Dear Mayor Bowser and Ward 4, Ward 1, and At-Large Members of Council,
This message was sent late Sunday, April 21, to the Mayor of DC and seven members of DC Council,
copied to the ANCs and commissioners of my current home and the place I’m moving to May 1.
I’m writing as a pedestrian, bike rider, resident of Ward 4 (soon-to-be resident of Ward 1), and friend of Dave Salovesh, who was killed Friday morning on Florida Avenue NE.
As I’m sure you’re aware, Friday was Good Friday. Today was Easter. Dave will not be rising again. His blood, along with the blood of Thomas Hollowell, Carlos Sanchez-Martin, Jeffrey Hammond Long, Malik Habib, and dozens of others killed on DC streets, is on your hands.
Long before I moved to DC to attend graduate school for my Master’s in Urban Planning, with a concentration in Transportation Planning—particularly in infrastructure for people walking and riding bikes—I heard great things about the District’s work to improve the ability of residents and visitors to get around without using personal cars. Projects like the 15th Street NW protected bike lane and legislation like the Safe Accommodations law were once models for other places — literally: when I heard about DC’s work to require construction contractors to replace pedestrian and bike space with equivalent space during the length of their projects, I suggested that Pittsburgh should do the same.
But DC’s progress has been stuck in neutral for years, and is sliding now backwards. Since the declaration of DC’s Vision Zero commitment, the number of deaths on the District’s roads has only increased. The day after my friend Dave was killed, another person riding a bike was hit by a driver only blocks away on Montello St NE in Trinidad. The day after that—that is, today, just hours after Dave’s memorial—five people were injured, one critically, when someone drove into them with so much force, it flipped their vehicle. A sixth person was also critically injured, hit by one of the cars while trying to cross the street.
These are just the most recent incidents of which I am aware. Dave is at least the fifth person killed while riding a bike or scooter on DC streets in less than a year. Over three dozen others have been killed walking or while driving or riding in cars by other drivers. And that’s before we even start counting those who have “only” been injured, often in life-changing ways, to say nothing of the partners, children, families, and friends through whom the impacts will continue to ripple for the rest of eternity.
You have the power to change this.
Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord!
Awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago!
Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?
Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep;
who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to cross over?Isaiah 51:9–10
God’s work isn’t done by God / It’s done by people.
Ani DiFranco, “Up up up up up up”
Wake up. Make us a way to cross over this sea of pain and death. Do the work. Act.
Some Members of Council have made statements about asking DDOT to study or consider making this change or that change. It is time to stop asking. It is time for Council to legislate. Make MoveDC law. Require building sidewalks and safe, protected bike lanes — with not just flexible plastic sticks that drivers can ignore and park on at will, but actual hard, protective barriers that will stop them. Stop accepting excuses and half-answers and years of endless study and planning for projects that will sit on the shelf for years, as plans for a calmer Florida Avenue NE have done.
It is time for Council to take its oversight role seriously and force DDOT to stop slow-walking safety.
Parking cannot be more important than people’s lives. Period.
As for Safe Accommodations, its implementation has been absolutely atrocious. See, for one example, the project at 17th and L NW: I reported in October that it was occupying the sidewalk without any accommodations for people walking, and it was completely unchanged in March. Last summer, a construction project closed the sidewalk on Georgia Ave NW at Gallatin—after two weeks of reports that people were forced to walk in that busy, dangerous road to reach a bus stop, the response was to close the bus stop. I have asked repeatedly why the project on 14th & R NW is allowed to close off the sidewalk w/out providing safe accommodation for people walking; people walk in the bike lane, so this also makes this road unsafe for people riding, but Dave is the only one who has ever provided anything close to a response.
This is shameful. The Department of Transportation and the office that approves and enforces these construction plans, and the arms of the Mayor’s Office and the Council that oversee them, should be ashamed and must be held to account for these repeated failures. When another person is harmed through the refusal of the District to provide and enforce safe accommodations that are already required by law, their blood, too, will be on your hands.
As New York City advocate Eben Weiss wrote in 2015, discussing the need to stop referring to crashes as “accidents”, “Our language and our streets have much in common: they’re both something we all share, and they’re both something we need to update from time to time.” Several decades ago, those in leadership of the District of Columbia decided to update its roads and make it possible for people to drive many more cars much faster on them. It is now time to update them again, to realize that in a city where the majority of residents don’t drive on a regular basis—where a third don’t even own one—to fail to provide them safe, accessible routes and allow them to be killed on a regular basis is to be an accessory before the fact to their murder.
This isn’t about “avid cyclists” or extreme pedestrians or any other single group. After all, the greatest proportion of those killed by drivers in DC last year were other people in cars. Vision Zero, as Dave himself said repeatedly, including just a month ago, is for the protection of everyone.
In 2016, Linda Bailey, then the Executive Director of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) wrote that “Elected officials should be champions for safe street designs.” The record and rising number of “lives lost is a wake-up call, yet we know how to stem this epidemic. Better design will save lives and make our streets safer.” Mayor Bowser, you hired her to be DDOT’s Vision Zero Director—I sincerely hope, for all our sakes, that you are listening to what she says.
This is your wake-up call. Make us a way to cross over this sea of pain and death. Do the work. Act.
Back to top“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”
This line from Horace Mann’s speech to the first graduating class of Antioch College is part of my .signature block, at the bottom of nearly every email I send.