How Washington DC fixed their Metro’s biggest problem
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- Опубликовано: 8 июн 2024
- A Silver Line appreciation video :^)
I visited my friend in #DC recently and was surprised to find a direct airport rail link, since many US cities don’t have that. I was even more surprised that it took over an hour, which takes this line into distances far beyond the scope of most metro systems.⁄
So I looked more into the Silver Line, and I’m pretty impressed.
I know it was over budget, somewhat unreliable, and hasn’t fully hit ridership targets. But it’s a #subway built after the turn of the century, when so many cities are going all in on #lightrail to save money.
It also demonstrates some rare collaboration between different states, counties, transit agencies, private landowners, and more - that’s something we can definitely learn from.
Enjoy the (somewhat) full story of the Silver Line :^)
00:00 Intro
01:27 Where it went wrong
03:13 Tysons Corner grows up
04:22 How did they fix it?
05:31 FUNding and special tax districts
08:31 2 separate tax districts
11:03 Other challenges: Tysons tunnel
12:32 Other challenges: Cracks in concrete
12:58 Other challenges: the big covid
13:18 Concluuuusion
![Dimension 20: Never Stop Blowing Up Trailer [Dropout Exclusive Series]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xYeXpbHnGEM/mqdefault.jpg)
Had a lot of fun filming something more location-specific 😎 If you want to support the channel, here are my favourite transit books that I think are definitely worth reading: bookshop.org/lists/fav-transit-books (I'll get a teeny tiny commission) + follow me on twitter if I ever start posting things twitter.com/hudsonyuen
I'm gay too 😊
The Silver Line grew despite the screwy governance and all the infighting. In fact, the location of Dulles Station had to be settled by an arbitrator.
Cincinnati has had an interesting history with Transit both successes and misses that would be great to cover!
Since you're in DC, a video about the currently-under-construction Purple Line would be neat!
As a fellow Nats fan we only have one more year of suffering hopefully before we have an actual team again. As a route one corridor Fairfax County resident the most frustrating one was the yellow line arbitrarily stopping in Huntington when it could have a Belvoir stop just a couple miles down the road that would alleviate half of the traffic in the area while also helping businesses, and extending it farther could provide good value in that direction as well.
“The best time to do it was 20 years ago. The second best time is now”
My exact thoughts on building a high speed rail network.
In Miami we decide to spend our entire budget on a transit study every 10 years.
i thought that was the line about transitioning with hrt
I think all this just proves that the best way to fix congestion in a city is to just build more damn metro lines. Seriously, it's not that hard to fix traffic, politicians, just build a damn train for the cities.
High density cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo and Shanghai figured this out decades ago. You can't solve traffic by accommodating to cars in urban areas. I think Anglo countries are somehow still accomodating to the sunk cost fallacy with suburban expansion in the past.
FULLY GRADE SEPARATED
But consider: one more car lane
I swear it'll work this time.
@@noonsky1794”6 lanes!
And nobody moves!” - Lewis Black - Atlanta
oh yeah sure, they'll just do that
(not disagreeing that they should, just pointing out Murphy's Law that everything will take longer and be much more complicated and more expensive than initially thought)
Your focus on funding is incredibly fascinating! It gives so much context that you wouldn’t get from just a regular review
Glad you like the funding focus - it's a critical part of any project that just isn't shared very widely I find
@@TheFlyingMooseCA You left out the that toll revenues will be used to pay off part of the debt to finance the construction of phase II and no federal funding was appropriated to build phase II.
As someone who lived in DC for 7 years, the metro's actual biggest problems are inconsistency, closing far too early, and distance between stations the further out you get being so large that you may need to take a car or use the bus system to even get to a station in many residential areas. Loved this video though. When I was last in DC, the silver line was still only partially completed and it's great that there are more options for commuting from Virginia now
Stations should be a bit far apart further out, fed by local buses. That means you get fewer stops and higher average speeds further out, meaning you're a more competitive mode of transport. The challenge is to get good zoning and strong bus routes around those metro stops to make sure as many people as possible have a short walk or convenient bus route to get there.
DC resident here. I’ve lived here for 0:02 4 years (before and after the Dulles extension). It’s genuinely a game changer and having moved here from a car centric town, I can’t see many self moving back anywhere without a metro system. Plus, DC has one of the cleanest and most well maintained underground train systems I’ve seen in the US. Now if we can just figure out how to balance WMATAs budget, we’ll be a paragon of public transit in the US.
Get the people in my neighborhood to pay their fares.. this entitlement fare jumping isn’t helping people learn responsibility. The DC City Council de-criminalized gate jumping! Enabling!
@@craigbyrnes7077You're not very bright are you.
@@doridore1234
1. You’re opinion of me is none of my business.
2. Every great leader coaches, behavior, never attacks personality.
3. Gate jumping means no revenue. Have you been to Congress Heights and done a scientific survey of fare collection? Ask the service station manager. It’s not a criminal offense in DC.. so, we get the entitlement jump! And, on top of that, gate jumping often damages the card reader…
that’s more money spent on equipment repair.
4. 1st amendment .. congratulations on your opinion.
Buddha taught that everyone and everything is interrelated. We cannot leave out anything or make one kind of spiritual consciousness superior and the other inferior. Next!
Get the city council to end the entitlement law! Radical responsibility!
Metro is pretty filthy and disgusting. Who know what kind of fluid that is on the sticky train floor. Look at the trash along the tracks. Parts of the stations not cleaned in 50 years. The tyranny of low expectations.
@@matthewgilmore4307. Try visiting other metros.. DC is cleaner. I see maintenance people mopping the floors.. mopping the elevators.. the system is cleaner than other city systems.
DAMNN!!! is it just me or is there a lot more high quality transit orientated videos being created nowadays ?! Im so glad im finding a lot more videos about what I thought was a niche topic! Crazy to see how many more people are into these sort of things, haha. Keep it up!! The editing is awesome!!!
because people are fed up with Americanized (car reliant) infrastructure, as it negatively seeps into many parts of our society
I think people are understanding more and more the importance of good public transportation. Hopefully this trend continues, and bleeds into seeing more actual change in our cities
Do a story on the Purple Line in Montgomery County. That project has died and come back to life multiple times. Also, regarding the Silver Line, structural concrete piers were constructed in the early 80s (before the West Falls Church Station) anticipating the flyover track needed for a future line to Dulles Airport. The Dulles Access Road was also constructed with room for a railway in the median. So rapid transit to Dulles was always the plan (or the dream) way back in the 60s.
Good call on the purple line - having to reprocure halfway was certainly quite something. And yep, leaving room in the median shows there was definitely intent on one day completing that link; love it when we get this type of foresight - in Toronto our Bloor Viaduct was purposely overbuilt with a lower deck for potential subway expansion, and that saved so much money later on
@@TheFlyingMooseCA Please do a deep dive on the Purple Line. It is a tragic story of old money politics, concessions upon concessions, and massive costs to deliver a project that will be disturbingly slow. When it comes online and ridership fails to meet projections, a result of forcing the line to exist alongside normal traffic, make diversions, etc., it will be the perfect talking point of NIMBYs.
@@TheFlyingMooseCAfr. I go to University of Maryland, where the purple line runs directly through campus and theres so much construction because it is literally dead center in campus
There's some supports for the Purple Line right outside my apartment building, they blew up a Rite Aid for it and they've just been sitting there since. There's another construction area for it I pass pretty often, and the only sign I've seen of any work in the past 3-4 years is that recently some of the steel plates on the walkway were painted.
The Purple Line is a failure. It doesn't connect to VA and it's not a full rail line - it's light, takes too long, and the stations meander.
I’m from Ashburn, the end of the new silver line corridor. Having the metro out here has made life so much easier
I live in Ashburn as well. I frequently walk past the metro station. It’s rarely used , the parking lot is empty. What an immense waste of money! And crime has gone up,, as predicted. The Metro sucks.
@@frogmantoad8110it’s not for everyone, but it will be a net benefit as new homeowners hop in around your area who may have work in/around DC as DC’s reach expands more and more. The fact that people are hanging around in your metro station at all is a good first step to building a walkable area/city. Tysons was also very nothing at first and it took 50 years but it is now incredibly developed. Either way, your property value should be rising- though obviously it takes years. The metro is really an infrastructure butterfly affect- it’s not going to change much now, but it will in the future.
Whether it was worth the billion dollars, we’ll see.
I live in the heart of DC. Having the metro out to Ashburn (and Dulles) has made life easier for me as well. We all win!!!
I grew up in the Washington area and remember in 1972 going to Transpo 72 which was held at Dulles International Airport. On display were several plans for rail lines, monorails and maglev's connecting DC to Dulles. It only took them 50 years to get the line built. BTW - the original system plan for Metro back in the 60's showed a "future" line to Dulles. There is a Wikipedia article on Transpo 72.
Yep, from what I gather the Dulles line was left out because it was only projected to serve airport traffic, and it wasn't fully obvious that the corridor would grow as it did. Also just reading the wiki page, Transpo 72 looks very exciting - a combined airshow/transportation fair would be amazing to attend, glad you got the chance!
I was there too, maybe we passed each other in the crowd. However, I was just a young kid at the time, and my only enduring memory of it was me crying all afternoon a day later, after learning of one of the crashes. 😢
@@michaelayers925 I was 15 in 1972. I'm pretty sure I took a bus all the way from my Maryland suburb across DC to Dulles. Being a railfan I made it a point to see the UA Turbo Train. Sadly I never got the chance to actually ride it. All were scrapped. There is a huge rail trade show in Berlin every few years that I wouldn't mind going to someday.
Dulles was also considered a white elephant for its distance from the main population areas when it was built (it was originally planned to be built in Burke) and for many years and it had a very low volume of passengers due to limited flights
@@nicolasisquithcarreno9692 The long term plan was that Dulles was to be Washington's airport with service to Washington National Airport (I refuse to use the other name) to be phased out. The problem with National is limited operating hours (noise) and a VERY narrow approach and takeoff zone. Stray too far outside that zone and you risk getting shot down. Unfortunately congress critters liked their nearby National Airport and the plan to close it was never followed through. As traffic at Dulles grew the Dulles Access road was built with an extra wide medium for a future (now) transit line.
A couple key things this piece misses:
1. Vienna & Bethesda weren't chosen by the two counties because of distinct development strategies. The Orange & Red Lines were both built deliberately along well-established corridors to leverage existing infrastructure &/or right-of-way to minimize costs. In the Orange Line case, it was the abandoned Washington & Old Dominion Railway, which by then had already been taken up for I-66. In the Red Line case, it was Connecticut Ave, which had previously hosted a streetcar line before the consolidated DC bus company ripped the tracks out in the '50s. As such, both corridors were already significantly developed as rail suburbs, though only the Red Line corridor retains some of that fabric today.
2. The Red Line wound up taking *far* longer to finish, because of inadequate geological surveys along the corridor. Instead of digging the tunnel through sediment or relatively soft rock like the rest of the system, the Red Line cuts through a block of solid granite running from the Potomac to Pennsylvania. As a result, it took over a decade longer to open the Red Line to Bethesda, than it did to open the Orange Line to Vienna. Had you actually filmed the Bethesda segment in Bethesda instead of Navy Yard, you would've seen a lot of development that *predated* Metro, because much of it was already there before Metro was planned to go there, and a lot of what got built because of Metro wound up finishing before the Red Line itself did.
3. The Silver Line didn't actually fix Metro's two biggest problems; in fact, in some ways it made them worse.
The first is core capacity: before the Silver Line, we used to refer to the "Orange Crush" caused by the sheer number of people trying to board the Orange Line between Ballston & Rosslyn, headed for Foggy Bottom & Farragut West. That section was limited to 13 trains per hour, because the tracks north of Rosslyn are shared with the Blue Line. Adding the Silver Line along the same route, only increased the number of trains that needed to pass through that bottleneck, and the only reason the Orange Crush isn't a thing anymore is because of the ridership decline of the 2010s precipitated by ridehailing & the Safetrack fiasco.
The second is operations funding: while this video covers the capital financing to get new Metro lines built, that's never been the real challenge for WMATA. The real challenge is that in its entire history, WMATA has never had a dedicated, permanent source of funding, & so has to beg the federal, state, & local governments it serves for money, literally every year, just to operate what the capital funding has built. This has made WMATA much more reliant on farebox recovery than systems which enjoy a half-cent sales tax or some other dedicated revenue stream. Where the Silver Line comes into that picture: it's the most expensive Metro line to operate per projected passenger-mile, and its ridership has not met those projections. To give a sense of scale, Metro had to construct an entirely new train control center and a new fourth dispatching zone, just for the two branches west of Falls Church, because the sheer number of train movements is equivalent to the three existing dispatching zones that comprise the rest of the system. But for all those train movements, the number of *passengers* moved is fully two orders of magnitude lower than what a Metro line has the capability to move.
So when capacity in the system core is constrained, and demand in the system core is high, you can imagine that most of us who've lived here for a while have been pushing not for the Silver Line, but for new lines Downtown. Unfortunately, electeds of decades past weren't receptive to those arguments, and so we got the Silver Line instead of a line to Georgetown or Logan Circle or H St NE. Fortunately, it seems that message is finally getting across, because WMATA is currently studying rerouting either the Blue or Silver Line downtown to create the new capacity needed to let the Silver Line do the job it's supposed to. But again unfortunately, all work on that planning has stalled because Metro is once again almost out of money & so all the effort is going to lobbying in Annapolis & Richmond to keep its operations funded.
Thanks for the very detailed perspective! I try to research as much as is feasible but it's still hard to get a full grasp of the picture, so your first 2 points help a lot to further colour in my knowledge.
Your point about capital vs. operation cost is something that I've thought about more broadly and seems to be an issue across multiple systems in NA. I'm personally a fan of helping transit agencies become more financially independent e.g. letting them develop real estate around stations to create true TOD - and crucially letting them reap the financial rewards so they're less beholden to politically-charged budgets - like in Hong Kong.
Either way, thanks for watching - I did also find it a little odd that I had to switch to a bus to get to Georgetown, so perhaps that changes soon :)
@@TheFlyingMooseCA if you want the full story on Georgetown, Zachary Schrag's book "The Great Society Subway" goes into quite a bit more detail on why the line didn't go there. And there's been a flurry of articles in Greater Greater Washington about the new Blue/Silver line proposals, all of them worth reading, but I particularly enjoyed Nick Sementelli's analysis of Metro's long-range planning.
As for housing as a revenue stream, it's a really good idea, & there might be appetite for it at some levels of government in the DC Metro region, but any housing reform at all has been a *huge* fight in the District, both states, & all the counties & cities, so it's a case of strategically picking our battles.
But you're totally right that all those objections shouldn't stop us from building new stuff.
@@jmchristoph Will add those to the reading list - thanks for sharing :)
Thank you for this comment!! As someone who lives here I do appreciate the silver line but there are some large issues with DCs transit system. ESPECIALLY Georgetown. I go to grad school there and it takes me an hour to get there in a good day even though I only live 2 miles away
@@jmchristoph Would love to get your POV as to why housing reform has been such an issue. I really dont understand why all these empty commercial buildings arent converted into apartment buildings.
As a DC native, thank you for this high quality video. The silver line is often overlooked by many! It's history is definitely interesting and your narrative is perfect.
Glad you enjoyed it :)
really enjoy the end which highlights the point that few people are going to remember all the delays and struggles in the process of building, but many will know and love the end result.
Agreed lots of pain and future pain for the DC Metro but it was worth it at the end of the day. I haven't actually had the opportunity to ride or use the complete Silver Line since it opened to Dulles though....
Ridership is nowhere near expected, and crime is up since the silver line was completed. So who are the people enjoying it? Why don’t riders pay their fair share through higher ticket prices? There is no equity.
Being able to take the Silver line to the airport was so amazing when I lived in the DC area. Walk to the metro, chill until the airport. No traffic, no stress, and no airport parking costs.
As a Montgomery County native, the Metro played a major role in my life. I grew up within blocks of the Red Line and had regular access to buses that took me almost anywhere I needed. When I decided to save money by staying home for college, the Metro made it so I could commute to school relatively easily. I didn't obtain a driver's license or a car until I was 23 and needed to branch out further for employment opportunities.
Also a longtime Montgomery County resident. I used the Metro to go to work for decades. Were there problems -- of course! But compared to driving, it was heaven.
As a former Silver Spring resident, I fully understand why the Purple Line is a good idea. To use the Metro to get from Silver Spring to Bethesda takes over an hour while driving takes 15 minutes less. Purple Line will make it much more reasonable to use public transit. And for so many people who work in Bethesda, especially those without the money or connections to get parking, the Purple Line will be great.
Montgomery county resident here, we need to red line to push further north!
EUCLID AVENUE SUBWAY IN CLEVELAND PLEASE! It was approved by voters but blocked by the county engineer, but there seems to be evidence that it was in part destroyed by competing department stores who saw that their comparative advantage in being more transit accessible would be lost if the subway was built
noted 🤓 guess I have even more of an excuse to catch a guardians game this summer
@@TheFlyingMooseCA Nice! If you're looking for expert on the failed Euclid Avenue subway I'd recommend Jonathan Souther. And adjacent to that research is then county engineer Albert S. Porter, it's hard to find such a cartoonishly bad guy for a video on transit
Haha okok, those are helpful starting points - thanks for sharing!
They should replicate what Asian department stores are doing - fight to have the right to be connected to the metro station.
@@ianhomerpura8937 In Japan it's actually the railway company running the department stores at their city terminals
As a DC sports fan / resident, I appreciated all the Washington sports edited into the video 😁
I live along the Silver line and it's really nice being able to shoot over to Dulles to get a flight on the Metro. The one thing that sucked though was, as an afterthought, the train platform feels like it's a mile away from the actual airport and you have to go through a bunch of confusing corridors. It's a hike to get into the terminal unlike at National where you just walk over the arrival road and you are inside. If you ever ride MARTA in Atlanta, the metro ends right at the terminal, though the rest of that system is kinda stupid.
I agree. I visited family last year and rode the line as well. I lived in the area since 1984, saw the metro basically start and expand through the years. Now live in Florida but come to visit family from time to time. Love the system. Back then the blue/yellow line National Airport Station was very similar in distance and looks as Dulles is today. It was years later, that with the expansion of National Airport, if feels just across the walkway bridge. Metro used then magnetic fare cards and was a super system in cleanness and people were not allowed to eat or drink. Sadly 😢today is so disappointing and different 41 years later. Overall an amazing rapid transit rail system including the buses.
@@josearzuaga1839 There have been some improvements in 40 years. It took several major accidents in order to kick WMATA into actually doing needed maintenance on the system and older stations done. I think they finally finished working on Farragut North which is one of the oldest stations in the system. We no longer use those magnetic fare cards (lots of issues). Heck we can now pay our metro fare with our phones and big chunks of the system have cell service. It took a while, but it's here... mostly.
I live right off of the Mclean station of the Silver line. I couldn't imagine this area without the silver line and it's connection to DC and Dulles airport. The addition of the metro has made the whole tysons area much more desirable to live and work in.
So you moved here 4 years ago?
A funny thing that I have to contribute is that in the early 2000s the metro system payed my grandfather to analyze the whole system and make a plan to fix the metros problems
They shelved it.
He spent like 6 months on this project, had his binder of solutions, and they just shelved it. I don’t know if they have ever gone back and used any of the stuff he put together for them, but it is a personal favorite story.
Unfortunate reality of infrastructure work :/ There’s a strongtowns podcast episode with Eric Goldwyn that I thought was pretty interesting - among other things, they dive into the psychology of all these consultants and planners having to essentially bin 70% of their work. It’s quite demoralising but just seems to be part of the game 🤷♂️
They paid him; he wasn’t payed. Payed would indicate a rope was fed out.
@@lwheatcraft Can you explain what payed means with regards to a rope?
I went to Washington DC 4 years ago and picked a hotel on the silver line which I could walk to and ride the train into DC. Good on the DC suburbs in realizing the potential having a transit could bring, something my hometown of Atlanta and the rest of the metro don't care to explore with MARTA.
Yeah, at least it goes to the airport. Except, you know, the next six weeks.
As someone who rides the Silver Line incredibly often, this video was awesome! The information is interesting and the presentation style is excellent! Well done and thank you for sharing!
It's great to see a video related to my hometown. The Metro is indeed a very useful tool here, and it's awesome that they expanded it farther out. It has helped so many people!
I couldn't believe my eyes when I looked down and saw you only had 10k subs. I've seen channels with 10 times that who don't have as good editing or production quality as this. Great video!
Thanks a lot! Definitely not planning to stop anytime soon :^)
I live in the DC area, and there are so many people around me who take the metro for granted, it’s easy to forget that we are one of the 3 cities in the US with a decent metro system. This is a great video!
What are the other 2 cities you have in mind?
@@TripleXRebornpossibly New York and Boston
@@_Bob_man_bro literally forgot about Chicago 💀💀💀
@@jb-br8bflmao it’s not on par with NYC, DC or Boston. Fuck out of here with that 💀💀💀. You’re a novice
Philly has a good system as well that stretches into the far northern and western suburbs, plus NJ transit leaving from center city all the way to interior Jersey, Trenton and Atlantic City.
as a resident of dc myself, (and a lover of the metro and silver line) i really appreciate this video!
I absolutely loved this video. As someone who used to live in DC, I loved the way you presented the metro system and the long-fabled finished silver line. It's absolutely huge that they finally connected it to the airport -- and it's great to see that thought is continued to be given to transport systems in America. WE NEED MORE TRAINS!
I am a huge fan of urbanism, transit, and the DC area. But lol I think the RUclips algorithm only served this video to me today because I'm on a baseball highlights binge and your vid had so many clips of teams I was reviewing haha.
I hope you make a few more videos on the DC transit system. It's a fascinating thing with a long history and tons of virtues and vices that has mostly been untapped in the new RUclips urbanism wave. You don't even have to come visit again just yet there's tons of good writeups online and you already have lots of good footage you can reuse. (Wikipedia alone is a goldmine of topics just as a step one.) Although if you do choose to come, plenty of us transit nerds including myself will gladly welcome you and show you around!
Great video! This goes to show you that building trains, not widening highways, is what solves traffic! And as you point out, transit leads to the development of walkable communities! Caojiawan in Chongqing opened in 2015 with nothing around it, and then it became surrounded by developments by 2019! When the IRT Flushing Line first opened in Queens, stations had basically nothing around them, so all the diverse neighborhoods that now surround that line in Queens, developed because of the subway. Because it gave people a reason to live there! To put things into perspective, approximately 800 languages are spoken in NYC, with 300 spoken along Roosevelt Ave that the 7 serves! Really shows that NYC is truly the international city! In Jersey City, both the PATH and HBLR have led to so much TOD as well as pedestrianizing downtown, implementing Vision Zero (the city achieved zero car crash-related fatalities on city-owned streets in 2022; Hoboken achieved the same as well) and bike infrastructure like Citi Bike which Hoboken has as well.
Love that they based the design of the Dulles Silver Line station off the design of Dulles Airport's main terminal itself! Dulles Airport's main terminal has such a cool design! Pretty small world that St. Louis' iconic Gateway Arch, Dulles, and JFK's TWA Flight Center were all designed by the same architect, Eero Saarinen! His concept of the mobile lounge for Dulles led to a revolutionary approach to airport movement, allowing the design of Dulles to do away with the multitude of gates that cluttered most terminals before it (though now, Dulles has the AeroTrain since 2010). Construction of the airport began in 1958, but Saarinen sadly did not live to see its completion in 1962 as he passed in 1961. By the 1980s, the original design was no longer well-suited to Dulles's role as a hub airport and so they built midfield concourses, with an underground people mover first opening in 2010 to link them.
How do you only have 1500 subscribers?! This is amazing editing and storytelling. Bravo! Have my subscription.
Much appreciated 😌 would you believe it was at 1200 this morning haha
As a Washingtonian who hated flying out of Dulles before, having a Metro line there makes it 1000% better. I remember consciously choosing to fly out of Baltimore National Airport because the MARC train goes there instead of IAD (which is closer) just because of the metro situation. Silver Line is a godsend for us.
That puts you in a narrow category, one who flies enough for it to matter yet one-price sensitive enough that you don't want to splurge for the door-to-door service that a rideshare or taxi gives you.
as a dc native and a metro lover, i’ve always loved how wmata tries to update their transit system and actually listens to what it’s riders need, they’re constructing the purple line as well, a line running through the northern suburbs of dc to relieve more congestion
EXCELLENT video, I loved the deep dives into planning policy as well as execution. Not to mention the high quality editing and script. Feels much more well rounded and insightful than other channels.
I'd love to see your take on bike infrastructure in the future!
As a 20+ year Metro rider, I was expecting this video to be about the woeful state of disrepair that Metro was in during the 2000s-2010s (Red Line Crash, fatal smoke incident, multiple derailments, daily delays and track problems that rippled through the entire system). That unreliability started a death spiral of falling ridership (I fled metro for the bus for several years - even the buses were more reliable!!) and service cuts until they got dedicated funding from MD, DC, and VA. This finally allowed them to undertake years of deferred maintenance and get the system back into working order. I would argue that this was the actual biggest problem of the DC metro, not that one development corridor wasn’t included. If none of the system works, eventually you’ll have no transit system to speak of. I would love to see a video about how they climbed out of the deep hole they had dug themselves into. That said, I do think this was an excellent video for the subject it covered.
I love a good high production, medium-long RUclips video on a niche topic I was never interested in until now
Great video explaining the issues involved with the Silver Line! As an Orange County, CA resident I was unaware of these issues. I was the beneficiary of the completed line in July 2023, when I took the Silver Line from Dulles to the City Center and I loved it! So convenient and easy. The Metro system of DC and BART in the Bay Area are examples of wonderful heavy rail transit that I wish LA and Orange County would adopt. Light rail lines in LA County are just not as good and as for the OC well........ we have very, very wide freeways.
I appreciate the use of the Harper charging the mound clip.
the intersection between baseball and transit is where this channel belongs 😎
Thank you for representing my city🎉🎉😄👍
Extremely well-done, this is certainly a great summary of how *a* problem was solved. I would agree with some other comments here that the Dulles corridor is hardly Metro's biggest problem, however. There were some serious problems in the initial design (lack of track redundancy comes to mind), but one of the biggest problems is that the system in the last decade has developed a well-deserved reputation of being neither reliable nor safe, and suffered a corresponding decline in ridership. The reasons behind that are as interesting as they are numerous and would make for a compelling follow-up.
The combination of baseball gifs and transit content tickles my brain in the EXACT right way. Never clicked subscribe more quickly 😂
I'm so thankful for the Silver Line, and personally dig the aesthetic of the elevated tracks. It makes my commute feel so much more bustling. I can't wait to see how much more NoVA will grow over the next decade. I've had access to opportunities I've never had the past couple of years that I've never had before or could ever dream of. The access to opportunities and thoughtful revelations I've had during my commutes along the Silver Line since moving here have really saved my life. I've met all sorts of people on it thanks to the airport and have grown a lot in those carts.
Great to hear you've had such a positive experience on it :)
I live in Tysons and I’ve lived and work in Tysons now without a car since 2018. Before the silver line would have been impossible. I have friends who are without cars too and manage just fine. When my family visits they utilize the metro and come directly to me without need for Ubers, taxis or their own cars. They live in Philly btw.
@@JeanClaudeCOCOYeah I used to commute to Tysons around the time they were finishing phase one. Since then they've made some major improvements to the area. Though there are still major parts of Tysons Corner that are still quite road centric (along RT123 & Leesburg Pike).
When the Orange Line was built, they left concrete footers for the flyover from I66 to Dulles Toll Road (267). Regardless, they lost the blueprints for the footers and had to reinspect them, but they did use the original footers.
Frankly, the Silver Line is not very attractive for long trips if one has a car. I commuted daily from downtown DC to Reston, doing the reverse commute, and the Silver Line would take roughly 45 minutes to get to Reston while by car I could be there in under 25 minutes.
Didn't know that about the concrete footers - thanks for sharing the commute perspective as well :)
The problem is I-66 eastbound inside the Capital Beltway. So I strongly doubt your return trip in PM rush could be done in under 45 minutes
@@CaradhrasAiguo49Yes the segment of I-66 within the beltway was a traffic snarled mess during rush hour. Though they technically changed it into a HOT lanes during rush hour. Outside the beltway, I-66 also has plenty of traffic issues even with the recently opened HOT lanes (with HOV-3)...
If speed is the criteria, then Metro is only the answer for routes that are congested. Pretty much every trip takes about twice as long by Metro as by car unless there is congestion.
@@jyutzler twice is a gross exaggeration... did you actually run any numbers?
"Never too late to build better transit." So true in so many ways.
How does this video not have more views it’s so welllll edited and 10/10 !!
Washingtonian here. Really glad Washington is developing more transit and showing the country that we can still build good transit.
Also glad that my county took advantage of the metro. Metros can bring connections which bring residents and business, and if it wasn’t for the Red Line, Bethesda would be less developed. Same thing with Tysons and Reston, more development started thanks to the Silver Line.
Yep, development and transit go hand in hand :)
@@TheFlyingMooseCA And for people who don’t believe that, look at a map of London, than a transit map of London. The tube stops at the London boundaries.
I'm less than fond of Bethesda with its way over-development, expensive everything (except Bethesda Bagels), and high-income/low-diversity population. But I agree that the Metro has been great for the county in general and for those of us who use (used -- past tense -- in my case) it every day to commute.
Amazing video with great graphics and tight narration! You just might be the next Alex Davis...
haha too kind - love your videos too, they're creative!
I just wanted to hop on and say how impressed I am with the quality of this video. This one was the first ever suggested for me (prob because I live in NoVa). Firstly, you actually being here and filming made a HUGE difference. It wasn't just someone else's b-roll looped and on repeat. Also, your thumbnails are fire with the retro serif font and the cutout on beige background. Great freaking design. LASTLY and maybe most importantly, the content was really thorough. I didn't even know about the TID covering both phases from the beginning. Really well done. I'm only 7 mins in and had to pause to leave a comment. Already subscribed. Seriously good work to you and your team. Keep this up and you'll blow Wendover out of the way quickly.
Dc metro mentioned… it’s my time to shine
We really do need more Metro lines in the DC area. One that goes all the way down to Lorton or even Fredericksburg would be great. VRE doesn't come frequently enough and doesn't run later in the day
As long as we have slow working overpaid morons in the office which is every damn time, maybe in year 2124.
The solution to that is to expand VRE service, not run Metro into the hinterlands.
@@jyutzler That would work too, if they came every 30 minutes and as close to 24 hours as possible that would be awesome. I'd certainly consider using it to get to DC more often. If I miss the last train though I'd be screwed, so it's easier to unfortunately deal with parking for now
Bus service would be better. There is not nearly the demand to run that many trains.
@@jyutzler true, and they have the express lanes to give them a consistent path
Can't believe I just found your channel....Awesome video! I'm hitting up DC soon and can't wait to check the Metro out.
Glad you liked it! You'll have a great time there :)
When I met my fiance, he lived way by the Loudoun Gateway station. He didn't realize that phase 2 of the silver line had just been completed, but the existence of that rail line definitely made it possible for me to commute all the way out there from DC several times a week. We live together near the end of the orange line now, but I'll always love the silver line for the way it facilitated our early relationship, and how we still use it to get to Dulles Airport.
As someone in the DC Area who's been on the Silver Line myself, this is an excellent and informative video! Great job, dude!
Nice video! Your narration is good with a confident voice, and I especially liked the segment about Herndon and figuring out how to make the project work. I kind of expected this to be a video about how Randy Clarke came in and turned all the frequencies up to the max this year, but you're right, a connection to the Dulles/Tyson's corridor is more important than improving headways from "fine but unimpressive" to "good." Not to diminish that, the only time I've found myself waiting more than 10 minutes for a train since August is the weekend during reduced service and it's excellent for a user!
Glad you liked it! I was only in DC for a weekend and the frequencies were pretty good, but small sample size I suppose :^)
"Not to diminish that, the only time I've found myself waiting more than 10 minutes for a train since August is the weekend during reduced service and it's excellent for a user!"
I've spent half that at a single stoplight. It's important to keep onesself well planted within perspective.
@@Kowzorz You're right, they're very fast headways for a train. The frequency is good and I am praising it. The Washington DC metro is one of the finest in America and faster frequencies have only made it better.
Very interesting stuff! Makes you realize how much transportations dictates how we live our lives.
yessir 😎
This was such an amazing and informative video. I’m a northern VA native and most of this was new to me
This was highly informative and entertaining. Excellent presentation. From one transit junkie to another transit junkie thank you
Petition to extend the orange line to be directly under my house (I’m lazy af and suck at driving)
How about a bus?
People who reject public transport projects are my mortal enemies
They are enemies of the humanity
Some are effective and fairly financed, some are poorly planned and financed unfairly. And those expected to foot the bill should have the right to make that assessment for themselves
@@bertholdvonzahringen6799in theory you are correct. In practice the public has a very distorted view on how tax dollars are spent and don't make rational choices. Not that the government is rational either, they are the ones perpetuating the poor spending and urban design to begin with, but considering the spending disparities between subsidies for cars and driving, opposing transit in America on financial grounds is 90% of the time unfounded.
Hey man, just wanted to say that you are doing a great job with your videos! Production quality is astounding, don't understand why your views are fluctuating that much. Especially your video about busses was amazing and well done! 💪🏻
Glad you like them! RUclips algo is finicky sometimes🤷
I did a work trips out to Reston, VA many times throughout 2022. I was impressed with how quick they were getting building there. The rails and the town centers around the metro. This was before they finished connected to Dulles. I got to go back once more early 2023 to see the silver line complete. As someone coming from the west coast it was a joy to see.
How does this channel only have 5k subs? With production quality like THIS
I got to ride it the first Christmas-New Year holiday season after SV line opening. ;) Props to DC to have essentially one of the best airport transit connections around the country. Having heavy rail to all 3 major airports.
Really awesome video, thanks for doing all the hard work required to research this and present it properly.
I had no idea that so much hard work was required by people I will never meet in order to make this transit project reality.
Glad you liked it - I had a lot of fun making this! And yep, large infrastructure projects always take an exceptional effort to become reality, and even then - there’s always certain individuals that have to go far beyond what’s expected of them to make things succeed 😎
Thanks. This is really excellent work. I'm from the UK, where we have similar transportation problems: holdups etc etc. Your presentation and voiceover skills are superb and you succeeded in producing a fast-paced and informative video that tells the story in under 15 minutes.
Glad you liked it :)
Great press for Metro! Thank you for digging into the history here and visualizing it with great graphics and transitions. WMATA's future looks bright!!!
MBTA indigo line is interesting because there isn't much out there about it, but Boston desperately needs a ring line
veeeery interesting - I was in Boston a few weeks ago and might be going back later this year. Will keep in mind!
Very nice video. I find videos discussing actual specifics about city building history (especially because it's usually much more recent than we think) very interesting.
This video is incredibly high quality; I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that your channel has
Love the mix of transit and old baseball clips! Great video
thanks! my absolute favourite combo 😎
Great vid! I know by the time it got built Metro was the only real option but it really should have been VRE. That kind of distance is just really too far to be running Metro/ subway service out there. The o&m costs are too high. When you get so far out into the suburbs that your subway stations are 3 to 5 mi apart, you're using the wrong mode. The rest of the world seems to understand this. It's why you don't really see that in most of the rest of the world. Even big mega regions like Tokyo, London, Paris, New York City - It's very rare to see a metro line going more than 15 mi from the center. In fact, the only place you really see this is DC and the Bay Area. Australian cities do something similar but backwards, where they use Regional rail service as a one-size-fits-all for commuter rail and for metro service but the problems that creates winds up being very similar to the problems in DC and SF.
Makes sense for BART for being practically like a commuter rail train, maybe could’ve done an express high speed metro? Quad tracked and special metro trains to do such a connection
Very fair - it is odd to add 10% of your total network length with one line! I didn’t look too much into why the metro was chosen, focusing on the fact that they managed to actually build it. But good call on how some of the silver line’s issues could be circumvented if it were VRE, at the very least to make life easier for WMATA
> only place you see this … DC and the Bay Area
Pretty much every Chinese megacity is reliant on a metro to cover the suburbs, and doesn't have any real regional/suburban lines, just like DC and the Bay Area. This is not good practice, but yeah
@@TheRandCrews the Bay got it backwards, IMO. Caltrain stations are closer together than BART stations. The problem with Bart and any other Metro system is that it has to be completely grade separated. It's not just expensive to build it, and to build the stations, it's also really expensive to maintain. Plus, suburban ridership profiles are completely different from Urban profile. So you wind up running these trains really far out into the suburbs to pick uo no one in the middle of the day and late at night or You don't run the trains and then you have these really expensive, barely use tracks running out to nowhere.
Fantastic video! Pleasantly edited and to the point w/o feeling rushed. Ideal. Thanks for your hard work!
Glad you liked it!
I take the silver line every time I fly to or from DC. I couldn't imagine not having it!
The aesthetic of the Washington Metro is among the best nationwide. And that's coming from someone who has lived in New York
"otherwise this video would be an hour long" ... I almost didn't click on this video because it was too short. Make it happen, Captain.
Wow, the detail here is amazing. I think I have a new favorite channel. Instantly subscribed
Good quality video about transit AND baseball clips to emphasize how things were going with it (plus it being clips from that city's team)?! Perfection
there is no situation that cannot be accurately represented by a baseball clip 😈
When half the “Bethesda” footage is in Navy Yard
Great video, but it's a very bold statement that an extension of a single line "fixed" the metro. It has all sorts of other problems
He's not from here and it's painfully obvious.
Wow this was so well researched and put together! Thank you!
You just earned yourself a subscriber this is really good very informative yet also entertaining
holy cow I didnt know, this. the trip from Dulles to dc used to suck. I haven't been there in a decade.
Love how aggressively DC this video is, made me proud of my city, especially with the Nats highlights.
i'm looking for any excuse to add baseball tbh
Yes I miss the era up until the world series win of the Nationals. THAT was a baseball team! Now.....meh.
@@alexdhall Wasn't that wonderful! I also loved it when the whole stadium booed trump when he stupidly appeared at Game 5 of the series.
You've more than earned this sub. Great piece on infrastructure that many of us likely take for granted. I dont even live in DC/MD but it is obvious how beneficial this was to the general economy.
Every project comes over budget, but transit lines are such a great investment. Great for the environment, people's health and potentially saves people money (when they dont' have to buy a car).
Good voice, funny editing. Keep it up 👍
DC Resident for 15 years. It’s not fixed. At all.
it’s better near tyson’s people actually uses transite now
I was laughing at how the story of the silver line is so similar to the ongoing saga of the Green Line Extension in Minneapolis, MN. That project also has a follow up project, the Blue Line Extension, that is trying to get its legs under it. Would maybe make a fun video! Thanks!
Great video! Now as a Montgomery county citizen I am excited for the purple line! The best time to build was 50 years ago, the next best is now.
Yes -- it will be great for our county!
If there's one thing, and one thing only, that Seattle did right when designing their light rail network it's that the first (and currently only until the end of the month) line had one terminus at the airport and the other in downtown. Then as par of the expansion it will eventually* (hopefully, in over a decade from now) also reach Paine Field in Everett which is starting to handle more and more domestic flights since SeaTac is basically at capacity.
Wow, haven't seen this channel before but will definitely have to dig into your library! This was well-structured, well-edited, informative, _and_ entertaining. That's top-notch stuff
*EDIT:* Wait, you have less than 10K subs?! How?!
Thanks for covering DC's metrorail system. The Silver Line was a massive political battle for well over a decade here, but totally worth it. The only regret is the aboveground track in tysons - i really wish it had been underground even with the added cost.
Yep, it gets infinitely harder and more expensive to add on to infrastructure after it’s built - a tunnel would have been nice, but it did unfortunately seem to be a dealbreaker for many :/
Frugality is beautiful.
Great job on this video. The story telling is on point!
I really love the breakdown of this video! I have noticed riding the metro, it feels more updated, they are even putting in new vehicles soon. I’m glad they are finally fixing it up, I thought it was gonna die out for a second lol
Glad you enjoyed! Yeah there was a bit of chaos around the derailment + covid I thiiink
Oh man, great video. If you get back to DC, there is the Purple Line, Light Rail system in MD to look into. Also would love your take on the death of trolley systems and their potential rebirth.
great video, im from the DC metro area so it was great to see. Really appreciate this piece of content.
Rode the Silver line from Dulles airport to the middle of DC in April. I was very impressed with the quality, efficiency and cost of riding it. From Toronto, and it absolutely humiliates the TTC.
Absolutely amazing video!! As someone dealing with coming up with solutions for projects with many people invovled.... "the messiness to get solutions that actually work for everyone" really hits home. I will have to quote this from you every time I get the chance now.
Might be the first time I’ve been quoted 😎 glad you liked the video!
As someone who frequently visits my family near the DC-Metro area via Union Station, I remember watching the elevated tracks being built every year I went to visit them.
It's always refreshing to see more urbanist videos about places that do things right. I feel like it's pretty easy to dwell on how everything is fucked, so thanks for making this :) Your editing style/delivery is also hilarious and concisely informative, keep it up!
As someone who lives in Tysons (specifically in one of the buildings in the wide aerial shot), two things: 1) wild to see my building in a RUclips video, even at a distance; 2) can’t overstate how crucial the Silver Line is for me. Made it entirely possible to live & work in Tysons while still having DC close at hand, particularly during rush hour when trying to drive in on 267 or I-66 would be a disaster, to say nothing of traffic in DC itself.
Great video on the history and challenges of the line!