As DC faces drastic cuts in its budget, the DC Council today will hear from residents about funding a multi-million dollar ‘protected’ bike lane on Grant Circle, a traffic circle, perhaps the most dangerous street pattern. The problem is that intersections are the place where crashes most often occur and traffic circles are where many intersections converge. Grant Circle at New Hampshire and 5th St., NW, the site of the plan, has 16 intersections. On the advice of consultants, DC again has embraced the most dangerous option, rather than the obvious, safer and less expensive option of avoiding hazards.
Studies by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety show that protected bike lanes (PBLs), where the bike lane is separated from vehicle traffic by concrete barriers or a row of parked cars, are dangerous, depending on the frequency of interruptions in the bike lane – interruptions like intersections. A protected bike lane on Grant Circle will be interrupted by an intersection every 30 or 50 feet.
Under this plan, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) will replace a traffic lane with a PBL, diverting vehicular traffic and congestion to smaller, residential streets. Needless to say, it would be cheaper and safer to divert bike traffic. Residents on Capitol Hill saw a rise in vehicular traffic on side streets after the city installed PBLs on Pennsylvania Ave., SE. DDOT’s ‘before/after’ study of Pennsylvania Ave., SE, shows a dramatic increase in crashes for right-turning vehicles. All traffic entering and leaving Grant Circle turns right.
A failure to communicate
The universal complaint of DC residents around the city is that they did not know a bike lane would be installed. DDOT published a notice of intent on its website (NOI-25-124) with a deadline for comment of June 12, installation to begin this summer.
DC Safe Streets Coalition has begun a protest petition https://chng.it/9ZjNchxbHX and will testify at the Council hearing today.
Nick DelleDonne
June 2, 2025