Posts tagged Streetcars
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Long ago, Baltimore had an elevated streetcar along Guilford Avenue
While Baltimore’s streetcar network never included tunnels, from 1893 to 1950 the city did have an eight-block elevated trestle for streetcars, including several stations along Guilford Avenue. Keep reading…
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A network of streetcar tunnels around the White House would have been built with this 1912 plan
Ghosts of DC keeps finding fascinating old plans for downtown. This one, from 1912, proposed a network of tunnels for the streetcars, and an underground terminal at 15th Street and New York Avenue. Keep reading…
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Look how pretty transit tickets were in 1937
Cool transit find of the week: This Capital Transit Company ticket from 83 years ago, featuring robins and cherry blossoms. Keep reading…
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Why the streetcar from Union Station to Georgetown died (mostly)
“DC Streetcar to Georgetown is dead,” read the headline. But the once-proposed DC Streetcar extension, likely in dedicated lanes, from Union Station to Georgetown didn’t just die. It died a long time ago. It’s just that reporters saw the death certificate, and that lent a certain finality to what many suspected and others already knew. Keep reading…
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See DDOT’s newest plans for the K Street Transitway
The K Street Transitway will speed buses and bikes down the middle of a mile-long stretch of downtown DC by 2024, according to information presented by DDOT at a November 14 pop-up. Keep reading…
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Take a peek at DC’s first streetcar opening in 1862
DC’s first streetcar system opened in the middle of the Civil War after taking only six months to build. It ran horse-drawn streetcars along Pennsylvania Avenue, and was an instant hit. Keep reading…
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How DC’s first electric streetcar helped build Eckington
Streetcars ran in the District from 1862 to 1962, and DC got its first electric streetcar in 1888 when the Eckington & Soldiers Home Railway went into operation. A ban on overhead wires kept it from running downtown, and the company ultimately went out of business because it couldn’t find another option. Keep reading…
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200 original DC streetcars survived the 1960s. Today only one still carries passengers.
In the late 1950s and early ’60s, as Washington’s original streetcar system slowly converted its rail lines to buses, owners sold or gave away nearly 200 of DC’s best railcars to any city that would take them. Those cars ran for decades all over the world. But time takes its toll, and today only one remains in anything like active service: Car #71 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Keep reading…
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National links: How “green” are electric cars anyway?
The electric car movement may not be as clean a transition as we think. A major national transportation organization calls for a new vision for federal spending. Seattle wants to put a lid on one of its freeways. Keep reading…
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Check out this map of DC’s horse-drawn streetcar routes
New York-based artist Jake Berman created and shared this unique map of streetcar routes in DC. But this isn’t a map of the modern, sleek streetcars we have today. Nor is it a map from the 20th century showing electric streetcar routes, such as the map Berman made that detailed streetcars and proposed subways from 1944. Keep reading…