The District of Columbia is spending three or four times what other cities have to build a maintenance facility for its fledging streetcar (tram) system, a reflection of the flawed planning and execution that have dragged down the transit start-up for more than a decade.
The "Car Barn" project was originally designed as a simple garage and rail yard for light repairs and storage, with some offices for staff. But it has ballooned in ambition and nearly tripled in cost - to US$48.8 million. It will now include a number of pricey and unusual features, including grass tracks for parking the fleet of six trams and a cistern for washing them with rainwater.
At the same time, a short stretch of track that the city built in Washington's Anacostia neighbourhood, never reached its intended destination and has been all but abandoned, leaving the city with a multimillion-dollar, eight-tenths of a mile monument to good intentions.
The expanding Car Barn and the discontinued Anacostia line are mirror images of a dysfunctional transit project that has cost the city US$200 million and is nine years late.
Since 2014, operators have been shuttling the bright-red trams back and forth without passengers, each trip underscoring questions about the District's ability to get big things done.