Today, the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) made changes to the pedestrians signals at Dupont Circle that will help protect folks as they cross in and out of the circle. This is an enormous safety improvement for pedestrians that the Dupont ANC has been working on for almost 9 months!
The new signals allow pedestrians to cross the entirety of the four lane intersection at once instead of being trapped in the median as the picture shows.
Last year, we held several public safety meetings and the idea came directly from a Dupont resident. My colleague, Kishan Putta and I contacted the city and asked for the changes to be made. To DDOT's credit, we were never turned away or told 'no'. They did say it would take a while to program new signals and make sure vehicular traffic could still flow relatively easily (maybe just not make it worse?). The signaling folks at DDOT did a fantastic job, though it took almost weekly calls from me to make sure the project remained on track.
My full time job is in federal traffic safety policy and this type of work is exactly why I ran for ANC. I knew there was great work to be done to help keep our pedestrians and bicyclists safe on the roads.
Please let me know if the new signal timing is an improvement or if there are any small changes that need to be made.
Thanks so much to DDOT, especially Bill McGuirk, for their diligent work on this and many other projects.
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