The modern-style D.C. Streetcar, the first such service in the Nation’s Capital since 1962, ran for the last time on Tuesday, March 31. Historically, streetcars had run in the city for 100 years (1862-1962), but the recent incarnation was limited to a single line and lasted for only ten years and one month, having begun service on Feb. 27, 2016.
The line was city-owned and operated by the D.C. Department of Transportation (DDOT), rather than the Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority (WMATA or “Metro”), which runs Metrorail and buses in Maryland and Virginia, as well as within the District. The initiative began in 2009, when the city began laying track for the line, as well as for a second line that was planned to go to Anacostia, in the Southeast quadrant of the city, a project that was later canceled before service could begin.
The surviving (until now) line was 2.2 miles long and ran in mixed traffic along H Street and Benning Road, in the city’s Northeast quadrant. The cars were three-section articulated units, 66 feet long, and they ran on 750-volt DC power from catenary. Three based on a Skoda design were built by Inekon Trams in the Czech Republic (which also supplied some cars to Portland, Ore.), delivered in 2009 and the other three were similar, built by United Streetcar of Oregon and delivered in 2014.
Ridership hit a peak of about 1,200,000 in 2017 and dipped slightly during the next two years. It dropped severely during the COVID-19 pandemic, a scenario that played out among most transit providers in the United States and Canada, as well as elsewhere. It recovered to 836,438 riders in 2025, according to the streetcar’s website, but that increase from the painful pandemic period was apparently not enough.
End of the Line
On May 28, 2025, the Washington Post reported that District Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that the budget proposal under consideration called for eliminating the streetcar and replacing it with an electric bus. Rachel Weiner’s story carried the headline: “Bowser to replace DC Streetcar with ‘next generation streetcar.’ It’s a bus” without details concerning how the buses would be operated. Weiner reported in the Post on October 9 that budget cuts will force the line to shut down in March.
The project faced problems not only during its incarnation, but also during the planning stage, including procuring the cars from United Streetcar. Even earlier, in 2002, DDOT had planned to build both that line and one in Anacostia, but Metro changed its plans and announced several expansion projects. One became Metro’s Silver Line, part of which opened in 2014 and the rest in 2022. Another part became the Purple Line, a light rail line in the Maryland suburbs, which that state eventually funded and started to build. Although a 2013 opening for the line on H Street and Benning Road was announced in 2011, there were a few delays, and the line did not open until 2016.
A March 7, 2015 report from the Associated Press that ran on WTOP bore the headline “Transportation director: D.C. Streetcar may never open,” a story that was brief but reported deep concerns about the line). The report said that the proposed new streetcar project had already cost the District of Columbia $190 million but might never open at all. That threat came from the acting DDOT director, Leif Dormsjo. The report said about the streetcar project: “It has been beset by delays, and some have questioned whether the benefits will outweigh the costs.” However, a peer review by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) found that the line could operate safely: “The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) announced today the findings of a letter from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), which conducted a peer review of the H Street/Benning Road Streetcar system last week. The peer review panel concluded that there are no fatal flaws that would prevent the DC Streetcar from starting revenue service on the H Street/Benning Road corridor. The site also quoted Dormsjo as saying: “This letter from APTA underscores DDOT’s guiding principle for the DC Streetcar that it will only open once it is deemed safe.” “The APTA peer review helped give us a pathway toward a Streetcar service that can meet safety certifications and the needs of passengers that it will eventually serve.” The APTA document (download below) was issued in June 2015. The ten-year run of the DC’s now-defunct streetcar began the following year.
The line’s death warrant was announced Oct. 8, 2025. The sum and substance of the announcement said: “The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) announces that D.C. Streetcar service will end on March 31, 2026. Following this date, the DC Streetcar will no longer operate. Riders are encouraged to plan and explore alternate travel options, including WMATA’s D20 bus.” The site also announced the end of service on March 31 and that hours would be cut back, Sunday service would be eliminated, and cars would run every 20 minutes, effective Jan. 4, 2026.
More Problems
The line ran for 1.9 revenue miles and included eight stations. The point of origin was called “Union Station” and was located near the historic station that hosts Amtrak trains, local trains on MARC and VRE (Virginia Railway Express), and the Metrorail’s Red Line. The outer end of the line was located on Benning Road and Oklahoma Avenue NE. There were also six intermediate stops: four on H Street (at 3d, 5th, 8th and 13th Streets NE). The other two were on Benning Road after it branches off from H Street, at 15th and 19th Streets NE. Of those six stops, only three offered connections with Metrobus routes, while the other three did not. One description of the line contained a note that the Oklahoma Avenue end of the line, connections were available to Metrorail’s Orange, Blue and Silver Lines, but “via a 20-minute walk,” a situation that hardly offers anything like a convenient transfer for riders.
There was a proposal at one time to extend the line further on Benning Road to connect with Metrorail. On December 15, 2021, Colleen Grablick reported for the now-defunct news site DCist: “By 2026, the D.C. Streetcar could extend out to the Benning Road Metro stop, part of a new construction and rehabilitation project. Once complete, it would add five new Streetcar stops, improve intersections, and upgrade bridges, among a slew of other roadway safety improvements.” The project never went anywhere, and on June 8, 2023, Martin Austermuhle reported for the same publication that delays were bringing the extension project to the “end of the line”: “A long-promised 2.2-mile eastward extension to the Benning Road Metro Station may now have to wait another seven years, if it happens at all … The planned project was dealt a setback last week, when the D.C. Council gave final approval to a budget that pushes back the funding to start construction by at least two years, if not longer. At best, that could delay the streetcar’s eastward extension until later this decade, at worst, streetcar aficionados worry, it could deflate any remaining enthusiasm for the project and kill it altogether.” The streetcar line never reached Metrorail on Benning Road.
The “streetcar aficionados’ worry” appears to have been well-founded. M. Paul Shore is a transit advocate who lived in the region before the streetcar began service and for most of its ten-year run. He told Railway Age: “I remember that being mentioned repeatedly as a big problem by people who were intimately involved in the process.” He also mentioned the “excessive closeness between the streetcars and the side of the road” and quoted a Washington Post article by Michael Larris from Dec. 5, 2015: “The design shortcuts left the track squeezed against parking spaces on H Street, which years later would mire the streetcars in conflicts with drivers.” Shore commented, though: “I think they used ingenuity to come up with the best design they could, considering the severe constraints.”
Shore raised other questions, too, including about a lengthy testing process. He told Railway Age: “The testing process was extraordinarily protracted, beginning in 2014 and lasting for more than a year, raising the question of whether any useful information was actually being accumulated, or whether they were just trying to create the illusion of useful effort.”
A Final Ride
This writer had ridden the line a few times during its brief incarnation, including for the last time on Friday, March 20. It took about 25 minutes to ride the line each way, end to end. The ride was an adventure, and not the sort associated with an interesting and pleasant ride on rail transit. The first challenge was finding it. It did not leave from the heart of Union Station, like the Amtrak or local trains, or Metrorail’s Red Line. Instead, it was necessary to go upstairs to the bus terminal, walk along a row of buses, and finally emerge on H Street, but the start of the line was not there. That required walking another block and crossing H Street halfway, to a center island that later sported a streetcar track. Cars ran every 20 minutes, and the middle of an arterial road is not a pleasant place to wait for transit, even a streetcar rather than a bus. Most of the stops either had center platforms that required crossing either H Street or Benning Road half-way, or they were located on parts of the line that ran in the second lane on the street, rather than the lane closest to the curb. That lane, as is often the case, was reserved for automobile parking. Stops were marked by bump outs from the curb. It appeared to this writer that the neighborhood had seen better days, including during the early years of the streetcar line’s brief lifetime. The neighborhood did not appear unsafe, but it appeared downscale. It is always hoped that the introduction of rail transit will help the neighborhood(s) along the route to improve. That did not seem to happen on the DC Streetcar route.
Could it Have Been Saved?
There is really no way to tell. It wasn’t a bad line, but it also lacked the sort of draw found on the New Orleans streetcars, the McKinney Avenue line in Dallas, the line on Market Street in San Francisco, and other urban rail transit lines. The neighborhood itself was not a draw for visitors. Perhaps a streetcar to Georgetown would have performed better, but nobody proposed one, at least as far as we know. Then there were all the unfortunate events that slowed the line’s establishment, construction, and operation, once it got going. Maybe it just never had much of a chance. It was originally one of the proposed lines that would have created a genuine surface-level rail transit system in the Nation’s Capital, but that did not happen, either.
The six cars that ran on the line might run somewhere else, perhaps in Portland, where half of them were built. Even if that happens, the long streetcars with their silver and red liveries and yellow accents that once ran in the nation’s capital will be a thing of the past, even if they carry someone else’s livery.
I have now learned that the outcome mentioned above has come closer to reality. The Community Streetcar Coalition (CSC) has reported that the District has announced that it will accept bids for the six cars that provided the service, as well as parts and more. The organization reported that the District of Columbia Office of Contracting and Procurement (OCP) is holding an online auction. Although the announcement contained few details about the auction itself, CSC reported that OCP said: “As part of this opportunity, we are hosting an Industry Day on April 15 that will allow interested parties to view the streetcars in person and gain additional insight prior to bidding. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP.” The announcement included a colorful flyer illustrated in the DDOT livery.
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