Sherman Circle, Leaf Collection, SNAP
Greetings friends! I wanted to send along some updates about Sherman Circle after the (incredible!) response I got on the survey I previously shared, plus provide a couple of other updates of issues in our neighborhood or that I’m working on.
Sherman Circle - Re-paving and restoration
Many of you may have seen DDOT contractors in Sherman Circle the last few weeks re-surfacing the roadway. I’ve been really thankful for how dedicated their team has been to continuing to work to restore Sherman Circle to its pre-roadwork state; I’ve been watching out my window every morning watching their teams re-stripe and repaint the lanes and crosswalks in the Circle.
Based on my communications with DDOT, they should be very close to done with the roadwork, with the last step being restoring the flexposts that they use to daylight the intersections in Sherman Circle, partially protect the bike lane, and shorten the crosswalks. Hopefully that will all be complete by Monday or Tuesday.
I’ve passed my thanks along to DDOT for their attentive work here, and if you’d like to do the same, feel free to email our Ward’s DDOT liaison, Kornelius.Anderson@dc.gov.
Sherman Circle - Survey results & resolution
I’ve written two recent posts about traffic safety in Sherman Circle, here, and here.
Thank you to all of you who shared your thoughts about Sherman Circle in the survey that was open last month. I’m going to share some of the key results here (and I will also be passing these along to DDOT, attached to a resolution I hope we pass at our next meeting on Dec. 20. If you want to read the full deck yourself, it’s here.
Here were the basics of the survey:
I was very pleased with the nearly 300 responses we got, the majority of whom live in ANC 4D (and the biggest group of whom are ANC 4D06 constituents):
You all support a variety of potential approaches in Sherman Circle, but you don’t support inaction! I included a few different cuts of the data here but you can see they don’t look very different.
As you might expect, people have very strong opinions about pedestrian safety in Sherman Circle! I only captured some of the responses along these lines because the slide was already quite full:
And, of course, you’ll find people with strong opinions on both sides of any possible approach:
Many of you also suggested flashing crosswalks (a.k.a. HAWK signals) in Sherman Circle, improving enforcement (things like speed cameras & better enforcement of paper plates and people with lots of tickets). Some of you suggested closing Sherman Circle to cars entirely, as well as getting a stop sign at Illinois & Buchanan (something that should be achievable, I think!).
The PPT presentation ends with some other potentially links, that I’ll share here:
The full results of the survey (except email addresses) can be found and explored here: https://tinyurl.com/ShermanResults
Petworth News’s recent coverage of proposed changes to Grant Circle: https://tinyurl.com/PNGrantCirc
2016 Rock Creek East II Livability Study: https://tinyurl.com/RCEII2016
2017 DDOT Grant & Sherman Circles Presentation: https://tinyurl.com/2017DDOTPres
DDOT Guidelines on vertical traffic calming (i.e., speed humps): https://tinyurl.com/DDOTVert
It also notes that due to the re-paving work we got a snapshot of what Sherman Circle traffic could look like with one lane of traffic; I took some video footage of how Sherman Circle traffic was moving on one lane at about 8:30am on a Thursday:
With all this said, I’m planning to introduce and hopefully pass this resolution at our Dec. 20 public meeting, sharing the results of the survey with DDOT and calling upon DDOT to quickly come up with a plan to improve safety, especially for pedestrians, in Sherman Circle, ideally in time to consider the design alongside their work in Grant Circle and install not too long afterwards.
Many of you shared on the survey that you would be willing to be contacted for more information about traffic safety in Sherman Circle, and I may tap you all to badger city officials about this at some point - keep your eyes peeled!
Leaf collection
Leaf collection in our neighborhood begins tomorrow! If you wish to have leaves collected, rake them into your tree box or curbside, and DPW will begin picking them up tomorrow (Dec. 11).
SNAP benefits
The last piece of news I wanted to share, that some of you may have seen, is that as of right now, the Mayor has said that she does not intend to follow a law passed by the District this summer allocating additional funds for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. While I understand that budgets all over the District are tight and the Mayor is under pressure to allocate funding to many different programs with urgent needs, I hope that she ultimately decides not to go through with this plan. SNAP benefits are crucial to struggling families, and the Council (particularly with leadership from Councilmembers Lewis George and Henderson) was right to fight for these families. And, as a lawyer who spends his day job litigating against government officials disregarding the law, I think it’s frustrating to have clear legislation ignored.
I’m hopeful that ANC 4D will pass a resolution encouraging these funds to be allocated as they are legally obligated to be, but I would love to hear from you all if you have a different view!
I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season! I’ll probably share my next newsletter next month. Have a lovely holiday and a happy new year!