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

By Daniela Deane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 29, 2008

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.

"It's one of the easiest ways to get into D.C.," James said. "It's not the only way, but often, it is the most convenient."

Some of the deadliest crashes on the parkway have been caused by motorists driving too fast, police say. In 1996, two speeding drivers who were screaming at each other lost control of their vehicles and crossed the parkway median, causing a four-vehicle crash that killed three people.

On Memorial Day, a 22-year-old military police officer lost control of a motorcycle on one of the parkway's most scenic -- but also most dangerous -- stretches, disappearing suddenly just north of the Spout Run Parkway, where there are 100-foot drops into the Potomac just over the small, stone guardrail.

"The dangerousness of the parkway comes from the fact there's very little space on either side of the road," said Jason McCandless, an Arlington County assistant commonwealth's attorney who recently prosecuted a Great Falls teenager for manslaughter in a fatal high-speed crash on the parkway. "It's got curves on it, it's not well lit at all, and sometimes your lane just runs out without a whole lot of notice."

McCandless said, though, that the parkway also attracts people, such as the Langley High School senior, who take dangerous risks behind the wheel. "She was trying to test the limits of the car," he said. The teen was found to be traveling faster than 100 mph.

"For someone who's trying to be daring or adventurous and they want to drive in a reckless manner, that's the place to do it," McCandless said. "It's more exciting than a straight stretch of road like an interstate."

Police say that if motorists would follow the posted speed limit on the curving, tree-lined parkway, which ranges from 25 mph in Old Town Alexandria to 50 mph on the northern stretch near the Capital Beltway, crashes would be greatly reduced.

Police and prosecutors say commuters often have trouble slowing down on the parkway after coming off roads with higher speed limits, such as the Beltway. "The roadway is designed for lower speeds," Lachance said. "What makes it dangerous is drivers who don't follow the law."

The parkway was built in stages from 1929 to 1970. The first segment, called the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway and stretching from the Memorial Bridge to Mount Vernon, was completed in 1932 for the bicentennial of George Washington's birth. The north sections of the parkway, from the Memorial Bridge to Interstate 495, were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s.

The parkway was designed as a scenic gateway to Washington that linked sites associated with George Washington's life. It was intended to provide recreational opportunities along the Potomac shoreline.

Motorists driving it are given expansive, open views of the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery; they get to see planes taking off and landing at Reagan National Airport; they pass such historic sites as Old Town Alexandria.

When the first section of the parkway was completed in the early 1930s, it was hailed as America's "most modern motorway," according to media reports at the time. It was widely praised for its up-to-the-minute engineering, which included the first cloverleaf intersection built by the federal government.

Not everyone agrees that changing the road, designated a Virginia scenic byway, is the best course of action, however.

"The key here is to make it less convenient to commuters to preserve it as a national resource," said Benjamin Johnson, a professor of landscape architecture at Virginia Tech who has studied national roadways. "The only way to solve the problem of traffic on the parkway is to reduce the amount of traffic on it, and that comes through things like the creation of HOV lanes or by making it a toll road. It was never intended to be the freeway it's become."

Freeway or scenic byway, for many Washingtonians, the G-dub is just part of everyday life in the metropolitan area.

"When people come to town, there's nothing better than the tour of Washington down the parkway," said Moira McQuillen, an Arlington artist. "You can show them everything except the White House in about half an hour. Sometimes when I'm driving down it, I can't believe it's even there, it's so beautiful."