page_title: Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway
section_title: Trail
hierarchical_section_title: Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway / Trail
context_page_description: The Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, often known simply as the Rock Creek Parkway, is a parkway maintained by the National Park Service as part of Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. It runs next to the Potomac River and Rock Creek in a generally north–south direction, carrying four lanes of traffic from the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Memorial Bridge north to a junction with Beach Drive near Connecticut Avenue at Calvert Street, N.W., just south of the National Zoological Park.
  The Parkway was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 4, 2005. Built from 1923 to 1936, it is "one of the best-preserved examples of the earliest stage of motor parkway development".
  During rush hours, a reversible lane setup is used between Ohio Drive and Connecticut Avenue to permit all lanes to be used for the predominant direction of travel. More specifically, the Parkway is one-way southbound on weekdays from 6:45 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., and one-way northbound from 3:45 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. The Parkway officially became one-way during rush hours on Valentine's Day 1938.
context_section_description: The Rock Creek Park Trail runs along the Parkway from the Lincoln Memorial to Connecticut Avenue, where it continues along Beach Drive to Broad Branch Road. The trail continues north along Beach from Joyce Road to Bingham Drive.
  The Shoreline section along the Potomac is the oldest section of the trail, built before 1967.
  In 1971, the Park Service set aside a lane of the Parkway north of Virginia Avenue for a week to promote commuting by bicycle. The experiment was a success, but caused traffic jams, so the Park Service paved bridle paths immediately to the west that had existed since the park was founded. The trail was extended in September 1971 to Calvert Street, and then 2 miles (3.2 km) to Bluff Bridge in 1972.
  In 1981-82, the parkway bridge over Rock Creek at L Street was replaced and as part of that project, a separate trail bridge was built. It replaced a narrow section of the existing bridge that then served as part of the bike path.
  In 1997, the Shoreline Trail section was repaved and realigned.
caption: Aerial view of the L Street Bridge and Rock Creek Parkway Trail, at center, 1973
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