Columbia Pike Streetcar

Rolling stock for the route had yet to be chosen, but most modern streetcars have a low floor section, to accommodate wheelchairs, like this modern streetcar from Portland Oregon.

The Columbia Pike Streetcar was a plan to build a modern streetcar route in the municipalities that surround Washington D.C, the capitol of the United States.

The route's name comes from an archaic term, used locally, for a highway. In the Maryland and Virginia area highways were often referred to as "turnpikes". The Columbia Pike connected the District of Columbia with destinations to its west.

The route would have been 5 miles long, and cost $300 million to construct. The route would have started at Pentagon City, a business complex next to The Pentagon, in Arlington Virgina, and gone west to Skyline in Fairfax County.

Proponents claimed the route would stimulate the local economy.

Politicians who had been supporters of the route dropped their support when they felt their constituents had shown a lack of support, and the plan was cancelled on November 18, 2014.

Libby Garvey, a critic of the route, had called for its replacement with a bus rapid transit route, instead. However, in an article five years after the cancellation, Inside Northern Virginia quoted Walter Tejada, a politician who remained committed to the streetcar route, who noted support for the bus rapid transit replacement was forgotten, when the streetcar was cancelled. Garvey's praise of Rob Ford, then mayor of Toronto, and another vocal opponent of streetcars, triggered attention from Toronto Journalists.

Garvey claimed councilor Chris Zimmerman was in a conflict of interest on the streetcar issue. She claimed Zimmerman was being paid for consulting work he was performing for one of firms with a contract for the streetcar line. The Arlington Board ultimately cleared Zimmerman.

Bus rapid transit, an alternative to streetcars, is capable of carrying as many passengers as a streetcar, or a light rail line - but only at the cost of constructing similar infrastructure. Bus rapid transit can carry as many passengers as a streetcar line or light rail line by building dedicated stations where vehicles could board and debark riders, and by supplying the vehicles with their own dedicated right of way. Ordinarily buses can carry only a fraction as many passengers as a streetcar route, since, when you add more buses, the bus stops become the limiting factor. On bus routes, with too many buses, buses end up lining up behind bus stops, to wait their turn to use bus stops.