The Great Society subway: a history of the Washington Metro

Abstract

This book describes how drivers in the nation’s capital face a host of hazards: high-speed traffic circles, presidential motorcades, jaywalking tourists, and bewildering signs that send unsuspecting motorists from the Lincoln Memorial into suburban Virginia in less than two minutes. And parking? Don’t bet on it unless you’re in the fast lane of the Capital Beltway during rush hour. Little wonder, then, that so many residents and visitors rely on the Washington Metro, the 1-6-mile rapid transit system that serves the District of Columbia and its inner suburbs. In the first comprehensive history of the Metro, this book tells the story of the Great Society Subway from its earliest rumblings to the present. Unlike the pre-World War II rail systems of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, the Metro was built at a time when most American families already owned cars, and when most American cities had dedicated themselves to freeways, not subways. Why did the Nation’s Capital take a different path? What where the consequences of that decision? Using extensive archival research, as well as oral history, the book argues that the Metro can only be understood in the political context from it which it was born; the Great Society liberalism of the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. The Metro emerged from a period when Americans believed in public investments suited to the grandeur and dignity of the world’s richest nation. The Metro was built not merely to move commuters but, in the worlds of Lyndon Johnson, to create “a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for the community.” The book scrutinizes the project from its earliest days, including general planning, routes, station architecture, funding decisions, land-use impacts, and the behavior of Metro riders. The story of the Great Society Subway sheds light on the development of metropolitan Washington, postwar urban policy, and the promise and limits of rail transit in American cities.