Posts about Klingle Valley
Public Spaces
Klingle Valley to get 10-foot trail, lights, trail connection
The Klingle Valley Trail Final Environmental Assessment is now available, and with one exception the most trail user-friendly and stream-friendly options were chosen as the best alternatives.
Trail connection option C. Image from DDOT.
The preferred alternatives include the fully restored stream bank and lights along the trail, which should aid bike commuters. The hours of illumination would even be limited and timed to correspond to prime commuting hours.
For the trail connection to the Rock Creek Trail, they chose the best option, Option C, which creates a separated side path along the south side of Klingle Road and along the ramp before connecting with the Rock Creek Trail below Porter Street, NW. However, they but modified it by narrowing the trail a bit. Instead of being 6-10 feet wide, it will be 6-8 feet wide.
The existing 20-foot wide vehicle travel lane will be narrowed to 12 to 14 feet wide, and the trail would be separated from the road by a curb. It's unclear how much of the trail would have been 10 feet wide before the modification, so this is a small loss.
The one place where the preferred alternative differed from what users might have asked for was in the width of the trail (in scanning the comments I saw more calls for a wider trail than narrow; but mostly it's people who want the road back or no build).
Instead of being 12 feet wide, they chose the 10-foot option. 10 feet is sufficient, and this trail may not be as busy as others, but 12 would have been better. The report doesn't give a justification for the preferences, but cost is a good guess.
The whole project, if the preferred alternative is built, would cost between $7 and $10 million $4.5 and $7 million.
Sustainability
An environmentalist says Gray is greener
The author is Conservation Chair of the DC Sierra Club and a member of the Board of Directors of the national Sierra Club.From an environmental standpoint, the decision between Adrian Fenty and Vincent Gray is not difficult. Fenty has repeatedly disappointed with his budget, personnel, and regulatory decisions, while Gray has been the greenest Chairman ever.
Photo by M.V. Jantzen on Flickr.
Four years ago, Tony Williams was stepping down after eight years as the District's first pro-environment Mayor. He had stood with us in our various park-protection battles (including the defense of Klingle Valley and Anacostia National Park), supported Dan Tangherlini's visionary plans for new streetcar lines, and put Jim Sebastian in charge of the new Bicycle Office and given him an ambitious agenda.
He commissioned the Office of Planning to develop a terrific new development and preservation plan for the Anacostia, and signed several cutting-edge laws passed by the DC Council, including the Tree Bill, the hazmat train prohibition, and the Green Buildings law. He had worked with the Council to create a new Department of the Environment (DDOE).
But in September of 2006 the Sierra Club couldn't decide whom to endorse for Mayor. Neither Linda Cropp nor Adrian Fenty had been an ally previously. Both were big fans of paving Klingle Valley, and neither seemed likely to support the ever-greener ambitions of the Council. For the first time in many cycles, we made no mayoral endorsement. Gray won our endorsement for Chairman over green Kathy Patterson, to the surprise of many. He was simply stronger on the issues.
Since his election in 2006, Fenty has done a good job of continuing Williams' bicycle and streetcar initiatives, both of which are now more than eight years old. But by every other measure, the Mayor has been a great disappointment to environmentalists.
On Anacostia Park, within his first six months in office Fenty dismantled the Anacostia Waterfront Development Corporation, which had been charged with implementing the vision articulated in the Anacostia Framework Plan of 2003. He now wants to build 6 million square feet of commercial and residential development at Poplar Point, compared with the approximately 1 million square feet that had been negotiated during the Plan's development. Defending Poplar Point is the Sierra Club's top land-use priority.
Fenty put a good man, George Hawkins, at the helm of DDOE, but then repeatedly saddled the agency with bloated green-jobs programs that drove Hawkins and most of his senior staff crazy. Hawkins ultimately left for WASA (now DC Water).
Fenty also wouldn't allow Hawkins to express support for Tommy Wells' wildly-successful grocery bag fee bill, which passed the Council with nary a dissenting vote.
This year the Mayor instituted major funding cuts for DDOE As we approached the culmination of our campaign to force Congress to quit burning coal in the Capitol Power Plant, we approached the Mayor with an offer to put him in front of our campaign. We considered this a no-brainer given the obvious health impacts of burning tons of coal in the middle of the District, not to mention the global warming implications. But the Mayor wouldn't accept our offer despite the silver platter. Only weeks later, Congress caved in. Decades of coal-burning in downtown DC ended last year!
Similarly, reduced greenhouse gas emissions are the central goal of DC's new Sustainable Energy Utility. But Fenty recently proposed to reduce its budget by 85%. He then tried to slash the DC tax credits for solar energy installations.
Then the Mayor nominated Lori Lee The Mayor is also fighting us on the pending "MS4" stormwater discharge permit from EPA. We would like to see improvements in the draft permit, but generally support its rigor. The Administration is doing its best to weaken it, arguing that the suburbs should take the lead on water quality improvement.
Meanwhile, during his six years on the Council, Chairman Gray has always been a friend of the District's environmental movement. My records show that he has been a 100% green voter for his entire tenure.
Earlier this year Vince valiantly fended off Mayor Fenty's proposed cuts in next year's budget for sustainable energy development, rooftop solar, as well as basic funding for DDOE. This largely unheralded work came at a steep price, because other budget priorities had to be sacrificed. Granted, he wavered for hours on streetcar funding, but ultimately made the right call. This was, after all, a very tough budget year.
Vince has supported our campaign to save Klingle Valley since the days when Adrian was holding pro-road press conferences in the Valley itself. In responding to our recent political questionnaire, he distinguished himself from Mayor Fenty in his commitment to oppose over-the-top development at Poplar Point.
Gray talks to us. He attended the Sierra Club's Annual Dinner last Fall and gave a rousing address. This is a leader whom we can trust and fully expect to work with in the coming years.
For these and related reasons, the Sierra Club's leadership voted unanimously (10-0) to endorse Gray.
If we want Washington to take its rightful place alongside Seattle and San Francisco as one of America's most progressive environmental cities, we need an executive that will work hand-in-hand with our now progressive legislature. Gray has the vision; Fenty doesn't. And Gray will end the war-between-the-branches that has held DC in second gear for four years.
Public Spaces
DDOT ponders four decisions for Klingle Valley trail
DDOT has released the Klingle Valley Trail Environmental Assessment to build a trail through Klingle Valley.
Image from the Klingle Trail EA.
For those not familiar with the area, Klingle Valley is the tributary of Rock Creek between Woodley and Cleveland Park, where a former road washed out in 1991 and kicked off a multi-decade debate about whether to build a new road or a trail that was resolved in favor of the trail in 2008.
Four decisions must be made before the project moves forward. These include the design of the trail, the restoration of Klingle Creek, access from the trail to the Rock Creek Trail and trail lighting. The more desirable and user friendly options also carry the highest price tags.
In all of the proposed actions, DDOT will build a multi-use trail with two trailheads, provide better storm water management and restore the creek. They would remove the existing road and all of its associated elements as well as a few trees that present a hazard.
They would add in a bioretention island on the west side and signage and/or pavement markings to connect users to the bike route on Woodley Road. Due to the steep terrain, the trail will not be designed to ADA standards. At the Indian Embassy property the trail would be lifted out of the flood plain.
Trail options: There are four options including a No Build Alternative (Alternative 1). All of the build options include 2-foot shoulders and a 7-foot swale to capture runoff. Alternative 2 would build a 10-foot-wide trail with a permeable surface, and Alternative 3 a 12-foot-wide trail. Alternative 4 is similar to Alternative 2, except that it uses an impermeable surface instead. They would all take 8-12 months to build.
Trail Alternative 3.
Access to Rock Creek Trail: Option A would build a trailhead on the east end and trail users would use the existing road to connect. Option B would narrow the 20-foot roadway to 14 feet and create a 6-foot bike/ped lane with a physical barrier and paint. Option C would also narrow the road to 14 feet but then build a multi-use trail (with a width that would vary from 6 feet to 10 feet) along the south side of the ramp that leads to the Rock Creek Trail below Porter Street, NW.
Access option C.
Lighting: Either the project will include trail lighting or it won't. If it does, they're looking at pole lighting and bollard lighting, using solar powered lights (which they previously noted would be difficult there) and low energy LEDs.
Stream restoration: Option A restores the most critical 420 feet of the stream, while Option B restores the entire 1,595-foot-long stream.
Analysis: For the resources studied in the EA, all options had either a benefit, minor and/or temporary negative impact or no impact (mostly no impact). The only exception was the removal of the hazardous trees.
The study also eliminated some options. It did not study a connection to Connecticut Avenue due to the steep grade. The idea of turning the Klingle-Porter intersection into a park was deemed unreasonable because it would be too disruptive and too expensive.
From a technical standpoint, Alternative 3, Access Option C, Stream Restoration Option B and the lighting option with lights are the best. Together they create a wide, permeable trail with the best possible connection to the Rock Creek Park Trail and lighting for transportation; and completely restore the stream. They also happen to be the most expensive options as seen in the table below.
The addition of lighting is critical to make the trail into be a commuter route. DDOT should make the investment.
The maintenance savings for the impermeable trail surface don't seem worth it. They create an additional $40,000 up-front cost to save $2,000 a year, and increase runoff. Therefore, Alternative 4 should not be considered.
Choosing between Alternative 2 and Alternative 3 seems difficult at first because of the over $2 million difference between the two. That seems like a lot of money for 2 extra feet of width. It is.
Running through the numbers in Table 2 below, it appears they made a math error. In order to get the high value in the Total Cost row for Alternative 2, they added $143,000 for access option C instead of $1,430,000. The real price difference for the two is $746,000. At that price, the wider trail may be worth it The most difficult choices deal with the trail connection and the stream restoration. The road in question gets very little traffic, and so $1M+ to get a narrow sidepath seems like an unnecessary expense. It would be a plus, and possibly even required for pedestrians, but it would be nice to know what DDOT would do with the money if it weren't spent on the connection. Complete stream restoration on the other hand, though pricey, seems like the right thing to do.
A public hearing on the EA has been scheduled for Wednesday, June 23, 2010, starting with an open house from 6-6:30 pm and presentation and comments from 6:30-8 pm The hearing will be at the National Zoo's Visitor Center Auditorium, 3001 Connecticut Avenue, NW (Red Line to Woodley Park-Zoo). The public comment period closes July 6, 2010, and comments must be received no later than July 6, 2010.
Crossposted at TheWashCycle.
Table of Costs for Klingle Options
Public Spaces
Turn the Porter-Klingle interchange into a park
The Klingle Valley trail project is focusing on building a trail, but it's also a great opportunity to reexamine the giant interchange to nowhere in the middle of Rock Creek parkland.
This interchange is massively overbuilt today. It was designed to shuffle cars between Porter Street, Beach Drive, and the now-nonexistent Klingle Road to the west. From satellite photos, it looks like a giant gash in an otherwise leafy expanse of parkland:
Porter Street is the visible road from the northwest to the southeast, while Beach Drive just appears as a dark line through the trees. Where the access road intersects busy Beach Drive, there is just a basic T-junction. That road then continues to Porter, but instead of a similarly-sized T-junction, we have six large ramps and two underpasses.
The current plan has the trail using part of the southernmost roadway (marked in green above) until it joins the Rock Creek trail. The roadway will remain open to cars for drivers coming from the handful of houses to the west.
But since no through traffic continues to the west, we shouldn't need this whole mess. Beach Drive gets by with a much simpler intersection. Why not turn the intersection of Porter and the road to Beach Drive into a regular T-junction as well? It could look something like this:
The road and underpass along the south (in green) would become a bicycles and pedestrian path only. The road and underpass in the north could become two-way for the cars going to the few houses on Klingle. The road that intersects Porter is already two-way, and cars heading east on Porter already turn across the intersection at grade to get to it.
The only change to traffic would be to have cars from that road going to Porter eastbound also turn across the intersection instead of looping under and back around. A stoplight could regulate those turns. Since the bottleneck on Porter is currently at the stoplights on either end, the small amount of delay from this extra movement shouldn't reduce the overall capacity of Porter Street. DDOT should certainly check that, however.
This change turns a lot of the land into usable park space. An even better arrangement would be to move that street toward the north, near the northern underpass. That would free up even more contiguous parkland by making all traffic to and from Beach Drive and the Klingle houses use the northern edge of the clearing, reserving the rest for recreation.
Public Spaces
Park and Planning closing commuter routes at dark
We don't close main arterial streets at night even if a road is less safe. So why do many local governments close walking paths and bicycle trails, even ones that are used as commuting routes?
Northwest Branch Trail. Photo by rllayman.
Reader Bianchi wrote in with a report:
My S.O. and I bought a house in Historic Hyattsville this fall. He uses the Northwest Branch bike trail to get to either West Hyattsville metro or Fort Totten. Last night, on his way home between 6 and 6:30 pm (when it was already dark), a PG County cop car came up behind him while he was on the bike trail and pulled him over.Bianchi contacted Hyattsville Mayor Bill Gardner. Here was his response:The officer told him the trail was closed when dark because there had been some reports of mugging. S.O. asked the officer (rhetorically) if he thought riding on the street with cars with no bike lane was really safer.
He feels the question of which route is safer to bike should be left to him, the biker. The 'no use at dark' prohibition affects the morning commute too. I guess one solution to street (or bike trail) crime is to just prohibit people from being on the street.
Almost all of the parks and the trails in the County are owned and managed by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC). The Commission's policy is that park facilities close at dark, period. It has been a struggle to get them to change, although apparently they did re-designate a trail in Montgomery Co. near a Metro as a commuter route a couple years ago and it is open after dark.All park facilities? M-NCPPC doesn't close the roads that go through their parks, like all the roads crossing the portion of Rock Creek in Montgomery County. NPS doesn't close the GW Parkway. The difference is that park agencies see those as commuter transportation facilitiesWe have met with them to request they change the policy, given that the trails in our area are commuting routes. After a bit of work and some publicity, M-NCPPC provided lighting and cameras along a couple short sections of the trail near the metro station. They didn't agree to "open" the trails after dark in other areas. The trails are policed primarily by the M-NCPPC police, but they do collaborate with the county and city police.
Leaving aside the question of whether it's right to have commuter transportation facilities a major part of a parks agency's mission, a bike and walking trail is a transportation facility as well. Just because people use it for recreation doesn't make it not a transportation facility; many people jog on streets, too.
Commenter Woodley Parker wrote about the Klingle trail, "I live right above the proposed trail and I would prefer that it not be lit at night. In fact, the trail should probably be closed at night just like many other parks."
I disagree. It shouldn't be closed any more than Beach Drive is closed, or Porter or Tilden Streets (none of which is closed). Klingle Valley isn't going to have a vehicular road, but it's still going to be a pedestrian and bicycle through route. As such, it should have lights (though they could be much smaller than the lights on a roadway) and be open at all times. So should the trails in Montgomery and Prince George's Counties that serve a transportation function as well as a recreational one.
Public Spaces
DDOT presents Klingle trail progress
Planning for the Klingle Valley Trail is moving along, but there are still few details about some of the issues that most affect potential users.
DDOT and Greenhorne & O'Mara are conducting this study to build a trail along Klingle Valley from the intersection with Porter Street and Rock Creek Parkway over to the western Woodley Road. In 2007, at the urging of many residents, the DC Council voted (1, 2) to build a trail instead of a road through the valley.
Sample trail alignment for the Klingle trail. Click to enlarge.
WABA would like the trail lit, but presenters at the meeting said that this is a "design decision" outside the EIS. That doesn't stop potential riders from wanting to talk about the subject. Lighting along the trail would make it much more accessible for walkers and cyclists at night, such as using the trail to commute.
It also would add to the environmental footprint, unless DDOT could put solar panels somewhere not blocked by too many trees to power the lights. If the valley had become a a road instead, the project certainly would include streetlights in the project, and those lights would have been far brighter than anything that might go on a trail.
Attendees also asked about the possibility of stairs between Connecticut Avenue and the trail below. DDOT representatives said that this wasn't part of the project, but they'd love for the local businesses or a residential building to create an elevator large enough for bicycles, which would also accommodate persons with disabilities.
Other considerations in the trail design include whether to make it 10 or 12 feet wide, and whether to use a permeable pavement for better stormwater management. The old road washed away because of rainfall in the valley, making the hydrology especially important here.
Public Spaces
On the calendar: Party, performance parking, public plazas, and park pathways
The Greater Greater Washington holiday party is in four days! Join us at RFD, in the back room, starting at 7 pm on Tuesday, December 8th. You can enter the back room directly from 8th Street, NW between H and I or walk through from the front entrance on 7th. Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown.
Klingle Valley. Photo by valkyrieh116.
That's not the only fun event in December. WABA's holiday party is the following week, on Thursday, December 17th, 5pm in their new offices at 1736 Columbia Road NW in Adams Morgan.
December also has several good opportunities to hear about and weigh in on plans for various DC neighborhoods. If you live in or around Columbia Heights, please stop by to support good parking policy at the community meeting Monday evening. I'll post my thoughts Monday, but this meeting follows the one in July where DDOT's Damon Harvey expressed reluctance to set meter rates to encourage turnover in the busy Columbia Heights commercial area. That's 6:30-8:30 pm on December 7th at the Columbia Heights Community Center, 1480 Girard Street, NW.
The Office of Planning will share their recommendations for the Mount Vernon Square area on Wednesday, December 9th, 6-8 pm at the Carnegie Library in the square. And the team planning the Klingle Valley Trail will present options the following Wednesday, December 16th, 6-8 pm at the Mount Pleasant Library, Large Conference Room, 3160 16th Street, NW.
Politics
Council At-Large: this Democrat's voting for Mara
I've never voted for a Republican in my life. Of course, growing up in Massachusetts, then living in Northern California, New York City, and Washington DC, there aren't so many Republicans to choose from. I've been a lifelong Democrat and see no way, for any federal office, that I could in good conscience support any Republican, no matter how good, since they will inevitably support the most extreme right-wing leaders.
Patrick Mara. Photo from the candidate's campaign site.
But on Tuesday, I'm going to vote for a Republican for the first time: Patrick Mara, for City Council At-Large.
Mara could have (and perhaps should have) run as an independent. After all, he's not much like today's national Republican leaders at all. Mara supports gay marriage and abortion rights, for example. He's a moderate Republican in the old sense, a disciple of Rhode Island Senator John Chafee. Mara grew up in the Ocean State and came to DC to work for Chafee on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Mara pursued his interest in the environment at DOE and later as a consultant on renewable and clean energy.
Mara doesn't own a car, and hasn't since high school, in fact. He commuted by bicycle from his Columbia Heights home to his energy consulting gig before he started running full-time. Mara believes DC's future rests on raising the population back to the 800,000 we had around 1950 (today, DC has only about 588,000 residents). Quite simply, there's no way we can fit 212,000 more cars (or even half that) in the city. There's not enough room to park them and no more road capacity to move them about. Instead, most of the new residents will have to get around by Metro, bus, walk, or bike.
Mara would like to see more bus service, streetcars, and an expanded Metro within the District. He believes in building more trails, and keeping Klingle Road shut. He supports measures to improve bicycle safety, like the three foot rule in Graham's recent bill. Like all the Council candidates, Mara is not yet sold on performance parking, saying, "We don't want to scare people from coming into the District if they do have cars." Most performance parking advocates don't want to scare people either; performance parking could make it less scary by removing the need to circle for hours. I believe he's more open to this and similar ideas than many of the candidates. In keeping with his fiscal conservatism, Mara does lean toward letting the market decide how much parking to build; his first-hand experience with many of the overbuilt, underused garages in Columbia Heights drive that home.
Education is Mara's top priority. He says he decided to run for Council after mentoring three young children, one east of the Anacostia River where dropout rates reach 50%, and seeing the way our education system is "letting kids down in a big way." Families who don't "win the lottery to go to a charter school" have to either pay huge sums for private school, move to Virginia or Maryland, or suffer under a bad system. He's a strong supporter of Fenty's education reform efforts (as are all the candidates I spoke to).
If we'd heard of a candidate running as an independent or even a Democrat with Mara's "socially liberal, fiscally prudent" values, nobody would have bat an eyelash. As it turns out, that might have given Mara a higher chance of success in the general election. Mara's original game plan was to win the Republican primary (check), then get most of the city's Republicans and enough others to win. Carol Schwartz' quixotic write-in campaign complicates the equation, but it's still anybody's race, though Michael A. Brown is probably the favorite for the second seat (incumbent Democrat Kwame Brown is sure to win reelection).
But Mara really does believe that one day the Republican Party will stop being so ruled by intolerance and hate, and I respect his loyalty. His Republican beliefs center on fiscal issues, like cutting waste in the DC government. Mara opposed last year's paid sick leave bill, which he made the centerpiece of his primary victory. His stance won him many Republican votes, key endorsements, and a lot of money (though he says he's not necessarily against any paid sick leave, just against that bill which passed before enough analysis was done on the effects).
To me, having one candidate with whom I disagree on some bread-and-butter Democratic issues matters little. The Council has eleven Democrats, the maximum number permitted by law. Even if Mara is on the opposite side from me on, say, health care or workplace safety (not that I know how Mara would vote on any particular such measure), if seven of those eleven can't agree on a bill, I'm not sure how good it really is. Besides, we've had a Republican in the past, and a much worse one for transportation, gay rights, and many other issues.
Coming up: My interviews with some of Mara's opponents, Michael A. Brown and Mark Long.
Transit
Let's create a scorecard
I'm in the process of interviewing candidates for DC Council at-large. I plan to make a scorecard comparing candidates' positions on various key issues.
Photo by jc_091447 on Flickr.
What issues should I include?
Some ideas:
- Transit-oriented density: Do you support the plans for greater density around Metro stations in places like Brookland and Takoma?
- Streetcars: Do you support making it a top spending priority for DC to build a comprehensive streetcar network? (Should it include something about overhead wires?)
- Minimum parking: Do you support the parking reform proposals that would reduce or eliminate most minimum parking requirements for development?
- Inclusionary zoning: Do you think the Council should push the Fenty administration to implement the inclusionary zoning rules as passed by the Council, without changes?
- Roads vs. trails: Do you agree with the Council's decision to close Klingle Road and create a hiker-biker trail? (Klingle itself is only one small fight, but it's a good proxy for general attitudes about traffic, since we can't really expect people to come out for demolishing the SE-SW Freeway.)
I'd like to ask something about pedestrian and bike safety and facilities, but am not sure what would be the right question.
What else? Everything should be, essentially, a yes-no question, and something on which the Council either has taken, or may soon take, a position. I'm also asking more nuanced questions, of course, but the scorecard should cover the more black-and-white issues.
@ggwash
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Greater Washington
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