It’s a little slow – the GMarker class is apparently designed with too many features to be used in mass quantities with decent performance, and it’s the built-in option when using GGeoXml to render a KML file. I’m currently exploring other options for future maps.

to embed:
<iframe src ="http://opinionnation.org/maps/smarttrip.html" width="100%" height="420px" frameborder="no" align="center"></iframe>

As a newly constructed line, this “streetcar” makes no sense whatsoever – why waste all that transit money replacing a traffic-ridden rushhour-only shuttle bus with a traffic-ridden train? We already have a bus system as well as more than enough people using their own cars. Confused, I explored the area in Google Earth.

I encourage you to zoom in on the satellite feed:

Turns out, there’s a 6 mile long singletrack already built & in place(The Shepherd Industrial Spur) that can deliver people from the Anacostia Metro to the dense employment centers at NRL, Bolling, & Anacostia with a little fixing up, as well as to the new St. Elizabeth’s DHS complex on a 1-mile spur that’s been graveled over (Replacing a Metro infill station likely to cost $100-$200 million). It’s owned but unused by CSX. A few of the grade intersections appear to be paved over, but most are signalized & a few are even bridged. With a few thousand feed of freight track separation in front of Fort Dupont, you could even utilize another 1.5 miles of track to run a transit line all the way up to the Minnesota Avenue station on the Orange Line.

Yes, it would be singletracked, but you can still do a lot with a singletrack, particularly if you double-track a few hundred feet in front of the Anacostia Metro Station, effectively dividing the span into two 4-mile tracks. Thus, two 400-foot long light rail vehicles serving 6 stations each on 4-mile-long segments would be implemented for a few million dollars, with traffic problems limited to isolated base roads & 1 grade crossing each on Suitland Parkway, South Capitol Street, and Howard Road.

The city saw this, and sprang to buy the rights from CSX and begin operation. When CSX revealed that they only had easement rights over some of the land, the District tried to renegotiate the $16M they’d offered, and CSX held out. Meanwhile the people enthusiastic about streetcars (who had been bothered that it wasn’t actually on any walkable streets) grabbed the reins and took the approved, groundbroken project to the nearest suitable right of way – South Capitol Street – a freeway anathema to the concept of “streetcar”. Anywhere else, and the busy 2-4 lane semi-urban streets of Anacostia would have to be widened beyond practicality. The three years since then have seen the project stall, an anachronism which noone wanted to build.

The City Paper describes the situation well.

Don’t look at it as a streetcar, look at it as light rail that extends Metro. This is perhaps a third of the benefit of a new Metro line across Anacostia, at 1% of the price. It won’t automatically revitalize Minnesota Avenue due to the quarter-mile walk, but it will serve it better for residents than buses during peak hours, especially once Poplar Point is built, and it will make the jobs overlooking Potomac in SW quite transit-accessible for nonresidents.

Janney Elementary School next door is one of the most overcrowded schools in the District.  The building was recently designated as historically protected, and the school system wants to renovate it and build additional footage, in effect doubling its size.  A joint building on both parcels was proposed, and thus began a long, hard slog through the approval process.

We’re most of the way through 2008, and every plan that’s been brought up has been shot down, a back and forth of delays that leaves the library in a 5,000 square foot interim location, the demolished site a brownfield.  People want their library, and there is a lot of finger pointing at the differing needs of developers, the Mayor’s office, the school system, and the library system.  The failure of the discussion has even prompted a debate on the use of surplus public land.

Area residents want the open space & recreation area for their children & for community uses.  Connecting additional school space & the library would be nice, but building over the soccer field that backs the library is highly unpopular.  Meanwhile, any PPP that brings in money would require parking that would further reduce recreation space.  The site has a high-water-table underground stream making underground development impractical.

In my mind, a large mixed-use building with school, library, residential, commercial, & recreational could fit the bill if it used a green roof and multilevel parking.  So I set off to see how that might be done, using Sketchup as a modeling tool

I attempted to maximize FAR & community uses for the site, assuming no underground parking is available, that the mature-treed parklike area is off-limits (becoming a pocket park), that Old Janney itself is off-limits as a recently designated historic building (which could become whatever is able to use its facilities).

I played around with it for a while & lost interest until the subject started thread-jacking several  Greater Greater Washington threads recently.  So I thought I’d share my ‘have your cake and eat it too’ plan.

Sketchup Model (Get Sketchup)

The building includes approximately:

• 156k sqft residential space
• A 0.6 acre wooded pocket park
• 44k sqft streetfront & 2nd-level retail
• Old Janney School building unchanged, for whatever purpose necessary
• 148k sqft school area, including:
• 25k sqft cafeteria, possibly dual-use as an evening restaurant
• 59k sqft classrooms & administrative
• 19k sqft auditorium/stage
• 29k sqft library & community center, plus
• 15.5k sqft class-instruction library section
• 1.65 acres roof recreational space managed as school ground during school hours, and as a public rec center at other times, including:
• 16k sqft indoor rec center
• 10k sqft shaded/paved basketball court
• Soccer field w/ bleachers
• Kickball field
• Playground
• 89000 sqft parking spaces on three levels in the core of the building, enough for approximately 150 spaces
• Wide through-driveway for schoolbus parking
• 6 feet of additional sidewalk space in the middle of the block
• 12 feet of additional sidewalk space on Wisconsin Avenue
• Benches & small plaza in front of entrances (evacuation space, waiting space)
• A 95 foot high roof, keeping under the higher of the two height requirements for the area.