Boo! DC Reverses Plan To Add Bike Lanes to Major City Street
Last year, Strong Towns wrote about Washington, DC’s, bold plan to reconfigure Connecticut Avenue with 2.7 miles of bike lanes and a host of pedestrian-friendly design features. We called it a “rare win for bikes over cars and parking.” We spoke too soon.
City transportation officials announced last week that the plans for the bike lanes have been removed from the project. In a hearing with the DC Council, the city’s acting DOT Director Sharon Kershbaum said any Connecticut Avenue reconfiguration, “will not include a bike lane,” and that what was originally intended to be a “safety plan” somehow “morphed into a bike project.” She said the city would initiate a study to find a north-south route for a cycling corridor.
Under the original plan, curbside parking lanes on both sides of Connecticut Avenue were to be replaced with protected bicycle lanes. This would have connected residential neighborhoods with a broader trail network that led to the National Mall. Additional safety enhancements in the $7.7 million project included a lower speed limit, daylighting intersections and no right turn on red. The roadway in question has been designated a “High Injury Network Corridor” in DC’s Vision Zero initiative due to the number of car, pedestrian and bicyclist crashes.
The Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA), which advocates for cycling safety, responded with a petition calling for a reversal of the reversal: “We urge the Mayor and the Council to act expeditiously to restore the protected bike lanes to the redesign of Connecticut Avenue.”
The petition notes that the plans had the approval of all the affected neighborhood advisory commissions and had been championed by the mayor, city council and District transportation officials when approved just a few years before.
DC councilmember Matthew Frumin, who questioned Kershbaum at the hearing, posted on Instagram that “after years of delay it is frustrating that DDOT is abruptly moving away from a plan that would improve safety for all road users.” He said DDOT has promised that some pedestrian safety enhancements, such as curb extensions, should start soon.
Much of the opposition to the reconfiguration centered around the loss of about 300 street parking spaces in the affected neighborhoods. Local merchants formed an opposition group and argued that the proposed changes would drive away customers and harm their businesses.
Longtime Strong Towns readers know that’s nonsense. “[Many] businesses do better with that type of bike infrastructure in place. And that means that more people are making smaller trips, they're putting money into their local businesses,” argued DC councilmember Charles Allen, who has advocated for multimodal transportation as chair of the city’s transportation and environment committee.
WABA’s petition echoes that theme: “Numerous studies have shown that bike lanes do not negatively affect businesses, as people who use bicycles are more likely to frequent local stores.”
And planner Timothy Tresohlavy, who specializes in bicycle transportation projects, debunks the parking argument with math. “Always remember that one parking space can fit about six bicycles,” says Tresohlavy. Then, because cars turn over parking spaces less frequently, that space opens up only a handful of times each day. So the merchants complaining about losing five customers a day could actually be gaining 40 or 50.
This episode is a stark reminder that victories over the suburban development pattern are always hard-fought, sometimes fleeting, and you may have to keep fighting even after you thought you had already won.
If you want to join the fight to make your community safer and more prosperous, check out our local conversations to find a group near you!
Ben Abramson is a Staff Writer at Strong Towns. In his career as a travel journalist with The Washington Post and USA TODAY, Ben has visited many destinations that show how Americans were once world-class at building appealing, prosperous places at a human scale. He has also seen the worst of the suburban development pattern, and joined Strong Towns because of its unique way of framing the problems we can all see and intuit, and focusing on local, achievable solutions. A native of Washington, DC, Ben lives in Venice, Florida; summers in Atlantic Canada; and loves hiking, biking, kayaking, and beachcombing.