New Contraflow Bike Lanes Installed At 16th and U Streets NW
The intersection of New Hampshire Avenue and 16th and U Streets NW, one of the city's busiest, has always been one of the more difficult traffic situations for Washingtonian cyclists to traverse. Often times, those on bikes (not to mention pedestrians) find themselves in the difficult position of having to break the law in order to safely navigate around the three-way confluence. Police had even set up traps to ticket cyclists who rode northeast up New Hampshire Avenue NW between T and U Streets, a one-way thoroughfare.
But with the introduction of new contraflow bike lanes, unveiled this week, such issues could be a thing of the past.
Cyclists now have a legal lane beginning at T Street which they can use along New Hampshire Avenue to safely and orderly access U Street and 16th Street. It's a fairly ingenious system, involving a bike box where the Avenue intersects, an embedded sensor which triggers a special "bike light," and a dedicated crossing for bikes across 16th Street. We could spend a bunch of words describing this, but this video does the job just as well.