On paper, one mile of protected bike lanes may not sound like a lot, but a newly-finished cycletrack project is creating a safer connection for cyclists between two neighborhoods.

The stretch of Irving Street between Park View and Brookland is notorious for speeders with its wide, highway-like lanes and little to slow vehicles down.

Biking on the road was a bad gamble before. This week the District Department of Transportation finished the project that created a mile-long, two-way cycletrack with concrete curb and bollards to better protect cyclists from cars. (Many cyclists have been using the semi-finished lanes for months).

The connection gives easier access to bike lanes on 4th Street NE and the nearby Metropolitan Branch Trail on the east side. The MedStar Washington Hospital Center is in the middle of the corridor. The west side of the route spits out into neighborhoods that have a few unprotected bike lanes going north and south. Cyclists can also continue west on Irving in mixed traffic to reach Columbia Heights.

The street still has at least two car lanes of traffic on each side and many vehicles still speed down the road, despite a speed camera. So some still may not feel completely comfortable along the route.

Many welcomed the addition, but some say DDOT should be rolling out one of these types of projects every month. Projects like these help meet goals like reducing the number of traffic fatalities and meeting the District’s climate change targets.

DDOT has been studying the project since 2015. The second phase of the project, two more protected north-south routes on Park Place and Warder Street are still in the works. The department has plans to build 20 miles of off-street trails or protected bike lanes by 2022.

The pandemic has drastically reshaped how roads are used. Cycling and walking are up big in the region while vehicle traffic took a nosedive, but has slowly returned to about pre-pandemic levels.