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[sparker]

The fact remains there's still a shit load of people working in city centers like downtown Dallas. There's lot of other people visiting tourist spots, eating and socializing downtown. Most of those people do not live in or near downtown. There's your economic benefit for freeways into downtown right there.

Uhhh, if people are going to point B you don't need a freeway through point B.

The concept of all through traffic flowing around the perimeter of a metro area was one of the concepts Eisenhower appropriated from the Autobahn network (that eventually morphed into the Euro "E/M" system of interregional limited-access highways) for the nascent Interstate system.  However, after WWII the demographic changes in metro areas -- with large blocs of folks heading out to the suburbs -- led cities, through their administrators and the state and federal representatives from those cities, to request Interstate facilities directly through the city centers to provide access from the perimeter to the middle.  They were worried that the cash flow provided by the folks moving outward wouldn't find its way back into the city centers without access by the increasingly prevalent common transportation mode -- the automobile.  Thus, either trunk interstates or urban loops were provided in the initial "final" iteration of the system.  With more political power shifting from rural to urban during and after the war, it was clear that without that concession to the cities (which added hundreds of miles to the network) the '56 Interstate act would have not likely passed.  At that time, cities were attempting to maintain their position as the "hubs" of their metro areas in the political, economic, and social sense; they welcomed traffic into and out of their city centers because it made economic sense to do so -- and they wanted the egress to be as efficient as possible. 

Now that concept has been essentially "stood on its head" by the movements to limit or inhibit access from the outside to city centers, which have in recent decades been considered in some circles to be functional "urban reservations" dedicated more to a particular set of social philosophies (loosely communitarian and often less concerned with economic details); the concept of a regional "hub" has been subsumed and replaced by a more utopian -- and often "retro" -- viewpoint that posits that retreat to the pre-freeway days with "boulevards" instead criss-crossing the city center provides some sort of "urban retreat" in a psychological sense; a place where folks can gather and socialize absent any visible connection to what's beyond downtown. 

But unless those boulevards are configured as "transit-only" (something which, IIRC, hasn't been proposed for central Dallas), there still will be countless cars, vans, and trucks making their way through the streets -- all with reason to be there.  No one drives in city traffic for recreation; they're there because they need to be -- more often than not for commercial purposes.  Sometimes I wonder if the folks proposing freeway teardowns or various traffic inhibitors bother to ask the businesses and merchants in the affected area their assessment of the effects of such actions.  Only some central city businesses can exist solely through sales to local residents (maybe a Starbucks or three); most need as many customers as they can get to walk through their doors regardless of point of origin.  They've got enough trouble competing with online sources and vendors; functionally depriving them of sales because folks not living close are actively or passively discouraged from downtown patronization isn't likely conducive to the continued economic vitality of the neighborhood. 

One thing I just can't understand is outright dismissal of "undergrounding" a facility like 345 in favor of outright removal + boulevardization -- but then I don't have an ideological itch to scratch -- just a concern for the well-being of the whole region (even those folks from Sherman) -- and that includes downtown Dallas merchants.       

[AlexandriaVA]

If you remove the I-395, I-695, I-66, I-295/DC-295 and US-50 freeways from inside the Capitol Beltway it would seem like the end of the world to commuters all over the Greater DC area. That especially goes for I-395.

None of those freeways really cut through the heart of the city. They take you to the edge of the CBD but you have to go the rest of your way on local roads. The closest you can argue is the Center Leg Freeway portion of 395 which ends at NY Avenue, but most commuters don't go that far north on 395 anyway.

[sparker]

If you remove the I-395, I-695, I-66, I-295/DC-295 and US-50 freeways from inside the Capitol Beltway it would seem like the end of the world to commuters all over the Greater DC area. That especially goes for I-395.

None of those freeways really cut through the heart of the city. They take you to the edge of the CBD but you have to go the rest of your way on local roads. The closest you can argue is the Center Leg Freeway portion of 395 which ends at NY Avenue, but most commuters don't go that far north on 395 anyway.

While none of those freeways serve the D.C. CBD per se, what they do particularly well is distribute traffic destined for in & around the National Mall, particularly tourist traffic, which makes up quite a bit of the overall vehicle volume in the city.  And despite the occasional rumblings about tunneling an I-66 extension under K Street (which don't go anywhere and are just talk), the prospect of system expansion functionally died about 45 years ago.  On the other hand -- except for the Whitehurst -- any clamoring for teardowns doesn't seem to have gained steam either; for the most part, the status quo seems to be working at least satisfactorily.       

[Bobby5280]

None of those freeways really cut through the heart of the city. They take you to the edge of the CBD but you have to go the rest of your way on local roads. The closest you can argue is the Center Leg Freeway portion of 395 which ends at NY Avenue, but most commuters don't go that far north on 395 anyway.

I-395 goes deep enough into central DC to be pretty significant. The East-West portion of I-395 seven blocks past the Potomac River goes right next to a lot of important buildings. The North-South leg after the I-695 interchange tunnels under the Capitol Reflecting Pool. Its terminus at New York Ave is past most of the important stuff. The combination of I-695, I-295, VA-295 and US-50 actually gives I-395 a type of thru freeway route back out to the Capitol Beltway.

There's a lot more development of office towers and other businesses in Alexandria and Arlington where the highway access is better. It has been over 30 years since I lived in the DC area, but even then places like Tyson's Corner, Springfield, Crystal City and other zones were blossoming with towers because it was relatively easier to get in and out of those place by car.

Sometimes I wonder if the folks proposing freeway teardowns or various traffic inhibitors bother to ask the businesses and merchants in the affected area their assessment of the effects of such actions. Only some central city businesses can exist solely through sales to local residents (maybe a Starbucks or three); most need as many customers as they can get to walk through their doors regardless of point of origin. They've got enough trouble competing with online sources and vendors; functionally depriving them of sales because folks not living close are actively or passively discouraged from downtown patronization isn't likely conducive to the continued economic vitality of the neighborhood.

Restaurants, retailers and other service sector businesses in downtown areas have more problems to worry about than just customers finding it too difficult to visit their businesses. They're going to have staffing issues to worry about too. And that's going to be a problem regardless of whether urban freeways are dismantled or not.

Cities like San Francisco, New York City and quite a few others are pricing middle and lower class workers clear out of the neighborhoods. Housing costs and other living costs are getting so ridiculously high that it threatens to push many of these people clear of the region. New York City is a really serious homeless problem right now. Many of these homeless people are people working full time jobs, sometimes even 2 or more jobs. Yet they still can't find any place to live, but unfortunately don't have enough money to escape the city either. It's a hell of a catch 22 situation. But when they are able to get out of town they're going to leave.

The new urbanists aren't saying much about the darker, douchebag side of their Utopian vision. I guess their thinking is they'll turn the city center into their own exclusive country club. Still, when the cost of living is too freaking high and the commute is too much of a pain in the ass, who are they going to get to wash their dishes and serve their food for shit pay? Who are they going to get to man the cash registers? There's lots of shit paying jobs out in the suburbs and lots more in far lower cost of living parts of the nation.

[sparker]

The new urbanists aren't saying much about the darker, douchebag side of their Utopian vision. I guess their thinking is they'll turn the city center into their own exclusive country club. Still, when the cost of living is too freaking high and the commute is too much of a pain in the ass, who are they going to get to wash their dishes and serve their food for shit pay? Who are they going to get to man the cash registers? There's lots of shit paying jobs out in the suburbs and lots more in far lower cost of living parts of the nation.

Unless there's sufficient funds to deploy reasonably attractive public housing (that doesn't look or seem like a prison block!) in these urban areas, any attempt to clear out land by removing freeways, altering the business climate, "boulevardization", etc. will inevitably draw development adhering to a modus operandi aimed at maximizing profit -- i.e., gentrification!  And that will exacerbate the existing problem of functionally overpriced in-city housing affordable by only the "1%".  Urbanists really should examine the concept of unintended consequences a little more closely before proposing conceptualizations that more often than not will result in exclusionary results.

[AlexandriaVA]

If you remove the I-395, I-695, I-66, I-295/DC-295 and US-50 freeways from inside the Capitol Beltway it would seem like the end of the world to commuters all over the Greater DC area. That especially goes for I-395.

None of those freeways really cut through the heart of the city. They take you to the edge of the CBD but you have to go the rest of your way on local roads. The closest you can argue is the Center Leg Freeway portion of 395 which ends at NY Avenue, but most commuters don't go that far north on 395 anyway.

While none of those freeways serve the D.C. CBD per se, what they do particularly well is distribute traffic destined for in & around the National Mall, particularly tourist traffic, which makes up quite a bit of the overall vehicle volume in the city.  And despite the occasional rumblings about tunneling an I-66 extension under K Street (which don't go anywhere and are just talk), the prospect of system expansion functionally died about 45 years ago.  On the other hand -- except for the Whitehurst -- any clamoring for teardowns doesn't seem to have gained steam either; for the most part, the status quo seems to be working at least satisfactorily.       

  Maybe like on the 4th of July, but are you serious?

Besides, you just made my point. Freeways don't need to cut through the city center to be effective...they just have you get you close by and onto a sensible portion of the local grid. Many large cities in Europe (e.g. Paris, Moscow) have multiple train stations around the core of the city since they couldn't run tracks through the middle of the city...same concept.

[AlexandriaVA]

It has been over 30 years since I lived in the DC area, but even then places like Tyson's Corner, Springfield, Crystal City and other zones were blossoming with towers because it was relatively easier to get in and out of those place by car.

You do know that they built a Metro line out to Tysons because it wasn't surviving as a car-only suburb, right? Furthermore, Crystal City is a second-tier office market compared to areas in the city and even Rosslyn. You don't seem to know much about the modern DC , and your information seems based on outdated experiences.

As to the rest of your manifesto, all I can say is that I'm glad that I live on the coast and not the heartland, if that's a typical view on things.

[sparker]

If you remove the I-395, I-695, I-66, I-295/DC-295 and US-50 freeways from inside the Capitol Beltway it would seem like the end of the world to commuters all over the Greater DC area. That especially goes for I-395.

None of those freeways really cut through the heart of the city. They take you to the edge of the CBD but you have to go the rest of your way on local roads. The closest you can argue is the Center Leg Freeway portion of 395 which ends at NY Avenue, but most commuters don't go that far north on 395 anyway.

While none of those freeways serve the D.C. CBD per se, what they do particularly well is distribute traffic destined for in & around the National Mall, particularly tourist traffic, which makes up quite a bit of the overall vehicle volume in the city.  And despite the occasional rumblings about tunneling an I-66 extension under K Street (which don't go anywhere and are just talk), the prospect of system expansion functionally died about 45 years ago.  On the other hand -- except for the Whitehurst -- any clamoring for teardowns doesn't seem to have gained steam either; for the most part, the status quo seems to be working at least satisfactorily.       

  Maybe like on the 4th of July, but are you serious?

Besides, you just made my point. Freeways don't need to cut through the city center to be effective...they just have you get you close by and onto a sensible portion of the local grid. Many large cities in Europe (e.g. Paris, Moscow) have multiple train stations around the core of the city since they couldn't run tracks through the middle of the city...same concept.

Most of the times I've been to D.C. (and never on 7/4!) for research interviews and archival research, I've encountered large numbers of tourists (it's always fun to converse with them to ascertain their feelings about being in "ground zero" of institutional power & prerogative).  The times I've asked, more are getting around the area by car (often short-term rentals) that availing themselves of transit (if they knew/understood the network better, that figure may decrease -- but "short-termers" usually don't bother to scope out transit unless they're doing a carless visit.

And in the case of D.C., through-put freeways wouldn't be much help in getting around the city; that point is correct -- in that particular instance!]  The traffic patterns that exist with the truncated network that there is in D.C. are long settled; the fact that while agencies and institutions are spread around the city; it's compact enough (by design!) so that transit and walking are a viable option; the distance between any two points is only a few miles.  And D.C., for the most part, emanates radially from a series of hubs at or flanking the mall area. 

But that doesn't indicate that the model that works for D.C. is in any way portable; the city configuration is completely different from a variegated environment such as posed by Dallas and most other cities.  Existing freeways are, in most of these cities, part of the regional economic structure, utilized for commerce and access by residents of the region at large; the city just happens to be where much of the "action" occurs, thus it's a common destination from within and out of the greater area. 

One additional thing to consider -- not all trips into and out of city centers are carefully planned and carried out; a lot of commercial and social activity occurs because one is near a particular location and realizes that there's something that "needs doing" along the way -- but only if it's moderately convenient to do so.  "Slicing and dicing" freeways and thus forcing traffic onto surface streets turns that equation of convenience on its head; it becomes a bothersome "forced march" through areas previously not traversed, adding the time needed to get from point A to point B to the time allotted to conduct one's business -- where previously it was a matter of exiting the freeway, "taking care of business" and popping back onto one's way. 

But what I don't understand is the "zero-sum" approach to urban freeways displayed by those with an urbanist bent -- and the I-345/Dallas scenario is a prime example of this train of thought.  Solutions have been proposed to get rid of the eyesore that is the elevated freeway by sinking it below grade, with the surface being a commons-type facility geared toward providing an uninterrupted city experience.  But some folks aren't satisfied to get what they want -- they have to also see that those not subscribing to their particular viewpoint lose something in the process.  The driving public seems to be viewed as a pariah -- or worse -- by such activists, not worthy of any consideration except banishment to the perimeter.  The prevailing sentiment here seems to be the age-old "if you're not with us you're against us!" credo (one which I personally find not only functionally inoperative/worthless but patently stupid).  Except as an indicator of the type of argument to be avoided at all costs, this sort of partisan discourse has no place in practical policy discussions.  Just because a human being lives in an outlying area -- and wants to occasionally avail one's self of urban amenities -- doesn't make them any less worthy than a city-center apartment dweller.  It's called tribalism, folks -- and is simply an unnecessary distraction from the process of arriving at policies and solutions that benefit the greater number rather than simply the most vocal and adamant!

[TXtoNJ]

Because development responds to incentives, including transportation capabilities. If we had subsidized public transportation instead of urban interstates in the '50s, American cities would look much, much different.

The suburbs have dictated development policy for the past 70 years. Is it such a terrible thing that people are resisting this in numbers these days, particularly when they are the most locally affected?

[Plutonic Panda]

Instead the government did the right thing and invested in the future, the private automobile.

[bugo]

You don't want the highway because it is near YOU. That is NIMBYism at its worst. You're saying fuck the commuters in Plano because I don't want to look at that freeway. Why are your aesthetic preference more important than the needs of motorists from Plano (or anywhere for that matter) who need to drive through the city without having to detour 35 miles out of the way onto a freeway that is already a parking lot? Why are you more important than them? You're usually very rational but you've gone off the deep end on this issue.

[sparker]

Because development responds to incentives, including transportation capabilities. If we had subsidized public transportation instead of urban interstates in the '50s, American cities would look much, much different.

The suburbs have dictated development policy for the past 70 years. Is it such a terrible thing that people are resisting this in numbers these days, particularly when they are the most locally affected?

For better or worse, the policy streams in this country have vested authority and responsibility with the individual rather than the collective; this was a deliberate choice back when the Constitution was being assembled.  The singular democratic methodology that might have yielded a pathway for collective rights -- a default parliamentary form of government rather than a distribution of powers among various entities -- was summarily dismissed by Madison, Jefferson, Franklin et. al. as a flawed format that would inject partisanship into even the minutiae of governance.  The "founding fathers" eschewed ideology in favor of a system that would promote effectual governance.  Obviously, the system has its issues in that it doesn't respond to populism or reactionism exceptionally well -- although we might elect folks with those tendencies, their power remains checked. 

What all that means in terms of policy is that the default regarding rights and prerogatives remains geared to the individual rather than the collective.  A policy favoring the funding of a collective form of transportation rather than enhancing the ability of citizens to select their own efficiencies would have never seen the light of day prior to the fuel crisis of 1979-80.  Public transit was seen as something that was grudgingly necessary in denser areas; a less desirable and less flexible means of getting around -- which would be promptly discarded, one person at a time, when the means to acquire and operate a private vehicle were available.  Car ownership increased commerce possibilities, postwar upward mobility dictated that more flexible and spacious living arrangements be ready and available -- and the cycle continued from there.  It was never that the suburbs "dictated policy"; the default policy, as always, was to maximize the potential for individual choice -- and the choice to acquire the maximally accommodating suburban dwelling was the more popular option.  The growth and dominance of the suburbs was not a collective choice but rather an aggregate one; despite some populist notions to the contrary, there was never a sinister "master plan" to expand metro areas outward, but simply the sum total of individual instinct as well as economic reality:  until fuel prices skyrocketed in the late '70's, it was considerably cheaper to live in a relatively spacious suburban dwelling than in a comparatively small city apartment (or, later, condo).  But even after commute costs rose throughout the rest of the 20th century, other economic factors (constantly rising urban housing costs prominent among those) intervened to maintain the status of the suburb as comparatively affordable.  There was never any chance that measures to curtail the trend toward suburban preferences would ever be instituted; that trend was viewed as a logical economic progression.  The concept of "urbanism" didn't emerge until much later, largely as an outgrowth of collective trends within academia.  Public transportation was -- and to a certain degree still is -- seen as necessary but partial compensation for the vagaries of capitalism -- but never as an elective choice. 

Nonetheless, it is an unfortunate -- not "terrible" but merely misguided -- thing that in some quarters a knee-jerk blanket position condemning all things automotive has been adopted -- as if depriving the driving public of the means to efficiently function will result in a mass epidemic of self-loathing among that group resulting in a large-scale abandonment of that transportation mode.  ]i]Ain't gonna happen, people![/i]  One may adopt any position one wants -- but nothing will rewrite history.           

[austrini]

You don't want the highway because it is near YOU. That is NIMBYism at its worst. You're saying fuck the commuters in Plano because I don't want to look at that freeway. Why are your aesthetic preference more important than the needs of motorists from Plano (or anywhere for that matter) who need to drive through the city without having to detour 35 miles out of the way onto a freeway that is already a parking lot? Why are you more important than them? You're usually very rational but you've gone off the deep end on this issue.

Thanks Jeremy, thats nice of you to say. You know I've always lived by freeways and never had an issue. I wanted this one gone when I was in college in 2001, 5 states away. There aren't any commuters that actually use the thing. Read the TxDot report. No one is commuting from Plano to the landfill. I'm saying fuck the people in Plano who go to Houston once a year, they can go around. It's useful to get to downtown, not through it.

In the 60s Vincent Ponte (I think he was from Montreal) was hired to write a report about planning downtown and this was part of the plan. The goal was to have ramps directly into big giant parking garages ringing the downtown area. Lots of blocks were bulldozed for them, but they were never built. It was never in the first freeway plans



and was added later on the prediction that a bunch of people would go live in the river bottom for some reason https://i.imgur.com/mRMyTdt.jpg - which never happened.

I have no idea why they eventually built the thing. It's never really been useful.

[Plutonic Panda]

150,000 people a day disagree it isn’t useful. I’m sure you’re response will be they can find another freeway with another 100,000 plus people that find that freeway useful. Fortunately, I am confident TxDOT will do the right thing and keep this freeway in place but rebuild it to better suite the community.

[Plutonic Panda]

You don't want the highway because it is near YOU. That is NIMBYism at its worst. You're saying fuck the commuters in Plano because I don't want to look at that freeway. Why are your aesthetic preference more important than the needs of motorists from Plano (or anywhere for that matter) who need to drive through the city without having to detour 35 miles out of the way onto a freeway that is already a parking lot? Why are you more important than them? You're usually very rational but you've gone off the deep end on this issue.

This is what I wanted to say but couldn’t put it in words minus my knowledge of this poster as I am fairly new to this site.

[austrini]

150,000 people a day disagree it isn’t useful. I’m sure you’re response will be they can find another freeway with another 100,000 plus people that find that freeway useful. Fortunately, I am confident TxDOT will do the right thing and keep this freeway in place but rebuild it to better suite the community.

As has been said repeatedly in this thread and the TxDot report 89% of the people you reference who are using 345 only use it to enter downtown, not go through it.

https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2014/05/poll-what-should-dallas-do-about-interstate-345/

In 2014 it was 70% hated, now i'd gather it's 90% hated.

[Plutonic Panda]

90% of who hate it? I don’t. Anecdotally, I can’t think of one person I know that lives in Dallas who hates it. Whether the use it for through traffic or not is besides the point, it’s used by over 150,000 people. That’s a lot of people who like this highway and use it for one reason or another.

[Plutonic Panda]

Okay, that was some poll by a news agency. I’m not familiar with their targeted readers, but I’m betting they’re more liberal and geared towards inner city living. It’d just be a shocker if LA Times came out with a poll that showed a lot of its readers opposed the 710 freeway expansion. I just couldn’t believe it.

[austrini]

90% of who hate it? I don’t. Anecdotally, I can’t think of one person I know that lives in Dallas who hates it. Whether the use it for through traffic or not is besides the point, it’s used by over 150,000 people. That’s a lot of people who like this highway and use it for one reason or another.

*rubs forehead*  using it for through traffic or not is precisely the point - dumping all incoming traffic into downtown - the destination of 89% (according to TxDot). That's why it's in the TxDot study as an option, because it makes sense.

[TXtoNJ]

You know, if a roadfan who lives there is saying that tearing it down might have some benefits, perhaps taking the "pave absolutely everything, everywhere, and never give an inch" approach isn't the wisest one.

If the issue is getting I-45 to Tulsa (as it seems to be for a few of y'all), just route it on LBJ East. Bonus - it will make sense to renumber and extend 75 through South Dallas, reconnecting it to 175 once again.

[kphoger]

The vast majority of traffic on I-345 would likely originate within a 20-30 mile radius of Downtown Dallas, even though it may not necessarily have a destination in Downtown (at I-35E, 80% of traffic just passes through). There's no need to caricaturize it as a freeway solely for people from Houston to Oklahoma, that would be only a tiny fraction of those 177,000 vehicles per day.

While the cost of putting it below grade would likely be high, the cost of upgrading tens of miles of existing freeways and reconstructing many interchanges would be much greater.

This is a situation where local, on-the-ground information contradicts what might be logical from how the system is laid out. From personal experience and that of others I know, everything austrini is saying is completely correct - you're simply not getting onto I-45 from North Dallas and Collin County  unless you're headed to Ennis or south. There is no significant local traffic in that corridor, and this is part of why it was so late to be built.

The cost of upgrading the existing freeways and interchanges may be greater, but they would also have much stronger network effects than sinking billions into 345.

Are you intending to say that most of the 177,000 vehicles travelling through there every day are long-distance traffic and have no actual business in Dallas?  Call me a skeptic, but I'm skeptical.

[Bobby5280]

You do know that they built a Metro line out to Tysons because it wasn't surviving as a car-only suburb, right? Furthermore, Crystal City is a second-tier office market compared to areas in the city and even Rosslyn. You don't seem to know much about the modern DC , and your information seems based on outdated experiences.

I've been in the DC area on a number of occasions over the years; some friends from high school still live in the area.

The Metro line to Tyson's corner was there back in the 1980's. Since then some massive expansion to highways has taken place. It hasn't all been about commuter rail. I-95 in Springfield approaching the beltway is gigantic compared to how it was 30 years ago. The HOV lanes for I-395 ended there. Now the HOV lanes goes down past the Marine Corps base in Quantico. The old Woodrow Wilson bridge/traffic jam creator was replaced with new twin bridges more than double in size & traffic capacity. I don't see freeways getting ripped out and replaced with bike paths in the DC area.

As to the rest of your manifesto, all I can say is that I'm glad that I live on the coast and not the heartland, if that's a typical view on things.

I don't know what you're reffering to as a "manifesto." If it has to do with my comments about low and middle income workers being financially squeezed by rising living costs in New Urbanist-theme city centers that's not a manifesto at all. It's dollars and cents simple math. Starve or leave town. Or maybe pile into a cramped apartment with 2 or more roomates or couch surf at various places. That might be tolerable as a temporary arrangement. The situation isn't practical for getting married and starting a family -an activity that drives much of our nation's economy.

And in the case of D.C., through-put freeways wouldn't be much help in getting around the city; that point is correct -- in that particular instance!]  The traffic patterns that exist with the truncated network that there is in D.C. are long settled; the fact that while agencies and institutions are spread around the city; it's compact enough (by design!) so that transit and walking are a viable option; the distance between any two points is only a few miles.  And D.C., for the most part, emanates radially from a series of hubs at or flanking the mall area.

DC began de-centralizing many years ago. It's no longer necessary to build a highway through DC to the other side of the beltway because even more people in the DC area work outside of the DC city limits.

The suburbs have dictated development policy for the past 70 years. Is it such a terrible thing that people are resisting this in numbers these days, particularly when they are the most locally affected?

That's politics for you. Government policy goes where the white folks live. Many of them retreated to the suburbs decades ago. The New Urbanist movement campaigns for everyone to move back to the city center and fight sprawl, traffic, pollution, etc. They preach sustainability, but the problem is there's no reality check going on with the economics of their ideal. If it costs too much to move to the urban center then suburbanites are going to stay put in the suburbs and keep using personal vehicles for most of their transportation needs.

[TXtoNJ]

The vast majority of traffic on I-345 would likely originate within a 20-30 mile radius of Downtown Dallas, even though it may not necessarily have a destination in Downtown (at I-35E, 80% of traffic just passes through). There's no need to caricaturize it as a freeway solely for people from Houston to Oklahoma, that would be only a tiny fraction of those 177,000 vehicles per day.

While the cost of putting it below grade would likely be high, the cost of upgrading tens of miles of existing freeways and reconstructing many interchanges would be much greater.

This is a situation where local, on-the-ground information contradicts what might be logical from how the system is laid out. From personal experience and that of others I know, everything austrini is saying is completely correct - you're simply not getting onto I-45 from North Dallas and Collin County  unless you're headed to Ennis or south. There is no significant local traffic in that corridor, and this is part of why it was so late to be built.

The cost of upgrading the existing freeways and interchanges may be greater, but they would also have much stronger network effects than sinking billions into 345.

Are you intending to say that most of the 177,000 vehicles travelling through there every day are long-distance traffic and have no actual business in Dallas?  Call me a skeptic, but I'm skeptical.

No. Most are headed downtown or in the immediate area, as indicated by the data that austrini has cited several times. This traffic can be handled either by surface streets, or a combination of Thornton, Stemmons and Rodgers. That's in contrast to the movement best served by 345 - Central to I-45, which is a small fraction of the traffic using the route.

That's politics for you. Government policy goes where the white folks live. Many of them retreated to the suburbs decades ago. The New Urbanist movement campaigns for everyone to move back to the city center and fight sprawl, traffic, pollution, etc. They preach sustainability, but the problem is there's no reality check going on with the economics of their ideal. If it costs too much to move to the urban center then suburbanites are going to stay put in the suburbs and keep using personal vehicles for most of their transportation needs.

There's no economics here beyond political will. If the suburbanites want to stay in their cars, they can stay in the suburbs. It's not as if they've spent the last 40 years building up Dallas, even as transportation policy served their needs - instead, we got the Metroplex sprawl.

[Bobby5280]

There's no economics here beyond political will. If the suburbanites want to stay in their cars, they can stay in the suburbs. It's not as if they've spent the last 40 years building up Dallas, even as transportation policy served their needs - instead, we got the Metroplex sprawl.

Affordability is the critical thing, not want or politics. You'll get a hell of a lot more living space for your money in the suburbs. Get a good sized house in the suburbs for the price of a closet sized apartment downtown. Maybe be able to have that house all to yourself versus having to share the downtown apartment with other roommates. The New Urbanists act as if this giant cost difference doesn't exist -that suburban residents (even those living in apartment developments) are being dicks for not moving downtown.

Developments lately have been increasing that cost difference by a wide margin. Various speculators (including foreign investors and hedge funds) have been buying up all kinds of urban center properties and running up the housing prices like mad. The problem is at its worst in places like New York City.

Yes, sprawl has affected many big American cities for the past 40 years. During the past 25 years employers have been leaving behind downtown skyscrapers for suburban office parks to be closer to their employees. The massive growth North of Dallas is undeniable evidence of that.

[TXtoNJ]

There's no economics here beyond political will. If the suburbanites want to stay in their cars, they can stay in the suburbs. It's not as if they've spent the last 40 years building up Dallas, even as transportation policy served their needs - instead, we got the Metroplex sprawl.

Affordability is the critical thing, not want or politics. You'll get a hell of a lot more living space for your money in the suburbs. Get a good sized house in the suburbs for the price of a closet sized apartment downtown. Maybe be able to have that house all to yourself versus having to share the downtown apartment with other roommates. The New Urbanists act as if this giant cost difference doesn't exist -that suburban residents (even those living in apartment developments) are being dicks for not moving downtown.

Developments lately have been increasing that cost difference by a wide margin. Various speculators (including foreign investors and hedge funds) have been buying up all kinds of urban center properties and running up the housing prices like mad. The problem is at its worst in places like New York City.

Yes, sprawl has affected many big American cities for the past 40 years. During the past 25 years employers have been leaving behind downtown skyscrapers for suburban office parks to be closer to their employees. The massive growth North of Dallas is undeniable evidence of that.

Great. Live in the suburbs. Just don't expect the center cities to reconfigure themselves for your benefit just as they've done in the past - especially since doing so didn't bring the economic benefits promised.