Dr. Transit offers some thoughts on the Adams-Morgan Transportation Study.

The photo would not come through due to problems with blogger and was deleted. It depicted the intersection of Connecticut Avenue, T Street, and Columbia Road. (Photo from the project website.)

The DC Department of Transportation has contracted a transportation study for the greater Adams-Morgan area (not just Columbia Road and 18th Street). The study website offers opportunities for comment, meeting schedule, and other resources.

From the website:

Study Summary:
Improving Transportation and Visual Aesthetics in the 18th Street Area

The 18th Street/ Adams Morgan Study study covers an area bounded on the north by Euclid Street/Adams Mill Road/Calvert Street, NW; on the east by 16 th Street, NW; on the south by Florida/Connecticut Avenue (Ashmead Place), NW; and on the west by Connecticut Avenue/Hawthorne Street/Cathedral Avenue, NW.

The study will examine current and future transportation conditions in this study area to determine which short- and long-term improvements would:

1. reduce traffic congestion, especially during peak hours;
2. improve traffic and pedestrian safety;
3. improve the connections between residents, workers, shoppers and restaurant patrons, and mass transit;
4. protect surrounding residential streets from traffic impacts; and
5. best accommodate “streetscape” aesthetics for both 18th Street and Columbia Road.T

The study will also examine the potential transportation impact from various planned developments.

Goals of the Study

The 18th Street/Adams Morgan Study will result in a multi-modal transportation, streetscape and transportation management plan designed to preserve, strengthen or foster a vibrant, diversified residential and commercial neighborhood. It will recommend a balance of physical design and management strategies that encourage efficient and safe movement of all users (pedestrians, bicyclists, bus riders, drivers, etc.).

Specific goals for the study include:

1. Recognizing the role of roadways, transit linkages, and bike/pedestrian pathways within the study area as an integral component in the District and regional transportation system;
2. Maintaining or improving the function and efficiency of roadways, transit linkages and bike/pedestrian pathways as part of the District and regional transportation system;
3. Balancing safe and efficient pedestrian, bicycle, transit and auto movement through and within the study area;
4. Establishing a flexible, demand-based parking strategy and implementation plan that supports both new and existing retail and residential uses;
5. Explicitly encouraging the use of transit and enhance transit efficiency;
6. Creating a safe and interesting neighborhood that supports a diversity of uses and activities;
7. Enhancing the streetscape – sidewalk, trees, light poles and bulbs – by using styles that capture and reflect the vibrancy and diversity of the area.

[Deleted and updated]

Public Meeting #1 is scheduled for Tuesday, March 29th

Time: 6 - 8 pm

Location: The Patricia M. Sitar Center for the Arts

1700 Kalorama St. NW

There is also a place on the site to submit comments. And the study website also has a Spanish-language version.

Some thoughts from Dr. Transit

Last year, the noted transportation planner-consultant Dan Burden came to Adams-Morgan to help residents and stakeholders begin the process of thinking about these issues more broadly. Although the schedule for the walkable.org study visit to Adams-Morgan is still online, Dr. Transit's normally prodigous research skills can't uncover an online copy of the final report on the transportation section of the Adams Morgan Main Street website or elsewhere on the web, although here is an interesting set of minutes from the ANC1C transportation forum.

Dr. Transit went to a couple of the sessions and was very impressed with some of the ideas, including breaking up the Marie Reed superblock, which although controversial, seems to have struck a chord with some, according to this resolution from the local ANC.

Dr. Transit offers a suggestion to the current study team, which is the same recommendation that he made last year to the Dan Burden-led study team:

Do a scoping-walk through-evaluation of the conditions on 18th Street and Columbia Road each night on a weekend (including Thursday) in the Spring or Summer* because that's when the issues arise that concern people, the issues that led to the commissioning of the study in the first place.

(* Dr. Transit is actually fine with the congestion in Adams-Morgan because he doesn't live there, AND because he takes the bus, subway, bikes or walks, to get to and around Adams-Morgan, particularly to the IdleTime used bookstore and Tryst.)

The idea came about (although it should be obvious) because of something I came across from Britain. "Managing the Evening and Late Night Economy" is a big issue in the UK, although I don't think the government came up with the right solutions (allowing for 4 am bar closings, to spread out the times when people leave places, fails to recognize most people will stay to last call, and then come out and be "yobs", merely extending the resultant problems to a later hour, which was the common criticism of the Government actions by various local constituencies--meanwhile this point continues to be ignored by the national government).

The UK government has been more focused on the binge drinking culture of the under-35 crowd, rather than traffic congestion (i.e., one of the suggestions in a report I read was "one strategy to prevent people from fighting in line while waiting at carryouts would be to give them chocolate to munch on while they wait").

A House of Parliament sub-committee actually did a night-time walk, starting after 11 pm, in some of the areas in London where this continues to be a pressing issue. Here's a link to the final report, a pdf version, and the Government response.

Can you imagine this kind of responsiveness from elected and appointed officials in the U.S.? It makes me want to go to the UK for graduate school.

While it's unlikely we could ever get U.S. Congresspeople to do a night tour of an area unless it was part of a fundraising event or an overseas junket, certainly we could get Adams-Morgan transportation study stakeholders to do that on 18th Street and Columbia Road sometime in May or June?

Think of it as a transportation wonk "bar crawl" without drinking.

Dr. Transit is game, are you?