Grant Circle today. Image by Eric Fidler licensed under Creative Commons.

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) wants to make Grant Circle safer for cyclists, drivers, and pedestrians. It's going to start with an experiment to see how traffic handles just one lane around the circle.

Grant Circle is located in the heart of Petworth, at the intersection of New Hampshire and Illinois Avenues and 5th and Varnum Streets. There are no traffic lights, and the circle has two wide travel lanes that drivers often speed through. Between 2013 and 2015, there were 14 crashes at Grant Circle, four of them involving cyclists.

Residents have been asking for changes that would make Grant Circle safer for years. In 2015, GGWash contributor Kelly Blynn wrote the following about Grant Circle:

Every few months, a new thread starts up on the Petworth neighborhood listservs about near misses or actual crashes around Grant Circle “Grant Circle is an absolute mess for pedestrians,” wrote one resident recently. “When I drive, I often hesitate to stop for pedestrians because I know cars will zoom around me and make it much more dangerous for the people that are crossing. When I do stop I often go between both lanes to try to ensure the pedestrian safety which is obviously not the best thing to do.” “The design of the circle is so wide and big that instead of helping to slow down cars, it makes them to speed up,” added another. “If so many of us have already had nearly misses, some tragedy will end up happening.”

Grant Circle before its most recent re-striping. Image from Google Maps.

DDOT recently painted new crosswalks to help make it easier for pedestrians to get to the park space in the middle. Longer term, the city's Rock Creek East II Livability Study recommends renovating the circle so there is only one travel lane for cars, a bike lane, wider sidewalks, and parking. This would cut down on speeding and collisions without having to introduce traffic signals.

What Grant Circle could look like. Image by DDOT.

A DDOT presentation on the matter, however, outlines concern that reducing the circle to one lane might cause more congestion on nearby streets. “Reducing to one lane will increase delays and queues, especially north of the circle during AM peak,” it reads. “Volumes on several approaches would further exceed available capacity.”

While in the past, these worries may have killed the safety improvement plans, the agency is willing to test whether that's the case here—especially because, as DDOT spokesperson Terry Owens said in a statement, “the travel model does have some limitations when used on a circle configuration.”

For the week starting May 22nd, the agency plans on using concrete traffic dividers to reduce Grant Circle to only one lane. That way, it can rely on real world experience to see what the impacts on congestion are.

Even if DDOT decides against narrowing it permanently and goes back to two lanes, it doesn't mean the circle won't get some of the changes it needs. Should Grant Circle keep both traffic lanes, DDOT still anticipates narrowing those lanes, shortening the crosswalks into the circle and raising them off the pavement, and adding a protected bikeway.

It's great when transportation departments test ideas out, but is a week enough time?

Real world experimenting is great and can pave the way for a lot of improvements. A mayor in Massachussetts decided to back a plan that temporarily replaced a parking lane with bus lanes, and that led to improved travel times for drivers and bus riders. Now, there are plans to make the bus lanes permanent.

Locally, a section of Georgia Avenue was painted red to only allow buses, and the results from that will inform future efforts to paint bus lanes across the city.

But DDOT's experiment on Grant Circle is only going to last a week. That may not be enough time to see what the long term effects of a one lane circle would be. Other road closures and lane reductions have seen short term spikes in congestion that eventually level out as people find new alternatives to traveling through an area.

In 2009, New York City decided to make part of Broadway in Times Square a pedestrian-only area, and that pilot ran for six months before the city made the decision to make the change permanent. A week long experiment may have led to Broadway staying open for vehicles as the short term effects could have been much different.

In Grant Circle, results from just a week may be skewed by factors other than traffic, such as the weather, which could keep pedestrians off the street and lead to traffic slowdowns on its own. A longer experiment could mean better data for DDOT and possibly better outcomes for safety in and around Grant Circle.

The test will not use the second lane for bicycles, as some of the long-term plans suggest; that means the test could be worse for car traffic than a permanent design would be.

DDOT spokesperson Terry Owens said in a statement, “We feel the one week trial period is a good balance between understanding, in real time, what would happen with reduced lanes in the Circle and concerns we heard from neighbors.DDOT has the ability to access accurate, real time data that comes from GPS systems in vehicles and apps that use GPS to direct drivers. This helps us to get a better understanding of a situation in less time than it previously would have taken. We are confident this week long tactical urbanism project will allow us to make an informed, data driven decision on how to proceed on improving safety within Grant Circle. We will be collecting data before, during, and after the tactical urbanism installation including gap data, diversions, travel time, and step out surveys.”

Either way, this willingness to experiment is a positive sign from DDOT, and could lead to faster changes that would help the city meet its goal of zero traffic fatalities quicker. It could also mean faster improvements to nearby Sherman Circle, which has traffic conditions similar to Grant Circle.