Correction Appended
Residents of Westover Place, the town house complex next to the Nebraska Parking Lot, called for a review of traffic conditions along Nebraska Avenue and around Ward Circle at an Advisory Neighborhood Committee meeting on Feb. 3.
The community is worried that development along Nebraska Avenue will aggravate existing traffic and parking problems around Ward Circle, according to David Fehrmann, the Westover Place residents’ representative at the meeting.
AU, Sibley Hospital and the Department of Homeland Security are planning major development projects along the Nebraska Avenue corridor. This is expected to bring more traffic to the area and the construction projects will worsen already “dangerous” traffic conditions, Fehrmann said.
At the meeting, the residents spoke of their concern with development related to AU’s Campus Plan.
“We’re concerned that AU is going to want to grow the campus dramatically,” Fehrmann said, speaking to the commissioners.
AU is in the preliminary stages of releasing its 10-year Campus Plan, which calls for the construction of a number of buildings in what is now the Nebraska Parking Lot. These development plans would eliminate 900 parking spots, Fehrmann said.
However, the Campus Plan also calls for the construction of an underground parking garage.
At the meeting, residents asked the ANC to petition the District Department of Transportation to review local traffic conditions, the second time in a year that ANC 3D has asked the DDOT to do so.
A letter sent to the DDOT associate director, dated May 30, 2009, said a study of projected traffic and parking conditions would be “instrumental in helping the community … to assess the impact … of any future growth projected by the University,” the letter said.
The DDOT rejected that request for a study. In an e-mail sent to District 3D02 Commissioner Tom Smith, the DDOT said that AU was responsible for conducting the traffic study.
In July 2009, AU released a traffic study entitled, “Transportation Existing Conditions.” The study concluded that traffic conditions around AU are better than they were 10 years ago.
Fehrmann and some commissioners were suspicious of the accuracy of the study.
“Anyone who’s lived here would know that traffic conditions around Ward Circle have deteriorated,” Smith said.
Westover Place’s residents’ call for a traffic study only addresses a small part of Nebraska Avenue and Ward Circle’s traffic problems, according to Smith. He is particularly concerned with pedestrian traffic across Ward Circle, he said.
There is a problem with traffic crossings without stoplights, according to Smith. In the past year, there have been at least two accidents at Ward Circle involving pedestrians, he said.
A student crossing Massachusetts Avenue was struck by a car in October, The Eagle previously reported.
Smith thinks there are enough traffic crossings at stoplights for other traffic crossings to be removed, he said.
Besides petitioning the DDOT, the ANC has considered conducting its own traffic study or hiring an outside consultant to review AU’s study, according to Smith.
Traffic “is not just a university issue,” Smith said.
The release of a new traffic study conducted by AU is expected sometime this summer, according to Community and Local Government Relations Director Penny Pagano.
You can reach this writer at news@theeagleonline.com.
Correction: An earlier version of this story did not fully identify ANC 3D02 Commissioner Tom Smith.
