Georgia Avenue isn’t a thoroughfare, it’s a destination

This article was first published on March 11, 2021. Ahead of this Saturday’s Open Streets event along Georgia Avenue NW, we thought it would be great to share this piece with you again.

Georgia Avenue NW is the spine of DC: the 7th Street-Georgia Avenue corridor connects diverse neighborhoods with rich histories, institutions, historic sites, and locally owned businesses to one another and downtown. The street was the site of DC’s inaugural Open Streets event, in which the street was closed to vehicles for a Saturday in October 2019. It was an overwhelming success and a clear indicator of the street’s potential to become the multimodal destination residents dream it can be.

But Georgia Avenue is also designated as a principal arterial, meaning that, supposedly, it “typically serve[s] major activity centers” as one of “the primary commuter routes.” This label disregards the Avenue’s role as a place entirely and sets up a positive feedback loop: decision-makers observe high traffic volumes that confirm their biases and prioritize through-movement of cars. That makes driving more enticing than transit, walking, biking, and rolling — not to mention sitting, shopping, playing, dining, and other public activities. This tradeoff is often justified by the illusory idea that just because someone chooses to drive, that means they prefer it. But what would happen to all that traffic if we reallocated space along Georgia Avenue to prioritize its role as a place?

To answer this question, I investigated the extent to which Georgia Avenue actually serves regional commuting trips (you can read the full study, which is also my thesis for my Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning at Georgetown University, here). Using StreetLight Data, which aggregates anonymized smartphone and GPS data to measure and explain trip patterns, I analyzed data on the activity of vehicles with origins, destinations, and passing through the study area and Rock Creek East more broadly.

It turns out that there are 6 times more vehicle trips that start and/or end along the study area than pass through from end-to-end without stopping.

In other words, the reason for high traffic volume along Georgia Avenue is not because people need a way to drive between Silver Spring and downtown DC. It’s because there are residents and visitors frequenting Georgia Avenue because of the appeal of the corridor itself.

Despite the fact that most people are traveling to Georgia Avenue, not through Georgia Avenue , the street is designed to shuttle cars through at peak times; the rest of time, it is underutilized.

This has real consequences for the people of Rock Creek East. By devoting most of the street to cars, we compromise the mobility, safety, and accessibility of the corridor. This also has a disparate impact on Black and Latinx populations, children, the elderly, and people with mobility challenges. These populations are less likely to drive, making their travel consistently more dangerous, slower, and less reliable.

The cost to transit in particular cannot be overstated. The current allocation of street space jeopardizes the efficiency and reliability of transit service for the tens of thousands of daily transit riders (pre-pandemic) along the corridor, who experience slow bus speeds and overcrowding because buses run in mixed traffic.

One study of the Georgia Avenue-7th Street transit route involved a sensitivity test to determine the impact of frequency and speed on ridership. Results demonstrated that, north of U Street NW, a streetcar running in mixed traffic would generate 20-25% more ridership if frequency was increased from every 10 minutes to every 5 minutes. And for every 5-minute reduction in one-way travel time, ridership would increase 11%. If there were bus-only lanes on Georgia Avenue, quicker bus trips could attract more riders. In the long-term, increased ridership could justify new routes, more frequent service, expanded coverage areas, longer operating hours, lower fares, and improved special mobility options.

Prioritizing cars also limits the space small businesses have to operate. Georgia Avenue has a lot of small businesses on small lots; with shallow setbacks and narrow sidewalks, many local retailers can neither display their products outside nor provide outdoor seating at restaurants.

The problem of space for businesses is compounded by social distancing measures associated with COVID-19. Despite the significant reduction in vehicle trips along the corridor during the pandemic (38% in the first few months), streateries are not allowed on Georgia Avenue. Many businesses have already closed, and they are likely to continue closing due to the lasting effects of the pandemic. Reallocating space could save small businesses and catalyze revitalization.

But what about congestion and driving and parking and traffic?

Good news: taking space away from cars doesn’t automatically make traffic worse or push it to neighboring streets. If the right mitigation techniques are in place, restricting car access can actually trigger shifts to more efficient modes of travel, rather than dispersing traffic to alternative routes. In other words, traffic can disappear! How does this happen?

Anthony Down’s has five words for us: modal, temporal, and spatial divergence. The principle of triple divergence states that when car access is reduced, people switch modes, go at different times, or take different routes. Oftentimes, people also consolidate trips or meet virtually instead. The transit infrastructure and trip behavior along Georgia Avenue make it a good candidate for modal shift:

• More than 25% of all vehicle trips that start, end, or pass through the corridor are within the 7.4 square mile planning area of Rock Creek East (many passing through are just crossing east-west). This means that many of the trips are short and could be converted to active modes, if we provide people with safe, inviting infrastructure and shared mobility options.
• Transit customers are well-served by transit between Silver Spring, neighborhoods adjacent to Georgia Avenue, downtown DC, and beyond because the Avenue is surrounded by regionally significant transportation hubs. Silver Spring is situated along the Red Line, the soon-to-be Purple Line, the Brunswick Line of the MARC train, several commuter bus lines to the Columbia area, Metrobus lines, and Montgomery County’s new bus rapid transit line known as FLASH. Customers can use Metrorail or Metrobus to connect to these major hubs.
• Metrorail stations in Montgomery County and Prince George’s County already operate like commuter rail. Most of the parking lots and at stations near the end of lines have underutilized parking lots for park-and-ride customers, despite that they constitute a major share of these stations’ ridership. If Metro service is running, regional commuters driving along Georgia Avenue can switch to park-and-ride.

DC’s commercial revitalization initiative, Great Streets, recognizes the Georgia Avenue corridor as an area to target for reinvigoration. If we really want to make Georgia Avenue a Great Street, prioritizing people over cars would be a good first step.