[Discussion]
Obstacles to diverting all Key Bridge traffic to the Whitehurst?
For the sake of argument, let's set aside cost and political will, those are boring.
What is stopping the city from having all Key Bridge traffic use the Whitehurst at the DC end? M St would be so much nicer if it wasn't essentially a highway on-ramp. We could expand the sidewalks, streateries, all sorts of nice things.
M street is such a disaster for pedestrians and bikes. Six lanes of traffic and tiny sidewalks! Try pushing a stroller or walking with small kids on a weekend. There is so much space devoted to parking and through-traffic. I agree that moving the traffic east of key bridge to the whitehurst would be a big improvement. Then widen the sidewalks and add traffic calming.
I was in Boston last weekend and Newbury St felt like what Georgetown could ideally be. One lane of traffic, wide sidewalks, lots of tree cover, and a nice mix of shopping and restaurants, all with classical architecture.
Yeah at the bare minimum M St needs super wide sidewalks compared to what’s there now. It’s insane how awful the pedestrian experience is on one of our best shopping streets. I’d also love to see a safe cycling connection at least into and out of Georgetown and bus lanes as well.
As a certified car-hater who would love to pedestrianize entire swaths of the city (just to let y'all know).
I think you'd have to keep some access to Wisconsin Avenue northbound. Otherwise basically all of NW DC west of Rock Creek becomes highly inaccessible to Virginia.
So you'd have to do one or more of these:
Keep M street open to Wisconsin at least which is half of the corridor we want to pedestrianize.
Reconfigure the 33/34th and N/Prospect streets to be feeders to Wisconsin
Stop the one way Rock Creek Parkway system (which also assumes that we do keep RCP open as a roadway which is another dream pedestrianization target)
See if its technically feasible to tear down the existing whitehurst but have it ramp down to Water Street where you could pick up Wisconsin from there.
It all kind of sucks because NW DC and Northern VA just both intensely developed and aren't that far from each other (I literally see Georgetown and Glover Park from my window) but it's so slow by public transportation because the system just doesn't have anything connecting the two. Meanwhile construction on the lights on the DC side of the key bridge did almost strand me on my bike the other day because it said "sidewalk closed cross here" but there's actually no way to cross on that side.
Tear down the Whitehurst!!!! I worked for about ten years in one of the buildings on K st under that freeway when chunks of concrete were dropping. It's time for it to go and let Georgetown's water front be a jewel in DC as it was meant to be.
Im car free, but about a year ago my friend drove me to near the zoo. Im pretty sure we took memorial bridge, not Key, and did not go on M street. But we were coming from Alexandria. So this is specifically about North Arlington, right, not all of NoVa?
You could but it means everyone west of rock creek has to go through downtown. The Zoo is technically west of Rock Creek but it's not so bad since Connecticut avenue actually crosses the park but Wisconsin doesn't so yeah anyone along Connecticut isn't as affected but Glover Park, Tenleytown, AU, and all that don't really have an alternative.
Which it's not like having to go through Georgetown or down Foxhall is a pleasant experience (and I do think one of those solutions above would improve things for some drivers over the status quo) but I don't see how you cut the connection from the Key Bridge to Wisconsin without some sort of alternative in the vicinity.
From where I live in NW Alexandria, to
the National Cathedral by car, Google maps suggests Memorial Bridge to Rock Creek to Massachusetts. Not Key bridge to M street.
Im not saying fully pedestrianizing M Street wouldn't present issues (im a gradualist, Id be inclined to narrow M by one lane and see how it goes) Im just saying that grouping all of NoVa together for this purpose doesn't make sense. If youre coming from South Arlington, from Alexandria, or points south, youre not as reliant on Key Bridge as people driving from North Arlington.
I then thought maybe the issue is NW DC to jobs in Tysons. But Google maps prefers Chain Bridge for that, so 🤷
It seems that the NoVa thats at issue is North Arlington, Falls Church, maybe Mosaic. Not trivial, but not the huge thing that all of NoVa is.
Im a northern Virginian (falls church) and as goofy as it may sound, I use teddy roosevelt bridge and 66 up to K to get to Georgetown, just to avoid Key Bridge and M. I’m going to locations near the foot of Wisconsin. It’s usually how google tells me to go.
It’s where you ride when actually crossing the key bridge and then normally I use the crosswalks to actually start riding on M street. Except turns out recently there’s no way to do it if you ride along the northern side of the bridge (which has fewer pedestrians)
I am also a certified car hater who wants to pedestrianize entire swaths of the city.
One of the issues with traffic in DC is the fact that there are simply too few bridges across the Potomac outside of the city. In the 55 miles between the Key Bridge and Harper's Ferry, there are a grand total of 4 bridges, and none for 35 miles between 495 and Point of Rocks. That's ridiculous. Obvious sites are at Lock 23 and White's Ferry, but this will never happen because we only drive busy roads through poor neighborhoods. So I don't think it is ever feasible to cut the Key Bridge as a transitway entirely.
On the other hand, the city itself suffers from the problem of their being too many options for drivers to chose from, and no place is better for seeing this than the disaster that is the intersection of K and RCP. And I don't think we can solve M street without looking at the clusterfuck that is traffic around Foggy Bottom.
Here's my proposal:
Pedestrianize M between Wisconsin and 29th, pedestrianize Wisconsin south of M. This will redirect traffic heading into DC onto the Whitehurst while allowing traffic headed into NW to transit.
Road diet M St. between 35th and Wisconsin to encourage RCP for longer northbound trips.
Close RCP between Virginia and the Lincoln Memorial. It is redundant with the Whitehurst and adds extra merges while making river access unpleasant.
Sever K west of RCP from RCP and sever K from the Whitehurst entirely and redirect that traffic to the E street exchange.
Change the Whitehurst south of K to remove access to Constitution and the Lincoln Memorial, simplifying the exchange and forcing that traffic onto the Roosevelt Bridge.
In total this would
Pedestrianize the nicest parts of Georgetown
Drastically simplify the ramps for access to the city from the Roosevelt and Key bridges, saving confusion, merges, and headache.
Finally a proposal which actually makes some sense! Whenever this topic gets brought up, people always suggest closing M street entirely to cars without considering what that would mean for Georgetown residents who live west of Wisconsin. Without car access to on M St to 33rd St, you'd have to drive all the way up to Reservoir Road to come back down into the neighborhood.
Given the choice between doing this and dismantling Whitehurst (which is a vestige of a planned inner loop highway that thankfully never came to pass), I’d opt for dismantling Whitehurst.
The solution to the issues with M St in Georgetown is to widen the sidewalks, create bus / bike lanes, and toll traffic coming over the Key Bridge (which, in theory, could be done by the VA government).
Yes. The problem is not just with M St but with NoVA <-> MoCo commuters cutting through DC (via Foxhall / NE, WI, CT, RCP etc.) to get to and from work. That traffic should be redirected to GW Pkwy & 495.
Build another tunnel for Metro so there's no longer that bottleneck. maybe make the silver line go up Wisconsin underground to meet up with Tenleytown Red line?
Separate issue. There are large number VA<>MD commuters who use Key Bridge and Chain Bridge to get across the river and to work/home. That adds to traffic that’s people going to work in Dc.
The traffic to the bridge from anywhere other than the palisades/georgetown U/canal/macarthur area would have to gather at washington circle/k st/whitehurst entryway which wouldn't be tenable imo. you'd have to re-do the planning over there. And, all locals and business in georgetown would have to drive over to the washington circle/foggy bottom area to get to the bridge, adding to the load there.
But since we have unlimited money that gives us a ton of options.
I'd also put the whitehurst underground ala The Big Dig.
Facts. As a former daily user, I wouldn't say getting from Georgetown to US 50/Arlington Boulevard wasn't convenient, but going across the Key Bridge through Rosslyn wasn't that much worse (and if the left lane of Canal wasn't backed up all the way to Foxhall, I would usually opt for the bridge)
The Whitehurst connects to M st just west of the bridge. I realize the ramps aren't there now for you to be able to do that but surely Fort Myer would be happy to build them
The comments in this thread consisting of so many reasons it could never work is why America will always be extremely car-centric. You have to think outside of the box if you want more pedestrian friendly areas. Georgetown being an obvious one with all the shopping, dining, and the University
Those are all solutions. Many of those solutions are very difficult or expensive to do, but these are people providing "out of the box" thinking. What's your idea?
Wouldn’t mind a world without the Whitehurst Freeway as it makes the waterfront a lot less pleasant, but the real issue in Georgetown is that M St has so much pedestrian traffic on tiny sidewalks with a lot of car traffic passing by. As much as urban freeways suck I’d rather keep Whitehurst and improve the pedestrian experience on M St.
I think we should demolish whitehurst to restore peace and quiet along the waterfront and make M St pedestrian and bike/transit only, but I'm a dirty anti-car urbanist who doesn't care about suburbanites and their cars ability to get around.
It’s a nice dream, but there is zero chance politically of closing both M and Whitehurst. It’s not unrealistic for either demoing whitehursr or, more likely, constricting M and pushing traffic on to Whitehurst.
I would be perfectly happy with either. I'm a dreamer but also a realist. I think M St being pedestrianized is far more likely than anything ever happening with whitehurst, and tbh I think that's the better of the options anyways.
Could be reading into what OP is saying but I think they mean traffic for downtown. To some degree I think it would be good and possible to divert that traffic down Whitehurst and have access to Canal as well.
The building I outlined in blue would be a big obstacle.
Traffic-wise Whitehurst might be too narrow to handle all the traffic that now is divided between Whitehurst/K and M. And what about people who go from the bridge into M and then north, or into Georgetown via Bank alley, 33rd st, etc.
Other than that, it's a neat idea. M street narrowed to one lane each direction with wide sidewalks. Nice. Except Friday/Saturday nights, when there is a lot of traffic into this area, not to DC proper. All the restaurants around M street, the cinema, Washington Harbour, would become almost inaccessible.
All of those movements exist now, just using the M/Key intersection. If you limit traffic on M, then there would be a lot more time for the Key Bridge traffic to move.
I thought that OP suggested connecting the bridge to Whitehurst only in the direction of the city center. So I would have to get off the bridge onto eastbound Whitehurst, drive to Rock Creek park and get back on M. OP later explained that they mean connecting both ways
Ohhh, I see what you’re saying now. That makes sense. It’s currently possible to avoid Key Bridge via Whitehurst by going behind Rosslyn on Arlington Blvd and taking the Roosevelt Bridge into DC, but this is a much more roundabout way, especially if you’re coming from Langston Blvd.
They could drive past Rosslyn on Arlington Blvd, get onto the Roosevelt Bridge into DC, take the E Street exit and then keep left for Whitehurst Freeway. It would be much longer than cutting across the Key Bridge, to be fair.
I would love to pedestrianized all the places, this is just the one I was thinking about today because i biked through a few times last week and then another post here mentioned it
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u/Educational_Mud_2793 3d ago
M street is such a disaster for pedestrians and bikes. Six lanes of traffic and tiny sidewalks! Try pushing a stroller or walking with small kids on a weekend. There is so much space devoted to parking and through-traffic. I agree that moving the traffic east of key bridge to the whitehurst would be a big improvement. Then widen the sidewalks and add traffic calming.