StreetsBlog: Tear down these 10 freeways

[hbelkins]

http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/02/13/tear-down-these-10-freeways-and-then-tear-down-some-more/

Thankful to have not seen "8664" in this list.

[Alps]

Meh. The envirowackos can keep crowing. Ain't happening.

[hotdogPi]

Making highways costs money. But tearing them down does NOT make money.

[NE2]

Eventually they'll get abandoned in place if we keep putting shit into the atmosphere.

[Alex4897]

What happens when they end up cutting sections of longer distance 2di's out though..?

[Duke87]

The primary arguments in favor of removing a freeway seem to usually boil down to either "they look ugly" or "cars are bad".

On the former point, the fact that people often seem to care more about what things look like than about how they function is something that continually erodes my faith in humanity. Sure, your neighborhood may look nicer without the freeway, but the reduced capacity and speeds for automotive traffic have negative economic impacts on the region (albeit not necessarily for that particular neighborhood), and the fact that you now have at-grade intersections where you previously didn't reduces safety for drivers, bikers, and pedestrians alike. I'll take walking under an eight lane freeway over walking across an eight lane boulevard at grade any day.

On the latter point... Steve's term of "enviro-wackos" is apropos. If the concern is carbon emissions, consider that technology to run cars without using fossil fuels already exists, it just requires further development to increase its commercial viability. If the concern is that cars do not use space as efficiently as bikes or public transit do, that's true, and it's worth promoting the use of those alternative modes of transportation when practical. But those modes lack the versatility of automobile travel, so there will always be a lot of trips you cannot reasonably divert to them. And promoting the use of transit by tearing down highways rather than by building more subways is just bassackwards thinking. Way to repress more latent demand and decrease a city's overall mobility, guys!


Also, anyone who says "but there's this other parallel freeway people can use!" needs to be forced to spend an hour sitting on a three person couch with five other people before they are allowed to make that argument.

[jakeroot]

Sure, your neighborhood may look nicer without the freeway

I'm not convinced. I think Interstate 90 over Mercer Island it quite pretty.



Also, I know they intentionally left the Alaskan Way Viaduct out because, well half of it's missing and the rest is primed for demolition. But with the tunnel-boring machine continually breaking down, locals seem to be (to borrow Alps' term) "crowing" about it and seem to just want to keep the viaduct. Uh yeah that's not happening you imbeciles. That thing is either gonna be torn down or it's falling down on its own.

[ET21]

Tear down a key interstate just to remove a barrier between St. Louis and the Arch. Next we'll hear cries to tear down Lake Shore Drive because it disconnects the city from the lakefront 

[Brian556]

Quote from Duke 87:

On the former point, the fact that people often seem to care more about what things look like than about how they function is something that continually erodes my faith in humanity

Well said. This is like women wearing high heels. How they can stand to wear those things is beyond me.

[froggie]

and the fact that you now have at-grade intersections where you previously didn't reduces safety for drivers, bikers, and pedestrians alike.

I think the jury is still out on this one.  But it demonstrates how a study on the before/after safety of those few freeway deconstruction examples we've done in this country (San Fran, Manhattan, Milwaukee)  could provide useful data.

If the concern is that cars do not use space as efficiently as bikes or public transit do, that's true, and it's worth promoting the use of those alternative modes of transportation when practical. But those modes lack the versatility of automobile travel, so there will always be a lot of trips you cannot reasonably divert to them.

I will disagree with you to a degree on bikes.  A strong argument could be made that bicycling is more versatile than driving for short distances, especially in urban areas.  Easier to park...less delay due to traffic.  Case-in-point:  it takes me an average of about 4 minutes from when I walk out of my apartment to when I get my car out of the complex's parking garage.  In that 4 minutes, by bike, I can be halfway to Ghent or anywhere downtown.  I can be to pretty much anything I would want or need outside of base within 10 minutes by bike.

This is an example of why adding bike infrastructure in cities is important, and WILL make a difference.  Not only does it cut down on traffic and parking needs (1 car parking spot can, on average, hold 10 bikes), but recent studies have suggested that bike infrastructure brings economic benefits far in excess of its cost, including an increase in business customers to businesses along the bike route.  Another factor to consider is that, per the 2009 National Household Transportation Survey (data extractable here), one-third of all vehicle trips are under 3 miles in length (and half of all vehicle trips are less than 5mi).  This is a trip pool that could easily be tapped into if we had better bike/ped infrastructure.  Unfortunately, we've been so car-happy in this country for the past 50 years and cash-strapped for the past 20 that we've forgotten how to build a decent all-mode transportation network (nevermind forgotten how to build community and "place")...

[ap70621]

I love how these wackos think they can just remove a section of a major interstate through a city. Then they'll probably complain when the interstate is rerouted around the city in the suburbs.

[ZLoth]

You have to love how some of these NIMBYs think. Life would be so much better if it weren't for those dreaded cars and roads. There would be no need for cars if everyone lived in the city and used urban mass transit and their love affair with (inhale deeply) TRAINS! They point to the success of mass transit in places like Singapore, and ignoring the fact that Singapore is the size of postage stamp that is very urban dense.

[jp the roadgeek]

How old is this article? Eddie Perez is no longer the mayor of Hartford.  He had to resign in 2010.  Of course, the Busway to Nowhere underneath the Aetna Viaduct will make grade-level building difficult.

[Duke87]

and the fact that you now have at-grade intersections where you previously didn't reduces safety for drivers, bikers, and pedestrians alike.

I think the jury is still out on this one.  But it demonstrates how a study on the before/after safety of those few freeway deconstruction examples we've done in this country (San Fran, Manhattan, Milwaukee)  could provide useful data.

I would consider "objects which cross through the same point in space are more likely to collide than objects which do not" to be simply common sense and do not see any apparent mechanism by which that would turn out to not be true. It seems to me to be a question of perceived danger ("oh no, I'm under the dark scary highway") being inconsistent with actual danger.

But I am curious to see if this has been seriously studied.

A strong argument could be made that bicycling is more versatile than driving for short distances, especially in urban areas.  Easier to park...less delay due to traffic.

I don't know about "easier to park", but then I could just be seeing a relative lack of infrastructure for doing so relative to cars. Seems like in Manhattan it's far easier to park a CitiBike than a bike you own (and I'm sure the folks behind the bikeshare program have a vested interest in keeping it that way).

Also, a car is a lot more difficult to steal than a bike. And a lot more difficult to get away with stealing once you've done it, since bikes don't have license plates or VINs or anything like that that they can be tracked with - although perhaps they should.

With regards to travel itself, though, I would agree with what you're saying since a bike can get into tighter spaces and can maneuver around stopped traffic. There is a good reason that food delivery people around here all use bikes instead of cars.

Nonetheless, while a bike is fine for within a city, it's not helpful when you want to leave the city and travel longer distances. And while you can argue that greater bike use means lower car use and therefore means less need for traffic lanes for cars, the same cannot be said for parking unless car ownership is reduced. Car ownership is a related but different matter from car use. It's dandy to tell me that I don't need to use my car to travel around the city (because really, I don't), but the leap from that to "therefore I don't need to own a car" isn't one I'm making. I lived in the city without owning a car for four years when I was in college. I was able to get by just fine, but there is no question in my mind that since then, owning a car has been a source of substantial improvement to my life.

[hbelkins]

How old is this article? Eddie Perez is no longer the mayor of Hartford.  He had to resign in 2010.  Of course, the Busway to Nowhere underneath the Aetna Viaduct will make grade-level building difficult.

Not sure, and I also don't remember where I saw the link originally. It may have floated across my Facebook feed.

[vdeane]

As I posted to a similar discussion on Facebook, human perception is about 100,000 years out of date.  To your subconscious mind, a freeway is just an ugly river.

Also of note: in the form vs. function debate, it's also important to not discard aesthetics completely; the ugly structures of the 40s-60s galvanized the freeway revolt in the first place.  If we built elevated structures then with the designs we use now, NIMBY culture would have likely never taken hold.

Quote from Duke 87:

On the former point, the fact that people often seem to care more about what things look like than about how they function is something that continually erodes my faith in humanity

Well said. This is like women wearing high heels. How they can stand to wear those things is beyond me.

Depends on the shoe, genetics, and practice.  I have a pair of high heeled boots that I barely feel.  I also have some shoes with an identical heel height that I try to avoid walking in.  When it comes to heels, the shoes need to fit perfectly or you're gonna be miserable.

[texaskdog]

I love how these wackos think they can just remove a section of a major interstate through a city. Then they'll probably complain when the interstate is rerouted around the city in the suburbs.

Sometimes it is practical but almost always there is not much you can do.  Destroy all the freeways without an alternative and what can you do?  Every time they get a decent idea like routing I-35 traffic around Austin, they build it too far out and then put expensive tolls on it.    In many cities they could build more efficient routes around the cities to get the traffic out of town but it rarely happens.

[cpzilliacus]

There would be no need for cars if everyone lived in the city and used urban mass transit and their love affair with (inhale deeply) TRAINS!

They also conveniently forget that in most of the United States (including New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.), the trains and buses would grind to a halt and the employees would go home unpaid without the diverted motor fuel tax revenue and toll revenue that goes to subsidize their operations.

They point to the success of mass transit in places like Singapore, and ignoring the fact that Singapore is the size of postage stamp that is very urban dense.

Agreed.  Or perhaps more commonly, they tour European cities with reasonably high-density core areas dating back hundreds or thousands of years (plus good and frequently excellent transit service) like Rome, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen and Stockholm, and come back home to North America and write Letters to the Editor lauding the "clean and efficient" rail transit systems they observed on the other side of the pond.  What these people don't do is take a trip to see the North American-style "sprawling" suburbs to be found to varying degrees around all of those cities.

[cpzilliacus]

Also of note: in the form vs. function debate, it's also important to not discard aesthetics completely; the ugly structures of the 40s-60s galvanized the freeway revolt in the first place.  If we built elevated structures then with the designs we use now, NIMBY culture would have likely never taken hold.

Agreed.  Though my personal preference is for the built and unbuilt urban freeways to be rerouted into bored tunnels under the city (think Big Dig in Boston or the undergrounded motorways in Madrid and Stockholm) - with tolls to assure that those tunnels run at or near the speed limit at all times.

[cpzilliacus]

I will disagree with you to a degree on bikes.  A strong argument could be made that bicycling is more versatile than driving for short distances, especially in urban areas.  Easier to park...less delay due to traffic.  Case-in-point:  it takes me an average of about 4 minutes from when I walk out of my apartment to when I get my car out of the complex's parking garage.  In that 4 minutes, by bike, I can be halfway to Ghent or anywhere downtown.  I can be to pretty much
anything I would want or need outside of base within 10 minutes by bike.

Adam, there's a 900 kilo gorilla here - in Europe, grocery shopping usually means walking or biking to a relatively small grocery store nearby several days a week (though in parts of the EU, Carrefour runs stores that rival a Wal-Mart Supercenter in store and parking lot size).   

But many people on this side of the pond like to shop at the grocery maybe once a week instead.  Somewhat difficult to do with a bike or on foot.

[corco]

On the former point, the fact that people often seem to care more about what things look like than about how they function is something that continually erodes my faith in humanity.

We aren't robots. Humans need to be in an environment they are comfortable in in order to want to use the facility. Why do you think light rail is so much more accepted by middle/upper classes than buses? People are more comfortable on light rail, for whatever reason.

The best functioning things in the world are useless if people are uncomfortable using them, and that requires attention to environment, which requires attention to aesthetics. Environment and aesthetics are very much a part of function, to the degree that environment and aesthetics are leveraged to draw people into an efficient operation. You can dislike that, but it's something that can't and won't ever be changed, and it's unrealistic to make any sort of policy decision without taking that into account. It's human nature. Hell, it's animal nature. Awareness of and sensitivity to environment go to the very core of being conscious, so you can't really discard it. When people have tried to discard it, it has failed.

Back on point, it is shitty to have a massive especially elevated freeway running through your neighborhood. That does make for a crummy environment,  but I agree that the solution is not to tear down the freeway (unless you can replace it with something with similar throughput), but to work around the existing design to make it more pleasant for the people that have to live next to it. For something to really work, it needs to be both functional and aesthetically pleasing. If it's non functional, that makes it useless too.

[vdeane]

On the former point, the fact that people often seem to care more about what things look like than about how they function is something that continually erodes my faith in humanity.

We aren't robots. Humans need to be in an environment they are comfortable in in order to want to use the facility. Why do you think light rail is so much more accepted by middle/upper classes than buses? People are more comfortable on light rail, for whatever reason.

The best functioning things in the world are useless if people are uncomfortable using them, and that requires attention to environment, which requires attention to aesthetics. Environment and aesthetics are very much a part of function, to the degree that environment and aesthetics are leveraged to draw people into an efficient operation. You can dislike that, but it's something that can't and won't ever be changed, and it's unrealistic to make any sort of policy decision without taking that into account. It's human nature. Hell, it's animal nature. Awareness of and sensitivity to environment go to the very core of being conscious, so you can't really discard it. When people have tried to discard it, it has failed.

Back on point, it is shitty to have a massive especially elevated freeway running through your neighborhood. That does make for a crummy environment,  but I agree that the solution is not to tear down the freeway (unless you can replace it with something with similar throughput), but to work around the existing design to make it more pleasant for the people that have to live next to it. For something to really work, it needs to be both functional and aesthetically pleasing. If it's non functional, that makes it useless too.

I think the point was that people were/are emphasizing aesthetics to the point of EXCLUDING a functional considerations.  The teardown proposals typically handwave function with "pedestrians will no longer perceive a barrier" and then ignore car function entirely.

[NE2]

Cars don't (yet) give a shit. It's the person in the car that matters.

[Duke87]

We aren't robots. Humans need to be in an environment they are comfortable in in order to want to use the facility.
{...}
The best functioning things in the world are useless if people are uncomfortable using them

Yes, but the conjugate to that is also true. The world's most comfortable toilet is useless if you can't piss in it.

[froggie]

Adam, there's a 900 kilo gorilla here - in Europe, grocery shopping usually means walking or biking to a relatively small grocery store nearby several days a week (though in parts of the EU, Carrefour runs stores that rival a Wal-Mart Supercenter in store and parking lot size).   

But many people on this side of the pond like to shop at the grocery maybe once a week instead.  Somewhat difficult to do with a bike or on foot.

A couple counter-points:

A) not a lot of overall trips are grocery store trips, and there are other short trips that could be captured by other modes.  While roughly half of all trips less than 3 miles in length are for "Family/Personal Business", it stands to reason that not all of those are grocery trips.

B) there's nothing stopping people on this side of the pond from grocery shopping more than once a week.  Even when I was in non-bikeable land and driving everywhere, I'd typically hit the grocery store (or Commissary as the case may be) every 4-5 days.