Walcher: Let’s use what we already have
By Greg Walcher | Guest Commentary, GregWalcher.com
In planning the nation’s 1976 bicentennial celebration, Congress made one of its dumbest-ever boondoggle decisions. Recognizing the near death of railroad passenger service since the 1950’s, Congress decided to spend millions turning the aging and crumbling Union Station into the National Visitor Center. But they missed the obvious red flag – the millions of visitors to the nation’s capital during 1976 would not be coming by train.
The ugly-carpeted National Visitor Center sat mostly empty that year, after which the old depot was boarded up, its roof caving in by 1981. Still ignoring reality, Congress spent millions more on several studies of what to do with the building. Each study concluded that the highest and best use would be a...










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