DDOT will host an Open House for residents in Ward 5

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) will host an Open House for residents in Ward 5.

According to a DDOT event announcement, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) will host an Open House for residents in Ward 5 to learn about current and future safety improvement projects that are advancing Mayor Bowser’s Vision Zero and infrastructure goals including the current status of the Metropolitan Branch Trail.

Residents interested in attending may register using this link or contacting Kelly Jeong-Olson at Kelly.Jeong-Olson1@dc.gov.

The meeting will be held at the following location and time:

Trinidad Recreation Center
1310 Childress Street Northeast
Washington, DC 20002
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Saturday, February 8, 2020
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
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This Open House is an opportunity for residents to engage directly with DDOT staff to facilitate one-on-one conversations and receive answers for specific questions. Engaging with DDOT officials is an important way to help build safe infrastructure.

To improve interaction with with DDOT, the meeting will forgo the standard presentation portion allowing residents to come-and-go when they are able without being concerned about missing content.

At the event, DDOT project managers and staff will be available to discuss safety and infrastructure projects in Ward 5, including the Florida Avenue NE project, Florida/New York Avenue intersection (also known as “Dave Thomas Circle”) project and the Metropolitan Branch Trail (Brookland – Fort Totten) project among other improvements in the Ward.

12 Tidbits from DDOT’s Fiscal Year 2020 Performance Oversight Hearing Documents

Each year, Council of the District of Columbia committees hold hearings with District agencies to discuss how they’ve spent funds during the first quarter of the fiscal year.

The oversight hearings also provide Council with updates to projects or programs recently completed, underway, or planned. Council committees gather this information in the form of questions that District agencies complete and submit to Council before each hearing.

The District Department of Transportation provided answered to a total of 113 questions totaling, with attachments, 624 pages. The document is available on the Council’s website.

At BikeSpecific, because we have no lives, we looked through this document to find the top ten most interesting questions or responses that have some relevance to #BikeDC, micromobility, or specific trail elements devoted to pedestrian issues.

This isn’t a comprehensive list of topics discussed in the DDOT document. Let me know if I missed something significant was overlooked.

Morning Commute 1/17

The Morning Commute is an occasional look at meetings or other #BikeSpecific discussions and stories happening in the District. It also looks at interesting bike, scooter, or urban related ideas or concepts from other places across the globe that could possibly work here. Again, this isn’t journalism, just fun.

Today’s commute includes:

WABA to hold community listening tour
A study on how to increase bikeshare use
Oslo actually sees Vision Zero

Morning Commute – 12/13

The Morning Commute is an occasional look at meetings or other #BikeSpecific discussions and stories happening in the District. It also looks at interesting bike ideas or concepts from other places across the globe that could possibly work here. Again, this isn’t journalism, just fun.

Today’s commute includes:

The Capital Trails Coalition is something big
Florida starts with “F”, which is also the grade that someone gave on initial plans to revitalize it
Women are less likely to bike for many reasons – including because many men are jerks
Happy Friday the 13th

The Sustainable DC 2.0 Working Group Has a Survey with Lofty Goals

Image: Author

The Sustainable DC 2.0 Working Group issued a comprehensive survey to gauge support and help set goals, actions, and targets.

Sustainable DC 2.0 is the second phase of a District government initiative lead by the Department of Energy and the Environment and the Office of Planning to draft a vision and develop recommendations for goals and actions within the topics of built environment, climate, energy, food, nature, transportation, waste, water, and the green economy. The working groups recommended 900 goals and actions for consideration in the final plan.

The draft Transportation Framework survey contains four goals with goal 2, “Expand provision of safe, secure infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians“, articulating 10 specific actions. The primary target of goal 2, “By 2032, increase biking and walking to 25% of all trips“, doesn’t appear to be particularly ambitious any longer. As the Coalition on Smarter Growth noted last year, the District has the highest share of commuters who both bike and walk, a combined total of 18.3 percent.

The survey allows participants to comment on each target and prioritize their importance, with 1 being the highest and 5 being the lowest.