New bike lane on DC side of the 14-th street bridge

[pmf]

Haven’t ridden in since Tuesday December 4. I ride in this morning (Friday the 7-th). They’ve divided the two lane road in front of the Jefferson Memorial and converted one lane into a bike lane. There’s even a tiny 3″ high barrier and some cones. I always hated riding on that road to get onto the 14-the street bridge. The mixture of slow buses in one lane and faster cars in the other was dangerous. 25 years of bike commuting and it keeps getting better. A tunnel underneath the intersection at Rosslyn would be awesome, but I’ll take anything better. Repaving parts of the MTV trail?

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[zsionakides]

I rode through it both ways yesterday, and while it’s largely fine going northbound, southbound is a different story. Going northbound the cycle track connects to the side path, which is fine since that’s the only route you can bike. Going southbound, if you use the road, which I’d guess over 50% of riders do due to the pedestrian volumes on the side path, you’ll probably need to take the regular lanes all the way to the 14st bridge ramps or cut into the cycle track between posts. If you use the cycle track going south and are going to the 14th st bridge, you also have to look back over your should to check for traffic and work out who is yielding to who since a proper connection wasn’t built from the 14th st bridge ramp to the cycle track.

They should have connected the south end of the cycle track to the bridge similarly to what was done near T.R. park on the MVT and made traffic yield to bikes/pedestrians. Instead they built an incongruent design that will probably lead to unnecessary accidents or close calls due to unclear right of way.

[CCC27]

I would caution anyone riding southbound to watch out when you hit the end of new lane and join the sidewalk around the Jefferson Memorial. If you are on the far right side of the lane you will miss the ramp and hit the curb. This almost happened to me last night in the dark.

[CCC27]

Watch out headed southbound. As the lane ends and heads up onto the sidewalk the ramp does not extend all the way into the lane. If you are at the far right edge you will run into the curb. Just missed this last night on the way home.

[Author]

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