For WMATA to make the biggest impact, it should think beyond just Metrorail

WMATA is considering spending $35 billion to build the Blue Line Loop (Bloop), as discussed previously. To be sure, the options presented are generally good, but only if we’re thinking strictly in terms of a single WMATA project.

What if we could think bigger? What if all that money could be spent on a regional scale rather than only on Metrorail? If we take a step back and consider rail transit across the entire region, we get a clearer picture of how to get the most transit for our billions, all while still meeting WMATA’s goals.

In this post, I identify four major sets of projects that meet the challenges WMATA has outlined now and in the past. Together, these meet the same goals that the Bloop would meet, but they’d also come in under the Bloop’s budget. At the conclusion, I also note a few of the very real constraints WMATA is facing with any major capital project.

tl;dr? The dream is that rather than one blockbuster project, we could get something that looks more like this:

What WMATA is currently thinking

As part of its Blue/Orange/Silver Capacity & Reliability Study (BOS Study), which spawned the alternatives like the Bloop, WMATA identified four goals:

1. Provide sufficient rail capacity to serve ridership demand (i.e., try to eliminate crowding on the Blue, Orange, and Silver Lines).
2. Improve reliability and on-time performance (i.e., make it so that a failure or delay on one line doesn’t cause more problems in other parts of the system).
3. Improve operational flexibility and cost-efficiency.
4. Provide transportation options that support sustainable development and expand access to opportunity.

With these goals in mind, WMATA analyzed over 100 different concepts and narrowed the list down to five options. One of these only focused on better bus service, but it performed poorly on the above goals, so we can safely exclude it and focus on the options that expand the rail footprint. The four rail-focused options name three corridors worth expanding into:

• M Street NW
• Northeast DC, either to Greenbelt or New Carrollton
• Southeast DC and National Harbor

Any minimum build should serve the four main goals and at least one of the identified corridors.

What else to tackle

These aren’t the only problems. In 2013, WMATA saw that there would soon be significant capacity problems between L’Enfant Plaza and Southern Avenue on the Green Line; between L’Enfant Plaza and Pentagon on the Yellow Line; and between Dupont Circle and Farragut North on the Red Line.

Costs are a major concern. Since WMATA is seriously exploring this $35 billion expansion plan, we should not exceed that. With that, it’s worth noting that subway construction costs in the United States are, to use a technical term, bonkers high. While non-Anglophone countries can generally build underground subways for around $300 million per mile (Spain and Sweden are particularly good at this), this was roughly the cost of the almost-entirely-elevated Silver Line.

While WMATA, MARC, and VRE should learn how to build more cheaply from their peers in Iberia, Latin America, and Scandinavia, this is not something to count on, and we can assume that the roughly 18-mile Bloop will cost around $2,500 million per mile (and really, the rough costs presented below might even be too low).

I’ve broken the budget into four umbrella projects, detailed below: Upgrade the Mainline, Rosslyn II, Huntington-National Harbor, and the M Street Subway to Union Station.

Project 1: Upgrade the Mainline

The most logical way, though not really the most straightforward way, to serve at least one of the corridors identified is to upgrade and integrate MARC and VRE and add infill stations along the Camden and Penn lines. That would provide excellent service to DC’s Northeast and the inner suburbs that are currently left out of the Metro system. It would also provide significantly better service to the region’s outer suburbs.

There is a lot to discuss about this effort, particularly the hard political questions of Amtrak, freight, and schedule coordination. Setting political concerns aside to focus only on capital needs, it would cost around $11 billion to: remove freight obstacles by building additional tracks; electrify service; build new service and storage yards for more trains; standardize existing stations; build 11 new infill stations, nine of which are within Metro’s inner northeast; improve signalization and timing infrastructure; and rebuild the L’Enfant Plaza commuter rail station.

(Note that the BOS study imagined a diversion to Bladensburg, but the interlocking required to do that could impact reliability on the Camden Line, so I have not included that sub-project. I also have not included any new VRE stations, since there aren’t any obvious infill opportunities.)

In the end, around 12 trains per hour could run through Union Station between Maryland and Virginia, giving DC’s northeast a train every 7.5 minutes and the inner suburbs, after the Penn and Camden lines diverge, a train every 15 minutes. Amtrak might take 1 or 2 trains per hour, cutting service a bit, but it would serve these areas with high-quality train service and provide 10-12 trains per hour of capacity across the Potomac.

Northeast DC: Served.

New transportation options: Provided.

Budget remaining: $24 billion.

Project 2: Rosslyn II (Electric Bluegaloo)

The most crowding in the Metro system has been between the Ballston-Rosslyn Corridor and downtown DC. Even before the Silver Line opened, the line saw crush loads of people – hence the nickname Orange Crush. To alleviate that crush, WMATA and activists have pushed for creating a second Rosslyn station, Rosslyn II, for the Blue Line.

Two options from the BOS Study do this as part of a new subway along M Street. But the thing is, all we need is Rosslyn II. It is important to separate the minimum build from the desired build in a case like this, so decisionmakers, planners, and the public understand how much of what they’re getting is need-to-have and how much is nice-to-have for any given goal. The only way to get more Orange and Silver Line trains through Rosslyn is to get the Blue Line out of Rosslyn; that’s the purpose and need of Rosslyn II. If we also want a subway under M Street, it needs to satisfy some other purpose. No matter how compelling that other purpose is, the point of the new subway is that other purpose, not adding Orange and Silver Line capacity.

It sounds a bit pedantic, but determining the minimum project to meet a given goal is a way to find, and push back against, gold-plated projects. Pedestrianizing a road does not require replacing water mains; building a bike-share station does not require new traffic signals; and Rosslyn II does not require an M Street subway.

In 2014, WMATA estimated that Rosslyn II would cost $1 billion on its own. With inflation, this would be $1.34 billion.

Sufficient railway capacity: Provided.

Reliability and on-time performance: Improved.

Budget remaining: $22.66 billion.

Project 3: Huntington-National Harbor

The southern end of the Bloop has a segment that might be worthwhile: service between Huntington and National Harbor. But, like Rosslyn II and the M Street Subway, service to National Harbor does not need a new subway south from Union Station. It did show up as part of a loop line analyzed in 2013, however, which generally showed promise for surface transit (i.e., buses) between Eisenhower Avenue and Branch Avenue.

A National Harbor extension would still be around 4.7 miles and involve at least one new station, and there is room for that at South Washington Street. At the Silver Line’s cost, this would be about $1.4 billion.

National Harbor: Served.

New transportation options: Provided.

Budget remaining: $21.2 billion.

Project 4: M Street to Union Station

The dream of the M Street Subway has probably been alive ever since Metro rejected a Georgetown subway station. This project, which would extend out to Union Station, is long, difficult, and would be the most significant extension of the subway system since the Silver Line. If it were to happen, it should include the option to extend east past Union Station along H Street, or south to complete the Bloop. Its stations should also be planned for potential branch lines.

With six new stations, a renovated Mount Vernon Square station, and 4.1 miles of new tunnel, the project should come in around $4.1 billion at typical US costs ($1 billion per mile) and $10.25 billion if it costs as much as the Bloop is expected to cost ($2.5 billion per mile).

M Street: Served. New transportation options: Provided. Budget remaining: Between $11 billion and $17.1 billion.

Hitting the goals

This set of capital projects would serve two, maybe three, of WMATA’s identified corridors, depending on how you count them: National Harbor, Northeast, and M Street. It would also improve capacity for the Silver and Orange lines and everyone along those corridors. Finally, it would transform our regional rail network, providing benefits to people far beyond WMATA’s footprint. And even if the cost numbers I’ve put up are off by 50 percent, there would be billions left over.

If WMATA funds these improvements, we could end up with a map like this:

With our leftover billions, other projects might make sense, like the $116 million K Street Transitway or BRT projects in Northern Virginia. Solving the Green Line’s capacity problems by separating the Yellow Line to a new L’Enfant Plaza station might also be a worthwhile investment. But, because these do not align with the goals outlined by the BOS Study, we can leave them on the shelf for another crayoning exercise.

Let’s say all of this happens. What next?

Before you go writing Randy Clarke or the Metro board, know that WMATA has some very real constraints put on it by the US Department of Transportation, and they make this kind of investment problematic-to-impossible.

The biggest constraint is that WMATA can only base its ridership projections on the region’s adopted land use plan, i.e., the compilation of all of the local land use plans in the region. While the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) is the one that assembles the plan, each individual locality is ultimately responsible for writing its own piece.

For example, one reason WMATA has given for why an H Street Subway does not make sense at the moment is that the planned land use in the area does not create enough new riders to make a Metro expansion there worth it. The DC Council needs to upzone that area first to make it more attractive to Metro. This is something WMATA has said about other corridors, too, like Columbia Pike, which is why that extension is not on the table at the moment either.

There is also the obvious fact that WMATA does not control MARC or VRE, and neither MARC nor VRE controls the tracks they use; those are almost entirely owned by Amtrak and CSX. For this kind of monumental investment to work, these organizations would need to strike some kind of bargain.

All these organizations – local governments, MARC, VRE, Amtrak, WMATA, and the US Department of Transportation – need to make a lot of reforms and strike a lot of deals before this kind of capital investment can actually happen. WMATA should take the lead, but such a major effort would need support from the grassroots: activists, riders, and others would need to speak up in favor of the plan anywhere a decisionmaker is likely to hear.

If the kind of project I’ve dreamed up ever were successful, the region would be fundamentally changed in ways far beyond what the Bloop would do. That, and we’d all get a helluva lot more transit for our dollars.