“…although Georgetown residents did oppose a transit station, their attitude was essentially irrelevant, for a Georgetown station was never seriously considered.

While it would have been possible to build a subway line to Georgetown, it would have been difficult. Georgetown’s commercial center, the busy intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street, lies quite close to the Potomac River. Any tunnel under the Potomac (such as the one that today connects Foggy Bottom and Rosslyn) would have been so deep at the river’s edge as to render a station there impractical. Thus, the most serious proposal to put a station in Georgetown, a 1963 sketch by NCTA planner John Insco Williams, depended on a combined highway-transit bridge across the river. According to Williams, highway planners, not Georgetown residents, vetoed this option. Moreover, Williams’ map shows that the curve up to Georgetown could not have followed the street grid, but would have to be bored under private property. And “if you get under buildings,” planner Thomas Deen recalled, “you get into all kinds of problems, digging under foundations, and settlement, and liability, and lawsuits.”

These technical problems 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 suburban parking lots, bus nodes, and clusters of apartment buildings in downtown Washington and Arlington. Under this logic, Woodley Park, with its hotels, apartment blocks, and bus routes, was one obvious site for a station, as was the Pentagon, with its 20,000 employees. Georgetown lacked apartments or office buildings or parking, and much of the area within walking distance of Wisconsin and M is underwater. “We were building the system for commuters,” planner William Herman recalled, “and there were not many people commuting to Georgetown. So why spend money on something that didn’t meet our goals?”

Still, the Georgetown legend has a kernel of truth. Residents of many neighborhoods did protest planned Metro stations, and WMATA was forced to respond, even canceling one station. But the residential protests lacked the clear-cut class and racial connotations of the Georgetown story, for the protests were as common to black neighborhoods and white, to poor neighborhoods as well as rich ones. A rapid transit system that had promised to spare neighborhoods by obviating freeways now found itself fighting many of the same people who had protested those roads.