We ALL know that the District's SW-SE Freeway is a monstrosity. BAD design. NO safety shoulders. Open trench bisecting SW, before rising up upon a hideous viaduct that crosses atop South Capital Street. And continuing east, a Chinese wall along Virginia Avenue to the interchange with the 11th Street Bridge, and a brief surface segment, before its sole well designed segment, the pair of 4 lane rectangular box tunnels beneath Pennsylvania Avenue SE's Barney Circle.
30 years ago, the Washington Post published a good article, by Roger K. Lewis, March 27, 1993, "For The 21st Century A Capital Design Reach In Need of A Regional Reach". Within was an illustration, indicating an underground replacement for the SW-SE Freeway.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, U.S. National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) published a few brochures with illustrations of the South Capital Street area with the SW-SE Freeway viaduct removed.
In 2005, NCPC published a brochure showing a westernmost portion of an underground SW Freeway, extending further west to extend beneath Washington Channel.
Nevertheless, NCPC fails to show any plans that are workable.
Note how the renderings above have substandard capacity (refusing to correct the bottleneck), poor geometry (too sharp a curve), and impractical to build as it transitions upon exactly the same right of way, which must maintain traffic through the reconstruction.
Even worse, the 1990s NCPC planning with the South Capital Mall - what it would obviously be called, yet such a phrase appears nowhere in any of their public publications - did not even include an underground replacement for the SW-SE Freeway. Instead it presents the unworkable-absolutely impractical notion of I-395 simply connecting to 14th and F Streets! An anti express highway exemplified by such NCPC published statements at that time, that "amphibious cars - contemporary versions of the old Army ducks - could render bridges obsolete" - try picturing that!
Anyone looking at the situation can see the obvious, that a band of land MUST be cleared directly to the south. And do note that the area WAS already cleared during the late 1950s-early 1960s for the SW Redevelopment Project. Yet nonetheless, that area was subsequently filled with new residential development by the early 1970s.
By 1993, that area had become developed except for the plot bordered by the SW Freeway southward to G Street, and extending west-east between 9th and 7th Streets SW. That is the area that people likely saw as being reserved by the feds for serving as the staging area for a project to reconstruct the SW Freeway underground, as well as definitely widening that short stretch of expressway to the interchange with the Center Leg/3rd Street Tunnel. Indeed that segment was built with inadequate capacity, lacking the must have minimum of two added lanes per direction, owing to the 1955 design report's excuse over aesthetics, never-mind the failure to design it as a cut and cover tunnel, and that the space was cleared anyway for the SW Redevelopment.
Nevertheless, and quite weirdly, in 1999, shortly after the start of the administration of D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, motorists are horrified, seeing a new real estate development project there being erected- the "Capital Square" townhouse project. It fills that parcel with townhouses, including a row of 28 at the northern side, a mere 16 or so feet from the open trench 1950s design expressway. This "Capital Square" project is undertaken by an entity called "E.Y.A. Associates.
They are the same firm that subsequently constructs another townhouse project to the east, facing the southern side of the same expressway between 3rd and 4th Streets, between I Street to the south and Virginia Avenue, complicating not only ever under-grounding that segment (which is an elevated earth filled berm), but also complicating the indisputably required Virginia Avenue railroad tunnel reconstruction project. E.Y.A. reportedly underplays the likelihood of that project to potential townhouse buyers. These townhouses are filled with new dwellers. At least one of them gets to bring a law suit to block the project. And that effort is supported by the "Committee of 100 on the Federal City", which instead sought to replace that railroad with one to the south side of the Anacostia River, and which would NOT be a tunnel. Fortunately that effort failed, and the Virginia Avenue railroad tunnel project gets built.
Now, one would suppose that the SW-SE Freeway corridor would have undergone an effort to purchase properties for the space to construct an underground replacement. As traffic MUST be maintained through the construction, a band of land MUST be assembled. As this area includes existing occupied dwellings, simply purchase them over time, at least when they come onto the market, and either demolish, or at least have occupied by people told that the use is only for a set period of time.
But get this, one such area IS cleared out, with dwellings removed, and without any protest sufficient to block such dislocations- the area immediately west of 4th Street SW, right next to the expressway where it transitions from trench to viaduct. And real estate developers are allowed to erect a new residential building- at 600 4th Street SW, called the "Kiley Apartments".
And this occurs in the same general area where the U.S. Departments of Housing and Urban Development, as well as the U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Authority are situated.
What is preventing the U.S. government from doing its duty?!
Who decried that only the City of Boston is to get a serious project to reconstruct its main existing expressways underground with its Central Artery Tunnel Project (with its mainline done sadly with NO shoulders)? If Ted Kennedy and Tip O'Neil could get such for Boston, why NOTHING for the nation' Capital, Washington, D.C.?!?!
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