Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Traffic @ 17th and Kalorama

The streets are thirty feet wide. Right now, there is parking on both sides of both streets, and both streets are two ways. This will change some time this year, a month or two before the new Harris Teeter Grocery Store opens up at this corner.
If the Harris Teeter sign represents the front door of the grocery store, some neighbors in the Dorchester House next door are right up under that front door. This little crowded street called Kalorama Road is expected to withstand, put up with and extend a welcoming hand to what is alleged to be 40 to 50 more trucks and 1,500 more cars per day when the store opens.



What the neighborhood looks like now

The building is called The Citadel. It used to be a skating rink way back when. Other uses have been made of it, but none has lasted. It sits next door to the Dorchester facing Kalorama Road and spans the entire block to the corner of Kalorama and 17th Street, NW.




Flowing into Kalorama from the south is a one-way 17th Street. This street is proposed to change to two ways between Belmont and Kalorama, but closed to trucks.




Flowing down into Kalorama from the north is a two-way 17th street, scheduled to change to a one-way 17th Street before the store opens.




Looking up Kalorama Road from 17th to 16th Streets, you see the road the traffic will flow down. This street is scheduled to turn from two-way to one-way going east in this block.

Right now, the only big vehicles coming down Kalorama and turning north onto 17th Street are the large (Trailways size) school buses picking up and returning the students at the H.D. Cooke Elementary School two blocks north of the proposed Harris Teeter project. Three large buses make travel this route three times a day.


Making the approach to the turn up 17th Street . . .









. . . the corner has to be clear of all traffic.










Even when clear of all traffic, the busses have to back up and maneuver boing back and forth to make the turn at this corner.













When the bus clears, the corner and makes its way on up 17th Street, NW, the Cooke students have to hope that there isn't much traffic to delay the end of their school day.