Drawing from September 2014 EYA Community meeting. The building retains its increased height, but the loading dock returns to Eastern and a wheelchair ramp juts into the sidewalk. Newscast about Meeting
Meeting packet for 18 Jun 2014 Compact Hearing on proposed Changes to WMATA Facilities at Takoma Metro Station. Video of that meeting.
In the May 14, 2014 Site Plan., the height of the building quietly grew 5 feet from Nov 1 2013.
Presentations from the July 16, 2013 community meeting
Posted July 8, 2013 by the WMATA Board's PPDRE Committee
Provided July 5, 2013 by Stan Wall, Director, Office of Real Estate and Station Planning, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
EYA site drawing of 24 October 2005 (1 Mb). Includes a "Village Green"
The current proposal gives us much of what we were asking for in 2007, but it is much more massive than envisioned. These are the items that I would require to get this passed:
I represent Seekers Church, a DC church located across Carroll St. from the Takoma Station. We walk, bike, drive and take the subway to church. Last year, we hosted over 600 events throughout the week. We consider the station site to be a gateway between DC and MD, and the center of an integrated Takoma community.
Like us, WMATA recognizes the importance of biking. The notice for this meeting cites “the improvement of pedestrian and bicycle access to the Station”. The Takoma Station Access Analysis Technical Memorandum (the TM) of November 2013, notes that in that year, Takoma had the second-highest level of bike parking in the Metro system. This was before the recently installed and heavily used Ride-On station as well as the planned bike station for 105 bikes to be installed by WMATA later this year.
While all this bike parking is good, the EYA planned development does nothing to improve bicycle access to the station and these bike parking spaces. The Circulation Paths Analysis (Exhibit 4 of the handout for this meeting) omits bicycles. This is because the proposed building, by providing a narrow sidewalk along Eastern and a narrow path through the garage, blocks bikes from accessing the station from the North. We believe that the building must provide a zoning-compliant setback from Eastern in order to allow bicycle access. Furthermore, we believe that a design that requires trucks to back into the sidewalk and block it is a danger to bikers and pedestrians.
Furthermore, according to the TM, “The Metropolitan Branch Trail (MBT) is an 8-mile trail that runs from Union Station in the District of Columbia to Silver Spring in Maryland. Following the B&O Railroad and along the Red Line, the trail route connects to Takoma Station along the east using an on-street alignment along Cedar Street and Eastern Avenue. However, the MBT is being designed to have a portion of its alignment on the west side of the rail tracks.”
The proposed building blocks the Eastern alignment. According to the 2007 “Final Public Hearing Staff Report”, the 2007 EYA plan provided: an 11 foot shared use path, a 5 foot buffer, and 24 foot travel lanes to support the alignment. This 2014 EYA plan does none of this.
Furthermore, while the Western alignment runs a few feet away from the bicycle entrance to the station, this plan does nothing to allow western access to that entrance, or access between the proposed bike-friendly residences and the MBT western alignment. Even if a “jog” around the elevator room is required to save the cost of moving the machine room, this plan passes on an opportunity to finance opening up the bicycle entrance to the trail, as called for in DC’s Central District Plan. Furthermore, a through tunnel would provide handicap access to new residential development on the western side of the tracks, such as the 150 units planned for Spring Place. The Takoma station should promote bike traffic, not block it.
P.S.: Speaking for myself and not for the church, I was disappointed by the number of speakers at the meeting who neither live nor work in our neighborhood and work for groups sponsored by EYA or were brought in by them to speak on behalf of development. A quick Google search can identify them because many also testified for the EYA development of the McMillan Sand Filtration Site on North Capitol St. I hope they will identify such conflict of interests in their written testimony, free of the time constraints on verbal testimony.
Thank You
Seekers Church