Early DDOT concepts for a safer Connecticut Avenue included removing all street parking in the stretches between commercial areas. DDOT officials hinted at a January 19th public meeting that the next concept reveal will be different.
Call it “a spoiler alert,” DDOT’s Ed Stollof told the meeting hosted by the Cleveland Park Community Association and ANC 3C’s Safe, Sustainable, and Equitable Transportation Committee.
“In the modified concept, we will have some type of parking or left turns throughout the entirety of the avenue,” Stollof said. “I think this responds to a lot of folks that went on the parking and loading walkthrough in October.”
Adding more left turn lanes, parking and pickup and dropoff zones would require narrowing the bike lanes and the buffers between bikes and motor vehicle traffic along the length of the 2.7 mile project. he parking and loading areas would remain on one side of Connecticut. Whether they would be on the east or west side would be determined block by block.
Below: A cross-section with parking on one side of the street, four-foot bike lanes and 2.5-foot buffers.
DDOT also revealed new traffic counts at three locations along the study area: Military Road to
Nebraska Avenue, Van Ness Street to Tilden Street, and Macomb Street to Devonshire Place.
Car traffic along those stretches of Connecticut Avenue was 21 to 22 percent lower in November 2022 than in February 2020. That’s 6,000 to 6,500 fewer vehicles each day. Using pre-pandemic traffic counts and models, DDOT had estimated that removing the avenue’s reversible lanes and adding bike lanes would divert 7,000 vehicles to other streets every day.
Concept and parking refinements will continue into April, when the design procurement phase is to begin. The design phase would not begin until late October or early November. And construction would not begin until 2025. Stollof said there would be more opportunities for public comment in the meantime.
Speaking of public feedback, DDOT answered some frequently asked questions, including:
Why not place bike lanes down the center of Connecticut Avenue?
We’ve seen this question in several forums, from people wondering if center bike lanes would preserve existing curbside parking and bus boarding areas. DDOT did not go into much detail during the January 19th presentation, but one slide lists some of the reasons the agency never put the concept forward in the first place. And those include the elimination of all street parking along Connecticut, and no space for left turn lanes. Travel times would increase due to the need for dedicated left turn signals. And accessing the center lanes would be difficult for cyclists.
Why isn’t Connecticut Avenue a bus priority corridor?
In short: ridership numbers. “Bus Priority corridors are based on the busiest corridors (ridership) in the District,” says one slide. Stollof said WMATA had provided new Connecticut Avenue bus ridership data that very day. They revealed 2,700 daily riders, a 40 percent drop in riders from the 4,500 who boarded each day before the pandemic.
“We have three Metro stations along the [corridor’s study area] which represents some duplication of service,” Stollof said.