Reversible Lanes - Greater Greater Washington

Maryland SHA pushing stupid growth on Connecticut Avenue

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:22:00 EDT

As part of their proposals for BRAC-related infrastructure adjustments, the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) proposed adding an extra reversible lane on Connecticut Avenue between the Beltway and Manor lane. No matter the area, the state's highwaymen continue floating more lanes as the solution to every problem, despite reversible lanes' poor track record in Silver Spring.

Silver Spring. Photo by thisisbossi.

The new lane would eliminate the need to widen the road near Jones Bridge Road, making the previously discussed demolition of five houses along Connecticut Avenue unnecessary, although the existing median would have to be eliminated.

A friend of a friend who lives on Connecticut Avenue between the Beltway and Jones Bridge Road recently received a letter from the Maryland SHA telling him that he might have to sell his house in order to make way for another two lanes of car traffic. Fortunately, it would appear that the state has decided against this option. However, why do they need to widen the road? Maryland does need some infrastructure adjustments to accommodate the upcoming BRAC-related jobs moves. However, why are they so focused on cars and traffic? After all, if you only plan for more cars and traffic, you only get more cars and traffic.

Fortunately, the scope of the road widening projects around the county is being reduced:

Several of the changes reduce the scope of the projects. They include eliminating proposed widening of Rockville Pike south of Jones Bridge Road near Glenbrook Village and adjacent to the Boy Scouts of the National Capital Area Council building and eliminating a proposed right-turn-only lane on Oakmont Avenue at the intersection of West Cedar Lane and Old Georgetown Road. Lane widths along the Pike at Cedar Lane and Jones Bridge Road would also be reduced.

However, despite the scaling back of the road projects, they will still induce more traffic. Just like with the misguided proposal to widen I-270, the existence of the wider road will cause more people with the choice to drive their car rather than take transit. Also, the wider roads will incentivize potential residential real estate buyers to live farther from their jobs. All the extra motorists will jam up the road. Just like with the I-270 widening from the late 1980's, the county will be right back at square one with traffic congestion. All the money that was spent on roads with the intention of relieving traffic will have gone right down the toilet. On top of that, the county/state will have a larger road maintenance bill, and the wider roads will make it less likely that more energy-saving walkable urban human settlements will ever be built near the widened traffic-sewer roads. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Local residents understand the correlation between road widening, increased traffic, and demand for more road widening in response. They are appropriately skeptical:

While he [Andy Scott, special assistant for economic development to Acting State Transportation Secretary Beverley K. Swaim-Staley] said SHA should "fast track" the Connecticut Avenue and Jones Bridge Road intersection study because of the possibility of property seizures, Ken Strickland of the Chevy Chase Valley Citizens Association also asked SHA to look at the intersections comprehensively, such as improving access onto Jones Bridge Road eastbound for residents of his neighborhood.
"We don't want to revisit this in three years," Strickland warned officials about the intersections.

Adding the extra lane on Connecticut Avenue would make the road even more of a traffic sewer than it already is. Rather than focusing on cars and traffic, we need to focus on moving people. The recent change in the language about the proposal to improve access allowing for a second entrance to the Medical Center Metro from the eastern side of Rockville Pike rather than only a pedestrian tunnel under the road is a step in the right direction. Adding additional Metro stations on the western Red Line in order to increase the land in walking distance to transit that serves Medical Center is another good strategy to move more people. Building the Purple Line so more people are connected to the western Red Line with rail transit is another such strategy. Improving MARC service from Frederick is another strategy. There are many ways, both large and incremental, that can move people to the new jobs surrounding the Medical Center Metro. Road widening projects will cost as much or more as similarly scaled transit projects, move fewer people, and will eventually choke on their own induced traffic.

7 comments

Lt. Gov. Brown open to new ideas, needs to hear them (Aug 3, 2009)
Montgomery making Conn. Ave. more like a freeway (Nov 3, 2010)
On Tuesday, Montgomery Council can avoid "ICC 2.0" (Jul 16, 2009)
For Montgomery's future, look to Arlington (May 6, 2009)
Moran: I know we can't lay more asphalt, but DC should (Aug 25, 2009)

Reversible pains

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:38:00 EDT

by Dave Murphy

Bustling downtown Silver Spring has a decidedly suburban-oriented feature that is strangely unique to denser urban areas: reversible lanes. This feature shows up in a few other places scattered throughout the region (most notably Connecticut Avenue in Cleveland Park), but Silver Spring's are the most prominent because they appear on two major thoroughfares that intersect at the heart of downtown.

Photo by katmere on Flickr.

Georgia Avenue north of the downtown has reversible lanes starting around 16th Street, continuing northbound under the Beltway to Forest Glen Road. Colesville Road's reversible lanes begin at the intersection with Georgia Avenue and continue northeast to Sligo Creek Parkway. The lanes are generally configured as follows:

X = Southbound, O = Northbound; signaled lanes are in black
X X X O O O Normal
X X X X O O Morning Rush
X X O O O O Evening Rush

Perhaps these reversible lanes help move a few more cars through the northern half of the downtown area during the rush hours. But how worthwhile are they? Here are some of the drawbacks:

Driving: I grew up in Silver Spring off Colesville Road. As a novice driver, I was mortified driving that stretch with the reversible lanes. Just north of the reversible lanes, Colesville Road transitions to Columbia Pike, a limited access freeway with a speed limit of 50 mph. This traffic, coming downhill, cuts to two lanes at the evening rush with no hard barrier separating the traffic, which is highly unnerving.

Reversible lanes don't work well with left turn lanes, so traffic piles up quite a bit at major intersections, causing dangerous lane shifts in heavy traffic to pass left-turning cars, culminating at the wildly confusing intersection at Georgia Avenue.

This is also true on Georgia Avenue north of 16th Street. Drivers are further stymied by several major intersections with no hard barriers between traffic directions. I have witnessed first-hand many traffic accidents resulting from this configuration at Georgia and Seminary Road. The interchange at the Beltway is also a disaster, but for reasons that go far beyond just the reversible lanes.

Walking: Silver Spring's walkability is one of its greatest assets. But crossing Colesville Road on the north side of Georgia, at Fenton, Spring, and Dale is a safety crapshoot. There is no median to create a pedestrian refuge in this wided street. And with visual cues of a large, wide swath of asphalt, drivers are tempted to speed up.

Furthermore, drivers mainly focus their attention on the unseparated oncoming traffic instead of walkers trekking across 75 feet of roadway. I'd say the same is true for Georgia, but this configuration has completely annihilated pedestrianism on the stretch with reversible lanes. Gas stations, auto shops, and strip malls dominate that stretch, even though it's very close to two Red Line stations. The intersection at the Forest Glen Metro station, which ought to be very convenient to pedestrians, is among the most notorious in Montgomery County.

Biking: The trail along Sligo Creek Parkway crosses Colesville Road at the start of the reversible lanes begin, offering no refuge in the middle. Forest Glen Road crossing Georgia has the exact same problem, making it more dangerous to access Forest Glen Metro station. And of course, neither of these stretches of boulevard offer bike lanes.

Aesthetics: The dashed dual yellow lines that separate the reversible lanes are clear enough if you know what they mean, but they are very confusing to new drivers and out-of-towners. The overhead signs (red X's marking oncoming lanes, green arrows marking accessible lanes) are clear enough, but they are hideous. These boxy lit signs hang from wires strung between telephone poles, placing an ugly web of wires above traffic. A median, on the other hand, would allow for trees and planters and minimize the unsightly wires.

Removing the reversible lanes might also create smarter traffic management in Silver Spring. Instead of treating the two main avenues through town as traffic sewers, Silver Spring could improve bus service on the roads and better connect the street grid.

Making these routes more walkable would help local businesses. More people walking there will attract more and better retail, and perhaps enable development of new mixed-use housing over retail. This would not change the sections that are currently single family houses, better walkability and traffic management would make living in a single family house on Colesville or Georgia slightly more palatable.

Adding a median on Georgia might not be that bad. We could widen the street, eating up the parking lots in front of the strip malls, and create a median. We could even add parking lanes to replace the parking lots fronting shops, replacing free parking with metered on-street parking. I dug up this 1988 plan to improve the strip, but nothing from this plan ever happened. An M-NCPPC memorandum in 2003 said that the study was moving forward, but I haven't been able to find anything more recent.

On Colesville, there isn't as much room to play around. But even a skinny median would be better than no median. Adding a median might require removing on-street parking south of Spring Street.

These reversible lanes are unsightly, confusing, and dysfunctional. They put the car first in what are otherwise highly walkable transit sheds. They have outlived their relevance, and they have no business in core downtown areas.

18 comments

Get rid of NY Ave's freeway signs (Dec 8, 2008)
Which way for one-way streets and reversible lanes? (Jan 14, 2008)
Rather than close Ellsworth Drive, narrow Georgia Avenue (Dec 21, 2010)
Indian Head's bottleneck (Jan 6, 2009)
Support two-way 15th Street today (Jun 19, 2008)

Better Know a Single-Member District: 3F05

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:28:37 EDT

by David Alpert

SMD 3F05. From Google Maps.

Welcome to a new GGW series leading up to November's election and beyond. I'll be profiling various Single-Member Districts, the areas each represented by an ANC commissioner, and the commissioners or candidates running to fill that seat this November.

There's little agreement on what to call the part of the city represented by 3F05, which spans Connecticut Avenue just south of Nebraska. To the east is Forest Hills; to the south is North Cleveland Park; to the north, Chevy Chase DC, and to the west, Tenleytown. Most of us know it as the area with Comet Ping-Pong and Politics and Prose.

As you can see from the below map, 3F05 is much smaller than many of the Single-Member Districts in ANC 3F, which spans from the eastern part of Tenleytown to Rock Creek and contains the area around Van Ness Metro. 3F05 and its southern neighor, 3F04, are small because that portion of Connecticut Avenue contains many large apartment buildings among single-family homes in most of the surrounding area.

Consequently, this part of DC is a bit of an urban-suburban tweener zone: it has a retail center, but it's small; there is pedestrian activity, but many people also drive; it's near Metro, but not quite that near; it's more than a sleepy hamlet, but less than a bustling village; Connecticut is a major commuter route, but also the neighborhood's main street. 3F05 is where a pedestrian was killed on Connecticut Avenue last week. It also played host to the recent controversy over Comet's outdoor pong-pong table, or benches in front of the local market and Politics and Prose.

While some residents and Commissioners opposed any outdoor activity that might cause noise, the ANC voted to support Comet's petition for outdoor seating. One of the supporters was 3F05's commissioner, Mital Gandhi.

Mital Gandhi.

Gandhi wants a vibrant retail corridor for Connecticut Avenue, both in his section and down around Van Ness Metro. Gandhi said, rhetorically, "Who wouldn't like retail? Who wouldn't like more of a walkable city?" (There seem to be at least a few people nearby who in fact wouldn't.) He knows upper Connecticut will never be a giant commercial district, and maybe Connecticut and Nebraska won't ever be able to support an ice cream shop or a bagel store, but he'd like to see these kinds of shops near Van Ness, and stronger retail (in an urban rather than suburban form) all along Connecticut.

How can the neighborhood encourage retail? First, he feels the ANC should take a more welcoming stance toward business. Many businesses shy away from certain areas because of the headache of working with the ANC; 3F shouldn't be that way. And second (Gandhi frequently answered questions by listing two or three numbered bullet points), the whole area could market itself better, such as with free Wi-Fi throughout the corridor.

I suggest branding the area as well. Right now, with no discernible name for the Connecticut-Nebraska corner, people don't think of it as a concrete retail district. How about Comet Square?

Long term, he hopes DC can grow in numbers of people as well as in businesses, calling DC's population "stagnant". "The way we're going to do that is by being more competitive," he said, such as with competitive tax rates to those in Arlington, and by trimming the city's bureaucracy. He'd like to see "smart development", including in appropriate areas of Ward 3 (though he declined to give specific suggestions), dislikes large surface parking lots, and is open to market-based parking pricing downtown.

Representing 3F05 isn't Gandhi's only public service; he also sits on the Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) board, where he tries to bring the same commitment to successful retail corridors to his decisions about liquor licenses. He's lived in DC since attending American University in the mid-90s, in "Comet Square" for five years, and on the ANC for four. He's unopposed for reelection this November. Gandhi now owns his own marketing communications firm, PeopleReach, which among other things is helping the Nationals sell naming rights to the stadium.

Gandhi has spent a lot of time lately thinking about the pedestrian situation on Connecticut. Slowing drivers is the top priority, but he's skeptical of replacing the reversible lane with a median, even though it will slow traffic; "we do need to get people out" of the city, he said, "but we need to slow them down."

He'd like to see more noticeable signs, especially on the reversible lane, warning drivers; after the recent death, DDOT put in two big LED signs in the area. Gandhi also made some handmade signs (which, by being less conventional, are more noticable) and talked to the local elementary school about having kids make some big signs with glitter to ask drivers to be careful.

After the neighborhood meeting with Councilmember Cheh, DDOT and MPD, police have been ticketing in the area; the police have been ticketing drivers speeding and talking on their cell phones as well as pedestrians crossing outside the crosswalk. Gandhi repeatedly spoke about the need for enforcement against both groups; I'm still concerned that MPD will see jaywalking as the primary cause of deaths like these, and while encouraging drivers to slow down with signs and tickets does help, there's no substitute for making a road feel narrower, with tools like medians, to make drivers ease off on the gas pedal. A lively retail corridor with more pedestrian traffic will also increase safety by ensuring drivers expect to see and avoid pedestrians.

17 comments

How to improve pedestrian safety on Connecticut Avenue? (Oct 3, 2008)
What's your experience walking on Connecticut Avenue? (Mar 30, 2010)
Better Know a Single-Member District: 3C03 (Oct 20, 2008)
Giving Upper Northwest a bad (neighborhood) name (Feb 25, 2010)
Better Know a Single-Member District: 7D06 (Oct 22, 2008)

"The far left lane is lava"

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:03:16 EDT

by David Alpert

Jalopnik has a feature on confusing traffic signs (via Digg). This one, the #2 most confusing sign, should be familiar:

Connecticut Avenue. Photo by talkingdc on Flickr.

Not only is it confusing, there's something else wrong with it. (Hint: Look at the upper right.) That aside, this isn't the worst of DC's reversible-lane signs; I'd pick the entry ramp signs to Rock Creek Parkway, which have a giant DO NOT ENTER and then, in small type, something like "6:30-9:30 am weekdays". It always makes me stop for a split second (usually in the middle of the intersection as I'm turning across traffic to get on at P Street), and if I have a passenger, they invariably yell, "wait, it says do not enter!"

I also immediately recognized the city where the sign on the left below appears, as I've driven through intersections like that (probably that very one) many times. The meaning of the right-hand picture, though, had me stumped.

Photos from Flickr by stuart (left) and Ryner12 (right).

I shared Jalopnik's initial reaction: "look up to see how many planes are landing or taking off before attempting a left." It's always a good idea. (Here's the real, but still not entirely sensible, answer.)

3 comments

Splashing in the Flickr Pool (Aug 20, 2010)
Get rid of NY Ave's freeway signs (Dec 8, 2008)
DDOT teasing blogs with five-year-old signs (Aug 24, 2009)
Then and Now: 519 and 521 Rock Creek Church Road (Jul 1, 2009)
DDOT to clarify where to wait for New Hampshire bike signal (Aug 19, 2010)

Transparently slanted Post article pits suburbanites against the city

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:20:00 EDT

by David Alpert

Post reporter Eric Weiss went trolling for suburban elected officials to condemn DC's pedestrian-friendly transportation improvements, creating an article that casts DC's efforts to improve pedestrian conditions as hostile moves against suburban commuters. It's a classic newsitorial, sporting this opening line: "The District is escalating what some suburban commuters are calling its war against workers who drive into the city."

War is not the answer. Photo by MatthewBradley on Flickr.

Weiss bases his findings on a number of pro-pedestrian proposals being considered, some more seriously than others: cutting I-395 back to Mass. Ave., replacing the reversible lane on 16th Street in Columbia Heights with a median, increasing fines for failing to yield to pedestrians, and the Clean Air Compliance Fee. They've already removed the rush-hour one-way operation on Constitution Avenue in Capitol Hill.

The suburban drivers—often, perhaps, drivers of Suburbans—Weiss hunts down to comment on DC's plans have plenty of vitriol. "The District is moving toward becoming 'the most anti-car city in the country,' said John Townsend, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic. 'They see commuters as the enemy.'" Your emergency towing memberships at work. And here's NoVa Congressman Jim Moran: "D.C. could wind up as an island isolating themselves with these policies. Don't pray too hard for fear that all your prayers will be answered."

Weiss's editorializing masquerading as news continues:

Auto commuters have long suspected that the city's speed and red-light cameras, along with its famously aggressive ticketing policies, have more to do with filling city coffers than with safety. The city's new parking meters, for example, can be programmed to charge escalating rates.

That's quite a non sequitur. Parking meters have nothing to do with safety, expensive or not. Despite Weiss's slant, performance parking is not about soaking drivers to "fill the city's coffers"; it's about ensuring people who wish to use curb space pay a market price to use a scarce resource instead of just making spaces impossible to find. Which is exactly what DDOT Director Emeka Moneme says, as a matter of fact:

Moneme said the city will continue—and increase—the use of market pricing when it comes to allocating such scarce resources as on-street parking. "Putting the real price of driving out there allows people to make better decisions," Moneme said, not a subsidized rate of $1 an hour.

Moneme, Councilmember Tommy Wells, and MWCOG Transportation Director Ronald Kirby all sound eminently sensible in their defense of complete streets policies over the blind promotion of high-speed traffic that all suburban drivers crave in Weiss's world. But the gold star on this article goes to the one suburbanite who made it into the article despite her refusal to roundly condemn the District:

"You'd like me to lambaste the District, but we're all in the same boat," said Montgomery County Council member Nancy Floreen (D-At Large). "I am sympathetic to some of these initiatives. But the challenge is finding the right balance. Not everyone can ride Metro or walk to work."
She placed blame for the problem, in part, on the federal government, which offers many of its employees free parking in the city.

Floreen makes an excellent point. Free parking does indeed cause problems; policies that mitigate its negative effects are restoring balance, not part of a "war against workers."

33 comments

The parking front of the commuter "war" (Jul 8, 2008)
Putting the performance back into the ballpark performance parking pilot (Mar 27, 2009)
Tom Craig picks up "angry driver" mantle from Weiss (May 22, 2009)
Eric Weiss leaves Washington Post (May 21, 2009)
Post leads content-free meter hike coverage (Apr 15, 2010)

Which way for one-way streets and reversible lanes?

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 15:21:38 EDT

by David Alpert

Are one-way streets a good idea? What about reversible lanes? Is slower traffic safer, or does it create more pollution? Citizens in are debating these questions in the context of 15th Street in Logan Circle (which may return to two-way) and Connecticut Avenue in Cleveland Park (whose reversible lanes were the subject of return to two-way) and Connecticut Avenue in Cleveland Park (whose reversible lanes were the subject of recent debate). The discussion brings up many arguments, some valid, others myths, and some uncertainties.

At last week's Dupont Circle ANC meeting, on the subject of the 15th Street reconfiguration, one citizen argued that slowing down traffic would increase pollution. After all, the longer cars spend on the block, the more they emit, right? Well, that's what planners thought in the 1960s and was also used as justification for building freeways; the problem was, speeding up traffic through the cities encouraged suburban development, creating even more traffic and more pollution ("induced demand"). Would this happen in reverse? I tend to think so, but haven't seen much hard data.

Here is an balanced article weighing both sides in the context of Richmond, VA. It makes the additional pollution-related rebuttal that one-way streets force drivers to circle larger distances to reach any particular location, since the most direct route may not be available.

It's more clear that two-way streets improve safety; this Streetsblog article rebuts arguments that one-way streets are safer, and especially with cars getting cleaner over time, cutting pedestrian crashes should outweigh the pollution issue even if pollution will increase (which is unclear).

Some also argued that making the northbound-only 15th Street one way would increase traffic by adding cars southbound in the morning; others argued it would divert northbound traffic to 16th or 14th. These arguments largely cancel each other out; there can't be more and less traffic at the same time. Jack Jacobson wrote a summary of some of the arguments.

Over in Cleveland Park, DCist covers a debate on the Cleveland Park community list about eliminating the reversible lanes on Connecticut Avenue, whose six lanes become four in the peak direction during morning and afternoon rush hours. The list's debate, and DCist comments, repeat many of the same points, on safety, pollution, or diverting traffic to side streets.

I'm less sure about the right thing to do on this one. Connecticut Avenue is a major artery, and having suburban traffic use mixed-use boulevards like Connecticut is far superior to the alternative, bulldozing neighborhood fabric for land-value-destroying freeways. Still, many commenters on the DCist thread, some serious and some facetious, repeat the most debunked myth of all, that the real solution to traffic is to build even more lanes.

Comment

DDOT may restore two-way traffic on 15th Street (Jan 10, 2008)
Support two-way 15th Street today (Jun 19, 2008)
Pedestrian safety: Fines? Lights? Two-way streets? (Jun 20, 2008)
DDOT proposes new option with cycle track for 15th Street (Nov 10, 2008)
What's your experience walking on Connecticut Avenue? (Mar 30, 2010)