District of Columbia citizens can look forward to a strong transit system of streetcars and rapid buses as the backbone for building a new Washington.
The District’s Office of Planning staged a series of community fairs over the past two weeks to solicit ideas and support from citizens for the revision of the D.C. Comprehensive Plan.
The DCP is a long-term proposal for city development, designed to incorporate and organize all of D.C.’s municipal activities with a focus on diversity and inclusiveness. The plan has not been modified for 20 years.
“It establishes the basic premise that the city must grow more inclusively to achieve its full potential,” a report from the Office of Planning states.
Much of the literature presented at the community fairs emphasized improved transportation as a means of bringing the city together. One proposal is for a new surface system that includes water taxis, streetcars and rapid buses with “signal prioritization,” allowing them to extend green lights and shorten red lights to help them bypass traffic congestion.
According to statistics used by the Office of Planning, nearly half of District residents use mass transit.
Better transportation would revitalize the main thoroughfares of the city, information at the fair’s transportation booth suggested. The surface system plan calls for removing parking lanes along major routes like Pennsylvania Ave. and K St. to make room for the new vehicles, as well as the addition of bicycle lanes and attractive landscaping.
Deputy Director of Long Range Planning Charles Graves said transportation is also a means to resolve greater problems. “Affordable housing and education are the top two issues,” he said.
The DCP will encourage developers to take advantage of the city’s transportation network, concentrating high density development near Metro stations where travel is heaviest to bring more housing into mixed residential and commercial zones.
The DCP also proposes to expand the practice of turning the District’s numerous empty school facilities, many of which lost their students to the increasing number of charter schools in the District, into housing for residents. Schools near Metro stations will be preserved.
“The District has sold a lot of surplus schools for housing,” said Art Rogers, who manned the housing booth at the fair. “Whenever we sell public land for housing there will be an affordable portion.”
Developers are already converting some of the District’s unused academic sites into condominiums or apartments in advance of the DCP to help increase the supply of affordable housing.
Some private corporations are also turning their empty buildings into housing projects. Last spring Georgetown University sold the Wormley School to Encore Development, which plans to put condominiums on the location.
A final draft of the Comprehensive Plan is slated to go before the D.C. City Council in Jan. 2006. The plan must also be approved by the National Capitol Planning Commission before being put into effect.
