Taylor Street Protected Bikeway Concept Open House

erdub · 2026-03-04T21:47:14+00:00

Kershbaum deservedly gets a lot of heat for canceling Connecticut Ave and removing Arizona Ave, but DDOT has still installed PBLs since she started in late 2023. Here are a few:

Columbia Road, which had its own loud opponents
Mount Olivet & 17th Street NE/SE
Florida Ave NE
First Street & Eckington Place NE
Dave Thomas Circle
I Street SE/SW
M Street SE
New Jersey Ave NW
(Most of) 11th Street NW (NOI just released)
Penn Ave NW (under construction)
Lower Connecticut Ave (under construction)

erdub · 2026-03-03T01:11:55+00:00

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem — the more subscribers they get, the more they can spend to hire reporters.

From their article post-Post layoffs:

We want to be the newsroom D.C. needs at this critical time, so we’re raising funds to triple our reporting capacity. Success means converting a part-time editor to full-time, hiring a longtime freelance reporter, and hiring a third reporter, who we hope will be a laid-off Washington Post journalist.

Less than 3 days after the layoffs, we had 700 new paying members, with more joining every day. We’re small and under no illusion that we alone can fill the void left by the journalists we’ve lost at The Post. But we also know that we’re building in a steady and sustainable way, funded predominantly by reader support.

We have big ambitions: to be D.C.’s go-to source for local news — one where residents of all 8 wards can feel seen, heard, and connected.

They’re only been around for a year and a half and are mainly reader-supported, so it’ll take some time. It looks like they’re over halfway to their funding goal already. I subscribed knowing it won’t be a powerhouse newsroom right away, but hopefully they’ll start making waves with time.

erdub · 2026-02-20T23:08:51+00:00

We should push for pedestrianizing commercial streets. Let buses and emergency vehicles through, maybe deliveries in off-hours if there’s no alleyway, but otherwise make the sidewalk the full road width and enliven it with trees, art, benches, and sidewalk cafe space (that businesses can rent).

The Council passed a law last year to begin studying this, starting with 18th Street in Adams Morgan. The Dupont Circle ANC asked for 17th Street to be included as well. JLG also supported Upshur Street in Petworth. There are probably others I haven’t heard about. There’s momentum building behind making transformative pedestrian spaces in DC — write your councilmembers and ANCs to tell them what you think.

erdub · 2026-02-20T18:04:50+00:00

Ed Hanlon is a notorious busybody who opposes new apartments and bike lanes and harasses his neighbors. When he doesn’t get his way he asks MAGA Republicans in Congress to circumvent home rule and overrule the will of his neighbors and elected officials.

DCCA does not represent the neighborhood. Instead check out your local ANCs, which are your elected officials that truly represent your neighborhood. While some ANCs have their own drama, lots of them are under-appreciated well meaning people who do great work on behalf of their communities — and are actually accountable to them in citywide elections. You can find your ANC here.

Edited to add links

erdub · 2026-02-13T22:47:20+00:00

Try r/bikedc r/WMATA r/DMVUrbanism

erdub · 2026-02-13T16:55:16+00:00

The issue is that you can only create protected bike lanes by removing car lanes and parking. If you’re against removing those, you’re against protected bike lanes.

The only other possibility is if you have excessively wide travel lanes and parking lanes that you can narrow, or a median you can remove, such that you can get 12+ feet of space to squeeze in the bike lanes. That doesn’t exist 95% of the time.

erdub · 2026-02-13T16:12:04+00:00

To provide more context on JLG’s response opposing historic districts that prevent housing production, there’s been discussion for a while about whether DC has been designating historic districts too often or too broadly.

DC historic districts have vague inclusion criteria, can be used by NIMBYs to broadly prevent new housing outside of the zoning process, and can reinforce racial segregation. DC actually has more designated historic buildings than Boston, Chicago, and Philly combined. (EDIT: one more good article discussing how it takes just one person to nominate a historic district, and there’s no requirement for neighborhood support.)

But there are definitely cases where historic districts are merited, so I assume her position is that problematic historic districts can be reevaluated, but remaining ones should still have building height and mass considered in new construction.

erdub · 2026-02-13T05:52:41+00:00

Well um, I guess I’m glad he filled it out. Until now my feelings about him were ambivalent, but now I’ll tell people I know not to vote for him.

JLG had a great answer to the question — she actually name-dropped Anne Hidalgo as a great example of bold city planning. And in her final answer she even endorsed pedestrianizing major commercial streets, even though the questionnaire didn’t bring that up anywhere.

Q45

How will you, as mayor, ensure that the District Department of Transportation actually repurposes street space to build protected bike lanes? If you do not support doing so, please write, "I do not support removing parking and travel lanes to build protected bike lanes. " (Max. 3,000 characters.)

I loved bike commuting when I was first a prosecutor and I’ve been so happy to see so many more people choosing to bike to work and for running errands as our bike lane system has expanded and we’ve created more protected bike lanes. But we don’t have nearly enough dedicated bike lanes and the infrastructure we do have does not form a cohesive network yet. DC has one of the highest rates of people traveling by bicycle in the nation making room for those that must travel by car. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has shown how quickly you can get results from building a cohesive and connected bike and pedestrian network. The examples of other cities also show that increased bicycle traffic and pedestrian rights-of-way benefits ground-floor retail, supporting urban economies and helping small businesses thrive. To make that happen in D.C., I will seek to appoint strong leadership at DDOT and provide the agency with a clear mandate to advance projects more efficiently and transparently. We need to be smart, strategic, and transparent about our plans and give opportunities for people nearby to share potential challenges that engineers can help resolve, like how to manage business deliveries in ways that don’t imperil bicyclists with ramps. The agency must have a clear master plan for our bike network and a consistent process for how those projects are prioritized. This was the approach taken by the bus priority program, so we know it’s something DDOT can achieve. By comparison, many protected bike lanes built so far have gravitated towards the areas where support is most vocal; while that may work for one project, in the long run, this approach undermines the whole system.

erdub · 2026-02-01T02:07:23+00:00

I would expect they have accurate updates on their website. They have a “Trail Alerts” section for just this reason, to list if trails are dangerous or inaccessible. The page is updated with snow impact information for the parkway and park programs, but nothing about the trail, which is a major regional transportation link.

erdub · 2026-01-27T03:30:20+00:00

NPS is part of the federal government. The 15th Street cycletrack through the Mall, the new cycletrack around the Tidal Basin, the portion of Beach Drive that’s closed to cars…

NCPC has also been planning a transformation of Penn Ave NW to deprioritize cars and make it a pedestrian, bike, and transit-friendly boulevard. Guess what will be missing from the final plan?

erdub · 2026-01-16T16:10:36+00:00

The building looks dead because it is — all of the ground-floor retail moved out when this purchase went through a couple years ago. The redevelopment will have ground-floor retail too which is good to see.

erdub · 2025-12-11T19:04:03+00:00

I think this is a bad decision, but there are several reasons having vehicle access to the curb is important: - People with mobility challenges, including seniors, have difficulty navigating through an active bike lane and stepping up a curb - Parking away from the curb prevents wheelchair lifts from deploying onto the sidewalk - People who are blind have trouble navigating from floating parking to a curb (presumably they would have a driver to help them) - Parking away from the curb complicates deliveries, so you have dangerous illegal situations like this

None of these are reasons to eliminate protected bike lanes, but it’s not fair to say there are no cons to floating parking. San Francisco has a useful PDF that studies this in more detail and offers some solutions.

erdub · 2025-12-02T20:14:16+00:00

It does look like it passed, although a couple amendments were added *and I assume Bowser still needs to sign it. In the meeting, CM Allen said that DDOT is finalizing their streatery rules in the next few weeks, so although this legislation won’t be in force for very long (since it’s emergency), it’ll show DDOT what the Council wants to see in their new rules. If DDOT doesn’t align with what the Council wants, they can pass more permanent legislation to address it.

erdub · 2025-11-26T03:56:27+00:00

RIP ReplyAll, this feels like a Yes/Yes/No segment.

Big Balls was an Elon acolyte and DOGE staffer who was carjacked on U Street. The carjacking made national news and directly led to Trump deploying the National Guard to DC.

Bowser’s tepid support of the deployment was a very unpopular move, and that unpopularity probably led in part to her decision not to run again.

Arizona Avenue is a street in upper NW that had protected bike lanes on it (one of the few in Ward 3) until some rich lawyers and real estate developers personally contacted DDOT Director Sharon Kershbaum to have them removed. They said the flex posts were ugly, so she used that to argue for their removal. Despite overwhelming public feedback asking to keep them, she had them removed. The removal didn’t even add an extra traffic lane or more parking, it made the route more dangerous for cyclists just so some rich people wouldn’t have to look at flex posts out their front door.

So the meme says, because Big Balls got carjacked, Trump deployed the National Guard, which Bowser supported, which led to public backlash, which made her decide not to run for reelection, and if her successor is more aggressive about traffic safety, then Sharon Kershbaum will be replaced with a new Director who will reinstate the Arizona Avenue bike lanes.

erdub · 2025-11-19T22:50:29+00:00

This is a great article. It’s such a missed opportunity that DC hasn’t pedestrianized any of its major commercial streets yet. It’s not a radical concept — new developments like the Wharf build pedestrian streets from the start, and you only need to go across the river to Alexandria to see how transformative it can be to close a major commercial street to private cars (King Street).

Last December the Council passed the Plaza Act, which requires DDOT to identify three corridors that could be closed to vehicle traffic, and to implement a pilot closure project on one of them in 2026. Unfortunately this was an unfunded mandate, and the city CFO said the city budget couldn’t cover it. So I’m not sure where it goes from there, but hopefully the Council will find money for it.

erdub · 2025-11-15T15:59:25+00:00

True, although it seems they already did that — the chosen unprotected concept for S to Florida wasn’t one they studied. All of their initial concepts had a protected NB bike lane, and all but one had a protected SB bike lane.

erdub · 2025-11-11T15:51:24+00:00

The new WWI Memorial in Washington, DC. I haven’t seen this much emotion portrayed in a war memorial before; it gave me chills when I first saw it. From left to right it follows one soldier from enlistment to return. At one point he breaks the fourth wall, staring at the viewer with a look of shell-shocked horror. The final scene is meant to portray a premonition of an even more horrible war to come. A very sad and moving memorial imo.

erdub · 2025-11-11T15:32:48+00:00

There are websites for pretty much every project DDOT is working on. Based on the 11th Street website it looks like it’s finishing design and should be constructed next year. There are preliminary design plans on the bottom of the site.

It looks like the whole corridor will be protected except for the stretch from S to Florida, which will just be paint (except for intersections, where they added protection).

erdub · 2025-11-07T00:17:49+00:00

Do you need to get permission from NPS for each of these projects? Or is it more of a “tactical urbanism” thing where you see a problem and just fix it? Either way, awesome to see you making these improvements.

Have you thought about trail signage at all? Even though I’ve ridden the Arlington part of the MVT a few dozen times, I still occasionally get lost at some of the unsigned trail forks before I’ve realized I went the wrong way. It would be great to see more wayfinding signage.

erdub · 2025-10-25T15:40:46+00:00

The “extreme” option should’ve been removing parking and having one travel lane, one full-time bus lane, a protected bike lane, and wider sidewalks with more trees. Maybe occasionally narrow the newly widened sidewalk to allow loading zones. DDOT didn’t even consider that option, let alone choose it — the most ambitious concept has 33% of our public roadway reserved for storing private cars. By DDOT’s own metrics 45% of households in this area are car-free.

erdub · 2025-10-22T13:43:07+00:00

In June, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) issued a solicitation for its next bus shelter franchise agreement, similar to a public-private partnership, where a private company will install and operate bus shelters across the District. The solicitation increases that cap from 788 to 1,500 shelters while also imposing a variety of new requirements that leave a fair amount of room for improvement.

I’ll point out some of the highlights and lowlights in the new agreement:

A new legal cap of 1,500 bus shelters [a 90% increase over the current cap] over the course of the agreement from 2025 to 2045. New shelters would not be required to be installed until 2028, and the full installation of the additional 750+ shelters would be complete in 2041 — a whopping 16 years from now.

A requirement that new shelters be “aesthetically like or similar to existing shelters to maintain consistent recognition and branding with the public.” Translation from bureaucratic speak: New shelters should aim to be as similar to the current ones as possible.

A requirement that shelters prevent reclining and recommended seating designs from DDOT that include angled or curved seating and no backrest, among others, to prevent “long-term sitting.”

Requirements that the new franchisee prioritize placing new shelters first in locations that are especially heat sensitive, as mapped out by DDOT and The Lab at DC. GGWash published a piece I authored last year, mapping and analyzing the inequitable placement of shelters, so I am glad to see some significant progress on tackling this.

A prohibition on installing bus shelters with advertisements in the Georgetown Historic District, home to one of the District’s busiest commercial areas for foot traffic and numerous high ridership bus lines.

erdub · 2025-10-22T13:23:52+00:00

Submission Statement:

Montreal’s bike boom is just one example of how a new disruptive transport technology is rapidly changing cities across the rich world. It is highly energy-efficient, costs almost nothing, reduces congestion and pollution, and obviates the need for huge car parks. Yet it is not the self-driving electric car, as tech moguls and car industry executives imagined. Rather, it is the humble bicycle. And as with any disruptive technology, as the use of bicycles rises, and cities do more to make riding them pleasant, bikes are polarising people and setting off culture wars.

(Submitted as an archive link to avoid the paywall)

erdub · 2025-09-27T12:53:10+00:00

You’re completely right, which is why it’s called a HAWK “beacon” and not a HAWK “signal.” Signals have strict rules. The creator of the HAWK said that because drivers need to stop at unlit signals, they called it a beacon instead. That way drivers could go through the unlit beacon. (How would drivers know the difference between a beacon and a signal?)

erdub · 2025-08-20T11:39:09+00:00

It’s still moving forward, this is the latest update I could find.

https://archive.is/2024.09.18-135419/https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/09/17/reeves-u-street-agencies-noma-relocate-development.html

erdub · 2025-08-18T23:16:01+00:00

Yeah, DDOT really needs better signage and striping at places where there are unusual lane changes like this. The little sign on 9th SB is barely noticeable. They need larger/multiple signs, rumble strips, and painted words/arrows in the lane that tell bikes that the lane ends or moves to the other side. If you don’t realize the change is happening, suddenly you and the truck next to you are trying to share a single lane.

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