We wish to express our support for the healthcare building on Parcel 1 as part of the adaptive reuse of the McMillan Sand Filtration site. The scale of the medical buildings responds to the scale of the hospitals on the other side of Michigan Avenue, with the highest point closest to the similar height at Children’s Hospital. The healthcare building uses Cell 14 as an acre of open space next to North Capitol Street to buffer its massing from nearby rowhouse neighborhoods.
Category: District of Columbia
Testimony to DC Zoning Commission on McMillan PUD
We wish to express our support for the multifamily/retail building, and townhouse elements of this adaptive reuse of the McMillan Sand Filtration Plant. We have tracked the review process at the HPRB for the last year and appreciate the evolution of the designs to today’s proposal.
16th Street will get another bus upgrade, but only a dedicated lane will really fix it
Metro has added more buses to the 16th Street “S” line, but ridership just keeps rising, the buses are crowded, and they’re seriously bunching. A dedicated lane is the best solution, say WMATA planners, but in the meantime, they’re going to add articulated (or “accordion”) buses along the congested corridor.

Better DC Buses: What does it take?
New and innovative bus service has offered a better ride on DC buses, but many more improvements, like the 16th Street rush hour bus lanes, are still pending. Improving bus service is of vital importance to DC residents, since they rely more on riding the bus than on Metro.
Traffic congestion, constrained funding, and limited street space are all challenges to speedier and more reliable buses. For several years, better bus service has been planned, and sometimes implemented in DC and the region.
What’s the status of bus improvement plans, and what can we learn from other regions’ experiences? Together with ANC Commissioner Kishan Putta, CSG hosted Parsons Brinckerhoff’s Joseph Barr (formerly of NYC DOT), WMATA’s Jim Hamre, and DDOT’s Sam Zimbabwe, as well as DC Councilmember Mary Cheh.
Testimony to DC Zoning Commission on McMillan parcels 6 & 7
We wish to express our support for the Master Plan and open space elements for the adaptive reuse of the McMillan Sand Filtration Plant. We have tracked the review process at the HPRB for the last year. This thoughtful plan restores all the major historic features, along with creating a new large park that celebrates the distinct historic elements and function of the former industrial site.
Plans for HOT lanes on 14th Street Bridge and D.C. freeways still just warming up
The District’s transportation planners envision sets of high-occupancy toll lanes stretching from Interstate 295 by the Maryland border to the 14th Street Bridge and the Virginia side of the Potomac River. But to see what they see, you’ll need powerful binoculars.
D.C. mayoral candidates call parking ticket system ‘maddening’
Both candidates for D.C. mayor want to overhaul the District’s parking enforcement to end bad tickets, confusing signs and lengthy appeals. Council members Muriel Bowser and David Catania, who will face off in November, have signed on to support a bill to overhaul the ticketing process in the District.
Rival bureaucracies are not the way to manage traffic congestion in Washington, D.C.
The D.C. transportation department is building a record of partially fulfilled promises on bike lanes, bus lanes, street parking, streetcar service and pedestrian safety. “In the 12 years since the District Department of Transportation was spun off from the Department of Public Works, no one has asked the critical question: Does the current agency structure work,” D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) said last week.
DC region’s new long-range plan fail to meet its own climate goals
If sea levels rise just one foot in the Washington, DC, area, nearly 1,700 homes could be lost. Is the region’s transportation planning agency doing enough to stop that from happening? Several environmental and smart-growth organizations in the region are saying no. Seventeen groups have signed on to a letter, being delivered today, urging the agency to take action. The comment period on the agency’s latest long-range transportation plan closes tomorrow.
The Constrained Long Range Plan update must address regional climate change goals
The undersigned organizations call on the National Capital Transportation Planning Board (TPB) to commit to full disclosure of the forecasted climate change impact of the 2014 Constrained Long Range Plan (CLRP), and to take action to align the CLRP with the region’s climate change goals. One of the most important national and
multi-national public policy issues of our time, climate change must be tackled by every city, county, region, state, and nation. Given that our region has already adopted important goals, it is past time to begin implementing them.