'G-dub' Is Part Freeway, Part Scenic Byway

We bicycle, hike and skate along it in the millions. We escort out-of-town visitors down it to show them the majesty of Washington. We use it to get to work.

And although we love it fiercely, it can bring out our worst daredevil.

The George Washington Memorial Parkway, known affectionately by locals as the "G-dub," is as much a part of Washington life as anything that lies across its expansive views on the other side of the Potomac River.

But the scenic and historic 23.5-mile roadway, a national park with more visitors than Yellowstone, is groaning under the weight of commuter traffic it was never intended to carry.

The clogged road opened in 1932 with a leisurely Sunday drive in mind, and officials say not much can be done to bring it into today's commuter age. Over the past 15 years, the National Park Service has made improvements in response to high-profile crashes -- installing steel barriers in the medians, making Memorial Circle easier to navigate and expanding some access and exit ramps.

The Interstate 395 ramp from the 14th Street bridge onto the Humpback Bridge is a particular trouble spot, said Sgt. Robert Lachance, a spokesman for the U.S. Park Police. An acceleration lane is being added there as part of a $35 million construction project due to be completed in 2010, he said.

When the parkway was built, merge lanes, now imperative for roads carrying large commuter volume, were not considered essential, said Dana Dierkes, a parkway spokeswoman. The Humpback Bridge was built to carry 20,000 vehicles a day; its load is now more than four times that.

"The infrastructure wasn't made to hold the volumes of traffic that are going on it now," said Jon James, acting superintendent of the parkway. "What we're trying to do is rehab it so that we can improve things as best we can without altering its historic character and the scenic mission it has. It's a real balancing act that requires a lot of out-of-the-box thinking."

Because the parkway, which extends from the Capital Beltway to Mount Vernon, and its surrounding parkland are a national park, options for change are limited, James said. The mostly two-lane road was purposely built along the Potomac, leaving little or no room to widen the roadway. Lighting it better, a cause many have advocated, is difficult because of rules governing national parks and aesthetic considerations.

Most crashes on the parkway occur when commuters rear-end one another in their rush to get to work and home again, police say.

"Too many Washingtonians think of the G.W. Parkway as just asphalt to get from point A to point B," said Bill Line, a spokesman for the Park Service, which oversees the parkway as one of the country's 391 national parks. "But it's way more than that."

Almost 7 million people visit the parkway and its surrounding 7,000 acres of parkland for recreational purposes every year, making it one of the 10 most-visited national parks in the country, more so than the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. But more than four times as many -- 31.6 million -- use it as way to get to the office.