The D.C. Department of Transportation is moving forward with a plan to place anti-suicide barriers on the William Howard Taft Bridge, the 115-year-old span that carries Connecticut Avenue across Rock Creek Park.

The decision comes in the wake of a lobbying campaign started last year by Dr. Chelsea Van Thof, a Woodley Park resident whose partner Dr. Peter Tripp died by suicide at the bridge a few months before. It also coincides with another death at the bridge, which occurred last week.

“The recent loss underscores the urgency in our work to add safety protective barriers to the Taft Bridge as part of our commitment to develop and maintain a safe and reliable multimodal transportation system,” said DDOT Director Everett Lott in a statement.

The move to place barriers on the bridge is an about-face of sorts. When Van Thof started her advocacy campaign, she was told there were no plans to consider the barriers. But shortly after her campaign drew widespread media attention, DDOT officials said they would start assessing every bridge in the city for whether or not barriers should be installed. Van Thof says she is relieved that DDOT is now committing money to barriers on the Taft Bridge.

“I’m feeling hopeful, but it’s bittersweet,” said Van Thof, reflecting on the number of deaths that have occurred at the Taft Bridge. According to data from D.C., from 2010 to 2022 there were 26 total deaths by suicide from all the bridges in the city, with half of them coming from the Taft Bridge alone. “It’s bittersweet that Peter had to die before we could do this thing that should have been done 40-odd years ago.”

It was then that barriers were placed on the nearby Duke Ellington Bridge, which at the time had become the scene of a number of deaths by suicide. A similar move to place barriers on the Taft Bridge was derailed by opposition from some historic preservation groups. Many of those same groups now say they do not oppose barriers, which research has shown can lead to decreases in deaths by suicide.

“I lived in Adams Morgan when the barriers went up on the [Ellington Bridge], and so I’d seen it happen and thought, ‘Well, it’s on one bridge, so why wouldn’t it be on the other?'” said Councilmember Matthew Frumin (D-Ward 3), who first met Van Thof and other advocates for the barriers when he was campaigning for office last year. “I talked to Chelsea and other people in the field about is this the kind of thing that makes sense, because we all want to prevent suicide, but is this an effective way to do it? And it’s pretty uniform that people think this is an important part of preventing suicide.”

City officials say that DDOT has allocated funding to start the design process for the barriers, though actual placement of any new barriers may not happen until 2024. The Taft Bridge is a historic span that straddles federal land, which means that the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the National Capital Planning Commission, the National Park Service, and the D.C. State Historic Preservation Office all have to be consulted.

“The historic nature of this bridge requires significant coordination with our federal and regional partners, who have all been supportive of this effort,” noted Lott.

In the meantime, city officials say they are considering other measures, including special signage on the bridge informing people of existing resources for those considering suicide. Van Thof says given the long timeline to get permanent barriers up — whether a fence like on the Ellington Bridge or netting like that which is being installed on the Golden Gate Bridge — she’d like to see some type of temporary barriers installed.

“I know that Cornell had put up a chain link barrier while they were doing the permanent one,” she said, referring to the temporary fencing placed on a number of bridges on the university campus in upstate New York in 2010.

Ultimately, Van Thof says she’s pleased to see progress, but she will keep advocating until the barriers are installed. She was told that two other bridges in the city may also qualify for barriers; DDOT did not respond to questions about which those are.

“I’m optimistic that DDOT is putting their best foot forward and trying to get this accomplished now,” said Van Thof. “But I’m hoping that no one else is lost.”