A 19-year-old dies in a traffic crash in Congress Heights
MLK Avenue and Malcolm X Boulevard SE, the site of a memorial rally earlier this year and another fatal crash Monday night. Image by GKJ used with permission.
A 19-year-old man died Monday night after an SUV driver collided with him on his moped on the 2900 block of Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE in Congress Heights, according to the Metropolitan Police Department’s Major Crash Investigations Unit. This street is known to be dangerous and has been the site of many crashes.
Jawan Evans of Southeast DC was driving a red and black moped northbound on MLK Avenue on Monday evening when he collided with an SUV driver turning left onto the street from Malcolm X, according to a police report. Evans was thrown from the moped and was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Intersection of MLK and Malcolm X avenues where Evans was killed. Image by Google maps.
MLK Avenue SE is a high crash location
MLK Avenue was the site of another traffic-related death earlier this year. On May 17, on the 2700 block, an SUV driver traveling southbound struck a woman while she was walking, and she died at the scene.
There have been 16 traffic fatalities District-wide in 2019. That number is down 40.7 % from last year’s 36 traffic deaths, but there has been an uptick beginning in 2015.
Image by Vision Zero.
Among those killed in traffic deaths this year, six happened in Ward 8, and 56% were pedestrians, Vision Zero data shows.
Image by Vision Zero.
Parts of Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue were flagged as a high crash site in 2017. The intersection of MLK Jr. Avenue SE, and Good Hope Road had 77 crashes from 2013 to 2017, according to data collected from the District Department of Transportation (DDOT).
A revitalization project is in the works along MLK, incuding the intersection of MLK, Jr Avenue and Malcolm X Blvd. Image by DDOT.
“It’s a busy, active place. There’s people there all the time and the roads are so wide [that] people drive through it too fast,” said Colin Browne, Communications Director with the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA). “There are ways you can design an intersection to generate caution. And that intersection doesn’t have it. It’s basically two wide roads that come together at the light.”
Browne said WABA has been talking about safety projects on that street, with a long term goal of adding a protected bike lane down MLK Avenue.
Transportation projects planned for Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE
On July 27, DDOT announced several transportation and safety projects in Ward 8. One of the biggest is a $9 million revitalization of MLK Avenue. Key elements include:
- Reconfiguring Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and a small section of Alabama Avenue (we wrote about another Alabama safety project here.)
- Installing a new median
- Adding ADA ramps and improving sidewalks
- Installing high visibility crosswalks
- Drainage and pavement improvements
- Streetlight improvements
- Five new traffic signals and one Hawk Signal
Construction is slated to start in the spring of 2020 and will last a year, according to a DDOT Vision Zero presentation document.
However, residents aren’t just worried about traffic danger here—there’s also been a lot of gun violence in the area. The crash site is also where a vigil for victims gun violence in Ward 8 was held a few months ago. More recently on July 28, 22-year-old Andre Broadie was shot and killed nearby on the 2100 block of MLK Avenue.
“Any fatality in our city is one too many and it reinforces the urgency for us to make safety improvements not just here [MLK Avenue] but across the District, and that’s why we are so focused and committed to doing that,” said DDOT Director Jeff Marootian. “The mayor has made it clear that Vision Zero is a priority and that means that we’re looking at major construction projects like this one, but also we’re looking for opportunities where there are small adjustments we can make that will have a big impact. So we’re really looking at doing both those things.”
Marootian said DDOT is currently finalizing contracts on the work that will be done on the MLK project. He added, “If this project wasn’t so close to beginning construction we may have looked at some temporary measures, but because we are so close, any of the temporary measures we would have put in place would have taken as long as actually starting this construction project.”
This story was updated with a comment from Marootian at 3:33 pm October 2, 2019