To anyone who hasn’t swung by the Social Safeway, you may not have seen that it has been reduced to a small pile of rubble. Social Safeway is dead! Long live Social Safeway!
Some more pics after the jump:
The Safeway Pharmacy has opened up next to the Einstein Bagels:
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The Safeway may be closed but the stoplight on Wisconsin Ave. is still going strong! I always thought that red light — which was installed to allow easier access to and from the Safeway parking lot — was timed much too heavily against Avenue traffic. I must have sat waiting for that light about a thousand times. But now, of course, there’s no parking lot at all, just construction fencing. One might think that DC government would simply flip the switch and give us all the literal green light. Seems easy but it would assume:
A) There’s someone in DC govt. that’s paying attention.
B) Rationality.
C) Efficiency.
For any masochists out there willing to brave the mayor’s 311 call center to find the bureaucrat in charge of DC stoplights, I salute you. Paging Jack Evans: place a call and do your driving constituents a solid.
I always thought the light was too short for those exiting Safeway. It probably seems long for Wisconsin Ave. traffic because it operates more than just two phases.
Regardless, there’s no reason for the light to still be operating as if there were customer traffic. There will be construction traffic of course, so it must allow for that, but perhaps it could give a green to the construction site on a request basis. I’ll take a look and see how it’s working.
The light was both too long and too short–it has about 10-15 seconds of all-way red lights, with a walk signal for pedestrians to cross Wisconsin, and then it turns green for about 12 seconds for exit from the Safeway. After the driver of the first car wakes up (or looks up from their Blackberry) and leaves the parking lot (and navigated the rather large ramp down into the street), at most one or two more cars could get out. It’s one of the worst places to put the entrance…