Wires Hanging Up DC Streetcars

Two years ago, the Antiplanner reported that Washington, DC’s transit agency, WMATA, owned several modern streetcars but hadn’t built any tracks for them to run on. As today’s Washington Post observes, the cars still sit in storage, more evidence of WMATA’s ineptitude.

Other than the lack of any money to lay new streetcar tracks, a major problem is an old law that forbids streetcar companies from using overhead wires in the “federal city” (Washington’s city limits as of 1887). In DC’s streetcar era, the companies dealt with this restriction by accessing a power line through a groove in the street, much like a cable-car groove. In some cases (such as the tracks shown above, which still exist near Georgetown University today), the tracks originally were for cable cars, so it was easy to swap out an electrical cable for a mechanical one.

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