Battle of the Beltway Bike Racks

Two photos of the Bicycle Valet area

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There are 8 spaces at hoop bike racks in The Yards parking lot on 1st St SE, just across the street from the Nationals Park parking garage (with the bike valet). This is a photo from the post-game fireworks on the day before Independence Day. (The team isn’t going to compete with the National Mall and have fireworks on the 4th of July. So they have fireworks the night before, and then a morning game on Independence Day.) The bikes are just visible at the bottom of the photo.

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Bike racks on Potomac Ave SE, the south/southeast side of the stadium:

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Unlike football stadiums, which are intentionally built with seas of asphalt (to accommodate the tradition of tailgating), baseball (and basketball/hockey) stadiums can be built with parking garages and only a limited amount of surface parking. This makes the area more walkable and open to other development. While the Great Recession held up much of the development in the surrounding blocks, momentum has picked up and many of the nearby plots are now being developed. The area around Nationals Park is set to become an active neighborhood with mixed-used developments: office with ground-floor retail, residential, restaurants/bars.

This can never be the case around a football stadium where a vast amount of surface parking is built. Most of that asphalt goes unused for most of the year. Even when the football team was playing at RFK, they would only occupy the stadium for eight games a year (plus the occasional playoff game). There are a few concerts and other temporary events. On the other days of the year, all that asphalt serves no purpose other than to create a heat-island effect. It also provides a large impermeable surface, which leads to a lot of pollution washing into the Potomac River and storm sewer flooding issues.

Nationals Park was built with a filtration system that treats both stormwater and water used for cleaning at the stadium, before it flows into the Anacostia River.

Construction work on the replacement for the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge (South Capitol Street) could begin this year or next year. The new bridge will include traffic ovals at either end. One of those will sit off the SW corner of Nationals Park. The bridge will include bike/pedestrian pathways on both sides.