When Shall the U.S. Congress Extend I-395?

Does the sudden shift in 'appointment' of national DC overlord suggest a tail that wags the dog of a top down dictate against those questioning the truncation of the Washington, D.C. freeways

Yesterday I open up the breakfast links of the blog Greater, Greater, Washington to see that D.C. may get a new overseer, Brian Bilbray (R-CA), that questions the truncation of the freeways:

This is my chance to say something about this. I was absolutely appalled when I came here in the 1990's and saw what appeared to be the gross abuses of local control by the local community. Freeways were not allowed to go through because of Ward politics. Maybe it is because I am a Californian that I can't comprehend the ability of politics to stop a freeway dead in its tracks, not just once but twice. Though, I have seen it happen.

Yet upon clicking on the link to the original Washington City Paper article that GGW points to, which has this above quote, it already has this update:

UPDATE, 1:30 p.m. - Whoops: Mike DeBonis is reporting that [Congressman] Bilbray's been removed from the Oversight Committee, which means we don't know who'll be in charge of the District's fate come January.

Reportedly this is because Bilbray has been given another assignment.

Perhaps this is just coincidential, but will any of the other possible candidates dare speak out against the status quo of why I-395 dead ends at New York Avenue, mere blocks from Washington, D.C.'s two largest transportation - industrial corridors -- despite local support for the tunnel concept extending at least to the vicinity of Florida Avenue - with the authorities considering a sole tunnel alignment that fails FHWA line of sight standards?

I-395 Extension Superior Option UNconsidered
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/11/i-395-extension-superior-option.html

I-(3)95 Extension Historic Overview
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-395-extension.html

Also see the tag "I-395 Extension"

Capping I-395 Center Leg To Reconfigure Ramps

http://www.ldproperty.com/395_air_rights/image_5.php

Southbound I-395 ramp with unusual configuration preserving a continous curbside surface connection along 3rd Street NW and going underground before G Street, providing a more suitable environment better seperating local and express traffic

Project shall erect new buildings atop a cap atop the I-395 Center Leg Freeway southwards from Massachusetts Avenue NW, along with reconfiguring the freeway's access ramps.

This includes removing the southbound off-ramp (which is viewed as unneccessary since the freeway only starts just to the north at New York Avenue- owing to the wholesale freeway cancellations of the 1970s and early 1980s), replacing a Roman Catholic Church rectory, and again moving the Adas Israel Synagogue (now the Lillian and Albert Small Jewish Museum) moved to its present site about 1969 to accomdate WMATA subway related development.
Project shall reconnect G and F Streets across-atop the freeway, with G Street for pedestrians and bicylists, and F Street including vehicular traffic (with a full G Street connection impractical owing to the design of the northbound offramp).

Cap North Capitol Street

Malcom Kenton provides this photo at Greater, Greater, Washington, with this caption:
"As I recently suggested, imagine this mini-highway decked over to become a tree-lined plaza framing the view of the Capitol dome"

Indeed at that earlier article, he writes:

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/8321/make-north-capitol-street-a-true-gateway/

DDOT should begin by studying the cost, feasibility and impacts of decking over the dug-in portion of North Capitol between Rhode Island Avenue and T Street and creating an attractive public square — replacing a noisy eyesore with a neighborhood amenity. Should a full decking over prove prohibitively expensive, other more affordable aesthetic enhancements, such as covering the fences with native flowering vines, ought to be considered.

The planned park covering Dallas's Woodall Rodgers Freeway. Photo from the Dallas Observer
blog.

Converting highway corridors into public parks is becoming a trend amongst American cities. Boston exemplifies how greatly a city can be enhanced when an ugly highway corridor is put underground and converted into a well-designed park. Dallas also seeks to convert its Woodall Rodgers Freeway into greenspace.

Improvements to the North Capitol Street and New York Avenue intersection should also seek to address traffic bottlenecks. The ramp from southbound North Capitol onto New York Avenue, which is now used by two high-ridership Metrobus routes and several delivery trucks, is a notorious one. A redesign of this intersection that improves traffic flow, while also leaving space for a greenery or a public monument or fountain would greatly benefit this developing part of
the city.

Instead of a noisy, unattractive mini-freeway that benefits those driving through Bloomingdale, Eckington, Truxton Circle, NoMa at the expense of those who live along it, future residents and business owners and patrons could benefit from visual enhancements that complement the surrounding Victorian architecture and the view of the Capitol, while still allow traffic to flow smoothly. Turning this part of the North Capitol Street corridor into a desirable destination would generate benefits that could exceed the significant costs of remaking parts of the infrastructure.

Capping the depressed segments of North Capitol Street (the photo above is of the northern segment that crosses beneath Rhode Island Avenue NE) would convert them into cut and cover tunnels, expanding upon the efficency of the below ground cut with a roof to further the social benefits. As these are roads allowing and reconciling greater human activity within a given footprint, one could imagine environmentalist organizations favoring their construction- provided a philosophy of human growth.

Around 2005 District authorities conducted a study of the Truxton Circle area of North Capitol Street between the two depressed segments of North Capitol Street- that included an option for a cut and cover segment in this area effectively connecting the two existing depressed segments. IIRC, it did not surface or provide intermediate connections to the surface at Florida Avenue, with sparce consideration of such.

Nor, AFAIK has there been consideration of any other concepts for extending the depressed segment[s], let alone that for extending the 'cap'.

The two depressed segments appear to be a part of an upgraded North Capitol Street, that was planned to connect with the planned North Central and Northeast Freeways, as seen here (image), and here (image).

47 Years Ago Today

November 14, 1963

JFK video I-95 dedication November 14, 1963

This was the day of his final press conference.

His I-95 dedication speech may be read here.

It was 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy who took an interest in the development of the Washington, D.C. freeway system, particularly regarding the north-south inside Washington, D.C. segment of planned I-95

JFK's Adminstration Gave Us the B&O Route North Central Freeway
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2010/05/jfk-administration-gave-us-b-north.html

JFK Adminstration Freeway System Other Aspects
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2010/05/jfk-administration-dc-freeway-system.html

JFK was apparantly more hands with the planning than predecessor Eisenhower
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2010/03/eisenhowers-burning-tree-commute-desire.html

JFK's B&O North Central Freeway Was Subverted

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-jfks-dc-north-central-freeway-was.html

Arizona Avenue Bridge to Chain Bridge Road- Unbuilt

Discussed in a recent article at Greater Greater Washington.

Illustration from a 1957 Northwest Freeway Report.

Also see map of unbuilt Nebraska Avenue Bridge- 1952 proposal
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2006/12/early-1950s-plans.html

New York Avenue Traffic Triangle

Of course the authorities have nothing regarding any tunneled extension of I-395, and only consider it with the 1996 'Ron Linton' routing with its substandard tight turning radii for the tunnel's curved segment for connecting to the existing I-395- SHAME on them!

The Un-Considered Superior Option

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/11/i-395-extension-superior-option.html

I-395 Extension History

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-395-extension.html

Washington, D.C.'s Supreme Bridge Builder

Cancelled D.C. I-95 next to Catholic University of America

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

From Rulers of Evil, Tupper Saussy, chapter 1, ‘Subliminal Rome’ pp 4-6

Vatican II affirms Catholic doctrine dating back to 1302, when Pope Boniface VIII asserted that “it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be the subject of the Roman Pontiff.” This was the inspiration for the Papacy to create the USA that materialized in 1776, by a process just as secret as the Reagan-Vatican production of Eastern Europe in 1989. What? American government Roman Catholic from the beginning?

Consider: the land known today as the District of Columbia. Bore the name Rome in 1663 property records, and the branch of the Potomac River that bordered Rome on the south was called the Tiber. This information was in the edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on Daniel Carroll. The article specifically declaring itself of interests to Catholics” in the 1902 edition, was deleted from the New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967). Other facts reported in 1902 and deleted from 1967. For example, when Congress met in Washington for the first time in November, 1800, “the only two really comfortable and imposing houses within the bounds of the city” belonged to Roman Catholics. One was Washington’s first mayor, Robert Brennt. The other was Brent’s brother in law, Notley Young, a Jesuit priest.

Daniel Carroll was a Roman Catholic congressman from Maryland who signed two of America’s fundamental documents, the Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution. Carroll was a direct descendant of the Calverts, a Catholic family to whom King Charles I of England had granted Maryland as a feudal barony. Carroll had received his education at ST. Omer’s Jesuit College in Flanders, where young English speaking Catholics were trained in a variety of guerrilla techniques for advancing the cause of Roman Catholicism among hostile Protestants.

IN 1790, President George Washington, a Protestant, appointed Congressman Carroll to head a commission of three men to select land for the “federal city” called for in the Constitution. Of all places, the commission chose Rome which at the time consisted of four farms, one which belonged to ..,. Daniel Carroll. It was upon Carroll’s farm that the new government chose to erect its most important building, the Capitol.

The American Capitol abounds with clues of Roman origins. “Freedom”, the Roman goddess whose statue crowns the dome, was created in Rome at the studio of American sculptor Thomas Crawford. We find a whole pantheon of Roman deities in the great fresco covering the dome’s interior rotunda: Persephone, Ceres, Freedom, Vulcan, Mercury, even a deified George Washington. These figures were the creation of Vatican artist Constantantino Brumidi.

The fact that the national statehouse evolved as a “capitol: bespeaks Roman influence. No building can rightly be called a capitol unless it’s a temple of Jupiter, the great father god of Rome who ruled heaven with his thunderbolt and nourished the earth with his fertilizing rains. It it was a capitolium, it belonged to Jupiter and his priests.

Jupiter’s mascot was the eagle. ...

Fascism nay be an ugly word to many, but its stately emblem is apparently offensive to no one. The emblem of fascism, a pair of them, commands the wall above and behind the speaker’s rostrum in the Chamber if Representatives. They’re called fasces, and I can think of no reason for them to be there, other then declare the fascistic nature of American republican democracy. A fasces is a Roman device. Actually, it originated with the ancient Etruscans, from whom the earliest Romans derived their religious jurisprudence nearly three thousand years ago. Its an axe head whose handle is a bundle of rods tightly strapped together by a red sinew. It symbolizes the ordering of priestly functions into a single infallible sovereign, an autocrat who could require life and limb of his subjects. If the fasces is entwined with laurel, like the pair on the House wall, it signifies Caesarean military power.

The Romans called this infallible sovereign Pontifex Maximus, “Supreme Bridge-builder.”

No Roman was called Pontifex Maximus until the title was given to Julius Caesar in 48 BC. Today’s Pontifex Maximus is Pope John Paul II.

As we shall discover in a forthcoming chapter, John Paul does not hold that title alone. He shares it with a mysterious partner, a military man, a man holding an office that has been known for more then four centuries as “Papa Nero,” the Black Pope. I shall present evidence that the House fasces represent the Black Pope, who indeed rules the world.

Later, I will develop what is sure to become a controversial hypothesis, that the Black Pope rules by divine appointment, and for the ultimate good of mankind.

-------

An entity considered a supreme bridge builder, will conversely mean that entity is that which decides to build or not to build a bridge.

Who stopped Washington, D.C.’s Freeways? Jesuit connections, aka Fordham University
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/12/who-really-stopped-washington-dcs.html

Washington, D.C. Free Planning Hegelian Dialectic
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2010/05/1960s-washington-dc-freeway-planning.html

1964 Highway Routing Mystery
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/05/1964-north-central-freeway-routing_08.html

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

A Sampling of Attitudes Towards D.C. I-95 (Jesuit-CUA attitude: Keep it far away from us)
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/02/sampling-of-attitudes-towards-dc-i-95.html

A Beholden Doctrine
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2007/10/beholden-doctrine.html

Tupper Saussy- Continuing Counter Reformation
http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/search/label/Tupper%20Saussy

Tupper Saussy- Finding the Lost - Continuing Counter Reformation
http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2007/09/tupper-saussy-finding-lost.html

Tupper Saussy- Abiding Religious War (1 of 5) Continuing Counter Reformation
http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2007/09/tupper-saussy-abiding-religious-war-1.html

Another Fenty Boondoggle?

Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty's ceremony on project that has its northwestern end overlap with USNCPC's recent I-395 Washington Channel Tunnel

a revised version of my message to this project's developer's web site:

From the illustrations on your web site it appears that the northernmost portion
encroaches upon U.S. National Capital Planning Commission's proposed I-395 tunnel.

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/07/new-i-395-gateway-if-its-coordinated.html

What consideration has been given to ensuring that the development does not impact the tunnel?

Sincerely

Douglas Willinger
A Trip Within The Beltway

The numerous 'planning' faux pas with jamming the nearby Capital Square townhouses a mere 16 or so feet from the SWS Freeway retaining wall, and the Golden Rule senior citizens' apartment building in the path of the not yet employed northbound I-395 Center Leg Tunnel on ramp can only make one suspect the worst- that the building to the left will be driven into the ground with the utter contempt for NCPC's Washington Channel Tunnel, as much as Nationals Stadium did to the route of the previously proposed South Capitol Street corridor tunnel.

Apparently Washington D.C. is utterly lacking in any sort of prevailing political order worthy of displaying architectural tools as a logo.

See more:
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/07/new-i-395-gateway-if-its-coordinated.html

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/search/label/Demolition%20Specials

The Fallacy of NOT Building the Diagonal South Leg Tunnel

Pics of the Reflecting Pool, July 2010; note the spots of smaller trees along each side at about the location of this 'diagonal' route I-695 tunnel.

Adopted from:

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-695-south-leg_18.html

In 1966, a new design for Washington, D.C.'s South Leg segment of the Inner Loop Freeway appeared. It featured a single continuous, 5,600 foot long West Potomac Park tunnel, constructed by the cut and cover method, upon a diagonal routing fully east of Lincoln Memorial traffic circle and partially beneath the Reflecting Pool. Because of its continuous length, this was the one option featuring ceiling ducts for a ventilation system. Under this plan, the surface roads in West Potomac Park were to be removed.

This design, initially pursued as a full tunnel alternative to the previous design, was approved by the National Capital Planning Commission on September 15, 1966, and recommended to the D.C. Board of Commissioners for implementation. However, this diagonal route tunnel proposal came under criticism by the Fine Arts Commission at a meeting on September 20, 1967, for reason of its destruction of two spots of mature trees that flank the Reflecting Pool, which would require more than a generation for transplanted replacements to grow to the same size as the removed trees. Hence, the D.C. Department of Public Works would back away from this design at a closed door, Tuesday meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission, reported by a Jack Eisen article in The Washington Post on October 30, 1969. Accordingly, for reason of entirely avoiding the trees along the Reflecting Pool, the earlier plan, regained its earlier status as the largely officially preferred plan. Ironically, while this tunnel was not built, the trees it would have displaced and replaced along the north side of the Reflecting Pool were displaced and replaced for other reasons.

New Hampshire Avenue B&O-PEPCO Connection

Pics of the New Hampshire Avenue area portion of the inside the Beltway I-95 route between its PEPCO and B&O segments

New Hampshire Avenue at the southern end of the PEPCO corridor


New Hampshire Avenue at the northern end of its commercial strip

This entire commercial strip from the southern end of the PEPCO corridor to the MD-DC line is about 1,600 in length and encompases about 13 retail strip properties, including the auto parts store that was originally built as a supermarket.

A recent planning effort envisions redeveloping this strip with far greater density- a concept compatible with the highway, as the segment would be depressed and hence accomdatable for a deck atop.

Just inside Washington, D.C., the route would displace about 27 brick houses- the number being this low because of the large open space of the immediately adajacent field.

This field is a part of the property of the Masonic and Eastern Star Home at 6000 New Hampshire Avenue, reportedly built in 1905.

The freeway would be depressed, would not require demolishing either of the two main structures, and could be constructed as a cut and cover tunnel in order to preserve the field.

My studies of the history of the official inside the Beltway highway planning have yet to reveal any openly stated concerns by any Masonic Order, including Eastern Star regarding the route nor the idea of a cut and cover tunnel which, AFIAK, was not proposed anywhere along New Hampshire Avenue.