The NoMa Parks Foundation recently selected "LIghtweave" as the second winner of the "Underpass Arts Park" competition, and this installation will go on the L Street section. The north side of the L Street underpass, unlike the M Street one, is part of the Metropolitan Branch Trail. In fact, there are two types of concrete used to designate which part is the trail - the portion between the lamps and the road and which part is the sidewalk. Unfortunately, there wasn't more of an effort made to distinguish between these two parts and so I suspect few users are even aware. Perhpas DDOT was waiting for the L Street stairs to be replaced by a ramp.
The new L Street underpass design doesn't designate any space for the trail and the light installations will be erected on the part of the underpass that is currently the trail, thus blending it all together.
The rendering doesn't show any cyclists either.
Not that this is bad. There's no reason why trail users and sidewalk users can't share this space, but I'd like to see something that makes it clear that the underpass is part of the trail. And some paint marking that separates cyclists and pedestriasns would be useful as well. But, at the minimum, something that makes it clear that cycling is allowed and even encouraged on this block would go a long way to reducing the amount of fist shaking that will likely result when the ramp is completed.
NoMa Parks will host a community meeting on the project on July 13th.
Look at all the floor-to-ceiling bollards!
Posted by: me | July 06, 2015 at 03:28 PM