The new 9th Street Bridge

Here are a few photographs of the new 9th Street NE bridge over New York Avenue and the Ivy City Rail Yard (you can see the old and new bridge side-by-side on the latest imagery at Google Maps). DDOT says the bridge should be fully opened by May 2011. The bridge it is replacing was built in 1941 and has outlived its usefulness.

This is the northern approach to the bridge. Traffic heading southbound onto Mount Olivet Road towards Trinidad and Ivy City veers to the left onto the old bridge. Traffic heading towards the Capital City Market and downtown veer to the right onto the new bridge.

This is right at the base of the new bridge. Only one lane is open for now, but you can see the wider sidewalks and the bricked median.

This is looking north from the bridge. Less sun glare in this direction. You can see the bricked median more clearly. The bridge is wider for both cars and pedestrians, and has a more gentle, constant slope than the old bridge.

Really Giant, this is the best you can do?

Now, while we promised in our introductory post the following:

That doesn't mean we'll hold back on the curmudgeonliness here, but we'll make sure that's not the only thing you'll read.

we didn't mean that there wouldn't be blog posts that were just good old complaining. How about this for an example?


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This is an exterior sign on Giant grocery store #0375, near the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station, on Brentwood Road NE. The store, built in 2002, is having its interior upgraded using Giant's new corporate color scheme. It's good to see this much money being invested in a store that's under a decade old.

Many people in the neighboring Edgewood neighborhood complained when the Safeway at 514 Rhode Island Avenue NE closed, but the writing was on the wall the year before, when I noted that the store was the only one in DC not slated to receive upgrades. The fact that Giant is staying invested in the neighborhood makes it clear that they're not going anywhere anytime soon.

Now, with all that said, someone explain this to me:

This is the new Giant logo that has replaced the sign you saw above. The grimy outline of Giant's old sign is clearly visible here. I just want to know why they didn't clean the wall before installing the new sign.

I mean, this is your face to the outside world, your potential customer's first impression, and you're going to do it half-assed? After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading your store, you'd think that Giant management would want to make sure to get everything right. This simple oversight—leaving the exterior looking unfinished—undermines all the other work they're doing. If you want me to come into your store, don't leave me with a first impression that screams "cheap".