To: WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 22:17:50 -0500
Subject: [WSFA] early times in Washington
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

On Tue, 15 Nov 2005 23:39:42 -0500 (EST) "Keith F. Lynch"
<kfl at KeithLynch.net> writes:

> "Robert MacIntosh" <macbuccfo at msn.com> wrote:
> > Additionally, in the 60's there weren't a tenth of the population
> of metro Washington (or Balt-Wash if you choose) there is now.
>
> Are you sure?  I know the population has increased, but I find it
> hard to believe it has increased that much.
>

It would indeed be an exaggeration to say that metro Washington's
population has grown by ten times since the 1960's, although it's easy to
see how it might seem that way, if one had observed the growth in a
fringe area during that time, since some local fringe areas have grown by
about that much.  In Montgomery County, Germantown and Gaithersburg come
to mind.  The population of DC itself, of course, has dropped
significantly over the past 40 years.

Without checking the official numbers, I would say that DC metro
population has grown by about a factor of two during the past 40 years.
A doubling in 40 years would imply a compounded growth rate of 1.74% per
year, which is not much different than the national population growth
rate over that time.  Keep in mind that the geographical definition of
the metro area has probably changed over that time, and that there may be
more than one such definition in use, so comparisons can be confusing.

> > And public transportation was non-existent if the buses weren't
> > going where you needed to go.
>
> Are you forgetting the trolleys?
>

The trolleys stopped in the early 1960s, and they were then serving only
a small area in DC.  Earlier, in the 1930s, the trolleys covered a wider
area, even going out to Chevy Chase Lake in Maryland.  That lake is long
gone.

The National Capital Trolley Museum was founded in 1959.

http://www.dctrolley.org/index.html

Ron Kean

.