GGW suggestion on making 90 bus line primary on its streets: bus on top, tunnel below?

While I haven't written for awhile, I have been thinking about things at a bigger scale, which will come out in some of the next entries.

As I get older, I become a little less doctrinaire, and given that in the US 92% of all trips are by car, I've resigned myself to having to accommodate them.  This is less the case in DC than SLC--which is the epitome of sprawl--but it's still an issue in DC.

Even though in DC on the major routes, bus riders make up a significant amount of the total people "throughput" on the street--e.g. on H Street NE, at least pre-covid, 40% of people throughput was by bus, via 300 bus trips, it's tough to corral automobiles, especially because most of the city, except the core is shaped by the automobility paradigm ("DC as a suburban agenda dominated city," 2013).

BeyondDC suggests in a GGW post, "One change to transform DC travel: Make the 90 bus truly awesome," that because the 90 bus line is the only major crosstown route, its uniqueness means that it should get priority on its streets.  

This is a problem because at many points the street is super narrow for an arterial

While it's unique as a crosstown route for buses, the same goes for the route in terms of motor vehicle traffic. 

And while I think the proposal is meritable, it's probably too controversial to ever get approved.

Not that my counter proposal is any easier....

In "Tunnelized road projects for DC and the Carmel Tunnel, Haifa, Israel example--tolls" (2011) and "DC and "city repair" of the urban grid," (2020) I suggest that a series of DC streets be "tunnelized and tolled" to separate commuter traffic from local traffic.  

It would facilitate faster travel for commuters--helping to maintain the relevance of Downtown as a regionally significant commercial district--it would also reduce the negative effect of commuter traffic on residents and neighborhoods.

Flickr photo by Elyse Horvath.

The 90s busline roadway could be brought into that proposed underground road network.  

It could get great urban design treatment on the surface where the bus would still run, because of frequent stops, while the tunnel would focus on satisfying longer trips.

With the tunnel, the surface street could become a kind of transit/sustainable mobility mall, at least in certain sections, using my Signature Streets model, the My Figueroa project in LA, etc..  

And you could run articulated buses to increase capacity.

Spitalerstraßße transit mall, Hamburg, Germany.  

Bi-articulated buses (3 sections) are allowed on the street

Image by BeyondDC.  50 foot road right of way with bus service in the middle of the street

Florida Avenue NE Streetscape Improvement (2nd Street NE to H Street NE)