11th Street Bridges Assessment Digested
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Ballpark and Beyond is from Jacqueline Dupree's blog on development in Near Southeast Washington, an area between Capitol Hill and the Anacostia River that is being transformed by the construction of the Nationals baseball stadium.
The 11th Street Bridges Environmental Impact Statement has been completed, and it identifies a "preferred alternative" from four initial designs for reconfiguring the bridges, one that would cost $465 million and take about five years to complete.
Read the report, which is hundreds of pages long, or its summary at http:/
¿ Two bridges would be built on the alignments of the existing bridges. The piers would be reused but would have to be widened to support new wider bridge decks.
¿ The city would build two ramps on the east side of the Anacostia River, providing access at last to the northbound Anacostia Freeway from the Southeast-Southwest Freeway and to the freeway from the southbound Anacostia Freeway.
The upstream bridge would be dedicated to freeway traffic, and the downstream bridge, known officially as the Officer Kevin J. Welsh Memorial Bridge, would handle local traffic, including paths for bicyclists and pedestrians. It could also accommodate a proposed light rail system in the future. The two bridges still would have 12 lanes total.
In Anacostia, access to the bridges from Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, Good Hope Road and 13th Street SE would be reconfigured, and a new exit ramp would improve access to Anacostia Park from the downstream bridge for cars, bikes and pedestrians.
In Near Southeast, many ramps would be reconfigured, with the ramps currently at N Street moved one block north, to M Street. There would also be new ramps to get on and off the Southeast Freeway at 11th Street, which would be feasible because the new freeway design eliminates the lanes running directly to and from the Pennsylvania Avenue/Barney Circle interchange.
They would be replaced by a "Southeast Freeway Boulevard" starting at 11th Street, which would be completed by the District Department of Transportation in a separate project.
