DC Budget Should Commit to Sustainable & Equitable Transportation

Written Testimony of
Sierra Club, Washington DC Chapter
Committee on Transportation and the Environment Budget Oversight Hearing
District Department of Transportation
Thursday, June 10, 2021

Thank you, Councilmember Cheh, for the opportunity to submit written testimony concerning the FY22 budget for the District Department of Transportation (DDOT). The Sierra Club is the nation’s oldest, largest and most influential environmental advocacy organization. We have approximately 3,000 dues-paying members in DC, and we work to reduce greenhouse emissions, expand sustainable transportation, reduce waste and ensure safe and clean water.

 COVID-19 Response

The Sierra Club DC Chapter recommends that the Council consider the FY22 budget in light of  the C40 Cities Global Mayors COVID-19 Recovery Task Force statement of principles, which we have previously asked Mayor Bowser to endorse.

Vision Zero

While we applaud the passage of the Vision Zero Omnibus bill, we were disappointed to see many of the basic targets that DDOT set for 2020 were far from being met. Recent trends for accidents and fatalities have been alarming. Sufficient funding must be allocated for the department’s goals to be met, and we believe recent failures suggest a need to increase funds  to meet these goals. In particular, the budget should reflect the urgent need to improve on the following metrics:

• Reducing the number of vehicle fatalities
• Reducing the number of pedestrian fatalities
• Increasing the percent of Circulator buses arriving on time
• Increasing the percent of sidewalk blocks completed in the sidewalk plan
• Increasing the miles of bike lanes installed; and
• Increasing the percent of pothole service requests filled and closed out within 72 hours.

 We cannot expect these Vision Zero outcomes to improve if the department does not improve the inputs required to meet the Vision Zero goals.

We recognize that the budget has been enhanced for certain items, and we strongly support those increases that go towards bus priority, bicycle infrastructure, and trail network expansion.We also support the commitment to recurring street closures and Open Streets events across all wards, and the increase in funding that has been proposed for these initiatives.

The budget mentions several specific projects that will improve the mobility and quality of life in DC. Among them:

• 10 new miles of protected bike lanes per year
• Pedestrian/bicycle bridge connecting Barry Farm to the Anacostia Metro
• K Street Transitway
• Dupont Crown Park over Connecticut avenue
• South Capitol Street trail
• Shepherd Branch trail
• Multiple livability and feasibility studies including a potential deck-over project on North Capitol street
• Expansion of Capital Bikeshare, to ensure all residents have access to docking station within ¼ mile

The Sierra Club recognizes that with proper funding and community engagement, these proposals can make important progress towards improving safety and sustainability in the city. It is crucial that ongoing funding is consistently provided for these types of projects along with the resources to identify where transportation improvements are needed most.

We appreciate the measurable targets such as miles of bike lane constructed and distance from bikeshare stations, but we question whether these goals along with those laid out in the Vision Zero Omnibus Enhancement Amendment Act have been given the funding that they require.The implementation costs of the Act have been estimated at over $11 million for DDOT, but it is difficult to see where this money is in the budget. Disappointingly, the budget of the Planning and Sustainability division, whose activities largely overlap with the items above, has actually been cut by nearly 20 percent from 2021.

Council’s unanimous passage of the Vision Zero Omnibus Enhancement Amendment Act sent the message that traffic safety is a priority, but this message is meaningless if resources are not devoted to its implementation.

Equity

Infrastructure investments are an ongoing need in Wards 7 and 8, which are disproportionately affected by vehicular violence. According to DDOT’s 2020 statistics, the combined number of deaths in these two wards outpaced the rest of the District, combined.^[1] The Sierra Club DC Chapter was disappointed that Ward 8 specifically was excluded from requirements to expand bike lanes and Safe Streets. While this was neither DDOT’s goal nor its ultimate doing, it is unfortunate nonetheless.

Communities east of the Anacostia River are clamoring for more resources to address these inequities. Many Ward 7 citizens recently signed an open letter asking for more resources to bring bike and bus lanes to their ward, as well as asking for more bus shelters.^[2] Despite the reliance on buses, only 10 percent of bus stops in Ward 7 have shelters compared to 16 percent District-wide. Meanwhile, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of the general failure to promptly address missing stop signs, unsafe intersections, and broken sidewalks in a timely manner. We urge the Council to prioritize investments in these areas to make up for the infrastructure gap and ensure equitable access to safe streets and multi-modal transportation options.

We would like to thank the Council and DDOT for continued progress on a couple of projects particularly important to Ward 7. First, thank you for funding the DC Streetcar expansion to Benning Road, which in addition to providing a much-needed transportation link includes many long-overdue improvements to basic infrastructure along Benning Road. It is our long-term vision—and we hope the vision of DDOT and the Council—that the DC Streetcar continues its expansion westward, giving Ward 6 and 7 communities access to the downtown core on a single trip. Second, thank you for funding the K Street / Crosstown Transitway. This project extends transit-priority lanes that facilitate east-west travel, improving bus travel times and reliability for bus routes that are heavily used east of the river, notably Metrobus 30s and D6. We urge that the Council continue to adequately fund the project to ensure its timely completion.

Implementing the Transportation Benefits Equity Amendment Act

Thank you to Councilmembers Allen and Cheh for your leadership in enacting the Transportation Benefits Equity Amendment Act of 2020. The Sierra Club supports incentives for commuters to use alternatives to single-occupied vehicles. Once implemented, this Act will provide an important counterbalance to the millions and millions of dollars spent by District employers to subsidize single-vehicle parking.

Unfortunately, DDOT is overdue on issuing rules to implement this Act. The Act required DDOT to issue regulations to implement its provisions within 90 days of its enactment, which occurred on June 24 last year.^[3] We urge DDOT to issue this rule without delay.

Given the state of COVID-19 recovery, issuing rules and allocating funding for this Act takes on additional importance. The number of commuters using public transportation has plummeted and remains quite low, while driving has rebounded significantly. Implementation of this Act—which includes funding—would help counter this trend and shape transportation habits in a post-pandemic world.

Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure

The Sierra Club wants the District to remain at the cutting edge of the transition to electric vehicles (EVs). We recognize this tranistion as an issue of both technology and policy. The rules concerning EVs and their charging stations (EVCSs) should promote the use of clean energy by fostering a robust market that is profitable for suppliers and affordable and easily understood by consumers. We support DDOT's commitment to creating a rules framework that promotes the disbursement of charging stations in an equitable manner throughout the District while still making them a profitable investment for companies to install. We want those people who purchase cars in the District to feel confident that they can buy an electric vehicle and affordably charge it in public spaces. Adjusting the infrastructure and policy of the District to better accommodate the influx of EVs should not be an afterthought, and we urge DDOT to account for the EV transition.

DC Circulator Bus

The DC Circulator is a crucial component of the District’s transportation system and provides a vital service to residents, businesses, commuters and visitors to the nation’s capital. The Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) includes funding for various improvements to the DC Circulator Bus, which Sierra Club DC fully supports. The FY22 budget also proposes one-time funding to provide free circulator rides and an increase of roughly $200,000 to support the expansion of DC Circulator routes, though it is unclear if this is a one-time increase or not. We support both these funding proposals and encourage the District to look for ways to sustain such funding to support greater access and expanded service long-term. These proposed changes will coincide with Metro’s recent announcement of fare reductions and service increases.^[4]

Regarding fleet electrification, the current fleet is made up of approximately 72 buses, of which 14 have been electric since 2018. DDOT has committed to replacing all its diesel buses with electric buses at the end of their useful lives, and having a 100 percent electric bus fleet by 2029, which is ahead of the electrification targets outlined in the Clean Energy DC Act. We continue to applaud the District for these commitments.

There does appear to be funding through the CIP; however, it is not clear how much is dedicated specifically towards electrification (e.g. planning, bus acquisition, garage renovation, charging infrastructure). We ask that the Council ensure there is adequate funding to support electrification. Our chapter wrote a letter of support this past February for a DDOT grant application to the US DOT Federal Transit Authority’s Low or No Emission Vehicle Program (Lo-No Program ) seeking to replace 14 diesel buses with electric buses and adding 3 electric buses for route expansion.

In transitioning to electric buses, we urge DDOT to do so in a way that does not leave workers behind. Accordingly, we ask that DDOT engage with transportation unions and commit to provide training for in-house mechanics to service electric buses.^[5]

Street Lights

DDOT has taken significant strides toward converting all the District's street lights to energy-efficient LEDs. In April, the Council approved DDOT's Request for Proposals (RFP) that covers both financing and technical specifications for the conversion, and the bidding process is now underway. The FY22 CIP includes funding for Streetlight LED Conversion, though it is unclear how much specifically. We ask that the Council allocate adequate funding for this project.

We want to emphasize a few points made previously in our performance-oversight testimony so that, once DDOT selects a bidder and the Council approves a contract, the allocated funding is used appropriately.

First, a key advantage of LED fixtures is their highly focused beam that reduces wasteful extraneous light. On the pavement itself, however, DDOT's approach to illumination is deeply flawed because the agency plans for many District streets to have light levels that are two or nearly three times what is sufficient for traffic safety according to national standards, resulting in unnecessary energy usage. To avoid a legacy of wasteful excessive light, DDOT should limit light levels to the minimums recommended by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IES) or the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO).

Second, DDOT's technical specifications reduce the amount of wasted "uplight" from the ubiquitous Washington globe fixtures but still allow the globes and teardrop fixtures to emit a certain amount of light upward into the sky, where it serves no purpose. The specifications for both of those fixtures should be revised to prohibit all uplight.

Third, compared to existing street lights, LED fixtures emit more blue-wavelength light, a critical factor in their environmental impact. Blue light is the most biologically active; it causes more dangerous glare than traditional lighting and plays a major role in suppressing the hormone melatonin, which regulates our circadian cycles.  It impacts both humans and wildlife.

DDOT has taken a laudable step by proposing that residential streets have warm-white LED fixtures rated at the relatively low correlated color temperature of 2700-Kelvin. (Lower Kelvin ratings mean less blue light.) Unfortunately, though, DDOT's technical specifications propose higher 3000-Kelvin LEDs on busier streets, including some with residential housing. The specifications should be revised to call for warm-white 2700-Kelvin fixtures on all streets, regardless of their traffic volume or surrounding land usage. This would follow the example of environmentally progressive cities such as Phoenix, which already has installed 100,000 warm-white 2700-Kelvin LED streetlights citywide.

Conclusion

Thank you for the opportunity to submit written testimony. If you have questions, you can contact Andrew Moiseff, Co-Chair of the Clean Transportation Subcommittee: andrew.moiseff@gmail.com.