DC is creating another bus lane, this time on 14th Street

In 2019 DC got bus lanes on H and I streets NW, and a bus lane on 16th Street will start construction this summer. Now, there’s also a bus lane in the works for part of 14th Street in Columbia Heights.

There are already bike lanes in with adjacent parking in much of the area. DDOT will be upgrading the bike plus parking into a red-painted, shared bike-bus lane, which will have flexposts (the plastic poles you see on protected bikeways around the city) to separate it from the regular traffic.

The District Department of Transportation announced the project today with a Notice of Intent, a formal notification to neighborhood leaders and residents. DDOT has been working with the local Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, 1A and 1B, to revise plans released in November 2018. (Disclosure: through DC Sustainable Transportation, we and other stakeholders have also been coordinating with DDOT on bus priority efforts including this project.)

The new red bus-bike lane will extend from Euclid Street to Irving Street. One tricky spot is what to do at bus stops, since buses will block the lane while stopped. The approach DDOT is trying here is to make the bus-bike lane even wider, to give space for people on bikes to go around the bus on the roadway side. (There won’t be the floating concrete bus islands that were just created south of U Street, as this project isn’t the kind of lengthy, expensive road reconstruction that happened farther south — plus, there have been some problems with those intersections.)

North of Irving Street, traffic around the Metro station and DC USA mall has been a real challenge. Parking spaces there will turn into pick-up/drop-off (“PUDO”) zones, more space for Metrobuses, and dedicated places for police and emergency vehicles. A protected bikeway will run behind some of the parking to get cyclists around the chaos.

Finally, up to Newton Street the road is not as wide, but there will be a new left turn lane at Newton to try to deal with turning traffic blocking other travel.

This is the third, or fourth, DC bus lane

Just a year ago, DC’s only bus lane was a three-block stretch on Georgia Avenue. Plans for lanes on 16th Street NW have been in the works for over a decade in some form or another, but that project is a significant construction job.

Reducing delays for buses saves riders time, and draws more people to ride the bus. It can save money, by offering more frequent service without having to pay for more buses and drivers, and more ridership means more fare revenue as well.

Recognizing these factors, DDOT agreed to try a quicker-build project to paint bus lanes on H and I last year, and started working on the 14th Street plans. The next large-scale bus project underway is the K Street Transitway, which will put a bus lane (and possible future streetcar lane), plus protected bikeways, in the middle of K Street NW in the greater downtown area.

DCST has recommended DDOT create a dedicated bus priority team, which can plan, design, and build bus lanes all around the city including east of the Anacostia River. The budget letter said, “Making bus service faster and more reliable represents the best opportunity to improve mobility and equity in DC transportation.”

Cyclists ask for a good north-south route

The Washington Area Bicyclist Association raised a number of concerns about the original plans, which replace existing painted bike lanes. Those provide dedicated space for people on bikes, though not protected and often blocked by trucks.

Greg Billing, Executive Director of WABA, called the new plans “less worse for people riding bikes” than the original ones, which for instance had parking in the shared lane off peak and how will have no parking at all and protecting flexposts.

But, he said, “We have swapped one set of problems for another. People riding bikes will have to deal with large buses, and before they had to deal with large delivery trucks. We aren’t expanding who this street will work for. Not many parents will feel safe letting their 8-year-old ride in a bus lane.”

WABA supports better transit, Billing emphasized, and he said this is a good plan for transit. However, WABA doesn’t want a situation that pits one sustainable mode of transportation against another. He pointed out that the five-year-old MoveDC plan showed 14th Street as a primary north-south bicycle corridor, and there is no good other north-south route for people on bicycles.

“This is one of the highest ridership areas of the city and we have no north-south protected lanes through Columbia Heights,” he said. DDOT’s commitment to 20 miles of protected bikeways by 2022 includes the Crosstown project along Irving past the hospital area and a north-south segment up to Petworth, but nothing to the south (and that’s considerably farther east). Meanwhile, the existing 15th Street bikeway ends at Euclid, and 15th Street itself doesn’t continue beyond Columbia Heights.

Billing said that riders from Ward 4 neighborhoods have to contend with the busy Columbia Heights area and don’t have a connection, and WABA feels DDOT needs to make a plan for where that would be. A lane on adjacent 13th Street would mean changing many parking spaces in a residential area, for instance. He added, “When 14th Street in New York City is going car-free, I don’t know why we don’t go all in on Columbia Heights.”

Bus lanes are just a few months away

DDOT plans to install the new bus lanes this spring and summer.

Where do you think DC should create a quality bicycle facility, and where else in the city and region do you think the next bus lanes should go?