Georgetown never blocked Metro stop

by David Alpert • June 20, 2007

Conventional wisdom says that the Washington DC Metro was supposed to go to Georgetown (after all, it barely misses it between Rosslyn and Foggy Bottom), but NIMBY residents in the 1970s blocked the station, fearing that the subway would bring inner-city (i.e. black and Hispanic) people out from poor neighborhoods to commit robberies. The anticipated crime spike around transit lines never did occur in other neighborhoods and cities, and now the people of Georgetown regret their earlier opposition.

I've heard that story from DC residents and seen it written online many times. But it's not true. Wikipedia points us to Zachary Schrag's book The Great Society Subway, which debunks the myth:


According to the book, two major obstacles prevented a Georgetown station. First, the corner of Wisconsin and M, which would have been the sensible location for a station, is so close to the river that a station in a river-crossing tunnel would have been too deep at that point, and highway planners had no interest in a bridge. In addition, routing the Metro to Georgetown would force tunneling under private property, which is much more complicated, both for the engineering challenges of underpinning buildings and for the legal issues.

In addition, the Metro was primarily designed as a suburban commuting resource, "connecting suburban parking lots, bus nodes, and clusters of apartment buildings with dense collections of office buildings in downtown Washington and Arlington." Georgetown was neither especially dense nor a major office center, and therefore wasn't a prime candidate for a station. (This probably explains why Adams Morgan has no station either, the misleadingly named Woodley Park-Zoo-Adams Morgan station not actually being very close to Adams Morgan).

Suburban racial fear wasn't confined to Washington, DC. Metro Atlanta's Gwinnett and Clayton counties opted out of MARTA at least partly for racial reasons (PDF - scroll to page 18).