The D.C. Freeway Revolt and the Coming of Metro Part 9 Post-Revolt
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The D.C. Freeway Revolt and the Coming of Metro Part 9 Post-Revolt Table of Contents Why Did Chairman Natcher Do It? ................................................................................................ 2 Clearing the Air ............................................................................................................................... 4 Air Quality Plans ............................................................................................................................. 6 President Nixon’s Plans for the Bicentennial in the District .......................................................... 9 About That Balanced System ........................................................................................................ 10 The Joint Hearing on Metro .......................................................................................................... 11 Highway Funding for Transit ........................................................................................................ 17 Decision on the Three Sisters Bridge ............................................................................................ 21 A New City Council Chairman ..................................................................................................... 24 I-66 Takes Center Stage ................................................................................................................ 31 District Appropriations Act, FY 1973 .......................................................................................... 43 A Landmark Event For The Nation’s Capital ............................................................................... 54 Across the Lincoln Memorial ....................................................................................................... 61 I-66 Flounders ............................................................................................................................... 69 The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1972......................................................................................... 74 The 1972 House Bill ..................................................................................................................... 82 The 1972 Senate Bill ..................................................................................................................... 91 The Conference Goes Down to the Wire ...................................................................................... 93 Problems Building ........................................................................................................................ 97 WMATA’s Bus Takeover ........................................................................................................... 100 After the Election ........................................................................................................................ 107 Awaiting Congressional Action in 1973 ..................................................................................... 112 Metrobus ..................................................................................................................................... 115 The Senate Takes Up the 1973 Act ............................................................................................. 116 The House Gets to Work ............................................................................................................. 121 While Congress Worked ............................................................................................................. 128 Facing Chairman Natcher ........................................................................................................... 131 Awaiting the 1973 Act ................................................................................................................ 141 Completing the 1973 Act ............................................................................................................ 144 The 1973 Act Becomes a Law .................................................................................................... 146 The Center Leg Freeway Opens – In Part ................................................................................... 153 The Flow of Oil ........................................................................................................................... 155 What To Do About The South Leg ............................................................................................. 158 In Virginia, I-66 Moves Forward ................................................................................................ 165 Part 9 Post-Revolt Why Did Chairman Natcher Do It? As 1971 ended, The Sunday Star magazine Washington carried an article by Kentucky-based journalist Ward Sinclair trying to explain Chairman Natcher’s role in the long freeway-subway impasse. Sinclair recalled the usual feature of 62-year old Natcher’s life – his goal as a young lawyer to be part of the U.S. House of Representatives; his safe seat in Kentucky (17 years in the House at the time of the article); his personal life as a teetotaling nonsmoker who avoided social outings; his pork-barrel interests on behalf of the locks, dams, and lakes in Kentucky; his refusal to talk with reporters outside his home district; his failure to accept campaign contributions, including contributions from the highway lobby; and his pride in his perfect voting record: The trouble with most of the theories about Natcher’s recalcitrance, and they abound in these parts, is that the theoreticians try to decipher his motives on their own terms – not on William Natcher’s terms . He defies all the popular myths. He had won a seat in the House in a special election in 1953: Once Natcher got to Washington, he lost no time in getting to know the right people and doing the right things to cement himself in Congress. He knew the appropriations committee was the right place to be, so he made friends with the late chairman, Clarence Cannon, and later, in 1962, as a favor to Cannon, Natcher accepted the chairmanship of the D.C. appropriations subcommittee, a thankless but necessary task. Most Members of Congress tried to avoid service on the District committees, much less a chairmanship, which had many challenges and few rewards for their home district or State: The District of Columbia is a brushfire. With it come two of the most thankless jobs this side of indexing the C&P telephone directory – the chairmanships of the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees for the District. Only an infinitely patient and detail-devoted man, at ease with the line-by-line minutiae of a monumentally boring D.C. budget, could handle the task without (1) going batty or (2) lousing it up completely . Many of his colleagues consider him one of the more powerful men in the House, by virtue of his No. 2 ranking on appropriations subcommittees for agriculture and labor- health, education and welfare, and by virtue of his close rapport with top men in the Democratic leadership. Why, then, would this dedicated Congressman take on the abuse that was heaped on him for his refusal to release the subway funds? Natcher’s interminable obstinacy over funding of the metropolitan subway system has earned him more contumely than he probable deserves, but Natcher doesn’t mind being a lightning rod for Congress. He would never suggest that Congress as a whole should take the blame. He would never suggest that blame more logically ought to be aimed at the public works committees. It isn’t his way. So, in Northeast Washington, they call him a racist. In Georgetown, the taffeta ladies summon up their highest dudgeon and call him a wretch. The frustrated patriots of Northwest just call him a lousy politician . In reality, none of these easy epithets will do for Natcher, because he is many other things: exasperatingly stubborn, unforgiving of the treacherous, paranoically suspicious, unrelentingly private, regally indifferent to his critics, maddenly self-righteous, possessed of a sense that he is somehow to make history. Sinclair identified two recurring themes in Chairman Natcher’s public statements that “go a long way toward illuminating the basis for his repeated refusals to release the city’s portion of the money needed to continue work on the rapid transit system. The first theme was the chairman’s “disdain for deception,” a view that “a man’s word is his word,” and a refusal to “play cute semantical games with him.” That was how he considered the words and actions of “certain local functionaries”: There were promises to forge ahead with the D.C. freeway system that Natcher so fervently thinks is necessary; and yet, in fact, the system was not forging ahead. Although the causes of the delays – “slow-moving studies, litigation and injunctions” – may have been beyond local control, Chairman Natcher “tends to think not.” He often cites NCPC’s reversal of its brief support in 1966 for the freeways as soon as he released the subway funds. The second theme was Chairman Natcher’s “personal view of the majesty and infallibility of Congress.” As he made clear before the House voted to reverse his stand, the prestige of Congress as a coequal branch of the Federal Government was really what was at stake. When Congress passed a law, it “must be obeyed without question by all the people.” Given his view on this subject, “the freeway question [was] cut and dried”: Congress wants the freeways built – witness the 1968 and 1970 federal-aid