Saturday, November 23, 2013

Wasting the Eastern SE/East Leg Freeway


Eastern end of Washington, D.C.'s SE Freeway beneath Pennsylvania Avenue-Barney Circle
note Congressional Cemetery at upper left, and the Anacostia River at upper right.
Extension to East Capitol Street canceled during the mid or latter 1970s, vis a design first officially adopted about 1963, replacing the earlier proposals for a depressed freeway on a new swath alongside 11sth Street SE/NE.


A proper design could build this with an enclosure atop in the fashion of the existing Barney Circle Overpass - Above Ground Tunnel, with the added fashion of extending Washington, D.C.s Monumental Core eastward- rather than having such merely to the west.  This would be easy to do, with the freeway extension to East Capitol Street, owing to it being somewhat cut into an existing hillside, both to the west and to the east of Barney Circle.

A recent report included illustrations of various cross sections essentially making the segment to the west as an above-ground tunnel, yielding maximum benefit for the broadest segment of society.  Strangely that idea is only conveyed by the illustration, with ZERO recognition in the text, which merely focused upon the restored street grid atop.



The existing plan to destroy the approaches to and beneath Barney Circle should be immediately abandoned, and replaced with a reconstruction with a minimum of 4 lanes per direction of undercover freeway, taking advantage of it being largely cut int the side of an existing hill, and with a look towards a design to permit some air rights development, with southern extensions of the existing north-south surface streets.

Ideally, this should be accompanied via reconstruction of ramps to and from the 11th Street Bridge, to more equitably handle the traffic burden, rather than the current plans for this to serve PRIMARILY as a dip down into SE east of the Anacostia, as yet another text book example of a more affluent area getting over on a less affluent area.

I-295 East Leg to East Capitol Street and the SE Freeway at Barney Circle 
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-295-east-leg-to-east-capitol-street_17.html


Eastern SE Freeway Bastardization
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/11/eastern-se-freeway-bastardization.html






Friday, November 22, 2013

The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back?

With the VATICAN being the Entity Behind the Assassination of JFK to thwart D.C. I-95?

"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country" - JFK inaugural speech with message applicable to situation of lack of northern radial freeways in Washington, D.C.






 


Assassination of 11-22-63 to Thwart I-95 Through Washington, D.C. alongside the proposed motorway's most logical route: centrally located northern radial railroad-industrial corridor - immediately alongside Catholic University of America

A basic logic scenario- something that JFK adopted about a year before 11-22-63: marked by being politically botched deliberately, being something that JFK played a more active interest than say his predecessor Dwight Eisenhower.  See the 1963 and 1965 Boston Inner Belt study reports which shows various partially open tunnel box for the Fenway segment- that would be logically needed as the buildings facing the Fen as those of Catholic University of America
Perhaps JFK likely that he noticed that great view southbound from the CUA side of the RR- and therefor ran afoul of that political entity all too self entitled to get its way no-matter what, clearly something with too much political power that subverts major planning.

 
1963 Boston Inner Loop Study Report
Did JFK dare suggest a tunnel box variant for the southbound I-95 carriageway along the Washington, D.C.B&O Route I-95?

Washington, D.C. freeway planning back-drop:

1955 - Inner Loop Study Report for the downtown 'hub' for connecting the various radial routes



also see 1956 NW Freeway Study Report

1959 - Mass Transportation study.


1959 plan with 3 northern radial freeways (also open to trucks)
left to right
I-70S NW Freeway, North Central Freeway, I-95 NE Freeway

1959 - NW Freeway incorporated work from 1956 study report indicating that the Wisconsin Avenue NW corridor route would displace 74 dwellings from the MD-DC line to Tenley Circle.


 1959 I-70S NW Freeway with cut and cover tunnel segments beneath Tenley Circle, 
and the segment crossing beneath Connecticut Avenue, 
plus a drilled tunnel segment in the vicinity of Sidwell Friends School
Included a Glover Archibold Parkway (excluding trucks)

 
 1959 I-70S NW Freeway 'Cross Park Freeway' 
extension to interchange with I-66
as planned 1955+ as an open trench between T and U Streets

 
I-66 North Leg as planned 1955+

1960 -   the U.S. Congress adopted its first formal application of this break from equal protection via that year's National Transportation Act's moratorium against any development of any new freeways west of Rock Creek Parkway.  Never-mind the disproportionate deference already evident with $$$ rather than number of victims, aka to just which side of Rock Creek Park?  

A mere 74 dwellings displaced for the segment from the MD-DC line at Friendship Heights to the area just south of Tenley Circle, plus ZERO for the western portion of the 'Cross Town Freeway', but perhaps 1,000 to the east through the Mt. Pleasant area to the planned interchange at 14th and U Streets with the I-66 North Leg as planned 1955+.  

Yet it was the political opposition with the least asked for local sacrifice - to Rock Creek Park's west that got it stopped rather than the east- despite the offering of tunneled segments for the former but not the latter.

1960 also brought the initial engineering report on the I-95 Northeast Freeway, with a number of alternative routes and a recommended route taking some 1,095.




http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/560/1265/1600/33138/image062.jpg

1960 B&O Route [more or less] D.C. I-95 - 
Catholic University of America/Brookland area



1960 D.C. I-95 NE Freeway with connections to the Inner Loop
 
 Note the 1960 D.C. I-95 NE Freeway connection to the DC-MD line:
 'Catholic Sisters Route'

By 1962 this portion of the D.C. I-95 route -- 'Catholic Sisters' -- was changed to the nearby 'Fort Drive Route' owing to the open opposition of the Roman Catholic Church, over lands that it would later sell off for more dwellings.

Between 1960 and 1962 with the moratorium on the nonetheless logical far NW Freeway, aka one along the Wisconsin Avenue corridor, a consensus developed that the solution was a double consolidation, of I-70S thus with North Central Freeway, itself ABANDONING the concept of a major freeway along the Georgia Avenue corridor, replaced along the historically established B&O Metropolitan Branch Railroad built a century previously, and intercepting I-95 from MD via the 'Fort Drive' route- south-ward of this I-70S-B&O/I-95 confluence known as the I-95 B&O North Central Freeway.



By late 1962 this consensus led to the B&O Route's adaptation by the White House, as the left and center portion of a "Y"- hence an I-70S designation north of the confluence with I-95.  This basic route was a key point of the White House report dated November 1, 1962 "Recommendations for TRANSPORTATION in the NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION Finance and Organization A Report to the President for transmittal to Congress by the NATIONAL CAPITAL TRANSPORTATION AGENCY", see page 44:
Significance of Using B&O Route. Use of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad corridor to bring Routes 70-S and 95 into the city is the key to meeting the need for additional highway capacity in northern Washington, Montgomery County and northwestern Prince Georges Counties and at the same time avoiding the substantial relocation of persons, loss of taxable property and disruption of neighborhoods that would result from construction of the Northeast, North Central and Northwest Freeway proposed in the 1959 plan. Further savings are realized by placing the rapid transit line to Silver Spring and Queen’s Chapel in the same railroad corridor.
 

1962 White House Report B&O+Fort Drive Route D.C. NE I-95

In addition, the 1962 White House report offered a series of secondary depressed 'express streets' - think of the two North Capitol Street underpasses where it crosses Rhode Island and New York Avenues, such as that seen in a 1962 Study Report about such an 'express street' for S Street NW as a substitute for the I-66 North Leg.   Also, regarding that somewhat more controversial idea of a Bridge at 3 Sisters, the 1962 report rejected: quote of the 1962 report on 3 Sisters Bridge at pages 25-26:
Three Sisters Bridge In the 1959 plan, Three Sisters Island Bridge was part of an intermediate loop (located between the Capital Beltway and the proposed inner loop) that virtually circled the city. The Agency's studies show no need for the portion of the intermediate loop between the Potomac River and the Soldiers Home area. Standing alone, the only purpose of Three Sisters would to bring trucks and additional auto traffic from Fairfax and Arlington Counties into downtown. For that purpose the bridge is not required.

As of 1957, there were a total of 22 bridge lanes across the Potomac River. Projects now under construction, or recently completed, will nearly double the number of such lanes ... [while] The Agency proposes two rail rapid transit lines to Virginia, one of which would serve the Three Sisters Bridge corridor. Rapid transit service would not have been provided in this corridor under the 1959 plan. With such service available, in 1980 a total of over 30,000 people - many of whom would otherwise be using their autos - would use public transportation from Virginia into the District in the morning peak hour, enough to fill 12 bridge lanes ... The result, as the following table shows, is that under the plan recommended by the Agency, central area bridge capacity will be adequate for the needs of motorists in 1980 without Three Sisters Bridge.

Owing to concerns that the proposed 2x2 'express street would be inadequate, along with abandoning the Crossing at 3 Sisters, a follow-up letter dated June 1, 1963 letter enumerates the cross town I-66 North Leg and Three Sisters Bridge as the most controversial segments require further study
“…I noted that certain portions of the highway network within the District of Columbia required further study. The guidelines which I believe should be followed in this re-examination are as follows:
The re-examination should focus upon the sections of the highway plans which have from the beginning been the most uncertain and the most controversial- the North Leg of the Inner Loop and the Three Sisters Bridge, both of which involve the manner in which necessarily involve a re-study of those additional portions of the plan which are directly affected by the conclusions reached in the re-examination…”
With his November 1962 report having rejected the Three Sisters Bridge, his June 1963 letter calling for that bridge’s ‘re-examination’ meant that it might be needed, hence having JFK place freeways alongside Catholic University of America and Georgetown University.


Canceled B&O D.C. I-95 next to Catholic University of America



The canceled I-266 Three Sisters Bridge- pointing at Georgetown University

That report dated November 1, 1962 was supposed to be followed in about 6 months, yet is delayed to near a full year AFTER his controversial assassination on November 22, 1963, in late 1964.

1964 Initial Engineering Study Report - North Central Freeway
 
OVERVIEW
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2006/11/1963-64-north-central-freeway-study.html

REPORT - PLATES

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/05/1964-north-central-freeway-report-je.html

REPORT - FULL TEXT & CHARTS (Complete)
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2012/02/october-1964-north-central-freeway.html

REPORT - ON THE B&O ROUTE
'PIN POINT THE B&O CORRIDOR ONLY AFTERWARDS'

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2012/01/pin-point-b-rr-in-dc-only-after-more.html





 Interchange with the I-495 Capital Beltway

Along 16th Street to the east side of the B&O Railroad

Along the B&O railroad in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, swinging away from the RR to the south to go upon a longer route than the RR through Takoma Park.

http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/560/1265/1600/307030/RR%20East%20TAKOMA%20320.jpg
Veers about 1/2 mile away from the B&O railroad on new swath through old neighborhoods in Takoma Park, Maryland, taking 471 houses for the 1.1 mile segment, before rejoining the railroad immediately north of New Hampshire Avenue


re-joining the RR by New Hampshire Avenue



Interchange with I-95 Northeast Freeway via the Fort Drive route;
from this point south, the North Central Freeway carried the I-95 designation



I-95 North Central Freeway at western Brookland by Catholic University of America
 
North Central Freeway at Rhode Island Avenue






The engineering study for the North Central- Northeastern "Y" Route I-95/70S Freeway ordered in 1962 or early 1963 and its report supposed to take about 6 months, yet delayed until October 1964 stated:
During the preliminary line studies it became evident that the pin pointing the general corridor of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the District of Columbia should only be accomplished only after more detailed investigation of a band of alignments in that area
Why?- considering that the idea of highway routes in such bands as the Georgia Avenue corridor were debated cir 1960-62, and abandoned in favor of the JFK administration's B&O 'Y' Route?!

If only JFK had not been assassinated, he would have asked why J.E. Greiner dissed his prescription for the freeway to hug the railroad centrally located between the Potomac River and the eastern portion of the I-495 Capital Beltway, hence resulting in the freeways’ political demonification.

JFK specified the B&O Route, as “the key”, to bringing I-70S and I-95 into Washington, D.C. “avoiding the substantial relocation of persons, loss of taxable property and disruption of neighborhoods that would result from construction of the Northeast, North Central and Northwest Freeway proposed in the 1959 plan”; yet the 1964 Greiner ‘North Central Freeway’ report excluded it, instead offering an upwards of 37 routes each with a far far higher amount of local impacts, akin to that in the 1959 planning. And it offers up a recommended route partially along the railroad but with serious deviations upon longer routes in Takoma Park Maryland and to a lesser degree in Brookland, D.C., creating mass opposition.

1966

Federal City Council subverts support for D.C. I-95 (mere weeks before ‘supplementary’ report faithful to JFK 1962 B&O Route) by calling for the disastrous 1964 route as “cheaper” (though a longer route taking 471 houses rather then some 30)

The 'Supplementary' North Central Freeway Study Report that essentially followed the assassinated President's adopted concept from 1962.

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2010/05/fallacy-of-federal-city-councils.html
 
1966 Supplementary North entral freeway Study Report
note the I-66 North Leg as a straight tunnel beneath K Street






 

 

 
Retains the Fort Drive alignment for the I-95 Northeast Freeway from Maryland via Northwest Branch Park; but it realigns the North Central Freeway to the west, increasing its impacts on Fort Totten Park- hence creating a new objection.

1964 North Central Freeway at Brookland-Catholic University of America, with area of proposed 'lid' to cover the freeway and even the RR in the area alongside the main campus of CUA.  I have seen nothing indicating any objections from CUA regarding this area of 'lid' being deleted.
Entirely to the east of the railroad further south in Brookland, it avoided Turkey Thicket and Brooks Mansion, reducing the number of dwellings for the I-95 portion of the North Central Freeway to 69 houses (1910-20s vintage).
 

This 1966 North Central - Northeast Freeway B&O Low level option proved too uncontroversial for the newly formed Federal Highway Authority to restraining itself from a further botching of the planning, by failing to commit to JFK B&O railroad route, waffling towards disastrous 1964 plan, as late as 1968 (the year that U.S. National Capital Planning Committee reversed itself and went against freeway).

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2010/05/significence-of-waffling-on-b-north.html

Letter to Maryland Governor Agnew, 1967 on how waffling on North Central Freeway planning was inciting opposition.
Citizens of Takoma Park and Silver Spring had reason for their demonstrations of bitter dissatisfaction with the highway authorities of your predecessor’s administration. After we had been given reason to believe that the causes of our protests had been in at least some part overcome, the matter now threatens to break into renewed bitterness. I am sure you will wish to avoid this as much as many of us.

We showed that the methods of traffic projections which were claimed to justify the North Central were fallacious, the results in error by as much as 400 percent. Our contention was tacitly admitted in “re-studied” versions of the proposal made public last year, sharply reducing the original plan of 5 lanes each way.

The re-studied proposal also tacitly admitted that the route first proposed was needlessly, even carelessly if not ruthlessly, destructive of our communities. The new version hugged both sides of the existing Baltimore and Ohio railway, thus avoiding a new swath of destruction to divide our communities and sharply reducing the number of homes to be taken.

The reduced, re-routed proposal was made public last year with endorsement of D.C. And Maryland highway authorities. The D.C. Portion was forced through the National Capital Planning Commission by votes of representatives of the D.C. Highway Department and of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. From this we concluded, reasonably enough, that the highway authorities of the two jurisdictions (Maryland and D.C.) had reached a firm understanding with the Bureau of Public Roads.
Many of us were therefore astonished and aroused to preparations for renewed protests when Washington newspapers recently reported that the Bureau has acted to open it all up again. We have not found the Bureau forthcoming with candid information, but the press articles intimate an intention to force Maryland to accept modifications of route or design ostensibly “cheaper.”

The result is that the whole controversy, which had been somewhat quiescent, is beginning to agitate the communities again. I can assure you this is so, for although I recently resigned chairmanship of the Metropolitan Citizens Council for Rapid Transit and write this simply as an individual citizen who wishes your administration well, I do remain in close touch with neighborhood sentiment on transportation-related issues.
From the Washington Post report, May 8, 1967:
Top officials of the Bureau have ordered a full review of the plans for the 3 ½ mile road … While it is good practice to disrupt as few people as possible in road building, is it worth the added cost of $22 million?

… Rejection by the Bureau would certainly fan the embers of one of the Washington area’s freeway controversies spearheaded by a group called the Save Takoma Park Committee. It rallied the residents of the middle income suburb composed largely of turn of the century homes on tree lined streets to strident opposition at hearings in Washington and Silver Spring on the original [1964] alignment.
This cheap skate attitude surely served the purpose of poisoning popular sentiment against the B&O North Central Freeway.


Notably latter 1966- early 1967 was a time of transition and bureaucratic reorganization, with the U.S. Bureau of Roads being replaced by the then brand new U.S. Federal Highway Authority, with the outgoing administrator Rex Marion Whitton, who served from 1961 to 1966, quoted by the Kansas Evening Star about his retirement that at [the age of] 68

"I want to get out while I am still winning or at least that I am still winning"
as if on que of an impending planned scuttling.

 
 Rex Marion Whitton



Lowell K. Bridwell

His successor, Lowell K Bridwell (1967-69) was later the FHWA director overseeing New York City’s to be scuttled Westway Project, which would have replaced Manhattan's elevated West Side Highway with a modern interstate highway, the southern part via a tunnel in new land fill within the pier area, beneath a new waterfront promenade, parkland and new development.  That would provide the perpetual benefit of property tax revenue, thereby creating an new source of perpetual property tax revenues; the Westway Project would have no expense to the City of New York , yet was unfairly maligned as a waste of money, as a reflection of the generalized post 1961 idea that the U.S. was too poor to afford highway and transit. Notably Bridwell died in 1986 at the age of 62 a mere year after Westway’s September 1985 cancellation.

The dynamics of a high level decision to scuttle the assassinated President's B&O Route North Central Freeway were further displayed by the words and actions of again subverting the B&O NCF by new US Department of Transportation Administrator Alan Boyd, starting with the adaptation of the historical revisionism that “forgets” to mention the route’s development 1961-1962, and its subsequent botching. As the Washington Post reported, January 15, 1968 Transportation Secretary Alan S. Boyd, who has refused to approve plans for the North Central Freeway, said yesterday the path of the road through Northeast Washington was determined
not by “where the traffic wants to go,” but by where “political opposition was insufficient to stop it.”

“All the traffic surveys say it should be built along the Wisconsin Avenue corridor,” Boyd explained in an interview on WTOP television’s Capital Conversation.

“But the people who live along Wisconsin Avenue or have business there have much more political clout than the people on the other side of town.”


Ten years ago the freeway was planned to run along the District shore of the Potomac River, Body said.


But it was pushed eastward,” he said, “until political opposition was insufficient to stop it.”


The outer approved by the National Capital Planning Commission in 1966 would run from the Capital Beltway through Silver Spring Takoma Park, and Northeast to a major interchange near Union Station. It would provide high speed access to downtown Washington from eastern Montgomery County.


“We’re going to have to find a better way to do it than to say we’re going to take the property of poor people and leave everyone else alone.” Body said. “That’s not the way the way the traffic moves.”


Boyd argued that highways could be built “to compact themselves reasonably well” in any neighborhood if stores and homes were built in the air space over the roads.

“We should not just tear up the homes of poor people and Negroes,” Boyd declared. “We ought t make a determined effort to put freeways where traffic wants to go.
Boyd, who said in November he would not approve another highway project, the Three Sisters Bridge, as presently planned, said he would continue his opposition until he knows “what’s going to happen to the traffic” that would use it. Under present plans, he said, “there’s no provision for a distribution system” to take heavy traffic from the bridge into the Northwest section of Washington
And, as reported in the Drew Pearson The Washington Merry Go Round column D.C. Mayor on Spot in Freeway Fight (yes the Drew Pearson who maligned the Tucker Motor Car), on February 21, 1968:
Secretary Boyd also argues that Negro communities are not the only ones to be relocated to make room for suburban freeways. Wealthier communities should move too. Specifically he has held up the North Central Freeway in Washington because it was shifted over from a high bracket residential community to a low bracket , because the white residents pack more political punch than Negroes do. “We should not just tear up the homes of poor people and Negroes,” says Boyd. “We ought to make a determined effort to put freeways where the traffic wants to go. We’re going to have to find a better way to do it than say we’re going to take the property of poor people and let everyone else alone.”
Boyd conceivably had the option of promoting reviving the Northwest Freeway- consider how that freeway could have fit within the re-development footprint in downtown Bethesda- Boyd had practicalities that he could have advanced: one could have pointed out that much of downtown Bethesda was to be demolished and replaced owing to the inevitable transit induced densification, and thereby promoted that segment as a cut and cover tunnel beneath new buildings there as well as in Friendship Heights; further south, where the grade must further descend owing to the NW Washington D.C. topographically, one could promote a revision of the southern portion via a deep drilled tunnel straight from the Tenley Circle area to the existing end of I-66, roughly twice the length of the 1960 I-95 Northeast Freeway study option with 4 x 2 tunnels 4,000 feet in length would have made a powerful backup to his statements concerning social equality.


 1965 local proposal for reviving a downtown Bethesda I-70S freeway
ignored by the Feds despite its clear and vital need!

Rather, he conformed with the dynamics suggested by the outgoing U.S. Bureau of Roads chief's comments about getting out "while it still appeared that we were winning." Indeed, he not only repeats the established media "spin" concerning I-70S (that 'forgets' the 1961-62 history leading to the JFK Administration's November 1, 1962, along with the route botching of the long delayed initial engineering report), thereby sustaining a resentment against he wealthier NW, he extends it to not only oppose I-70S along the railroad through Silver Spring and the Takoma Park area, but also to I-95 through the western edge of the Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Brookland, displacing 69 WW1 era townhouses (with a 1970 revision reducing that to 34), just across the railroad from Catholic University of America. Indeed this geographical class angle would be useful, given that B&O and the Northeastern I-95 would have displaced but a fraction of that for the I-70S segment, due to the later construction of brick houses along the railroad's western side Blair Avenue, along with the Montgomery Gardens apartment complex constructed at about this very same time, near Blair Park.

The reaction of "white mans roads through black mans homes" had been the response to the botched planning unveiled in 1964, with its review of a broad array of route options of the type of freeway planning of the 1959 Mass Transportation Plan rejected by the planning discussions that had lead to the adaptation of the I-70S / I-95 B&O North Central Freeway in 1962 by the Committee of 100 on the Federal City and the Kennedy Administration. Hence it was a betrayal of the participants who accepted this eastward shift as the means of routing I-70S with the least displacement (and as the most logical-cost effective means employing the existing areas of the rail-yards for routing traffic from I-70S and I-95 into and through the Inner Loop: certainly a deep drilled I-70S tunnel from Tenley Circle to I-66 would work, especially with an under Potomac Tunnel to Virginia Route 27 and or 110, but would not handle I-95 traffic, whereas the B&O concept handles I-70S and I-95 traffic).

The 'social justice' idea conveyed with this freeway planning politicization can be seen as a history extending back a century earlier when the B&O Metropolitan Branch was routed where it was in NE with that corridor significantly industrialized, while the comparable stream valley in NW, Archibald-Glover Park, remained more or less in its natural state.

Boyd (like any other such FHWA figure) has the option of promoting a further design evolution of the I-70S/ I-95 B&O North Central. One with greater capacity, given his testimony before the House subcommittee on roads -- reported by a December 6, 1967 Washington Post article "3 Major Road Projects Are Unwise" -- against the North Central Freeway "as it is now designed" describing it as "a tremendously expensive and inadequate artery."

He could have promoted a re-design without the neck-down and within a right of way avoiding the historic Brooks mansion to the east, and the line of Catholic University of America buildings to the west with the freeway entirely under-grounded southwards of Taylor Street.

The extra capacity would come via an added cut and cover tunnel carriageway along the railroad's west side directly beneath John McCormack Drive- named for the 1961-1971 Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

 John W McCormack 1965.jpg

Hence it would accommodate the traffic while maintaining and even enhancing the tranquility of this area directly alongside Catholic University of America: note Donald Trump's promoted treatment of the 57th to 72nd Street segment of Manhattan's West Side Highway of new fully enclosed concrete box tunnels directly beneath the new Riverside Park Drive.


Manhattan, N.Y. Freeway Tunnel Box beneath Riverside Drive

A subsequent 1971 plan would unfortunately not address the neck-down of a 6 lane I-70S and an 8 lane I-95 with 2 lanes diverted to a direct connection to North Capital Street converging into an I-95 North Central Freeway of only 10 lanes.

Furthermore, while it does replace the elevated configuration of the I-70S segment flanking the existing railroad in the Takoma Station area with a cut and cover tunnel, it places all 6 lanes along the railroad's eastern side thereby displacing the landmark Cady Lee mansion along with the row of older houses along Takoma Avenue facing the railroad - thereby again creating a new objection absent from the earlier plans.   This is despite an 85 foot setback between the railroad and Cady Lee sufficient for a re-design with 4 or even 5 lanes of cut and cover tunnel along each side allowing an 8 lane I-70S supplemented by one additional lane in each direction to facilitate a MD Route 410 bypass around Takoma Park- an idea then not even considered.

Notably, regarding Brookland, it did extend the proposed 'lid' atop the B&O I-95 North Central Freeway southward to the vicinity of Rhode Island Avenue, while deleting the concept further north that had been shown in the 1966 report.
 

 
 1971 proposal with all 6 lanes along the railroad's eastern side
 thus displacing the historic Cady Lee mansion, plus the line of older houses to the north facing the railroad along Takoma Avenue



 1971 B&D.C. I-95


 
  1971 B&O D.C. I-95
Open sided 'tunnel' beneath proposed 'lid'


This 1971 Study Report was the last one officially commissioned, and came 3 years after U.S. NCPC's infamous decision of lying to itself by confusing arteries as say Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Georgia Avenue, with a grade separated interstate highway specification freeway.

As a political offering, Maryland officials deleted the I-70S segment of the proposed North Central Freeway, with the stated goal of ensuring construction of its I-95 portion, now to be called the NE Freeway adopting the name of its connecting segment from Maryland now routed by the New Hampshire avenue corridor to continue to the existing I-95/I-495 interchange via the existing 250 foot wide PEPCO power line transmission right of way.



1971 or 1973 I-95 PEPCO-New Hampshire-B&O Route

By a number of indications, John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie were the type to pay significantly greater attention to major planning issues than their predecessors the Eisenhowers- for instance with the proposed planning for Washington, D.C.;s Pennsylvania Avenue NW segment between the White House and the Capitol building.

Likewise with what had been going on with the planning of a major proposed freeway in the very city that U.S. President John F. Kennedy could call 'home' with the 1963 and 1965 planning for Boston's 'Inner Belt'.



1965 Boston I-695 Inner Loop

1965 Boston I-695 Inner Loop


This 1963 Inner Belt planning indicated a number of variants of a more or less partially open tunnel box enclosure, including at least one version with the highway fully covered though with grilled segments in order to ventilate the freeway traffic- something which could have been a political liability given the relative emissions from automobiles of late 1950s vintage.

I'm thinking, especially with the advancement of cut and cover and tunnel box designs for the Boston Inner Belt, with pedestrian promenades atop, that it is likely that JFK has at one time or another personally surveyed the Washington, D.C. B&O Metropolitan Branch.  And if so, did he mak the obvious conclusion to modify the design so as to place the southbound I-95 to the west rather than to the east of the RR, owing to the potential spectacular through the windshield vita there visible, which I show here.


It would be interesting to learn more about JFK's involvement with these sort of designs, and making me wonder if he ever personally surveyed the B&O I-95 corridor, and if so, what conclusions/ideas that he may have come to and thereafter promoted?

Sitting in the car is Ruth Abbott- widow of Sammie Abbott, in 1998 or 1999, with the backdrop of the vista that would be seen by southbound I-95 people if routed along the corridor's western side.


 
 
 

 Looking south from east side of RR




Looking south long 8th Street NE











B&O I-95 Corridor Threatened by 'Chock' Point Demolition Specials

This may be viewed as all merely coincidental, though nonetheless the dynamics of a hidden hand of the papacy within our generally otherwise secular government, to wit:

The Roman Catholic Jesuit Order Georgetown Law Center has sued to stop a number of road projects.

The dynamics of the U.S. NCPC 'Extending the Legacy' program, and the deal to construct Nationals Stadium: its prominently featured in the illustrations but un-named in the text what would otherwise be called 'South Capitol Mall'.  Yet it's not given its fair respect being vaguely described as a boulevard and a gateway rather than a promenade further suggest, and hence going essentially under-reported, even as a similarly under-reported-mis-reported initially as an "M" Street site.  And it involves a stadium that the D.C. City council had to be reconvened in a closed door after hours session to reverse its opposition in March 2006, pushed by a Major League Baseball insistence upon that particular stadium location, also favored by a D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission with close ties to the Vatican, in a South Capitol Street planning perverted to conform to that stadium and the sole pre-existing building of the St Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church.



Are we to suppose that the authorities continually refuse to even consider reviving a NCF because of the hard-line opinion of a group as the ECTC- which had a national spin off which disbanded after the B&O-NH-PEPCO I-95 was canceled by MD in July 1973 and before the subsequent OPEC oil shortages?

Are we to suppose that the MWCOGTBB Citizens Advisory Committee going from being open to the public to by appointment only, filling it with anti vehicular road ‘activists’ even those who did not attend many of the meetings, as something we can honestly call 'democratic'?

Are we to suppose that the private groups are too afraid of reviving anything within the beltway, not even stuff the scale of the North Capitol Street  underpasses beneath New York Avenue and Rhode island Avenue, for no reason?

Likewise despite the advances made in tunneling technologies particularly drilled-moled  tunnels as what’s being done for Route 99 in Seattle Washington.  Why not even a mention of a new study for the southern portion of a I-270 NW Freeway, especially given Bethesda, MD’s willingness to approve tearing down building for larger buildings for profit- e.g. construction, jobs and perpetual property tax revenues?

Why is it even AFTER 911 that discussion of revving any of the Washington, D.C. northern radial freeways so verboten?

Why is it with all the political sloganeering about 'white man's roads through black people's homes has not anything occurred with updating the sole through DC freeway route that was built- the Anacostia freeway?  With all of the burden placed there why nothing- neither with capacity nor environmental mitigation, let alone a major project to completely reconfigure the east of Anacostia East Capital Street- replacing the existing ghastly configuration with some thing appropriate with a cut and cover Anacostia Freeway and a surface configuration atop to extend the monumental planning legacy eastward.

Given the promenade atop a depressed freeway planning evident with the unbuilt Boston Inner Belt, might have it been JFK to come up with the idea of the Grand Arc, or at least something more like it?

That the freeway planning has been so successfully imposed upon government speaks volumes of the political power secreted within northern Washington, D.C.
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country" - JFK inaugural speech with message applicable to situation of lack of northern radial freeways in Washington, D.C.

An Example of the Vatican's Sway Over Washington, D.C. Planning
http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2011/07/up-front-hidden-in-plain-sight.html


Homeland Security Served by Reviving I-270 Within The Beltway
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/homeland-security-goal-would-be-better.html