No Clear Route Around the Whitehurst

Perhaps so many people simply call it the "Whitehurst" because it's so ridiculous to complete the title with the word "Freeway."

This is not one of those drive-with-the-top-down California freeways. This is the bunny slope of highways in the nation's capital, an elevated road that, on a good day, allows commuters to crank it up to 20 mph as they cruise beside the Potomac River for, oh, 30 seconds.

Linked to Canal Road and the Key Bridge on one end and K and E streets on the other, the Whitehurst is a relic of an urban highway system that never happened. Yet many commuters love it because it keeps them away from M Street, a gridlockian crawl in which no sane person would voluntarily participate.

But here's the tension: The high-up Whitehurst casts a shadow over the Georgetown waterfront. It walls off city dwellers from their principal waterway.

So the District commissioned a recently completed feasibility study on taking it down and replacing it. Options include a souped-up K Street or a tunnel.

Sounded like the perfect setup for a city versus suburbs story, but it's more complicated. Many in the District are unwilling to forget the freeway.

Dear Dr. Gridlock:

Why there is such a study to begin with is beyond me and most of the thousands of D.C., Virginia and Maryland residents who commute to work on the Whitehurst.

It is common sense that deconstruction of the Whitehurst would cause traffic problems that are hard to overestimate. Anyone who commutes from Northwest Washington, Virginia (via Chain Bridge and Canal Road) or Maryland (via MacArthur Boulevard and Foxhall Road) knows of the nightmare that would ensue should the Whitehurst be taken down.

In addition, the impact on Georgetown is certain to cause constant gridlock. The costs of alternatives in the study -- such as a tunnel under K Street or a boulevard along lower K Street -- boggle the mind.