Lincoln Rd NE, facing North by the author.

Lincoln Road NE is a crucial connection between Edgewood and the center of the city, but its current design encourages speeding and dangerous driving. Recently announced plans to repave the road offer a tremendous opportunity to add pedestrian and cycling improvements that would make the street safer for all users, a change many Ward 5 residents enthusiastically support.

As an Edgewood resident, who lives right off Lincoln Road, I am intimately familiar with the road’s problems. Between Franklin and V Street, the street is completely bordered on its west by the Glenwood and Prospect Hill cemeteries, leading to a half-mile stretch with no lights, stop signs or even four-way intersections. The road has a single narrow lane southbound, and then two lanes (one of which is designated for parking most of the time) northbound. Adding to the problem is a blind curve on a steep hill midway in the block, which drivers either come whipping down, or accelerate to ascend.

All told, it’s a recipe for dangerous speeding, which the data confirms. In 2019, there were more than 7,500 speeding violations issued to drivers who were going 11 mph over the 25mph at the intersection of Lincoln Road and Douglas Street NE. Over 2018 and 2019, 27 crashes were reported on Lincoln Road NE.

Lincoln Road NE between 4th St NE and Rhode Island Ave NE.

The danger for pedestrians is particularly acute. At both the north and south ends of the stretch, the sidewalk on the west side of the street abruptly ends, forcing a mid-block crossing with no crosswalk. There’s also the amorphous angular intersection of Lincoln, Douglas and 2nd Street, where pedestrians are asked to make an extra long crossing in a zone where drivers on Lincoln turn at high speeds with no stop signs. Even worse, that intersection sits directly in front of our neighborhood’s Inspired Teaching School, putting our kids directly at risk.

Intersection of Lincoln Rd, 2nd St and Douglas NE. Image by the author.

Walking on this street is bad enough, but biking is even worse. As a daily bike commuter from Edgewood to Pennsylvania Ave, each day I ride on this stretch of road and have to make a choice between what is the safest and who I will have to inconvenience. If I use the street, I have to ride in the single, narrow southbound lane up the hill. If a car comes around that blind bend behind me at 40 mph, I wouldn’t stand a chance, and there is nowhere for them to swerve to miss me.

The only other option is to ride on the sidewalk on the east side of the road, but that space is heavily used by people walking to Rhode Island to catch the G8 bus, northbound cyclists biking their kids to school, as well as neighbors walking their dogs. So, my choice each morning is to risk my life on the road, or inconvenience my neighbors on the already crowded sidewalk (which adds significant time to account for stopping to allow people to safely pass).

Blind curve on Lincoln Rd NE. Image by the author.

How to improve safety on Lincoln Road NE

The good news is, there is a real solution in sight. Installing a two-way protected bike lane on Lincoln Road NE would help solve all three problems at once. Providing a separate, protected space for bikes and scooters would remove the conflicts with both cars on the street and pedestrians on the sidewalk. It would also help physically and visually narrow the street, which is proven to help traffic calming. And it would necessarily force a redesign of the dangerous three-way Douglas intersection.

All that would come with few tradeoffs: as a mostly “paint and posts” project it would require very little infrastructure or taxpayer money, and the existing northbound driving/parking lane has some inconsistently utilized part-time parking spots, so it’s a great candidate to be repurposed.

Lincoln Road as it is today (top) and what it could look like with a protected cycletrack. The right lane (by the cycletrack) is northbound. Image by Streetmix.

A new cycletrack would immediately help residents traveling to a number of community resources in Edgewood. It would connect the new Edgewood Recreation Center to the Harry Thomas Recreation Center further down Lincoln Road and provide a safe commuting area for Inspired Teaching’s parents and students.

It would also be a crucial piece in connecting the area’s larger bicycle network, which is currently quite disconnected. We have the wonderful Metropolitan Branch Trail (MBT) which connects NoMa to Brookland, and we have the great new cycle track on Irving Street that (finally) gives us the first leg of a viable option to cross town to Columbia Heights and Adams Morgan without risking life and limb or riding on the sidewalk. A new bike lane on 4th Street also helps connect our portion of the city to the crosstown bike lanes on R and Q, helping commuters feel safe getting across town. But, there are missing links yet to be filled in as part of this long-term strategy to make our part of town a place where cyclists can get around safely.

The protected portion of that 4th Street lane currently dead-ends right at the northernmost entrance to Lincoln, while the R and Q St lanes are just a few blocks south. Piecing these components together via Lincoln would connect Edgewood to the wider cycling network in the city and make our neighborhood destinations more accessible to the wider community.

It’s clear that the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) sees the potential too. The agency included the installation of a cycletrack on this street in its 2019 plan, but failed to deliver. Lincoln has shown up again on their latest bicycle priority network in the MoveDC plan, but residents don’t want to see this stuck in the planning stage for multiple years more. Over the last year, I’ve been working with my neighbors and the Washington Area Bicyclist Association to build support for this change. Over 550 residents have signed our petition asking DDOT to make this a reality, 206 of them from Edgewood and our neighboring communities in ANC5E.

Lincoln Road identified as a future planned improvement in DDOT’s 2021 Bicycle Priority Network.

The timing for this may never be better. During the pandemic, bike sales have been at record levels and all signs point to a biking boom in our region as we enter spring and beyond. If we want those new bike commuters to have a good experience, and not jump right back into cars, we need to make sure they have safe infrastructure.

Even better on timing, last month, DDOT informed residents that Lincoln Road would be repaved this year, which is a great opportunity to combine these two projects—and there’s good precedent for it. Just the other month, DDOT accelerated the bike infrastructure slated for West Virginia Avenue so they could combine it with upcoming street paving. We recently sent our petition to the agency asking them to take advantage of the same opportunity here.

I look forward to being able to safely share the road and my neighborhood with the growing demographic of fellow cyclists, cars, and pedestrians, without having to make the choice between my safety and theirs.

Tagged: roads

Doug Knight is an international affairs professional. He has worked at USAID since 2017 and Peace Corps for 10 years previous to that. He lives in the Edgewood neighborhood of DC.