Concept C removes the Connecticut Avenue reversible lanes and adds bike lanes. DDOT modified the proposal in late 2020 to include 24-hour parking along some segments.
An Axios DC article yesterday morning on DDOT bike lane projects planned through 2024 took note of what was missing: “lanes on Connecticut Avenue, which would connect upper Northwest to Dupont Circle and downtown.”
A few hours later, Mayor Muriel Bowser and DDOT filled in some of those missing lanes. They announced the elimination of the reversible lanes along upper Connecticut Avenue. And DDOT will proceed with plans to install protected bike lanes along the stretch between Calvert and Legation Streets.
A covered sign with the Connecticut Avenue north- and southbound reversible lane hours. Reversible lane operations have been suspended since the pandemic began.
The reaction from Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh, who secured the $2.2 million for the upcoming design process in the FY 2022 budget:
Today was a big day for major transportation safety announcements, but it is really just the beginning.
I'm very grateful to @MayorBowser @DDOTDC @DDOTDCDirector for this announcement and cannot wait for the inaugural #bikedc ride down the *protected* Connecticut Ave bike lane.
— Mary M. Cheh (@marycheh) December 15, 2021
The preferred concept was presented to the public in 2020 as Concept C, which has evolved during the two-year reversible lane safety study to include 24-hour parking on one side of the street in commercial areas. The design could also include left-turn lanes and floating bus islands.
Four advisory neighborhood commissions supported Concept C, some unanimously. ANC 3C vice-chair Janell Pagats told WTOP, “The brave people who bike down Connecticut Avenue, I mean, they’re going to be so much safer.”
All users will find travel on Connecticut is safer, ANC 3F chair David Cristeal told The Washington Post.
DDOT staff said at the March and April public meetings that they would make their recommendations to DDOT management by the end of June. During the intervening months, Acting Director Everett Lott told WAMU/DCist, the agency was doing “due diligence” and making sure they “understood all of the pros as well as the cons.”
No one will be gliding down Connecticut in a protected bike lane anytime soon. Completing the project’s design alone is expected to take 18 months, according to the mayor’s statement.
Paul says
This will have a disastrous effect on Forest Hills streets as traffic backed up on Connecticut due to the reduction in traffic capacity will flow onto neighborhood streets. Many of us have been pointing this out to the ANC for years. It’s a sad fact that none of the objections were heard. Is this due to the outsize influence of the bicycle lobby on DC government?
DCdog76 says
The bicycle lobby representing a tiny percentage of our population is strong. I’m surprised there is not more outrage over this, there will be once these bike lanes are implemented.
Green Eyeshades says
This claim begins with the phrase “[t]he bicycle lobby representing a tiny percentage of our population ….” If the claim is supposed to suggest that only “a tiny percentage” of DC residents and only a “tiny percentage” of residents in adjoining counties ride bicycles, it is flat wrong. If the claim was intended to suggest that the population of bicycle riders is DC is not growing, it is also flat wrong.
Take this four-year-old report from WTOP, for example:
[snip] “In fact, the percentage of commuters in D.C. opting for two wheels ranks third in the nation.
“Among large U.S. cities, D.C. leapfrogged over Seattle between 2010 and 2015 to become No. 3 in the percentage of people who bike to work, according to data collected by the federal government.
“The District is now tied with famously bike-friendly San Francisco in the proportion of its population that bikes to work.” [snip]
“The percentage of D.C. residents who bike to work increased from 2.2 percent in 2010 to 4 percent in 2015, according to U.S. Census data from the most recent version of the American Community Survey. That equates to about 13,000 D.C. residents who currently bike to work and an average of about 1,200 new cyclists hitting the streets every year.” [snip]
“In Bloomingdale in Northeast and in Mt. Pleasant and Petworth in Northwest, well over 20 percent of residents regularly commute to work by bicycle, according to D.C. city data based on the census statistics.
“And the federal data may actually undercount the total number of cyclists in the D.C. area, advocates said, because occasional cyclists and those who bike part of the way to work before transferring to Metro are not counted in the tally.
“The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, which also surveys the region’s residents for its ‘State of the Commute’ study, reported an average 16 percent of D.C. residents commute to work via bike when those groups are counted.” [snip]
https://wtop.com/local/2017/05/many-people-really-bike-work-around-dc-surprising-stats/
The link to the U.S. Census Bureau in that old WTOP story is now broken, but here is one example of current Census data on percentage of DC residents who bike to work:
The most recent product from the American Community Survey (ACS) that shows the number of persons in DC who bike to work appears to be the 2019 ACS one-year estimates, which (IIRC) use 2018 data. It shows that 15,528 DC residents biked to work (with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 2,200). That is not a “tiny percentage.”
https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=B08&g=0400000US11%245000000&d=ACS%201-Year%20Estimates%20Detailed%20Tables&tid=ACSDT1Y2019.B08301
Even if the claim was not false or misleading, it would be irrelevant because the District of Columbia, by statute and regulation, and in agency budgets and transportation planning decisions, has adopted formal findings of fact as a matter of law that increasing the use of bicycles and reducing the use of motor vehicles is in the public interest and must be encouraged, and will be encouraged through construction and maintenance of an increasing number of miles of protected bike lanes in the District.