Proponents of the Whitehurst Freeway are grumbling that Mayor Adrian Fenty, who they once counted as an ally in their fight, broke his word by authorizing further study into the highway’s destruction.
Within weeks, the D.C. Department of Transportation is expected to award a $900,000 contract for an environmental impact statement — a formal follow-up to a feasibility study completed last year on the Whitehurst’s razing. The major new analysis, funded mostly with available federal dollars, will take up to 18 months, according to DDOT officials.
But by allowing the EIS process to advance, opponents of demolition argue, Fenty is tacitly approving the freeway’s destruction — spurring momentum for the controversial project. And they say the mayor has flip-flopped on his opposition to the road’s downfall.
“In our wildest dreams, we didn’t think the EIS was going forward because Fenty was so adamant and unwavering in his position,” said Palisades resident Carol Bolotin, who manages the Web site www.savethewhitehurst.org.
It is “ridiculous” to even talk about tearing down the Whitehurst, Fenty told the Foggy Bottom Association during a candidates forum last summer. He made similar statements to Palisades residents as he went door-to-door during the campaign.
The mayor still opposes tearing down the freeway, Fenty spokeswoman Mafara Hobson said, but he is interested in seeing what the EIS reveals. Hobson acknowledged the two positions appear “contradictory.”
“I just think this was a process that has been started and it’s just going to be completed,” she said.
Some 45,000 vehicles daily use the Whitehurst to bypass Georgetown, and critics of demolition contend tearing it down — and replacing it with a wider K Street — would create dreadful traffic, parking and pedestrian problems. But many residents consider the freeway an eyesore in the midst of an upscale community and an impediment to Georgetown’s revitalized waterfront.
“At this point we don’t have any predetermined notions, but we do think based upon the examination of the alternatives … that it might be possible to remove the elevated freeway and deal with all of the traffic needs with a surface road,” DDOT Director of Transportation Policy and Planning Ken Laden told a D.C. Council committee last month.
Ward 1 Council Member Jim Graham, who has oversight of DDOT, said proceeding with the EIS “is an obvious next step,” though “the outcome is by no means assured.”
