An End to I-15th Street?
Commuters beware: Your northbound launching pad is in peril.
The District’s Department of Transportation is weighing proposals to turn this four-lane expressway into a sleepy, two-way neighborhoody street. Rerouting would affect the portion of 15th from the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue NW all the way up to Florida Avenue/W Street.
According to DDOT spokesman Erik Linden, the stretch of asphalt in question has “become increasingly residential” in recent years. “The general theory behind converting such a corridor to two-way is to help calm traffic and improve access for residents. Too often our one-way streets downtown become speedways instead of livable city streets. If we move forward, the goal would be to change that.”
And Linden emphasizes that the “if,” in this case, is pretty big. “It’s important to note that no decision has been made - DDOT is studying the feasibility of this option and engaging residents and businesses before moving forward,” writes Linden via e-mail. “We are in the early stages.”
Those early stages have yielded an assortment of proposals for the thoroughfare. In addition to the status quo (one way, four travel lanes, two parking lanes), they include the following:
1) Three northbound lanes, two expanded parking lanes, and a bike lane.
2) Three northbound lanes, two parking lanes, and bike lanes going both ways.
3) Two northbound lanes, one southbound lane, two parking lanes, and bike lanes going both ways.
4) One northbound lane, one southbound lane, one turn lane, two parking lanes, two bike lanes.
Why is DDOT taking a hard look at such a reliable route to the north? Community-building gets us part of the way there. With people repopulating the city, Linden says, “many are requesting a more neighborhood feel to their surroundings, and converting one-way streets to two-way streets is one way to do this.”
Another factor: “Preliminary” DDOT studies suggest that this part of 15th Street is underutilized, a suggestion that seems a bit at odds with the daily rush-hour scene of motorists piled up at lights along the corridor, revving their engines in hopes of beating the next red light up the street.
The city is now gathering input from residents on the plan and has already given a look-see to nearby advisory neighborhood commissions. If a change is made, says Linden, it’ll happen within the next year or two.
It’s not hard to foresee the battle lines on this plan. Anyone who lives in Dupont East/Logan Circle will welcome a break from the raceway that is now 15th. And just about anyone who lives north of U Street–Maryland commuters, sure, but also Mount Pleasanteers and Ward 4 people–will lament the loss of their conduit out of downtown.
DOWNLOAD: Possible configurations of 15th Street (PDF)
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1:41 pm
The smartest way to drive 15th is go the speed limit, during non-rush hour the lights are timed to turn green if you approach each light at that speed.
The reverse is also true, the faster you go, the more red lights you encounter.
And if people want a more “neighborhood” feel, then turn all of 15th street into a pedestrian walkway like the Penn Ave @ the White House. I much prefer a modest sized Wal Mart to make you feel at home.
1:43 pm
Did anyone else notice 2 identical families walking opposite each other in the 15th street picture? I mean, what are the odds of that happening?
2:42 pm
Could it get any more confusing?
4:04 pm
This is nutty. 15th Street is hardly a highway - there’s rarely any benefit to speeding since the lights are timed. If you made it two ways, I’d expect it to become a congested nightmare, like U street, with cars trying to turn left against traffic, people trying to park, blocking the road, honking. It would basically open it up as another place to stalk for parking for the U/14th corridor, taking a nice, smooth artery and turning it into a cluster f*ck like U street.
4:14 pm
Have to say, all those folks who insist that the lights are timed for 30 mph are full of it. I routinely cruise 15th at 45 mph plus starting from a dead stop at K Street and not hitting a red light until Florida Avenue or later. And I love it.
4:42 pm
Mike… well, I guess it depends where you start from and whether or not your were at a red light on 15th to begin with (versus turning into it after the light cycle has already begun). After Florida it’s pretty much 30 mph if you start at a red light.
But for a real good time I recommend 16th Street for the reverse commute during rush hour. You can easily hit 60 or 70 and barely be passing people!! LOL
6:20 pm
I regularly cross at 15th and N St, no light but crosswalk and signage. I feel very unsafe, with the speeding cars attempting to make the light at the next intersection. It’s always a challenge, even the Police do not stop for pedestrians.
7:00 pm
I live near the corner of 15th and R, and can attest to drivers treating 15th as a highway. Speeds often exceed 50mph, twice the limit. Four lanes of traffic in one direction in a residential neighborhood in unneccesary. Its only a matter of time before a pedestrian or bicylist is run down.
7:06 pm
Who is Running DDOT and why are they messing with my city? The only thing 15th st need is a bike lane. We need more bike lanes across the city anyway. Driving at rush hour is not that bad until you get out of the city, or are trying to go to/from VA.
Now, let’s talk about going cross twown!
7:51 pm
15th is underused for most of the day. And, in the evening, many residents think it’s used too heavily. A fun fact- To keep the lights on 15th timed to facilitate North bound traffic during rush hour, Dupont East/Logan pedestrians are given 18 seconds to cross the 4 lane highway.
9:22 pm
They gotta put in some bike lanes on 15th. It is a disaster waiting to happen. I hope no one is killed before the lanes are put in.
11:02 pm
Oh great! DDOT you SUCK. Finish studying NY Ave for the 147th time and fix it before you go messing with 15th street! Honestly!
6:30 am
Yeah, I used to live at 15th & Q, and it’s a nightmare over there.
15th St. makes a total waste of the Logan Circle Area.
They need reduce it to two auto lanes, one in each direction,
plus they need double the size ofthe sidewalks,
and put in double-wide bike lanes.
This would be a much nicer neighborhood if they reduced the number
of travel lanes and increased the mode share of bike and pedestrian access.
8:12 am
Yes, please make 15th Street two ways!
9:15 am
I live in Logan, off 15th Street, and think this is another example of DC taking something good and fucking it up. We don’t need traffic calming. The misguided parking enforcement, piss-poor driving skills, and homeless fuckwads wandering the streets calms traffic enough. Let it be and focus on something more important.
9:15 am
I live at 15th and R. Rush-hour commuters drive at extremely high speeds and it is dangerous to cross the street at these times. The Maryland drivers are the most insane. My building does not have parking. So when I come home in the evening (from my commute to the exurbs), I park on the street close to my building. This process involves driving in the left lane and slowing down after I hit Q Street. On numerous occasions, I have been verbally (and once almost physically) accosted by INSANE drivers who cannot figure out that I am trying to park. As I was parking one day, a woman pulled up from behind me, rolled down her window and started screaming, “F-you, f-you, f-you, f-you” continuously for about 10 seconds.
Insane. Turn 15th into two-way traffic now. As to all the whiners on here: I LIVE here. You don’t. Plus, I suspect you are the people driving 50 mph and screaming at me when I park. To hell with you.
9:32 am
I DO live here, and i definitely think it should stay 1 way. This city has notoriously bad traffic going cross town. The only thing that keeps going uptown from work (in a taxi) sane is that beautiful stretch of 15th st. north of mass. I walk home all the time from Whole Foods and have never felt unsafe crossing 15th. Just cross at the lights, its not that hard.
I do think that bike lane(s) should be added though.
10:02 am
As a person living north of U Street, I always look forward to getting home effortlessly from about K street to nearly Harvard street by going the speed limit and enjoying the timed lights. While walking the area I also liked how the red lights for east west streets like T or S streets are very short - about 20 seconds - so crossing 15th street is also very easy. The area seems nice and residential and contrary to what is said above was always residential - but maybe poorer. Sure residents might like to have 15th street be their private country lane, but the city has a responsibility to have a sufficient number of efficient routes that let us get around the city.
I’m also concerned about talk all over the city about slowing and calming traffic will effect employer’s decision to locate downtown. Let’s not kid ourselves; the city is competing with MD and VA. Sure I don’t want us to prostitute ourselves out by giving away the shop to commuters and businesses, but we have to keep in mind that the more difficult a commute we create, the more likely some employers and employees throw in the towel and relocate.
I like 15th the way it is and hope the city doesn’t try to pander to a small number of residents while further slowing down the commute for the north of the city and MD folks. If the city does this, why don’t we try to also slow down 16th, 14th and 13th street north of Columbia Heights to build their community too? They are predominately residential for there north.
10:05 am
This section of 15th is way underused by cars, so the cars that do use it go way too fast. 15th Street is not there simply to be an easy way for people to get out of the city. Drivers may find this proposal inconvenient, but most of them (i.e. Maryland license plates) don’t even live in D.C. Go with two ways, bike lanes and a center turn lane - option 4 - I doubt there will be much of a difference in car travel time with that anyway, considering what speed people are supposed to go.
10:22 am
Please DO NOT MAKE 15TH TWO-WAY, for all the glorious reasons everyone else has listed. I live here, and I love it just the one-way it is.
10:38 am
To all of you who do not live on the 15th Street speedway: Do you want a speedway in front of your house? Do you want the inconvenience of a one-way street iin front of your house? Didn’t think so.
Another issue here is the huge number of one-way streets in D.C. Between P and U Streets, there is one — ONE — two-way, east-west street: S Street. That’s it. Try navigating that and you will understand why a two-way 15th Street looks good. Church, Q, Corcoran (it even goes one-way in opposite directions on either side of 16th Street), R and T Streets are all one way.
Understand now why some of us are so crazy on this issue?
As for commuters, why not make 16th Street ONE-WAY going south in the morning and ONE-WAY going north in the evenings? ALL lanes.
10:40 am
Dear Jason — So, it’s okay for the city to “pander” to YOU, but not to me — someone who is directly affected by 15th Street NW? Ah, yes. It’s all about YOU.
11:08 am
2 Identical families! The odds of that happening are like 800 to 1!
11:21 am
I live at 15th and R. I prefer options #3 and #4 above.
“U St resident” is correct about 15th St being underutilized most of the day. The few cars using 15th in the afternoon drive way too fast, like they’re on a 4-lane racetrack. Just getting out of our alley onto 15th is a death-defying feat.
11:35 am
I live here, too, and I am 110% or more in favor of making 15th St. into a neighborhood street. It is too wide, too hard to cross, too fast, and seems to me more designed to serve Marylanders who aren’t paying for it than those of us who are.
1:31 pm
I live on 15th street and it’s a pedestrian’s and resident’s nightmare with traffic, due to noise pollution, cars turning the wrong way on 15th street and most of all the speeding. Taxis being the worst offenders. Then the commuters and big a__ mack trucks speeding up 15th street.
There have been a number of accidents on 15th street involving vehicular and pedestrians, a couple of them fatal at 15th & R street. I’ve seen pedestrians trying to cross in the crosswalk and almost being hit (one last week actually got nipped by a car and the car didn’t bother to stop), and people walking dogs where the dogs have barely made it alive.
If you want to go to MD, get on the beltway…..it’s a highway, made for speed. And how about enforcing the spped limit law?? How about installing a traffic camera? They work, people get to know where they are located and actually slow down. I’m happy to see a 2 lane possibility. The more you give the more people take. If you actually squeeze down the opportunity and make it frustrating, people find alternative routes or they don’t use their car as much! it’s a city, walk.
9:38 pm
I live just off 15th St on Corcoran. 15th street is not just a local residential street or a major thoroughfare north out of the city — it is both. Both residents and commuters must learn to live with each other and make compromises to make this work. I would leave 15th a one way street N. I would also add a bike lane. I agree rush hour traffic North vastly exceeds speed limits and reasonable safety standards. Either get DC police to monitor and punish offenders or change traffic light patterns to force people to stop more often during rush hour. Do not change the one way streets in this area. Those work fine. If residents cannot park their cars on those streets during rush hour quickly, the answer is not to change traffic patterns but for residents to take parking lessons.
11:24 am
With all due respect to “parking lessons” — the drivers are very aggressive. One day a woman pulled around to my right side as I was parking (from behind me) and rolled down her window. She screamed “f-you, f-you, f-you” for a full 10 seconds. Another team, a DC cop put on his lights and siren as I was parking. He started screaming at me that I was holding up traffic. I told him that I was parking my car near my home. He screamed that “you can’t park during rush hour.” I thought he was going to arrest me. I was too shocked to get his name or badge and I haven’t seen him since. Cars constantly tailgate me and the drivers get very angry when I slow down to park. Please don’t tell me that I pay some of the highest taxes in the country and cannot park in some civilized way after commuting home from the suburbs.
11:26 am
Furthermore, I am not one of those suburbanites who take 10 minutes to parallel park. I am a veteran of city living; I will challenge anyone to a parallel parking contest. Please stop blaming us residents for the bad behavior of others.
12:53 pm
The thing is, 15th can never really be the arterial that 16th, Mass, Ct or 13th are or could be. This is because 15th goes from 6 lanes to 2 lanes at Fl Ave. So all those folk who happily speed at 35, 40, 45+ mph through technically 30 mph downtown Dupont/Logan just end up slowed and stuck when they hit AM/CH, anyway.
Oh, and FYI, I made a mistake in an earlier post. To make the North bound traffic friendly light timing possible, pedestrians are given 18 seconds to cross *6* lanes, not 4. That’s 3 seconds per 10′ wide lane, folks. Not including a little something called “start up time”.
For some scientific data on how dangerous the current conditions are, see: http://www.usroads.com/journals/p/rej/9710/re971001.htm
1:21 pm
I live one house off 15th Street between Mass and U. Yes, it is a speedway during the evening rush hour. But only during the evening rush hour. While initially I thought the idea of making the street two-way would be nice, I think it is actually a bad idea. People need ways to get out of the city. There are too few right now. Removing 15th Street as an easy way to get out will probably mean (1) more congestion during rush hour, leading to (2) a longer rush hour. As for bike lanes, I actually think they are a bad idea on 15th. Cars go too fast and bicyclists will get hit. At this point, I think bicyclists just stay away when its busy (I do). But on Saturdays and Sundays, there’s actually not a big need for bike lanes as there’s not that much traffic.
1:41 pm
I have lived near 15th & R for the last 17 years and I do not think changing it to two lanes would be good for those of us who live here. As others have said, volume is not the issue right now, but speed is. I like the fact that after rush hour and on weekends, the street is quiet and traffic is very light. I do not want to hear horns honking as the impatient, obnoxious, me-first drivers freak out if they have to wait - god forbid - an extra 30 seconds, while someone else needs to park, cross, or turn left (which is what I imagine would happen if changed to two lanes).
In order to address the speed issue, I would be in favor of more police enforcement, re-timing lights (which would increase the amount of time we have to cross the street), putting up those “Your speed is___” signs, and/or installing red-light cameras at all lights in this section of town. That ought to slow things down without giving up the convenience of this northbound thoroughfare.
Furthermore unless speed is addressed, adding more bike lanes seems risky and a waste of time, too. If DDOT is serious about promoting use of bikes, they need to go to Copenhagen to see how bikes lanes REALLY work in a busy city (separate lanes on wide sidewalks, where opening car doors and speeding traffic don’t pose a threat).
Just my two (or three) cents.
3:41 pm
One thing that keeps hitting me as I read the different opinions is that there is a perception that 15th Street is some huge-mongous 4-lane highway that runs all the way to Philadelphia. If we somehow alter it, the traffic patterns of the entire Northeast Corridor between Richmond and Boston will be horribly altered! The reality is — as someone else here pointed out — 15th Street is a commuter street from Massachusetts to Florida. That’s it! North of Florida it becomes two narrow lines and then merges into 16th Street a few blocks later.
Somehow, keeping this unbelievably short piece of racetrack for the benefit of suburban commuters is paramount to the desires of [what I be is the huge majority] residents who live on this stretch of 15th Street.
What am I missing?
4:34 pm
Matty–
That unbelievably short piece of racetrack ain’t just for the ‘burbanites. It’s for me! It’s by far the quickest automotive route from downtown to my home on the 1400 block of W Street. Which also means the cars whiz up the hill a half-block from my front door–and I don’t mind a bit. Viva I-15th Street!
5:03 pm
DSL wrote-
“I do not want to hear horns honking as the impatient, obnoxious, me-first drivers freak out if they have to wait - god forbid - an extra 30 seconds, while someone else needs to park, cross, or turn left (which is what I imagine would happen if changed to two lanes).”
-Option 4 (my favorite) features a center turn lane. A center turn lane would:
1- be used for the obvious left-turn purposes, and
2- be used to bypass parkers/double-parkers.
These two features would greatly help maintain a continual 30 mph throughput, and so address your thoughtful concerns. Additionally, option 4 would also greatly encourage compliance with the existing 30mph speed limit on 15th by making it *not* a 4-lane one-way freeway.
As an aside, option 4 also adds N and S-bound bicycle lanes. I’m local, have a 3 year old child, bike that stretch of 15th nearly every day, and haven’t owned a car since ‘90. For those reasons (and more), I like the center turn lane feature very much.
Matty wrote-
“What am I missing?”
- It’s not that you’re missing any physical thing about the street; 15th does go from 4 travel lanes to 1 at Fl Ave. It’s not, in the words of one poster, “a way to get out of the city”, it’s a fast way to go the 0.9 miles from Mass Ave to Florida Ave.
9:56 am
I live at 15th and U, and it would be a shame to have anything change on 15th Street. Change in this case is bad. The natural order the Universe intended will be destroyed!
10:15 am
[...] City Paper covered this in their 14 Aug City Desk Blog Entry: An End to I-15th Street? [...]