Continuing to look at old Washington Post articles I learned, from this article about the 1999 Metropolitan Branch Trail formal groundbreaking ceremony, that DC used to have a cycletrack-like facility on 13th Street from Logan Circle "all the way to the Maryland border"
Bicyclists and drivers have long gotten on each other's nerves, and that tension is widely blamed for the "retrocession" of 13th Street NW.
In the late 1970s, the city government designated one lane of that thoroughfare for bikes only. The lane ran from Logan Circle all the way to the Maryland border. It was widely hailed by bicyclists as the beginning of a cycling-commuting revolution.
But the lane was sparsely used, and it was quietly returned to automotive traffic in the early 1990s. Bike enthusiasts say the 13th Street lane would have been used more if motorists weren't so hostile and confrontational toward cyclists.
I'd never heard about this before and the article makes it sound like the bike-only lane was the width of one full size traffic lane, but there are other errors in the article that raise questions - like the fact that 13th Street doesn't go all the way to Maryland (not uninterrupted at least). Also there is this:
It's called the Metropolitan Branch Trail. It runs for 7.7 miles, from Union Station to Silver Spring. Within a few months, the 10-foot-wide trail will be fully paved.
Though there was a groundbreaking (attended by Hillary Clinton) at the time, Levey may have been confused about the timeline.
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