Photo by StreetsofWashington.

Before things get better on Beach Drive, they’re going to get a whole lot worse.

An extensive rehabilitation project for Rock Creek Park’s major thoroughfare begins on September 22 with road closures for cars, bikes, and pedestrians from where the road begins at Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, near the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Woodley Park, up towards Tilden Street NW, by Peirce Mill.

The construction was originally slated to begin on September 19, but was delayed until later in the week after “engineers ran into some challenges with the underground cables that support stop light signal timing along Tilden Street NW,” according to NPS.

The closure means no access to the National Zoo driveway and Harvard Street Ramp from Beach Drive. There’ll be detours using park roads and D.C. streets, including for cyclists and walkers, but officials are warning about serious traffic delays.

The entire project, which covers 6.5 miles of full pavement reconstruction for the road and includes rehab for the nearby trail, is expected to take about three years. The work will be completed in segments, each slated to last around six to eight months. People can keep track of the different segments and their accompanying detours here.

According to the National Park Service, more than 12 million vehicles use Beach Drive annually and it spends more than $75,000 every year on temporary repairs, which “are no longer viable options” because the pavement has “long surpassed its service life.”

Updated with new date for construction after NPS pushed back closures from Sept. 19 to the 22nd.