Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Washington History

Mapping Metro, 1955-1968: Urban, Suburban, and Metropolitan Alternatives
Author(s): Zachary M. Schrag

Source: Washington History, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Spring/Summer, 2001), pp. 4-23
Published by: Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40073484
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The Judiciary Square station is crowded on Metro's opening day, March 27, 1976. Fifty-one thou-
sand people rode the trains that day, though only five stations on the Red Line, from Rhode Island
Avenue to Farragut North, and 4.6 miles of track were complete. As plans for a Washington area
subway system took shape during the 1960s and early 1970s, the designers continually adapted the
route map to satisfy congressional concerns and to accommodate both urban residents and suburban
commuters. The result, 25 years after the first stations opened, is a network that binds together a
metropolitan area spread over two states and the District of Columbia. Courtesy, Washingtoniana
Division, D.C. Public Library, © Washington Post Company.
Mapping Metro, 1955-1968
Urban, Suburban, and
Metropolitan Alternatives
by Zachary M. Schrag
two centuries, planning Wash- People familiar with other cities are often
ington has meant planning the fed- puzzled by this combination. Those accus-
eral city. From L'Enfant's original tomed to the New York subway expect flat
design of the 1790s through the McMillan fares and closely spaced stations. In con-
Commission plan of 1901 and the building trast, those more familiar with commuter-
of the Federal Triangle in the 1930s, plan- rail systems, including San Francisco's
ners and architects poured their efforts into BART, are likely to gasp at Metro's $10 bil-
creating a stately home for the federal gov- lion cost, not understanding that Metro's
ernment within the District of Columbia. urban sections required extensive tunnel-
Even the National Capital Planning ing. Only when Metro's true function is
Commission's 1996 Extending the Legacy understood does its form make any sense.
plan, though determined to look beyond It is a metropolitan system, designed to
the Mall, scarcely mentions the suburbs serve both city and suburb and to bind
that house four-fifths of the urbanized them into a working whole.2
area's residents. The best-known regional Metropolitan planning is not easy.
However interdependent, city and suburb
plan, the Commission's 1961 Policies Plan
for the Year 2000, has long been derideddoashave different priorities. In the 1950s and
vague and Utopian.1 1960s, planners and politicians mapping out
routes for the new system had to reconcile
But hidden in plain sight is a regional
the District of Columbia's demands for
plan for Washington that is neither Utopian
good service and minimal disruption with
nor vague; indeed, it is as real as concrete
and has been planned down to the inch. the It suburbs' calls for economy. The system
is Metro, a 103-mile-long rapid transit sys-
they eventually produced is far from perfect
tem serving Washington and its suburbs. in either its urban or suburban sections. Yet
Metro is a hybrid technology, combining it does work, as both a political compromise

the long reach of a commuter rail network and a transportation system. In a nation
with the frequent service and underground where city and suburb are often seen as
downtown stations of an urban subway. inevitable antagonists, such regional coop-
eration is no small achievement. As a physi-
Notes begin on page 90. cal embodiment of metropolitan identity,
Washington History, Spring/Summer 2001
Metro is worthy of its name. concentric ring roads: one-way streets and
The first serious consideration of bring- expressways in an inner ring downtown,
ing rapid transit to the capital emerged parkways and freeways in an intermediate
from the suburbanization of the Washing- ring three to five miles from the White
ton region. Before World War II, the House, and an outer ring outside the
District of Columbia had dominated the
District of Columbia, a proposal that even-
region in population and employment.tually
But evolved into the Capital Beltway.3
the growth of the region during World WarThe 1950 plan was only a rough sketch
based on spotty data, so Bartholomew rec-
II, plus the postwar explosion in automo-
ommended
bile ownership, changed that. By 1950, the a more thorough transportation
Maryland and Virginia suburbs housed study.
40 As it turned out, he was essentially
percent of the region's population. recommending a course of action for him-
self. In September 1953 President Eisen-
Moreover, the construction of the Pentagon
hower
heralded a movement of federal jobs to appointed him chairman of the
suburban locations. National Capital Planning Commission
City planner Harland Bartholomew did(NCPC), which succeeded the NCPPC. And
in 1955 Congress granted his wish for a
not think that this dispersal of jobs and
transportation study, appropriating
people was necessarily a bad thing. Born in
1889, Bartholomew had become, by mid- $400,000 to create the Mass Transportation
century, one of the nation's preeminent Survey. As chairman of the NCPC, a mem-
planners, having worked on comprehen- ber of the National Capital Regional
Planning Council, a planner with decades of
sive plans for dozens of cities. When the
National Capital Park and Planning experience in the region, and the man who
Commission (NCPPC) began work on hada originally suggested a transportation
comprehensive plan for the Washington survey, Bartholomew controlled the survey,
region, Bartholomew was a natural choicesetting its agenda and picking its expert
for chief consultant. He warned that staff. As one congressional observer put it,
Washington's downtown could not absorb "as the dominant personality, a considerable
measure of credit or blame for the outcome
any more government employment, lest it
choke to death on traffic. of the survey can be attributed to him."4
Responding in large part to his advice, The biggest question on the table was if
in 1950 the Commission proposed a decen-mass transit had any significant role still to
play, or if, in Bartholomew's words, "indi-
tralized plan for the region, based on the
vidual automobile transportation can take
dispersal of government agencies to subur-
over the full burden of transportation in a
ban locations, continued residential subur-
large metropolitan area such as Wash-
banization, and increased reliance on the
private automobile as the means of gettingington." Following a strike in the summer of
people from home to work. Judging that 1955, the future of the city's streetcar system
"the automobile is here to stay [and] its was
use in doubt. And even a healthy streetcar
and bus system was no substitute for rapid
will continue to increase as the metropoli-
tan area continues to grow and distances
transit: buses or trains running on their own
become greater," the plan suggested right-of-way,
a unimpeded by automobile
series of expressways and parkways
and pedestrian traffic, and frequent enough
that schedules would be unnecessary.5
throughout the region to serve its thou-
sands of new automobile owners. With On this issue, Bartholomew himself
employment dispersed, the region could no was undecided. He had a record of sup-
longer serve all commuters with radial porting highways, sometimes to the detri-
highways converging downtown. There- ment of transit. In 1945 he had advised
fore, the 1950 plan proposed a set of three against a proposal for streetcar subways in
Mapping Metro
Washington, arguing that it would "over-

concentrate" real estate values in a small
area of downtown. The 1950 plan for which
he had served as chief consultant dismissed
rapid transit with a single sentence, stating
that "neither the existing nor the probable
future population pattern" in the area
would provide the densities needed to
make rapid transit economically sensible.
As he would tell Congress in 1960, while
some commuters could be lured to transit,
"this is the age of the automobile and we
cannot ignore it. People are going to have
cars and they are going to wish to drive
them." Yet Bartholomew was not quite
ready to abandon the city to the automo-
bile. In 1949, he had observed that "the
automobile has disrupted and virtually
exploded the city fully as much as would
an atomic bomb could its force be spent
gradually," hardly a reassuring image. And
he eventually accused a colleague of a
"prejudice against any form of rail transit,"
insisting that rail still had a role to play
when demand justified it.6
Harland Bartholomew, chairman of the
Bartholomew's transportation propos-
National Capital Planning Commission,
al, released in 1959, reflected these beliefs.believed
that ''this is the age of the automobile
He held true to his conviction that decen-
and we cannot ignore it," so he called for a
tralization was a good thing, and that network
a of circumferential and radial high-
ways to expedite commuting. He recommend-
planner should accommodate commuters' ed only limited rapid rail and express bus
wish to drive their cars. The plan accepted
routes to supplement highways. Courtesy,
all the highways proposed by the D.C.,
WD, DCPL, © WPC.
Maryland, and Virginia highway depart-
ments, then giddy with the prospect of 90-
percent federal financing for the new But even as the plan proposed this mas-
Interstate Highway System. That meant sive roads program, it reflected Bartholo-
keeping the three rings of the 1950 plan, mew's doubts that these highways could
handle all the traffic predicted by his mod-
upgrading the inner ring to an all-express-
way Inner Loop, and building radial high- els. To supplement the freeways, the plan
ways from the Inner Loop to the suburbs called
in for eight new routes of express buses,
several directions. In addition, the plan though these would have to push through
called for a Northwest Freeway through rush-hour traffic, rather than getting their
Rock Creek Park to Bethesda, a North own lanes. And it included four rapid rail
Central Freeway parallel to North Capitol routes, comprising about 33 route miles.
Half the mileage would be built above
Street, and other segments. All in all, the
plan added 70 miles of parkways and free- ground, in the median strips of the new
ways to the 81 miles already built and thefreeways proposed by the plan. The rest
178 miles planned by the highway depart- would be underground downtown. Despite
ments, for a total of 329 miles.7 this underground portion, Bartholomew
had not proposed a truly urban subway, but only cautiously. In 1960, it passed the
designed to get people from one part of the National Capital Transportation Act, creat-
city to another. Rather, in the words of the ing the National Capital Transportation
plan, the express bus and rail routes would Agency (NCTA) as a temporary body
constitute "a new kind of fast, comfortable designed to draft a more specific proposal
public transit between the suburbs and for rail transit in the region. The act kept
downtown Washington/' That was Barth- Bartholomew's focus on rail as a service to
olomew's vision of metropolitan transporta- suburban commuters, specifying that any
tion planning: easing long commutes from planned rapid transit system serve Union
suburban home to downtown job.8 Station, the hub of any future commuter
Bartholomew's 1959 report persuaded rail service. Had Richard Nixon won the
Congress to move ahead with rapid transit, presidential election that fall, it is quite like-
Mapping Metro
The Mass Transportation Plan of 1959 pre- Transportation Agency administrator C.

sented the first serious proposal for rapid tran- (for Charles) Darwin Stolzenbach.10
sit in the Washington region. Four rail
Stolzenbach was a specialist in opera-
lines - routes J, K, F, and part of D - and
eight express bus lines supplement an exten- tions research, a method of applying eco-
sive highway network, shown in solid and nomic analysis to a variety of problems. At
dotted black lines. The shading around route a time when operations research and sys-
lines indicates estimates of volume of com- tems analysis were being adapted from
muter traffic, increasing with proximity to the
their military origins to civilian tasks, this
city. Courtesy, WD, DCPL.
credential qualified him to manage a major
engineering project. More significant than
Stolzenbach's work history was his
ly that the agency would have simply pro- extracurricular interest in local affairs, par-
posed a more detailed version of Bartholo- ticularly planning. After a draft of Bartho-
mew's plan. But the election of John F. lomew's plan became public in 1958, home-
Kennedy to the presidency made planning owners in the path of his proposed
for rapid transit in Washington much more freeways had begun to organize to oppose
ambitious and controversial. them. Particularly vocal were the lawyers
Though Kennedy famously deridedand other professionals of the Cleveland
Park neighborhood of Washington, who
Washington as a city of Southern efficiency
and Northern charm, in his actual deeds hecreated the Northwest Committee for
Transportation Planning to fight the pro-
was a good friend of the city, especially in
terms of architecture and planning. Having posed Northwest Freeway through that
arrived in Washington in 1947 as a 29-year-neighborhood. When, as a Montgomery
old congressman, by 1961 Kennedy felt County civic group leader, Stolzenbach tes-
quite at home in the city. As president, hetified against that freeway, he revealed
made it clear to the D.C. Board of himself to be a potential ally. So following
Commissioners that he wanted "to have the election of 1960, the Cleveland Park
Washington serve as a model for the coun- protestors passed on his name to their
try" in municipal affairs, from the preven- friends on Kennedy's transition team,
tion and treatment of mental retardation to securing Stolzenbach his new post.11
ensuring that the hot dogs at the baseball
stadium were indeed served hot.9 had planned from the
With worries about matters of national
concern, the president had little time for the Bartholomew
need outside
to get people from in, thinking primarily of the
the suburbs
myriad details of urban and regional plan- to downtown. As NCTA administrator,
ning, but he gave important jobs to local Stolzenbach sought to reverse that perspec-
activists who had spent the Eisenhower tive, asking instead how to minimize the
years complaining about federal insensitiv- need for highways with their resultant dis-
ity. Elizabeth Rowe, a longtime resident of ruption to the city. The 1960 Act required
the District who had been horrified by that "the Agency's studies shall . . . include
three-dimensional models of proposed evaluations of the transportation system rec-
highways in downtown Washington, ommended in the [1959] transportation plan,
became chairman of the NCPC. Charles and of alternative facilities and kinds of ser-
vice." Stolzenbach interpreted this clause to
Horsky, a lawyer and housing activist who
feared the destruction of housing in give
the him the power and duty to approve or
name of freeway construction, became reject
the all local highway plans. In November
first White House Adviser for National 1961 he asked the NCPC to defer final
approval of the proposed Three Sisters
Capital Affairs. Most significantly, Ken-
nedy chose as the National Capital Bridge over the Potomac and an Inner Loop
interchange until his agency could produce which refused to cancel any highways.
its plan. Rowe was sympathetic, worried Brigadier General Frederick Clarke, who as
about displacement and the disruption of the engineer commissioner of the District of
neighborhoods, and reluctant to "freeze the Columbia was responsible for public
pattern of past thinking" by building high- works, had nothing against rapid transit, so
ways before the NCTA had released its he proposed to Stolzenbach that they join
report. But Stolzenbach had tipped his hand, forces to promote both a complete highway
striking at the very core of the freeway plan system and a complete transit system.
for the city, and the result was instant polar- Appalled, Stolzenbach indignantly replied
ization. At the Bureau of the Budget, staffer that even if he could accept such an
Harold Seidman shook his head at the "unholy proposition," he would not trust
Clarke and the other road builders to live
naivete of this new agency administrator
who would act without consulting up other
to the deal. Though the technical staff of
each department continued to cooperate in
federal agencies, alienate officials whose
support he would need, and project their
thetraffic projections, the top officials of
thethe
appearance of having "been captured by NCTA and the highway departments
anti-highway groups in town."12 all but stopped talking.13
After November 1961, Stolzenbach got Shrugging off the opposition, in
nowhere with the highway departments November
of 1962 Stolzenbach produced his
the District, Maryland, and Virginia,manifesto,
all of Transportation in the National
10
Mapping Metro
National Capital Transportation Agency To make up for the substantial reduc-

administrator C. Darwin Stolzenbach uses a
tion in planned highways, Stolzenbach
model to explain possible subway connections
at Union Station, March 1964. Reflecting
called for a much more ambitious rapid
many citizens' resistance to the proposed transit system than that envisioned by the
highway network, Stolzenbach recommended Bartholomew's Mass Transportation
an expanded mass transit system, including Survey. In place of the 33-mile rapid tran-
rapid rail, in place of some of the highways.
sit system proposed in 1959, the NCTA
Courtesy, AP/World Wide Photos.
envisioned an 89-mile, 65-station system,
composed of two downtown trunk lines
crossing twice, then splitting into seven
Capital Region: Finance and Organization. radial branches serving termini 10 to 15
While it maintained a few continuities with miles from the Capitol. Even with seven
the 1959 MTS report, Stolzenbach's plan branches, the rail could not go every-
introduced a new consideration: the desire where, so the agency filled in the gaps
to avoid the destruction of homes and with a 15-mile commuter rail line (with
neighborhoods by highways. Earlyless in frequent
the service) and five express bus
introduction, it warned that many routes
of thetotaling 52 miles. As a final after-
highways proposed by the MTS "would thought, Stolzenbach added a dotted
pass through residential areas and arrow
parks" showing future service to the one
and generally regarded highways as section
guilty of the region left unserved: the
until proven innocent. eastern corner of the District and Capitol
Heights, Maryland. And he promised the
As if to emphasize Stolzenbach's claim
to jurisdiction over highways, thewhole
reportpackage for a mere $793 million in
capital
placed a highway map opposite its map of outlays, with the new service so
proposed transit routes. Gone from popular
this (and parking and highways so
limited) that all but $180 million would be
highway map was Bartholomew's interme-
diate loop. Gone was the northern half of from the farebox.15
paid back
the Inner Loop - the so-called NorthStolzenbach's
Leg plan retained the basic
mission
and East Leg - except for enhancement of of Bartholomew's: to bring subur-
ban commuters to the downtown employ-
existing streets. Gone was Bartholomew's
Northwest Freeway. Gone also was the
ment core. Purely urban functions were a
lower priority. Thus, because Stolzenbach
Three Sisters Bridge. The NCTA acknowl-
was determined to propose a combined rail
edged the need for some new highways,
and road
but only where they could be built with the proposal that would cost less than
the 1959 plan's system, his rail lines were
minimum impact on established neighbor-
hoods. Thus, it combined the North largely
Centralconstrained to cheap rights-of-way
and Northeast Freeways of the 1959 plan railroad tracks or in the medians
alongside
of those
with a version of the East Leg to create a Y-freeways the NCTA could tolerate.
Only
shaped freeway whose stem would run19 miles of rail would be placed in
alongside of the B&O railroad tracksunderground
lead- tunnels. Similarly, Stolzen-
ing north from Union Station. Becausebach instructed his planners to serve areas
these tracks had been in place since the employment, rather than residen-
of dense
beginning of the century, a highwaytial neighborhoods. It was this focus on
along-
side them would not divide neighborhoods
bringing suburbanites to their offices, along
with some tricky engineering challenges,
any more than they already were divided,
"avoiding the substantial relocation that kept a Georgetown station off Stolzen-
of per-
bach's and later maps.16
sons, loss of taxable property, and disrup-
tion of neighborhoods" that would result Stolzenbach's plan did serve several
from the 1959 plan.14 urban neighborhoods, including the work-
11
The 1962 NCTA transportation plan proposed a stunning 89-mile rapid rail system, above, but the
accompanying map, opposite page, showing a cut-back highway network, earned Stolzenbach the
wrath of the highway lobby and other planners in the region. Courtesy, WD, DCPL.
ing-class areas of Columbia Heights in the Stolzenbach was a passion-

central city and Anacostia. More signifi- ate man, often unable to see things
cantly, Stolzenbach had redefined the func- from his opponents' perspective.
tion of rapid transit. Rather than being a As a result, his NCTA was unprepared for
complement to highways, it would be a the hostile reaction that greeted its 1962
substitute. It would still serve the suburbs, report. The city's newspapers, fearful that
but it would also serve the city, both by Washington would miss the window for
providing rail service and by protecting it 90-percent federal funding of highways,
from the freeway bulldozers. To those engi- had been critical of Stolzenbach since his
neers and politicians who believed that calls for delay in 1961. Now, with the
road building meant progress, his map was report out, they went after the agency
a slap in the face. again, complaining that it was silly to argue
12
Mapping Metro
the relative merits of highways and rapid D.C. Department of Highways) issued
transit when the best thing to do would be reports attacking the NCTA's methodolo-
to build both. Meanwhile, local officials gy. The reports insisted that highways
largely stayed loyal to Bartholomew's plan could move more people for less money
of something for everybody.17 than transit, but either failed to notice or
More antagonistic were the responses could not understand Stolzenbach's alter-
from road-building agencies and pro-auto- native value system. They devoted dozens
mobile lobbies threatened by Stolzenbach's of pages to the question of whether high-
proposal to shift hundreds of millions ofways or transit could satisfy the most com-
dollars from highway construction to tran- muters for the least cost, but barely glanced
sit, which they feared could set a national at the negative effects of highway construc-
precedent of highway cancellation and tion, especially the issue of destruction of
diversion of funds. In February 1963, both housing.18
the Department of Commerce (the parent Likewise, the D.C. branch of the
of the Bureau of Public Roads) and the D.C. American Automobile Association credited
Engineer Commissioner (the parent of the the NCTA with "the worst example of
13
Washington History, Spring/ Summer 2001
sions and derided Stolzenbach's vision as

"an iron-age rail, subway transit system of
the 19th century vintage."19
The NCTA had one champion, Con-
gressman Basil Whitener, of Gastonia,
North Carolina, who served on the House
District Committee. Whitener had been
shocked by the flattening of Southwest
Washington in the name of urban renewal,
and he did not want highway construction
to do the same to the rest of the city. He
saw the NCTA's plan as the best hope to
provide an alternative. To prevent that plan
from dying completely, he proposed radi-
cal surgery, specifically amputation. In
July, prominent local architect Louis
Justement had testified that "if you had to
do something that was just a partial system
I would much rather start with the body
and have the downtown distribution sys-
tem to which you could always add arms,
but I would never try to make an arm func-
tion without a body." Whitener took him at
his word. Judging that Stolzenbach had
failed to rally enough support from
Walter McCarter had a distinguished career
Virginia and Maryland for a regional sys-
in urban transit management before he came
to Washington as head of the NCTA in 1965.
tem, Whitener proposed instead a prelimi-
Far less controversial than Stolzenbach, he nary "bobtail" system with six lines but
helped convince Congress to pass a much sim- only 23 route miles, mostly confined to the
pler rapid rail plan within months of his District of Columbia. If neither Bartholo-
arrival Courtesy, WD, DCPL, © WPC.
mew's all-suburb system nor Stolzenbach' s
regional plan could please, perhaps it was
time to try an all-urban map.20
urban transportation planning in the coun- It did not work. In the charged atmos-
try." Retired Major General Louis Prentiss, phere surrounding Stolzenbach' s attack on
a former D.C. engineer commissioner now highways, even this plan was too contro-
with the American Road Builders' versial. On December 9, 1963, the House of
Association, demanded that "rapid transit voted 276-78 to reject the
Representatives
has to stand on its own legs andbobtail plan, sending the bill back to the
not stand
District away
on legs that are supported by taking Committee. Stolzenbach morosely
what careful studies by expertsamended
have indi-his agency's budget, canceling his
cated is absolutely essential to the solution
earlier request for tens of millions of dollars
of the transportation problems of to this
begin city."
work on land acquisition and con-
Bus mogul O. Roy Chalk - whose relation-
struction. More seriously, the agency's staff
was cut
ship with the NCTA had soured inin1961
half. The administration coun-
when Stolzenbach rejected his proposal
seled patience
for until the next congressional
a monorail to Dulles Airport -session,
demanded
in the hope that passage of a bill
offering
that bus companies be given equal statustransit
to aid to cities nationwide
would clear
the NCTA administrator in planning deci-the air. The agency's internal
14
Mapping Metro
motto became "Stay alive 'til '65."21 central area that would be both capable of
The agency did stay alive, and in handling all peak-hour trips and compati-
January 1965 released a new report, Rail ble with the city of Washington," and at the
Rapid Transit for the Nation's Capital. Unlike end that rapid transit "will enable the high-
the elegantly typeset and lavishly illustrat- way system to function more effectively"
ed 1962 report, Rail Rapid Transit broadcast by diverting some drivers, but that is all;
frugality. It appears to have been created either of these mild statements would fit in
on a typewriter, with only a few drawings well in the 1959 plan. It mentions no high-
thrown in. Inside, the plan essentially repli- ways by name and includes no highway
cated the bobtail scheme defeated in 1963, map, and an ignorant reader would have
refining it slightly and extending the 23 no way of knowing that there was any con-
miles of rapid transit to 25 miles at a total troversy at all. The humbled agency that
cost of $431 million. Significantly, high- had produced this document was no place
ways are scarcely mentioned in Rail Rapid for Darwin Stolzenbach, and in May 1965
Transit. It notes at the beginning that "no he resigned. He left dreading that the sub-
highway system could be designed for the way would never be built.22
Humbled by the defeat of

its ambitious 1962 plan,
the NCTA returned to
Congress in 1965 with a
rapid transit proposal
that was restricted to the
District of Columbia and
close-in Arlington
County and Silver
Spring. In this map, the
small rail system is over-
whelmed by roads.
Courtesy, WD, DCPL.
15
learned the perils of having a September 8, 1965, President Lyndon

passionate ideologue as NCTA Johnson signed the 25-mile bobtail plan
head, the Johnson administration into law.24
sought a less controversial figure to suc- The Rail Rapid Transit plan of 1965 had
ceed Stolzenbach. They found Walter been a great plan for getting congressional
McCarter, recently retired from the Chicagoapproval, but as a proposed means of mov-
Transit Authority after 20 years of service, ing commuters, it represented a terrible
including years as the head of that agency.design. First, it had five spur lines all feed-
Like Bartholomew, he was a Midwesterner ing into a single trunk line between
whose qualification for planning trans- Farragut Square and Union Station. Every
portation in Washington came not fromtrain originating at each of the five end
local political experience but from profes- points would pass through three stations: G
sional expertise - he had a tremendous rep- and 12th streets, G and 8th, and Judiciary
utation as one of the top experts in urban Square, causing tight scheduling and, in the
transit. As a career transit man, he was seencase of any delay in that crucial stretch, cat-
as less likely to go meddling in roads than astrophic backups. This bottleneck would
loose-cannon Stolzenbach. At the White only worsen as the five radial lines were
extended out into the suburbs, as the plan
House, Charles Horsky watched with relief
anticipated. A second flaw was that each
as the House of Representatives applauded
the choice.23 branching would require the construction
of an underground junction, a difficult and
Congressional confidence in McCarter
expensive task in a crowded city.
was crucial, for in July the stripped-down
bill again went before the House. With The
a third, and perhaps most serious,
flaw was the lack of stations serving the
less controversial plan and a less controver-
chain of enormous federal office buildings
sial administrator, the agency faced fewer
obstacles than it had in 1963. Moreover, being built in the redeveloped Southwest.
NCTA staff and their supporters had These buildings were expected to house
85,000 workers in the Departments of
learned from their mistakes. For example,
to defuse the complaints of both labor Housing and Urban Development, Health,
unions and the bus companies that a pub-Education, and Welfare, and the new
Department of Transportation, as well as
licly operated transit system would hurt
the transit industry, the 1965 bill pledged the Department of Agriculture, which had
that while the subway would be built bylong a been headquartered on Independence
government agency, it would be operatedAvenue. The 1965 plan would require these
by a private contractor. Whitener helped workers to walk or take a bus the three-
the agency tailor its bare-bones transit plan quarters of a mile between the G Street
to suit Congress's frugal mood; later, after trunk and their Independence Avenue
passage, he admitted that "legislative tac- offices. Given that many of these riders
tics," more than transit engineering, hadwould have begun their commute with a
determined the shape of the proposed sys- trip by car or bus to the rail station, an
tem. Even with these precautions, Whitener additional bus or long walk at the end was
too much to ask. The NCTA plan of 1962
feared the bill would lose a roll call vote, so
he arranged for a voice vote. Then he per- had proposed serving the Southwest offices
with a second trunk line downtown,
suaded several congressmen who opposed
including a stretch along Independence
the bill but liked him to remain in the
House cloakroom rather than actively Avenue, but that line had been deleted in
opposing the bill, thus securing victory inthe thrifty bobtail proposal of 1963. Now, in
the House. The next month the Senate late 1966, the NCTA staff began thinking
approved the bill as well, and on about adding it back, making the formal
16
Mapping Metro
recommendation in March 1967.25

To offset part of the cost, they proposed
deleting the Connecticut Avenue line's
Columbia Heights spur, which served
mostly residential neighborhoods of rela-
tively low-income families. The NCTA
planners pointed out that while the con-
struction costs for the Southwest line, esti-
mated at $98 million, were double that of
the Columbia Heights spur, the former
would generate enough fares from all those
federal workers to eventually pay for itself,
whereas the latter was "uneconomic" and
could never pay for itself from the farebox.
Though the NCTA's critics, at the time and
later, saw the agency's emphasis on farebox
revenues and its desire to delete the spur as
evidence of callousness toward the inner-
city poor, in fact the real decision was not
so much whether to serve Columbia Heights
and adjacent neighborhoods, but how to
serve them. Even as they erased the
Columbia Heights spur, NCTA planners
were penciling in a third trunk line that
would serve the same general area.26
The idea of a third, mid-city line to
serve these mostly African-American, When subway designers considered cancelling
the Columbia Heights spur to save money,
inner-city neighborhoods of central Howard University sociologist and NCTA
Washington had been mooted as early as advisory board member G. Franklin Edwards
1962, only to be rejected as too costly. argued that the system must provide a substi-
Following the passage of the 1965 bill, plan- tute route to serve mid-city residents. His per-
sistence helped ensure the inclusion of what
ners regained the courage to think big. It is
became the Green Line. Courtesy, Moorland-
not clear exactly what led to the reversal. Spingarn Research Center, Howard
Officially, the agency explained the change University.
as a product of the city's winning urban
renewal funds for the Shaw neighborhood
(between North Capitol and 15th streets, cated in the mid-city. Edwards consistently
N.W.) in October 1966. As transit officialsused both of his positions to speak for the
later explained to Congress, on hearing theinner city, decrying freeway dislocations
news, "the NCTA staff immediately con-and pressing McCarter to consider starting
tacted the [Redevelopment Land Agency]construction with those lines serving low
and a major citizen leader (Rev. Walter income neighborhoods. In early 1967, he
Fauntroy) to suggest renewed efforts for a put the issue point-blank to McCarter, ask-
mid-city line capable of first class service."27 ing, "Walter, if you eliminate the Columbia
Perhaps a more important factor wasHeights Line, do you propose a substitu-
the presence on both the NCTA advisorytion or some modification along the
board and the National Capital PlanningGeorgia Corridor?" McCarter had little
Commission of sociologist G. Franklin choice but to answer that yes, if funds were
Edwards of Howard University, itself lo-available, a third trunk line would be desir-
17
A Metro Stop in Georgetown?

is a legend about Metro in promising location for a station, the busy
intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and M
Washington. Many believe that
transportation officials planned Street,
a is quite close to the Potomac River.
station for Georgetown, only to withdraw Any tunnel under the Potomac (such as
the one that today connects Foggy Bottom
their plans in the face of opposition from
influential residents who feared that the and Rosslyn) would have been so deep
subway would bring undesirables to theirwhen it got to the river's edge that a sta-
exclusive neighborhood. Like any myth, tion there would have been impractical.
Thus, the only serious proposal to put a
this story has a kernel of truth, for many
Georgetown residents did oppose astation in Georgetown, a 1963 sketch by
Georgetown station, and they made their Williams, depended on a combined high-
way-transit bridge across the river.
opinions known to transportation plan-
According to Williams, highway plan-
ners. But the four planners most responsi-
ble for planning Metro in the key years ners,
of not Georgetown residents, vetoed
this option. Moreover, Williams's map
1961 to 1968 tell a different story. Recent
interviews with these men - Robert Keith,shows that the curve up to Georgetown
Thomas Deen, John Insco Williams, and could not have followed the street grid,
William Herman - suggest that communi- but would have to be bored under private
ty opposition was at most a minor factorproperty. And "if you get under build-
in keeping Metro out of Georgetown.1 ings," Deen points out, "you get into all
Certainly, there was opposition. Thekinds of problems, digging under founda-
tions, and settlement, and liability, and
four planners recall hearing about it, not
lawsuits."
through official channels, but, in Keith's
words, it was "just commonly under- These technical problems could have
been overcome had planners felt a com-
stood. And I don't mean that in any secre-
tive way. It was just, oh, the people pelling
in need to serve Georgetown. They
did not. They were building rapid transit
Georgetown . . . don't want all that dis-
ruption." Deen recalls that Georgetownto serve as many rush-hour commuters as
possible, which meant connecting subur-
merchants j^ere opposed to the "trauma"
of construction, and Herman states that
ban parking lots, bus nodes, and clusters
"in those days, the residents of of apartment buildings with dense collec-
Georgetown and the business center oftions of office buildings in downtown
Georgetown I don't think wanted a sta-Washington and Arlington. Under this
tion." Moreover, it is quite possible thatlogic, Woodley Park, with its hotels,
had the powerful residents of the neigh-apartment blocks, and bus routes, was
borhood lobbied for a station, they mightone obvious site for a station, as was the
have gotten it, just as a station was pro- Pentagon, with its 20,000 employees.
posed for the Capitol in the hopes ofGeorgetown in the 1960s lacked apart-
attracting congressional support. But allments, employment, and parking, and
four planners suggest that neighborhood much of the area within walking distance
of
feeling was not the main reason that an M Street station is under water. "We
Metro dodged Georgetown. were building the system for the com-
Instead, a more important reason was muters," Herman recalls, "and there were
that, while it would have been possible tonot many people commuting to
build a subway line to Georgetown, it Georgetown. So why spend money on
would have been difficult. The most something that didn't meet our goals?" A
18
Mapping Metro
Plans for a Georgetown rail station never got past the 1963 pencil-sketch stage; arrow marks inter-
section ofM Street and Wisconsin Avenue, the most likely location for a station. Lacking a reason to
serve a neighborhood without apartment towers or office buildings, planners avoided the difficulty of
running a tight curve close to the Potomac River. Detail, courtesy, Stolzenbach Collection, Special
Collections, Gelman Library, George Washington University.
Georgetown curve would only have been hood leaders opposed to Metro were
a source of delay for Virginia commuters happy to imply that they had killed a sta-
heading downtown. tion. But like roosters taking credit for the
When the first stretch of the Blue Line dawn, they had an exaggerated sense of
opened in 1977, Georgetown neighbor- their own influence.2
able. In any event, by late 1966 NCTA plan- the understanding that it would make
ners were thinking about running a trunk mid-city line possible, and Congress
line along one of the mid-city's two main approved the modified map only after
commercial streets, 7th or 14th. And the being assured that "the 7th Street line
agency never proposed abandoning the still an integral part of our regional plan.
inner city entirely. The NCPC and the As it turned out, the mid-city line, the most
District Commissioners endorsed the urban line of all, would be ratified in a
Columbia Heights spur deletion only with
grand metropolitan settlement.28
19
Washington History, Spring/ Summer 2001
October 1966 Congress approved a above by Congress.

compact between Maryland, Virginia, Moreover, the financial logic of trans-
and the District of Columbia, creating portation planning had changed. Whereas
the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit the NCTA's thrifty proposals had been
Authority (WMATA) to take over rapid largely designed to please Congress, the
transit from the National Capital Trans- WMATA map would only become a transit
portation Agency. This transfer changed system if it pleased enough voters in each
the scale of planning. City and suburb were suburban jurisdiction to pass necessary
now full partners in the transit project, bond referenda. And a transit system
working toward a regional system with less designed to pass a referendum must be, in
fear of having anything imposed from the words of NCTA veteran Tom Deen,
20
Mapping Metro
The 98-mile regional system, adopted in railroad rights-of-way and highway medi-
March 1968, offered something for every an strips. In the nineteenth century, several
major jurisdiction. To encourage support for railroads had penetrated the city, and with
local bond referenda, the map included dotted the decline of both passenger and freight
lines showing "future extensions" in every
rail transportation in the twentieth century,
direction. Courtesy, WD, DCPL.
their tracks were often lightly used or even
up for abandonment.31
The most attractive route of all was the
"big, bold, glamorous, fast, extensive, and, Metropolitan Branch of the Baltimore &
above all, [appear] to serve as much of the Ohio (B&O) that led north from Union
affected area as possible from the day the Station, through Northeast Washington,
system first opens." Given these require- Silver Spring, Maryland, and on to
ments, Deen observed, "it's easier to sell a Rockville. This ground-level and elevated
billion dollar project than a hundred million route that would bring commuters from
dollar project." Stolzenbach's dotted arrow booming Montgomery County into down-
pointing toward Prince George's county town was an obvious bargain, and every
would no longer do, and planners began to proposal since 1962 had included it at least
consider real routes in every direction.29 as far as Silver Spring. Other attractive rail-
On the other hand, the staff had to keep road corridors included the B&O Washing-
some sort of check on suburban appetites ton Branch that led toward Baltimore via
for service. As Jeff O'Neill, aide to Con- College Park and Greenbelt and the
gressman Gilbert Gude of Maryland, noted, Pennsylvania Railroad line to Bowie, via
Landover (slated for commuter rail service
WMATA members from each suburban
in the 1962 report).32
jurisdiction will be under political pres- In Virginia, the most attractive rail cor-
sure to nail down extensive facilities in
their own jurisdictions for the home folks
ridor was the Richmond, Fredericksburg &
who help foot the bill. Thus there is a rea-Potomac (RF&P) line to Colchester, which
sonable likelihood that pressures will be passed right by National Airport and just
for track extensions far beyond what'swest of Old Town Alexandria. From
economically feasible. Virginia alone is Alexandria, the RF&P went west toward
talking about seven (7) lines. Thus there
arises a two-fold pressure, opposing Springfield, paralleled by the Southern
forces which political leadership must Railway. Another candidate was the
resolve: Building and maintaining support Washington & Old Dominion line, stretch-
for the system - and the tax money to paying from Alexandria to Herndon, near
for it - and resisting pressures to expand it Dulles Airport. As for highway medians,
beyond what's practical. If WMATA log-
rolling leads to a vastly overblown system
the most promising was the planned
requiring an unreasonable request to Interstate 66. Within the Beltway, the pro-
Congress, we could be in trouble.30 posed highway was too narrow for transit
tracks, but beyond the Beltway its wide
The most powerful constraint on plan- median strip offered a route through outer
ners' ambitions was their knowledge that Arlington and Falls Church and into
much of the system would have toFairfax be County, passing near Fairfax City.
financed by bonds to be repaid from sys- Where cheap rights-of-way were not avail-
tem revenue. They knew that to minimize able, transit was slated for tunnels under
right-of-way expense, subway constructionmajor arterial roads, with the hope of serv-
(which costs roughly ten times as muching as dense development already arrayed
building on the surface), and dislocationinto
of neat lines.33
homes and businesses, they should route as Rather than dictating where the lines
would go in each jurisdiction, the staff pre-
many miles as possible on the surface along
21
A 1977 Woodward & Lothrop ad

captures the sense of endless pos-
sibilities as Metro continued to
open more lines and stations.
The first Blue Line stations, from
National Airport to Stadium-
Armory, opened July 1, 1977.
HSW.
sented local governments

with choices. In Mont-
gomery County, for exam-
ple, the County Council
chose to connect Rockville
to downtown via Beth-
esda, rather than the B&O
line to Silver Spring. In
Virginia, some officials
sought a subway line
along Columbia Pike to
serve residential neighbor-
hoods, which would have
been similar to the Georgia
Avenue subway planned
for Montgomery County.
They were dissuaded by
WMATA staff, who ar-
gued that the projected
patronage could not justify
such expensive construc-
tion. For the District of
Columbia, ehtnces were
more constrained, due to
everyone's reluctance to
disturb the basic system
approved by Congress in
1965 and modified in 1967.34 Centreville or Laurel. On the other hand,
The last big decision to make was the they did want the rail system to reach
scale of the system. In the summer of 1967,beyond built-up suburbs such as Alexan-
the planning staff and local officials agreeddria and Silver Spring. The terminus of
that most of the lines would terminate near each line was planned as a busy transporta-
the Capital Beltway, the new highway cir-tion hub, with parking garages and bus
cling the Capitol at a radius of about ten bays to collect commuters from more outly-
miles. The Beltway offered a good compro- ing areas and, in most cases, yards for stor-
mise between a bobtail system and one thating and maintaining rail cars. These facili-
was overbuilt. Planners noted that as of ties would be less disruptive in the
1962, 95 percent of commuter trips tookindustrial
less areas of the outer suburbs.35
than 45 minutes, so few passengers wouldBy March 1968, planners had a map
endure an hour-long rail trip in from
that offered something for everybody. With
22
Mapping Metro
stations at half-mile intervals downtown

Lance Wyman. At first glance, the map
and spaced up to two miles apart inmight
the seem to be nothing more than a tool
suburbs, the system promised convenience to orient passengers. But it was something
in the city and speed in more open country. else too. Bold lines in primary colors denot-
The federal core got service - mostly under-ed the routes that would bind neighbor-
ground - to the Southwest office complexes hoods to downtown and to one another.
as well as the Capitol, White House, Navy The old barriers of rivers and jurisdictional
Yard, State Department, and Federal borders, suddenly less significant obstacles,
Triangle. The District of Columbia got the faded to pale blue and gray. Shortening the
mid-city line (later named the Green Line), suburban branches to fit in the frame,
as well as the residential sections of the Wyman understated the distance from the
Silver Spring and Connecticut Avenuecity lines
center to Rockville, Vienna, and New
planned earlier. Montgomery County got
Carrollton, just as Metro promised to bring
two long lines, one from Silver Spring to residents effectively closer to down-
their
town. Both
Glenmont, the other up the Wisconsin a commuter rail service for the
suburbs
Avenue corridor - previously slated for the and a subway for the city, Metro
now-discarded Northwest Freeway - was truly a metropolitan system. And look-
stretching to Rockville. Prince George's ing at Wyman' s map, riders could see that
County, which shares a longer border with they were no longer just suburbanites or
the District, got four, shorter lines, all of city dwellers, but citizens of a region.
them ending roughly at the Beltway. In January 2001, WMATA began ser-
Virginia got two long lines. By relying vice on the Branch Avenue line, completing
on the median strip of 1-66 to Vienna and the plan promised in 1968. Today, after a
on the RF&P and Southern Railway rights- quarter century of operation, Metro riders
of-way through Alexandria to Springfield, are more likely to complain about broken
WMATA was able to plan 77 percent of the escalators and crowded trains than to
reflect on the historical significance of the
Virginia lines above ground. Some Virginia
officials mourned the loss of a third system's creation. But Metro is an extraor
dinary achievement. It is the third grand
Virginia line along Columbia Pike. To mol-
lify them and anyone else who felt leftplan
out,for Washington, every bit as visionary
the official map included several thick,
as the L'Enfant plan for the federal city and
the McMillan Commission plan for the
dashed lines indicating "future extensions,"
Mall, and much larger in geographica
including the Columbia Pike line and vari-
ous extensions of proposed lines scope.
far It is proof that bitter debates can
beyond the Beltway. The final systemyield was to negotiated compromise. And it is
as delicately balanced as a china dish massive counterpoint to those who woul
perched on a pole. And it was expensive, claim that city and suburb must be rivals,
with an estimated capital cost of $1,828 orbil-
that American society grows inevitably
lion in 1968 dollars, more than double more atomistic. The promise of metropoli-
Stolzenbach's 1962 proposal. But it worked; tan harmony is displayed every day, as
that November, voters in the Maryland andhundreds of thousands of Washingtonians
Virginia suburbs voted overwhelmingly in Marylanders, and Virginians gladly shar
favor of the bonds.36 one enormous machine. E
Eight years of political turmoil, con-
struction, and inflation later, the first
stretch of Metro opened for business in Zachary M. Schrag, a Ph.D. candidate in histo-
March 1976. Each shiny car and each mon- ry at Columbia University, is writing his dis-
umental station displayed schematic sys- sertation on the history of Metro from 1955 to
tem maps drawn by graphic designer the present.
23

Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Washington History

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Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Washington History

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Mapping Metro, 1955-1968: Urban, Suburban, and Metropolitan Alternatives

Author(s): Zachary M. Schrag

Metro is a hybrid technology, combining it does work, as both a political compromise

Washington, arguing that it would "over-

The Mass Transportation Plan of 1959 pre- Transportation Agency administrator C.

National Capital Transportation Agency To make up for the substantial reduc-

ing-class areas of Columbia Heights in the Stolzenbach was a passion-

sions and derided Stolzenbach's vision as

Humbled by the defeat of

learned the perils of having a September 8, 1965, President Lyndon

recommendation in March 1967.25

A Metro Stop in Georgetown?

October 1966 Congress approved a above by Congress.

A 1977 Woodward & Lothrop ad

sented local governments

stations at half-mile intervals downtown

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