“Dear PoPville,
Sometime in the past several months, dedicated bus lanes were installed in the 14th street corridor through Columbia Heights. This means what used to be two lanes for combined traffic now is one lane each for cars and buses/bikes. This is a great way to increase bus efficiency. One major caveat – this requires buses to use the dedicated bus lane and for that lane to be clear for them to do so.
Until there’s some actual parking enforcement, there will forever be cars double parked in the bus lane preventing this from happening. So either buses get blocked in the bus lane, or they stop in the car lane and block traffic through the intersection. Either way, I spend a good portion of my day listening to people laying on the horn for minutes at a time due to the gridlock this causes.”
Ed. Note: The car free lanes officially kick off January 4th. At that time, “The fine for unauthorized driving or parking in a Car Free Lane is $200.”