What's Next for moveDC?

First and foremost, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) would like to thank the thousands of people who participated in the planning process—in meetings and workshops, through social media, surveys, webinars, emails, and countless casual conversations. Your suggestions, critical thinking, comments, inspiring ideas, and concerns contributed significantly to the plan’s development. We are grateful for the time you have given to planning Our Transportation Future.

 

Its been a busy year of planning, but we’re not quite done yet. In the early spring of 2014, we’ll release the draft plan for you to read and provide comments on. We’ll then finalize the plan and start taking follow-up actions—programming, studies, and design—to move priority elements forward.

 

While we’d like to be able to move the entire plan forward at once, we will approach implementation in phases and over time, correlating with the constraints of funding and the need for change.

 

We hope that you will continue to participate in dialogue about the future of transportation in the District and will stay with us as we wrap up the moveDC process and transition into implementation. We are planning a closing dialogue on the plan and will continue to communicate with you as we have, via email, social media, and other outlets. See you soon.

What can moveDC do for you?

As if we haven’t gotten enough information from you, we want more!  We are in the process of finalizing the moveDC plan.  Throughout the document we want to incorporate people-specific questions about moveDC with short answers. This is where we need YOU. We need your questions about what can moveDC do for you. 

For example:

I’ve lived in DC my whole life. I grew up and went to school here, I work here, shop here and my family is here. How does moveDC help me stay here?

I deliver fresh foods to stores and restaurants all over the District every day. I have to double-park and circle looking for parking. I get stuck in traffic constantly. What’s in moveDC for me?

I ride a bike for everyday trips and to stay in shape. The city has made a lot of progress in the last few years to make it easier and safer to bike. How does moveDC retain that momentum?

To be featured in the final plan document, send us your questions via Twitter,  Facebook, Email, or comment on this blog post.  If your question is selected, you’ll be identified by either your twitter handle or first name and initial for your last name.

Thank you for your involvement in the moveDC Transportation Plan. Whether you attended one of our public workshops, served on the Transportation Plan Advisory Committee, participated in online surveys or provided feedback via the website, we appreciate your voice in this process.
moveDC is your plan!

How do you move? The Votes are in...

Thank you for taking our first poll on the website. More than 600 of you, 622 to be exact, responded to the poll. The results certainly are interesting, even though they were never intended to be statistically significant.

 

How You Move Today

We asked you how you get to work or school today. You could select more than one method of getting between home and school or work.

 

What You Told Us

A lot of you use bicycles, buses, Metrorail, and your own two feet to get from home to work or school. Comparatively fewer of you drive to get to school and work. Nearly half of you get to school or work using two or more modes of transportation.

 

How You Want to Move in the Future

We also asked how you would like to get to work or school in the future. Again, you could choose more than one way you want to get there.

 

What You Told Us

Compared to today, more of you would like to take the bus, Metrorail, or walk to get to work or school. Again, compared today, a whole lot more of you would like to use streetcar (yeah, okay, any increase is a whole lot if you are starting at 0), bicycle, and telework. From our results, more than 70 percent of you would like to do something other than drive. That’s great news for the SustainableDC plan’s 75 percent non-auto trip share goal.

 

Thoughts on Pedestrians

 A few quick observations on people who said they walk for all or a portion of their trip:

• 53% percent of pedestrians also ride Metrorail and 34% also ride the bus
• Today, 15% of people who walk, make their entire trip walking
• In the future, only 5% would like to exclusively walk

Today’s walkers are very interested in other ways to travel to work or school in the future:

• 83% want to bike (higher than poll average)
• 73% want to ride Metrorail (higher than poll average)
• 63% want to take the bus (higher than poll average)
• 59% want to take streetcar (higher than poll average)
• 38% want to telework (higher than poll average)

What Does All of This Mean?

As we said to begin this commentary, this is not a statistically significant survey. We received 622 responses—approximately 0.1% of DC’s population. Setting all of this aside, there's some very interesting food for thought in the responses:

 

Choices appear to be important

• You are travelling to work or school in a lot of ways now
• You want more choices in the future

Driving may be less important. More data would be helpful, but working with what we have…

• Some people drive today and will drive in the future
• Driving was the only travel mode that saw a decreasing share in the future

Come on streetcar!

• Nearly half of you want to take streetcar to work or school in the future

Multimodal connections should be coordinated and convenient

• More of you want to use several modes of transportation to get from home to work or school in the future

What do you think?

Send us comments.

 

Want more?

Are you interested in other statistics? Do you want to see the data? It’s posted at wemoveDC.org/Resources. If you have any interesting takeaways or infographics, please send them our way!