I never meant no shoulder… I was saying, convert the existing shoulder into a travel lane, and then construct a new full depth paved shoulder in the existing grassy area between the pavement and the sound wall.
No new right of way acquisition, fits within the existing footprint, and would provide three 12 foot travel lanes and a full 10 foot paved right shoulder. I never suggested providing zero right shoulder, or even a reduced one.
Edit: It appears there may only be room for a 7 or 8 foot shoulder, but that’s still reasonable in that small segment. The sound wall could be pushed out a slight amount and Imperial St narrowed slightly, if full consistency was truly desired. Either way, I’m not seeing a need for a total take of any property.
Where does the water go when a new, larger highway surface needs to drain? How do you deal with the loss of that slope on the approach to the underpasses? Plus you're going to have to replace the sound barrier itself with a system that has a high performance barrier. And there's no room to do any of this on the south side:
https://goo.gl/maps/bQRUyAgDugNKqVoP9Honestly, acquiring the adjacent properties is probably the cheaper solution. And far and away the practical one from any engineering standpoint.
Edit: plus how on earth do you stage that construction? Based on the quoted volumes in this thread, there's no way you can single lane it. So more and more trying to wedge a lane into the existing platform becomes a physical impossibility.