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You can turn all the parking into a park and build a new stadium if it is served by a newly separated blue line to union station, Georgetown, and Rosslyn. Its a win win for everyone.

If a stadium went there, there would still need to be parking, in reality, for it to get done, but you could do it with multistory garages and free up a lot of space.

I would love a velodrome. Finally get to use my track bike for its intended purpose instead of just as a rain machine. The economic benefits of having a velodrome as part of the park would be attractive too, though I'm sure the city council and most locals would prefer getting the pigskins back.

Dreams vs. reality.

Minor quibble, but it's the National Park Service (not Parks). Intriguing idea to have a NRA managed by DC Parks. You are correct that some NRA's are not managed by NPS, but I believe the only other agency in that position is the Forest Service (e.g. Mt Rogers NRA in southwest VA).

NRA's need to be created by an act of Congress, so I say lobby your (non-voting) member of Congress to introduce a bill. Or maybe a member of Congress from VA or MD.

Might be simpler to have this new park incorporated into Anacostia Park, already under NPS management (as part of National Capital Parks East). This might not require an act of Congress since that unit of the park system is probably currently responsible for the land there.

Regardless of how it's managed, I think this is a great proposal and would be a much better use of land than surface parking.

Thanks for catching the typo. According to wikipedia, one NRA is managed by BLM and "several" are managed by the Forest Service.

Sure enough, White Mountains NRA in Alaska is BLM. I was not familiar with that one.

Usually the Forest Service ends up with NRAs when a portion of a national forest is considered especially significant for recreation, so the management approach is shifted to emphasize recreation over extractive uses. It's done with land that is already part of a national forest.

The forest service (and NPS and BLM) also manages several national monuments, which are similar but are usually created by presidential proclamation under the antiquities act rather than by Congress. Maybe that's another model here - petition the President to create a national monument at RFK. Since it's already federal land I think it could be done, legally. Politically it might be a different story.

Another idea to add to the NRA: a bike-learning area. Arlington is building a small one, and European cities often have bigger spaces, where people, especially kids, can learn the basics of riding a bike, including how to deal with infrastructure you encounter (signals, signs, lanes, etc).

If we actually build a velodrome can we get the road racing crowd to train there instead of the trails on weekends? That would start mending a lot of fences with the non-racing crowd as well as motorists, pedestrians, etc. who are regularly terrorized by the speed bandits.

Some, probably. All, certainly not. Track cycling, as I understand it, is very different from road cycling.

The best analogue for an urban National Recreation Area is Golden Gate NRA. Several parts of GGNRA are managed by other entities -- including most of he Presidio, which is run by the self-sustaining Presidio Trust (a federal entity that operates mixed-use development on the site), and Sharp Park in San Mateo County, which is confusingly owned and managed by San Francisco Recreation & Parks.

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