DALLAS — Washington Mayor Vincent Gray said Tuesday that work will begin next year on the first 10 projects in the 25-year, $53.9 billion MoveDC transportation plan aimed at expanding transit options and discouraging personal vehicle use in the District of Columbia.
The 25-year plan is based on a prediction by the D.C. planning office that Washington will grow to have 800,000 residents and 1 million jobs by 2040.
The District of Columbia Department of Transportation said the additional 170,000 residents and 200,000 jobs will cause more congestion on already-crowded major roadways, add 70,000 additional trips a day on existing D.C. transit lines, and bringing in another 130,000 riders a day from suburbs in Virginia and Maryland.
D.C. DOT will work with transportation departments in Maryland, Virginia, and other states to identify funding for projects of regional significance and cross-jurisdictional efforts in the initial phase.
"Given the final resources needed to implement the District portions of the MoveDC plan, D.C DOT will study potential transportation funding sources to develop a recommended approach to funding," Gray said.
The final version of the MoveDC plan is the culmination of 18 months of work, Gray said. A preliminary draft plan was released in June.
The MoveDC plan identified $20.6 billion of committed funding and $5.9 billion of potential funding for the capital projects in the proposal, leaving a $27.4 billion gap to be resolved in the program that stretches to 2040.
The committed funding includes $10.9 billion that the city provides as its share of Metrorail capital and operating expenses, $4.2 billion of local revenue, $3.7 billion of federal highway grants, and $1.1 billion from local revenue already dedicated to streetcar system construction.
Potential new sources of revenue identified in the report include a 0.25% increase in the D.C. sales tax to 6%, and tolls on vehicles entering the downtown area at designated times.
The initial phase of the plan involves some capital projects and more than two dozen studies and policy recommendations to be completed or implemented in the first 24 months.
The transportation plan is a long-term guide for improving mobility in D.C., Transportation Director Matthew Brown said.
The full program will take years to implement but metrics outlined in the two-year work plan plus annual updates will provide a framework for monitoring its progress, he said.
Capital programs in the 25-year plan includes 70 miles of new streetcar or bus high-capacity transit, a new Metrorail Loop downtown, expanded commuter rail, water taxis, sidewalks on at least one side of every street, and 200 miles of bike lanes.
Capital projects in the first two years of the action plan released by Gray include initial construction on a new Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge over the Anacostia River, new sidewalks where gaps exist near schools and parks, installation of dedicated bus lanes, 15 miles of new bicycle lanes, and maintenance work to cut in half the number of deficient bridges in D.C.
D.C. DOT also will use the first two years of the 25-year plan to study how to reduce traffic in some of the more congested areas of Washington, including dynamic parking fees and managed toll lanes on the bridges into D.C.
It will also develop a full-cost estimate on the cost of bringing the city's transportation infrastructure, including roads and Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority's Metrorail transit system, to a state of good repair. The estimate will include the maintenance backlog as well as future needs, D.C. DOT said.