Photo by A new traffic pattern is coming to a three-block stretch of 15th Street.
The District Department of Transportation announced today that the reversible lanes on 15th Street NW between K and Massachusetts Ave. will be eliminated as of March 15. The change means that section of 15th will remain two-way at all times.
Two-way traffic is already the norm on that part of the street most of the day, with the exception of the evening rush. Between 4 and 6:30 p.m., the street switches to one-way northbound.
The Downtown Business Improvement District lobbied for the change, after officials at two major property management companies in the area, Monument Realty and Perseus Realty, complained that access to commercial property in those three blocks was severely limited by the reversible lanes.
Ellen Jones, the director of transportation programs for the BID, noted that she regularly bikes through that part of 15th Street, and says it’s almost always underutilized in the evening.
“It was just empty,” Jones said. “Two and a half hours a day, it was empty.”
DDOT officials say they analyzed the traffic patterns in the area and found that four lanes are not required to handle the current volume of traffic during that time. They also found that the reversible lanes continue to cause confusion for drivers despite how long they’ve been in place.
The road will continue to be one-way only north of Massachusetts Avenue. DDOT will place signage in the area to alert drivers to the new traffic pattern.
