page_title: Streetcars in Washington, D.C.
section_title: Right-of-way
hierarchical_section_title: Streetcars in Washington, D.C. / Remnants / Right-of-way
caption_attribution_description: Abandoned Trestle of the Cabin John Trolley over Foundry Branch
context_page_description: Streetcars in Washington, D.C. transported people across the city and region from 1862 until 1962.
  The first streetcars in Washington, D.C., were drawn by horses and carried people short distances on flat terrain; but the introduction of cleaner and faster electric streetcars, capable of climbing steeper inclines, opened up the hilly suburbs north of the old city and in Anacostia. Several of the district's streetcar lines were extended into Maryland, and two Virginia lines crossed into the district. The city experimented briefly with cable cars, but by the beginning of the 20th century, the streetcar system was fully electrified. By 1901, a series of mergers dubbed the "Great Streetcar Consolidation" gathered most local transit firms into two major companies. In 1933, a second consolidation brought all streetcars under one company, Capital Transit. Over the next decades, the streetcar system shrank amid the rising popularity of the automobile and pressure to switch to buses. After a strike in 1955, the company changed ownership and became DC Transit, with explicit instructions to switch to buses.
context_section_description: The right-of-way of the Glen Echo line is mostly extant from the Georgetown Car Barn all the way to the Dalecarlia Reservoir filtration plant in DC and from the District line to Cabin John in Maryland. The DC section includes an abutment near an entrance to Georgetown University, a trestle over Foundry Branch in Glover Archibald Park, the median of Sherier Place NW from Cathedral Avenue NW to Manning Place NW and a strip of land along most of the right-or-way. Part of the right-of-way on the Georgetown campus was removed in the spring of 2007 to create a turning lane off of Canal Road NW. Bridge #1 at Georgetown University was removed in 1976. The section from the aqueduct to Foxhall Road was purchased by the District of Columbia in the early 1980s to construct a crosstown watermain. In 1980 and 1981, the three other bridges along the right-of-way - Bridge #3 at Clark Place, Bridge #4 next to Reservoir Road, and Bridge #5 over Maddox Branch in Battery Kemble Park - were removed during the construction of the water main. Bridge #6 over the Little Falls Branch Valley was removed sometime prior to 2000.
  The wide median of Pennsylvania Avenue SE from the Capitol to Barney Circle was built in 1903 to serve as a streetcar right of way.  It now serves as urban greenspace.
caption: Abandoned Trestle of the Cabin John Trolley over Foundry Branch from intersection of Foxhall Rd and Canal Rd
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