Overhaul of GW Parkway Bridge to Hamper Commute

Delays Projected From '08 to '10

Construction will begin early next year to improve safety and traffic flow on the George Washington Memorial Parkway's Humpback Bridge. Commuters, however, should prepare for major traffic delays during the work.

Construction improvements, slated to begin in January and end by spring 2010, include widening the bridge, adding barriers to better separate pedestrians from traffic and building tunnels under the bridge so that people can get to both sides without walking through traffic. Officials said the overhaul will maintain the bridge's aesthetics.

"Enhancing safety and improving traffic flow . . . those are really the main points of the project," said Christina Snyder, a project specialist with the National Park Service.

Located in one of the most scenic areas in the Washington region, the Humpback Bridge is on the GW Parkway just north of Interstate 395, to the east of the Pentagon and directly across the Potomac from the Jefferson Memorial. The bridge carries traffic over the Boundary Channel toward Lady Bird Johnson Park. It gets its name from the noticeable bump in the road, but officials said that's going to be adjusted as well to give people a better line of sight while crossing the bridge.

The National Park Service manages the parkway, which runs from Mount Vernon all the way to the Beltway, while the Federal Highway Administration manages construction projects. The $35.2 million cost of the project is being paid by the U.S. Department of Transportation, of which the highway administration is part.

Although many of the improvements are aimed at helping motorists, a number of additions will aide pedestrians, Snyder said. She cites the example of a sidewalk that currently runs alongside the roadway, noting that a person riding a bike on that path risks falling into traffic.

"The need is great to eliminate the danger there," said Bill Line, a spokesman for the National Park Service. A waist-high, stone-faced barrier will be erected to better separate the roadway from pedestrians, bikers and joggers.

The pedestrian crosswalk will be replaced with two tunnels to keep visitors from having to walk through traffic to get from the Potomac shoreline side of the parkway to the Columbia Island Marina side, Line said.

"It will eliminate the need for any human being on foot or bicycle or whatever to risk getting hit by a car and risk a fatality," Line said. "Our concern is safety first and foremost, with those two tunnels underneath and obviously placing those barriers."

Snyder said there are about 30 accidents a year at the site. The highest number of accidents occur on the northbound ramp from I-395 to the parkway, according to the Federal Highway Administration. A lane will be created for traffic from I-395 to merge with northbound parkway traffic, which officials hope will ease congestion and prevent backups onto the 14th Street bridge.

The Humpback Bridge will remain open during construction, with two lanes each northbound and southbound during rush hour and a probable lane closure in both directions during other times. The contract specifies rush hour as between 5:30 and 10 a.m. and 3 and 7 p.m.

"Since the lanes are open at all times during rush hour, it's not needed that a person would have to drive an alternative route, but for the benefit of the traveling public, we are posting a few alternatives" on the National Park Service's Web site, http://www.nps.gov/gwmp, Snyder said.

Signs will be erected telling motorists to dial 511, a 24-hour service, to find out about lane closures during the construction, she added.

During non-rush-hour periods, the Federal Highway Administration and the National Park Service urge motorists to seek alternative routes.

Snyder said the bridge has "outlasted basically its life expectancy." She said that the bridge is safe but that it carries about 75,000 vehicles a day, far more than was intended when it was built in 1932. Part of the construction will involve a new support system for the bridge.

The northbound entrance for vehicles into Columbia Island Marina and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove parking areas will be closed permanently.

When construction is completed, the bridge will have essentially the same facade. Stone from the bridge's current incarnation will be used to re-create and retain the historic character and appearance, so people looking at the structure from across the Potomac will see the same facade; on the other side, which faces Virginia, the historical look will be replicated with new stone.

"We're going to end up with basically the same look of the historic bridge, with the exception of the two pathways underneath it," Snyder said.