Try doing your own research on the proposed Washington, D.C. South Capital Mall, or South Mall.
http://southmallblogger.blogspot.com/2012/04/south-capitol-mall.html
We never heard those phrases in the mass media.
Nor in the U.S. planning documents published by the National Capital Planning Commission, even the 1996 "Extending the Legacy" plan, which shows the South Mall on its very front cover.
The news reporting nationally carefully un-reports the proposed South Mall by crafting reports that leave out showing the full illustrations, leaving only a rendering of its narrow northern terminus.
If one relied upon say Time magazine's reporting on "Extending the Legacy" one would be unaware of the proposed South Mall, thinking only that South Capital Street remains but a boulevard/surface street.
ALL the news outlets describe the plans for the South Capital area as a boulevard and not a promenade.
https://wwwsouthcapitolstreet.blogspot.com/2008/09/un-reporting-1996-how-largest.html
https://wwwsouthcapitolstreet.blogspot.com/2008/09/un-reporting-2003-adopted-from-my-2005.html
The initial reporting in the Washington Post cites a peculiar opposition from the "Committee of 100 on the Federal City" - Extending the Legacy is too "Olympian" - a charge likewise extendable to the McMillian Commission.
In or about 2002, N.C.P.C. issues another planning document showing different variants of a South Capital Mall, one which is asymmetric, deleting the portion to the west of South Capital Street, ostensibly to save dwellings.
Yet in the year 2000, at a slide show that he gave at the National Building Museum, Committee of 100 member Joseph Passonneau shows a future South Capital Street with its existing 130 foot width corridor, lined with new buildings.
Passonneau, slideshow National Building Museum
Having followed the South Mall idea, I search in vein for any indication of any sort of public discussion or debate, let alone even reporting. Was one the email list of a few of the established activist organizations, including local environmentalist organizations as Friends of the Earth. NOBODY was even talking about the South Mall.
September 2005, brings the public announcement of the planned baseball stadium, for what would be a new Major League Baseball franchise (team)- what became named the Nationals. This stadium is along the eastern side of South Capital Street, directly blocking the space of a South Capital Mall.
March 5, 2006, the D.C. City Council votes to deny (block) the baseball stadium. March 5/post mid-nite, early morning March 6, in a CLOSED DOOR/CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC MEETING, the D.C. City Council RECONVENES to switch their NO votes to YES.
And there is NO media coverage. No Jack Anderson syndicated columnist style expose. No discussion by television talking heads. Just nothing.
Except for yours truly, with my initial blog http://wwwsouthcapitolstreet.blogspot.com/
https://wwwsouthcapitolstreet.blogspot.com/2006/03/unreported-story.html
And subsequently with my 2nd blog https://wwwfreespeechbeneathushs.blogspot.com/2006/10/
The decision to not build a South Mall was not over mass preservation, as South Capital Street is getting new buildings along both sides. Everything gets replaced with new development, with the sole exception of the only architecturally significant structure needing to be removed or relocated to make space for the Mall, at the northeast corner with M Street- St. Vincent De Paul Roman Catholic Church, constructed 1904-1906, ironically at the very site of the former canal loading dock for the Carroll family and others for Tobacco market distribution.
Go to South Capital Street and run along each side, and see that church.
Go search for newspaper accounts of Catholic church members lobbying to save this St Vincent de Paul Church, simply by relocating the St. Vincent de Paul Church about 100 or so feet east to accommodate the South Mall, instead of blocking it. I did not see any reporting on this whatsoever, or alternatively catholic church members openly opposing the South Mall.
The South Capital Street Nationals Stadium site was selected by the people running Major League Baseball, and any of them could have easily known about the proposed yet officially unnamed South Mall, of which he was still on prominent display at U.S. N.C.P.C. These M.L.B. officials were going along with a conspiracy to defraud the people of a D.C. South Mall, being done with absolutely no media or private charity organization whatsoever. That defies any mathematical probabilities. What would a public inquiry into these M.L.B. officials memberships in any sort of fraternal or religious military order? Such as college fraternities/societies? Such as organized masonry? Such as catholic church related organizations as the Sovereign Order of Malta?
Nationals Stadium is completed. 43rd U.S. President George W. Bush, an avid M.L.B. fan throws the ceremonial 1st ball of the season, a presidential custom since William Howard Taft circa 1908.
On April 17, 2008, Nationals Stadium hosts a Catholic Church Mass featuring Pope Benedict himself, held April 17, 2008.
SOMETHING got to steamroll this boondoggle baseball stadium, with a clear case of something perhaps reeking like blackmail with that post mid-nite D.C. City Council vote to reverse their no to a yes for that stadium's approval.
And again, what explains the lack of any public attention made to the proposed South Mall? Am sure that tens of thousands of people saw that 1996 U.S.N.C.P.C. model of the future Washington, D.C. with a South Capital Mall, along with those who saw the various N.C.P.C. publications. So are we to believe that there was zero public input?
The South Mall would simply vanish, with zero public outcry, nor visible controversy within the mass media/political organization spectrum.
We would not see any newspaper articles about the surrender of the South Mall, nor anything about saving St Vincent de Paul Church, despite that D.C.'s oldest Jewish synagogue was moved twice to accommodate the north-south Center Leg Expressway and its subsequent "air rights" butchering for the office complex now housing the headquarters of the American Petroleum Institute.
So a single Catholic Church gets to stop the South Mall, with zero media/organizational discussion nor visible controversy, and nothing in any news reporting.
The opposition of the Catholic hierarchy did not always get so under-reported. To wit, during the very early 1960s, with the initial planning of I-95 into NE, between the MD/DC line and the B&O RR corridor.
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2006/11/1960-northeast-freeway.htmlI have seen newspaper accounts reporting of the opposition of the Catholic church to this routing via Catholic Sisters College.
But what about what followed?
The routing through Catholic Sisters would be soon replaced with a route to the north, along the formally proposed Fort Circle Drive Parkway/Expressway between Gallatin and Galloway Streets NE, quite obviously in response to the church opposition.
But look what would happen with D.C. I-95's routing to the south via the B&O RR corridor.
Civic discussion in response to the 1959 plans come to the conclusion. Don't construct the two separate expressways, the North Central following Georgia Avenue, and a North East following alongside or near the B&O. Instead, construct a "Y" route of a North Central following the B&O, fed to and from the northeast of I-95, entering the District at the Fort Drive/Gallatin-Galloway, and carrying the I-95 designation southward. This idea gets the endorsement of the Kennedy Administration, with J.F.K.'s words expressing the importance of improved design infrastructure for the family of man. The J.F.K. Administration report, dated November 1, 1962, Recommendations
for Transportation in the National Capital Region: A Report to the
President for Transmittal to Congress by the National Capital
Transportation Agency November 1, 1962, made this key point:
"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."
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2006/12/1962-national-capital-transportation.html
Some time afterwards the Washington Post reported at a further detail study concerning the B&O North Central Freeway, would be publicly released sometime summer 1963. But summer 1963 passed without any such unveiling. J.F. K. is assassinated November 22, 1963, just a few days after attending the dedication ceremony for I-95's segment extending south from Delaware.
Any such report on the engineering feasibility of the B&O North Central Freeway would be delayed, to a release date of October 30, 1964- the Friday a mere 4 days before the November 4, 1964 election day, where L.B.J. overwhelmingly defeated his Republican challenger Barry Goldwater. And it is a complete sandbagging of the Kennedy Administration backed B&O "Y" route, via its willful manipulations designed to generate overwhelming public opposition, via its gross deviations, and that of its idea of a B&O Route N.C.F., with its following the RR but with lesser and considerably worse deviations in Brookland, D.C. to push it further from Catholic University of America, and worse in Takoma Park, 1/3 mile away on an incredibly more destructive as well as longer route:
“ 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”,
It featured 37 routes almost all over the map. Had its "recommended" option, route option #11 "Railroad - Sligo East" with its deviations slashing through Takoma Park and Brookland's Turkey Thickett- so as to set up the B&O Route idea for opposition via its fusing here with routing insanity.
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2012/01/crafted-controversy-scuttling-of-jfks-b.html
The feds would take another 2 years to unveil a B&O Route North Central Freeway engineering feasibility study design report, issued November 1966.
This plan was a good start, in need of even further design revisions. To wit, it does a good job with its cut and cover tunnel routing of the I-70S segment in the Blair Park area of Silver Spring, Maryland. But it hardly offers anything for too much of the route for enclosing these high speed expressway to better control the emissions of auto exhaust and noise. The cut and cover tunnel in Silver Spring should extend further south, to a bit south of the Takoma WMATA Station downtown. And the segment further south alongside Catholic University of America should have been planned as a fully enclosed tunnel, ultimately with exhaust filtration, rather than some semi enclosed, for a tunnel roof with its outer "wall" simply just a set of support posts, so there is nothing to enclose traffic noise from reflecting west towards C.U.A.
But what would we see? Would people ask why the plans were so substituted? Would they insist upon furthering the design process- more creative use of tunnels, and measures address air pollution issues, like staging the traffic flow over time as leaded gasoline was phased out and automobiles became cleaner.
Conduct your own research. Look up any contemporary newspaper account reporting the post mid 1960s Washington, D.C. I-95 North Central Freeway. Look for even any mention let alone discussion of the planning substitution.
Rather, there is this protesting about "white mans roads through black mans homes" - so prompted by the evil 1964 plans, which followed the inclusion of a provision in the 1960 U.S. Transportation Act effectively cancelling the previously planned NW Freeway through the overwhelmingly white people inhabited west of Rock Creek Park NW, with its 5 year moratorium on such NW planning- including even any design process.
The feds further muck things up, by actually stating publicly that they had NOT committed to the sensible 1966 plan, but rather the incredibly insane 1964 plan. In a letter dated June 1, 1967 written to Maryland's Spirio Agnew. See http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2015/02/june-1-1967-duncan-wall-letter-to-spiro.html
"...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 jurisdictions (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
Yes, the feds, via the then newly created Federal Highway Authority, expressing their waffeling to shave perhaps 5% in constructing costs from the greater use of retaining walls.
So by the end of 1968, U.S. National Planning Commission reverses its support for the B&O Route North Central Freeway, with NO attention to the planning substitution. D.C. City Council does likewise.
Any official North Central Freeway design evolution stopped with the November 1971 release of the design study District of Columbia Interstate System, by Deleuw, Cather Associates and Harry Weese Associates, ltd 1971, prepared with the District of Columbia Department of Highways and Traffic, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration.
To its credit it was based upon the 1966 rather than the evil 1964 plan. It offered some revisions. At its entry into the District, the I-70S B&O N.C.F. the 1966 plan had each direction of roadways flanking the existing elevated RR, thereby widening and making a considerably noisier Takoma Station. This 1971 plan instead had this segment as a 6 lane cut and cover tunnel on the RR's east (northbound) side primarily through space cleared for the WMATA station, and to the north requiring shoring up the landmark Cady Lee Mansion, and the row of houses along Takoma Avenue. To the south, it presents what may appear at first glance to be a "tunnel", but which is a semi-enclosure. Some variant of a hybrid design, with a solid wall on one side, facing an open side of support columns, and or a wall with substantial openings. It might have been a northbound I-95 N.C.F., if with a continuous media wall instead of open-non filled in support columns. But for the southbound lanes, that 1971 study shows a southbound right hand "wall" of a set of support columns- an open side.
So the sound reflection would have been an issue, and if so facing westward, making noise towards C.U.A., likely raising objections.
Elsewhere, urban highway design evolved towards fully enclosed expressway tunnels.
Boston I-93 Central Artery Tunnel- built.
New York City 1974-1985 Westway West Side Highway Project (stopped)
New York City Donald Trump Development
57th to 72nd Street West Side Highway Tunnel
But for Washington D.C., nothing.
Nothing heard for a rational moratorium on any immediate highway construction. Sit back, examine the plans, and look at ways for improvements. Preserve the corridors from creating path clearing conflicts as relatively expensive - tall - towers upon the lightly developed lands along the B&O RR. The feds ought to hang their heads in shame for failing to preserve the strip of properties flanking this WMATA Red line corridor in downtown Silver Spring, Md, with a tower at the northeast of the junction with Colesville Road, along with the entire strip to the west with a row of National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration/National Ocean Services office towers extend along the B&O, instead of perhaps a low level retail strip mall so as to generate income while avoiding considerably higher condemnation costs.
ZERO indication anywhere of any sort of further design evolution for Washington, D.C.'s B&O Route North Central Freeway.
Instead just the mindless "de-mapping- for all time" - based upon the popularization of the implication that the U.S. was too impoverished for its long term planning to include the expressways with WMATA and expressways, by targeting planned road links for simply transferring the construction funds to WMATA, with zero regard to the added costs of failing to preserve easements.
So the public does not get to see any sort of publicly shown design competition for fullfilling J.F.K.'s plausible visionary status for a cut and cover enclosed cut and cover tunnel I-95 North Central-Northeastern Expressway.
The 1964 planning sabotaging was entirely neglected. Research yourself any contemporary news accounts of the D.C. freeway planning controversies. The mainstream media completely buried the matter, simply adhering to sloganeering as a substitute for a broader understanding.
And WEIRDLY, its the indefensible 1964, rather than the defensible 1966+ plan, that appears in the 1970s Federal Highway Authority documents concerning the expressway system segments "de-mapped" and "for all time".
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2015/01/feds-stoked-controversy-over-dc.html
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/highwayhistory/data/page05.cfm
But how any why?
The U.S. was somehow too poor to construct both the expressway and the WMATA rail system?.
The November 1, 1962 White House report had both the expressway and rail transit systems.
But ever-since, transportation planning has been effectively high-jacked by the manta of reduced expectations. No more urban expressway. Therefore no interest in any further design evolution. Therefore blocking developing designs for tunnel box cut and cover encased urban expressways, joining to this religious doctrine that the U.S. can not afford constructing both, with zero consideration of any long term considerations.- with the authorities allowing expensive new buildings to block easements, starting in Silver Spring, Md. And it is now buttressed with other such religious doctrine masquerading as sound judgement with its abuse of the phrase "induced demand" to mean that expressways are bad because they are used.
The feds scuttled the B&O Route D.C. I-95 via this planning substitution/subversion.
The plans in the 1964 report appear to be work from perhaps the mid to late 1950s, and not what the Kennedy Administration endorsed.
And what might that have looked like- a more detailed visualization of the B&O Route North Central Freeway?
A possibility exists as the concurrent planning for the Fenway Park segment of Boston's planned Inner Loop, featuring a pedestrian promenade atop a semi enclosed rectangular box expressway tunnel. President Kennedy was from the Boston area, and would have likely been aware of such planning.
1963
1965
1965
Note the open roof portals, done for ventilation.
See how close pedestrians can get, to get a wiff of the petroleum based motor vehicle fuels automobile exhaust emissions. In a nutshell, the explanation for the post 1963 "progressive" distain for highway tunnels, as the portals would embarrass petroleum interests, and any demand for cleaner fuels as ethanol gets sidetracked by the jesuitical theatrics of sacfricing urban highway tunnels as useful deflection. Like N.Y.C.'s Westway project as the sacrificial lamb for the phase in of an effective zero percent NYSE stock sales/transfer tax with computerized High Frequency Trading.
Imagine that mode of expressway design, of a semi enclosed rectangular tunnel box, beneath a new pedestrian promenade, with ceiling openings for ventilation, for the J.F.K. vision for the Washington D.C. I-70S/I-95 B& O North Central Freeway. Study that RR corridor, and picture such alongside the corridor's single largest piece of real estate of Catholic University of America (C.U.A.).
What can independent scholars locate, regarding any details regarding this planning, particularly under President J.F.K.
The scuttling of the Washington, D.C. expressway system, and the sheer fear of any officials dare propose anything, asides from Boston, Massachusetts getting its Central Artery 3rd Harbor Tunnel, passed by Congress 1986, what explains the dynamics?
Try a look at N.Y.C.
New York had its Westway with its partially underground West Side Highway replacement scuttled for the sake of transferring its $2.3 billion construction funds towards the MTA.
The single most important thing about opposing Westway, says Michael Garrad, an attorney who has represented a number of the opposition groups in court, is priorities. The money could be put into mass transit, where there is a much greater need for it. The solution is called a trade in. Because 90 percent of Westway's cost will be paid by the federal government, and because the city and state have the option of exchanging the highway money for other projects, the priories and trade in debate that became crucial to Westway's future. A billion dollar freebie, but what happens to the West Side and all those commercial vehicles that now have to plow their way through the Center of Manhattan. page 45, New York magazine, the Day the City Stopped February 11, 1980
OK. A single billion, or $1.5 or $2.5 or $3 billion plus was somehow unaffordable.
How often did the public see that notion pounded into the collective subconscious through the mass media. New York Magazine and especially the Village Voice, from 1974-1985?
And during this time of concern over budgetary and fiscal matters as the reason/excuse to scuttle Westway or any other underground West Side Highway, how much attention in the very same press/news media gave to the impending imposition of a phased in "rebate" (refund) of the minuscule rate ) 0.1% New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) stock transfer/sales tax?
Wall street investment firms could now run up unlimited amounts of buying and selling, as there was no longer any effective tax, with the giveaway increased to 100% by December 1981, under N.Y. governor Hugh Carey
People fell for the notion that any such Westway project was somehow unaffordable, right at the very time of the preparations behind the scenes for bringing about this effective zero percent sales tax to the NYSE trading, with legislation establishing full refund of, no, not anything like the 5 to 7.75% sales tax we now pay even on internet sales. No. Rather a low 0.1% rate, under New York State, with so such tax federally. In 1978, the N.Y. State legislature passes legislation pushed via Governor Hugh Carey (research him and the people around him, particularly his brother who is a member of the Knights of Malta). And both Dems and Republicans deflect from this with the typical disinformation over "trickle down" as if we were to suffers higher income and corporate taxes, while feds and state gave away an effective ZERO PERCENT sales transaction tax to the N.Y.S.E to facilitate the practice of High Frequency Trading with NYSE trading computerization, to swing stock prices drastically with all its negative economic ramifications, along with the Feds lowering he interest rates to banks so they no longer pay people for using their money. And Democrat Party (as well as Republican Party) strategists get people to completely neglect the economics of the zero percent NYSE transaction tax with High Frequency Trading, by the endless "hot button" issues.
Such is the product of a political system of environmentalist, supposed "climate activists" who fail to dare question this political posturing of scapegoating urban expressway projects, while turning a blind eye to the nonsensical policies used to protect petroleum market share from renewal sources of fuel as ethanol.
A political, media and organizational line up of the pattern of using urban highway tunnel bashing to deflect for petroleum market share is universal. All of the parties support or have supported this status quo. This includes the supposed progressives, as well as sadly both main alternative parties the Libertarian Party and the Green Party, each regurgitating the same American Petroleum Institute disinformation against allowing greater ethanol market share seen from Rolling Stone, Mother Jones as well as sadly Reason magazine. We see endless sloganeering, along with typical jesuitical theatrics, of those that denounce any ideas towards fuel substitutes to petroleum. Zero interest in retrofitting existing automobiles for cleaner burning fuels, nor in slowing immensely wasteful scrappage of repairable already produced automobiles. Has the U.S. Environmental Agency offered publicaly offering retrofitting information? Or did they instead ban states from allowing any mid range ethanol grades, between 10-15% and "E-85", as say E40, E-50 etc. And what about the fixing of motor vehicle fuel standards greater than 10 or 15%, with such E30, 40 etc fuels with fixed standards for the gasoline component, together with posting the octane. Ask, why is "E-85" fuel not octane posted? The E10/15 grades all have the octane posting, 85,87,88,89, 91, 93 aki. Ethanol has an octane of 112 aki. So where are the 95, 97, 99, 102, 104 aki posted E30/40/50 etc fuels? Nah! Zero interest from the environmentalist activist organizations. Just an endless regurgitation of the jesuitical idea that highways are bad for being simply used (the ridiculously broad abuse of the phrase "induced demand") so we can NEVER construct any new expressways anywhere in say the north eastern U.S.
Ponder this- the overwhelming dominance of this no new urban expressways together with this bizarre disregard of motor vehicle fuel policy. Everywhere, in the mass media (newspapers, magazines, web sites, as well as private organizations, this pair of realities reflects. This blatant pairing supercedes any mathematical probabilities but as result of something large enough to have such control by infiltrating and effectively taking over everything.
Why such a taboo on potential road projects? Other nations ultimately replaced scuttled road links with underground variants. Just consider that we hardly ever hear or see anything of people or organizations dare publicly unveil anything in the way of alternative ideas/plans for any new underground urban highway links. Ask yourselves. In a nation of over 300 million people, that barely anyone dares write openly challenging this establish inquisition of bashing urban expressway tunnel projects with REFUSING to address the fuel standards and adhering to American Petroleum disinformation, including the U.S. E.P.A. It is as if we have some organization large enough to infiltrate/control everything, particularly the government, the media, the political organizations. Like they run the college/university fraternity/society system to exclude independents, and serve as the gatekeepers for who gets hired. You make the deal to join, getting the perks, while loosing the ability to speak out against the false or questionable narratives. So no wonder that people through the spectrum regurgitate such things as Cannabis worse than liquor, or that ethanol fuel was considerably dirtier than tar sands, with deliberately inconsistent science for the sake of guarding certain protected narratives. Such as urban highway tunnels suck, while having zero interest in market suppression of ethanol and other cleaner running renewable fuels. This set of attitudes is hardly socially rational, rather simply a scapegoating for deflection from mercantilism/crony capitalism. Under such an arrangement of a shadow government network of officials belonging to such fraternal order organizations, its hardly any wonder that nobody on or near Capital Hill, nor candidates for political officials, dare address any of this.
So lets have some public research and revelations about this secreted network in all of this. A great place to start is that March 5/6, 2005 post midnite D.C. City Council reversal of their rejection of Nationals Stadium to vote to approve, at a closed door convening.
