As Metro stretches to Tysons Corner and beyond, this paperback edition
features a new preface from the author.
Drivers in the nation's capital face a host of hazards: high-speed
traffic circles, presidential motorcades, jaywalking tourists, and
bewildering signs that send unsuspecting motorists from the Lincoln
Memorial into suburban Virginia in less than two minutes. And parking?
Don't bet on it unless you're in the fast lane of the Capital Beltway
during rush hour.
Little wonder, then, that so many residents and visitors rely on the
Washington Metro, the 106-mile rapid transit system that serves the
District of Columbia and its inner suburbs. In the first comprehensive
history of the Metro, Zachary M. Schrag tells the story of the Great
Society Subway from its earliest rumblings to the present day, from
Arlington to College Park, Eisenhower to Marion Barry.
Unlike the pre-World War II rail systems of New York, Chicago, and
Philadelphia, the Metro was built at a time when most American families
already owned cars, and when most American cities had dedicated
themselves to freeways, not subways. Why did the nation's capital take a
different path? What were the consequences of that decision?
Using extensive archival research as well as oral history, Schrag argues
that the Metro can be understood only in the political context from
which it was born: the Great Society liberalism of the Kennedy, Johnson,
and Nixon administrations. The Metro emerged from a period when
Americans believed in public investments suited to the grandeur and
dignity of the world's richest nation. The Metro was built not merely to
move commuters, but in the words of Lyndon Johnson, to create "a place
where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the
demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for
community."
Schrag scrutinizes the project from its earliest days, including general
planning, routes, station architecture, funding decisions, land-use
impacts, and the behavior of Metro riders. The story of the Great
Society Subway sheds light on the development of metropolitan
Washington, postwar urban policy, and the promises and limits of rail
transit in American cities.
