Imagine if they had built the out beltway. In Boston, there’s 128/95, the inner ring road and 495, the outer one. Both suffer from being over capacity but not as badly as the beltway around DC. The photo of the Jefferson memorial from the 1950’s is remarkable for all the open space.
I know--I can't imagine an inner ring slashing through the neighborhoods of NW and NE, but a good example of how intrusive it is, can be found in Tokyo. There, in anticipation of the 1964 Olympics, they built a major elevated highway straight through the middle of the city, over one of the old imperial palace moats and all but completely covering up the famous Nihonbashi (Bridge of Japan) that was the "zero mile" for all Japanese roads during feudal times. To this day, the poor bridge, which was a favorite subject of artists, languishes in the shadow of the expressway.
In Washington, the awful spaghetti tangle from I-66 coming into the city at the Kennedy Center and Watergate and the E Street Expressway, and even where the Arlington Memorial Bridge comes in at the Lincoln Memorial, gives an idea of how much space could have been eaten up had the full plans been realized. Even now, NCPC has reviewed proposals to put those interchange/access points underground and have parks over them. It will probably never happen, due to cost and disruption, but just a look at the maps shows what a cost to the city it is.
Imagine if they had built the out beltway. In Boston, there’s 128/95, the inner ring road and 495, the outer one. Both suffer from being over capacity but not as badly as the beltway around DC. The photo of the Jefferson memorial from the 1950’s is remarkable for all the open space.
I know--I can't imagine an inner ring slashing through the neighborhoods of NW and NE, but a good example of how intrusive it is, can be found in Tokyo. There, in anticipation of the 1964 Olympics, they built a major elevated highway straight through the middle of the city, over one of the old imperial palace moats and all but completely covering up the famous Nihonbashi (Bridge of Japan) that was the "zero mile" for all Japanese roads during feudal times. To this day, the poor bridge, which was a favorite subject of artists, languishes in the shadow of the expressway.
In Washington, the awful spaghetti tangle from I-66 coming into the city at the Kennedy Center and Watergate and the E Street Expressway, and even where the Arlington Memorial Bridge comes in at the Lincoln Memorial, gives an idea of how much space could have been eaten up had the full plans been realized. Even now, NCPC has reviewed proposals to put those interchange/access points underground and have parks over them. It will probably never happen, due to cost and disruption, but just a look at the maps shows what a cost to the city it is.