New Retail Center Stirs Concerns About Traffic

"It's our most urban neighborhood," said Karina Ricks, associate director of policy and planning in the Department of Transportation. "It's going to be a lot of human beings on the street. There will be lots of cars and traffic. There will be bicyclists. If you approach it as an urban place, I don't see it being a nightmare. If you go in hoping for a free flow, like it's Jefferson Davis Highway, it will be a nightmare."

Ricks characterized as a "worst-case scenario" the estimate that DC USA would create 30 percent more traffic during the evening rush hour. "People who do it once will figure out it's better to go at a different time of day, or on the weekend, or to take mass transit," she said.

D.C. officials said they hope people use the Green and Yellow Metro lines to travel to Columbia Heights, which has a station four stops north of downtown.

But they know that many shoppers will travel by car, particularly if they're buying a large item or shopping in bulk. The challenge, officials said, is to keep traffic moving and to prevent motorists from commandeering the neighborhood's parking spaces.

Toward that end, the department is dispatching whistle-bearing traffic officers to the two intersections that border DC USA, during rush hours on weekdays and all day on weekends.

The agency is installing more parking meters along 14th Street, and it plans to charge $2 an hour to encourage motorists to use the shopping center's garage, which costs $1 an hour for the first four hours.

Officials also plan to restrict parking by nonresidents on some streets.

"This is our starting point. Let's see how it goes," Ricks said. "We didn't want to be too radical and annoy too many people. Let's start with this and regularly evaluate it."