Public Meeting for Pennsylvania & Potomac Avenues SE Intersection Improvement Project

DDOT will once again discuss alternatives for
this complex intersection
Image: DDOT

The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) invites you to attend an informational meeting about the Pennsylvania Avenue SE and Potomac Avenue SE intersection improvement project. The meeting will be Thursday, June 1 from 6:30 to 8:30 at the Hill Center (Abraham Lincoln Hall, 921 Pennsylvania Avenue SE.

According to DDOT, the meeting will allow residents, visitors, and those in between the opportunity to learn about, and comment on, the proposed design concepts associated with this intersection. Specifically, the project will look at how pedestrians can successfully cross as many as 8 lanes of vehicular traffic. This intersection is a hub for Metrobus, containing at about 9 routes as this location feeds the Silver, Orange, and Blue lines at the Potomac Avenue Metrorail station. Given the increasing transportation share of bicycling, DDOT may also include bicycling facilities, which were absent from earlier conceptual drawings.

Like so many projects, this isn't the first time DDOT has looks at this particular intersection. After a series of community meetings, the initial scoping meeting was held in January of 2013 where DDOT and the public discussed problems associated with the area. This was followed by a November 2014, and a January 2015 meeting. The Final Environmental Assessment and Project Decision was to be issued in the Spring/Summer of 2016. While previous alternatives did not specifically include bicycling infrastructure, the public did. They included adding bikeshare stations, creating separate bike lanes through the intersection, additional bike parking, and adding wayfinding signage.

In 2014, Greater Greater Washington contributors Veronica (O) Davis and Brian (@gearprudence) McEntee discussed the three designs DDOT proposed: a oval, a square, or a parallelogram, otherwise known as an ellipse. The ellipse, they determined, created the most green space and reduces the number of bus stops from five to 4.

The Davis/McEntee perferred Alternative
Image: DDOT

The project is a part of the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative (AWI) Program, which hopes to transform the shores of the Anacostia River into world-class waterfront. This means that the control of this intersection isn't under the complete control of DDOT but must also include feedback from the National Park Service, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, National Capital Planning Commission, State Historic Preservation Office, and the defenders of historic viewsheds, the Commission of Fine Arts.

If you can attend, please tell what happened or what you hope to see.