The D.C. transportation department is building a record of partially fulfilled promises on bike lanes, bus lanes, street parking, streetcar service and pedestrian safety. “In the 12 years since the District Department of Transportation was spun off from the Department of Public Works, no one has asked the critical question: Does the current agency structure work,” D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) said last week.
Category: CSG in the News
DC region’s new long-range plan fail to meet its own climate goals
If sea levels rise just one foot in the Washington, DC, area, nearly 1,700 homes could be lost. Is the region’s transportation planning agency doing enough to stop that from happening? Several environmental and smart-growth organizations in the region are saying no. Seventeen groups have signed on to a letter, being delivered today, urging the agency to take action. The comment period on the agency’s latest long-range transportation plan closes tomorrow.
DC council’s Cheh gains early support for major overhaul of city transportation agencies
D.C. residents and visitors would have to deal with one agency instead of four for transportation issues including parking tickets, taxis, bike sharing and other problems under a new proposal that is likely to pass.
Takoma Metro development moves forward
A new apartment complex at the Takoma Metro station got the go-ahead Thursday from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Board of Directors, though some neighbors disapprove.
Prince George’s adds incentives to get developers on track
Developers just received more reasons — a package of reasons, to be exact — to bring business plans to five Metro stations in Hyattsville, Largo, New Carrollton and Suitland. Prince George’s County officials announced the new incentives Monday at the University Town Center, a mixed-use project located near the Prince George’s Plaza Metro, and in front of the site where a $23 million Safeway supermarket project is expected to break ground in May.
Prince George’s County pushing development around five of its 15 Metro stations
Prince George’s County announced a new strategy Monday that officials say is aimed at spurring development and growth around the county’s transit centers. Officials plan to focus on five of the county’s 15 Metro stations, using investment in infrastructure, financial incentives and regulatory policies to jump-start development.
Takoma Metro Development Set for Approval, Despite Cross-Border Opposition
Nearly every new development project that’s taller than most of the surrounding neighborhood raises a few hackles among locals. Less common is one that arouses opposition across state lanes.
Tomorrow, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority board will vote on plans for an apartment building at the Takoma Metro station. The plans are the latest in an effort to redevelop the area around the station that has spanned two decades. They’ve changed form a few times, from townhouses with two-car garages that neighbors found insufficiently transit-oriented, to abuilding with five residential stories that neighbors found too tall, to the current scheme, which is one story shorter and contains about 210 apartments. The latest proposal has won plaudits from the Coalition for Smarter Growth as a compromise between suitability to a Metro-adjacent site and compatibility with a medium-density area.
But neighbors still aren’t pleased with the plans, on either side of the D.C.-Maryland border. Both the Takoma Park City Council and local Advisory Neighborhood Commission 4B have passed resolutions objecting to elements of the proposal.
“The biggest problem is, the building is too big,” says Takoma Park City Council Member Seth Grimes. (The project, by developer EYA, is on the D.C. side of the border, but Takoma Park is just across the street.) Grimes says the “vast majority” of neighbors are opposed to the design, largely because of its scale, which exceeds the standard zoning for the area by about 20 feet. He also personally believes there should be fewer parking spaces to encourage more Metro ridership.
Sara Green, an ANC commissioner on the D.C. side of the border, is frustrated that the neighbors are being portrayed as naysayers for opposing the current plans after getting some of the revisions they wanted from the earlier proposals. “WMATA said, ‘OK, we want to do what you suggested,'” she says. “And we said, ‘Fabulous!’ And then they came to us with something that was so much bigger than the existing zoning! We’re being painted as people who don’t want anything. What we’re rejecting is greed.”
Ward 4 D.C. Councilmember Muriel Bowser, whose ward includes Takoma and who sits on Metro’s board of directors, argues that the changes to the plans have addressed neighbors’ concerns. “A few issues popped out at everyone, especially involving the green space and how we could maintain it,” she says. “That’s gonna happen. We wanted to make sure that the height was fitting with the community.”
Bowser says she’ll vote for the proposal tomorrow, as, most likely, will the majority of her colleagues on the WMATA board. “We do expect it to be favorably voted by the WMATA board on March 27,” says Grimes, resignedly.
Click here to read the original story on Housing Complex >>
Photo courtesy of EYA.
Transit advocate backs bus-only lane as traffic solution for D.C.’s busy 16th Street route
Sixteenth Street buses are squeezing out all the capacity they can under current conditions. There’s no more room to add additional capacity for cars to the road without harming neighborhoods adjacent to 16th Street NW (nor is driving an option for many residents along 16th Street anyway).
Yet our region continues to grow, and more people need to commute to downtown D.C. from D.C. and Silver Spring neighborhoods all along the corridor. What are we going to do to address that?
The 16th Street bus lanes proposal, in which the current reversible rush-hour lane from Arkansas Avenue NW to downtown would be transformed into a dedicated bus lane, is our best option. With the rush-hour bus lane, we would increase our capacity to move the greatest number of people through this important corridor and with the least disruption to commuters using different transportation modes.
A 2013 feasibility study for the District Department of Transportation showed that creating a bus lane in that stretch of 16th Street would still leave two lanes for cars and only slightly increase delays. Meanwhile, buses, which move half of rush-hour travelers on 16th Street, would move 30 percent faster with a dedicated lane and, most important, would increase capacity for [moving people through the corridor] by 10 percent.
All of this can be done without sacrificing any parking spaces or narrowing 16th Street to one lane for cars in the peak direction south of U Street NW, as the letter-writer in your column suggests.
The same 50-foot right-of-way along this corridor has sufficient room south of U Street to be restriped for three travel lanes in the peak direction during rush hour, and to allow the non-peak direction to remain as it is — with one parking lane and one travel lane. Traffic volume is not as high south of U Street as it is to the north, where street parking isn’t allowed during rush hour in either direction.
As to your other points about bringing signal prioritization to the corridor and increasing the number of Metro supervisors along 16th Street to improve the efficiency of bus spacing, we agree, but it’s not enough.
Buses get stuck in traffic and are thrown off their schedules for two big reasons: They are stopped at red lights, and they are held back from moving through intersections because there are a bunch of cars in front of them.
Dedicated bus lanes free up buses from being stuck behind a line of cars trying to get through an intersection, and signal priority gets the bus through the intersection. Together, bus lanes and signal priority do more than the benefits they offer individually to get buses moving.
When we can do this with a marginal effect on traffic congestion, but a real increase in overall capacity, it’s a win for everyone.
What should be our next move? Do the detailed evaluations, approvals and plans to assess and implement a bus lane. DDOT should also expedite implementation of transit-signal priority, which is scheduled to be operating in the next two years.
The current status of the bottled-up transit service on 16th Street leaves more than half of the corridor’s commuters with a substandard option that is not only unacceptable, but also fixable. Why would we be so biased against effective solutions to make a corridor work for a majority of its travelers?
Cheryl Cort, policy director, Coalition for Smarter Growth
DG: A woman who lived at 16th and U streets in the late 1980s told me the Metrobuses were referred to as the “Banana Bus Lines,” because they always arrived in bunches. Many of today’s riders who try to board in the Mount Pleasant/Columbia Heights neighborhoods and farther south say that’s the most predictable part of the rush-hour bus service.
But to really succeed, a transit service needs the schedules to be predictable, not the bus bunching and crowding.
Metro and the District Department of Transportation consider 16th Street part of a regional bus priority corridor network, but DDOT has not yet presented an official proposal for bus-only lanes on 16th Street.
Maryland-to-D.C. commuters and D.C. residents along the corridor need to see such a proposal to make a proper evaluation. DDOT’s abortive experience with reconfiguring Wisconsin Avenue NW highlights some of the difficulties in translating what looks good on a map into what works for commuters in rush-hour traffic.
Before bus lanes arrive on 16th Street, drivers and bus riders alike need to know the District will be committed to enforcing new rules on lane use, parking and turning.
Bus-only lanes in an urban core are a block-by-block experience in engineering and transportation politics. If 16th Street becomes an initial experience, it needs to be a good one. Otherwise it could poison the environment for other transit improvements.
Are bike lanes safe?
WASHINGTON– After more than six hours of debate, the Alexandria City Council unanimously approved a plan to add bike lanes on King Street on Saturday.
The plan adds lanes west of the King Street Metro Station between West Cedar Street and Highland Place. The decision culminates months of hotly contested debates between bicyclist advocates, city planners, and local residents concerned about the impact on parking and access to their homes.
“It’s unfortunate that a topic of this sort has become so divisive. As Alexandria has committed itself to become an eco-city, we’ve always been attempting to identify opportunities to be more multi-modal, whether that means walking, biking, pushing strollers, jogging, cars, buses, light rail or all of the above,” says Alexandria Mayor Bill Euille.
The key issue that both sides debate was safety. Do bicycle-only lanes increase or decrease safety on King Street in this residential neighborhood? Should bicyclists ride on busy King Street, or use The George Washington Masonic National Memorial?
“Everybody agrees that there is a speeding problem. What we’ve heard is that the traffic is moving too fast. No one moves into Alexandria expecting to live on a street where we have speeding and we don’t address that issue,” says Rich Baier, Alexandria transportation director.
Transportation officials say the average speed on King Street between Cedar Street and Highland Place is 33 to 35 miles per hour, even though the speed limit is only 25 miles per hour. Baier says adding bicycle lanes will slow down drivers and add a buffer to keep pedestrians safe on the sidewalk.
“Bicycle lanes will go a long way towards making this more of a residential-based street than an arterial road,” he says.
Alexandria resident Sue Gunter agrees with the bike lanes because she thinks it will make pedestrians safer.
“Because there’s no bike lane on King Street right now, some bicyclists who ride down to the Metro station regularly use the sidewalk. While walking, I’ve frequently been startled by a bicyclists being behind me. A bike lane will solve this because bicyclists will no longer need to use the sidewalk,” she says.
Resident Scott Binde says he’s a bicyclist, but does not currently ride on King Street.
“This plan would change that. Bicycles, pedestrians and cars would each have their own space, making movement for all predictable and safe,” he says.
Patrick Earl, who teaches at T.C. Williams High School, says he drives and bikes to work from Takoma Park, Md.
“I see both perspectives and by far the safest situation for me as a biker is to have a dedicated bike lane. But also, I feel much more confident passing a biker who is in a bike lane than when there is a blurred area,” he says.
But Lisa Beyer Scanlon of the Taylor Run Citizens Association believes that bike lanes are a bad idea. She thinks only expert bicyclists should use King Street, and adding bicycle-only lanes could lead to more crashes.
“To use bikers as a buffer is just wrong. They’re people, they’re human beings. Having a car hit them first, so they don’t hit a pedestrian is not our idea of a buffer. Let’s say there’s a 100 bikes an hour. If we build these lanes and they do come, there’s never going to be a full lane of bikes going through there. So there will never be a complete buffer,” she says.
“Complete streets for our neighborhood include sharrows, they do not include dedicated bike lanes,” adds Scanlon.
Sharrows stand for shared arrows placed in the roadway to let drivers know that they need to share the road with bicyclists. Sharrows are popular in the District of Columbia, as well as Arlington. Montgomery County is also looking to add sharrows to help with their launch of Capital Bikeshare last fall.
Scanlon also opposes the plan because it would mean parking spaces would go away. Originally, about 27 spaces would have been removed, but a compromise to add sharrows between Highland Place and Janneys Lane mean that 10 of those spots can be saved.
“Instead of getting rid of the parking, we think that parking is the safest part of the street and provides a better buffer for people riding on the sidewalk,” she says.
Baier says on average, only three out of the 27 spots are filled at a time on the street. He says the spots are underutilized and thus do not create a buffer. He adds that removing the parking spots should not create a parking problem for residents in the area. Scanlon agrees parking is underutilized, but recommends throwing out the resident-only parking rules and opening the spots to the general public.
Other residents like Amy Lehmkuhler and Lynn Lawrence, are also worried that it will be more dangerous to pull in and out of their driveways with bicycle lanes, especially with fewer parking spots.
“In order to safely access our home on the hill, we must back into the driveway, so that we can face the speeding traffic when entering onto King Street. If this is passed, we the people, when we pull out, we will be in both of these lanes,” says Lehmkuhler.
“I’ve watched as neighbors have tried to negotiate getting in and out of their driveways in heavy traffic. I just cannot imagine how bike lanes would be an improvement at this location. These lanes will make an already difficult stretch of road even more hazardous to navigate, resulting in potential injuries to bicyclists and residents alike,” says Lawrence.
Resident Louise Welch says the bicycle lanes will make life more difficult for her and her husband.
“My husband is disabled and on oxygen. Taking away this 7 foot lane and replacing it with a 5 foot bike lane means he cannot even picked up in front of our own home, where we have lived for 35 years,” says Welch.
Others like Jake Jakubek believe the bicycle lanes are important for attracting new business and younger residents. Jakubek is the Vice Chair of the Alexandria Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.
“If people are demanding better pedestrian infrastructure, better bike lanes and better transit, then we need to cater to those demands. If we don’t provide for the amenities that this generation of people feels is important, we will be left behind. Public transit use is at the highest level it’s been since 1956,” says Jakubek.
Stewart Schwartz of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, also testified in favor of the plan, calling it a sensible way to promote commuters not to use their cars.
“The consensus among elected officials and the business leaders is one of transit- oriented, walkable and bikeable communities. It is the most feasible and effective means for managing our region’s growth and traffic that is only getting worse. Certainly this is really key to Alexandria’s competitiveness in the future,” says Schwartz.
In the end, the Council unanimously approved the bike lanes proposal. Transportation officials will update the Council on the progress of the project in 2015.
At 16th Street NW, a divisive bus-lane proposal
Read the original article at Washington Post >>
“Public transportation needs to supersede the convenience of suburban commuters,” said Sarah Spurgeon, an attorney who rides the S Line buses from her home near U Street. “There is just so much traffic coming from the suburbs down 16th . . . we need to focus on good transportation within the city center.”
Residents have sent letters and spoken at public meetings in support of the proposal. They say the city should have bus lanes, just as it has bike lanes, and cite a District Department of Transportation study recommending a bus lane in the corridor. Smart-growth advocates are gathering signatures in support of the effort. And Metro says a bus lane is necessary if it is to provide dependable service.
“Unless you address the congestion problem that the buses are facing, nothing is going to change,” said Kishan Putta, a member of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission for Dupont Circle and a bus user who lives near 16th and R streets.
Bus lanes that take away a lane for regular traffic are generally not popular, but transportation officials are increasingly viewing them as critical to comprehensive transit networks. Arlington County and the city of Alexandria are set to open the region’s first bus-only lanes this year. The five-mile stretch connecting the Braddock Road and Crystal City Metro stations will offer traffic-free bus travel, frequent service and off-board payment. Montgomery County is studying an ambitious plan to build a system of express bus lanes. And in the District, Metro and DDOT also are exploring bus-only lanes along H and I streets NW.
Increasing ridership in the 16th Street corridor warrants consideration of a dedicated lane, said Jim Hamre, director of bus planning for Metro.
Metro has added buses to the corridor and in 2009 launched a limited-stop bus route. But as service has increased, so has demand.
Metrobus carries about 50 percent of the people traveling 16th Street from Silver Spring to downtown D.C. each morning, yet buses comprise only 3 percent of the vehicles traveling the roadway, Metro said. They get stuck in traffic, sometimes traveling at speeds of less than 10 miles per hour, according to the agency.
No room for more
By the time the bus arrived at the 16th and U streets stop one morning last week, bodies were squeezed up against the exit doors. A glimpse up 16th Street showed a cluster of buses slowly making its way through heavy traffic.
“You wait a long time and see many, many buses pass by,” Catherine Depret said as she and her 22-month-old son waited at 16th and Corcoran for a bus to get him to day care. On a good morning, they might wait 15 minutes. On a bad day, she is forced to take a cab.
When Depret arrived at the stop at 8:30 a.m., an S4 bus had just left. Three other people were waiting at the stop. At 8:36, an approaching S2 stops a few yards away from the bus shelter, and a woman and a child get off. The bus takes off, leaving behind a dozen people.
By 8:40, four crowded buses have passed by without stopping. One woman starts walking west toward Dupont Circle. A man begins to head south toward the White House.
“When it’s cold or raining, it’s really not fun, especially if you see four, five or even six buses go by,” Depret said.
A fifth bus arrives at 8:46, with limited standing room, and those remaining at the stop crowd on.
Metrobus ridership in the corridor has increased 25 percent in the past four years, Metro said, and the agency expects that trend to continue as people move back to the city, particularly to areas such as Columbia Heights and Dupont Circle. The S Line carries more than 20,000 passengers daily — an average of 4,237 during the morning rush hour alone.
Since the launch of the limited-stop S9, Metro has extended the S9 service from 7 to 9:30 p.m. In 2012, larger buses were added to the night runs to meet the demands of workers who often were passed up by full buses after 10 p.m. Last year, Metro added nine morning S2 trips, starting at Harvard Street, to ease crowding in the southern portion of the corridor. Longer buses have been shifted from the Georgia Avenue Line to increase capacity. And this month, Metro started running emergency buses on the route when people are left behind by crowded buses.
“Bus lanes will help,” Hamre said.
Considering the trade-offs
But some riders say traffic congestion isn’t the problem. They say there simply aren’t enough buses.
“There aren’t enough buses to pick up everyone,” said Ronnie J. Kweller, who lives just south of U Street. “Watching a full bus pass by in a dedicated lane does not help anyone get where they need to go.”
Kweller said she also worries about the possibility of a bus lane taking away parking in an area where it is already tight. “It will be a real hardship to people who have cars and need to park them safely, lawfully and relatively close to home,” she said.
The impact on parking and car lanes will be studied if the city decides to officially consider the idea, said Sam Zimbabwe, associate director for policy and planning at DDOT. The department’s master plan, MoveDC, scheduled for release this spring, is expected to include the transit lane alternative for 16th Street.
“You couldn’t just add a bus lane without any changes. You will need to be taking a car lane or parking. There are some trade-offs in there,” Zimbabwe said. But, he said, “we are probably years away from having a dedicated bus lane on 16th Street.”
The southern portion of the corridor, in particular, presents challenges because of its two- lane configuration. A stretch in the central part of the corridor already has an alternative lane, so during the morning rush three lanes are southbound. If a bus lane were to be designated, the area would still have two lanes for general traffic.
A 2013 DDOT study of the corridor recommends a peak-hour transit lane extending 2.7 miles between Arkansas Avenue and H Street NW. The bus lane has potential to increase transit travel speeds by 30 percent and accommodate up to a 10 percent increase in ridership, the report says. But it also would affect parking, currently permitted on portions of 16th Street NW during peak periods, and could create more vehicular delays at some of the busiest intersections, according to the report.
Drivers dealing with an already bad commute would suffer more with a bus-only lane, AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman Lon Anderson said.
“Sixteenth Street is a mess, but for them to suggest that it is okay to take a lane and dedicate it to buses . . . is not an acceptable solution,” he said. “I don’t think the cars hold up the buses particularly. Everybody moves along about the same speed. We are all stuck in it together.”
A better solution, Anderson said, would be fast-tracking Metro’s plan for a traffic signal priority program at 16th Street that would allow buses the green light, which could speed bus travel.
Although transit advocates agree the signal initiative is part of the solution, they say freeing the buses from the general traffic will get them moving faster and allow them to make more trips. Metro already has 42 bus trips in the corridor in the 8 a.m. hour. That’s one bus every 85 seconds, more than the minimum required for a successful bus lane, officials say.
“We are seeing folks using all the available space on those buses,” Hamre said. “At the current rate of growth, we need something else.”