The GBC's work culminated in the People Before Highways protest on January 25, 1969, when hundreds of residents flooded the Massachusetts State House, demanding that Governor Francis Sargent (who assumed office just three days prior when Volpe was confirmed as President Richard Nixon's secretary of transportation) cancel the Inner Belt and Southwest Corridor.

The project was canceled in 1971 after intense protests organized by community activists, and following Sargent's 1970 moratorium on highway construction inside Route 128.

There was also speculation that the construction of the Inner Belt would essentially bypass Downtown Boston completely, resulting in economic stagnation in a city that was already having considerable financial problems.

Unresolved traffic problems resulting from the cancelation were among the factors eventually leading to Boston's Big Dig highway project, decades later.

In the 1980s, the rotary was replaced by a traffic light and the highway was connected to the park-and-ride garage at Alewife station on the newly extended Red Line.