I appreciated your April 29th article on this and would further appreciate your continued interest. As is turns out, July has come and gone and the Monroe Avenue connector is still not completed.
For people living in the south Del Ray/Rosemont area, this is a continual irritant. For years, we have had to detour down Mt Vernon, through the neighborhoods, or through the congestion of the Braddock Road intersection to get to the Parkway or Rt. 1. For the past couple of months, the Commonwealth Avenue portion of the detour has been clogged with a massive construction project. This has added time, fuel costs, congestion, and aggravation. The official web site for the project said this would be done in late winter – then went silent. I wrote to them and I wrote to the city planning office and did not get a reply from either one. I have had to navigate the detours a couple of times a day for years – and no one seemed to care.
When completed, the Monroe Avenue connector will still present a round-about way to get to the parkway. It’s interesting that this is called the Monroe avenue bridge project when, in fact, it substantially reduces easy access to Old Town from Monroe Avenue.
At this point, I just want this done. I’ll deal with the apparent lack of interest the city has shown in serving my part of Alexandria both through the protracted detours and the sub-optimal design of this project. Maybe we should rename south Del Ray as “Bypass, VA.”
