E Street NW in front of the White House was closed to traffic after 9/11. While car traffic is banned, bicyclists face barriers to using it as well. A new plan by the National Park Service could push cyclists off the street entirely.

Proposed President’s Park South Alternative 3. Image from NPS.

Back in early July, the NPS and the Secret Service held a public open house on the joint-agency President’s Park South Project. This project will redesign the park immediately south of the White House, including E Street NW between 15th and 17th streets. E Street was closed after 9/11 and has never been reopened. Unlike Pennsylvania Avenue, which is also closed to car traffic, pedestrians can usually use E Street but not bicyclists, for whom the street is a barrier.

In 2011, the National Capital Planning Commission held a design competition for the park and selected five finalists, some of whom recommended putting bike lanes on E Street. But NCPC’s chosen entry proposed keeping the street closed unless security threat conditions change in the future.

NCPC’s contest was non-binding, but it “informed” the eventual design process. The four new alternatives NPS and the Secret Service presented at the July meeting are very different from the ones in the NCPC contest.

Alternative 1 is a no-build option. Alternatives 2 and 3 include a bicycle path along the southern edge of E Street, and Alternatives 4 and 5 route bicyclists around the existing perimeter streets, 15th Street, Constitution Avenue, and 17th Street. The latter two do this to create an expanded viewing area south of the existing fence, shown as the shaded purple area on the image below.

I think it would be a shame if this project didn’t include a space for a bike path on E Street. I don’t see why they can’t expand the viewing area and include the bike path, as the two do not seem mutually exclusive. Isn’t that what we have on the north side of the White House?

If you’d like to comment to that effect, public comments are being accepted until September 12th at the NPS website. Comment early and often.

A version of this was crossposted at the Washcycle.