Gordon Chaffin: DC’s poorly organized transportation planning meetings contribute to polarization

As a reporter for Street Justice, which covers transportation, infrastructure and housing in DC and its suburbs, I recently participated in a panel discussion about transportation in DC’s Southwest Waterfront neighborhood. During the 10 years I’ve lived in the District, I don’t think I’ve seen an area change more rapidly than the Southwest waterfronts of the Anacostia and Potomac rivers.

Public and commercial investments have led to housing, retail, entertainment and infrastructure additions at The Wharf, Buzzard Point and Navy Yard. The Capitol Riverfront is well into a housing and commercial revitalization. There are nascent efforts to improve waterfront amenities, transportation and safety around RFK Stadium, Kenilworth Park and Kingman Island as well as the neighborhoods of Kingman Park, Carver/Langston, River Terrace and Greenway. 

With any planning project, DC leaders and residents should ask several critical questions: Are the proposed changes helpful? Who will they benefit and how? How should policymakers improve their approach to planning in the future? 

Most residents would expect decision-makers to maximize the beneficial aspects of a project and minimize those that are detrimental. But, as someone who attends four to six community meetings per week, I find that DC’s leaders fail miserably in fostering constructive community involvement, crafting inclusive plans, and implementing them within the timeframe stakeholders thought was agreed upon. These failures occur despite the numerous opportunities that exist for residents’ input on planning projects, with many residents saying it’s obvious that policymakers don’t respect them. 

Residents claim that policymakers may listen to their concerns, but they don’t really understand them and certainly don’t empathize with them. I hear this in every ward of the city, at every advisory neighborhood commission (ANC) meeting: The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) isn’t listening to us; the Metropolitan Police Department doesn’t enforce that law; we’ve been telling the Department of Public Works about that illegal dumping for years. Given the number of opportunities for residents to provide public input, I’m left asking a disturbing question: Why are so few residents feeling like equity stakeholders?

In light of residents’ concerns that they’re being ignored, I’d suggest becoming familiar with the District’s planning processes that include public input:

• Long-Term Planning: In 2014, the DC government completed its most recent multimodal transportation master plan, called MoveDC. MoveDC comprises elements for each transportation mode, including bicycles, transit, freight vehicles, and curbside space usage that includes parking. In 2018, DC updated a second master plan — the Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP) — to reflect MoveDC’s priorities. Expect MoveDC and/or the STIP to be updated again in 2020-21 ahead of the current STIP’s 2022 expiration. Each master plan includes public meetings and comment periods, with input from ANCs and the DC Council. Master plan projects are slated for completion within 10 to 25 years.
• Medium-Term Planning: The Transportation Department produces about one “livability” study per year. These projects, reviewing conditions in several neighborhoods, include several public meetings and culminate in final recommendations with lists of potential to-do items. Residents participate in these studies, and ANCs offer official comment. In September, ANC 3D established a special committee to lobby for and manage implementation of the recommended projects in the newly finished Rock Creek Far West Livability Study. Livability study projects are targeted for completion within one to five years.
• Short-Term Planning: The Transportation Department conducts Traffic Safety Assessments (TSAs) to evaluate concerns raised by residents and determine if any action is needed. TSAs are the best way to get something changed on a residential street, such as adding a stop sign or speed hump. Residents fill out a short form, their ANC rubber-stamps it, and DDOT staffers in the Traffic Operations and Safety Division study it for four months. Once DDOT shares its findings, the new road feature is usually installed quickly. Generally, projects approved as part of a TSA are completed within two years, but installation can take longer if the recommended intervention is expensive or complex. 
• Project-Specific Planning: With small, operating-budget projects such as bike lanes within existing curbs, DDOT officials give notice and seek input from civic associations, ANCs, business improvement districts and residents over a period of at least several months. With bigger capital projects, such as road reconstruction and sidewalk expansion, public involvement is more extensive. Agency officials organize three to four meetings with project revisions guided by public input.

This boatload of community input opportunities highlights just those offered by the District and DDOT. They don’t include DDOT analyses for other kinds of reviews, such as mandatory studies related to new housing development. All of these involve public input and real-world data collection of some form. Moreover, regional groups produce bigger-picture plans that — in theory — are updated with information and public input from the shorter-term and project-based plans. The Transportation Planning Board of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments does this.

The District’s Transportation Department has been adding new staff almost monthly, bringing on more public engagement officials, so the agency’s small team of planners doesn’t have to spend every evening away from their families attending public meetings. DDOT provides significant in-person, in-writing and electronic methods to lodge citizen complaints, requests and exhortations. This is part of the agency’s work furthering Section VI of the Civil Rights Act. That section states in part that no person in the U.S. shall, “on the grounds of race, color or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of or be otherwise subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” DDOT projects receive federal money, and public feedback opportunities offer participation as well as ways to increase access to benefits from infrastructure changes.

In some cases, bad-faith citizen participants are to blame for miscommunication and poor project planning. Two of the most common arguments deployed by privileged NIMBYs and anti-change residents are lack of proper notice and insufficient modifications to plans based on public feedback. Often, a resident group that claims they’re being ignored is in fact opposed to the very concept of a project. But the volume and attention given to the poisonous few — presenting an unrepresentative sample of varied feelings within their community — is a result of bad project planning.

The Transportation Department, other government agencies and elected bodies such as ANCs generally solicit public input via open mic sessions. Some try to enforce false equivalency. Last March, as part of the debate about two blocks of bike lanes on Woodley Place NW, ANC 3C had pro- and anti-bike lane speakers line up and take turns at the microphone. When the last of the opponents spoke with many residents on the other side still waiting for their turn, the ANC simply ended its public comment phase. At many ANC and civic association meetings, hotly contested items are far down on the agenda, resulting in debate that is abruptly cut off as the hour grows late. It’s not uncommon to see sleepy elected officials yawning and insisting the library will kick them out as they vote on letters of support or opposition with shocking uncertainty.

More and more over the last 10 years, coinciding with the Capital Bikeshare era, DDOT has improved its meetings by hosting open houses. At open houses, residents can add comments via Post-it Notes to easy-to-read project plans and large-print drawings. This alleviates the polarizing environment of public meetings, where jeering and grumbling from the audience threaten the credibility of public input. Angry questions dominate the conversation: Do you live in this ANC? How long have you lived here? Do you even own a car? Unfortunately, open houses are still rare. Most of the transportation planning in DC happens in small conference rooms, where a free-for-all atmosphere and the absence of key stakeholders mean that the loudest participants win the fight.

I frequently cover wards 7 and 8, and most of the residents I’ve spoken to there tell me DDOT has hired people of color to present them with bad news over which these outreach workers have little say: With their neighborhoods changing at a rapid pace, these residents think agency higher-ups are deploying these reps in a CYA maneuver. As a reporter, I know that this suspicion of government apathy is false. DC government is listening. District agencies including DDOT often change plans or re-prioritize projects based on community input. Residents do have power to affect change if they show up to meetings, submit comments online, and otherwise participate in planning. But, how much does the truth of their power matter when so many refuse to believe in it?

I don’t have a solution to unite DC’s civically engaged but often divided citizens. But I know they can do their part to help improve the planning process. They can find out about the opportunities for input and be willing to show up for a meeting in a high school cafeteria at 7:30 on a Tuesday night. If they’re comfortable with computer technology and accessing the Internet, they can review PDFs online and email their comments to a project manager. 

Residents and DC officials alike can improve the way planning takes place in the District. But more often than not, DC leaders ensnare residents in an endless cycle of public meetings where polarized camps duke it out and many of the people directly affected by a proposed change don’t weigh in because they don’t realize they can or should.

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Gordon Chaffin is a reporter for Street Justice, a daily email newsletter covering transportation and infrastructure throughout the Washington region, especially in less privileged, rapidly changing neighborhoods. Street Justice produces a free, weekly digest on Sundays and publishes daily reports for subscribers that include a story, a calendar of local public meetings and a list of projects open for public comment. To submit a pledge for a subscription, click here.