Reader “Totten Nettot” sent in two more photos that illustrate the transformation of the Riggs Road/South Dakota Avenue area in Fort Totten and the folly of excluding pedestrians from one side of this intersection.

Top left: The intersection in 1952. Photo from the DDOT historical archives. Top right: The intersection today. Photo by Google Street View. Bottom left: Current plans for the intersection (PDF). Bottom right: Rendering of the planned development from StreetSense.

The lower right image shows a lively street corner with many pedestrians at the southeast corner, which from the other renderings looks like it will be a park. Yet these people are forbidden from crossing the road on the left to reach the buildings that are there or whatever might replace them in the future.

Pedestrians deserve the right to cross every road. If forbidden, they’ll just do it anyway. Then some people will die, especially seniors, and the police will shrug because they “weren’t supposed to be there.” The traffic engineers who say it’s not possible to have two turn lanes and enough signal time for a crosswalk are just designing an intersection to be deadly to pedestrians.

Here’s CSG’s page to send a letter to Gabe Klein and ask him to keep the intersection for everyone.

Continue the conversation about urbanism in the Washington region and support GGWash’s news and advocacy when you join the GGWash Neighborhood!

Tagged: dc, ddot, fort totten, pedestrians, walkability

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.