Interurbans: Back to the future?

Years ago before car was king, there were networks of interurban rail, that connected cities and towns, and towns and towns. With our crosstown economy, it's time to bring them back.

Yes I know, it’s been a while since I last posted. Part of it was dealing with my own and family members health issues. A lot of it though, was I had a writers’ block, and couldn’t find a way to put my ideas into words. I became inspired after I attended the Greater Greater Washington mixer at the Metro Bar on September 30th. Even though I am the politically polar opposite of 99% of the left-wing, college educated, Socialists and Socialists-lite, that make up most of the urbanist crowd, I still enjoy being in their company. Why? Because we believe in the basic principle of making our cities great places to live, work, and play. We just have different ways of getting there. Now, back to the article. Here goes…

Here’s the $10,000 question, “How do you move a lot of people from point A to point B and back again on public transportation, with no or minimal POV usage?” Commuter rail? Yup, we do that. Metro? Same thing. Buses, we’ve been doing that for years. Light rail? It’s being built. Streetcars? Well, we have one line back, and I think that’s going to be about it. Interurbans? Hmmmm…

Years ago, there were interurbans. They were larger streetcars that ran on a regular schedule, between cities, towns, and municipalities. That was back when a lot of the roads were dirt roads too. Plus, a lot of people just didn’t have cars. They were too expensive.

Imagine living in a small town like Laurel, Maryland, back somewhere between 1910 and 1920. Bit’s and pieces of what would become US Route 1 were being paved, but most of the road was still a dirt road. You could take the train into DC. You were along one of the main lines from Baltimore to DC. The trains ran on a regular schedule, a lot more frequently than the MARC Train does now. Then, there was the interurban. It ran more frequently, and was probably cheaper than the heavy rail passenger train.

While our urbanist love of transportation nostalgia makes us long for the days of interurban rail transports, it’s a pipe dream to think about trying to bring them back as rail infrastructure. We are now too connected with asphalt. Yet the need for a system of interurban transport still exists, and the more people move to the suburbs and exurbs, the more demand there will be. At the same time, we are no longer a rural, suburban bedroom community, urban core society. At least in the DC area, the edges are getting a lot more blended. You see that with Georgia Avenue/DC Silver Spring, Rhode Island Avenue/DC Mount Rainier, DC/West Hyattsville. You can tell when you cross the line into DC, because the telephone poles line the road in a different place. You can tell when you cross the line from DC to Mount Rainier on Route 1, because you see all the cars double parked at the liquor store. Sometimes it’s a slalom course getting around those cars. I pity anyone on a bicycle approaching the traffic circle just past that area.

We are beyond the days of the post WWII organizational man, who lived in the suburbs, was married to a stay-at-home wife, had the requisite 3-4 children, and rode commuter rail to and from the downtown city office. The family had one car, so the wife would drive the husband to the train station in the morning, and pick him up at night. I used to see that when I rode the train from Brewster, NY to New York City when I was studying drums in Manhattan. That was even in the 1970s, not the 1950s. Today, most families have two working parents and two cars. If the family has a teenager, make that three cars. Yes, sometimes both mom and dad ride the Metro or the MARC train together to their separate offices in downtown DC. Sometimes mom works in the suburbs and dad in the city, and vice-versa. Sometimes mom goes to work and dad stays home as a “Mr. Mom.” I know two guitar players that have that arrangement. One is very liberal and other one is a Donald Trump loving conservative. Whatever works.

There has also been another trend. Quietly and under the radar over the years, there has been an increase in suburb to suburb commuting. Covid just made it more obvious. I used to commute from College Park to Potomac. It was 83 Bus to College Park Metro, Green or Yellow Line to Fort Totten, E4 Bus to Friendship Heights, and the T2 Bus to the driveway at the Bullis School. It was a little over a hour commute if you timed it right. Driving during rush hour? About a little over an hour commute, and then having to park down by the ball fields, and walk a half a mile back to the Music Building.

I am handicapped, and yes, there were handicapped spaces. They were usually taken up by non-handicapped, Nuevo-riche, Potomac Soccer Moms, who’s family gives a whole lot of money during the annual Gala, and to the Alumni Association, so the law was never enforced. Money talks. Money buys. Money prevents…It was a shorter walk from the bus stop than the ball field.

Over the years, more and more corporations have been either locating or relocating to the suburbs. At the same time dealing with a younger and more ecologically aware workforce, they are building or acquiring office space that is within reasonable walking distance from a Metro station. Many of those younger employees don’t own cars, so they see no need for a company parking lot. The issue then, is where do they live? Marriott is moving its headquarters to downtown Bethesda, which is walking distance from the Bethesda Metro Station. You can make great bus connections there too. There is one problem. A lot of a company’s workforce can’t afford housing in the employer’s county.

There is a lot more cross county and town to town commuting than there used to be. Housing costs are the main driving force. I know quite a few people that work in one county and live in another. They drive to work, because in order to use public transportation, they would have to go all the way into the city and then all the way back out on the other side. Sounds like a perfect situation to establish a regular schedule of interurban buses. It’s time to beef up the ones we have, and fill in the gaps with some new ones.

Like many of our old rail lines and streetcar lines, the former interurban line rights of way have been converted into hiker/biker trails. That’s fine. That’s all part of the alternative to the car culture we are trying to get established in a nation that has built part of its identity on the freedom of the automobile. It’s going to take a lot of work. It’s also going to take an acceptance by many of the anti-car activists, that the car is not going away. It’s going to take years before American culture no longer glorifies the automobile, if ever.

I’ve got a couple of ideas about how to implement a system of interurban buses. First of all, there could be a circle line bus route running both clockwise and counterclockwise, that only stops at the Metro stations closest to the Beltway. Examples: New Carrolton, Greenbelt, Forest Glen, Grosvenor, Tysons, etc.. Better yet, have it run on dedicated bus lanes, and/or the HOV Hot Lanes in order to avoid traffic. At the Metro stations it services, you can connect up with either the Metrorail, or the buses that stop at that station. Bethesda to Tysons? Get on the express bus. It runs every 15 minutes 24/7/365 as should all buses.

Remember, the car is part of the American culture. If you don’t provide an alternative that is cheaper, reliable, convenient, and reasonably safe, people are going to drive. You should be able to get from Laurel to Gaithersburg by an interurban bus that runs on a regular schedule 7 days per week. Expanding on, and developing new cross-county bus interurbans, should be a transportation infrastructure priority. The days of the 9-5 suburban to city core commuter economy are not gone, but they are greatly diminished.

We are basically now a 24/7/365 service economy. That doesn’t mean service workers are all poor. Doctors are service workers, and they make plenty of money. They shouldn’t have to drive to work, just because they are the on-call specialist who’s shift ends at 3 am . Taking public transportation needs to be a better option than driving, even for doctors.

We need public transportation systems that support all the various economies. We are no longer dad, and mom too, commuting from the bedroom communities into the city for their 9-5 jobs. Before the pandemic, about 5% of the white collar workforce was working remote. It is predicted that up to 45% of the white collar workforce will continue to do so. Let’s put a public transportation system in place, that makes it so convenient not to drive, that the upper-middle class “Progressives” (in name only), will have no excuse about driving their Chevy Suburbans, complete with a “Save The Rainforest” bumper sticker, while preaching the requisite fashionable environmental twaddle. They will be able to preach the requisite fashionable environmental twaddle, without looking like total hypocrites. If it’s easy and 24/7 convenient for the upper-middle class and lower-wealthy that make up the Professional Managerial Class (PMC), think about how easy and 24/7 convenient it would be for all those little brown people that live in Langley Park, and speak little English, that service them? Wouldn’t that be called Transit Equity?

Years ago, there was a need for interurban public transportation. That need has come back. However this time, public transportation is competing with well-designed automobiles that go 200,000 miles, and a vast network of pavement-based infrastructure. We need to take advantage of, and repurpose that infrastructure, rather than trying to create a new one. It’s cheaper! Money doesn’t grow on trees.

Let me be selfish here for a moment: Wouldn’t it be nice if I could walk two blocks from my house to the nearest bus stop, hit the beg button to cross the street to the opposite bus stop, and using a combination of bus and/or rail, go to work (strictly optional since I’m retired), visit friends over in the next county, and be able to return to my house anytime day or night. And, and it’s a big “A” And, have the trip be affordable, convenient, reliable, and safe. That is no small task. However, its time has come. Bus-based interurbans need to be part of that mix.