The District Department of Transportation (DDOT) began construction of 11th Street Bridge Project in December 2009 to replace the two existing bridges with three new bridges and improve the related interchanges. When completed in mid-2013, the $300-million the project will:

• Improve mobility by providing separate freeway and local traffic connections to both directions of DC 295, the Southeast-Southwest Freeway and local streets on both sides of the Anacostia River,
• Provide a shared path for pedestrians and bicycles, as well as rails to allow future streetcar connections,
• Replace the existing functionally deficient and structurally obsolete bridges,
• Provide an additional alternate evacuation route from our Nation’s Capital, and
• Include new trail connections, improved drainage and other environmental investments.

Projected to serve almost 180,000 vehicles per day by 2030, the existing bridges lack connections to allow travel directly from southbound DC 295/Anacostia Freeway to the Southeast-Southwest Freeway or from the Southeast-Southwest Freeway to northbound DC 295. The two new freeway bridges will provide these connections. The third bridge will carry local traffic between city streets on both sides of the river and provide additional connections to both directions of DC 295.

The project is the largest ever constructed by DDOT and is the first river bridge replacement in the District in more than 40 years.