Posts by Adam Froehlig

Someone riding south on the 15th Street lane has to merge into busy traffic and then cross the Mall either by riding on the sidewalk, which is often quite crowded with tourists and joggers, or in the road, where cars expect to drive fast and not encounter cyclists. The last time David rode there, a DC taxi pulled up right behind and started honking, even though there was another, mostly empty lane it could switch into. It eventually did, honking even more.

It gets worse around Maine Avenue and Ohio Drive, near the Tidal Basin. Not only is the pavement in this area in horrible condition, but those roads are configured like highways with cars speeding along the winding curves. The sidewalks are extremely narrow and packed with pedestrians, especially during warm, sunny weather and in Cherry Blossom season.

The pedestrians deserve to use that space, but what do cyclists do? Riding in the road is only an option for southbound bicyclists, and it's a harrowing experience with the curved yet high-speed roads and drivers traveling very fast.

Bicycle issues near the bridge. Image from Google Maps.

In the other direction, there isn't really a choice. From the path over the Mason Bridge, a cyclist has to ride on the sidewalks around the Tidal Basin, go the long way around west of the Tidal Basin toward the Lincoln Memorial, or take a long detour through East Potomac Park to get to the eastern side Ohio Drive and then head back up through the Maine Avenue area.

From Southwest DC, there's a path along the Case Bridge, which carries I-395 over the Washington Channel, but to get to it you have to navigate across and around highway-style ramps in Banneker Park, then 2 narrow switchbacks which force dismounting.

On the East Potomac Park side, the path turns into a narrow sidewalk along the on-ramp from the Park Police headquarters. Riders have to travel though the NPS parking lot (or go farther out of the way), then ride along the western Ohio Drive past the George Mason Memorial to get to the path.

On the Virginia side, the Mount Vernon Trail connects to many trails, but has no direct connection from the 14th Street bridge area to Pentagon City right across the freeways. Someone riding there has to either head north through Lady Bird Johnson Park and then wind around the Pentagon parking lots, or go south to the airport and then backtrack through Crystal City.

Alternatives improve Virginia connections

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement suggests 3 alternatives. The most ambitious, Alternative 2, proposes a new bridge from western Ohio Drive across the Potomac along side the Long Bridge (the CSX and VRE tracks) and then over the GW Parkway, with access to both the Mount Vernon Trail and Long Bridge Park.

The connection in Virginia seems great, but dumping cyclists in East Potomac Park isn't that useful. It's a little closer to the Case Bridge path, but not much, and getting to downtown or the Mall is worse than today's existing bridge.

The DEIS also contains 2 other, smaller bicycle proposals. Alternative 1 slightly widens and makes some changes to the approaches to the Mason Bridge path on each side, connecting to the Mount Vernon Trail and to the Jefferson Memorial. An earlier version also proposed widening the bike/ped path on the George Mason Bridge, but this bridge widening was removed from the alternative for "technical complexity." The final EIS ought to reconsider this option.

Alternative 3 has two parts. One would create better and more consistent wayfinding signage on both sides of the river. The second part proposes new trail connections to the Pentagon and in Pentagon City.

Around the Pentagon, a new connection would extend the half-built trail under the Humpback Bridge over to Boundary Channel Drive, providing a more direct connection between the 14th Street Bridge and the Pentagon. In Pentagon City, it would create a better bike connection from the north end of Crystal City (12th and Clark) west along Army-Navy Drive, under I-395, and along the south edge of the Pentagon Reservation to Columbia Pike and the Washington Blvd trail.

Proposed trail connections in Virginia. Labels added to base image from the EIS.

DC needs better bike connections as well

The Virginia connections would significantly improve access to the bridges, but there are no comparable bike connections proposed on the DC side of the river. This is the most glaring missing piece in the DEIS. The team should study and propose a better connection to 15th Street.

Drivers have direct connections in all directions here, even having too many ramps to too many roads. Cyclists, meanwhile, have one bad connection southbound from downtown and none at all northbound, and poor and winding connections to other directions.

This isn't just a recreational amenity. Many already use the bridge for commuting. Many more likely would for both commuting and general transportation if there were a clear, direct, and safe connection.

Ideally, we could find a way to extend the 15th Street cycle track from Pennsylvania down through the Mall, then past or through the Maine Avenue/Ohio Drive/East Basin Drive area up to either the Mason Bridge path or a new bridge.

WashCycle suggests extending the new bridge along the railroad tracks across East Potomac Park to the east side, where it's a lot closer to the mainland. Another option is to convert 1 lane on East Basin Drive (the 2-lane road from Maine Avenue to I-395 South and the Jefferson Memorial) into a 2-way bicycle facility up to Maine Avenue, and eventually connect through the Mall to the 15th Street lanes.

What do you think is the best way to create a connection between the Mall and downtown across the Potomac?

In late 2008, DDOT submitted a request to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to de-designate I-295 north of the Anacostia side of the 11th Street Bridge, and to extend I-695 across the 11th Street Bridge to meet I-295 and DC Route 295. DDOT said the purpose was to "rationalize the freeway system in the District."

Image from DDOT.

But people are asking, if I-695 has existed all these years along the Southeast Freeway, why hasn't it been signed?

Not even DDOT knows for sure, but one possible reason is that it was intended to go farther.

I-695 South Leg proposal, from 1970 study.

This image, from a 1970 study, shows one of the alternatives for an extension of I-695 as part of the DC Interstate system. Dating in some form back to the mid-1950s, I-695 would have continued west from the 3rd Street Tunnel, diverged from the Southwest Freeway at Maine Ave, and continued northwesterly to meet I-66 at Constitution Ave NW. The ramp configurations at I-395/Maine Ave SW and at I-66/Constitution Ave NW are remnants of this long-ago plan, officially killed by then-mayor Marion Barry in 1980.

This segment might have been partially signed before it was cancelled. There's an empty space on the sign bridge on westbound I-66 just north of the E Street Expressway that might have housed an I-695 sign, and an associate of mine has reported that he recalls an I-695 sign on the inbound Theodore Roosevelt Bridge back in the 1970s. Any such signage has long since disappeared, however.

1971-proposed Inner Loop freeway system.

This map, from the 1971 DC Interstate System study by DeLeuw, Cather & Associates, shows how the longer I-695 would have fit into the context of the freeway system proposed for the DC core. As it connected I-66 with I-295 around the south side of the core, it would have been long enough to warrant signage. Since the South Leg was cancelled, plus the lack of connections between the 11th Street Bridge and DC 295, there was less of a need to sign I-695 after the freeway cancellations.

So why sign I-695 in DC when there's an I-695 around Baltimore, some ask. Wouldn't that just cause confusion? It might for unaware drivers and tourists, but there's precedent for signing nearby Interstates with the same number. We already have that in the DC area: both DC and Baltimore have I-395. An example with even less intermediate distance can be found in New England. I-291 exists in both Springfield, MA and suburban Hartford, CT, separated by only 22 miles. By comparison, over 31 miles separate DC's and Baltimore's I-695.

Now that DDOT plans to remove the Southeast Freeway spur to Pennsylvania Ave and is building connections between the 11th Street Bridge and DC 295, the agency has decided to reintroduce us to I-695. To reduce driver confusion, DDOT should install consistent signage all along I-695 and at the interchanges at both endpoints. Only time will tell if drivers can adjust to the "great route experiment."

This graphic, from the City Council meeting docket, shows the draft list of proposed stations. The white circles on the map identify the initial round of 6 stations, and black circles potential additional expansion locations. Green circles show stations that will likely come from developer funding, Alexandria's Transportation Management Program fund, or other grants.

Capital Bikeshare belongs in Alexandria

Alexandria is particularly well-suited for CaBi expansion. It has the second highest bicycle commuting share in the region, a dense core area with several destinations and nearby Metrorail stations, and a major bicycle route with several other nearby bicycle improvements. The city is also no stranger to bike sharing: Capital Bikeshare bicycles have been spotted as far south as the Fairfax County portion of the Mt. Vernon Trail.

Over 30 individuals and groups contacted the City Council or sent letters in support of Capital Bikeshare, including the city's Environmental Policy Commission, the Transportation Commission, and the Alexandria Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.

In addition, Mayor Euille and other councilmembers said they were flooded with emails supporting CaBi in the hours leading up to the Council meeting; Euille said he's never gotten so many emails in one hour on any other topic.

$400,000 of federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) funding, was already approved last year for the initial round of 6 stations, to be located generally in Old Town. An additional $400,000 in FY 2013 CMAQ funding, approved by the council on September 27, will add another 6 stations for a total of 12 CMAQ-funded stations.

These funds will cover station purchase and installation, 108 bikes for the stations, and operating costs for the first year. Additional operating costs are proposed to be covered by existing Transportation Management Plan (TMP) funds that Alexandria has collected. The city currently has $400,000 in unused TMP funds available. This ensures that no general city funds will be needed for the program.

City staff estimate that Capital Bikeshare will generate 40,000 to 50,000 bike trips in the first year of operation. Experience in DC and elsewhere suggests this will drive additional general demand for bicycles and bicycle trips. They also estimate that the program will fully cover operating expenses via program revenue by the third year, a conservative estimate considering that DC fully met operating expenses in the first year and Arlington met 65% of their expenses in the first yer.

Joining Capital Bikeshare also opens the door for developers and the TMP to fund stations in addition to the CMAQ-funded ones. Several employers and developers have already approached the city with interested in adding bike sharing stations, and the upcoming Harris Teeter development in North Old Town had a station approved as part of the development and site layout.

Most councilmembers enthusiastic

When it came time for discussion, many councilmembers were clearly very eager. Rob Krupicka asked just how soon the city could construct stations. Vice-Mayor Kerry Donley went so far as to argue the pilot program "was meager," and advocated for a much larger expansion. Both went on record as supporting the use of city funds to support operating expenses as well if necessary. Councilmember Redella "Del" Pepper was enthusiastic in her comments in support.

Not all of the discussion was positive. Councilmember Frank Fannon wanted the program be entirely fiscally self-sustaining. Councilmember Alicia Hughes wanted to see the city plan out future phases and their potential impact on the city budget, and also argued that the council should be sure to understand the potential fiscal ramifications of joining Capital Bikeshare.

Several citizens, including two councilmembers, questioned why Del Ray was not included in the proposed station list, especially since there's a large level of support for bike sharing in that neighborhood. Staff explained three reasons for Old Town and Carlyle:

1. Bike sharing stations should be relatively close together (about ¼-mile apart) to work effectively.
   
2. The "Potential Bicycle Activity" map from the city's Pedestrian and Bicycle Mobility Plan clearly shows western Old Town as the area with the greatest potential for bicycle activity and, conversely, the areas with potentially the highest CaBi usage.
   
3. Old Town is the densest and most connected part of the city, with several bicycle routes, destinations, and 2 Metro stations to support Capital Bikeshare usage. While other areas of the city have higher population density, they don't have nearly the multimodal connections, destinations, and bicycle-supportive infrastructure that Old Town has.

That does not mean the city will stop at just Old Town and Carlyle, though. City staff have expressed interest in future expansion into Rosemont, Del Ray, Arlandria, and possibly even into the West End as the transit infrastructure (with the Beauregard/Van Dorn St corridor) is further developed.

Stations could come by spring

Now that City Council has given their blessing, city staff and the City Manager will work with Alta, DDOT, and Arlington County to finalize the agreement, select station locations, and begin ordering and installing stations. The city hopes to have the first six stations in by spring, though it may not happen until summer. This will be followed up by a second wave of six stations funded from the FY 2013 CMAQ money.

City staff have a draft list of proposed station locations, but will conduct site surveys and preliminary enginnering to finalize those locations. In the meantime, they plan to consult with citizen groups and roll out an interactive website to gather public input on station locations.

Building a successful Capital Bikeshare core in Old Town should easily build support for the program and enable the city to further expand CaBi into adjacent neighborhoods, eventually tying into Arlington's Bikeshare stations. Alexandria and its residents will see additional travel choices, fewer vehicle trips, and better health as a result.

I contacted each jurisdiction's GIS office in order to determine the price charged for three common map layers: building footprints, zoning, and elevation contours. The prices are shown in this chart:

Alexandria and Loudoun charge a nominal price for CDs containing their full data set, which offers all of the GIS data they make available to the public. Arlington is similar but more expensive, as they separate their contour data from the rest and charge more for the contours. Prince William splits their land area up into several small geographic squares called "tiles," and then charges by tile instead of countywide. Fairfax provides countywide data, but charges a higher rate.

Even Fairfax is affordable compared to jurisdictions in Maryland, though. By comparison, both Montgomery and Prince George's charge excessive rates. They both charge "by tile," like Prince William, but with several hundred tiles within each county, the cost of full coverage skyrockets significantly.

There are some exceptions. Both Fairfax and Montgomery offer downloads of limited data for free. In Montgomery's case the free data comes as Google Earth "kml" files. However, the bulk of their GIS data, including the three layers mentioned above, comes at a price.

A number of free or low-cost GIS programs are available for the general public. As GIS becomes a more mainstream way to gather information, good data availability will become even more paramount. Making it available to the public at a nominal cost or free of charge is a good opportunity for jurisdictions to be more open with their residents, and to foster understanding and innovation.

It costs each jurisdiction virtually nothing to give the data to additional users. Some localities have argued in the past that they need to charge to recoup the cost of generating the data. However, that ignores the massive public good that comes from making it possible for people to create maps on their own, even if those maps will just get posted online somewhere and never earn anyone a dime.

Some area jurisdictions, DC in particular, have recognized this. It would behoove the other jurisdictions to follow suit.

Basic land use

This map simplifies the city's zoning into four categories: commercial, residential, designated mixed use/"coordinated development" zones, and other (everything else).

The commercial corridors along King St, Washington St, and Mt Vernon Ave really stand out on this map, as do the designated mixed-use or "coordinated development" areas that reflect recent development (Carlyle), new development (Potomac Yard), or proposed redevelopment areas (Beauregard).

Figure-ground map

These maps show building footprints. The first one is citywide, while the second one is a zoom-in showing Old Town, Carlyle, Rosemont, and the southern part of Del Ray. While not as "thick" as DC, there is some noticeable density in Old Town.

Topography

This map details the city's topography, with contours at 10 foot intervals. The highest point in the city is located in Fort Ward Park. Other noted areas of elevation are the ridge along Seminary Rd, the Landmark area, and the far southwestern corner of the city near the Beltway/Van Dorn St interchange (technically outside the city limits but included in the data package).

Some man-made and other features can also be easily seen in the topography, including I-395, the Beltway, the Beltway/Telegraph Rd interchange (before the Wilson Bridge-related construction began) and the CSX tracks. Also easily visible are the Cameron Run channel, Holmes Run, Backlick Run, and part of Four Mile Run.

Cross-posted at Just Down the Parkway.

On a recent WashCycle post, one commenter noted that most planned bike lanes lie in the Northwest quadrant, while others pointed out that the quadrant contains more of the city's land than any other.

I created this map using shapefiles from DC OCTO. The background image is 2008 ortho imagery. The red outline is the city boundary plus the quadrant boundaries. Blue-shaded polygons represent water, bright green shading represents NPS parkland and other while the orange shading represents military bases.

Total area (including water):

• Northwest: 29.21 square miles. 42.6% of the total.
  
• Northeast: 15.52 square miles. 22.7% of the total.
  
• Southwest: 11.02 square miles. 16.1% of the total.
  
• Southeast: 12.73 square miles. 18.6% of the total.

So Northwest is by far the largest quadrant, followed by Northeast. Only about 1/3 of the city is considered "south."

Water area (using OCTO's Water Polygon shapefile and includes the creeks and some ponds):

• Northwest: 1.11 square miles (mostly the Potomac). 15.3% of the city's water total. 3.8% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Northeast: 0.38 square miles (mostly the Anacostia). 5.2% of the city's water total. 2.4% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Southwest: 5.26 square miles (Potomac, Channel, Tidal Basin, part of the Anacostia, etc). 72.5% of the city's water total. 47.7% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Southeast: 0.51 square miles. 7% of the city's water total. 4% of the quadrant's total area.

As you can see, DC's water is predominantly focused in Southwest, due largely to the Potomac, Washington Channel, and the Tidal Basin. Almost three-fourths of the city's "water area" is in Southwest, and almost half of Southwest's total area is covered by water. By comparison, water covers relatively little of Northeast or Southeast, even with the Anacostia River in both.

Subtracting out water area from the total yields Land area:

• Northwest: 28.1 square miles. 45.9% of the city's land total. 96.2% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Northeast: 15.14 square miles. 24.7% of the city's land total. 97.6% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Southwest: 5.76 square miles. 9.4% of the city's land total. 52.3% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Southeast: 12.22 square miles. 20% of the city's land total. 96% of the quadrant's total area.

As can be expected, Northwest has the lion's share of DC's land area, whereas less than 10% of the city's land area is in Southwest.

I didn't stop there, I also ran calculations for both National Park Service land (listed as NPS Map A) and military bases within DC.

NPS-parkland area (using OCTO's Parks Polygon shapefile)

• Northwest: 5.35 square miles. 51.4% of the city's NPS total. 18.3% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Northeast: 1.52 square miles (mostly Anacostia Park). 14.6% of the city's NPS total. 9.8% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Southwest: 1.52 square miles. 14.6% of the city's NPS total. 13.8% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Southeast: 2.01 square miles. 19.3% of the city's NPS total. 15.8% of the quadrant's total area.

This includes circles and triangles maintained by NPS. It also includes some land classified as "parkland" but which contains parking lots (like around RFK stadium, though it doesn't include the stadium itself) or roads (Rock Creek Parkway, Canal Road/Clara Barton Parkway, and others).

Here, Northwest takes the lion's share, with half the city's total. NPS parkland also takes up a larger share of Northwest's total area than the other three quadrants. Roughly half of Northwest's NPS parkland is Rock Creek Park.

Military base/facility area (using OCTO's Military Locations Polygon shapefile)

• Northwest: 0.42 square miles. 17.5% of the city's base total. 1.4% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Northeast: No military bases/facilities.
  
• Southwest: 1.87 square miles. 77.9% of the city's base total. 17% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Southeast: 0.11 square miles. 4.6% of the city's base total. 0.9% of the quadrant's total area.

Again, Southwest takes the lion's share, thanks to the joint Anacostia Naval-Bolling AFB base. Note how there are no military bases in Northeast.

Factoring out water area, NPS parkland, and military base area yields this remaining Land area for each quadrant:

• Northwest: 22.33 square miles. 46.1% of the city's land total. 76.4% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Northeast: 13.62 square miles. 28.1% of the city's land total. 87.8% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Southwest: 2.37 square miles. 4.9% of the city's land total. 21.5% of the quadrant's total area.
  
• Southeast: 10.1 square miles. 20.9% of the city's land total. 79.3% of the quadrant's total area.

While Northwest has the largest amount of non-NPS/non-military land in the city, both Southeast and Northeast have a higher percentage of their total area as non-NPS/non-military land.

By comparison, Southwest has very little land available, and a large chunk of this is occupied by Federal office buildings near the Capitol and south of the National Mall.

Cross-posted at Just Down the Parkway.