What’s DDOT Doing Around the Neighborhood?
New sidewalk on Warder between Manor and Newton.
Last night I too a brief walk around part of the neighborhood to check on all the work DDOT is doing in the community. I continue to see large areas of sidewalk that have been replaced and a large number of crosswalks. Far beyond any notification I’d received from DDOT. For the most part, these are good improvements.
I’ve observed new crosswalks installed up and down Warder and Park Place. I’ve also observed smaller sections of sidewalk replaced abutting the new crosswalks. What I find interesting for many of these crosswalks is that in addition to the red textured area many of them slightly slope down to a level surface on grade with the street prior to meeting the street.
(New crosswalk on ne corner of Warder and Newton).
However, not all of the work strikes me as as quality work. Below are two photos of an area of new sidewalk on Park Place between Otis and Newton Place where the sidewalk takes an odd slope down to the curb. Personally, I question the safety of this and will be questioning DDOT about it.
(Above: a section of new sidewalk on Park Place between Otis and Newton Place. As it approaches the street it suddenly slopes downward.)
Tree to be removed on Quebec Place
In addition to sidewalk improvements, I was sad to see one of the large trees on the 600 block of Quebec Place marked and ready to be cut down. That said, in looking at its trunk near the base it appears that it may be hollow inside and leaving it alone likely poses a safety hazard. The photo below shows an opening in the trunk providing an idea of its hollow interior.
I’ve been working with a group of neighbors in the central section of the neighborhood to tree up streets like Luray and Manor places as those streets have no tree box areas for new trees. Fortunately for Quebec Place, there is tree box space so, even though this tree is coming down, we can get a replacement in the fall.
Park View, D.C. 
June 23, 2016 at 9:26 am
They did a terrible job on Park Pl. The first time they did it, they left it way too low and everyone’s bottom steps to their property were unsafe and not up to code as a result. My husband asked them to fix it, and this was the result. It was great that they were so responsive, but I agree this also isn’t a safe situation. They also covered up the drainage holes in our wall and a bunch of others – they’ve said they’d fix it but haven’t yet. Thanks for your help in this!
June 23, 2016 at 9:34 am
I think it was a waste of our tax dollars to do a very sloppy job, replacing sections that probably didn’t need replacing and making some of the sidewalks look even worse. They could have been so much more thoughtful about it and integrated what we had proposed in the Streets Working Group, such as bumpouts at the intersections to include more trees in the neighborhood. Instead, they slopped concrete, making the streetscape look worse, doing an ugly patchwork job on many of the blocks, and we don’t even know where the rest of the work will be done. We just get to standby as they make our streetscape ugly and sloppy. An easy fix that doesn’t include DDOT is if people cleaned up their own sidewalks, removing weeds and trash from their walkway. Ah the dream!
June 23, 2016 at 10:15 am
Thanks, Kent, for your attention to the sidewalk replacement effort and the trees. A couple of things for your list of concerns:
The west corner of Warder and Newton has an odd “design” that I haven’t seen in any of the other replaced corner sidewalks. It’s as though the sidewalk was scooped out but a curb was built up, creating a tripping hazard.
The new sidewalk on the west side of Warder Street, between RCCR and Quebec, is great now after a rain – water no longer pools in that stretch. One block south there are still patches of old sidewalk mixed in with the new. Between Quebec and Princeton, the water still pools in those portions of the block with the old sidewalk. Will those old patches be replaced to eliminate the problem in that block?