Existing urban freeways that would not even be considered now

[briantroutman]

The problem with this sort of speculation is that many of the urban areas would not exist as they do without freeways...

Exactly. Are we imagining that freeways were never developed across the country, or that the city in question was an island where freeways somehow never materialized? In either case, it would be difficult to imagine that cities would have grown in the same ways as they have.

There would be no suburbs, and the cities would be denser...

I disagree with this somewhat, though. Suburbanization predated the Interstate System and the growth of freeways–these factors just accelerated an existing trend. Going back to the turn of the century, most large cities had so-called streetcar suburbs that enabled people to move tree-lined bedroom communities away from the urban core. And even without the enticement of Interstates, many people were already commuting by car on local arterials, and urban street networks were a tangle of cars in gridlock, horns honking, and traffic officers frantically waving on motorists by hand. In the popular culture, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House–probably the archetype of American suburbanization–dates back to 1948.

So I'm confident that we'd still have suburbs even without freeways, but they likely wouldn't be as large, as numerous, or as distant. (Like people commuting to NYC from Stroudsburg.)

[english si]

The problem with this sort of speculation is that many of the urban areas would not exist as they do without freeways.  There would be no suburbs, and the cities would be denser, more high-rises, like New York City (which really lacks the required freeways for a city of that size, even with great public transportation) or London.

Where are the high-rises in London? there's not that many and those that are residential are typically social housing. You might get 4-storey apartment blocks, but not that much that is high.

And London sprawled in the 20s and 30s, with 'Metroland', aided by the railways. Miles of endless, dense, suburbia. The Green Belt (also around other UK cities) hemmed it in since the war, with new towns (Hemel, Harlow, Hatfield, Crawley, Bracknell, Milton Keynes, Stevenage, etc) providing a place for relatively low-density housing.

[Urban Prairie Schooner]

particularly since you can't turn left onto Earhart at Carrollton.

Is the Michigan Left setup really that bad?

Not for the amount of traffic involved, particularly when turning left from Carrollton. The only direction that is really set up to accommodate "Michigan left" turns specifically is WB Earhart to NB Carrollton, and that is only since an extended turn lane was added during the Earhart Boulevard resurfacing/reconstruction. In point of fact, IIRC you actually cannot make a U-turn at the first crossover on Carrollton north of Earhart (Oleander Street).

I was really hoping that the Earhart reconstruction would add actual direct left turn lanes here for once, since they are so obviously needed. Oh well, one can dream.

Michigan lefts in Michigan (and Jefferson Parish, for that matter) are purpose built, designed to work a certain way, and (I assume) therefore do their job as intended without much hassle. In NOLA, Michigan lefts are essentially the only legal turning movement possible due to poor intersection design and consequent left turn restrictions, and thus are nearly always clusterf***s of some sort or another. They are not designed to be Michigan-type lefts, and thus turning movements follow this pattern by default due to the above reasons. It's the typical New Orleans "bon temps rouler" mentality at work. On the other hand, it makes life here more interesting.

[Urban Prairie Schooner]

Indeed, once LaDOTD adds the proposed connections to Airline to the west and Causeway in the middle, Earhart will be pretty useful. Some sort of direct connectivity to Claiborne/Jefferson Highway at the parish line to/from the west would really help make it useful to people in Carrollton - as-is, if you're going to try to get on Earhart to go to the airport or shop somewhere in Jefferson Parish you might as well just go the extra few blocks to I-10, particularly since you can't turn left onto Earhart at Carrollton.

When I was but a wee roads scholar, I must have drawn up at least twenty or so plans for an Earhart Expressway extension, curving north just west of the parish line and then east via Airline Highway, to meet I-10 at interchange 232. This is the only viable way I see, along with adding connector ramps to Jefferson/Claiborne at Monticello, to render Earhart more useable.

[NE2]

particularly since you can't turn left onto Earhart at Carrollton.

Is the Michigan Left setup really that bad?

Not for the amount of traffic involved, particularly when turning left from Carrollton. The only direction that is really set up to accommodate "Michigan left" turns specifically is WB Earhart to NB Carrollton, and that is only since an extended turn lane was added during the Earhart Boulevard resurfacing/reconstruction. In point of fact, IIRC you actually cannot make a U-turn at the first crossover on Carrollton north of Earhart (Oleander Street).

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=29.96064,-90.11439&spn=0.001264,0.001772&gl=us&t=k&z=20
Turn right into the leftmost lane on Earhart, which becomes U-turn only. The only thing that might be suboptimal is the lack of traffic light at that U-turn.

[lordsutch]

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=29.96064,-90.11439&spn=0.001264,0.001772&gl=us&t=k&z=20
Turn right into the leftmost lane on Earhart, which becomes U-turn only. The only thing that might be suboptimal is the lack of traffic light at that U-turn.

Admittedly the setup has been improved a bit since I lived in NOLA five years ago, but you're probably still looking at sitting through 2-3 light cycles to make this movement.  Plus if I read the pavement markings right you're competing with the downriver Earhart -> back Carrollton movement which also uses the new U-turn lane rather than having its own protected left.  Plus if it's like all the other "Michigan lefts" in NOLA, it isn't signed, so good luck figuring it out if you're not already familiar with NOLA's predilection for forbidding cross-neutral-ground lefts most anywhere you'd actually want to turn left.

Really it's just easier to go straight to I-10 and just not bother with Earhart, or rat run the neighborhoods between Claiborne and Earhart (although I'd put that on the "inadvisable" list for tourists or anyone who wants their car to still have a functioning suspension).  Hell, taking Leake & River Road would usually get you to the Huey Long faster than futzing with getting over to Earhart.

Presumably they left out the left turn bays on Carrollton so nobody'd be too disappointed when they remove them again whenever they decide to extend the Carrollton streetcar line back to City Park. I can't say anyone would particularly miss the two palm trees otherwise...

[froggie]

Regarding speculation on what cities and metropolitan areas might have become had the urban freeways not materialized, Vancouver, BC provides a case-study that's pretty close.

[briantroutman]

Regarding speculation on what cities and metropolitan areas might have become had the urban freeways not materialized, Vancouver, BC provides a case-study that's pretty close.

Vancouver came to mind when I tried to think of any large city in North America that didn't have a freeway system. But I bristle when anyone tries to compare anything in Canada with a counterpart in the US.

It's like how Bill Cosby said that he doesn't consider a person who has only one child to truly be a parent because "there are too many things left out". Canada looks and feels a lot like the US, but there are too many factors left out to draw a solid comparison. They don't have the kind of racial diversity we have–and all of the attendant "white flight"–or comparable urban crime levels that draw people out of cities. Yes, I know that Vancouver has an extremely high Asian population and a large number of foreign-born residents, but I don't think their situation comes anywhere near the both overt and latent racial tensions our American cities have seen. And I don't think that Canadians have quite the same sense of individualism, desire for independence, and distaste for social structures that have lead so many Americans to seek their own 0.7 acres of soil.

So Vancouver might provide some hints, but I think an American city with no freeways would look very different.

[1995hoo]

Regarding speculation on what cities and metropolitan areas might have become had the urban freeways not materialized, Vancouver, BC provides a case-study that's pretty close.

Vancouver came to mind when I tried to think of any large city in North America that didn't have a freeway system. But I bristle when anyone tries to compare anything in Canada with a counterpart in the US.

It's like how Bill Cosby said that he doesn't consider a person who has only one child to truly be a parent because "there are too many things left out". Canada looks and feels a lot like the US, but there are too many factors left out to draw a solid comparison. They don't have the kind of racial diversity we have–and all of the attendant "white flight"–or comparable urban crime levels that draw people out of cities. Yes, I know that Vancouver has an extremely high Asian population and a large number of foreign-born residents, but I don't think their situation comes anywhere near the both overt and latent racial tensions our American cities have seen. And I don't think that Canadians have quite the same sense of individualism, desire for independence, and distaste for social structures that have lead so many Americans to seek their own 0.7 acres of soil.

So Vancouver might provide some hints, but I think an American city with no freeways would look very different.

Your post raises an interesting question in my mind in that some of the urban freeways were intentionally routed through blighted neighborhoods, near areas planned for "urban renewal," or just plain through ghettoes. In some cases the routing of the urban freeways were the impetus for later "urban renewal" projects. Then you have the areas where an urban freeway was built and "renewal" was carried out but failed because the area was too cut off. One wonders, if the urban freeways hadn't been built, what might have become of some of those neighborhoods–would they have declined further into the ghetto or would they have improved? (Of course there are a ton of other variables that preclude an easy answer to the question. For example, where an urban freeway was rammed through a poor black neighborhood prior to 1968, there's no way to know whether the neighborhood would have burned in the race riots following Martin Luther King being shot that year.)

The question the OP raises does pose a bit of a conundrum, though, because it raises something of a chicken-or-egg problem. That is, the question asks what existing urban freeways wouldn't be considered now. That question presupposes that we know not only about pollution or traffic flow issues but also about societal effects of urban freeways (slashing through neighborhoods or forming sort of a wall across the city because of limited roads crossing the freeway). But if urban freeways hadn't been built, it's not necessarily clear that the societal effects would have become understood to the degree they are (because there wouldn't have been urban freeways to allow for a study of the question).

[Brandon]

There would be no suburbs, and the cities would be denser...

I disagree with this somewhat, though. Suburbanization predated the Interstate System and the growth of freeways–these factors just accelerated an existing trend. Going back to the turn of the century, most large cities had so-called streetcar suburbs that enabled people to move tree-lined bedroom communities away from the urban core. And even without the enticement of Interstates, many people were already commuting by car on local arterials, and urban street networks were a tangle of cars in gridlock, horns honking, and traffic officers frantically waving on motorists by hand. In the popular culture, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House–probably the archetype of American suburbanization–dates back to 1948.

So I'm confident that we'd still have suburbs even without freeways, but they likely wouldn't be as large, as numerous, or as distant. (Like people commuting to NYC from Stroudsburg.)

Exactly.  People were using the rail lines for suburbanization well before the freeways came about.  One of the earliest was Riverside, Illinois.  Riverside was meant to be a bedroom community for Chicago and connected it Chicago via rail.  Other Chicago suburbs grew up the same way, along the rail lines first, then expanded to the freeways and tollways.  Today, you can see the rail lines and Metra stations in the downtowns of these suburbs.

[Henry]

There would be no suburbs, and the cities would be denser...

I disagree with this somewhat, though. Suburbanization predated the Interstate System and the growth of freeways—these factors just accelerated an existing trend. Going back to the turn of the century, most large cities had so-called streetcar suburbs that enabled people to move tree-lined bedroom communities away from the urban core. And even without the enticement of Interstates, many people were already commuting by car on local arterials, and urban street networks were a tangle of cars in gridlock, horns honking, and traffic officers frantically waving on motorists by hand. In the popular culture, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House—probably the archetype of American suburbanization—dates back to 1948.

So I'm confident that we'd still have suburbs even without freeways, but they likely wouldn't be as large, as numerous, or as distant. (Like people commuting to NYC from Stroudsburg.)

Exactly.  People were using the rail lines for suburbanization well before the freeways came about.  One of the earliest was Riverside, Illinois.  Riverside was meant to be a bedroom community for Chicago and connected it Chicago via rail.  Other Chicago suburbs grew up the same way, along the rail lines first, then expanded to the freeways and tollways.  Today, you can see the rail lines and Metra stations in the downtowns of these suburbs.

I agree with that assessment! Even without the freeways, suburban areas would still come in one way or another.

[briantroutman]

One wonders, if the urban freeways hadn't been built, what might have become of some of those neighborhoods...

We do have some suggestions as to what would happen.

Several artistic, bohemian, or otherwise offbeat areas owe their existence to freeways that were never built. A few that come to mind are SoHo in Manhattan, South Street in Philadelphia, and Haight-Ashbury here in San Francisco. In each case, an urban freeway was proposed through the area, real estate values plummeted, and all of the workaday bus drivers and sanitation workers moved out, taking their Lifebuoy soap and middle class values with them. And who would live in a neighborhood that was getting bulldozed tomorrow? Ne'er-do-wells who live as if tomorrow is never going to come. So would-be poets and artists moved in, started throwing psychedelic paint on the walls while on acid trips and getting busted by Joe Friday. Krausmeier's Bakery skipped town and was replaced by a head shop. And the rest is history.

[J N Winkler]

Suburbanization predated the Interstate System and the growth of freeways–these factors just accelerated an existing trend. Going back to the turn of the century, most large cities had so-called streetcar suburbs that enabled people to move tree-lined bedroom communities away from the urban core.

A distinction which gets to the idea of using large European cities as prototypes for American cities without urban freeways is that, unlike the case in Europe where a large share of turn-of-the-century public transit (including trams) was under municipal ownership, American streetcar lines tended to be privately owned, and streetcar tycoons were often real-estate developers.  C.T. Yerkes was particularly notorious for this form of vertical integration.

[1995hoo]

One wonders, if the urban freeways hadn't been built, what might have become of some of those neighborhoods...

We do have some suggestions as to what would happen.

Several artistic, bohemian, or otherwise offbeat areas owe their existence to freeways that were never built. A few that come to mind are SoHo in Manhattan, South Street in Philadelphia, and Haight-Ashbury here in San Francisco. In each case, an urban freeway was proposed through the area, real estate values plummeted, and all of the workaday bus drivers and sanitation workers moved out, taking their Lifebuoy soap and middle class values with them. And who would live in a neighborhood that was getting bulldozed tomorrow? Ne'er-do-wells who live as if tomorrow is never going to come. So would-be poets and artists moved in, started throwing psychedelic paint on the walls while on acid trips and getting busted by Joe Friday. Krausmeier's Bakery skipped town and was replaced by a head shop. And the rest is history.

Right, but all of that is based on the given that the city plans showed the road would be built. Take away that premise and it's a fundamentally different question because you don't have the supposition that the neighborhood is about to be bulldozed.

(Next time I see her I'll have to ask my mother what it was like in Bay Ridge during the Verrazano Bridge construction. I don't think I've ever asked about it. She grew up a few blocks west of where the 92 Street exit on I-278 is now.)

[thisdj78]

Had Nixon created the EPA before Ike created the Interstates, we might have a system more like France: minimal urban freeways and tolled rural freeways with lots of bridges and tunnels. In other words, we'd come closer to paying the external cost of fast driving.

These were somewhat similar to my thoughts when reading the thread title. The freeways would still exist but mostly tolled if built today. Look at Texas as an example. Almost all of the new urban freeways built in the last 13 years have been tollways.

[NE2]

Look at Texas as an example. Almost all of the new urban freeways built in the last 13 years have been tollways.

That's less because of externalities and more because Texas. In France, most intercity freeways are tolled, while Texas continues to build free I-69.

[spmkam]

Turnpikes were the trend just before the interstate system. Many of those turnpikes in the east were simply grandfathered.

[hbelkins]

Given the fact that there are some idiots in Louisville who want to get rid of existing I-64 between I-65 and the Sherman Minton Bridge, I'd nominate that route.

[NE2]

Given the fact that there are some idiots in Louisville who want to keep existing I-64 between I-65 and the Sherman Minton Bridge, I'd nominate that route.

Fixed again.

[Molandfreak]

As much as I like the MN 62 crosstown as a traffic reliever, I doubt it would stand a chance for even being considered for a freeway upgrade in todays world.

One of the N-S freeways west of Minneapolis (I-494, U.S. 169, and MN 100) could be nixed from the plan, too. 169 and 100 each get a lot more traffic, so I would ditch 494 west of 169 (and I do realize 494 came first).

I-35E wouldn't stand a chance in southern St. Paul (they had a heck of a time getting that built anyway).

MN 36 wouldn't be a full freeway anywhere.

MN 77 north of I-494 and south of I-35E would go, too.



In Peoria, IL, I bet we would see I-74 on modern I-474. Modern I-74 wouldn't be built today.

[TEG24601]

My point is that the current location of people or businesses would be much different than they are in our world.  As a result, there would be some places where there would be no people, so a freeway would be fine, and others where there would be tons more people making a freeway futile or not cost effective.  Or are we simply looking back to when they were built, and how our modern sensibilities wouldn't have allowed them in those locations at that time?

If it is the latter, I know that I-5 through Portland, along the west bank wouldn't have built.  The would have gone with Moses' original idea of placing the freeway between the existing lanes of 99E, or routed it directly down Harbor Dr., so a new freeway wouldn't have been built.  Or, eve following the route of I-405 through the city, but as a full tunnel, instead of just sunken.  I could however see a modern Portland actually building more East-West routes, to ensure proper traffic flow around the city.

In Seattle, I could see them just using the Alaskan Way viaduct, or building it all subterranean, or again just following I-405.  Then again, much of the route North of Seattle was/is along Railroad Right of way, so there weren't people nearby to complain, and there wouldn't be in any instance we are discussing.

[vtk]

Columbus's 104 freeway could probably be built today, but people would (and do) question why it's needed.  Actually, there's a decent chance I-70 would be routed that way if it wasn't already downtown.

[vdeane]

Given the fact that there are some idiots in Louisville who want to get rid of existing I-64 between I-65 and the Sherman Minton Bridge, I'd nominate that route.

Is that why they're building another bridge in that area?  The proposed bridge looks like the only halfway decent re-route of I-64.

[kkt]

Suburbanization predated the Interstate System and the growth of freeways–these factors just accelerated an existing trend. Going back to the turn of the century, most large cities had so-called streetcar suburbs that enabled people to move tree-lined bedroom communities away from the urban core.

A distinction which gets to the idea of using large European cities as prototypes for American cities without urban freeways is that, unlike the case in Europe where a large share of turn-of-the-century public transit (including trams) was under municipal ownership, American streetcar lines tended to be privately owned, and streetcar tycoons were often real-estate developers.  C.T. Yerkes was particularly notorious for this form of vertical integration.

The typical pattern was the real estate developer built the streetcar line to sell the houses.  The streetcar line lost money, but made the houses more valuable.  A couple of years after all the houses had been sold, the streetcar would (surprise!) go bankrupt.  Then the citizens of the subdivisions would demand their city take it over and operate it.

[COLORADOrk]

I-890 in Schenectady NY. Little traffic. Exit 1 to Exit 7 seems pretty useless to me. The whole elevated section through downtown and all of its six lanes seem like a waste to me. That maze of ramps near GE could all be eliminated. I think that land could be better utilized for parks, river access and possible SCCC expansion.