Comments on: An End to I-15th Street?

By: The District Autocrats » Death to the 15th Street Expressway!?!

The District Autocrats » Death to the 15th Street Expressway!?! — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:15:15 +0000

[...] City Paper covered this in their 14 Aug City Desk Blog Entry: An End to I-15th Street? [...]

By: DistrictAutocrat

DistrictAutocrat — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 13:56:04 +0000

I live at 15th and U, and it would be a shame to have anything change on 15th Street. Change in this case is bad. The natural order the Universe intended will be destroyed!

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 21:03:51 +0000

DSL wrote-
“I do not want to hear horns honking as the impatient, obnoxious, me-first drivers freak out if they have to wait – god forbid – an extra 30 seconds, while someone else needs to park, cross, or turn left (which is what I imagine would happen if changed to two lanes).”

-Option 4 (my favorite) features a center turn lane. A center turn lane would:
1- be used for the obvious left-turn purposes, and
2- be used to bypass parkers/double-parkers.
These two features would greatly help maintain a continual 30 mph throughput, and so address your thoughtful concerns. Additionally, option 4 would also greatly encourage compliance with the existing 30mph speed limit on 15th by making it *not* a 4-lane one-way freeway.
As an aside, option 4 also adds N and S-bound bicycle lanes. I’m local, have a 3 year old child, bike that stretch of 15th nearly every day, and haven’t owned a car since ‘90. For those reasons (and more), I like the center turn lane feature very much.

Matty wrote-
“What am I missing?”

- It’s not that you’re missing any physical thing about the street; 15th does go from 4 travel lanes to 1 at Fl Ave. It’s not, in the words of one poster, “a way to get out of the city”, it’s a fast way to go the 0.9 miles from Mass Ave to Florida Ave.

By: Mike DeBonis

Mike DeBonis — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 20:34:56 +0000

Matty–

That unbelievably short piece of racetrack ain’t just for the ‘burbanites. It’s for me! It’s by far the quickest automotive route from downtown to my home on the 1400 block of W Street. Which also means the cars whiz up the hill a half-block from my front door–and I don’t mind a bit. Viva I-15th Street!

By: Matty

Matty — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 19:41:13 +0000

One thing that keeps hitting me as I read the different opinions is that there is a perception that 15th Street is some huge-mongous 4-lane highway that runs all the way to Philadelphia. If we somehow alter it, the traffic patterns of the entire Northeast Corridor between Richmond and Boston will be horribly altered! The reality is — as someone else here pointed out — 15th Street is a commuter street from Massachusetts to Florida. That’s it! North of Florida it becomes two narrow lines and then merges into 16th Street a few blocks later.

Somehow, keeping this unbelievably short piece of racetrack for the benefit of suburban commuters is paramount to the desires of [what I be is the huge majority] residents who live on this stretch of 15th Street.

What am I missing?

By: DSL

DSL — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:41:10 +0000

I have lived near 15th & R for the last 17 years and I do not think changing it to two lanes would be good for those of us who live here. As others have said, volume is not the issue right now, but speed is. I like the fact that after rush hour and on weekends, the street is quiet and traffic is very light. I do not want to hear horns honking as the impatient, obnoxious, me-first drivers freak out if they have to wait – god forbid – an extra 30 seconds, while someone else needs to park, cross, or turn left (which is what I imagine would happen if changed to two lanes).

In order to address the speed issue, I would be in favor of more police enforcement, re-timing lights (which would increase the amount of time we have to cross the street), putting up those “Your speed is___” signs, and/or installing red-light cameras at all lights in this section of town. That ought to slow things down without giving up the convenience of this northbound thoroughfare.

Furthermore unless speed is addressed, adding more bike lanes seems risky and a waste of time, too. If DDOT is serious about promoting use of bikes, they need to go to Copenhagen to see how bikes lanes REALLY work in a busy city (separate lanes on wide sidewalks, where opening car doors and speeding traffic don’t pose a threat).

Just my two (or three) cents.

By: JT

JT — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:21:57 +0000

I live one house off 15th Street between Mass and U. Yes, it is a speedway during the evening rush hour. But only during the evening rush hour. While initially I thought the idea of making the street two-way would be nice, I think it is actually a bad idea. People need ways to get out of the city. There are too few right now. Removing 15th Street as an easy way to get out will probably mean (1) more congestion during rush hour, leading to (2) a longer rush hour. As for bike lanes, I actually think they are a bad idea on 15th. Cars go too fast and bicyclists will get hit. At this point, I think bicyclists just stay away when its busy (I do). But on Saturdays and Sundays, there’s actually not a big need for bike lanes as there’s not that much traffic.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:53:48 +0000

The thing is, 15th can never really be the arterial that 16th, Mass, Ct or 13th are or could be. This is because 15th goes from 6 lanes to 2 lanes at Fl Ave. So all those folk who happily speed at 35, 40, 45+ mph through technically 30 mph downtown Dupont/Logan just end up slowed and stuck when they hit AM/CH, anyway.

Oh, and FYI, I made a mistake in an earlier post. To make the North bound traffic friendly light timing possible, pedestrians are given 18 seconds to cross *6* lanes, not 4. That’s 3 seconds per 10′ wide lane, folks. Not including a little something called “start up time”.

For some scientific data on how dangerous the current conditions are, see: http://www.usroads.com/journals/p/rej/9710/re971001.htm

By: Matty

Matty — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:26:53 +0000

Furthermore, I am not one of those suburbanites who take 10 minutes to parallel park. I am a veteran of city living; I will challenge anyone to a parallel parking contest. Please stop blaming us residents for the bad behavior of others.

By: Matty

Matty — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:24:53 +0000

With all due respect to “parking lessons” — the drivers are very aggressive. One day a woman pulled around to my right side as I was parking (from behind me) and rolled down her window. She screamed “f-you, f-you, f-you” for a full 10 seconds. Another team, a DC cop put on his lights and siren as I was parking. He started screaming at me that I was holding up traffic. I told him that I was parking my car near my home. He screamed that “you can’t park during rush hour.” I thought he was going to arrest me. I was too shocked to get his name or badge and I haven’t seen him since. Cars constantly tailgate me and the drivers get very angry when I slow down to park. Please don’t tell me that I pay some of the highest taxes in the country and cannot park in some civilized way after commuting home from the suburbs.

By: JD

JD — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 01:38:28 +0000

I live just off 15th St on Corcoran. 15th street is not just a local residential street or a major thoroughfare north out of the city — it is both. Both residents and commuters must learn to live with each other and make compromises to make this work. I would leave 15th a one way street N. I would also add a bike lane. I agree rush hour traffic North vastly exceeds speed limits and reasonable safety standards. Either get DC police to monitor and punish offenders or change traffic light patterns to force people to stop more often during rush hour. Do not change the one way streets in this area. Those work fine. If residents cannot park their cars on those streets during rush hour quickly, the answer is not to change traffic patterns but for residents to take parking lessons.

By: Tiarch

Tiarch — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:31:00 +0000

I live on 15th street and it’s a pedestrian’s and resident’s nightmare with traffic, due to noise pollution, cars turning the wrong way on 15th street and most of all the speeding. Taxis being the worst offenders. Then the commuters and big a__ mack trucks speeding up 15th street.
There have been a number of accidents on 15th street involving vehicular and pedestrians, a couple of them fatal at 15th & R street. I’ve seen pedestrians trying to cross in the crosswalk and almost being hit (one last week actually got nipped by a car and the car didn’t bother to stop), and people walking dogs where the dogs have barely made it alive.

If you want to go to MD, get on the beltway…..it’s a highway, made for speed. And how about enforcing the spped limit law?? How about installing a traffic camera? They work, people get to know where they are located and actually slow down. I’m happy to see a 2 lane possibility. The more you give the more people take. If you actually squeeze down the opportunity and make it frustrating, people find alternative routes or they don’t use their car as much! it’s a city, walk.

By: michael

michael — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:35:27 +0000

I live here, too, and I am 110% or more in favor of making 15th St. into a neighborhood street. It is too wide, too hard to cross, too fast, and seems to me more designed to serve Marylanders who aren’t paying for it than those of us who are.

By: DMBT

DMBT — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:21:15 +0000

I live at 15th and R. I prefer options #3 and #4 above.

“U St resident” is correct about 15th St being underutilized most of the day. The few cars using 15th in the afternoon drive way too fast, like they’re on a 4-lane racetrack. Just getting out of our alley onto 15th is a death-defying feat.

By: Jokster

Jokster — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 15:08:39 +0000

2 Identical families! The odds of that happening are like 800 to 1!