New and Old #266
The demise of the D.C. Streetcar, the insane high bar for zoning reform, fishing with tech, and a fun old map
The DC Streetcar dream deserved to work, Greater Greater Washington, Dominic Bossey, March 31, 2026
When I got out of Union Station, it took me about 15 minutes to figure out where the Streetcar stop actually was. How was I to guess it would be in the middle of a six‑lane, high‑traffic road and about 150 feet from the closest crosswalk on the far north side of Union Station? I was lucky to see the Streetcar boarding as I walked up, but after I got on, we crawled along H Street behind turning cars and even a boarding D20 bus.
Even with all that, I could see the promise of a full streetcar system (cue the fade into a fictitious world where unicorns are real and public transit is always funded). But that promise is gone after fading for years as the streetcar prepares to stop service today.
That point, about the streetcar crawling along in mixed traffic, is important, and it’s one of the major reasons for the decline of streetcars in the first place. It doesn’t really make much sense to build the infrastructure for a streetcar without giving it a dedicate right of way. But of course taking away a lane from cars is a huge political lift, more so than merely spending money on a shiny new project.
I also want to note this: I think a lot of suburbanites don’t realize how common it is for people who live in urban cores not to own a car. The language around inequality can sound abstract or “political,” but it’s descriptive:
Nearly 40% of DC households don’t own a car, yet bus trips can still take much more time than driving. A successful streetcar network (which is not the one we got) could’ve helped fix that gap with the capacity and energy efficiency of Metrorail but much less infrastructure.
Instead, new connections were blocked by over a decade of politicking and reallocations of funds. When mobility depends on luck and headways instead of design and investment, the people with the fewest transportation choices pay the highest price.
You don’t have to follow all of this, and I don’t understand the legal reasoning behind all of it, but it seems to me the real point is that “local control” is sacrosanct until it’s used to loosen rather than tighten zoning, and then all of a sudden a local land-use decision is held up for years by legal challenges:
Arlington’s Missing Middle ordinance has gone through numerous legal ups and downs since the County Board approved the change in March 2023.
Following a trial in summer 2024, a circuit court judge initially ruled in favor of plaintiffs, striking down the Missing Middle zoning changes.
An appeals court panel overturned that decision in June 2025, finding that a developer who had invested in an EHO project is an “indispensable party” that needs the opportunity to be included in court proceedings.
The decision presented a major setback for plaintiffs, since it would require a redo of the original trial — only this time, it’s possible that all developers in previously approved Missing Middle developments would be considered indispensable parties that need the opportunity to be included in court proceedings. Even if only a few of the developers opted to sign on as defendants, they could cause a lot of trouble for plaintiffs through additional filings and arguments, experts have said.
That would be particularly challenging for a privately funded lawsuit with finite financial resources.
Plaintiffs appealed the Court of Appeals decision to the Virginia Supreme Court last October.
Grand Theft Angling, Drag Free Drifts, Stephen Wisner, April 28, 2026
I’ve done just a little bit of fishing, and while yes, it is mostly boring, it’s also boring in the way that an uneventful walk is boring: in a good, clear-your-head kind of way. This is an argument against sonar technology that basically turns fishing into a live-action video game, another screen-mediated activity rather than a quiet, suspenseful outing.
Wisner draws an analogy with using drones for hunting, which most would consider a kind of cheating:
In my home state of Wisconsin, the use of drones for hunting is completely banned. You cannot use them for the taking of game or for scouting. No drones allowed. Period. Nobody who values fair chase would argue against this without being laughed out of the room by every ethical hunter in America. Killing a deer with the aid of a drone is every bit as lame and lacking in skill as killing one in a fenced enclosure. It is the action of a sorry-ass, no-skill poseur.
Which brings us to forward-facing sonar.
He elaborates. I really like this, and it kind of dovetails with the “good friction” idea I was just writing about:
This acceptance of limitations has always been what fishing with a rod and reel is about. There are far more efficient ways to catch fish if catching fish is the only goal. Commercial fishers, with the goal of maximizing efficiency and profit, use nets for a reason. You can pose with a fish you caught in a seine net if you want to, but nobody is going to give you much credit for catching it, it being one of thousands you surrounded with a net and scooped out of the ocean.
A few years ago, at the end of a summer that had been particularly dry, I noticed a boat I had never seen before on the river in front of my house. I paid particular attention to it because the anglers on the boat had fly rods and over the years I had come to know most of the local musky fly fishers. I didn’t know these guys. The next day the boat was back with the same person running the trolling motor, but a different angler in the bow. And again the next day with again a different set of anglers.
What set this boat apart from the others was the way they were working the water. They were running from likely spot to likely spot and staring at a screen on the boat. They weren’t casting, just looking at the monitor and then firing up the motor and running to the next spot. This was my first encounter with forward-facing sonar.
Give it a read.
1990’s Rockville Pike Business Map
I found this on Reddit: it’s an image of a 1990s map of businesses in Rockville, Maryland. I like these maps in general; somewhere I have a little collection of those advertising maps you’d get at diners, the size of a placemat or maybe actually used as placemats, with a sketch of the town and some businesses (which probably paid to be named) listed.
I like the whimsical, not-quite-accurate scale and the hand-drawn aesthetic. And it’s also neat to find one of these and see what’s still there, what’s changed, spot old company logos, etc. (One commentor thinks the oldest business listed there and still around is the Snowden Funeral Home. Fitting, maybe.)
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