disregarding the recent
11th Street Bridge replacement with its new ramp connections to the DC 295 Anacostia Freeway to and from the northeast.
via an article appearing February 29, 2016 in
The Washingtonian "Let's Tear Down The South East Freeway And Build A New Neighborhood"
http://www.washingtonian.com/2016/02/29/southeast-freeway-development-construction-navy-yard-dc-neighborhood/
makes an interesting juxtaposition with the accompanying simplistic freeway removal ideology
to discourage use of the New York Avenue corridor and the Center Leg and thus shift traffic to the SE Freeway-11th Street Bridge-DC 295 Anacostia Freeway combo.
The Southwest Freeway, which carries a significant amount of traffic
between the Potomac River and Fourth Street, Southwest, probably
couldn’t be removed without overburdening the local street network. By
the time it changes to the Center Leg Freeway and then to the Southeast
Freeway, at South Capitol Street, the roadway carries a third fewer cars
and could be replaced with a surface street that handles some of the
traffic, with M Street, Southeast, and Pennsylvania Avenue picking up
the excess. Biking and rapid transit could take care of the rest.
The amount of traffic upon the initial- western- segment of the Southeast Freeway is destined to carry significantly more traffic with the recent 11th Street Bridge replacement project that added new ramp connections on its southern end directly into the DC 295 Anacostia Freeway heading to and from the north-east, thus establishing a seem-less through D.C. connection.
The freeway changes dramatically along its path—sunken below street
level here, rising onto an elevated there—so my colleagues and I
developed three different treatments. At Fourth, Seventh, and Tenth
streets, Southwest, the sunken Southwest Freeway is crossed by bridges.
We thought about building a big cap over the freeway here, like Boston’s
Big Dig, but decided it would be too expensive for the limited amount
of new space it would create. Instead, we expanded each bridge to create
a platform for small retail buildings, sort of like the Ponte Vecchio
in Italy. They would help connect the north and south sides of the
freeway visually for those crossing the bridges, while new retail could
draw more street life to an area that has very little today.
The freeway is in a trench as it crosses 10th and 7th Streets SW, before rising to an elevated berm to the east thus crossing over 4th Street SW- thus the above statement is factually incorrect about the freeway being sunk below the 4th Street crossing.
How would a cap above the existing sunken segment be too expensive? Other cities have had far more extensive cut and cover freeway projects, yet somehow this is "too expensive" for such a freeway within Washington, D.C., the Nation's Capital. Rather, this would be a good time to remove the bottleneck with its dangerous two into one lane merge with the on ramp from Main Street, by replacing the existing retaining wall which is not designed to support a tunnel roof, with a new wall set out further to the south, allowing adding a couple lanes per direction, at the expense of a row of townhouses built in 1999 too close to the freeway- a mere 16 feet or so from the existing retaining wall. This would be necessary to facilitate construction staging for the removal and replacement of the elevated segment to the east with a new lowered cut and cover tunnel segment.
Farther east, where I-395—now the submerged Center Leg Freeway—bends
north toward New York Avenue, we’d build a platform, like the Capitol
Crossing development, and place new retail, office, and apartment
buildings atop it, reconnecting local streets that currently dead-end at
the freeway. In the space where the 395/695 interchange now takes up
nearly three square blocks, we’d create a grand new public square,
similar to Farragut Square, granting this area much-needed open space.
This disregards that the freeway transitions from a trench at 7th Street SW to an elevated berm by the time it crosses 4th Street SW. Any new platform to reconnect local streets, and such a "grand new pubic space" absolutely requires not simply covering an existing freeway segment but rather its removal and replacement with a new set of roadways constructed at a lower elevation.
East of there, we’d eradicate the Southeast Freeway entirely. Before the
1960s, Virginia Avenue—which still exists in fits and starts around
Foggy Bottom and L’Enfant Plaza—was a broad boulevard not unlike
Pennsylvania or Massachusetts Avenue. Our design puts it back. The new
street would extend from just east of South Capitol Street to the 11th
Street Bridge and all the way to the Anacostia, where it would end in a
new waterfront park.
This disregards the above stated need to completely reconstruct the eastern portion of the SW Freeway at a lower elevation, as well as the recent 11th Street Bridge replacement project with its new ramp configurations making this a continuous through D.C. freeway route. Without such a reconstruction, his platform atop the freeway would have to be likewise elevated, could not restore the street grid as the elevated highway would still be in the way, and would require a ramp to transition from the elevated freeway to the restored Virginia Avenue street level boulevard.
The idea of a restored boulevard could actually make sense if built atop a SW-SE freeway reconstructed underground.
Because of the need to maintain traffic throughout the construction project, the way to do this would be by a staged program:
- first constructing a parallel tunneled freeway facility, starting with a
Washington Channel Tunnel akin to
the 2008 U.S. National Capital Planning Commission proposal, continuing east beneath G Street SW-SE to Virginia Avenue, dipping under the new railroad tunnel, to a temporary merge into the SE Freeway, together with tunnel connections to the north along the Center Leg beneath 2nd and 3rd Streets. This G Street Tunnel would be two levels, eastbound atop westbound. Once completed, open the G Street Tunnel to SW-SE Freeway traffic heading
to the 11th Street Bridges.
- secondly, remove
the row of townhouses closest to the SW Freeway's southern side between 10th and 7th Streets SW, excavate that area, build a new retaining wall designed to support tunnel roof, framing additional freeway capacity, and continue this east, crossing beneath 4th Street SW, to the existing ramp to the Center Leg, and perhaps with an extension further east squeezed alongside the existing elevated SW-SE Freeway to minimize housing displacement, before merging to the east with the new G Street Tunnel to the existing SE Freeway. Subsequently begin closing and removing the elevated SW-SE Freeway, and start constructing the underground replacement. That could ultimately be shifted slightly southwards to improve the geometry of the connections with the Center Leg. And it all would be opened together with the direction of the G Street Tunnel
from the 11th Street Bridge.
- subsequently, finish the new 2nd and 3rd Street Tunnels along the Center Leg. Before these could be used as a through route, they would need a merge into northbound I-395, which would occur within a tunneled extension to the north-east, employing not
the substandard geometry of the 1996 Ron Linton plan's curved transition at the rear of the Bibleway Church complex and then directly beneath New York Avenue, but rather
a gentler radii curve arcing beneath the New Jersey Avenue/N Street intersection and the Dunbar field, to a straight line continuation under O Street NW/NE. Optionally, build a temporary connection to
New York Avenue near the location of the Fed Ex building. Or expedite a permanent underground tunnel box freeway extension to the east along the northern side of New York Avenue featuring parallel box for a new WMATA rail transit line, and a decking over of the railroad chasm, with a new linear park and city scale real estate development atop; such would be easier than constructing that tunnel directly under New York Avenue as discussed during the late 1990s and early 2000s, and far more potentially profitable with the line of new real estate development.
- This tunneled extension from the Center Leg to alongside New York Avenue should have design flexibility to ultimately accommodate tunnel box versions of freeway connections to the north along the
Grand Arc reconstruction of the B&O Metropolitan Branch with a vast linear park atop, to an East Leg to RFK Stadium and the eastern end of the SE Freeway as a cover-way essentially extending the structure of Barney Circle, and for a tunnel directly under New York Avenue
Once the New York Avenue corridor box tunnel freeway is completed to Maryland Route 50, traffic could be shifted from the antiquated DC 295 Anacostia Freeway to facilitate the latter's reconstruction as a modernized cut and cover facility bring its specifications up to date while permitting opening up local access to the Anacostia River waterfront.
The failure of the
Dan Reed article in addressing any of this, speaks volumes as to the deficit of thought with much of the trendy [anti] intellectualism of the ideology of outright freeway removal
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/02/extending-legacy-with-grand-arc.html
Do be sure to write out about misplaced real estate development placed too close to such corridors in in other wrong places as "The Hampshires" townhouses that are essentially demolition specials, as well as poorly designed projects as the Capitol Cross project that combines the righteous idea of covering the Center Leg with the foolishness of wasting up to 50% of its capacity, thus necessitating a new pair of parallel cut and cover tunnelways.
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/09/washington-dc-big-dig.html
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/11/i-395-extension-superior-option.html
Thankfully the more recent Dunbar HS building replacement does not conflict with doing that.
Such could then continue as a duel stacked tunnel beneath O Street before turning to join the railroad corridors.
A tunnel beneath New York Avenue would be better for a continuation of a cross-town I-66 Tunnel that from Mt Vernon Square to Washington Circle run beneath K Street- the idea favored by opponents to the 1950s plan for a new swath along Florida Avenue and U Street.
To the east of the railroad, the cut and cover tunnel should then run alongside New York Avenue with a box containing highway and a new WMATA rail subway, beneath a linear park and new development with a deck atop the rail chasm.
The authorities subverted the idea of extending the tunnel east by only considering the pricier, more disruptive and less profitable idea of placing it directly beneath New York Avenue.
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2015/01/new-medievalism-overides-popular.html
cf. the width of the High Line.
However, it could be worth doing it it were possible to double but probably triple stack tunnels for railroad and subway transit.
But it would cost many billions, and the benefit would likely not be greater than the cost.
Selective tunnels for roads could have much greater social and economic benefit.
I don't know exactly how the track is threaded, but it seems that from New Carrollton you can figure out how to get to Annapolis, and from New Carrollton to DC there is no need to tunnel.
Just do a London Overground in terms of organizing the service, as I outline in past posts.
2. The I-66 idea is interesting but I don't think serves much purpose. But you could build it in conjunction with the proposed separated blue/silver line that I have written about in the past. Dumping traffic on city streets isn't something that makes sense.
3. But in conjunction with I-66, I've suggested a cut and cover tunnel for an RER type line out of Union Station (a continuation of Penn Line) which would be electrified.
4. I don't know enough about electrification technology to figure out how to make an Annapolis to DC rail line electrified rather than diesel. Maybe it's just as easy to put it underground to be able to electrify it.
Probably the best analogy in the various plans in DC to bridge/tunnel over E st and the area around 66 and the Kennedy Center.
(Again, we have the tunnel machines but the shadow government only wants to use them for sewage, not for transportation. Different funding buckets)
Or to blow the willinger's mind, build a tunnel under K, run it under georgetown (and take down whitehurst), go under the potomac and then up Spout run).
The displacement besides the 34 or so targeted by the 1966-70 plan would be confined to the foolishly misplaced new buildings such as the 2 Arts Space buildings nearest to the RR.
To the north, recently recklessly located buildings as the Elevation 314 project would be demolished, as they should as safety hazards as residential wood framed buildings within a footprint of a potential freight rail derailment from a set of ELEVATED tracks, as would the Cedar Crossing and a corner of the adjacent project. The late 1990s Takoma Co-Housing project is thankfully just outside the footprint. To the north, the historic Cady Lee mansion and the row of houses along Takoma Avenue would all be avoided; however the foolishly placed mid 1960s Montgomery Gardens apartment complex would be at least partially demolished.
For the connection to the PEPCO corridor, a depressed, part or all covered link along the north side of New Hampshire Avenue would displace 27 1940s houses just inside D.C., strip retail just inside Maryland, and of course a good chunk of that recent demo special of "The Hampshires" which was a completely irresponsible development, before swinging across New Hampshire Avenue to run via the PEPCO corridor to the I-95 stubbs at the Capital Beltway. To address the challenging topography, I would have NH Avenue upon a new bridge with I-95 passing through its southern abutment.
New retail and housing could then be constructed in a lid atop the NHA I-95 segment, rather than keeping it as an open trench. I would do the same in spots to the north along the PEPCO corridor, including a lid with such at University Avenue.
The benefits would be immense. Not simply for achieving a full northern I-95 link plus one towards I-270 and a cut and cover tunnel beneath Georgia Avenue as an alternative to the old Northern Parkway proposal. But as well with the creation of a vast new northern radial park - a northern Mall in essence - for Washington D.C. extending down to the rear of Union Station- already the existing end-cap. And furthermore, as I see it, with a resurfacing of the long buried Tiber Creek.
New high speed tolling would make this only even more practical.
Something akin to that was briefly proposed by the Committee of 100 cir 1968.
A variant of that would be to build a 3 Sisters Bridge, but rather than the mess of spaghetti for its approaches, do those via a tunnel that makes the elevation change arcing beneath the recreation field of Georgetown University.
The existing I-66 terminus near the Watergate ought to be reconstructed as an underground semi-Orb beneath a new pedestrian park overlook.