A major piece of legislation that aims to reduce traffic fatalities and reach the District’s Vision Zero goals reads like a laundry list—nearly 25 ideas from ban right turns on red everywhere to lower speed limits and putting more mandates for safe streets on developers.
The Vision Zero omnibus bill from Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen was introduced alongside other traffic safety legislation.
One bill from At-large Councilmember David Grosso would mandate corner bulb-outs on any District Department of Transportation project either new or reconstructed. Those extended curbs help reduce the amount of distance a pedestrian is exposed to traffic and slows traffic.
Another from Ward 4 Councilmember Brandon Todd would expand the DMV driving test to include rules on how to drive near bikes.
And Allen’s bill, well, it does a lot. You can read the full list below. Allen said the impetus was three traffic deaths in one April weekend: a pedestrian, cyclists, and a driver.
“It’s a real wake-up call,” Allen said. “We’ve lost ten people this year, over 30 last year, and we need to be more aggressive.”
After Mayor Muriel Bowser adopted a Vision Zero goal in 2015 to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024, the annual number of traffic fatalities has risen every year.
A similarly weighty traffic safety bill failed to pass last year at the end of the Council’s two-year legislative cycle, when many bills get backed up or dropped because of time restraints.
“This bill is more ambitious and has some teeth in it,” Allen said. “I haven’t met any resistance from members … I think there’s a shared understanding that being able to move around the city safely shouldn’t be a perk, but a standard.”
The bill garnered wide support with councilmembers Brianne Nadeau of Ward 1, Kenyan McDuffie of Ward 5, Brandon Todd of Ward 4, and At-large councilmembers Anita Bonds, Elissa Silverman, David Grosso, and Robert White. The bill was co-sponsored by Chairman Phil Mendelson and Ward 7 Councilmember Vincent Gray.
Here’s the full list of ideas in the bill with some explanations from Allen:
Speeding up infrastructure
- Requires DDOT to certify plans for private developments that include new sidewalks, marking unmarked crosswalks, and adding protected bike lanes that are in the Transportation Plan.
- Requires that new developments of 10 or more units have a plan to create spaces for ridehailing and deliveries that do not block the right-of-way of sidewalks or bicycle lanes. “If we don’t design these spaces, we put other people at risk,” Allen said. When asked whether he thinks developers will be amenable to the legislation, he said that “this is public space and they need to view it that way.”
- Requires sidewalks on both sides of all streets and makes connections to any existing sidewalks within 0.1 mile.
- Requires DDOT to consider four-way stops as the starting point for designing residential intersections with two-way streets. Abdul Seck, a pedestrian, was killed by a speeding car at 16th and V Streets SE where residents had long called for a four-way stop.
- Speeds up the approval process for DDOT to make critical infrastructure repairs at high-risk areas. Reduces the public notice time from 30 days to 10 days. “If DDOT sees an imminent danger, we want them to move quickly,” said Allen. “We need to rewire DDOT to put safety first and foremost in every project and move more quickly.”
- All DDOT capital projects must increase traffic safety or transit equity.
- Requires annual progress report on all projects or recommended projects in the transportation plan, including explaining why recommended projects were not advanced.
- Creates space for DDOT to ensure prioritization of projects based on equity needs for underserved neighborhoods or ones experiencing high traffic injuries and fatalities.
Stronger enforcement
- Bans right-on-red turns throughout all of D.C. The District moved to ban right on red at 100 intersections last year.
- Creates a Citizen Traffic Safety Enforcement Pilot program to test training and empowering citizens to enforce parking laws in crosswalks, bicycle lanes, fire lanes, and bus stops.
- Restricts speed limits to 25 mph on most minor arterial roads and 20 mph on local roads. “We know that if a collision takes place, with every 5 to 10 mph faster, we know that faster is more fatal,” said Allen.
- Clarifies that the Mayor can impound cars parked illegally in crosswalks and bicycle lanes and allows parking enforcement staff to mail tickets when a driver leaves before receiving the ticket.
- Requires all applicants for a new or renewal driver’s license to take a written test. “The last time I took a driver’s test was more than a few decades ago at 16,” said Allen. “We’re talking about operating a couple of tons of steel on public streets. It’s not too much that every so often that you have to make sure you know the updated rules of the road. A test today would look different than decades ago.”
- Levies a $10,000 daily fine on contractors who do not restore crosswalks and bicycle lanes within 24 hours of completing work.
- Allows parking enforcement to target repeat reckless drivers by impounding parked cars with five speeding violations at 31+ mph over the speed limit or violations for passing a stopped car yielding to pedestrians in a crosswalk.
Reducing car use
- Requires DDOT to update the transportation plan every two years, that will be approved by the Council, and to include:
- A plan to get to 50 percent of commutes by public transit and an additional 25 percent by bike/ped by 2032, in line with goals set by the Clean Energy D.C. law.
- Identify areas in need of improved transit access.
- Identify high-risk intersections.
- A list of one street or one bus line in each ward that will get a dedicated transit lane.
- Allows the Council to direct additional elements for the next plan in an approval resolution.
- Requires Complete Streets Policy laying out standard project delivery processes for projects managed by DDOT.
- Adds requirement for DDOT to aggregate crash and speed data in one publicly-accessible site.
This story originally appeared on WAMU.
Jordan Pascale