We draft DDOT traffic control plans for contractors working in public space. Send the site plan you already have. Three to five business days later you get a submission-ready plan set, checked against DDOT's own submittal requirements, and we keep revising it until it is approved.
We draw the traffic control plan.
You submit the permit.
Work in DC public space needs a traffic control plan as part of the DDOT public space permit. Every job gets a plan drawn for that street, that work zone and that week.
Public space starts at your property line. An excavation in the roadway, a sidewalk closure, a lane taken for a crane pick, a dumpster in a parking lane: if the work sits beyond that line, there is a plan to draw.
One plan per address, every time. A job spanning three addresses is three plans, and a phase that changes the closure is its own sheet.
Send it over and it stops being your problem.
A DDOT engineer inspects the site and checks the drawing against District standards for traffic, pedestrian and bicycle safety and accessibility before it is stamped. Meeting that standard is our work, not an evening your project manager loses to a drawing. One email out, a finished sheet back, and your people stay on the job.
Revisions are never charged extra.
If the reviewer comes back on the traffic control, we answer the comments and redraw until it is approved, at no additional cost. That is the whole of the third bar.
Whatever you already have: the PDF from your engineer, the plat, the sketch with the dimensions written on it. Plus the address and roughly when you expect to be in the ground.
The sheet is drawn to the street as it actually is, with lane widths, directions and right of way confirmed against the District's published records. Devices, tapers, buffers and sign sizes come from the governing DDOT and MUTCD tables. Then it is read back against DDOT's submittal requirements, line by line, before it leaves.
A clean PDF for TOPS, plus a short set of notes: what we assumed, anything on your plan that looked wrong, and what is worth confirming before you file. You submit it. If DDOT sends it back on the traffic control, we revise until it is approved.
We do not submit on your behalf. The permit stays yours, in your name, on your account.
Drawn at 1" = 20', the whole intersection shown, every street named, direction arrows and right-of-way dimensions on each one, and the legend in current MUTCD nomenclature.
Taper lengths, device spacing, advance warning distances and sign codes taken from the governing DDOT and MUTCD tables for the posted speed, not from a drafter's memory.
DDOT publishes what a plan has to show, item by item. Every sheet gets read back against that list before it goes out, so the avoidable rejections are caught here rather than ten working days later.
An ADA-compliant route through or around the zone for every phase, and a blocked bike lane accommodated in the order the regulation requires rather than signed away.
What we assumed, anything we spotted on your plan that looked wrong, and the questions worth asking before you submit. The drawing itself stays clean, the way a crew needs it; the notes travel beside it.
If DDOT marks the plan Revision Needed on the traffic control, we revise it until it is approved. No second invoice for our own miss.
We have been drawing DDOT traffic control plans since 2019, across hundreds of projects in DC public space. That is where this comes from: knowing what a reviewer measures first, and which small wrongness gets a sheet handed back.
Here is the part they actually check.
Every temporary sign carries its MUTCD number and size, taken from the sign table, not estimated
Distances between signs come from the spacing table for the posted speed on that block
Pavement markings are drawn only where they are actually painted, and proposed work is drawn distinctly from existing
North arrow, scale, legend and the whole intersection, every time
Knowing these documents is the job. We draw to the editions DDOT publishes today, and we track which one each requirement comes from, because they get reissued and a sheet drawn to last year's table is a sheet that comes back. That accuracy is the product: a plan that matches the standard the reviewer is holding is a plan that moves.
Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, the edition DDOT's compendium currently lists
Work Zone Management Manual and the D.C. Temporary Traffic Control Manual inside it, including its typical applications
TCP Submittal Guidelines from the Public Space Regulation Division, which is where the checklist comes from
§ 3315, safe accommodation of pedestrians and bicyclists. Law, not guidance
Safe Accommodations for Pedestrians and Cyclists in Construction Work Zones, the scenario drawings
Standard Specifications for Highways and Structures, including the tree protection rules that catch people out
No. You submit to TOPS yourself. The permit stays in your name on your account, which is how it should be: it is your job, your schedule and your relationship with the reviewer. We hand you the plan set and the notes that go with it, ready to attach.
The site plan you already have, in whatever form it exists, the address, and roughly when you expect to be working. If your engineer put notes on the plan, send those too; they often change the traffic control and they always go in the notes.
Three to five business days from a usable site plan to a submission-ready set: three for most jobs, five when the work zone is complex or sits inside an intersection. If what you send is missing something we need, you hear about it the same day rather than at the end.
If the comments are on the traffic control plan, we revise it and keep revising until it is approved, at no additional charge. If the comments are on something we did not draw, a changed scope or a changed site plan, that is new work and we will say so plainly.
Per plan, not per hour, and the number depends on what you are doing and how often. Tell us roughly how many permits a year you pull and what the work looks like and you will get a straight answer on the first call. We do not bill the revision cycles, which is where hourly drafting quietly gets expensive.
Not yet. DC public space permitting is its own system with its own reviewers and its own manuals, and doing one jurisdiction properly beats doing four of them approximately. Ask anyway; if there is enough of it we will say when.
Usually, and we would rather see it than not. Site plans arrive wrong often enough that checking them is part of the job: two addresses on one sheet, a street name spelled the way the plat spells it rather than the way the District does, a dimension line that ends early. We flag what we find instead of drawing on top of it.
Email the plan and the address. You get a reply the same working day telling you whether we have what we need, and a plan set three to five business days after that.
pablo@lanetaper.com