Florida Avenue Improvement Project Delayed Until 2016

A long-planned improvement of Florida Avenue NW between U Street and Sherman Avenue will be delayed until April 2016, according to Richard Kenney of the District Department of Transportation (DDOT). Kenney made the announcement during the latest regularly-scheduled meeting of Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 1B/U Street on April 2.

(From October 2014 DDOT presentation)

According to a presentation made by DDOT on October 27, 2014, the Florida Avenue project was to start construction in October 2015.

The delayed project will eventually bring bike lanes and sharrows to this stretch of Florida Avenue. It will also improve drainage, provide a traffic light at V Street, widen sidewalks, and add wheelchair ramps. There will also be additional green space, Kenney said. 

Kenney told the ANC that "outstanding issues were putting the project on hold" including one involving District Department of the Environment (DDOE) storm water management regulations and another involving curb cuts along Florida Avenue which need to be closed before work could start.

In addition, a separate project will soon begin nearby on Georgia Avenue, Kenney said, and DDOT does not want to have two projects in close proximity in progress at the same time, since both will obstruct north-south traffic.

The Georgia Avenue project will bring dedicated bus lanes. The October 2014 presentation said construction would start in February 2015. At the meeting last week, Kenney said the start of the Georgia Avenue project was "imminent".

ANC Commissioner Ellen Nedrow Sullivan (district 02) asked Kenney if, since the project was delayed anyway, whether new street lights for the 1900 block of 9th Street could be incorporated. Much of the neighborhood has received new street lights with an elegant, retro look to replace utilitarian-looking street lights used before -- see a examples of the two styles in this SALM blog post. But the 1900 block of 9th Street has not yet benefitted from this upgrade.

See a September 2012 post from the blog Greater Greater Washington about this project here. This post references 2011 input (see here) from ANC1B.