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DC Bicycle Advisory Comments on moveDC

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2005 Bicycle Master Plan
MoveDC includes a status report on the implementation of the 2005 Bicycle Master Plan. It
gives the implementation of the 2005 Plan a mixed rating:

We know that the proportion of bicycle trips has increased from about 1 percent of all
trips in 2001 to at least 4.1 percent in 2014, an important goal of the 2005 Plan.

We dont really know if weve reached the 2005 Plans goals of better bicycling on 50
miles of DC streets since 2005 or if were on track to reach that goal on 100 miles by
next year, but we do know that 45% of the street network gets a failing grade for
bicycling.

We dont know if bicycle crashes are increasing at a slower or faster rate than the number
of trips taken by bicycle.

The bicycle element of moveDC includes a number of recommendations that should help us
evaluate the performance of bicycle infrastructure and programs in the city. The stated
performance criterion is to increase the number of trips made by bicycle while lowering the rate
of bicycle crashes in the city. The BAC supports this performance criterion for DDOTs
bicycle program. It should be noted that most of those recommendations were included in the
2005 Plan as well.

moveDCs Bicycle Mode Share Goal
The moveDC goal for trips made by bicycle in 2040 is 12% of work trips, an 8% increase over
26 years. This is a modest goal by any standard, but particularly when compared to the level of
interest expressed by the public during the moveDC planning process. Fifty-six percent of the
participating public prioritized better bicycling as their preferred outcome for this Plan. The
BAC recommends setting a goal for trips made by bicycle closer to 25%, the goal that the
city of Portland, Oregon, has adopted.

By setting such a low bar for increasing bicycling, moveDC misses opportunities to transform
neighborhoods into the communities that people want to live, work and play in. Bicycling is not
the only ingredient in that recipe, but it is the leavening.

moveDCs Policies and Complete Streets
The BAC has long advised the District government to pursue a complete streets policy approach
to balancing the needs if different users in a given corridor. The 2005 Bicycle Master Plan and
the draft moveDC Bicycle Element include policy recommendations that require every
transportation project to be assessed for the opportunity to accommodate bicycles.

Bicycle accommodations vary depending on the corridor. We currently have a mixture of streets
with sharrows, indicating that bikes and cars need to share the same space. Painted bike lanes on
streets where there is room to put them now dot the street network. The highly popular separated
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cycle tracks on a handful of major downtown corridors are national models for innovative
design. The bridge access and the struggling multi-use trail network play a role in the bicycle
infrastructure network as well.

MoveDC appears to be setting a new policy direction when it states that preference going
forward is to provide a better quality accommodation by strategically separating travel
modes, rather than a network made up of compromises for all modes. This new policy
seems to be letting the perfect be the enemy of the good; separated cycle tracks being the perfect,
or the preferred, and everything else being a sacrifice.

The BAC whole-heartedly endorses cycle tracks as an ideal type of bicycle facility but
advises DDOT to leave the door open to the use of painted bike lanes, bicycle boulevards
and other facility types to create a truly comprehensive bicycle network in the city.

The BAC urges DDOT to adopt a policy that gives preference to accommodating all users in a
corridor unless safe and efficient operation of a mode is compromised to an impracticable level
by doing so. The criteria for establishing a better quality accommodation needs to be clearly
articulated and widely communicated to enable the public to participate in the determination of
how the public rights of way are utilized.

The moveDC documents contain scores of maps indicating which modes will be given
preference in the public rights of way. It may be more useful to consider these maps as
informative rather than proscriptive going forward.

Anacostia River Bridges
The BAC has an ongoing concern about the bicycle network required to connect Wards 7 & 8 to
the rest of the city. MoveDC proposes off street paths on the Anacostia River bridges. The
BAC advises DDOT to pursue a separate accommodation for bicycles on the Anacostia
River bridges whether it is an off street path or a cycle track. Failure to do so will perpetuate
the geographic division of the city with all of the undesirable effects that creates.

Going Forward
The compilation of data and analysis on transportation in moveDC is possibly paralleled in the
history of the city. It will be a useful resource for planning and decision-making going forward.

Because city life is conducted in increments of less than a quarter century, the BAC
encourages the District government to develop action plans for transportation that spans a
3-6 year time frame. The action plans should be comprehensible to the general public. The
current documentation for the DC budget, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Transportation Improvement
Program are indecipherable.

Because the scope and scale of most bicycle improvements are very small in proportion to the
rest of transportation expenditures, they wind up in the miscellaneous category in these
documents. There is little to no accountability for budgeting and planning of bicycle
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improvements in the current system. A near to mid-term action plan aimed at taxpayers should
make these investments visible.

In addition to the budget documentation for bicycling improvements, the coordination of
planning for bicycling needs to occur throughout the District government, including the
following:

DC Office of Planning Comprehensive Plan,
Department of Parks and Recreation Play DC Master Plan,
District Department of Energy Sustainable DC Plan,
Department of General Services Workplace Design Guidelines and
Metropolitan Police Department Training Plans.