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Changes along Rock Creek Parkway planned to make things safer

By Max Smith

Significant safety changes have been approved for several spots along Rock Creek Parkway, including near the Kennedy Center and Memorial Bridge, where it can be tough for fast-moving cars to see people walking or biking.

The National Capital Planning Commission approved final plans last week from the National Park Service that include eliminating the paved loop near Memorial Bridge that used to be the end of Constitution Avenue in Northwest.

The change would allow for a straighter trail and a traffic shift to make accessing the Memorial Bridge a right turn rather than a straight shot so that people walking, running or biking on the frequently crowded trail no longer come out of nowhere for drivers, and so people on the trail do not have to blindly guess whether someone they cannot see is walking or biking around a high wall.

Part of the paved loop, known as the Belvedere, would still be marked with stones. It could host a new national memorial of some kind in the future.

The park service also plans to build a wider and smoother trail at other points in the area under this plan, including through a new separated tunnel under the Roosevelt Bridge, past the Kennedy Center where a new connection is planned as part of an expansion project, and at better intersections at F Street and Virginia Avenue in Northwest.

Additional trail repaving and widening is planned south of Memorial Bridge down to the bridge over the inlet to the Tidal Basin.

This work is separate from improvements just to the north of this area for the C&O Canal in Georgetown.

One attack, many Americas: Why 9/11 and its many griefs land differently 25 years later

By The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — When the planes crashed and the buildings fell on that sunny September morning 25 years ago, the shock waves of dismay and grief went far past downtown New York City, rural western Pennsylvania and just outside Washington, D.C. They radiated through every part of the United States in communities large and small, tearing at Americans' sense of safety and their place in the world. Hearts were broken across the nation, not just of those who lost their loved ones but among strangers who mourned for them, the Sept. 11 attacks leaving no one unaffected in an unwanted moment of horrifying togetherness. A quarter of a century later, the effects linger. We all live in a post-9/11 world, with its security strictures and surveillance. But here's the thing: Americans don't all live in the SAME one. What the attacks and their aftermath have come to mean isn't a single viewpoint shared by everyone, for reasons chronological, political and personal. It's a tapestry of meaning and grief as varied as the nation in which 9/11 took place.
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