Rose Park Trail rebuilt and bridge in place as DDOT's Rock Creek Park trail project chugs along

It's been a few years since we last checked in on the Rock Creek Park Trail rehabilitation and since then there has been a lot of exciting progress. At that time, the federal government had wrapped up their project and DDOT was making plans to start theirs. Work on the DDOT project began at the end of last March. 

The DDOT project is doing the following

• Rebuilding, widening and realigning 3.7 miles of the trail from P Street NW in Georgetown to Broad Branch Road NW (including Rose Park Trail)
• Building a new 0.8-mile trail along Piney Branch Parkway
• Building a new 110-foot pedestrian bridge south of the ZooTunnel
• Reconstructing and reopening the Zoo Loop trail
• Building a new 0.2-mile trail from Peirce Mill to Broad Branch

It's is broken into 7 stages (with one stage into two parts). Stage 1, which is the Rose Park Trail and Stage 4, the Western Ridge Trail were both completed in 2021 - though Rose Park lighting wasn't completely resolved until early 2022. 

Since the September meeting the Pierce Mill (6)  and Broad Branch (7) sections have been completed as expected. But it's not clear if they'll finish the Zoo Loop (3) this winter.  Work on Piney Branch (5) began in November and is scheduled to complete at the end of the year. Work is also underway on Stage 2, which is to be completed by summer. 

The Rose Park Trail is much improved. It had a worse surface than most mountain bike trails, but is now smoother. It's still narrow, but not as much so and in order to keep cyclists from going fast - which is not appropriate here - it has rumble strips.

It also includes a beautiful trail connection to the Rock Creek Park Trail.

The Western Ridge Trail also looks nice.

The Pierce Mill section was completed in December, but I don't have a photo of it or the new pedestrian bridge there. Here's a photo of construction though.

They've already poured some, if not all, of the Zoo Loop pavement and at last report they were working on stream bed stabilization, but the big news is that the span for the new bridge is in place. 

The other thing they're still working on is the Piney Branch Trail which is partially completed on the north end.

The whole DDOT Rock Creek Trail project should wrap up in 2023. 

Tangentially related is this story about how trail work inadvertently pushed onto land that was once part of the Mount Zion and Female Union Band Society cemeteries. These are historic black cemeteries - among the oldest in the city. Part of the trail, near the Devil's Chair bridge, has been closed and will remain closed until an archeological exploration of the cemeteries is completed. That will begin on March 21. 

The cemeteries’ land was acquired by the US government via eminent domain in 1931 for the development of Rock Creek Parkway, but there is little evidence that the grounds were checked or that any bodies were reinterred elsewhere. 

The excavation was set in motion in the fall of 2021, when Mount Zion-Female Union Band Society Memorial Park’s executive director, Lisa Fager, found a construction crew working on expanding a bike path within the cemeteries’ limits. No one had contacted her or her organization, which has been focused on the cemeteries since 2005. In fact, the burial grounds had been left off the maps used by city and federal agencies. 

That section of the trail has been closed since the fall, in order to prevent any damage to the area before it’s closely examined.  The project had to wait until temperatures rose, because the sonar technology requires the ground to be warm.

There’s no detour or alternative route, so don’t plan on using this part of the trail until March 28, when the area is scheduled to reopen.

Comments

[Purple Eagle]

Thanks for the updates. I biked on Piney Branch (Road) last week . . the completed trail looks nice. In the lower section there is not as much space for the trail and it looks like they might need to stabilize a retaining wall next to the stream so that would be a bigger job.

[Sam C]

This may be covered somewhere in the links to this *very informative* post, but whatever came of the NPS deliberations in summer 21 about extending the Beach Drive closures permanently? Haven't been by there on a weekday in ages and google only turns up stories about the NPS comment period from last summer. Did they ever make a decision?

[washcyle]

They've not said a word as far as I know.

[Moose]

Thank heavens for the new bridge south of the Zoo tunnel. I used to live and commute from north of there, and riding or running on the side of that car bridge was terrifying.