No Metro in Georgetown: a myth refuted?

There is no Metrorail service to Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown neighborhood, which is home to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a busy shopping district, and a selective private university. The neighborhood is certainly dominated by the wealthy. There are certainly street stories about why there is no Metro service to Georgetown, but Zachary Schrag seeks to put them to rest in his book, The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro:

Now, as in the 1970s, there is a legend about Metro among the people of Washington. Many believe that WMATA planned a station for Georgetown, then withdrew its plans in response to opposition from politically influential residents who feared that the subway would bring undesirables--the poor, the criminal, the nonwhite, and the tacky--to their exclusive neighborhood. In fact, although Georgetown residents did oppose a transit station, their attitude was essentially irrelevant, for a Georgetown station was never seriously considered.

While it would have been possible to build a subway line to Georgetown, it would have been difficult. Georgetown's commercial center, the busy intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street, lies quite close to the Potomac River. Any tunnel under the Potomac (such as the one that today connects Foggy Bottom and Rosslyn) would have been so deep at the river's edge as to render a station there impractical. Thus, the most serious proposal to put a station in Georgetown, a 1963 sketch by [National Capital Transportation Agency] planner John Insco Williams, depended on a combined highway-transit bridge across the river. According to Williams, highway planners, not Georgetown residents, vetoed this option. Moreover, Williams's map shows that the curve up to Georgetown could not have followed the street grid, but would have to be buried under private property. And "if you get under buildings," planner Thomas Deen recalled, "you get into all kinds of problems, digging under foundations, and settlement, and liability, and lawsuits."

These technical problems could have been overcome had planners felt a compelling need to serve Georgetown. They did not. They intended to serve as many rush-hour commuters as possible, which meant connecting suburban parking lots, bus nodes, and clusters of apartment buildings with dense collections of office buildings in downtown Washington and Arlington. Under this logic, Woodley Park, with its hotels, apartment blocks, and bus routes, was one obvious site for a station, as was the Pentagon, with its 20,000 employees. Georgetown lacked apartments or office buildings or parking, and much of the area within walking distance of Wisconsin and M is under water. "We were building the system for the commuters," William Herman recalled, "and there were not many people commuting to Georgetown. So why spend money on something that didn't meet our goals?"

Still, the Georgetown legend has a kernel of truth. Residents of many neighborhoods did protest planned Metro stations, and WMATA was forced to respond, even canceling one station. But residential protests lacked the clear-cut class and racial connotations of the Georgetown story, for the protests were common to black neighborhoods and white, to poor neighborhoods as well as to rich ones.

Schrag's explanation has been met with deep skepticism among the few people whom I have discussed it with. But after reading his book, his explanation makes perfect sense. Most Metro lines were laid out just as Schrag suggests: to bring suburban commuters to the city. Even the few routes that deviated from original plans--such as the mid-city Green Line's routing between Fort Totten and downtown, or the Arlington Orange Line's shift from Interstate 66 to Wilson Boulevard--fit within this larger scheme of bringing suburban commuters into the city. A Georgetown station would not have assisted with this goal. Of course in some cases, such as with the Green and Orange mentioned above, lines were rerouted to serve other purposes, such as commercial development. So it is interesting to wonder whether Georgetown would have received rail service if there had been a constituency advocating for it. But Schrag's explanation does refute the common story about why there is no Metro in Georgetown.