Capozzi’s
Plan Traffic incentives for Barney Circle
Barney Circle — in fact the whole connection
between the Southeast/Southwest Freeway and
I-295 — is a mess. Traffic engineers and Hill East residents,
at odds for years, have kept it so, with urban and suburban interests
on the battle line.
DUNCAN
SPENCER
The city quashed plans for I-695 through Barney
Circle in 1996.
A freeway hookup —
mythical Interstate 695 — was killed by the D.C. City Council
in 1996. Now, the city is looking for new ideas, and Mayor Anthony
Williams (D) has pledged to implement them.
Locally, the result has been regular traffic snarls on both inbound
and outbound freeway lanes. The pressure has led many drivers, including,
it is authoritatively rumored, U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman
Y. Mineta, to take an illegal shortcut. The rumor holds that Mineta
uses a lane meant for special events at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium
to slip quickly onto Hill streets on his way from his Maryland home
to his 7th Street S.W. office.
About once a month, D.C. police set up a ticket trap at the turn,
netting dozens of drivers per hour.
Barney Circle resident and local Democratic Party power John Capozzi
suggests a solution — a high-occupancy-toll (HOT) system for
the overcrowded river crossings and the Southeast-Southwest Freeway.
Maryland and Virginia are discussing the use of HOT lanes on big roads
including I-95, I-495, I-395 and I-270, he argues in a letter sent
to Mineta’s assistant undersecretary for policy at DOT, Jeffrey
Shane. “D.C. is left out of this discussion,” he writes.
There already is a ban on tolls on vehicles coming in and out of D.C.
— a result of deeply imbedded urban-suburban friction and distrust.
Thus, changes must come from a federal, not a local, executive agency.
But Capozzi says the usual panacea for traffic — building bigger
roads or creating more one-ways — would not work.
The answer, he argues, is to install some sort of “E-Z Pass”
electronic system, with devices on cars whose drivers are willing
to pay for convenience and privileged lanes — and as a final
incentive, to allow D.C. residents to take tax credits for the tolls.
Capozzi also wants the city to offer free public-transportation vouchers
worth $50 a month to residents of Anacostia neighborhoods to reduce
one-passenger car driving, create better biking conditions on the
Sousa and 11th Street bridges and install secure bike-parking areas
at the Potomac Avenue and Anacostia Metro stations.
let’s get
over it Old Barry politics are obsolete
Who knows what is in the mind of former Mayor Marion Barry, save
one thought: he knows he will win against Sandy Allen (D-Ward 8)
and become a City Council member again.
There’s little that can be done to stop the protean 68-year-old
“Mayor for Life” (as the spunky City Paper
dubbed him) as he moves into the limelight once more. But it is
time (as Barry himself famously advised) to get over it.
The hapless, nearly witless Allen has been an embarrassment to the
council, the city and even her benighted ward ever since her election
two terms ago. She has no real legislative record, no philosophy
and no presence among her peers, all of whom — except Republican
David Catania (At large), who acts as her mentor — treat her
as if she did not exist.
Why will Barry win? Mainly because of the absurdly low turnout usual
in Ward 8, where fewer than 3,000 voters out of 28,000 bother to
vote. Barry, who has been both kind and cruel to Allen, can summon
that number with a wave of his hand and a call to remember the “good
old days.”
An example of Barry’s contempt for the incumbent is a famous
part of low-down city political lore: When Barry emerged from six
months in prison and regained the mayor’s office in his astounding
return to power in 1994, all good Democrats expected him to endorse
Allen for the Ward 8 seat in the Democratic primary. But Barry publicly
dumped her and endorsed Eydie Whittington — who won by a single
disputed vote and was later ousted by a persistent Allen.
Allen got the heave, purportedly because Barry’s fourth wife
Cora Masters Barry, could not stand her — in spite of Allen’s
having stood by MB while he was on trial and in prison, even taking
Barry’s collect calls from inside. But even now, Allen seems
more anesthetized than angry over the news that her former master
intends to trample her again.
So the way remains clear for Barry to return to the council. He
will doubtless run on the familiar “them and us” ticket,
a stock show that sets up a mythical white overlord (the man) who
is determined to take over the District (our city) and displace
the deserving poor (my people).
Though Barry can doubtless win if he avoids the kind of disgrace
that led to wrecks in 1990, with the drug conviction, and in 2002,
when he was found late at night by Park police with traces of marijuana
and cocaine in his Jaguar, the question really is — does it
matter?
Barry will doubtless make a colorful and noisy job of representing
his ward, but the fact is that the city has moved far beyond his
brand of politics. Part of the reason for that sea change is Barry’s
own legacy — the unintended consequences of his drive to create
a middle-class black city where the job base and his constituency
were one and the same.
Barry lifted thousands into the middle class, all right, enriching
a vast army of city workers numbering close to 40,000 and nearly
bankrupting the city as a result. But he did not count on most of
them moving out of the city to the surrounding counties, abandoning
D.C. and their leader in the process.
The remnants, pensioners and retirees, will vote him in. Ward 8’s
young and restless, famous for causing trouble, will watch Barry
promise them summer jobs forever. But they are also famous for not
voting. And as for the relentless gentrifiers whom Barry loves to
hate, and who would love to vote against him? They have yet to arrive
in Ward 8.
which war? Oblivion for WWI
Want a quiet, restful spot in the busy city, a place where no one
comes during these days of heat and barriers and long lines and
wide-eyed tourists?
Check out, then, the only memorials in the nation’s capital
for the veterans (and the 116,516 dead) of World War I, men and
women who never said they were the “greatest generation”
or even asked for a remembrance of themselves as a generation.
No crowds come to the dignified column topped by a shining gold
angel, south of the Executive Office Building, that commemorates
the 1st Division (Big Red One to intimates) — the first of
the American force to face battle in France during the ’14-to-’19
war. Even fewer visit the handsome white marble cupola (along Independence
Avenue, west of the new World War II memorial) that commemorates
the 26,000 residents of D.C. who served in World War I and the 525
District men and women who died.
These quiet old places are forgotten now. In spite of its being
the “war to end all wars,” no one apparently thought
the event momentous enough to raise $175 million, call in architects
and plant marble plinths across the Mall. The 1st Division pillar
cost, by contrast, about $110,000 in 1924; the D.C. memorial cupola
cost about $200,000 in 1931.
All is well at the First Division’s noble column — beds
of flowers bloom and the grass is neatly cut — but this is
not the case for the District’s Memorial. But for the outrage
of Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) — who wrote an angry
letter to National Park Service (NPS) Director Fran Mainella about
“disturbing” neglect of the memorial, with a warning
that it could become “a national disgrace” — the
NPS would have left the cupola to rot. Instead, superficial cleanup
and some planting took place in time for the hoopla about the new
World War II Memorial.
Everything about the new World War II Memorial contrasts sharply
— the size and expense, and even the facts. Though “400,000”
is the figure bruited freely about for the American war dead of
WWII (compare to the U.S. Civil War’s 624,000), British and
French totals are much higher, and between 15 million and 20 million
are counted as the Russian dead in the war, not to mention the devastation
that Europe suffered. It is the Americans who now happily take the
credit for saving Western civilization.
Those who revel in the new memorial would do well to visit the relics
of the past Great War. The marble colonnade astride the Mall, too,
will one day become a quiet and lonely place where few visitors
gaze with curious eyes.
THE
HILL HEARS...
• Of a ring of hands around Watkins
Elementary on 10th Street S.E., where parents and children stood to
protest personnel cuts last Thursday. “Save our teachers”
was the chant, as news spread that two Watkins teachers, Lisa Tate
and Frances Slaughter, were to lose their jobs. Tate, incidentally
is the Capitol Hill Cluster school news reporter for the popular Hill
monthly Hill Rag. ...
• Concerns about management of parking at Eastern Market from
merchants who have noted that Maryland and Virginia commuters now
dominate the 25 or so customer spaces west of the Market’s South
Hall. “Come back in the evening,” says Canales Deli owner
Jose Canales, “You will see the same cars parked there.”
Enforcement of short-term customer parking is the responsibility of
Market Manager Stuart Smith, Canales says. ...
• From the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority (WASA), the sender
of ever-higher water and sewer bills for city residents: Annual flushing
of water mains on Capitol Hill is expected to occur this week. WASA
workers will open hydrants; some discoloration of water in the early
morning hours is expected. ...
• Solicitations from “easement” schemes that promise
big tax savings if a homeowner agrees not to alter the exterior of
a historic house are flooding Hill mailboxes. But in the fine print
are mere mentions of lawyers’ fees and bank fees that can total
thousands. You’ll need a trusted real-estate lawyer for this
one.
