Vision Zero DC

| Kevin McMaster

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser launched Vision Zero in 2015 to inspire and transform DC’s roadway safety efforts and to set DC’s sights on a goal of zero fatalities or serious injuries on District streets. Since then, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) has shifted to designing streets that are safe for everyone, working closely with community members to identify problems and build solutions. As part of a new community outreach effort, SymGEO was honored to help DDOT build the new Vision Zero DC website using ArcGIS Hub technology. Read the official press release from DDOT for this exciting website launch, as well as the comprehensive ArcNews article entitled “Washington, DC, Pursues Equity and Transparency in Vision Zero Campaign” featured on the front page of the Spring 2023 edition.

“The new Vision Zero DC website will help us work closely with community members to identify problems and build solutions. SymGEO iterated quickly and efficiently on design ideas and built a very engaging platform solution for DDOT.”

– DDOT Vision Zero Director

The Vision Zero DC site is organized into easily navigable sections based on audience interest and is designed to be mobile-responsive and broadly accessible.

A poignant look at the human costs of dangerous driving and unsafe behaviors is presented in Vision Zero Stories, developed using ArcGIS StoryMap technology.

The Education page features educational campaigns that help to promote safe driving and pedestrian habits throughout the District.

The safety campaigns target the biggest threats to the most vulnerable travelers on DC’s roadways. These include aggressive driving, impaired driving, occupant protection, pedestrian safety, and bicycle safety.

A link is also featured to Safety Grant information housed on DDOT’s Highway Safety Office page. This page also includes many links to safety programs, grants, procedure manuals, and publications.

This living document provides links to numerous helpful documents and publications.

A look at the Engineering page shows the significant progress made in designing solutions to benefit vehicular and pedestrian traffic, conveniently organized into a Safety Treatment Toolbox.

Expanding a section of the toolbox gives a wealth of information about each treatment “tool.”

A Safety Intervention dashboard gives insight into all the implementations of the safety toolbox tools that have occurred to date.

An Annual Safety Improvement Program dashboard gives insight into all the roadway and intersection improvements made to date.

Exploring the Crash Analysis page gives a deep dive into the data fueling the push for zero fatalities on D.C.’s roadways, including a Fatality and Injury dashboard with authoritative data provided by the Metropolitan Police Department.

Talk to SymGEO today if your municipality or agency is interested in setting your sights on a goal of zero fatalities on your roadways using a Vision Zero hub site – we are certified experts and are here to help.

Special Event Operations at DDOT

| Kevin McMaster

Esri’s Special Event Operations is a configurable solution that helps organize special events, create event site maps, develop health and safety plans, manage event incidents and assignments, monitor public health and safety operations, and create after-action reports. The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) recognized the value of having comprehensive information about an event in one authoritative, collaborative place, and asked SymGEO to help configure and deploy Special Event Operations for their internal use.

“The Special Events solution has sparked a new level of excitement in preparing for special events in the city. With SymGEO’s technical help, DDOT now has improved internal communication and decision-making abilities. The training provided by SymGEO has been super beneficial – they are a treasure!”

– DDOT Program Manager, Traffic Management Center

ArcGIS Hub was used to host the solution as it facilitated the understanding and workflow of how each individual component fits into the comprehensive picture.

The solution is built around a core data set of special events. Individual events are initially “registered” with the solution using an ArcGIS Survey123 intake form.

An ArcGIS Dashboard uses the event information to give managers an overview of upcoming (or past) events that can be filtered by venue type, expected crowd size, approval status, or other event characteristics.

The Special Event Manager is used to dive deep into specific events. From this interface, site maps or operation maps can be created, copied from past events, reviewed, and eventually approved.

The Special Event Site Map interface facilitates the creation of site maps linked to individual events. Site maps include the point, line, or area representation of event physical features. This may include signs, fire lanes, event perimeters, or other stationary event components.

The operations map includes mobile or distributed resources that will be actively deployed during the event. This may include trucks, traffic control officers, resource assignment paths, staging areas, or security perimeters.

During an event, assignments can be created and assigned from the Special Event Command Center. Assignment deployment, tracking, and in-the-field responses are managed using ArcGIS Workforce behind the scenes.

ArcGIS Notebooks are used to copy site plans and operations maps from previous events. This saves time, money, and the duplication of effort for annual or repeating events.

Talk to SymGEO today if your agency or organization is interested in managing special events using the power of Esri’s Special Event Operations solution – we are certified experts and here to help.

Capital Bikeshare Community Survey

| Kevin McMaster

With 6000+ bikes covering 180+ square miles of the region, Capital Bikeshare is a great way to explore Metro DC and travel to and from various destination points. The network of 600+ bike stations is constantly expanding, and community feedback is an important part of deciding where to locate new stations. To facilitate the presentation of proposed locations to the general public and gather community feedback, SymGEO was honored to help build the Capital Bikeshare Station Request Tool using Esri’s ArcGIS Online technology. This work was featured in the Esri case study “GIS-Driven Initiatives Promote Active Transportation in Washington, DC“.

“The SymGEO team helped DDOT quickly implement a complex, public facing tool with a simple user interface to help us gather a high volume of public input data, which is extremely useful for Capital Bikeshare planning purposes. Their knowledge of GIS and ESRI products helped make a challenging project with many stakeholders simple and quick to turn around.”

– DDOT Project Manager

The tool leverages an ArcGIS web map and ArcGIS Web AppBuilder for the application as well as Survey123 for the gathering of comments on proposed bike stations, and it is hosted on ArcGIS Hub. Sharing feedback for a selected station opens a survey page for that station using URL parameters so that the comment is connected to the appropriate station.

If a resident would like to suggest a location for a new site, an alternative survey is launched with additional data capture fields.

The Request New Capital Bikeshare Location survey was constructed using Survey123 Connect and offers the ability for a user to suggest multiple sites in the same submission.

“This is great stuff. Thanks again for pulling this together so quickly!”

– DDOT GIS and Applications Manager

Talk to SymGEO today if your agency or organization is interested in community engagement with the power of Esri’s ArcGIS Online platform – we are certified experts and here to help.