Dear PoPville – Despite a terrible injury & support for traffic calming, another crash on Arkansas Ave NW

“Dear PoPville,

Last October, my good friend Kelly was struck by a speeding car while she was loading her own car. She spent five weeks in the hospital, nearly lost her leg, and has undergone 8 surgeries. Cars travel notoriously fast along the stretch of Arkansas Ave NW where she was struck, and it took very little effort to gather over 100 signatures from neighbors to petition Mayor Gray and Councilmember Bowser to address speeding on the street. Apparently speeding has long been a problem on this street, and these types of crashes – speeding drivers rear-ending parked cars – have happened far too often. Residents have been trying to get a change since the Williams administration.

DDOT, Bowser, and Gray all promised action at a community meeting at the end of 2013. But despite promises and good intentions, there have been no infrastructure improvements to lower speeding.

Now there’s been another crash and another person send to the hospital. We have footage from the crash, which ocurred just a block north of where Kelly was first hit.

Here’s more information about the crash.

And here’s the petition Kelly started to drum up demand for immediate action.

Will we finally see progress along this stretch? With DDOT under fire for a lack of progress on basic infrastructure, will the agency be able to at least tackle a traffic calming effort with enormous community support? Will political shifting distract from an issue with broad community support and a pressing need?”