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Mount Pleasant DC Forum
Discussion about the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood
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jack
Joined: 23 Mar 2004
Posts: 4416
Location: 19th & Lamont
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 Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 1:00 pm Post subject: Newton Street traffic |
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| MPHS wrote: | Yes, congestion. At least in my experience. But, nothing compared to southbound 16th St in the am commute hours, or, oddly, on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
Speed bumps will rattle your homes, and generate a lot of stop and go noise, so be careful what you wish for. |
Yes, I agree with that. Speed humps (not bumps, please, those are what you find in parking lots) definitely have their drawbacks. But the residents of blocks that have gotten them (e.g., Monroe, 17th) swear by them.
-- Jack |
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Jennrgolden
Joined: 21 Jan 2006
Posts: 275
Location: Newton St
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| Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 1:14 pm Post subject: |
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I can deal with a little noise if it means the cars will slow down...don't forget we're talking about the blocks in front of and just before the elementary school.
_________________
- Jenn |
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Subcity
Joined: 17 Mar 2010
Posts: 203
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| Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 7:13 pm Post subject: |
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Until recent years, wasn't Park Road 2 lanes at rush hour?
If Park Road backs up at rush hour now, such that people take alternate routes through the neighborhood, maybe a good solution would be making Park Road a better through street. Make Park Road the better way to go.
There is a need for efficient east-west routes in the city. Or, the city should fess up that it doesn't want people to drive across town.
Irving used to have its lights timed all the way to Washington Hospital. Now, not only are the lights miss-timed, DDOT refuses to paint lanes so traffic often backs up as a jagged, single lane. Same with Harvard Street, eastbound from 16th - no striping for what is supposed to be a 2-lane (1-way) street.
DDOT paints stripes on streets in and out of the city - the streets that are essential to commuters. Yet, they don't paint stripes on cross-town streets - the streets that residents are most likely to consider important, day to day. Why is that? Seems to me, if DC wants to discourage commuters from driving in and out of town every day, they'd want to make the commuter streets inefficient , such as 16th Street. Instead, they do that only to the cross-town streets.
Last edited by Subcity on Fri Feb 10, 2012 7:59 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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Subcity
Joined: 17 Mar 2010
Posts: 203
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| Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 7:30 pm Post subject: Re: Newton Street traffic |
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| jack wrote: | | MPHS wrote: | Yes, congestion. At least in my experience. But, nothing compared to southbound 16th St in the am commute hours, or, oddly, on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
Speed bumps will rattle your homes, and generate a lot of stop and go noise, so be careful what you wish for. |
Yes, I agree with that. Speed humps (not bumps, please, those are what you find in parking lots) definitely have their drawbacks. But the residents of blocks that have gotten them (e.g., Monroe, 17th) swear by them.
-- Jack |
Well, irrespective of what the city calls them, many of them are not really "speed humps" - they are too narrow and high for that. A proper "speed hump" on a street set for 25 MPH would not cause a car traveling 15 MPH to bottom out, yet many of the ones around here do that.
"Most agencies implement speed humps with a height of 3 to 3.5 inches (76 to 90 mm) and a travel length of 12 to 14 feet (3.7 to 4.3 m). Speed humps are generally used on residential local streets...
"Speed bumps generally have a height of 3 to 6 inches (76 to 152 mm) with a travel length of 1 to 3 feet (0.3 to 1 m). "
SOURCE: "Updated Guidelines for the Design and Application of Speed Humps" by Margaret Parkhill, P.Eng., Rudolph Sooklall, M.A.Sc, Geni Bahar, P.Eng. 2007
None of the humps/bumps I've seen in Mt P and Columbia Heights have a travel length of 12-14 feet. And their profiles/cross-sections are wrong. Also, "speed humps" are generally supposed to be passable at 20 MPH, and most of these humps/bumps are not.
If you want to see properly installed "speed humps", there are some in Adams Morgan on Lanier, east of Ontario.
Based on the safe-travel speeds for these "things" and their dimenisons, if they are anything, what we have around here are indeed "speed bumps".
POSTSCRIPT: I just discovered this language in the DDOT "Speed Hump Request" document:
"A. Speed Hump Standards
The typical hump has a design speed of 25MPH. This speed is safe and comfortable for passenger cars."
I'd love to go with the director of DDOT on a ride-along over our local "speed humps" at 25 MPH. Unless the car's a convertible, I'll be wearing a helmet.
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jack
Joined: 23 Mar 2004
Posts: 4416
Location: 19th & Lamont
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| Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 9:18 pm Post subject: Re: Newton Street traffic |
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| Subcity wrote: |
POSTSCRIPT: I just discovered this language in the DDOT "Speed Hump Request" document:
"A. Speed Hump Standards
The typical hump has a design speed of 25MPH. This speed is safe and comfortable for passenger cars."
I'd love to go with the director of DDOT on a ride-along over our local "speed humps" at 25 MPH. Unless the car's a convertible, I'll be wearing a helmet.
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Yes, you're right about that. I think the speed humps produced by DDOT contractors are pretty rough-and-ready, and certainly those on the 1400 block of Newton Street, a route for returning to Mount Pleasant from Columbia Heights, are too harsh for 25 mph. But maybe a big SUV can take them faster than my Prius can.
I don't like speed humps, and support them only where there's a very clear need. On Newton Street, there's the unhappy combination of lots of rush-hour commuters using the street like an arterial, and the presence of Bancroft Elementary, and lots of kids walking to school. That's sufficient for me, despite the downside of speed humps.
BTW, taking these things on a bicycle is no fun either.
-- Jack |
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jack
Joined: 23 Mar 2004
Posts: 4416
Location: 19th & Lamont
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| Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 9:40 pm Post subject: Newton Street traffic |
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| Subcity wrote: | Until recent years, wasn't Park Road 2 lanes at rush hour?
If Park Road backs up at rush hour now, such that people take alternate routes through the neighborhood, maybe a good solution would be making Park Road a better through street. Make Park Road the better way to go.
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It's been about 10 years since Park Road was two lanes westbound during rush hour. But the problem on Park Road isn't the single lane; it's the slowdown at the Klingle/Walbridge intersection. The delay at that intersection limits the traffic flow, not the number of lanes in the 1700 and 1800 blocks. (Note that the 1900 block is two lanes westbound during the morning rush.)
Agreed that we should encourage traffic to stay on the arterials by making those arterials efficient carriers of traffic. Anything we do to "slow" traffic on the arterials exacerbates the diversion of traffic onto neighborhood streets (and alleys).
But cross-street traffic makes that hard to do. The traffic light on Park Road at Klingle/Walbridge is green about 50% of the time, and that's what limits traffic flow through the intersection.
| Subcity wrote: |
There is a need for efficient east-west routes in the city. Or, the city should fess up that it doesn't want people to drive across town.
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No doubt about it, and I've complained about the traffic signal cycles on our cross streets that so heavily favor traffic to and from the suburbs. DDOT concentrates on maximizing that commuter traffic flow, at the expense of east-west traffic. I've had no success at changing their priorities.
| Subcity wrote: |
Irving used to have its lights timed all the way to Washington Hospital. Now, not only are the lights mis-timed, DDOT refuses to paint lanes so traffic often backs up as a jagged, single lane. Same with Harvard Street, eastbound from 16th - no striping for what is supposed to be a 2-lane (1-way) street.
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I recall suggesting improved east-west light timing on Irving Street through Columbia Heights, only to encounter vociferous opposition from a Columbia Heights ANC commissioner, who demanded that the lights be intentionally mis-timed in order to "slow" traffic. DDOT kind of throws up its hands, and sticks to favoring the north-south commuter flows.
| Subcity wrote: |
DDOT paints stripes on streets in and out of the city - the streets that are essential to commuters. Yet, they don't paint stripes on cross-town streets - the streets that residents are most likely to consider important, day to day. Why is that? Seems to me, if DC wants to discourage commuters from driving in and out of town every day, they'd want to make the commuter streets inefficient , such as 16th Street. Instead, they do that only to the cross-town streets. |
There's been a shift in attitudes at DDOT, as they become less favorable to automobile commuters. But still, the traffic-engineering culture calls for maximizing traffic flow. And, to go back to your first (and valid) point, we don't want to make arterials so slow that drivers will seek out bypasses through our neighborhoods.
-- Jack |
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ilana-mtp
Joined: 01 Aug 2007
Posts: 201
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| Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 10:34 pm Post subject: |
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The problem is not so much the paint on the pavement, but the parking regulations (or lack thereof).
To get to Mt Pleasant from the eastern part of the city, we have very few choices: 1) Newton, 2) Park, 3) Columbia Road.
The first 2 are hopeless (Park between 14th and 15th is always busy).
And have you tried to drive on Columbia Rd from 13th street to 16th between 5:30 PM and 6:30 PM? It's a parking lot.
If parking/stopping was forbidden on both sides of the road at "rush hours" (morning and evening), like it is on Connecticut for example, it would at least get things moving... |
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jack
Joined: 23 Mar 2004
Posts: 4416
Location: 19th & Lamont
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| Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 12:32 am Post subject: Newton Street traffic |
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| ilana-mtp wrote: | The problem is not so much the paint on the pavement, but the parking regulations (or lack thereof).
To get to Mt Pleasant from the eastern part of the city, we have very few choices: 1) Newton, 2) Park, 3) Columbia Road.
The first 2 are hopeless (Park between 14th and 15th is always busy).
And have you tried to drive on Columbia Rd from 13th street to 16th between 5:30 PM and 6:30 PM? It's a parking lot.
If parking/stopping was forbidden on both sides of the road at "rush hours" (morning and evening), like it is on Connecticut for example, it would at least get things moving... |
Irving to Kenyon is your best route to Mount Pleasant from the east.
As for rush-hour parking prohibitions, you can imagine how unpopular that would be for residents of these neighborhoods.
-- Jack |
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