After being left out of Mayor Bowser's budget, the DC Council recently allocated $2.2 million to continue the work to redesign Connecticut Ave that might include a PBL. This project, the Connecticut Avenue NW Reversible Lane Safety and Operations Study, is one of the possible permanent traffic changes to come out of temporary changes made during the Covid Pandemic.
The District is considering adding bike lanes and making other changes to a 2.7-mile segment of Connecticut Avenue NW, where city leaders envision a corridor with less vehicle traffic and better access for pedestrians, transit users and bicycles. The $4.6-million makeover would add a northbound and southbound bike lane and remove reversible rush-hour lanes — a source of confusion among drivers— resulting in fewer car lanes.
The concept, which has broad support among bicycle users and road-safety advocates, is worrisome to drivers and some businesses over fears that a bike lane would reduce already-scarce parking.
Parking you say? I guess there's a first time for everything.
Cyclists have been advocating for bike lanes on CTA for as long as I can remember, and protected bike lanes on CTA, albeit farther north, were in the original "Bikeways Plan" that the DC proposed to meet EPA mandates back in 1974 - so this has been a long time coming. More recently Connecticut Avenue was identified as a Bike Priority Corridor in moveDC 2014 and the 2021 Update.
At the center of the plan is a push to remove rush-hour lanes from Woodley Park to the Chevy Chase neighborhood of Washington, a stretch of six-lane road that carried an average of 32,000 vehicles daily before the coronavirus pandemic. The two reversible lanes allow four of the road’s lanes to carry southbound traffic during the morning rush, then reverse in the evening to carry northbound traffic out of the city.
As the road is reduced to four lanes, a protected bike lane would be added in each direction, with parking and loading zones removed on one side of Connecticut Avenue. More than 300 parking spaces would be eliminated, according to a DDOT analysis. The new configuration would cut parking availability outside of rush-hour and car-lane capacity in half for peak direction travel during rush hour.
The proposal would remove rush-hour parking restrictions, enabling all-day parking on one side of the road.
But they're also considering a non-bike option even though they admit that it's out of sync with their current plans and Vision Zero.
The city is also considering removing the reversible lanes without building bike lanes. In that plan, which would lower the project’s cost to $1.9 million, there would be three lanes in each direction during peak hours and two in each direction during nonpeak hours. Parking would be preserved on both sides of the road with rush-hour restrictions remaining.
DDOT says of the project
The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) is studying the feasibility of removing the reversible lane system as part of the city’s Vision Zero initiative, which aims to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries. Per the findings of the previous 2003 DDOT study, there is renewed community interest in reviewing the reversible lane system and exploring concepts for other mobility options such as bike lanes.
Regardless of what happens with the bike lanes, removing the reversible lanes is popular and seems to have more momentum
Removing the lanes would bring a 36 percent reduction in crashes during peak hours, according to DDOT.
While about 300 bicyclists use the corridor daily, more than 3,000 bike trips would be made on the route after a bike lane opens, according to city estimates.
I don't know if it's the pandemic or years of education/advocacy, but this time things feel different.
“The commuters who are going down there at 50 miles per hour, they don’t even see my business because they are moving too fast to get through it,” said Krigman, who also is a member of Woodley Park Main Street. “So I’m very pleased with the prospect of slowing down Connecticut Avenue.”
In fact, when DDOT tried to restore the reversible lanes in June, neighborhood opposition caused them to reverse direction.
There are a couple of designs with PBLs on each side, and then a few designs with a two-way protected cycle track on the west side, but both WABA and all four impacted ANCs support the one pictured above (Concept C) if you can't decide.
DDOT was to make their management recommendation by the end of last month and then there's another public meeting tentatively scheduled for the fall. But don't get too excited construction may not occur until 2025.
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