Task Force to Suggest Pa. Avenue Car Tunnel
Push to Reopen Street Falters After Attacks

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 30, 2001; Page C01

A federal task force is preparing to recommend to President Bush that Pennsylvania Avenue remain closed in front of the White House, but will lay out options for a four-lane tunnel that would ease congestion by routing traffic to the north or south, according to participants.

A car-only tunnel underneath E Street or Pennsylvania Avenue NW -- reinforced by steel and concrete -- is supported by Secret Service and District officials. It would protect the presidential complex from a truck bomb while allowing car traffic to resume across congested downtown Washington.

On the avenue itself, the Secret Service is considering allowing limited access to some regulated vehicles, such as tourist trolleys or a city-run shuttle, in front of the White House past security checkpoints. Only pedestrians and authorized government vehicles are permitted now.

Bush administration budget analysts are reviewing several tunnel proposals, officials said. An underground passage up to four blocks long could cost $70 million to $140 million, according to preliminary estimates. It would take five years to plan, design and build.

No final decision has been made on a tunnel, and other less-costly options to divert traffic remain.

The National Capital Planning Commission, the federal government's planning agency, has scheduled an Oct. 10 vote on a recommendation by the task force that it appointed to settle controversy around 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., which President Bill Clinton ordered sealed in May 1995.

The panel, appointed in March, also will propose a multimillion-dollar program to streamline and centralize security design around Washington's core of monuments and federal buildings.

City political and business leaders had praised the review and hoped it would result in reopening the avenue. But the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, in which suicide hijackers crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, has quelled such talk.

Supporters suggest that an alternative reopening, such as a tunnel, would show the nation's resolve to return to business as usual.

They also hope that funding, a major barrier in the past, could be made available as part of a package of major, expensive security upgrades in the capital.

Richard L. Friedman, task force chairman, said no conclusion has been reached, and he would not discuss specifics. John V. Cogbill III, Bush's appointed chairman of the Planning Commission, said yesterday that "it is premature to talk about any specific options."

But another participant, speaking anonymously because of task force rules, said, "I believe what the commission will do is present as clearly as they can several of the most promising tunnel options, describe their performance and leave it to others to pick or debate which if any should be produced."

The task force includes representatives of federal agencies, including the Secret Service and the Justice and Interior departments as well as federal planning panels that oversee the city, Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) and D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D.)

The discussion of a new tunnel comes amid sweeping security changes considered by the federal government and District. Acting unilaterally under its mandate to protect the president, the Secret Service temporarily shut E Street between 15th and 17th streets NW after the Sept. 11 attacks. That, and the closure of Pennsylvania Avenue after the Oklahoma City bombing, has diverted 38,000 vehicles onto other east-west streets in downtown Washington.

District leaders say their foremost concern is to roll back the E Street closure and stop other closings.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) said a congressional resolution to open the avenue has "lost momentum."

The reopening of Pennsylvania Avenue is the city's first choice. But a tunnel, Williams spokesman Tony Bullock said, "is better than the current situation."

Short of building a tunnel, the easiest option to speed traffic is to coordinate signals, turn lanes and parking hours on adjacent streets.

But task force participants are considering a security-hardened tunnel that would stretch between 14th Street and 18th Street NW underneath E Street or Pennsylvania Avenue and that would open sufficiently far away so that a blast inside would not destroy key buildings.

"Several tunnel options are being looked at," said Terence Golden, chairman of the Federal City Council, a private nonprofit group of civic and business leaders that has urged reopening. Golden said a recommendation to restore above-ground street traffic is "unlikely."