Case Study Research Highway Removal Alternatives

In considering the Anacostia River Corridor and the advantages and challenges of each approach, the boulevard approach appears to be best suited for the local context and for advancing connectivity, resilience, and equitable development in the communities that surround DC-295.

Highway removal precedents around the world reflect three main ways to remove a highway: reroute the highway into an underground tunnel, convert the highway into a boulevard, and replace the highway entirely with a new or restored street grid. The table on this page lays out benefits and challenges of each approach.

A boulevard would retain the corridor’s role as a highercapacity north-south connector yet still serve to reconnect neighborhoods to the riverfront park and one another. In addition, a boulevard can take on many different forms, which offers the flexibility for the removal of DC-295 to adapt to changing local conditions along the corridor. Lastly, a boulevard approach takes advantage of the existing momentum surrounding the Highways to Boulevard movement.

The boulevard approach is one amongst many possible methods to transform the DC-295, and has been chosen by our studio as a basis for imagining alternatives for the Anacostia River Corridor.

Tunneling or Capping Boulevard Removal + Conversion

Benefits

• Traffic going north and south through the corridor remains continuous

• Improve health equity through removing pollutants, mitigating heat, and reducing flood risk

• Restore open space that increases biodiversity gains and improves climate resilience

• Increase access to public amenities, recreation, and active transportation

Challenges

• Highest cost and longest time to implement

• Does not shift travel behavior away from polluting, private vehicles

• Likely requires high-end/luxury development to recoup project costs which does not fit in with goals of equitable development or the existing neighborhood fabric

Benefits Benefits

• Maintain a high level of travel capacity throughout the corridor

• Create smoother connections to the riverfront recreation spaces

• Shape development along the boulevard, contributing to placemaking and re-knitting efforts for the community

• Increase opportunities for resilience through the use of blue-green infrastructure assets lining boulevard and a depressed median

• Eliminate infrastructure barriers to open and recreational space for the community

• Expansive multimodal transit corridor investments would create new highcapacity connections north-south between existing neighborhood transit nodes, routes, and trails

• More green space and stormwater interventions to address flood risks, air quality, and urban heat effects

• Catalyze development that amplifies existing assets and preserves neighborhood character

Challenges Challenges

• Will require some former users of DC-295, especially those who use it for through travel, to shift away from driving motorized vehicles or take new routes

• Non-motorists could still face issues safely crossing at busier stretches of the boulevard

• Will require the largest change in travel behavior away from driving alongside the largest investments in transit

• Biggest change from what exists today