Tag Archives: DDOT

February 24, 2010 · 10:01 am

MPD No Longer Issuing No Parking Signs

We’ve all seen them. Some of us have put them up ourselves. They’re Emergency No Parking signs, and they’re a fact of life in neighborhoods like Georgetown. They ordinarily evoke a bit of frustration, and sometimes a whole lot, but we learn to live with them.

Those that have had to put them up themselves have had two options:

  • Submit an application to DDOT, pay $34, and travel all the way down to North Capitol St. to pick up the signs once the application is approved;
  • Go to MPD 2D headquarters on Idaho Ave. and pick up the signs for free

Unsurprisingly, most people choose Option Two. But Option Two is available no longer. MPD no longer issues No Parking Signs.

If you need to block off some parking spaces, you have only one choice now: submit and application to DDOT and pay $34. The upside? Maybe fewer people will use them.

Hat tip to GGW’s Lynda Laughlin.

Share

3 Comments

Filed under Parking

Tagged as , ,

November 23, 2009 · 10:00 am

Why Not: Build More Bike Lanes?

Photo by Elly Blue.

As part of an occasional series, GM asks “Why Not?“. Today he asks: why not build some bike lanes in Georgetown?

For those not familiar with them, bike lanes are special lanes painted on roads the designate a space on the road just for bikes. In DC they generally take the space between the travel lane and the parking lane. Compliance with the lanes is spotty. And there is a passionate debate among bikers as to whether bike lanes are even better for bikers in the first place, although one study suggests that at the very least bike lanes encourage more biking.

As part of its Bicycle Master Plan, the city hopes to build 50 miles of bike lanes across the city by 2010, and 100 by 2015. As of this summer, they had already reached somewhere around 37 miles, so these goals seem obtainable. But what about Georgetown?

As reported here, the city is planning to build two bike lanes in Georgetown: on 34th and 33rd 35th. In fact, these lanes are currently being painted and should be ready within weeks. But these lanes are north-south and do not do much to tie Georgetown in with the rest of the city’s bike network. Why not build east-west routes that connect Georgetown to that network?

But what are the candidates?

Continue reading →

12 Comments

Filed under Bikes, Why Not

Tagged as ,

November 11, 2009 · 8:00 am

The Morning Metropolitan

North Face by Jason Pier.

Good morning Georgetown and happy Veterans Day, here’s the latest:

  • As announced at last week’s ANC meeting, stop signs have replaced the traffic lights on P at 28th and 30th.
  • Speaking of transportation, DDOT exploring new technologies for parking meters, which could eventually play a big role in any future parking overhaul for Georgetown.

Leave a comment

Filed under The Morning Metropolitan

Tagged as ,

October 30, 2009 · 10:00 am

Streetcars to Return to Georgetown (Eventually)

Wednesday night DDOT hosted an open house at Hyde-Addison to discuss the city’s plans for a brand new streetcar network. The long term plans for this network include a branch into Georgetown. This would bring an end to the nearly 40 years that Georgetown has been without streetcars (which traveled Georgetown’s streets for about a century before they were shut down).

The saga that is the DC streetcar effort has been well documented at GGW, among others. Long story short: During the Williams administration, DDOT performed a study for DC’s transit future. The study concluded that better interneighborhood transit was necessary. This was to be achieved through the use of multiple tools including streetcars and bus rapid transit.

The first streetcar line was to run through Anacostia. This is about when the plans spun off the tracks, if you can pardon the pun. Questions about the route and just who exactly owned the CSX tracks increasingly made a mockery out of the ground breaking ceremony staged in 2002.

Gabe Klein Speaks to Ward 2

But new DDOT Director Gabe Klein, along with Councilmember Tommy Wells, have rededicated the city towards building an ambitious streetcar network. Initially lines will go to Anacostia and along H St. NE. If all goes as planned, the network will eventually look like this:

For Georgetown, this will mean a streetcar coming from Washington Circle down K St. to somewhere around 33rd St. This line will travel from Georgetown down K St. all the way to New Jersey Ave. where it will snake down to H St. It will then pass Union Station (where it will be incorporated into the Union Station Intermodal Transportation Center) and continue on along H St. NE until it reaches Benning Rd.

The Georgetown extension is not planned to be built until the second of three phases. DDOT is hoping to finish all three phases in seven to nine years. That would probably mean streetcars would reach Georgetown in four to six years. Although further delays are probably inevitable.

The big issue when it comes to streetcars in DC is how to power them. All over the world streetcars are powered with overhead wires. However, in central DC (including Georgetown) overhead wires are prohibited by federal law. DC will probably end up using a hybrid system involving some overhead wires and batteries. There is zero chance that any overhead wires will go up in Georgetown.

Finally, you’ll notice from the map above that there’s an arrow going from K and Wisconsin northward. That’s because DDOT is considering Wisconsin as an extension to the Georgetown line. That could mean that it gets incorporated into the third phase or it could just mean that it would be among the first expansions considered after the 37-mile system is built.

In reality, besides the H St. and Anacostia lines, nothing is set in stone. The true driving force will be whether the city can find money for the system. That’s a huge ‘whether.’

12 Comments

Filed under Transit

Tagged as ,

October 13, 2009 · 10:00 am

DDOT Exploring Circulator Extension

DDOT Exploring Circulator Extension

When it rains, it pours. We were just days away from losing half our Circulator service when the Mayor stepped in to save it. Now news comes that we might double our service. The Examiner is reporting that DDOT and the Georgetown BID are in discussions to turn the remaining Blue Bus into a Circulator. This would mean a Circulator would go from the Rosslyn metro to Dupont Circle, via Georgetown.

This is all a bit of Deja Vu all over again. In 2007, DDOT worked with the BID to modify the then relatively new Circulator to take over the Georgetown-to-Foggy Bottom Blue Bus route. The BID always considered the Blue Bus to be a demonstration project for what reliable bus service could do in Georgetown.   Having the Circulator take over the Foggy Bottom route was a culmination of that. Continue reading →

11 Comments

Filed under Transit

Tagged as ,

September 22, 2009 · 8:00 am

The Morning Metropolitan

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

  • DDOT officially announces the cut in Circulator service through Georgetown. Just as reminder: This means there will be an overall 70% service cut on Wisconsin Ave. It may not be too late, so please email the Mayor at Adrian.Fenty@dc.gov and demand that he rethink this decision.
Photo by Flickr user Roebot used under Creative Commons.

1 Comment

Filed under The Morning Metropolitan

Tagged as ,

September 17, 2009 · 9:30 am

DDOT Confirms Circulator Service Cut

Yesterday DDOT’s spokesman John Lisle confirmed that the Wisconsin branch of the Circulator has been slated for elimination. Lisle offered a list of reasons why they decided to do this. GM will list and analyze each of these reasons:

  1. The Circulator Whitehaven extension carried 2 percent of the entire Georgetown-Union Station route’s ridership but was responsible for 15 percent of its cost.

    2. Response: We’ll have to take their word for these stats. Do you want to know why we’ll have to take their word? Because they didn’t hold any public meetings to present the proposed service cut. It’s been announced fait accompli. It hasn’t even really been officially “announced”.

    Without being presented with the underlying numbers it’s impossible to argue with this statement. What does it even mean? How does one stretch of road cost more than another? How does that compare with other segments on the route?

    Moreover, how does that ratio compare with the Navy Yard Circulator route? By most accounts that’s been an abysmal failure. (Perhaps that’s simply fitting since the route is designed to service Nationals games). But GM doubts the ride from M St. to Social Safeway is nearly the money pit that the ride from Union Station to Nationals Park is. But we won’t know because they didn’t make that information public.

  2. The elimination of the extension to Whitehaven will allow the Circulator to reduce the number of in-service buses, which will lower the overall cost of providing the service.

    3. OK, maybe. But cutting service is almost always going to save some money. So what? The question is whether the cut is fair and justified. The Wisconsin Ave. corridor has be decimated with bus service cuts. Surely they save money, but at what point do we recognize that the bus system is designed to move people around, not simply serve as budget cut fodder. Continue reading →

5 Comments

Filed under Transit

Tagged as ,

September 14, 2009 · 10:00 am

Circulator to No Longer Ascend Wisconsin?

DDOT/WMATA to Cut Ciculator Service through Georgetown?

On Friday, Jennifer Altemus, President of CAG, sent out an alert on the possibility that DDOT/WMATA are considering the possibility of cutting Circulator service up Wisconsin Ave. This was the first GM heard of the proposal, but the proposal has a strong bit of deja vu surrounding it.

Right now the Circulator travels along M St. from downtown, turns up Wisconsin Ave., and ends its route at Whitehaven St., just behind the British School. This was not always the route it took through Georgetown. Originally it entered Georgetown on K St., took a right up Wisconsin, and turned back to downtown at M St.

In May 2007, the Circulator was extended up Wisconsin to its current route to take over the Blue Bus’s Foggy Bottom route. In less than a year after this extension, DDOT was already floating plans to cut it (despite the fact that the Blue Bus route it replaced was cut once the extension took place). After strong pushback from the community, DDOT decided to keep the extension. Continue reading →

16 Comments

Filed under Transit

Tagged as ,

September 4, 2009 · 4:35 pm

Update On Smartbike Expansion

As discussed by GM in June, the long discussed expansion of the District’s bike sharing program, SmartBike, which was to include a Georgetown station, has been delayed. Today the Director of DDOT Gabe Klein sent out a message giving an update on the delay and what they are currently considering. The email and the takeaway after the jump: Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Transit

Tagged as ,

August 28, 2009 · 8:00 am

The Morning Metropolitan

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

  • Dolley Madison family day tomorrow 10 to 2 at Dumbarton House. Come celebrate Dolley’s escape from the White House (Dumbarton House was her first stop) with games and cake.
  • After celebrating the War of 1812, come over and let the National Parks Service tell you about Georgetown during the Civil War. It’s at 12:15 at the C & O Canal at Thomas Jefferson St.
  • A resident suggested to the Georgetown listserv that DDOT install speed bumps next to Montrose Park. GM thinks people speed too much there (which is to say they speed at all), but that other traffic calming measures are more effective (such as resurfacing the road with something rougher than asphalt). What do you think?
Photo by Flickr user Laura Padgett used under Creative Commons.

1 Comment

Filed under The Morning Metropolitan

Tagged as , , , ,