This is the ice covered path on Galloway Street pedestrians are supposed to use

Once again, we are writing about the sidewalk path on Galloway Street by the Art Place at Fort Totten construction site. The north sidewalk on Galloway Street between South Dakota Avenue and 4th Street NE was closed for construction and jersey barriers were placed in the road to create a sidewalk path for pedestrians because there is not another sidewalk on the opposite side (south side) of the street.

The problem is that after winter storms, this path is not cleared in a timely manner. Because there is not another sidewalk, pedestrians either have to traverse an icy path or walk in the street. Doing either is dangerous. We had this same problem after January’s wintry weather and wrote about it then. We took pictures of the ice covered path around 6:05 pm Monday evening.  Also notice in the pictures that several jersey barriers have been knocked down.

We submitted a 311 request yesterday to have the path cleared of ice, just as we did last month.

It strikes us that there might be a bigger problem requiring a better solution.

(1) On a broader level, perhaps the transportation management plan that developers are required to submit should also include plans for inclement weather if they are not already required to do so. DDOT has rules about closures of sidewalks for construction, which is why these jersey barriers were erected in the first place. Even in cases in which the sidewalk remains open during construction, there should still be something in the transportation management plan to ensure that developers clear the sidewalk in front of their projects.

With respect to this specific project, maybe a complete sidewalk structure needs to be constructed on the north side of Galloway rather than just having the jersey barriers in place since it appears they can be knocked down easily and the construction team has made no effort to upright them to form a complete path, nor has the construction team made efforts to diligently clear the path after winter storms. We emailed the construction team and developers both last month and yesterday evening regarding the condition of the path after submitting 311 requests.

If this is something that needs to be worked out between the developers and the District in terms of who is responsible for clearing the path and making sure the jersey barriers actually form a complete barrier, we hope that there is a mechanism to do so. We do not know the best solution; we are just thinking out loud about what might help.

(2) DDOT, WMATA, and the National Park Service should work together to implement the recommendations in the Fort Totten metro accessibility study (pdf) completed in 2011. One of the recommendations was constructing a sidewalk on the south side of Galloway Street between South Dakota Avenue and 4th Street. We know there have been conversations between DDOT and the Park Service to figure out how much land belongs to the District in order to construct a sidewalk. We do not know the status of that project or this study as a whole, as we understand funding is always an issue, but this should certainly be a priority for the District as Galloway is a primary access route to a metro station with three lines and several buses.

Construction is anticipated to last another three years. We really should not have to deal with this issue every winter.  We hope that the mayor’s office, DDOT, and the developers together can find a workable solution to this problem.