Mayor Bowser and the DC Department of Transportation can already claim a major traffic safety accomplishment from the Connecticut Avenue Reversible Lane, Operations and Safety Study that began in 2019: the removal this year of the rush-hour reversible lanes. The design alternative that includes bike lanes got the mayor’s and DDOT’s approval almost exactly a year ago.
Now, pedestrians and bus riders need a win.
What would that look like? Improvements that make it easier to get around without getting into a car. This means encouraging greater use of alternative modes of transportation by providing better connections to nearby commercial areas, and by recognizing the impact of the pandemic on our travel patterns.
In one way, the study delivers: It provides for a dedicated bike lane on each side of Connecticut Avenue, which will improve safety and ease of travel for cyclists. But it is fuzzy on improvements to other non-car modes of transportation, and DDOT’s initial design concepts have not explained how buses and their riders will be safely accommodated.
Jim McCarthy, a former ANC 3/4G commissioner who served for eight years, commuted by bike on Connecticut Avenue for more than 30 years. He told me he is nevertheless concerned about the impact that bike lanes will have on transit.
“It all depends on the design, I guess, but it’s important that bike lanes not impede the operations of bus service, which is used by more people than are likely ever to bike,” McCarthy said. “If we’re taking climate change seriously, we need to get people out of their cars. We won’t do that if the main alternative, the bus, is stalled in traffic.”
We also won’t get people out of their cars if there’s no better alternative for non-cyclists traveling to nearby neighborhoods for shopping, dining and work. This intra-neighborhood movement has taken on greater importance since the pandemic began. Federal agencies that were seeking to reduce their office footprints prior to Covid-19 continue to do so, at an accelerated rate. And increased telework means leaving your home for lunch or a quick errand, not a downtown office.
“At the height of the pandemic, 60% of federal government workers were working remotely,” reports the Washington Business Journal. “Today, there’s a vanishingly small chance of reverting to the pre-pandemic norm, and so far, little in the way of a comprehensive strategy across the federal workforce.”
It follows that Connecticut Avenue’s value as a conduit for downtown commuters will diminish. But it remains an important connection between commercial districts, and that importance will only increase as new development adds more housing and retail.
Chevy Chase DC, which is not served by a Metro stop, has a small area plan for additional housing and businesses along the avenue. In Van Ness, the Days Inn is up for sale and ripe for mixed-use development. Roadside Development had redevelopment in mind when it purchased properties on the northwest corner of Windom Place. UDC is actively seeking retail tenants for its vacant retail spaces, and preparing to welcome MOM’s Organic Market next summer. In addition, David Franklin, UDC’s chief operating office, reports that UDC is moving forward on plans for student housing.
“UDC is currently undergoing the development of a feasible housing plan, conducted by a national firm, to determine the type of housing and potential timeline for implementation,” Franklin told me.
If new businesses and new housing attract people who feel they have no good alternative to driving, buckle up for gridlock. Better east-west transit is also critical. In Friendship Heights, 1,400 apartments are in the development pipeline. City Vista and other projects further down Wisconsin Avenue are adding more retail and more housing.
That’s a lot of potential new customers, and without more transit to and from these areas, that’s a lot of missed opportunities to connect them to Connecticut Avenue commercial areas. The advisory neighborhood commissions that urged DDOT to conduct the Connecticut Avenue study in 2018 may not have been thinking precisely along those lines, but in resolutions, ANC 3F and 3C stated “that overall goals of the study should be to enhance pedestrian safety, walkability, and overall economic vitality of the affected neighborhoods.” [emphasis mine]
Unfortunately, most of the Connecticut Avenue traffic data used for the study was collected in 2018. A goal of growth in all modes of transportation was not even considered, nor were the plans for increased retail and housing density along our commercial corridors.
For years, too, there has been a double standard at play. For road projects and even for bike lanes, there is the mantra that if you build it, they will come. But that is not applied to improving pedestrian access and bus operations. If not enough people cross the street at an unsignalized intersection, the community can’t get a pedestrian light. And if bus ridership falls off, service is reduced. The L1 Metrobus line has not operated since March 18, 2020, and in September, the L2 went from ten minutes between buses to 12 minutes, during what used to be the typical weekday community hours. The gaps between buses can be at least twice as long at other times.
Many cities around the world are combining housing development with planning for better mass transit and pedestrian and bicycle connections within neighborhoods. Concepts include Luxemburg’s 2017 mobility plan, which aims to expand transit to handle 40 percent more trips. Paris’s 15-minute city emphasizes walkable distances between homes and amenities. Barcelona’s superblocks close interior streets to motorized vehicles other than emergency, services and residents’ vehicles.
Let’s learn from these cities. If we want residents to travel to nearby commercial areas and also reduce car usage, the District needs to rethink its approach to mass transit and pedestrian mobility. For Connecticut Avenue, that means collecting new data and incorporating the changes that are already upon us, and those in our future. And it means coming up with a transportation system that can accommodate commuters heading downtown, but is not largely focused on them.
So let’s start building a safer transportation system that gets people out of cars and connects us to local shops, restaurants, parks and other neighborhood amenities. Let’s set a goal of becoming a 15-minute city.
LN says
Hear, hear!! Very well said.
David Jonas Bardin says
Excellent observations today by Marlene Berlin.
Pay heed:
ANC Commissioners (today’s and tomorrow’s), DC Council Members (today’s and tomorrow’s), DDOT, Mayor Bowser, bicyclists, MetroRail, MetroBus, etc.
Michael Chorost says
I agree with the point that DC’s downtown is going to lose foot traffic, which will migrate to the outlying areas such as Van Ness as more workers work from home. To that end, I’d like to see more takeout-friendly places such as Julia’s Empanadas, Little Sesame, and District Taco, and solid midrange restaurants that are like Chef Geoff and Buck’s Camping and Fishing (e.g., good places to have a burger and a beer.) The former home of Uptown could host two such restaurants easily.
Too often, we seem to get shops that don’t seem well-suited for survival, such as Shemali’s, which seems to stock only specialty items that most people wouldn’t buy very often. There is one thing Shemali’s does very well, though: they make excellent hand pies. I’d love to see them switch over to making more of those pies. They’d sell.
Other restaurants I’d like to see here: Hill Country Barbecue, Lia’s, and a good midrange Indian restaurant.
We could also use a hardware store like Ace’s, and a Bank of America ATM.
FHC says
Don’t sleep on the ready-to-eat salads and shawarma at Shemali’s!
Luke says
Shemali’s is a gem. I go there once a week and it is well supported.
Roberta Carroll says
Comparing DC to Paris and other cities is useless since so many factors are different so conclusions on traffic and pedestrians is useless. Many offices have told workers they must return to the office after the pandemic. Office rents are expensive and businesses posing those rents want people back using the space. Just one reason return to the office is necessary. Conn Ave is walkable every day as you see many empty sidewalks waiting walkers. With the proposed bike lanes there is no place for bus riders and a proposed center island takes up a huge amount of space and feels unsafe. The large trucks that sit near the curb and unload at stores and restaurants will block the two lane Conn Ave down to one moving lane. There is no room for bike lanes on Conn Ave. ANC 3f did not consult or poll the neighborhood before they voted on this issue. ANC is suppose to reflect the neighborhood not to vote their personal opinion. Just say no to Conn Ave bike lanes.
Green Eyeshades says
Please stop your disinformation about the effect of bike lanes.
Krucoff’s crushing defeat in the campaign for Ward 3 DC Council proves that opposition to bike lanes was dead in the water. It proves that bike lanes are deeply popular, in all of Ward 3 and even in the voting precincts that make up Forest Hills and nearby neighborhoods along Connecticut Avenue.
For example, in precinct 138 (what I think of as 7th Day Adventist but which the board of elections calls “Capitol Memorial Church”), Krucoff lost by 72% to 27%.
In precinct 50 (Chevy Chase Community Center), Krucoff lost by 75% to 24%.
In precinct 34 (Edmund Burke school), Krucoff lost by 83% to 15%.
In precinct 33 (Murch elementary), Krucoff lost by 78% to 21%.
In precinct 32 (Wesly Methodist church), Krucoff lost by 76% to 22%.
Krucoff’s margins of defeat were similar at the Cleveland Park Library and Oyster School precincts, which can be proxies for Cleveland Park and Woodley Park neighborhoods.
Disinformation about bike lanes failed for Krucoff, and it fails in your comment.
Adrian Salsgiver says
Krucoff’s defeat had nothing to do with the bike lanes and everything to do with the fact that he ran as a Republican. The Carol Schwartz era is long over and anyone who doesn’t know it is ignorant about DC politics. Only Democrats and Independents that are really Democrats can win.
Stephen Schwartz says
The traffic flows on Conn Ave were originally done in 2019. They were redone in late 2020. They were redone again in late 2021. They are in the process of being redone RIGHT NOW. It is factually untrue to say that these plans were concieved and set in stone years ago and now being forced in a different environment. That is not the case and DDOT has been gathering additional data and making conceptual recommendation changes as a result.
In the meantime, people keep getting in accidents. Two cars have flipped over on Conn Ave in the past few months. A pedestrian crossing at the north end of this project was killed in the summer. Just in the past month two cyclist injuries occured at Porter and Conn Ave. Several pedestrian accidents have occured this year.
DDOT is moving slow already, taking their time with conceptual refinement – the next stage is the more on the ground design that will itself take another year.
Super blocks in the city would be a fine and great idea. But it’s also a huge stretch for it and more suited to a fully dense set of blocks of retail and residential. So AdMo, U st/Shaw, Georgetown/GWU, maybe the new McMillian project. It’s a red herring to try that type of project first in sleepy, single family house laden upper NW.
Paul Walters says
I appreciate the thought provoking article. Thank you FHC and Marlene. It seems that we are in a period where all the pieces of the puzzle have been tossed into the air — the economy, the future of commuting, the evolving modes of commuting, the morphing demographics of NW, etc., — that the District might have to evolve through several transit strategies before hitting on the one that serves all constituencies equitably.
Personally, I’m not going to get on a bike, those days are long gone for me, and I prefer walking to driving. Since 90% of my “trips” are within NW, and I would rather not drive and deal with parking, I would like to see the District Government and WMATA figure out how to provide effective east-west-north-south transit options within NW. Maybe a network of mini-buses operating on the average within a 3 to 4 block walk of most residences and businesses, with easy transfers to Metro for longer trips.
Marchesa says
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/27/upshot/road-deaths-pedestrians-cyclists.html
The US is a world leader in pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities. The debate over increased safety and decreased deaths for people, not drivers, is settled.