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With all political discussion aside, I miss visiting DC pre-Trump, when you could walk right up to White House gate and snap a photo. The last time I was in DC was February 2018, and the entire street was closed off. I was wondering if it's still like that, and do you think when the time comes when Trump is out of office, will we once again be able to walk along Pennsylvania Ave.?
Penn Avenue between 15th and 17th streets was first closed to motorized traffic on orders by Bill Clinton during his Presidency. Only pedestrians and skaters have been allowed since . This disrupted traffic severely, including hundreds of daily busses which had to permanently detour to already-clogged parallel H street (eastbound) or I street (westbound).
I retired in 2006 and haven't been by there since. Has it been restricted even more than before ?
Penn Avenue between 15th and 17th streets was first closed to motorized traffic on orders by Bill Clinton during his Presidency. Only pedestrians and skaters have been allowed since . This disrupted traffic severely, including hundreds of daily busses which had to permanently detour to already-clogged parallel H street (eastbound) or I street (westbound).
I retired in 2006 and haven't been by there since. Has it been restricted even more than before ?
Pennsylvania Ave was restricted after the Oklahoma City bombing at the request of the Secret Service.
It's frequently closed even to pedestrians now, and that's what the OP is talking about. Seems like a good 10-20% of the time when I'm biking by, everyone's been squeezed onto either just the north "sidewalk" of Pennsylvania Ave, or else even Lafayette Square is closed and everyone's been shoved onto H St NW. This happens so frequently that tensabarriers have been installed on the lampposts along the north sidewalk, so that the cops don't even have to string up police tape. The south sidewalk of Pennsylvania Ave has been fenced off permanently, due to the number of fence-jumpers, so the answer is: no, you'll never again be able to get a photo without at least three fences between you and the White House.
These constant closures are really a problem for bike commuters, since a bunch of bike routes flow through that stretch of Pennsylvania Ave. Then I get there, and NOPE, must turn around, with zero warning until there's an angry cop screaming in your face. All of the surrounding roads are traffic-choked highways.
So what you say is that it is open to pedestrians the majority of the time.
No. The OP says "you could walk right up to White House gate." That is NEVER allowed at ANY time anymore. Multiple barricades now separate all pedestrians, at all times, from the high fence around the grounds.
It used to be that you could hold a camera in the gap between two fence pickets and get a clear view of the WH. No longer.
"put in place a second, shorter barrier — made of metal bike racks — several feet in front of the current fence. Potential jumpers would essentially have separate fences to scale — the bike racks and the actual fence. The added security has kept tourists from taking photos of the historic building without the fence showing up in their frames."
And even though the former Pennsylvania Ave ROW is often open to pedestrians, at any moment armed guards may suddenly start chasing people out and telling bicyclists to go play in highway traffic instead. That's like saying that the Metro is not on fire "the majority of the time," or the Beltway is not shut down by truck crashes "the majority of the time." When people rely on a transportation link as part of their commutes, reliability has to be better than "the majority of the time."
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