Facilities Committee Minutes Meeting held at RFD Washington Dec.

6, 2011 Attendees: Name Jeanie Osburn Mike Goodno Kyle Todd Randall Myers Brian McEntee David Alexander Lauren Konopacz Alphonso Coles Affiliation BAC DDOT Wd5/FORIA BAC Wd6 BAC Wd6 BAC email brewbub@verizon.net mike.goodno@dc.gov rkyletodd@gmail.com uno000@yahoo.com bfmcentee@gmail.com 3210mud@gmail.com lkonopacz@gmail.com alcoles@gmail.com

1- Bicycle Parking At the last full BAC meeting David Cranor provided us with information hed gotten through a Freedom of Information Act request. The information included the original legislation for bicycle parking, The Bicycle Commuter and Parking Expansion Act of 2007, L17-0103 as well as a 2010 study report from Alta Planning and Design, and we used these documents as a starting point for discussion about bicycle parking. All at the meeting concurred with the studys report that DCs bicycle parking is woefully inadequate. As the study was commissioned by the DC government, the review focused on bicycle parking at or near DC-owned property as a starting point. The legislation itself specifies in Section 8 (a) that Within 90 days of the effective date of this act, the Mayor, ., shall issue rules to implement the provisions of this act. No one knew of any implementation plan other than the recently drafted Implementation Plan from the Downtown BID. The legislation does not specify what agency within the DC government is responsible for enforcement of the provisions of the Act. Given that, we determined that the best course of action was to write a letter to the Mayor (actually this will end up being a multi-component letter based upon later discussions on other topics) with the following points: no implementation plan was ever developed (perhaps the BID plan could be used as a template) no agency is currently responsible for enforcing the Act the initial goal should be to provide bicycle parking on every block in which there is a DC-owned facility.

Randall and Jeanie will draft a letter to the Mayor. 2- Effective means of communicating input from the BAC FAC rolling meetings The BAC FAC this year held 4 rolling meetings, 3 of them in the areas of DCs Livability Study areas (Rock Creek Park, Far Northeast, Far Southeast) and one in the South Capitol Street corridor. Minutes of those meetings are sent to the BAC email list which includes staff from DDOTs bicycle coordinators office. Jeanie suggested that while thats fine for communicating with the choir, it would probably be more effective to have a shorter version, an executive summary, to send to management. The suggestion was made to send the executive summaries to DDOTs Director Bellamy and Associate Director Zimbabwe as well as the Ward planners in the areas where the rides occur. Other suggestions included providing the

BAC FAC chair or the DDOT rep with a helmet cam to record the rides, because pictures are worth thousands of words. Randall would post the videos on the BAC website. Mike Goodno provided the list of Ward planners and their manager:

Ward 1 Ward 2 Ward 3 Ward 4 Ward 5 Ward 6 Ward 7 Ward 8

Gabriela Vega, gabriela.vega@dc.gov, 478-1458 VACANT VACANT Anna Chamberlin, anna.chamberlin@dc.gov, 671-2218 VACANT Jamie Henson, jamie.henson@dc.gov, 671-1324 Gabe Onyeador, gabe.onyeador@dc.gov, 671-0590 Charles Thomas, charles.thomas@dc.gov, 671-1373

Their manager is Chris Delfs, christopher.delfs@dc.gov, 671-1598

Associate director is Sam Zimbabwe, sam.zimbabwe@dc.gov, 671-2542

Jeanie will draft a final report of BAC FACs 2011 rides for Bellamy, Zimbabwe, (ward 3 is vacant), Gabe Onyeandor, Charles Thomas, Jamie Henson, and Chris Delfs 3- Effective means of assuring DDOT designers involve bike/ped office in planning projects As noted in item 2, the BAC FAC has done several rides in 2011, and has come across instances in which it appears that DDOT has internal communication problems, because the bike/ped office often has no idea what is being planned until it is too late in the process to change it. Instances include the South Capitol Street bridge replacement, the widening of South Capitol Street by St. Elizabeths new Department of Homeland Security campus, and the reconstruction of Benning Road. This topic came up at the last DC BAC meeting, and Jeanie has an action item to write a letter to Director Bellamy. The group talked about having a bigger impact by positively linking planning for bicycling with the Mayors Sustainable DC efforts now underway. It is critical to have bicycle representation on the Sustainable DC Transportation Working Group whose next meeting is Dec. 15 from 6:30PM to 8:30PM at the Hearing Room, Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, 1100 4th Street, Second Floor. A government-issued ID is required to enter the building. Jeanie is unable to attend the meeting on Dec. 15 and appealed to others to attend. 4- Budget item- routine maintenance of bike facilities DC has spent significant amounts of money to improve bicycling facilities, bike lanes, new trails, bikeshare, etc, and it is important to maintain those facilities to continue to increase the number of people using bikes as transportation. Bike lanes and trails need to be swept routinely and overgrowth needs to be cut back. DPW is supposed to be maintaining the facilities, but they either dont have the budget or the will to do what needs to be done. Some trails such as the MBT have the good fortune of having citizens who take it upon themselves (THANKS HEATHER DEUTSCH!) to spend lots of their own free time getting rid of litter and making the trail appealing. But just as DC streets get street sweeping done regularly, the trails also need regular maintenance. Suggestions were to include this issue in the letter to Mayor Gray (copy David Howland), take photos and send them to CM Cheh who chairs the committee with oversight of DPW and DDOT, send a copy of

what we send to Cheh to Office of General Council (David Alexander will get the name), post photos on twitter and/or the BAC website to get more voices from the bicycling community. David Alexander suggested there may be a tie in with DCs pot hole legislation in which DC is not responsible for damage due to a pot hole unless they knew about it (theres a database thats maintained for this purpose). The letters and communications to the above people need to highlight the need to maintain the facilities that DC has invested in and also tie that into Sustainable DC. 5- 2012 Bike Lanes Mike Goodno reported that in 2011 so far DDOT has only been able to stripe about 1 mile of bike lanes. Part of that apparently is due to no more low-hanging fruit and part due to paperwork getting hung up within DDOT for months. Mike thought that now that the contract is in place, if the weather were good through the end of the month, it may be possible to end up with a total of 5 miles of bike lanes striped in 2011. Mike brought the attached plan for proposed bike lanes for 2012 and asked for input from the bicycling community. When the bicycling community applies pressure in the form of contacting their representatives (ANC, CM, Mayor) the probability of getting resources needed to add bike lanes increases dramatically. So getting the bicycling community engaged is important here, too, and methods such as Twitter, Facebook, and other social media were important. (as an aside, the 3 non-BAC attendees learned about the BAC FAC meeting via twitter). We also discussed the need to update the DC Bicycle Master Plan. Jeanie recalled that a previous BAC meeting it was suggested that we not update the Master Plan, but rather put bicycling in the general Transportation Plan. Mike said hed talked Sam Zimbabwe, who is the DDOT Associate Director and who is responsible for the multi-modal Transportation Plan. Mr. Zimbabwe told Mike that due to the huge scope of the multi-modal Transportation Plan, it would be advisable to update the Master Plan so that bicycling did not get dwarfed. Jeanie suggested this is a topic to discuss at a full BAC meeting. Subsequent to the meeting, attendee Lauren Konopacz reserved a twitter handle, helpbikedc with the thought this could be a repository for people with questions/concerns/suggestions regarding biking in DC, much like potholepalooza. The address is twitter.com/helpbikedc. 6- Friends of Rhode Island Ave (FORIA) FORIA is a newly assembled group that is promoting improvements along RIA including commercial facilities as well as improved bicycling. We focused on bicycling. No one knew what the plans are for Rhode Island Avenue (RIA) with regard to bicycling. Some thought that DC considered it a poor bicycling level of service and should be avoided, others thought there was a plan to put bike lanes there, others said its a Great Street project. Whatever scenario is the case, the point was well made that DC is a largely residential street and is currently carrying many brave cyclists. Jeanie lives along RIA, and has seen an ever-increasing number of these brave souls. Kyle indicated that a councilman in Mt. Rainier, is interested in continuing any RIA bike improvements DC makes through Mt. Rainier. Lauren made a point that RIA is a direct link between University of Maryland and downtown DC, and with improved cycling conditions, even more people would opt to ride from College Park, MD into DC. Kyle outlined several things in the hopper for RIA including CM Thomass task force, Mt. Raniers interest in developing the area at RIA and Eastern, a proposed improvement district between 17th St and South Dakota Ave NE. FORIA is a newly formed group that is free to join (go to http://www.friendsofria.org/). Kyle said FORIA needs any assistance it can get to improve conditions along RIA. Jeanie suggested doing our first rolling ride of 2012 (April) on RIA. All at the meeting suggested that an after-work ride might be

verging on suicidal. Perhaps with a helmet cam the point that cyclists need better conditions could be well made. Meeting adjourned minutes before 8PM. The next meeting will be February 7, 2012 at 6PM at an undetermined location (Caps game at Verizon Center that night precludes meeting in the Gallery Place area)