DDOT's Chief Engineer Penney on the 11th St. Brigde Project

The below article has been excerpted, in its entirety, from the February 2009 Hill Rag's "the last word", Pages 155 and 156.(Note: highlights, bold-text and [text] have been added)






The successful completion of the 11th Street Bridge Project has the potential to redirect 1,000s of commercial and commuter vehicles from the Greater Capitol Hill Neighborhood Street Grid (GCHNSG), including C Street, NE!

C Street, NE and subsequent residential streets carry nearly 20,000 west-bound vehicles, most out-of-district commercial and commuter motorists, each weekday. Constructing the new 11th Street Bridge, with the I-295/Kenilworth Ave. and I-395/East-west Freeway connection, is essential to redirecting regional-commuter and downtown-destined vehicles, currently using C Street, to appropriate and designated routes. The solution to redirect these vehicles is two-fold, first make it “more appealing” to use the existing freeways infrastructure by creating an uninterrupted connection between the two existing freeways, and second, making it “less appealing” to use the GCHRSG by placing strategic neighborhood scaled traffic-calming devices to make it difficult to traverse the GCHRSG from I-295/Kenilworth Ave to either downtown or I-395/East-west Freeway.

Without this important piece of the transportation puzzle, our community will continue to resort to using "bubble-gum fixes" in a feudal attempt to restrict and manage the overwhelming current traffic volumes flowing through the Greater Capitol Hill Community and never fully realize Capitol Hill's potential as a "livable, walkable community".

Also, WashCycle refers to the DC Chief Engineer's editorial in a recent post, HERE, discussing the proposed 11th Street Bridge project from a cyclist perspective.

For more on the project...

HERE is the February 2009 "Waterfront Watch" newsletter, published by the Anacostia Waterfront Civic Engagement Program, which includes reference to Kathleen Penney's Hill Rag article.

Below is a DDOT newsletter, from July 2008, providing general project goals and design objectives.


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HERE is a link to DDOT/Anacostia Water Initiative’s 11th Street Bridge Project website

Greater, Greater Washington blog has a 3 part series discussion on the project, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.