More sidewalk news I slept on: 17th Street pedestrian promenade
This one thanks to DC Blogs: some sort of mysterious quasi-community organization calling itself the 17th Street Campaign is lobbying to turn 17th St. between NH Ave. & Mass Ave. into a pedestrian promenade. It's an intriguing idea and urban "pedestrian promenades" are something alien to DC, I think (not counting the Mall). I really like the idea but the gridlock-inducing DC bureaucracy along with the gridlock-inducing neighborhood complaints about the lost parking and hampered traffic flow, I doubt it will ever happen. Please prove me wrong.
An aside: I attending a neighborhood planning meeting in Adams Morgan a couple years back in which a landscape architecture firm had been contracted by the city to redesign 18th Street to make it more pedestrian/bicycle-friendly and to add traffic-calming elements, such as a circle at 18th & Columbia. There was much debate, discussion and hope for this utopian urban dream but this was almost 3 years ago. Anyone heard any hint of this project going forward? In the case of 17th Street, another firm has been contracted by the DC gub'ment, there will be much debate, etc... So this is the basis for my cynicism.
1 comments:
I'm much more interested in doing whatever we can to make the sidewalks and building edges as interesting as possible on 17th Street and continuing to calm traffic. I don't really see the need for auto traffic to be removed from 17th Street. Unlike 18th Street in Adams Morgan, the sidewalks on 17th Street are plenty wide to handle large numbers of pedestrians, as well as all of the cafe seating.
I'm leery of pedestrian promenades because of how rare they are a success in the US. For every Pearl Street in Boulder there are 5 more that were terrible failures. Didn't they try this with H Street downtown for a spell?
Dupont Circle itself is exactly what they say they need this promenade for. It's a great public space, surrounded by shops and food, close to transit and the draw for the area is all of the action at the street level.
If you want to see 17th Street turn into chain-store paradise, a pedestrian promenade would be the way to go.
I'd have to think about this one to completely make up my mind, but I'd lean towards thinking it's not the best idea.
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