Not so much anymore
The partial closure of Arlington Memorial Bridge had me thinking about NPS's project to reduce conflicts at Memorial Circle. Though there was a meeting in 2015, it seems that's where it ended unfortunately. Which is too bad because Memorial Circle has so much room for improvement.
The really frustrating thing is that NPS has the bones of a pretty good plan, and they've had it for a long time. It was in their 1990 Paved Trails plan. Back they they planned to grade separate most of the trail crossing with an underpass. And extend a trail north from the circle to the Roosevelt Bridge. And that new trail - between the Parkway and Arlington Blvd - would connect to the MVT two more times on the north side of Columbia Island. Another trail would connect to the LBJ grove. They were also going to realign the lane of Washington Blvd that goes under the bridge. None of that happened.
Memorial Circle from the 1990 Paved Trails Plan
Still, back in 2014 they announced they were going back to the drawing board.
The National Park Service (NPS) is starting a Transportation Plan and Environmental Assessment (plan/EA) for the Memorial Circle area of the George Washington Memorial Parkway (the park). The purpose of the plan is to reduce conflicts between trail, walkway, and roadway users and to increase overall visitor safety, while maintaining the memorial character of the area and improving mobility for vehicles, pedestrians, and bicycles.
They held a design charrette in February of 2015 to discuss possible concepts and then posted those drawings in March. And then....nothing. They were supposed to perform and Alternatives Refinement and then an Analysis of Environmental Impacts of
Alternatives in the latter part of 2015. In early 2016 there was to be a Public Review of the Plan/Environmental Assessment and then an NPS decision by the end of the year. None of that happen. The project has just been able to linger in no man's land ever since. There isn't even a project schedule or a map. Making matters worse, the paved trails plan doesn't include any suggestions because it just cites the Memorial Circle plan that NPS was to be working on.
So I guess this is where we are. That 1990 plan looks better and better.
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