Roads
Meet the new route through DC
If you ask Google Maps how to get from Baltimore to Richmond (or New York to Raleigh, or Boston to Miami), it suggests taking the Beltway around through Bethesda and Tysons to circumvent DC. But that may change.
There's no all-freeway route that goes through DC's center. According to Google Maps, the alternate route along the Anacostia Freeway to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge is only a minute more; taking the eastern half of the Beltway is three minutes more. The most direct route on a map is to take the Anacostia Freeway to the Southeast Freeway. But there's no direct connection, and drivers have to get off the freeway to cross the river. That encourages people to go around instead.
Unfortunately, DDOT's split personality on traffic has come down on the traffic-speeding side with the redesign of the 11th Street bridges. Under the laudable goal of better connecting neighborhoods east and west of the river, the Fenty Administration and DDOT have thrown their weight behind spending $500 million of local money (not federally matched money) to widen the road and connect the southbound Anacostia Freeway to westbound Southeast Freeway (and vice versa).
Traffic is simple. When you increase capacity at a bottleneck (which this is), you increase overall capacity, and when you increase overall capacity, you get induced demand, people driving who wouldn't have driven before. There's little doubt that more people will be driving along this stretch who didn't before. And the Sierra Club has numerous other objections which project officials have so far ignored.
I'd love to know why DDOT is doing this. Does Deputy Chief Engineer Kathleen Penney (who I'm told has a bridge-building background) come from the more-lanes-more-cars school of traffic management? Is Mayor Fenty, unlike his predecessors, just clueless on traffic (as on Klingle)? Are our suburban Congresspeople (Hoyer, Van Hollen, Davis, et. al.) pushing for this to shove more traffic through the poor, black neighborhoods of DC and make commuting easier for their constituents (as happened when the NPS considered closing Beach Drive during some off-peak times)?
People in Wards 7 and 8 support this at the moment because it'd be convenient to cross the river without getting on and then off the freeway. There's also the potential to get some traffic off their neighborhood streets that gets off the freeway to cross the river since there's no direct connection; but traffic calming those streets, a better solution, isn't an alternative in the EIS.
I suspect that if built, five or ten or twenty years from now residents will be agitating to remove it, as environmental justice advocates are pushing for the Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx. Is increased asthma and loss of parks and a boathouse worth $500 million and the convenience of a quicker trip to Capitol Hill?
 | David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.   |
Comments
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I believe people are more likely to remain on a slow freeway than weave throught the backstreets of Capitol Hill if given the option. Similar to being able to take one mode of public transit from poin to poin rather than changing modes (freeway to street). Sure more people may take 295, but I'm not as intersted in traffic volume as I am in the location of that volume.
by Grant on May 30, 2008 3:21 pm • link • report
Which has nothing really to do with what commuters will do to the streets. The only real solution is for the federal gov't to stop providing so much free parking to their employees. Otherwise, people will find their way through the city (whether on freeways or on the streets) to get to their offices.
I used to commute from Capitol Hill to Annapolis. I couldn't believe that so many people would be willing to sit in traffic on Route 50 for miles instead of using public transportation. Clearly, gas is too cheap, and parking too easy.
by mecki on May 30, 2008 3:41 pm • link • report
Listen, I bike to work and am very pro-transit, but occasionally I want to get to Baltimore and other northern routes and sitting in traffic for two lanes to turn onto Pennsylvania Ave. for a quarter mile is foolish. Worse, the turn onto the Anacostia freeway from PA Ave. sucks.
I'm not sure it's the best use of funds, for D.C., but if we're gonna have highways, we might as well connect the damn things.
by AE on May 30, 2008 4:25 pm • link • report
Consider it a trade-off, I guess.
by BeyondDC on May 30, 2008 4:48 pm • link • report
Keep up the good work!
by Phil Lerman on May 30, 2008 5:06 pm • link • report
What got me most was the overwhelming disingenuousness of the project. The Sierra Club comments, which I helped write, tried to get at this, but I think the definitive analysis was the one that the Capitol Hill Restoration Society comissioned from Smart Mobility.
The tragedy is that there are any freeways through DC. I don't think it would be too difficult to demonstrate that traffic models are complete garbage, because they cannot account for induced demand, nor for demand destruction. If DDOT were really progressive, they'd realize this and stop hiring engineering consultants who churn out traffic models. There's no reason why they shouldn't convert DC-295 into a grand, at-grade urban boulevard, complete with signalized intersections, so that it resembles, say, Connecticut or Wisconsin Avenue. Then make all the connections you want at the base of the 11th street bridges, but use intersections, not interchanges.
by thm on May 30, 2008 5:10 pm • link • report
One of the primary reasons DC has experienced a rennaissance is because those hihgways weren't built and the metro was built instead. For that thank those neighborhood activists from 45 years ago who didn't want highways.
Look at Baltimore. Any rennaissance there is not/has not occurred next to I-83; it's been in Federal Hill and Fells Point; areas served by water taxi or train; areas that retained their historic character and architecture and weren't destroyed by a roaring interstate.
Some of the highways planned for DC did get in, i.e. Whitehurst, to the detriment of Foggy Bottom. To see the plans of all the highways envisioned for DC causes one to shudder. To see photos of NY Ave before it was "improved" is heartbreaking. It was a beautiful boulevard lined with tall majestic trees with streetcar lines out to Bladensburgh. Hundreds of mature trees were removed for more and faster cars.
I lived in Basel Switzerland for several years. It's the 2nd largest Swiss city. It's about the same distance from Zurich as DC is from Baltimore. There are trains day and night between those cities and plentiful trams/trains/busses going all over when you arrive - and you can take your dog!
We don't have to be slaves to cars. We do have a choice. But the choice is difficult on the individual level; If there is no infrastructure/choice for me other than driving, then really do I have choice?
I want freedom to take a train to Baltimore any hour of the day or night, with my dog. Investing in more highways and not in trains keeps me enslaved. Some people had some very bad ideas in the '50's and 60's, but we are not compelled to perpetuate them.
by Bianchi on May 30, 2008 6:01 pm • link • report
by Bianchi on May 30, 2008 6:14 pm • link • report
L'Enfant had the right idea: a grid of small local streets, with the occasional wider but still pedestrian-scale avenue lined with commercial activity. Superblocks, highways and skybridges are all a consequence of the misguided mid-century impulse to separate people from cars. That's anathema to a vibrant urban fabric.
by David Alpert on May 30, 2008 6:24 pm • link • report
A better project would be for the district to look at doing a cut and cover of the SE freeway in conjunction with a new 11th st bridge, perhaps even tunneling if feasible. This would actually provide benefits to a large section of the city and would bring in the incremental tax money and land rights needed to pay for it.
I agree with converting DC295 to an at grade boulevard. It could definitely help revitalize the area and benefit the district as well. The new Wilson bridge should provide cover for eliminating that highway.
by Zack on May 30, 2008 6:55 pm • link • report
No, DC 295 isn't pretty; and hopefully some day we can do something about that. But in the meantime, let's connect what we do have and help those of us in town get through town on our way out of town.
by lyonsking on May 31, 2008 1:36 pm • link • report
by William on May 31, 2008 1:53 pm • link • report
I think this plan should be largely redone, not because I am against taking a local bridge, but because essentially they are rebuilding a spaghetti-style freeway intersection on the Anacostia side of the river rather than doing something a little more classy and ped-friendly. As it is now, and is currently planned, onramps will continue to block the view of Anacostia (actually a nice view) from the bridge, as well as providing a further physical barrier from Anacostia to parts west.
They really just need to bury 295 -- desperately!
by DG-rad on May 31, 2008 2:11 pm • link • report
by Rich on Jun 1, 2008 12:54 am • link • report
Preserve full ramp accessibility, with below ground approaches on both sides, with a cover atop the SE Freeway to the east (easily done with the existing freeway mainline roadbed), with a covered extension to RFK Stadium beneath a new waterfront promenade and slow speed surface road.
Depress and bury the SE Freeway to the west (more complex but worthwhile given the need to do likewise at and west of South Capitol Street), and likewise with an improved DC 295- making that an at grade boulevard will increase guaranteed stop start traffic events and increase vehicular/pedestrian conflict.
Cut and cover is the way to go!
by Douglas Willinger on Jun 1, 2008 8:38 pm • link • report
A reader above recommends converting DC-295 into something akin to Connecticut or Wisconsin Ave. Even doing that I'd say connecting the two "major avenues" might likely be necessary.
by AE on Jun 2, 2008 10:43 am • link • report
As it stands, I do not believe the Federal Government would allow wholesale removal of the freeways in the city. But for this reason I feel it is important to connect the freeways so they rely less on the city streets. A connection from southbound 295 to the 11th Street Bridge, as well as a connection from the bridge to NB 295, could keep this traffic out of the neighborhoods.
I'd also be a fan of decking over the Anacostia Freeway, particularly in areas where it abuts the Metro. I-395 and railroads pass through Southwest, but there are enough underpasses that connect the two neighborhoods. Anacostia is completely robbed of the River for which it is named, and that is downright criminal.
by David Murphy on Jun 3, 2008 1:58 am • link • report
by Bianchi on Jun 3, 2008 5:11 pm • link • report
Not something we can easily do in D.C., but the decking-over idea has merit in some locations.
by Froggie on Oct 24, 2008 3:14 pm • link • report
by David Alpert on Oct 24, 2008 3:20 pm • link • report
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