The 15th Street cycle track in its better, albeit wetter, days. (Photo by Andrew Bossi)

While it opened to great fanfare in 2009, the cycle track that runs down 15th Street has, for quite a while, been a pockmarked husk of its former self. Although it offers a bollard-protected route for cyclists going north or south between U Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, it is riddled with potholes, surface cracks, and other faults that make it less of a convenient artery and more of a destroyer of suspensions and tires.

But the District Department of Transportation is finally going ahead with plans to repave the lane. Kishan Putta, a member of advisory neighborhood commission 2B, announced the plans this morning in a post on Greater Greater Washington. Putta, whose district includes a few blocks along 15th Street, says in an interview that the reconstruction of the bike lane could begin after a planning process that took the better part of a year.

“We’ve been working on it for nine months,” says Putta, who adds that his own tires have been mangled by the distressed asphalt. “I think the community was getting upset. It’s in such crappy shape, so why should it take so many years for DDOT to keep it in acceptable shape?”

Monica Hernandez, a spokeswoman for DDOT, tells DCist that the agency plans to resurface all the cycle track between K and and Swann this summer. While Putta is hopeful the work could begin as early as the first or second week of July, Hernandez says it is premature to give a specific date.

Tire vs. the cycle track. Potholes win. (Photo by Kishan Putta)

According to Hernandez, the cycle track and adjoining gutters and curbs are slated to be replaced between K Street and Massachusetts Avenue. The repair zone will expand to include the parking lane from Massachusetts Avenue to Swann Street. In total, the work along the 0.85-mile segment is expected to take three weeks and cost about $500,000, Hernandez says.

But DDOT is still figuring out when exactly the job will begin. The agency is still determining how to accomodate cyclists while the bike lanes are being reconstructed and must fit the job in with its other planned road work. “We’re still scoping that out,” Hernandez says.

In the mean time, the 15th Street cycle track remains open for business, though it remains a rough ride, albeit one that nearby bike shops find lucrative. Putta says that when he got his tire fixed at The Bike Rack, at 14th and Q streets NW, a store employee beseeched him to give up his quest to have the lane fixed up.

“They even joked, ‘Don’t fix it or people will stop needing repairs!’,” he says.