The College Park City Council sent a letter to the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC) in October supporting the construction of a bridge connecting Old Calvert Road Park to the Northeast Branch Trail.
The council requested that the bridge be built near the parking lot by the park’s playground, crossing the Northeast Branch of the Anacostia River to the trail.
“We don’t want to spend another month waiting,” Councilmember Ray Ranker (District 3) said. “We want to get [construction] started … tomorrow.”
Ranker said his constituents have waited a decade for a bridge to connect the park to the trail system. Sonja Ewing and Bob Patten, who presented the findings of a study by M-NCPPC at the Oct. 7 council meeting, said the only way to travel from the park to the trail is to use the sidewalks on Campus Drive, which, they said, are not safe.
The estimated cost for the proposed bridge is about $2 million, not including expenses for design consultants, floodplain and environmental studies, as the location is a flood-prone area, or permit applications, they said.
“The biggest challenge with that location is the permitting process and the going through the design and all the approvals that you need to actually have a new bridge,” Patten said.
The council also considered a less-expensive option, which would modify the Campus Drive bridge by narrowing the road and adding bike lanes with bollard barriers. Ranker said under that plan, cyclists would still have to cross traffic to get from the trail to the park.
Councilmember John Rigg (District 3) pointed out that the Campus Drive bridge has only five years of usable life left. “I have almost unanimously … have heard from those residents that [the Campus Drive bridge] option … is not where we want to spend any of the money,” Ranker said.
Ranker added: “This has been something that our community has been asking for for at least 10 years. It’s a really great park and it’s just … really difficult to get to.”