“Traffic Mayhem on Rock Creek Pkwy at Kennedy Center”

“Dear PoPville,

As rush hour commuters may know, the recent construction at the Kennedy Center has caused mammoth headaches for those of us using Rock Creek Parkway. The morning rush in the past few weeks has been particularly bad — Thursday morning, the two lanes headed south toward Memorial Bridge/Independence were backed up almost to P Street.

Most of this seems to stem from confusion about the adjusted rush hour traffic pattern configuration, in which the right southbound lane is closed once you reach the edge of the Kennedy Center. To make up for this, cars in that right lane are supposed to merge into the left southbound lane, while cars driving in the left southbound lane are supposed to cross through an opening in median into the unused northbound lane and continue on their merry way.

At one point there had been cones set up to guide traffic through these lane adjustments during the morning rush, which worked pretty well. There haven’t been cones for a while now, which unsurprisingly leaves drivers unsure about whether they are allowed to cross into that open northbound lane, and causes a traffic jam with most cars merging into the sole available southbound lane.

Further compounding the situation has been the persistent presence of a National Park Police cruiser parked at this node, which essentially forces all southbound traffic into one lane before allowing them to split back into the aforementioned two open lanes. For the life of me, I don’t see a safety factor requiring that police vehicle to be parked there, because there are no construction workers or obvious need to have everyone merge like that.

I called the Park Police District One Station (202-426-6710), asked to speak with a supervisor, and shared my comments. The sergeant was very friendly and receptive, saying she see would look into why/if it was necessary to have that police vehicle parked there — and (I hope) to consider a better way to guide traffic and preclude confusion/bottlenecks/collisions. If other drivers have shared my frustration, I’m sure a few extra calls might go a long way.

Update: traffic this morning was markedly in general better, and the police car was not present (possibly because Friday traffic is generally lighter). But still a jam/slowdown at the spot where both lanes of cars are supposed to shift left. Cones or some other form of lane shift guidance would go a long way, methinks!”