Twenty-six years after it was closed to the public, a three-quarter-mile stretch of Klingle Road is set to reopen Saturday as Klingle Valley Trail.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) will open the trail during a ceremony at 3 p.m. Saturday.
It has been a long-running saga for such a short-spanning stretch of road.
Closed to the public in 1991 after extensive flood damage brought on by heavy rains, Klingle Road NW, which runs east-west across Connecticut Avenue, remained shut for years because the city didn’t have the money to repair it.
But before repairs could begin, the section of road became the subject of a contentious debate that stretched on for years. At issue: should it be rebuilt as a road for drivers, or turned into a nature trail for hikers and bikers?
Over the years, the short section of Klingle has been described as everything from a “road to ruin” to a “vital artery.” Residents east of the park wanted the road open to cars as a traffic-beating shortcut for drivers; environmentalists and residents west of the park wanted to see it turned into a pedestrian trail nestled in a green oasis under the canopy of the stream valley forest.
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Stuck in a tug of war between warring factions, the seven-tenths of a mile of Klingle Road has been the source of countless protests, appeals, arguments, and even a lawsuit.
First, the D.C. Council voted in 2003 to reconstruct and reopen the road to traffic. Five years later, the Council reversed its earlier decision, instead ordering that the road to be kept closed. A lawsuit challenging the 2008 decision was filed, then dismissed in 2012, finally clearing the way for the road to be converted into a hiker-biker trail. But it wasn’t until late 2014, that a final design for the project was completed, and construction began in July 2015.
“I’ve been on much bigger projects,” said Andy Graf, the construction manager overseeing the Klingle Valley Trail Project. “…For a project of this size to have so many different contending stakeholders…is really something.”
Now, almost two years later, the trail will officially open with a ribbon cutting ceremony at the west trailhead near Cortland Place NW. The decades-long saga of Klingle Road is finally drawing to a close.
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