Posts about Bus Priority

Multiple sources have said that the District expects to get much of the operating funding for the Circulator from the National Park Service and/or Mall visitors. A Circulator on the Mall primarily benefits tourists, though with easy transportation to and from nearby neighborhoods, it could also help encourage tourists to spend some money at local shops and restaurants.

That funding might come from Circulator fares, parking meters on the Mall (where on-street spaces are now free and thus usually nearly impossible to get), or other sources. Specific details are not yet public and, based on the press release, may not be yet worked out between DC and NPS.

This is the diagram of proposed Circulator routes from a recent plan from DC Surface Transit, the public-private partnership that runs the Circulator. According to the press release, funds in the coming fiscal year will fund planning the actual routes, which might or might not be the same as some of these.

New fund supports bus priority around the city

In addition, Gray has added a $750,000 annual capital fund to support projects that improve bus service and reduce delays. This could presumably fund dedicated bus lanes, queue jumpers, signal priority, off-board fare payment or other projects that make buses a quicker and more appealing way to travel.

DC won a TIGER grant way back in 2010 to improve buses on several corridors, but 3 years later we've seen few if any changes. According to an email forward to me from DDOT, they are planning to use the money to optimize traffic signals downtown and install backup traffic signal power.

The TIGER money will also fund 120 real-time digital displays in some bus stops, "some minor bus stop improvements on 16th Street, Wisconsin Avenue, and Georgia Avenue," and "some bus stop safety features" on H Street and Benning Road, the email says. For a grant which was supposed to fund "shovel-ready" stimulus projects in the immediate term, though, it's taken quite a long time.

Finally, DDOT is working on a short bus lane on Georgia Avenue between Florida Avenue and Barry Place, a spot where buses get significantly stuck in traffic.

There is also an ongoing WMATA study looking at potential bus lanes on H and I Streets in the area north of and around the White House. This would be a more complex project, but it's important for DC to take some big steps that speed up buses significantly, in addition to small and easier steps like new signals.

Neighborhoods still benefit from performance parking

Another new fund creates a pool of money for neighborhood improvements in areas that adopt performance parking. The original performance parking law dedicated some of the extra money to neighborhood-specific projects, and around the ballpark, it has already funded new trash cans, benches, bike racks, and signs for a historic heritage trail.

Gray's budget eliminated the dedicated funding, but to make up for the loss, this new fund will let neighborhoods with performance parking still have some say in local fixes. This fund will have $589,000 for the rest of this current fiscal year and $750,000 a year in future years.

Many specific actions are important steps forward

Strong policy statements like this make a big impact. When agency heads and employees look at a potential action, they'll know they should consider it through the lens of these policies. That doesn't mean people won't keep doing other things that confound the goals at times, but one group inside one agency can use these statements as ammunition to argue for policies that support the goals.

The plan also lists a number of specific actions agencies can take in a number of areas, from waste to building energy efficiency to parks and trees. The land use section includes the most significant (and controversial) parts of the zoning update, reducing parking minimums and allowing more accessory dwellings.

In the transportation section, there are a few promising new steps. Most are things DC already plans, such as streetcars, more bike lanes, and expanding performance parking.

Notably, the plan also suggests exploring a regional congestion pricing system. That's entirely speculative at this point, and the plan says that unless Maryland and Virginia agree, it'd be almost impossible to set up any sort of congestion pricing system. But just putting it in the plan is a meaningful step.

Another significant policy statement calls on DC to "Program crosswalks and traffic lights for improved safety and convenience of pedestrians and cyclists." That's right, it says that pedestrian and cyclist safety should take precedence over vehicle speed. It also suggests timing lights along major corridors for traffic, as groups like the Chamber of Commerce and Board of Trade repeatedly ask, but notably recommends timing such lights for motor vehicles and bicycles, not just the former.

To reach goals, agencies will have to do even more

Many of these statements commit DC agencies to go beyond what they have done to date. But is it enough to achieve the even more ambitious goals, like 75% of trips by transit, walk or biking, 250,00 new residents, and cutting in half citywide unemployment, obesity, and energy use?

On land use, the zoning update takes a significant step, but still an incremental one. There are many conditions that will limit accessory dwellings. Reducing parking minimums may make some housing cheaper and make some buildings feasible around the margin, but it does not add to the total amount of potential housing.

According to Planning director Harriet Tregoning, DC could add enough housing for 250,000 more residents just under existing zoning, but that assumes building up to the zoning limit across most of the city. Wholesale redevelopment of neighborhoods is not what anyone really wants.

Rather, it would be better to focus more new housing near Metro stations, streetcars, and high-frequency bus corridors. To do that, though, some administration will have to modify the Comprehensive Plan and zoning to create denser areas somewhere, or even revisit the height limit in some parts of the city.

The Office of Planning also backed away from earlier proposals to also set thresholds where a new development has to set up a Transportation Demand Management (TDM) plan. That now only applies to parking lots over 100,000 square feet, not large garages in many buildings which will contribute to more traffic and inhibit reaching some of the mode share goals.

Can DC reach 75% non-auto mode share?

The transportation section aims to increase public transit's share of trips ("mode share") to 50%, and walking and biking to 25%. There isn't actually data on total trips today, but the plan shows a breakdown of commute trips (which the Census asks about). There, transit had 38% share in 2010, walking 12%, and "other means" (since bicycling isn't a specific category) 4%.

That means if we use commute data and count all "other" in the walking and bicycling group (since it's probably fine to also count rollerbladers and Razor scooter riders), transit has to gain 12 percentage points and walking plus biking 9.

Implementation steps include DDOT's current plans to add some more bike lanes and Capital Bikeshare stations, build out the streetcar system, plus recommendations to improve transit connections such as better service for low-income riders and later hours, set up a dedicated source of funding for transit, and make transit systems "resilient" to intense heat and storms that we'll see more often thanks to climate change.

Will this get 12% of commuters to switch to transit, though? Especially while the vast bulk of DDOT spending is still going to projects like big racetracks on South Capitol Street, which will add more car capacity to Saint Elizabeths rather than boosting transit connectivity.

If congestion pricing actually comes about, that could drive the mode shift, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Meanwhile, though, DDOT could meaningfully improve transit by building a network of dedicated bus lanes that make the bus truly an appealing alternative for residents from Glover Park to Fairfax Village to Woodridge.

DC won TIGER grants for bus priority projects from 2009, but those still haven't yielded anything on the ground. Last year, Mary Cheh set up a fund for DDOT to pay for bus projects, but it hasn't done any. H and I street bus lanes are on the long-term regional transportation plan, but if DDOT is making any concrete progress, it's pretty covert, and most of all isn't anywhere in the plan.

DDOT also needs to step it up on bicycle infrastructure. The plan laudably calls for 200 more Capital Bikeshare stations (so far, DC has committed to 87, and 100 miles of "connected" bicycle lanes, compared to about 50 (and not all connected) today, "prioritizing" ones east of the Anacostia.

But as WABA noted in its action alert at the end of 2011 about anemic progress in bike lanes, DC had installed 4-8 lanes per year from 2006-2010, which if continued should put the District at 130-210 by 2032 rather than just 100. Gabe Klein's Action Agenda set a target of 80 miles by 2012, so only 25% more than that 20 years later seems a bit underwhelming.

MoveDC is key

Tregoning, who spearheaded the overall plan while working with individual agencies on the specific proposals, said that these sets of actions aren't supposed to be an exhaustive list of everything to do in the next 20 years. Among other reasons, they wanted to actually publish the plan, not spend endless years tinkering with the lists—a worthy impulse indeed.

On transportation, in particular, the MoveDC citywide transportation plan is the opportunity to create a more detailed list of everything DC has to do. Gray's 50%-25%-25% targets provide a perfect frame for that plan. If a proposed piece of MoveDC moves us toward the targets, it should go in; if it pushes the other way, it should come out.

The 50%-25%-25% also gives MoveDC a high bar to hit. We'll all need to ensure MoveDC is more like the sustainability plan, with clear and aggressive goals, and less like some other plans which try to give everybody what they want and end up meaning little.

Intermediate goals are also necessary

How can we avoid getting to 2032, looking back on this plan, and seeing these great targets but having only moved imperceptibly toward them? The administration could set intermediate goals and really hold agency heads' feet to the fire to reach them.

What can we do to boost transit at least 0.6 percentage points in 2013 (1/20th of the way to the 12 point growth in the plan) and walking and bicycling 0.45 (1/20th of 6 points)? What can we do to get recycling up, obesity down, more buildings retrofitted for energy efficiency, and more parks not just by 2032, but by 2014 and then 2018?

To really hit these goals or at least come close, a next step needs to be a set of intermediate targets, perhaps one for the end of Mayor Gray's current term, and for every 4-year mayoral term thereafter. We should also ask mayoral candidates, in the 2014 race and future races, if they are willing to commit to these targets, both the long-term and intermediate ones, and ask their agency heads to do the same.

At the press conference, Gray noted that this plan's 20-year horizon certainly extends beyond his administration, whether or not he runs for or wins reelection. But, he said, this is a product not just from him but from his agency employees, many of whom still may be around that long. They can reach these targets as long as this and future mayors continue to send clear messages that the objectives in the plan are not just nice words on a paper but a real vision for the future of DC.

The Momemtum plan also talks about some downtown tunnels in a future phase, "Metro 2040," but Tom Harrington, Director of Long-Range Planning for WMATA, emphasized in an interview that WMATA has not made any decisions about where specifically such tunnels would go, or which they want to build.

Rather, those sections are more general placeholders than anything else. While it's likely Metro needs at least one new tunnel to add capacity, WMATA can't even begin to plan for those tunnels until the elements of the 2025 plan get funding.

Given how long it takes to design, build, and fund transit in the United States, it's not too early to start talking about and building support around the elements of the 2040 plan. But what's more important now is laying the groundwork to enable those plans to go forward. That's the 2025 plan.

Harrington added that the $26 billion figure in the Washington Post's headline, which most other reporters subsequently focused on, isn't really the price tag for WMATA's plans. Rather, that covers the total cost of all transit projects the region's governments hope to build as well as future projects for WMATA.

As we discussed on Thursday, the plan also contains a lot of priorities for WMATA to improve its own operations. They include finishing repairs on the system, ensuring it's safe, devising better plans for communicating disruptions, making the system more "self-service," lowering costs and increasing efficiency, environmentally sustainable practices, and more.

The plan is not very detailed about these, and we look forward to hearing and discussing them more when there's more to understand.

Meanwhile, let's look more at the 7 capital items:

100% 8-car trains: The original system's designers anticipated having trains of 8 cars, the full length of each platform. However, the system didn't need such long trains at the start, since the designers knew demand would grow over time.

They didn't build enough power stations and yard space to house all of those cars, anticipating that as the system grew, the local, state, and federal governments would fund the system's growth. That investment didn't continue much after the initial system was built, however. Today, Metro is overcrowded in many places, and needs the longer trains.

Core station capacity: The main transfer stations (Metro Center, Gallery Place, and L'Enfant Plaza), plus Union Station which is a transfer point between Metro and commuter rail or Amtrak, are jammed during rush hour. Metro needs to expand key spaces inside the stations and increase the numbers of escalators, elevators, and/or stairways between the different levels of the stations.

WMATA's proposal includes pedestrian tunnels between Farragut North and West, and Metro Center and Gallery Place. The Farragut tunnel would reduce loading on the Red and Orange Lines where people have to currently ride to Metro Center to transfer, and the Metro Center-Gallery Place tunnel would let people avoid riding the Red Line one stop to transfer there.

Fix Rosslyn: This is the system's biggest bottleneck. We'll talk about this in part 2.

Turnbacks: Many subway systems have places where "gap trains" can wait to enter service in a busy section if trains get delayed, or places to push a disabled train out of the way. The Momentum plan isn't clear on where these would be, and Shyam Kannan, Managing Director for Planning, said WMATA is finishing up a study on this now.

In the past, WMATA planners have talked about adding pocket tracks north of Fort Totten and east of Eastern Market. A pocket track north of Fort Totten would also make it possible to run Yellow Line trains to Fort Totten during rush. Here's an explanation of why it's not possible to do that today; basically, they turn around on the main tracks, which takes too long to avoid delaying other trains at rush frequencies.

Communications infrastructure: The current "PIDS" screens in rail stations use very old technology dating back to Metro's early years. According to Kannan, during a service disruption, someone has to manually modify the information in the computer system to get the PIDS to work properly. They want to replace this whole system with a more modern one that doesn't have the flaws of the old.

This project also will involve systems to help riders get real-time bus and train predictions, Kannan said. Metro would like to place large screens, perhaps 4 by 6 feet, in many rail stations and busy bus stops to tell riders about the locations of trains and buses, as well as information about other modes like commuter rail and commuter buses. Better apps for smartphones and tablets, as well as open data to help other developers make their own tools, are also part of this piece of the strategic plan.

Bus priority corridors: Let's not forget buses. As we've talked about many, many times, making the buses more efficient, with features like "queue jumpers" to bypass congested areas, is an inexpensive way to improve transit and could even save money. If a bus can travel its route more quickly, you can have the same bus frequency with fewer buses and drivers, or more frequent service with the same numbers.

WMATA has identified a set of corridors ripe for optimizing bus service, but it needs more cooperation from local jurisdictions, which control the roads, signals, and bus stops, to make it happen. Some early elements are in the works; DC is planning bus lanes on H and I Streets past the White House, for instance.

More buses and a bus garage: A lot of bus riders wait longer than they should have to. We should beef up service on busy lines and in key places, like east of the Anacostia, which need better connectivity.

Also, WMATA needs to replace its aging garages in DC with a new one somewhere; Walter Reed was a promising spot, but Muriel Bowser and Vincent Gray blocked the idea; most recently, they have apparently been eying the Armed Forces Retirement Home, at North Capitol and Irving.

These are not in the region's plans today

These 7 items are extremely important for mobility in our region. They aren't just things that would be nice to have, but necessities if we don't want terrible overcrowding and delays.

However, these items are still not in the Constrained Long-Range Plan (CLRP), the list of transportation projects each jurisdiction gives to the Transportation Planning Board to staple together into a regional plan. (DC just proposed adding the I Street bus lane, and already had H Street in there).

As the TPB explains:

The CLRP (Financially Constrained Long-Range Plan) includes all "regionally significant" highway, transit and High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV), bicycle and pedestrian projects, and studies that the TPB realistically anticipates can be implemented by 2040. Some of these projects are scheduled for completion in the next few years, while others will be completed much later.

That means without action by regional leaders, we could get to 2040 and still have no more 8-car trains, the same and even worse Rush Plus crowding problems, terrible jams at transfer stations, buses stuck in even more traffic, and no room to park buses to expand service.

These improvements are basically necessary to keep Metro running efficiently over the next decade and to set the stage for future expansion. But it will not be easy to build these projects unless regional leaders are able to work together to secure funding for Metro's future.

The District alone spends $190 million per year on bus service, 3½ the amount it spends on Metrorail and 2 times the whole DDOT budget. While much press scrutiny goes into WMATA's administrative budget items like executive travel, there are enormous opportunities to save far more taxpayer money, and provide a better service to riders, by streamlining bus service.

Bus lanes, queue jumpers and other road features would help the buses avoid getting stuck in traffic. A bus stuck in traffic not only delays riders but costs a lot of money in driver time and forces Metro to buy more buses. Metro believes that the top priority spot to try a bus lane is on H and I streets around the White House, where traffic congestion is high and there are many, many buses.

Unfortunately, DDOT Director Terry Bellamy has not made bus priority much of a priority thus far, though DDOT did agree to work with WMATA on a study. That study took a while to fund, then got stuck in WMATA procurement for even more months. But it's finally underway and generating some results. The study is looking at H Street from 17th Street to New York Avenue, and I Street from 13th to 19th.

PlanItMetro posted some findings that underscore the need for bus lanes. 50 different bus services use H and I, including Metrobuses, Circulator (where the 14th Street line turns around at McPherson), Loudoun County commuter buses, and PRTC (Prince William, Stafford, Spotsylvania, Manassas, Manassas Park, and Fredericksburg) commuter buses. They transport 40% of the people using only 2% of the vehicles, but the buses get stuck in traffic and even are only able to travel half as fast as the other vehicles, not counting the time they spend at stops.

If buses got their own lane during rush hours, the road could move even more people than it does now. The curb lanes on H and I are already devoted to parking off-peak and are travel lanes during peak, so a simple approach would be to make one of those part-time lanes remain parking off-peak but serve only buses in the peak.

There are some operational challenges to ponder. For example, what do drivers turning across the lane do? Do they merge into the lane before an intersection? If so, and if they then have to wait for pedestrians before turning, will that back up the bus lane? New York does it this way on its new(ish) 1st and 2nd Avenue bus lanes, and they have been working well.

DC actually already has some bus lanes, on 7th and 9th Streets, which don't work well at all. One reason is that there aren't that many buses on those streets, and so the lanes stay mostly empty of buses most of the time. Also, partly since there are not so many buses, people drive in the lanes all the time, and DC doesn't do anything about it.

Drivers will do the same on H and I lanes unless there is enforcement. New York has cameras, and DC probably needs to do the same. The cameras could simply look at 2 spots, one before and one after an intersection, and give a ticket to a car that appears in both spots, proving that it was in the lane but didn't turn.

As with other camera tickets, the fine probably does not need to be very high to work. It just needs to be high enough to make it more worthwhile to wait in the regular lanes. Or, perhaps the fine could even be lower, and serve as a kind of toll; you can use the bus lane, if you want to pay a few dollars.

This video describes New York's lanes. They also have protected bike lanes on the same street, but those are far wider than ours; here, the bike lanes will go on L and M, and cyclists can also use the closed Pennsylvania Avenue.

The PlanItMetro post also suggests that Metro will look at another, stranger but possibly (or possibly not) more effective option: a contraflow lane. Instead of putting a bus lane on the right side of the street, it could be on the left and buses would travel in the opposite direction of traffic. Then, left turning cars would cross the lane but not need to merge. On the other hand, if someone accidentally drove into or double parked in the lane, it would really block the buses, which can't just drive out into another lane to go around an obstruction.

London has many contraflow bus lanes:

According to Metro planning director Tom Harrington, they have now begun studying alternatives for how to design the lanes, and expect to finish 1 or 2 conceptual designs for the most promising options by December. The onus will then shift to the District government to actually build a bus lane, since it controls the roads, signs, parking, enforcement cameras, and so on.

Hopefully riders, stuck in traffic, will not have to wait even more years to see the fruit of this important project, which we've already talked about for years. It could be the biggest win for both transit costs and quality of service in a long time.

MetroExtra

All of Metro's limited-stop bus services will now be called MetroExtra instead of Metrobus Express, although buses painted with the Metrobus Express scheme won't be repainted right away.

It was always a little bit silly for Metro to have two competing brands for similar limited-stop services, so rebranding them all under one banner makes a lot of sense. WMATA picked MetroExtra as the name to keep because in bus parlance "express" usually means a route that either runs along a freeway, or that doesn't stop at all between two far apart points.

Routes that have widely-spaced stops like the 39 and S9 aren't technically express routes; rather, they're "limited-stop." Meanwhile, some bus routes that are more legitimately expresses, such as the 5A to Dulles Airport, weren't branded as part of Metrobus Express.

The old system was needlessly confusing, and the new one will be clear. It's a good move.

Beyond the rebranding, there are several MetroExtra-related service improvements coming as well. Wisconsin Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, and 16th Street will all see additional MetroExtra buses, as routes 37, 39, and S9 are expanded. There will also be more buses running on Leesburg Pike's limited-stop 28X. Finally, new limited routes will begin operation along Chain Bridge Road as an alternate 15L, and between Pentagon and Rosslyn as extensions to the 9E and 10E.

The 28X will be fully rebranded as MetroExtra sometime this fall, when a second round of MetroExtra improvements is scheduled to hit. When that happens, MLK Avenue's A9 route and Columbia Pike's 16F and 16Y routes will also be converted to the MetroExtra brand.

All in all, there are going to be a lot more blue buses on the road.

Georgia Avenue line

Changes coming to routes 70 and 79 won't be so obviously visible, but they could be more profound from an operational standpoint. For these routes, Metro will be shifting to headway-based scheduling, which means that rather than trying to have buses stick to set arrival and departure times, dispatchers will try to keep all the active buses along the corridor about the same distance apart from one another.

The idea is that trying to keep to a timed schedule is a lost cause, and it's better for riders if a bus comes regularly every 12 minutes than for a half hour to go by and then have 3 buses all come at the same time.

This is how DC Circulator works, which is why there's no such thing as a Circulator timetable, and also why it's rare to see multiple Circulators from the same line bunched together.

This will be Metro's first second experiment with headway scheduling. Theoretically this change should make riding the 70 and 79 much more predictable. It will be harder for a route as long as the 70 than it is for Circulator, but it's a worthy experiment.

WMATA has been using headway scheduling on the 90 and 92 since September, 2011. Director of Communications Dan Stessel reports that it has worked quite well. On time performance has increased by 15-20%.

16th Street line

The S-series buses are among the most overcrowded in Metro's entire network. I personally ride them for my commute, and most mornings I have to wait for 2 or 3 to pass by full before one with open capacity comes along. One rainy morning I literally counted 10 full buses pass me by. So I am personally very, very excited about the increased capacity Metro will be adding to this corridor.

And it will be a lot of new capacity.

First, the MetroExtra route S9 will be getting additional service, as previously indicated. Limited stop buses will run every 7-8 minutes instead of the current every 10. These additional runs will be new buses, not buses cannibalized from the S1, S2, or S4, meaning they are 100% new capacity for 16th Street.

In addition to being convenient for longer-distance riders, this should also have a positive effect on bus bunching. Since S9s stop less often than other S-series buses, they bunch less. That means the more riders Metro can shift to the S9, the less of a problem bunching should be along the whole corridor.

Secondly, more articulated buses will be put to use on the S1, increasing capacity for local riders. Because of space constraints at Metro's Northern Division bus storage facility, there are only about 30 articulated buses available for use on routes serving Mid-City.

Among those 30, the busy Georgia Avenue line gets first priority. Historically, whatever articulated buses Georgia Avenue didn't use were kept in reserve, but now as many as possible will be made available for 16th Street. The number of articulated buses on S1 runs on any given day will vary, but it's going to be more than now.

One reduction planned for 16th Street is that midday weekday S4 trips will terminate at Franklin Square instead of going all the way to Federal Triangle. Except for this, S2 and S4 service won't be modified.

Other changes

Although MetroExtra, Georgia Avenue, and 16th Street are the biggest winners, several other routes benefit as well. The G8 and W4 will have additional buses, shortening waits and relieving crowding. Schedule and route adjustments are planned for dozens of other routes, including the F, L, P, Q, R, and Y series.

Unfortunately, all of this comes at a cost. Although WMATA is pumping a lot of new money into Metrobus, and working to squeeze additional efficiencies out of the reserve bus fleet, such a major restructuring inevitably also includes service reductions. The changes coming will result in better bus service for more people overall, but some specific lower-ridership routes will see service decline.

Reductions of one kind or another will come to the 74, D3, D6, 3T, and 22A, as well as to riders on some of the restructured F, L, P, Q, R, and Y-series buses.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

Madam Chairman and members of the Council,

Appointing DDOT Director Terry Bellamy to the WMATA Board of Directors represents a very significant opportunity. There are many such opportunities, such as to work with you to push WMATA to correct its stifling and longstanding stance of secrecy toward riders and simply to make sure needed repairs are on track, but specifically having the DDOT director on the board is a chance to bring DDOT and WMATA closer and foster greater coordination between these agencies.

Each controls an enormous share of the transpor­tation infrastructure that our residents depend on every day, yet the two agencies often do not work in harmony as much as needed to move transportation forward.

By far the greatest opportunity to improve transportation for District residents lies in our bus service. DC spends over $190 million per year in public operating dollars on our bus service. That is about 3½ times the amount we spend on Metrorail, and is more than double DDOT's operating budget.

Bus delays from traffic swell this cost and cause pain to our residents. For example, I recently received this email from a reader who will soon be moving to the Wisconsin Avenue area:

My wife took a bus going from Federal Triangle over to Wisconsin Ave for an appointment but also near our future new home. She became stuck in traffic on I St and is now cursing the bus. What is the outlook for the H & I bus lanes?

With the volume of buses that use that route, it really should be a priority. Anything that can be done to help speed up the process? My wife was spoiled by few stop Metrorail commutes and the bus is a big adjustment for her.

This type of question is far from unusual. Residents rich and poor, black and white, in outer low-density areas and inner high-density ones all struggle with bus delay if they aren't fortunate enough to have both home and work close to a Metrorail station.

There is an enormous amount DC could be doing to reduce the costs of bus travel while improving speed and reliability for our bus riders:

• Allow appropriate turning movements for buses to help them get through congestion
  
• Create queue hopper lanes that help buses bypass traffic waiting at signals
  
• Enforce illegal parking that prevents buses from making turns or bus stops
  
• Locate bus stops in ways that allow buses and customers to use them more efficiently
  
• Create bus lanes where practical
  
• Implement traffic signal priority
  
• Improve the accessibility of bus stops so that fewer riders are dependent upon, or beholden to, costly and unreliable MetroAccess service
  
• Remove on-street parking where the benefits outweigh the costs.

There are dozens of recommendations in WMATA line studies and service evaluations that have not yet been implemented. Sometimes, these just do not come up in internal DDOT discussions. At other times, WMATA and DDOT's transit staff point to the recommendations, but the engineers and traffic operations folks balk at implementing the studies.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution. These divisions work for Director Bellamy. He can bring these issues from WMATA and ensure that DDOT prioritizes implementing them.

Here are a few examples:

• WMATA was implementing bus priority on the 70s lines at the same time DDOT was planning the 7th Street streetscape. However, there was no coordination on signal technology needs.
  
• The 90s line study proposed bus enhancements along U street, but DDOT paid no attention to these recommendations while they simultaneously designed streetscape enhancements on U Street. Meanwhile, efficiency recommendations for 8th Street go almost completely unnoticed.
  
• A study about the potential for bus lanes on H and I Streets downtown was supposed to be complete in March, but still remains months from completion, with no clear path to implementation thereafter. Short segments H and I are where many of DC's most heavily used bus lines bogged down in commuter traffic wasting hours and ruining bus reliability.

WMATA isn't the only source of bus operating efficiency needs. The DC Circulator routes, for which DC bears 100% of the operating subsidy, is an ideal place for DDOT to prioritize operational enhancements.

I have spoken over several years with officials at both WMATA and DDOT. I repeatedly hear from WMATA that they are not finding the support at DDOT to implement their recommendations, and hear from folks at DDOT that they don't feel WMATA is ready to support DDOT or understands the constraints DDOT must labor under.

I am sure both groups of people are right. It is often difficult for two agencies to coordinate closely, especially when the agencies answer to different masters. I am sure many people at DDOT find it simply less work to tackle projects that don't require calling the Jackson Graham building, and those at WMATA have less trouble simply solving problems they can handle without going to New Jersey Avenue.

But this is necessary. Bus service is our best chance to save money and improve mobility for the residents of the District. We're not going to build any new Metrorail lines in the near future, and while streetcars will bring meaningful economic development, they will not be a speedy ride across town. But our bus service can and should be a desirable mode of travel for all.

There is no big megaproject to undertake that will fundamentally revamp bus service. Improving this mode of travel requires making many small and medium-sized fixes over many years that build up in the aggregate. The same applied to bicycle lanes, and tireless staff worked for years to gradually build up more and more lanes. DDOT needs to start now to put in one bus improvement at a time, then another, and another.

Right now, that is not yet happening, which costs DC millions of dollars and makes bus riders suffer, often at the expense of commuters from Maryland and Virginia who we often end up prioritizing despite clear policies at DDOT, and statements from this council, to the contrary.

The time is now. Montgomery County yesterday released their proposal for building 160 miles of a new bus Rapid Transit System, mostly on dedicated lanes. The Council, with your support Madam Chairman, just created a special fund for bus enhancements beginning in FY13, which could raise several million dollars per year if DDOT moves swiftly to implement performance parking in the downtown area.

With Director Bellamy on the WMATA Board, I am hopeful that this state of affairs can change. We will have a single person who can instruct his staff in DDOT meetings to advance bus improvements, and then head over to WMATA and push the staff there to uphold their end of whatever is necessary.

I hope you will ask Director Bellamy questions such as these:

• Do you agree that bus efficiency must get much higher priority from the department?
  
• Will your participation at WMATA represent a turning point to get long-awaited, significant progress going on these bus projects?

If the answers to both are yes, then Director Bellamy's presence on the WMATA Board will not just mean yet another voice contributing to already crowded debates, but a very positive step toward getting these two agencies working together to exploit our greatest untapped mobility opportunities.

Performance parking money goes to neighborhoods and bus priority

Mayor Gray had proposed ending the practice, which the original performance parking pilot zones established, of putting some parking money toward projects in the local neighborhood. The committee restored that in part. Now, if a performance parking zone raises extra mone over its "baseline" revenue from before performance parking, half of that money can go toward transportation projects in that neighborhood.

In other words, if DDOT extends meter hours or raises rates, half of the extra revenue from that change can go to local projects. Before, just setting up a performance parking zone meant that 75% of the total revenue, including the preexisting revenue, went to the neighborhood (though, in some cases, some of that revenue had to pay for new meters). The neighborhoods with performance parking got to spend some money right off the bat, even if DDOT never tweaked meter rates and hours. And in some of the zones, DDOT took a painfully long time to do so.

What about the other half of the money? The committee's budget probably dedicates that to bus priority improvements.

While DDOT needs to do its utmost to make the H Street streetcar a success and lay the groundwork for future lines, streetcars won't go everywhere and won't magically solve all of DC's transportation problems. The District spends $190 million per year to subsidize on bus service, yet many buses spend a lot of time in traffic and many people don't want to ride a bus that's not the Circulator.

Reducing bus delay could save a lot of money and draw more riders to the bus system. The many Metrobus line studies came up with countless recommendations for how to make service better: moving a stop across the street, changing a turn signal to help buses through a rough spot, improving enforcement to avoid illegal loading, adding a bus lane, and so on.

Funds depend on DDOT implementing performance parking

A dedicated pot of money will push DDOT to move ahead with these important changes. These projects won't have to compete with others for money. That assumes there is money, though. Before any money goes to bus improvements, WMATA gets about $30 million for existing bus operations. The CFO's office estimates that DC's meters today will almost cover that. DDOT is upgrading old meters to newer ones with better technology that break less and therefore are less likely to lose revenue; the WMATA payment also assumes that those upgrades continue.

If DDOT goes ahead with the upgrades and then starts managing its curbside space more efficiently, the meter revenue will surpass the $30 million mark. Local neighborhoods and bus priority projects will get funded. If the meter upgrades get delayed and DDOT doesn't tweak rates and hours, it could fall short, and both neighborhoods and bus priority could end up with nothing for the year.

An amendment from Tommy Wells at the markup specifically asks DDOT to make bus priority improvements on downtown segments of H and I streets a top priority for the money. WMATA has said that this congested area forms a major bottleneck for bus routes from all parts of the District; bus lanes here could do the most to reduce delays. A consultant is currently studying traffic operations along H and I, and their report will help DDOT design the lanes to best move bus traffic and minimize the amount of extra delay for drivers.

To help get performance parking moving downtown, the legislation specifically instructs DDOT to work on performance parking with DC Surface Transit, the business-led group that was been instrumental in bringing in the Circulator and promoting the streetcar. DCST and downtown businesses have been eager for performance parking.

Other changes in the budget

The budget also takes steps to restore the pedestrian and bicycle enhancement fund, which pays for a number of smaller pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure projects. In addition, $100,000 comes from the Committee on Libraries, Parks, Recreation and Planning to fund a new volunteer Trail Ranger program, similar to one in Denver. The money pays for a grant to an organization like WABA to manage that program.

The committee asked DDOT to use federal funds to redo the streetscape on Florida Avenue between 2nd and 10th Streets NE. Florida Avenue is wider here than elsewhere, but the sidewalk is far too narrow even though it adjoins the growing NoMa district and Gallaudet students often walk along the road. DDOT has already acknowledged in an earlier study that the sidewalk needs to be better here.

Finally, the budget takes a little bit out of transportation to fund a few of Cheh's other priorities, including a program encouraging food stamp recipients to buy food at farmers' markets ($50,000), help fund the Office of Campaign Finance ($100,000), and a tax break for a homeless services organization ($10,800).

A good budget gets better

Mayor Gray's original DDOT budget was an excellent proposal. It funded the streetcar, preserved Metro service, and took the very significant step of pushing for performance parking citywide. Gray made it clear that he stands behind initiatives that enhance walking, bicycling, and transit.

The way the budget used parking meter revenue was the biggest issue council staff had with the budget. The Mayor's proposal sent all parking meter revenue straight to WMATA. It's great to fund transit, but the problem with this approach is that DC doesn't just give more or less to WMATA as money is available; its commitment gets set in the WMATA budget.

Far more money comes from the general fund for WMATA, and a small amount from meters. As meter revenue increased, it would just have replaced general fund support. That would have only fueled the criticism that performance parking is just a way to raise money.

Perfromance parking is best when local neighborhoods also get a benefit from meter changes, and when money goes toward improving the other ways shoppers, diners, office workers and others can travel to an area besides driving and parking. The commitee's budget restores that nexus. Money DDOT raises from changing parking will directly help fund programs that make neighborhoods either easier to get to or more attractive.

This budget recommendation will next go to the entire council as part of the overall budget debate. The council should preserve what the committee has done.

The only way to create an effective, affordable rapid bus network is to use existing roadway lanes more efficiently by reserving them for bus-only traffic. Unfortunately, the Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) refuses to modify any existing roadways that would help buses move faster than cars.

Building a successful system in Montgomery County will present unique challenges. In DC, though progress has been slow, DDOT is working with WMATA to study how to best fit bus priority into its roadways. MCDOT needs to do the same.

If MCDOT started dedicating bus lanes on priority corridors now, engineers would be able to understand the challenges and issues that arise when redesigning one of Montgomery County's roadways. They would gain knowledge and experience that would speed up future phases of BRT, saving time and money.

Outside the Beltway, the BRT task force recommends putting high-speed bus lanes in the center of roadways. This will require limiting left turns and other changes in highway operations. Dedicated lanes on priority corridors now will let MCDOT try out some of the treatments that could ultimately become part of those BRT lines.

The path to making existing streets into a welcoming environment for transit riders and pedestrians will undoubtedly involve a learning curve. The sooner that MCDOT can begin to study and learn from real world experience, the better and more cost-effective the Montgomery County BRT system will be.