Over the past two weeks, Washington, D.C. has experienced something that it hasn’t felt in more than 25 years: the verge of a sports victory.
Washingtonians are following the Stanley Cup finals and taking over public places like the National Portrait Gallery after each playoff game. As the hype and fervor continue to grow, pop-up concerts and street closures are becoming a defining feature of the celebration outside the Capital One Arena in Gallery Place. But could the Stanley Cup playoffs bring permanent change – pedestrianization – that could fundamentally alter Downtown D.C.?
Photo by the Washington Capitals
Pedestrianization refers to the process of redesigning formerly car-centered streets and restricting it to only pedestrian and non-motorized traffic. Typically it is applied to the main shopping or entertainment streets of a city center as a way to make it easier for walkers to interact with the neighborhood.
The dream of pedestrianizing central, urban areas has a storied history in the planning field. But it’s not just unique to Europe, where cities are at the forefront of changing the way people interact with streets. Times Square was successfully pedestrianized under the leadership of former NYC Transit Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn and designed by firm Snøhetta.
While Gallery Place is not New York’s Times Square, it might as well be D.C.’s: the intersection of 7th and F Streets NW are serviced by the third busiest Metro station in the entire system with more than 22,000 trips daily, in addition to having some of the highest foot traffic in the region.
Map of the road closures in Gallery Place Chinatown due to the Stanley Cup.
As for the impact on car traffic, other cities like Paris have shown that traffic actually stays stagnant – or even decreases – and crashes are reduced in surrounding areas. Even temporarily, such as in the case of Los Angeles’ “Carmaggedon” in 2011, when a large stretch of I-405 was closed off, traffic was dramatically lower than usual, while the amount of people using non-car modes significantly increased. While Carmaggedon didn’t inspire dismantling the freeway, the closure points to a similar outcome as pedestrianization: because cars became a hindrance, not a convenience, people switched modes.
In Times Square, according to data from Snøhetta, pedestrian injuries were reduced 40 percent and crashes by 15 percent, all while foot traffic increased. It’s fair to say that Gallery Place would reap these benefits if it were pedestrianized, as 40 percent of crashes in the District occur at or near an intersection and more than 1,500 crashes in 2015 involved pedestrians. A large amount of these collisions happened in Ward 2 where Gallery Place, the National Mall, and Georgetown are located.
There are also ample transportation options in Gallery Place that make closing off the streets permanently feasible, with the abundance of Capital Bikeshare stations, Metrobus routes running along 7th and 9th Streets NW, and multiple Metro stations within a few blocks. We’re not sure exactly which streets can be permanently pedestrianized, but there’s a strong case for F St NW, which is typically closed off after major events at the Capital One Arena anyway.
Taking a page out of Sadik-Kahn’s playbook, the benefits of pedestrianizing the street would be huge for tourists, making it simple and easy to explore the National Portrait Gallery, arena, and the hundreds of businesses, hotels, theaters, and museums nearby. Studies have shown that people on foot spend more money than people passing through neighborhoods in cars.
For a capital city that is always on the move, making an already existing walkable area even more pedestrian-friendly makes sense. The Gallery Place-Chinatown area has a history of accommodating for pedestrians, from the closure of F St NW before and after arena events to diagonal crossings in front of the Friendship Archway.
If done correctly, taking back the street permanently has enormous potential to make D.C. safer and contribute to the growing liveliness of the downtown at all times of the day.
Photo by Elvert Barnes.