Batshit Crazy Virginia Politician of the Day
That would be Delegate and Republican senatorial candidate Bob Marshall of Prince William County. Today, on WTOP’s Politics Program With Mark Plotkin, Marshall was a guest, and Plotkin asked what he, as the junior senator from Virginia, could do to help Virginia’s notorious transportation problems.
Volunteered Marshall, I’d build I-95 through D.C.
Let’s set aside for a moment that Marshall is proposing building a potentially six-or-more lane freeway through a jurisdiction he would not have been elected to represent. And let’s ignore the billions of dollars it would cost. Maybe even we can forget that such a road would, if not destroy their homes and parkland, disrupt the lives of hundreds of District and Maryland residents for years. And we’ll even forget this would have unproven effects of Virginia traffic. How ’bout the fact the people stopped this more than three decades ago and no credible proposal for an inner-city highway has been proposed in D.C.—or virtually anywhere else in America—since.
The way portrayed it, Marshall said it would simply be a matter of dusting off plans prepared in the early 1970s, and in fact proposed doing so to former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening and former Mayor Marion Barry some years ago. The excellent Web site Roads to the Future describes what those plans entailed:
If I-95 had been completed according to the original plans, it would have continued from the Center Leg to north of New York Avenue, and it would have junctioned the North Leg of the Inner Loop, turned east, and followed the North Leg, which would have paralleled the New York Avenue corridor, about a block to the north of it. At the B&O Railroad corridor (today’s CSX Transportation), I-95 would have turned northward as the North Central Freeway, following the railroad corridor to beyond the Brookland area, being tunneled (cut and cover) for 3/4 mile from south of Rhode Island Avenue to north of Michigan Avenue, then leaving the railroad corridor at Fort Totten Park, heading northeast into Maryland as the Northeast Freeway, passing west of Hyattsville and College Park before junctioning I-495 at the I-95/I-495 interchange that was completed in 1971. I-95 would have had 10 lanes on the North Leg and North Central Freeway, and 8 lanes on the Northeast Freeway.
Plotkin seemed as taken aback at the idea as LL, and he asked Marshall to confirm that he was in fact proposing pushing a freeway through the middle of residential Washington.
Marshall confirmed he was, “along with a corridor for light rail, correct,” he said.
Oh, light rail (along a corridor already served by Metro’s Red and Green lines)—it’s all good, then, Bob.
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2:39 pm
OK, we can agree that that idea is crazy, but the current situation isn’t much better. 395 just sort of ends right at NY Ave. I don’t fully see the purpose of 395 anyway. I say tear the whole thing up after the Senate exits and build on top of it. It creates a huge scar between Union Station and Judiciary Square.
3:10 pm
Well, Reid, there are air rights to that huge scar held until recently by old Barry crony Conrad Monts, who held those rights since 1988 and never did anything with them. The District has tried to get them back over the years.
As far as it dead-ending at NY Avenue, if you look at the Roads to the Future site, 395 as it is was meant to be a “center leg” in a system with unbuilt north, east, and west legs (it’s still referred to as the “Center Leg Expressway: by many today). The center leg would have connected to an expressway out NEW York Ave to US 50 and the B-W Parkway. An expressway more or less following the B&O Metropolitan line would swing up toward Brookland and beyond and the Southeast/Southwest Freeway would swing up around RFK past Kingman Park and and connect to that
Luckily—IMHO—those plans were scrapped in the 1970s around the time when folks realized the benefits of urban expressways weren’t worth the costs in terms of what they did to neighborhoods. Various expressways proposed over the years would have destroyed parts of today’s Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, Brookland, Kingman Park, Trinidad, and other neighborhoods.
4:18 pm
What I meant is that so long as 395 doesn’t attach up through to the beltway, it doesn’t have a point. I realize that all those hill staffers filling those surface parking lots with Virginia-licensed cars cherish 395, at least up to E St. But that stretch from E to NY Ave. ought to be removed, or at least built over.
I didn’t know about the Barry crony. Is that the same one that sat on 7th st. for a decade without doing anything? At least when Jemal sits on a site for a decade he normally actually does something. Eventually.
5:04 pm
I bet you also want the Whitehurst Freeway torn down.
It sure is a good thing that certain people aren’t in charge of our city’s transportation plans.
5:12 pm
Hmm. Don’t recall if that was Monts.
I use the stretch north of E to shave a few minutes off trips uptown esp when coming from the east. I think the plan all along has been to build over it, at least the section you note between E and Mass Ave.
5:22 pm
Actually, yeah, I say bring down the Whitehurst–study it anyway. It makes what should be a vibrant waterfront area dark and uninviting and I think the effect on crosstown travel times wouldn’t be drastic if the traffic were dumped down onto a rebuilt K Street—which the city might have determined had it completed its study of the matter. Thing about the Whitehurst is that at times other than rush hour it’s virtually empty.
7:55 pm
“The way portrayed it, Marshall said it would simply be a matter of dusting off plans prepared in the early 1970s, and in fact proposed doing so to former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening and former Mayor Marion Barry some years ago.”
The best part about this is that Barry was one of the people who helped stop the DC interstate proposals back in the 70’s and Glendening is nationally famous as a smart-growth (and thus, anti-urban highway) leader. Just imagine how they would respond to Marshall.
I still like Mike Huckabee’s idea to solve traffic congestion the best from one of the Republican debates: just add a lane to I-95 in each direction, for its entire length. That would stop congestion in its tracks.
Are these people serious!?
11:34 pm
“I bet you also want the Whitehurst Freeway torn down.
It sure is a good thing that certain people aren’t in charge of our city’s transportation plans.”
Funny how you chose to defend two roads that disproportionately benefit non-District residents. Perhaps you shouldn’t be calling it “our” city.
Besides, for the record I think the Whitehurst is fine the way it is. The reason the Georgetown waterfront is atrocious has nothing to do with the Whitehurst. It’s because the waterfront is atrocious. Fix the actual waterfront itself, and then we’ll see if the Whitehurst has anything to do with it’s lack of success.
10:23 am
with unlimited money, i would say build a really long road tunnel underneath NY ave that would connect to 395 underneath mass ave, with the other portal coming out of the ground east of the florida ave. intersection. it would allow the people who are commuting through to bypass the area, leaving it less cogested for those of us who actually live there…