The street crews and heavy machinery wound down a couple weeks ago, but today District officials marked the completion of the overhaul of 18th Street NW in Adams Morgan, ending nearly a year-and-a-half of jackhammers, bulldozers and disruptive noise.

The $6.8 million project, which began in February 2011, made the stretch of 18th Street that runs between Florida Avenue and Columbia Road much more hospitable to cyclists and pedestrians, adding sharrows alongside the main traffic lanes and widening the sidewalks for those always-crowded Adams Morgan nights.

The so-called “Trapezoid of Iniquity” has never looked so good, Mayor Vince Gray said in remarks at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“If you have not been to Adams Morgan recently, you might not recognize it. 18th Street has undergone an extreme makeover and the results are remarkable,” Gray said.

The 17 months of work by the District Department of Transportation came at a significant cost to the neighborhood’s businesses, many of which took out interest-free relief loans from the District to abate the constant noisiness and disruptiveness of the constant construction work.

But 18th Street does look markedly different than it did two years ago. There are dozens of new streetlights, more sidewalk ramps for wheelchair access and, in the most love-hate upgrade, 71 new bike racks.

Ordinarily, we would not complain about new bike racks, so long as they are the standard-issue, inverted U-shape racks that make it a cinch to lock up. And the Adams Morgan racks almost had it. The outline of the racks is the right form; if only they didn’t include those awful “Adams Morgan” crossbars and plates embossed with the three stars of the D.C. flag. Those accoutrements, despite the attempt at civic pride, make chaining up one’s bike a clumsy chore.

A chore that will remain the legacy of an otherwise successful DDOT endeavor.