The Washington Metro as vision and vehicle, 1955--2001 (Washington, D.C.)

This dissertation tells the story of Metro, a rapid transit system serving Washington, D.C., and its suburbs, from its conception in the mid-1950s to the completion of the 103-mile system in January 2001. The historian's perspective distinguishes this dissertation from most scholarly literature on rail transit. Whereas planners and economists primarily ask whether a transportation system meets a given objective, historians ask how objectives were adopted in the first place. And rather than confining itself to published reports, this dissertation uses a range of manuscript collections, congressional hearings, and oral history interviews to trace decision-making. This approach will show that Metro does not have a single, stable function. Rather, its many functions have been negotiated over time among a variety of groups: local and national officials, planners, engineers, architects, developers, workers, neighbors, and, perhaps most importantly, riders. Rather than just asking if Metro is a success, I ask how various people at various times have defined success.; Ultimately, I show that from the beginning Washingtonians have not evaluated Metro according to any one set of numbers, but instead have projected their hopes for their city onto their transit system. Dreaming of a beautiful, efficient, democratic, growing capital, they have tried to build a beautiful, efficient, democratic, growing rail system. That Metro serves so many functions so well marks it as a triumph of democratic consensus. In 1970 the Washington Post described Metro as “the last best chance to make this metropolitan area a decent place to live in the future.” Thirty years later, Washington is indeed a decent place to live, and Metro has done much to make that true.