Most pro and anti freeway states & cities.

[TXtoNJ]

The most pro freeway city/Metro area is Houston. 15 freeways in the city area with 12 active expansion and/or extension projects going on.

Disagree. You had a lot of pushback against 99 in Spring and Cypress, and 225 was canceled inside the loop. The plans to remove the Pierce are popular inside the loop, even if people in the northern suburbs eye them suspiciously. It's not the '60s-'80s anymore.

[jakeroot]

The most pro freeway city/Metro area is Houston. 15 freeways in the city area with 12 active expansion and/or extension projects going on.

Forever under construction. My cousin lived in Houston for five years. He appreciated the vast network, but not the constant orange cones.

[AlexandriaVA]

The most pro freeway city/Metro area is Houston. 15 freeways in the city area with 12 active expansion and/or extension projects going on.

Forever under construction. My cousin lived in Houston for five years. He appreciated the vast network, but not the constant orange cones.

Periodic reminder that Sun Belt "cities" are often really just megacounties in disguise, to include rural/undeveloped areas:

https://www.google.com/maps/@29.585077,-95.4921538,3a,60y,239.79h,82.93t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sCtBuXwftIRmdT4Q_VZ1l2A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

[AlexandriaVA]

San Fran seems straight up anti-car.  The city approved a plan to ban private cars, including Uber and Lyft, on busy Market Street.

Plan approved to ban private cars on San Francisco's busy Market Street
http://abc7news.com/traffic/plan-approved-to-ban-private-cars-on-sfs-busy-market-street/2268956/

that road gets pretty bad traffic wise.  the original freeway plan for SF was crazy.  they should have just built a freeway for us 101, ca 1, and have i-80 terminate at us 101, 280 east of 101 should go away too.

Looking at the map, I found it amazing that they basically have paralleled freeways, US-101 and I-280. I-280 north of the 101/280 interchange is basically a commuter spur, that you probably don't even really need. Just convert this stretch of I-280 into a surface boulveard (https://www.google.com/maps/dir/37.7352996,-122.4064462/4th+St+%26+King+St/@37.7559764,-122.4070204,14z/data=!4m9!4m8!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x808f7fd6c1fec7e5:0xd8bc412643fbe0c7!2m2!1d-122.3937049!2d37.7760608!3e0).

Then co-route 280 with 101, and you still have a freeway connection through the city without the needless second freeway right next door.

[bing101]

I recently stumbled upon this stupid anti-highway blog by some young lady from Los Angeles:
https://la.curbed.com/2018/1/5/16854828/los-angeles-freeways-pollution-solution

I like this one reply by Hans Laetz;

https://la.curbed.com/2018/1/5/16854828/los-angeles-freeways-pollution-solution#460088219

"There's stupid, industrial grade stupid, and breathtaking stupid.
This transcends all.
I guess all those trucks using the freeways can be replaced by pollution-free Uber skateboards?"

Wow its amazing that certain sections of Los Angeles are anti-freeway though. I tend to view the Los Angeles Area as the most pro-freeway city in the nation until there were stories about a Beverly Hills Freeway, the La Cinega Freeway, the 710 gap diffuse that idea that Los Angeles is Pro-Freeway.

[silverback1065]

LA should have at least built CA 90 and I-710. 

[sparker]

LA should have at least built CA 90 and I-710. 

After the 1992 riots, the CA 90 corridor -- with a precise route never adopted -- became a functionally dead issue (it would run E-W close to Slauson, near the center of the rioting; that street is only 3 1/2 -4 miles north of the I-105 alignment in any case).  Probably not a good idea -- both in political and pure expenditure terms -- to plan or execute new freeways south of downtown.  And the I-710 situation has been amply covered in other threads. 

[bing101]

San Fran seems straight up anti-car.  The city approved a plan to ban private cars, including Uber and Lyft, on busy Market Street.

Plan approved to ban private cars on San Francisco's busy Market Street
http://abc7news.com/traffic/plan-approved-to-ban-private-cars-on-sfs-busy-market-street/2268956/

that road gets pretty bad traffic wise.  the original freeway plan for SF was crazy.  they should have just built a freeway for us 101, ca 1, and have i-80 terminate at us 101, 280 east of 101 should go away too.

Looking at the map, I found it amazing that they basically have paralleled freeways, US-101 and I-280. I-280 north of the 101/280 interchange is basically a commuter spur, that you probably don't even really need. Just convert this stretch of I-280 into a surface boulveard (https://www.google.com/maps/dir/37.7352996,-122.4064462/4th+St+%26+King+St/@37.7559764,-122.4070204,14z/data=!4m9!4m8!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x808f7fd6c1fec7e5:0xd8bc412643fbe0c7!2m2!1d-122.3937049!2d37.7760608!3e0).

Then co-route 280 with 101, and you still have a freeway connection through the city without the needless second freeway right next door.

But Wait I-280 was originally going to connect with CA-480 prior to 1989 but that fell apart though. It was going to get CA-480 to Doyle Drive aka Presidio Parkway as the original intent.

[silverback1065]

i'd also realign the us 101 stub to tie directly into van ness ave.

[Techknow]

I been lurking in this forum long enough that I finally felt like I like to chime in...

San Francisco Proper has to be the most Anti-freeway city in the country. plus population density is a factor here.


Dang San Francisco has the same number of 3 freeways as Vallejo, CA a nearby city though. Except Vallejo is only 1/8 the population size of San Francisco but and area is the same.


I-80, US-101 and I-280 (San Francisco)


I-80, I-780 and CA-37 Vallejo.


But in the case of San Francisco gentrification debates are also a factor here.

SF is incredibly dense for its population. Jacksonville, FL has a slightly larger population but is 875 square miles large, compared to almost 49 for SF! So far less space for freeways, and likely none for new tunnels because many tunnels are already in use by the 5 streetcar routes that have been around for over a century!

I agree that the city I live in hates freeways. Sometimes I can get by that, sometimes not. I happen to live close to I-280 in the south part of the city, so I can go south easily, I can go east and northeast relatively easily. But to go west or past the Golden Gate Bridge? I need half an hour to go through Monterey Blvd, Sloat Blvd, 19th Ave and Park Presidio Blvd. There aren't really any good solutions to this though. Maybe a speed limit increase from 30 MPH to 35 MPH would help on 19th Avenue, traffic generally goes from 35-40 anyway. But faster traffic and higher capacity means non-existent street parking. It's already non-existent in most of the city but I live in an area where street parking isn't a matter of fitting my car into tight spaces or having to extend pass the curb cut. I'm too young to talk about the political implications of all this but I'm convinced the city need to improve its mass transit options, and I'll take what I can get!

Looking at the map, I found it amazing that they basically have paralleled freeways, US-101 and I-280. I-280 north of the 101/280 interchange is basically a commuter spur, that you probably don't even really need. Just convert this stretch of I-280 into a surface boulveard (https://www.google.com/maps/dir/37.7352996,-122.4064462/4th+St+%26+King+St/@37.7559764,-122.4070204,14z/data=!4m9!4m8!1m0!1m5!1m1!1s0x808f7fd6c1fec7e5:0xd8bc412643fbe0c7!2m2!1d-122.3937049!2d37.7760608!3e0).

Then co-route 280 with 101, and you still have a freeway connection through the city without the needless second freeway right next door.

It's not needless if it has 6-8 additional parallel lanes to and from downtown SF and a speed limit of 65 MPH. There are plenty of arterials to get from one end of the city to the other, but very few have speed limits of 45 MPH (San Jose Avenue aka the "Mission Freeway" portion, Veterans Blvd right before the Golden Gate Bridge on CA-1, Skyline Blvd on CA-35, that's all I can think of!). If I need to get to downtown SF, I'll just take BART. Yeah I drive a lot in the Bay Area but I avoid SF streets so I'm weird that way

[sparker]

One of the "unwritten agreements" in SF post the original 1965-era "freeway revolt" was that a "freeway boundary" was made consisting of the Alemany (now the E-W portion of I-280 across the south side of town) freeway, the northern section of the Lick/US 101 freeway between the I-280 and I-80 junctions, and I-80 itself.  Of course, the Embarcadero and Central "stubs" remained within the "out of bounds" area; the former, of course, was downgraded from I-480 to CA 480 back in '65, eventually falling victim to the 1989 earthquake (although teardown plans were in place for some time previous to that but never acted upon), and the US 101 stub was truncated (again with the assistance of the aforementioned quake), with the present stub kept in place as an accessway to the Civic Center, with the remainder "boulevardized" or simply developed over.  However, despite pressure from some quarters to cut back I-280 east of US 101, it's found a second life as access to the baseball stadium (and may get even more use if the Giants start winning again!).  The tensions within SF politics regarding neighborhood privileges versus citywide needs have been ongoing for most of the last century and will probably continue into the foreseeable future; right now plans for development of the former SP yards south of the current Caltrain depot near the north end of I-280 have everyone in the immediate area on edge; more than a few folks are fearful of Google or other tech company coming in, outbidding everyone else, and building "complete" corporate campuses with offices as well as housing (and certainly not the type affordable to much of the denizens of the surrounding area).  SF seems to perpetually on the knife-edge between egalitarian principles and gentrification; "boulevardizing" I-280 (which would be a bit difficult in any case as much of it is built on bents over a steep hillside -- or directly over the Caltrain commute line) isn't going to alter that dynamic.   

[Roadgeekteen]

Pro is North Carolina, anti is the DC metro! I-66....

[mrcmc888]

Delaware is pretty pro-freeway, seeing as they've completed DE-1 as a toll road down the center of the state and DE-141 as another bypass of Wilmington in the last 20 years.

Tennessee is more on the anti-freeway side. I-26 is still incomplete, I-840 stopped and started for almost 20 years, and the proposed southern extension of I-81 lies in limbo due to Great Smokies preservation activists.  I-640 in Knoxville took years to get out of planning thanks to NIMBY, even though traffic at the I-40/75 intersection was some of the worst in the US at that time.

[sparker]

Delaware is pretty pro-freeway, seeing as they've completed DE-1 as a toll road down the center of the state and DE-141 as another bypass of Wilmington in the last 20 years.

Tennessee is more on the anti-freeway side. I-26 is still incomplete, I-840 stopped and started for almost 20 years, and the proposed southern extension of I-81 lies in limbo due to Great Smokies preservation activists.  I-640 in Knoxville took years to get out of planning thanks to NIMBY, even though traffic at the I-40/75 intersection was some of the worst in the US at that time.

What southern I-81 extension is that? -- this is the first I've heard of it.  But if it impacts the Great Smokies, then it sounds like a renumbering of the old "I-3" proposal for a Savannah-Knoxville freeway that was to track the "Dragon Tail" segment of US 129 just south of the Smoky Mountain park.  If so, that proposal has been essentially dead for years!

[CtrlAltDel]

I-26 is still incomplete,

What part of I-26 is incomplete in TN?

[oscar]

Delaware is pretty pro-freeway, seeing as they've completed DE-1 as a toll road down the center of the state and DE-141 as another bypass of Wilmington in the last 20 years.

Tennessee is more on the anti-freeway side. I-26 is still incomplete,

Huh? I-26 extends from the NC state line, almost all the way to the VA state line, and the short US 23 segment between US 11W and the VA state line is freeway. Especially since Virginia isn't doing anything on its side of the line, no really good reason to extend I-26 north of US11W.

[mrcmc888]

Delaware is pretty pro-freeway, seeing as they've completed DE-1 as a toll road down the center of the state and DE-141 as another bypass of Wilmington in the last 20 years.

Tennessee is more on the anti-freeway side. I-26 is still incomplete, I-840 stopped and started for almost 20 years, and the proposed southern extension of I-81 lies in limbo due to Great Smokies preservation activists.  I-640 in Knoxville took years to get out of planning thanks to NIMBY, even though traffic at the I-40/75 intersection was some of the worst in the US at that time.

What southern I-81 extension is that? -- this is the first I've heard of it.  But if it impacts the Great Smokies, then it sounds like a renumbering of the old "I-3" proposal for a Savannah-Knoxville freeway that was to track the "Dragon Tail" segment of US 129 just south of the Smoky Mountain park.  If so, that proposal has been essentially dead for years!

Yes, as far as I know it was the same proposal.  The plan was to route I-81 on I-40 until Knoxville where it would then split and head south toward the Dragon.  The highway seemed a little redundant to me anyways.

I-26 is still incomplete,

What part of I-26 is incomplete in TN?

Delaware is pretty pro-freeway, seeing as they've completed DE-1 as a toll road down the center of the state and DE-141 as another bypass of Wilmington in the last 20 years.

Tennessee is more on the anti-freeway side. I-26 is still incomplete,

Huh? I-26 extends from the NC state line, almost all the way to the VA state line, and the short US 23 segment between US 11W and the VA state line is freeway. Especially since Virginia isn't doing anything on its side of the line, no really good reason to extend I-26 north of US11W.

I thought I-26 was planned to head farther east toward I-75, but obviously not...the dead end in Kingsport makes a lot more sense now.

[ftballfan]

Michigan has elements of both. Metro Detroit mostly comes off as anti-freeway (I-275, M-53, M-59 cancellations; I-696 long delayed but eventually built) while Grand Rapids comes off as somewhat pro-freeway (M-6 being completed over three years ahead of the original schedule)

[SSOWorld]

Michigan has elements of both. Metro Detroit mostly comes off as anti-freeway (I-275, M-53, M-59 cancellations; I-696 long delayed but eventually built) while Grand Rapids comes off as somewhat pro-freeway (M-6 being completed over three years ahead of the original schedule)

and the potential I-375 road diet.

[silverback1065]

Michigan has elements of both. Metro Detroit mostly comes off as anti-freeway (I-275, M-53, M-59 cancellations; I-696 long delayed but eventually built) while Grand Rapids comes off as somewhat pro-freeway (M-6 being completed over three years ahead of the original schedule)

that may be because m-6 doesn't go downtown, it's along the perimeter. 

[Perfxion]

The most pro freeway city/Metro area is Houston. 15 freeways in the city area with 12 active expansion and/or extension projects going on.

Disagree. You had a lot of pushback against 99 in Spring and Cypress, and 225 was canceled inside the loop. The plans to remove the Pierce are popular inside the loop, even if people in the northern suburbs eye them suspiciously. It's not the '60s-'80s anymore.

True, but still, 99 is built from 59 west to 59. And they are about to do the next eastern expansion on it(even without the traffic for it). I-45 being moved and expanded on the east side of downtown is a good thing. The Pierce is a hot garbage that has to go. The second to the right lane seems to be the only through lane on the whole highway. The bottleneck seems to be everyday.

[roadman65]

What about Newark, NJ?  NJ 75 and then you have NJ 21 that should really be a freeway at its south end, but not so.

Even to get the proper I-280 full interchange with NJ 21 was like pulling teeth.

How about Philly?  Cancelled freeways such as PA 90 and I-695, and may I remind you how long it took to complete I-676.  Even with I-676 completed its still has that issue with a direct connection to the Ben Franklin Bridge due to local opposition.

[TXtoNJ]

The most pro freeway city/Metro area is Houston. 15 freeways in the city area with 12 active expansion and/or extension projects going on.

Disagree. You had a lot of pushback against 99 in Spring and Cypress, and 225 was canceled inside the loop. The plans to remove the Pierce are popular inside the loop, even if people in the northern suburbs eye them suspiciously. It's not the '60s-'80s anymore.

True, but still, 99 is built from 59 west to 59. And they are about to do the next eastern expansion on it(even without the traffic for it). I-45 being moved and expanded on the east side of downtown is a good thing. The Pierce is a hot garbage that has to go. The second to the right lane seems to be the only through lane on the whole highway. The bottleneck seems to be everyday.

That's the truth.

Houston's got a lot of freeways, no doubt. However, that has less to do with their relative popularity, and more to do with the particular mix of powerful interests that guide Houston's development.

And I'm not saying it's the energy companies who push the freeways through - at this stage, many who I've talked to would like a robust (read: rail-based) mass transit system to help attract high-caliber STEM talent who are drawn more to the East and West Coasts. It's suburban tract-housing developers (in memory of their patron saint Bob Lanier), along with auto dealers (who control a good chunk of local politics) who want infrastructure to cater to the single-family detached, three car household, and they don't want to change that for anything. And they've got plenty of friends in Austin, and a few in DC too.

To put it another way - there's no way the Texas Bullet Train would have gotten as far as it has if it weren't former Bush Administration officials, along with energy company allies, pushing the project through. They're the only ones with the juice to push past the above interests.

[Roadwarriors79]

Within Arizona, Tucson is definitely anti-freeway.  They only have two freeways and they always vote down road improvement bonds.

do you know what's going on with 44th st near the airport in pheonix?  It looks like they tried to build a SPUI, then gave up.  was this supposed to be a freeway?

Current 44th St near Sky Harbor was once part of AZ 153. A connection was once planned from the half SPUI at University Dr to I-10 at 40th St.

[D-Dey65]

What about Newark, NJ?  NJ 75 and then you have NJ 21 that should really be a freeway at its south end, but not so.

That and the southern extension of NJ 17 to the New Jersey Turnpike.

I know, it's not a true freeway. But it's still an unfinished section of the road.