Urban Highways

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0302/Downtown-need-a-makeover-More-cities-are-razing-urban-highways

Just an interesting article concerning urban highways. A lot of cities in the past decade have been rethinking urban highways. Boston with the Big Dig and San Francisco with the Embarcadero Expressway (way back in the 80s I think). Now New Orleans wants to remove I-10 through downtown.

Interstate Highways are not the best way to provoke urban development. People can claim it's for traffic efficiency, but my personal anecdotal experience cries foul on that theory. I've seen many urban boulevards that carry a high traffic volume at high speeds. Yet they still provide road frontage for development that don't divide neighborhoods. Take Spanish Town: one side of  I-110 is one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city, while on the other side is vacant land, hugely separated by the remaining of the Spanish Town subdivision. The highway concept stopped development abruptly from crossing the interstate.

Yet, the fast moving traffic only cuts a few minutes off a trip because most people aren't traveling a great distance. But when there is an accident, traffic is stuck on the interstate with a lack of connectivity. No alternative choices, except at the interchanges that are a mess because hundreds of cars are exiting in one place.

Sometimes you can get interesting spaces like the Perkins Overpass, or down by the Mississippi River Bridge. But those are far and few between. Even so, they are not good public spaces to say the least. It is only interesting because, well, it's kinda shady. No matter how hard cities have tried, you can't make these places "attractive". It's too loud, harsh, and just creepy. But it does provide wonderful parking areas.

So, in my opinion, the urban highway is a traffic efficiency myth.