The National Park Service has created a concept design for access and safety improvements to the Rock Creek Park Trail from Virginia Avenue to the Tidal Basin Bridge. There are a lot of components to this project and I think it will make many people happy. From north to south
Virginia Avenue NW intersection improvements - This won't really impact trail users, but it will resurface the road, improve the crosswalks, repair the cobblestone median and repave a sidewalk to nowhere. The repaving of the road and repair of the median will happen all along the Parkway.
Trail widening and waterfront improvements - The project contemplates the widening of the trail from Virginia Avenue, NW to Ohio Drive, SW to 14 feet in most locations, with a width of 10 feet in locations constrained by important trees or other landscape features. It will also be resurfaced with a consistent porous asphalt pavement along its length, much of which currently surfaced with variable materials. Even the cantilevered balcony in front of the Kennedy Center will get a real trail surface. And they want to replace the wooden benches with narrower ones to widen the trail from 6 functional feet to 14. Hooray! The portion of trail from the John Ericsson National Memorial, just south of the Lincoln Memorial, to the Tidal Basin bridge will not be widened, but will also be resurfaced with porous pavement. It won't be widened though. They also want to install improved signage all along the trail.
Trail tunnel under the Roosevelt Bridge - This is pretty exciting too. At the Roosevelt Bridge, trail users currently use a six-foot-wide sidewalk that runs through an existing tunnel shared with vehicular traffic. NPS is planning to construct a new trail tunnel through the non-historic TR Bridge abutment, which would accommodate a 14-foot-wide trail with 12-foot vertical clearance. There are two trail alignments through the abutment, one that goes through aligned with the abutment and the other at an angle to the abutment, making for a straighter trail. And y'all, they're recommending the one with the straighter trail. They're also recommending the one with an arched roof instead of the square one. So, what you see below and at the top.
Belvedere improvements - The Belvedere is that weird overlook thing that the trail passes around just south of the Roosevelt Bridge. It's kind of an annoyance and, since it's no longer the turnaround for Constitution Ave, it serves no transportation purpose. The proposed design will realign the Rock Creek Park Trail around the outside of the site, and provide landscape improvements in preparation for a future memorial.
With all the improvements to the Rock Creek Trail north of Virginia Avenue (the part along Rock Creek), these improvements will make it really hard for trail users to find anything to complain about.
The street crossing by the Belvedere is terrible, any work on that danger zone?
Posted by: Will Handsfield | August 06, 2018 at 10:14 AM
Yes. If you look at the bottom picture, you can see that the crossing will be realigned. The white with black checkmarks part north of Parkway Drive is the old trail. The new trail is in yellow. There will be refuge median there as well.
Posted by: washcycle | August 06, 2018 at 10:53 AM
I'm impressed - these are some really good design proposals.
I am curious how the tunnel under Roosevelt bridge will be impacted by the existing trees on the North side of the abutment. For the past week, a work crew has had the grass/tree section between the trail and the river fenced off as they do some major tree upkeep. They've dug down and exposed the roots and have been using compressed air to clean them, it looks like. At least two of the trees along that stretch look to be pretty old, so I'm curious how those will be dealt with if they reroute the trail to align with a new tunnel.
I'm really excited about the Belvedere redevelopment prospects - as it is now, cars East bound on RCP have a straight line as they continue on to Parkway Drive up to the Lincoln - getting them to slow and stop at the trail intersection has always been tough. If the redesign does force a right turn from RCP onto the Parkway Drive (as pictured above) it will be much much better for trail users!
Posted by: Bilsko | August 06, 2018 at 10:56 AM
Looks great. Love the tunnel.
Looks like NPS has seen what I've seen that needs to be redone.
Truth is, Rock Creek Parkway along the Potomac really is redundant to 66 and should be removed. But maybe that's too big of a project at this time.
Posted by: Brett Young | August 06, 2018 at 04:34 PM
The NPS might want to examine whether the Roosevelt Bridge concept could be applied to the Virginia end of the Memorial Bridge as well to accommodate the Mount Vernon Trail.
Posted by: dbb | August 07, 2018 at 09:37 AM
Is all the work that is going on now just north of the TR bridge related to this plan?
Posted by: VeloC | March 07, 2019 at 05:02 PM
No. I believe you're referring to the bridge to the Kennedy Center.
https://www.ncpc.gov/news/item/55/
Posted by: washcycle | March 08, 2019 at 09:55 AM