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News & ArtsMonday, November 14, 2011
Transportation Because Freeways Are Not Free
Posted by Goldy on Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 10:44 PM
Over at ThinkProgress, Matthew Yglesias explains why building freeways through cities was always a bad idea:
The reason is simply that the purpose of a highway is to make it easy to travel long distances in short periods of time. But the central fact about cities is that almost by definition they’re not far from downtown. When you build a freeway that leads from downtown, through residential areas, out to the suburbs what you’re doing is making it easier to get to stuff downtown without living in the city. If you replaced the freeway with a normal at-grade road, suddenly it would make more sense to live closer to downtown. The idea of urban freeway construction was to preserve the vitality of downtown areas at a time when more people wanted to move out to the suburbs. But trying to preserve downtown at the cost of eliminating your residential neighborhood’s core advantage — it’s easy to get downtown! — was fantastically short-sighted. Of course what’s done is done, and just because a highway shouldn’t have been built doesn’t necessarily mean it would make sense to tear it down. But oftentimes that’s exactly what it means!
The point is, urban freeways generally diminish urban vitality by devaluing the city's residential core. Some people are okay with that, but let's not pretend that urban freeways are anything but a gigantic subsidy of suburban communities at the expense of in-city residential neighborhoods.
1
I always weep for the beautiful craftman houses along I5 near the University District. Also, San Francisco kind of does this. And Europe too, although that's a historical thing since most cities where developed before cars.
3
This is all well and good, but that horse left the barn decades ago when the interstate highway system was built.
Do you see us ripping up the freeways?
Do you see us ripping up the freeways?
5
I'm not following this. The claim is that urban freeways keep downtown vital by drawing in suburbanites, but at the same time they reduce the advantage of living close to downtown. So far so good.
It follows, then that removing these same freeways would reduce downtown vitality, thereby reducing the advantage of living close to downtown because downtown sucks. That's supposed to be better?
I'm going to side in favor of making downtown vital and accessible. The fact is, I can get pretty much anywhere interesting in Seattle much faster and much drunker (cause I'm in a cab) than anyone from the east side. Or I can walk to one of the gazillion destinations in my immediate neighborhood.
It follows, then that removing these same freeways would reduce downtown vitality, thereby reducing the advantage of living close to downtown because downtown sucks. That's supposed to be better?
I'm going to side in favor of making downtown vital and accessible. The fact is, I can get pretty much anywhere interesting in Seattle much faster and much drunker (cause I'm in a cab) than anyone from the east side. Or I can walk to one of the gazillion destinations in my immediate neighborhood.
6
This makes me think of Vancouver, B.C. - if I remember right, there's no freeway cutting through like in most cities. If you drive up the freeway to Vancouver, it ends up dissipating into surface streets and you find yourself driving through neighborhoods towards your destination. And they have a very dense population too. Doesn't seem to have hurt them to not have a tunnel and a freeway bypassing everything...
7
Also, before we make this entirely about Bellevue/Kirkland/Redmond, as Stranger writers always seem to want to, plenty of people use the freeways to drive from one neighborhood *within* Seattle to another. Without it, maybe people would do things in their own neighborhoods more, or maybe we'd have a more robust and quick/efficient/grade-separated transit system.
8
let us fix that for you, dumbass-
"let's not pretend that urban freeways are anything but a gigantic subsidy of in-city residential neighborhoods at the expense of suburban communities..."
we hang on to our downtowns because we're sentimental.
you would like it better if the jobs and cultural venues migrated out to the suburbs as well?
the economic engine that you could maintain if you limit downtown to the people who live within walking distance would resemble Mayberry.
"let's not pretend that urban freeways are anything but a gigantic subsidy of in-city residential neighborhoods at the expense of suburban communities..."
we hang on to our downtowns because we're sentimental.
you would like it better if the jobs and cultural venues migrated out to the suburbs as well?
the economic engine that you could maintain if you limit downtown to the people who live within walking distance would resemble Mayberry.
9
This explains why in Seattle the freeways that run through downtown are mostly to get people past Seattle, not to it. Unlike Vancouver, for example, geography means our downtown is not a destination for most highway users, but a bottleneck in the road between points of trade and housing north and south of us.
10
Like@6, I was thinking of Vancouver, BC. With no freeways through town it takes for-fucking-ever to get around town on surface streets. They do have more density, though, if you like that kind of thing.
11
Actually what it does is foster the idea of a single downtown towards which all must commute, rather than an archipelago of towns and villages each with a town center.
12
This is pretty much the history of the interstate highway system across the US. The intention of adding exits in cities (that was not the original plan) was to make it easier for people to get into cities. What actually happened was the highways made it easier for people to *leave* cities, and go live in the 'burbs. New London, CT is a great example of how decimating freeway construction through a city can be. When I-95 was built, eminent domain was used to seize a large, middle class neighborhood in the city, which was razed for the freeway. Those middle class people never came back, opting to leave New London and go live elsewhere. Today, New London still doesn't have much of a middle class-- most people who can afford to live elsewhere-- and hence, not much of a tax base, either (the large number of churches they have doesn't help, either). They still struggle with urban blight and a downtown no one wants to go to, even though it's really easy to get there.
13
So you mean that having a deep bore tunnel carrying a major state road under Seattle without any off ramps into the city is increasing the property values and attractiveness of close-in suburbs?
14
Only tangentially related here (specifically to @8) but I really, really enjoy the train-wreck like, can't look away element of unregistered comments. I wonder what percentage of comments containing either a slur, insult, or (bonus!) both, appear via the unregistered.
15
Only tangentially related here (specifically to @8) but I really, really enjoy the train-wreck like, can't look away element of unregistered comments. I wonder what percentage of comments containing either a slur, insult, or (bonus!) both, appear via the unregistered.
16
That's a great sentiment, if you want a city to be a bedroom community and not the center of economic activity in its region.
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