December 2021 Newsletter

Dear neighbors,

Thank you to everyone who joined our public safety walks on December 7 and December 14! We met Councilmember Allen and our area’s MPD captains, who are all visiting the area more frequently in response to the recent increase in crime.

(Screenshot of tweet from Councilmember Allen’s team showing their December 14 public safety walk with several ANC 6A commissioners.)

H Street Northeast

6A01 Commissioner Keya Chatterjee and I also met with several H Street NE small business owners for an informal listening session.

We shared DDOT’s plans for H St NE to include a set of transit-only lanes with bright red paint similar to H St NW in downtown. The DDOT director committed to exploring this in October 2021’s ANC meeting – as part of the eastward extension of the DC Streetcar. A transit-only lane on H would accommodate the Streetcar, the X2 and X9 buses, and inter-city buses.

In the meeting, small business owners generally supported Commissioners continuing the three goals of the early 2021 safer H Street NE push: 1) transit-only lanes, 2) wider sidewalks, and 3) pick-up/drop-off zones. However, business owners shared their experiences with transit lanes in other parts of DC and identified lack of enforcement as the biggest challenge. Attendees worried that drivers would just ignore the transit lane. We look forward to more meetings, especially as DDOT plans bus priority lanes on both 8th St NE and H St NE.

Though these meetings are focused on small business owners, we have a few residents attend; email me if you’re interesting in joining.