote on the wall of the WASC Facebook page that a member of the Tenley neighborhood listserv posted a Human Transit article to erode support for the streetcar. (The article argued that streetcars aren’t any faster than buses.) Meanwhile, he’s suspicious that upcoming construction on Wisconsin Avenue near Glover Park will impede streetcar tracks, and Glover Park residents are questioning how serious about the possbility of expansion DDOT really is in the Gazette (PDF).

For its part, the Voice is internally divided over whether a streetcar is such a good idea. In the Fall, the editorial board warned that streetcars were a foolish thing to pursue, considering that DDOT has enormous year-to-year budget shortfalls. In his feature story about the up-and-coming Atlas District, however, Chris Heller pointed out that the connectivity a streetcar line offers can mean big things for individual D.C. neighborhoods.

Via Georgetown Metropolitan

If you don’t recall how neighborhood residents of Georgetown reacted when administrators presented the 2010 Campus Plan back in November, let me remind you of the words of Advisory Neighborhood Commission Chair Ron Lewis when he heard that adding 1,000 parking spaces in the University was part of the plan:

“There is a problem,” he said. “And the problem is that people who come to your classes are jamming up our streets by parking. It’s not our role, it’s not our job to figure out the solution—it’s the University’s. But there is the problem. And unless the problem goes away, it’s going to be a problem for the plan.”

And that was at the meeting where Georgetown said it was definitely rerouting GUTS buses through Canal Street, which the ANC has been demanding for years.

Now, as the end of January nears—at which point Georgetown administrators have said they hope to submit the Plan to the ANC for its first stage of review—neighbors are no less content than they were in November about the proposed 2010 Campus Plan.

Jennifer Altemus (COL ’88), the president of the Citizens Association of Georgetown, sent a dense letter to President John DeGioia last Thursday which she provided to the Voice. The letter enumerates the neighbors’ grievances with the current draft of the Campus Plan.

“We are extremely disappointed with the process thus far. It appears that community input at the GU sponsored meetings has been ignored,” she wrote. “This list is by no means comprehensive but these issues represent the priority concerns of the community that will be raised during the plan review and approval process.”

Read the full letter and a summary, after the jump.

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The D.C. City Council is considering a bill that would allow the Circulator—the frequent, clean, and inexpensive buses that link multiple core areas of the city—to run outside of the District. That measure’s approval, writes the Washington Post‘s Dr. Gridlock, would mean that a new Circulator route running through Georgetown may take over the route that is now covered by the Georgetown Blue Buses, which ends at Rosslyn Metro Station.

At the same time, D.C. City Councilmember Kwame Brown is pressing his fellow councilmembers to approve a measure to extend the Circulator into Anacostia. He is not having much luck with his amendment but has vowed to keep trying.

Via Georgetown Metropolitan.

Photo from Flickr user afagen used under a Creative Commons license.

The proposed loop road and new GUTS routes

The last time University officials discussed the transportation aspect of the 2010 Campus Plan back in May, they said they were tentatively planning to send the Dupont GUTS bus through the Canal Road entrance, meaning the shuttle route would be extended to the experimental 4.7 mile test route permanently.  At last night’s meeting presenting the University’s first draft of its transportation plans, University officials made it clear that the rerouting isn’t just tentative—it’s now part of the University’s preferred draft plan.

Vice President for Facilities and Student Housing Karen Frank, who presented the University’s transportation plans to neighbors last night, explained that Georgetown would like to build a loop road on the west side of campus (as illustrated above) which would allow more buses to use the Canal Road entrance.

When the University requested the rights to build the Canal Road entrance in its last ten year plan it promised neighbors that the new entrance would be used for GUTS buses. Georgetown students, faculty and staff have been spared from the extended route thus far thanks to the fact that the current set-up of the parking lot near McDonough makes it nearly impossible for buses to turn around on campus.

The other problem is that between 6:15 a.m. and 10:15 a.m. on weekdays—prime rush hour time—drivers are not permitted to make left turns off of the Canal Road entrance.  If the University could get the left-turn prohibition lifted and build the loop road, all buses besides the Wisconsin Avenue route would be able to enter and exit through Canal Road.

The potential roadblock for the plan is the Park Service, which owns the land west of campus that abuts the proposed loop road.  While the road would be on GU property, the University has an agreement with the Park Service to only use that part of campus for service vehicles.  Frank said she is pushing for the definition of “service vehicles” to be any vehicle “dedicated to the University,” which would include GUTS buses.  However, Frank said, the Park Service is “not real easy to work with.”

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Bye bye blue bus?

It’s been a banner month for the Circulator: after the Wisconsin Avenue portion of the Georgetown-Union Station loop was saved from elimination in in the 11th hour by Mayor Adrian Fenty, plans are in the works to create a new line connecting Georgetown with Rosslyn.

According to the Washington Examiner, local officials are pushing for the creation of a new Circulator route that would replace the Georgetown Metro Connection “Blue Bus,” which is currently run by the Georgetown Business Improvement District.

The Blue Bus was conceived of as a way to demonstrate the demand in Georgetown for public bus service to a nearby Metro stop, and currently serves between 35,000 and 40,000 riders per month.  But the Blue Bus was only designed as a temporary solution, and the BID is hoping that the District Department of Transportation will take over the route.

Last week, D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), whose district includes Georgetown, introduced a bill to change the rule preventing the Circulator from running outside D.C. city limits.

Although the BID says D.C. leaders have pledged financial support and Rep. Jim Moran (D—Va.) secured federal money for new buses, DDOT spokesman John Lisle said they “have no plans for a new route at this time.”