Busting the clusterfudge. Can we get an Anacostia River Connection to 52nd Ave?

In a set of Christmas Wish List posts that I never completed, I was going to highlight the 12 biggest bicycle dead zones - areas that have to be biked around, like the White House. The biggest of these was was centered on the Tuxedo area of Maryland between Fort Lincoln, Colmar Manor, Cheverly and Deanwood. Here, two highways - the BW Parkway and US 50; two railroads - the Penn Line and Landover Sub; the connections between them; a river; the Arboretum; parks and even Beaver Dam Creek conspire to create a barrier to cyclists that I labeled the Clusterfudge. Even along the edges, Kenilworth Avenue and Bladensburg Road are no picnics to ride on. 

Up until 2016, any trip that would, as the crow flies, pass through the area in red, had to instead go around it on the red line drawn on the map. In 2016, the Anacostia River Trail, the blue line I drew, punched through that area and improved things quite a lot for those going north and south by creating four new connections in the area, but the Clusterfudge is still probably the biggest dead zone in the region; though Arlington Cemetery, with its ever more-limiting rules and ever expanding size is trying to give it a run for its money.

Some help may be on the way. The planned bridge across the Anacostia to the Arboretum and the trail from there to M Street, NE will help a lot. A bike path on the New York Avenue Bridge, a Beaver Dam Creek Trail, and A Fort Lincoln Trail would too, but those are big projects that would take years.

In the short term can we maybe get a trail connection to 52nd Street?

It's not exactly a game changer, but there is no connection to the trail for the 1.5 miles between Beaver Dam Creek and Quincy Run. A connection to 52nd Avenue would break that up and shorten the trip from DC to Cheverly via the trail by about 0.8 miles. A trail connection (the blue line below) would only need to be about 1200 feet to get the job done, and it wouldn't need to be as wide as the rest of the trail.

It could be about 300 feet shorter (the red line) if it could use the access road that connects to the trail in the area (see image below)

As it is now, a trip from DC to Cheverly along the trail requires a ride up to the LLoyd access road. A trail connection to 52nd Avenue would shorten the trip for every destination in the area bounded by Kenilworth Ave, 52nd Ave, Annapolis Rd, Cheverly Rd. and Tuxedo Rd. It would benefit many people with just a short connection.

Then maybe a protected bike lane on 52nd Ave from the trail to Newton St., a bike-ped bridge over the Parkway from Inwood to Viewpoint and a micro-trail from Inwood to the Hospital could follow, creating a complete connection from Cheverly to the trail. 

Comments

[John Stith]

This looks great at first glance. There seems to be relatively more thinking about how to connect the Route 1 corridor to DC, but much less about the Orange Line corridor. This post is a good step forward!