Time To Accelerate Freeway Teardowns?

Time To Accelerate Freeway Teardowns?


Sep 02 2010

By Neal Peirce

Read More: http://citiwire.net/post/2241/

Is America ready to tear down more of the elevated expressways that ripped through its cities in our post-World War II freeway building boom? It may well be. In New Orleans, there’s a concerted citizen-led campaign, backed by the national Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), to demolish 2.2 miles of the elevated Interstate-10 Claiborne Expressway as it plows into the city from the northeast, past the French Quarter and ending near the Superdome.

- Old Claiborne Avenue, with its generous, oak-shaded median, a walkable neighborhood center with a history of picnics, Mardi Gras parades and black marching bands, literally disappeared under the broad new route that backers claimed would carry traffic and prosperity into downtown New Orleans. The number of businesses along the freeway’s path literally collapsed — from 132 in 1960 to 35 in 2000. Poverty and decay reigned, the stark expressway section creating a hostile no-man’s land around it.

- In Milwaukee, where Jon Norquist — then mayor, now CNU president — led the successful effort to dismantle the Park East Freeway, the bill for teardown and putting a surface street system in place was just $30 million, compared to $80 million to rebuild the freeway. In fact, teardowns, at least on unessential interstate links, may start looking more attractive nationally as the U.S. Department of Transportation struggles to come up with sufficient maintenance budgets to keep up the elevated freeways passing their effective 50-year lifespan point.

- The CNU position is that regular urban grids, minus the expressways, raise property values, increase mobility, restrain sprawl, and make for far more successful cities. The normal roadways foster, says Norquist, “compact, pedestrian-friendly and mixed-use neighborhoods with interconnected networks of streets†— a system that works well as space for drivers and pedestrians alike.

- Disasters took out two other famed freeways. The first was New York City’s West Side Highway, which experienced a catastrophic collapse in 1973 and was eventually replaced by a boulevard with a parallel river front bicycle path. And then, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake forced closure and led to eventual demolition of San Francisco’s Central Freeway. It would be hard to find many New Yorkers or San Franciscans who would want either expressway back.

I don't have time right now to look up sources, but I've read that while traffic along the San Francisco Embarcadero Freeway corridor dropped, traffic on alternate routes did see an increase.

In relating this to Toronto, if we took down the Gardiner Expressway then both other arterials would have to have capacity to handle increased traffic (which they don't), and our transit network would need to have enough capacity and speed to support the new trips (which it doesn't).

Electrify said:

I don't have time right now to look up sources, but I've read that while traffic along the San Francisco Embarcadero Freeway corridor dropped, traffic on alternate routes did see an increase.

In relating this to Toronto, if we took down the Gardiner Expressway then both other arterials would have to have capacity to handle increased traffic (which they don't), and our transit network would need to have enough capacity and speed to support the new trips (which it doesn't).

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If we had all-day two-way service on the Milton and Georgetown lines that would help a lot.

^^ That's the point. We shouldn't be tearing down any freeways until transit becomes a viable regional alternative to most of the population. Once people can get around by train and bus well enough though (all day Go service on all lines at least,) we should definitely take a look at tearing a couple down, notably to me the DVP and Allen Expressway, and cleaning up a few others in terms of number of lanes and turnoffs.

Coruscanti Cognoscente said:

If we had all-day two-way service on the Milton and Georgetown lines that would help a lot.

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You are absolutely right and that should be a pre-requisite before we start tearing things down.

Just an example....we lost one lane on the Gardiner with the Jameson bridge construction...that one lane has increased drive commute times by huge amounts....taking down the whole Gardiner without viable alternatives is just a non-starter...the proponents who say a revamped lakeshore would take up the slack are, either, dreaming or lying.

I think its reasonable to assume that most of the traffic on the Gardiner during rush hours could be shifted to GO. But three conditions have to be met; There must be enough capacity on Lakeshore and other major lines during rush hour. This requires more trains, but also more space at Union. Secondly the trains must have adequate service during the day so commuters never feel trapped downtown by the lack of options during the day or in the evening. Third, all the parking capacity we have downtown has to move to suburban GO stations. It would be nice to think that everyone will arrive by local bus systems, but its difficult to serve a decentralized population well with public transit.

^^ Doesn't mean we can't try. I agree that parking needs to be improved a lot around Go stations for transit in the region to be successful, but at the same time feeder bus service needs to be improved substantially as well. I'm sure more people would bus to stations if schedules were at least a bit convenient, and having a higher ridership density allows you to pump routes full of more busses and add more routes while justifying it.

More on topic, how long is the Gardiner supposed to last? The Gardiner really shouldn't go down before we have a more substantial Go ridership/people not driving in, but that seems a long way off, and the highway's looking rather crumbly.

I still don't think there are any rational reasons why the section of the Gardiner east of Jarvis couldn't be removed. It's not a critical piece of infrastructure.

Boston did something called the 'Big Dig' and maybe Toronto should look at that design. Their plans came into some serious cost overruns and I hope Toronto could avoid that, but I really feel that the elevated Gardiner has to go and maybe a ground level or underground arterial road rather then a highway put in place to move alot of the traffic from the downtown core. I haven't been to Boston since the 'Big Dig' but I am looking forward to my next visit there so I can get some ideas of what Toronto can possibly do.

GTS said:

Boston did something called the 'Big Dig' and maybe Toronto should look at that design. Their plans came into some serious cost overruns and I hope Toronto could avoid that, but I really feel that the elevated Gardiner has to go and maybe a ground level or underground arterial road rather then a highway put in place to move alot of the traffic from the downtown core. I haven't been to Boston since the 'Big Dig' but I am looking forward to my next visit there so I can get some ideas of what Toronto can possibly do.

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Aside from the fact the dig was a financial disaster, I have to ask....so it is not freeways into the city or vehicular traffic you don't like.....it is just the elevated nature of the freeways? why is that?

TOareaFan said:

Aside from the fact the dig was a financial disaster, I have to ask....so it is not freeways into the city or vehicular traffic you don't like.....it is just the elevated nature of the freeways? why is that?

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Freeways, whether elevated or not, cut off neighbourhoods. In established neighbourhoods, a freeway destroys continuity. I lived in Chicago and it's easy to see how their downtown freeway network really hurt the neighbouring communities. In less established neighbourhoods, freeways generate more car culture since you can't get from one side to the other very well without a car.

I loathe freeways. I drove one to work for 10 years at 30-45 minutes per commute and then decided this was a stupid way to spend my life. I now live in downtown Toronto and take the TTC. If somebody had eliminated a freeway when I was driving, maybe I would have seen the light earlier.

The cost to bury the Gardiner could be more worthwhile if it incorporated other projects into it such as covering the train tracks as well for uninterrupted access to the waterfront and have housing and public spaces over the covered things. And of course throw in an extra subway or 2.

GraphicMatt said:

I still don't think there are any rational reasons why the section of the Gardiner east of Jarvis couldn't be removed. It's not a critical piece of infrastructure.

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Given that the plan is to replace it with a 10-lane surface roadway, it would make access to the lake more difficult.

Also included in the plan to do this is to increase the capacity on Adelaide and Richmond off the DVP. These streets are a blight on Corktown now, really dividing the community in two. Wouldn't we be better served by converting these streets back to 2-way, and discouraging their use as an expressway?

Most of us could agree, driver or not, urbanite or suburbanite that a highway is not the most desirable neighbour to a residential community.

The noise and pollution outweigh the convenience in most cases. Of course there is a need for a highway system linking urban areas, even in a rail-utopia with higher levels of local-buying, trucks will always be needed and there will always be places trains don't go.

Highways also serve (obviously) to ship commuters around. While I favour people living closer to work, and believe that both through the choice to do (housing options) and some encouragement, people will do so in greater numbers, commuters will nonetheless need to be accommodated well into the future.

So it really is about the details.

Elevated highways, and trenched highways that require retaining walls, have much higher maintenance costs, therefore there is a more pressing financial case to look at alternatives.

But beyond that, for green-reasons, but also for the reclaiming the vast real estate occupied by them, we need to cut back on the proportion of commuters using cars and highways, and of course, in the process, accommodate them in other ways, either first, or at least simultaneously.

With respect to Toronto, the best cases for short-term removals are the east leg of the Gardiner (east of Jarvis) as this is quite low-traffic, most people using the DVP connect via Eastern or other streets to the north.

And, the Alan Road/Expressway, which holds very little traffic, and could be replaced by a surface road (1 lane each way) by filling in the trench, to great advantage, and with little consequence.

Any other removals/narrowings will require significant transportation alternatives in place.

I won't run the whole list here as we've all discussed them a bunch of times.

Suffice to say it is do-able; but we need a long list of improvements first, and given the 2 easier removals that can more or less be done now; I think everything else waits till beyond 2020

So Toronto, which grows by 100,000 people a year, should tear down our freeways because New Orleans - which shrunk by 50%, and Milwaukee - which has stagnated in population for 60 years, are considering doing the same? I don't think so. I would agree that Toronto's road and highway network should not be expanded, however the city is growing too quickly to be able to afford a reduction in road capacity.

In a best case scenario for the GTA, improvements in transit will stop the growth of car usage dead in its tracks as the overall population soars. However, this means that 10, 20, and even 50 years from now, we will still need to maintain the exact same road capacity that we have today. Any existing resident who finally gives up their car will see their spot on the highway occupied by one of the 100,000 new people who move into the GTA each year.