Cosmobile Cosmopolitan Transport

Trump Should Call for Inquiry into Tunnel Blockage

2011-12-15T19:01:00.005-05:00

Donald Trump shows an interest in infrastructure.

So why does not he call for an inquiry into the virtual stop upon the proposed Cross Sound Tunnel that came with the N.Y. Governor Eliot Spitzer sex scandal?

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2010/07/was-ny-gov-spitzer-felled-for.html

Likewise he should be speaking out against the Obama Administration's contempt for long term planning, lagging behind other nations:

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2011/12/us-decline-under-obama-bqe-eis-stopped.html

After all, both the Cross Sound Tunnel and Brooklyn-Queens Expressway are within N.Y., and Trump himself is a New Yorker...

U.S. Decline Under Obama- BQE EIS Stopped

2011-12-04T23:31:00.000-05:00

Officials cancel EIS for needed BQE I-287 reconstruction.

Apparently, the Democratic Party takes the region for granted. This segment of I-278 is New York Long Island's sole continuous interstate highway route to the west that bypasses Manhattan, yet somehow its modernization is not compelling to the Obama Administration?

Borough President Marty Markowitz- “While I understand that budgets are facing deep cuts, the decision of NYSDOT and the FHWA (Federal Highway Association) to terminate the EIS studies on the Gowanus and BQE expressways is an insult to Brooklyn and New York City. By postponing their replacement by a generation or more, poor service will continue on these critical roadways and the millions of New Yorkers who travel them every year or live in proximity will suffer.”http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=47766

Meanwhile, Germany is to Widen and Cover its A7

http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/german-autobahn-covered-giant-public-park.html

Although the article mentions six lanes being covered, the video shows this freeway widened to 4-5 lanes, with covered segment intelligently utilizing the now existing sloped embankment space.

Perhaps some politicians shall make this an issue?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/01/claire-mccaskill-afghanistan-infrastructure_n_1121565.html?ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=120111&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NewsEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

Sweden- We Do Urban Freeways Right

2011-10-10T16:14:00.000-04:00

from CP Zilliacius:

In Sweden they could say “We do urban freeways right!”

The Southern Link motorway, part of a fairly tight circumference “beltway” around Stockholm, opened some years ago.

The western side (mostly not underground, extremely busy) has been open for decades.

Now they are building the Northern Link (the Eastern Link is left, and that’s in planning and preliminary engineering).

Southern Link on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B6dra_l%C3%A4nken

Northern Link (being built now):

Handout (in English):
http://www.trafikverket.se/PageFiles/52050/Norra%20lanken%20A4-broschyr_eng_webb.pdf (.pdf, 3.73 MB)

Environmental mitigation (also English):

http://www.trafikverket.se/PageFiles/52035/Milj%C3%B6n%20i%20fokus-2010-GB_mindre.pdf (.pdf, 4 MB)

The Boondoggle of the Westway Opposition

2011-09-22T00:01:00.000-04:00

More controversy in N.Y. over 1.2 billion (1975 figure) 2.3 billion (1981 figure) Westway Highway Project than the continuing mega boondoggle of the drug war; for the sake of a mere $1.7 billion for mass transit out of $30 billion claimed by anti-Westway Straphangers Capaign

Remember the late 1970s and early 1980s in New York City controversy over Westway?

It was to replace Manhattan's geometrically obsolete elevated West Side Highway with a modern highway tunnel within new landfill; it was to have an outboard configuration, that was found to be the most cost effective via construct-ability, and would have provided the added benefit of extending Manhattan's streetgrid an additional block west - building upon a tradition of doing so dating back to the 1600s: providing new waterfront parkland and developable lots bring in revenue via the sales and perpetually via property taxes.

North of 29th Street, Westway would have been elevated upon the existing West Side Highway/12th Avenue right of way, sparing the existing docks northward alongside the Javits Convention Center to the vicinity of 57th Street, connecting north to the 9A Henry Hudson Parkway- with its I-478 interstate highway designation and mixed with truck traffic no further then 57th Street.

Westway was to be funded by the Federal government.

Westway would have maintained the traffic light free 3x3 mainline West Side Highway in the way best facilitating local-pedestrian access to the waterfront, of a tunnelway. Though further facilitating likewise the further densification of Manhattan -- think about the many new condos, many with their own new private automobiles -- Westway would merely maintain the existing 3/3 configuration, with extra pavement only for ramp access, safety shoulders and bringing the lanes to the 12 foot standard to ease truck traffic.

Other cities have adopted this general concept of enclosing riverfront freeways into enclosed tunnels and free up the space above for waterfront pedestrian access.

So one might ask- how did Westway get so villified?

NY-NJ Cash Tolls Now $12

2011-09-21T00:49:00.002-04:00

A 50% increase from $8 to cross the Hudson River.

EZ Pass users pay $9.50.

This is less then the $15 and $12 cash/EZ Pass proposal of the previous month.

Yet not a single additional lane since the construction of the lower deck of the GW Bridge a half century ago!

NY-NJ Toll- Fares to Steeply Increase in region with far too few major infrastructure projects

2011-08-06T01:52:00.007-04:00

Public hearing scheduled for August 16-

public should demand additional crossings, new RR tunnels, Lincoln & Holland Tunnel Augmentation, Cross County Bridge to New Jersey, and expedited Cross Sound Link and Cross Brooklyn-Harbor Tunnels*

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/nyregion/port-authority-proposes-steep-toll-and-path-increases.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey proposed its steepest toll increase in modern memory on Friday, unveiling a plan that would raise the cost of crossing the tunnels and bridges that span the Hudson River by 50 percent for most drivers and raise the price of a monthly PATH train pass by 65 percent.

E-ZPass users would see a jump from $8 to $12 at peak hours on the three major Hudson River crossings — the George Washington Bridge and the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels — as well as three other bridges between New Jersey and Staten Island. Drivers who pay with cash would be charged $7 more, or $15 a trip, making the toll one of the highest in the country.

The provenance of the larger-than-expected proposed increases was mysterious. The two men who control the agency, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, issued a statement saying they shared “obvious and significant concerns” about the proposal.

But privately, the Cuomo administration signed off on the plan within the past week, according to two sources familiar with internal discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering administration officials. The agency had been planning for months to impose a $2 toll increase. The $4 proposal caught agency officials off guard.

Asked whether Governor Cuomo had pushed for the $4 increase, a spokesman, Josh Vlasto, responded, “That’s not true.” But he would not elaborate on the discussions or the governor’s view of the proposal.

“There is nothing more to say,” Mr. Vlasto said.

Of course, governors often like to step in and halt unpopular increases and fees, and proposals to raise Port Authority tolls tend to start a familiar political dance: the agency puts forward a bracing plan, the public reacts angrily, and governors relish the role of advocate for the overburdened commuter. Usually, a more reasonable compromise is reached.

A public hearing on the proposal is expected to be held on Aug. 16, and the Port Authority’s board of commissioners will consider the new tolls and fares at a meeting this month.

If the board votes for the plan, both governors would have 10 days during which they could veto the increases.

The board and the Port Authority’s top administrative staff members are entirely selected by the two governors, and few decisions at the agency, which controls many of the region’s bridges, tunnels, shipping ports and airports, are made without some form of consultation with Albany and Trenton.

The Port Authority, which receives all of its revenue through tolls and fees, has seen its budget wither from the poor economy, which has reduced the number of drivers on its crossings, and the siphoning off of funds for nonagency projects.

After Governor Christie decided last year to end an ambitious plan for another train tunnel under the Hudson because of its cost, he successfully pushed the agency to redistribute $1.8 billion of the money it had earmarked for the project instead to be used for road and highway repairs in New Jersey.

Some regional transportation advocates endorsed the toll increases on Friday, saying the additional revenue was sorely needed for major infrastructure projects. But critics said drivers and PATH riders would not be asked to make such large sacrifices if the agency’s budget had not been raided.

“This increase is not surprising given the financial pressure” put on the agency, said Kate Slevin, executive director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. And some New Jersey politicians said the big increases were a way for Mr. Christie, who has sworn off tax increases, to squeeze revenue from the commuting public.

“If you say you’re not going to raise taxes on anybody to fund transportation, it’s disingenuous to take money from the Port Authority and have them raise tolls, and act as if you’re not responsible,” said Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski, Democratic chairman of the State Assembly’s transportation committee. The toll increase, he said, “is Chris Christie’s toll increase.”

Under the proposal, a single fare on the PATH train, the diminutive commuter subway system that connects parts of Manhattan to New Jersey, would be raised $1, to $2.75 a ride.

The price of a 30-day unlimited pass for the PATH system would be raised by 65 percent, to $89 from $54 a month.

The proposal calls for the crossing tolls to be raised again in 2014, with an increase of $2 for drivers. The PATH fare would not be raised again in 2014, under the current proposal.

Revenue from this year’s increases would generate an additional $720 million for the agency. The second phase of increases, in 2014, would raise $290 million.

Michael Barbaro contributed reporting

---

* Best done without new general taxes and without the continuing mega boondoggle of the cigarette-pharma mercantilism drug war.

NY Times Phony Pro Automobile Slant

2011-07-03T21:24:00.008-04:00

"Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy"
one sided reporting sustaining the misconception that European cities are against spending money to accomodate automobile traffic, such as reporting on efforts to remove freeways but not those to construct them underground

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/science/earth/27traffic.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4&hp
excerpt

“In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving,” said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. “Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.”

To that end, the municipal Traffic Planning Department here in Zurich has been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers. Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the city’s ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.

Around Löwenplatz, one of Zurich’s busiest squares, cars are now banned on many blocks. Where permitted, their speed is limited to a snail’s pace so that crosswalks and crossing signs can be removed entirely, giving people on foot the right to cross anywhere they like at any time.

As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, the city’s chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. “Driving is a stop-and-go experience,” he said. “That’s what we like! Our goal is to reconquering public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers.”

The New York Times selectively ignores examples to the contrary, of European cities with significant projects to modernize and bury important express highways. Rather it sets the stage of taking out portions of the road network:

“There were big fights over whether to close this road or not — but now it is closed, and people got used to it,” he said, alighting from his bicycle on Limmatquai, a riverside pedestrian zone lined with cafes that used to be two lanes of gridlock. Each major road closing has to be approved in a referendum.

This is entirely consistent with the 'mainstream' aka organized-funded 'environmentalist' organizations, and internet media outlets, which will obsess over the freeway removal projects such as that in South Korea, though not mention the Madrid project- a notable example of this was the June 1 NY Times article about an effort in Mexico City citing the Korea project but curiously not that in Madrid.

This is a strict loyalty to a doctrine that we simply can not afford to spend more on infrastructure overall, that we can only do a zero sum game of shifting the funding from one type of infrastructure to another- and dare not even consider the WHY behind this budget constraint of continuing distraction from the overspending on military solutions, starting with that cigarette-pharama racketeering scheme of the $1/5+ trillion a year 'drug war'.

A Conversation with the Self-Centered "Cap'n Transit"

2011-06-03T00:01:00.000-04:00

http://capntransit.blogspot.com/2011/05/swinging-with-pendulum.html

[excerpt]

Douglas A. Willinger said...
"... bring down the Tappan Zee, the Kosciuszko, the Goethals and the Pulaski"

Ahhh. Guilt out the impressionable young college studnest to believe that technology is static, that the are no alternatives to petro, and increase conjestion, and pollution by taking out valuable river crossings -- including a non contigious BQE?

It's a great way to dumb down the public to accept the obscene Pentagon- an entity that does not care a rats's ass about roads, evacuation routes nor civil defense.

Take out the Tappan Zee- and leave NO road links accross the Hudson River between the GW Bridge and Bear Mountain with its attrocious Westchester approach roads.

May 8, 2011 11:32 PM
Cap'n Transit said...
Yeah, that's about what it boils down to, Doug. Except that I do believe we should replace that lost road capacity with rail capacity.

In your worldview there is no induced demand. Who's dumbing down the public?

By the way, Doug, are you here to have an actual discussion where you listen to what other people say, or will I have to delete your comments?

May 8, 2011 11:47 PM
Douglas A. Willinger said...
How are you serving rail by eliminating the Tappan Zee Bridge crossing, rather then including rail in the replacement spans?

That would be more anti-highway than pro transit: a conclusion I likewise have, in a mirror image version, with - alas -- Reason and CATO

They spend their efforts decrying rail. But they DON'T promote the needed highway links (such as I-287 to 135 Long Island Sound Crossing and Cross Brooklyn-Bay Tunnel), nor Washington, D.C.'s incompleted I-395 at NY Ave. [Though to their credit they at least give some lip service for ending some aspects of the cigarette mercantilism].

IMHO it's no accident that the lamestream jesuitical 'intelligensia'that gets many people to support ideals to serve fewer people, serving existing technologies.

May 13, 2011 3:17 PM

Cap'n Transit said...
You're not getting it, Doug. I'm not serving rail. Either rail is serving my goals or it's not.

May 15, 2011 12:33 AM
Post a Comment

TSTC Shortsightedness on N.Y.'s Tappan Zee

2011-06-02T00:00:00.000-04:00

Writes letter to Gov Elect Cuomo asking to scale back the Tappan Zee Bridge Project, including deleting the rail component.

http://blog.tstc.org/2010/12/23/an-open-letter-to-governor-elect-cuomo/
excerpt

On the capital side, the next Governor should also support the LIRR third track project (key for Long Islanders to reap the benefits of East Side Access) and plans for bus rapid transit in the Tappan Zee Bridge/I-287 corridor. Additionally, plans for Tappan Zee Bridge replacement could be scaled down and proceed without the commuter rail connection from Rockland to NYC. Most commuters using the Tappan Zee are travelling to suburban destinations, not ending their trips in Manhattan, so the bus rapid transit connection, which provides much greater utility at the most affordable cost, should be retained.

"Scaling back", without stressing modularity of design -- aka a design allowing components to be added in seperate stages -- for such a major corridor is simply asinine.

The project should include the rail component from Suffern to Tarrytown, with the design permitting a future extension to White Plains and Portchester, and eventually, via the proposed Cross Sound Tunnel, to Long Island and ultimately Jones Beach. Such would be extremely sensible later addition, for serving future desification-redevelopment of the I-287 Cross Westchester Expressway's numerous office parks, which would significently add potential risership.

Likewise, the project should include a barriar seperated 'busway' designed to be expandable to a minimum of two lanes in each direction, given the economics of scale (the 'busway' like any other seperate carriageway requires its own ramps), and serving as a seperate express truckway- more effectively providing additional east-west road capacity where it's scarce, and the ability to better seperate types of traffic.

The twin configuration variant with the best modularity of design
Indeeed, I-287 is Westchester County's sole east-west interstate highway, and one of two of the county's east-west freeways: the other, the Cross County Parkway does not permit trucks -- hence the 'parkway' designation -- and is missing its extensions east of the Hutchinson River Parkway and west of the Saw Mill River Parkway, let alone any bridge or tunnel connections to Long Island or New Jersey. A third planned east-west freeway -- the Bear Mountain Parkway, remains significently unbuilt, despite the proximity of the Indian Point nuclear power station.

Meanwhile, the two closest completed east-west interstate links are I-84 to the north and the heavily used and most difficult to widen I-95 George Washington Bridge/ Trans Manhattan Expressway/ Cross Bronx Expressway.

As the mid-point between I-95 and I-84, I-287 continues to the west of the Hudson River, yet currently has its eastern terminus at I-95 in Portchester/Rye, and currentl lacks a continuation to Long Island- now proposed in the form of the Cross Sound Tunnel. Yet despite the clear need for additional capacity upon the Westchester approach roads, there appears to be a lack of planning for improving the approaches to this new tunnel in Westchester

That the 'mainstream' organizations would rather chip away at a vitally important project for improving regionally scarce east-west high speed road capcity, including adding that which does not yet exist- the rail component, with not a word about designing to add other components later with minimal wasteful demolition (a strange and curious disregard), let alone dare suggest other projects to place less of a reletove burden upon the I-95 Cross Bronx Expressway, speaks volumes about these organization's nature as part of a broader effort to acclimatize people to expect less butter, and more security theater state, cigarette-pharma market protection 'drug war' nonsense.

Mexico To Ignore Madrid For Seoul?

2011-06-01T15:28:00.002-04:00

This does have space for a set of cut and cover tunnels

Mexico City has a river lined with roads that activists want to re-work into a more pedestrian friendly corridor.

Yet today's New York Times article fails to mention any consideration of Madrid, Spain's acclaimed project that placed the roads underground, instead maintaining the traffc flow all upon the surface- despite its superiority and that Mexico was established by Spainish people.

Instead, these activists are presenting the model of a project in Seoul, Korea which replaced a 4 lane elevated freeway and 10 lane surface road that had been built over a covered stream, with the stream uncovered and restored, but with no underground roadways to increase accessibility for the largest number of people.

Take Out Manhattan's East River Drive?

2011-05-29T03:24:00.000-04:00

http://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/munshisouth10/group-projects/east-river/future/

excerpt

Currently, the Carl Schurz Park is separated from the bountiful waters of the East River, which it was once connected to in the past. In between the Park and the water lies the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive – commonly known as the FDR Drive. It forms the line of demarcation between the interior of the East Side and the East River, running approximately nine and a half miles long. Two layers of the FDR separate the Carl Schurz Park from the East River: the northbound FDR lanes the on the middle layer, and the southbound FDR lanes on the bottom layer, with the park itself on the top layer. Although the parkway is a necessary facet of the area, and serves a vital purpose for commuters, it also has several harmful polluting effects on the park and its the species. Therefore, our proposed idea is to redirect the Parkway away from the park, so that it can once again be joined with the aquatic environment and species that it has previously been joined with in the past. Reconnecting the park to the waterfront could return it to a more natural state.

Models for Reconnection:

Cheonggye Freeway, South Korea: In the 1970s, the Cheonggye River in Seoul, Korea, was covered and a road and elevated freeway were built over it. By the year 2000, the area became one of the most congested and noisy parts of Seoul. IT was decided that the freeway would have to be removed in order to combat these issues, as well as stimulate the economy. Freeway demolition began in June, 2003 and was completed in September, 2003. Stream restoration began in July, 2003 and was completed in September, 2005. In March, 2003, Seoul began constructing its first Bus Rapid Transit line, which serves the route of the freeway and is designed to accommodate the drivers of the 120,000 cars that used the road every day. It was completed in June, 2003, at the same time the freeway was closed.

The Korea project was about demolishing an elevated 4 lane freeway, and its flanking 5 lane service surface roads, and uncovering the stream that had been previously paved over.

It is IMHO unwise to come to too many conclusions about the Cheonggye Freeway removal's transport utility without finding any before and after maps (only finding before and after pictures about the obvious that the project made the place much prettier and infinitely more pedestrian friendly).

However, the East River Drive, otherwise known as the FDR Drive is Manhattan's sole remaining full north-south freeway, with the parallel West Side Highway no longer filling the colloquially accepted definition of such with the post Westway defeatism consigning that corridor’s vehicular traffic to traffic lights south of 57th Street.

It's a telling indication where this nation is headed when the universities and the foundation type entities are supporting such nonsense to waste countless person-hours while increasing pedestrian-vehicular conflict, rather than the truly progressive type projects as recently completed in Madrid, Spain.

Madrid, Spain Reclaims Riverfront

2011-05-21T19:08:00.000-04:00

Madrid Big Dig - Proyecto Madrid Rio
Buries M-30 beneath new parks along Madrid's Manzanares River

An interesting project I have NOT seen on any of the mainstream blogs such as Streetsblog nor the Infrastructuralist in conformity to the elitist doctrinaire bias for removing freeways -

Indeed, explore Madrid to see how the cookie-cutter 'environmentalist' and 'new urbanist' entities continually *pretend* that freeways and grade seperation don't fit within urban environments.

Elements

1. Construction of a new 4 kilometer tunnel along the river banks
2. Construction of a new 3.8 kilometer tunnel in the northern intersection
3. Renovation of all intersections with national highways
4. Creation of 6 new exits and access routes along the ring
5. Construction of a 6 kilometer by-pass tunnel connecting the east and west sides of the city

The M 30 had been build decades earlier.

This project was not simply covering the existing M 30, but rather digging it down, and not only for the M 30 but for connecting routes, such as tthat from the southwest.

It was reported at
http://www.landezine.com/index.php/2011/04/madrid-rio-by-west8-urban-design-landscape-architecture/

The ambitious plan by Madrid’s mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón to submerge a section of the M30 ring motorway immediately adjacent to the old city centre within a tunnel was realised within a single term of office. The city undertook infrastructure measures over a total length of 43 kilometres, six of them along the banks of the River Manzanares, at a total cost of six billion Euro. West 8 together with a group of renowned architects from Madrid, united under the name MRIO arquitectos led by Ginés Garrido Colomero designed the master plan for Madrid RIO.

In 2005, an invited international competition was announced. The proposal submitted by West8 and MRIO for the design of the reclaimed area above the tunnel was the only submission to resolve the urban situation exclusively by means of landscape architecture. The design is founded on the idea »3 + 30« – a concept which proposes dividing the 80 hectare urban development into a trilogy of initial strategic projects that establish a basic structure which then serves as a solid foundation for a number of further projects, initiated in part by the municipality as well as by private investors and residents. A total of 47 subprojects with a combined total budget of 280 million Euros have since been developed, the most important of which include: the Salón de Pinos, Avenida de Portugal, Huerta de la Partida, Jardines de Puente de Segovia, Jardines de Puente de Toledo, Jardines de la Virgen del Puerto and the Parque de la Arganzuela. In addition to the various squares, boulevards and parks, a family of bridges were realised that improve connections between the urban districts along the river. The first subprojects were realised in spring 2007. The realization of the whole project is planned for spring 2011.

Continuing BS Artists Against 'Big Dig West'

2011-05-15T00:24:00.000-04:00

The Sierra Club anti environmentalists are at it contiunually.

People think of them as about protecting wildernesses.

Yet when it comes to projects allowing and reconciling greater amounts of human activity within a given developed footprint- this is where they instead go the other way. DON'T build ANY new vehicular road capacity. Especially grade seperated, including tunneled.

This is a strategy of employing simple slogans to stir emotions and a disregard of any facts that would be seen as insane applied anywhere else.

For instance "Big Dig West', regarding Seattle's planned Route 99 Tunnel, conjuring up night mare visions of construction and operationable disasters, ignoring variable of construction let alone such basic things as featherbedded non competitive bid contracts, shoddy concrete, and some highly questionble design details, such as a guardrail design, say upon a right turning curved ramp, to sever people's arms, and worse, dropped ceiling of 6000lb concrete panels relying upon mere adhesive with its extremely unforgiving narrow window of acceptable curing conditions.

Are we suposed to think that such matters are unique to the Boston CAT Project, nor not matters of concern with anything else? Shoddy construction and contracting OK with say rail projects and transit oriented development?

Shoddy arguments abound with the Sierra Club arguments:

1. It lacks exits. True, though the tunnel would serve as 2/2 or 3/3 express lanes of a Route 99 with an express/local 'split', with the tunnel's parallelling local lanes being the new Alaska Way waterfront boulevard.

2. It encourages driving. Yes, allowing and reconcling greater human activity within a given developed footprint. It does not stop the development of transit and transit oriented development.

3. It encourages the production of more greenhouse gasses. It might do that, though that hardly need mean the release of such gasses into the general atmosphere, because even though a free-flowing road without traffic lights allowing more traffic, it is also a great way with the tunnel enclosure to concentrate and collect such gases for producing algae fuel.

The Sierra Club alternative of no vehicular tunnel, all vehicular traffic on the surface might well produce just as much- conceivably with fewer autos, but more stop-start events- think of wasted time & fuel and far greater vehicular - pedestrian conflict, and of course a 100% release of such gasses produced into the general atmosphere.

Accompanying this are ideas that are either in their own right commendable, such as more transit, and others that are not thought out to their feasibility. A particularly egregious example being the idea of improving Seattle's parallelling I-5- sure some extra lanes would be nice, but how do they fit beneath Seattle I-95's downtown Freeway Park?

Has anyone instead looked at the idea of a 99 Tunnel with greater capacity, with a larger bore (2 levels as planned but with 3 lane plus a shoulder rather then the planned 2 lanes plus shoulder in each direction), with planning for a future parallel tube with connections to serve as an express I-5 relief route? Drilling bored tunnels beneath Seattle is going to be infinitely less destruptive and a greater value then propping up Freeway Park as downtown Seattle I-5 is widened. The no 99 Tunnel, add lanes to parallel Seatle I-5, idea combination disregard feasibility and bang per buck.

Of course we have the standard doctrine.

But that just happens to serve petroleum by convincing people that there are simly NO alternative, we must tightern our belw while the elites don't.

Must punishing people for the sins of the elites be "environmentalist", or rather elitist?

Streetsblog Pretends there are too many new vehicular road projects

2011-05-03T12:58:00.000-04:00

Where the highways are not simply falling apart, but most were never even built.

http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/05/03/mayors-rebel-against-state-mandated-highway-expansion-fight-for-transit/

“but the fact of the matter is when you look at how our dollars are deployed at the state level they’re deployed in a fashion that is inconsistent with where jobs are and where the economy is created.” That was fine was the U.S. was the world’s incomparable economic superpower, but we need to be more thoughtful with our spending these days, he said.

Beware these foundations from Washington, D.C., Manhattan, nor San Francisco, that claim that we have too many new urban road projects- they are about keeping the roads away from key properties and promoting the myth that there are no alternatives to petro via the 'white van' scapegoating of freeways- all for the devious distraction embodied in the above quote, from the obscene spending on the military and upon cigarette pharama mercantilism (the criminal drug war).

If they are that out of touch with reality regarding their locality, how can they continue to gather so much trust?

Granted there are many gullible college students ...

CO2 Capture from Vehicular Tunnels for Algae Fuel

2011-04-30T14:40:00.000-04:00

Carbon T.A.P. Tunnel Algae Park

http://americancity.org/buzz/entry/2976/

Intriguing concept for vehicular traffic tunnel CO2 filtration, capturing it for algae fuel production, presented by Christopher Marcinkoski.

Tunnel Plan Still Submerged

2011-03-07T15:34:00.001-05:00

– By Peter Jovanovich –

With much fanfare late last year, the Long Island commercial developer Polimeni LLC. floated the idea of building a tunnel from Long Island to Westchester, terminating in Rye. To date, the plan has caused barely a ripple in Albany or on Wall Street.

“We’re shopping the project around,” says Michael Polimeni, the point person for the proposed 16-mile tollway under the Sound. He acknowledges, however, the so-called “Cross Sound Link Tunnel” has received no response from any of the executive departments in Albany, such as the Department of Transportation or the Department of Environmental Conservation.

“Realistically,” says Polimeni, “this project only gets off the ground with top-level support from Governor Spitzer.” When contacted last week by the paper, a press spokesman from the Governor’s Office offered “no comment” on the tunnel proposal, saying that this appeared to be a private matter.

As for Wall Street, where the investors in the project would need to raise at least $9-10 billion, Polimeni said that Bear Stearns was “quite comfortable about raising the money once there was regulatory approval.”

What are the prospects of getting approval to dig a tunnel under Long Island Sound? The Rye Record contacted one of the leading project finance experts in the country, and asked his opinion, on background, of the financial feasibility of the tunnel idea.

“If you are 50 or older, you can stop worrying about the tunnel,” said this Wall Street veteran. “You’ll be gone before it’s dug, if ever.” In this expert’s view, the regulatory obstacles are almost insurmountable. Getting approval, and fighting through lawsuits at every turn, would take as long as two decades and tens of millions of dollars – with no assurance of victory.

Long Island State Senator Carl Marcellino plans to hold a hearing on the project in Oyster Bay January 24, post press time. But, as yet, not one of the “powers that be” in Albany has voiced any support for the Cross Sound Link Tunnel. That prospect, according to a source in the Executive Branch, is “highly unlikely.”

Some Highly Needed Freeway Projects: U.S.A.

2011-02-28T15:05:00.000-05:00

all new crossings

Cross Sound Tunnel- New York, Westchester County I-287 to Suffox County (Long Island). Proposed as a triple tube (3 lanes each outboard tube; middle tube for emergency access: modified proposal to increase center tube bore for additional lower level railway; added modication to also increase outboard tube bore for 3 lanes atop and 2 below) VITAL potential evacuation route. Although bored rather then cut and cover, it detours unneccessarily to the east of Oyster Bay, yet is apparantly politcally sabataged- aka the scandal of 'Emperors Club' client #9 NYS Gov Spitzer (with scant mention of any other 'emperor' clients!)

Cross Bay/Cross Brooklyn Tunnel- New Jersey I-78 to and through Brooklyn via the LIRR Bay Ridge to Conduit Boulvard- Upgraded Beltway Parkway Corridor. Combines and upgrades the railway only Cross Bay Tunnel with the cancelled Linear City concept. VITAL potential evacuation route

St Louis I-70 Bridge- vital though hardly requires eliminating grade seperation near Arch. St Louis needs to extend the depressed current I-70 alongside the stadium --requiring it to duck beneath the --- RR, which is why its now elevated

Urban Road Tunnels

Atlanta East Tunnel

Chicago Crosstown- not being proposed as a tunnel, but why not?

San Francisco 19th Street Corridor Tunnel

San Francisco Central Freeway-Octavia Boulevard Bypass Tunnel

San Francisco Embaradero Tunnel

Washington, D.C. Grand Arc-Eastern Star Tunnel- PEPCO I-95 & Downtown Tunnel Loop

Washington, D.C. Wisconsin Avenue Tunnel- Canal Road Duelization- yes let us not forget west of Rock Creek Park

Urban Freeway Reconstructions

New York City:

I-87 Deegan Expressway- expand to 8 lanes minimum (6 lanes as it crosses beneath I-95), each 12 feet wide, with the idea of relieving the I-95 Cross Bronx Expressway by encourging some shift to the Deegan, including for trucks to Hunts Point and Queens, as well as to the north, with expansion via the parallel abandoned railroad and strip of industrial land, with an expansion of the decking to entirely cover, with some additional capacity overall. Project would include a new waterfront cut and cover tunnel perhaps built incrimentally ala Cincinatti Fort Washington Way in the vicinity of Cromwell Avenue, with a new underground southbound ramp crossing beneath 238th Street (eliminating a major traffic backup), as well as a depressing and covering the parkland segment just before the Bronx-Westchester County line, meeting the existing 6 lane I-87, with the 4th lanes connecting to the service roads. Should be a part of the NYDOT project to reconstruct the Highbridge Interchange/Hamilton Bridge, extended to include a reopening of the 178th and 179th Street Tunnels for relieving the I-95 Trans Manhattan Expressway as passages for Manhattan west side bound traffic.

I-87's Plausible Continuation

Improve the Triborough ('RFK) Bridge Queens approach to interstate specifications with 12 foot lanes, 4 in each direction, with new retaining walls mimicking the 1930s design of the originals, in tandem with the other projects for so improving the entire I-278 Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, including a new 10 lane K Bridge, and new tunnels to augment capacity, such as this, and this, down to the Gowanus Expressway segment, crossing the new Cross Bay/ Cross Brooklyn Tunnel, and connecting with the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

I-678 Lower Van Wyck Expressway - southward from the Kew Gardens Interchange: expand to 8-10 lanes, with portions decked. Eliminate Robert Moses apsostsy from basic math via his planning for fewer numbers of lanes from more.

Rural Freeways

New Jersey I-95 to the southwestern I-287 for long distance traffic to go through rural wealthier area to more efficently bypass I-95 through Manhattan and the Bronx, serving to relieve the heavily used Cross Bronx Expressway (where are the environmental justice types at Jesuit Fordham University New Urbanist movement on this?)

What is wrong with the Pentagon?

2011-02-26T02:55:00.000-05:00

Highways and Railways are vitally important as lifelines of commerce and movement, with the U.S. Interstate Highway Act of 1956 establishing the network for purposes of DEFENSE

So what gives with the Pentagon's utter indifference for the nation's transportation corridors, and disregard of the principle of evacuation routes, undermined by the political dynamics of political scandal as distraction

Following September 11, 2001, lip service was given to the idea of improving evacuation route capacity, yet whatever happened even with the overly modest idea of a railway only tunnel connecting Brooklyn with New Jersey, let alone the more reaching, and ultimately multi-model Cross Sound Tunnel connecting Long Island Rt 135with Westchester's I-287 with supplementary rail?

Whatever happened to the post 911 idea of additional likely to be targeted areas evacuation route capacity?
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2007/10/whatever-happened-to-idea-of-additional.html

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

Homeland Security Would Be Better Served By Reviving D.C. I-270 & I-95 Northern Radial Super Arterials
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/homeland-security-goal-would-be-better.html

Was NY Gov Spitzer Felled for Supporting Cross Sound Tunnel?
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2010/07/was-ny-gov-spitzer-felled-for.html

February 24, 2011 Discussion at Greater, Greater Washington
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2011/02/feb-24-discussion-at-greater-greater.html

The Story of the blog "Commuter Outrage"
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2009/12/commuter-outrage-rip.html

Michelle Malkin- 'White is Black, Black is White' Inside the Beltway Conditioning to Blame Unions, Disregard Social-Economic Benifits

2011-02-21T03:32:00.001-05:00

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/09/08/the-mother-of-all-big-dig-boondoggles/#comments

President Obama calls his latest attempt to revive the economy a “Plan to Renew and Expand America’s Roads, Railways and Runways.” I’m calling it “The Mother of all Big Dig Boondoggles.” Like the infamous “Big Dig” highway spending project in Boston, this latest White House infrastructure spending binge guarantees only two results: Taxpayers lose; unions win.

As if the bidding process for the constrution contracts were a topic unworthy of mention, as she places the blame on 'unions' while defining broad civic benifit as unworthy of mention. M Malkin is a useful tool for the powers that be to have us expect less from our government, beyond more wars and more corruption.

Far worthier things written about Boston's CA/T Project are found on the internet, such as this:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/10/25/dont_blame_baker_for_big_dig/?comments=all&plckCurrentPage=1

I hate to bust a lot of bubbles in this foam about Charlie Baker and the Big Dig, but I was chronicling the Big Dig for a WGBH documentary series and then Directed a CPB Internet experiment in video narrow casting about it from 1990-1997.

My recollection goes like this-on camera everyone (Democrats and Republicans) said one thing regarding the cost and on occasion when the camera was still on and they didn't know it, they might say a few other things regarding the cost. And the estimates climbed every year. Basically it was a love fest and they were all giddy over 80%-92% federal money for each part of the work, the Democrats who were feeding the unions and the Republicans who were stuffing their fat cat contractor buddies and the owners of the utilities and communications companies.

Anyone who has driven anywhere outside of Massachusetts and anyone who ever sat in lines on the Tobin Bridge or coming from the south or west to Logan knows exactly why they were giddy-everyone else in the USA had gotten their share of federal highway dollars over the years and Massachusetts was finally getting in on the federal bucks. Meantime the Republicans were using the Dig to lay groundwork to break up the Turnpike patronage haven and the Democrats were getting political mileage for every cost overrun by Bechtel.

Clearly I have a bias from living on the North Shore. I think only two mistakes in addition to the shoddy work approvals that cost at least one life were made:

1. The whole Big Dig probably would have cost a lot less if we had shut down portions of Boston for 3 to 6 months and excavated the tunnels under the city, relocating utilities as needed. Of course that would have really POed the businesses, the residents, the contractors, the skilled building unions, the police detail unions and would not have stuffed any political pockets, so stupid me for even mentioning it.

2. Charlie Baker and Jim Kerasiotes should have submitted the required documentation to the Feds to put tolls on 93 north of the city and 93 south of the city as required by the feds before final project finance approval. Then, like New York, every major artery would have a toll into the city and the Commonwealth's portion of the Big Dig would have been paid for by people using the new highway system daily. Instead, money to cover the state's portion of the expenses has been sucked from every from bridge and pothole while the people south of Boston still turn their noses up at the commuter rail. If every commuter into Boston (93 N, 93S, Turnpike extension East and maybe even Storrow Drive east was paying $3.50 a day like we do on the Tobin Bridge or in the Ted Williams Tunnel, the Dig would have been paid off without burdening anyone's grandchildren.

So, Charlie Baker made some BIG Big Dig mistakes and he had lots of company, very strange bedfellows and was typically Republican in the process-taking care of the Fat Cat contractors and not caring if the ceiling falls on Marie's h - Dale Orlando

As well as this:

http://goodspeedupdate.com/2010/3007
...could the Big Dig have cost less?

Like any historical counterfactual, a definitive answer is impossible. However, much could be revealed through a detailed case study. What delays were avoidable? What complications did the engineers overlook? Is there any evidence cost estimates were deliberately manipulated? Should the partnership between the Turnpike Authority and Bechtel/Parsons Brinkerhoff been differently designed to improve accountability? Could the project’s 144 separate construction contracts have been written differently? Were Federal highway standards or environmental laws responsible for excessive costs? In short, could changes to the underlying public policy structure have resulted in different costs and construction time? To my knowledge, these questions have not been deeply examined by scholars. If any readers are aware of studies, please post them below.

The result may not be nefarious scheming by greedy contractors. In fact, scholar Bent Flyvbjerg has argued major causes of cost overruns are systematic under-estimation of costs due to political pressure, and a failure to properly account for the inevitable risks that occur as a result of the complexity of megaprojects.

Far from a matter of historical interest, the high cost of transportation infrastructure is a pressing policy issue in a state currently spending $3 billion re-build bridges and planning an extension of the city’s Green Line, among other proposed projects. The high cost of transportation projects was raised recently on an email list operated by the Somerville Transportation Equity Partnership, in a thread grousing about the $600,000 price for a bike cage and high cost estimates for the Green Line extension. The issue provoked a rare response from the Commonwealth’s Secretary of Transportation Jeffrey Mullan himself, who denied the costs were inflated or the bidding process is faulty. Although the message concedes “things cost a lot; unacceptably so sometimes,” the post omits any speculation as to why.

Perhaps one day the question will be subject to the scrutiny it deserves.- Rob Goodspeed

---

Indeed, I'll say, what about the fraternal order connections & featherbeading?

Anti Automobile Elitism Followed Anti Rail Elitism

2011-02-18T00:42:00.000-05:00

http://www.mrformansplanet.com/Index_files/WarAgainstCarDiCarlo.htm

(excerpt)

It's no coincidence that as soon as the automobile became affordable to the masses and ceased being a luxury good for the wealthy, the anti-car crowd swung into high gear. To them, the car is a symptom of an entire lifestyle they find objectionable: that is, mobility and choice for all. And, not surprisingly, the people they criticize tend to be people they have little in common with, who have no chance of becoming part of their social circles. One only has to conjure the names of environmental activists in Hollywood, such as Cameron Diaz or Laurie David--the wife of comedian and Seinfeld creator Larry David--to prove this point. To illustrate the snobbery of
anti-car elitists, car enthusiasts like to quote the Duke of Wellington, who at the advent of the railroad proclaimed the new technology would "only encourage the common people to move about needlessly."

Anti Car is Anti Transportation

2011-02-17T20:25:00.000-05:00

Anyone writing that they are against "Cars" is against transportation for just about everything, and a hallmark of the sort of brain dead group reaction where sloganeering substitutes for rational independent thought.

-------------
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/car

car (kär)
n.
1. An automobile.
2. A vehicle, such as a streetcar, that runs on rails: a railroad car.
3. A boxlike enclosure for passengers and freight on a conveyance: an elevator car.
4. The part of a balloon or airship that carries people and cargo.
5. Archaic A chariot, carriage, or cart.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Middle English carre, cart, from Old North French, from Latin carra, pl. of carrus, carrum, a Gallic type of wagon; see kers- in Indo-European roots.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
car [kɑː]
n
1. (Engineering / Automotive Engineering)
a. Also called motorcar automobile a self-propelled road vehicle designed to carry passengers, esp one with four wheels that is powered by an internal-combustion engine
b. (as modifier) car coat
2. a conveyance for passengers, freight, etc., such as a cable car or the carrier of an airship or balloon
3. (Transport / Railways) Brit a railway vehicle for passengers only, such as a sleeping car or buffet car
4. (Transport / Railways) Chiefly US and Canadian a railway carriage or van
5. Chiefly US the enclosed platform of a lift
6. a poetic word for chariot
[from Anglo-French carre, ultimately related to Latin carra, carrum two-wheeled wagon, probably of Celtic origin; compare Old Irish carr]

-----

Inadequate Barriars

2011-02-04T11:02:00.000-05:00

Video from Canada underscores the inadequacy of freeway center median dividers for heavy trucks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8BSK6DE2PM&feature=player_embedded

The Spin Against Westway and Fiscal - Social Responsibility

2011-01-08T22:30:00.000-05:00

Killing the goose that would lay the golden egg of a modern underground highway better controlling pollution, new parkland and development providing perpetual added property tax revenues, for the sake of subsidizing the questionable book keeping of the NY transit agencies (along with distracting from the far, far greater expenditures upon the growing prison state/cigarette phama protectionist rackett known as the 'drug war')

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gene-russianoff/25th-anniversary-of-westw_b_743377.html

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2010/10/westway_the_hig.php

Westway Project (1974-1985)

Russianoff writes in Huff Post:

In New York City's long tradition of fighting City Hall, one of the most spectacular examples happened a quarter century ago this week.

It was 1985, when local elected representatives, community members,transportation and environmental advocates, fiscal conservatives and the U.S. Congress forced State and City officials to "trade-in" a planned Interstate highway and river development project known as Westway. The highway would have been built off of Manhattan's West Side and been partly constructed through landfill poured in the Hudson River.

The federal share of Westway's pricetag - $1.725 billion - was reallocated to fix our crumbling subways and buses (more than $1 billion) and to a more modest rehabilitation of West Street (several hundred million.)

Westway's supporters saw the project as a way to gain money from Washington and provide development opportunities off of the West Side of Manhattan. The highway's failure to move forward was another sign of how hard it was to advance construction projects in New York, they claimed.

Opponents saw the project as a misguided allocation of precious federal dollars at a time when our transit network was staggering under decades of inadequate funding. In the early 1980's, riders were plagued by derailments, track fires, crime, breakdowns, slow and unreliable service, boarding vehicles with non-working doors, inadequate lighting and graffiti.

For us, winning more than a billion dollars for transit was the right priority, as was keeping landfill out of the Hudson River.

That would be a rather expensive transfer:

The project received formal approval in 1976. At the time, its estimated cost was $1.2 billio. Not one penny was to come from he City of New York. The project actually generated cash for the city. Ninety percent of the project's cost (aquisition, demolition of the abandoned piers, landfill, parks, new streets, ect.) was to come from the Federal Highway Trust Fund. The rest would be paid by New York State. Westway would assume responsibility fort he City's Hudson River piers and pay for demolishing them. It would pay for building a new municipal incinerator and bus garage. Better yet, the city would recieve cash for its property. In 1981, President Reagan even arrived with a giant sized reproduction of the $85 million.
The American city: what works, what doesn't By Alexander Garvin p 459

The Huff Post- Russianoff piece months later shows 1 comment (comments closed)

jl4141 04:56 PM on 9/29/2010 187 Fans
Nonsense. The defeat of Westway was the result of one of the most ill-considered and misguided political campaigns in New York City history. There would have been long stretches of underground highway atop which would have been built plenty of new parkland. Instead we have had never-ending traffic congestion and far, far more automotive pollution, which has surely brought about serious health problems for residents, visitors, and commuters, than we would have had had the project succeeded. Westway was unfairly tarnished as a boondoggle and environmental nightmare, but that's what we (ironically) achieved by defeating it.

The Village Voice article meanwhile, as of this writing months afterwards, show zero comments- an astonishing amount for what Russianoff and the Village Voice present as such a great example of citizen activism.

A Christmas Wish List: Most Needed Road Projects

2010-12-25T00:20:00.000-05:00

A mix of needed road projects,

San Francisco:

Strictly Highway
- 19th Street Corridor Tunnel
- Central Freeway Alternative Tunnel
- 280 Embaracdero Tunnel

New York Greater Metropolitan Area:

Strictly Trains
- #7 extension to Secuscus
- PA station additional tube
- Upgrade NE Corridor for higher speed to further rail as alternative to flying

MultiModel
- Cross Sound Tunnel- I-287 extended to Long Island Rt 135 with extra capacity for RR
- Cross Harbor (New Jersey to Brooklyn RR and vehicular highway tunnel with tunnel extension via Brooklyn to Conduit Boulevard-JFK Airport), with Interboro (Brooklyn-Queens) Tunnel- via concrete box enclosures sunk and buried primarily via existing RR right of way. (Facebook page)
- Replacement Tappen Zee Bridge with twin duel level spans with MetroNorth

Strictly Highway
- Cross County 'Parkway' Western Extension to New Jersey as mixed use to I-87
- Cross County Eastern Extension Tunnel to I-95/New Roch City
- Cross County Arterial (former NYW&'Boston' RR through New Rochelle, Pelham and Mount Vernon)
- 178th and 179th Street Recommissioned Local Relief Tunnels, with Alexander Hamilton Bridge Reconstruction Project
- I-87 Deegan Reconstruction to 4 lanes minimum per direction with full 12 foot width lanes and shoulders with waterfront Cromwell Avenue Tunnel, and full cut and cover incorporationing the adjacent right of way now partially encroached upon in the northren Bronx.
- Mid-Town Manhattan Expressway Tunnel, once proposed as alternative to above ground Mid Town Manhattan Expressway
- Mid-Town Tunnel 3rd tube
- Lincoln Tunnel 4th tube, NJ 495 approach reconstruction 4 lanes min. per dir with greater cover and shoulders
- Holland Tunnel Augmentation with Canal and Broome-Delancy Street Bypass Tunnels
- Westway/Westway variant

Baltimore:

Multi-Model:
Howard Street Tunnel Alternative, with I-83/MLK 295 Connection

Suggested additions?

Washington, D.C.:

I-95 PEPCO-New Hampshire Avenue-Metropiltan Branch Grand Arc promenade covered multimodel highway-RR tunnel, with K Street-New York Avenue- East Capitol Street Bridge Underground Inner Loop, with reconstruction of SW-SE Freeway underground, with new Washington Channel Tunnel

Continuing Political Neglect of Infrastructure

2010-11-30T23:18:00.000-05:00

Just more of the same from politicians who act as if dealing with infrastructure was somehow beneath them.

New Haven CT Funny Handshake on Rt.34 Giveaway

2010-10-31T22:06:00.000-04:00

Outgoing U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd flanked by New Haven Mayor and Congressman making fools out of themselves with the Route 34 Giveaway.

See more at:

http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/10/16/news/new_haven/doc4cb931277aa4d627218579.txt

Alen Swerdlowe BQE Tunnel Makes a Comeback

2010-09-05T02:49:00.000-04:00

Allen Swerdlowe made this proposal at the 1997 conference of the Regional Plan Association, as an extension of the RPA's proposal to reconstruct the Gowanus Expressway southwards of the interchange with the Prospect Expressway in an all new set of tunnels.

As with the shorter NYSDOT proposal, this tunnel is constructable separately from the existing BQE, minimizing construction distributions of traffic, and allows the re-use of the that existing BQE segment as a collector distribute roadway, as an alternative to having this full set of ramps via the tunnel (making it more expensive and more likely to displace some building).

Swerdlowe reportedly opposes the re-use the existing BQE segment as a collector distributor over a beholden doctrine there should be no additional urban freeway capacity- a doctrine ignoring cost benefits of re-using existing roadways and that the additional capacity would be underground, yet pandering to those at the very top of the political pyramid with their contempt for the profane common masses cloaked in the sort of "environmentalist" anti-human ability to innovate reactionarism seen with that James L. Lee human time-bomb in Silver Spring MD on the northern border of Washington, D.C.

The re-use of the existing BQE segment, if done as discussed with re-striping it with 2 full 12 foot width lanes, plus a shoulder, from the existing 3 10 1/2 foot lanes with no shoulder, would offset the new capacity. Thereby a 6 lane version of Swerdlowe' tunnel, with 4 lanes of the re-striped BQE collector distributor road, would ideally connect to the south to a 10 lane Gowanus Expressway to the south, and to the north to a 10 lane BQE.

The existing project to reconstruct the Gowanus Expressway, either as a new viaduct or as a new tunnel envision only envision a 7 lane tunnel (3 per direction with a reversible bus-HOV lane, with space for more, though limited to the Varrazono Narrow's Bridge's 12 lanes, shared with the connections to the Belt Parkway, the southern end of which would connect with the 12 lane Verazono Narrows Bridge

To the north, the Kosciuszko Bridge segment replacement will provide 10 lanes, though has the task of carrying 2 lanes in each direction to and from the Williamsburg Bridge, hence logically leading to a project to reconstruct the Williamsburg area segment with more capacity, and as local mitigation, largely underground.

Together these would finally form the creation of a continuous modern interstate highway link from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to the Long Island Expressway.

Cap Buffalo, N.Y.'s Kensington Expressway

2010-09-04T22:26:00.000-04:00

Alas, this sensible idea is under attack by a well connected, well funded campaign to waste the trench and place all of that corridor's traffic upon the surface, as if that would be more pedestrian friendly- NOT.

http://artvoice.com/issues/v9n26/letters/cover_the_kensington/index_html

The Reclaiming Our Community Coalition (ROCC) is a committee of concerned organizations focused specifically on the goal to reclaim the beauty and dignity of its once beautiful community.

For three decades beginning in 1868, Frederick Law Olmsted, his partners and successors created for Buffalo a series of parks and parkways that attracted national and international attention. These men were motivated by the belief that developing a plan of interconnected parks and parkways would promote the health, wealth and prestige of the city. These convictions hold true to this day. Recent studies confirm that cities with well maintained parks and parkways (especially those designed by Olmsted) are healthier and attract more businesses and workers.

A case in point is the recent study conducted in Philadelphia. It is an older city that is plagued by similar problems to those facing Buffalo. Its population is shrinking, aging and losing economic strength. In areas of the city with easy access to parks, however, the educational attainment and median income of residents was higher. Additionally, unemployment declined and housing values increased notably. Higher property values near parks, in turn, increased revenues from property taxes, resulting in the expansion of the tax base of the city. In this connection, researchers estimate that urban parks increase tax revenues by as much as 30 percent. In short, this study shows that cities like Philadelphia and Buffalo need to attract people who will contribute to increasing the education and income levels of community residents as well as boost the tax base. Cities with well maintained parks and parkways, then, are more likely to achieve those goals.

The Reclaiming Our Community Coalition is proposing that a cover be built over a portion of the Kensington Expressway complete with trees, shrubs and flowers. This project would restore the visual quality and natural environment of the Humboldt Parkway neighborhood by recreating Humboldt parkway over the section of Route 33 from east Ferry Street to the Best Street exit. This project would promote an aesthetically pleasing physical connection across the existing below-grade expressway, reuniting communities. In implementing this project, it should be noted, there would be no impact on existing traffic patterns.

In sum, this project would restore the treasure envisioned by Olmsted. A majestic tree-lined parkway would be restored which would improve the looks, health and benefits of the neighborhood. Specifically, with regard to looks, it would: return the beauty and elegance of the parkway; change the aesthetic perception of the community; and affect the curbside appeal thereby encouraging investment and attracting potential home-buyers. Regarding health, it would improve air quality and impart all the benefits of trees and green space. And, in terms of benefits, it would: stimulate the repair and improvement of existing structures economically, which would appreciate property values in a real way; stimulate commercial interests in the community, monetarily restoring needed vitality; highlight the City of Buffalo as the city of solutions for improvement; and show the community’s children the possibility of a better way of life.

Reclaiming Our Community Coalition
Stephanie Barber, President

TIME magazine "Green Spin" Against Bolivian Economic Development

2010-08-21T03:07:00.000-04:00

Against Infrastructure, notably modern roads,
as revenge for opposing 'drug war' market protection criminal mercantilism by insisting that Coca leaf be legalized?

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2010/08/times-green-spin-against-evo-morales.html

Was NY Gov Spitzer Felled for Supporting Tunnel?

2010-07-20T23:06:00.000-04:00

Gov Spitzer was busted as "Client #9' at an exclusive "Emperor's Club" - a name suggesting a sexual services business for 'emperors' (government officials) - though with precious little attention on any other clients.

Such timing, together with the Pentagon's continuing defferrence to an outmodeled, doctrine against any new urban freeway capacity, suggests a plausible reason that transport subversion emanates from the political pyramid's highest levels...

http://www.lohud.com/article/20080522/COLUMNIST/805220439/Despite-setbacks-would-be-tunnel-developer-remains-optimistic

A funny thing happened on the way to the Cross Sound Link.

Actually, two things happened almost simultaneously in March. One was about greed and the other involved lust.

The first event was the sudden and surprising collapse of Bear Stearns, the Wall Street firm that fell in love with the subprime mortgage market. The second event was the sudden and surprising resignation of Eliot Spitzer, the governor who found love in the arms of prostitutes at 400 bucks an hour.

Both the investment bank and Spitzer had figured in an audacious plan to build the Cross Sound Link, a $10 billion (or more) vehicular tunnel that would travel 16 miles under the Long Island Sound, linking the eastern end of Long Island with Westchester County at Interstates 95 and 287 in Rye. Bear Stearns was going to float the bonds and sell the stock necessary to pay for the project while Spitzer supposedly was going to grease the political machinery to move the project through the approval process, according to the developer, Vincent Polimeni.

"Everything stopped when Spitzer had the disaster, coupled together the same week with Bear Stearns, who were obviously the people who were going to be funding the whole thing and spearheading it," Polimeni told me. "So, I'm retrenching."

Polimeni said the Spitzer sex scandal probably set him back at least two months because Spitzer, with whom he had met, understood the tunnel proposal and was at least willing to take the first steps needed to tests its merits. Now, he said, he'll have to explain the idea to the new governor, David Paterson.

"I know him," Polimeni said of Paterson. "I know all these people and I wanted the dust to settle before I got him into the loop. We'll try to set up a meeting with his people next month, to bring them up to speed with the tunnel.

"I think he'll be completely for it."

Polimeni said he was shocked when he heard the news of the Bear Stearns debacle and the axing of his contacts there. But he remained undaunted because he knew that the high-powered people who were key players in the Cross Sound Link would eventually be recruited by other firms.

Tappan Zee Long Term Solution Proposed

2010-06-29T04:07:00.000-04:00

From an array of options:

the most capacity with the least direct river impact via design requiring fewer piers

NYSDOT Proposes BQE Tunnel

2010-06-15T19:53:00.000-04:00

among two other options, including a re-aligning the existing route to displace dwellings

Update*: [the update has a sharper curved transition]

http://www.nypost.com/p/blogs/brooklyn/state_vows_brooklyn_heights_brownstones_kqvmzpr1I57LCKuVj7CJkN

Three versions of a tunnel plan were unveiled last night [with NYSDOT announcing they were dropping the destructive option proposed days earlier], including one that could take homes at yet-to-be decided sites to build ventilation buildings and portals for the tunnel.

Under that plan, the existing BQE over the stretch would go from three, eight-foot lanes in each direction to two, 12-foot lanes and would be supplemented by a tunnel with two-12-foot lanes each way. [or perhaps three ten-foot lanes in each direction to two with a 6 six-foot shoulder]

The tunnel would begin at the intersection of Congress and Hicks streets in Cobble Hill, run below ground north to Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn Heights before heading west underneath Borough Hall and connecting again with the highway at Navy Street.

Another tunnel option is building it directly under the existing BQE from Kane and Hicks streets in Cobble Hill to North Portland Avenue near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. After it is build, the existing highway would be taken down.

While this plan would have little impact on homes, it could drastically increase traffic on city streets. Vehicles would no longer be able to access the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges from the highway.

The third tunnel option is similar to the second. It would also begin and end roughly in the same locations, not require taking private land and force traffic on to city streets to access both East River bridges.

However, part of it calls for running directly under the Brooklyn Heights piers being used to build the 85-acre Brooklyn Bridge Park, potentially causing problems for that project.

---

With bridge access and limiting displacement priorities, the first option shown in this post's leading graphic would retain the existing iconic cantilver BQE and its approaches, restriped with fewer yet wider lanes while continuing to serve the more local traffic such as that destined for the bridges, and relieved with the new tunnel.

Not only does this improve things by seperating the more local and longer distance traffic, the tunnel can be built while the existing BQE segment remains in service, minimizing construction disruptions.

The re-striping of the existing BQE cantilever segment to two lanes per direction, with the new tunnel segment with two lanes per direction, (with each having one full shoulder), results in increasing the BQE from three to four lanes in each direction.

An alternative to petro mercantilism

2010-05-21T18:56:00.000-04:00

Here's a far more useful alternative to the jesuitical guilting over driving, and feel goodism of canceling freeways in order to divert traffic to less affluent areas as prevalent in Washington, D.C. and New York City;

I say, fight petro mercantilism- require ALL new automobiles be flex fuel

From George Washington's Blog:

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/05/nows-time-to-switch-to-alternative.html

As Robert Redford writes this week:

Thursday, May 20, 2010, marks one month since BP's oil rig exploded in the Gulf Coast ....
This is the clearest picture we could have of our failed national energy policy -- which extends over many decades and administrations.

And if Alan Greenspan, John McCain, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin and others are right, the costs of that failed energy policy might be even higher.

Many still believe that alternative energy is an expensive, unrealistic pipe dream.

But that is no longer true.

As I have previously pointed out:

One of the world's leading experts on trend forecasting says that producing our own energy for our homes and cars (called "micro generation") will become a huge trend in the next couple of decades.
What's he talking about?

Well, energy and food prices will keep going up. Every dollar we don't have to pay to the energy utility or food producers is a dollar we get to keep. And the technology for producing it ourselves is getting better and better.

So increasingly over the next couple of decades, we will generate our own energy and food.

***

Due to high oil prices, major breakthroughs in energy production are happening every day.

For example:
A scientist has figured out how to make and store energy by splitting water with sunlight. He says: "You've made your house into a fuel station [and we can get] rid of all the ... grids"
A new generation of highly-efficient wind turbines (and see this) is being introduced which can produce much more energy
And new approaches to solar energy [see below] are making residential solar very cost-competitive
It has been discovered that alcohol made from donuts, grass and other abundant materials can run cars and all other engines [see below]
With recent breakthroughs, individuals can now generate enough energy to get off the grid and power their own homes. Indeed, some companies will even provide the equipment for you (and see this).

Indeed, an new government study shows that North Sea wind and wave power could make Britain the "Saudi Arabia of renewable energy". For more on microgeneration and solar energy breakthroughs, see this, this, this and this.

Moreover, Japan and other countries are funding large-scale projects to place solar collectors in orbit, and then send clean energy to Earth.

And as I've written before, alcohol has more alternative energy applications than you might know:

There's a secret history regarding alcohol that you won't hear on the six o'clock news:
Cars and everything else running on internal combustion engines can run on alcohol at least as well as they can run on gasoline. Indeed, engines were built back in 1870 that could run using either alcohol or gasoline

A New York Times article from 1908 (and here) enthusiastically states:

"Autoists Discuss Alcohol As Fuel; Great Future Ahead For Use In Commercial Wagons, Says Prof. Lucke. Tests With Motor Truck E.R. Hewitt Tells Engineers Of His Results With Gasoline And Alcohol In Same Engine"

Henry Ford said that alcohol was "a cleaner, nicer, better fuel for automobiles than gasoline" (James Brough, The Ford Dynasty: An American Story, p. 118, and cited in "Ford - The Men and the Machine", p. 365). The Model T Ford had a knob right on the dashboard to adjust the fuel-air mixture for either alcohol or gas

Alcohol does not corrode or shorten the lifespan of modern cars, and an inexpensive adjustment to regular cars will make them run smoothly and inexpensively on alcohol
***

Moreover, those in the know actually are using alcohol as a fuel today. For example, there are many millions of cars being driven in Brazil that run on alcohol.

And many government and car fleets are actually required to be able to run on either alcohol or gas. The car companies simply forgot to tell the American consumer that these kind of cars are available. See this and this.

Indeed, as I've previously noted, running equipment using alcohol should not increase food prices:

The leading proponents of alcohol as fuel are not talking about corn. Corn is a lousy crop for making alcohol, and there are many other crops that are much more efficient. Indeed, the leaders in this field promote growing a wide variety of crops (appropriate for whatever specific climate you live in) , and many of the crops they suggest are also valuable food crops.

And you don't even need to use plants . . . you can make alcohol fuel out of rotten fruit, stale soft drinks or donuts.

And see this and this.

And as I pointed out last year:

Heat can be used to generate electricity. This is true not only on the industrial scale, but even on the level of your home faucet. Indeed, inventors have already built home faucet kits which turn the unused heat from your hot water into electricity.

In hot climates, black thermal-electric mats could be installed on roofs to generate electricity.

Heat is a byproduct of other processes, and so nothing special needs to be done to create it. Just about every human activity and many natural processes create heat, so we just have to utilize it.

***

Another use of a free, wasted byproduct to generate electricity is piezo-electric energy. "Piezo" means pressure. Anything that produces pressure can produce energy.

For example, a train station in Japan installed piezo-electric equipment in the ground, so that the foot traffic of those walking through the train station generates electricity (turnstiles at train, subway and ferry stations, ballparks and amusement parks can also generate electricity).

Similarly, all exercise machines at the gym or at home can be hooked up to produce electricity.

But perhaps the greatest untapped sources of piezo-electric energy are freeways and busy roads. If piezo-electric mats were installed under the busiest sections, the thousands of tons of vehicles passing over each day would generate massive amounts of electricity for the city's use.
***

Scientists have figured out that solar collection is much more efficient if you focus the sunlight:

And see this.

***

One day, virtually every surface will be turned into an energy-production medium. Instead of having discreet energy-producing machines, roofs, exterior walls, sidewalks, roads and many other surfaces will be coated with "smart materials" which convert light, heat, pressure and other inputs into useful energy, which are then collected, stored and distributed as needed.

Hundreds or thousands of years in the future, mankind might even learn how to collect the virtual particles which are constantly popping into and out of existence.

Harvesting The Ocean of Energy

Perhaps the biggest evolution needed in people's thinking - in any area of life - is how we think about energy.

The current paradigm is that energy is produced expensively by governments or large corporations through gigantic projects using enormous amounts of money, materials and manpower. Because energy can only be produced by the big boys, we the people must bow our heads to the powers-that-be. We must pay a lot of our hard-earned money to buy electricity from them, and we can't question the methods or results of their energy production.

Our life will become much better when we begin to understand that energy is all around us - as an ocean of electromagnetic forces and as a byproduct of other processes in the form of heat, pressure, etc. - and all we need do is learn how to harvest it.

The Gulf oil spill disaster must not be in vain.

We must use it to finally find the vision and the will to make the switch to alternative energy.

2010-04-19T22:01:00.000-04:00

NY TIMES on the X-Bronx
“On the Cross Bronx, Torture, On the Stoop, Entertainment”

Describes the intersection of the Cross Bronx Expressway and the Bronx River Parkway s “the single worst bottleneck in the country.”

They are talking about the intersection that I wrote up here this January; they fail to mention the deficiency of the ramp used by northbound traffic from the short Sheridan Expressway to get to the northbound Bronx River Parkway.

In this article they fail to mention:

The difficulty of widening the X Bronx, particularly its western portion
Its heavy use by truck and automobile traffic - as a relatively scarce east-west highway

Of course they reflect the standardized conception.

“Few roads in America have histories as tortured as the Cross Bronx Expressway. The master builder Robert Moses gouged the highway through crowded neighborhoods, displacing tens of thousands and critics say helping set the stage for the arson and crime that ravaged the borough for a generation.”

No mention that neighborhoods near it thrive while those further away floundered.

“Today, the Cross Bronx Expressway is among the busiest roads in New York City, and its problems are legion. Of the four worst bottlenecks in the United States identified by Inrix, a traffic research company, three of them were on this highway.”

“The Cross Bronx carries 184,000 cars a day, according to the State Department of Transportation, and Mrs. Moore’s intersection is congested 94 hours a week, with cars traveling at an average speed of 11.4 miles per hour, according to Inrix.”

“Log portions of the expressway have no shoulder, so even minor accidents can snarl traffic for miles. The lighting is poor and exit and exit ramps are too short. Most of the road sits inside a trench, leaving commuters to stare at concrete walls, longing for the distraction of scenery. After too long the trench can feel like a crowded coffin.”

“But when you live hard by the Cross Bronx, special compromises must be made. On Fteley Avenue, where Mrs. Moore lives, the children on her block know not to play past the stop sign where merging traffic lurks. But unlikely pleasures can also be won”.

The article goes on to consume much of its space, saying precious little about the Cross Bronx Expressway not the larger system that it’s a part of.

“I go as far out of my way as I possibly can not to have to take the Cross Bronx”, he said. “I avoid it at all costs to the point of adding 20 or 30 miles to a trip I’m taking.”

The article helps display the mindset why the highway is so congested, ending with the line:

“She lit a cigarette, leaned back, and settled in to watch the chaos.”

Ah, just sit back and smoke Virginia Dope rather then think about solutions- something which the New York Times and the elites generally have a morbid fear about considering improving the interstate highway network, particularly where most needed.

Hey New York Times, assorted politicians, officials, etc: how about instead an RX:

Logic dictates taking advantage of opportunities to provide extra capacity along the CBE as well as nearby

The CBX itself is difficult. Ultimately it will need major reconstruction. However, the general lack of space will make that more disruptive to maintaining traffic, let alone idea of widening the right of way given the proximity of its retaining walls, and overpasses/tunnels and apartment buildings. Sure it can gain capacity with a series of smaller projects, reconstructing these walls and eventually its overpasses/tunnels with some extra width, prioritizing full shoulders, extra collector-distributor lanes and ultimately a 4th continuous lane in each direction with the spot removal and replacement of some buildings.

However, apart from these physical feasibility of widening, the corridor can only take so much traffic given the infeasibility of widening the main river crossing it feeds, the 14 lane George Washington Bridge, fed not only by the 6 lane CBE, but also 4 lanes to and from the Harlem River Drive, and 2 apiece from the Deegan and the Henry Hudson Parkway. At best, adding capacity to the Cross Bronx Expressway would best serve local traffic and indirectly longer distance traffic by providing the extra space for the local traffic to stay more out of the way of the latter. So beyond the extra capacity on this road itself, extra ‘capacity’ will be needed elsewhere for diverting away some of this traffic. So beyond identifying the varying feasibilities of improving various segments of the CBE, including the idea of continuous service roads, and improved ramp designs providing improved pedestrian safety, NYSDOT needs to identify such regarding diverting some of the traffic from the CBE, onto alternative routes that are less congested and/or are physically more feasible to add capacity.

Map

Study the network, to see the varying feasibilities of traffic re-routing.

Remember that the Cross Bronx Expressway was designed to work as part of a network with at least 2 other parallel routes: the Mid Town Manhattan Expressway and the Lower Manhattan Expressway, respectively connecting to the Long Island Expressway and the Bushwick Expressway- the latter not built.

Of these, the MidTown Manhattan was the most environmentally feasible, possessing an under street right of way for a set of cross island tunnels.

The other plans, including the earlier version of the Midtown Manhattan would have had high real estate costs, and even the latter versions of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, though designated as tunnel, would have nonetheless required clearing a swath of buildings from historic SoHo.

The un-built Cross Brooklyn Expressway had its existing right of way of the LIRR Bay Ridge line, with the latter plans having it encased in cut and cover tunnel with new development – a linear city – atop. However, it merely ended at the already over capacity Gowanus Expressway to either the Verrazano Narrows Bridge or towards Manhattan via the Battery Tunnels or the Brooklyn Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges- all three leading merely to surface streets. Of these the Battery Tunnel has the best right of way, though would lead to the overcapacity antiquated Holland Tunnel.

Of all of these options the easiest’ (relative term) would be the Cross Brooklyn Expressway linear city tunnel together with a Cross Harbor tunnel to New Jersey with both rail and highway, and most worthy of pursuit, among other reasons as an evacuation route from Long Island., followed by the Mid Town Manhattan Expressway Tunnels, which already has its connecting express highway in New Jersey and Queens. However either would be further off in the future simply for their costs and complexities, physical and political. Of these two, the Cross Harbor-Cross Brooklyn Railway-Highway Tunnel should be the next major project pursued within New York City, in conjunction with that to reconstruct the Gowanus and Brooklyn Queens Expressways.

Map- showing Cross Harbor Cross Brooklyn Tunnel, Cross Sound Tunnel and Tappan Zee Bridge Replacement

Within the broader regional area, this project should happen with the next two major projects within New York State: of constructing the Cross Sound Tunnel to Long Island connecting I-287 in Westchester to Route 135 in Long Island; and of constructing the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement.

Like the Cross Harbor Tunnel, both of these should be multi-model, including highway and rail (or at least the capacity to add a rail line).

Like the Cross Harbor, the Cross Sound would be a valuable evacuation route from Long Island- something that should matter to our government which has instead shown its interest in warrant less domestic surveillance.

Both could ultimately be connected as the south-eastern part of the greater metropolitan New York City area I-287 Beltway, via a new Route 27 Sunrise Highway corridor express highway, perhaps via drilled tunnel, connecting to an upgraded Belt Parkway-Conduit Avenue corridor, providing another set of express routes to JFK international airport.

Amongst the existing highways, extra capacity would be physically easiest along the Cross Westchester I-287 corridor, particularly as its Tappan Zee Bridge has undergoing planning for its replacement.

Because completing gaps in this I-287 metropolitan beltway will attract greater amounts of traffic, the Cross Harbor and especially the Cross Sound Tunnels will require upgrading the existing approach corridors, particularly the I-287 Cross Westchester Expressway and its overlap with I-87 that includes the Tappan Zee Bridge.

As the 1st main parallel route to the I-95 Cross Bronx Expressway, the I-287 Cross Westchester Expressway provides a far more feasible source of new capacity for diverting some of the traffic from the former, particularly with its Tappan Zee Bridge’s replacement not yet fixed, making additional capacity there even more feasible. With the difficulties of establishing a new east west route to the south –the best would be via a set of land tunnels connecting each end of the Cross County Parkway respectively to I-95 and a new bridge from Yonkers to Alpine New Jersey – providing extra capacity along the I-287 Cross Westchester/I-87 Tappan Zee corridor would provide the best bang per buck for providing extra capacity in the area.

To accommodate both the new Cross Sound Tunnel and to divert some of the traffic from the Cross Bronx Expressway, the Connecticut I-95/Cross Westchester I-287 corridor should be expanded, across a new wider Tappan Zee Bridge. In Connecticut, I-95 from New Haven to the I-287 connection just inside of New York, should have at least one additional through lane in each direction – widening it from 6 to 8 lanes -- which the existing right of way could accommodate, whether as a single project or over a series of projects, such as those for replacing the existing overpasses. So should the Cross Westchester Expressway, which since the 1990s, primarily in White Plains and further west has been reconstructed with extra capacity or at least the space for such, as should be done with its entire length. Fortunately, an upcoming project in the White Plains area near Westchester Avenues and Route 22 will add a short collector-distributor roadway at least for the eastbound side. Ideally this should be extended, with a segment to the west beneath a new freeway lid/cap, for some mitigation of the wider more heavily traveled highway, and an all new interchange with I-87 appears to provide the space for one additional lane in each direction.

Because the I-95/I-287 interchanges is so close to the Long Island Sound, the Cross Sound Tunnel’s connections to I-287 must extend further west, and due to the issue of maintaining I-287 traffic as the tunnel is constructed, its approaches will almost certainly flank the existing I-287, emerging in the area between Route 1 and Westchester Avenue displacing some dwellings built after the freeway’s initial construction, and eventually merging with I-287. Because of the relatively short distance between this area and the ramps leading to the interchange with the Hutchinson River Parkway and subsequently I-684, it’s highly plausible these outboard lanes will extend at least this far, with improved ramp connections to I-684 for encouraging traffic to divert (given that I-684 is even easier to widen then I-287, and should be widened with an additional lane in each direction incrementally via projects replacing its various overpasses as they come due for replacement).

Because of its multiplicity of uses, the entire I-287 Cross Westchester Expressway corridor should have a minimum of 4 lanes per direction, plus generous collector distributor lanes, particularly between I-95 and I-684 for the proposed I-287 to Long Island Route 135 Cross Sound Tunnel, as well as the I-87/I-287 overlap, not only for diverting traffic from the north away from the I-95 Cross Bronx Expressway, but for that from the south away from that road and instead straight up the relatively under-utilized I-87 corridor. The new Tappan Zee Bridge[s] should have at least 6 vehicular lanes in each direction (rather than the current 7 total), and include the proposed heavy rail from Suffern, though extended at least to White Plains with the corridor’s design allowing extending the rail to the New Haven line and ultimately through the future Cross Sound Tunnel. To mitigate the widened highway approaches, construct new urban decks atop segments in Tarrytown and Nyack, plus at least one segment in White Plains. This set of movements along I-287 will provide an alternative for traffic from Connecticut I-95 to avoid New York I-95, and with the Cross Sound Tunnel, improved I-287, an alternative from the I-495 Long Island Expressway, and the Throgs Neck , Whitestone Triborough [RFK] and George Washington Bridges. The new wider Tappan Zee Bridge will be undeniably crucial in providing as an enhanced alternative to the far more difficult to widen George Washington Bridge. Obviously it is way more practical to begin to improve our outer metropolitan area bypass than the Cross Bronx-Trans Manhattan-George Washington Bridge corridor, and it is safer for everyone when truck drivers have adequate areas established for rest. Nonetheless, the current plan for the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement fails to go beyond adding a single lane plus a rail line extending to Suffern but failing to extend to White Plain- ignoring the future potential of the I-287 Cross Westchester office park corridor, and truck stops are rare, despite the need for expanding such facilities on I-87 in Yonkers, and I-684 to the north of Mount Kisco. It is apparent, from such things as this latest New York Times article, that highway planning is one of those things very far away from the thinking of our inner city elites.

In a nutshell, the most feasible needs as alternatives to the cross Bronx Expressway

NYC to the south:

- Cross Harbor-Cross Brooklyn Tunnel with railway and highway
- Mid Town Manhattan Tunnels connecting New Jersey 495 with Queens-Long Island I-495, with design accommodating two pairs of cross-town tunnels with 3rd Midtown Tube and 4th Lincoln Tunnel tube

NYC to the north:

- Continue the 4th northbound lane of I-95 past its current end at the Pelham Bay Parkway to past its 1st crossing of the Hutchinson River Parkway to Co-Op City, and add the room for added capacity to I-95 through NY incrementally as bridges etc are replaced over time, allowing at least 4 lanes per direction.

NYC to the East:

- Construct an additional lane along the Clearview Expressway-Grand Central Parkway interchange to and through the latter’s interchange with the southbound Cross Island Parkway, which should be incrementally widened to the south, furthering the utility of this route as an alternative way to JFK international airport.

NYC Greater Metro Area to the North:

- Connecticut I-95, Westchester I-287 additional capacity with at least one additional lane in each direction, plus spot improvements via collector-distributor roadways.

- Cross Sound Tunnel, with improved I-287 connections to Hutchinson River Parkway and I-684, with the latter incrementally widened with an additional lane in each direction.

- Tappan Zee Bridge replacement with at least 6 lanes in each direction up from the current 7 total, possibly with separate local and express lanes. It’s the only vehicular crossing between the George Washington Bridge and the Bear Mountain and I-84 Bridges, so it definitely makes sense to give it more capacity, including the addition of the new railway.

- Further north, construct a new expressway continuing from I-87/ I-287 through Elmsford’s industrial flats and then via an improved Route 100/9A corridor to the existing expressway along the Hudson River north of Ossining.

- And even further north, preserve the New Haven Connecticut Route 34 Freeway corridor, with air rights development atop an extended below ground freeway, incrementally first to surface upon the existing frontage roads, with $1 paid apiece for the irresponsibly placed buildings, and ultimately via bridge or tunnel beneath the WW1 memorial to an extension ultimately to NY Route 17/I-86

- NYC Locally:

- Deegan Project- to improve with additional capacity and a radical redesign particularly at its southernmost areas for improved pedestrian accessibility to the waterfront. Traffic from the George Washington Bridge would have an improved connection to the Hunts Point industrial area and the Triborough, while northbound traffic from such places would have the I-87/I-287 Tappan Zee combo as an increasingly viable alternative.

Where To Start: The upcoming project for reconstructing the High Bridge I-95/I-87 interchange.

Expand it to include:

- Re-opening the 178th and 179th Street Tunnels alongside the I-95 Trans Manhattan Expressway for non-George Washington Bridge bound traffic.

- Widening the northbound I-87/Highbridge interchange merge to facilitate transferring some of the potential I-95 CBE bound traffic to the northbound I-87 Deegan cantilevering the existing service road overhead, and ultimately adding capacity to Westchester via a new southbound roadway to the west, and the two existing carriageways used for northbound traffic, re-striped with the righthand most lane as a merge rather then strictly continuous lane.

- Widening the Deegan southward from the High Bridge interchange to 4+ lanes per direction with generous ramp lineage, with Fort Washington Way scale project for depressing and ultimately covering along the Cromwell Avenue corridor past a new under-crossing past 238th Street, facilitating a more human and holistic approach to this south of Yankee Stadium/Mott Haven area recently rezoned, also covering the depressed segment at Willis Avenue, as well as reconstructing the ramps and service roads with greater use of short tunnel underpasses for providing greater pedestrian safety.

Instead, our political ‘leadership’, while at best proceeding with peace-meal planning, is allowing itself to become beholden to a theology so against any additional highway capacity – even ramps and choke-points – seemingly requiring creating new choke-points as some sort of symbolically distracting ‘moral’ crusade’ against driving.

LINK- Jerry Brown A Beholden Doctrine

The most egregious example is that in New Haven Connecticut with the substitution of Yale University’s skybridges for the underground Route 34 freeway, now blocked by the irresponsible placement of a trio of buildings, with the first constructed being a Pfizer research facility, followed by a new cancer hospital directly butted up to block the right of way.. Unfortunately the lure of this pseudo moral crusade is sufficiently strong to lure even the Regional Plan Association

Short of that, the worst example is allowing the Deegan to be chocked by new real estate development projects…

This has already happened in the north Bronx with the erection of a building substantively closer to the Deegan, within the underused right of way to its immediate west.

The Deegan is often dangerously congested in the area of the interchange with 238th Street.

This segment was built over 60 years ago. It lacks shoulders. The southbound ramp is particularly problematic, largely because much of its traffic is straight through (does not turn onto 238th Street) yet has to stop for the traffic light at the surface intersection with 238th Street. The elevated segment to the north overshadows Cromwell Avenue while that to the south is a solid wall flanked by heavily used service roads to and from the Wills Avenue Bridge[s]. That area deserves something better.

Current Moot Haven Community Board votes to increase pollution risk maintain Deegan in its existing divisive configuration.

NYSDOT take the results of a sole public hearing announced only 3 days previously and the pronouncements of Streetsblog and the Tri State [anti] Transportation Campaign about the unanimity of opinion there expressed by a number of people in attendance not reported. Of course there was no notice to those using the facility- say via NYSDOT being required to purchase the existing billboard space to let motorists know of this one opportunity to express their opinions. NYSDOT presents the sole idea of widening the existing highway configuration – IOW widen its viaduct and add a wider ramp to replace a narrower one for southbound off ramp traffic from I-87 to the 238th Street intersection.

This is a total travesty of the concept of ‘democracy’.

The total lack of reporting other then by a cluster of seemingly centrally directed internet present organizations (notably Streetsblog and TSTC) is highly suspect) with their spin of a decision to place some 10,000 new residences next to what they consider a health hazard, without consideration of the added truck traffic through the antiquated ramps, all as the will of the community. A charade that places the public interest beneath the whims of the political pyramid that appears to be strong enough to have stifled debate.

LINK- Chock the Deegan

LINK- My conversation with a developer shill

Route 34 Giveaway Continues

2010-03-04T16:18:00.001-05:00

New Haven elitist driven Mayor continuing his mission to subvert transportation so a few developers -- such as big pharm Pfizer which took the right of way for a $1 sweetheart land deal -- don't have to pay for the beams for their buildings to span rather then fill New Haven's below ground level Route 34 freeway

According to an article in the New Haven Independent:

The developer is Carter Winstanley.

The name of the project is 100 College Street.

It will close the segment of the route 34 freeway with its exits 2 and 3.

The Mayor intends to take this to the New Haven alderman for their approval sometime in 2010, with ramp demolition starting in late 2010 or early 2011.

This has already received $5 million in Federal funds, plus State of Connecticut approval, and is awaiting a decision upon a request for $40 million in stimulus funds.

Public response to this, from the comments section to this article, appears to be growing more negative then that to such right of way blockage projects to te west of the Air Rights Garage, given its application to an existing segment of highway.

posted by: Our Town on February 2, 2010 9:29am
To all of you who may think this is a good idea (removing Rt. 34), good luck to you getting around in New Haven in the future. This “re-knit the city” jargon is crap. Johnny is blindly pushing ahead without a care about how it will work. Even with the highway in place and without the development, there is gridlock in this area daily. Now we’re building more in this tight corridor adding thousands of trips, and we’re going to reduce capacity to serve it. Gateway College alone will overwhelm the street system. There is no transit component to this. There will be MORE cars on WIDER streets around the hospital. I just hope some of the “traffic calming” groups see through this and realize that conditions around the hospital will get worse, not better. Build over the highway. DO NOT REMOVE IT. You will regret this if it is built as planned.

posted by: Pioneer on February 2, 2010 11:08am
It is not wise at all, as Our Town said to remove Rt. 34. This isn’t so much of a highway to nowhere as everyone thinks. It connects downtown and the highway to Westville, Edgewood, Whalley, yadyyadyaya. It is always crowded, it cannot be removed. This road must stay, somehow. So while we are tearing up the highway and we’ve got a big hole, lets fill it! Lets put a tunnel going from where Rt. 34 will leave off, going to the other end, towards the other end where it will leave off.

posted by: Scot on February 2, 2010 12:43pm
I love the idea of reconnecting those parts of the city and having a nice-looking, pedestrian friendly way for people to walk around. Also love the idea of building some new office space and residential to increase tax revenue and make it more vibrant. First and foremost I want the city to be walkable and safe. That said, I’m also realistic and realize many people commute, and we need to accommodate cars, bikes, and buses too. The idea of building over the corridor, and creating a tunnel sounds logical, as long as it could be done attractively. You could build almost anything you want over the tunnel -walkways, a park, condos, offices, etc. People needing to drive from across town to the interstate can zip through without endangering any pedestrians. A tunnel would actually remove a lot of cars from the walkable parts, rather than just slowing them down. Does anyone know if the city is looking into that? Of course if they have other plans that could truly accommodate the traffic without a tunnel, even better. But definitely dont want more gridlock, which creates more smog, etc.

posted by: westviller on February 2, 2010 5:25pm
While I appreciate the Utopian sentiments of those who want to do away with rt. 34, we cannot simply ignore the prospect for gridlock that these plans create. The potential for even more impediments to access to YNHH is not just a philosophical matter about privileging automobiles or bikers/pedestrians. It is a public safety issue. Any plan to redesign this corridor must absolutely assure that emergency access to the hospital is not impeded. I have not seen a word in any of these discussions about this public health issue. Apparently, it is okay for patients to die in ambulances stuck in traffic, as long as we have nice bike lanes and the cars all move slowly, if at all.

posted by: Chris O on February 2, 2010 9:22pm
Boston downtown (I93?) works fantastically well in the tunnels exiting onto pedestrian oriented streets with ground level retail. Keep 34, fill the side, build over it and give us a tunnel. Tunnels, bridges and cities go together. We need higher density in the city and this is the right place. Over the next century the city will probably grow in two directions from downtown; South to the Harbor( Longwarf) and North of YNHH along 34 to and along the Boulevard. We need to build a smart network of roads to handle traffic volume and easy and expensive parking.

posted by: Joe H on February 2, 2010 9:47pm
What is it? New Haven doesn’t have enough vacant land, so it’s forced to incur expensive projects and build over an existing highway?????
What about the former site of the Colosseum?
I think it’s a major mistake messing with the current Route 34. It will tighten a major artery into the city and limit options in the future. The city should have continued the highway under the air rights garage and under the Pizer building. It would have alleviated some of the traffic congestion. But it’s too late for that now. Don’t make another mistake. Bridge to the Hill neighborhood? Big woop-de-doo?!

Northbound Sheridan Pinch

2010-01-28T19:56:00.000-05:00

Groups as Tri State Transportation Campaign and Streetsblog are fond of calling for the removal of New York City's Sheridan Expressway, largely upon the grounds that it is underutilized.

But what do they say about the reason why such traffic, particularly that going northbound, is so sparse- namely the ramp that once must use to continue northbound past the Sheridan’s northern end via 177th Street, in order to get to the northbound Bronx River Parkway?

Particularly wicked is the substandard width of the lanes where that from the roadway from 177th Street used by traffic from the northbound Sheridan joins the eastbound service road- aka the northbound Sheridan ‘pinch’.

Illustration: the pinch

The bridge that carries this eastbound (regionally northbound) I-95 Cross Bronx Expressway service road, has a mate to the north that carries the other direction with 3 lanes of traffic, while the eastbound one has 4 lanes. As both bridges appear to be about the same width, the eastbound direction gets its 4th lane not via extra pavement but rather with lanes that are narrower. Although I have not gotten out a measuring stick, if for instance the roadways are 36 feet wide, then the westbound side has 3 lanes that are 12 feet wide apiece, while the eastbound side has 4 lanes that are 9 feet wide apiece- assuming they are all the same width.

The eastbound service road bridge which cross over the Bronx River Parkway was apparently not designed to accommodate the full array of traffic flow movements that it accommodates (barely) today, consisting of, from the perspective of the photo directly above from left to right:

- Ramp from 177th Street
- I-95 CBE exit ramp to eastbound service road
- Ramp from southbound BRP to eastbound service road- local road

For whatever reason , whether the addition of one of the ramps, or perhaps an upgrading of the ramp from 177th Street and/or that from I-95 to be freeflowing to help prevent backups onto I-95, as well as to accommodate the traffic from the northbound Sheridan Expressway which ends at 177th Street with the cancellation of its planned extension to Co-Op City with NYC Mayor Lindsey’s across the board cancellation of all of the area’s planned yet not yet built highways in 1971.

The sort of attitudes behind such an across the board cancellation, regardless of the relative merits as well as the feasibilities of further design evolution to better serve both regional and local concerns, reflects itself in the accompanying disregard for the consequences of such highway cancellations, aka addressing just where such decisions will place the traffic. This ramp from 177th Street onto the eastbound service road to regionally northbound I-95, is an excellent example of this disregard, one encompassing a distain for facilitating traffic flow efficiently and safely for vehicles and for pedestrians throughout this CBE-BRP mixing area, with a continuation of merely band aid type method of simply accommodating the eastbound service road’s 4th lane by re-striping, rather then a strategic widening.

Such a widening would involve only perhaps another 12 feet of pavement, which could be designed with a cantilever to minimize reconstruction of the bridge itself, in order to provide 4 lanes each with the standard 12 foot width, for intercepting a lane apiece from this 177th Street ramp, the I-95 Rosedale Avenue ramp, the southbound Bronx River Parkway ramp, and the local road. Such a widening would take no buildings and involve land that appears to be publicly owned.

Nonetheless the authorities have simply added a set a plastic stanchions briefly separating the most serious part of the pinch between the 177th street ramp and the I-95 offramp.

Illustrations: the pinch from the I-95 off ramp service road lane

Illustrations: the pinch from the 177th Street Ramp

Note the signage, that this is a free-flow, without any stop signs or yield signs, but rather of two separate roadways joining into one roadway as two separate continuous lanes.

Also note, not only the substandard lane widths, but how the lanes were recently striped to indicate that the left-most lane, the ramp from 177th street, basically juts into the space that one could likely presume is the space for the immediately adjacent lane. Just imagine the confusion that can result particularly if the lane stripings are worn away.

I was a victim of this in the form of a traffic ticket #AAM2778366, issued to me on August 6, 2009 alleging a right of way violation of NYS 1143

1143: The driver of a vehicle about to enter or cross a roadway from any place other than another roadway shall yield the right of way to all vehicles approaching from the roadway to be entered or crossed.

I was the vehicle from the leftmost lane; the Officer was in the immediately adjacent lane. It was here where we both stopped in my response to his turning on his lights as we were alongside, with him informing me through a his drivers window, my passenger window conversation that I was guilty of failure to yield the right of way, and for me to follow him to the right so he could safely issue me the ticket.

On January 22, 2010 at a hearing scheduled for 8:30 AM, and which was over by 9:12 AM, the Officer would testify that I had a yield sign – wrong – and that there were no plastic stanchions between our roadways – also wrong.

Though he would testify correctly that the road had been subsequently repainted since the incident, he would mischaracterize that as a restriping rather then a repainting. The solid lines now shown appeared sometime in Autumn 2009, and match the previous dashed lane markings that existed on the nite of the incident but, for perhaps a 40 foot length of the road right at these lanes meeting where the paint was worn away. He would also testify that I came into his lane, a belief sustainable by the paint being worn away at the point later shown by the solid white line showing my lane jutting into the space that one would otherwise presume to belong to the adjacent lane.

He would testify that I was on an ally – hmm, an ally passing directly crossing beneath I-95 – before being cross-examined about whether it was in fact upon not an ally but a roadway, and hence answering that yes, that it was a roadway.

The distinction is critical because the former does not require the presence of a stop or a yield sign.

In this instance, there is no stop or yield signs, but instead a single ‘no merge’ sign showing two separate roadways, each with a single lane that each continue past the point of these roadways joining: a sign visible to the lane the officer was in.

I wonder how many people have gotten this sort of ticket at this pinch, and indeed the collision rates there, and have as a result NOT used the northbound Sheridan.

Global Warming and Fast Cars -- A Perfect Match

2010-01-08T13:45:00.000-05:00

From Becker's Environmental Law Update:

http://www.iowaenvironmentallawupdate.com/2009/09/articles/going-green/global-warming-and-fast-cars-a-perfect-match/
Global Warming and Fast Cars -- A Perfect Match

Posted on September 28, 2009 by Chuck Becker

There is an under-reported fact that may very well save the world from those who fear global warming. It will do it without government mandates and it will do it following tried and true capitalistic principles. The fact? Electric cars are faster than gas-powered vehicles.

A while back I posted about Lamborghini’s foray into hybrid cars. It seemed odd to me that a gas-guzzling race car would want to “go green” by using an electric engine. Then Ferrari did the same thing. What I didn’t focus on was that these manufacturers were just being true to their sport—they wanted to go faster. The green advantages were just a fortunate by-product.

Now we have Tesla Motors, which has already sold 700 all electric vehicles. A few facts about their cars:

• For $128,000 you get a car that goes 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds;
• For $101,000 you get a car that goes 0 to 60 in 3.9 seconds;
• The federal government has provided Tesla with a loan for $465 million to produce an all electric sedan to sell for $50,000.

These are all sorts of other facts about Tesla that are interesting . . . but none of them matter. Zero to 60 in 3.7 seconds. There are only two gas-powered production vehicles currently being built that can beat it and neither of them have a fixed gear box.

You see, we love speed. That’s why NASCAR is the second most popular spectator sport . Now that there’s a car that can go faster, particularly without putting gas in it, people are going to want it. And if the consumer, the capitalist and the environmentalist all want it, it will be built. This time, no one is going to kill the electric car.

There are a lot of details to work out. How do you store the energy? How far can they go on a charge? How do you get the price down? But the tipping point has been reached. Like the dinosaurs that wondered what that big explosion was, the internal combustion engine for cars is dead — it just doesn’t know it yet.

It’s conceivable that Tesla will go the way of DeLorean, but the concept has now been made feasible. When people start demanding the speed provided by the electric car in the body of a family sedan, Ford, Toyota and Honda will find a way to make it affordable. Most car manufacturers have already made major inroads into electric cars. Expect to see the first big wave of them sold to those “kooks” in California. Then Florida and Washington, D.C. (GM ought to call it the GoreMobile). Finally, Iowa. Once it hits Iowa, you can relegate the internal combustion engine to the Smithsonian.

So in the end, what does it mean for the environment? You already know the answer. Emissions from cars is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. In the United States alone, auto emissions account for 33% of carbon dioxide emissions as well as 70% of the carbon monoxide, 45% of the nitrogen oxide and 34% of the hydrocarbon emissions. Driving a car is the largest source of pollution for most individuals. With the widespread use of the electric car, this source will be gone. It will be gone whether you are a Democrat or a Republican. It will be gone whether or not you believe in global warming. It will be gone whether or not we have a “Copenhagen protocol." It will be gone because electric cars are faster than regular cars and we love speed.

When the CD replaced the music album, I thought it was a fad. It wasn’t, because CDs are more convenient, smaller and (arguably) produce better music. It took a worldwide change of mindset to change from albums to CDs, but the change was inevitable once the advantages became clear. And so it is with the electric car. It’s fast, so we want it. All that is left is to make it cheap. And there are whole countries that are willing to do that.

Peter S. Craig: An Editorial Reply

2009-12-30T18:49:00.000-05:00

From A Trip Within The Beltway:

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2009/12/peter-s-craig-editorial-reply.html

The Washington Post Does Not Get It-
subverting transportation based upon lies
(excerpts)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/20/AR2009122002242.html

For more than two decades, Mr. Craig battled business interests, developers and members of Congress who wanted to build a bridge over the Potomac River to carry Interstate 66 into Georgetown and seven multilane highways, which would have destroyed more than 200,000 housing units, many in historically black sections of the city.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/22/AR2009122203176.html?sub=AR

CHRISTOPHER WREN, the great 17th-century English architect, whose many works dominated the London scene, had as his epitaph, "If you seek his memorial, look about you." Similar words might be fitting for Peter S. Craig, who died Nov. 26 at the age of 81, only in his case it would be what you didn't see that would mark his significance. ... [such as] a long-planned North-Central Freeway running through much of the eastern part of the city and over places where thousands of people live. In all, Mr. Craig and his allies succeeded in blocking about three-quarters of the interstate highway system once planned for the District....

There are still some who argue that the city made a major mistake when it blocked those highways. Most Washingtonians, we think, when they look about the city, with all its beauty and its history as community and national capital, would say otherwise.

The Washington Post reports he was a railroad attorney at Covington & Burling- something to think about concerning Washington, D.C.'s beauty, given the Posts' own expressed cluelessness convenient for diverting attention from the blight of to Washington, D.C. NE in the areas behind Union Station, with beauty in from, but ugliness behind.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/20/AR2009122002242.html
Mr. Craig was working for the powerful Covington and Burling law firm in the 1950s, specializing in transportation regulation matters, when he became aware of plans to build a freeway from the Georgetown waterfront up Glover-Archbold Park and out Wisconsin Avenue into Bethesda, where it would have joined what is now Interstate 270.

Craig was also long involved with the “Committee of 100 on the federal City”- a private organization founded in 1923 by Frederic A. Delano, uncle to FDR and brother in law to Covington & Burling co-founder, railroad industry attorney Edward Burling. OK, so this law firm has a long history representing the railroad industry.

He got involved when planning was going to bring a highway near his residence in Cleveland Park.

Why- the logic of the Wisconsin Avenue corridor as the most commercialized corridor spaced roughly midway between the Potomac River and the B&O corridor, & the barring of a highway allowing trucks via Glover-Archbold Park, leading to a search of alternatives, with a brief consideration of a Cathedral Heights Tunnel, before a 1958-59 route via a split at the top of Glover-Archbold for a parkway not allowing trucks, with an I-70S continuation via a separate route known as the Cross Park Freeway starting as a tunnel just north of Fannie Mae and the northern edge of the Sidwell Friends School property to just west of Tilden Street, skirting the northern edge of Cleveland Park and entering another tunnel crossing east of Connecticut Avenue and emerging to cross Rock Creek Park via a highway arc bridge before continuing as an open depressed freeway through Mt Pleasant, starting at , crossing 16^th Street before turning south to parallel 14^th Street continuing to an interchange with the open trench I-66 along U Street.

This highway would have displaced 74 dwellings along the Wisconsin Avenue corridor, about 8 to the east in or near Cleveland Park, and 100s if not 1000s to the east of Rock Creek Park. Whereas the 1959 version added the two tunnel segments in the Sidwell Friends/Cleveland Park area in addition to the Tenley Circle underpass, it would fail to even consider tunnel segments anywhere to the east of Rock Creek Park, limiting any options to merely depressed with sloped embankments or depressed with vertical retaining walls. From a preservationist standpoint, the most sensible opposition was that to the east of Rock Creek Park, with the least sensible being Bethesda, Maryland which ended up tearing out and replacing most of its downtown business district anyway via WMATA Red Line subway induced denser development that could and should have included an underground highway.

Its effective cancellation via the 1960 – Act mandating a moratorium on free planning for DC NW west of Rock Creek Park – via political pressure from the area with the fewest impacts testifies to the dominance of political affluence.

This did not mean that Peter S. Craig necessarily opposed other freeways within Washington, D.C.

During the early 1960s he supported the concept appearing in the November 1, 1962 Kennedy Administration White House report of a “Y” route B&O railroad I-70S North Central Freeway.

Quote from report about reduced impacts

The B&O corridor makes perfect sense not only as a railroad corridor providing a band of lightly developed industrial property, but also with its placement roughly midway between the Potomac River and the eastern portion of the I-495 Capital Beltway in Maryland.

It was consistent with a philosophy embodied in proposals made via Craig cir. 1962. Not for not buildings the highways. But rather for building highways instead more via existing corridors/right of ways, occasionally coupled with the idea of some short segments of these highways as tunnel. I found two such proposals in perusing some of his papers and those of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City that are graciously made publicly available at the GW University Gelman Library Special Collections: constructing inside the Beltway Virginia I-66, not via the official route, but rather via a reconstructed fully grade separated Route 50 (already a major 4 – 6 lane artery generally flanked by service roads); and constructing the downtown D.C. north-south I-95 Center Leg (known today as the I-395 3^rd Street Tunnel), not via the official routing via a swath cut via clearing a swath of buildings between 2^nd and 3^rd Streets, but instead as a pair of cut and cover tunnels respectively beneath 2^nd and 3^rd Streets. Obviously, neither idea was adopted, and I did not find any evidence of any official consideration.

Craig at times expressed favor for this concept for the Georgetown waterfront via removing and replacing the elevated Whitehurst Freeway with a tunnel within the existing right of way; in 1968 the Committee of 100 briefly proposed extending that tunnel beneath the Potomac – a Three Sisters Tunnel – to Virginia; they soon abandoned that idea due to the costs of drilling a sufficiently long tunnel to accommodate a sufficiently gentle grade transition for trucks, with Craig’s idea for a shorter tunnel only along the Georgetown waterfront being coupled with the idea of it being sufficiently reduced in capacity not to preserve anything but rather so that it would be useful to fewer.

Such was followed by Elizabeth Rowe with the I-66 K Street Tunnel proposal.

The flip- said to have been guilted by Abbott. Since he strictly opposed freeways in NW, he would have to do the same elsewhere.

Its absurdity- was in response to a response to a bastardized program

Was done in the name of stopping white mans roads through black mans homes.

The idea of opposing “white mans roads through black mans houses” could make sense: as such meant a road that would go through a less affluent area rather then a more affluent area, or through the latter without the extra mitigation of tunnels seen in more affluent areas. Such example of this include the 1955 Inner Loop design for I-66 different treatments west and east of New Jersey Avenue- to the west as trench, to the east as an elevated berm, the 1959 NW Freeway that Craig stopped which would have taken fewer then 100 from the Maryland line to Rock Creek Park, but considerably more to the east, with tunnels only for areas to the west, and of course the 1964 NCF report’s options. [This led to some intelligent things as the I-66 K Street Tunnel proposal via Elizabeth Rowe in 1965-66. ]

But opposing such was hardly was synonymous as simply stopping freeways as that would simply kick the can elsewhere- a main consistency of the shifting polices of Craig and the Committee of 100.

He could have called for greater right of way efficiency and tunnelization for the highways within the western part of the inner loop.

He could also have done that with the NW Freeway proposing a different tunnel for its southern end. But AFAIK he did not.

He could have called for greater right of way efficiency and tunnelization for the highways within the eastern part of the east loop. Oddly to me, despite all of his opposition to say the Glover-Archibold Parkway I saw no indication he opposed the Northwest Branch Park routing for the I-95 Northeastern Freeway before he opposed the freeway outright, failing to apply the concept of reusing existing corridors in this instance with that giant PEPCO power line right of way to New Hampshire Avenue that would require only 13 retail strip properties, and clusters of 24 and 5 houses flanking a short jaunt through the open field of the Masonic and Eastern Star Retirement Home at 6000 New Hampshire Avenue NE to meet the B&O Route. Craig could have further applied such concepts to the B&O NCF. But AFAIK he did not.

Instead he took a course that would effectively be a “white mans road through black mans homes” – or area, depending upon if it displaced dwellings along the railroad corridor in Anacostia SE – via the Anacostia Freeway. If it had not displaced any homes, it would have simply been placing the traffic disproportionately through such areas by stopping both the NW Freeway and the NCF-NEF.

Craig's allies, the Committee of 100 did this with a 1968 proposal for re-routing inside the Beltway I-95 along a longer portion of the NWBP and Virginia 4 Mile Run

It was SE and in Virginia that Craig and the Committee of 100 would soon promote receiving even more of the burden, with their work to cancel the B&O Route North Central Freeway, supplemented by their 1968 proposal for a longer routing of inside the Beltway I-95 via Northwest Branch Park bringing it directly to the Anacostia Freeway, with the Baltimore-Washington Parkway reconfigured to come directly into the I-295 East Leg of the Inner Loop, and with I-95 continuing via the Anacostia Freeway extended somehow across the Potomac River to Virginia and continue via the 4 Mile Run corridor to the existing I-95 Shirley Highway.

Illustration: 1968 proposal, Brookland houses, ECTC protests

All to avoid 69 post WW1 townhouses targeted by the 1966 plans at the western edge of Brookland from the west side of 10^th Street NE to the railroad’s eastern side, all to the south of Monroe Street that crosses the railroad just to the south of Catholic University of America located immediately to the railroad’s west side along Brookland Avenue.

These 69 dwellings, a fraction of that targeted by the 1964 and 1960 proposals which would have decimated Turkey Thicket and Brooks Mansion which the 1966 and later plans spared, were colorfully protested by ECTC- the Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis, even after this number of 69 was reduced to 34 by a 1970 D.C. Department of Public Works design modification realigning the freeway closer to the railroad, and/or substituting its eastern side sloped embankment with a vertical retaining wall. Internet writer Mark Bentley, in misc.transport.road noted:

Quote: numbers of houses, time on beltway x years

With only 34 rather the 69 that – figure becomes –

With only 11-14, that figure becomes --

I did not find any discussion on how a longer route via a longer route along a more sensitive watershed area of Northwest Branch Park was necessarily more worthy then a more direct route via the existing railroad-industrial corridor, nor consideration of tunnel segments. Nor did I find anywhere near the amount of consideration that lead to the B&O NCF route concept in 1962, regarding whatever they gave to the Craig-Committee of 100 flip, against the B&O North Central Freeway by 1966 reportedly in response to Sam Abbott shaming him into eventually opposing any proposed freeway, never-mind the actual designs and consequences, all based upon the B&O North Central Freeway’s bastardization which lead to the rush of popular opposition.

Indeed, the idea of “white mans roads through black mans homes” a great deal of sense for a NCF that would displace 720/590 with options going as high as 2770/--- on the heels of cancelling a NWF that would have taken fewer then 100 dwellings to the west of Rock Creek Park, as opposed to simply the 1962 Kennedy Administration B&O Route NCF that as per the 1966 supplementary study would have displaced 372 within DC, of these 69 for the I-95 segment. That slogan made far less sense against the B&O concept due to its central location and status as an industrial corridor providing a swath of lightly developed properties

Perhaps this was because such a mangling was required to stoke the opposition, hence the political need to use the righteous opposition to the 1964 plan to inflame the passions against any NCF.

Such appears to be the case, even after the release of the 1966 plan with officials waffling on the earlier plan through 1967 and as late as 1968

Quote: June 1967 Duncan Wallace letter.

Such was sufficient time to stoke the opposition to get the DC City Council and the U.S. NCPC to flip their support to opposition.

Quote USNCPC 1968

Such fit with the pursued legal strategy, of declaring the freeway illegal for lacking support of the legally required government entities for approving additions and subtractions to the Washington, D.C. road network.- even as this was untrue as the Council voted to approve .--- and USNCPC had voted … supporting the NCF and East Leg – positions they would only change after much colorful protest by ECTC – the Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis disproportionately centered upon the 69 WW1 era houses in westernmost Brookland nearest to the B&O railroad this one portion of the I-95 NCF displacing houses – in comparison to the 600+ late 1800s houses as per the 1971 plans for its connecting segment to the built portion of the I-95 (now I-395) Center Leg (3^rd Street Tunnel) that was also required for the Route 50/logical I-66 east extension, and which remained on planning books for about a decade after the B&O NCF’s abandonment. Indeed it was the 69 – reduced by a 1970 DCDPW revision to 34 – where Brookland meets the B&O railroad immediately across from Catholic University of America, and at the site of the officially proposed I-266 Three Sisters Bridge practically pointing at Georgetown University that marked the two hot spots of latter 1960s-early 1970s anti-freeway protests.

Such strategy by the anti-freeway forces would be matched by such ostensibly pro-freeway forces as the Federal City Council – founded in 1954 as a sort of rival to the Committee of 100 – which in 1966 issued a report on the DC freeway system with a sufficiently heavy emphasis upon opposing delays sufficient to have it endorse building the NCF via the 1964 plan - good for saving perhaps a few weeks on the construction and perhaps cheaper if eminent domain is sufficiently abused by underpaying for properties then the additional retaining walls and tunnel roof segments of something true to the 1962 Kennedy Administration NCF – at the expense of literally splitting the town of Takoma Park Maryland.

Such useful blundering for increasing popular opposition to freeways in general continued not only via the 1964 reports betrayal of the 1962 Kennedy B&O NCF, and the waffling and support for the 1964 plan at least as late as 1968, but with the addition of new design objections with each subsequent official proposal useful for generating new opposition. The 1966 plan, though following the basic 1962 concept, changes the arcs of the roadway connections to and from the I-95 Northeastern Freeway to increase the footprint within Fort Totten Park- an issue that saw being brought up in 1966 just prior to the release of the supplementary study in November 1966 as a new objection. The 1971 plan does this same basic thing with its reconfiguration of the I-70S segment alongside the northwest edge of Takoma Park; though changing it to a cut and cover tunnel through the Takoma Station area between Piney Branch Avenue and Aspen Street, a definite improvement from the 1966 plan’s tightly aligned elevated segment flanking the existing elevated railroad, the 1971 plan places all 6 lanes of I-70S along the railroad’s eastern side, bringing it into direct conflict to displace the northernmost along the railroad’s east within Washington, D.C. landmark Cady Lee Mansion- something I found no mention within the Peter S. Craig and Committee of 100 papers, though nonetheless certainly a potential flashpoint for generating opposition. Further helping sustain this opposition was the slowness of the DCDPW in adopting the K Street Tunnel alternative for I-66.

Such blundering would be the thesis of the antithesis of the openly opposing ever more doctrinaire anti freeway sentiment that under the guise of opposing “white mans roads through black mans homes” even opposed such things as an I-66 K Street Tunnel via some accompanying sentiment against people outside one’s immediate neighborhood – commuters – sufficiently parochial to have people forget how such an attitude would work against them anywhere they went out of their immediate neighborhood. …

In the middle were some people making an effort to serve the most by making design suggestions. The leader of the Shepard Heights[?] Neighborhood Association for instance questioned the need for a 3 sisters bridge while favoring new bridges connecting D.C.’s Eastern Avenue to SE and another to Virginia, and B&O I-95 which he proposed be redesigned to spare the 69 or 34 houses in Brookland via being elevated directly over the railroad, taking advantage of the area immediately to its west south of and by extension alongside CUA. The Urban Freeways Committee of the National Urban League would propose an alternative plan for the easternmost segment of the I-66 K Street Tunnel, by having it at Mt Vernon Square swing to beneath New York Avenue and continue to and east of the Center Leg (3^rd Street Tunnel), this New York Avenue Tunnel intercepting I-95 as well. Yet their voices were eventually drowned out in a environment being dominated by theatrics and threats with ECTC reportedly being to riot by Covington & Burling at DC City Council meetings.

Council and NCPC votes 1969 1970

The NCF was 1^st to disappear from official DC planning, though effectively remaining in that of MD until July 16, 1973.

Then I-266.

Then the I-66 K Street Tunnel

Then everything else but the Center Leg to New York Avenue and then the North Leg east tunnel to 1^st street NE. then that, and then the leaving only Center Leg to New York Avenue, completed in 1986 with a set of added walls reducing its capacity in half- while not saving a single dwelling. IOW, a message of lets benefit fewer people for the benefit of fewer people.

Cancelled under the name of opposing “white mans roads through black mans homes”, the D.C. freeway system as planned by 1971 would have displaced a small fraction of the earlier designs:

148, 600+, 172 for completing the full Inner Loop, plus 59 for B&O/PEPCO I-95 and 303 for I-70S.

Granted this could have been further improved significantly be redesigning the connecting segment along New York Avenue, as with my own redesign that reduces the displacement figure of 600+ residences along New York Avenue between New Jersey Avenue and North Capitol Street to as few as 34 all situated between New Jersey Avenue and 4^th Street, south of N Street., via a gentler radii tunnel arcing beneath the intersection of New Jersey Avenue and N Street and ultimately connecting to the Grand Arc Mall Tunnel.

Such would be a far better memorial in honoring the positive side of Craig’s actions in preserving neighborhoods – although I have yet to see an ECTC or the “Committee of 100” mention or protest of the 600+ residences along New York Avenue between New Jersey Avenue and North Capitol Street, nor show any interest in extending Washington, D.C.’s monumental core beauty to the area to the relative ugliness of the area to north of Union Station- as I guess can be expected from the sort of doctrinaire anti-freeway, anti-questioning existing railroad design emanating from an attorney and a law firm well connected to the railroad industry, Covington & Burling.

Washington Post Continues Lying About D.C. Freeways

2009-12-26T00:50:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post continues its efforts to misinform the public about the feasibilities of completing the Washington, D.C. freeway system

From A Trip Within The Beltway:

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2009/12/washington-post-continues-lying-about.html

From The Washington Post obituary of Peter S. Craig:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/20/AR2009122002242.html

For more than two decades, Mr. Craig battled business interests, developers and members of Congress who wanted to build a bridge over the Potomac River to carry Interstate 66 into Georgetown and seven multilane highways, which would have destroyed more than 200,000 housing units, many in historically black sections of the city.

This 200,000 dwellings figure is something the Post repeats from its error ridden November 2000 article, which was refuted in the newsnet group misc.transport.road, by participants including Scott M. Kozel, and in a Post forum since made unavailable. It is something that the Post has simply ignored any requests for them to publish a correction, and something they grossly misreported with that November 2000 article's map with the false depiction of the I-95 Northeastern Freeway route.

The Posts' characterization is misleading not only in the number, but in presenting it as static, when in fact the proposed freeways underwent significant routing and design revisions to reduce impacts via the greater use of existing right of ways and of tunnels for pollution containment and land reclaimation. It mentions for instance a North Central Freeway routed via a new swath paralleling the Georgia Avenue corridor, displacing some 4,000 dwellings- in fact the variant of this 1959 proposal appearing within the initial North Central Freeway engineering report in 1964 with the most residential displacement was option #4 "Sherman, 8th Street, Ritchie, Sligo" with figures of 2,770 within D.C., and 440 within Maryland.

But it fails to tell the readers that such a concept was explicitly rejected by the Kennedy Administration, which instead proposed for that highway a tight alignment along the B&O Metropolitan Branch Railroad, which is Washington, D.C.'s sole north-south transport and industrial corridor located roughly mid way between the Potomac River and the eastern north-south portion of the I-494 Capital Beltway.

It fails to mention the 1962 Kennedy initiative, and blurs the history by failing to go into the history of the design evolution of the B&O Route North Central Freeway- for instance not mentioning how the North Central Freeway was effectively sabotaged via the initial engineering report -- dated October 1964 -- disregarding the Kennedy administration idea of the North Central Freeway strictly hugging the B&O railroad together by this report excluding it while presenting an upwards of 37 preliminary and alternative routes[- see plates] mainly nowhere near the railroad, with a recommended route that deviated sharply from the railroad through Takoma Park, Maryland, taking 471 houses in 1 mile where strictly following the railroad would be a fraction of that, that followed the railroad elsewhere just enough to help derail the highway altogether. It fails to mention that it took another two years for the supplementary report to appear that essentially followed the Kennedy idea, yet which was continually sabotaged by officials refusing to commit to it, and such highway "advocacy" as that of the Federal City Council, which only weeks earlier issued a report calling for the North Central Freeway's construction via the earlier 1964 design simply to save some time and money. According to a letter to Maryland Governor Spiro T. Agnew from Takoma Park resident Duncan Wall dated June 1, 1967- excerpt:

The re-studied proposal also tacitly admitted that the route first proposed was needlessly, even carelessly if not ruthlessly, destructive of our communities. The new version hugged both sides of the existing Baltimore and Ohio railway, thus avoiding a new swath of destruction to divide our communities and sharply reducing the number of homes to be taken.

The reduced, re-routed proposal was made public last year with endorsement of D.C. And Maryland highway authorities. The D.C. Portion was forced through the National Capital Planning Commission by votes of representatives of the D.C. Highway Department and of the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads. From this we concluded, reasonably enough, that the highway authorities of the two jurisdiction cons (Maryland and D.C.) had reached a firm understanding with the Bureau of Public Roads.

Many of us were therefore astonished and aroused to preparations for renewed protests when Washington newspapers recently reported that the Bureau has acted to open it all up again. We have not found the Bureau forthcoming with candid information, but the press articles intimate an intention to force Maryland to accept modifications of route or design ostensibly "cheaper."

The result is that the whole controversy, which had been somewhat quiescent, is beginning to agitate the communities again. I can assure you this is so, for although I recently resigned chairmanship of the Metropolitan Citizens Council for Rapid Transit and write this simply as an individual citizen who wishes your administration well, I do remain in close touch with neighborhood sentiment on transportation-related issues.

As Governor of our State, you are in position better than we as private citizens to require straightforward answers from the Bureau of Public Roads.

You can also insure that the Maryland State Roads Commission refuses to go along with divisive proposals which these communities will regard as cause for new protests.

It furthermore fails to discuss the evolution of the I-95 Northeastern Freeway connection from the B&O Route to the I-95 'stumps' at the Beltway via the 195os decision to route it via the more sensitive closer watershed area of Northwest Branch Park in Maryland then that existing 250 foot wide right of way that conveniently parallels I-95 at and beyond the Beltway that would be ignored by official highway planning -- and apparently even the opposition -- until about 1971.

By so blurring the history, it increases the likelihood of confusion between say, 1,095, the figure for completing I-95 from the Maryland line to roughly along the B&O corridor though veering significantly into Brookland along 12th Street as per the 1960 proposal, with that of 1,166 for completing the entire system via the 1971 design, with figures of 148, 600+*, and 172 for the three areas along the downtown Inner Loop segment with displacement, and with a figure of 59 for completing I-95 from the Capital Beltway to just north of New York Avenue via the B&O-PEPCO combination. That figure of 59 includes the cluster of about 24 and about 5 along the northern side of New Hampshire Avenue flanking that large open field of the Masonic Eastern Star Home, just inside D.C., and the 34** at the western edge of Brookland. The I-70S portion of the B&O Route North Central Freeway as per the 1966 supplementary study would have displaced 303 dwellings [372 total NCF - 69 of I-95 segment] within D.C., and 163 *** in Maryland, a reduction from the figures of 720 and 590 for the infamous 1964 "recommended alternative" #11 "Railroad-Sligo East" proposal.

*the 600+ figure is reducible to as few as 34 via my superior alternative employing a some 1,400 radii transition cut and cover tunnel passing beneath the intersection of New Jersey Avenue and N Street, taking advantage of the convenient placement of the Dunbar HS building that seems to me as if it was situated for this very purpose, and transitioning to a multilevel tunnel beneath O Street to its junction with New York Avenue. This alternative entirely bypasses the stand of Victorian development extending from the southwest quadrant of New York Avenue and North Capital Street to New Jersey Avenue, minimally requiring displacement only within the area immediately west to the east side of 4th Street NW between N and M Streets, while sparing those prettier dwellings along M Street nearest to New Jersey Avenue, while providing a greater -- gentler -- tunneled turning transition radi then the 1971 design that had a 50 mph design speed.

**the 34 figure is reducible to about 11 if a portion of the highway is shifted to the railroad's immediate west side which has a generous amount of underutilized industrialized space. (However a development project just approved for this area includes a structure that is directly in the way -- IOW a 'demolition special' -- named the "Arts Walk". Meanwhile, further development along the railroad-industrial corridor promises to place 100s of new 'demolition special' dwellings, with official planning abandoning the idea of at least decking over a short stretch of the railroad.)

***the 163 figure is reducible qualitatively by a redesign that extends the idea of cut and cover tunnels that the 1966 supplementary study report shows alongside Montogomery Community College, further south beneath Takoma Avenue preserving the entire row of Victorian houses that face the railroad that both the 1966 and 1971 plans would have destroyed, along with preserving the sanctity of the landmark Cady Lee Mansion that the 1971 design displaced via replacing the 1966 plans configuration of 3 lanes in each direction flanking the railroad, with that instead placing both directions along the railroad's east side. (The 1966 plan's mainline would miss the houses to the north along Takoma Avenue but the open depressed design would push the replacement Takoma Avenue into the houses). However, the cir. 1966 construction of the Montgomery Gardens apartment complex -- located all the way up to the very edge of the RR's western side created a right of way chock at the expense of the Victorian structures that were built a century earlier with a sensible amount of set back allowing cut and cover highway tunnels.

Hence, if right of ways are preserved, and the designs are so further developed, completing I-95 through Washington, D.C. and all the way to the Capital Beltway in Maryland would displace as few as 74 dwellings- which was about the number that would have been taken for the D.C. Wisconsin Avenue corridor portion of the late 1950s NW Freeway.

How JFK's D.C. North Central Freeway Was Sabotaged

2009-12-23T22:51:00.000-05:00

to effectively stay away from Catholic University of America,
and keep any such freeway far away from, let alone through the field of the Masonic Eastern Star Home on New Hampshire Avenue

As with anything, just connect the dots with the most influential property owners along a given route...

excerpted from:
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/homeland-security-goal-would-be-better.html

1959

The cancellation of the NW Freeway led to the 1962 JFK Administration proposal of replacing the 1959 plan for three separate northern radial freeways with a 2 into 1 "Y" Route upon the B&O Metro Branch RR-industrial corridor that runs next to the campus of Catholic University of America. This was to occur with essentially the rail transit network that was built for WMATA.

1962

That plan would be effectively undermined politically via the subsequent 1964 North Central Freeway reports' failure to follow the JFK plan with up to 37 studied routes largely nowhere near this rr and with a recommendation running along the rr in some areas only to deviate significantly directly through old neighborhoods with far far higher local impacts -- 471 free standing dwellings for the 1 mile segment through Takoma Park, Maryland upon a route not only far more destructive but longer and less direct then JFK's B&O "Y" route.

1964

Veers about 1/2 mile away from the B&O railroad on new swath through old neighborhoods in Takoma Park, Maryland, taking 471 houses for the 1.1 mile segment, before rejoining the railroad immediately north of New Hampshire Avenue.

This route was longer and less direct.

Route #11 at New Hampshire Avenue, veering away from the B&O railroad into Takoma Park

1964

1966

It was not until 1966 that a "supplementary" North Central Freeway study with the JFK B&O route appeared; it eliminated the separate swath in Takoma Park by "hugging" the railroad's flanks at the edge of Takoma Park, with various sort tunnels to swing the highway to one side or the other railroad, such as alongside Montgomery Community College, with a proposal to effectively do the same alongside Catholic University and Brookland via "air rights" development.

1966

1971

The 1971 plan extends the highway cover southward to Rhode Island Avenue, yet inexplicitly deletes the northern segment alongside the main campus of Catholic University of America, continuing its traditional isolation from the east .

All of this was undermined by various politician's suggestions as late as 1968 in favor of the earlier route from 1964 as "less expensive".

So would a change in the route in the vicinity of Fort Totten to use more parkland, creating a new objection in the 1966-71 plan absent from the 1964 plan.

1964 plan which follows the railroad at Fort Totten

1966 plan which veers to the west at Fort Totten

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/11/ectc-1970.html

So conceivably did the 1971 plan's to bury the highway segment through Takoma, D.C., but with a catch: whereas the 1966 plan flanked the railroad -- that is a 3/RR/RR/3 configuration -- the 1971 plan placed both directions of the highway along the railroad's eastern side, thus placing it in direct conflict with the landmark Cady-Lee mansion on the corner of Eastern Avenue and Piney Branch, necessitating its removal, whereas the 1966 plan avoided this.

1966 I-70S
Cut and cover tunnels
Silver Spring, Maryland
alongside Blair Park/Montgomery Community College

1966 I-70S North Central Freeway
flanks the railroad
in Takoma, D.C.

1971 I-70S North Central Freeway
all on the eastern side of the railroad

No plan was drawn up via the authorities to tunnelize this segment of highway with highway carriageways flanking the railroad to preserve the Cady Lee mansion as well as the houses to the north facing Takoma Avenue. The Cady Lee mansion, built cir 1884, is the northernmost house within D.C. along the railroad's eastern side.

Cady Lee

Why add objections lacking in earlier plans?

Doing so would only continue to undermine this highway's political support, doing so pretty much by the time of the final re-routing with the change of the I-95 Northeast Freeway's route from Northwest Branch Park/Fort Drive, to the PEPCO power line/New Hampshire Avenue route.

D.C. I-95 Northeast Freeway routes
1960-1973

1960 report has I-95 in Maryland via Northwest Branch and entering D.C. passing alongside Catholic Sisters College, which was openly opposed by the Roman Catholic Church and the adjoining residential areas, leading to its abandonment.

The November 1962 White House report retains the Maryland Northwest Branch routing, while, for D.C. adopting the Fort Drive right of way between Galatin and Galloway Streets NE- which is the routing adopted by the subsequent 1964, 1966 and 1971 study-reports.

The 1971 study-report presents that option of the subsequent PEPCO Power Line right of route, in order to preserve parkland by instead re-utilizing the existing 250 foot clear cut power line right of way that extends from outside the I-495 Capital Beltway to some 1,600 or so feet from the Maryland D.C. line alongside New Hampshire Avenue, to then travel about another 1,600 feet to join the B&O railroad corridor.

Below is the most significent property along the connecting segment of B&O-PEPCO I-95.

-------

Masonic Eastern Star Home
on New Hampshire Avenue
between railroad and the Washington, D.C.-Maryland line

http://www.mei-futures-dc.org/campus

the beautiful, historic grounds of the Masonic and Eastern Star Retirement Home at 6000 New Hampshire Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20011.
The home was built in 1905 and has retained much of the original architecture throughout recent renovations.

This Masonic Order appears to possess an affinity for this side of Washington, D.C.'s New Hampshire Avenue, expressed with the early 1900s creation of the Order's Home on 6000 New Hampshire Avenue NE near the border with Maryland, quickly followed by the 1906 start of construction of what became its downtown headquarters new DuPont Circle, at 1618 New Hampshire Avenue NW:

http://wwwsouthcapitolstreet.blogspot.com/2008/09/appearances-of-power-ruminations.html

The Perry Belmont Mansion is one of Washington’s finest examples of Beaux Arts architecture. Designed by French architect Eugene Sanson [started in 1906] and completed in 1909, the house remains today much as it was when originally constructed and still contains many of the Belmonts furniture and objects d’art. Mr. Belmont was the grandson of Commodore Perry who negotiated the 1854 Treaty of Amity, which opened the ports of Japan for commerce. During the sixteen years that Jessie and Perry Belmont, who had served as US Ambassador to Spain, occupied the house, dignitaries from around the world were entertained there. The landmarked house was purchased in 1935 by the Order of the Eastern Star for use as its international headquarters. It serves also as the private residence of the Right Worthy Grand Secretary. The Order’s careful stewardship provides Washington with a remarkable example of its built heritage.

Formerly the Perry Belmont Mansion, it was started in 1906 and completed in 1909, at the then-extravagant cost $1.5 million. Perry and Jessie Belmont built the mansion for the specific purpose of entertaining not only notables of Washington, but also dignitaries from all over the world. The building was only used during the Washington party season (about two months each year) and special events. It was designed by Eugene Sanson, a famous French architect who had designed many grand homes and chateaus in Europe. He was renowned for his use of light and space, and for his beautiful staircases. Long before the acquisition of the building by the General Grand Chapter in 1935, it was a site of elegance, gracious and grand hospitality, of distinguished diplomats, world-renowned guests and romance.

The Belmonts entertained lavishly and had a staff of approximately 34 servants. They used the house from 1909 to 1925. It was then closed and put on the market for sale with the stipulation that it could not be altered for 20 years after purchase. The mansion stood empty and unused until 1935, when the General Grand Chapter purchased it. Mr. Belmont, being a Mason and happy to be selling it to someone who would take care of it, sold it to The General Grand Chapter for $100,000. As part of our agreement with Mr. Belmont, The General Grand Chapter law states the Right Worthy Grand Secretary must live in the Temple. So the building is still a working private residence as well as our headquarters. Many furnishings, including several Tiffany vases, 37 oil paintings, Louis the 14th and 15th furniture, china and oriental rugs were included with the purchase of the Temple and are still on display for our members and their guests to enjoy on tours. Chandeliers throughout are gold gilt and hung with hand-carved rock crystal drops – some with amethyst as well. There are eleven fireplaces, most with hand-carved marble mantles. All the marble in the house was brought from Italy, all the wood from Germany and all the metal fixtures from France.

-------

PEPCO/New Hampshire Avenue
1971- dropped by Maryland July 16, 1973

In my studies of numerous historical information sources regarding this highway planning, I have yet to encounter anything on the Order of the Eastern Star's opinions- for instance did they ever request making the depressed segment through their property as a tunnel to preserve the home's sanctity?

Likewise with that of Catholic University of America- did they for instance object to the proposed highway lid's shortening in the 1971 plan versus the 1966 plan which extended further north alongside the CUA main campus to Taylor Street?

The Washington Post would completely misrepresent this route
in its November, 2000 article "Lost Highways" by Bob and Jane Levey, with this map turning the I-95 Northeast route away from the field of the Order of the Eastern Star Masonic home property alongside New Hampshire Avenue between the RR and the D.C./Maryland line, and instead upon a highly destructive and fictitious route that appears in no planning documents

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/01/washington-post-lies-about-inside.html

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2009/10/roads-for-many-through-homes-of-few.html

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/02/sampling-of-attitudes-towards-dc-i-95.html

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2009/05/romish-masonic-religious-drive-against.html

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2008/12/who-really-stopped-washington-dcs.html

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2009/05/telling-deletion.html

Commuter Outrage R.I.P.

2009-12-22T17:14:00.000-05:00

My take on the sudden disappearance of the blog Commuter Outrage, that I posted to the comments section of the Streetsblog article at:
http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/12/21/what-the-heck-was-commuteroutrage-com/#comments

Douglas Willinger

"So, that's it. That's the end of our story and, apparently, the end of CO.com as well. Sadly, we were unable to cobble together enough evidence to convince ourselves that CO.com was the product of an unholy alliance between the highway lobby and military intelligence and propaganda professionals."

If so, they were strangely silent about the incompleteness of the Washington, D.C. freeway system, and that in other areas, such as the lack of highway-railway tunnel connecting LI with Westchester County and New Jersey:

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/homeland-security-goal-would-be-better.html

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2007/10/whatever-happened-to-idea-of-additional.html

But then again, perhaps not so strange:

"So, we started poking around the Internet for a xxx xxxxx and quickly found him. According to a LinkedIn account that has since been deleted, xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx graduated from Princeton in 200x. He studied at the University of Qatar and earned a master's degree from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He lived in a temporary corporate housing facility in Falls Church, Virginia and worked as a consultant for SAIC, Science Applications International Corporation. And in 2006, xxxxxx xxxxx was married in Loudon County, Virginia to xxxxxx xxxxx. "

Georgetown University through its law school (Georgetown Law Center) has been a prominent opponent of D.C.'s freeways for decades.

For instance see the story about D.C.'s most needed and least in displacement proposed freeway links -- the I-95 NE/NCF -- which was sabotaged politically with successive design additions to increase local opposition (most notably the 1964 NCF report's disregard of the 1962 JFK Administration proposal for the highway to strictly hug the existing B&O [Red Line] corridor; I have much at this on my blog "A Trip Within the Beltway" such as this:

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

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/search/label/highway%20routing%20mysteries

As with anything, just connect the dots with the most influential property owners along a given route...

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

December 21, 2009 at 9:55 pm Link # 29

As of 2AM, December 22, 2009, Streetsblog has allowed the appearance of additional 2 posts to this comments area, both dated later, while my comment above does not appear at all.

UPDATE:

As of the following afternoon, my comment appeared in the proper order of its submission as #29, followed by the earlier approved subsequent two submissions, plus those made later- having grown at this writing on December 23, 2009 to 45 comments.

The article, which is certainly a landmark at Streetsblog -- which was the target of much criticism from Commuter Outrage, and is reproduced below.

It provides a good overview of detective work, though I could not find how they got the photo of
"xxxxxx xxxxxx: The face of CommuterOutrage"

Disturbingly, there is no word from xxxxxx xxxxx (the name in this Streetsblog article), or of Lewis Derkins, Judd Wiley and Alvin MacIntosh, the names that appeared in Commuter Outrage, nor from anyone knowing this individual or persons.

I thought the blog had great potential, but alas would veer off with silly things like attacking people for wearing tweeds while riding bicycles, while not dare to attack any of the lack of highway or railway links, nor any of the "chocks" of transportation corridors by misplaced, misguided 'new urbanist' real estate development.

Indeed, I left a comment at Commuter Outrage about the chocking of the N.Y. I-87 Major Deegan Expressway and of the Mott Have area in the South Bronx, by the thoughtless prioritization of a real estate development project to hem in the existing 6 lane elevated I-87 Major Deegan Expressway, placing some 10,000 new residents mere feet away from this exposed source of traffic pollution, and leaving less space to replace the freeway viaduct with a cut and cover tunnel equipped with exhaust filtration. There it remained, but I never saw any response. Should not a pro-highway entity care about such matters?

So "cute" how he Pentagon does not give a damn about improving our transportation network capacity, with "debate" crafted upon an axis of overly strict and hence socially destructive dogmas: aka we should ONLY build rail transit OR highways. It reflects for example from much of the "pro-highway" side of this "debate" for instance are those who spend far more time opposing seemingly any and all major rail transportation projects as a waste of money, while decrying the basic concept of transit oriented development with little discussion of context and even less discussion of design, yet failing to make a single specific highway proposal. It simultaneously reflects in the forms of such reflexes as groups opposed to any major transit investments in cities with many highways, and with such in reverse such as apologists for stopping planning for PEPCO/B&O Route D.C. I-95.

But such a silence is totally consistent with anything connected to our [Jesuit Order] Georgetown University possessed government with its ominous combination of no new highways but lots and lots of domestic surveillance supposedly making us safer.

Note Georgetown University's support for domestic surveillance -- it's where the PATRIOT Act was crafted -- and their opposition to highways near to them or other such major Vatican properties as Catholic University of America, where the B&O Route I-95 would have passed alongside.

See some of the history how this highway was politically sabotaged:

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

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/search/label/highway%20routing%20mysteries

And note note the line of work of the person[s] reportedly behind Commuter Outrage:

(excerpt from the Streetsblog article- below)

SAIC is one of those gigantic federal government mega-contractors that you ought to know about but probably don't. With 44,000 employees and $8 billion a year in revenue, SAIC has more individual government contracts than any other private company in America. "No Washington contractor pursues government money with more ingenuity and perseverance than SAIC," investigative journalists Donald Bartlett and James Steele wrote in a 2007 Vanity Fair article. "SAIC currently holds some 9,000 active federal contracts in all. More than a hundred of them are worth upwards of $10 million apiece. Two of them are worth more than $1 billion."

SAIC offers its federal patrons a long list of products and services related to energy, infrastructure and national security. But its big specialty is intelligence. Boasting "information dominance" as one of its areas of expertise, SAIC is one of the major players in the brave new world of government intelligence out-sourcing (Yasmin's employers, CSC and Booz Allen, are two of the others). SAIC is the National Security Agency's largest contractor, and the NSA is SAIC's single largest customer. By 2007, SAIC had "virtually replaced the National Security Agency as the primary collector of signals intelligence for the government," according to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock.

In addition to the spy-for-hire work, the government also turns to SAIC to develop media and propaganda campaigns for the U.S. military. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon selected SAIC to run its Rapid Reaction Media Team. After the invasion, the Pentagon awarded SAIC an $82 million no-bid contract to establish the Iraqi Media Network, which "quickly devolved into a mouthpiece for the Pentagon," according to Bartlett and Steele.

It seemed completely far-fetched, but could it be that some member of the highway lobby had hired SAIC to run a domestic propaganda campaign around the upcoming federal transportation re-authorization and CO.com was the result? Was this what "information dominance" looked like when applied to domestic transportation policy? Preposterous! Yet CO.com's authors suggested that we sustainable transport "weenies" had merely glimpsed the tip of the CO.com iceberg. "Trust me," Judd Wiley wrote in a July 1 comment. "We've only just started. You clowns have no idea what's coming your way."

----

Monday, December 21, 2009 45 Comments

What the Heck Was CommuterOutrage.com?
by Aaron Naparstek on December 21, 2009

xxxxxxx xxxxxes: The face of CommuterOutrage.
Every rare once in a while we used to get e-mails from readers asking us if we saw what they're saying about Streetsblog over at CommuterOutrage.com. For the most part, we didn't. We had long since concluded that CO.com didn't have much of an agenda beyond trying to get Streetsblog's attention.

There was, however, a time in the summer of 2008 when these outraged commuters managed to do just that. That's when we noticed that a comment posted by one of their authors on Streetsblog originated from an IP address that traced back to the Pentagon's Office of the Secretary of Defense. We did a little bit of digging and, for a brief, thrilling moment we thought we might just have stumbled across a secretive new blogging division of the military-industrial-automobile-sprawl complex working down the hall from Donald Rumsfeld's old lair.

If you've never heard of CommuterOutrage.com then you probably want to go ahead and skip this story. But if you ever found your blood pressure rising as you slogged through a 3,000-word CO.com blog post filled with off-the-wall assumptions, cascading series of factual errors and childish personal attacks, then read on. The following 3,000 words were written for you.

* * * * *

CO.com popped up in the spring of 2008 pseudonymously authored by three guys calling themselves Lewis Derkins, Judd Wiley and Alvin MacIntosh. Their introductory "Rant" (still available in the purgatory of Google cache) announced that they were "fed up with the buffoonery" of the "lazy politicians and inept bureaucrats" who "say we should choose to live closer to the office or find alternative means of transportation." They were outraged over having to pay for tolls, gas taxes and short-term parking at the airport. They decried "entitlement spending" and "social engineering experiments" like congestion pricing and tax credits for hybrid vehicles (As for entitlements like free highways and social engineering experiments like exurban sprawl: No problem!) And they demanded that federal transportation dollars be spent on the "maintenance and expansion projects that benefit all of us."

If you've ever spent a bit of time in the right wing policy realm, a lot of that language will sound familiar. In the spring of 2008, lobbyists and advocates across the transportation policy realm were gearing up for the upcoming federal re-authorization. In transportation circles, the call to spend more on "maintenance and expansion" is often code for directing funds to roads and highways. You can't, after all, "expand and maintain" light rail and bus rapid systems, or walkable, bike-friendly communities or a national high speed rail system that don't yet exist.

CO.com was a little bit like Opposite Day Streetsblog. Day after day, its authors tried to make the case that Americans love and demand automobile sprawl, mass transit is filled with perverts and run by incompetent bureaucrats, and bike commuters are sociopathic anarchists who ought to be licensed. But more than anything, CO.com was about, well -- us. Lewis, Judd and Alvin were obsessed with Streetsblog, Transportation Alternatives and the livable streets movement. Though none of them seemed to live there, they were outraged by any effort to make New York City a more hospitable place for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders. And they were intent on exposing livable streets advocates as frauds, liars and socialists.

While Streetsblog-types tend to argue in a wonky, policy-oriented style, Lewis, Judd and Alvin seemed to be schooled in the Karl Rovian Swift Boat style of political discourse. Calling themselves the "Streetsblog Truth Squad," they frequently called out individual advocates by name, published their photos online, and piled on the personal insults and schoolyard taunts. Referring to advocates as "weenies" was a favorite. Few Streetsblog items escaped their wrath. Even a funny, little throw-away Streetfilm on Portland, Oregon's new bike boxes merited a lengthy "debunking" by Lewis Derkins.

There were clearly some brains behind CO.com. The writing could be smart and funny. And they certainly knew how to get under the skin of livable streets advocates. Given the intensity and frequency that Lewis, Judd and Alvin were blogging when their site first launched, it seemed conceivable that CO.com was someone's day job. They aggressively promoted their links in the comments sections of other blogs and by May 2008 they started to get some traction in local New York City media, occasionally picking up links from blogs like Queens Crap, Village Voice, Gotham Gazette and even the New York Times' City Room.

For a time, Lewis, Judd and Alvin slugged it out in Streetsblog's comments section until they deemed our automated spam filter an infringement on their First Amendment rights. Likewise, Streetsblog readers did battle in the CO.com comments section until they realized that, aside from a renowned bike crank and the last of the urban highway advocates, Lewis and the gang didn't actually have much of a readership. Our server stats confirmed that. Despite the constant links, CO.com drove virtually zero traffic to Streetsblog.

Then it got interesting.

On July 22, 2008 we posted an item called "Highway Funding: The Last Bastion of Socialism in America." Not surprisingly, the article's hyperbolic title outraged Lewis and Alvin and they voiced their displeasure in the Streetsblog comments section. WordPress lets us see the IP addresses of our commenters and after Alvin MacIntosh published a comment during weekday work hours we clicked through to see if it might reveal his place of employment. It did. Alvin, apparently, worked here:
OrgName: The Pentagon



OrgID: THEPEN



Address: OPN-BM, Pentagon



Address: Rm BE884



City: Washington



StateProv: DC



PostalCode: 20310



Country: US
CO.com's "Alvin MacIntosh" was blogging out of The Pentagon!

Now, that was interesting. We already had this lurking, paranoid suspicion that CO.com was, perhaps, being funded by some highway lobby interest. Could it be that a top-secret section of the U.S. Department of Defense was publishing a pro-automobile, pro-suburban sprawl web site bent on the destruction of Streetsblog? In the waning days of the George W. Bush Administration did someone at The Pentagon consider the livable streets movement a threat to national security? How cool would that be?

Excited, we called a couple of our favorite tech geeks and asked if they might be able to help us dig up any more information on Lewis, Judd and Alvin. It was summer and work was kind of slow. So, a small group of us decided to spend some time taking a closer look at CO.com.

First, we looked at their domain name registration. It was purchased on April 4, 2008 by xxxxxx xxxxx. It looked like xxxxxx initially tried to register the web site address anonymously but somehow wound up with her name on it. Though Google turned up a few xxxxxx xxxxm's, the one that stood out was a public relations professional at Booz Allen Hamilton. She graduated from Princeton in 2002 then got a masters degree in "strategic public relations" from the USC Annenberg School for Communications in 2004. Prior to Booz Allen, she worked for CSC, Computer Sciences Corporation.

Next, we took a look at CO.com's source code. There we found "xxxuxes" listed as the Client I.D. on an advertising widget embedded in the web site's sidebar. That was the clue that opened the floodgates. A Google blog search for "pxxxxxx" uncovered a set of April 9, 2008 test blog posts on CO.com, one of them titled "Test xat." Though the test posts had been deleted from the live web site, they still showed up in Google's cache.

So, we started poking around the Internet for a xxx xxxxx and quickly found him. According to a LinkedIn account that has since been deleted, xxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx graduated from Princeton in 200x. He studied at the University of Qatar and earned a master's degree from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He lived in a temporary corporate housing facility in Falls Church, Virginia and worked as a consultant for SAIC, Science Applications International Corporation. And in 2006, xxxxxx xxxxxx was married in Loudon County, Virginia to xxxxxx xxxxx.

CommuterOutrage.com, it seemed, was xxxxxx xxxxxs's web site. We had our man.

* * * * *

SAIC is one of those gigantic federal government mega-contractors that you ought to know about but probably don't. With 44,000 employees and $8 billion a year in revenue, SAIC has more individual government contracts than any other private company in America. "No Washington contractor pursues government money with more ingenuity and perseverance than SAIC," investigative journalists Donald Bartlett and James Steele wrote in a 2007 Vanity Fair article. "SAIC currently holds some 9,000 active federal contracts in all. More than a hundred of them are worth upwards of $10 million apiece. Two of them are worth more than $1 billion."

SAIC offers its federal patrons a long list of products and services related to energy, infrastructure and national security. But its big specialty is intelligence. Boasting "information dominance" as one of its areas of expertise, SAIC is one of the major players in the brave new world of government intelligence out-sourcing (xxxxxx's employers, CSC and Booz Allen, are two of the others). SAIC is the National Security Agency's largest contractor, and the NSA is SAIC's single largest customer. By 2007, SAIC had "virtually replaced the National Security Agency as the primary collector of signals intelligence for the government," according to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock.

In addition to the spy-for-hire work, the government also turns to SAIC to develop media and propaganda campaigns for the U.S. military. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon selected SAIC to run its Rapid Reaction Media Team. After the invasion, the Pentagon awarded SAIC an $82 million no-bid contract to establish the Iraqi Media Network, which "quickly devolved into a mouthpiece for the Pentagon," according to Bartlett and Steele.

It seemed completely far-fetched, but could it be that some member of the highway lobby had hired SAIC to run a domestic propaganda campaign around the upcoming federal transportation re-authorization and CO.com was the result? Was this what "information dominance" looked like when applied to domestic transportation policy? Preposterous! Yet CO.com's authors suggested that we sustainable transport "weenies" had merely glimpsed the tip of the CO.com iceberg. "Trust me," Judd Wiley wrote in a July 1 comment. "We've only just started. You clowns have no idea what's coming your way."

So, we did some more digging.

* * * *

We found that in February 2008, xxxxxxx xxxxx took a course with SPS Training at EEI Communications in Alexandria, Virginia so he could learn how to use PD2, a software application used for Defense Department procurement. In his paperwork, xxxxxxx listed his organization as "the Office of the Secretary Defense" and his email address as xxxxxxx.xxxxes.ctr@osd.mil.

CO.com frequently pulled photos, links and text from Transportation Alternatives' web site, so we asked T.A.'s tech guys if we could take a closer look at their server logs. We quickly noticed that someone with a Defense Department IP address often rummaged around T.A's web site in the hours prior to CO.com blog posts that used T.A. material. For example, we found that someone using a computer at this IP address: 214.16.41.245, dns1.bta.mil, had been doing Google image searches for "Wiley Norvell" just hours before Lewis Derkins published a blog post featuring a photo of T.A.'s Wiley Norvell on July 16, 2008.

BTA.MIL is the domain name for the Pentagon's Business Transformation Agency and we found that, among its thousands of federal government contracts, SAIC had a consulting team working for the Pentagon's Business Transformation Agency in Virginia. We also noticed that people who worked for the BTA often had osd.mil e-mail addresses, just like xxxxxxx xxxxes.

Was "Lewis Derkins" actually xxxxxx xxxxxs? Lots of evidence seemed to point that way. But the big question was whether CO.com was official Pentagon product or merely xxxxxx's hobby. If a Defense Department contractor with a specialty in "information dominance" were producing a right-wing, pro-autosprawl, climate change-denying, attack-blog bent on "exposing" the New York City livable streets movement, that was a pretty good story. If CO.com was just some bored Pentagon contractor's side-project, well, that wasn't exactly "60 Minutes" material.

Still, it was nice just to know the name of at least one of the anonymous authors behind CO.com. Even if CO.com was xxxxick's hobby, it was notable that a guy who proclaimed himself to be a watchdog over waste, fraud and ineptitude was using the Defense Department's computer network and your federal tax dollars to produce his personal blog. Likewise, it was also somewhat incredible that a guy who worked for one the nation's preeminent contractors of outsourced spy services wasn't competent enough to maintain the anonymity that he so clearly desired. If this were a CO.com story, they would probably say that xxxxxx xxxxxx was just another inept, money-wasting private contractor leeching off the American taxpayer.

* * * * *

While it was fun to imagine that such a thing as the military-industrial-automobile-sprawl complex existed and that it members were sitting around the Pentagon thinking about ways to counter the growing influence of Streetsblog and the livable streets movement, a number of clues piled up during our brief investigation that led us to believe that CO.com was, in the end, nothing more than a hobby for xxxxxxx xxxxes and some pals.

The first most obvious clue was the quality of the blog itself. If someone had hired CO.com's authors to advocate for more highway spending -- or anything, for that matter -- they didn't seem to be getting their money's worth. If SAIC, the nation's premier provider of private spy services was running CO.com, how were they making mistakes like the one that allowed us to grab that photograph of xxxxxxx xxxxxx off their server? It didn't add up to a professional operation.

Lewis Derkins, in particular, came across as a desperate undergrad eager to show that he was the smartest kid in class by proving, quantitatively, how stupid everyone else was. Putting aside his inability to make an argument free of sophomoric personal attacks, Lewis's blog posts were so consistently filled with errors it would have taken a full-time fact-checker just to correct them.
We'll give you one example pulled randomly from the first post we chose. On July 2, 2008, Lewis Derkins wrote a 3,200-word term paper criticizing the "bizarre analysis" and "misinterpretation of facts" in Charles Komanoff's seminal work, "Killed by Automobile" [PDF]. Derkins wrote that from 1994 to 1997, "465 people were killed in fires in New York City. That's two and a half times more people killed in fires than all pedestrians and bicyclists killed in NYC by cars. Are we going to launch an initiative to ban ovens in kitchens to combat this menace next?"

As was often the case, if you were familiar with the subject matter that Lewis Derkins was writing about, then you noticed that his numbers were completely wrong. "Killed by Automobile" repeatedly states that 947 pedestrians and bicyclists were killed by cars between 1994 and 1997, nearly twice as many as the 465 that Derkins says were killed in fires. Lewis's assertion that fires killed two-and-a-half times more New Yorkers than cars was off by a factor of five. It's a small mistake. But CO.com blog posts were jam-packed with errors like these, one snowballing atop the next. Lewis Derkins often built entire arguments around these kinds of errors. CO.com was simply too amateurish to think that some corporate interest was paying for it.

There were other circumstantial clues suggesting that CO.com was probably just xxxrick's hobby. Our favorite was Hiss Kaag.

We noticed that, in the early days of CO.com, a character named "Hiss Kaag" often showed up in the blog's comments section. In his comments, Hiss came across as a kind of bureaucratic manager caricature, like the Pointy-Haired Boss in the Dilbert cartoon, but with an inexplicable obsession for the International House of Pancakes. A typical Hiss Kaag comment went like this:

Hiss Kaag May 15th, 2008, 8:55 am

Lewis,

Only one complaint about your posting: Too damn long! Who has time to read all this poo at work?

Myself, Hiss Kaag that is, will not allow any of my staff to experience joy, happiness or the general feeling that their work matters.

I like making them change charts for no g-d damn reason, and spend my whole day managing up and kicking down.

That's the Hiss Kaag philosophy my friends. Use it too and you'll end up a lonely shriveled up sad excuse for a man.

G-d Bless.

SEE YOU AT IHOP.

Mr. Kaag

As we were clicking around through xxxxxx xxxxxxs's LinkedIn profile we noticed that Pxxxxx was connected to a guy named Kris Haag working at the Pentagon's Business Transformation Agency. Haag's resume showed that he was older and more senior than Pxxxxx, he was a government employee, not a contractor or consultant, and he appeared to hold a management job at the BTA.

That's when it clicked: Maybe Haag was xxxxxxxx's boss at work. Perhaps this Hiss Kaag character was xxxxxxx-and-friends way of mocking the pancake-eating federal bureaucrat who tasked them with making charts all day. Or perhaps Haag was in on the joke and was one of CO.com's other authors. (Or maybe Kris Haag has nothing to do with any of this, in which case, we apologize for mentioning your name here, Kris.) Either way, would this Hiss Kaag character be making appearances in the CO.com comments section if it were an official Pentagon product?

All in all, it seemed a lot more likely that the blog was being produced by one or more SAIC consultants slogging away in obscurity at a boring, bureaucratic job in the Pentagon.

* * * * *

Unlike CO.com, if we're going to write about you on Streetsblog, we generally like to call you first, check our facts, understand where you're coming from and give you an opportunity to tell your side. So, last week we did quite a bit of reporting on this story.

Calls to SAIC's switchboard confirmed that xxxxxx xxxxxx works in the company's Intelligence Security and Technology Group. But Melissa Koskovich, an SAIC spokesperson, insisted that CO.com is not produced by the company. "I can tell you right off the bat this is nothing we'd be involved with," she said. "We might have an employee blogging during work time."

Likewise, the Department of Defense said it is not responsible for CO.com. "By definition there's nothing that we do that is 'dot com.' We are either 'dot gov' or 'dot mil,'" Pentagon spokesperson Darryn James said. "The Pentagon is a small city. There are 25,000 people working here. So, this could be some contractor working in his off time."

We reached out to Kris Haag and xxxxx xxxxx but never heard back from them. After a number of calls and e-mails, xxxxxx xxxxxs replied on Thursday to say that he had received our note and was open to a conversation. We have been unable to reach him for an interview since then. Also on Thursday, the CO.com web site was taken offline and obliterated.

So, that's it. That's the end of our story and, apparently, the end of CO.com as well. Sadly, we were unable to cobble together enough evidence to convince ourselves that CO.com was the product of an unholy alliance between the highway lobby and military intelligence and propaganda professionals. In the end, all we think we managed to do was put a name to CO.com. Though, after months of non-stop anonymous attacks, that's kind of satisfying. Commuter Outrage.com was xxxxxx xxxxxs's blog. If nothing else, xatrick is now free to come out of hiding and add his voice to the vigorous public debate over 21st century transportation policy and urban sustainability. May he now enjoy the same high standard of accountability that he seemed so eager to impose on others.

Engineering Contest Sees Tunnels in Urban Future

2009-12-20T23:52:00.000-05:00

http://www.discoverynews.org/2009/12/new_technology_contest_highlig029751.php

An innovative deep-bore tunneling operation devised for Sound Transit in Seattle is one of five projects in competition for the Outstanding Civil Engineering Award of 2009, a contest conducted by the American Society of Civil Engineers. One of the Seattle project's competitors is another tunnel in California. All in all, tunnel technology is being revolutionized these days, with extensive implications for urban design as well as transportation.

All five nominated 2009 civil engineering projects are impressive and tend to renew one's confidence that technology can provide breakthroughs in human life comparable to the great feats of the past century. The successful Sound Transit project is also significant for the next deep-bore program in Seattle, a tunnel under the downtown to replace the Alaska Way Viaduct, a 60 year old elevated freeway alongside the harbor. Eventually, the waterfront tunnel project may offer a national model for cities that wish to recover surface land in high density urban areas for multiple uses--land now used for the single purpose of motor traffic. Tunnel technologies like those in Seattle also could help remove the reputation for waste acquired by the "Big Dig" project in Boston.

Here is what Erik Sofge of Popular Mechanics says about the already completed Sound Transit tunnel:

"Whether or not you're a believer in the universal benefits of public transit, this project deserves respect. To build a passenger rail station in the Beacon Hill area, south of downtown Seattle, contractors had to create the largest and deepest soft-ground sequential excavation method (SEM) tunnels in North America. SEM refers to the practice of digging a tunnel in sections, supporting each segment as you go. The pair of mile-long tunnels—part of a 14-mile light-rail project—were nearly twice the depth and diameter of previous such projects, running under a 352-feet-high hill. When initial test shafts found a surprisingly large amount of fine sand, engineers quickly rearranged the design and path of the tunnels, pioneering new construction techniques that should benefit future SEM projects in soft soils. The final result is inherently unassuming—the Beacon Hill station is 160 feet underground, accessible in 20 seconds by elevator—so the 642-ton, 330-feet-long earth-pressure-balancing tunnel-boring machine that dug the tunnels will have to stand testament to this nimble and literally ground-breaking project."

Posted by Bruce Chapman on December 10, 2009 2:49 PM | Permalink

710 Freeway tunnel would be feasible, Caltrans study finds

2009-12-20T22:04:00.000-05:00

Traffic backs up on Valley Boulevard in Alhambra. A tunnel could eventually connect the 710 to the 605, the 210 or the 2. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tunnel18-2009nov18,0,3597542.story

The preliminary survey examines five proposed underground areas for the final phase of the freeway and presents the challenges of each. Public hearings will be held before the report is finalized.
A long-awaited geological study for a proposal to complete the 710 Freeway as a tunnel under either the San Gabriel Valley or northeast Los Angeles found that such a project would be scientifically feasible.

The findings mark a small step in what even supporters say is a long road for the tunnel idea, which was proposed by transportation officials and some politicians after residents fought for decades against completing the 710 as an above-ground freeway.

The tunnel has also generated opposition, and building it would be significantly more expensive than a regular freeway.

The 710 ends in Alhambra, just north of the 10 Freeway. Planners originally envisioned that it would go through South Pasadena and Pasadena to link with the 210 Freeway.

Transportation officials began studying areas in five directions from the end of the freeway in January of last year.

Those zones stretch east to the 605 Freeway, north to the 210 Freeway, and west to the 2 Freeway.

The study, which is still in draft form, will not be finalized until early 2010, after a series of public meetings are held, said officials with the California Department of Transportation.

Abdi Saghafi, the Caltrans project manager for the 710 corridor, said the study did not favor one particular zone over another, but rather presented issues, challenges and conditions of each.

It was based on the assumption that the tunnel would be about 200 feet below ground and about 50 feet in diameter.

The study researched issues such as faults and seismic activity, groundwater conditions and the presence of hazardous materials, among others.

Some of the findings for each zone, according to the study, are:

Zone 1 (Northeast L.A.): There is one Superfund site in the northwest portion of the zone which could be a source of contaminated soil and groundwater in the tunnel.

There is also a possibility of encountering naturally occurring gases such as methane and hydrogen sulfide.

There are no active faults in the zone.

Zone 2 (Northeast L.A.): The active Raymond fault crosses the zone and there is also the potential of encountering naturally occurring gases.

Some soil and groundwater contamination could result in hazardous materials being encountered.

Zone 3 (South Pasadena/Pasadena): The Raymond and San Rafael faults are groundwater barriers in this area, and there is one active and two potentially active faults in the area.

There are two places with minor soil contamination in the northern limits of the zone.

Zone 4 (San Marino/Pasadena): Active faults that cross the zone are the Raymond and Alhambra Wash faults.

There is one Superfund site in the southwestern end of the zone.

There are also six other sites with various levels of soil contamination.

Zone 5 (Alhambra/San Gabriel/Temple City): The active Alhambra Wash fault is in this zone and so are the perennial Rio Hondo and San Gabriel rivers.

There is one Superfund site in the south-central portion of the zone and seven other sites with various levels of soil and groundwater contamination.

ari.bloomekatz@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Calls For Buried SF 101 Highway Tunnel

2009-12-20T10:00:00.000-05:00

from the comments at this article at Streetsblog:

http://sf.streetsblog.org/2009/02/06/mta-board-agrees-to-consider-studying-central-freeway-alternatives/

Marty

San Francisco should just do what they did in Boston, put the freeway underground. Out of sight, out of mind. Nobody likes to sit in traffic all day.

March 7, 2009 at 5:19 am Link # 13

marcos

I agree that US-101 should be undergrounded somewhere between Bryant and Mission with entrance ramps at Masonic and Geary onto the Golden Gate Bridge.

Many enviro urban pioneers who moved here from the suburbs don't like that idea, hell, they're afraid of any significant capital projects to speak of. We should all take our BRT and like it so they can get on with enjoying the rich and vibrant "experience economy" (TM) that San Francisco offers.

but then again, most of them do not live in close proximity to the freeway either, being forced to breathe the diesel particulate in our homes, or navigate on and off ramps by bicycle or foot to get most anywhere.

Undergrounding US-101 would also allow for air filtration to capture particulate matter for disposal.

And taking through traffic off of surface streets would clear the way for a much more efficient Muni.

Were the City to incorporate TBM capacity, in addition to boring subway tunnels, we could bore freeways.

If the freeway were taken down around San Bruno and Division, in the middle of the wye, then traffic could articulate 180 degrees, from Townsend to the east, 7th, 9th and 11th north, and division to the west.

Josh, to be nitpicky for no reason at all in response to not knowing where Duboce, 13th and Division--the same street--begin and end, there are not hundreds of streets that connect the freeway to the Golden Gate Gridge.

-marc

March 7, 2009 at 9:32 am Link # 14

My Conversation With a Shill For Thoughtless Development

2009-12-18T19:27:00.000-05:00

http://www.motthavenherald.com/2009/11/24/state-won%E2%80%99t-build-new-ramps-on-deegan/comment-page-1/#comment-679

19 Responses to “State won’t build new ramps on Deegan”

Streetsblog New York City » A Reason to Give Thanks: State DOT Won’t Widen the Deegan

24. Nov, 2009

[...] Opposition to expanding the highway was widespread. Community activists, city officials, and electeds — including Congressman Jose Serrano — condemned the proposal as a threat to redevelopment planned for the Harlem River waterfront. Transportation advocates warned that the project would attract more traffic, negating the promised reductions in congestion. [...]

Douglas Willinger

24. Nov, 2009

Wow! Wait until the area is all built up, making the highway rehab more expensive to taxpayers, but oh well, orchestrate and steer a controversy for some powerful entity that wants to build its towers more quickly, bringing in 1,000s of new residences and vehicles, behind a wall of an elevated highway separating themselves and the waterfront from the inland. Mark Gorton serves his masters at Credit Suise. Nice how they have that one meeting that though barely advertised to the public, is filled with opponents and apparantly none of the road’s users. And then, you have NYSDOT [first] issuing not a press release, but rather a call to Streetsblog?

MottHavendude

01. Dec, 2009

Douglass your comment is spoken like the typical DRIVER WHO DOESN’T LIVE IN THE COMMUNITY. People actually live here, and are forced to deal with the Major Deegan that plows through the community. And you are complaining that the community doesn’t roll over as the development plans to FINALLY open the waterfront, build affordable housing (did you notice we need more of that?), parkland (yeah we don’t have much of that either), decrease car traffic/exhaust (we have a bit of an asthma problem here due to the significant amount of cars/trucks on that Deegan), have just been approved and will be crushed so that YOUR commute from who knows where is slightly better? I mean really? Is this your argument? It has ZERO to do with Credit Suisse, and EVERYTHING to do with OUR COMMUNITY. But what do you care…you don’t live here. If you cared enough about the expansion of the Deegan ramps, you should have made it your business to be informed and attend the meeting. Feel free to come to ANY of the Community Board 1 meetings and voice your opinion about the issue. We would be happy to hear how you know whats best for the community and the city of NY.

Douglas Willinger

03. Dec, 2009

Dude-

You can have the development.

But why must it infringe on the much needed ramps? Do you think it makes any sense to add 10,000 residents to an already overcapacity interchange without even leaving room to upgrade the ramps?

And why jam in an elevated highway rather then what Cincinatti did that would really open up the waterfront, rather then create the cul de sac comminty that you shill for?

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2009/11/i-87-cromwell-avenue-tunnel.html

Why do you state that you are concerned with asthma when you will create even more of a traffic jam by not doing the Fort Washington Way with cover and filtration. The “Streetsblog” position is all about the public be damned just to make a development project a bit more sprawling?

That NYSDOT has a single meeting announced reportedly 3 days beforehand, and makes a decision on that shows that it is simply cherrypicked with paraochialists.

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2009/11/chock-deegan.html

Any meeting about the Deegan ought to be better announced, including the people using the highway.

A decision based on such an obviously cheery picked audience, and one so obviously steered to make this cul de sac development a bit larger is clearly invalid. So does that fact that the matter is unreported by the major newspapers- to keep the general public uninformed. Its all about hoodwinking the public, which the parochialists are good at.

But yes, the ruling class tool Mark Groton does his work well, as do the handlers of this “community” based opposition that would have Mott Haven become further walled off from the waterfront for the sake of a cul de sac development obviously pushed by something towards the top of the political pyramid.

A development along and atop a depressed. covered filtrated Deegan would be far better for everyone.

But again, as perhaps with the Washington, D.C. South Capitol Mall being canceled for that Nationals Stadium, when the top of the pyramid wants something, the unthinking minions just say yes.

Douglas Willinger

03. Dec, 2009

“If you cared enough about the expansion of the Deegan ramps, you should have made it your business to be informed and attend the meeting.”

I do care and I do follow transportation.

But my, a single meeting barely announced (and even them only afterward by TSTC and Streetsblog) and obviously cherrypicked and unannounced to the using public, and you treat it like gospel.

By that logic, lets have decision made on a transit project upon as sole barley advertised meeting. By defending the cherry picking process you essentualy state that you favor decisions made by the elite, suger-coated with rhetoric (but not logic) about serving existing communities.

That is the mark of a top down directed mission where the politicians relied upon their handlers, and not any independent analysis.

MottHavendude

04. Dec, 2009

Douglas your opinions are tragic indeed. The new development that we “shill” for is NOT in lieu of new Deegan ramps, it is just coming FIRST. The community does not want to jeopardize in any way the future redevelopment of the site, or the access to the waterfront, so they are redeveloping the community FIRST, at which time the Deegan ramps, should they be necessary in the future, very well can be built and will likely be revisited at some point. HOWEVER, if we build the ramps FIRST, it compromises what can/can’t be done to redevelop the area and will cut-off the waterfront. So why would someone choose to do that first? So your 45 minute commute down the Deegan from Sleepy twig, NY will be 2 minutes faster? Really?

The community is already shaped enough by highways, off ramps, truck traffic, and commuters like yourself. We do not live around the highways, they live around us…and as such the redevelopment is being built based on the community’s needs and the city’s interests, not your commute.

What you fail to realize, as most far-flung commuters with no knowledge of the community do, is that they are redeveloping along this site because A: It has substantial underutilized land that is perfectly situated adjacent to Manhattan, and with the benefit of opening the entire waterfront for the FIRST time. and B: It is along TRANSIT routes, including Metro-North, 2/4/5/6 train lines so that those that move into the area are NOT those that are dependent on cars or expect to have driveways. The car traffic that come with an increase of 5,000 people of which you speak of is typical of new developments in suburbia (where you live), NOT NYC transit based development, which is what we have here.

Your rhetoric of a ‘cul de sac” community is quite laughable, and reflects your inability to look past your suburban life. What the city is creating here is NOT a closed off waterfront community, it is an OPEN waterfront with parks, green space, outdoor restaurants, pavilions, bike trails, and pedestrian zone. Your are demonstrating a total lack of information regarding this redevelopment, as well as a complete ignorance of the community and how it will reshape the Southern Bronx and move the city forward. But then again, how much would one know about either when they are simply driving through in the mornings and evenings.

Motthavendude

04. Dec, 2009

(contd)..
It should also be noted that if you feel so strongly regarding the new Ramps, why don’t you come to the community board #1 monthly meetings and express your opinion. If you believe it is that important, why not educate us and convince us otherwise? You clearly expressed an interest and claim the meetings were “held in secret”, but had you been INVOLVED in the community from the beginning, you would have known all about these meetings. They were not held in secret, they were publicized to EVERYONE with ANY interest. Here is a great way to keep abreast of other such events: Involve yourself with the community instead of relying on random blogs for information and you just might discover alot more that you are missing, and you hopefully will be more capable of forming an educated opinion about the community and its goals.

If I don’t see you at the next community board #1 meeting, I am sure I will see you sitting in traffic on the Deegan.

Douglas Willinger

07. Dec, 2009

You defend a meeting that was essentially unannounced to the general public, filled with a group of people steered to protect the maximum amount of space for the development, disregarding the fact that there is plenty of space for development and the ramps.

But some entity at the top wants to jam in a cul de sac development- why don’t you look at the development plans on the NYSDOT site which show it as such?

If you really care for the community (defined as more the general public rather then the developers and their shillers) why no mention of the Fort Washington Way style tunnel with filtration, which would help everyone?

The shilling for making this development have more space and happen quicker ought to be a textbook example of elitism running amock all for a wealthy cul de sac enclave wedged between the waterfront and an elevated highway that I would like to bring down.

Motthavendude

08. Dec, 2009

Douglass why do you keep repeating that the meeting was unannounced to the general public. IT WAS ANNOUNCED, as are ALL NYSDOT hearings…so please take responsibility for not being informed. It was a full house of people who made it their business to be informed about the project and state their opinions. Had you been involved in the community you would know this, but you are not. So why are you voicing your nonsensical complaints on this website now?

There is NO entity at the top that is dictating this development. This clearly demonstrates your profound ignorance as to who is shaping this development: THE COMMUNITY. How many Community Board #1 meetings have you attended? The answer is ZERO. How do I know this? Because this project has been discuss ad nauseum for over a year with the community, local, city, and state officials. Had you attended any of these meeting you would A: Have known when the hearings were and B: Would not be making ignorant, uninformed comments on this website.

Elitism is not what governs the Mott Haven community, it is the community. Secondly, I would like to know how one could possibly describe this redevelopment as “wealthy.” IT IS AFFORDABLE HOUSING, with parks, bike trails, pedestrian zones, and retail. There is NO “luxury” component/housing of any kind..why? THE COMMUNITY DOES NOT WANT IT. How do I know this? I GO TO THE MEETINGS. And again you describe it as a “cul-de-sac” when in fact it OPENS the waterfront, NOT closes it! You are welcome to keep repeating lies, but it doesn’t make them true.

The fact remains you know nothing of the community, you do not live in the community, you care nothing for the community, and your sole interest is in shaving 2 minutes off your 45 minute commute down the Deegan from Sleepy Twig, NY. Until you educate yourself about this redevelopment and attend ANY meetings, please refrain from spewing nonsense.

Douglas Wilinger

08. Dec, 2009

Your sole interest is increasing the available land that is quickly available for this cul de sac development. The NYSDOT report itself has it has a cul se sac recommended in the area of the ramps- perhaps because of the heavy traffic.

The meeting was hardly advertised — what on a Friday 3 day before the meeting — and filled with people mouthing the exact same thing (apparently- as I am going by the meger reports) with NONE mentioning the Fort Washington tunnel-filtration concept?

Why would no one mention these things is they were so concerned or informed?

Any why is NYSDOT making decisions on a single basically unadvertised meeting apparently without the users? Why no billboard along I-87 advertising it to the users? No meeting on a transportation artery should lack advertisement to the people using the facility- but they apparently do not matter to parochialists such as yourself.

What you will accomplish is hemming in the highway, making it 3x expensive to underground, hence confirming the existing highway wall. By definition this screws the existing community. but the new development will sit behind its elevated highway and its presumable heavy sound glass. You will increase pollution and health problems by further over taxing the ramps and making it far more difficult, expensive and unlikely that the highway would be buried and filtrated. Why is it that the upper west side and the Gowanus area advocate for a longer term tunnel solution while the Mott Haven community gets steered to sanction keeping up the wall of the elevated highway?

You ought to tell the Jesuit Fordham “new urbanists” that we can do far better for Mott Haven.

How does it feel to sell out your area for pleasing some $#%@& at the top of the political pyramid who wants to get how tower up before he dies?

Douglas Willinger

09. Dec, 2009

A small group of people discussing something used by a great deal more people, and discussing it particularly without anything posted to the internet where users are likely to find about it in this day and age, is elitism. If there is to be a discussion about any transportation artery, that must include BOTH those alongside it and those using it- the latter for instance with signs-billboards announcing the meeting at least 30 days in advance.. Otherwise its is something that NYSDOT has no business basing a decision upon.

Telling me that I “care nothing for the community” is a strange charge considering that I am the one addressing concerns about noise pollution with proposing a “Fort Washington Way” ultimate tunnel solution allowing even more development space, while you instead would choose remaining oblivious to anything other than maintaining the existing WALL of an elevated expressway for the sake of building the development a few years quicker- and disregard how much more expensive this sort of anti-development makes burying and filtering the highway in the future. What you are advocacy is placing developer profit above the broader social good. Apparently by “community” you certainly mean far fewer people then do I. Everyone else should suffer merely to make the development a bit larger more quickly.

Compared to the Riverside South Boulevard and Gowanus Tunnel projects why do you insist upon the extra and quicker space of cramming in the existing elevated highway -placing some 10,000 new residents in such close proximity to the exposed highway and continuing to expose the area to the unfiltered vehicular exhaust?

Can the future generations of people living there sue the government for allowing such planning?

MottHavendude

09. Dec, 2009

Douglass I am very sad to see you are still here making pointless complaints. Why are you here alleging a conspiracy and elitism by the NYSDOT because YOU did not stay abreast to what is happening in MY community? If you have a problem with the standard procedures/announcements the NYSDOT uses to advise the public about hearings, PLEASE TAKE IT UP WITH THEM. Those that cared enough about it made it their business to stay informed, and attended the meeting. Had you attended any Community Board #1 meeting, or this meeting, you would note “elitism” is the last word used to describe those contesting the Deegan ramp extension.

If it were up to me I would eliminate the Sheridan, greatly limit truck traffic and have 90% of distribution done by rail/barge in and out of Hunts Point, NOT expand any other highways in the city, bury all highways, and filter accordingly. However, life is not fair, and as a result, you must pick and choose your battles…welcome to the real world. The “Fort Washington Way” is a great idea, and if it were up to me I would do it, but let’s get back to reality. The redevelopment will NOT proceed should that requirement be implemented because it is too costly when combined with this new redevelopment.

So as a community we had a decision to make: Is it more important to redevelop the area, provide a significant amount of new quality, affordable housing, parkland, retail, pedestrian zones, bike trails, open waterfront, and improved infrastructure, OR Is it better to expand the Deegan ramps first, which would cut off the waterfront and permanently diminish the potential for this development. The community chose to move forward with this development, and to revisit the extension of the Deegan ramps later, because we have the opportunity RIGHT NOW to make this dream happen. It may not happen again in our lifetimes…as it has taken decades just to get to this point.

Would the community like to have all highways buried and filtered? YES. Will we kill this development for possibly our lifetime just so that we can get a stretch of the highway buried? NO.

Had you attended any of the Community Board #1 meetings, you would have had the opportunity to state your case and convince people otherwise. But you chose not to…so you don’t care. If you did care, you would have made it your business to attend the meetings, but instead you choose to complain and whine on a blog.

We, as a community, and the city of NY, will move forward with this development because we have the opportunity NOW, and will revisit the Deegan ramps and possible “Fort Washington Way” proposal IN THE FUTURE. Don’t like this decision? Get off the keyboard, drive down to the Community Board #1 meeting, and state your case. Otherwise, why do you continue whining on these blogs?

Douglas Willinger

15. Dec, 2009

Why is “this” development– the specific proposal rather then the concept of the area’s redevelopment?

Doing the development first will make burying the highway later way more difficult and expensive- please refer to Brooklyn’s Gowanus Tunnel proposal (NYSDOT) that has evolved towards a waterfront tunnel rather then directly beneath the existing elevated highway. Why should a particular development plan proceed without study of alternatives, nor cost studies of different such alternative plans?

Why proceed with this particular plan without even considering a Fort Washington Way “Cromwell Avenue Tunnel” with configurations allowing greater flexibility and waterfront access. How after all is hemming in the existing ELEVATED Deegan making the waterfront more accessible for many people?

BTW- I support widening the highway right of way, but conditionally that it be undergrounded ala the Fort Washington Way.

As for you last point- because ‘telecommuting” is infinitely more practical- though I will gladly attend any future meetings provided at least some advance notice- again, why nothing upon the billboards along that stretch of I-87 if its a decision more broadly community based. Please don’t forget that the meeting was publicly announced only 3 day beforehand- and conspicuously not to the using public, and notably so far unreported by the major NY City newspapers!

MottHavendude

15. Dec, 2009

And here we go again Douglas. Can somebody please cancel this guy’s internet access [bold added]. Let’s try this one last time: HAD YOU BEEN TO ANY OF THE PAST 2 YEARS OF COMMUNITY BOARD #1 MEETINGS, YOU WOULD KNOW THAT WE HAVE ALREADY DISCUSSED ALL OF THESE OPTIONS IN DETAIL. YOU WOULD ALSO HAVE KNOWN WE HAVE HAD SEVERAL MEETINGS SPECIFICALLY WITH THE NYSDOT REGARDING ALL OF THESE ISSUES. YOUR IGNORANCE TO WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH THIS DEVELOPMENT IS PRECISELY BECAUSE YOU GET YOUR INFORMATION FROM RANDOM BLOGS AND NOT FROM THE SOURCE: THE COMMUNITY BOARD MEETINGS.

What you are seeing TODAY is the result of MANY meetings with MANY groups, and we have discussed it and made our decision. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY WE MADE OUR DECISIONS, COME TO THE COMMUNITY BOARD #1 MEETINGS, STATE YOUR OPINION, AND ASK WHY WE HAVE CHOSEN OTHERWISE. THE END.

And lastly, if you are unhappy with the NYSDOT’s standard procedures for notifying the public regarding their meetings, TAKE IT UP WITH THEM. The Bronx, nor the Community Board, nor anyone else, makes those decisions. IF YOU WANT THE NYSDOT TO PUT UP BILLBOARDS ON HIGHWAYS FOR COMMUTERS, GET OFF THE KEYBOARD, GO TO THEIR OFFICE, AND MAKE THE RECOMMENDATION.

Why are you continuing to waste everyone’s time with ill-informed arguments/recommendations on random blogs? INFORM YOURSELF. STOP BLAMING THE WORLD FOR YOUR IGNORANCE AND LAZINESS.

Douglas Willinger

17. Dec, 2009

Where was any of this done in public on the internet? I for instance frequently research the area highways, such as via Steve Anderson’s nysroads.com, and saw nothing about any meeting.

In this day and age, why should anyone defend having the discussions — for such an important matter — in such traditionally confined circumstances?

Did Robert Moses ever so strongly defend keeping the public so un-informed?

Motthavendude

17. Dec, 2009

TAKE IT UP WITH NYSDOT. THE END.

Douglas Willinger

18. Dec, 2009

Your evasiveness and defensiveness is quite telling, Mr. Shill for the wealthy, influential, & thoughtless.

The NYSDOT decision is baseless, and your attitudes admit it!

DuPont Circle Tunnel Portals

2009-12-15T19:04:00.001-05:00

These photoes show the set of portals for vehicular traffic and streetcars included in Washington, D.C.'s latter 1940s DuPont Circle underpass project.

North Portals

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2007/08/classic-classism-kathryn-schneider.html

South Portals

http://www.ddot.dc.gov/ddot/cwp/view,a,1250,q,639677.asp

The set of portals for the streetcars -- those portals furthest away from the circle -- were sealed during the early 1960s.

There existence points to a time when official transportation planning literally covered vehicular roads and rail transit, only to be followed by a popularized single-mindedness during the 1960s of planning only one to grow, while ignoring the other.

More For More?

2009-12-13T05:28:00.000-05:00

December 9, 2009

Would you back higher gas taxes for better roads?

11:41 AM Wed, Dec 09, 2009 | Permalink
Rodger Jones/Editorial Writer Bio | E-mail | Suggest a blog topic

If so, you're in a small minority of about 15 percent, according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey that's posted on the Transportation Blog.

Top-line question:

Americans pay a federal tax of 18.4 cents on each gallon of gas to help fund transportation projects. Should the government raise the gas tax to help meet new transportation needs?
15% Yes
74% No
10% Not sure

Reader comments range from the sublime to this, from Dostoyevsky:

"I'd rather spend my money on alcohol, cigarettes, junk food, and concert tickets than on taxes. I won't live long enough to drive on the new roads anyway."

Chris W. is on the other end of the spectrum, saying:

"So people want to go places but they don't want to pay for it. The same guys complaining about roads not being there or too much traffic that complain about raising the out of date gas-tax. I think the cost of not doing anything costs more than the cost of doing something about."

Join the debate over on the Dallas Transportation Blog.

I-87 Cromwell Avenue Tunnel

2009-11-30T18:45:00.000-05:00

Mott Haven, Bronx, N.Y. Major Deegan Expressway
An alternative proposal not yet considered...
Cut and cover tunnel to boast waterfront access, development, cut air pollution via filtration

Groups as the Tri State Transportation Campaign Streetsblog and Mark Groton's Streetsblog Sell the Bronx Short for speeding cul de sac waterfront along wall of the existing elevated highway, that will hem in the Deegan, intensify traffic congestion -- remember that the Nov 2009 NYSDOT decision is to NOT preserve space for the ramp widening by allowing development placing some 10,000 new residents adjacent to this highway which should be buried and filtered -- hence instead maintaining this devise elevated highway for the next half-century.

Such planning that hems in the highway makes burying that highway far more expensive to construct- a matter officially UNconsidered.

Such is but what could become a future text book example of an intrinsically detrimental dogmatic stance against highways here used to prevent them from considering more environmentally friendly highway designs- such as the concept of filtrated tunnels, for what would be the I-87 Cromwell Avenue Tunnel.

Cromwell Avenue runs from Yankee Stadium at a southwesterly angle towards and then along the riverfront, parallel and actually closer to the adjacent River Avenue, ending unceremonially beneath the existing I-87 viaduct, running into Exterior Street which continues southward paralleling the southbound side of I-87 as its service road, that’s fed by the southbound ramp from I-87 just north of the intersection/interchange with 138th Street, where this off-ramp and service road traffic has a traffic light intersection traffic often backs traffic onto I-87.

Immediately south of this interchange where I-87 transitions to a short underpass, I-87 curves to the east, rising up again as an elevated highway before encountering higher topography where it becomes depressed passing beneath Willis Avenue. Much of the southbound I-87 Deegan off-ramp traffic at the interchange with 138th Street continues ‘straight’ along the Deegan service road in order to make the right turn onto the Willis Avenue Bridge into Manhattan.

Project would reconstruct Cromwell Avenue, and area surface streets with this segment of I-87 to run in new cut and cover tunnel extending from approximately 150th Street southward to reconstructed underpass beneath 138th Street. Project would take cost advantage via being built BEFORE mass development, employing existing industrial properties alongside the existing I-87 (further facilitating construction by allowing maintaining traffic) for constructing the new southbound I-87 tunnel box, which would temporarily handle both directions of traffic while the existing I-87 viaduct is torn down and the northbound box constructed.

Project would likewise submerge the new widened ramps, while providing a tunnel box conduit for the straight through southbound service road traffic to bypass the surface on the way to the Willis Avenue Bridge, providing for a southern extension of Cromwell Avenue atop and then swinging to the south side of I-87 as it turns east, improving pedestrian accessibility to the waterfront with the tunneled southbound ramp, and overall local accessibility towards the southernmost waterfront with the Cromwell Avenue extension. Project would include I-87 reconstruction with sections of urban decks atop I-87 between 138th Street and the Metro North RR there terracing down towards the waterfront, and in the vicinity of Willis Avenue. The I-87 Cromwell Avenue Tunnel would effectively extend continuously from about the Grand Concourse to approximately 150th Street on the approach to Yankee Stadium[s].

Project would open up acres and acres of new land for public use and private development, with footings designed to support development (buildings) atop the highway tunnel to hence allow greater developable square footage, with funds from the sale of air rights. It would also reduce air pollution by employing a tunnel’s ability to trap emissions with filtration systems, respectively locally and regionally with increased capacity for the ramps (needed to address the current levels of congestion and the future levels of traffic at that 138th Street interchange with 10,000 new residents within this new Harlem Riverfront Development), and the mainline (with a minimum of 4 lanes in each direction for its importance and scarcity as a major north-south artery into NYC and through the southern Bronx, feeding Queens County, Long Island and beyond via such things as the Hunts Point Terminal, a major industrial area featuring not only numerous scrap yards, but also the large food distribution businesses that live off of truck accessibility, particularly as a parallel alternative to the underutilized Sheridan Expressway which requires such traffic to also use the highly over-utilized western portion of the Cross Bronx Expressway. As widening that later road would be far costlier, and displace thousands of residences, encouraging some of its traffic to divert to a widened lower I-87 that ran in a filtrated tunnel continuously southward form say 150th Street to the Metro North RR would reduce traffic emissions, and hence asthma rates, not even taking into account the increasing prevalence of cleaner and cleaner automobiles.

A project precedent, in design and size: Cincinatti, Ohio’s waterfront interstate highway ‘Fort Washington Way’ reconstruction, which replaced a 1950s design 6 lane depressed freeway (with sloped embankments and frequent ramps) with a 1990s design 8 lane depressed freeway within a ¾ concrete box with vertical retaining walls designed to support the addition of a roof to make it a full cut and cover tunnel. This stageability makes it more affordable over time.

Photos below from: http://www.cincinnati-transit.net/fww-2000.html

The City of Cincinnati tapped PB for a $150 million reconfiguration of the 1.5-kilometer (0.9-mile) Fort Washington Way interstate connector. As the city reconsidered the project, it added an additional $160 million of new viaducts, ramps, improvements, watermain replacements and an underground transit center—without extending the original schedule.

The efficent tunnel box design creates low cost underground space beneath the freeway's service roads.

Illustrations below from: http://www.riverside-south.org/highway.html

Tunnel box allows superior space utilatilation for freeway and adjoining developement, with sound containment of tunnel ideal for accomodating greater real estate developement within close proximity

The NYC area is hardly altogether unfamiliar with the concept of building highway below, notably with portions of the East River (FDR) Drive as well as the now under construction Riverside South Boulevard extension box tunnels for the future relocation of the 9A Henry Hudson Parkway. As such it has had proposals for so effectively burying significant segments of essentially that latter highway’s southern extension (the 1974-1985 ‘Westway" project of the West Side Highway largely in concrete box tunnels through new landfill), and later for that same highway’ continuation from Manhattan (2002-2005 proposed ‘West Street Tunnel’), and into Brooklyn (the 1996+ Gowanus Expressway Tunnel project then championed by the Regional Plan Association, and even written about favorably by such organizations as Tri State Transportation Campaign, that was to be routed paralleling the existing highway viaduct beneath 3rd or 2nd Street, but now planned instead to run directly along the waterfront. All said and done, it has been the Riverside South project that has began, with its favorable attributes rendering its construction to be relatively inexpensive. Its advantages included:

- out of the way of traffic
- no utility relocation
- no excavation, as a concrete box on land, with its open space to the west sculpted with earthen fill creating a sloped hill – a grassy knoll – up to the Riverside South Boulevard now on the surface.

From http://www.riverside-south.org/highway.html:

Funding the tunnel shell now (rather than building it in 10-15 years from now) will:

• Avoid the disruption to the local community resulting from the need to dig up part of the new Riverside Boulevard and the newly constructed Riverside South Park in order to achieve the relocation;

• Save $50 million by avoiding the costs to dig up and rebuild Riverside South Park and Riverside Boulevard; and

• Utilize the $60 million being invested by the developer to build the northbound lane and the land contributed by the developer needed to construct the southbound lane as the required 20% local share of any federal funding - no State or City matching funds will be required for the highway relocation.

Significantly, with the $110 million savings ($60 million contributed by the developer and $50 million in savings) resulting from the early construction of the tunnel shell, the cost of the refurbishing alternative and the relocation alternative will be approximately equal.

The immediate funding needed to complete the southbound lane of the tunnel shell between 62 nd and 67th Streets before building the park, is about $94 million. This project is shovel ready and should be considered for funding under the Federal stimulus funding program and/or the City should require Extell to provide funding for the for the relocation. We have asked the Governor and the Mayor for the funding to build the tunnel shell in coordination with construction of the buildings and park by the developer - the work that can be completed during the next two years.

Through the efforts of a bipartisan group of Congressmen and Senators (including Senators Schumer and Clinton and Congressman William Green, Sue Kelly and Jerrold Nadler) over several years, $21 million in Federal earmarked funds have been made available. $5.7 million has been spent on the EIS and engineering work and $15.3 remains available. We need the cooperation of our senators and congressman to make these funds available for building the most southern section of the tunnel shell and the park, which will not be completed during the next two years.

That contrasts favorably with the 2002-2005 NYSDOT designs for the proposed "West Street Tunnel", a cut and cover tunnel beneath an existing street, with its significant utility conflicts increasing the construction costs, notably a sewer pipe that actually could have been avoided.

An I-87 Cromwell Avenue Tunnel (I-87 CAT) enjoys the most favorable combination of factors of any tunnel requiring excavation.

- out of the way traffic, via staged construction starting with new southbound I-87 CAT within the now lightly developed industrial properties alongside I-87’s western (southbound) side.
- Little or no additional utility relocation or building removal as the I-87 CAT Project employees the footprint of existing industrial land that has been recently re-zoned for high rise development, with its cut and cover design accommodating footings for maintaining planned developable square footage.
- Opportunity to reconnect lower Grand Concourse area up to the Yankee Stadium Park with the waterfront via I-87 CAT
- Opportunity to reduce air pollution via highway tunnel filtration, locally in the vicinity of Mott Haven, and further away particularly along the western portion of the stressed Cross Bronx Expressway, as an alternate route to the Hunts Point area then the former which is used in conjunction with the Sheridan Expressway.
- An opportunity hence to improve in every way a critically important north-south highway into NYC.

All of these benefits are thwarted with NYSDOT’s reported November 20, 2009 decision to defer any increase in the capacity of the I-87 ramps at its interchange with 138th Street until after the area is built out. Note that the proposed development district extends right up to the edge of the existing I-87 viaduct, leaving precious little space for ramp expansion, only worsening the congestion and pollution along a 1930s design Major Deegan Expressway at one of the most congested interchanges where new real estate development adds 10,000+ new residents and untold numbers of vehicles, while requiring any tunnel replacement to be built directly beneath the existing viaduct, likely increasing the costs by 100s of millions of dollars.

There’s has apparently been no consideration of a tunnelization of Mott Haven I-87, not even amongst those citing asthma rates, with no mention of tunneling nor tunnel filtration as already done overseas.

List of such places with filtrated road tunnels

Why then not any of the highways in the Bronx?

By spouting doctrine they neglect imagination…

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2008/02/filtration-of-vehicular-exhaust-in-road_27.html

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2008/02/going-below-big-roads-below.html

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2008/02/recycling-right-of-ways-ad-other_5329.html

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2008/02/avoiding-forseable-conflicts_27.html

Chock the Deegan!

2009-11-30T18:41:00.000-05:00

Cram This-

Next To This!
without leaving room for wider ramps
while adding perhaps 10,000 new residents

NYSDOT sought to spend $240-340 million to reconstruct the elevated I-87 Major Deegan Expressway segment --- widening its ramps to and from the north to 138th Street

Let’s continue to ignore the broadest segments of society:

- continue to settle for maintaining the wall of the elevated freeway, regardless of # of lanes
remains an elevated wall separating people from the waterfront
- continue to neglect motorists, particularly bus drivers and truckers by not bringing the lane widths
up to standard when we have the chance

Let’s make more of a traffic mess:

- don’t expand the 138th Street ramps
- then add 10,000 new residents and consequently many more vehicles there

Let’s hurt the South Bronx’s economic competitiveness

- chock Hunts Point by constraining the Deegan Expressway and its ramp capacity, especially while calling for eliminating the largely parallel Sheridan Expressway

All by allowing organizations which dogmatically oppose any highway expansion, and which almost always neglect calling for more advanced types of highway design for better harmonizing highways into the areas they pass through.

Manhattan’s East Side has its East River Drive beneath parkland
Manhattan’s West Side has its Miller Highway Tunnels beneath Riverside South boulevard
South Bronx’s Mott Haven gets to maintain its Elevated Deegan Expressway segment wall off its waterfront

Let’s treat the South Bronx like a series of afterthoughts

- first construct new high value waterfront real estate development bringing in 10,000 new residents
- leave precious little space for more capacious ramps, nor for lowering the wall, aka depressing and covering this segment of I-87 making such way more expensive then doing in coordination, such as done with Manhattan’s Riverside South

Don’t even dare consider an I-87 Deegan tunnel for Mott Haven

- that would be significantly easier and less expensive to coordinate rather then construct as an afterthought later
- that would eliminate the wall, allowing greatest local access to the waterfront
that would facilitate pollution reduction with the tunnel trapping emissions and equipped with filtration as done overseas
- that would reconcile industrial trucking access needs with more capacity and local waterfront neighborhood environments and with extra capacity serve to relieve the highly congested western Cross Bronx Expressway
- that could be funded with lobbying for future economic stimulus funds- in the spirit of the slogan ‘yes we can!’

but that would take months if not a few years more to plan out, hence delaying the new real estate development projects

Just continue to defer to organizations as the "Tri State Transportation Campaign" and Streetsblog, and the calaphony of lock-step march organizations so disdainful of highways they can’t suggest better designs, and that have steered the ‘debate’ along with a not very imaginative nor necessarily forthcoming NYSDOT hierarchy.

Illustrations: TSTC logo, Mark Gorton on bike and closeup

Rather its about some powerful entity wanting to build something and perhaps do so quickly perhaps before some pivotal figure’s death

2009-11-24T19:10:00.000-05:00

Policymaking Steered to Maintain Wall of Elevated Freeway-
via delaying planning until after massive developments constricts
I-87 Major Deegan Expressway expansion,
making any expansion or undergrounding far more expensive

NYSDOT Caves In:

http://www.motthavenherald.com/2009/11/24/state-won%E2%80%99t-build-new-ramps-on-deegan/comment-page-1/#comment-624

Chalk up another one to those that run things.

They hold a single meeting that was not well advertised to the public, particularly those that use the road -- I-87 --, and the meeting is somehow packed with opponents (remember that it was not well advertised).

Despite the clear precidents nearby -- say portions of the upper East River Drive, and the Riverside South Boulevard-Tunnel project -- as well as those overseas in employing highway tunnels to reduce pollution via trapping such and treating it within filtration systems -- the people stirred to fight the NYSDOT proposeal to expand the elevated Deegan Expressway apparantly have never given any consideration to applying such for Mott Haven: instead they act as if steered to simply approve of maintaining the wall of the elevated expressway in compliance with the wishes of some factrion[s] desirious of a new pricy enclave between the elevated highway and the waterfront. They even would act as if a few hundred square feet of space at Mott Haven somehow justified chocking truck access upon an invaluable alternative to the jammed western Cross Bronx Expressway-Sheridan Expressway (the latter which they seek to eliminate) of the South Bronx's major industrial employer area- Hunts Point with its regional food distribution- somethng unconsidered by The Day After Tommorow. And everyone within the government and the well organized-orchastrated 'activist' groups, acts as if that were just so unimportant, with sloganeering a substitute for critical thinking and imagination-application.

Of course NYSDOT need not even consider the cost differences between doing a project now while there's a swath of virtually open industrial wastelands alongside, rather then a few years later with new condo towers build up to the previous building lines, hemming in expansion even for the ramps, while adding 1,000s of new redents and vehicles upon the unwidened ramps.

They apparantly don't even post the plans to the internet.

Then they notify the public through a private conversation confirming the decision, reportedly made November 20, but announced only today, 5 days later, with someone at Mark Gorton's Streetsblog.

The DOT capitulated at a meeting on Nov. 20 requested by the Bronx Borough President’s office, which brought together representatives of the state agency with staff of the city Department of City Planning department, members of Community Board 1 and local elected officials.

“We don’t want to be a bad neighbor in that area,” said Levine, the DOT’s director of public affairs. “What we heard from the community was that the widening would impede” waterfront development.

“They were very clear that at some point they will revisit the issue,” said Sam Goodman, a planner in the Borough President’s office, but not until the rezoning plan has a chance to spur development. Once the area has been built out, the state will consider its options again. In the meantime, said Goodman, other traffic-calming measures will be looked at.

Also see:

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2009/11/activism-steered-to-maintain-wall-of.html