Yesterday’s transportation online chat with the Post’s Lyndsey Layton and Steve Ginsberg brought up a number of interesting questions, including one from a person in Annapolis who wondered when there would be some initiative to build a crosstown freeway connecting I-66 from Virginia to Route 50 in Maryland and complete a north-south freeway through Northeast to Prince George’s County.

Isn’t it time to dust off plans to build freeways through the District to connect I-66 to US 50 and I-395 to I-95 north? Since the 1950’s construction techniques and roadway designs have evolved to minimize impacts of new roadways on communities. There’s obviously a need for crosstown highways in D.C.

We had to laugh somewhat. Sort of like DCist’s dream to see a new crosstown subway built via M Street to relieve the Blue and Orange lines (though that is theoretically more likely considering that 2 million more people expected to settle in the D.C. area in the next 25 years will send enough people to metrorail bringing the current system to gridlock), a crosstown freeway is a pie in the sky idea.

Or is it?