On the Vision Zero Omnibus bill (B23-0288)

The revised Vision Zero bill, now known as the Vision Zero Enhancement Omnibus Amendment Act of 2020, passed out of DC Council’s Transportation Committee last week. It’s a rather long bill—the new edition fills the last 26 pages of the 110-page Committee Report and runs 632 lines—so this ended up being a rather long letter to my Council member…

CM Nadeau,

I was happy to see that the latest version of the Vision Zero omnibus bill B23-0288 made it out of committee last week, but I have several concerns that I hope you will help address before the bill goes to a final vote.

First, and frankly most disturbing, is the new requirement (Section 13) for bikes to have a working tail light.  Requiring tail lights is the sort of thing that seems like a good idea (people should be able to be seen!) but will just lead to non-white people being harassed by police, as in Tampa, where a 2015 Tampa Bay Times investigation “found that Tampa police are targeting poor, black neighborhoods with obscure subsections of a Florida statute that outlaws things most people have tried on a bike, like riding with no light or carrying a friend on the handlebars”, or Chicago, where in 2017 the Chicago Tribune found that “more than twice as many citations are being written in African-American communities than in white or Latino areas”.  On top of that, while tail lights don’t have to be especially expensive—although I have no idea if mine are “visible from a distance of at least five hundred feet” either; I have never tried to make sure that mine is visible from further away than atop my own saddle—every additional cost to get on a bike and keep it operational is an added barrier to something we should be making easier to access.  If Council is seriously concerned about people’s visibility while riding, give people lights—for example, by funding the WABA/DDOT “Got Lights?” program¹.

¹ You can also see WABA’s statement on this at https://twitter.com/jeremiah4dc/status/1281325773681496064

Secondly, Section 8, part d creates a series of conditions under which DDOT should prohibit right turns on red.  Like many others, I think it would be not only safer, but simpler and more coherent to simply ban right-turn-on-red everywhere throughout the District.  CM Cheh has said that adding all these different conditions “covers over 80% of the District” while maintaining the District’s eligibility under a Federal Department of Energy grant program which requires states to permit right turn on red.  However, there are two reasons I believe this should not be a bar:

• The program funding is minimal—$376,440 in 2020, and a total of $1,285,700 over the last four years combined.  The director of the department that receives this funding, Tommy Wells at DOEE, has said himself it would be worth giving up this funding in order to achieve the safety improvements that would be achieved by simply banning right-on-red District-wide.

• I also suspect it could be possible to have this cake and eat it, too:  the federal law in question, 42 U.S. Code § 6322(c)(5), requires the District to have “a traffic law or regulation which, to the maximum extent practicable consistent with safety, permits” right turn on red (emphasis added).  Although I leave the details to actual attorneys, I would suggest that in an urban environment like the District, “the maximum extent practicable consistent with safety” is “not at all”.

Third, the Committee report notes, “Arguably the greatest threat to pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure in the District is the failure to restore crosswalks and bike lanes when a contractor finishes work in the public space” (PDF, page 4).  As I said in my testimony submitted to the bill’s hearing in October, the laws and regulations around work in public space, and safe accommodations for people walking and riding past such work, must apply not only to private land-holders but to District agencies as well.  For example, as DDOT repairs, upgrades, and replaces sidewalks throughout the District, they often make no provision for people to get past that repair work—I have reported multiple Safe Accommodations violations with 311 for work that blocked sidewalks without alternatives not only along minor streets like 19th & T Streets NW, but heavily traveled, often high-speed roadways like Connecticut Avenue over the Taft Bridge, where there wasn’t even an advance warning of the closure, leading northbound pedestrians to have to cross from the inside of a blind curve.  I agree that DDOT must do better at requiring private companies to maintain and restore non-auto rights of way—but we also need to require the same of DDOT itself.

Finally, there are several notes in the Committee Report about DDOT’s failure to issue reports that Council has previously required, such as in the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Amendment Act of 2016; even when reports are written and filed, they are often hard to find.  However, there doesn’t seem to be anything which holds DDOT, the Director, or EOM responsible for failure to act.

I wrote a paper last year for a class on Transportation Planning Policy about Vision Zero and its success or lack thereof in DC and Montgomery County.  One of the sources I came across in my research was a publication from the Federal Highway Administration “review[ing] Australia’s accomplishments in highway safety”.  In it, the author notes particularly the importance of public release of strategic plans and such—“public release…helps ensure, but does not guarantee, application of sufficient resources”—but he also notes that there must be consequences for failure to act: “the plan must not only be evidence based, but it must have sharp teeth.”

What can and will Council do to put teeth in its own plans and policies?  What consequences can and will Council lay on DDOT and EOM if they continue to ignore Council’s mandates?

Thank you, as always, for your work for the Ward and the District.