From DDOT
Contract Signed! Design/Build for the New York Ave. to Franklin Street segment: On Tuesday, July 22nd the contract was signed to begin the Design/Build for the trail segment from New York Ave. to Franklin Street. The contractor will have 12 months to design and build this segment which will include 5 neighborhood connections and will create direct access to the New York Ave. Metro Station.
Artist Selected! Met Branch Trail Artistic Identity: On July 21st a local DC artist was selected to create an artistic identity for the trail including signage and amenities. This project was sponsored by DC Arts and Humanities.
* Volunteer: we will be hosting community meetings and asking for your thoughts so stay posted!
Design Begun! Rhode Island Ave. Ped/Bike Metro Bridge: We have begun to design the pedestrian and bicycle bridge that will connect the Met Branch Trail to the Rhode Island Ave. station. Preliminary engineering drawings have been completed and bridge plans will be available for the public soon.
That means the NY Ave to Franklin section should be open by this time next year. Something I mentioned in January was that the hotel (A 218-key Courtyard by Marriott with ground retail and a green roof) between the trail and the ATF building - the one that has that section of trail closed - would open in April. Obviously that was wrong. I meant April 2009 or well before the new section is set to be done. North of Florida, the Washington Gateway project is being built. More on NoMa here. Map. In this picture, you can see the trail way over on the right with a tiny little cyclist heading north.
I still can't find the photo of the Gateway building's bicycle lobby online - I hope they didn't drop it. Last I saw they were going to have the lobby open to the trail - instead of presenting a blank wall. That's good.
It doesn't appear that the hotel will consider the trail as a gateway. There's no sign you'll be able to transfer from one to the other without going to ground level. That's bad.
the photos may be up in one of the eckington-bloomingdale blogs. That's where I saw it.
Posted by: Richard Layman | August 11, 2008 at 07:35 PM