Washington Dc Infrastructure

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Health systems

A prominent hospital in Washington, D.C. is Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the U.S. Army's premier medical center on the east coast. The 5,500-bed Walter Reed provides care for active-duty and retired personnel from all branches of the armed forces, as well as the President, Vice President, and Congressmen. The hospital, however, is scheduled to move to a newer and larger facility in nearby Bethesda, Maryland, forcing its closure in 2011.

Armed Forces veterans also receive care at the Veterans' Affairs Medical Center on the grounds of the Old Soldier's Home.

Washington Hospital Center is the largest hospital campus in the District, and both the largest private and largest non-profit hospital in the Metropolitan Area. It is consistently ranked among the top hospitals in the United States, notably by HCIA [6] and U.S. News and World Report. [7]

Immediately adjacent to the Washington Hospital Center campus in central Washington are the National Rehabilitation Hospital and Children's National Medical Center (although Children's has satellite centers scattered across the city). Both, like WHC, are among the highest-ranked hospitals in the nation.

The Specialty Hospital of Washington is a long-term acute care facility, established in 1995 in Northeast D.C.

Three of the universities in Washington have associated medical schools — and, subsequently, hospitals: George Washington, Georgetown and Howard University. All three are teaching hospitals and are highly regarded institutions. In particular, George Washington University Medical Center is noteworthy as the medical center whose doctors saved the life of President Ronald Reagan when he was shot in 1981. The GWU Emergency Room facility, in fact, is named for Reagan. [8] Georgetown University Medical Center is home to the Lombardi Cancer Center, which is the sole comprehensive cancer center in the Washington, D.C. region.

The oldest continuously operating hospital in the city is Providence Hospital in Northeast D.C., chartered by Abraham Lincoln in 1861. There are three additional private, non-profit community hospitals in Washington: Sibley Memorial Hospital in upper Northwest, Hadley Memorial, a long-term acute care facility in lower Southwest, and Greater Southeast Community Hospital in Southeast, which generally serves the population east of the Anacostia River.

Until 2001, D.C. General Hospital operated near Capitol Hill as the city's only public health-care facility. Mayor Anthony A. Williams had the hospital (which lost several million dollars a year) shut down in an attempt to manage the city's recovery from bankruptcy. The majority of its patient base has since been picked up by Greater Southeast and Prince George's Hospital in Maryland. Mayor Williams in 2005 proposed a new state-of-the-art facility, the National Capital Medical Center, be built on the D.C. General campus as a joint project of the city and Howard University. However, higher-than-expected cost analyses and questions about the proposed hospital's public-health-care capacity caused support for the project to dwindle rapidly. In 2006, the Mayor instead announced support for a $72 million "healthplex" on the D.C. General grounds. [9]

In addition, there are three psychiatric hospitals in Washington, D.C.: Riverside Hospital, Saint Elizabeth's Hospital and the Psychiatric Institute of Washington.

Utilities

Water is supplied to Washington D.C. from the Potomac River at the Dalecarlia and McMillan Reservoirs, and is treated by the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority.[49] Though, the safety and quality of tap water is marginal, with unsafe levels of chlorine and lead in water provided to many parts of the city.[50]

Transportation

Pierre L'Enfant's original plan for the city provided for a grid of streets and a diagonal array of avenues, all centered on the Capitol building. The north-south streets are primarily named with numbers and the east-west streets with letters. From the Capitol as the center, one set of numbered streets sweeps eastward (1st Street, 2nd Street, etc.) and another set sweeps westward (1st Street, 2nd Street, etc.) Similarly, sets of lettered streets sweep northward from the Capitol (A Street, C Street, etc.) and southward. The diagonal avenues in L'Enfant's plan are chiefly named after states (e.g. Pennsylvania Avenue). Street addresses are identified by their location in one of the four quadrants of the city, centered on the Capitol building: Northeast (NE), Northwest (NW), Southeast (SE) and Southwest (SW). Addresses end with a quadrant suffix to indicate whether the location is, for example, on 4th Street NE, 4th Street NW, 4th Street SE or 4th Street SW. Outside the original city boundaries, street layout and naming practices are less regular. However, the alphabetic order of east-west streets, ending with W Street, is in some areas succeeded by an alphabetic progression of two-syllable names (e.g. Adams, Bryant, Channing), followed by a three-syllable progression (e.g. Allison, Buchanan, Crittenden), and then a progression of botanical names (e.g. Aspen, Butternut, Cedar).

Major interstates running through the area include the Capital Beltway (I-495), I-66, I-95, I-395, I-295 and I-270 (which does not reach D.C., terminating at I-495). Other major highways include the Whitehurst Freeway and Anacostia Freeway in D.C., the George Washington Parkway in D.C. and Virginia, the Suitland Parkway in D.C. and Maryland, the US Route 50, the Clara Barton Parkway and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in Maryland, and the Dulles Toll Road in Virginia.

The Washington area is served by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which operates the region's subway system, Metro rail, as well as Metrobus. A public-private partnership operates the DC Circulator buses downtown. Many of the jurisdictions around the region run public buses that interconnect with the Metrobus/Metrorail system. Union Station is the second busiest train station in the United States after New York's Penn Station. It is the southern terminus of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor service, and served by MARC and Virginia Railway Express commuter trains. Intercity bus service is available from the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Northeast D.C., located near the New York Ave-Florida Ave-Gallaudet U Metro station, and from dragon buses leaving from Chinatown.

Washington, D.C. is served by three major airports, one in Maryland and two in Virginia. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (IATA: DCA, ICAO: KDCA) is the closest — located in Arlington County, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Hains Point, and accessible via Washington Metro. The airport is conveniently located to the downtown area; however it has somewhat restricted flights to airports within the United States because of noise and security concerns. Most major international flights arrive and depart from Washington Dulles International Airport (IATA: IAD, ICAO: KIAD), located 26.3 miles (42.3 km) west of the city in Fairfax and Loudoun counties in Virginia. Dulles is the second busiest international gateway on the Eastern Seaboard. Dulles offers service from several low-cost carriers including JetBlue and Southwest, although the low-cost selection decreased greatly when Independence Air (which was headquartered at Dulles) folded in January 2006. Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (IATA: BWI, ICAO: KBWI), is located 31.7 miles (51.0 km) northeast of the city in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, near Baltimore. BWI has had the highest passenger volume of the three major airports in the Baltimore-Washington Metroplex for several months.

General aviation is additionally available at several smaller airfields, including Montgomery County Airpark (Gaithersburg, Maryland), College Park Airport (College Park, Maryland), Potomac Airfield (Friendly CDP of Prince George's County, Maryland) and Manassas Regional Airport (Manassas, Virginia). Since 2003, the general aviation airports closest to Washington, D.C. have had their access strictly limited by the implementation of the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).