My least favorite streets in DC, part 1
For 30 years, I have been walking, driving, and riding the streets of the District of Columbia. For the most part, they are among the best in the country. But no city is perfect, and DC certainly is no exception.
Here are 20 streets that I find to be dirty, ugly, unsafe, traffic-choked, under utilized, or just plain not doing what they are supposed to be doing. I chose to forgo the interstates, they were a bit too obvious.
20) Riggs Road NE
This road enters the district as a PG County style high speed thoroughfare. What’s worse, 25% of it’s 0.8 mile stretch in the District is consumed with that ridiculous triangle intersection with South Dakota Avenue at Fort Totten. Fortunately, that is getting fixed, which is why this road is almost off my list.
19) Water Street SW
This street ought to be renamed Southwest Parking Lot Access Road, because that is all this redundant street is used for. It’s entirety runs parallel to Maine Avenue, never more than 60 concrete-paved feet away.
Get rid of this street, build frontage on Maine Avenue, and create plazas at all the current intersections crossing Maine and Water. Get more people walking around down there. Again, there are plans to improve this area, if they ever get built.
If I am ever Vice President of the United States, I would refuse to live at this address. It is a spattering of buildings across a secluded lot surrounded by most of a circle. The circle doesn’t connect all the way around and breaks up the street grid between Wisconsin Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue.
This road starts at a horribly complex intersection in the H Street area. Moving north, it provides a horrifically ugly face for the Trinidad and Carver Langston neighborhoods. It then becomes a desolate stretch of freeway despite running between two scenic DC landmarks, Mount Olivet Cemetery and the National Arboretum.
Next is a horribly autocentric intersection at New York Avenue, which is a freeway to the east. The rest of the stretch is dirty, unkempt, and gives a very unsafe feel, even into Maryland as it goes past another historic cemetery. It has a lot of potential, though, and as H Street and Trinidad continue to revitalize, Bladensburg Road should show signs of life as well.
On the north end, it looks like you’re driving past military barracks circa Vietnam. On the other end, I’m pretty sure it is chop shops and automobile graveyards. If this street was designed for people, someone ought to tell the business owners that seem to have all opened up some kind of auto shop along the stretch.
15) Howard Road SE
I’m sure at one point, Howard Road served a purpose greater than connecting the Anacostia Freeway to the Frederick Douglass Bridge. By Anacostia Metro Station, it feels like a stark wasteland begging for some building frontage. Empty streets are not conducive to pedestrians, and we want those around Metro stations.
14) 22nd Street NE
The entire road network around RFK Stadium is guilty here. At one end of the Capitol east-west axis sits the Lincoln Memorial, fronted by acres of National Parkland. On the east end sits a moribund stadium surrounded by a spade-shaped interchange and a bunch of grassy lots to fill the void between the traffic sewers. 22nd Street is only good for turning around when you realize you do not want to drive over the Young Bridge.
13) 4th Street SW
This area was completely ruined by urban renewal. Intersections at H, K, and L were removed to make way for giant superblocks of hideous towers with first floors devoted to parking, making them huge dingbats. Only recently the connection to 4th Street was reopened, which was a huge improvement, but this neighborhood still suffers from a great deal of miserable urban renewal.
12) Harewood Road NE
I used to park on Harewood Road when visiting my sister when she attended Catholic University. It is nothing more than the edge of a couple super blocks. The buildings of the University are not built towards the street, and the southern terminus at Michigan Avenue is flanked by a giant parking lot.
My main issue with this street is that is set up to produce economic failure. The lack of a permeable street grid and the cheap garden apartments far from job centers, social centers, or mass transit create a desolate atmosphere for poverty and neglect to fester.
Inexpensive housing does not have to be as ugly, desolate, or spread out as the low rises that front Mississippi Avenue. We need to remember that streets like this are not in Greenbelt or Suitland, they are in the nation’s capital, and therefore deserve a higher standard for development than the worst Prince George’s County has to offer.
Next: #10 through #1, my very least favorite street in DC.