I learned from Yonah Freemark, principal research associate in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute, that today is the semi-centennial of the Washington, D.C. Metro system.
Happy birthday to the Washington Metro, which opened 50 years ago today with service on 4.6 miles of Red Line between Rhode Is. Ave and Farragut N. System now serves 130 miles.
The DC Metro shows that, with good planning and enough investment, the public sector can succeed and build something extraordinary.
I can't imagine the time I lived in Washington without the Metro, even though I didn't even live particularly close to it — and the system was probably half that size at the time.
This reminds me of one of my favorite (well, unfavorite) facts I've learned recently: When the U.S. interstate system was built, only 10% of its miles were within cities, but that 10% cost half of the money spent. As Eisenhower envisioned the system, it would not have gone into the cities, but instead would have only connected to the edges.
If the money spent on urban freeways had instead been spent on subways, it could have built the equivalent of 36 Paris Metro systems.
That startling fact comes from a new report (summarized here on Bloomberg) that "offers a wealth of original data on the economic toll of downtown freeways, and the economic potential of tearing them down."
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