A street in Eckington will become a one-way for safety. Neighbors want it to protect cyclists too.

DC will make a street in Eckington one-way for safety, but neighbors say that leaves out bikes and are asking to modify the design to ensure the change also protects cyclists.

T St NE in Eckington between Lincoln Avenue and 2nd Street is home to three schools, McKinley Tech High School, Langley Elementary and Harmony PCS, making pick-up and drop-off hours particularly hectic and dangerous for students and families.

The street is currently supposed to be one-way eastbound from 7-9 am and 2-5 pm on weekdays to mitigate traffic conflicts, but enforcement has not been consistent or effective. It’s so bad that drivers are even actively ignoring crossing guards trying to maintain the one-way flow.

So in September 2019, area ANC commissioner Sylvia Pinkney submitted a Traffic Safety Assessment (TSA) request to DDOT asking the agency to consider permanently changing the street to one-way. Two months later, a traffic conflict between a crossing guard and MetroAccess driver that escalated to violence prompted more calls for action to DDOT, in particular from members of the Langley Elementary PTA.

The results of the TSA are finally ready, and DDOT agrees that a permanent one-way conversion between Lincoln Road and 2nd Street NE is an appropriate solution; a notice-of-intent (NOI) to make the change is due to be released shortly.

However, while the proposed change represents a big improvement for school pick-up and drop-off, some neighbors have flagged that it unintentionally creates a new problem. T Street NE is one of only two streets that extend across the full East-West length of the neighborhood, connecting both to the Metropolitan Branch Trail (MBT) and North Capitol Street. As such, it’s a connection for cyclists traveling to and from the neighborhood, the MBT, and on to downtown. Changing T Street to one-way eastbound will limit access to the northern part of the neighborhood for people coming off the trail in particular.

To ensure that access isn’t eliminated after the conversion, at least two neighbors, Eckington Civic Association president Conor Shaw and Edward Russell, have asked DDOT to add a one-way contraflow bike lane to the plan (among other asks around westbound vehicle access and pedestrian safety measures). The bike lane ask would appear to be a revision with minimal tradeoffs. Since the proposed design already eliminates a drive-lane, there’s extra room in the middle of the street to add the bike lane without eliminating any further drive or parking lanes.

The Washington Area Bicyclist Association is a fan of lanes like these. Garret Hennigan, community organizer for WABA, communicated the organization’s opinion that “contraflow bike lanes are a low cost, effective, and typically safe solution to make a low-traffic, one-way street more accessible for people getting around by bike or scooter. And in keeping with DC’s complete streets policy, before any permanent changes are made to a street, DDOT should explore options, including contraflow bike lanes, to make sure the street helps everyone get around safely.”

This solution isn’t new for the neighborhood either. It’s already been implemented on the other major trail-connection route in Eckington, R Street NE, which has a contraflow lane on the one-way block between 2nd and 3rd Streets NE.

While that bike lane is on the north side of the street between the parking lane and the sidewalk, DDOT’s recent best practices are to avoid placing bike lanes next to the more dangerous driver-sides of parked cars.

The more recent example of M Street and 9th Street NW shows the agency’s latest standard of placing the bike lane in the more visible center of the street and away from driver doors.

Technically, DDOT’s TSA process doesn’t formally solicit community feedback until the 30 day comment period after the NOI is released. But Shaw and Russell advised DDOT officials that a significant change like this could produce some blowback if it takes neighbors by surprise in the form of a near-final NOI. They have asked the agency to present the proposal to the community in advance to explain the thinking behind the proposed change and solicit more feedback like the contraflow bike lane addition.