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Articles
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| H Street streetscape delays frustrate residents |
VOICE writes, "BY BEN WEINSTEIN
It’s been more than five years since transportation officials started planning the H Street corridor streetscape renovations, and projected start dates have come and gone.
While those officials insist that the project is still a priority and that work will soon begin, Northeast residents involved in streetscape planning say they’re frustrated with the delays.
“We’ve come a long way,” Northeast Capitol Hill advisory neighborhood commission chairman Joe Fengler said at a recent meeting. “The plans we have in place are attainable but … I’ve been frustrated with a lot of the delays we’ve had.”
Fengler, who’s been working with the D.C. Department of Transportation, city leaders and other affected neighborhood commissions throughout the project’s planning phase, defined his role as a “cheerleader and an irritant.”
For the first few years, Fengler said, he acted as a project catalyst. But in the past year, while start dates have passed without groundbreaking, he said communication breakdowns with transportation officials have driven him to become the irritant. "
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Speakers at an April 28 Stanton Park Neighborhood Association meeting also included the Transportation Department’s Ward 6 planner Chris Delphs, its mass-transit planning manager Catondra Noye and engineer Said Cherifi.
Delphs generally agreed with Fengler’s assessment of the strained relationship between the agency and the community on the H Street project, but offered an explanation.
“I think that there has been somewhat of a disconnect in the past 12 months,” he said, adding that while the project is still a priority, recent changes in city and Transportation Department leadership have slowed plans.
Fengler and other Northeast residents asked transportation officials about project holdups, including the controversy over whether a planned streetcar system will run on overhead wires.
“I’ve seen no concrete plans to solve this problem,” Fengler said.
Federal law prohibits overhead wires within much of the District, including portions of H Street, and the National Capital Planning Commission has opposed the Transportation Department’s streetcar plans for the corridor.
But the Transportation Department has maintained that the overhead cables would greatly facilitate the streetcar plans, which are based on the Portland, Ore. system. The Anacostia streetcar line, which is the first scheduled for completion -- and located outside historic city limits -- will run on overhead power.
The federal planning commission asked the city to consider alternatives to overhead wires.
“With the L’Enfant City plan, we haven’t just been sitting on our hands,” the Transportation Department’s Noye said, referring to the historic city boundaries where the overhead-wire ban applies.
In fact, earlier this year transportation officials presented several possible streetcar system alternatives to the federal planning commission. In March, Transportation Department director Emeka Moneme presented scenarios where streetcars would run on overhead power and switch to either an onboard power source or below-rail power when entering Georgetown and the L’Enfant City.
But city officials have maintained the overhead-wire system is still the most practical and feasible solution.
“That’s our prerogative,” Noye said of opposing the overhead-wire ban. She said the federal home-rule charter gives D.C. the option of making these kinds of choices for itself, “if our council members so desire.”
But she also acknowledged the difficulty of such a decision -- the city would need congressional approval to sidestep the overhead-wire ban, and the citywide streetcar system would require some federal funding.
A main concern among residents at the neighborhood association meeting was securing funding for the project. Cherifi said the Transportation Department put out a request for proposals for the project in January, but has not yet identified all of the funding.
“That’s a concern for me,” Fengler said. “Meanwhile, the [start] date keeps changing.”
But Cherifi said planners have incorporated a great deal of community input into the project, coming up with the “most economical, most efficient” construction schedule.
Cherifi and his colleagues were also optimistic about the quality of the finished streetscape. Cherifi said it will be “10 times better than Barracks Row,” which Delphs called “the original H Street.”
Nevertheless, residents said they want to see concrete progress.
“It just can’t wait,” said Jay Adelstein, adding that business owners who have invested in the corridor must suffer through each delay. “It’s like waiting for Godot.”
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Posted on May 13, 2008 16:31pm.
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