Show your support for streetcars at Tuesday's Council hearing

Here's another call for streetcar supporters to show up for and testify at the Council's Tuesday, June 22, at 2:00 p.m. hearing of the Committee on Public Works and Trasportation on Tommy Wells' narrowly tailored bill to allow streetcars to proceed on H Street with limited overhead wires while maintaining the ban on wires in other parts of D.C. and to direct the executive branch to prepare plans to conduct a feasibility study on removing overhead wires on H Street in coming years. Any and all are encouraged to take three minutes to testify on Tuesday.

Dear streetcar supporter,

Thank you for helping us win $47 million for streetcars in the D.C. Council's recently-passed budget. We need your help once again to help ensure that the H Street-Benning Road streetcar line can begin operating by spring 2012, as planned.

Next week Tuesday, June 22 at 2:00 pm, the Council's Public Works and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing to consider legislation introduced recently by Councilmember Tommy Wells and 11 of his colleagues to permit the use of overhead wires to power streetcars in the H Street-Benning Road corridor. This is narrowly tailored legislation, which asserts the District's right to make our own decision about the use of overhead wires of streetcars rather than ceding this authority to the federal government.

The bill has strong support on the Council, but we expect that opponents of overhead wires, who are rumored to have nearly scuttled vital streetcar funding last month, will show up to oppose the legislation.

We need you to sign up to attend this important hearing and tell the Council that you want streetcars to become a reality on H Street and Benning Road as soon as possible, using overhead wires.

To sign up, please send an email or call Ms. April Hawkins-Mason at ahawkinsmason@dccouncil.us or 202-724-8195 and ask to be added to the public witness list. For more information about the hearing, please visit: http://streetcars4dc.org/?p=126. We strongly encourage you to attend the hearing to demonstrate the strong support for streetcars, but if you will not be able to attend, you may still submit testimony via email to Mr. Hawkins (ahawkinsmason@dccouncil.us) up until June 22 at 5:00 pm.

Thank you for your continued support!

Jason

Jason Broehm
H Street-Benning Road Streetcar Alliance
www.streetcars4dc.org