The Crafted Counter Reformation U.S. Anti Road Movement

A multitude of well funded & crafted front groups continuing repeat the same simple talking points:

 

We are always being told that adding any lanes to existing expressways adds vehicle miles traveled.  But how is that absolutely bad, particularly as we could use the extra capacity for serving a broader segment of a growing population?! This is especially so within existing urbanized areas, to accommodate more activity within an existing urbanized footprint.

Adding any such capacity increases emissions.  Which emissions?  Automobiles are getting cleaner and cleaner.  Pollution standards are tightening.  More cars are going electric, which is quite bad with the carbon front loading from the mining of the materials for, and the production of the enormous battery packs for the pure EVs (non hybrid, meaning lacking an on board small internal combustion engine to waste existing liquid fuel infrastructure while severely increasing demand upon the grid), which Biden's EPA pushes.  But asides from any emf emissions, which gets ZERO mention in the media, the EVs are quite clean in their use.

 

Expressways certainly DO add auto emissions to a given corridor, especially when there was no expressway there previously.  Just look for instance at N.Y.C.'s Cross Bronx Expressway. So why is that apparently the sole urban expressway now being consideration for retrofit with a new tunnel shell to enclose traffic emissions, equipped with various technologies to filter such exhaust?  After all, should not such technologies be made mandatory upon such high capacity roads within the more densely built urban environments?

 

Expressways of course require space, and we would want to reduce the displacement of existing dwellings while preserving space for local relocation of existing businesses that would be displaced from the most logical and feasible existing main corridor to construct new urban expressway tunnels.  

 

To better understand the planning dynamics, with what occurs within the U.S. and elsewhere, examine what occurred within the capital city, Washington, D.C. in the wake of the Kennedy assassination.  To wit, the stymieing of the inside the Capital Beltway segments of I-95, as well as the spur to I-270, following 1962-63, of the B&O Metropolitan Branch RR/above ground WMATA Red line/MARC/CSX corridor, agreed upon and endorsed by the November 1962 White House transportation report.

 

  "Significance of Using B&O Route. Use of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad corridor to bring Routes 70-S and 95 into the city is the key to meeting the need for additional highway capacity in northern Washington, Montgomery County and northwestern Prince Georges Counties and at the same time avoiding the substantial relocation of persons, loss of taxable property and disruption of neighborhoods that would result from construction of the Northeast, North Central and Northwest Freeway proposed in the 1959 plan. Further savings are realized by placing the rapid transit line to Silver Spring and Queen’s Chapel in the same railroad corridor."

 

So why was a promised for summer 1963 further detailed report not released?  

 

And, why would the report that would be released, October 1964, 11 months after 11-22-63, and mere days before the 1964 U.S.Presidential election, so deviate from the Kennedy Administration plan?

 

 “ During the preliminary line studies it became evident that in pin pointing the general corridor of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the District of Columbia should only be accomplished only after more detailed investigation of a band of alignments in that area”,

 

Why would it instead, scrap the tightly aligned B&O Route North Central Freeway.  Instead it examined 37 routes all over the map, with a recommended route primarily along the B&O.  But that variant had outright ridiculous deviations.  In the D.C. neighborhood of Brookland, it was pushed needlessly through the Turkey Thicket neighborhood so as to move it a bit further away from Catholic University of America).  And even worse, in Takoma Park, Maryland, deviating about 1/3 mile from the B&O insanely slashing through charming late 1800s neighborhoods, for a longer more out of the way route!

 

Rightfully so, the public broadly opposed such nonsense.  But strangely, indeed weirdly, the press failed to ask why the plans were so botched from what was proposed under the Kennedy Administration, with zero public mention by the Johnson Administration asking why.

 

By November 1966, a "supplementary" North Central Freeway report was released, that was on the right path, with a tightly aligned B&O route.  It could have used further refinement, such as making the portion just inside the District into a full cut and cover tunnel, rather then simply a widening of the existing elevated corridor at Takoma Station. Public opposition was nonetheless considerably less than the evil 1964 plan.  However, instead of further design refinements, the feds went backwards.  See 1967 Duncan Wall letter to Spiro Agnew.  By mid 1967, officials from the then recently crafted Federal Highway Authority publicly announced they were still favoring  that evil 1964 plan.  Public opposition was again heightened, and the previous approvals of the U.S. National Capital Planning Commission.were reversed by late 1968, and formally "de-mapped" by the early to mid 1970s. And quite tellingly, the federal documents concerning these "de-mappings" show, NOT the alignments of 1962 or 196, but instead that from 1964!

 

This was clearly and blatantly a crafted scuttling, assisted by a complacent and undeniable centrally controlled press, in the wake of the J.F.K assassination, for the sake of keeping the I-95 North Central Freeway from being constructed along the sole agreeable route - the B&O - with its single most important real estate holding being Catholic University of America, owned of course by the Catholic Church.

 

The propaganda behind this had two main thrusts: completely ignore this post 11-22-63 planning perversion; and pretend to this very day, that the U.S. was somehow too poor to afford constructing such urban expressways (which in this case would obviously MUST be enclosed within tunnel box with exhaust filtration, and best covered with new linear parkland), with the insistence that such facilities MUST be cancelled "for all time".

They would mean that literally. 

 

No discussion of long term planning, to say build an expanded railroad with the WMATA line and at least a extra set of tracks to separate MARC and CSX freight, nor a segmented expressway construction of initial box tunnels with space for a supplementary set to be opened when auto emission standards had resulted in a population of cleaner automobiles.

 

And therefore, NO program at a minimum to leave space for any such corridor improvements.

 

By the early 1980s, the authorities permitted development encroachment.  Just north of the Turkey Thicket neighborhood, the westernmost properties of Catholic Sisters College, previously suggested as a new industrial area for relocating businesses from directly alongside the B&O, was filled with new houses.(despite the District's shortage of industrial spaces).  And horrifically, the lightly developed, virtually building free industrial strips on BOTH sides of B&O just outside the District in downtown Silver Spring went under assault by developers insistent upon erecting large office towers, under the notion that people using the passenger rail must not have to walk perhaps a quarter or half a block to work.  No, they had to jam such buildings directly abutting the railroad with no more than 20 or so feet, the first being the office tower placed along the T.W. Perry property just north of the Silver Spring Metro, DIRECTLY on the B&O Route North central Freeway's long agreed path.  And if anyone had the idea of placing it to the B&O's west side, that area was subsequently filled with office towers, opened by 1993 and used by the National Oceanic Administration.

With the corridor in Silver Spring so blocked (and therefore requiring substantial removal by the righteous use of eminent domain for public use at perhaps well over $100 million), the corridor remained clear to the south well into the 1990s.  The Takoma Station area remained essentially flanked by parking lots, as did the stations further south at Fort Totten, and in Brookland, with a clearing next to the Pizza Hut just south of Catholic University of America.  That is, until following the publication of an article by yours truly in the July 1997 Takoma Voice, featuring the idea of a revived B&O N.C.F, as an underground, encased, set of cut and cover tunnels, including such for actually removing the elevated railroad, with the WMATA Red line and the MARC/CSX tracks relocated underground.  Include a replica of the historic 1880s Takoma station building within the new park space atop, which would be a part of a new grand northern D.C. linear park/what could be called the North Mall, in what would be called the Grand Arc project.

So what happens?  

Did the feds even bother considering the idea? 

Seemingly not.

But get this, suddenly there is this heighten effort to constrict the corridor with new "transit oriented" development.

A Yale University School of Architecture graduate starts a project to place a new residential building "Elevation 314" about 15 feet or so from the railroad's eastern side, in a blissful disregard of blatantly violating safety, next to heavy freight trains, a derailment of which would send freight cars directly into people's apartments/condos!  As if on cue, projects spout up on the corridor's west side, likewise within a freight rail derailment zone, and at a lower elevation with like safety concerns, for new residential buildings using wood frame construction touted as cheaper!

Further south, particularly in Brookland, new real estate development springs up like mushrooms, on both sides of the corridor.

 

And likewise further south.  Both around the mouth of the downtown interceptor, the underground Center Leg/better known as the 3rd Street Tunnel, and with that facility itself with the 2014+ "air rights" project which steal more than half the facility's built capacity, (not even leaving sufficient shoulders!).  Yours truly writes a series of articles at my D.C Expressway planning blog "A Trip Within The Beltway".  But not anyone else!  The media, press, television and internet ALL completely ignore the right of way surrender!  Yes, you read that right.  The media is so obviously controlled, that they abjectly fail to even dare mention this dirty deal, upon this "air rights" project, upon that downtown open trench expressway alongside Georgetown Law Center (the law school of Jesuit run, (Catholic Church owned) Georgetown University.

Just connect the dots.  The expressways are scuttled by obviously perversion of planning and manipulation of popular opinion by an orchestrated mass media, further propagated by likewise controlled activist organizations spouting the doctrinaire anti urban expressway agenda of the counter reformation.

 

Neglecting Safety Shoulders- Out of Touch R.P.A.

Regional Plan Association Forgets About Shoulders- Places stranded motorists and emergency crew workers at needless risks, wasting opportunities for reasonable widening within existing corridors- see illustration:

 

 

 http://fourthplan.org/action/remove-highways

 

Decking is a perfectly valid concept, but must be combined with taking full advantage of the existing corridors.  Alas the concept there is sullied by the reactionary nonsense of *removing* freeways, rather than redesigning them for improved service to the public.

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

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?)

Was NY Gov Spitzer Felled for Supporting Tunnel?

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.

Yale's Parochialist Messiah John Norquist'

Norquist, a proponent of removing unsightly locally divisive elevated urban freeways, was recently in New Haven calling for removing that city's Route 34 Oak Street Connector: a below-grade freeway which opened in 1959, and since truncated beneath an Air Rights parking garage, but with a cleared right of way -- asides from Pfizer's 2005 demolition special -- extending to just before the also uncompleted West River Memorial Park, initially created as a WW1 monument to be lined via promenades.

"I [John Norquist] Say, 'Tear It Down'"

by Allan Appel | April 17, 2008 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Allan Appel Photo

John Norquist tore down a “connector” in Milwaukee more than twice as long as New Haven’s lamentable Mayor Richard Lee Highway — and a viable and prosperous streetscape arose in its place. He came to New Haven to tell us how to do it.

More than 100 people came to the Career Regional Magnet High School auditorium Wednesday night, many thinking they were there to hear from a kind of transportation messiah. As with messiahs in general, Norquist, who served as Milwaukee’s mayor from 1988-2004, didn’t bring many details, but he did provide hope.

Calling the Route 34 connector, the “Disconnector,” Norquist also provided some concrete advice: “First, don’t contemplate the project to death. It’s not going to be extended, it doesn’t justify itself by carrying much traffic. So get on with it, build the pressure, and get it done, so it can be an example to other cities, especially Hartford.”

Mayor John DeStefano wants to build over the Route 34 Connector and redevelop all the land once planned for an extended highway there.

But a co-speaker of Norquist Wednesday night, state Deputy Transportation Commissioner Albert Martin said the removal of Route 34 is by no means a done deal with his department.

Speaking with consummate diplomatese, he said, “Governor Rell’s vision of livable communities calls for an objective study of the removal of 34 to see if it’s in the best interest of New Haven.”

“I say tear it down,” Norquist replied in his remarks. “The state built it, let the state get rid of it. If you want to be nice, maybe the city can pay for the utility reconnects. But otherwise, not a dime.”

He also advised that the road should be taken down as close to I-95 as possible. “Get those off ramps tucked right next to the highway,” he said, “the way it’s done on the Dan Ryan Expressway in Chicago. So that when you get off the highway as soon as possible you’re on a viable urban grid of small streets.”

Except perhaps for Martin, Norquist was preaching to the choir about the removal of 34. It was the nature of the new space to be created, that viable urban grid to follow the removal, that was really on the minds of the audience members.

“I didn’t come here because I needed convincing to take down 34,” said East Rock Alderman Allan Brison of the Green Party. (Only two other alders, Dwight’s Gina Calder and Fair Haven’s Erin-Sturgis Pascale, were present.) “I hoped to hear what’s going to go in there. From what I heard from the city at previous meetings and the current construction makes me think it’s going to be high-end tall buildings with lots of parking.” ...

More than 100 people came to the Career Regional Magnet High School auditorium Wednesday night, many thinking they were there to hear from a kind of transportation messiah. As with messiahs in general, Norquist, who served as Milwaukee’s mayor from 1988-2004, didn’t bring many details, but he did provide hope.

Posted by: Our Town | April 18, 2008 12:41 PM

Beware false prophets. They talk of destroying one true transportation corridor without thought of how all that traffic will get around, just, it will be absorbed by the grid system. They talk of replacing the highway with buildings in "scale" with their surroundings. They talk of trolleys, but don't want to build to the density that would actually support a trolley system.

This is all poorly thought out. Give me an alternate transportation plan before you start tearing out a major transportation facility.

Some here forget that Rt. 34 is part of a regional system, it's not just for New Haven. Every city could say get your road away from here, but we all rely on the system, and we need to look beyond our parochial interests and see the big picture.

All I can say is that I don't want any of those 80,000 cars a day coming down my street. That's why the Rt. 34 highway was constructed in the first place. All that traffic was on Chapel Street and George Street. And now there's even more. What a relief to the neighborhood was Rt. 34 when it was connected along the frontage roads...Have we forgotten?

Posted by: robn | April 17, 2008 8:57 AM

The Urban Design League needs to show how the daily I-91 traffic back up on the connector (something that Mr Norquist obviously hasn't bothered to examine) is going to be absorbed by that exit. Its completely unacceptable for that exiting to be absorbed into the East Rock neighborhood, where there is already too much traffic. Unless viable, high volume exiting is provided in the current connector location this idea is dead on arrival. Alderman Brison should acknowledge this problem because if he doesn't he is going to be a one term alderman.

Posted by: Webblog 1 | April 19, 2008 3:19 PM

How much was Norquist paid to come to New Haven and say something stupid like:

"If you mean affordable rents," he responded, "the head of our city council, an African- American, said that affordable rents should not be a goal in life."

"Unaffordable rents should be. He meant of course that people do so well, they can afford more. I wouldn't worry about it. Then again, I'm not that familiar with New Haven."

Obviously Norquist didn't do his home work:

According to a NHI article Re: "Pilot Hike Back on the Table"

Forty Seven thousand (47K) New Haven residents qualify for federal Earned Income Tax Credit, that's 47K of 92K persons above the age of 18, with a family of four earning less than 40K a year. (Source U.S. Census Bureau). Almost half of New Haven's residents rely on the so called affordable rent.

Therefore, Vanessa Burns, representing State Sen. Toni Harp, asked Norquist to comment on how the post-highway removal gentrification in Milwaukee affected local minority communities.

This was an entirely appropriate question.

Posted by: robn | April 20, 2008 1:51 PM

This is a stupid idea and I'll reiterate that anyone who thinks its a good one should drive down I-91 into 34 during rush hour and observe the volume of traffic. There is NO WAY that this can be instantly absorbed into a slow city grid without backing up traffic and causing drivers to dump into East Rock.

There is plenty of developeable area beyond Phizer and the reason that rt 3d dempo is being discussed is becuase its a classic triple dip...federal pork barrel funding for road demolition as well as road re-building and surrounding redevelopment.

How about just simply develop where there isn't a major vehicular artery?

Or, just simply build upon platforms to preserve the Route 34 freeway and extension's subterranean right of way to get the benefits of both the freeway and the new real estate development.

More than 100 people came to the Career Regional Magnet High School auditorium Wednesday night, many thinking they were there to hear from a kind of transportation messiah. As with messiahs in general, Norquist, who served as Milwaukee’s mayor from 1988-2004, didn’t bring many details, but he did provide hope.

“I didn’t come here because I needed convincing to take down 34,” said East Rock Alderman Allan Brison of the Green Party.

It's already "down" as its a below grade highway.

Obviously sloganeering here serves as a substitute for independent thought.

Obama Endorses 'Congestion' Tax Scheme WITHOUT Anything for Roads

ObUma- PLONK!

Not because what he says is necessarily bad in the abstract.

But rather, it's bad in the context of the strict doctrine of no new highways and that of NYC's infamous book-keeping, along with its new cameras that would be most useful for dissident tracking.

Without elaboration upon 'infrastructure' that takes a stance against the religious doctrine of no new urban highway links, this translates to just some 'mass' transit with bloated bureaucracy.

Just another panderer to the elites who want to raise more taxes without providing more benefits!

Obama: Congestion Pricing ‘Thoughtful’ and ‘Innovative’

Mar 28, 2008 in Congestion Pricing, Politics, Transportation

In an exclusive interview with a New York television station, Senator Barack Obama described congestion pricing as a thoughtful and innovative approach to the problem of congestion. In the interview he described it as a way to reduce congestion, reduce pollution, and invest in infrastructure and mass transit. With an April 7th deadline approaching, New York City appears poised to approve a historic congestion pricing plan. (See Streetsblog for exhaustive congestion pricing coverage.)

More room on the existing roads for our limos, frat brother...

and no new urban roads to offend elites...

Earthquake Hazard Battery Park City Underscores Official Plannings Disregard for Safety

Foolishly Placed Buildings on Landfill WITHOUT Foundations to Bedrock May Imperil Vital Transportation Links.

http://www.greatgridlock.net/NYC/nycadd4.html

As for the subsoil conditions in NYC itself, the well-known Manhattan bedrock rises to the surface in the northern part of the island, extending also to the north. The bedrock falls deeper as we go to the south and east, forming still a reachable foundation for buildings in Midtown, but generally not as far south as in Downtown. Because bedrock forms a solid base for a building, it, despite also transmitting seismic shockwaves effectively, will be a better choice than soft soil. The ample soft soil in New York would be the cause for the city's major harm in case of an earthquake. Not only does it amplify the seismic waves and direct them to the surface, but parts of the city land are also prone to so-called liquefaction, an abrupt loss of soil cohesion. The sand particles lose their friction resistance under the earthquake vibration and get mixed up with water beneath the ground surface, naturally losing any support it gives to a structure. A particularly clear example of its effect was the accident in Brooklyn, where building a sewer in reclaimed land with a vibratory pile driver collapsed four houses within two blocks with the loss of a life. The agitated soil had given way even from that distance and led to the collapse. Much of the waterfront is filled-in and reclaimed from the rivers with soil that is prone to liquefaction, especially below water level. The most notable of these landfills is the Battery Park City in Downtown Manhattan, which would face severe problems in a major earthquake -- as would do many other vital services, like several major hospitals or the Long Island airports on fills, with JFK also near Rockaway.

An earthquake could make BPC buildings tilt, possibly towards the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel portal approach, requiring their subsequent demolition as a hazard to transport.

Perhaps this is also applicable to the irresponsibly placed Chase Manhattan buildings immediately along the south side of the Holland Tunnel in New Jersey? I would not be too surprised given the extreme disregard to transport amongst 'new urbanist' planning.

New N.Y. State Gov. Patterson Sells Out on 'Conjestion' Pricing

Gov. Patterson

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/nyregion/22congestion.html?em&ex=1206331200&en=85525bdb332c0d91&ei=5087%0A

Gov. David A. Paterson added his support on Friday to the idea of charging drivers to enter the busiest sections of Manhattan, rescuing the controversial program from the brink of death by submitting a bill to the State Legislature to establish it.

The turnaround came after an impassioned pitch to the governor from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg behind closed doors at City Hall on Wednesday, when Mr. Paterson privately expressed support for the proposal, city officials said. He warned the mayor that he first had to tell Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who has shown little inclination to approve it, the officials said.

Mr. Paterson’s blessing, which came as Bloomberg aides have been furiously lobbying the city and state lawmakers whose approval is needed for the program, could prove crucial in making the proposal to charge most drivers $8 to enter the zone below 61st Street on weekdays a reality.

Congestion pricing addresses two urgent concerns of the residents of New York City and its suburbs: the need to reduce congestion on our streets and roads, and thereby reduce pollution, and the need to raise significant revenue for mass transit improvement,” Mr. Paterson said in a statement.

Winning the support of Mr. Paterson, who has far more experience and good will among state lawmakers than his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, represents something of a coup for Mr. Bloomberg, who has made congestion pricing an important element of his second-term agenda.

The Throgs Neck Bridge, which opened January 11, 1961, and which represents Long Island's only continuous modern interstate highway route to the mainland (via the Clearview Expressway to the Long Island Expressway) is in such poor shape that trucks are limited to using the middle lane in each direction with a 30 mph speed limit.

The Verazano Narrows Bridge, which opened November 21, 1964, with its lower deck opening June 28, 1969, represents Long Island's only other modern interstate highway route to the mainland (though without a continuous modern interstate highway route connection via the pre-WW2 spec Gowanus Expressway), and is the latest such structure constructed. Although it was to have a easterly connection via a proposed Cross Brooklyn Expressway that would connect to an Atlantic Expressway along the Sunrise 'highway' (surface street) corridor, that, along with every other planned but not yet built highway was canceled en-mass by then New York City Mayor Lindsey in 1969-71. A planned modern interstate highway bridge connecting Long Island's Route 135 to Westchester County's I-287 would be canceled in 1973, while a modern replacement for Manhattan's antiquated West Side Highway would be politically raped for appropriating its funds for non-highway subways by 1985.

Although 'conjestion' pricing funds shall come from vehicularists, who already have their toll monies so diverted, all we seem to hear about these funds being used is non-highway mass transit.

Obviously, this is sustained by a nexis of political money power largely centered around Manhattan's Central Park of people who exemplify a near total disregard of the importance of road infrastructure that we saw in the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" about a Manhattan flooded and frozen, with nothing coming into the city, yet no one seems to mind the lack of food.




A look at Gov. Patterson's Secretary 'ex' Jesuit Charles J. O'Byrne

Classic Classism- Kathryn Schneider Smith

Useful traffic tunnel decried by elites over temporary construction disturbance


Kathryn Schneider Smith, wife of Washington, D.C. journalist Sam Smith, wrote the following in her 1983 book Washington at home: an illustrated history of neighborhoods in the Nation’s Capital, about the DuPont Circle underpass project:

There were other things for the residents of the neighborhood to worry about, including the proposed DuPont Circle streetcar underpass, which local officials believed was necessary to relieve the congestion on the Circle itself. From before the turn of the century, both northbound and southbound tracks of the Cabin John line had run side by side around the western rim of the Circle between Connecticut Avenue and P Street. In the mid-1930s the city considered decongesting the western side of the Circle by moving the northbound tracks to the east side. The change was not made, and thus one of Washington’s most durable legends was born.

The story was that highway officials had not moved the tracks because of the objections from Eleanor “Cissy” Patterson, the editor and published of the powerful Washington Times Herald. Legend has it that Patterson did not want the noisy street cars running in front of her mansion, which faced the Circle at P Street. Later she was to tell a reported that she was flattered at the suggestion that she could wield so much influence, but she denied the story, as did highway officials.

When the underpass was first proposed in the early 1940s, little opposition was expressed by neighborhood residents. The projected cost was $500,000. But by 1947 when the digging began, the cost was projected as more then $3 million. A citizens’ group protested the project, citing the cost and anticipated disruption of their neighborhood. Their fears were confirmed when a construction left the park “a morass of mud and clay, surrounded by detours and dotted with concrete mixers, steam shovels, scaffolding and piles of assorted unattractive materials” for more then three years. It also meant the destruction of numerous trees and the temporary relocation of the DuPont fountain.

Patterson, who at one time had supported the underpass in her editorial pages of her newspaper, changed her mind and called the project a “blunderpass” and commented, “If it is ever finished, it will be the worst white elephant of them all.”[*]

She was right. In 1961, 11 years after it was completed, the streetcars were phased out in favor of buses. The semicircular trolley tracks were closed, leaving the underpass as just another road for cars.

What about the folly of closing the semi-circular trolley underpass rather then maintain it for bus service?

Or the failure to cover the traffic underpass for the one block segment to the Circle’s north?

“…the worst white elephant of all.” [?!?!]



Schneider-Smith presents an outlook that generations of use and benefits to society are less important then the temporary disturbances to some of the city’s wealthiest and most influential people.

Accordingly, it's better to place all of the Connecticut Avenue traffic on the Circle in perpetuity, rather then have a newspaper editor look at a construction project directly across the street from her mansion for three years a half century ago.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cissy_Patterson_home_at_Dupont_Circle.jpg

Are we really supposed to think that a $3 million underpass that serves thousands of vehicles and the people served daily, is the “worst” “of all” denying the multiples of that spent on the military budget- namely that of the cigarette-petrochemical pharma-alcohol protectionist "war on drugs"?

This passage by Schneider-Smith is heavily borrowed (without attribution) by Joseph Passonneau in his book Washington through Two Centuries.

The parties that would battle over the future of DuPont Circle neighborhood the older mansion dwellers, what would be described as the counter culture and the city’s highway department converged at the circle itself. L ‘Enfant had not designed his neighborhood centers as future automobile traffic circles, and by the beginning of World War II, traffic congestion around DuPont Circle had become a problem. The congestion worsened after the war, and an underpass was proposed, projected at a cost of $500,000. At first there was little citizen opposition, but by 1947 when work began, residents protested, citing the price tag (which had escalated to $3 million) and neighborhood disruption. There fears were confirmed.

Construction left the park in the center of the circle a sea of mud, filled with construction equipment and littered with building materials, for more then three years.

Eleanor “Cissy” Patterson, owner and editor of the Washington Times Herald and owner of one of the mansions on the circle, at first supported the tunnel, then called it a “blunder pass”, writing that , “If it is ever finished, it will be the worst white elephant of them all.” She was right. In 1961, the streetcars were replaced by buses, and the semicircular trolley tunnel was closed. The automobile and truck underpass remained and the surface travelways widened at the expense of the park.

“She was right.” [?!]

It’s an attitude that Mr. Passonneau has bowed down to regarding Washington, D.C.’s un-built highways – taking a bizarre stance against anything underground – as he did to a question that I asked him at the National Building Museum. All traffic must remain on the surface because some exceptionally influential person does not want to even look at a construction project that’s say across a street- there need not be a direct conflict, such as that between the U.S. National Capital Planning Commission's proposed Extending the Legacy South Capitol Mall and the St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church.


Note the name of the individual who help her write this book, elitist road transport hater: Jane Freundel Levy.

Accordingly, inconveniencing the super influential for a short period of time is a no, no- damn the public interest.

*
She comes to that conclusion even as she died only a few months after the construction started, and while she lived in another mansion in suburban Maryland- facts unmentioned by Schneider-Smith.


About 'Cissy' Patterson:

[excerpts]

Eleanor Josephine Medill "Cissy" Patterson (November 7, 1884 - July 24, 1948) was an American journalist and newspaper editor, publisher and owner. Patterson was one of the first women to head a major daily newspaper, the Washington Times-Herald in Washington, D.C.

Her grandfather Joseph Medill was Mayor of Chicago and owned the Chicago Tribune, which later passed into the hands of her first cousin Colonel Robert R. McCormick, Joseph Medill's grandson. Her older brother Joseph Medill Patterson was the founder of the New York Daily News.

She was educated at Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. When her uncle Robert S. McCormick was named ambassador to Austria-Hungary, she accompanied him and his wife, Cissy's maternal aunt Kate, to Vienna. There she met Count Josef Gizycki and fell in love with him, a romance not interrupted even by her return to America, where she lived in Washington, D.C.. In Washington, she was a leading light in society, where the press labeled Alice Roosevelt (daughter of Theodore), Marguerite Cassini (daughter of the Russian ambassador), and Cissy the "Three Graces." Count Gizycki came to America and they were married in Washington on April 14, 1904 despite the objections of her family, which later proved well-founded. A daughter was born to them September 3, 1905, and was named Leonora Felicia (1905-1999). Cissy went with the Count to his home, a huge feudal manor in Russia. Their family life did not go well, but when Cissy wanted to leave, he tried to keep her there. She fled with their child, hiding her in a house near London, but the Count pursued her and kidnapped the little Countess, hiding her in an Austrian convent while demanding a million dollars in ransom. Cissy filed for divorce, which took thirteen years to obtain, and in which William Howard Taft and Czar Nicholas II were personally involved. The Czar ordered the Count to return the child to her mother.

After her experience abroad, she moved to Lake Forest, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, but she returned to Washington in 1913. In 1920, her brother Joseph finally succumbed to his sister's entreaties and allowed her to write for his New York Daily News, founded the previous year. She also worked for William Randolph Hearst. She published two novels, romans a clef, Glass Houses (1926) and Fall Flight (1928), part of her feud with former friend Alice Roosevelt Longworth. The friendship with Alice Longworth ended when at a dinner party hosted by the Longworths, Patterson was caught sleeping with Mrs. Longworth's husband. During the party, Mrs. Longworth caught Eleanor and Nicholas on the floor of a bathroom in the home, with the light on and the door unlocked. Alice then retaliated by having a lasting affair with Senator William Edgar Borah, which at its height, produced a child Paulina Longworth. Patterson also had an affair with Borah, but Alice won out reportedly because Patterson frequently gloated about their experiences unlike Alice.

Patterson tried to buy the Washington Herald and the Washington Times, then separate papers, from Hearst, who hated to sell anything, even when he needed the money. Although he had never made money from his Washington papers, he refused. However, at the urging of his editor Arthur Brisbane, Hearst agreed to make Patterson editor of the Herald. She began work on August 1, 1930. Patterson was a hands-on editor who insisted on the best of everything--writing, layout, typographic, graphics, comics, everything. She encouraged society reporting and the women's page and hired many women as reporters. In 1936, she was invited to join the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Patterson made her paper popular with all strata of Washington society and doubled its circulation.

In 1937, Hearst's finances had gotten worse and he agreed to lease the Herald and the Times to Patterson with an option to buy. Eugene Meyer, the man who had outbid Hearst and Patterson for The Washington Post in 1933, tried to buy the Herald out from under Patterson, but failed. Instead, she bought both papers from Hearst on January 28, 1939, and merged them as the Times-Herald.

Along with her brother at the New York Daily News and her cousin at the Chicago Tribune, Patterson was an ardent isolationist and opponent of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1942, after the Battle of Midway, the Times-Herald ran a Tribune story that revealed American intelligence was reading the Japanese naval code. Roosevelt, furious, had the Tribune and the Times-Herald indicted for espionage but backed down because of the publicity, charges he was persecuting his enemies, and the likelihood of an acquittal (since the Navy's own censors had twice cleared the story before it was published). During World War II, she and her brother were accused by their enemies of being Nazi sympathizers. Representative Elmer Holland of Pennsylvania on the floor of the United States House of Representatives said Cissy and Joseph Patterson "would welcome the victory of Hitler"

She feuded with her daughter, who publicly "divorced" her in 1945, and with her former son-in-law, Drew Pearson. Alienated from her family and friends, she turned to alcohol, and died alone at her home Dower House [Mt. Airy Mansion] near Marlboro, Maryland. She left the paper to seven of her editors who within the year sold the paper to her cousin Colonel McCormick. He held onto the paper for five years, and although for several years he seemed close to returning it to profitability, it eventually proved to be too much of a financial drain. After quietly sounding out several other publishers, McCormick opted to sell the paper to the rival Post, which promptly closed it.

About Drew Pearson:

[excerpts]

Drew Pearson (December 13, 1897–September 1, 1969), born "Andrew Russell Pearson" in Evanston, Illinois ^[1] was one of the most prominent American newspaper and radio journalists of his day. He was best known for his muckraking syndicated newspaper column "Washington Merry-Go-Round".

The Washington Merry-Go-Round column started as a result of the anonymous publication in 1931 of the book, Washington Merry-Go-Round (New York: Horace Liveright and Co.), co-written with Robert S. Allen. The book comprised a collection of muckraking news items concerning key figures in public life that challenged the journalistic code of the day. In 1932, it was followed by a second book, More Merry-Go-Round. Pearson and Allen were successful enough in their books to become co-authors of the syndicated column, the Washington Merry-Go-Round, that same year. Allen would later be succeeded by Jack Anderson as Pearson's junior partner.

It has been said that disclosures in Pearson's column sent four Congressmen to jail and led to the resignation of President Eisenhower's chief of staff, Sherman Adams. Pearson was the first to report the incident of General George S. Patton's slapping of a soldier. General Douglas MacArthur sued Pearson, unsuccessfully, after Pearson accused MacArthur of lobbying for a promotion. ^[2]

Drew Pearson had one daughter, Ellen, in a short marriage (1925-28) to Felicia Gizycka, daughter of the newspaper scion Cissy Patterson and Count Joseph Gizycky of Poland. Thereafter, Pearson maintained a strained relationship with his former mother-in-law, and they frequently exchanged barbed comments in print. His second wife was Luvie Moore Abell, whom he married in 1936; they had no children together.

In May of 1948, Pearson leaked news in the Washington Post that the SEC and Justice Department were talking to Preston Thomas Tucker of the Tucker Corporation, an automobile company in Detroit. Pearson stated - erroneously, as it would later turn out - that the agencies would uncover financial crimes at the company. Tucker stock dropped from $5 to $2 based on Pearson's charges. The SEC and Justice later found Tucker and his company innocent of any wrongdoing, but the damage was done. The Tucker Corporation was never able to recover and went out of business. It is widely believed that Pearson's claims cost Tucker investors and 2,000 car dealers millions of dollars, and that, as a result, America lost what was perhaps the most innovative automobile of its time.

Pushing it Away: New York Times Enshrinement

From page A18, New York Times editorial page: "Editorial Observer" by Verlyn Klinkenborg-
"Trying Times Ahead: The Prospect of 60 Million Californians"

Recently, the California Department of Finance predicted that there will be some 60 million people living in the state by 2050. At present [2007] there are 36 millions. The numbers in themselves are frightening enough, but what I find terrifying is the bland assumption that a two thirds increase in population is inevitable and that the main problem will be creating the infrastructure necessary to house, feed, educate, transport and govern all those people. To me, the main problem is how to keep them from showing up in the first place [emphasis added].

Representative aristocratic myopia, with its unspoken assumption of some sort of major disaster in order to bring about the population reduction of others that they desire.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/opinion/18wed4.html?ex=1342497600&en=7c88d647ee1ac26c&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink