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Goodbye-ways: The downfall of urban freeways | Grist
http://grist.org/cities/goodbye-ways-the-downfall-of-urban-freeways/

By Greg Hanscom

13 Mar 2012 6:47 AM

QuoteWe can say this for our Great Urban Freeway Experiment: It seemed like a good idea at the time.

The time was the 1950s and '60s, specifically, and U.S. cities were watching their residents flee to the suburbs in alarming numbers. Their solution: Build giant freeways connecting city centers to the 'burbs, thereby allowing citizens to live the good life on the outskirts and commute to work in the urban core. It was an attempt to hang on to urban industrial might even as the city's population bled (or drove) out.


The golden days -- when the traffic hadn't caught up with the lanes. (Photo by coltera.)

When all was said and done, these freeways did salvage some downtown commerce, but they only accelerated the flight from the inner city. At the same time, they carved up historic urban neighborhoods, turned whole sections of cities into slums, and cut off many downtowns from their waterfronts. Legendary urban activist Jane Jacobs was among the first to fight the scourge of the urban highway, and by the late 1970s and early 1980s, it had become all but impossible to gain approval for new highways through urban areas.

It's one thing to stop building urban freeways, however, and another thing entirely to tear down existing ones. For many city centers, those highways still look a lot like lifelines.

But over the past few decades, urban freeways have begun to come down — from the West Side Highway in New York to the Embarcadero in San Francisco — and if a growing urban transportation reform movement has its way, many more will fall in the coming years.

This is the thrust of a report just released by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and EMBARQ, two organizations that promote equitable and sustainable transportation projects around the world. The report, called "The Death and Life of Urban Highways" — a tribute to Jacobs' groundbreaking 1961 urbanist manifesto, The Death and Life of Great American Cities — declares that "the urban highway is a failed experiment," and describes cities that have traded in highways for parks, mixed-use developments, and all manner of urbanist bliss.

At last! City leaders have seen the light! Power to the people! Critical mass!

Well, not really.

"Cities are not removing all highways because of a sudden awakening of environmental consciousness or realization that car culture is bad," the report says. Instead, they're doing it because they can't afford to keep aging freeways from crumbling, and they're realizing that the space these roads take up is a hell of a lot more valuable, both socially and economically, when it's used for houses, businesses, and parks. And then there's the raft of studies showing that freeways don't relieve traffic congestion — they actually make it worse.

Death and Life documents all this, and then provides five case studies of cities that have removed freeways, starting with Portland, Ore., which in the 1970s tore out Harbor Drive, a freeway that walled off the downtown area from the Willamette River, and replaced it with a waterfront park that to this day is a central attraction in Stump Town. San Francisco tore out a raised freeway that was critically damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, replacing it with Embarcadero Boulevard, replete with palm-tree-lined pedestrian promenade. Most recently, in the early 2000s, under longtime Mayor John Norquist, Milwaukee dynamited the unfinished Park East Freeway, making room for three new neighborhoods, a boulevard, and a street grid that reconnects the city to its downtown.

In all three cases, land values around the demolished highways have skyrocketed, the areas have served as hubs for economic redevelopment, and, according to the report, the impacts on traffic congestion have been minimal — thanks in some places (Portland) to the construction of parallel roads, and others (San Francisco) to an increase in mass transit ridership. And just as remarkably, all three cities saved money over what they would have spent widening, rebuilding, or completing their existing freeways.

The report finishes out with a look at Seoul, South Korea, which in 2003 demolished the Cheonggyecheon freeway, "daylighting" the river buried beneath and turning the whole thing into a miles-long urban park; and Bogotá, Colombia, which chose not to build a planned Inner Ring Expressway, opting instead to invest its money in mass transit, bicycle paths, pedestrian walkways, and promenades. Too cool.

It's pretty inspiring, especially when you compare it to what we would have been left with if the highway engineers had their way. In a recent interview with Next American City, John Norquist, the former Milwaukee mayor who is now CEO of the Congress for the New Urbanism, described where that dream would have taken us:

The Detroit metropolitan area is covered with freeways ... More than any other place in the country, the Michigan DOT pretty much got its way. And they have solved the problem that they identified, which was congestion ... So by creating a transportation system that encouraged people to leave town — the population of the city is about a third of what it was since 1950.

[Detroit] had 300 miles of streetcars at the end of the war. That's all gone ... The street grid has been cut up, so it's hard to move around on the surface streets. [But] the stated goal was to battle congestion, and in Detroit, they did it. And there are side effects.

Side effects. Sure — if you consider your city turning into a wasteland a "side effect." (Sounds like a potentially terminal illness to us.) But if there's a silver lining here, it is this: Highway construction ground to a halt much earlier in most burgs than it did in the Motor City, and now those freeways that were built are coming of age. It's a perfect time to reconsider our approach to urban transportation.

In fact, we really have no choice. Being broke has a way of narrowing your options. Besides, with huge latent interest in urban living, it's time to get serious about making cities work for city residents again, not just the folks who drive in from the 'burbs.

Grist special projects editor Greg Hanscom has been editor of the award-winning environmental magazine High Country News and the Baltimore-based city mag, Urbanite. He tweets about cities and the environment at @ghanscom.

It is doable. Just need to believe it is.

We seem clearly to be at least a generation behind the front-runners in removing urban freeways. Do we have to await an earthquake to get rid of the Riverside Expressway? We could aim first to close most of the ramps connecting it to the CBD.

What we lack, compared to cities that moved to less congestion, is champions in politics. The nearest approach has been Clover Moore, who lacks the authority to do what she and most of Sydney would like. Brisbane, zilch... Perth had some progressives, Ms McTiernan and the good Professor Newman, and better performance followed. Has Perth the critical mass to stay on the path of real progress?

Meanwhile, our soon-to-be LNP govt promises a few trivial fare and frequency sops and tells us that the pillars of growth are the same as powered this state for Jo Bejlke-Petersen - back to the future. No other policies are evident, not only in urban and transport but any other areas.

This is the problem I have with this idea.

You wake up one morning to find barricades on the Riverside expressway, barricades on the SE Freeway, Barricades on Coronation Drive, Barricades on Milton Road, Barricades on the Western Freeway.

Everyone is told "go catch a bus" or "go catch a train".

Discuss the problems and issues arising from this... 

The evidence from this article and many others is that the traffic actually flows better and our public transport systems are very resilliant. 

PLUS it would not all happen over night.

This stuff is being successfully done all over the world.   Easy to find plenty of examples.

Quote
PLUS it would not all happen over night.

Disagree entirely... putting concrete barricades on all major arterials and freeways can be done overnight.
If you want to block all major arterials in the city, that can be done overnight and cheaply. No need to tear down anything.

Think of the "benefits" advocates claim - public transport usage would increase INSTANTANEOUSLY to mode shares approaching the holy grail of
100%. Great huh?

So if it is so fantastic as it is being made out to be, why not do it? There must be good reasons as to why not...
I'm not advocating this at all, but I want people to think about the flow on consequences so they can see where my position is coming from.

How about you read what the actual flow on consequences have been are rather than what "we think might happen".  This stuff works, has worked and is being undertaken all over the world.  As johnnnigh says all we lack is the Champions in politics.  You don't do it overnight as people need to be made aware, learn why, accept and ultimately champion the change.

PS. To the family, friends and collegues of the 1600 people killed each year on our roads "Motor Vehicles are Evil/Bad". But that is from the other thread.  40 billion dollars a year in road trauma costs makes then econimically evil as well. 

I don't hate motor vehicles I just hate them killing people, destroying environments and communities and creating a culture where the congestion free movement of a mmotor vehicle is more important than residents of a city.

Quote from: Jonno on March 14, 2012, 23:30:16 PM
How about you read what the actual flow on consequences have been are rather than what "we think might happen".  This stuff works, has worked and is being undertaken all over the world.  As johnnnigh says all we lack is the Champions in politics.  You don't do it overnight as people need to be made aware, learn why, accept and ultimately champion the change.

I have to disagree, of course it can be done overnight, as Tramtrain had pointed out.  There can be the signs put on the barricades, followed by the directions to the nearest train or bus station.  Signs can be put not only on the barricades, but on signs around the streets placed by the road workers and in mailboxes, instant awareness right there.

Why stop at the barricading of the freeways or major arterials, this could probably be extended to the secondary roads.  With them converted to pedestrian malls.  

The only roads that can be kept is from places where PT or active transport may not be able to be provided (eg very low population, or other natural factors preventing the use of active transport).

Edit: Bolded part where I disagree (pretty much agreeing with tramtrain).

Remember when that Riverside Expressway ramp nearly fell down? Traffic problems did not follow. Traffic simply disappeared, PT usage might have increased but I don't remember there being a problem of overcrowding, a great object lesson for all traffic engineers.

So, all we need is a major outbreak of concrete cancer to test this theory again.

Quote from: johnnigh on March 15, 2012, 11:44:51 AM
Remember when that Riverside Expressway ramp nearly fell down? Traffic problems did not follow. Traffic simply disappeared, PT usage might have increased but I don't remember there being a problem of overcrowding, a great object lesson for all traffic engineers.

So, all we need is a major outbreak of concrete cancer to test this theory again.

+1

Without looking through the archives atm, if it worked back then? Why not advocate for the closure of all major and secondary roads now?  

I do recall a newspaper article saying that the shopping traffic was down from normal levels at the time, and that the extra PT passengers were mostly the workers that normally would drive or carpool.

Like it was pointed out by tramtrain, it can be done overnight (nothing like a a bunch of barriers and signs that will fix).

Quote from: johnnigh on March 14, 2012, 22:14:23 PM
We seem clearly to be at least a generation behind the front-runners in removing urban freeways. Do we have to await an earthquake to get rid of the Riverside Expressway? We could aim first to close most of the ramps connecting it to the CBD.....

Seriously man, lay off the meds for a while.  I'll make a bet with you here and now, say 25yrs from now, the Riverside Expressway, a modest sized freeway by world standards, will still be standing and operating.  Of course there's more traffic, because, 1) there's more people, 2) the real cost of motor vehicles have declined and they've 3) become enormously more fuel efficient and silly concepts like "peak oil" are dead and buried for at least a few more generations!

Brisbane and other regions need intelligent balanced transport solutions, not everyone wants or can use public transit, a balanced development of urban environments is what's required!  Ohh, and Sir Joh's govt, love him or not, was central to the long overdue electrification of Brisbane's rail network, the single biggest step forward this regions PT has taken in the last 50yrs - don't you worry about that!

Quote from: johnnigh on March 15, 2012, 11:44:51 AM
Remember when that Riverside Expressway ramp nearly fell down? Traffic problems did not follow. Traffic simply disappeared, PT usage might have increased but I don't remember there being a problem of overcrowding, a great object lesson for all traffic engineers.

So, all we need is a major outbreak of concrete cancer to test this theory again.

Actually traffic DID get worse and the end result was a very, very bad one. Overcrowding also DID occur as well.
You're off this planet if you think you can shut off one of the main arterials in this city and assume nothing at all will happen. How do you think all those people got to work if there supposedly was no traffic problem (there was) and no overcrowding? Vanish into mid air? Teleport?

You can't shut down a major motorway like the RE overnight and expect no consequences. Seriously.

I am not advocating more freeways (hell no) but you can't just close a congested road and expect your problems to disappear.