The busy intersection in D.C. where the restaurant once sat is, in fact, improved by its absence.

It would have been a stretch to call the Wendy’s at the intersection of New York and Florida Avenues in Washington, D.C., charming even when it still existed. An odd byproduct of the fact that the city limits used to end where it sat, this restaurant, and the intersection (christened “Dave Thomas Circle”), was the bane of many drivers traveling in and around the area north of Capitol Hill.

Yet its quirky placement turned the Weird Wendy’s into an unexpected local landmark. Those of us who lived in the area were thus initially dismayed when the city government bought this Wendy’s, via eminent domain, with plans to raze it and improve the traffic flow of the intersection. We watched its progress from a thriving restaurant, to one in its last days, to a long-lingering husk of its former self. For a long time, it endured in the lattermost state, a relic of a different time in D.C., before the city had fully taken on its modern, all-important status, and when it still had many unplanned oddities and quirks of which to boast. The longer it persisted in this way, the more my initial skepticism that it was even possible to better this intersection seemed vindicated. I wasn’t even sure the building itself would ever be demolished until it finally was about two years ago.

As a car-owning resident of the area, I experienced every stage of the changes between July 2023 and now. For a time, as new lanes were being built to dismantle what had been a gauntlet of one-way streets surrounding the Wendy’s, things were, in fact, worse. Fewer lanes than ever were available, as construction crews spilled over into the other ones. The final plan for cars didn’t seem viable, much less an improvement.

Slowly but surely, however, an ameliorated traffic flow came into view. I was almost elated when, for the first time, I could drive one way straight through where the Wendy’s used to be, and could then drive back in the opposite direction on the same road. Crews were putting the final touches on everything in the weeks leading up to this one, when the new and refurbished intersection officially debuted as Mamie “Peanut” Johnson Plaza (Johnson was the first woman pitcher in the Negro Leagues). This led to a few more of its trademark traffic headaches. Now, however, I can say that it’s definitely superior to what was there before.

This is not to say it’s perfect. The new mini-parks now dotting the intersection may prove attractive to vagrants. One previous way of navigating the intersection is now closed off, and wasn’t exactly replaced. Despite all the new options for navigation, drivers are quite fond of creating their own by defying new signage forbidding left turns in certain lanes. It’s possible that, in some kind of anhedonic treadmill, traffic flows will soon enough increase in direct proportion to better flow so that the new intersection ends up just as clogged as it was before. Perhaps.

Yet I provide what I expect to be my final Weird Wendy’s update to admit that I was wrong to cling so affectionately to that particular quirk. The busy intersection in D.C. where the restaurant once sat is, in fact, improved by its absence. A reverence for the unplanned and the established is a good default perspective, as is a skepticism of the capacity of municipal governments to make anything better, especially when they themselves previously inflicted it on us. But when there’s a long train of traffic caused invariably by the same design, it’s good to throw off such patterns, and to provide new routes.

I never ate at that Wendy’s anyway.