I recently went on a bike ride around southwest DC with Concilmember Charles Allen, his staff, WABA staff and other local citizens and one of the subjects to come up was the Anacostia Riverwalk Trail. Currently the west bank trail ends at the south side of the Dock 79 building at the empty lot where Bardo is now, but the long-term plan is for it to extend all the way down to Buzzard Point and then connect via protected bike lanes on 2nd and P Streets to the trail along the Washington Channel through the Wharf.
Extending the trail will require the coordination of at least 5 projects, some with more than one phase.
The next section going south will be a short piece built as part of Phase II of the RiverFront redevelopement (Phase I was Dock 79). According to JDland, Phase II construction is slated to begin this spring. The rest will be built as part of Phase IV, whenever that is built.
Next is the new Douglass Bridge. I'm going to write more on this later, but that is to open in 2021. I believe Phase IV and any development just south of the bridge will need to wait on that project to complete.
Then comes the heliport. I don't know how they plan to get the trail through or around there, but perhaps they can put it over the water by routing it onto the existing piers.
After that comes the Douglass building at 1900 Half Street, SW. They plan to rebuild that building from the inside out, because they suspect they would never be able to build on that footprint again otherwise, rather than do a normal tear down. But the project will include the trail on the riverfront. The completion date on this appears to be 2019.
Then comes Buzzard Point Park. Last December, NPS presented two options for rebuilding that, both including the trail, but nothing public has happened on that since then. This is also TBD.
Finally there's the Transpoint Building, which used to be the Coast Guard Headquarters. It will become Riverpoint via the same footprint salvaging trick that Douglass will use. You can see the bikeway in the image below, and at the very top, how it wraps around the west side of the building to connect with 2nd Street. I don't know when construction will start or end.
The design is proposed to include a twenty-five foot (25-foot) natural buffer and ten-foot (10-foot) active and passive trails separated by a five-foot (5-foot) planting area (Sheet L13). The Applicant is also proposing to install a Capital Bikeshare (Cabi) station in the 2nd Street SW right-of-way to the south and west of the subject property. The trail would continue as a cycletrack along the Second Street right-of-way to the west of the project.
A passive trail, with a minimum width of ten feet, would run south of the terrace. An approximately six-foot, four- inch planted buffer, consisting of infiltration planters, would separate the passive trail from the ten-foot active trail.
Beyond the active trail, visitors would encounter a wood sundeck at the western portion of the site.
According to CM Allen's staff, the 2nd Street protected bike lane will not be built as part of Audi Stadium, but will come later. As will the Audi Field traffic operations and parking plan (TOPP) which should come out in January.
I suspect P Street will be done after 2nd.
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