Residents Express Frustration With Glover Park Traffic

Just north of Georgetown, the new traffic patterns formed by Glover Park’s $5-mil- lion Wisconsin Avenue Streetscape Project have many neighbors fuming over the reduced lanes on the avenue. The project put rush-hour lanes at two, down from three; the intent was to make the area more walker-friendly. Others like the wider sidewalks, such as the one next to Holy Rood Cemetery. The debate may seem like it is driver versus pedestrian, but it is more than that as residents worry about traffic overflow.

Comments abound on community forums. Indeed, there is a Facebook page for venting: www.facebook.com/GloverParkTrafficJam.

Rick Gersten wrote in the Georgetown Forum: “This plan apparently was generated by the need to promote smart growth planning. I, as many of you do, support smart growth planning. However, we can’t stand by and allow the city and those who favor this project to be protected, without changes, simply because ‘smart growth planning’ has been the reason for it. … We have either experienced firsthand or have heard from others the reasons we have no Metro in Georgetown. Here it is: The decision to not have metro was made by a few people who derided those who were in favor of that project. We are experiencing that same type of attack in reverse by a few influential people who stand by the original plan of the relined Wisconsin Avenue project.”

Cynthia Anthony added this in the forum: “To avoid the traffic mess on Wisconsin Avenue, I now drive farther into the residential area. … When I have driven straight up Wisconsin in non-peak hours (which used to be a pretty short trip) there are very few cars actually using the left-hand turn lanes. We’re now all crammed into the one lane, and if someone gets out of a cab, or a bus can’t fit all the way into the curb, there’s goes the traffic flow. “

Another Glover Park resident wrote directly to the Georgetowner: “Sure the neighborhood harps about it. But it is perhaps the best thing that ever happened for everyone down the hill in Georgetown — and everyone in the neighborhood. Stand up here for a while and wait to see how that open median allows fire trucks, ambulances and motorcades to double their speed from Calvert Street to Holy Rood. … I was out in front of Pearson’s the other day, and there was a Secret Service guy on a big Harley parked watching the avenue: a hook-and-ladder headed south at full speed, cleared Calvert and with the median open must have kept going 40 miles per hour south; then, there was a motorcade north. Think of the mess those two would have made with the old system.”