MORE ON GEORGETOWN METRO

The myth that Georgetown's well-heeled and well-connected defeated a planned Georgetown metro station won't die easily. As discussed earlier, Metro decided decided against a Georgetown station because of the technical problems and expense associated with building a station there.

In his book, A Great Society Subway, Zachary Schrag, asserts that a Georgetown Metro station did not fit into the Metro designer's vision. He quotes one of the designers of the system who said:

"We were building the system for the commuters, and there were not many people commuting to Georgetown. So why spend the money on something that didn't meet our goals."

Schrag goes on to say technical problems caused by the closeness of the Pototomac River:

"could have been overcome had planners felt a compelling need to serve Georgetown. They did not. They intended to serve as many rush-hour commuters as possible, which meant connecting parking lots, bus nodes and clusters of apartment buildings with dense collections of office buildings in downtown Washington and Arlington."

But still many remember protests from Georgetowners. Schrag notes that some Georgetowners protested, as did people from other communities.

"The residential protests lacked the clear-cut class and racial compositions of
the Georgetown story, for the protests were common to black neighborhoods and
white, to poor neighborhoods was well as rich ones."