In 1961, John F. Kennedy proclaimed that America would go to the moon. Eight years later, a human walked on the moon. In 2007, Washington DC began construction on a 2.2-mile streetcar. Eight years later… well, it still wasn’t finished.
Finally, after almost a decade of delays, mismanagement, and shattered dreams, DC’s streetcar will open tomorrow (hopefully). In a story by Kriston Capps at CityLab, accompanied by a helpful infographic designed by Mark Byrnes, we see that the streetcar not only took longer than the act of successfully placing humans on a really big rock that is orbiting Earth and bringing them home safely, even huge infrastructural projects like the Burj Khalifa and the Transcontinental Railroad were completed in less time.
Are people in DC celebrating? Maybe you could call it that. Some took to Twitter to apologize for the project in threaded and numbered tweets.
https://twitter.com/embed/status/703336281229627392
2. Changing mayors & agency heads frequently makes it really hard to follow through on large capital projects effectively.
— David Alpert (@alpert) February 26, 2016
Others chose to voice their support in different ways:
https://twitter.com/embed/status/703188925859438593
https://twitter.com/embed/status/703211050167091200
Which DC’s DOT really appreciated:
@jackonfiredc Seriously? How'd you even get it on our letterhead? ATTENTION everyone else, this is not an official DDOT document.
— DDOT DC (@DDOTDC) February 26, 2016
Streetcars aren’t inherently bad. There are many places that they work very well, provided they run frequently and on-time. There’s one big problem with DC’s streetcar that may have doomed it from the start.
https://twitter.com/embed/status/703333066132082688
Hi, Mayor Bill de Blasio, are you listening?
[CityLab]
