Catching up - Alexandria BPAC minutes from Feb. 2011

It's been a busy month, to say the least. Combine that with some procrastination, and the result is no blog updates. So in an attempt to clear out the backlog, I'm going to start with what I hope will be a monthly occurrence: posting of the Alexandria Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) minutes. This first set is from the inaugural BPAC meeting (the group being realigned from the former BikeWalk Alexandria) on February 15. A lot of this initial meeting was procedures/charter/introductions/administrative-stuff/etc etc, but there were some nuggets (at the time) in the city update. Here's the basic rundown of the minutes:

Introductions By Committee

Jerry King, former President of BikeWalk Alexandria, presided over the introductory portion of the meeting. Eight individuals were accepted for membership based on the Committee’s previous meeting, and six of those individuals were present to introduce themselves.

Nominations for Committee and Officers

Several individuals were nominated prior to the meeting for the seven additional slots available for Committee membership as well as the three Officer positions. Four Committee members were accepted by a group majority vote, and three slots will remain open at this time. Members are encouraged to seek out individuals who could potentially fill these slots, especially those representing stakeholders in the community not already represented on the Committee (e.g. senior citizens, ethnic minorities, Trails for Youth, public school system, charity organizations and shelters). Final nominations and voting occurred for the three Officer positions.

Committee Charter

The new Committee’s Charter was circulated prior to the meeting, and its acceptance was discussed. To give additional time to review the Charter, its acceptance was tabled until the next meeting. It was noted that the Charter may be amended in the future as needed.

Future Meetings

Based on previous discussions, the Committee intends to meet the third Monday of each month from 7pm-9pm. The usual meeting place will be the Durant Recreation Center, located at 1605 Cameron Street, Alexandria VA, and Carrie offered to help coordinate the periodic reserving of this space. Andrea inquired about the availability of A/V and web capabilities in the space, and indicated she would call the Durant Center to gather more information about the space. Michael offered the periodic use of his portable projector system. A suggestion was made to consider meeting periodically on the west side of the City, to reach out to all areas of the community. Members were encouraged to research potential spaces for future meetings, such as public libraries. Suggestions for agenda items for future meetings should be emailed to our Chair and Vice Chair. Draft agendas will be circulated to the listserv prior to each meeting.

A discussion arose on the Committee’s standing, and whether the City would like an advisory committee. It was agreed that the Committee is not seeking to become a Commission at this time, and hopes to have a productive relationship with the City. This related to an earlier question on whether Committee Members needed to be residents of the City. The Charter outlines requirements for membership, and the Committee seeks a diverse membership to represent the interests of bicyclists and pedestrians traveling within and through the City.

City Briefing by the Carrie Sanders, Alexandria’s Bicycle Pedestrian Coordinator

Carrie began by sharing that she envisioned her contribution to the Committee could be to provide updates on key projects and issues and to serve as a facilitator for communication between the Committee and the City. She encouraged Members to bring questions for her to the meetings. She then shared updates on several projects:

- Capital Bikeshare: the City is working with Arlington, DC, and Alta Planning to understand how Alexandria could bring CaBi to the City. Carrie indicated that several neighboring jurisdictions are competing for available grant funds, so speaking up at the MWCOG’s Bike-Ped Committee on behalf of Alexandria could be helpful. (Mike Farrell, 202-962-3760; see MWCOG for more information.)
- Commercial Add-On Tax: the City has held public meetings on the proposed tax that would be solely for use on transportation projects. Members are encouraged to write to the City regarding their position on the tax.
- Charles Barrett Safety: the City held a recent meeting to hear community concerns on a proposed reconfiguration of a key intersection adjacent to this public elementary school that the City proposes would enhance the safety of children crossing the street. The project would be grant funded and would greatly reduce the crossing distance.
- Safe Routes to School: a question arose on whether we have a Bike to School Day in the community. Members expressed interest in pursuing this further, either in conjunction with Bike to Work Day in May or with the international Walk to School day in October. A suggestion was made to target lower-income areas for a Bike to School Day and to seek out police support. Megan Brooks of Trails for Youth may be a good point of contact to begin this conversation.
- Complete Streets: the City will be holding an upcoming work session with the Transportation Commission to further the ongoing consideration of a Complete Streets Policy or Ordinance for the City. See the Transportation Commission for further information.
- Bike Friendly Community: the next application will be due in June, 2011. A suggestion was made for the Committee to select a subcommittee devoted to supporting the application to renew and/or upgrade the City’s status. Michael, Jonathan, Jerry, and Bruce volunteered. Carrie will send out a summary of the City’s major accomplishments since our last application and what is currently being planned.

Notice to Media

A determination was made to generate a press release on the new organization and its related activities and online resources. Andrea volunteered to draft the press release and share it with Members prior to the next meeting. A suggestion was made to consider waiting a couple of months before releasing a press statement, to give the Committee time to settle in. Andrea will generate a brief statement for the Committee’s consideration.

Events and Meetings

A list of upcoming events was included on the agenda, and Members were encouraged to participate in public meetings on the Potomac Yard redevelopment and other community meetings of interest to the Committee.

My first GGW post

My post from a couple weeks ago on DC land/water area has been picked up by Greater Greater Washington. My first GGW post...and it probably won't be my last, as I'm talking with David Alpert about possibly writing some Alexandria and southeast Fairfax County articles for GGW. Hopefully I'll get one of them written later today.

Apologies

Apologies to those of you who read my blog via an RSS feed. It appears that when I edited my old posts to include labels, it reposted EACH ONE on my RSS feed. This was not intentional, but now that everything's labeled, it shouldn't happen again.

Blog redesign/rebranding

If you follow my blog with any regularity, you'll notice a new look and a new name tonight. Given my transportation focus in general and my more specific focus on Alexandria, Huntington, and the southeastern part of Fairfax County (along/east of Richmond Hwy), I decided to give a new name to the blog and do some layout revisions. I'm also adding labels to my blog posts for easier reference.

Thanks to Stephen Miller for the name idea...and thanks to Dan Reed for allowing me to steal the name concept...:o)

Bike facilities and such

Lots of things I need to catch up on with the blog (I have at least 3 items I'm backlogged on and need to write about), but for now, a quick bike bit.

Last week, the National Association of City Transportation Officials released their Urban Bikeway Design Guide. I haven't taken a deep look into it yet, but it appears to be a "best practices" guide for things like bike signage, bike lanes, cycletracks, and other bicycle facilities within an urban environment.

On a related note, FHWA recently posted a listing of bicycle facility and element types, their status in the MUTCD, and whether they were considered experimental.

Some good stuff to go through for urban bike advocates and aficionados...

DC's quadrants and land/water/park area

A question brought up on a recent WashCycle post asks about the land/water area and percentages for the four DC quadrants (SW, SE, NW, NE). So a quick project here, using shapefiles from DC OCTO.



Here's a quick map I created using some of the shapefiles available from DC OCTO. Background image is 2008 ortho imagery. The red outline is the city boundary plus the quadrant boundaries. Blue-shaded polygons represent water, bright green shading represents NPS parkland and other while the orange shading represents military bases.

Total area (including water) comes out like this:

Northwest: 29.21 square miles. 42.6% of the total.
Northeast: 15.52 square miles. 22.7% of the total.
Southwest: 11.02 square miles. 16.1% of the total.
Southeast: 12.73 square miles. 18.6% of the total.

So Northwest is by far the largest quadrant, followed by Northeast. Only about 1/3 of the city is considered "south".


Water area (using OCTO's Water Polygon shapefile and includes the creeks and some ponds):

Northwest: 1.11 square miles (mostly the Potomac). 15.3% of the city's water total. 3.8% of the quadrant's total area.
Northeast: 0.38 square miles (mostly the Anacostia). 5.2% of the city's water total. 2.4% of the quadrant's total area.
Southwest: 5.26 square miles (Potomac, Channel, Tidal Basin, part of the Anacostia, etc). 72.5% of the city's water total. 47.7% of the quadrant's total area.
Southeast: 0.51 square miles. 7% of the city's water total. 4% of the quadrant's total area.

As you can see, DC's water is predominantly focused in Southwest, due largely to the Potomac, Washington Channel, and the Tidal Basin. Almost three-fourths of the city's "water area" is in Southwest, and almost half of Southwest's total area is covered by water. By comparison, water covers relatively little of Northeast or Southeast, even with the Anacostia River in both.


Subtracting out water area from the total yields Land Area:

Northwest: 28.1 square miles. 45.9% of the city's land total. 96.2% of the quadrant's total area.
Northeast: 15.14 square miles. 24.7% of the city's land total. 97.6% of the quadrant's total area.
Southwest: 5.76 square miles. 9.4% of the city's land total. 52.3% of the quadrant's total area.
Southeast: 12.22 square miles. 20% of the city's land total. 96% of the quadrant's total area.

As can be expected, Northwest has the lion's share of DC's land area, whereas less than 10% of the city's land area is in Southwest.


I didn't stop there, I also ran calculations for both National Park Service land (listed as NPS Map A) and military bases within DC.

NPS-parkland area (using OCTO's Parks Polygon shapefile)

Northwest: 5.35 square miles. 51.4% of the city's NPS total. 18.3% of the quadrant's total area.
Northeast: 1.52 square miles (mostly Anacostia Park). 14.6% of the city's NPS total. 9.8% of the quadrant's total area.
Southwest: 1.52 square miles. 14.6% of the city's NPS total. 13.8% of the quadrant's total area.
Southeast: 2.01 square miles. 19.3% of the city's NPS total. 15.8% of the quadrant's total area.

Here, Northwest takes the lion's share, with half the city's total. NPS parkland also takes up a larger share of Northwest's total area than the other three quadrants. Roughly half of Northwest's NPS parkland is Rock Creek Park.


Military base/facility area (using OCTO's Military Locations Polygon shapefile, includes circles and triangles maintained by NPS)

Northwest: 0.42 square miles. 17.5% of the city's base total. 1.4% of the quadrant's total area.
Northeast: No military bases/facilities.
Southwest: 1.87 square miles. 77.9% of the city's base total. 17% of the quadrant's total area.
Southeast: 0.11 square miles. 4.6% of the city's base total. 0.9% of the quadrant's total area.

Again, Southwest takes the lion's share, thanks to the joint Anacostia Naval-Bolling AFB base. Note how there are no military bases in Northeast.


Factoring out water area, NPS parkland, and military base area yields this remaining Land Area for each quadrant:

Northwest: 22.33 square miles. 46.1% of the city's land total. 76.4% of the quadrant's total area.
Northeast: 13.62 square miles. 28.1% of the city's land total. 87.8% of the quadrant's total area.
Southwest: 2.37 square miles. 4.9% of the city's land total. 21.5% of the quadrant's total area.
Southeast: 10.1 square miles. 20.9% of the city's land total. 79.3% of the quadrant's total area.

Some interesting conclusions here...while Northwest has the largest amount of non-NPS/non-military land in the city, both Southeast and Northeast have a higher percentage of their total area as non-NPS/non-military land. By comparison, Southwest has very little land available, and a large chunk of this is occupied by Federal office buildings near the Capitol and south of the National Mall.

Complete Streets, Take 2

As I tweeted earlier, the big news out of tonight's Alexandria Transportation Commission meeting is that the commission voted to forward a revised Complete Streets resolution to City Council. Two more changes from even this revised one: the reporting will be every 6 months instead of annually, and language was inserted to revisit and "reaffirm" the resolution in 2 years.

I'll do a larger writeup on the meeting in the next couple days or so.

Lots of bike stuff at this week's meeting

WashCycle beat me to the punch here, but there's a lot of bike stuff that will be discussed at this Wednesday's Alexandria Transportation Commission meeting.

First, and likely foremost, will be Complete Streets. During the meeting two months ago, staff had raised concerns about the then-proposed Complete Streets ordinance, and recommended a resolution and checklist instead. After a good bit of debate, the Commission tabled the subject and appointed a sub-committee to further study Complete Streets and the staff-proposed resolution, after which it would be reintroduced at a future meeting. This week's meeting is that "future meeting".

A few key highhlights of the revised Complete Streets resolution:

- Replaced "should" with "shall", which theoretically gives it at little more sticking-power with regards to how the city implements Complete Streets on a given project.
- Directs city staff to create a "Complete Streets Checklist" to be used for all development and city road projects.
- Requires the director of the ciy's Transportation and Environmental Services (T&ES) department to state, in writing, why Complete Streets would not be used on a given project.
- Directs city staff to prepare an annual "Complete Streets report" for the Transportation Commission, including where Complete Streets was not incorporated into a given project and why.

Also, Barbara McCann, executive director of the National Complete Streets Coalition has been invited to speak at a Transportation Commission workshop on Complete Streets that will preceed Wednesday's meeting.


First reported by the Post's Dr. Gridlock last week, but also mentioned yesterday by the Examiner, Alexandria is considering placing roughly 6 (and perhaps up to 10) bikeshare (likely Capital Bikeshare) stations total in the Old Town, King St Metro/Carlyle (between King St and Eisenhower Ave), and Del Ray areas (Del Ray was not mentioned in the news articles, but is in the city's Transportation Commission documentation). The stations would be funded from the city's annual allocation of Federal CMAQ and RSTP funding for Fiscal Year 2013. Which means, if this goes through, it would still be at least the summer of 2012 before we see them. Until then, the closest CaBi station is on Arlington's side of Potomac Yard.


Another CMAQ/RSTP request regards bicycle parking at Metro stations. The city is requesting $250K in FY2016 for additional bicycle parking at the city's Metro stations...likely focusing on King Street and Braddock Rd.


A third CMAQ/RSTP request is to rebuild the city's "Alternative Mount Vernon Trail" where it parallels the railroad spur between Abingdon Drive (the GW Pkwy frontage road) and Royal Street. Speaking from experience, the existing trail is very rutted and narrow, and this reconstruction aims to improve both of those situations. The city's requesting $500K in FY2013 dollars to do this.


Lastly, there's an item for consideration of a city Long Range Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Plan, which may have a future impact on bicycling and walking in the city as both modes are conducive to the goals of TDM...increasing transportation efficiency and reducing congestion.

Inaugural meeting...

So I didn't get voted in as chairman (sorry, Allen). But all in all I think it was a good start to the BPAC. Lots of issues to tackle in the upcoming months.

Will post meeting minutes once our secretary writes them up.

Alexandria BPAC meeting tonight

The "inaugural" Alexandria Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) meeting is tonight at VeloCity (on Union St) at 7pm. This is where we finalize our reorganization (from the old BikeWalk Alexandria), elect officers, and continue the business of advocating better bicycle and pedestrian transportation in Alexandria. If you read this blog post in time and can spare a little time, feel free to come on down.