Catholic University of America and
Masonic Eastern Star
in Blocking PEPCO-B&O Washington, D.C. I-95
as property holders along the route
Deleted conversation from Imagine DC:---
Douglas A. Willinger said...[Dave Murphy- Imagine D.C. quote]
" Now, I'm not endorsing HOV and HOT lanes (and certainly not any new construction of such roads) as any sort of a cure for our traffic problems here in Washington. But this is a very poignant reminder of how entitled we believe are cars should be. "
[my reply]In that area?
With that giant gap in the northern radial net and the center hub?!
I do not ever see the original 1955-59 system being built for good reason - aka footprint. Why clear cut trees and or houses when there is a 250 foot wide power line, a rr industrial corridor and a 147 foot wide street to go beneath?
I do see a modified version of the 1971 plan somewhat with a redesigned center section (see "Trip" Nov 2007) with the northern I-95 continuation via the PEPCO route.
But only after something major politically happens about what runs that area (aka that Masonic Eastern Star property [on New Hampshire Avenue near Eastern Avenue], which I am suspicious of given the lack of anything from them about that route or the logical to me option of it as a cut and cover tunnel to preserve the property's dignity.
Likewise with CUA's apparent lack of interest in a deck along the B&O corridor. Please note the 1966 plan proposed it to run north to Taylor Street, but that is deleted by the 1971 plan.
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/05/1966-1971-covered-north-central-freeway.html
And as well that attitudes I have witnessed, aka at the end of the following article; do recall the active participation of the Jesuit Georgetown Law Center in the anti highway crusades.
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/02/sampling-of-attitudes-towards-dc-i-95.html
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/01/physical-realities-undermining-north.html
Knowing my history beyond that of the planning of the D.C. area highways, I see no reason to go along with any sort of white is black and black is white placating (as I witnessed at say college frat parties).
Dave Murphy said...Douglas,
I fail to see the relevance of this...- Douglas A. Willinger said...
You made a strict statement against any new highways in an area with huge gaps in the road network and in common sense.
I think a far better constitutional argument would be the lack of the freeways in the northern sector as placing a disproportionate amount of the traffic burden to the south east of the Anacostia River as classic environmental racism.
Of course Georgetown Law Center apparently would make the situation worse by truncating I-395 at Mass Ave, and with their unjustified influence get their way.
That our government continues with these completely unjustified strict anti freeway policies and boondoggles as street cars while pushing domestic surveillance (while ignoring civil defense) speaks volumes about its nature.- Dave Murphy said...
I made a passing opposition to new construction of HOT lanes and HOV lanes. Are you saying lack of construction of HOT lanes and HOV lanes is unconstitutional?
I fail to see how any of what you said relates to this post.- Douglas A. Willinger said...
No, rather the lack of freeways in the northern sector relative to placing the burden where it is, might be.
HOT/HOV lanes though are a good way IMHO to throttle usage, particularly with transfers to WMATA rail parking garages.
Also the tolls are good for funding the extra high dollar designs of cut and cover and drilled tunnels necessary for accommodating a high speed highway in an urban area.
If you search misc.transport.road, my late 1990s advocacy of the PEPCO-B&O route coupled it with a southbound variable rate toll at Fort Totten and rail transfer facility.
- Dave Murphy said...
In the future, I'd appreciate it if you kept the comments focused on the issues presented in the articles I post and save your crusade to have I-95 constructed through NE DC for your own website (unless, of course, it is pertinent to something written about here.) Any further such comments will be deleted.
- Douglas A. Willinger said...
The comment was relevant to this and your preceding post.
I did not see any reason to post it twice.
- Douglas A. Willinger said...
The link to my blog on your blog vanished, though I do not know why.
Masonic Eastern Star Homeon New Hampshire Avenue
between railroad and Eastern Avenue
Proposed D.C. I-95dashed lines indicating connecting segment of
PEPCO power line-B&O route
through Masonic Eastern Star property
1966 D.C. I-95 proposalwith red area of proposed air rights development
extending alongside CUA northwards to Taylor Street
1971 D.C. I-95 proposalwith proposed air rights development extending south from CUA
(leaving area alongside CUA uncovered-
hence preserving the local isolation from the east via the surface railroad)
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/05/1964-north-central-freeway-routing_08.html
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/homeland-security-goal-would-be-better.html
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2009/05/romish-masonic-religious-drive-against.html
--- added February 1, 2010
Note- contrast the above February 28 - March 1, 2009 conversation with that about 4 months earlier from the comments section reproduced below from my December 17, 2008 article at 'A Trip Within The Beltway' that republished and expanded upon an article by Richard Layman
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/12/under-selling-b-metropolitan-branch.html
6 comments:
- Dave Murphy said...
-
I think burying the Metropolitan Branch is a fantastic idea, and making it multi-modal would be great. But I have my typica question: where would the freeway end? I don't see it getting to the Beltway through Silver Spring, considering all the high density development along the tracks. I can't imagine they'd approve the Fort Totten Park alignment because it would still tear out a good bit of Chillum before it hits the Beltway. I certainly hope you aren't recommending another dead end freeway!
- 2:53 AM
- Douglas A. Willinger said...
-
The plan would have I-95 split from the rr as a cut and cover tunnel beneath the field of the Masonic Eastern Star Home alongside NH Avenue, displace about 27 brick houses just inside DC and then 13 strip retail properties (with a monumental traffic circle at the DC-MD line, and then some cut and cover in MD with new development atop); there is no reason to use the Fort Totten (Fort Drive) Park route with the existence of the NHA-PEPCO route.
It could and should include the Silver Spring segment, either by ripping out some of the misplaced development on the rr's eastern side, or even a segment as drilled tunnel.
It would not displace the historic Cady Lee Mansion in TP, nor the houses facing the rr along Takoma Avenue, though it would take some of the misplaced Montgomery Gardens apartment complex.
Grade requirements will require placing the heavy rr in a drilled tunnel to northwest of 16th Street, but the WMATA could stay upon the existing Georgia Avenue overpass, which could have a surface street placed on it where the heavy rr is to better connect the area locally.
Some of Cedar Crossing might have to go, along with the entire Elevation 314 building.
However a replica of the historic TP rr station could and should reappear in a new Takoma Station Town Square. - 11:47 PM
- Douglas A. Willinger said...
-
Please see:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVmqBLaso6uklFbH8gB_MlvwZn31Un448Yia3Zolm7126DvcmJd70vRDGxn25SoY9HZpghUh6oKrBtxoFcuhyQrqO2iXRwGNTFfKmha9JQsiPnTbVtkjNXKM2Tig_4AAHbRkfT/s1600-h/Takoma_Station_Tunnel.JPG - 11:49 PM
- Douglas A. Willinger said...
-
The above url may not be readable; it is the illustration in this blog's post of July 2007:
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
try this blog's tag "Grand Arc Mall Tunnel"
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/search/label/Grand%20Arc%20Mall%20Tunnel
Also see the 2 redundant tags about the B&O rr corridor. - 11:53 PM
- Dave Murphy said...
-
the PEPCO route seems to be logical, reconnecting at College Park's interchange, I presume. I also imagine it would be two lanes in each direction, and above the railroad ROWs?
I'm a huge fan of burying the Metropolitan Branch, but I have never seen any sort of an estimate for how much it would cost to do so, and what kind of service interruptions the red line, MARC, and CSX would face during reconstruction. - 2:39 AM
- Douglas A. Willinger said...
-
The rail lines would first be replaced to avoid service interruptions, before the removal of the existing rail lines and the construction of the underground highway.
- 8:24 PM
15 comments:
In Southern Roman Catholic Europe you could better appreciate the policy about the roads. The Ecologism is since many years hitting the Freedom of Transport meanwhile the road net decayes. "Inefficiency & corruption" are hiding a theological guidelines.
Recently there was the "Day of the Earth" where the pagan worshipping of the ancient idols is coming back under the disguise of the 'respect' for 'mother' earth. The continue uncounscious training of the masses with the "GOOD WORKS to do do to SAVE the MOTHER earth" witnesses so brightly about the Roman Catholic theological spin that even a blind one, only warning the 'hot' issues of the topics on his skin, could see. The Council of Trent's guys of today did the right choice, pushing the Eco(theo)logism in the leftist area. To attack the human rights using 'mother' Nature's disasters as 'impersonal' hammer, and doing this in the name of the same 'human rights', is worthy, because you create logical short-circuits in the minds of the sheeople, paralyzing the faculties of their intellect.....
So true.
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2009/05/romish-masonic-religious-drive-against.html
Note the constant Masonic symbolism in these anti road tunnel people.
And what about that hand gesture by Imagine DC's Dave Murphy (with the maps of Italy and Australia) in the picture at top?
Another evidence: Italy of Vatican behind that guy ....
.....the Vatican Counter Reformation theology behind the 'thougts' of certain people and certain movements.....
(The saint patron of the ecologists is saint Francis, the founder of Franciscan order of Franciscan friar Ustasha Filipovic Mojstorovic - one among the commanders of Jasenovac - Saint Francis, a sort of Sindona-Calvi-Marcinkus, was the Vatican ambassador in the Islam.... The green colour maybe could be explaned also in such a way...)
I forget: of course I am against many projects of highways & high speed train routes. But the sense is: I am against the absurdity of projects which has been developed just as a provocation to arise a Roman Cathollically correct eco(theo)logism.... When you propose incredible devastations of 'mother Nature' it is clear that you have in mind to instigate a worshipping for 'mother Nature'.... at the expensed of the individual Freedom... It works like 9-11 and Patriot act....
Dave Murphy is half Italian, and half Irish IIRC.
I do not know why he has a map of Australia though.
" But the sense is: I am against the absurdity of projects which has been developed just as a provocation to arise a Roman Cathollically correct eco(theo)logism...."
Speaking of such provocation, see how JFK's North Central Freeway in northern Washington, D.C. was bastardized to create opposition.
I strongly favor the freeway in basic schematic, but not the bastardized versions in the 1963-64 study.
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/05/1964-north-central-freeway-routing_08.html
Their result of course would be to poison public sentiment against any route, when the logical route (the B&O railroad) runs next to Catholic University of America, and its connection to the PEPCO power line right of way, runs directly through an open field of the Masonic Eastern Star Home on New Hampshire Avenue with a single tree in the path).
As I am into infrastructure design (aka see the tag 'Alexandria Orb') I redesigned the B&O corridor portion as a park covered tunnel and it comes out as a giant green comet poised at the head of the beast!
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/02/extending-legacy-with-grand-arc.html
"...And what about that hand gesture by Imagine DC's Dave Murphy (with the maps of Italy and Australia) in the picture at top?..."
Especially the hand located near the heart.... In The Unhived Mind I've seen it exposed many times, but I don't remember the threads.
I have not analyzed your whole post.
But just from eyeballing - it would appear that I-95 was to follow the Red Line right of way.
I grew up in DC and lived there from 1980-1998, with a few stints in PA. So, I may be a bit off, here.
Are there still signs reading "I-95 - New York" at the 3rd street tunnel / New York Avenue interchange?
Remember that another plan had 95 following New York Avenue and onto the BW parkway.
I am guessing that is the reason for these signs that make NO sense at the 3rd Street tunnel.
Whoa.
You guys are really getting heated - going back and forth.
And I just stumbled onto your site to research the Barney Circle project.
Tell me how to get to 95.
(just kidding)
Here is an early February 2008 quote from Murphy where he attempts to weasil out from his earlier statement:
Douglas,
Even though such a freeway would not run through Chillum, it would still have a negative and partitioning effect on the town for all the reasons Cavan mentioned. Chillum and Langley Park are in the process of overcoming suburbanization, and even the best designed highways would damage this type of progress.
Also, support for a multi-modal transportation corridor is not support for a freeway, and certainly not support for an interstate. The only new freeway connection for which I have ever even dabbled with endorsing was the New York Avenue tunnel, which I supported theoretically but dismissed as far too costly here:
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=1511
I generally favor the closure of freeways that are dead end stubs over connecting these stubs with new freeways.
Three of the four major highways connections to DC (50, 295 north and 295 south) dump out into Prince George's County. There is no reason that PG should be a dumping ground for freeway development.
by Dave Murphy on Feb 2, 2009 12:11 pm
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=1597
---
IMHO- it makes perfect sense for such double talk to come from a man who posts a picture of himself doing what appears to be a masonic hand gesture, about a highway route that runs directly through the masonic eastern start home at 6000 New Hampshire Avenue!
---
And Dave Murphy previously:
Dave Murphy said...
I think burying the Metropolitan Branch is a fantastic idea, and making it multi-modal would be great. But I have my typica question: where would the freeway end? I don't see it getting to the Beltway through Silver Spring, considering all the high density development along the tracks. I can't imagine they'd approve the Fort Totten Park alignment because it would still tear out a good bit of Chillum before it hits the Beltway. I certainly hope you aren't recommending another dead end freeway!
2:53 AM
As we can see from Dave Murphy's double talk, the behavor of the Alexandria City Council regarding the Washington Street Urban Deck, and of course the disgusting lockstep silence on the USNCPC Extending the Legacy South Capitol Mall: MASONRY SUCKS!
Here is Dave Murphy in a comment section at Greater Greater Washington regarding the New Hampshire Avenue corridor:
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=1129
Wow. This would have a HUGE impact on better meshing an urban fabric between Silver Spring and Hyattsville. And it would be a nice grand entrance to the District.
As for traffic, I wouldn't be totally opposed to having I-95 connect through there. Too many highways is bad, but unfinished highways can be even worse. Even if 95 isn't completed, I don't believe traffic would be that disastrous if the area was more walkable. That alone would cut down on vehicle trips. Add a Purple Line station and a denser, more walkable Langley Park at University Blvd and bus lines between that and Fort Totten, traffic might not be as bad as everyone fears.
Most importantly, even if no other part of this plan happens, pedestrian crossings must must must be improved. Bulb-outs, raised crosswalks, better signaling, whatever it takes. People don't seem to care when someone gets killed crossing the street in Prince George's County, but it happens all too often and NH at East West Hwy is a suicide chute.
by Dave Murphy on Aug 16, 2008 4:00 am (link)
And here's the article which Dave Murphy made his telling deletion- not ethat it has no comments tag, unlike the other posts in his blog Imagine DC
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Highway Prejudice
I was reading this WaPo Roads and Rails Q&A session and I noticed a disturbingly high number of people commenting that HOV lanes and congestion pricing was unconstitutional because they discriminate against people who can't find another person to ride with them, and it is unconstitutional to discriminate on public infrastructure.
Oh Really?
I can't take my bike on the Shirley Highway. Are they discriminating against me? I can't even take a mo-ped out there. I sure as hell can't walk along the shoulder. You can't take your car on the Metro. Is that discrimination? Is it discriminatory for trail users to yeild to cars when they cross roads? I'd like them to tell me where controlled usage becomes discrimination, and why.
Now, I'm not endorsing HOV and HOT lanes (and certainly not any new construction of such roads) as any sort of a cure for our traffic problems here in Washington. But this is a very poignant reminder of how entitled we believe are cars should be.
at 7:03 PM
Labels: freeways, traffic
The link to that post:
http://imaginedc.blogspot.com/2009/02/highway-prejudice.html
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