Mark Sussman on speeding up the installation of the WV Avenue bike lane

The District Department of Transportation plans to build a bike lane on West Virginia Avenue in two phases, starting in 2021. It would resemble the bike lane on Florida Avenue, and be separated from vehicle traffic. Mark Sussman, an avid D.C. cyclist, went to businesses in Ivy City and came back with this:

16 Ivy City businesses support prioritizing the WV Ave NE Protected Bike Lanes & sent this letter (part 1) to @DDOTDC:
@BicycleSPACE | @BikramYogaWorks | @CityWineryDC | @CompassCoffeeDC | @douglasdevdc | Dunn Lewis | @greenhatgin | @CFHierarchy | @MOMsOrganicMrkt 1/ pic.twitter.com/JZCEc4Ufj2

— Mark Sussman (@MarkSussman_) December 18, 2020

I emailed some questions to Sussman and he sent me back some answers, which you can find below. If you're a cyclist, or interested in expanding bike access to our corner of the city, you may find some of his answers interesting.

Why is the West Virginia Avenue corridor significant to you?

I’ve lived in NE/SE DC since 2009. First just off on H Street (before the Streetcar) and now further south between Eastern Market and Potomac Ave. The West Virginia Ave corridor is significant to me because I bike everywhere and have done so since moving to DC in 2006, and WV Ave is both the best/worst way to get to several places I enjoy - Ivy City (which I frequent often to support local businesses) and the Arboretum, which has been a vital lifeline for some peace and tranquility, especially during the pandemic.

I say that the WV Ave is both the best/worst because of the geography of the area (which you know well). Due to Gallaudet and Mt Olivet Cemetery, there are really only 3 arterial roads that connect to Ivy City (NY Ave, Bladensburg Ave, and WV AVE), with WV Ave being the clear winner of these three poor options.

Why enlist businesses? What kind of message do you want this to send to DDOT?

This all started with the most recent near miss I had with a reckless driver while riding south on West Virginia Ave NE while towing groceries back from MOM’s in my bike trailer. I’m not particularly nimble with my trailer in tow, so there wasn’t much I could do except pray he didn’t hit me as he passed extremely close, well above the speed limit and yelling at me to “get on the sidewalk.”

I’m a new father, so I vowed that day that I wouldn’t be returning to Ivy City by bike again until the protected bike lanes are built and that got me thinking about how many others there are like me that don’t visit Ivy City because of the lack of a safe route or sufficient public transportation -- this is one reason I enlisted businesses.

Also, historically businesses have not often favored bike lanes on their streets and I wanted to see if I could get the Ivy City business community to support this effort. This ultimately proved to be fairly easy and allowed me to concentrate my advocacy efforts on a small group of stakeholders.

The message I want to send to DDOT is that folks are eagerly awaiting these bike lanes and not just the hardcore advocates, but the affected business community, which have been hit hard by the pandemic and could really use the shot in the arm that these bike lanes would help provide.

In the past, bike lane projects have been delayed, put on ice or even removed. Are you motivated to show DDOT that local businesses are watching and engaged with what happens here?

Exactly, if you look at the 2020 bikeway map on the DDOT website, what’s represented there are some pretty stark differences than our current reality, most of which are good (projects being expedited). However, most of these projects being completed are in NW/SW and projects in those areas tend to get a lot of attention. My worry is that projects that don’t have huge population centers around them or aren’t in a high profile area will get deprioritized. WV Ave fits that profile, but is a vitally important to the overall network. The Ivy City businesses are certainly up there in terms of stakeholders that would benefit from this project and it was a fairly unique effort, so I thought it would be effective to ensure that DDOT doesn’t lose track of this project.

It seems to me that DDOT, these businesses and the ANC do not really need convincing: DDOT already included this road in its 20 x 2022 plan and the ANC supports it. But what you're asking for now is for DDOT to install protected bicycle infrastructure on the entire stretch, between New York Avenue and Florida Avenue, next year, and not over the course of two years like they plan, right? Why should they do it all next year?

After Dave Salovesh died in 2019, the Florida Ave bike lanes were installed in 4 months. Why should WV Ave take 2 years? I understand that the size and scope of these projects are different, but it goes to show what’s possible when there is pressure from the community. I don’t want to be remembered for why the West Virginia Ave bike lanes were expedited without being able to use them, if you catch my drift.

From a business perspective, most of the businesses in Ivy City are local, small businesses that have been hit hard by the pandemic. Let’s say that the PBLs will increase business by 1%-5% for most of these businesses. In these bleak times, that might be the difference between shutting down and staying open. Getting this project done in 2021 could prevent some businesses from closing. There are several of examples on social media of local residents that don’t frequent Ivy City and vise versa because of safety concerns on WV Ave.

DDOT's timeline, which they've already presented to ANC 5D, breaks this project into phases so they can space out the engineering, community engagement and construction. Do you think it should all be done together? Why?

Well the good news is that I’ve done part of the community engagement piece on DDOT’s behalf. But in all seriousness, there is already overlap between the project schedules, so it's clear that phases of each project can be done simultaneously. At the end of the day, there is one issue at hand -- whether or not DDOT is willing to hold the line over the amount of on street parking that would need to be removed between Mt. Olivet and Florida Ave to install protected bike lanes. The P Street SW project comes to mind as a potentially similar situation.

Where else in ANC 5D do you think protected bike infrastructure is necessary now? DDOT wants to build it on every major road between now and 2045, but few of us want to wait 25 years in order to safely bike to the Arboretum. What else should be prioritized?

Now you’re really getting into what I daydream about!

#1 is the “permanent” version of Florida Ave. The current configuration is just not usable east of WV Ave due to potholes and I could see this slipping through the cracks since there is something there.

#2 Mt Olivet. It seems like a pretty obvious gap in the network that would connect nicely between the Brentwood Parkway PBL to nowhere and the WV Ave PBL.

#3 17th St NE/Montana Ave. Would allow for a safe connection to the Arboretum without needing to ride on Bladensburg.

#4 NY Ave Trail. A boy can dream!

#5. Bladensburg. I foresee major residential density coming to the corridor and we will have a Florida Ave/ Dave Salovesh situation here in the next 5 years if nothing is done. 

Photo of Ivy City by Payton Chung through Creative Commons license