The DC Department of Transportation’s  recently released final environmental impact statement (FEIS) presents several build alternatives for the new $465 million 11th Street bridges. Each would build an eight-lane bridge between I-285 and the SE/SW Freeway, and 4 "local" lanes between Capitol Hill and Anacostia. The current bridge has a total of 8 lanes. The new local lanes provide the potential for routing more commuter traffic through the residential areas of Capitol Hill and Historic Anacostia.

Why build a new--and fourth--Anacostia River bridge inviting yet more commuters to use Capitol Hill streets? That is the question that the FEIS should answer. Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

According to the American Planning Association, Capitol Hill is one of the nation’s Top Ten Great Neighborhoods because residents are “able to go about living and working and recreating without having to use a car all the time.”  To enhance that sense of community, residents and groups have been working for years to reduce commuter traffic across Capitol Hill. 

For the last few years, residents have urged the District to study ramp changes that would allow all Anacostia Freeway drivers to access the Southeast Freeway at the 11th Street bridge. Currently, only north-bound Anacostia Freeway drivers have this option.  During that time, there was no discussion of a new non-freeway bridge at 11th Street. Nor was there any public review or study of such a proposal.

So what’s up? The FEIS gives residents four choices of poison—four 12-lane options involving an 8-lane freeway bridge plus a new 4-lane non-freeway bridge. The arterial bridge would connect 11th Street on Capitol Hill with Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Anacostia.    

The surprise 12-lane package is self-defeating. It threatens to create new routes for commuter traffic across Capitol Hill without reducing commuter traffic on the old short-cuts. Sadly, the omission of a “freeway link only” alternative from the FEIS prevents residents from even comparing the 12-lane package with a “freeway link only” alternative. 

Worse, both the 8-lane freeway and the 4-lane arterial bridge link to the Anacostia Freeway. And both link with Capitol Hill streets on the west side. And they would force east-side residents who want to go downtown or to Virginia, who can now use the freeway system, to use the local bridge and local Capitol Hill streets to get to the Southeast Freeway via new ramps at 8th Street and 9th Street.

The four-lane arterial bridge would flow continuously onto 11th Street at N Street. While the arterial bridge is, in theory, more transit-oriented than the freeway bridge—it has facilities for bikes and pedestrians and a possible future street car—the fact remains that it will function to supplement our overloaded freeways as an alternative facility for commuters from eastern and northern suburbs.  

The new bridges will carry significantly more daily traffic than the “no build” baseline: 179,900 versus 131,000 vehicles daily. The high point of the new bridges would be 75 feet high, i.e., 25' above the high point of the existing bridge.  The width would be 183 feet, i.e., about 63’ wider than now.

To old timers on Capitol Hill, the proposal may seem somewhat “déjà vu.”  Decades ago, Capitol Hill defeated proposals to route freeway traffic along 11th Street.

Despite daily experience with commuter flows across other bridges affecting Capitol Hill, the FEIS claims that the new bridge would only be used by local traffic and that the new bridge would help ‘separate’ local and freeway traffic. Yet it provides no evidence of separation or segregation.  FEIS data in fact show the opposite result. According to the FEIS, the preferred alternative

• doubles bridge-related rush hour traffic on Capitol Hill streets compared to the “no build” baseline (11,590 versus 6,171).  
• increases daily traffic on important streets, e.g., west and east-side Pennsylvania Avenue, 11th Street, M Street, 25th Street. (Though not studied in the FEIS, it probably increases traffic on other feeder streets as well, e.g., 8th Street, SE )
• makes no documented claim to reduce commuter use of other streets, e.g., 4th and 6th Streets or 17th and 19th Streets. And does not dispute studies such as the Capitol Hill traffic study suggesting the project would contribute to traffic increases on those streets. 
• shows 20,900 vehicles using local streets daily as a result of the project. This does not include vehicles using local streets to access or exit the Freeway bridge so the true number is significantly larger than 20,900.

The FEIS claims unconvincingly that the project would reduce “congestion” at certain Freeway-sensitive intersections. FEIS Appendix B provides the source data. Why “unconvincing”?  The appendix shows that only 10 of the 16 intersection reports present data for both the “build” and “no build” baseline. And that, of these ten, only five are comparable, i.e., the intersection design is the same in both cases. And that all five comparable intersections have virtually the same results, i.e., show no congestion reduction compared to the ‘no build’ baseline. Lastly, in at least two of the five non-comparable cases the “improvement” is due to traffic reductions that the FEIS concedes would likely be temporary.  One can question whether this rationale warrants a half-billion dollar project.  

The FEIS also claims that the project reduces daily traffic by about 50% on parts of three east-side arterials—Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Good Hope Road and Minnesota Avenue—that are impacted by commuters who would be diverted to the Anacostia Freeway. The argument raises two basic questions. First, even if the project diverted commuters originating in northern communities that could use the Anacostia freeway, the benefit would be short-lived since commuters from the east would likely rapidly utilize the new arterial capacity. Second, it seems inconsistent to say the least to justify the project on the basis of temporary decreases on some arterials while giving no weight to large, permanent traffic increases on other arterials. 

The FEIS omits to discuss how the project relates to other related projects in the area. A number of east-side and west-side groups and residents have asked the District for more information on how the District’s Anacostia Waterfront Transportation Master Plan, the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative and the Great Streets Initiative all fit together. All of these involve ambitious ‘programmes’ of major transportation infrastructure changes and/or land use development. The 11th Street Bridges project, a key part of all this, will affect and be affected by these changes.  

Residents can review the FEIS and decide for themselves. The FEIS is available for review and comment on the web at http://www.11thstreetbridgeseis.com/whatsnew.  Comments may be emailed to EleventhSt@ch2m.com or addressed to Mr. Bart Clark, DDOT, 64 New York Ave., NE, Washington, DC, 20002. The deadline for public comment is November 20.