Posts about Stormwater

The county's decisions about its streets affect the financial and physical health of its residents. A large portion of Prince George's residents outside the Beltway pay over 45% of their income for housing and transportation costs. These communities also have a Walk Score less than 50%, said Yolanda Takesian from Kittelson and Associates.

RJ Eldridge, a planner with Toole design and councilmember in the Town of Cheverly, pointed out that about 67% of county adults are obese or overweight, as are 33% of children ages 2-11.

Ortiz said that County Executive Rushern L. Baker has committed $17 million to a "Green Streets" fund. This will pay for sustainable streets that accommodate all uses, including walking and biking.

The county is no stranger to environmentally sustainable streets. Ortiz said that the county's Department of Environmental Resources pioneered bioretention, where streets include planted areas to absorb stormwater, around 1990. Their bioretention on Route 202 was the first in the nation. Bioretention has now become an accepted practice in stormwater management.

Incorporating walking and bicycling with green streets is a natural next step. Andre Issayans, Deputy Director of the Prince George's Department of Public Works and Transportation, listed several projects that will be the next "complete and green streets," including Oxon Hill Road, Harriet Truman Drive, and Ager Road. Construction will start on Oxon Hill Road in late summer or early fall.

Council Member Eric Olson discussed a bill he and Councilmember Mel Franklin have proposed that would allow the Planning Board to require developers to construct adequate pedestrian and bicycle facilities on new development. The Board would have to determine the infrastructure necessary to access destinations within ½ mile such as a public school, parks, shopping center or transit.

Developing a network for walking and biking goes beyond just transportation planning, but must include land use decisions as well, Eldridge elaborated. He said that that development codes must complement capital improvements from transportation. Infrastructure investment should serve many purposes beyond just moving cars.

The Countywide Master Plan of Transportation already outlines a Complete Streets policy. Eldridge recommends the next step is for the county to develop a design manual that brings Complete Streets principles to actual projects.

While the County representatives agree with complete and green streets, the forum ended on a note of reality. Many of the county's best intentions depend on funding. Planned projects may stay on the list far longer than anyone would like.

Residents also called attention to the fact that a walkable community is not only about infrastructure but about personal safety as well. Coalition for Smarter Growth Policy Director Cheryl Cort questioned the need for a new 4-lane highway to Branch Avenue Metro station when the county should be focusing on building a walkable community.

Slater said the project will include bicycle and pedestrian facilities, but that doesn't satisfy many residents concerned that the county still overbuilds auto infrastructure. It's great to accommodate pedestrians and bicyclists on roadways, but a high-speed highway with token sidewalks and bike lanes still doesn't create a livable place.

Prince George's has taken some significant steps, but county officials and supporters of better communities alike should continue to work together to address the challenges they face as a community.

The vast majority of the work just updates, streamlines, and simplifies the text. Today, under the zoning code approved in 1958, rules and restrictions appear in general chapters that cover zone types or other, neighborhood-specific sets of rules called "overlays." Many rules use terms that aren't defined anywhere, like "building façade line," which seems very simple until you start thinking about buildings with rounded turrets.

There are also a few significant policy changes. In particular:

• More homeowners will be able to create accessory dwellings, like garage or basement apartments.
  
• A limited number of small art studios, corner groceries, shoe repair shops, hardware stores and the like will be able to open in residential areas when there aren't any commercial areas nearby.
  
• Fewer buildings will be forced to provide parking, or will not be forced to provide as much.
  
• More alley lots will be able to have houses.
  
• Green Area Ratio will require landscaping and other stormwater-managing features in projects, though not the low- and moderate-density residential buildings covered in the chapters released so far.

With the exception of the Green Area Ratio, a very 21st-century sustainability idea, the other changes acually harken more back to a past era than to the future. They correct some of the most egregious problems from the 1958 code, where it imposed social engineering ideas in vogue at the time that ended up eliminating local corner stores, pushed people out of urban neighborhoods, and forced new buildings to take a suburban form incompatible with the walkable communities that previously existed.

If Georgetown, Capitol Hill, or Petworth didn't exist today, they couldn't be legally built as they are. Even many single-family neighborhoods of detached houses like AU Park, Brookland, and Hillcrest are mostly illegal as well under current zoning. Where the new zoning code makes changes, it's to legalize the kind of development patterns that formed the neighborhoods residents treasure today, rather than forcing radically different forms which characterize much of the mistakes of the mid-to-late 20th century.

Accessory dwellings

Back when the 1958 zoning code was written, the average DC household had far more people than today. Families had more kids, senior citizens more often lived with adult children, and more young and/or single people lived in group homes and boarding houses than now.

Therefore, fewer people live in DC's existing houses than they did at the time. Allowing accessory dwellings is a way to let those buildings serve their historic population levels in the modern day. An accessory dwelling is a separate legal unit either in the same building as a larger, main residence or in an accessory building like a garage or carriage house.

Row house neighborhoods like Capitol Hill, Columbia Heights, and Bloomingdale already allow these units because they are R-4 districts, which allow 2 apartments per building. But in the few R-3 row house neighborhoods, like Georgetown, the northern half of Petworth, Anacostia, and a few small others, these units are illegal except in those unusual buildings which are completely detached, and then only with a "special exception" from the Board of Zoning Adjustment.

There are many neighborhoods with semi-detached houses, where houses are connected in pairs (the orange areas in the above graphic), and accessory dwellings are also illegal in these buildings. Fully detached single-family homes (the yellow areas) can have accessory dwellings, but only by special exception (except to create housing for domestic employees in the 2nd story of a garage), and only in a main building, not a standalone garage or carriage house.

This is bad policy. These houses used to hold more people. Today, many owners are empty nesters who used to have kids in the house but no longer do. Retirees on fixed incomes find it harder to afford to keep up their homes. The simple solution is to let people rent out separate units to get some extra income, or even live in those small units and rent out the main house.

OP proposes a policy change to let people create accessory dwellings by right in the detached and semi-detached residential areas. In the R-3 row house areas, owners could create them as well, but would still need special exceptions.

This is a good change, but there's no reason to impose such burdens just on people in these row house districts, especially when only slightly denser row house districts allow far more by right. OP should amend its proposal to permit accessory dwellings by right in R-3 zones (which will be called R-14 in the new code) as well as in lower density ones.

Corner stores in residential areas

A big part of historic development patterns was the local corner stores selling many of the necessities of life. Far more Americans could walk a short distance to do their daily shopping than today. Those days aren't coming back, because malls and online shopping can be quite convenient, but there's still enormous value in having some local options.

The local shops of today might be different than those of the past, like yoga studios rather than general stores, but the principle remains. Under current zoning, however, no commercial use can locate in a residential zone.

OP's proposal would allow some limited retail in residential areas, but with a great number of restrictions:

• Only "Arts Design and Creation" (arts studio, furtniture making, radio broadcast station), "Food and Alcohol Service" (deli, ice cream parlor), "Retail" (drugstore, grocery, jewelry store, but not auto shop or firearm sales), and "Service" (bank, travel agency, tailor, but not daycare, animal boarding, health clinic, or sexually based business) uses are allowed.
  
• They can't be in any building within 500 feet of a commercial or mixed-use zone, so this doesn't let existing retail corridors expand (though, arguably, some of that might be a good idea).
  
• There can't be more than 3 other arts, retail or service uses within 500 feet, or more than 1 other food establishment, to prevent too much of a concentration of these non-residential uses in one area.
  
• It can't be above the ground floor of any building, except for artist live-work spaces. This prevents a building from becoming entirely commercial.
  
• It can't be larger than 2,000 square feet.
  
• It can't be open after 7 pm or before 8 am.
  
• There can't be more than 4 employees at the business at any time.
  
• It can't have more than 1 sign, a lighted side, or a sign sticking out from the building.
  
• All of the trash and materials have to be stored inside; there can't be a dumpster, for instance.
  
• Any alcohol sold has to be for consuming elsewhere, not at the business, and can't take up more than 15% of the business's floor area. That means a small grocery could offer some beer and wine, but there can't be a wine bar or liquor store.
  
• Food sales can't involve cooking food on-site, but reheating pre-cooked food is okay. Grease traps (a part of kitchens that do frying or other cooking with grease) aren't allowed.
  
• There can't be dry cleaning chemicals, so a dry cleaner in a residential district has to be the kind that sends its clothes out to be cleaned rather than doing the work in the building.

Despite these regulations, a number of people are nervous about allowing any commercial use in a residential area. They understandably worry about noise, traffic, and other effects of commercial activity. OP seems to have tried to set rules that cut off the problematic impacts, like late night activity.

Maybe there need to be additional restrictions, or maybe some of the proposed uses are just too risky for neighbors to be comfortable. If so, we should amend this section rather than scrap it entirely.

Minimum parking requirements

Few zoning rules have done more to harm urban neighborhoods than parking requirements. The view in the 1950s was that since everyone would drive everywhere all the time in The Future, all buildings need to have lots of space for cars.

It turned out, however, that many of the parking requirements were far too high, forcing buildings to dedicate precious space to parking lots. That makes construction more expensive and creates gaping holes in the urban fabric. It also pushes architects to design buildings around cars rather than people, making them less pedestrian-friendly and forcing residents to drive more and walk less.

In the low- and moderate-density residential areas covered by the zoning rules OP just released, buildings of 9 or fewer units don't have to build any parking. That's great, but many buildings still do. Nobody can build larger residential buildings in these zones, but existing ones become nonconforming.

All non-residential uses in these districts also have to build parking. That includes churches, schools, daycares, rec centers, chanceries, and retail. These are the very kinds of buildings that shouldn't be car-oriented in residential neighborhoods. A daycare in a residential area ought to be serving the neighbors, not attracting people from far away. If it has no parking, that's more likely.

Many neighborhoods have fought with churches which want to tear down historic row houses just to create parking lots for parishioners who don't live in the city. Minimum parking requirements only exacerbate this problem instead of solving it. Neighbors have fought with embassies about converting grassy yards to parking lots. Why make this mandatory in the zoning code?

The rationale for these requirements is that curbside space is limited, and neighbors don't want the patrons of these other uses to take up curbside parking. But the proper way to solve this problem is by pricing or restricting curbside parking, not to force such buildings to devote a lot of their space to parking which makes traffic even worse. If DCPS builds a new school in a residential neighborhood, building less parking, not more, lets kids have more space to play and encourages as many teachers as possible to take the train or bus.

The higher-density residential, mixed-use, and other areas of the city will distinguish between transit-oriented areas, near Metro, high-frequency bus or streetcar lines, and areas without good transit access. While it's probably unnecessary to require it in zoning, there's some argument that a store in a commercial area far from transit might need some parking.

But these parking minimums for non-residential uses in low- and moderate-density residential areas even will apply right next door to a Metro stop. A potential school just a block or two from Takoma, Potomac Ave, or Deanwood Metro will nonetheless need to build considerable parking. That's wrong.

Alley lots

Residences in alleys are a big part of DC's history. African-Americans came to live in many DC alleys after the Civil War, and a number of alley residences remain. While the ones in the late 19th Century weren't the most sanitary or well-built, there's no reason modern ones can't be perfectly safe and habitable.

Current rules allow alley dwellings as long as the alley lot is 400 square feet or greater, it has adequate plumbing and so on, and the alleys serving it are particularly wide, at least 30 feet. The new code removes the 30-foot alley rule, but any alley unit will still have to get a special exception and satisfy DC agencies on fire safety, traffic, waste and more.

If the fire department doesn't think it can put out a fire in an alley dwelling, it shouldn't go in, but if one satisfies them, DDOT, DPW and the others, an arbitrary alley width shouldn't be the obstacle.

Green Area Ratio

A 21st-century change creates a new "Green Area Ratio" for large buildings. Projects which have a GAR requirement must include a certain as a percentage of the lot area. Grassy space, green roofs, water features, trees, and other sustainability elements each give a certain number of points based on their size, and the sum of all of those must equal a set fraction of the lot's size.

Parking lots, in particular, also have landscaping requirements, mandating a certain number and size of trees and grassy areas to ensure that parking lots have shade, don't form urban heat islands, and can handle some stormwater runoff.

This version is still just a draft. OP will make changes from comments by residents including a citizen task force, hold more public meetings, make more changes, and finally move to formal public hearings before the Zoning Commission. You can send OP your comments here.

Opponents of these changes are organizing groups to attend tomorrow's oversight hearing, which starts at 10 am. If you want to speak, email aphelps@dccouncil.us to sign up, or you can watch the fireworks online.

On Tuesday, June 7, NCPC will host a panel discussion as part of their Contemporary Design, Historic City series. Titled The Balancing Act Between Innovation & Preservation, the talk will examine how contemporary architecture can coexist with DC's historic characteristics. The event will be held at Catholic University, and though it's free and open to the public, RSVP is encouraged.

Finally, WABA's major summer fundraiser, BikeFest, is Saturday, June 11th, from 8 pm to midnight in Crystal City. Besides the "carnival-cycle games, a silent auction and raffle, sideshow performances, live music and dancing ... palm readings, photobooth and much more," three area bike shops will compete to create custom bicycles using low-cost, recycled materials.

You can get more information about these and other events on the Greater Greater Washington calendar.

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.

Here's a video about bike boulevards from New York:

The bicycle boulevards would go on certain streets which travel through residential areas but stretch long distances. This not only gives cyclists a safe and comfortable through route but also discourages motor vehicles from using the streets for long trips, instead pushing them to use the major arterial routes and making the resident streets quieter and safer.

Several other roads would get "sharrows," which also promote sharing space between bikes and cars but don't give priority to bicycles.

For a number of intersections, DDOT is proposing curb extensions, or bulb-outs. Some, where there is a high volume of pedestrians, would be paved, adding space for pedestrians to wait and also shortening the crossing distance.

In other places, they would be "green curb extensions," where most of the added space is filled with plantings and designed to capture and hold stormwater that runs off from the surrounding street.

Curb extensions would go along River Road at 45th/Fessenden (paved) and 44th (green), on Davenport at Reno Road and Connecticut Avenue (both green) and 36th (paved), and at a lot of corners in Tenleytown.

At some places where three roads come together, small side roads serve as slip lanes encouraging fast turns and speeding. The study recommends closing a small section adjacent to main streets at 36th Street between Connecticut Avenue and Fessenden Street, and Brandywine Street between 42nd and River Road.

The former road space would either become a basic grass area or get additional stormwater facilities, like rain gardens, to capture and store rainwater and runoff.

From Albemarle to Brandywine Streets just east of the Tenleytown Metro station, between the Whole Foods and Wilson High School, is a pair of parallel roads, 40th Street and Fort Drive. They are only a median's width apart and serve essentially as two directions of one street with a median in between. The report calls the intersection between these and Albemarle Street "awkward, confusing, and obstruct[ing] some views."

It suggests reversing the direction, so cars travel clockwise instead of counterclockwise, and replacing parallel parking adjacent to the median with angled parking, almost doubling the amount of parking. A break in the median for U-turns, currently adjacent to Albemarle, would be moved to the center of the block, lining up with the Whole Foods while also adding crosswalks there.

42nd Street and Warren Street meet in a large, gently curving triangular intersection which also encourages speeding. The plan suggests a pair of small neighborhood traffic circles, essentially small islands in the middle of the intersection which drivers have to travel around more slowly instead of zooming through the large intersection.

These items are far from all the suggestions for improving safety and mobility in Upper Northwest. Part 2 will look at Ward and Chevy Chase Circles, other ideas that didn't make it into the report, and when all of this might actually become a reality.

A bill in the Virginia legislature would let counties opt out of designating these areas. Speaker Bill Howell (R-Fredericksburg) has been opposing this bill. Donna Holt, leader of Virginia's Campaign for Liberty, sent an email to Virginia tea party members making some astounding statements about the effects of UDAs:

If [Speaker Howell] has his way, you'll be forced to forfeit your land in the suburbs for the development of high-density 'urban development areas' also called 'smart growth'.

This is a gross violation of property rights. The inalienable right to own and control the use of private property is perhaps the single most important principle responsible for the growth and prosperity of Virginia. ...

You see the corporate developers stand to gain high profits from the construction of up to twelve homes on a single acre of land. They also get huge tax breaks for their green building practices in the "new urbanism design".

Eco-extremists are heavily funded for their lobby efforts to grab and preserve up to 90% of all the land that would be off limits to humans and move you into high-density feudalistic transit villages.

They use global warming and environmental disaster to scare the citizens and politicians into abolishing private property ownership.

If they have their way, single family homes will be a thing of the past. We'd become mere lease holders of the homes we live in.

The claim that any of this would take anyone out of any homes is so ridiculous as to be laughable, except for the fact that the tea party groups have acquired significant influence over national and state legislators.

More ironic is the way Holt argues that property rights are "the single most important principle" in Virginia, but almost immediately then castigates "corporate developers" for wanting to maximize their own property rights.

It'd be fascinating to see what would happen if a property owner next door to Holt's single-family home requested permission to have the right to put 12 homes on his or her one-acre property. I'm sure Holt would quickly insist that while property rights may be inalienable, the right to prevent any development denser than her own within viewing distance is even more inalienable than that.

Much was made in the media during the mayoral election about bike lanes and how they fed "the perception that outgoing Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) was more attuned to the concerns of affluent parts of the city."

It is true that there are few bike lanes in Wards 7 and 8 when compared to the L'Enfant city. But much of this is due to the original design of the roads, which comes from when they were built.

Roads built before the introduction of the automobile tend to have odd widths for car travel, leaving extra space that can be requisitioned for bike lanes, while roads in newer parts of the city were built with cars in mind, leaving no unused space. As was demonstrated on Pennsylvania Avenue last year, it is politically easier to narrow a single 17-foot lane to 12 feet with a 5-foot bike lane than to remove a lane of traffic.

In order to meet their goals that everyone in the District live within a half mile of a bike lane or trail, DDOT is adding miles of trail in neighborhoods under-served by bike lanes. In contrast to bike lanes, DDOT is building most of its trails in the eastern half of the city.

Several projects are under construction now.

Over the past year, construction has been ongoing on a 3-mile long section of the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail (ART) from the Douglass Bridge to the existing section in the River Terrace neighborhood. More than half of it has already been paved and the last section awaits completion of a project to shift Anacostia Drive away from the river.

An under-construction bridge over the railroad tracks will complete the trail from Firth Sterling Avenue to Benning Road. A future, 2-mile long section of the ART from Benning Road to the DC Boundary is being designed now.

When the 11th Street Bridge is completed it will replace a narrow 4-6 foot bike/ped path with a 14-foot active transportation lane that connects the ART on both sides of the river.

Joining these projects as currently-underway is the Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue Great Streets project. That will close a gap in the 2-mile long Marvin Gaye Park trail, which itself went through a complete rebuild and upgrade from 2006-2009. The Pennsylvania Avenue SE Great Streets project will also include parallel bike facilities.

Meanwhile, DDOT is preparing to move forward with three additional trail projects that will add or upgrade 11 miles of trail in the southernmost part of DC.

The current Oxon Run Trail runs from South Capitol Street SE to 13th St SE in the Washington Highlands area. The new, 5 miles of trails would extend southeast to the DC-MD line and connect with the trails in Oxon Hill Farm NP and northeast to Southern Ave (and the Metro station there) where, with help from PG County, it will connect to the Suitland Parkway trail.

The Oxon Run trail involves several upgrades and extensions. There will be a full trail on both sides of Oxon Run, much of it widened to 10' and repaved. The existing bike/ped bridges that cross the stream would also be widened and improved. Many sidewalks in the park will be reconstructed and new ones will be built. In some places the trail will be rerouted to make it straighter.

Bike lanes will be added to Southern Ave and Mississippi Ave to serve as the northern section. Four new bike/ped bridges will be built across Oxon Run and its tributaries. A new trail section from Joliet St SW to Blue Plains Dr. SW will create another connection to the Wilson Bridge route. In addition to the trail projects it will include several storm water management elements. Bioretention ponds and other such landscaping will reduce the amount of street-to-stream storm-water flow. The whole project would cost $10.7 million.

A second trail project is a transportation improvement related to the already underway redevelopment of St Elizabeths as the Department of Homeland Security headquarters. In order to serve the thousands of new workers there, a new road along the west side of the campus is planned. The access road will connect Firth Sterling with Malcolm X Avenue and then with MLK Avenue just north of the intersection with South Capitol. A parallel 8-10 foot wide trail will be built on the east side of the 1.7 mile long access road.

With the South Capitol Street trail, the trail off the Douglass Bridge and the new streetcar station, the intersection of South Capitol and Firth Sterling Avenue will become a significantly more important transportation hub, especially for pedestrians and cyclists.

Another sidepath will be built on the north side of Malcolm X Avenue from the South Capitol Street trail to MLK Avenue. Furthermore, bike lanes will possibly be added to a rebuilt MLK Avenue.

Finally, the South Capitol Street trail project will build a new, 4.25 mile long, 8-10 foot wide trail where currently there is none. Cyclists may currently go south on the roadway, but there is no way to go north and no place for pedestrians.

The trail (in solid orange on the map) would start at the intersection of South Capitol and Firth Sterling. It would cross the streetcar tracks at grade and then continue on the west side of South Capitol and Overlook Avenue. Just before Laboratory Road the trail would cross to the east side of Overlook, then cross Laboratory and follow along the south side of that to Shepherd Parkway. It would then become a sidepath along Shepherd Parkway, Blue Plains Drive and DC Village Lane to the existing trail connection to Oxon Hill Farm.

The trail would be, in some places, pinched between the federal facilities' fences and the roads, with bus stops and other obstructions creating more pinching. To overcome this, DDOT plans to remove lanes from the parallel roads in some places, narrow the lanes in others or, sometimes both. Their traffic analysis shows that this will do little to lower the level of service for drivers while creating enough space for a safe trail.

In addition, an interim connection (in light blue on the map) would be built between South Capitol and the Oxon Run Trail. It would be an on-road route using sharrow lane markings along Halley Pl, 1st St and Atlantic St SE.

The whole $5.7M project would be built in four phases, some of which need to be coordinated with the rebuilding of DC Village and proposed improvements to I-295/ South Capitol Street, as a part of the DHS redevelopment of the St Elizabeths property.

Once all of these projects are completed, moving around Wards 7 and 8 by foot or bicycle will become an increasingly safe, easy and pleasant experience. They should help to increase bike commuting to the government facilities along the river and at St. Elizabeths and provide new recreational opportunities.

Projects like the Aldi in Carver-Langston or the Van Ness Walgreens (later changed) will keep getting proposed while the zoning rewrite is underway. Developers will design a project the way zoning requires, but in the absence of guidance, they'll just fall back on the standard suburban models. These projects will last for 50 years, so the least we can ask is that the developer put the parking behind the buildings.

To submit comments, fax or emailed a signed PDF of not more than 10 pages to zcsubmissions@dc.gov by 3 pm today.

The Green Area Ratio (PDF), the subject of tonight's hearing, incorporates a standard of environmental sustainability into development. New development or large-scale renovations for buildings will have to meet a GAR standard, except for single-family homes, 2-unit condos/apartments, or accessory dwellings .

The proposed text sets scores for different kinds of landscaping and stormwater management. Trees count for a certain number of square feet depending on their size. Landscaped areas count for 30-60% of their size depending on the depth of their soil, permeable pavers about 40-50%, green roofs 60-80%. That score is then divided by the total size of the lot to generate a GAR.

The actual GAR each property will have to achieve has yet to be determined, and the Office of Planning will propose specific thresholds as they write zoning text for each individual type of zone.

Implementing the GAR will cost some money, though statistics from a similar program in Seattle showed that it added only ½% to 1% to the total cost of the project. In addition, buildings have to pay impervious surface fees from the District Department of the Environment and DC Water, and higher GAR will directly lower those payments. GAR features on buildings will also help DC reach its EPA-mandated stormwater quality goals, improve air quality, and reduce air conditioning costs.

OP estimated the current GAR of properties in DC. For commercial zones, the GAR today falls between .2 and .3, with industrial zones a little lower, moderate density residential between .3 and .4, and lower density residential zones higher due to their lower lot coverage.

The Zoning Commission asked OP to estimate what GAR requirements it might set for a zone. OPS ran the analysis for Production, Distribution and Repair (PDR) zones, which are designated C-M for Commercial and Manufacturing or just M for Manufacturing in the old zoning code. PDR zones average .137, the lowest category in DC.

Each 0.1 of GAR would add about $1.50 per square foot to projects. OP would recommend a starting GAR requirement of 0.2, with the opportunity to reevaluate raising the threshold in the future. This would add less than 1% to the construction costs of new projects.

The hearing is tonight, 6:30 pm at 441 4th Street, NW (One Judiciary Square), room 220-South. Typically in these hearings, OP presents first, then the Zoning Commission asks questions, and finally public witnesses can speak, first witnesses in support and then those opposed. Fill out two of the little witness cards that are on the table next to the far right door while you wait.