OK, so there’s more to the SmartBikes than the fact that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty knows how to ride one.

Here’s what you need to know:

• After numerous delays, the program is now live. However, to use it, you need to get a SmartBike card, which costs $40 per year but allows unlimited bike use. You need a credit card and must be over 18. It can take up to two weeks to get a card after ordering one online.
• You can find racks at the following locales: Logan Circle (14th Street & Rhode Island Avenue NW), Gallery Place (7th & F Streets NW), Dupont Circle (Massachusetts Avenue NW west of Dupont Circle), Farragut Square (17th & K Streets NW), Reeves Center (14th & U Streets NW), Metro Center (12th & G Streets NW), Shaw (7th & T Streets NW), Judiciary Square (4th & E Streets NW), Foggy Bottom (23rd & I Streets NW), McPherson Square (14th & H Streets NW).
• You are allowed to keep a bike for up to three hours. If you keep the bike more than three hours, you get a warning placed on your account; do it a second time, and your account is terminated. Keep one more than 24 hours, and your credit card is charged $550 for a replacement bike.
• You may be wondering, if everyone grabs a bike in their neighborhood in the morning to ride to work, how will there be enough parking spaces downtown for all the commuters? That problem is solved by having a van that can carry bikes from full racks to empty racks; a computer in the van can track the status of each rack thanks to an RFID chip in the handlebars of each bike.
• The bikes are equipped with kickstands, mudguards, bells, hand and coaster brakes, and three-speed internal gearing.
• There’s some gaps in the rack coverage, Georgetown and Capitol Hill being the glaring exceptions. Transportation department spokesperson Karyn LeBlanc says the city is about to start looking at new locations, moving out “spherically” from the city core.
• All your other questions can be answered at the SmartBike Web site. You might ask, why isn’t it part of the city’s Web site? That’s because the program is being run by ClearChannel Outdoor as part of the city’s bus shelter contract.

About a half-hour ago, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty rode one of the District’s new SmartBikes without incident.

Fenty, some two weeks after a crash on his racing bicycle aggravated a prior foot injury and left him houseridden for days, checked out Bike No. 9 at the newly operational Frank D. Reeves Center rack and rode it along the U Street NW sidewalk for a good 90 seconds, maintaining perfect balance and impeccable pedaling technique.

After the ride, Fenty told reporters he’s back on the “CompuTrainer,” a sort of dyno for bikes, and that he’s been cleared to run next week. Fenty was no longer sporting the walking boot he’d been wearing before his trip to China.

LL is going to take the departure of D.C. Department of Transportation Director Emeka Moneme as an opportunity to mention a problem that he knows is being solved by Moneme’s old agency in a thoughtful and thorough manner but has been such a longstanding menace to LL’s quality of life that he feel compelled to rant about it to no particular end.

Seriously, what the hell is up with Columbus Circle?

OK, DDOT, LL knows that you’re aware of the problems and you’ve done a painstaking redesign, but let me tell you: As he rides his bike across the cracked and bus-deformed asphalt in front of Union Station, almost popping his tire there for the 900th time in his life, He had to wonder: What in AASHTO is taking so long?

The thing isn’t just a menace to cyclists (which it has been for years). When LL drives through there at night, he can never tell if he’s in the proper lane, seeing as (a) the lane markings are severely worn and (b) the lighting is piss-poor. Seriously, coming off Mass Ave from the west after dusk, it’s suddenly like you’re on a desolate stretch of rural interstate highway at 3 a.m. (That probably has something with special lighting regs for the federal core, but Jesus, it’s dark!)

A WTOP article from last summer suggested this whole thing could be done by 2009. DDOT spokesperson Karyn LeBlanc says design work on the plan—which isn’t just about repaving, but re aligning lanes, including “intermodal” features, etc—is now 90 percent complete, and designs will be presented for approval by the federal Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission in September. Best case scenario, reconstruction starts in January; most likely, LeBlanc says, it won’t kick off till later in spring.

Yarrrgh!

The WaPo’s Lena Sun and David Nakamura are reporting that city transportation director Emeka Moneme is resigning to take Metro’s chief administrative officer post. The scoop is attributed to “sources”; here’s the juicy part:

The Fenty administration was said to be angered by Metro’s grab of Moneme; the news comes with Fenty out of town on vacation this week. But Moneme was said by some government sources to be irked by Fenty’s hands-on managing style…

Fenty spokesperson Dena Iverson confirms the news and says press releases will be forthcoming from the city and Metro around 2 p.m. As far as any Fenty frustration, she says, “There are no hard feelings.”

UPDATE, 1:50 P.M.: Let the replacement speculation begin! According to folks LL has consulted, the likely and safest choice for at least an interim replacement would be Kathleen Penney, the agency’s chief engineer, who has subbed for Moneme at public appearances he couldn’t make. Or will City Administrator Dan Tangherlini pluck someone with director experience at one of the city’s smaller agencies to do one of the highest-profile jobs in city government (and one Tangherlini once held himself). Clark Ray, perhaps?

UPDATE, 2:45 P.M.:The CW was wrong: Frank Seales Jr., DDOT’s general counsel and a generally unknown quantity, has been named interim director.

This afternoon, the D.C. Council’s public works and environment committee voted to strip $2 million meant to reconstruct Klingle Road NW from Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s budget proposal. Furthermore, the committee voted to add language to budget legislation requiring the road to remain closed, effectively overturning a 2003 council vote to reopen the road.

For LL’s take on the whole sordid story and how it got to this point, read this.

Committee chair and Ward 1 councilmember Jim Graham supported spending the money, as did Ward 4’s Muriel Bowser. Ward 3’s Mary Cheh, Ward 7’s Yvette Alexander, and at-large member Kwame R. Brown opposed doing so. Ward 8’s Marion Barry, though not a committee member, also showed up to speak in support of keeping the road closed.

The full council is free to revisit the decision when the budget legislation moves forward next month.

Updates to come.

UPDATE, 3:50 P.M.: A subsequent amendment by Cheh moves the $2 million in local money to alley repairs and earmarks another $2 million out of the District’s federal funds for environmental remediation of Klingle Valley and construction of a recreation trail.

UPDATE, 4:17 P.M.: After the markup ended, Graham vowed to take the matter to the full council at the May 13 budget session. He also said he intends to hold a public “roundtable” on the Klingle issue in the two weeks interim. “I think there’s going to be a lot of discussion,” he says. During the hearing, Graham had proposed delaying any vote until such a roundtable could be held. Cheh & Co. voted it down; “The public had had ample time….I don’t know anything that’s been debated more than Klingle Road,” she said.

UPDATE, 7:30 P.M.: The Fenty response, from spokesperson Carrie Brooks: “The Mayor will defer to the judgment of the members of the Committee on Public Works and the Environment on this issue. Having served as a councilmember for six years, he certainly appreciates the legislature’s role in shaping the District’s budget.”

In this week’s column, LL detailed the political machinations beneath the latest resurrection of the interminable Klingle Road dispute. In the process of counting the votes on a $2 million budget line item to move forward with road reconstruction, LL chose to count At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown as a “Spineless Wind-Twister” thanks to his comments in favor of further debate of an issue that has been debated for 17 years.

Well, yesterday, Brown called LL up and gave him an earful for lumping him in with Ward 8 Councilmember Marion S. Barry Jr. in that category. LL visited Brown’s office and listened as Brown explained his deep convictions—and campaign promises—against spending local money on Klingle Road repairs.

So there you have it folks: LL is officially pulling Brown from the Spineless Wind-Twisters and putting him amoung the proud ranks of the Bleeding-Heart Tree-Huggers. That’s brings the running count to eight anti-road votes, four pro-roaders, and one unknown.

Brown’s conviction also means that the mayor’s $2 million Klingle Road line item isn’t going to make it out of the council’s committee on public works and the environment. Committee chair and Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham favors spending the money, as does Ward 4’s Muriel Bowser, but the other three committee members—Mary Cheh of Ward 3, Yvette Alexander of Ward 7, and Brown—are all now unequivocally on the record against it.

Look for that $2 million to be directed elsewhere at the committee’s April 30 budget markup.

Photo of Klingle Road by Darrow Montgomery

Cynthia Pratt guesses at least 200 cars had to be moved from two blocks of Hobart Street NW in Mount Pleasant for tree trimming early this month. But as usual, some residents disregarded the no-parking signs. In the past, parking scofflaws were ticketed, and trimmers worked around the cars, says Pratt, who has lived on the street for more than 30 years. Not this time.

When the trimmers arrived, they saw the cars and left without starting their saws, Pratt says. But not before calling parking enforcement, which doled out $50 parking tickets. “They didn’t even try to do any work,” says Pratt, whose husband had taken their Toyota to work. “They could have done so much, but they just didn’t.”

When Pratt called the Urban Forestry Administration, she was told the contractor didn’t trim the trees because the contract said he had to cut them all at once. “We talked for a long time about what’s practical in the city,” Pratt says.

Erik Linden, a spokesman for District Department of Transportation, says the agency is looking into what happened on Hobart Street. “It appears that the job was not done, but that we were not necessarily informed that the job was not done,” Linden says, adding that DDOT sent the contactor a letter of warning.

Linden says the trimmers will be back to Hobart Street. Pratt hopes it will be soon. During winter storms, she says, falling branches from the 60-foot oaks will “make a mess out of somebody’s car.”

Last week, Arthur Delaney wrote about Billi, a gentleman who had been living in between lanes of I-395 for weeks. Yesterday, the city evicted Billi & Co. from their spot under the 9th Street SW overpass.

Channel 9 was there with cameras.

D.C.’s Department of Transportation scored a few supportive mainstream-media articles after its August 17 announcement that its Circulator bus service had boarded its four millionth rider sometime earlier that week. Four million is a lot, right?

Well, no. Metrorail handles that many trips in less than a week. And the 30 line, Metrobus’s busiest, carries that many passengers in about 200 days. It took the Circulator’s three routes approximately 760 days to reach the four million number. That means the service has carried, on average, about half the 10,000 to 11,000 daily passengers Circulator co-planner Dan Tangherlini
projected in 2005. (Tangherlini’s number was for 2008 and may have been supplanted by later estimates. But if those exist, DDOT won’t release them.)

Secret numbers and boosterish press releases aside, the fact that the Circulator is struggling is revealed by DDOT’s regular tinkering with the Union Station to Georgetown line, the only one (almost) anyone uses. The latest attempt to boost low ridership partly undoes the last one: Half the buses will return to the original course, which entered Georgetown via K Street and turned back to Union Station at the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and L Street. The rest will continue to follow the reroute instituted in March, taking M Street into Georgetown and continuing up Wisconsin Avenue to the Georgetown Safeway.

The latter route—which is longer, more congested, and thus slower—was designed to serve riders on the canceled Georgetown Metro Connection “Blue Buses” that ran from Foggy Bottom to upper Georgetown. That service was killed to reduce costs for its sponsor, Georgetown’s Business Improvement District, which also pays a small subsidy to the Circulator. But the end of that blue-bus line was also clearly intended to boost Circulator passengers, which apparently didn’t work.

The change will significantly reduce service levels for riders who need one of the two subroutes. Buses between Union Street and 20th & K Streets will maintain, if all goes well, the existing 10-minute headways. But the two Georgetown legs should see red Circulator buses only every 20 minutes or so. That should send some passengers back to where they came: Metro’s 30 and D lines, whose ridership the Circulator has cannibalized.

Perhaps someday DDOT will pay some attention to Metrobus, which carries most of D.C.’s bus riders. But it’s a lot simpler to keep dabbling with the Circulator, which can be manipulated with impunity precisely because its role in D.C.’s transportation system is so negligible.

The Current newspapers are built to channel gripes. The paper’s reporters blitz ANC meetings, zoning hearings, and council sessions, the better to fill each Wednesday’s edition with the latest on the NIMBY front. If there’s a liquor-license spat, a row over dog poop, or someone bitching about traffic flows, the Current is on it, provided that it occurs within its reportorial jurisdiction (essentially, wealthy Northwest).

But the latest edition is stretches the formula a bit, with an extensive report on the dangers of brick sidewalks. Titled “Bricks bring worries for some pedestrians,” the piece inventories various concerns from activists about brick’s unevenness and the potential for treacherous sidewalk conditions. Here’s one: “‘As much as I like the look of brick sidewalks…they cause a lot of wear and tear on a scooter,’ said Laurie Coburn, a Dupont Circle disabilities advocate who uses a motorized scooter to get around.”

Not to dis the disabled, but if this is as bad as the case gets against brick, I’m not switching allegiances. Brick sidewalks are one of the greatest ever streetscape accomplishments of the District government. And sure, there’ve been detractors, like former Washington Post reporter Vernon Loeb, who in the late ’90s wrote a nasty piece slamming the city for putting in brick sidewalks and nice curbs on a then-desolate stretch of Massachusetts Avenue east of the NPR building. Well, look at that real estate now: It’s a booming part of the city, and I’d like to think that the city’s foresight in installing the nice sidewalks had something to do with it.

There’s no gray in this picture whatsoever: DDOT does fabulous work in installing brick sidewalks in all kinds of neighborhoods. The real wonder is how well it’s all done. Sure, there may be a place or two where the brick is uneven or a touch dicey, but by and large it’s solid as a rock. I wish the brick in my entryway were as well laid.

Commuters beware: Your northbound launching pad is in peril.

The District’s Department of Transportation is weighing proposals to turn this four-lane expressway into a sleepy, two-way neighborhoody street. Rerouting would affect the portion of 15th from the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue NW all the way up to Florida Avenue/W Street.

According to DDOT spokesman Erik Linden, the stretch of asphalt in question has “become increasingly residential” in recent years. “The general theory behind converting such a corridor to two-way is to help calm traffic and improve access for residents. Too often our one-way streets downtown become speedways instead of livable city streets. If we move forward, the goal would be to change that.”

And Linden emphasizes that the “if,” in this case, is pretty big. “It’s important to note that no decision has been made - DDOT is studying the feasibility of this option and engaging residents and businesses before moving forward,” writes Linden via e-mail. “We are in the early stages.”

Those early stages have yielded an assortment of proposals for the thoroughfare. In addition to the status quo (one way, four travel lanes, two parking lanes), they include the following:

1) Three northbound lanes, two expanded parking lanes, and a bike lane.

2) Three northbound lanes, two parking lanes, and bike lanes going both ways.

3) Two northbound lanes, one southbound lane, two parking lanes, and bike lanes going both ways.

4) One northbound lane, one southbound lane, one turn lane, two parking lanes, two bike lanes.

Why is DDOT taking a hard look at such a reliable route to the north? Community-building gets us part of the way there. With people repopulating the city, Linden says, “many are requesting a more neighborhood feel to their surroundings, and converting one-way streets to two-way streets is one way to do this.”

Another factor: “Preliminary” DDOT studies suggest that this part of 15th Street is underutilized, a suggestion that seems a bit at odds with the daily rush-hour scene of motorists piled up at lights along the corridor, revving their engines in hopes of beating the next red light up the street.

The city is now gathering input from residents on the plan and has already given a look-see to nearby advisory neighborhood commissions. If a change is made, says Linden, it’ll happen within the next year or two.

It’s not hard to foresee the battle lines on this plan. Anyone who lives in Dupont East/Logan Circle will welcome a break from the raceway that is now 15th. And just about anyone who lives north of U Street–Maryland commuters, sure, but also Mount Pleasanteers and Ward 4 people–will lament the loss of their conduit out of downtown.

DOWNLOAD: Possible configurations of 15th Street (PDF)

If everyone drives to a sold-out game at the new Nationals stadium, the result will be a mess.

That was the unstated message of the Aug. 2 “open house” held to brief D.C. residents on the Traffic Operations and Parking Plan (TOPP) for the stadium, which is scheduled to open for the 2008 baseball season. Representatives of Metro, D.C.’s transportation department, and consulting firm Grove/Slade Associates were on hand to explain the various TOPP maps and graphs. But none of them could say what will happen if most Nats fans drive, or if they ignore the complicated game-days scheme for traffic flow, street closings, color-coded parking sectors, and on-street parking restrictions.

Anyone who perused the maps, or walked the nearby streets, would have noticed that the site of the under-construction stadium is less accessible than RFK, the team’s current home. It’s served by one Metro line rather than two and can be reached by fewer major thoroughfares and bus routes.

At least there are some ideas about remedying the latter problem. The stadium’s opening might spur extensions of the N22 Union Station-Navy Yard shuttle (whose conversion to Circulator service is being considered) and the 7th Street Circulator line. Also possible, in theory, is a game-only express Circulator directly from Union Station to the stadium.

The N22 expansion makes sense, even if its roundabout route to the stadium, via 8th Street SE, might discourage baseball fans from riding. But the express line is dependent on the reopening of 1st Street SE alongside the Library of Congress’ Madison Building, which has been fortified since 9/11. That’s not gonna happen. And the extension of the 7th Street Circulator, which would also offer an indirect approach to Natsland, seems primarily designed to coerce a few more people onto a route that currently attracts almost no passengers. (At the TOPP event, even a Metro representative allowed that ridership on the 7th Street Circ is “light.”)

Possible supplemental transit strategies include a bicycle “valet” to encourage gamegoers to cycle to the stadium and a water taxi to the area. The latter seems a long shot, however, even if four companies have reportedly expressed interest in a 18-month pilot program. After all, a water taxi could only ferry people from other sites that have mediocre transit access and limited parking, like Georgetown and Old Town Alexandria.

The principal revelation of the TOPP event had nothing to do with transportation, however. The open house was held on the unoccupied top floor of 20 M Street SE, which turned out to be a new office building developed by the Lerner family, who also own the Nats. The 10-story building was appointed with baseball-related art, an outdoor video screen that showed stylized images of the game, and an electronic signboard that welcomed attendees in the name of the Lerners. Inside, each person who entered the session was offered a soft-sided mini-cooler branded with the Nats’ logo.

From the 10th floor, there was an unencumbered vista of the stadium but also a view of the new official plan for Washington: Block after block of bland office cubes, with no public structures, few shops or restaurants, and little public space. And those blocks that haven’t been ceded to private developers will be the province of the security-crazed feds. So enjoy that soft-sided mini-cooler, Mr. and Ms. D.C. It’s all you’re getting.

DDOT these days is exploring all sorts of ways to make the city more pedestrian friendly. That quest includes a first-ever public meeting on pedestrian issues that our city planning expert, Mark Jenkins, skewered in this very space.

I didn’t attend, but I have a belated recommendation: End the tyranny of right on red. No single traffic rule—actually, permission—so routinely horrifies and puts in danger the noble pedestrians of the District of Columbia. At any well-traveled intersection, the right-on-redders are constantly pulling up into the crosswalk, cutting off and, I’m sure, occasionally clipping those on foot.

And why wouldn’t they? Think about the dynamics of the right on red: As you approach the intersection in your vehicle, you spot the red. You see that the lightpost has no sign prohibiting the turn. At that point, as you creep up to the light, you pivot your head to the left, waiting for a break in the traffic, so that you can do your right on red without sideswiping someone. You spot a break in the flow, and execute your R on R.

Oh, but what about that poor jogger who just (legally) started across the crosswalk! You didn’t see him because you were looking the other way, worried only about other cars.

Step 1: Scrap R on R. Step 2: Actually enforce traffic laws.

Terry Lynch, the persistent municipal watchdog and executive director of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations, recently celebrated a victory. Having finally compelled the city to do a blast removal of dozens of abandoned bikes chained to street signs and tree boxes, he fired off a jubilant press release. The memo included a list of nearly 100 suspect bike frames which Lynch had provided to officials in order to speed the cleanup process along.

According to transportation officials, more than 50 abandoned bicycles have been cut off and sent to the dump with the help of Lynch’s list. There was just one little hiccup of a glitch: Some of the bikes that were sent to the heap belonged to living cyclists.

The process is supposed to protect rightful owners: the Department of Transportation first tags a bike, giving the owner 10 days to move it or call and make a claim. If no one intervenes, the Department of Public Works removes the bike.

Lynch says he copied DPW employees when he sent his list to the Department of Transportation. According to Jim Sebastian, the DDOT’s bicycle program manager, DPW officials must have thought the list was already approved and snapped into action. So far, just two of the heretofore abandoned bicycles have been claimed; one was successfully rescued from the dump. It seems likely that others may have gone the way of the Velveteen rabbit—and that the owners simply assumed their steeds had been stolen.

And yes, the abandoned bikes are taken to the dump—the Fort Totten transfer station, to be specific—not donated.

Press release and list of bikes after the jump.

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Orange flags arrived in Chevy Chase to great media fanfare in 2005. Inspired by a similar program in Salt Lake City, area residents had lobbied the city for buckets of the flags at two intersections on Connecticut Avenue NW to help pedestrians safely cross from Safeway to Child’s Play or the American City Diner.

For two years, people pranced and danced and twirled their flags in the face of oncoming cars, and the traffic mostly slowed down for them (except for one poor soul who was hit during a blizzard while carrying the flag). But when the flags disappeared this year from the intersection of Connecticut and Morrison Streets NW, no one called a press conference. Indeed, even some longtime Chevy Chase residents apparently didn’t notice that in March, the city replaced the flags with a bona fide streetlight equipped with a pedestrian call button.

George Branyan, the pedestrian program coordinator for the District Department of Transportation, says he’s seen several people just walk out into traffic, oblivious to the new signal.

On the other hand, a vocal minority of Chevy Chase folks has complained to his office that the light is causing backups and forcing cars onto side streets. But Branyan won’t be bringing back the flags. Instead, the city will work out the hiccups with the light in the coming months.

“I personally am not a big fan of the flags,” Branyan says. “I just don’t think you should have to wave a flag to cross a street.” Those who preferred the flags with their street crossings can still find them two blocks north, at Connecticut and Northampton Streets, at least for now.

—Stephanie Mencimer