Text submitted as comment to the Rehabilitation of Massachusetts Avenue NW project meeting; links have been added
I am extremely disappointed that this project will not include any bike infrastructure. The 2014 MoveDC bike element (p. B-23) calls for a trail along Massachusetts Ave west of R St NW, DC’s 2015 commitment to Vision Zero calls for lower speeds and safer places to ride, and DC’s repeatedly-expressed commitments to lowering traffic, pollution, and drive-alone modeshare all require taking space from cars and dedicating it to making it safer and more comfortable to use non-automotive modes.
Mr Kim’s repeated statement that this project doesn’t contemplate the MoveDC plan’s vision for the future of the road because it was begun in 2016 simply doesn’t hold water since, again, MoveDC itself was finalized in 2014. Furthermore, community members up to and including ANC 2B have been asking for this project to include bike infrastructure since DDOT first began holding public meetings about it.
Separately, I was disappointed that questions about how and how well the contractor will be held responsible for safe accommodations for pedestrians were reduced to issues about cleaning the work site. D.C. Law 20-49, the Bicycle Safety Amendment Act of 2013, requiring safe accommodations at work sites—“The Mayor shall require permittees blocking a sidewalk, bicycle lane, or other pedestrian or bicycle path to provide a safe accommodation for pedestrians and bicyclists”, that is, if you allow someone to block the sidewalk, you need to make sure they are providing an alternate route, and no, simply telling people to cross to the other side of the road isn’t safe or an accommodation—is over seven years old. It is inexcusable for a DDOT project manager in 2021 not to know what safe accommodations are, how the contractor will provide safe accommodations at the work site, and how DDOT will enforce the requirement.
This goes beyond this issue. DDOT needs to get serious about Vision Zero, about safe accommodations, and about ITS OWN LONG TERM PLANS and to train its staff, starting, apparently, at the top, on what they mean broadly and for the specific projects they are working on.
It is already difficult to get people to care about and contribute to the ongoing MoveDC update process. If DDOT can simply ignore things that were in [the original] plan because this five-year-old project was started two years after that plan was issued, well, why should anyone care about updating it? If DDOT can’t explain what safe accommodations mean to, and how they will be implemented on, its own project, why should anyone else doing any kind of work in the public space care about them either?
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