TESTIMONY ON BILL 20-759, THE TRANSPORTATION REORGANIZATION ACT OF 2014

Members of the Committee:

Over the past several years, WABA has testified before this Committee on a number of concerns related
to the performance of the District Department of Transportation (DDOT). As representatives of the
Districts and regions bicycling community we fully appreciate the motivations for this bill, and applaud
the effort to improve delivery on a variety of projects and programs that are presently DDOTs
responsibility, and at which DDOT is presently failing.

However, we are concerned that the structure proposed in this bill does not address the key problems
that limit DDOTs effectiveness, and may actually create more difficulty and delay.

Modal Concerns Regarding the Location of Bike Programming in the District Transit Authority

WABA is deeply concerned that under this bill, bicycle planning and implementation is being
shoehorned into a new entity constructed for a different purpose, where it is likely to be marginalized
and underfunded. The responsibility to build and maintain a transportation network that serves the
needs of District residents who bike and walk is a fundamental governmental responsibility that should
not be ceded to a corporate board comprised of members with no public accountability and no
qualifications in bicycle planning.

Nowhere in the world is the responsibility for bicycling taken from a transportation agency and given to
a transit authority. It simply makes no sense, as biking is not transit by any normal definition. Bicycling is
transportation. It needs transportation planning. It needs transportation design and construction
management. It needs transportation funding.

Despite our shared concerns about DDOTs delivery of bike projects, moving the responsibility for biking
to a transit agency would be a move from bad to worse. Presently, there are internal organizational
issues at DDOT that limit its ability to deliver on biking projects. But those internal flaws can be
addressed by the proper deployment of just a few additional FTEs and by a project-based management
system, as we can see working for their internal AWI team.

If this proposal is enacted and biking is instead shoehorned into a transit agency, it will then be
systemically marginalized and underfunded in a way that will be much more difficult to correct in the
future. Federal funding for bike and pedestrian projects would be stalled in additional bureaucracy, as it
would have to be routed through the transportation agency anyway. And in every competition for
resources, a transit agency will choose transit over other things, including investment in biking and
walking.

Structural Concerns about the Regulation of Public Space

It is important to remember that, despite its name, DDOT is not just the Districts transportation
department. In reality, it is the Districts department of all things public spacewhich is a somewhat
broader mandate. And the breadth of that mandate is important. While it is correct for the Council to


ask whether DDOTs mission has become so expansive the it simply cannot deliver on everything, it is
equally important to ask whether that breadth plays an important role in providing flexibility for
innovation and improvement that would by stymied by bureaucracy and parochialism if multiple
agencies were involved.

As the District continues to grow in population without growing in area, pressures will continue to
mount on exactly how our public space can be put to the best use for a variety of purposes. The
Districts ability to adapt the use of its public space to the evolving needs of a growing population is
critical to capturing the economic and sustainability benefits offered by increasing density. We must be
able to balance the needs for cars and bikes, pedestrians and delivery vehicles, street trees and
sidewalks, catchbasins and cafes. We must be able to flexibly optimize public space to the needs of the
people.

Are we able to do this presently? No. But flaws in internal structure, organizational management, and
leadership can be corrected with new leadership and new systems, so long as the underlying structure
makes tradeoffs and attempts at optimization possible.

However, if the system is realigned so that our public space is to be managed by multiple entities with
competing interests and no shared motivation to compromise, gridlock will result. An agency that exists
for the sole purpose of dealing with parking will forever prefer parking and the revenue it affords.
Similarly, an agency that controls space only when that space contains street trees will argue for street
trees in every space. Ultimately, the parochialism that will result from splitting and isolating particular
uses of public space among various agencies will make compromise and innovation of the sort that leads
to removing three parking spaces to increase bike travel on a road by 65% impossiblethough this just
happened with the installation of the cycletrack on L Street.

I do not defend DDOTs present capacity to deliver on the needs of residents. But I do believe that the
ability to flexibly manage the Districts public space to balance the needs of transportation, economic
activity, environmental activity, and other needs is criticaland this bill, in splitting the management of
public space into numerous agencies each responsible for discrete pieces, removes the necessary
flexibility.

Timing and Capacity Concerns

In addition to concerns about the placement of biking responsibilities and the management of public
space, we are also concerned about the timing of this proposal and the affect it will have on the
Districts ability to move projects forward.

As you know, the long-awaited MoveDC transportation plan was released last week. Weighing in at
several hundred pages, it describes the Districts multimodal plan for the future of transportation, and it
will be before this Council within thirty days.

How is the public supposed to simultaneously comment on DDOTs substantive plan for the future of
transportation and a plan to reorganize the agency responsible for creating and implementing that plan?
Rather than simultaneously proposing a new org chart and a new long-range plandeveloped in
isolation from one anothershould we not work first agree on a long-range transportation goal, then
design the organizational scheme that will best bring it to reality?



Meanwhile, residents are ready for the backlog of projects to move forward. For eighteen months
DDOTs standing excuse for its failure to move forward on new projects was the need to finalize the
MoveDC plan. Now, the final plan has been released, and it is time to expect movement on the projects
it contains.

This will not happen quickly if the administrative reorganization proposed by this bill takes place,
however. Such reorganization does not happen quickly. It involves duplication of functions, movement
of people and offices, filling of new FTEs, and creation of new structures and org charts.

My first experience working for the District government came in 2006, when as a Fellow I was asked to
join the newly formed DDOE to help sort out some of its permitting processes. The agency had been
carved out of a combination of DCRA, DOH, DDOT, and DPW to consolidate environmental review rather
than have it spread across multiple agenciesthe opposite of what is proposed here regarding public
space. And for the better part of two years, the agency struggled to find its footing, operating with large
numbers of vacancies, using forms and wearing jackets with the wrong agency name listed, and being
listed as a high-risk grantee of federal partners because it had no track record of achievement or
demonstrated capacity to operate programs with federal funds.

The focus of a new agency, at least at the outset, will be to figure out what it is and build capacity to be
that. We have seen it with DDOE. We have seen it with the SEU. Frankly, we still see it in DDOT as it is
structured today.

Changing the organizational structures of entities within the DC bureaucracy by pulling one agency apart
and creating others presents the District with enormous transaction costs. In this case, those transaction
costs will likely be at least a year of startup and capacity building that could otherwise be spent on
solving the problems this Committee, WABA, and residents want solved.

Recommendations & Conclusion

Fundamentally, WABA agrees with the motivation underlying this proposal. DDOT has failed to deliver
on such a variety of its responsibilities that change is needed. But what is needed is not a bill that splits
our public realm into battling bureaucratic constituencies and costs the District years of actual progress.
What is needed is leadership and management at DDOT that understands the purpose of its breadth and
undertakes the internal realignments and education and work to deliver on its responsibilities.

Unfortunately, such internal and leadership changes are not within the direct purview of the Council. So
it is understandable that councilmembers seek an alternate solution that can be effected through
legislation. But the solution to internal agency problems is unlikely to be an external reorganization that
subjugates biking and walking within a transit agency, divides public space responsibilities into further
silos, and relies on a new cast of characters and agencies to reach capacity before they can act.

To further the goal of improving DDOTs performance for bicycling and for project delivery in general,
WABA recommends:

Limit the authority of the District Transit Authority, if created, to transit operations for
Circulator, Streetcar, and Capital Bikeshare. Bicycling and walking policy, planning, and
implementation should not be housed in a transit corporation.



Do not create an agency with a budgetary and parochial interest in the maintenance of parking.
This inappropriately elevates parking over all other potential uses of public space, which do not
have their own agencies. (The need to bring parking under a single, coherent system could be
addressed by housing a robust parking division within any of the agencies currently involved in
parking matters.)

Promote structures that allow multi-modal tradeoffs and flexibility in the regulation and use of
public space, as opposed to narrowly defined agencies that will compete rather than cooperate.

Allow time for the full public vetting and Council approval of the MoveDC plan before
significantly changing the implementing agency, to avoid undermining the MoveDC process and
confusing the public.

Thank you for your commitment to improving the Districts structure for managing its public space and
transportation, and for the opportunity to provide our input on behalf of the Districts bicyclists.