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Undead Road Plans

Started by theroadwayone, August 18, 2018, 03:26:04 AM

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theroadwayone

What are some highway alignments that were planned ago and have been unbuilt in the face of extreme resistance, but despite that, refuse to die? And while I'm at it, what are some of those that just might have a chance of being built?


jeffandnicole

Route 55 in NJ. Chances of being built: lower than slim. Chances of a news story talking about it every 2 years? Greater than 100%.

hotdogPi

Long Island Sound crossing.
Clinched, minus I-93 (I'm missing a few miles and my file is incorrect)

Traveled, plus US 13, 44, and 50, and several state routes

I will be in Burlington VT for the eclipse.

Beltway

Chesapeake Bay northern and southern crossings in Maryland.

Seeming dead since the 1970s but they have been discussed in the new bridge studies in the last 15 years.
http://www.roadstothefuture.com
http://www.capital-beltway.com

Baloney is a reserved word on the Internet
    (Robert Coté, 2002)

jon daly

I occasionally hear something regarding CT-11, but I'm not sure if it's a zombie or merely dead.

Max Rockatansky

CA 190 over the Sierras...just started a new thread about that specifically on Pacific Southwest. 

3467

Check out the IDOT project page. It's full of them . The last viable segments of the supplemental freeway system that dates from the 60s. Except for bypasses which are becoming unpopular in Illinois...its less opposition  and more lack of funds and traffic that is the problem.US 20 34  50 51 and 67 and the state routes 29 336 and 127 are the routes.Not dead but with the exception of 67 none of them have had any work since their environmental documents were done so I wonder if those will have to be updated.

J N Winkler

Local to me, there is a recurring idea of removing tolls and building local service interchanges on the Kansas Turnpike in southeast Wichita so it can form part of a circumferential freeway with I-235 and K-96.  KTA has zero interest in the idea, and (AFAICT) no-one in state government has expressed openness to the idea of forcing them to implement it, but this part of Wichita is (with some justice) seen as very under-served in terms not just of transportation but also other public facilities like libraries.
"It is necessary to spend a hundred lire now to save a thousand lire later."--Piero Puricelli, explaining the need for a first-class road system to Benito Mussolini

3467

I would think KTA would want more urban interchanges.  ILSTHA has been adding them.  They add marginal ones like Illinois 23 if a local government pays for part if it.

sparker

And then there's the northern Sacramento bypass, generally from the I-5/CA 99 interchange near the airport and extending northeast, skirting Lincoln to the south, Auburn to the north, and merging with I-80 near Applegate.  Considered a reroute of the old CA 102 corridor to the south and formulated in the early '90's, extensive development in the Lincoln area has rendered the concept problematic regarding location (no formal route adoption has taken place).  However, the new expressway southwest of Lincoln as access from CA 99 seems to be the focal point of renewed interest in this bypass.  It'll probably be revisited anytime a media article about congestion on I-80 northeast of Sacramento crops up. 

mgk920


Duke87

The Intercounty Connector in Maryland. Was officially canceled decades ago due to vocal local opposition. Then rose from the dead and actually got built in spite of said vocal local opposition still being present.
If you always take the same road, you will never see anything new.

jp the roadgeek

US 7 from Norwalk to Danbury.  Maybe if the NIMBY-snobs of Ridgefield and Wilton were to give way, it could get built. 
Interstates I've clinched: 97, 290 (MA), 291 (CT), 291 (MA), 293, 295 (DE-NJ-PA), 295 (RI-MA), 384, 391, 395 (CT-MA), 395 (MD), 495 (DE), 610 (LA), 684, 691, 695 (MD), 695 (NY), 795 (MD)

txstateends

The closest thing I know of in north TX would be Loop 9 in the Dallas area.  It was supposed to be the next loop after I-635, but the original project was cancelled by the state many years ago.  In the 1990s, it was partially revived as a tollroad, which is now the Bush Turnpike.  There is still talk of completing the rest of the Loop 9 path, but between I-30 and I-20 east of Dallas would be either TX 190 or more of the Bush Turnpike.  Now, officially, there are new plans (to the point of it being designated but not yet built) for a part of Loop 9 on a path south of Dallas from US 67 to past I-35E, I-45, and US 175 around to I-20 to meet the TX 190/Bush Turnpike project's path in southeastern Mesquite.  The closest planned construction segment of Loop 9 would be the part from I-35E to I-45.  Officials do see a need for some kind of highway along the south side to accomodate heavier truck traffic anticipated in the area due to a growing quantity of warehouse/distribution facilities and Dallas' planned "inland port" project.

http://www.loop9.org/
https://www.nbcdfw.com/traffic/stories/Loop-9-Along-Dallas-Ellis-County-Line-Closer-to-Reality-146914355.html
https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/blog/2013/06/loop-9-project-comes-back-to-life-with.html
https://www.txdot.gov/inside-txdot/get-involved/about/hearings-meetings/dallas/041718.html
http://www.keepitmovingdallas.com/projects/other/loop-9-from-i-35e-to-i-45/project-history
\/ \/ click for a bigger image \/ \/

3467

The crosstown expressway in Chicago.  See the Midwest board for details.

theroadwayone

Quote from: jp the roadgeek on August 18, 2018, 03:12:50 PM
US 7 from Norwalk to Danbury.  Maybe if the NIMBY-snobs of Ridgefield and Wilton were to give way, it could get built.
We could always call up the Air Force to send a B-52 to carpet bomb them. That should take care of the problem.

TEG24601

I-605 around Seattle, comes up every few years on the News.


Bridges across Puget Sound (to replace the ferries, and was the original intention of the state taking over the ferry system).  Not a popular news item, but something that talkshow hosts, and people new to the area keep saying they want.
They said take a left at the fork in the road.  I didn't think they literally meant a fork, until plain as day, there was a fork sticking out of the road at a junction.

TheStranger

The Southern Crossing in the Bay Area, though the routing has changed from the 1960s proposals (a connector between the I-280/Cesar Chavez (Army) Street interchange and today's 980/880 junction) to a hypothetical 380-238 bridge.

Some form of southern/southeast Sacramento bypass route, originally proposed in some form as Route 148 (which ended up becoming the local arterial Cosumnes River Boulevard) and now as the Capital Southeast Connector.

More recent: the proposals to build a new American River bridge for what is now Business 80/unsigned Route 51 between midtown Sacramento and Cal Expo - ironically, the plan CalTrans had until 1979 for the I-80 realignment, when the city of Sacramento voted to cancel that and move all funds for that project into creating a light rail system.

Chris Sampang

Bruce

The North Spokane Corridor has shifted east several times since the 1960s and was finally built beginning in 2009. Only took billions of dollars and many, many evictions to solve a problem that doesn't really exist (since Spokane has very little traffic compared to any city requiring a new freeway).

jakeroot

Quote from: Bruce on August 19, 2018, 02:39:59 AM
The North Spokane Corridor has shifted east several times since the 1960s and was finally built beginning in 2009. Only took billions of dollars and many, many evictions to solve a problem that doesn't really exist (since Spokane has very little traffic compared to any city requiring a new freeway).

This was going to be my reply.

I can only assume that the NSC was built in such a central location as to persuade as much traffic, from either direction along I-90, to use it going north. If the NSC dropped down to I-90 too far east or west from it's alignment north of the city, it wouldn't remove as much traffic from local streets as they want.

Weirdly, I don't think any of the other proposed freeways in WA have anywhere near the same level of resistance as the NSC, and even the NSC is only opposed by residents in the immediate vicinity (chiefly Hillyard and East Central).

TheOneKEA

The MD 32 freeway between MD 108 in Clarksville and I-70 in West Friendship. It's been planned for the past 20 years and has been built piecemeal over the past 10. It's been planned for so long that it's succumbed to attrition and is now being recast as a partial access-controlled divided highway.

The US 50 six-lane upgrade between Queenstown and the MD 404 intersection north of Wye Mills has been planned for the past 45 years and is no closer to fruition. Its companion project of the dualization of MD 404 between US 50 and the western end of the Denton, MD bypass finally got built.

The replacement of the intersection between MD 140 and MD 97 in Westminster is also an undead project that needs to be built.

Hurricane Rex

11th street expressway in Eugene. Tecnically has been going from dead to alive, back to dead (current phase). Origionally it was going to be a freeway, then it was shifted north due to resistance, then back south but only an at grade expressway.

Portland Westside bypass (which recently is back alive, will be posting in Northwest about it soon)

Van Buren bridge replacement in Corvallis.

LG-TP260

ODOT, raise the speed limit and fix our traffic problems.

Road and weather geek for life.

Running till I die.

Beltway

Quote from: TheOneKEA on August 19, 2018, 01:37:45 PM
The US 50 six-lane upgrade between Queenstown and the MD 404 intersection north of Wye Mills has been planned for the past 45 years and is no closer to fruition.

Ditto for the interchanges at MD-404, MD-213 and at MD-18.
http://www.roadstothefuture.com
http://www.capital-beltway.com

Baloney is a reserved word on the Internet
    (Robert Coté, 2002)

cpzilliacus

#23
Quote from: Duke87 on August 18, 2018, 03:07:58 PM
The Intercounty Connector in Maryland. Was officially canceled decades ago due to vocal local opposition. Then rose from the dead and actually got built in spite of said vocal local opposition still being present.

I have been around for all of it.  What helped to finally get  it built were these facts:


  • It had been studied in  the 1980's, 1990's and again in the 2000's.   By the time of the last study, much of the work had already been done and the 2000's Final Environmental Impact Statement contained a lot of content that was recycled from the 1990's version.
  • The Maryland governor (Parris N. Glendening (D)) that "cancelled" the project in 1999 left office in 2002 as very unpopular, and in spite of his claims of "cancellation," It remained on the legally-binding  master plans of the counties where  it was proposed.
  • Project opponents had promoted an "upgrade existing roads" alternative that would have had a lot of negative impact on neighborhoods that fronted on the roads to be  upgraded.  When Glendening "cancelled" the project, the advocates of this alternative conveniently disappeared and some of them  actually opposed the upgrades of some of those roads.  I don't think this was lost on state DOT planning and management staff.
  • Several of the loudest elected opponents to the project were gone from office after 2002 - some by defeat for re-election, others by death.
  • The governor that succeeded Glendening, Republican Bob Ehrlich, based a major part of his campaign on getting this highway built, and the  Democrat that defeated him in 2006, Martin O'Malley, was also in favor of the project (much to the rage of remaining project opponents, who mistakenly thought that all Democrats were against the project).  Local opposition  remained, but  at least in Maryland, it's not an especially good idea to try and stop a project favored by a sitting governor.
  • The brown trout  (related story here from 2005) in the Paint Branch tributary of the Anacostia River that had been cited repeatedly by activists and some federal regulators as reasons not to build the highway was determined to be an alien and non-native species in Maryland (it was introduced from Germany). Non-native species are not protected by federal environmental statutes and regulations. There were also claims of bog turtles in the path of the highway, and the state spent millions looking for them, and did not find any, as well as assertions that the project was going to run through old-growth forest (false, as there is no old growth forest in Montgomery County, and the only old-growth  forest in Prince George's County is the Belt Woods in far-away Upper Marlboro.
  • Project opponents  sued in federal court on several grounds, demanding that the Final Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision be vacated and remanded to the U.S. Department of Transportation.   The case came before Judge Alex Williams of the Greenbelt Division of the District of Maryland.  Judge Williams was the elected States' Attorney for Prince George's County before being named to the bench, and spent a lot of his time stuck in Maryland traffic jams.  He dismissed every count of the demand for a remand by project opponents, and his opinion stood-up, as opponents dropped their appeals (I have been told that the opponents were warned that they would likely lose on appeal to the 4th Circuit, and that the result of such a loss would be a legally-binding opinion that they might not like - and it  would be binding in all of the 4th Circuit states from Maryland to South Carolina plus West Virginia (but not D.C.)).
Opinions expressed here on AAROADS are strictly personal and mine alone, and do not reflect policies or positions of MWCOG, NCRTPB or their member federal, state, county and municipal governments or any other agency.

thenetwork

Completing the northwest bypass of the Denver Metro Area, a.k.a. the (Northwest Parkway/C-/E-) 470 loop.  Just when you think it is dead, some news outlet or group mentions another crusade to get it built, then the tree-hugging NIMBY's of the Boulder-Golden area mount an even louder voice to shoot any and all proposals down.




Opinions expressed here on belong solely to the poster and do not represent or reflect the opinions or beliefs of AARoads, its creators and/or associates.