Rock Creek Park is an urban jewel. But as trail closures worsen, is it at risk of neglect?

For Rock Creek Park hikers and bikers, sites like this have become common recently. (Photo by me)

The U.S. National Park Service (NPS) advertises Washington, DC's Rock Creek Park as an "oasis in the city." As someone who lives right next to the park, I can attest that this is true. Just a few steps from my apartment, I can descend into the forest and hike for hours on end surrounded by our region's natural state, only to emerge at a Silver Spring brewery or a Georgetown restaurant. Though I'm from California, with all its majestic scenery, Rock Creek's beauty suffices for the lack of a bus or rail route from DC to Shenandoah, our closest full-scale national park.   

But over the two years I've lived here and fallen in love with the park, I've noticed more and more obstacles blocking my path, inflicting needless stress on what should be relaxing weekend walks. Impacts from heavy summer rains, a construction project for car commuters, and an impasse between a transit agency and historical preservationists have conspired to make it extremely likely hikers and bikers will encounter detours, regardless of their route. 

In trying to mitigate these impacts, NPS seems to have lost sight of its mission to "preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations." With a few small adjustments, they can do much better.

Out of the creek, into the tunnel

Is Beach Drive's Zoo Tunnel an"oasis in the city"? (Photo by me)

From around Klingle Road south, trail routing unfortunately forces pedestrians and cyclists to travel quite close to car traffic on Beach Drive and Rock Creek Parkway. One pleasant reprieve from this is the stretch past the National Zoo, where the trail hugs the creek while cars head through the Zoo Tunnel. 

But early last week, high waters damaged this stretch of the trail, as Rock Creek siphoned runoff from heavy rains toward the Potomac. Though I'm not sure as to the full extent of the damage (I could see a downed tree blocking the path from one of the blocked gates), the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) has warned that repairs could take as long as a year.  

In the meantime, trail users have been detoured onto the narrow Zoo Tunnel sidewalk. As can be seen as right, this is a bad situation, both from a health perspective (I could feel the exhaust and fumes hurting my lungs as I walked) and from a traffic safety standpoint (I don't think that barrier would be of much help if one of those drivers lost control of their vehicles). Walking through the tunnel certainly is not the experience park visitors expect. 

There are no comparably safe north-south cycling routes that parallel the closed trail through this area of Northwest DC and offer a viable alternative to the tunnel – nearby, but hostile Connecticut Ave and 16th St certainly do not. However, for drivers, those wide arterial boulevards are reasonable, if not preferable alternatives to narrow, two-lane Beach Drive. They helped absorb the latter road's traffic when it was closed for a major rehabilitation project in 2016-2017. 

To help drivers and cyclists share the pain of the trail closure, NPS could learn from one of WMATA's primary strategies to keep trains running during construction: single tracking (or in this case, technically "single laning"). Specifically, one lane of the tunnel could continue carrying car traffic, in alternating directions, while the other is dedicated entirely to cyclists and pedestrians, with clear signage dedicating separate space to the two different modes. 

If implemented effectively, single-laning would impact drivers minimally. During rush hour the car lane could be signalized to continuously carry peak-direction traffic, while parallel roads and temporary increases to bus service (akin to those helping mitigate the ongoing Red Line closure) could absorb lost car capacity at other times. And while not as ideal for park visitors as the creek-side trail, it would be far preferable to the dangerous environment they are currently subjected to.  

And who knows? Maybe implementing this measure would increase public pressure to expedite trail repairs, perhaps encouraging NPS and the National Zoo to complete them as rapidly as the two-week "emergency" repairs planned for nearby Broad Branch Road, which was damaged by the same floodwaters.                     

         

While flood damage blocks the way south, road renewal block the way north

The National Park Service expected Rock Creek Park hikers and bikers to detour via city streets, rather than cross a single Beach Drive bridge in a construction zone. They were wrong. (Photo by me)

NPS's above-mentioned Beach Drive Rehabilitation Project has progressed, with the latest phase closing a 2.7-mile stretch of the two-lane road through fall 2019. Due to concerns regarding maintenance equipment, the agency has elected to close under-construction sections of the roadway not just to cars, but also pedestrians and cyclists.

According to NPS's public advisory on the project, the ongoing construction blocks all east-west crossings of DC's northern portion of the park, except for one major through road close to the Maryland border. However, the advisory's wording fails to clarify that north-south trail hiking along the creek, which requires use of a single Beach Drive bridge just north of Military Rd, is also no longer possible due to the detour. 

The alert, however, does specify a detour route for pedestrians and cyclists – they're to head straight out of the park at the southern end of the closed segment, then walk or bike along city streets all the way to the Maryland border. No alternate route is specified for people not wishing to hike all the way to Maryland. 

This isn't the time or place to debate whether National Park funds should go toward giving transit-averse car commuters from suburban Maryland wishing to avoid a few 16th St or Connecticut Ave stoplights a slightly smoother ride to downtown. It's true that Beach Drive doesn't even carry a bus route, and there's certainly a valid argument that converting it to a bike path would yield optimal benefits for the public. But since construction has started, it's likely going to get finished. 

It must be possible to complete the project in a manner that doesn't cause such an extreme disruption, especially given that, despite the presence of construction equipment, Beach Drive is arguably safer during construction than when open to cars. The closed bridge blocking hikers' way has sidewalks on both sides, and it's possible for pedestrians to proceed through the area without even entering the roadway. However, it appears NPS didn't consider possible ways to keep at least one of the two walkways open and safe, instead just blindly implementing blanket closures.

Few park visitors seem to be following NPS's orders. As can be seen in the photo above, taken around a week after the current phase of the rehabilitation project began, the temporary fencing blocking the path had been dismantled before I'd even encountered it. 

Since people tend to take the most practical, direct route from A to B, rather than adhere to others' wishes, the Park Service should do its best to ensure they're able to cross the construction zone safely.               

Bureaucracy blocks the way to Georgetown

DC Transit's Route 20 streetcar hasn't run between Georgetown and Glen Echo for nearly 60 years. But thanks to a trestle it ran on, forget running through Glover Archbold Park today. (Photo courtesy of Mark Lieberman, The Current)

Another trail closure obstructs the southern end of the Glover Archbold Trail, which runs through Rock Creek's satellite park of the same name. At around two years old, the blockage just west of Georgetown University's campus is the longest-running of the Rock Creek Park closures (at least as far as I know), and an administrative dispute is to thank. 

Ironically, a bit of DC's transit history – specifically, an abandoned railroad trestle that carried Streetcar Route 20, once a trunk line connecting the city's urban core to an amusement park in outlying Glen Echo, MD – is at the root of the problem. The trestle, which closed in 1962 and subsequently was passed down to WMATA, now lies in such disrepair that the transit agency has deemed it at risk of "imminent collapse." Due to this risk, the path beneath it is closed to hikers, who (akin to the Beach Drive pedestrian/cyclist detour) are diverted out of the park to city streets. 

If our mid-20th century transportation planners had been semi-competent, the riverfront streetcar line would still operate today and the bridge would be maintained to 21st-century safety standards, averting the problem. But today, transit in the DC region faces much more pressing needs than restoration of Route 20, so the abandoned trestle – while a glimpse of the nightmarish fate some private interests hope befalls our Metro – does not have any practical modern-day function. 

Thus, the logical solution, which WMATA favors, is simply to tear the bridge down and reopen the path. If funding ever materializes for a westward bicycle or pedestrian connection from Georgetown, or even a new rail corridor replicating the old streetcar route, constructing a new bridge would make more sense than rehabilitating the derelict one.   

But the DC Preservation League has other ideas, and has utilized the city's Historical Preservation Act to stall the project. Meanwhile, us hikers and pedestrians are left in the lurch, waiting for government bureaucracy to function.      

    

Our government should embrace Rock Creek Park for the urban gem that it is

You may need to hop a fence or two, but Rock Creek Park still is a great place for an evening walk (Photo by me) 

While the direct causes of Rock Creek Park's three major ongoing trail closures differ, the closures reveal a deeper systemic problem: Park Service officials seem to have forgotten why their agency was created, and why it remains funded even in an increasingly hostile political environment. In trying to keep visitors safe, they've created an unpleasant environment, forcing people to make potentially dangerous decisions and violate the law just to get where they need to go. 

Instead of neglecting its system of lush corridors that stretches throughout Northwest DC, NPS officials and their local counterparts should promote the park as a crown jewel of urban sustainability. No other city I know of – not places with top-notch multimodal transportation such as Paris or Seoul, nor areas with legendary urban waterfronts such as San Francisco, Chicago, or San Diego – has anything remotely comparable or extensive. They could learn a lot from what DC has done. 

But for this to happen, our trails have to be open.