Interesting Freeway Interchanges of the Capital Region

American taxpayers have spent trillions of dollars building freeways since the passage of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956. This network of freeways has re-shaped American cities, and arguably impacted the economy and culture of the country. While some enthusiasts find interest in the highway system’s endless strips of asphalt, for most the only true drama within the system is contained in freeway interchanges, where one or more freeways intersect. Although designed by traffic engineers, interchanges can contain dramatic ramps and intriguing shapes from above. One artist even took inspiration from the world’s freeway interchanges to design a set of tiles featuring their shapes.

Of these highways, Washington, D.C.’s Capital Beltway is among the more famous, as a symbolic dividing line between the national capital and the rest of the country. Let’s take a look at some of the interchanges in and around the beltway, to see what they reveal. We will approach the city from the north on Maryland’s I-270. Here, that highway branches in two as we approach the beltway.

If we travel East on the beltway we come across this interchange near College Park where I-95 intersects the beltway. Original plans for Washington’s freeway system included an extensive network of urban freeways that were never built — this interchange was designed to accommodate a never-built leg of I-95 extending to the District. Today, University of Maryland officials are advocating a freeway connecting this interchange to their campus.

As we continue along the beltway we come to this recently rebuilt interchange between the Capital Beltway and Route 50 in Prince George’s County. This photo shows the close relationship between Washington’s freeway and Metrorail system. From the very beginning the systems were designed somewhat in tandem and the train was intended to carry visitors into the city after arriving this far by auto. Here, special onramps connect the beltway to the New Carrollton Metro Station.

Continuing around the beltway we encounter the Springfield Interchange, one of several interchanges around the country known popularly as “The Mixing Bowl.” Here the beltway intersects both I-395 and I-95, and the interchange was long one of the most dangerous stretches of the beltway. In 1999, the Virginia Department of Transportation began an 8-year project to re-design the interchange in a project that is currently estimated to cost in excess of $670 million before it is complete.

As we continue around we come to the last I’ve selected for inclusion — this interchange where the beltway meets Route 50/Arlington Boulevard.

Interchanges Elsewhere

Interestingly, perhaps because of the investment in Metro, the scale and number of the freeway interchanges in the region is not notable from a national perspective. This image of the Big Dig in Boston gives a good idea of the scope of that project.

Unlike Washington, the city of Detroit did actually construct the entire network of urban freeways planned for that city, including some truly massive interchanges like this one, between I-96 and the Southfield Freeway.

Much more is written about interchange design and the Washington region’s freeways elsewhere on the web, so I won’t go into detail here. What am I missing? What is your favorite (or least favorite) interchange in the region?

References

> Scott M. Kozel’s Roads to the Future (Transportation history for VA, MD, DC)
> Kurumi’s Field Guide to Interchanges
> Springfield Interchange Improvement Project
> Google Earth Community: Crazy Highway Interchanges thread

Mapping Development in College Park

Today at Rethink College Park we launched an interactive Google Map of all the various development projects we have written about so far on that website. It also serves as a graphical index to the site, since each point is linked to a page containing all our posts on the project.

While it’s not as robust as some of the sophisticated GIS systems used by more forward thinking governmental agencies (see the City of Alexandria’s development viewer), since we developed it in a few days at no cost, I’m pretty happy.

> Rethink College Park Development Map

Blogging for Engagement in College Park

Can a blog help bring new participants to the planning process? We’re not sure, but we’re trying. Two recent articles describe the progress we’ve made since launching Rethink College Park six months ago. The first is from today’s edition of The Diamondback, the campus student newspaper.

When then-graduate student Brian Carroll defended his thesis on redeveloping the Knox Box area last month, he never expected the debate to travel beyond a committee of professors.

But once the local development blog Rethink College Park got wind of his work, posting Carroll’s drawings and ideas to revamp the aging neighborhood populated with students, the comment section came alive with interest. The attention highlighted the push for student housing development downtown and the propensity online forums have for facilitating discussion, but Carroll expressed surprise at the reaction.

“I think the thing that they did was pull it all together,” Carroll said of the Rethink College Park editors. “I could’ve completed my thesis and put it on the shelf in the library, but that got it some publicity.”[...]

But if the interest in Carroll’s work once posted on the Internet and the exchange of ideas since the blog’s launch are any indication, Internet discussions could be the future of public discourse here. That doesn’t mean city council meetings will ever cease, but council member Bob Catlin said with his constituents becoming increasingly busy, communicating with them electronically has become a major convenience.

> Diamondback: “City officials, students take talks to the Web”

Second, this article co-authored with the site’s other editor, David Daddio, recently appeared on the website Campus Progress. It offers a good overview of the project and the context here on campus.

” … Our single-minded focus on helping transform College Park into a great college town has led to discussions on the site about a host of progressive issues … With many institutions interested in building or expanding college towns near their campuses, students are in a unique role to ensure the development agenda includes what they value, whether it is sustainable design, affordable housing, socio-economic diversity, or the protection of small businesses. We believe students should be actively engaged in the design of their campuses and towns, and a website can be an effective tool to build a group of like-minded students and share knowledge about what is happening in your community. … “

> CampusProgress.org: “From Parking Lot to College Town?“

Rethinking College Park: An Update

Things have been kind of quiet around here lately for a couple reasons: I just successfully wrapped up my first semester of graduate school, and because most of my blogging energy has been dedicated to Rethink College Park, a new community website I am involved in.

Readers of this website may be familiar with the general concept of the site I described in May, or perhaps may have seen the announcement I posted after we launched last summer. However, I have said little about it since then.

In short, things are going very well. We summarized some of our accomplishments in December: we have averaged over 100 visitors a day (In a city of 25,000), published 95 posts and over 200 comments. Our posts have included everything from thoughtful essays on urban design, obscure documents we dredged up about controversial projects, and examinations of a secretive University-led development project. Most recently, we have posted detailed candidate surveys for an upcoming special election to fill two vacancies on the city council.

Furthermore, we have begun to build the infrastructure to make the effort sustainable in the long term. We have identified as a major goal for next semester as recruiting more writers and leaders for the organization. Although it is difficult to measure of the impact of the site, it’s clear that at the very least we are succeeding to create an open forum for the entire community — our first and primary goal.

To top it off, I just found out today we are the top hit if you google “I want to run for city council.” Either we’re doing something right, or there is a sore lack of this type of information on the web!

Can Wheaton Become the Next Silver Spring?

A motley collection of one and two-story strip malls in the DC suburb of Wheaton, Maryland is poised to be transformed into a high density urban downtown. Montgomery County officials have declared victory in downtown Silver Spring, where a decades-long redevelopment process injected millions of dollars of new development into what was an economically depressed district. County officials are looking to Wheaton for their next major project.

Wheaton is an important regional transit node — in addition to the Red Line Metro Station, roughly a dozen bus routes converge on the area where several busy roads converge. High density development has not happened due to zoning restrictions adopted in 1992 that were designed to limit the scale of new development and prevent Wheaton from becoming a large-scale edge city like Bethesda. However the tight restrictions on development mean there has been little new investment in the area and now community members — and Montgomery County officials — want change.

The illustrations above and below were created by architect Jim Russell for the Wheaton Redevelopment Advisory Committee. They depict the outcome of a community “visioning” process where residents and business owners proposed creating a dense development with a central park on land that today contains aging low-rise commercial buildings, a parking lot, and a Dunkin’ Donuts. While County officials are dreaming up plans, some major developers have been investing money: already two major luxury housing projects are open for business and the Bozzuto corporation plans to break ground soon on housing over the WMATA-owned bus depot. The website of the county’s Wheaton Redevelopment Program has more information on projects, and this map (PDF) dramatically illustrating how many projects are completed or proposed in the area.

The redevelopment program is moving aggressively to work with local businesses to improve their business saavy and modify zoning laws to attempt to preserve the “small business character” as much as possible. As part of that effort county officials have partnered with the DC-based Latino Economic Development Corporation to provide loans and financial advice to small Wheaton businesses.

Despite the bold goals and vigorous citizen involvement of the redevelopment project which will impact hundreds of businesses, most of the reporting has been regarding just one: Barry’s Magic Shop. I won’t go into the details here other than to say the shop is facing eviction by county officials to make room for a long-planned pedestrian walkway, just barely visible off Georgia Avenue in these renderings.

Thanks to the Wheaton Redevelopment Program for providing digital copies of Jim Russell’s drawings.

Rethinking College Park

Click here to visit the new blog Rethink College Park.

In May I blogged about an interesting op-ed published in the University of Maryland student newspaper written by Maryland undergraduate David Daddio. Although College Park is the home of the University of Maryland’s flagship campus with almost 35,000 students and has its own Metro station on the D.C. subway, the “city” is limited to a run-down stretch of U.S. Route 1 near campus and few strip malls. In recent years a consensus has emerged among students and community leaders in College Park that the city should strive to become a better “college town.” At the end of the school year the student government even sponsored a design brainstorming session with the architecture school about how the city could grow. Despite all the interest, development has been uneven in the city: zoning decisions are controlled by county officials with other priorities, students are disconnected and ill-informed, and University administrators are often not engaged with community concerns.

David’s op-ed proposed a website that would function as “an ongoing public participation venue where students and city residents can be educated, debate the merits of projects and voice opinions.” When I got in touch with David to talk to him about my work with Arborupdate and DCist and offer to help in the effort, we decided to collaborate on a new site. Thus, today I’m happy to announce the beta launch of Rethink College Park. Our visionfor the blog is similar to what his original op-ed proposed: to connected stakeholders and encourage a “walkable, inclusive, and dynamic city.” We’re actively looking for event planners, graphic design people, writers, photographers, and just about anybody interested in helping, so please drop me a line if you want to get involved.

> Rethink College Park

Lichtman for Senate

Trailing behind Kweisi Mfume and Ben Cardin in the Maryland Democratic Party Senate race, underdog Allen Lichtman is scrambling to get voters’ attention before the September 12th primary. Campaigning under the tagline “Too much government intruding in our private lives, Too Little government meeting our needs,” Lichtman’s platform includes withdrawing troops from Iraq and policies to make higher education more affordable. Today’s Post article describes his scrappy campaign, noting he likes to boast he’d be the only lifelong teacher in the U.S. Senate if elected.

> Post: “Behind the Pack, Lichtman Feels the Heat”
> See the campaign website, myspace, and Facebook group