Call me crazy, but I’m of the opinion that the best use of scarce, valuable urban land is not to allow suburbanites to speed from one point outside of the city to another outside of the city–not unless they’re willing to pay dearly for the right. As such, I’m rather fond of the notion of tearing down, or at least burying, the SE-SW freeway, given that it takes up some incredibly valuable real estate and cuts an ugly swath between waterfront neighborhoods and the city to the north.

DDOT, apparently, has a different idea. Build new ramps to connect the SE-SW freeway with the Anacostia freeway. Brilliant. The official goal is to get freeway drivers trying to connect anyway off the local streets, and to enhance connectivity between the east and the west of the river. But that’s stupid. You want to get suburban freeway users off the local streets, then slap a heavy toll on the road. You want to connect east and west, then get rid of the freeways, reconnect the street grid, and get busy building streetcar connections.

This is a terrible deal for the District. Shame on DDOT and on the city government.