Georgetown ANC Withholds Judgment on Glover Park Streetscape

Georgetown's Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners (ANC) are "collecting anecdotal evidence" about the impact of the Glover Park Streetscape project on traffic on Georgetown and Burleith streets.

At the ANC meeting Wednesday, Commissioner Ron Lewis said they have received a "significant" number of complaints about increased traffic on 37th Street in Burleith and 35th Street near Hardy Middle School.

"It has been hard to figure out what is due to construction and what is due to the configuration," Lewis said.

The Glover Park Streetscape project broke ground in April and was "substantially complete" in mid-December. The project reduced the number of lanes for traffic from three to two during peak hours and from two to one during non-peak hours; select intersections now have left turn lanes.

The Georgetown ANC endorsed the streetscape project in November 2011 with some hesitation.

During the lead-up to the project and throughout construction, Glover Park residents raised concerns about overflow traffic using side streets like 37th Street to avoid the congestion on Wisconsin Avenue. DDOT agreed to reconfigure 37th Street to discourage such behavior.

"An increase in traffic during construction was noted and with ANC 3B and community input, DDOT has committed to reconfigure the 37th Street and Tunlaw Road intersection as well as improve pedestrian cross walks in the Glover Park area," Paul Hoffman, the project manager for DDOT, told Patch in an email.

Georgetown's ANC commissioners said they have spoken with the Glover Park ANC commissioners who believe the recent traffic was related to construction.

In June, DDOT published a report of the traffic counting in the Glover Park neighborhood. After 37th Street and Tunlaw Road is reconfigured this April, the agency will take additional traffic counts to see how or if it has changed, according to Hoffman.

"So we’re going to see how this all plays out," said Commissioner Ed Solomon.