15th Street Safety Improvement project work to start in February

DDOT intends to rebuild one block of 15th Street from V Street to W Street, with a complete redesign of the 15th, W, New Hampshire and Florida intersection. This does not include extending the cycletrack up the hill to Euclid, though that should follow soon, one would hope. Construction bids for the project were due in October, and DDOT plans to award the contract this month. Work will start in February, with completion scheduled for next October.

Currently the cycltrack ends at V Street, with bike lanes on 15th, New Hampshire, V and W. North of W, 15th has two bike lanes, both going (oddly enough) in the same direction. 

After work is done, the 15th street cycletrack will be extended to W (and past it a little) along the west side of the road and then protected by granite parking blocks and traffic islands (not exactly what is shown in the image above, but close). The existing bike lane on the east side will be replace by sharrows. I'm not sure how cyclists will proceed north of W, but the cycletrack is shown continuing for the first few feet (15th goes left to right in the image below, W goes up and down and Florida/New Hamsphire is the diagonal).

Bike lanes will be added to Florida Ave, with cyclists moving through the intersection from the right-hand side of the road, to the middle of the road (guided by sharrows) to connect with the existing bike lanes on New Hampshire Ave.

Bulbouts at every intersection should slow car traffic (and make for shorter crossing distances for pedestrians) and cyclists will find bike boxes at every stop line. The new intersection also adds bioretention and drainage space (where currently there is pavement) and a more ADA compliant design.

Comments

[M]

Greater Greater Washington is going to start calling them "protected bikeways." Good idea?

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/25158/out-cycletrack-in-protected-bikeway/

[washcycle]

It's fine. I don't really think it matters that much. I'm not sure that "cycletrack" is problematic. People can learn and understand new ideas. I think people can sometimes get too hung up on these things. I remember when people were saying that Obama couldn't be elected because his name was weird (and included "Hussein"). Maybe at times it matters. It probably helped those who wanted to reduce the inheritance tax to rebrand it as a "death tax". I'm not sure how much "climate change" has held back CO2 reduction efforts over "global warming." There is a lot of hand-wringing and brainstorming that goes into things like this, and I probably get sucked into too, but I doubt it is really worth all the effort.