The failure of NCPC's "Extending the Legacy" to accommodate regional transportation
Whereas the earlier plans accommodated the main modes of transportation, with the L'Enfant Plan including canals, the McMillan Commission with RRs, and with more recent planning including today's D.C. National Airport, "Extending the Legacy" marks a retreat, itself marked by an ideological decision to respond to a particular need with substitutes that assumes that such substitutes would simply suffice.
To its credit it persues the McMillan plan idea of humanizing existinng RRs and freeways in stating:
The basic strategy is to replace obsolete structures with improvements that benefit large areas of the District, coordinating these efforts whenever possible to coincide with the District's plans for rebuilding neighborhoods or reclaiming the waterfront.For the RR, this means furthering its undergrounding via a new replacement tunnel at a deeper elevation permitting a due south alignment from 2nd Street NE/SE that passes south of the Anacostia River before turning west into Virgina just south of Reagan National Airport.
For I-66 by the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts this means covering this West Leg Freeway,
For today's I-395/ 14th Street Bridge [s] this means a new singular and prettier span.
But it falls flat on its face by failing to fails to provide for the SW/SE Freeway, leaving the I-395 Center Leg (
Likewise, the north end of the 11th Street Bridge[s] would connect to 11th Street but no SE Freeway.
The Barney Circle Connector project, which was declared politically dead by D.C. non-voting U.S. Represenative Eleanor Holms Norton in March 1996, is not shown.
Nor does it show anything regarding the two unsightly large RR corridors that tri-sect NE.
Nor does it say anything about the future of the Whitehurst Freeway or the K Street corridor
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