[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 44 (Thursday, March 29, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3146-S3148]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  25TH ANNIVERSARY OF WASHINGTON METRO

  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, tomorrow, March 29, 2001, the Washington 
Metropolitan Area Transit Authority will celebrate the 25th Anniversary 
of passenger service on the Metrorail system. I want to take this 
opportunity to congratulate WMATA on this important occasion and to 
recognize the extraordinary contribution Metro has made to this region 
and to our Nation.
  For the past quarter century, the Washington Metro system has served 
as a shining example of a public investment in the Washington 
Metropolitan area's future. It provides a unified and coordinated 
transportation system for the region, enhances mobility for the 
millions of residents, visitors and the federal workforce in the 
region, promotes orderly growth and development of the region, enhances 
our environment, and preserves the beauty and dignity of our Nation's 
Capital. It is also an example of an unparalleled partnership that 
spans every level of government from city to state to federal.
  Since passenger service first began in 1976, Metrorail has grown from 
a 4.6 mile, five station, 22,000 passenger service to a comprehensive 
103-mile, 83 station, and 600,000 passenger system serving the entire 
metropolitan region, and with even more service and stations on a fast 
track toward completion. Today, the Metro system is the second busiest 
rapid transit operation in the country, carrying nearly one-fifth of 
the region's daily commuters traveling to the metropolitan core and 
taking more than 270,000 vehicles off the roads every day. It is also 
one of the finest, cleanest, safest and most reliable transportation 
systems in the Nation.
  Reaching this important milestone has not been an easy task, by any 
measure. It took extraordinary vision and perseverance to build the 103 
mile subway system over the past twenty five years and, as the 
Washington Post has recently underscored in two articles about the 
Metro system, it will require an equal or even greater commitment to 
address the challenges that lie ahead. I ask unanimous consent that the 
text of the first of these articles be included in the Record 
immediately following my statement.
  The great communities throughout the world are the ones that have 
worked to preserve and enhance their historic and natural resources; 
provide good transportation systems for citizens to move to their 
places of employment and to public facilities freely; and invest in 
neighborhoods and local business districts. These are among the things 
that contribute to the livability of our communities and enrich the 
lives of our citizens. I submit that the Metro system and the regional 
cooperation which it has helped foster has helped make this region a 
community in which we can all be proud.
  This week's celebration is a tribute to everyone involved in the 
continuing intergovernmental effort to provide mass transit to the 
people of the Washington Metropolitan area--those local, State and 
federal officials who had the vision to begin this project 25 years ago 
and who have worked so steadfastly over the years to support the 
system. This foresight has been well rewarded and I join in celebrating 
this special occasion.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Mar. 25, 2001]

             Region's Subway System Begins to Show Its Age

                          (By Lyndsey Layton)

       As Washington's Metro trains hummed to life 25 years ago, 
     many people didn't know what to expect. It was, after all, 
     among the first U.S. subway systems built from scratch, 
     rather than cobbled together from several existing railroads, 
     as in New York and Boston.
       But from its opening on March 27, 1976, Metro was a new 
     American monument. Embraced by locals and tourists, it became 
     a $9.4 billion model for moving people swiftly between 
     suburbs and the city. Riders have lately flocked to Metro 
     faster than it can buy rail cars to carry them, a fortune 
     never anticipated by its designers.
       The Metro would provide to be far more than a people mover. 
     It shaped the region in dramatic ways, turning the village of 
     Bethesda into a small city, reviving sagging Clarendon, 
     pumping new life into downtown by creating mass transit 
     access that eventually lured the MCI Center and its 
     professional sports teams to Gallery Place.
       The Metro system has become--among many other things--a 
     gathering place, a unifier, a matchmarker, a land developer, 
     an economic power and a community planner.
       But while Metro fulfilled some dreams, it left others 
     unrealized. Ideas that made sense when the subway was built 
     turned out to be mistakes. Escalators open to the sky are 
     falling apart after decades of soaking in rain and snow. The 
     two-track design of the railroad is too simple for increasing 
     demands for service.
       Metro is lapping up tax dollars to keep its aging equipment 
     running.
       And the rail lines don't reach where most movement now 
     takes place: suburb to suburb. Transit managers have grand 
     visions for Metro's next 25 years: They want to connect major 
     suburbs with rail and to use the more flexible bus system to 
     follow the market, joining suburbs, carrying the spillover 
     from rail lines, stepping in to fill gaps.
       They dream of a transit system that forges the region's 
     destiny for the next quarter-century as it did for the past.


                           Molding the Region

       The transit system has sprouted restaurant rows in Bethesda 
     and Ballston, shops and offices in Pentagon City and around 
     Union station, affordable housing in Virginia Square, 
     economic revival on U Street. Metro means cheap mobility for 
     college students.
       It has helped diversify the inner suburbs, encouraging 
     immigrants from Bolivia and Peru to settle in Arlington. It 
     made it possible for many of the 300,000 federal employees to 
     buy single-family homes in close-in communities and work in 
     downtown Washington. It even gave a name to the neighborhood 
     of Friendship Heights, which most called Chevy Chase in the 
     days before the subway station.
       Metro has tied together a region fractured by state lines, 
     race and class.
       ``You've got people of different races, different classes, 
     different job descriptions, from city and from suburb, old 
     and young, able and disabled,'' said Zachary Schrag, a 
     graduate student at Columbia University who is writing his 
     dissertation about the Metro. ``And they actually treat each 
     other pretty civilly most of the time.''


                             Moving People

       Alan Sussman studies Torah on the Red Line. Frank Lloyd 
     takes his twin girls for all-day rides as a cheap diversion. 
     Oren Hirsch, 14, always tries to claim the seat directly 
     behind the operator so he can peer through the smoked-glass 
     window and watch the controls and the track bed rushing under 
     the train.
       Metro is carrying about 600,000 passengers a day on its 
     trains and 500,000 on buses, making it the nation's second-
     busiest transit system behind New York's.
       That's a ranking that none of the original planners dreamed 
     of when they were designing the system in the late 1060s.
       ``I'm a believer, and it has even outstripped my 
     expectations,'' said Cleatus Barnett, 73, who was appointed 
     to the Metro board of directors in 1971 and is the longest 
     continually serving member.
       The subway takes more than 270,000 cars off the road each 
     day, Metro officials say. Those cars would have used more 
     than 12 million gallons of gasoline a year and needed 30 
     additional highway lanes and 1,800 acres of parking.
       Mary Margaret Whipple, a state senator from Arlington and a 
     past member of the Metro board, puts it this way, ``One 
     hundred thousand people a day go underneath Arlington on the 
     Metro system instead of through Arlington in their cars.''
       As highway traffic gets worse, subway ridership has soared. 
     Ridership records are shattered regularly, thanks in part to 
     a robust economy, strong tourism, a new transit subsidy 
     extended to federal workers and fares that haven't increased 
     since 1995.


                            an early vision

       Before it opened, Metro had trouble recruiting workers, who 
     were wary abut toiling in the dark underground. ``All people 
     knew about subways was New York,'' said Christopher Scripp, a 
     Cleveland Park Station manager, who was a Metrobus driver 
     when he became one of the first subway employees.
       The architect, Harry M. Weese, had been sent on a tour of 
     European subways with instructions to combine the world's 
     best designs into a new American monument.

[[Page S3147]]

       Weese dreamed big, and a legion of engineers followed his 
     concept to launch a transit system that would eventually cost 
     $9.4 billion and stretch 103 miles across two rivers, two 
     states and the District.
       With their coffered concrete arches and floating mezzanines 
     lighted dramatically from below, the stations were celebrated 
     by everyone from architecture critics to construction 
     workers.


                            design problems

       But planners can see only so far into the future. What they 
     failed to recognize as a service area--the edge cities 
     outside the orbit of downtown Washington--has left Metro with 
     the challenge of trying to be useful to people who don't live 
     or work where the subway lines run.
       They plotted a hub-and-spoke pattern of five lines with 83 
     stations stretching from the suburbs to the center of the 
     District to ferry federal workers from homes to offices. But 
     development patterns have since strayed, creating suburban 
     communities and office centers far from the subway lines in 
     upper Montgomery, Howard, Southern Maryland, western Fairfax, 
     Loudoun and Prince William.
       Those patterns are going to intensify. In another 25 years, 
     two-thirds of all daily trips in the region will be from 
     suburb to suburb, according to the region's Transportation 
     Planning Board. Transit advocates have been lobbying for 
     several years for a Purple Line to connect Bethesda in 
     Montgomery County with New Carrollton in Prince George's 
     County. Advocates say the Purple Line is the best bet for a 
     fast connection between the counties, since the proposed 
     intercounty connector linking I-270 and I-95 has been 
     sidelined.
       Metro planners are also looking at ways to connect Prince 
     George's County with Alexandria by running rail over the new 
     Woodrow Wilson Bridge.
       Metro has started several new suburb-to-suburb bus routes, 
     though it acknowledges buses are a far cry from rapid rail 
     service.


                          changing communities

       The original 103-mile Metro system was finished in January, 
     when the final five stations opened on the Green Line in the 
     District and Prince George's. While Metro is primarily a 
     people mover, it also can change the look and feel of a 
     community, for better or worse. Even in neighborhoods that 
     waited many years for Metro service, people have mixed 
     feelings about living on the subway line.
       ``The more accessible transportation is, the more likely 
     developers are going to come into your neighborhood and price 
     you out,'' said Brenda Richardson, a consultant who runs her 
     firm, Women Like Us, from he rented home five blocks from the 
     new Congress Heights Station.
       ``People here are worried about being displaced. We feel 
     like we stayed here when things were awful, and now that the 
     community is a prime place for development, we're going to be 
     booted out.... Gentrification to a lot of black folks means 
     the white folks are coming.''
       Communities like Arlington and Bethesda either require 
     affordable housing near Metro stations or offer incentives to 
     developers who set aside a portion of a project to affordable 
     housing.
       Richardson wants a similar protection in the District. ``I 
     don't like the idea that Metro can destabilize communities,'' 
     she said. ``There needs to be some sort of policy that is set 
     so that when Metro comes into neighborhoods, developers are 
     not at liberty to push out longtime residents, seniors and 
     renters.''
       Exactly how Metro changes a community has plenty to do with 
     the decisions made by the community's own planners and 
     leaders.
       Metro is the reason some places, like Bethesda or the 
     stretch between Rosslyn and Ballston in Arlington, have seen 
     thriving ``urban villages'' sprout up around their stations 
     while other spots, such as Rhode Island Avenue in the 
     District or Addison Road in Prince George's have stations 
     that are relatively isolated and undeveloped.


                           arlington's model

       Arlington County is widely seen as the gold standard for 
     molding growth around Metro. Along the five-station corridor 
     from Rosslyn to Ballston, which opened in 1979, Arlington 
     leveraged the subway stations to attract jobs, housing and 
     commercial development.
       ``There is no better success story,'' said Stewart 
     Schwartz, of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
       The story starts with Arlington leaders, who recognized 
     early on that Metro could be powerful enough to revitalize 
     the sagging commercial corridor between Rosslyn and Ballston.
       They fought to change the route of the subway, which had 
     been planned along the median of I-66, and convinced 
     Arlington taxpayers it would be worthwhile to pay extra to 
     burrow the subway underground and pull it south to run 
     between Wilson and Clarendon boulevards.
       They worked with residents to establish a vision for the 
     development they wanted and wrote zoning laws to make it 
     happen. The plan was high-density, high-rise office, retail 
     and residential space next to the stations, with a gradual 
     tapering in height so that single-family homes remained 
     untouched just two or three blocks away.
       The streets around the stations welcome pedestrians, not 
     cars. There is no Metro parking.
       ``We were willing to go through a major community 
     transformation in order to maximize the value of this transit 
     system,'' Whipple said. ``The feeling was that people could 
     live and work near transit, and it should have a beneficial 
     effect. And it has. We simply don't have the kinds of traffic 
     problems that exist elsewhere.''
       With offices, shops and housing near Metro, the station 
     becomes as much destination as origin. Trains are full coming 
     and going.
       That's not the case for most suburban Metro stations. 
     ``Most of the trains leave most of the stations most of the 
     time essentially empty,'' said Ed Risse, a Vienna-based 
     consultant who has closely studied the link between urban 
     development and public transit systems such as Metro. ``In 
     the morning, it's crowded and uncomfortable. But going in at 
     midday and out in the morning, there are huge amounts of 
     unused capacity. Looking ahead to the next 30 years, we need 
     to much more efficiently use that capacity.''


                            Other Approaches

       Fairfax County, meanwhile, largely squashed attempts to 
     develop commercial and retail property around its Orange Line 
     Metro stations. Risse worked on five different projects to 
     develop land around the Vienna Metro station--they all failed 
     to win approval.
       County supervisors said they recognize that some 
     development may be healthy at some stations and have approved 
     a new zoning category that allows higher-density projects 
     near Metro.
       But Risse said the county is far from ready to embrace 
     ``transit villages.''
       ``If you undertake transit-related development at Vienna or 
     any of those stations, it's a long, acrimonious process,'' he 
     said. ``There are vocal people who want to drive to the 
     station, park and use it. A larger group wants others to 
     drive to the station so they can keep driving. And the third 
     group lives near the station and doesn't want anything built 
     there.''
       By contrast, Prince George's County has struggled to lure 
     developers to its Metro stations. Most of its larger 
     employers near Metro stations are federal agencies. Many of 
     its stations are hard to reach by foot and are surrounded by 
     large parking lots or garages.
       ``prince George's took a $10 billion investment and put it 
     on the shelf,'' Schwartz said. ``The bottom line is, today 
     there are four spurs of the Metro system in Prince George's--
     more than any other jurisdiction--and very little 
     development.''
       Prince George's planners forecast little additional 
     development 25 years form now. Using projections made by 
     local counties, the Metropolitan Washington Council of 
     Governments created a map that predicts regional development 
     by 2025. It shows that Prince George's offices expect few 
     projects to be built around their Metro stations.
       Metro was one of the first transit agencies in the country 
     to sell or lease land it owns near stations. To date, Metro 
     has approved about 40 such projects, of which 27 have been 
     built and generate about $6 million in annual revenue for the 
     agency. Metro has identified about 400 additional acres it 
     wants to develop.


                            Roads and Rails

       Critics, such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, say Metro 
     could be more aggressive in developing projects around its 
     stations and that too much land is developed to parking and 
     roads. The environmental group says Metro should instead 
     develop shops, offices and restaurants so people would ride 
     the trains to--as well as from--the station, to invigorate 
     the community. But Metro General Manager Richard A. White 
     said the system has historically stayed out of local affairs.
       Meanwhile, the road network carries the load that Metro 
     can't. The high-tech corridor of Northern Virginia, the 
     biotech community in Montgomery County and the Navy's 
     expanding air station in Southern Maryland are fed by 
     congested highways or the overwhelmed Capital Beltway.
       While 40 percent of the region rides mass transit into the 
     core of Washington, the remaining 60 percent travel by 
     automobile. And when you consider the total number of daily 
     trips taken throughout the Washington region--including outer 
     suburbs far from Metro--the percentage carried by transit 
     drops to about 5 percent.
       ``There's just a limited number of people who can use it,'' 
     said Bob Chase, of the Northern Virginia Transportation 
     Alliance. ``If you live in Ballston and work in Farragut 
     Square, fine. But that's not a lot of people.''
       Still, the subway has a strong public image. In a recent 
     poll of riders and non-riders conducted by Metro, 69 percent 
     said they felt positively or very positively about Metro.
       ``Most people are for mass transit because they believe 
     everyone else can use it,'' Chase said. ``They're driving 
     down the road and they're thinking, `Gee, if we only had 
     transit, everyone else would ride it and get out of my way.' 
     ''
       Even as they celebrated the completion of the original 
     system, Metro officials were working on three new projects--
     extending the Blue Line to Largo in Prince George's, building 
     a New York Avenue station on the Red Line and extending rail 
     to Dulles International Airport, with stops in Tysons Corner.
       As Metro starts digging the rail bed for the new century, 
     some say it should correct its mistakes.
       ``If they just run [rail to Dulles] out the highway median 
     and don't focus on development at the stations, it will be a 
     wasted investment,'' Schwartz said.

[[Page S3148]]

       If Metro won't pull the rail to Dulles off the Dulles Toll 
     Road and route it into the heart of the suburbs, it should 
     make the most of the stations along the highway, Risse and 
     Schwartz said. They want stations of the new millennium to be 
     built on platforms over the highway that would also support 
     stores, offices and housing--all of it rising into the sky 
     over the roadway.
       ``While there is record ridership and we are doing a good 
     job, it's like having a Class C basketball team beating all 
     its opponents and saying that's good enough,'' Risse said. 
     ``But there's Class B and Class A and Class AA. There's no 
     reason this transit system can't be Class AA.''

                          ____________________