DDOT ends corridor road-diet push for now; will use roughly $600,000 for spot safety work on South Dakota Avenue

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) told residents at a community meeting that it will not pursue a corridor-wide road diet on South Dakota Avenue with the funds currently available and will instead target spot safety improvements where crash and pedestrian concerns are highest.

Councilmember Zachary Parker opened the virtual meeting by noting he had secured funding in the fiscal year 24 budget to study safety improvements along the corridor and said he remains committed to making South Dakota Avenue safer. "I secured in the fiscal year 24 budget funding to improve safety along South Dakota," Parker said. He also thanked DDOT staff and Director Kirschbaum for work on the study.

A DDOT project presenter, identified in the meeting as Christine, summarized the feasibility results and the agency's recommended next steps. Christine said the project began as a study of a full road-diet option — reducing some segments from four lanes to three — but that recent federal and District budget changes reduced available project funding. "We are not able to, pursue and and build a road diet with the remaining budget that we have," she said.

The study and public outreach produced substantial community input: DDOT said it had collected about 2,000–2,600 comments total (approximately 850 map comments, 1,400 feedback-form responses and nearly 75 letters). Respondents repeatedly cited speeding, high-crash intersections and unsafe pedestrian crossings; some recommended protected bike lanes while others opposed lane reductions because of congestion concerns.

Budget figures presented at the meeting described the project's financial constraints and choices. DDOT said the original program budget, including a $300,000 addition provided by Parker in FY25, began at about $1.3 million. After completing the feasibility work and selecting spot priorities, the agency estimated roughly $600,000 would remain for construction of selected spot treatments. By contrast, DDOT presented an estimated $6.5–$7 million cost to complete a full road-diet reconstruction and any new signal work along the corridor.

DDOT listed typical treatment costs to give residents context: new traffic signals at about $250,000–$500,000 each depending on location and electrical work; markings and signs or signal-timing changes at roughly $10,000–$50,000 per intersection; and concrete elements such as curb extensions or median islands starting at about $50,000.

The agency described the method used to assess a road diet's feasibility: collecting traffic counts and modeling peak-hour and weekend operations, then testing mitigations such as signal-timing adjustments and turn-lane changes. Modeling showed variable effects by segment and time of day. For example, DDOT reported some peak‑direction travel-time increases of a few minutes in certain segments and modest travel-time reductions in others; weekend travel showed different patterns in several segments. DDOT staff emphasized that models reflect current counts (data collected in March) and do not predict long-term changes in travel patterns unless those growth factors are explicitly modeled.

DDOT identified a list of focus areas for spot treatments along the corridor and explained the priorities used to choose locations: the citywide High Injury Network (fatal and severe-crash locations), high crash-rate intersections, school areas (Perry Street was mentioned), unsignalized multi-lane crosswalks, and locations flagged by public comment. Top intersections named by participants included Galloway/Gallatin, Riggs Road, Twentieth/Otis, Monroe and 26th/Myrtle; DDOT said it will prioritize which of those the remaining funds will address.

Potential spot measures cited in DDOT's toolkit included left-turn traffic calming (flex posts), rapid‑flashing beacons or pedestrian hybrid beacons, median refuge islands, curb extensions and daylighting, pavement marking and signal timing updates, turn‑lane modifications, and targeted new signals where a location meets federal signal warrants (the presentation noted signals must pass a series of nine tests). DDOT also mentioned possible temporary or very short road-diet segments and access-management measures such as removing a skewed approach or converting a short block to one-way to reduce conflict points.

During Q&A, residents raised specific safety concerns and asked what would happen to the road-diet option in the future. A caller asked about the crosswalk by McKendree Church and unsafe crossings at Rhode Island Avenue; DDOT said that block (Lawrence to past Rhode Island) is within the scope of spot-treatment consideration. When asked whether a future budget could revive a corridor road diet, DDOT staff said that would be "undetermined" and likely require fresh data collection and updated traffic analysis. DDOT also said that the complex Riggs–South Dakota intersection would require a separate, robust study if it were to be redesigned.

DDOT told the community it will publish the full road-diet feasibility memo and traffic-model videos on its project website, return with more detailed spot-improvement concepts and cost estimates in the fall or winter, and then present finalized designs next summer if the schedule holds. The project team also asked residents to use a live feedback form and said it will host an in-person meeting at Perry Street School to continue prioritization work.

The meeting did not include a formal vote; the shift from a corridor road-diet analysis toward prioritized spot treatments was presented as the agency's conclusion based on the feasibility study, budget constraints and community input.