as of 5 p.m. on sunday, there are 250 comments on that wapo article, and i'm not going to take the time to read them. if it's anything like the comments on a typical post article, there will be many, many suburbanites talking about how much of a shithole DC is, etc.
that article, though, especially in its title, is so terribly written, it's clear that the intent was likely to get the suburban commentariat riled up.
it could have just as easily been spun as "city making roads safer for pedestrians and residents". the post chose to spin things from a suburban point of view though, unsurprisingly.
we owe nothing to suburban commuters who use our roads as racetracks.
The issue I have is that there is a woeful disconnect between the stated mission of DDOT to improve pedestrian safety and alternative mobility on the planning side, and the reality of old-thinking vehicle priority on the traffic management side.
Despite the release of the Pedestrian Master Plan, the thinking still seems to be on the old way as opposed to the vision as outlined in the Wash Post article.
By my estimation, it will take someone other than the current director to see it through.
After 40 comments, I simply can't read readers' opinions.
It's a balance, sure. But at the same time, I believe most of the cars clogging the roads do not belong to DC residents. Some times, for some events, ok, maybe. And if one is going to be an absolutist, or nearly so, and say that we need more DC tagged cars off the roads, then the first thing I think of is, ok, then, improve public transport, but I mean improve THE HELL out of it. Not little incremental tweaks here and there, while at the same time cutting service on some other line. Of course, I am talking about buses. We need smaller buses that run more frequently. Basically we need twice the $ and brain power devoted to buses than we currently have. Do that, and I might agree with you regarding sweeping all or nearly all DC-tagged buses off our roads.
Also, I was hanging out at 15th Street these last few days. Sure, cut a lane, that is fine with me. Give it back to the property owners. Cool. But man, compared to 14th and 16th, 15th is a wonderful oasis. There are long times with no traffic whatsoever, especially on a holiday weekend.
Oops, of course I meant "cars" here.
- Do that, and I might agree with you regarding sweeping all or nearly all DC-tagged buses off our roads. -
If DC DOT is seriously entertaining the thought of closing the northern section of the 3rd Street Tunnel, they should also consider shutting down the SE Freeway between the 11th Street Bridge and Pennsylvania Avenue. That section of freeway provides no benefit to the city and only causes traffic headaches on both sides of the Sousa Bridge.
Other DC freeways like 295 and the SW freeway at least provide some value as high-speed connections to other freeways (the merit of this use is debatable as well). The 3rd St. Tunnel and SE Freeway are wholly detrimental to both residents and commuters alike as they dump freeway-loads of traffic onto city streets.
no transit with holding tax w/o lessening the taxes in another category. DC already has onerous and very un-necessary/frivolous taxes and this stifles competitiveness. We should cut the sales taxes or residential or small business taxes first- and then institute a transit tax .
the withholding tax would be assessed only against employers.
GhettoBurbs: from what i understand, part of the plan with the reconstruction of the 11th street bridges is to eliminate the freeway from the bridges to pennsylvania ave., and turn it into a surface streeet, connected into the street grid.
The 3rd street tunnel is certainly NOT detrimental, only that it ends at NY Avenue and that its surface atop could have been done much better.
The detrimental thing is the denial of reality by those that advocate the boondoggle of massive trolley programs while ignoring that which benefits the profane- the highways.
DC thoughtlessly truncated its freeways merely to speed WMATA construction by a few months. Clearly the need is more pressing to build highways for Washington DC- unless one's perspective is white is black and black is white as decried by one's superior.
In a vacuum, the 3rd Street Tunnel is not detrimental in that it facilitates high-volume cross-town movement in a speedy fashion. However, because of its connection (or lack thereof) with the rest of the DC freeway system, it has an extremely negative impact on the NY Avenue area.
If I-95 was built along its originally designed path, this topic wouldn't even be an issue. However, the fact that I-(3)95 terminates at New York Avenue is the exact reason why the 3rd St. Tunnel is detrimental to the neighborhood. When freeway-level volumes of traffic are diverted to surface arterials, bad things happen. Plus, the allure of a quick(ish) connection to the SW Freeway and Northern Virginia induce traffic on NY Ave. from commuters in Maryland. Make this connection less convenient and suddenly NY Ave. is much more manageable.
There is little point in debating the merits and demerits of constructing I-95 to its original specification because it will never happen. Urban freeways have been losing popularity for a long time, especially as the monied folk repopulate cities and notice the devastation caused by the freeway building frenzies of the 50s and 60s. The discussion is no longer about constructing new urban freeways, but instead about mitigating the effects of poorly implemented ones.
Where freeway/arterial interfaces are horribly mismatched (3rd St. Tunnel, SE Freeway), the best option might be removal of access from those sections. Where bottlenecks can be addressed with minimal impact on the local communities, some construction might occur (11th St. Bridge to Anacostia Freeway interchange). Where the benefits of freeways are seen to outstrip the detriments to the local community, those freeways will remain (SW Freeway, Anacostia Freeway, I-295).
Side issue: the crosswalk photo reminds me that many drivers on the Hill don't take the decorative crosswalk at 8th and D Streets, SE seriously, despite "Stop for Pedestrians in X-Walk" signs.
Sad to report, it would be safer to rip out the fancy work and put zebra crossings back in.
It won't happen via the original planst- TRUE.
But there are alternative plans, better then the 1971 plan and far better then the 1996 or 1955 plans.
See:
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.b...ior-
option.html
The New York Avenue Transportation Study calls for tunneling the "I-95" part of New York Avenue -- through traffic.
Ideally that would happen back at the US-50 entrance into the city, but never will because of cost.
The report talks about it happening somewhere between 6th St. NE and Florida Avenue NE.
http://www.ddot.dc.gov/ddot/cwp/
...Nav,|32399|.asp
Mike -- a colleague makes the point that the fancy decorated crosswalks are hard for drivers to see at a distance. I think that is unfortunately something to think about.
I laugh about research that finds that more accidents happen in crosswalks than not. Of course that's true, because more people walk in crosswalks than anywhere else when crossing the street.
Extending the tunnel to the Maryland line would cost perhaps $10 billion- about what is spent on the Iraqi occupation in how many days?
Extending it to at least the east side of the Red Line would cost perhaps $3-4 billion via my design which uses a gentler radii passing beneath the intersection of New Jersey Avenue and N Street (see the link in my preceding comment), and displace about 34 dwellings (in comparison to the 1970s plan which would have displaced 600+).
However the new studies don't even mention this option, and have gone apostate with their scheme to close the northern I-395 tunnel and have the traffic exit at Massachusetts Avenue.
Interesting how such medievalism gets to trump post 911 evacuation route concerns and common sense in general.
BTW- the current tunnel plan which displaces 0 dwellings, has deficient geometry (think about line of sight in a curved tunnel).
The officials implicit message is that not a single dwelling be displaced (even though 34 represents a 95% reduction from the 1971 plan), safety be damned, but it's okay to displace 100s of dwellings for new dwellings.
Note that I am all for the tunnel idea. And we could call it 395 even. Maybe DC could even get more highway money for it...
You think that they could considering the national defense issues sch as an evacuation route. The I-395 tunnel extension would be a tiny fraction of the money spent in Iraq, and on all of the domestic dissident surveillance.
Yet the DC govt and NCPC (which disgraced itself with its selling out the South Capital Mall, the rubber stamping of the 80% reduction of the Alexandria Washington Street Urban Deck, and with pushing I-95 out of DC) wants to make the area an even greater mess- all in the name of parochialism.
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