ground until March 1999. Traffic barriers were used to create reversible lanes, to alleviate rush hour problems. The work proved more difficult than planned, and was not complete until June 2002. For reasons which remain unclear, the bridge over the railroad tracks near South Dakota Avenue NE was not replaced, and the two-lane bottleneck continued. As the 1999 reconstruction project continued, the section of New York Avenue from South Dakota Avenue to Bladensburg Road was repaved to remove bumpy asphalt. All three inbound lanes were closed at the same time, as the city experimented with what it called a "full-bore approach" in repaving. Fort Myer Construction handled the $700,000 ($ in dollars) job. The new construction method worked, and the avenue reopened on time three days later. According to a study released in 2005 by the government of the District of Columbia, five of the ten most crash-prone intersections in the city are along New York Avenue. The most crash-prone intersection in the city is at New York Avenue NE and Bladensburg Road NE. Another major bridge, carrying 9th Street NE over New York Avenue, began replacement in April 2009. The 70-year-old structure carried 26,000 vehicles a day. The two-year, $40 million ($ in dollars) project replaced two-lane, wide span with a four-lane, wide structure. Sidewalks were widened from to in width, a median was added, and new crash-resistant railings installed. Delays in other New York Avenue projects allowed the 9th Street NE bridge to begin replacement sooner than expected, and to proceed faster toward completion. Work on New York Avenue occurred again in the spring of 2010. Single lane closures in both directions occurred as repaving occurred from Bladensburg Road to Florida Avenue. A far more major repair effort began 2011, when the 1907 bridge over the railroad tracks between Florida Avenue NE and Penn Street NE was replaced. The job was a complex one, as the bridge also carried electricity, telecommunication cables, and mechanical equipment critical for railroad operations. The project was ready to begin in 2010, but the complexity of the replacement led to a new replace plan which delayed work a year. Lanes closures in 2011 consisted of a single lane in one direction during rush hour, but expanded to two lanes in each direction in 2012. Corridor redevelopment efforts Originally, New York Avenue Extended passed through relatively rural areas, where farms and small, isolated developments