DC’s H Street Northeast should go car-free

A car blocks the streetcar tracks on H Street NE, causing an unnecessary delay for riders. (Photo by me)

New York’s 14^th Street Busway has proven a smashing success, and San Francisco’s Market Street is set to emulate its breakthrough.

People in DC should also have the opportunity to enjoy a vibrant, mixed-use corridor that’s both easy to access and free of oppressive automobile traffic. Just about any thoroughfare in the region would benefit from more equitable allocation of space between modes.

But Northeast DC’s eclectic, already transit-rich H Street Corridor is ripe for immediate progress.

H Street has an array of transit and cycling options, but cars impede their safety and performance

The section of H Street NE between Union Station and Bladensburg Road is a robust dual-mode transit corridor.

The fareless DC Streetcar serves five stations along the corridor, complementing WMATA’s local X2 Metrobus (a rare example of a 24-hour transit route in the nation’s capital), the limited-stop X9, and the rush-hour-only X1. The D4, which connects up-and-coming areas including Ivy City and Trinidad to the city center, runs on K Street, just two blocks to the north. Numerous trunk north-south Metrobus routes, including the 90, 92, B2, and D8, intersect the east-west H Street Corridor, and riders can transfer to Metrorail, the DC Circulator, all of the region’s suburban rail lines, and Amtrak at Union Station.

Many people bike to residences and businesses along the corridor. Capital Bikeshare has five stations on H between 3^rd and 15^th streets, as well as numerous others just a block or two away. Additionally, substantial portions of parallel F, G and I streets have bike lanes.

H Street is also an essential connection for intercity buses that serve Union Station’s bus terminal. Routes operated by the likes of Greyhound, Megabus, BoltBus, and Peter Pan traverse the corridor on their way to and from destinations throughout the Northeast.

But all of these options are forced to fight for space with inefficient automobile traffic.

The streetcar is particularly vulnerable to automobile-caused delays because ride-hailing vehicles, people picking up take-out food, and sloppy parallel parkers block its tracks all too often. The H Street Runners Club even holds an annual event at which joggers outpace the streetcar’s 5.7 mph average speed.

Bus riders, who already are disproportionately harmed by traffic congestion, aren’t spared either. Coalition for Smarter Growth and MetroHero gave H Street’s WMATA routes F grades for headway and schedule adherence on their May 2019 Metrobus Report Card; about 40 percent of buses serving these routes operated outside of tolerance.

The street’s existing setup has had deadly results for cyclists who, in spite of the aforementioned bike lanes on parallel roads, must use H Street at times to get home, access their jobs, or patronize the corridor’s businesses. In June 2018, 19-year-old Malik Habib was biking on the street when his wheel got caught in the streetcar tracks. This caused him to fall into the path of a bus in the adjacent lane, and he died in the collision.   

       

What would a car-free H Street look like?

H Street NE currently has six lanes between Union Station and Bladensburg Road, three in each direction. The right-most lanes are primarily for car parking, while automobiles and transit fight for space in the center and left-most lanes. Cyclists have no dedicated right-of-way on H Street, and must choose between riding on the sidewalk, in a traffic lane, or on a parallel street.   

Streetcars operate on tracks in the center lanes and serve stations that consist of sidewalk bulb-outs into the parking lane. Metrobuses also primarily use the center lanes, but serve curbside bus stops (which require a merge into the parking lane to access) rather than the streetcar stations. Intercity buses primarily use the left-most lanes on their way to and from Union Station, and Metrobuses occasionally use this lane to pass.

The corridor would function more efficiently and safely if it is redesigned to prioritize people, as follows:

• The right-most lanes should be converted into raised, protected bike lanes. At streetcar stations, the protected bike lanes would run between the main sidewalk and the bulb-outs, a design that’s succeeded in other cities, such as San Francisco.
• The center lanes would still carry streetcars and Metrobuses. However, without automobile traffic in their way, the streetcars could travel between stations at their designed speed of up to 35 mph. In addition, bus stops and streetcar stations should be consolidated, allowing passengers to simply board whichever service comes first for trips within the dual-mode corridor and eliminating any need for buses to merge into and out of bike lanes to pick up passengers.
• The left-most lanes would be primarily for intercity buses, whose travel times would also improve. Limited-stop Metrobuses could still use these lanes to pass local buses and streetcars, but these interactions would be smoother and safer without automobiles involved. The lanes also would remain open to emergency vehicles.     

H Street businesses already enjoy car-free success

A viable proposal for a car-free H Street will likely draw opposition from the typical sources. Expect opponents to storm public hearings and online comment sections with two primary talking points:

• The improvements would cause nightmarish traffic congestion on nearby streets.
• The improvements would be disastrous for local businesses.

Both of these points, of course, are easy to debunk. Comparable street improvements, both domestic and abroad, have not caused an increase in congestion on parallel roads and in some cases actually reduce travel times for drivers. The reason is simple: there’s still just as much street space, but because people traveling through the corridor use more spatially-efficient modes the street’s capacity increases.

Similarly, while some may argue businesses will fail if drivers can’t park or ride-hailing cars can’t stop right in front of them, such arguments are not evidence-based. In reality, a substantial portion of customers patronizing establishments on comparably transit-oriented corridors do so without getting in a car.

Accordingly, eliminating obstacles to these customers’ access boosts business. And on H Street’s biggest day of business, the corridor is already car-free.

The annual H Street Festival, held in September this year, draws 150,000 people – more than the combined crowd that attended the Nationals’ three World Series home games this past weekend. During the festival, the street is temporarily pedestrian-only. A permanent mix of biking, walking, and multiple transit modes would do even more for businesses’ day-to-day operations.   

A car-free H Street’s benefits would extend throughout DC

Converting H Street NE into a thoroughfare exclusively for transit, biking, and walking would not just improve travel within the immediate corridor between Union Station and Bladensburg Road. Rather, it would immediately make mobility throughout DC more functional, while also catalyzing support for further regional transportation improvements.

H Street’s X-series bus routes currently extend as far east as Capitol Heights, MD and, via Downtown DC, as far west as Foggy Bottom. Also, near-term plans call for extension of the streetcar line to Benning Road Metro Station, doubling its length and providing direct transfers to three additional Metrorail lines. And if improvements reduce vehicle miles traveled – particularly ride-hailing VMT – not only would the corridor be more accessible for all, but lives would be saved region-wide.

Over time, other corridors will want to emulate a car-free H Street’s success, and future bus route realignments – associated with WMATA’s ongoing Bus Transformation Project – would help maximize these corridors’ utility.

For example, an upgraded H Street NE, along with the now-permanent H and I Street NW bus lanes in downtown, could form the beginnings of a dedicated east-west corridor for surface transit. The proposed K Street Transitway will add redundancy and capacity to this crosstown corridor, which would serve as the first phase of an extensive network of frequent, reliable mobility that, in conjunction with Metrorail, connects the region and brings people together.