Posts about M Street

The 3 options aren't sufficient

Several people who attended last Thursday's meeting about the study came away feeling that it unnecessarily pitted transit against bicycles. The 3 alternatives look at somewhat extreme approaches, essentially bracketing the universe of genuinely practical ideas with a few options at the very edges. That's a reasonable approach, but it lacks options that help both transit and bicycle traffic at the same time.

Instead, the study seems to have assumed that no option can affect single-passenger cars that much. In making this assumption, the study creates tradeoffs for the limited space left after reserving most of it for cars. But what about greater tradeoffs between vehicular capacity and other modes?

Option 3, keeping the road with 3 car lanes in each direction, should be a non-starter. M Street doesn't need that much car capacity, and it doesn't serve the other modes well.

Option 1 looked at adding a transit lane, which could be extremely valuable, but then modeled removing the existing bike lanes on I Street entirely in order to add vehicular capacity there. If the team wants the public to think about that one extreme, we also need to understand what would happen in the alternative that adds the transit lane but then converts I Street to a full cycle track on the other hand. Or, what about putting a cycle track on M and keeping transit in shared lanes?

The area is growing rapidly, and single-passenger cars are a spatially inefficient way to move people. There's already a freeway nearby, which should be main route for cars. M and I Streets need to serve the neighborhood, and with limited road space, do so in the way that moves more people in less space. That's transit and bicycling.

Keep transit on M Street

Option 2 would provide a cycle track on M, but it would move streetcars and the Circulator off it, to parallel streets south and north. That's not a good option either. M Street will be the center of the neighborhood, and is where transfers to Metro will take place. Asking every streetcar rider who wants to shop on M Street or connect to Metro to walk a quarter mile will cut down potential ridership significantly.

DDOT concluded that in this scenario, it would need to use the Circulator south of M and the streetcar to the north. But the streetcar can do the most good on the south side. The streetcar is an economic development tool. It helps bring in development and new residents and shops where mobility and perceived mobility are some of the biggest obstacles.

Portion of diagram showing where streetcar (green) and Circulator (blue) could travel in option 2. Click for full map (PDF).

The streetcar could spur sluggish growth around the ballpark and later in Buzzard Point. Along I Street there are a few parcels slated for development, but most of the road's length passes through already-built residential areas that aren't likely to change. It does make sense for the Circulator to pass by Nats Park, since many people use it to reach that destination, but way up on I Street the streetcar would be too far away to maximize its potential.

There's room for bicycles and transit

Option 1 would create a dedicated transit lane along M Street from 7th SW to the 11th Street (SE) bridge, but no cycle track. The CH2M Hill study designed this with a 67-foot cross-section. That's about the width of M Street east of South Capitol, but in Southwest the road is 80-84 feet wide.

Option 1.

West of South Capitol, it should be possible include a cycle track as well. One way to do that could look like this:

The wide section of M Street, with both cycle track and transitway. Image by Dan Malouff.

There would be some design challenges and tradeoffs. Should the cycle track go inside or outside the transit lanes? Putting them between the car lanes and transit lanes would require cyclists to cross over streetcar track in order to get to the sidewalk and buildings, which isn't ideal, and cyclists would feel less protected riding between lanes of cars and transit.

On the other hand, putting the cycle tracks between the transit lanes and the sidewalk would make streetcar riders walk across the cycle tracks at transit stops. That would be unusual, but not unheard of around the world. Vancouver has some bus stops like that, for example. Here, many riders would probably stand in the bike lane, at least until everyone got used to the arrangement.

East of South Capitol Street, where M Street is narrower, it is more difficult to fit in both bikes and streetcars.

One option would be to squeeze in cycle tracks by eliminating the median, narrowing the cycle tracks to half their originally-designed width, and narrowing the sidewalk to only 7.5 feet. This would be less than ideal for both pedestrians and bicyclists, but it would be a compromise that would keep everyone on M Street.

The narrow section of M Street, with both cycle track and transitway. Image by Dan Malouff.

DDOT's standards for sidewalks in commercial areas are 10 feet, and bike lanes of this type at least 5 feet. That's not unprecedented in DC; Georgetown and U Street, with very high foot traffic, have had extremely narrow sidewalks for years. That creates an unpleasant pedestrian experience, however. Narrow sidewalks on M Street also might preclude having things like street trees and sidewalk cafes, which are important as well.

Another option that avoids narrowing the sidewalk would be to build the cycle tracks in SW only, and then put them on parallel strets on the SE side. From M Street, the cycle tracks could use Half Street SW to deviate one block south to N Street and Tingey Street, where they could continue past the ballpark and Yards Park to connect to the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail around the Navy Yard. When the Nats close N Street for games, they could keep it open to bicycles.

Meanwhile, DDOT could build another good bicycle facility on I Street, to the newly 2-way Virginia Avenue, atop the CSX tunnel to 11th Street and the new local bridge. I street, which isn't very high traffic, could remain as painted bike lanes, and Virginia Avenue could get 2-way cycle tracks. Riders could use either of these routes to get across the area or reach any destinations there.

A potential arrangement of transit and bicycle facilities. Red is streetcar. Blue is cycle tracks (dark blue) and bike lanes (light blue). Green is the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail (the Maine Avenue segment will be built as part of the Wharf development). Image by David Alpert on Google Maps.

DDOT and CH2M Hill will be taking feedback from the public on these 3 possibilities and creating a final report. That's not even the end of the process—they then plan to conduct an environmental review that may consider a different or larger set of options. The environmental review should indeed consider many more options than this study did, and think about more tradeoffs than just bikes versus transit.

What do you think is the best solution?

If multiple streets ran through within a block of each other, one street could have a cycle track while an adjacent street could serve the streetcar, for instance. But there are only 2 long east-west through streets here, M Street and I Street.

M connects Maine Avenue in the west to the 11th Street bridge and beyond in the east. I Street, a more residential-feeling street, runs from 7th Street SW near Maine Avenue to Virginia Avenue near 4th Street SE with only one gap, at Canal Street. A DC Department of Public Works facility in the way of I Street was recently demolished, and a coming development there will reconnect I Street. The study also recommends converting the very wide Virginia Avenue here to 2-way.

Image from DDOT.

DDOT and their consultant, CH2M Hill, looked at 3 options:

1. Create a pair of dedicated transit lanes on M Street and 2 general travel lanes, but no bike lanes. Put bike lanes on alternate streets, maybe including a cycle track on I Street. Widen I Street to carry more car traffic and take away the current bike lanes.
   
2. Create a cycle track in each direction on M Street, plus 2 general travel lanes, plus a parking lane where space permits. Move the streetcar and Circulator to parallel streets. Other buses can still use the general lanes.
   
3. Keep 3 lanes of traffic all the way through. Streetcars and buses would share a lane with cars.

Each option varies a bit from place to place because the road is wider in SW than in SE:

Widths of each block on M and I Streets.

Where would the streetcar and Circulator go in Option 2? DDOT suggests routing the streetcar from the 11th Street Bridge up to Virginia Avenue, then on I Street to 7th. The Circulator, meanwhile, would take M past the Navy Yard, then cut down to Tingey and N Streets a block south, pass the ballpark, take Canal Street into Buzzard Point, loop around down there, then come back up 4th Street to I back to 7th.

Why put the Circulator in the south and the streetcar in the north instead of vice versa? DDOT planning head Sam Zimbabwe said:

The Nationals currently close N Street during games and Potomac will cross at the oval with the [South Capitol Street] project. I think we also have some concerns about making the streetcar route too circuitous, and having 2 turns on and off M Street may not work very well. Unlike a bus, a streetcar really needs a full phase to make a turn, and also has some wide radii which sometimes can impact the right-of-way.

I think an important thing overall, which we talked about at the workshop, but probably doesn't come through in just the slides, is that the alternatives were set up somewhat to define some stark contrasts among different alternatives, and are a bit at the "extremes." The purpose of this study is not to define a single recommended alternative for premium transit (streetcar), but to define some of the planning-level scenarios and tradeoffs so that we can carry reasonable alternatives into an environmental process with some existing basic levels of analysis. Our plan is to start a NEPA process (probably an EA [Environmental Assessment]) later this fall.

Update: Some commenters have pointed out that instead of making I more hospitable to bicycles, Alternative 1 as presented actually makes it less hospitable by taking away the bike lanes and adding more car lanes. I have updated the post, and Dan and I will add this information to our discussion tomorrow.

By allowing cars to park alongside one or both sides of a street during rush hour, that effectively narrows the street by one lane permanently. Not only does this provide more space for parking, which could help local businesses, it also allows DDOT to design the street with bus bulb-outs, intersection extensions, or other changes in the balance of space between that devoted to cars and other users like pedestrians.

Eliminating rush hour parking restrictions would also simplify parking signs, improving the legibility of signs so that drivers are less confused about whether they can park. Allowing parking would provide the District with more revenue from parking meters.

On the flip side, some streets are congested long after the official sign-mandated rush hour periods are over. For those streets, DDOT should consider eliminating street parking altogether, and devoting the space to dedicated cycle tracks, bus lanes, or other non-automobile uses.

Sure, some streets have so much traffic that eliminating a whole travel lane is not possible at this time. But there are many streets that have rush hour parking and virtually no traffic, and DDOT should start assessing which restricted streets could be opened up for parking and which could have parking eliminated.

A good place to start would be M Street SE. They've already done it with one block. Why not the rest?

Fund green alleys. Many alleys have crumbling surfaces and greatly need repair, but there hasn't been much money for this in recent years. $1 million would fund a new Green Alleys program, picking some alleys to rebuild with permeable paving, energy-efficient LED lighting, trees, and more.

Keep Circulator fare. Wells is proposing to keep the Circulator fare at $1, rolling back Mayor Gray's proposal to make it $2 cash and $1.50 with SmarTrip. Downtown businesses argued that it would cut ridership substantially, perhaps even reversing all or most of the expected revenue gain. The Circulator is also going east of the river, and some felt it wasn't right for it to finally go there and double in price at the same time.

The funding for this comes partly through use of one-time funds at WMATA, so the Council will have to look at the Circulator fare again next year. Wells wants that to happen once the Council has reviewed and approved DDOT's plans for longer-term Circulator expansion.

Semi-replace 7th Street Circulator. The north-south Circulator is still going away. To partly make up for it, WMATA is creating a 74 bus to travel between I Street NW and the Southwest Waterfront along a route similar to that part of the Circulator's, and extending the V8 bus, which connects Minnesota Avenue to Southwest, along 7th Street to downtown as well.

Hire ward planners, development reviewers, and parking czar. Wells also wants to restore six positions at DDOT which have been vacant for some time. Gray's budget cut most vacant positions entirely. The six positions include three ward planners, for wards 2, 3, and 5. The ward planners made sure that all DDOT projects in a ward fit together well, and provided useful points of contact for the communities involved.

DDOT also needs to staff up its development review department, which looks at planned developments and zoning filings and encourage developers to effectively accommodate pedestrians and bicycles, consider good stormwater management, and include Transportation Demand Management programs. Wells would add 2 positions for this.

The final and most exciting staff position is a parking program manager, or "parking czar." DDOT's parking program has been a tremendous disappointment for years. The performance parking pilot zones didn't see the kind of experimentation that the legislation asked for. Some neighborhoods have wanted performance parking but haven't been able to get it.

DDOT has been mailing out free visitor parking passes in several wards, which leaves large opportunities for abuse. They have promised for years to set up a better system, but haven't. If they can get a good parking program manager, DDOT can finally be the national leader in parking policies they once seemed to be, but got eclipsed by San Francisco and other cities.

Start performance parking on H Street. Wells would create a third performance parking zone, around H Street NE (G to I Streets from 3rd to 15th). Residential streets in the area would become resident-only for one side of the street, as in the other zones, and meters set to achieve 10-20% available spaces.

Protect neighborhood RPP funds. The performance parking pilot zones dedicate most of the revenue raised to local neighborhood improvements, giving residents a stake in the success of performance parking. Gray's budget took this money away to use as general revenue; Wells wants to restore it.

Maintain traffic enforcement officers. The proposal would restore 5 traffic enforcement officers cut in Gray's budget. There are plenty of places where enforcement can make pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers all safer by stopping dangerous behavior. Also, DDOT wants to do more to stop parking in loading zones, bus stops, and handicap placard abuse.

Keep "sweepercam" tickets. Gray's budget eliminated the "sweepercam" system, where street sweeping trucks automatically photograph vehicles illegally blocking sweeping and DPW can send them tickets. Without this, DPW would have to have people manually enforce the sweeping.

Also, as the report points out, the cameras allow DPW not to ticket anyone parked in a sweeping zone after the actual sweeping has finished, whereas if officers did it manually, they wouldn't know and would still ticket those cars. The committee report restores $300,000 for this program.

Create a DDOT enterprise fund. When DDOT lost its "unified fund," it lost some ability to dynamically fund innovations without going through the Council first. Budget staff at that time talked about creating a special fund with some money that can go to such programs. Wells' proposal moves Capital Bikeshare advertising revenue into this fund, along with truck weight fees, multispace meter advertising, car sharing fees, loading zone permit fees, and a few others.

And more. Wells' proposal also funds a "bait bike" where officers place a bike which looks ripe to steal, and watch to catch people who try to steal it. $50,000 will also go to the Committee on Libraries, Parks and Recreation for neighborhood parks. Gray's budget cut the $10,000 annual funding each for the Bicycle Advisory Council and the Pedestrian Advisory Council; Wells is restoring both.

Revenue

How will Wells and his committee pay for all this?

Errors in the budget. Some money comes from finding mistakes in the budget. For example, Gray's budget office moved a lot of DDOT positions from the capital budget over to the operating budget. That's mainly an accounting issue; the jobs are still there, but some categories of spending went from large amounts to zero and other categories went from zero to big. Upon scrutinizing all of this, Council staff realized that some of the jobs had been moved over twice, leading to double-funding in the budget.

Higher and graduated RPP fees. A big part of the increase comes from a longtime GGW recommendation: increasing RPP fees, especially for households with multiple cars. DC's fees for resident parking permits are remarkably low, at $15/year. Renting any other chunk of space anywhere in the city costs far more. San Francisco charges $98/year, for example.

Under Wells' proposal, RPP fees will increase to $35/year, except for seniors 65 and older who will only pay $25/year. Once the DMV finishes a computer upgrade to support it, additional permits for each household will cost $50/year for the second and $100/year for additional permits beyond that.

Fines for repeat parking offenders. Fines for parking in residential areas beyond the 2 hours allowed, or for parking in resident-only areas, would increase for repeat offenders. The fine now is $30, except $60 around the ballpark during games only. The $30 fines would remain $30 for the 1st and 2nd tickets someone receives in a single calendar year, but become $60 beyond that.

Reciprocity fees. Congressional, military, Presidental appointees, and some others are allowed to have reciprocity permits, getting the benefits of registering cars in DC including RPP permits but without actually becoming DC residents. They pay $10 annually for this, while students have to pay $338 and temporary residents $250. Wells proposes increasing the reciprocity fee to $50.

What's not included

WMATA, fully. Gray's budget slightly increased DC's contributions to WMATA, but DC was still $10.422 million short of the level needed to avoid service cuts. Wells found another $6.265 million, and is asking the Council to consider the other $4.157 million as a council-wide priority in the next phase of the budget process.

Each committee first considers its own budget, and moves around money within that area, raising related revenues if desired to restore programs. Then, the whole Council looks at further cuts or restorations broadly; the remaining WMATA gap will be one of them.

Street sweeping inspectors. Gray's budget cuts the numbers of officers enforcing street sweeping rules. Wells said in this morning's markup that he wanted to increase the numbers, but unlike with the DDOT traffic officers, the CFO wouldn't certify revenue from these officers, so the Council would have to come up with more revenue to restore them.

Policies

The committee report also touches on some other topics which aren't line items in the budget, but which have budgetary implications. It asks DDOT to organize a task force to look at long-term transportation funding as gas taxes decline; to try to implement Circulator expansions even sooner than proposed; to add more efficient streetlights; and more. DDOT has also promised to conduct a transportation study on M Street SE/SW.

For DPW, the committee asks them to aggressively push fleet sharing, especially to replace older vehicles; to come up with a strategy to increase recycling; and to publish more information on costs that Wells has been asking for.

The committee had its markup session scheduled for 10 am, but as of this writing didn't have enough Councilmembers present to make up a quorum. Assuming it passes the markup, this will get agglomerated with the budget reports from the other committees.

The full Council will then take up the WMATA funding issue and other larger priorities from other areas. Issues outside of transportation, like the proposed income tax increase for people making over $200,000 and cuts to human services, will be debated at the full Council level.

The limit was lowered to 25 mph last year in response to a series of pedestrians—this is literally true—getting killed hit crossing the street at New Jersey Ave and M St, SE, ironically right in front of the headquarters of the US Department of Transportation. That's also why the camera is there, not to entrap drivers but to actually get them to slow down.

Update: In fact, minutes after this article first ran, DC Fire and EMS tweeted about a pedestrian being struck on the 500 block of M Street, SE—on this very road we are discussing.

This road, heavily used by pedestrians traveling around the neighborhood or going to and from the Metro, should be more of a neighborhood main street than a high-speed raceway to bypass the SE-SW freeway. But years ago, traffic engineers using the "move traffic as fast as possible" mindset built the road as a raceway anyway.

Just two lanes each way would be sufficient for the traffic volume west of South Capitol, and one lane each way on the east, according to DDOT metrics. If the road is 50% to 200% too wide for the traffic, no wonder Weingarten thinks of hippopotami when he drives there.

The solution is to redesign the road. If it feels like typing with mittens, make it a touch-screen iPad instead where you don't need to type so much. Fortunately, a well-respected road design firm, Toole Design, already analyzed this road for us.

Concept sketch for M Street. Photo by volcrano of diagram by Toole Design.

Toole's plan would give M Street a "road diet" from 3 lanes each way to two. A narrow median would go in the center to create small pedestrian refuges, and each side would get cycle tracks.

Tommy Wells tried to promote this idea, but a few of the very residents of the Southwest Waterfront and Near Southeast whose walks to the store would become safer objected. Opponents focused on some elements of the plan that would encourage cycling, while giving short shrift to its pedestrian enhancements.

Meanwhile, however, David Garber won election to the ANC for 6D07, which encompasses all of M Street SE, and Grace Daughtridge, one of the most strident critics of the plan (who claimed neighbors were "bad parents" for biking with their kids to school or the store) lost a bid for an ANC seat in Southwest.

Maybe it's time for the ANC to take another look at this plan, especially if the commissioner for the eastern half will support the concept. Not only can it make the neighborhood safer and more pleasant for residents, it could help Gene Weingarten drive slower and feel better doing it.

GGW proposal for downtown mobility. Purple: Cycle tracks. Blue: Existing bike lanes. Red: K Street Transitway. Orange: Bus lanes that also allow bikes, or bus lanes as well as bike lanes.

DDOT listened to feedback from Greater Greater Washington, WABA, cyclists, BIDs, transit riders and more, and has created a better plan as a result.