The Battle of Klingle Road

In 1991, a three-quarter-mile segment of Klingle Road, just west of Rock Creek Park, was washed out by stormwater, and the road closed to traffic. That event triggered a bitter battle that has gone on for years, with extraordinary intensity. It appears to be approaching a conclusion, in 2008, 17 years after the closing of the road. We'll see. But here, as briefly as I can do it, is the story, and why it has been such a battle.

East-of-the-Park lifestyles

For years after the 1968 Martin Luther King riots, all of the District east of Rock Creek Park was in decline and not very desirable. Mount Pleasant for some years consisted of inexpensive rooming houses. In time, the residential areas closest to the Park began to recover, middle-class people (like yours truly) buying houses in Mount Pleasant and Crestwood. But this recovery extended only a few blocks to the east of the Park. Columbia Heights remained, for years, a rough neighborhood, with some of the highest crime rates in the District. Schools were poor, and shops catered to a low-income clientele. Residents looking for better shops and schools quite naturally zipped across the Park to the wealthier neighborhoods to our west, Cleveland Park, Woodley Park, Tenleytown, Georgetown, et cetera. Even Mayor Marion Barry, a prototypical urban-black politician, sent his children to Murch Elementary, west of Rock Creek Park (all the way from Southeast DC). For us residents of Mount Pleasant and Crestwood, our homes were east of the Park, but our shops, restaurants, and schools were west of the Park.

That placed a premium on travel from east to west, especially in the morning, when rushing one's children to school, then hurrying off to work. Here in Mount Pleasant, there was a heavy rush every morning of cars heading west, to those “better” west-of-the-Park schools, such as Murch and Eaton. Few professional-class residents of Mount Pleasant were willing to send their children to our neighborhood school, Bancroft. (As of 2003, Bancroft was just 2% white non-Hispanic, in a neighborhood that was at least 35% white non-Hispanic.)

 This is where Klingle Road was such a great convenience. The map shows how one gets from Mount Pleasant, on the far right, to Eaton Elementary, the starred location on the left. Klingle Road was a nicely direct, virtually traffic-free  route. The alternative route is on Porter Street (Klingle undetectably becoming Porter, as “real” Klingle turns off just west of the Park). The Porter crossing of Connecticut Avenue is notorious for its congestion and long traffic delays. As is invariably the case in the District, the north-south “commuter” routes are given favorable green-light times at these intersections, while the east-west traffic waits. Hence, the time difference for the Porter Street route, versus Klingle, can easily be 5 or 10 minutes.

Thus, the abrupt closing of Klingle in 1991 was upsetting to many residents of Mount Pleasant and Crestwood. Drivers stuck in traffic at the Porter Street crossing of Connecticut longed for the return of their quick and convenient Klingle route.

The battles begin

OK, so, why wasn't the road simply rebuilt, right away? I know that the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) was reluctant to put more money into repairs for this troublesome road, afflicted with underground springs and torrents of water during summer rainstorms. According to a City Paper report in 2000, "City officials were sick of paying to repair it". The Klingle Road Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) says this: "As the watershed became more urbanized and developed, stormwater loads increased to levels that began to cause excessive erosion in Klingle Valley and irreversible damage to Klingle Road prompting the road’s closure." That is, it was the paving and buildup in the area that led to increasing maintenance difficulty on this valley road.

There are further reasons against the rebuilding of the road. For one thing, the residents of Woodley Park, on the west end of Klingle Road, were not unhappy to have the road closed. Like everyone else in the District, they want to be able to drive easily to whereever they want to go, but they don't want any traffic on the roads in front of their own houses. Klingle Road emerges on Woodley Road, a residential street, so residents in that high-income neighborhood were treated to little rush hours of Klingle Road commuters every morning. (Some residents of Mount Pleasant want our "minor arterial" streets converted to "local traffic only" residential streets, preventing drivers from passing through the neighborhood on their east-west routes. These same residents want Klingle Road opened, failing to perceive the irony in their willingness to impose on Woodley Park precisely that traffic that they hate in Mount Pleasant.)

But the crucial fact that makes Klingle Road different from other such traffic-NIMBY situations is that it is in Rock Creek National Park. More than that, it's in an exceptionally beautiful part of the park, a deep valley of dense woods, and Klingle Creek at the bottom. The city was given a 50-foot right-of-way for the "highway" in 1885, five years before Rock Creek National Park was established. At the time, it was a gravel road descending to a ford across Rock Creek. (Today, road advocates leap upon that "highway" designation as justification for the reconstruction of the road. But no one in 1885 imagined fleets of SUVs on a hard-paved surface. Their "highway" carried horse-drawn wagons down to the streambed, where the horses waded across the creek.)

The Park was already suffering for having become a heavy-traffic commuter route in 1966, upon the opening of the tunnel connecting Beach Drive to Rock Creek Parkway. A phenomenal 25,000 vehicles per day now use Beach Drive through the tunnel, and they're not there to enjoy the park scenery. The National Park has become little more than a host for a freeway. Park management has become resigned to this unpleasant use of their park on Beach Drive, but isn't happy about it, and is pondering methods of reducing the commuter traffic burden. When Klingle Road, another busy commuter route through parkland, was closed, the management of Rock Creek National Park was content to leave it closed, preferring quiet parkland to a traffic-laden road.

That's a lot of arguments against the rebuilding of the road, but the east-side residents who wanted their quick route to the west were unpersuaded, and have been relentless in demanding the return of their road. Leading the charge to reopen the road was Mount Pleasant resident Laurie Collins, who built a Web site, Repair Klingle Road,  just for this purpose, and who put unrelenting pressure on politicians for the return of the road, even as the years passed. Leading the opposition to the road was an ad hoc group, the Klingle Valley Park Association , supported by the DC Chapter of the Sierra Club.

The Berger Study

The District seems to have taken a "hope it goes away" approach to the issue, perhaps thinking that if nothing was done, and the road remained closed, the advocates would lose interest and move on to other matters. But they underestimated the intensity of the road advocates. Green "Repair Klingle Road" popped up all over Mount Pleasant. Laurie Collins created her Web site, and made her Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance a loud voice for reopening the road. Collins raised money and organized meet-and-greet gatherings for politicians who favored the road, and made reopening the road a "litmus test" for any candidate. Ward One Councilmember Jim Graham became a proponent of the road, and received Collins' fund-raising support (as did Fenty, in his campaign for Mayor in 2006). At-large Councilmember Phil Mendelson did not support the road, and found himself under steady attack by Collins and her allies. 

The pro-road forces were so vocal and demanding that the District was driven to undertake in 1999 a detailed study of the road, and the various alternatives proposed for it:

? Option A: No Action -- do nothing, a choice mandated for such studies

? Option B: No Build -- repair retaining walls, rebuild drainage

? Option C: Green Space -- as B, but remove the roadbed, allowing the area "to return to a natural state"

? Option D: Bicycle, Recreation and Facility Management -- as C, but repave the road as a bike path (capable of supporting utility trucks for servicing)

? Option E: Rebuild Klingle Road to its Original Alignment -- rebuild the road, as it was before

? Option F: Build Klingle Road to Accommodate Vehicular, Pedestrian and Bicycle Uses -- widen the road, for a two-lane road plus bike/hike path

? Option G: Build Klingle Road as a One-Lane (One-Way) Road with a Pedestrian/Bicycle Lane -- one lane for cars, one lane for bicyclists and pedestrians

Options A, B, and C were simply nonstarters. Option D had the support of the Sierra Club, and Washington bicyclist organizations. Option E is what the "Repair Klingle Road" people wanted. Option F was ruled out by the narrow right-of-way possessed by the District through the National Park. Option G was a fair compromise, but the road advocates refused to settle for anything less than the full return of their road, for cars only, two-way, all the time. Because the road is narrow -- the 50-foot right-of-way does not allow even for shoulders, much less any adjacent sidewalk or bike path -- Option E would render the road nearly unusable by bicyclists and pedestrians (similar to the situation on Park Road, east of Beach Drive). As was the case before the closing of the road in 1991, Klingle Road could be used in safety only by automobile drivers. Perhaps that is why this was such a bitter battle; the only acceptable outcomes were everything for cars, nothing for bicyclists and pedestrians on the one hand, and nothing for cars, everything for bicyclists and pedestrians, on the other. There was no middle ground.

The Berger study, released in 2001, resolved nothing. Traffic benefits of the road were found to be modest: ". . . any reopening of Klingle Road would lead to significant delay reduction on Porter Street and moderate delay reduction on Cleveland Avenue and Garfield Street. However, most of the already failed approaches at the study intersections will continue to operate with an unacceptable level of service." In short, all the benefit of the road accrues to the drivers who could use it, instead of Porter Street, to reach their destinations.

Road advocates wanted their road, despite its high cost, and the Berger study conclusion that the road would yield little benefit to traffic flows elsewhere in the area. Road opponents wanted the bike/hike/recreation option, no cars. The arguments flew back and forth, persuading no one.

Among the perverse uses of the Berger report was an absurd analysis of traffic delays by the MCV Associates, claiming enormous traffic benefits on other roads if Klingle Road should be reopened, despite the clear conclusion of the Report. This claim was utter nonsense, even fraudulent, as I showed, and as any competent traffic engineer would see. My conclusion: "Consequently the time savings predicted for Porter Street eastbound is not credible. Since that is the bulk of the overall time savings predicted, the total time savings is also not credible. Consequently the MCVcalculations, which hinge on this calculation of time savings, are not valid." This bogus traffic analysis was commissioned by Peter McGee, husband of Laurie Collins, and equally vociferous advocate of rebuilding Klingle Road. The Collins-McGee pair were aggressive in making such claims, eliciting this response by DDOT to Councilmember Mendelson.

The District Council acts

Early in 2003, the District Government took up the Klingle Road issue again, now with the Berger study in hand. Mayor Williams declared his opposition to the road, summarizing the arguments against it: high cost, small benefits. The District Council was unpersuaded, and inserted a line item in the District budget bill (thus immune to veto), the "Klingle Road Restoration Act of 2003",  requiring the restoration of the automobile road:

"Sec. 2402. The portion of Klingle Road, N.W., between Porter Street, N.W., on the east to Cortland Place, N.W., on the west shall be re-opened to the public for motor vehicle traffic, with the repair and reconstruction of Klingle Road, which shall include the establishment of a District Department of Transportation storm water management plan, to commence no later than 180 days following the effective date of this title."