Downtown need a makeover? More cities are razing urban highways

[finehoe]

Downtown need a makeover? More cities are razing urban highways

Removal of aging highways is a strategy some cities are using to try to boost their downtown districts.

By Jeremy Kutner, Correspondent
posted March 2, 2011 at 2:43 pm EST

New Haven, Conn.
In New Haven, Conn., a mistake of the past â€" one that displaced hundreds, razed a neighborhood, and physically divided a city â€" is finally set to be rectified: A highway is going to be demolished.

Some people in New Haven have been waiting to see this for 40 years, ever since it became clear that a modern roadway slicing through the heart of downtown would not bring the hoped-for suburban shoppers and revitalization. That waiting list is long, it turns out, as cities across the United States look to erase some of the damage from urban highway construction of the 1950s and '60s â€" tearing up or replacing the roadways and attempting to restitch bulldozed neighborhoods.

"For people who live and work around [urban highways], they always had huge negative side effects: They broke up the urban fabric, were noisy, and divided cities," says Ted Shelton, a professor of architecture at the University of Tennessee who has studied urban highway removal. Removing roadways presents an opportunity for wiser, gentler redevelopment that can â€" if all goes well â€" add vibrancy and livability to areas around city centers.

That possibility has planners from Providence, R.I., and Baltimore to New Orleans and Seattle rethinking decisions to run highways through the hearts of cities. To that end, they are hoping to get some help from federal transportation programs (though budget-cutters in the US House have this program in their sights), as well as from local and state sources. New Haven's $16 million from Uncle Sam, for instance, will help demolish a short stub of highway â€" called the Oak Street Connector â€" that delivers visitors to a Walgreens and a parking garage.

Two things are driving these extreme make-overs. One is the simple fact that many highways built in the postwar years are nearing the end of their useful lives, says Joseph DiMento, a professor of planning and law at the University of California, Irvine, who is at work on a book about urban highways. The other, he says, is a growing faith that urban centers, including some that have been long neglected, have development potential.

Still, he cautions, not every city can reclaim its downtown by ripping up highway, because the highway may not be the biggest problem.

"You can't isolate freeway intervention as the only factor in the depopulation of many Rust Belt and Snow Belt cities. It was a factor but not the only factor. People were moving out independently," Mr. DiMento says.

Those who hope the post-highway landscape will right wrongs and make things the way they used to be will probably be disappointed. New Haven's removal project, set to evolve in phases, will try to reconnect city streets long separated by the highway. But where lower-end housing and a predominantly African-American neighborhood once stood, city officials now pin their economic hopes on a 10-story medical lab and office building.

"It's pretty audacious to take out a highway," says Kelly Murphy, city economic development administrator. But "we're not going to build four-story walk-ups anymore." Restitching a city must accommodate the modern role of cities, not just nostalgic visions of the past, she notes.

In Baltimore, demolition is under way on the "highway to nowhere," which displaced almost 3,000 residents on the city's west side when it was constructed more than four decades ago.

"It tore apart the social fabric of the community, and it created division. For those communities, it was the last nail in the coffin," says Jamie Kendrick of the Baltimore City Department of Transportation. The highway's removal was motivated in part, he says, by the "idea that these communities that suffered injustice 40 years ago are finally able to correct some of that injustice."

The highway is slated to be replaced by a light-rail public transit station and parking lots, a temporary measure, Mr. Kendrick says, until the troubled area becomes attractive to burgeoning biomedical industries downtown.

Muriel Praileau, a West Baltimore resident and retired social worker, remembers when her old neighborhood was torn down. "I hope that the [highway removal] will reconnect the community and make for a more harmonious relationship with the area," she says. But given the area's "deterioration, heaven knows what may happen at this stage," she adds.

In Providence, Rhode Island transportation officials opted to reroute a dilapidated section of highway, moving the road outside the downtown core at no small expense. Demolition began late last year.

Now, "there's an opportunity not only to create a new neighborhood but to sort of reinvent our downtown," says Robert Azar, a planner with the Providence Department of Planning and Development.

Boosters of urban highway removal acknowledge the difficulties of repairing city fabrics after roadways are scaled down. Tearing them down "is not like it's a magic thing that suddenly everything's fine," says John Norquist, president of the Congress of New Urbanism.

But Mr. Norquist's own experience while mayor of Milwaukee proved to him that losing a highway can be a blessing. Milwaukee's massive highway removal project is generally hailed as a success, opening up the city's downtown. Sections of the former freeway space, though, remain undeveloped, the victims of fluctuating developer interest, ownership divisions, and the recent recession.

Norquist sees the rising desire of cities to rid themselves of highways as a hopeful sign that past mistakes will not be repeated. "If Paul had been facing a grade-separated highway on the road to Damascus," quips Norquist, "maybe he wouldn't have seen the light."

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

[acme54321]

When are we going to rip out I-95?

[cline]

When are we going to rip out I-95?

Well, demolition for the Overland Bridge project starts in 2012

[fsujax]

Main St Bridge ramps and the Hart Bridge Expressway come to mind!

[acme54321]

Yep, In all seriousness I think hart bridge expressway needs to go.  Main street I'm not so sure of.

[peestandingup]

They're talking about highways, not interstates. Highways have absolutely no place inside of urban areas (seen Main Street lately?? Look how well that's working out). Hell, I dont think they really belong anywhere except in rural areas because they stifle walkability/bikeability & make it EXTREMELY difficult for folks who may want to get outta their cars & get to their destinations another way.

You actually can't unless you want to endanger your life, which is just messed up that this is so one-sided where the car is king. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to bike places in this town that don't even have a fucking shoulder for me to ride on, let alone a separate bike lane. Its like its a completely foreign concept. "Not drive?? Well, why on Earth would you not wanna drive everywhere??"

You basically have to resort to riding on the sidewalk because there's no room on the road if there are no shoulders & the cars are taking up both lanes (which are slim & so they dont have room to give you any distance when they pass you). But then its illegal to ride on the sidewalk (and rightly so, thats for walking pedestrians), but still. If they wanna ticket me, go for it. I'll never pay it. Not because Im an asshole & think Im above the law, but because they dont give me a choice.

[acme54321]

Interstates are highways by definition. 

high·way
   /ˈhaɪˌweɪ/ Show Spelled[hahy-wey] Show IPA
â€"noun
1.
a main road, especially one between towns or cities: the highway between Los Angeles and Seattle.
2.
any public road or waterway.
3.
any main or ordinary route, track, or course.


I think this article is referring to high speed, limited access roadways.  Not surface streets, like main street through DT.

[middleman]

Actually, two of the three highways cited here (Balt & New Haven) are interstate stubs that were originally part of proposed but canceled expressways. When built, they cut right through established neighborhoods, and given that the projects were later canceled, should have never been built in the first place. This is not like these cities are demolishing I-95. The third highway cited, in Providence, is being relocated... not really the same thing. I think what Baltimore and New Haven are doing is marvelous... cities admitting mistakes and fixing them... what a concept!

If you want to talk about the greatest example of getting rid of a downtown eyesore neighborhood-destroying expressway, look to Boston. I know everybody uses the "Big Dig" project as a classic example of government waste, but after all of the cost-overruns and bad publicity, what was left was a thing of beauty. Could you imagine I-95 in Jax relocated underground? I know this is impractical and impossible, but imagine our city without this concrete monster snaking through it.

[Wacca Pilatka]

I don't know if or when it'll happen, but Syracuse has been considering tearing down I-81 (for the same reasons of neighborhood separation as are cited in New Haven) and replacing it with an at-grade road, forcing drivers onto the Beltway around the city, which would be renamed as part of 81.

[fieldafm]

The Jacksonville Expressway(now part of the interstate system) did immeasurable harm to the urban neighborhoods it divided. 

[Kay]

I've been advocating for the demolition of 95 through the urban core for a while now.  Instead of expanding I-10 and I-95, they could have downsized it with the addition of 295.  It is god awful if you live near it.

[iMarvin]

Come on people, it is not feasible for I-95 and I-10 to be rerouted onto I-295. It would have to be about 10 lanes if that happened. I-95 and I-10 have to get into town someway. And unlike other cities, I-95 and run on the edge of downtown. Yeah it would do something for the city but it wouldn't do much.

[middleman]

The Jacksonville Expressway(now part of the interstate system) did immeasurable harm to the urban neighborhoods it divided.  

I know, same story in most American cities. Imagine what Jax would be like if the planners back in the 50's decided to route the expressway directly through downtown instead of around it, ripping Riverside in two instead?

I've been advocating for the demolition of 95 through the urban core for a while now.  Instead of expanding I-10 and I-95, they could have downsized it with the addition of 295.  It is god awful if you live near it.

I've often wondered if I-95 would be rerouted to the east once 9B is completed. It would make sense to encourage all of the through traffic away from downtown. I-95 is routed to the beltways around D.C. and Boston. I-75 is routed around Tampa. But even if it is, there is no way they will tear down the existing DT expressway system, especially after investing a few hundred million to rebuild it.

[thelakelander]

I wouldn't mind seeing State & Union reconstructed as regular downtown streets by shifting through traffic to the MLK Parkway, which would serve as the limited access link between the Arlington Expressway, Hart Bridge and I-95.  That would effectively provide the city with the opportunity to truly link DT with Sugar Hill, Springfield, Hogans Creek Greenway and the Eastside.

[middleman]

I wouldn't mind seeing State & Union reconstructed as regular downtown streets by shifting through traffic to the MLK Parkway, which would serve as the limited access link between the Arlington Expressway, Hart Bridge and I-95.  That would effectively provide the city with the opportunity to truly link DT with Sugar Hill, Springfield, Hogans Creek Greenway and the Eastside.

That would work as long as the reconstructed Union/State have the same capacity as the existing limited access highway. We still need direct access from DT to the Matthews bridge. But it doesn't have to be a elevated highway. The lifetime of the Union St Expressway must be nearing its end, maybe this is the alternative to rebuilding it.