Logan Circle residents own more bikes than they do cars.
The young, single and hip neighborhood is leading the way to a car-free future, according to a new survey done by the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board.
The survey analyzed the travel patterns of 2,200 residents of seven areas in the Washington region: Logan Circle, Reston, Woodbridge, White Flint, Largo, Frederick and the Purple Line corridor including Takoma Park and Adelphi.
Residents of Logan Circle, where 60 percent of the population is between the ages of 20 and 40 and 57 percent of households don’t have land-line telephones, choose to walk for 56 percent of the trips they make in a day, much higher than the regional average of 9 percent. And with 6 percent of trips made by bike, the neighborhood had 10 times the number of bike trips than the regional average.
“If someone is looking for a car-free or car-light neighborhood to live in, that certainly fits the bill,” said the TPB’s Robert Griffiths, who organized the survey.
The study was meant to give planners and experts a “before” picture of the seven neighborhoods, all of which are expected to develop and change dramatically over the coming decades.
The survey results show that mixing residential and retail buildings and having more people in small city areas can actually help traffic rather than hurt it, Griffiths said.
All seven of the areas — all relatively dense, urban communities — had fewer people commuting by car solo than in traditional suburbs, survey results showed. In Logan Circle, 21 percent of residents drove alone to work. In White Flint, 61 percent did. In Frederick, 78 percent did — a figure still lower than the 80 percent who drive alone to work and live just as far from D.C.’s center.
“It’s not a traffic nightmare as long as you give people transit and bikeshare and other options to get around,” Griffiths said.
Highways also changed travel patterns. Woodbridge residents made 40 percent of their daily trips in cars with more than one person — showing that Interstate 95’s high-occupancy vehicle lanes are making people not want to drive alone, Griffiths said.
The TPB will next survey Friendship Heights, the New York Avenue corridor, St. Charles, National Harbor, the Beauregard corridor in Alexandria, East Falls Church, West Falls Church and the area north of Dulles in Loudoun County.
