196 CONFERENCE ON NATURAL BEAUTY 



over four lanes wide and I would like to have you explain that some- 

 what further. 



Mr. CLARKESON. Mr. Whitton, this is a proposed 12-lane traffic 

 facility.* Four main lanes are in one direction. Four lanes can 

 be treated architecturally without imposing it on people or the city. 

 In this case it is an average of 48 feet in the air, so it lets light and 

 air in. Four lanes of the main highway below grade go in the other 

 direction. No traffic headlight glare and no head-on collisions, for 

 vertical distances are too great for that. 



The other four lanes are distributor services to ramps. No one 

 part of it is so big as to restrict the interneighborhood types of city 

 activities. 



Now in the case of protecting a recreational area, we could not 

 apply this technique of reducing these things to small elements. 

 These are our proposals for going through a park, an existing histori- 

 cal park. They have not been adopted yet. We have put all eight 

 lanes below ground to permit us to reconstruct the park in its present 

 area and its present elevation. This happens to be the Fens in Boston 

 which is flanked by several museums, many schools, and many 

 pedestrian activities. We have maintained the pedestrian flow, 

 which is the basic benefit of breaking the 12 lanes into its integral 

 4-lane parts. It can be done nicely. 



EDWARD McMAHON. I w.ould like to move from the urban to the 

 rural area where interstate roads are also being built and where a 

 problem exists with which I am familiar. That is the removal of 

 existing facilities completely, taking utilities completely off the right- 

 of-way. Has any thought been given, instead of paying to eliminate 

 the evil, to incorporating it into the over-all planning of the highway 

 right-of-way? By that I mean providing a corridor for underground 

 communication and power circuits, even though admittedly, at the 

 present time, the technology will not allow full utilization at the 

 electrical level. If this has not been considered, I would suggest that 

 this conference make this one of its recommendations. 



Mr. SARGENT. Who is going to pay for it? 



HAROLD GILLIAM. I woud like to get the reaction of the panel to 

 a couple of possible legislative changes which I think embody some 



*Mr. Glarkeson displayed at this point drawings of a highway section. 



