This site tells the story of the Washington Metro, a 103-mile rapid transit system serving Washington, D.C., and the surrounding areas of Maryland and Virginia. Planning for Metro began in the 1950s, construction began in 1969, and the first segment opened for operation in 1976. Metro is one of the largest public-works projects ever built, and it is the second-busiest rail transit system in the United States. Metro is the creation of thousands of planners, engineers, architects, and builders, and hundreds of thousands of neighbors and riders. Whatever your role, we hope you will share your own experiences as part of the ECHO Science and Technology Memory Bank. This site was researched and written by Zachary M. Schrag, author of The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

Ambiance Of Metro Might Take Sharp Turn

By Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 2, 2007; A01

Metro's new general manager wants to get rid of the carpet in trains, brighten the lighting in stations and increase advertising in stations, trains and buses.

In many places, such mundane changes would be met with a shrug.

But this is the Washington area Metro, which has long prided itself on a dignified ambiance that is supposed to make it better than the average commuter system.

The changes are intended to help make the nation's second-busiest subway more modern and functional. As the system struggles to keep pace with growing demand, Metro's new top executive, John B. Catoe Jr., wants to focus the agency's limited resources toward moving people to and from work and away from some costly features that gave the subway a distinctive, first-class feel when it opened 31 years ago.

With ridership continuing to swell, the debate over those trade-offs is sharpening.

Underground in D.C. Zachary M. Schrag, an assistant professor of history at George Mason University, grew up with the Washington, D.C., Metro rail system, and now he chronicles its history. The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro (2006; Johns Hopkins University Press; 346 pp.; $30) seeks to put the ongoing controversy over rail transit - whether the high cost is justified - in historical perspective. "Metro was never intended to be the cheapest solution to any problem," he writes.

The story he tells is relevant to all metropolitan areas struggling with multiple jurisdictions, federal constraints, and a shrinking economy.

There were a number of alternatives to a rail system in the 1950s, when Metro was first proposed. Ideas ranged from imposing strict land-use and fuel-consumption controls, to tolerating or encouraging decentralization, to building many more freeways, or (D.C.'s choice) building both freeways and rail. A brief comparison to Atlanta, which at first chose something more like the third option, suggests that Washington is not worse off.

To be sure, Metro does not guarantee transit-oriented development. This is the main message of Schrag's key eighth chapter, "The District." Suburban Arlington and Montgomery County managed to encourage transit-oriented development near Metro stations; Fairfax County did not. TOD, he concludes, "is a human cultivar, demanding care, foresight, and political will."

Even a transit line needs planning help to make a livable city.

Book Review
The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro (John Hopkins University Press 2006).
By Zachary M. Schrag

What's the deal with... Georgetown not having a Metro stop?
by Clayton McCleskey
Hatchet Reporter