Showing posts with label Streetcar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Streetcar. Show all posts

Sunday, December 09, 2012

Valor Development Moving on New Residential near H Street Corridor

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Developers are set to break ground this month on an $11 million dollar residential project that will bring 84 new condominiums to DC's H Street Corridor.  The five story building will  replace vacant church buildings at 1350 Maryland Avenue NE, at the intersection with 14th Street and south of H Street.

1340 Maryland Ave. - Rendering: Valor Development
Will Lansing of Valor Development, project developer, told DCMud plans call for one and two-bedroom units and a roof deck.  Former plans called for a mix of retail and residential, but the latest of the iteration of the project is residential only.  Eichberg Construction is the general contractor on the project and the architectural firm is PGN Architects.  Launched under the moniker The Maia, the name of the project has also changed, Lansing said.  The building's new name is The Maryland.

"I think it will be a nice [building] for that neighborhood," Lansing told DCMud.  "For the most part, that neighborhood is all row houses, a scattered bunch of small condo buildings, but otherwise mostly apartments, so we’ll be pretty much the only condo inventory coming online in that neighborhood for a while."

DC's District Department of Transportation (DDOT) says it expects to start streetcar service with 10 stops along a two mile stretch of H Street by 2014.  The city also says this first of several lines in the proposed future $1.5 billion DC Streetcar project, when it goes online, will raise property values all along the H Street corridor.  Now, two retail clusters anchor the east and west ends of the corridor, and The Maryland is on new developments are sprouting up beyond the street too.

*Amanda Abrams contributed reporting for this story.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Streetcar Plan To Boost District Real Estate Values by $8 Billion, District's Chief Planner Says

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The District's ambitious plan to restart its streetcar network will cost $1.5 billion -- but could pay for itself more than fivefold with increased property values, more jobs and development along the 37 miles of planned streetcar lines, says Harriet Tregoning, the District's chief planning officer.

Tregoning unveiled the Streetcar Land Use Study and her office's number crunching session today at a smart-growth planning session at the National Building Museum. "It's really our transportation infrastructure that shapes our development," said Tregoning, noting that the District has earmarked $100 million in capital funding for the development and building of the eight-line streetcar expansion. Already the District has two lines under construction, one in Anacostia and the other on H Street NE, where more than two miles of tracks have been laid as part of a Great Streets revitalization. The District recently agreed to expand service over the H Street "Hopscotch" Bridge to connect the streetcar system with Union Station and to buy two more cars in addition to the three in storage in Greenbelt. Both lines are expected to begin limited service starting in mid-2013 with some on-rail non-revenue testing of the Skoda-Inekon-built cars beginning this year, Tregoning said.

While much of the grunt-work and operational details are being handled by the District Department of Transportation, its been up to the Office of Planning to detail the 30,000-foot view of the impact to the city as a whole, if the District can return a city-wide network of streetcars, similar to what existed for nearly 100 years up until January 1962, when the last streetcar rolled on a revenue run.

The Office of Planning's study showed that the current $100 billion values of District properties would increase by as much as $ 5 billion to $7 billion over ten years as the plan is completed and would attract investment of $5 billion to $8 billion during the same period. That might allow the District to sell $600 million to $900 million in bonds paid for the by the new revenue, the study claims.

"The streetcar's visibility and permanence will attract private real estate investment," she said, echoing a line long argued by streetcar proponents. "You don't have to worry about the route changing like you do with buses," Tregoning said in a pitch to potential real estate investors in the 100-person audience. "Please look at these corridors for your strategic acquisitions."

While drilling deep into streetcar proponent's talking points, including improving access to schools, expanding an already growing "creative class" and reviving historic neighborhoods, Tregoning poured some cold water on calls for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which would be cheaper and faster to get into service, saying they won't get the same bang-for-the-buck as streetcars. "BRT does not attract the same level of investment," she said.

Tregoning said that the Office of Planning estimated that the streetcar lines would add 5,000 to 12,000 additional households over ten years, above the increases already projected. That in turn would spur a further burst of retail, as 1,000 households typically support an expansion of 30,000 to 50,000 square-feet of shopping, equal to a large supermarket.

Tregoning however wouldn't answer questions on whether the ridership projections would be enough to pay for the operating costs of the system, or where the financing of the remaining $900 million-plus estimated to fully build out the system would come from. The federal government is always an option, but the study notes typically that the federal government funds only up to 50 percent of the project's cost and can add delays while the community waits for the feds to decide.

The District, according to the study, is counting on increased revenue from real estate development along the streetcar corridors to help finance future construction of the system. "We want to be able to finance the whole system," Tregoning said. That may take the help of the real estate development industry, which, she said, historically supported mass-transit systems as part of building new communities. "We are going to need private partners as well as public."

Washington D.C. real estate redevelopment news

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

The Streetcars are Coming - in Prototype

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For all you Paul Revere-types out there harboring fears that the arrival of the streetcars spells doom, with cumbersome, monument-obstructing wires and disaster for DC as-we-know-it, tomorrow's Streetcar Showcase is for you.

Despite a minor setback of DDOT failing to make it to last night's Georgetown ANC meeting to present their plans, streetcar service may eventually cover 37 miles of the District, but will begin with limited service in Anacostia and at H Street-Benning Road by 2012. But on Wednesday, May 5th through Saturday, May 8th on Lot B of CenterCityDC (a.k.a. the still undeveloped old convention center site at 9th and H Streets, NW), The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) is giving District residents, workers, and those rare tourists interested in DC transportation matters, a chance to ogle and board the District's latest transportation innovation.

Admittance to the 10:30 AM showcase is free. And if you still haven't gotten your fill of streetcars, you can stop by the free streetcar propulsion technology seminar at the Renaissance Hotel at 999 9th Street, NW on Thursday, May 6th to listen to the top minds in transportation technology and planning discuss ideas for how the streetcars can be integrated into our transportation mindset.

Ellen Jones, Executive Director of DC Surface Transit Inc. - a veritable posse of entities and BIDs including the Downtown, Golden Triangle, and Georgetown Business Improvement Districts, as well as the Washington Convention Center Authority (WCCA), the Washington Convention and Tourism Corporation (WCTC), and the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) - explains that the seminar will cover all aspects of "the adaptability of the three cars that we've [the District] purchased and what can be done with them."

Thursday's panel of experts will include everyone from Downtown BID's Executive Director, Richard Bradley, to what Jones affectionately calls "five ubergeeks with over 200 years of propulsion system experience between them" from the American Public Transportation Association, to urban design guru Greg Baldwin. Stop by and get answers to any question you've ever pondered about the green-ness of the project, how DDOT intends to get around that pesky 19th century Federal statute prohibiting overhead wires in the District, and ideas for how Prius-style battery technology can safeguard our views from wires for many miles of the tracks.

Washington DC Real Estate and Development News

Thursday, February 25, 2010

The Future of Washington DC Transportation

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One year after Gabe Klein took the helm at the District Department of Transportation (DDOT), the District agency has a brand new website, an aggressive two-year plan and a progressive approach to transportation. Yesterday, DDOT Director Klein invited several transportation bloggers to discuss the agency's progress during his first year, and plans going forward. By 2012 DDOT aims to more than double the 2009 bicycle road share, add 250 car-share vehicles, increase Circulator ridership by 47 percent, add six more "performance" parking districts and have 2.75 miles of operating streetcar lines. Yes, he went there: operating streetcars.

Klein described an agency embracing a culture shift, one that focuses on sustainability, safety and open communication. A new website, along with DDOT's social networking presence, are part of it's outreach to inform DC residents of the agency's services down to online plans about what DDOT has planned for their neighborhood and commute.

The DDOT Director is optimistic and confident that DC will resolve issues facing overhead wires for the planned 37 miles of streetcars through a combination of technology and, of course, compromise with transportation's other stakeholders - the National Capital Planning Commission, the Capitol Hill Restoration Society and the Committee of 100, among others.

Klein says the open dialogue has narrowed the wire issue to the North-South "viewshed" of the Capitol. Klein said he was determined to make streetcars happen and eliminate unnecessary overhead wires. At the same time, he's asking streetcar opponents to rethink the boundaries for overhead wires and to maybe allow them along areas of H Street to Benning Road.

There's also the matter of disguising wires. Klein said he took a trip with several BID directors and Marcel Acosta, Executive Director of NCPC, to see the streetcars in Portland, Oregon, which Klein said fit seamlessly into the transportation flow, with wires hidden by a canopy of trees. Klein joked that he even has a photo of Acosta smiling with an overhead wire dangling in the background.

On the technology side, Klein said he is working with United Streetcar, maker of the first American streetcar manufactured in the U.S. in 50 years, to develop hybrid solutions for power. Right now the cars can travel up to 1/4 mile just on battery power, but Klein hopes to get that number up to 1 mile by working with the company to developer a lithium ion battery. Klein is applying for federal funding to pay for the new batteries, and anticipates, with rapid changes in battery technology, that the cars could eventually run up to 2 miles on battery power alone. Like a Prius, with better brakes. Announcements about the streetcar project timing should come in the next few months.

Beyond the streetcar, Klein is seeking innovative solutions at every level of the agency. A Maintenance and Operations contract will be going out to bid soon, in which DDOT will ask for creative solutions that address the agency's needs. "Free consulting" from the private sector, said Klein.

Then there are changes coming to parking meters in pilot programs throughout the city; new solar-powered meters allow payment by coins or by credit card, "so people don't carry 16 quarters for two hours" said Klein. Since their inception, 52% of patrons started using credit cards, and in the study area DDOT has seen a 30% increase in parking revenue. Klein said of the pilot, "revenues are up, people seem to love it" but that he was not ready to say it was a definite success until he knew more about the machines' reliability. Another parking change is the pay-for-performance areas - which DDOT hopes to increase to eight by 2012 - where pricing for parking is based on demand. Klein admitted that testing this out in the ballpark district might not have been the best decision, but that the agency is expanding the concept to new areas to continue to test its effectiveness.

The new website is a good resource for residents to maneuver the various responsibilities of DDOT and to learn how to maneuver the streets of DC in ever-expanding ways. If DDOT gets its way, District residents in 2012 will have a markedly different transportation scene.

Washington DC real estate development news

Friday, February 12, 2010

Beneath Dupont, A Renaissance in the Making

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Washington DC commercial real estate newsThe District could release a request for proposals (RFP) to reuse the Dupont Trolley Station by March. As a pre-RFP requirement, the office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED) is seeking community input and preferences for use of the tunnels hidden under some of the District's hottest real estate; community input would be attached as an appendix to any RFP to provide guidelines for responses. Thanks to the Dupont Circle Undergroundsnow delay, the ANC2B meeting for community input about the potential RFP was delayed from this week until next Wednesday, the 17th. Those with a long memory or a penchant for random transit knowledge are probably familiar with the Trolley Station sitting dormant under Dupont Circle. For the rest of you, take note: there are two large tunnels running underneath Dupont Circle that, until 1963, served as a station for DC's widespread system of trolley's a.k.a. streetcars. According to sources familiar with the project, the pending RFP will likely be open to any type of use, hopefully encouraging some creative submissions from groups eager to lease the space from the District and reclaim the Dupont underground from the rodents and discarded drug paraphernalia currently there. The underground venue had a short life in the '90's, when it was expensively renovated with a tacky streetcar theme, a project that failed when patrons realized that Dupont Circle had restaurants above ground that didn't require a long walk in a poorly ventilated tunnel. Why hasn't the District tried to find a use for this space sooner? The answer is that it did, but then got a lawsuit for its troubles, one that lasted long enough for (most) people to forget the tunnels existed. The RFP has come back to the forefront, thanks in part to the Arts Coalition for Dupont Underground, spearheaded by architect Julian Hunt and the Washington Project for the Arts.

Along with several other arts groups and galleries in the area, the group proposes a new gallery space below Dupont along the P Street near many existing above-ground galleries. The Arts Coalition will be competing for the RFP when it is released, it is unclear who their competition might be. The RFP will likely only be for a lease of the space, no land disposition, said sources familiar with the project. Though the District Department of Transportation does not have any plans to bring a streetcar to Dupont in the near future (20 years near future), an existing tunnel for a Connecticut or Massachusetts Avenue line would be a costly thing to give away, a fact the RFP is likely to keep in mind. 

Washington DC real estate development news

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Senate Square Apartments

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Senate Square Apartments, 201 I St., NE, Washington DC
Senate Square Towers are part of the redevelopment of the old Children's Museum site. The museum itself was turned into a condominium, the remaining land was sold to Broadway Development of New York. Broadway and architect Esocoff and Associates designed and built the 432-unit pair of towers, completing in late 2007. While under construction, the developer attempted to sell the project as condos, but with prices as low as $410 per square foot, only 150 sold, all of which were then canceled when the project converted to apartments for rent.

Senate Square Towers - the Lexington and Concord - are 12-stories each are masonry structures with metal windows and precast concrete and stone trim, and feature an 80' rooftop pool and sizable fitness center. Within walking distance of Union Station, the Metro, and the Capitol, Senate Square towers also share a common amenity space with Landmark Lofts - a historic building in the central courtyard that serves as a business and conference center. H Street is also supposed to have streetcar service, but that remains an elusive goal. Bozzutto Management began leasing the apartment building in 2007, but leasing rates were initially very slow until prices were lowered and incentives given. In 2009, Broadway lost control of the project for lack of payment; the building will be auctioned February 22, 2010.

Post your comments about this apartment building below:

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The Streetcars are Coming!

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The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) announced today that DC's streetcars have finally arrived in the District and will no longer be gliding through the streets of the Czech Republic. The three cars, which arrived in Baltimore via ship on Saturday, will be stored in Greenbelt and tested so workers are familiar with their function.

Today's announcement does little to clear up when the cars will be able to roam freely through DC, but does give residents (and taxpayers) a hopeful sign of things to come. DDOT Director, Gabe Klein, said “We’re also thrilled to have the streetcars here locally so we can familiarize ourselves with them, test them and prepare for the day when we will put them in service.”

Friday, October 16, 2009

Industry Insight: Gabe Klein

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Gabe Klein, Mayor Fenty's pick to steer the future of transportation in DC, began his post as Director of the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) in February 2009. Klein comes from a progressive, private sector background where he cultivated a reputation for partnering innovative businesses with government programs. He served as the DC regional Vice President of Zipcar from 2002 to 2006, making DC the nation's largest car sharing city by both membership and vehicles. He then co-founded and most recently served as the Chief Executive Officer of On the Fly, a boutique food-service company with retail, wholesale, catering and events businesses all-in-one whose green smartkarts are spotted throughout the city. Having achieved a quasi rock start status among urban planners and other pointy-heads for his entrepreneurial, progressive approach to greener transportation and development, Klein has quickly made Washington DC a leader in non-carbon transport options. Klein recently discussed with DCMud his plans for the future of DC transportation.

DCMUD: So it’s been almost a year at this point since you started at DDOT.

GK: Almost…I got appointed in December but I started February 1st. Nine months.

DCMUD: What do you think is the biggest problem with the city’s transportation right now and what are you doing about it?

GK: Well, it depends on if you look at this part of the region or if you focus more on just the city itself, I live just five blocks from here.

DCMUD: Do you walk to work?

GK: I walk to work or I bike to work. My commute on foot is about 9 minutes. So you know, from my personal stand point, we have a wonderful transportation system - a very walk-able, ride-able, transit-oriented city. So if you live, work or play in the city, I think it’s wonderful. I think if you’re commuting in - I was talking to one of our guys today - he lives in Baltimore, so his commute, total is between 2 and a half to 3 hours a day. So for folks that live in the region, I would say the traffic during rush hour is a huge problem.

Here in the city I think we need to make sure that the city is as safe as possible for people, particularly when people want to not be in their car. You know, forty percent of the people in the city don’t even own a car.

DCMUD: By safer do you mean as in a transportation perspective on the street as in walking?

GK: [It needs to be] safe for people to walk, to bike, to drive—and so you know we have a big responsibility in terms of safety and we’re looking hard at that, at how we want to arrange our safety resources in the form of a team so that they’re as responsive as possible to the public. Right now we’re looking at the fifty worst intersections in the city and trying to make sure that we focus our efforts on making them safe. In terms of your readers, I think what’s important is that if you’re developing at one of the worst intersections in the city—like Donatelli’s at Minnesota and Benning—what are we doing to make that safe, so his mixed-use development really attracts people to live there. It’s very important to the city to have smart growth, to have transit-oriented development of which that will be both, right, so there’s going to be stores, offices, and residential. And the problem is if we don’t create a safe intersection so people can cross to the grocery store, are people going to want to buy there? Is the real estate going to be worth what it could be? We’re very focused on that. And there is obviously a renaissance in DC, as there is in many urban quarters, and we’re very aware that there are many more children in the city than there used to be. There are people like you and I who are, well I don’t know where you live, but there are people like us who at this age are saying, “we want to live in the city and maybe raise a family,” and the mayor I think is doing a phenomenal job at trying to better the schools; I think our job is to make sure that people feel their neighborhoods are safe from a transportation standpoint. And a lot of that is pedestrian safety. One thing I’ve noticed - I’ve had one hearing season here - and when I go in front of council, the majority of the people who are testifying are testifying about safety - particularly pedestrian safety. So we’re really focusing on that. We’re also going to be launching an expanded bike share program.

DCMUD: Bike share has been pioneered during your tenure, can you address that? Also, I recently spoke with DDOT Transportation Planner Jim Sebastian and he said you’d be expanding the program from 10 bike stations to 90. When can we expect that?

GK: Right now we’re going through a contracting and procurement process, so we’re going to have everything nailed down, I can tell you soon we’ll be making an announcement about our expansion of the program. It will be a significant expansion. We’re hoping to take it to 100 stations. And a thousand bikes, it could be a little more, a little less, and our hope is to create a transit system with bikes

I just went to Montreal about a month ago on vacation…[and]…I wanted to go…to actually see the bike share system. We were the first in North America to launch our system, but they have the biggest system in North America, I think something like 3,000 bikes. Just recently they dropped in 3,000 all at once. It’s very interesting to see biking go from a sort of secondary mode of transportation to a primary mode of transportation and really become its own point-to-point transit system. So we’re very excited. And I think for developers it’s exciting because we can park one of these [systems] right in front of their development. And depending on what system you go with, we’re looking at a few options. It may even be a mobile system, meaning that we can move it seasonally or just move it periodically, you may have seen the SmartBike system out front. That was a construction project, we put that in the ground. We are looking at some other options which will allow us more flexibility in moving them and we definitely will be doing some outreach to the development community to talk about placing them on private property.

DCMUD: Would that be part of their PUD (zoning change) application?

GK: It certainly could be. It could be something that we do after the fact. So yeah, we’re very excited about working with the private sector. I think there’s so much we can do together. And you know one of the great things about our Mayor and working with the Mayor is that he really gets the synergy between the public and private sector - think how more you can accomplish when you’re working together.

DCMUD: Okay, and then regardless of bike sharing stations, in order to have bikes, or Segways, we need a useful infrastructure—bike lanes, bike paths. You said before you’re goal is to level the playing field for bikers, how do you plan to do that?

GK: One of the things I’ve been focusing our staff on around here is the fact that we’ll be launching this expanded bike share system which in many ways is going to hopefully make cycling a primary mode of transportation. It will also be institutionalizing it and bringing it to the masses. You know the early adopters of bike sharing, like the early adopters of car share, are people who are really into it so to speak, or environmental. Then you get the mass adoption, and when you hit mass adoption, you have to make sure you have safe and secure infrastructure. And again something I’ve seen in other countries - and they’ve been working hard on in New York and Portland and some other progressive cities - is dedicated bike-ways, cycle tracks, contraflow bike lanes, etc.

DCMUD: So not just a painted line?

GK: Not just a painted line, although I think we can do more with a painted line, the painted line could really be a painted bike lane, which may actually keep cars out of the lane. And you know, we really want to create a safe infrastructure for cars too. So we’re looking harder at a signal system, signal timing, we’re making significant upgrades on New York Ave. We’re going to have five very large projects, totaling…over $100 million in investment to make sure that some of the main arterials that allow people to get in and out of the city, whether you’re a resident or a commuter, that they are in tip-top shape with the best technology to move as many people as possible. So I think striking a balance also doesn’t mean ignoring vehicular traffic, it means supporting the best technology for vehicular traffic, best infrastructure, it means investing in transit through metro through our own transit system and it means creating new transit systems like bike share and making sure we have the infrastructure so people can safely ride. One of the things I’ve been talking about with my staff is that we’re going to have 75 year-old folks getting on the bike sharing system because we’re bringing it to the masses. So we need these separated, dedicated lanes for people.

DCMUD: How are you planning to bring it to masses? Are you thinking advertising or what is your plan for making it more approachable?

GK: Well, you know I come really from a marketing and operations background. I’m a private sector person. I’m used to doing a lot with a little, first of all. And I’m used to having to market without a lot of resources. At Zipcar we actually had no marketing budget for probably the first two or three years—I mean literally nothing. And we were very effective at leveraging partnerships, and grass roots, guerilla marketing to get the word out. So we’re going to bring a lot of those marketing strategies to DDOT. We’re also going to leverage technology quite a bit. We’re going to have new web site that we’ll be launching probably in the winter. We’re using Facebook and Twitter. So we’re reaching people in new ways. And we want to pair that high-tech strategy with feet-on-the-street and continuing to make sure we do a great job - as DDOT really always has - in going to meetings in the community, engaging the public, engaging the business community. We’re aggressively working with kids.

DCMUD: And about car sharing, what are you doing to encourage that, obviously you don’t work for Zipcar anymore but how are you incorporating that into the DDOT plan?

GK: Well when I was at Zipcar I had the opportunity to work with Dan Tangherlini and the folks at DDOT and bring car sharing to the masses and a lot of that - I mentioned we aggressively marketed on the street and in people’s neighborhoods - but we also formed a partnership with the city as we did with Arlington county and actually placed cars on the street. It’s very important to make a new transportation option high-profile. That’s what we did with car sharing. I think the car sharing program needs to be rejuvenated a little bit. Our TDM Program (Transportation Demand Management Program), we plan to enhance that and put more resources into it. We’ve got one great person running that TDM Program, but we need to give her more resources. We plan on doing that next year. Which will allow, not only the promotion of car sharing, but bike sharing, the bike station, our DDOT store that we’re working on…so there are a whole lot of projects. I’m actually working on a slightly different work chart structure which is going to have an Innovative Transportation Services Division. And that Division will receive Street Car, our Mass Transit Group, and what were core partnerships that are incubated through our Policy and Planning Group, but now that we have a critical mass of them - we’re getting up to about six or eight - we’re working on an electrification program so that people can charge their cars curb-side. So as we build more and more of these units we need people that can really manage these contracts, and manage these as business units, which includes marketing.

DCMUD: Street Cars: the overhead wires, you’re making progress on laying the tracks on H Street, but NCPC doesn’t seem to be buying into the idea of having overhead wires. How do you think that issue is going to get resolved and when do you think that’s going to happen?

GK: Well, the first thing I’d like to say is that there seems to be a lot of drama out there about the over head wire issue—for lack of a better term. NCPC, they’re great folks over there, we have a good relationship with them. We don’t publicly talk about this all the time, but we meet with them on a pretty regular basis. We’re working on a compromise of sorts that will protect their interests and protect our interests. We in no way want to upset the North/South “viewsheds” around the monuments. We are working on alternative technologies which include electric, battery-powered vehicles that can drop the wire. So for instance, let’s say that NCPC was okay with us having the overhead wire on H Street but once we got to K near the monuments, they wanted the wire dropped—if that was a concern for them, these cars this new technology that is looking to be built in the US in Portland, Oregon, we could drop the wire for up to a mile. And that’s just one of many different technology options. The roof of the car would be lined with battery. So it would charge while it was attached to the [overhead contact system], when it dropped it would run on battery power—similar to a Toyota Prius which uses gas and charges and then when it’s stopped or coasting it just goes to battery power.

DCMUD: So street cars were purchased for Anacostia. How will this fit into the picture? Do you need new cars? Are those the cars…the cars that will go on H Street, will there be a difference in cars between those [at H Street] and those that go into Anacostia?

GK: Well, we have a Street Car Division, now—a dedicated team that we’re building to work just on Street Car. And that’s very important because I don’t think the Street Car program has historically been treated as its own large-scale project with its own team—the way we’ve treated the 11th Street Bridge, which is a large $300 million dollar infrastructure project. The first thing is that we’re building a group of people to manage it. Second of all, we have an operational segment in Anacostia. The H Street/Benning portion was designed as a Great Street, and we said, okay, if we’re going to do the construction let’s put in the rails. But we are challenging ourselves and the Mayor is challenging us as well to make that an operational segment in the same timeline as Anacostia.

DCMUD: Which is when?

GK: Well, right now we’ve said about 2012. But we’re working very hard now that we have a team in place to speed that up - pretty dramatically. So hopefully, you’ll see an announcement in the next 6 months that gives people an update and hopefully it will be a good update - that we’re going to get up and running more quickly. I actually spent the morning out touring the city looking for maintenance facility locations near H Street. We have a number of places we’re looking at, existing infrastructure we can use - so we’re very focused on this project, we’re putting a lot of our own in-house resources into it. We want this to be, you know, a real win for the city.

One of the things that’s really made me passionate about this is learning the history of Street Car in Washington. The fact that we had over 200 miles of Street Car in and around the city - every major arterial, they all had Street Car. It was the primary mode of transportation in the city. In fact, if you look at old pictures, you see very few cars. You see bikers, walkers, and Street Car. So what’s so funny is that people think, “Oh you know, this agency or that agency is progressive with its New York DOT or Portland DOT,” and you know we’re just trying to put back what was here.

DCMUD: So new buildings in DC are required to provide parking minimums. But there’s nothing in the building process that requires people to do car-sharing, or bike benefits—it’s all like an addition or a community benefit—at what point will that change, or is it going to change? Do you see this as being at odds with your role in integrating transportation?

GK: It needs to change. I’ll be honest with you, this year, I have so many projects, it is probably not something we’re going to be able to attack. But, I mentioned earlier that we want to build our TDM resource capability. I would put that in the TDM category. We want to make sure that we’re heavily involved in the PUD process, in zoning, in making sure that we give builders alternatives to building parking which can be up to $65,000 a space as you dig down into the ground. So why are we incentivizing people to dig garage spaces? There was an article in The Washington Post about how nobody is using the garages there [in Columbia Heights]. And the fact is, whoever built that spent a lot of money doing that. So we would prefer that people invest in transit and alternative modes and facilities and infrastructure, to encourage that rather than building parking spaces.

DCMUD: We wrote an article about H Street and how the Steuart Investment Company has a new development underway there. They’re changing their plan to have one-level parking and .7 parking spaces per unit. We had a lot of feedback that so much parking wasn’t necessary. I don’t know that there’s enough information out there about alternatives to parking.

GK: I think 97% of people live within a few minutes of a bus stop. We’re working hard to upgrade buses, particularly with our own DC Circulator, to make it more on-par with something like the Metro or Street Car. I think, 1.5 or 2 spaces per unit, it’s just old school. We need to move into the 21st century. And we don’t live in Reston. And one of the beauties - I mean, I’m not putting down Reston, I like Reston, it’s a nice place. I don’t want to get any nasty letters, but - what’s nice about living in a city, is that you don’t need that 2.2 cars per household, that you can walk to the grocery store or jump on a Trolley. I mean, that’s what makes the city a city. So if we’re trying to recreate McLean in DC, I think that’s a huge mistake. Let’s take advantage of the positives. And it’s a huge cost. It’s just wasteful. One of the nice things about a down economy is that people can’t afford to waste.

DCMUD: So pedestrians, bicyclists, and car drivers all need different kinds of infrastructure to make their lives easier. How do you prioritize different projects for different users and how do you balance all of those needs when you’re redesigning a street, how do we want to approach transportation in the city?

GK: Well, inherently, a huge amount of our program and our budget goes toward asset maintenance. And a lot of our assets are vehicular-focused assets. So by default, we spend probably 70-80% of our budget on asset maintenance, you know, bridges, tunnels, roads, sidewalks—all these things. I think our biggest challenge, though, is when we’re looking at redesigning, re-building, maintaining these facilities, let’s balance the system. So when we’re redoing a road in Columbia Heights, let’s do a wider sidewalk. Let’s create bike lanes. When we’re building a plaza in Columbia Heights, let’s make sure that it’s functional, but that it’s beautiful - which it is. So I don’t think it’s so much about prioritizing one aspect. It’s really about making sure we’re addressing everybody’s needs when we’re out in the field doing our work, and I think for far too long, nationally, we focused too much on cars. So we’re trying to focus on beauty of the public space, sustainability—you know we take care of over 140,000 trees in this city—so every project, we now look very hard at the urban tree canopy. We actually have an arborist over in our permitting office. And we make sure that we’re addressing the needs of pedestrians and cyclists for their safety.

DCMUD: You’ve already answered question how do you get to work, but do you do bike sharing to get here or do you use your own bike?

GK: So bike sharing’s great. I worked in the car sharing industry and the way it works now is you take a car and you’ve got to bring it back to where you found it. So it’s good for leaving home, going shopping, you bring it back. The great thing about bike sharing is it’s point to point. But generally you don’t have a bike [share station] at your house. But the goal is that when we locate more stations, we can actually push them out into the neighborhoods so that people can use them more for commuting. My bike’s down in the garage, so I ride my bike or I walk. If I have to do something immediately after work like in Virginia, I might bring my car. I have a little Smart Car.

DCMUD: You don’t have to defend your car.

GK: Well, you know. I don’t really need it to be honest, but I like it. It’s a cute car.

DCMUD: Do your friends ever complain to you about commuting and transportation in DC? [Do you get complaints like] “It took me 20 minutes to get to work today, you need to fix this…”

GK: Oh, my friends will text me and say, “I think the signal timing’s screwed up at 18th Street.” And yeah, I take all the feedback from friends and people that aren’t friends. Whenever people write us and they want us to look at something we always look at it and we always respond. But yeah, your friends can be your biggest detractors.

DCMUD: Is there anything else you wanted to add about DDOT or your plans for the future? Or what it’s been like to have had this position?

GK: Well, it’s been great. I need to thank the Mayor, Dan Tangherlini, and Neil Albert you know for giving me this opportunity. It’s something I never thought I’d be doing—working in the government. It’s just a great experience. I feel like we’re doing a lot of great work. And it took me probably 6 months to get my feet under me. And now I feel like I’m really putting together a strategic vision for the future that we’ll be able to execute over the next 24 months. So you’re going to see a lot of new energy, and direction, and work out of the agency over the next two years.

Friday, September 18, 2009

11th Street Bridge Under Troubled Wires

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The 11th Street bridges that span the Anacostia in SE DC are one step closer to a transporation makeover, assuming government agencies can play nice. The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) recently reviewed the District Department of Transportation's (DDOT) design, which will replace the 40-year-old 11th Street bridges, improving traffic flow, connecting I-695 and I-295 and creating a pedestrian and bike-friendly addition to the I-295 bridge. The new bridges make accommodations for future street car use of the bridge, including features for (gasp) overhead wires. The bridges will get their makeover, but the street car may have to wait.












According to DDOT, the Southwest/Southeast Freeway (I-695) was originally planned as part of the "Inner Loop Freeway System," a highway system designed in the '50s and built in the '60s that was (thankfully) never fully completed. The portion at issue here was to connect the Inner Loop with the Anacostia Freeway (I-295/DC-295), a plan that was ultimately abandoned; to date motorists have no direct connection between the two highways north of the 11th street bridge complex. DDOT's plan suggests that this inconvenience leads to increased traffic on neighborhood streets like Martin Luther King Jr. Ave, Good Hope Road, Minnesota Ave and Pennsylvania Ave.

The current upstream bridge has four lanes headed north and the downstream bridge has four lanes headed south, for a total of eight lanes (we can add good); the new bridges will have a total of 12 lanes. The upstream bridge (I-695) will get an additional four lanes, or four in each direction, but two will be used as entrance and exit lanes. The downstream bridge (I-295) for local traffic will still have four lanes, two in each direction with the two outer lanes shared, in theory, by street cars and motor vehicles. The local traffic bridge will also include a 14 foot "shared use path" for pedestrians, runners and cyclists.

While the 11th Street Bridge plan does not directly provide for street cars, it does include the tracks, light posts, and overhead wires for the street cars that may eventually help bridge the chasm between the two sides of the Anacostia river. DDOT has been moving full speed ahead on the Anacostia street car program and is pretty excited about it (to anthropomorphize a bit), and weekly updates are now available online. The plan to install track lines in the new 11th street bridge is just another example of foresight by the transportation planning body.

But, DC being a jurisdictional hodge podge of government overlords, enter the turf battle. The NCPC Executive Director's recommendation stated that NCPC "does not support a street car system with overhead wires in the L'Enfant City" and encouraged DDOT "to pursue alternative propulsion technologies...that do not require overhead wires." The same issue was raised about the street car planned for the H Street corridor. The conflict is not going away any time soon.

If you paid attention to our NCPC crib notes last week, you'll remember that their authority over the historic Washington City means it will uphold federal law that prohibits overhead wires from obstructing view of landmarks.

DDOT and NCPC have clear mission statements and long-term plans, which often can work in unison to improve planning in the District. On this issue, however, it looks like we will see a showdown or at least some creative bargaining as the two agencies are pitted against one another in the what future generations will surely call the "Great Street Car Dilemma of L'Enfant City."

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Streetcars on H Street

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If you were in the H St NE area today, you might have run into a bit of a snag. District Department of Transportation (DDOT) announced in a traffic advisory that construction and installation of street car rails continues along H St NE. The construction is part of an ongoing street improvement through the Benning Road/H Street Great Streets Project. DDOT spokesman John Lisle indicated they are proactively laying the tracks in concrete during the road improvement so that DDOT does not have to dig up the road again once the issues surrounding the street car are resolved. Forethought, how refreshing. So, street cars next week?

Not so much. The street car element of the $65 million Great Streets project still has some unresolved conflicts, and the cars still gather dust in the Czech Republic. According to Lisle, there is still no final plan on where the cars will turn around to continue their loop. Also, the city's ban on overhead wires in the downtown area means DDOT will either have to find a way to power the street cars without overhead wires or have the law changed to allow them. Lisle said the Benning Road project is set to continue for two more years and anticipates the street car line will be running from 3rd and H St NE to Benning Rd and Oklahoma Avenue, NE, by 2011. Others are less optimistic about the timeline.

Today's street closures, with more Friday, will allow workers to lay tracks at the intersections. In addition, the eastbound curb lane on H Street, NE between 3rd and 5th Streets will be closed to traffic for the next day. On Friday, the intersection of 7th and H Streets, NE will be closed from 9 am to 5 pm, as well as the eastbound curb lane on H Street between 6th and 8th Streets. Have patience, its in the name of progress.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Columbia Pike to Secede from VDOT in Arlington Plan

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Arlington County is making a bid to control a 3.5 mile stretch of Columbia Pike now owned and maintained by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT). The proposal would give Arlington County control of the right-of-way from the Arlington-Fairfax County Line to Joyce Street. A press release from the County sites that Arlington is already absorbing most of the cost, and that VDOT is basically standing in the way of progress. Ouch.

The progress Arlington is looking for is the new streetcar line (streetcars are the new blog...everyone's got one). Barbara Favola, the County Board Chairman, said taking control, "will make it easier for Arlington to ensure the transformation of Columbia Pike from a suburban highway to an urban, pedestrian focused and transit-oriented main street." The county will pay for maintenance and other expenses ranging from $180,000 to $450,000. A small price to pay for a progressive County, tired of review processes and applying for design exceptions from VDOT, which often led to project delays. Over the past 10 years, the County has spent about $12 million on capital projects along the Pike with another $9.5m slotted for the future.

Joan Morris, VDOT Public Affairs representative for Northern Virginia, told DCMud that "this was a first" but that the County's plan had been in the works for a while and VDOT had been kept abreast throughout. The project ultimately has to get approval from the Commonwealth Transportation Board, a 17-member board appointed by the governor to oversee VDOT. The board meets monthly and the Columbia Pike issue should go before it in the fall, either October or November, and barring unforeseen complications, the exchange should take place in January.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

H Street Transit Developments, Don't Stop Believin'

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H Street, NE has been coming into its own over the past few years. With a dozen or so new bars and restaurants and the Atlas District, the area surprises those who remember the H Street of 10 years ago - but for one constant: the utter lack of metro accessibility. Residents can see signs of progress on the line, but continue to wonder about the reality of service. The DC government has made several promises to improve transportation there, including rail, and have already bought the trains. So trains will be running any day, right?

In January 2008, Mayor Adrian Fenty and Councilman Tommy Wells celebrated the groundbreaking on the Benning Road/H Street Great Streets Project, and plans were set in motion to develop an at-grade street car connection between H Street NE and Benning Road. The Great Streets title means the area will receive money for streetscape improvements in addition to transit lines. H Street, NE, commercial real estate development But Shannon Yadsko, an urban planner at Parsons Brinckerhoff, opines that even if residents see rails going into the ground, "service is probably at least 5 years away." Yadsko says that though she is not connected to the project, she foresees a slew of obstacles including, "DC's ban on overhead wires (which streetcars need to run, generally)" as well as competition with other DC projects for increasingly limited financing. One such project is a similar street car line, in Anacostia, which Yadsko notes is "probably a higher profile project." When DC committed to the project, they purchased the street cars for both the Anacostia and and H Street. You might say they got the whole "if you build it, they will come" thing backwards. According to a WTOP article from last April, the DC streetcars are still chilling out in the Czech Republic. Slightly different from the ambulance loan to the Carribean, but equally odd. Better just hail a cab.

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