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Bowser’s Car-Centric Design Changes Have United Advocates Behind K Street Transitway Cuts

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When Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen first unveiled plans last week to fund free Metrobus service by raiding $115 million from the K Street Transitway project, D.C.’s transit nerds were divided. But it took just one tweet from Mayor Muriel Bowser to bring them back together.

Make no mistake, most transportation advocates in the city would rather see the District government fund Allen’s new “Metro for D.C.” program and the $123 million effort to remake the major downtown drag. Allen’s legislation, which passed the Council unanimously last year, would make all Metrobus rides free inside the District and fund substantial service increases. But the K Street NW project had plenty of fans too, considering it would add bus priority lanes down the middle of the road alongside bike lanes and pedestrian-centric improvements. Choosing between them wasn’t exactly a palatable prospect for many, especially those who value frequent service above free service.

This dynamic seemed to set Bowser up for success. She’s no great fan of Allen’s proposal, and stood by as Chief Financial Officer Glenn Lee axed the funding for it. Now she would get to rail against Allen’s plans as an assault on her efforts to revive downtown D.C. Bowser doesn’t always have the support of the urbanist set on these issues, but this split could’ve helped her pull away support from Allen’s coalition if she could successfully argue that nixing the K Street project would hurt bus service all over the city.

But a Saturday tweet announcing a rally to save the transitway quickly upended this delicate balancing act.

That’s because the tweet also happened to include a rendering of the K Street project with none of the promised bike lanes, and with an additional lane of car traffic beyond what the (theoretically) final designs showed last year. A follow-up post suggesting that the project would result in “better motorist experiences” only heightened suspicion that Bowser’s real interest here is speeding up traffic and meeting the demands of the car-centric, property-owning class. (Bowser’s deputies admitted as much when they raised the possibility of moving the bike lane from K Street to L Street in a Council hearing last month.) Suddenly, it started to look a lot more untenable for many activists in the transit world to defend Bowser’s plans.



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