Bikes Get Rare Win Over Cars, Parking in Bold DC Plan To Reconfigure Connecticut Avenue
(Source: Flickr/Elly Blue.)
Like many American cities, Washington, DC, spent the 20th century accommodating the automobile. A vast network of highways, freeways, and regional roads sprung up, and planning decisions, such as reversible one-way rush hour lanes, prioritized through traffic.
This century has been much kinder for all other road users. In recent decades, the city has added miles of dedicated bike lanes, including in its downtown core. It’s embraced a plethora of private, smaller-scale transportation options, such as bike share and scooters. It permanently closed to cars a road through Rock Creek Park long used by commuters.
DC is soon to undertake its most ambitious project yet, converting a 2.7-mile stretch of Connecticut Avenue, one of the city’s main north-south streets, into a mixed-use corridor. The specs for the project, being run by the District Department of Transportation (DDOT), the city’s transportation agency, read like a wish list for cyclists and safety advocates:
Installing protected bicycle lanes on each side of Connecticut Avenue.
Relocating some bus stops to the far side of an intersection.
Adding pedestrian refuge islands and curb extensions.
Prohibiting right turn on red (city council actually voted to prohibit such turns citywide, with the changes scheduled to take effect in 2025).
Removing parking at some intersections to increase visibility and reduce crashes.
Reducing the speed limit from 30 mph to 25 mph, and including automated enforcement.
Under the approved design, the protected bicycle lanes would be added by claiming an existing parking or traffic lane. Cars and buses will have two lanes in each direction throughout the corridor.
It’s a major commitment to safety and parity for cyclists and pedestrians, and directly confronts two interests that have long held sway in transportation planning: parking and through-traffic.
Charles Allen, a DC councilmember who chairs the Committee on Transportation and the Environment, says the changes reflect a broader reevaluation of city streets. “So much of our public space has been built with a car-centric mindset that we're having to rethink how to use the limited public space. You’ve got 60 feet curb to curb. So how do I use what I've got in a much better and safer way?”
Allen says the city views these investments in cycling infrastructure as setting the stage for a growth in users. “The number of times I talked to seniors, that I talked to families, they're not comfortable biking mixed in with the cars. But the moment we build out a better and smarter bike infrastructure, their mobility and their options open up.” He also notes that e-bikes are lowering the barriers for some prospective riders.
Garrett Hennigan, organizing manager for the Washington Area Bicyclists Association (WABA) sees that network effect as key to enable more “low-stress cycling,” and convince more riders to see bicycles “as a viable way to get around.” WABA has advocated for these changes in the wake of deadly crashes involving cyclists on this stretch of Connecticut Avenue.
Hennigan says some of DC’s previous projects have been well executed and could set the stage for a broader network. He points to similar reconfigurations on 17th Street, K Street, and 9th Street, in which existing parking or traffic lanes were used for bike lanes, that have created much safer corridors for riders. As more such projects fill the city map, “stitch them together and suddenly [you can have] exponential growth” in cyclists, says Hennigan.
Created as part of the original L’Enfant Plan, Connecticut Avenue is one of DC’s most iconic streets. Starting just a block from the White House, it continues north through the city’s business district all the way to the Maryland state line. The stretch in question is lined with apartment buildings, townhouses, and neighborhood-scale businesses, flanked by some of the city’s most desirable residential neighborhoods.
Connecticut Avenue was built out along a streetcar line, but later became a car commuting corridor, aided by a confusing system of reversible rush-hour lanes. Riders along the new bike lanes will be able to connect to a protected trail in Rock Creek Park that runs to the National Mall.
One of the most prevalent complaints about the Connecticut Avenue plan has been from local merchants worried about the elimination of surface parking near their businesses. Allen says the project should address the concerns of all stakeholders, but cites evidence that such investments have a beneficial effect on economic productivity. “[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.”
The Connecticut Avenue project went through a rigorous community engagement process, including more than 60 public meetings and dozens of votes in favor of the redesign coming from the affected Advisory Neighborhood Commissions (ANCs).
The project has been approved by city council and Mayor Muriel Bowser selected the working design from among three options, saying the city “will continue working closely with the community to update our infrastructure so that it is not only safer, but better aligned with the ways people are moving around our city and the future of transportation in DC.”
DDOT is currently working with stakeholders to address their concerns and may present another set of design revisions. Its timeline calls for concept designs to be in place by fall of 2023, with the procurement phase starting in spring 2024.
Allen notes that the political process is always challenging, but recalls how the 9th Street, reconfiguration was plagued by complaints and delays, but is now “filled with people on their bikes” and seen as a great success on a vital north–south route.
While much of the focus has been on busier corridors, Allen says one of his favorite projects was on a neighborhood scale. For the reconfiguration of C Street, the city “preserved on-street parking, but we actually removed the travel lanes. And we now have a dedicated cycle track that is the envy of neighborhoods. It accommodates bus travel, cycle travel, car travel.”
Allen also emphasizes that many residents use multiple modes of transportation, but their needs largely align. Whether traveling by car, by bicycle or on foot, “I want to do it quickly, safely, and be able to come home at night.”
Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn says changes like this represent a pivot point in reversing the destructive effects of car-centric development. “When things mature (become more productive and useful for the people there), a successful transition is to shift away from auto throughput and toward prioritizing place.”
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.