Are DDOT’s plans for extensive streetcar and cycle track networks safe?

Today’s announcement that mayor-elect Vince Gray will let DDOT Director Gabe Klein go is extremely disappointing. If there’s one thing Gray could have done to show the city’s urbanists that he’s serious about sticking to the progressive policies that have defined DDOT in recent years, it would have been to keep Klein. Speaking personally, that would have won me over to Gray’s administration. Having sent Klein packing, doubt and suspicion are likely to continue.

But it’s happened, so now we’ll have to move on to the question of what Vince Gray’s DDOT will look like.

My hunch is that we’ll do a lot of treading water, and not much moving in either direction. I don’t think Gray will order DDOT to tear out the streetcar tracks on H Street or paint over the bike lanes that have gone in all over the city. That’s just not his style. But will DDOT’s long range plans be followed through with? That’s become a pressing question.

Gray seems committed to finishing the H Street and Anacostia streetcars, but what about the other 30-some miles of our planned 37 mile system? Will planning go on? And if planning does continue, will funding follow? Or will Gray do what Bob Ehrlich did to the Purple Line when he was governor of Maryland, and cut it without actually cutting it by leaving it stewing in planning limbo for most of his tenure? Likewise, will DDOT’s plans for a whole network of cycle tracks be followed through with, or will they be forgotten?

It’s almost unthinkable that the alternative transportation programs will be discontinued, but assuming they continue, at what level?