15th Street NW contraflow bicycle lane

Sunday
Originally uploaded by myriadian

This has been in the news, in the blogsphere ("Seven future improvements for the 15th Street bike lane" from Greater Greater Washington, the entry includes links to previous articles, and in Washcycle) plus the Washington Post, "D.C. bike lane worth pursuing but could stand some tweaking" as the Dr. Gridlock column, and an earlier article, "No doubt about it -- this lane is for bike traffic."

While I agree with GGW and the Post that this project should be looked at in terms of the power of experimentation, I do think that it might have been the wrong choice.

Apparently one of the options, and one that I had recommended years ago (before this project was even considered) was to revert 15th Street NW in this section back to a two way street.

Currently it is a one way street between Rhode Island Avenue to just a bit past W Street NW. It's very very wide, and it is what we would call "seriously underutilized." I don't know what the traffic counts are but they have to be low.

Were 15th Street once again a two way street, the overall street grid would become more robust, prevailing speeds (which can be high) would likely drop, and it would allow for some rebalancing of traffic between 14th, 15th and 16th Streets, making the overall road network function better.

And bicycle lanes could have been added on each side of the street, one for each direction. Possibly, some parking would have had to have been removed in this scenario. But DDOT chose the experimental contraflow bike lane instead, because it is cheaper.

(Note that the Washington Area Bicyclist Association supported the two way option. I didn't go to the public meetings in the process. I would surmise that residents were opposed to changing the street back to bi-directional.)

It's not all that much money to restrip and add signs. (Somewhere I have a link to a road improvements cost calculator, but I can't find it and I haven't yet added it to the links on the sidebar. Data I have that's five years old says it costs about $60,000 to restripe one mile of road, including bicycle lanes. But that presumes the road is already two way and wouldn't need additional traffic signals. A traffic signal costs at least $150,000, plus installation.)

But having to add equipment to the traffic signals on the street--as a one way street, there aren't signal lights in the westbound direction--apparently was more money than DDOT budgeted.

But I think in terms of building a more robust street network, and a better overall environment for bicycling, the harder, more expensive choice should have been made.

Today's Post has a letter to the editor on the subject, "Bike lanes should be two-way streets." He argues for making this contraflow bicycle lane two way, because bicyclists are "confused" by the sharrow line on the southmost side of the street. (Sharrow signage and markings mark a traffic lane that is used by both automobiles and bicycles.) And they are using the contraflow lane as a "flow" lane and riding in the eastbound direction.

But a lane this narrow to be used for two way bicycling would be a serious violation of the design standards for bicycle lanes. (The default standard is a 5 foot width for each direction, although some DC bicycle lanes are narrower.)

This is an indictator of a design flaw... a bad choice. Too bad DDOT didn't make the optimal, but more expensive, decision.