Attention DDOT: This Route 29 sign is still posted. (Photo by Michael E. Grass)
In the not-really-news-but-still-sorta-interesting department, City Desk gets results! You may recall that I've been closely following the saga of some signs around Dupont Circle that have pointed drivers in the direction of Route 29, a U.S. highway connecting the Baltimore area with Pensacola, Fla. The problem is, as I first pointed out more than five years ago, Route 29 hasn't traveled through Dupont Circle for years, yet the outdated signs still lingered.
Though the power of Twitter and some periodic nagging, most of the incorrectly placed signs have been removed. The District Department of Transportation recently alerted me that the signs were coming down, so earlier today, I hoofed it down to Dupont to check up on the city's sign-removal work first hand. As Mayor Adrian Fenty's re-election campaign team says: No rhetoric, just results!
There is still one Route 29 sign still posted by Dupont Circle, pictured here, where southbound Connecticut Avenue enters the circle adjacent to the Starbucks and PNC bank branch. Even so, the removal of most of the signs should get The Needle to inch up a few slots today. Our quality of life has improved with reduced Route 29 confusion! (In case you're a cartographer wondering, Route 29 enters the District from the south at the Key Bridge, then runs along the Whitehurst Freeway, K Street NW, 11th Street, Rhode Island Avenue, 6th Street, and Florida Avenue, where it turns up Georgia Avenue and heads north to Silver Spring, where it becomes Colesville Road.)
Our next sign removal project? Attention Metro ...
A spy in Foggy Bottom passes along this photo of an aging Metrobus sign on Benito Juarez Circle outside the Watergate complex.
If you call the number listed on the sign, 637-2437—assuming the area code is 202—nobody picks up. It would be cool to call the number and get Metro customer service circa 1978!
