In addition to a long-term full an partial closure of the Memorial Bridge planned by NPS, road users in the near future can also look forward to many months of partial closures of the East Capital Street Bridge.
The slides are not online yet, or at least not where this obsessive blogger can find them, so here's my second hand telling of what is going on with the East Capital Street Bridge Rehabilitation Project.
First of all, Whitney Young is getting the shaft. They named the bridge after the guy and no one can bother to call it that?
In addition though, it seems the bridge is in desperate need of repairs. The undersides - I believe they mentioned something about pins and rollers(?) are in bad shape. They showed a photo of how one is being supplemented and supported by stacks of wood, bubble gum and at least a half dozen of those sugar packets you get from a restaurant caddy. They'd like to resurface it too.
So the plan is to close the north/inbound span of the bridge for four months, fix it and then repeat with the south/outbound span. During the closure all traffic will be re-routed onto the open span with one lane in each direction and one variable lane in the rush hour direction. You can see what that might look like in the images below.
Anyway...what about bikes.
The good news is that the Young Bridge doesn't get a lot of bike/ped traffic because it isn't particularly useful. OK, so that's not really good news. As I noted back in 2007, DC-295 and the railroad tracks create a barrier that can't be crossed on foot or bike anywhere between Benning Road and Pennsylvania Avenue, so the Young Bridge only gives access to the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail and the River Terrace neighborhood. Still, it does get some traffic.
One of the lessor problems with the Young Bridge is that the south side bike/ped facility is useless. As I mentioned back in 2007, "The east side of the downstream lane dumps riders off at a dead end with woods on one side and 295 on the other. A connection to the future ART is needed here." The actual good news here is that this could finally get addressed.
During Phase I, the bike facility on the north side will probably be closed (though only if necessary). If it is closed, they'll either route it onto the south bridge separated from car traffic and with a connection to River Terrace's East Capitol Street NE; or they will build the needed connection mentioned above. Someone suggested that it might be a temporary connection, which would be silly - the bad silly, not the good silly. Such a connection will require NPS to sign off on it since that is NPS land - something to include in any comments on NPS's paved trails study!
Even if they don't need the south side connection for the north side closure, creating such a connection is something they have been looking into as part of this project. That would solve at least one issue with the bridge.
There doesn't appear to be any plan to create another bike/ped connection to the east side, connect the trail to Kingman Island, improve the connection to E. Capital Street, NE, widen the bike/ped facilities, or improve lighting or signage. Once a method for commenting on this is made public, I'll share it on the blog.
I'll point out that the best place to connect this to the east is probably not at East Capitol Street - at least not as part of this bridge. The "easiest" way would be to build a bridge from C Street and 33rd SE that goes over the RR tracks, and then to contiueing the path under DC-295 where the road is elevated and an underpass already exist. Then it is a few feet to the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail. The nice thing about C and 33rd SE is that it is also where the no-longer-in-use Shepherd Branch terminates.
hahaha. great title. The Closening!
Posted by: Bayley | May 17, 2016 at 07:47 AM