1. In terms of livability and mobility, DC has changed dramatically over the past decade. What are the three changes you like?

One of my favorite changes is the emergence of bikeshare—when I moved to DC, SmartBike (the predecessor to Capital Bikeshare) was getting underway, but CaBi itself really opened up so much more of the city to me, as someone living without a car. And in the past year, dockless bikeshare has opened things up even more—to me, and to people who never felt bicycling or Capital Bikeshare was for them. I especially love the e-assist JUMP bikes… so much so, that I’m thinking about buying a pedal-assist bike!

This one is definitely livability not mobility, but it’s still really relevant. The food scene in our region has really exploded in the past ten years. I can’t imagine DC having Michelin-starred restaurants when I moved here in 2008! I go to other cities now, and I’m often underwhelmed by their food scenes, because we’ve gotten so spoiled so fast in DC… not just fine dining, but also great fast casual (with some homegrown DC chains really knocking it out of the park) and everything in between. I try to eat healthy and eat at home as much as I can, but my busy schedule means eating out a few times a week, and in DC it’s always a pleasure.

Over the past ten years, I also think our collective consciousness about DC as a city has changed and matured a bit. Policy-wise, we’ve done a bunch of the low-hanging fruit (installing bike lanes where it’s easy, adopting Vision Zero and Sustainable DC, implemented inclusionary zoning) and it’s had a real impact on my day-to-day life. Now we’re on to much more politically-fraught changes (like taking away parking for bus-only or bike lanes), but even so, general consciousness of transportation and land use among residents is as high as I’ve ever seen it. When I talk to people at parties, they really “get it” how important things like a strong Metro system and bicycle infrastructure are to everyone’s day-to-day life.

2. And three changes you don’t like?

The decline of Metro service and reliability is the biggest one. But honestly, local residents have nobody to blame but ourselves—we as a region have neglected to take care of the system, and now we’re paying the price. It’s really painful, though, that transit-dependent people are the ones most hurt by this.

Because, on the flip side, the rise of TNCs (like Uber and Lyft) has been a boon to personal convenience, but at the cost of public attention to transportation options that actually make our cities cleaner, more livable, and more pleasant, like transit, bicycling, and walking. According to a recent study, something like over 50% of Uber/Lyft trips would NOT have otherwise been in a taxi or private vehicle… in other words, more than half of Uber/Lyft trips are putting people into cars. That’s more congestion on our roads and more greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. It’s a real tragedy of the commons situation, in that as an individual it’s often the easiest choice (if you can afford it), but when everybody takes Uber/Lyft, it has real negative consequences for our cities.

Finally, just as our collective consciousness about DC has matured a bit, so have our problems. Affordability of housing is the biggest problem (in my opinion) on the horizon, not just in DC but many cities… and while it’s easy to think of transportation and housing as two totally different realms, in reality they’re so closely intertwined. If you can live close to the things you need, it cuts down on congestion, makes it easy to get where you’re going, and gives you back time in your life you’d have otherwise spent getting from A to B. We must, must, must turn our collective attention to finding solutions that allow everyone to have safe, affordable homes with reasonable access to the jobs, services, and other amenities that we need in our day-to-day lives.

3. What’s the most important thing you’re working on right now?

We just finished up a successful campaign to secure dedicated Metro funding… it’s probably the most important thing I’ve ever worked on. Locals love to hate how Metro service has declined over the past several years. The system definitely needs reforms, but without a long-term funding source, Metro hasn’t been able to plan for long-term preventative maintenance, so it’s really no surprise that things have declined. Imagine if you never did preventative maintenance on your car—never got the oil changed! Things would be pretty messed up after a while. While real changes need to be made, the system also needs enough consistent funding to fix the decay that decades of neglect have caused. As a region, we have nobody to blame but our elected officials (and by extension, ourselves) for letting things get as bad as they have. It’s going to take years of public pressure, reform, and repair to get Metro back to a world-class system.

4. Two recent bicyclist deaths on DC streets highlight the dangers of commuting in the DC area. What’s the most important step the transit community can take in mitigating these dangers?

We have to demand better-designed infrastructure. Most unsafe conditions can be mitigated by design. Paint is not enough—we need dedicated infrastructure for various modes, we need complete streets, we need curb separation where safety calls for it—not just when it’s easy for departments of transportation to build it. And while we keep up and amplify the drumbeat for better infrastructure, we also have to keep up political pressure for enforcement—whether that’s traffic enforcement, ticketing, red light cameras, whatever it takes.

5. How did you get involved in transit?

Cities have been important to me since I first moved to a city—New Orleans, in 2003, for college. I studied political science and architecture, and found (though I couldn’t have described it as such at the time) the urban fabric to really have an impact on my day-to-day life and happiness. I was living in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit, and during the aftermath and rebuilding. That’s what got me interested in public policy, and environmental policy seemed a natural fit. When I moved to DC for grad school, I took an entry-level job at a transit-related non-profit because, I reasoned, it was environmentally-friendly. Within a few years, I’d gotten involved in the urbanism/smart growth community in DC, and the rest of my transit advocacy career is history!

6. Tell us about your commute. Metro, bus, walk, bike … or a mixture of everything? How long does it take you to get from door-to-door?

My commute really varies depending on the time of year, and what I have going on that day and after work. I live ~2 miles from my office, and it’s an almost-straight shot through DC from Dupont Circle to the Coalition for Smarter Growth offices just east of Union Station. My favorite way to get to work (and most consistent, recently), is to grab a JUMP e-assist bikeshare, and take the 15th St cycletrack down to Pennsylvania Avenue, then pedal up through the US Capitol grounds to the office (20 minutes).

Depending on how hot it is, sometimes I’ll grab a Capital Bikeshare bike instead (30 minutes)… and other days, I’ll hop on Metro and take the Red Line to Union Station (20-25 min). Finally, when the weather’s perfect, it’s almost exactly an hour to walk straight up Massachusetts Avenue, door-to-door. If I wake up early enough, or don’t have anything going on after work, I love the walk. It’s very zen and a great time to catch up on podcasts.

7. What are your three most essential pieces of commuting gear?

I’m pretty low-maintenance… I don’t own any specialty commuting gear. That said, my three biggest essentials are headphones (podcasts or music!), messenger bag (I almost always have either my laptop or camera with me), and my prescription sunglasses (days that I walk or bike).

8. We hear you’re also a wedding photographer. What are your top 2 transit-related venues to photograph?

Yes, I am! It’s been very fun over the past ~6 years to have photographed many people in the local transit-bicycling-urbanism community. One of my go-to favorite places to photograph couples in our region is Union Station. Both the inside and outside are so beautiful and iconic, and unlike so many places in DC, you don’t need a photography permit! My all-time favorite related photography adventures, though, was photographing a surprise-marriage-proposal-bike-ride-and-party for two members of the DC bike community. You really have to see their crazy-amazing celebration for yourself—there’s no way it won’t make you smile.

Read the full article here.

We all share a passion for this city and we want it to succeed for everyone’s benefit. In fact, our organization, the Partnership for Smarter Growth, fully supports the revitalization of the 10-block area north of Broad, relative to the old Coliseum, into a walkable, mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhood, with restored street connections. We also support tax increment financing (TIF) districts in principle.

If we want to make smart choices, the best way is through an inclusive and transparent public process. Top business leaders and city staff don’t have a monopoly on good ideas. In fact, the closed-door approach to city public land deals — with a rushed public process after the deal is cooked — doesn’t exactly have a great track record in Richmond.

Our city is blessed with a diverse, smart, and creative population that has spearheaded so much positive change. Why not tap all this talent when making decisions about 10-plus blocks in the heart of our downtown?

We credit Mayor Levar Stoney for insisting that a Request for Proposal (RFP) be issued, that affordable housing be a part of the project, and for saying he won’t take a deal that’s not good for the city. However, a number of things are troubling about the process to date.

In many jurisdictions, the city engages the public and private sectors ahead of time to create a small area plan for such an important part of the community — capturing the vision, ideas, and needs of the community, while also accounting for market-related financing. This didn’t happen in this case, and we are still waiting for such a process for Shockoe Bottom and the Boulevard. With the plan in place, a streamlined rezoning process could be used for private proposals designed in accordance with the community plan.

The city could have consulted with the public prior to drafting the RFP. Subsequently, the city outsourced public outreach entirely to the developer without any involvement or public briefings by city staff. This is very unusual, and particularly so when talking about disposition of publicly owned land.

The Partnership shared the city’s RFP with some of the most successful mixed-use development firms working in Washington, D.C. All declined to bid, citing their assessment that there wasn’t enough economic value in the 10-block area to fund the new Coliseum and other public benefits sought by the city. Not being local, they also may have felt that the odds were against them with such a connected set of local business leaders out of the gate first.

The D.C. firms may also not have known that the city would consider throwing two more very valuable parcels into the mix — the blocks between 6th and 7th at Grace and Franklin, and at Broad. Or that the TIF district might be extended to encompass such a vast area, including Dominion’s two office towers. This calls into question whether there has been a level playing field.

Then of course there are the important questions being raised about the TIF district. In earmarking the increment in tax revenues over today’s baseline, the city will be diverting revenues to this project that would otherwise go to the general fund for schools, public safety, transit, and other infrastructure. This is a pivotal choice and the cost-benefit analysis must be rigorous and transparent. What is the net value of directing Richmond’s tax dollars to the Coliseum versus other investments we could make?

It’s hard to have a public discussion when most of the critical information isn’t public. If it weren’t for the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s intrepid reporter Mark Robinson filing a Freedom of Information Act request, we’d be even more in the dark.

Looking ahead, if we have just one public hearing before the Planning Commission and one before City Council following release of a fully-baked agreement, this won’t cut it. Fortunately, the council is calling for the time it needs and may commission its own consultants. But in the interim, we need public briefings and community input sessions hosted by the city, not the developer, to include review of the financials, the design, the affordable-housing commitments, and alternative approaches to the redevelopment of downtown.

Let’s keep in mind that today’s most successful cities fully engage their residents in planning for the future of their communities, and no longer plan behind closed doors with a small group of business people.

Read the full story here.

Dive Brief:

• In an open letter, the Coalition for Smarter Growth, DC Sierra Club, DC Sustainable Transportation, Greater Greater Washington and Washington Area Bicyclist Association have called on Washington, DC leaders to bring 20,000 shared bikes and scooters to the city.
• The local advocacy groups implore Mayor Muriel Bowser and District Department of Transportation (DDOT) Director Jeff Marootian to conceive and plan for a 20,000-vehicle system that is safe, equitable and includes “regulations primarily around the future we want to build, and not only short-term administrative considerations.” The letter cites that the city currently permits each dockless company to have 400 vehicles, in addition to approximately 2,500 Capital Bikeshare bikes.
• The petition comes shortly after two dockless bike-share companies, ofo and Mobike, abandoned operations in the District, citing onerous city regulations.

Dive Insight:

The petition from the advocacy groups to DDOT suggests that Washington, DC follow in Seattle’s footsteps, a city that recently passed legislation to bring 20,000 dockless bikes to the city and add more bike lanes to downtown. The groups also cite the Institute for Development and Transportation’s (ITDP) recommendations for 10-30 bikes per 1,000 citizens, and the city’s goal of 25% of all commutes take place by walking or biking by 2032, as reason enough for DC legislators to take “bold action” and expand the bike and scooter fleets.

However, expansive planning will be required to avoid haphazard placement of more bikes and scooters in the nation’s capital. In DC and around the country the same bike-share concerns continue to arise, which are listed in the open letter: parking, safety and maintenance of bikes, equity, troubleshooting, data sharing, bike and scooter lanes. The groups do not lay out concrete plans for how to deal with these concerns, leaving the DDOT to develop the specifics of any and all policy solutions.

According to Marootian, the District extended its dockless bike-share pilot program through August in the hopes that continued analysis will help find a “sustainable way forward.” Now might be the time to pounce on expansive bike-share planning as ofo and Mobike’s abandonment of operations in DC quells some competition concerns and legislators can look to Seattle for clues on how to regulate the industry.

Read the full story here.

Washington Post, July 25, 2018:

In Washington, supporters of a new tax on ride-hail trips to help fund Metro argue that pooled rides should be exempt from the additional fee — or pay a lower rate — because they are carpooling. For some, Schaller’s conclusions cast that argument in a new light.

“I think it’s an interesting proposal, but then you have to again look at this study and wonder if ride sharing has enough of a net benefit such that pricing should be tiered,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the pro-transit Coalition for Smarter Growth.

Schwartz pointed to another one of the report’s conclusions. Lyft says that today, a third of its rides in major markets are shared. The company has outlined a goal to make half of its ride shared by 2022.

“Even if Lyft managed to meet its 50 percent shared ride goal, you still increase [vehicle miles traveled] by 120 percent,” Schwartz said, citing the report’s finding that 50 percent shared ride adoption would still add about 2.2 vehicle miles to roads, or a 120 percent increase in driving overall.

Schwartz called the conclusions “pretty sobering.”

Read more here.

Texas-based developer Trammell Crow intends to break ground on the “Armature Works” project in Northeast D.C. later this year. A 2017 appeal by the grassroots entity H Street Neighbors had challenged the development and stalled work on the project while it moved through the courts. The appeal was dismissed earlier this year. The same group has appealed several other projects in the NoMa area, as have other groups throughout the city. According to a spreadsheet maintained by the Coalition for Smarter Growth, more than 4500 housing units are not being built because they are stalled in an appeals process. Approximately 700 of them would be classified as affordable.

A slew of appeals against “planned unit developments,” which allow developers to exceed zoning limits in exchange for building some affordable housing units or providing other benefits for the community, may hinge on a precedent set by Friends of McMillan Park, which contested 25 acres of fenced-off and unused land at the corner of North Capitol Street and Michigan Avenue NW. The historic site is home to ruins of an obsolete water filtration system.

Street Sense Media reported on the long-running grassroots resistance to the redevelopment plans in 2015 and the appeal the group filed in November 2016. One month later, the day after a ceremonial groundbreaking at the McMillan Park site, the D.C. Court of Appeals overruled the Zoning Commission’s approval of the $90 million project. Friends of McMillan had successfully argued to the court that the project did not fall within the guidelines of the city’s Comprehensive Plan.

The 1000-page Comprehensive Plan guides “inclusive” development in the city, aiming to encourage, yet regulate, growth that will attract new residents without pushing away Washingtonians. The McMillan case was the first successful filing of its kind in two decades. Now, to other actors, the Comprehensive Plan suddenly had teeth.

The plan was created with the expectation that it would be updated every five years. It was last overhauled in 2006 and last updated in 2011. Since early 2017, the D.C. Office of Planning has been spearheading revisions.

Commercial real estate developers say that a minority of District residents have prevented thousands of affordable and market-rate housing units from being built by filing appeals that stall projects for months as they work their way through the courts. Developers say that now, when they pitch projects to investors, they must factor in time for lengthy appeals. But the residents filing appeals say this is the only tool they have to demand more affordable housing and combat gentrification.

The Comprehensive Plan update process has been a lightning rod for these tensions.

During the 2006 revision, the Office of Planning received 300 public comments. During the comment period for the current revision, it received more than 3,000. A total of 273 concerned citizens, including lawyers, activists and policy wonks, signed up to testify at the first D.C. Council hearing, which lasted more than 13 hours and stretched well into the morning of March 21.

Despite its length, the hearing was relatively small in scope, only addressing changes to the 60-page “Framework Element” that sets up broad guidelines for the detailed chapters that follow. City government had released a markup of the suggested changes ahead of time.

ANC 2B Commissioner Nicholas DelleDonne sent an email to his constituents highlighting the suggested changes and calling out language on page 54 of the document. “New language there reads that the Plan is ‘not to be strictly followed,’” DelleDonne wrote to his constituents. “That is a massive shift — not an amendment, but a rewrite.” DelleDonne and others fear the plan would become a set of suggestions, not a rulebook.

This change would effectively remove the potential for the U.S. Court of Appeals to interfere with decisions made by local zoning officials based on the language in the plan, as has been done recently. That’s exactly what developers say is needed.

When asked why this portion of the document was updated, the Bowser administration said in a statement provided to Street Sense Media that the language governing enforcement of the Plan is vague. DelleDonne interprets the new language as even more vague, indicating the plan is not to be “strictly followed” – rewriting or removing current guidelines rather than massaging them.

During the hearing, Councilmember-at-Large Robert White Jr. said the amended plan, as written, doesn’t have enough “teeth” to bring needed change. “Long-term residents are being displaced by development,” he said.

“There is a clear misunderstanding of the issues,” said his colleague Trayon White, who added that residents east of the Anacostia River, in Wards 7 and 8, are very much misunderstood.

Councilmember Brianne Nadeau said there is a consistent path of racial and economic discrimination in D.C. “Steer the ship toward more responsible and affordable public housing,” she said.

Activist David Whitehead, representing the Edgewood Community in Ward 5, said the Comprehensive Plan should be a tool to get more affordable housing and prevent displacement.

“We need more housing,” he said to the packed council chamber, adding that the Comprehensive Plan needs stronger language on affordable housing. “The question is whether to water down the Comprehensive Plan or clarify it.”

“We need to emphasize stability,” testified Ms. Greene, a public witness. “Don’t tear down the existing affordable housing.”

Caroline Petty, president of the Brookland Civic Association, favored the plan, though she had concerns. The amendments obscure the clarity of the Comprehensive Plan, she said, opening it more to debate and interpretation.

Councilmember Elissa Silverman commented that “we have lost much affordable housing in our city,” and also emphasized the need for clarity.

“What is a stable neighborhood?” Nadeau asked rhetorically. “It is one where people don’t get displaced.”

There is a lack of “transparency,” testified Dr. Sabiyha Prince, a gentrification expert trained in anthropology and qualitative research.

In response to a complaint by housing advocates that Mayor Bowser’s office bypassed usual procedure, her communications director told Street Sense Media in an email that officials in the mayor’s office held several meetings with assembled members of the public. Bowser’s staff submitted a report to the Office of Planning.

“The problems aren’t solved; they’re getting worse,” said Parisa Norouzi, Executive Director of Empower D.C., the main nonprofit behind the anti-plan protest efforts and “Stop the Comprehensive Scam” stickers worn by many to the hearing. Empower D.C. has been organizing community meetings for the past year to review individual chapters of the 1,000-page plan, generate comments to submit to the Office of Planning, and organize turnout to events such as the evening hearing.

“We keep subsidizing high-cost developers to build a few affordable housing units,” she complained to a recent gathering at one such meeting meeting in a packed church basement in Southeast D.C.. “We have to pick a fight with the status quo.” She argued that there’s still a lot of racism in D.C. driving gentrification, whether people admit it on the surface or not “We need a drastic reassurance to enable uplifting of people starting with affordable housing.”

There is a basic equity gap that is hard to bridge in the current climate, all seemed to agree, whether they supported the proposed changes or stood against them.

“It’s poor to develop this way,” Dr. Prince later told Street Sense Media. “It represents uneven development; it’s helping some people and not others; a trickle-down strategy. It’s important to take input from the community and follow through 100 percent.”

A D.C. Council vote is expected in the fall. More information about the plan is available at http://plandc.dc.gov.

Read the full story here.