# Cancelled Expressways and Freeways



## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

In most of Western cities there were lots of expressways and freeways planned after WWII but because of their spoiled democracy :bash: most of them were cancelled.
These cities were Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, London, Paris and much more.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

Ile de France Expressway and Autoroute network
red : Motorway built
dark purple : deleted
green : renamed project
orange : plan Pompidou (freeway in the center of Paris) deleted
light purple : freeways built
brown : project approved.










Plan Pompidou in Paris
Double blue line : freeway. (6 at 8 lanes)
Dark blue line : avenue, boulevard without intersection or single way freeway for the Seine banks.
light blue line : avenue or boulevard with underground passage.
blue circle : interchange


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

The system was proposed in 60's and 70's and most of it was cancelled in 70's


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

Toronto Cancelled Expressways:
Plans in 1944:








Plans in 1954:








The results of the plans:








The comparison of the proposed but cancelled network of 1966 and today's


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

This is how Spadina Expressway would have looked like in Toronto:


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## ed110220 (Nov 12, 2008)

South Africa has quite a few.

The reasons are a little different from in Europe and were mostly economic. After the Second World War, the South African economy boomed massively reaching a peak in the late 1960s and this coincided with massive growth in traffic.

After that, political instability resulting from internal and external opposition to apartheid and the intervention of Soviet and Cuban troops in neighbouring countries caused an economic slowdown which prevented many schemes from being built. The most famous are the incomplete flyovers in Cape Town, where work was frozen in 1976:-


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

London has a lot of propose motorways...

AKA London Ringways...

I'm glad they didn't get built although I do think that some of it could have been completed...such as North Circular Motorway and a further ring outside the M25

This is a video about it all!


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

^^ This could have been a very immpresive network.
this is another map of the central London plans


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

Extra post :bash2:


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## ed110220 (Nov 12, 2008)

poshbakerloo said:


> London has a lot of propose motorways...
> 
> AKA London Ringways...
> 
> ...


These would have been fantastic! Especially the south cross route as South London is such a mess. Also, on such a massively important route as the M25, duplication of roads is necessary (ie one motorway is not enough) in particular on the western side.

If they had been built in the 1960s, the inevitable whining and moaning would be long forgotten by now and no-one would remember what all the fuss was about.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

^^ That's why I created the thread. To tell people that forcing governments to stop a big project is not useful. The problems of big constructions are short-term while their benefits are long-term


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

Boston's Cancelled Expressways


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

Nima-Farid said:


> ^^ That's why I created the thread. To tell people that forcing governments to stop a big project is not useful. The problems of big constructions are short-term while their benefits are long-term


Very nuanced point of view you've got there....

EDIT: Also, some of those supposedly-canceled expressways in Boston were in fact built.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Those plans for Paris are so cool. IT would be a much better city (not that it is bad) had they got modern freeways right into the heart of the central areas.

When I was driving in Manhattan, I realized how bad cross traffic is because it lacks the two proposed crosstown links, namely the Lower Manhattan Expressway. With a sleek design and modern lighting, it would be a tremendous addition to Lower Manhattan and ease traffic from NJ to Brooklyn.


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## Phobos (Sep 14, 2003)

Robert Moses plan for NYC wont't be missed.And none of those cutting heavily urbanized areas.


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## hofburg (Jun 27, 2009)

Paris is so lefty. all they do is turning streets in sidewalks and building new tramways...


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

Maybe the next government helps a little bit


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

This is how Lower Manhattan Exp would have looked like


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## Minato ku (Aug 9, 2005)

If we built all these freeways, Amelie Poulin would never exist as the Canal Saint Martin would be a freeway.
Between Amelie Poulin and freeways, I prefer the freeway. 

No Paris plage. 
I hate Paris plage, the bank of the Seine should be reserved to suburban commuter, not lounging on a an expensive beach where you can not swim.
Less urban conservatism. Honestly who care to protect a buch of ugly old buildings when there is a freeway next to it.
Paris would be a lot cheaper, a lot more housing and office space and more architectural possibility.
Less annoying tourists, they walk too slowly.

Unfortunately I am only half joking because when I see how conservative is the urban development in inner Paris, I wonder if freeways in the heart of the city would not be better than what we have today.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

This is how Lower and mid Manhattan Exp would have looked like on google earth


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

Nima-Farid said:


> I think they think they are developed enough and demand won't grow and any further spending is useless and will cause problems such as bankrupcy


Far from it , we have over 300+ Projects in the Coastal Northeastern US that need to be built in this region , unfortunately we tend to fight in the NYC Region which sees many useful Trans-Hudson projects killed. Like the 8 Billion $$ ARC Rail project , that was killed last year , NY/NYC would not pay anything even though it would have enhanced regional travel and allow for at 12 more regional Rail projects to proceed.... NYC/NY then offered a solution which won't do any , NJT , and the PA will likely block it. Theres another mega project in trouble the New Tappan Zee Bridge / I-287 Upgrade / Rail corridor that's in trouble hopefully that doesn't get canceled. Both projects were /are very popular but politicians don't really seem to care. There doing the small unpopular projects at the moment , which don't really put anyone to work and are questionable in there nature. Hopefully things start picking up in this region , because our infrastructure is starting to collapse or is way over capacity. Theres also a problem of cancelling one project to fund others which happens alot in this region , so the smaller projects get done but the more important larger ones don't. The ARC was killed to fund smaller Road and Rail projects around NJ.... The Tappan Zee Bridge project is at 16 Billion $ , killing that would fund most of the projects in New York state but would be political suicide. Then there's also the broken funding issues that plaque the Northeast , which is amplified by the raiding of the Transportation Trust fund....


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

-Pino- said:


> The engineers can do it. The point made by the previous poster is about funding. The tunnels under discussion here are multi-billion projects, in an age where budget austerity is the buzz word.
> 
> When it comes to austerity, there is of course the perennial question where the cuts ought to be made. Luckily, we're no longer in the 1970s where every type of road construction was blocked at one stage, partially as a result of the oil crises. But I'm not surprised at all that projects in the hundreds-of-millions-per-kilometer league get questioned for their merit. As far as that is concerned, new 12-lane tunnels in NY may indeed be overambitious in the sense that tax payers do not want to pay for them and prefer traffic jams instead.


I know nothing about engineering, so don't understand this as a challenge, just a question: is a twelve-lane tunnel under Manhattan feasible? There's a hell of a lot of stuff (subways, water, power...) there already - the complexity of the underground city in Manhattan is a frequent topic of gee-how-about-that TV shows.

That said, if the issue is making it possible to get from Long Island to the mainland, midtown Manhattan's not the only option. Improvements to the George Washington Bridge/Cross-Bronx Expressway/Throgs Neck Bridge corridor and the route across Staten Island would surely be less expensive and less disruptive.

As far as getting into Manhattan itself is concerned: now that I think of it, there was a controversy a year or so ago: the rail lines between New Jersey and Manhattan are saturated and someone (Amtrak, the feds, the Port Authority...?) did in fact want to build an additional rail tunnel. The governor of New Jersey balked at the expense, to considerable backlash from a portion of the public. I don't know what the end result of that was; someone like Nexis probably does.

(EDIT: I see Nexis posted while I was writing this, so I don't know yet what he said.)


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

I didn't propose a 12-lane tunnel under Manhattan. That's about impossible to bore, the diameter would be incredible. A six-lane tunnel is feasible, it has been done before. They recently completed a six mile expressway tunnel in Tokyo. I don't understand the funding issues. Where have the NYC region motorists paid tolls and taxes for in the past 40 years? No major projects have been executed since the mid-1970's.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

^^Someone proposed a 12-lane tunnel. Which can happen on forums with multiple participants. 

And don't get me started on our national allergy to taxes and government spending.


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

ChrisZwolle said:


> I didn't propose a 12-lane tunnel under Manhattan. That's about impossible to bore, the diameter would be incredible. A six-lane tunnel is feasible, it has been done before. They recently completed a six mile expressway tunnel in Tokyo. I don't understand the funding issues. Where have the NYC region motorists paid tolls and taxes for in the past 40 years? No major projects have been executed since the mid-1970's.


The Tolls in this region are split for Rail / Road projects due to the anti-Tax movement..... But most of the projects are small between 50-600 Million , the big projects need Federal funding and that could take up to a decade.


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

ChrisZwolle said:


> I didn't propose a 12-lane tunnel under Manhattan. That's about impossible to bore, the diameter would be incredible. A six-lane tunnel is feasible, it has been done before. They recently completed a six mile expressway tunnel in Tokyo. I don't understand the funding issues. Where have the NYC region motorists paid tolls and taxes for in the past 40 years? No major projects have been executed since the mid-1970's.


You run the risk that a six-lane tunnel would be congested from its opening onwards. Not sure whether that is something that anybody should thrive for. And as Penn's Woods remarked, it may just be more sensible to seek relief via routes that bypass Manhattan, such as upgrades to I-278, I-678 and I-295. At last on the transit routes from Long Island to regions North, West and South of New York. My thought as a non-engineer would be that you can build a tunnel below Manhattan with all the subway tunnels and other stuff under it, but it would probably be a deep tunnel and then still require a lot of work that you do not require for tunnels underneath a river or a mountain (let alone tunnels under farmland, our Dutch national hobby). Accordingly, a tunnel underneath Manhattan would be an exercise that is much more expensive than your everyday tunnel. 

As to tolls and taxes paid over the last 40 years: a shame as it is, the income from tolls and road taxes has gone elsewhere and you cannot spend the same dollar twice. New roads require new funds. And in days of budget austerity, those new funds can only come via cuts in other budgets (e.g. healthcare) or via new taxes or tolls.


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

A new tunnel underpassing Manhattan (Long Island - New Jersey) would be a tolled link of course. An upgrade of the existing expressways is not reasonably possible without probably even higher cost. It's impossible to improve the Trans-Manhattan Expressway (I-95) and its interchanges without incredible cost and destruction of property. The same can be said about the Gowanus Expressway and the BQE. You'll end up tunneling anyway.

It's not like a five or six mile bored tunnel is that extraordinary or out of the box. Many countries have urban tunnels like that. Stockholm is going to build the Förbifart, or bypass, that would run through tunnels for 17 kilometers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Förbifart_Stockholm

I don't say it has to be constructed next year. Before all planning is done you're a decade further anyway.


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

Toll at this type of routes is a tricky thing. A route like Sydney's Cross City Tunnel is heavily underused because of toll, maintaining the congestion and exhaust fumes in town and meaning that the investors will most likely not recover their investment. If NY/NJ/Federal authorities were to create this type of toll route, it would be a bad assumption that they will recover their investment via tolling. The tax payer will take a substantial part of the hit.

That being said, a Long Island - New Jersey tunnel following the I-95 corridor is probably much more sensible than the originally planned Cross-Manhattan route. In doing this, you would eliminate as much Manhattan as you could, and most certainly the area where the ground is full of tunnels, electricity lines, etc. That is also the reason why Stockholm's Förbifart is kind-of feasible. It's proposed route goes under water much more than underneath residential areas.


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

It's possible to go quite deep with a bored tunnel with this length. There are subsea tunnels in Norway that are less than 8 kilometers long that are deeper than 200 meters below sea level. There's plenty of opportunity to go below most of Manhattan's subterranean infrastructure due to the length of such a tunnel. This would not be possible with a short tunnel. 

There are several differences with Sydney and New York. First of all, the Sydney Cross City Tunnel is short, and bypasses only a limited number of traffic lights, with plenty of alternate surface streets available. In New York, the potential for such a tunnel is much bigger, you have 7.5 million people on Long Island on one side and northern New Jersey with 6 or 7 million people on the other side. It's not only shorter, it's also much faster than using the trans-Manhattan routes via the existing tunnels, or the alternate routes via the GWB or BQE. These alternate routes already have tolls at some point, so you will have to pay any way. It also would give direct access to the area's highest capacity routes; the 8-lane Long Island Expressway and the 12-lane New Jersey Turnpike.


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## mgk920 (Apr 21, 2007)

In addition to the real potential to replace the antiquated elevated structure on the Gowanus Expressway (I-278) in Brooklyn, NYC with a tunnel, I would continue that tunnel northward on a fairly straight track under Brooklyn from where I-278 makes that turn at the Prospect Expressway to emerge and connect with the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (I-278) about where it crosses Flushing and Kent Aves. This would allow I-278 through traffic to bypass the very congested parts of the BQE in the area of downtown Brooklyn, allowing the worst part in the middle (the cantilevered section) to be abandoned, while retaining 'spur' access between I-278 and downtown Brooklyn from each end.

Also, IMHO, I would think that a, I-495 Manhattan bypass tunnel would work very well with a one-way eastbound car toll in the $25-30 range, in today's money, considering the tolls charged by the existing bridges and tunnels and the much improved utility that such a bypass tunnel would provide.

Mike


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

^^There have been proposals to that effect. I remember reading something in the New York Times about a year ago.

It was discussed at AARoads: http://www.aaroads.com/forum/index.php?topic=3545.0


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

mgk920 said:


> Also, IMHO, I would think that a, I-495 Manhattan bypass tunnel would work very well with a one-way eastbound car toll in the $25-30 range, in today's money, considering the tolls charged by the existing bridges and tunnels and the much improved utility that such a bypass tunnel would provide.


Yep. If you want to leave Long Island for New Jersey today, you will have to pay tolls at either the RFK / GWB bridge or the VNB and Goethals bridge, also running in the $ 15 - 20 range plus all congestion en-route. 

The main problem in the New York City area are not the number of lanes per se, but the outdated alignment of many expressways and parkways, plus the low-capacity interchanges. The average daily traffic per lane in New York City is much lower than say, Houston or Los Angeles. This is even more pronounced when you consider that commercial vehicles are banned on many parkways and drives, which should theoretically lead to a higher capacity than on the expressways.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

^^The last time I drove through (as opposed to "to") New York City - on my way to New England, following I-95 from central New Jersey all the way to Attleboro, Massachusetts, so the George Washington Bridge and Cross-Bronx Expressway - I had no congestion at all until I was in Connecticut. This was 2 or 3 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon in early June.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

^^ what if they build a bridge, partially suspended.


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## RV (Oct 23, 2007)

*Helsinki proposed expressway/motorway network (1960's-1970's)*
All of these should had been built by 1980, or that was what they thaught in 1970. A real shame they didn't - we had money to build this when environmental activists had ready appeared.

Blue: Built
Green: Approved
Pink: May possibly be built in a far future
Red: Cancelled

I'm sory about a so shitty paint-made picture, but the information is from a book that dates back to 1970 and I didn't find the plans online.


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

ChrisZwolle said:


> IIn New York, the potential for such a tunnel is much bigger, you have 7.5 million people on Long Island on one side and northern New Jersey with 6 or 7 million people on the other side.


I am not familiar enough with New York to assess how those population numbers translate into actual commutes. It is of course a city in which the vast majority of people works either in their own borough or on Manhattan. Cross-city traffic will not make up a huge percentage of the drivers on New York's routes. But in absolute numbers, the combination of incidental cross-city traffic and people that do have a regular cross-city commute may add up to large enough volumes to justify a construction like this.

But unlike one or two previous posters suggested, I do not think that there is much merit in having a tunnel merely to serve transit traffic, i.e. from Long Island to places beyond Greater New York.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

RV said:


> *Helsinki proposed expressway/motorway network (1960's-1970's)*
> All of these should had been built by 1980, or that was what they thaught in 1970. A real shame they didn't - we had money to build this when environmental activists had ready appeared.
> 
> Blue: Built
> ...


So much cancelled


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## I-275westcoastfl (Feb 15, 2005)

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^The last time I drove through (as opposed to "to") New York City - on my way to New England, following I-95 from central New Jersey all the way to Attleboro, Massachusetts, so the George Washington Bridge and Cross-Bronx Expressway - I had no congestion at all until I was in Connecticut. This was 2 or 3 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon in early June.


You got lucky.. However the Cross-Bronx is one of the better East-West expressways. Try driving from Jersey using the Holland Tunnel at the same time, good luck having no congestion. Even once you are on Long Island from my experience you usually had congestion until the Cross Island Parkway on any of the freeways going East. The problem with going from NYC to Long Island or the opposite is all the traffic has to go onto I-278 which is really outdated and doesn't have enough capacity for the traffic. Directly from there you are limited to going way south to the Shore/Southern State Parkway, Long Island Island Expressway, or Grand Central Parkway. You have lets say 8 miles before you get more options and in one of the most urban areas in the country, its a mess daily. Tunneling all that needs to be improved is unrealistically expensive and lets not forget how the "Big Dig" in Boston went. In my opinion the only way to solve congestion in NYC is in the true New York fashion of going vertical. I can see I-495 being a double level expressway to at least Flushing with local lanes on the the bottom along dedicated truck lanes on each level. On I-278 I can even see it as triple level with one level dedicated to those commuting further with limited exits. It's not the perfect solution but it is most realistic, with technology now the roadways can have less noise impact and with some extra money less of an eyesore. I've been going to New York since I was 4 and they've constantly had construction on the the Expressways. If they can build a double level expressway in Dallas, why not New York?


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

Is there a way from Long Island to NJ that is not tolled?


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

^^You have to cross the Hudson River to get from New Jersey to New York (unless you go from New Jersey to Staten Island, New York, in which case you're crossing other waterways). Every bridge and tunnel crossing the Hudson (or the Staten Island waterways) south of Albany, 200 km north of New York City, has a toll, and until you get well north of the city they're among the highest tolls in the country.

Incidentally and as a point of history, there was no way to cross the Hudson in the New York area by train until about 1910. Until the Pennsylvania Railroad built the tunnels into Penn Station (now used by the national passenger system Amtrak and by New Jersey's commuter-rail system), all trains approaching New York from the west - meaning from most of the country - terminated at stations on the New Jersey side of the river and then you crossed by ferry. With competing (then-privately-owned) railroads having their own stations in New Jersey, and people wanting to get to different parts of New York, there must have been 20 or 30 ferry routes around 1900....


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

Welcome to the eighth page!!!


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## CNGL (Jun 10, 2010)

And a "Last page" has been added!

BTW, your links only give a overview of the US.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

^^ I wanted to be more general. If you go to the first page you see that I talked about Toronto and Paris.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

Substructure said:


> And that's if we don't go through an energetic breakthrough. There is energy everywhere, from energy cords in the universe to the primordial energy that move subparticles inside atoms.
> If we can harness that, if we can find a clean, abundant, free, new energy, there will be no reason for us to live like sardines in a concrete jungle.
> But by then, hopefully our lives will be more meaningful than transporting our body in a metal box (train/car/bus) twice a day from a concrete box (house) to another concrete box (office).


Some people actually like being around other people, and the opportunities that such concentrations of people provide. I don't understand this "everyone must live in suburbia!" crap (or the assumption that everyone would want to if they could) any more than the opposite.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

MarneGator said:


> Noticed this and couldn't help but make a correction: the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad, predecessor to today's PATH, was the first permanent connection across the Hudson River, predating Penn Station and its tunnels by two years. Sure, you had to transfer at Hoboken from one train to another to reach Manhattan, and it didn't have the sort of radical effect on Midtown real-estate that Penn Station did, but it was the first.


I wasn't thinking of the H&M since I consider that a transit system rather than a railroad, but you're right. But 1909 vs. 1911, we're still basically talking the same time period.


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## italystf (Aug 2, 2011)

Nima-Farid said:


> Autostradas and Superstrada's of Roma proposed based on vurrent wide roads and possible corridors
> http://maps.google.com/maps/mm?hl=en


Part of the inner Rome's ring already exist. It was built in the 70s as elevated expressway and now there are plans to build it underground.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

^^ I drew some parts of it based on that ring.


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

The 1960's was the most ambitious decade in the Netherlands in terms of motorway development. Many sections opened, and even many more began construction, leading to a motorway completion boom in the first half of the 1970's. Construction rate dropped considerably after the mid-1970's, due to the oil-crises, lack of money and the higher construction costs.

Below is a 1966 planning map. It's important to note that this was planned for the next 40 years, and not all routes indicated were actually planned as motorways, but as main roads. It was also projected the Netherlands would have 20 million people in the year 2000, while it was closer to 16 million in reality. The map shows a really high density of higher standard roads. Many of these weren't build. Especially of notability is the number of river crossings in the central parts, most of which weren't build, something that haunts the Netherlands to this day. It's also important to note that back in those days construction costs were considerably lower than today (even inflation-adjusted), comparable to what we saw in Spain in the early 2000's, when even low traffic volumes made a motorway profitable.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

^^ Very nice!
It looks like a very big city


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

Well, with 20 million people the population density would have been 500 - 600 inhabitants per km². Imagine an additional 4 million people compared with today. The western half of the country would've been mostly urbanized. It would be comparable with a whole Rotterdam - The Hague metropolitan area extra.


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## RV (Oct 23, 2007)

Nima-Farid said:


> So much cancelled


Yes. The environmental activists of the 70's and the first Oil Crisis hit really badly this projects; by 1973-1975 they thaught that new motorways won't be needed in 50 years. By the time they noted this was not true the opposition was so strong that most of the plans were forced to be abandoned.

Only the blue part of the left (Mallaskatu tunnel ramp, 1968-1970(?)) and the right one (Hakaniemi expressway-like bridge section with two interchanges, 1961), were actually constructed.

Actually, the inner west-east corridor was to be used as the corridor of the Central Tunnel, whichs plans were abolished in a votation because of The Greens, commies and SDP in 2008 bash::bash. One day it took 49 minutes me to drive 2 kilometers in central Helsinki, and all they do is quit lanes :bash: Esplanadi and Mannerheim avenue used to be 2x3 back in the 90's...


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

Don't the Greens and environmentalists know that in traffic in central parts of the city the pollution is much more than a free flow traffic?


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## Peines (Aug 13, 2011)

Nima-Farid said:


> Don't the Greens and environmentalists know that in traffic in central parts of the city the pollution is much more than a free flow traffic?


:banana:

Those persons are the typical kind of person who are bad drivers and hates cars and motorbikes… at least in my area, Elche & Alicante (Spain).

I'm preparing a video about the inefficient designing for the low gas consumption of the vehicles in the motorways and the _dual-carriageway'n'roundabouts_ (also known as "via parque" or "that shit") around my home.


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

Birmingham (UK) was the car centre for England...

Motorways pretty much went everywhere. The inner ring road was pretty much a motorway that ran through and around the city centre. Most of it was removed in the late 90s due to it being unpopular...

But here is an idea of what someone who was car crazed could do...

a lot of it is again upgraded existing roads...
The west midlands are pretty hard to design roads for as there are several centres all close together. There ends up being a lot of short motorways...

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?ms...&ll=52.548801,-1.859436&spn=0.572865,1.454315


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## dmn42 (Sep 12, 2011)

Building a new cross-town highway in Manhattan in the style that was proposed by Robert Moses is a non-starter. For one, there's the expense of demolishing whatever buildings are in the way. And then there's the negative impact on the community: noise, pollution, a reduction in land values, and the impact of having a massive, ugly elevated structure creating an artificial barrier that cuts a neighborhood in two. It would be one thing if we were talking about an underground highway, even a cut-and-cover one that was covered by parkland - I'd be all for that (I'm a big fan of what Boston did with the Big Dig, from a purely conceptual standpoint - the cost issues are another matter, of course). But there are too many existing obstacles at that depth for it to work.

There are a couple of I could realistically see getting done. One would be to improve the West Side Highway south of 59th by separating it into local lanes above ground and express lanes below - right now there are too many lights. That could be done at a shallow depth (I think, barring interference from tunnels, but even that's not a complete obstacle). The other is to do a tunnel from New Jersey to Long Island through Midtown - six or eight lanes would probably suffice, and it would have to be a deep bore. But it would only be able to have two interchanges on it - one for the West Side Highway, one for the FDR. Not only is there no room to build them in the center, but the street structure isn't set up to handle the traffic going in or out. 

Other than that, the cross-town situation is likely going to stay the same, and to be honest it really isn't that bad - you can get across Midtown in about 15 minutes, and it's much better elsewhere. The uptown and downtown routes are mostly adequate as well - the lights on the avenues are synchronized for good traffic flow (I can routinely go 20 or 30 blocks without running into a red light), and the FDR and West Side Highway generally do pretty well outside of rush hour. 

Yes, driving through Midtown sucks, but what can one really expect? New York isn't a city designed around the car - it's a walking and subway city. It makes little sense to spend lots of money ripping up the city to make it easier to drive through when there's already a far easier way of getting where you need to go. The coverage of the public transport is generally excellent (yes, the East Side is somewhat lacking, but that's in the process of being fixed), and there's really no need to use a car for general-purpose getting around. And when one does need a car, there are plenty of taxis, and now there are car-share programs that are perfect for that sort of thing.



hammersklavier said:


> ...Although I submit that the express lanes of the Roosevelt Boulevard should be depressed and made into a freeway. The road as it exists today is a danger to everybody and absolutely suicidal for pedestrians.


If you're talking about Queens Boulevard, I would definitely agree. Unfortunately, there's a subway line under there, so I'm not sure how feasible it is.



ChrisZwolle said:


> The main problem in the New York City area are not the number of lanes per se, but the outdated alignment of many expressways and parkways, plus the low-capacity interchanges.


The interchanges are indeed a killer - it's very common to have backups on the highways simply because of people getting stuck behind the line of cars trying to get off. The I-95/I-87 interchange is horrible at any time of day. But I'm not really sure that can be fixed, since many of them are crowded in as it is.



I-275westcoastfl said:


> Cars still make the majority of NYC congestion, trucks are a problem and they tear up the roads but I always see more cars than trucks. Even if by your logic trucks make up the largest congestion transit wouldn't solve that.


If you could solve the problem of trucks double-parked in traffic lanes for loading and unloading, you'd go a long way toward reducing the congestion on Manhattan streets. I'm not sure how you'd go about doing it, since deliveries do need to be made, but it would be a huge help.


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## I-275westcoastfl (Feb 15, 2005)

dmn42 said:


> If you could solve the problem of trucks double-parked in traffic lanes for loading and unloading, you'd go a long way toward reducing the congestion on Manhattan streets. I'm not sure how you'd go about doing it, since deliveries do need to be made, but it would be a huge help.


Well I guess I should have been specific but I was taking about the outer boroughs and into Long Island. I pretty much agree with what you said Manhattan is going to stay the way it is and I would be against anything cutting through Manhattan however leaving Manhattan is a different story, those highways outside the city center need extra capacity and updated free-er flowing interchanges and ramps.

Actually there is a way to improve cross-Manhattan traffic but I'd imagine it would be pretty expensive though not impossible. What if they were to were to build underground interchanges at the Holland Tunnel and bore a tunnel to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel in addition to adding some capacity to connect to the tunnel. The tunnel would be maybe 1.5 miles which isn't bad but I imagine that connecting to existing tunnels and anything related would be expensive. In addition you would have to add capacity to I-278 which would be expensive as well. The good thing is you would have uninterrupted highway going across lower Manhattan with no exits except maybe adding an exit near the batt-brooklyn tunnel but that wouldn't be necessary as you could take I-278 and connect to the Brooklyn Bridge to get to lower Manhattan. Another way is maybe adding an interchange around Liberty Park in Jersey and making a tunnel from there to connect with the Battery Tunnel or into lower Manhattan and back to Battery tunnel.


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## Koesj (Dec 27, 2006)

Building on what Chris already added (concerning the Netherlands) are these two maps I made for a course on economic and social history:


First there's a national comparison on the planned network on the left (I think this is from the 1968 Rijkswegenplan), the actual network in the middle and the routes that were dropped on the right.










This is a zoomed in view of the Randstad with an ephasis on axed plans. The thin, dotted lines are current motorways while the thick broken lines currently planned or at least potentially upgradeable highways.

The big black ones have been completely cancelled. This includes the planned A16 'stamweg' which was only supposed to intersect with other motorways.










By the way I did these in 2008 so there's bound to be mistakes somewhere.


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

In the 1960s, there were also far-reaching plans for urban motorways within Amsterdam (the most prominent one being from a Mr. Jokinen) and other cities. I've never found maps and couldn't bother creating one on the basis of written information. 

But I did find an impression of what residential areas would look like under the plan. So this is Nima-Farid's dream for towns throughout the World. Would you want to live there?









(this is the area concerned)


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

-Pino- said:


> But I did find an impression of what residential areas would look like under the plan. So this is Nima-Farid's dream for towns throughout the World. Would you want to live there?


That looks totally awesome if not for the style of the buildings. The Spui would also do well with some motorways out there, and so would an IJmuiden-Centraal Station expressway. 

Brilliant.


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

Urban motorways or just spurs?


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

Suburbanist said:


> That looks totally awesome if not for the style of the buildings. The Spui would also do well with some motorways out there, and so would an IJmuiden-Centraal Station expressway.


No, it looks awesome if not for the presence of buildings. Irrespective of what those buildings look like. It completely ruins town. But then again, if you think motorways over the Spui, you clearly do not care about the town but only about the concrete.

An IJmuiden - Centraal Station expressway would actually not have ruined too much, as the area was more or less wasteland at the time when plans for such a road were made. Part of the 1960s redevelopment plans was also to move Central Station to an area South of the city centre.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

-Pino- said:


> No, it looks awesome if not for the presence of some many buildings. Irrespective of what those buildings look like. It completely ruins town. But then again, if you think motorways over the Spui, you clearly do not care about the town but only about the concrete.


You wrote like I was proposing to pave or build over ALL Amsterdam canals, I just needed one to provide easy access to downtown (plus better traffic flow in the streets of Oud Zuid and Joordan areas). Anyway: the worst problem of Amsterdam is not lack of freeways, but lack of affordable parking lots (underground or course). € 42 to park the car for a day... too much. Seriously, € 42 is far more than what I spend in fuel to go and come back from Tilburg to Amsterdam (125km each way).


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

Access to downtown does not mean "a freeway right through downtown". A freeway that more or less follows the current s100, as it was planned in the days, already forms an extremely good access to downtown. In other words, you have just confirmed that you only look at concrete for the sake of the concrete.

With respect to parking lots in Amsterdam, it is not a capacity problem but a pricing problem. Anything new they might build in town will be priced at EUR 42 per day too. It all boils down to the policy that day visitors are supposed to park at the edge of town and take a suburban train from there. Those edge-of-town parking lots are priced accordingly. Like the policy or not, the problem is not about a lack of adequate infrastructure.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

dmn42 said:


> ....If you're talking about Queens Boulevard, I would definitely agree. Unfortunately, there's a subway line under there, so I'm not sure how feasible it is....


He's talking about Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia. New York is not the world, you know.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

-Pino- said:


> No, it looks awesome if not for the presence of buildings. Irrespective of what those buildings look like. It completely ruins town. But then again, if you think motorways over the Spui, you clearly do not care about the town but only about the concrete.
> 
> An IJmuiden - Centraal Station expressway would actually not have ruined too much, as the area was more or less wasteland at the time when plans for such a road were made. Part of the 1960s redevelopment plans was also to move Central Station to an area South of the city centre.


I'm rusty on Amsterdam: remind me where the Spui is?


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## dmn42 (Sep 12, 2011)

I-275westcoastfl said:


> Actually there is a way to improve cross-Manhattan traffic but I'd imagine it would be pretty expensive though not impossible. What if they were to were to build underground interchanges at the Holland Tunnel and bore a tunnel to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel in addition to adding some capacity to connect to the tunnel. The tunnel would be maybe 1.5 miles which isn't bad but I imagine that connecting to existing tunnels and anything related would be expensive. In addition you would have to add capacity to I-278 which would be expensive as well. The good thing is you would have uninterrupted highway going across lower Manhattan with no exits except maybe adding an exit near the batt-brooklyn tunnel but that wouldn't be necessary as you could take I-278 and connect to the Brooklyn Bridge to get to lower Manhattan. Another way is maybe adding an interchange around Liberty Park in Jersey and making a tunnel from there to connect with the Battery Tunnel or into lower Manhattan and back to Battery tunnel.


It wouldn't really be across Lower Manhattan though - the east side would be left out. In addition, I'm not sure either the Holland Tunnel or the Battery Tunnel could handle the extra capacity (unless we're talking about additional tubes, which I'm all in favor of, especially on the NY-NJ side). You can expand I-278 all you want, but the tunnels end up being choke points.

Plus, since it's pretty much just as easy to get from that part of Brooklyn to New Jersey by going over the Verazzano, I'm not too concerned about a new link there. A cross-Manhattan tunnel in the Midtown area would serve the East Side as well, connect Queens to New Jersey, and if you combined it with an upgrade to Route 17 in New Jersey, would give people a reason not to drive up to the GWB to get to northern Jersey and thus reduce congestion on the West Side Highway.



-Pino- said:


> But I did find an impression of what residential areas would look like under the plan. So this is Nima-Farid's dream for towns throughout the World. Would you want to live there?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Wow, that is hideous. Completely shutting out the waterfront from one side of the canal. What a disaster that would have been. 



Suburbanist said:


> Anyway: the worst problem of Amsterdam is not lack of freeways, but lack of affordable parking lots (underground or course). € 42 to park the car for a day... too much. Seriously, € 42 is far more than what I spend in fuel to go and come back from Tilburg to Amsterdam (125km each way).


The solution to that is to make sure that there's lots of parking at train or bus stations on the outside of the city where people can leave their cars and take public transport the rest of the way. Cheaper to build them out there due to greater availability of land, and it doesn't lead to massive congestion in the city center.


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## strandeed (May 31, 2009)

my city Newcastle has NO motorways, but is host to the busiest dual carriageway in the country 

The congestion was so bad they decided to slap a 50mph limit on it... which has done bugger all.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

dmn42 said:


> Wow, that is hideous. Completely shutting out the waterfront from one side of the canal. What a disaster that would have been.


This is one of the more than 30 large canals in Amsterdam. It's not in the inner core of the city (from 16th-17th Century). It's not the oldest, or the more picturesque. Just yet-another-wide-canal-so-what in the city, could have been easily given a better use in one of its banks to a concrete maze of elevated lanes :cheers: It would be an addition to the area, I think, it would give it a modern appearance, they would build high(er) office towers behind the freeway overlooking it and the canal.



> The solution to that is to make sure that there's lots of parking at train or bus stations on the outside of the city where people can leave their cars and take public transport the rest of the way. Cheaper to build them out there due to greater availability of land, and it doesn't lead to massive congestion in the city center.


Amsterdam has something like 14.000 park-and-ride spaces IIRC, and they could easily add more by stacking garages in stations near freeways. P+R costs less than € 10/day and return tickets on subway, tram or bus are free. There are three inconveniences, though, the first of those particularly serious:

- if you are staying late (say, you went for a long dinner, music concert in the Melkweg, a party, a date, whatever), there are no subways or trams running back to P+R. You need to take night buses, whose coverage of the city is limited. So if you might stay later than planned (main reason for some to take cars to Amsterdam instead of a train), you might need to add a taxi fare to the P+R. 

- you can't easily get access to your car during your stay (I use my car as a sort-of depot if I'm doing different things in the city, instead of carrying bags all day around). 

- at peak times, subways and trams and buses are packed with commuters and all the comfort I (or any driver) gave ourselves by driving instead of taking a national train from our original destinations to Amsterdam is lost travelling standing and stumbling upon people or up to 25 minutes 'till downtown.


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

dmn42 said:


> The solution to that is to make sure that there's lots of parking at train or bus stations on the outside of the city where people can leave their cars and take public transport the rest of the way. Cheaper to build them out there due to greater availability of land, and it doesn't lead to massive congestion in the city center.


That's a popular idea, and implemented often. However, this mainly appeals to incidental visitors. The traffic P+R's reduce is so incredibly marginal compared to all traffic. Nearly all motorway exits in the Netherlands have a carpool parking or a P+R or both. I know of motorways that have P+R/carpool parking capacity along a 50 kilometer distance that is comparable to 10 minutes worth of traffic (about 2,200 parking spots). Near large cities P+R capacity is higher, but so are traffic volumes. It's a nice addition, but one shouldn't expect it to solve traffic or parking problems.


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## michael_siberia (Jul 9, 2009)

> Most of the autobahns in today's Poland teritory was cancelled


2 of 5. Berlin-Wrocław-Gliwice highway is continuously dual carriageway road from Berlin. Only 70 km of this route doesn't fulfill the freeway standard. Szczecin-Gdansk freeway is planned in the other corridor, at the seaside (bigger potential traffic). Rest of them was really cancelled. Berlin-Warsaw freeway is done or U/C (openings in 2011 and 2012).



> If someone says that a price of the oil (in not so much affluent, former communist country) of a say $ 1,7 per litre forces to abadon cars, I'll be laughing on the floor....


Yes, it's truth that many drivers abandoned their cars. I suppose that traffic on S86 was 25% lower than in 2010 (spring '11). In our country 5 PLN (ca. 1,7 USD) for 1 litre of fuel is a psychological barrier.


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

Penn's Woods said:


> He's talking about Roosevelt Boulevard in Philadelphia. New York is not the world, you know.


Roosevelt Boulevard will have a subway under it one day , it just needs funding. So burying a Freeway under there is out of the question.....


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

Suburbanist said:


> Just yet-another-wide-canal-so-what in the city, could have been easily given a better use in one of its banks to a concrete maze of elevated lanes. It would be an addition to the area, I think, it would give it a modern appearance, they would build high(er) office towers behind the freeway overlooking it and the canal.


While it is certainly not a pittoresque canal, the canal is part of the so-called "Staande Mastroute", the only waterway from Amsterdam to the South-West that has a high clearance. Not very apt for your concrete maze.

An addition to the area? Only if you get wet dreams when you see concrete. More office space is definitely not needed. Existing areas along existing freeways offer more office space than the city actually needs. And as residential area next to a freeway is bound to fail (people with actual experience in having freeways in the backyard never seem to have wet dreams of projects like these), building more freeways in Amsterdam only leads to more urban wasteland.


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## hammersklavier (Jan 29, 2010)

Nexis said:


> Roosevelt Boulevard will have a subway under it one day , it just needs funding. So burying a Freeway under there is out of the question.....


Not entirely true. The Boulevard is, above all else, _wide_. Like really really wide. Sinking the limited-access portion where the express lanes currently are is technically feasible and retains the median for other purposes. Where the Boulevard shrinks to its narrowest--I'm particularly thinking about the Cottman intersection here--and the existing infrastructure doesn't leave adequate median space, the fixed guideway line can simply be elevated over grade as the existing express lanes sink under it.

The broader point can be made: _while expressways to the core of the city are a bad idea, there are particular cases in urbanized area where they are not_, due to externalities such as clear (not oblique) safety hazards, existing easements, etc. A sub-point I may add is that there seems to be a region _x_ distance from the city center where the built environment thins from urban to suburban density. Paris' Boulevard Périphérique is in that zone, which is why it works so well as a city border. As such, the innermost ring needs to be built _at that gradation_, where the City and suburbs meet in terms of density, and _no other expressway allowed further into the city core beyond it_.

Of course in the United States, we royally screwed that up, and are still paying the price.


-Pino- said:


> But I did find an impression of what residential areas would look like under the plan. So this is Nima-Farid's dream for towns throughout the World. Would you want to live there?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


No.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

> But I did find an impression of what residential areas would look like under the plan. So this is Nima-Farid's dream for towns throughout the World. Would you want to live there?


It is not my dream to cover for example historical Manhattan buildings with wide areas filled with cars and why shouold I care about other cities? Don't they have their own residents? I saw articles about some cities and I found this disscusion intresting.


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

Interestingly, Japan appears to have few, if any, canceled expressways. It's truly amazing what they've built there for such a relatively small land area. All flat areas are urbanized and all non-urbanized areas are mountainous.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

And in Iran I've never heard of a cancelled Freeway/Expressway project


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## hoosier (Apr 11, 2007)

Suburbanist said:


> That looks totally awesome if not for the style of the buildings. The Spui would also do well with some motorways out there, and so would an IJmuiden-Centraal Station expressway.
> 
> Brilliant.


Are you insane? Most of those buildings would have become vacant eyesores, home to squatters and drug addicts, if that concrete monstrosity had been built. No one wants to live next to such a noisy, dirty structure.


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## hoosier (Apr 11, 2007)

Nima-Farid said:


> In most of Western cities there were lots of expressways and freeways planned after WWII but because of their spoiled democracy :bash: most of them were cancelled.
> These cities were Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, London, Paris and much more.


You are a twisted little turd. DEMOCRACY is the most important component of any society- the right of the people to make their voices heard and have a say in their city, state, country.

There are good reasons why those freeways were cancelled- because they would have incontrovertibly destroyed those cities to make it easier for rich white people to get to and from the core. 

The cities you listed are bustling, growing, and vibrant BECAUSE their citizens rejected these proposed ribbons of destruction.


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## hoosier (Apr 11, 2007)

Suburbanist said:


> They should have done that in the 1970s, when the city was in decay and real estate in Lower Manhattan was dirty cheap. Indeed, they should have done with together with the project of the original WTC. Parts of Manhattan were like a war zone, very third World, Times Square was full of hookers, drug dealers, strip shows, illegal products... perfect opportunity missed: build a freeway, and tip off decadent and rotten areas.


And constructing freeways through these "rotten areas" would have made them permanently so. Instead, Manhattan has seen a resurgence in development and revitalization that would have been impossible had your concrete ribbons of destruction been built.

Thank God you have no power.


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## hoosier (Apr 11, 2007)

Suburbanist said:


> There is enough coal and uranium out there to run a lot of cars on electricity. And 2nd generation biofuels with HIGH (rather than low) yield per energy input unit. Surely, it will make some agricultural prices rise, but so be it. Developed countries can afford that.


You are advocating for policies that will increase food prices in the U.S. when 1/6 of its people live in poverty. You are so fucking clueless it's not even funny.

Mining uranium and coal destroys the surface of the planet- the combustion of coal for energy is a main contributor to global warming and releases hundreds of toxins into the air that jeopardize public health. Uranium is RADIOACTIVE and there are limited quantities of it.

Jesus, do you consider REALITY at all when you come up with this crap? Are the concepts of practicality and environmental destruction completely foreign to you?


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

Suburbanist said:


> I'm not saying what is best or not. US Census Bureau is revealing data about what Americans actually do in the real world, not the fantasy land in which Northeastern US has returned to be a separate entity where pipe dreams of no-car-land realize.


When where we every a separate Entity? Its more what the people want and as the baby boomers Generation gets old , there having an increasingly hard time getting around. Hench why Transit enhancements and expansions are being pushed more and more these days. Transit Developments tend to sell out faster then non Transit developments , so towns are starting change from an Auto-based town to a Transit based town. You can see that happening all over the US... I'm not saying we want a No-car land I said and others have said that there needs to be a balance which there isn't. Which has caused traffic to become nightmare in the growing areas....


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## ed110220 (Nov 12, 2008)

I don't think we're talking of the USA specifically, but of urban freeways in general. Obviously not every proposed or possible urban freeway would be desireable, what I am against is the misguided orthodoxy that all urban freeways are bad.

Here's a case in point. In 1962 Settlers Way was cut through the inner Cape Town suburb of Observatory and in 1967 the freeway was completed to the city centre, cutting through Woodstock. That road is of immense benefit to commuters accessing the city.

The orthodox view is that Woodstock and Observatory should have decayed. In fact the opposite has happened.

No decay overlooking Settlers Way

Woodstock looking fine next to Eastern Boulevard

New international conference centre from elevated freeway


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

Nima-Farid said:


> It is not my dream to cover for example historical Manhattan buildings with wide areas filled with cars and why shouold I care about other cities? Don't they have their own residents? I saw articles about some cities and I found this disscusion intresting.


Except in your thread title, your first post, and your signature, your *supporting* the construction of canceled highways, not just opening the topic to a "should they or shouldn't they" discussion. Claiming to be neutral now is not credible.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

hoosier said:


> And constructing freeways through these "rotten areas" would have made them permanently so. Instead, Manhattan has seen a resurgence in development and revitalization that would have been impossible had your concrete ribbons of destruction been built.
> 
> Thank God you have no power.


+1!

Hence my "um, you're proving my point," when Suburbanist brought up the state of Manhattan in the 70s versus now. Which, of course, he ignored.

:cheers:


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

ed110220 said:


> Well this is the fashionable view, but I don't believe it has much basis in reality. I believe it had two flaws: one, it wildly overstated the extent of the destruction, making out huge areas would have to be demolished and frightening people with ridiculous ideas that priceless historical districts were going to be bulldozed. Two, it grossly overstated the negative aspects of freeway construction (you'd be forgiven for thinking they were to be built out of pure plutonium, emitting radiation that would kill everything in sight) and completely ignoring their positive aspects.


Another one who doesn't know New York.
Suburbanist was lamenting the fact that the Lower Manhattan and Mid-Manhattan expressways weren't built in the 70s, when it would have been easy, because the areas were blighted. Does that exaggerate the extent of the blight? Perhaps.
But what is utterly indisputable is that the hundreds of millions of dollars of development that have taken place directly in what would have been the path of the expressways could not have (because the expressways would have been there, just in case that's not clear). And the fact that it has taken place in spite of the lack of expressways....


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

It is possible to build skyscrapers on top of expressways, I believe the original plans for the Mid-Manhattan Expressway called for skyscrapers and buildings on top of it. They also did this at the Trans-Manhattan Expressway (I-95).


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

I'm thinking in particular of what SoHo and TriBeCa (yes, they're spelled that way) are like - the areas between Greenwich Village and downtown Manhattan that the Lower Manhattan Expressway would have run through. What's there now happened naturally, through market forces - i.e. people perceiving the areas as desirable and hip, and - while we can't know, of course - I think it's very unlikely that that would have happened with the expressway cutting a dent through the fabric of the city. Put more precisely, I think it's unlikely, with the expressway there, that those areas would have developed enough of a desirability factor for commercial developers to be interested in building on top of the freeway.

I believe what's on top of I-95 is public housing. Which is a completely different sort of thing (because the government can make it happen - or could, 50 years ago, pre-Reagan and pre-Tea Party - market forces or no). That's also a very different neighborhood. It's close to ten miles from midtown Manhattan and, um, not at the socioeconomic level we're talking about downtown.

And I still haven't had anyone remind me where the Spui in Amsterdam is.... (Yes, I could look it up myself.)


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

^^ I wonder why New yorkers oppose any kind of developement because it will "ruin bussinesses". The Interstate system ruined the bussinesses of small towns bypassed by the system. Building a designated busway in the streets will damage the bussinesses. So what?? The bussinesses will recover after a while.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

Sigh.

I'm not talking about the individual businesses and whether they recover from an individual project a year after it's built, but about the way a whole neighborhood feels, and the way it evolves over time.

(And I'm not a New Yorker.)

The area that the Lower Manhattan Expressway would have run through has developed in a very different and far more lucrative way (restaurants, nightclubs, art galleries, shopping... and housing for the sort of people who like to and can afford to live near that stuff) than it most likely would have with a freeway running through it.

That said, do businesses that have to close for several months, or have reduced customer traffic for several months, while the street is torn up for a busway, always recover? I'm not convinced of that.


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

The Areas where the Freeways run are mostly poor and dangerous areas , but before the Freeways were built these areas were the place to live and very safe. Hopefully over the next few decades as this region grows we can go back to Pre-Freeway destruction in the form of covering the Cut Freeways with Parks and demolishing the stubs which would re-connect separated neighborhoods and heal the city. Developers these days hate developing near Freeways hench why those areas stay bad for a long time , they love transit though or wide boulevards.... The Suburban office parks in this region are dying because companies want to be closer to the Airport or Transit which Usually means a Urban area. Employees also tend to like the various eateries in the Urban areas and parks....making working easier....


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

^^ I know that in some cases the bussinesses will not recover like the Interstate highway example but these bussinesses and the people will get used to the system.

Lower Manhattan Exp. in my opinion is not the main case because the distances are shorter in the south and a shoreline Parkway can be cinstructed instead. I didn't mean only you. I was also talking to Nexis. (His post#201)


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

Nima-Farid said:


> *^^ I know that in some cases the bussinesses will not recover like the Interstate highway example but these bussinesses and the people will get used to the system.*
> 
> Lower Manhattan Exp. in my opinion is not the main case because the distances are shorter in the south and a shoreline Parkway can be cinstructed instead. I didn't mean only you. I was also talking to Nexis. (His post#201)


We can't afford anymore decades that it takes to fully recover....this country can't handle any change that will disrupt things for more then 2 years....


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

It will not take that long to get used to it. 2-3 years at most. for example can you imagine LA without freeways?


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

Nima-Farid said:


> It will not take that long to get used to it. 2-3 years at most. for example can you imagine LA without freeways?


Yes , I can...2-3 years is enough to close a business. Which many do , or struggle to survive.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

But the traffic caused by destructing all these freeways will be disasterous. Imagine a night that you can't sleep because of the roaring caused by passing cas and trucks.


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

Nima-Farid said:


> But the traffic caused by destructing all these freeways will be disasterous. Imagine a night that you can't sleep because of the roaring caused by passing cas and trucks.


Well who said all the Freeways had to , only a few....ie in the Downtown core. Downtowns should be Freeway-Less or Freeways should be underground not obstructing or destroying anything...


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

^^ I know buthaving to less freeway in downtown core is not that good. In the city I live (Shiraz, 1,500,000 pop.) the traffic is disastrous. Although we have a good public transport system (ie. Lots of bus routes with 15 min freq., busways, metro u/c) it may take 1 hour to travel 2-3 km in city center. every street is filled with cars, even small residental lanes.


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## I-275westcoastfl (Feb 15, 2005)

ChrisZwolle said:


> It is possible to build skyscrapers on top of expressways, I believe the original plans for the Mid-Manhattan Expressway called for skyscrapers and buildings on top of it. They also did this at the Trans-Manhattan Expressway (I-95).


Probably won't happen post 9/11, the possibilities of a truck bomb would scare most people away from such a thing. It would be an ideal thing to do though.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

You know this fear won't last forever especially after arab spring. people want freedom and democrocy (turkish style rather than western style). They suffered from violence enough. I think after 15 years everyone will forget such a fear and then this thing can be built!


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Nexis said:


> The Areas where the Freeways run are mostly poor and dangerous areas , but before the Freeways were built these areas were the place to live and very safe.


The areas where most freeways were built were, mostly, areas that were already dilapidated, reservoirs of poverty or already on the process of decay. They did many a neighborhood a favor by accelerating its clearance because it was hopeless to recover it. Sometimes the whole social system built-up around a neighborhood is wracked, and disbanding the neighborhood with nw infrastructure serving other areas of the city is an awesome win-win way to achieve that.



I-275westcoastfl said:


> Probably won't happen post 9/11, the possibilities of a truck bomb would scare most people away from such a thing. It would be an ideal thing to do though.


Truck bombing near the ground is more dangerous.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

USA is not Pakistan, Iraq of Afghanistan that truck bombing is considered important. How many type of these bombings happened in the US?


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

Suburbanist said:


> The areas where most freeways were built were, mostly, areas that were already dilapidated, reservoirs of poverty or already on the process of decay. They did many a neighborhood a favor by accelerating its clearance because it was hopeless to recover it. Sometimes the whole social system built-up around a neighborhood is wracked, and disbanding the neighborhood with nw infrastructure serving other areas of the city is an awesome win-win way to achieve that.
> 
> 
> 
> Truck bombing near the ground is more dangerous.


No they weren't , they were some of the nicest areas of each city or middle class.  After the Highway was built it became poor , they didn't do any favors.... You honestly need to study US Urban history more , because you know nothing about it...


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

Nima-Farid said:


> USA is not Pakistan, Iraq of Afghanistan that truck bombing is considered important. How many type of these bombings happened in the US?


A Few dozen from 1960-1995....enough to cause Bollards to be put up at every Major Govt Building , Train station and Popular meeting place.


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

ChrisZwolle said:


> It is possible to build skyscrapers on top of expressways, I believe the original plans for the Mid-Manhattan Expressway called for skyscrapers and buildings on top of it. They also did this at the Trans-Manhattan Expressway (I-95).


There not really skyscrapers, but skanky apartment blocks that are undesirable...


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

poshbakerloo said:


> There not really skyscrapers, but skanky apartment blocks that are undesirable...


I know, but it doesn't really matter what type of buildings there are, fact is there can be large towers on top of expressways. They could even cover the rest up too, so you won't see, hear or smell the expressway. Which means valuable real-estate development + good accessibility. There are many autoroutes in Paris where they've built covers over the motorways. An urban motorway can be much more than just a noisy concrete river.


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

Having a motorway in a tunnel also means that future expansion is pretty impossible...
...and inner city motorways always get too busy


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

Yep, but existing motorways in denser urban areas are almost impossible to widen anyway. Just look at Paris, or Japanese expressways. The Japanese simply build another expressway parallel to it. Koreans do that too.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

Nima-Farid said:


> USA is not Pakistan, Iraq of Afghanistan that truck bombing is considered important. How many type of these bombings happened in the US?


Oklahoma City (April 19, 1995) killed something like 170 people.
And the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 was a truck in the parking garage. Didn't do much damage though.

At the risk of having people scream "envirowhacko!" at me - but it's just a question - how's the air in an apartment building that sits directly above a highway?


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

Penn's Woods said:


> At the risk of having people scream "envirowhacko!" at me - but it's just a question - how's the air in an apartment building that sits directly above a highway?


That depends how high that window is situated. If it is on the lower floors, just over the roadway, the air quality will not be very good, that's why you need to cover somewhat more than the building alone, or offices with internal air circulation so no windows can be opened (pretty common in tall towers anyway). There are a bunch of office buildings on top of motorways in Amsterdam and The Hague.


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## Apoc89 (Mar 4, 2010)

I don't know about skyscrapers or apartments, but the Galleria mall in Hatfield just north of London is built right on top of the A1(M) motorway. So even in the fairly conservative (development-wise) UK, such an idea isn't out of the question.


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## mgk920 (Apr 21, 2007)

Suburbanist said:


> The areas where most freeways were built were, mostly, areas that were already dilapidated, reservoirs of poverty or already on the process of decay. They did many a neighborhood a favor by accelerating its clearance because it was hopeless to recover it. Sometimes the whole social system built-up around a neighborhood is wracked, and disbanding the neighborhood with nw infrastructure serving other areas of the city is an awesome win-win way to achieve that.


One place in the USA is now seeing just this scenario. In Sheverport, LA, I-49 is being extended northward from I-20 (an elaborate intechange, too!) to Kansas City and the first section in Shreveport was one of those inner-city places that NIMBYed that freeway to death in the 1960s and 1970s. A public housing 'commieblock-light' project was even built in the ROW. Fast-forward to now, the public housing failed and was removed, the neighborhood continued its decline and those neighbors who are left now WANT the freeway to be built. It is now waiting its turn for funding and the rest of I-49 farther north is in various stages of construction.

Mike


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## I-275westcoastfl (Feb 15, 2005)

Nexis said:


> No they weren't , they were some of the nicest areas of each city or middle class. After the Highway was built it became poor , they didn't do any favors.... You honestly need to study US Urban history more , because you know nothing about it...


What?? Its a FACT that most urban freeways were built in poorer parts of town and it makes perfect sense why. Cheaper buildings and land means a cheaper highway, by the time Interstates began construction it was after the white flight so inner cities were cheap and it was easier to move poor people than people with money and education. Name me some cities where an Interstate was built through a "nice" area? Parkways are different story because the highway is tucked away in a heavily wooded area with what was low density.


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## ed110220 (Nov 12, 2008)

Nexis said:


> No they weren't , they were some of the nicest areas of each city or middle class. After the Highway was built it became poor , they didn't do any favors.... You honestly need to study US Urban history more , because you know nothing about it...


Is there any concrete evidence that the freeway building was the main cause of the decline? Plenty of cities all over the world have suffered decay in the inner city as economic activity and the middle classes have left for the suburbs. Ie I'm unconvinced the decay wouldn't have happened anyway and the freeway link is spurious. Many of those cities have no significant urban freeways (I'm thinking of British cities for example) but have extensive impoverished inner cities.


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

I-275westcoastfl said:


> What?? Its a FACT that most urban freeways were built in poorer parts of town and it makes perfect sense why. Cheaper buildings and land means a cheaper highway, by the time Interstates began construction it was after the white flight so inner cities were cheap and it was easier to move poor people than people with money and education. Name me some cities where an Interstate was built through a "nice" area? Parkways are different story because the highway is tucked away in a heavily wooded area with what was low density.


White Flight didn't hit these areas intill after the Freeways were built , there were plans for a massive network in NJ which would have cut through the older towns but those residents saw the Urban Damage and managed to stop and kill those projects. Its different in the Northeast then the rest of the country where they didn't care for destroying buildings....the Damage Urban Freeways have caused in this region is ridiculous...

I-78 through Newark , was a nice area intill the Freeway was built , then it declined.

I-280 through Newark , was also a nice part of the city intill the Freeway was built. Both Freeways were built in a cut style method thus dividing up those areas and bringing down the wealth and people started leaving.

I-80 through Paterson , cut off the Downtown and southern side of the city which were decent intill the Freeway was built never have recovered neither has Paterson which saw 2 busy Railways destoried by I-80

I-195 / 95 in Providence it caused blight and a slow in the Downtown growth , 195 has been moved but 95 still is a major blight. And the City Declined after the 2 freeways were put in , now that 195 has been moved the city is starting to rebound

Parkways were built through the nice areas and Freeways were built in nice areas which are now bad areas....


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

At most, freeways were *enablers* rather than *cause* of White flight and decay of central areas.

There were a lot of factors associated with that: an economy that shifted towards more and more offices instead of 5-digit employment massive factories, double-income households, the rise of homeownership as something inherently desirable (and thus the demise of renter) etc.


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## italystf (Aug 2, 2011)

The only motorways that should be build in urban areas are the underground ones. They have long urban tunnels in Boston, Rome, Dublin and Stockholm and probably in other large cities in the developed world. Build elevated highways destroy the city. In Italy they did that in Rome and Genoa and now there are plans to tear down them and build tunnels. There is also a plan for a 15 km long tunnel below Milan with six underground interchanges, but I don't think they would ever realize it.


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## hofburg (Jun 27, 2009)

too bad nobody is from Genova. it has so great infrastructure.


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## ed110220 (Nov 12, 2008)

Suburbanist said:


> At most, freeways were *enablers* rather than *cause* of White flight and decay of central areas.
> 
> There were a lot of factors associated with that: an economy that shifted towards more and more offices instead of 5-digit employment massive factories, double-income households, the rise of homeownership as something inherently desirable (and thus the demise of renter) etc.


Indeed, and I believe this is a perfectly natural process, unlike the political/ideological line that sees it as an inherently bad thing and sees the inner cities as virtuous and to be promoted and the suburbs as evil and to be discouraged.


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

ed110220 said:


> Indeed, and I believe this is a perfectly natural process, unlike the political/ideological line that sees it as an inherently bad thing and sees the inner cities as virtuous and to be promoted and the suburbs as evil and to be discouraged.


Actually the Cities hate the Suburbs because they often get neglected by the state when it comes to funding , or the Suburbs hate the cities because they think too much funding goes to them. The Suburbs in the Northeast for the most part are old , so the Flight in this region wasn't as bad as say the south. We have had suburbs since the 1870s , Railroad Suburbs are some of the oldest suburbs in the US. There also the most popular suburbs today unlike there Auto Cousins.... Hench why only the Auto-suburbs get promoted as bad which they are , congested , have more crime and lower quality of life then there Railroad suburban cousins. Railroad Suburbs later spawned Parkway suburbs in the 1920s......which then spawned Interstate suburbs in the 1950s/60s. Parkway suburbs filled in the areas where the Railroad suburbs weren't established. Sadly alot of these suburbs were destoried when the Interstates were built , which is a shame because they were nice burbs. The Cities aren't promoted there bashed by just about everyone in the burbs.....but the City folk rarely bash the burbs..... I have to wonder where the Europeans read up on some of there US history?


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## kubam4a1 (Oct 28, 2009)

And I say NO for the tunnel-mania that is spreading around cities. Look, even such transit- and bicycle- oriented city as Amsterdam has its orbital motorway not rural and not in tunnel (A10) , and *nobody* says it is not livable city. The same for Copenhagen. Tunnels are simply too expensive to dig them everywhere.

What I'm saying is not that we should never build tunnels, but we should not be going towards them at all cost, like in Stockholm.

If there is a neccesity to build a motorway *inside* an area like what is inside A10 in Amsterdam or A406 in London or Stockholm's ring that E4 is part of it , I could change mind a little bit.

And I'm not talking of the NY for example, don't know what is it like in US cities, but total prohibition of urban motorways (including those that are bypassing historical centres, like those I mentioned above) is an extensive overkill that affects the traffic situation adversely.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

^^ Good explanation. We don't need to go though city centres we just need to bypass them in a very closed area


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

Nima-Farid said:


> ^^ Good explanation. We don't need to go though city centres we just need to bypass them in a very closed area


Having an urban motorway running around the immediate city centre would mean that it would be cut off from everywhere else, unless you drive. Oh, so why not make it elevated so people can walk under it? Everyone knows what happens under an elevated motorway in a city...

It also stops the expansion of the city centre. Birmingham (UK) has just removed part of it inner ring road due to it cutting off the city centre and so far has been better off without...

Congestion has also reduced in many areas around where it used to be...

Before...









After...


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

How about this?









People are very selective when it comes to "barriers".


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

^^What and where is that?


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

Okay, someone posted, some time back on this thread, a suggestion about building a freeway along the Spui in Amsterdam.

This Spui: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=52.369023,4.889731&spn=0.003655,0.00825&t=m&z=17&vpsrc=6 ?

Really?

My one time in Amsterdam, I stayed in a hotel on the Singel.


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## ed110220 (Nov 12, 2008)

ChrisZwolle said:


> How about this?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Indeed - that railway, and those like it in South London are every bit as ugly (I would say more so) than the worst elevated roads, and I speak from having seen them in the flesh - decayed-looking, covered in graffiti etc.

Yet the people who complain of freeways being barriers never, ever mention these railways.

I think these people just recycle clichés about freeways - they are barriers, they cause urban decay etc without actually thinking logically. For example, you will often hear people in Cape Town complain that the elevated freeway pictured below cuts off the city from the sea. Which is technically true, but totally irrelevant as the "sea" in question is an industrial container port and not the English-style seaside promenade that used to exist until the late 1930s. They could easily see this with their own eyes as they drive along the freeway, but the stupid cliché is so ingrained that it overrides their thinking.


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

ChrisZwolle said:


> How about this?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Railways are a lot older. You will find that when that route was first built it wouldn't have been built up around it. Urban freeways need loads to be demolished! Also a railway that size has a much much much high capacity than any 10 lane motorway!


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## I-275westcoastfl (Feb 15, 2005)

I think elevated roadways are fine if done properly and planned properly as well. First off I think people have the 1960's image of elevated roadways. Nowadays they can build them to look nice and modern and even with some art on them. I think elevated roadways should be further away from residential areas so run them by commercial buildings or industrial areas. If they build a completely elevated road they can build parking or light rail underneath which in my opinion isn't a bad idea. At night keep them well lit and enforced and crime wouldn't be a big issue either. New ideas and innovations can make elevated roads the best thing for city centers, especially newer ones. Chris posted a good example, I would rather have a nice modern and clean elevated roadway hiding rail or parking underneath than something like that. The cutting off thing is not true for completely elevated roads, it is true for roads that are elevated by raised earth and you can't pass underneath except at a few select points. A car is nearly always a quick way to travel and can bring more life into downtown especially for cities like North America, if it is done right.


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

ChrisZwolle said:


> How about this?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Railways of that size are rare , and usually are old like 1890s.... They also have 3 or 4x the Capacity of Highways of the same size.


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

poshbakerloo said:


> Also a railway that size has a much much much high capacity than any 10 lane motorway!


But railway capacity is not as efficiently used as with motorways. The peak - low difference is much greater during the day than urban motorways, which still operate at 80 - 90% at 1 pm. A 10-lane motorway transports 264,000 vehicles, or about 350,000 persons per day. Not many railways achieve that. Railways also produce much more noise than motorways.


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

Penn's Woods said:


> Okay, someone posted, some time back on this thread, a suggestion about building a freeway along the Spui in Amsterdam. This Spui: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=52.369023,4.889731&spn=0.003655,0.00825&t=m&z=17&vpsrc=6 ?


That's the one Spui that we have. Understand why I called the idea ridiculous?


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

-Pino- said:


> That's the one Spui that we have. Understand why I called the idea ridiculous?


With dozens of channels, sparing a few for being built over wouldn't be a problem. They don't need even to close or cover it, they could build pillars in the middle of the channel and use single-point subsequent balanced elevate freeway design!

I wanted to extend A2 from its terminus right into the Damrak, with a tunnel near the Spui confluence itself (no intention on demolishing the University buildings around there).

Then, they should have built a dual road+subway tunnel that would lead this expressway into the Central Station area, where it would be connected to a major West-East freeway to be built there. :cheers:


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

That would be no problem - if Amsterdam was a Japanese city. However, it is not. Amsterdam would better optimize traffic signals and downgrade bus priorities. Much efficiency potential is wasted due to high bus priorities at traffic signals.


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

ChrisZwolle said:


> But railway capacity is not as efficiently used as with motorways. The peak - low difference is much greater during the day than urban motorways, which still operate at 80 - 90% at 1 pm. A 10-lane motorway transports 264,000 vehicles, or about 350,000 persons per day. Not many railways achieve that. Railways also produce much more noise than motorways.


I don't think that's true , and your wrong about the Noise. Highway Noise is constant and 24/7 , Railway Noise is a few times per hour and doesn't last more then 10 seconds unless you mean Freight which rarely uses the lines that go through the Urban areas. Railway capacity is used just as Efficient as Motorway capacity , I would argue Railways are better then Motorways in that dept. Each train can hold up to 1,000 people , and Capacity can be added easily unlike Roads.


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

ChrisZwolle said:


> Railways also produce much more noise than motorways.


That couldn't be further from the truth! A railway, even a busy one makes some noise maybe 6 times an hour for an average line and the sound lasts for about 4 seconds depending on the speed. Motorways make a constant sound from 1000s of cars zooming by...


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

Nexis said:


> Each train can hold up to 1,000 people , and Capacity can be added easily unlike Roads.


Exactly right! And thats 1000 cars off the road! Most people commute on their own, rush hour traffic is mostly single people in their own cars...


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## hoosier (Apr 11, 2007)

The air next to railways is not dirtied by exhaust, there is little noise, and property values are not depressed.

Other than that, a rail line cutting through a city is no different than a freeway.hno:


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## hoosier (Apr 11, 2007)

Nima-Farid said:


> ^^ I wonder why New yorkers oppose any kind of developement because it will "ruin bussinesses". The Interstate system ruined the bussinesses of small towns bypassed by the system. Building a designated busway in the streets will damage the bussinesses. So what?? The bussinesses will recover after a while.


What the hell are you talking about? There are HUNDREDS of multi-story buildings under construction in New York City on any given day.

There are several large scale infrastructure projects under construction including two subway lines and the Long Island Railroad East Side Access project to Grand Central Station.


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## hoosier (Apr 11, 2007)

ed110220 said:


> Is there any concrete evidence that the freeway building was the main cause of the decline? Plenty of cities all over the world have suffered decay in the inner city as economic activity and the middle classes have left for the suburbs. Ie I'm unconvinced the decay wouldn't have happened anyway and the freeway link is spurious. Many of those cities have no significant urban freeways (I'm thinking of British cities for example) but have extensive impoverished inner cities.


Yes, there is plenty of evidence of you cared to pay attention at all.

By and large freeways in the U.S. were intentionally built through minority neighborhoods, many of which were thriving and vibrant but turned into desolate wastelands afterwards. Look at some friggin' before and after pictures.


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## Illithid Dude (May 17, 2011)

All I can say, is I am thrilled that no more freeways were built in Los Angeles. They effectively separate the city, and they bring nothing but blight and traffic. If more freeways were built, we could have lost some of the greatest neighborhoods in the city. It's interesting, because now L.A. is almost unanimously supporting, not only mass transit, but also the stoppage of current freeway proposals. It's telling that the greatest cities in the world are the ones that have less freeways.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

^^ Not everytime. Tokyo, Seoul, Tehran,Shanghai, Hongkong, Madrid and much more oppose the statement.


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## Illithid Dude (May 17, 2011)

Nima-Farid said:


> ^^ Not everytime. Tokyo, Seoul, Tehran,Shanghai, Hongkong, Madrid and much more oppose the statement.


Most of those freeways avoid the city centering, serving to only funnel people to the city and out. And Tehran as one of the greatest cities in the world? Okay...


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

Isn't it? Come on!! It is the biggest city in middle east after Cairo and before Istanbul!


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

Nexis said:


> your wrong about the Noise. .





poshbakerloo said:


> That couldn't be further from the truth!


Noise impact assessments are my living. Railway noise is significantly higher than motorway noise. Of course there are variables, but a busy railway will produce up to 80 - 85 dB at a distance of 50 meters. Motorway noise usually do not exceed 70 - 75 dB. Furthermore, motorway noise can be more effectively reduced, mainly because source reductions, like silent pavement are much more effective than rail source reductions, where about the only effective measures are driving 30 km/h or rail dampers. However, the effect of rail damper is no more than 3 dB, while porous asphalt can reduce up to 6 dB. Lowering speed limits from 130 to 100 also scrapes off another 1 - 1.5 dB. 



poshbakerloo said:


> Exactly right! And thats 1000 cars off the road! Most people commute on their own, rush hour traffic is mostly single people in their own cars...


These statements are nonsense. First, the assumption that each train traveler means one less car on the road is absolute rubbish. A large proportion of public transport travelers do not have the option to make the same journey by car. Most students cannot afford a car, for instance. Furthermore, a trip of 3 or 4 people by train would have otherwise not necessarily been done by 3 or 4 individual cars (families, groups, etc). 

Unfortunately, such things are often quoted to overstate the impact of transit in reducing road traffic.

Second, the average motor vehicle has an occupation rate of 1.2 persons, about 1.3 in urban areas due to somewhat more carpooling. With an average of 4 seats, that is an occupancy rate of 30%, which is similar to a railway network.


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

hoosier said:


> By and large freeways in the U.S. were intentionally built through minority neighborhoods, many of which were thriving and vibrant but turned into desolate wastelands afterwards.


minority, thriving and vibrant is realtor talk for low-income immigrant neighborhoods with higher than average crime. Typically the neighborhoods where it costs the least to build a new road through. These are just economical arguments, not racial, nobody wants to spend $ 20 million per mile when it can be done for $ 5 million. And there are many neighborhoods far from the freeway impact zones in the United States which are also desolate wastelands. Although freeways may have contributed somewhat more, it is by far not the only factor.

And, as I said before, we allow it to become that. Governments make little effort in regenerating such areas. Mostly because the U.S. problems are on a too large a scale, not only near freeways, but almost entire city proper areas, look at Detroit or Philadelphia or Washington or Saint Louis. Now you'll see some gentrification on the most valuable potential spots that should've been done decades ago.


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

ChrisZwolle said:


> Noise impact assessments are my living. Railway noise is significantly higher than motorway noise. Of course there are variables, but a busy railway will produce up to 80 - 85 dB at a distance of 50 meters. Motorway noise usually do not exceed 70 - 75 dB. Furthermore, motorway noise can be more effectively reduced, mainly because source reductions, like silent pavement are much more effective than rail source reductions, where about the only effective measures are driving 30 km/h or rail dampers. However, the effect of rail damper is no more than 3 dB, while porous asphalt can reduce up to 6 dB. Lowering speed limits from 130 to 100 also scrapes off another 1 - 1.5 dB.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


The sound from a busy motorway is constant. Even if they noise from car is a lot less than from one train. You could have 3+ car passing at once. And then there is a constant stream of them not a few every hour like with trains...


Also If you look at any rush hour traffic jam, pretty much every car only has one person in, many except mums driving their children to school...Who Drives into central Manchester from Cheshire? Who does that when there are like 6 rail lines all going there...its these people that want the urban motorways, and spend most of the time stuck in traffic moaning when a commuter train speeds past at 80mph full of people...


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

poshbakerloo said:


> The sound from a busy motorway is constant. Even if they noise from car is a lot less than from one train. You could have 3+ car passing at once. And then there is a constant stream of them not a few every hour like with trains...


That's true, but the peak noise emissions of trains are very high, whereas road traffic is fairly constant. Due to the high peaks, noise screens for instance along railways need to be much higher than along roads, which is hardly acceptable (nobody wants a 10 m tall Berlin Wall along railways). Road traffic noise can be brought to more acceptable levels of 50 - 60 dB by various measures such as a 80 - 100 km/h speed limit, 2 - 3 m tall noise barriers and silent pavement. Motorists pay enough taxes to pay for this. The U.S. ones are much worse, with concrete pavement and vehicles which are generally much louder than in Europe. Concrete alone can be as much as 10 dB more noisy than porous asphalt. (a 40 km/h speed reduction equals about 3 dB, to bring this into perspective).

The main problem in London is that the road issues are less visible. Congestion and delays along surface streets are harder to register and map than on motorways. London has many residential streets with more than 20 000 vehicles per day. The traffic is not less in London, but it's spread out over hundreds of main streets, most of which also have a residential function. There are traffic lights in London which handle more than 100 000 vehicles per day.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

-Pino- said:


> That's the one Spui that we have. Understand why I called the idea ridiculous?


I must say that during my few days in that neighborhood, I never once said to myself, "what this area needs is a freeway!"


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

hoosier said:


> The air next to railways is not dirtied by exhaust, there is little noise, and property values are not depressed.
> 
> Other than that, a rail line cutting through a city is no different than a freeway.hno:


Not sure you're right about the property-values factor: in New York, the parts of the Upper East Side east of Third Avenue certainly benefited when the Third Avenue El was torn down.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

ChrisZwolle said:


> minority, thriving and vibrant is realtor talk for low-income immigrant neighborhoods with higher than average crime. Typically the neighborhoods where it costs the least to build a new road through. These are just economical arguments, not racial, nobody wants to spend $ 20 million per mile when it can be done for $ 5 million. And there are many neighborhoods far from the freeway impact zones in the United States which are also desolate wastelands. Although freeways may have contributed somewhat more, it is by far not the only factor.
> 
> And, as I said before, we allow it to become that. Governments make little effort in regenerating such areas. Mostly because the U.S. problems are on a too large a scale, not only near freeways, but almost entire city proper areas, look at Detroit or Philadelphia or Washington or Saint Louis. Now you'll see some gentrification on the most valuable potential spots that should've been done decades ago.


Hey! Philadelphia and Washington are not as bad as people say they are. "Entire city proper areas" is certainly an exaggeration in both cases.


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

Penn's Woods said:


> Hey! Philadelphia and Washington are not as bad as people say they are. "Entire city proper areas" is certainly an exaggeration in both cases.


Both city propers lost a considerable amount of their population, even with all the planned freeways being canceled. Philadelphia lost half a million people and Washington 200,000, both about 25%. Like I said, there are more factors to urban decline and population decrease in central city areas than just freeways. Crime was rampant in the 1990's.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Penn's Woods said:


> I must say that during my few days in that neighborhood, I never once said to myself, "what this area needs is a freeway!"


Tourists arriving by air or long-distance trains have different transportation needs than people living or travelling to/from the region. And that is not only the case from Amsterdam.

I live in Southern Netherlands, occasionally I drive with friends to Amsterdam, and I DO feel the impact that lack of urban expressway spurs have. I live less than a 10-min drive (4 and 8 respectively) from both freeways that pass through my city. Then I can complete the fast-moving freeway sector, absent jams, the trip to A2 terminus in Amsterdam in about 63-71 minutes (108km). Then, the final 3,5 km to Museumplein area where I usually park takes me another 11-18 minutes off-peak time. If you get stuck behind a bus, too bad: it's impossible to beat the hideous signal priority.

In any case: the single, most dangerous issue with Amsterdam traffic are foreigners/tourists, unused to ride bikes according to traffic laws, that drive their bikes with completely disrespect for bike lanes, bike traffic lights, no-bicycle and bicycle-only-unmounted zones. Last weekend a friend of mine cracked his arm and bruised his wrist when he was hit by a foreign student that ignored a bike traffic light and hit 3 people on a pedestrian crossings. Locals behave badly sometimes, but they are more used to the traffic laws governing bike traffic, while many tourists see them as toys in a park, not as vehicular traffic that must obey rules.

I never had such incidents, but that is only because I drive with extreme caution in areas where unruly tourists behave like they were in a resort, not in a city. I wish there were something like bike license without which one couldn't ride a bike in Netherlands.



poshbakerloo said:


> The sound from a busy motorway is constant. Even if they noise from car is a lot less than from one train. You could have 3+ car passing at once. And then there is a constant stream of them not a few every hour like with trains...


At the ranges concerned in these discussions (since we're not talking of extreme noises of a factory or airport runway), peak noise is more relevant than accumulated noise that could be measured as a accumulated density function.



> Also If you look at any rush hour traffic jam, pretty much every car only has one person in, many except mums driving their children to school...Who Drives into central Manchester from Cheshire? Who does that when there are like 6 rail lines all going there...its these people that want the urban motorways, and spend most of the time stuck in traffic moaning when a commuter train speeds past at 80mph full of people...


One basic big mistake one could do is to look at any point of observations for any mode of transport and draw conclusions like "what a waste, 10 cars, all with motorist only". Freeways are high-capacity corridors, bur if you were able to see the origins and destinations of people in, say, a 1500m longitudinal section of a motorway with all cars there, I doubt many of the cars found there would be coming and going to the same destinations within a 200m or 3min maximum added travel distance/time of one another.

Also, to reach that fast commuter train you need to travel much slowly from your house to the station, probably involving waiting time at your local bus stop and at the station, and then repeat the process on the other end. If you count the time since you closed your house's door to the time you are seated n a departing commuter train, for most European cities that trip (comprising walking, waiting and travelling) will rarely reach more than 10-14km/h average, if much.

There is little discussion that, comfort issues aside, a 4-track state-of-the-art railway can carry 4, 6 more passengers per hour per direction between points A and B than a 2x4-lane highway used by cars. However, people are rarely travelling from A and B, they have multiple origins and destinations, and that kills the train advantage between specific points.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

Edit: this is a response to Chris, post #271.

Well, obviously, you know Philadelphia and Washington better than I do.

The part of Washington west of Rock Creek Park - roughly a third of D.C.'s territory - never declined and has remained one of the wealthiest urban areas in the country. (And has no freeways....) Central Philadelphia is fortunate never to have been abandoned by its upper to upper-middle classes, and has been growing (in population and by other measures) recently; neighborhoods farther and farther out from Center City (as we call it) are reviving... And there are outlying neighborhoods (Chestnut Hill for example) that are de facto wealthy suburbs. The city as a whole actually gained population between the 2000 and 2010 censuses. As did many cities in the Northeast and Midwest that had been shrinking since 1950. In fact, it's starting to be safe to recognize a turnaround starting in the 1980s (Boston and New York grew during that decade and have continued growing since; more cities gained population during the 90s....).

I saw just the other day - I forget where - a statistic that Philadelphia has "the third-most-populous downtown" in the country. My question would be what they're defining as downtown. And in the late 90s, so it may no longer be true, I read that more people - not a larger percentage of people but actually more people - in Philadelphia walked to work than in any other city in the country. Because the neighborhoods where lawyers and professionals live tend to be within walking distance of their offices, so the type of person who in New York or Chicago would be using transit for their three-mile commute is walking a few blocks here.

And population decrease is not always an indication of decline. Many North Jersey suburbs have lost population since 1970, not because they're in decline but because the sort of house that 40 years ago was occupied by a parent and two or three kids is now occupied just by the aging parents. Houses are too expensive for young families to move in. Which is a problem but not the sort of problem that is normally associated with population decline. Likewise, a neighborhood that was a slum a century ago and is gentrified now has a smaller population now but their living conditions are better.


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

ChrisZwolle said:


> Both city propers lost a considerable amount of their population, even with all the planned freeways being canceled. Philadelphia lost half a million people and Washington 200,000, both about 25%. Like I said, there are more factors to urban decline and population decrease in central city areas than just freeways. Crime was rampant in the 1990's.


Actually all those areas that lost people are on the rebound and give them 2 decades and they will regain and them some. The Transit suburbs have exploded over the past decade , and some of the cities have rebounded. The Crime problem was rampant the 1980s , the clean up / Renewal was the 1990s. SEPA / Philly should see all of there Urban Areas regain there population by 2030 , and then some.


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

Suburbanist said:


> Tourists arriving by air or long-distance trains have different transportation needs than people living or travelling to/from the region. And that is not only the case from Amsterdam.


Well, I live in town and I think that there is no need at all for a freeway to the edges of the city centre, let alone straight through it. So that is two out of three groups of users.

That is not to say that people from out of town should not have proper access to the city centre. But I don't think Amsterdam is doing really badly as far as that's concerned with your 15 minute ride (my rides from the A10 to the Museumplein tend to be quicker, following "Centrum" from the A2 it not very helpful as far as this is concerned). Some European towns of comparable size do better, some do worse. The fact that Tilburg is doing better follows more or less directly from the fact that Tilburg is six times smaller than Amsterdam. Mind you, Gilze is doing even better than Tilburg, but that is not a reason to build more urban motorways in Tilburg.

I do think that the access to the Amsterdam city centre from the South and West could have been better. There is not one proper street between the A10 and the city centre; too many turns and traffic lights. And the routes are almost fully 1+1. From the North and East, the situation is much better, look at streets like Wibautstraat and Piet Heinkade. But as opposed to urban freeways, these routes do maintain a proper urban balance (in other words, they do not change the area into wasterland in the way a motorway would have done). So think of urban boulevards to the city centre instead of urban freeways.

For an urban freeway through the city centre, though, I cannot find the slightest piece of justification.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

-Pino- said:


> The fact that Tilburg is doing better follows more or less directly from the fact that Tilburg is six times smaller than Amsterdam. Mind you, Gilze is doing even better than Tilburg, but that is not a reason to build more urban motorways in Tilburg.


I didn't mean to compare Tilburg with Amsterdam, I was just adding up the total travel time. Tilburg is extremely underserved in terms of freeways: Breda, Eindhoven and 's-Hertogenbosch all got partial expressway ring roads, whereas we don't even have A261 to Waalwijk completed (and running through the city to reach A58).



> So think of urban boulevards to the city centre instead of urban freeways.


Urban boulevard can work well in medium-sized cities, but at least here in The Netherlands, they love to put stupid things in place like (mostly empty) bus priority, limit speed to 50 instead of 70-80, excessive number of pedestrian crossings that are not timed in long phases (meaning: if somebody push the button, they will stop the flow of cars because "OMG a pedestrian have to wait 3 minutes to cross a boulevard").



> For an urban freeway through the city centre, though, I cannot find the slightest piece of justification.


Not through the city center, around it. Creating a freeway belt (essentially encompassing a ring from the IJbrug to Plantage district to Joordan (the outer part) with many exists and nearby parking lots reasonably priced (not the scandalous € 38-51/day they charge) so then people can walk from them into the smaller canal streets and so.

An elevated freeway can actually be an addition to an otherwise dated place, bringing some touches of modernity to mix with the old. Looks at this example: Genova, Italy. It's an area close to the old port, full of 18th century buildings. In the 1950s, they cleared whole swaths (the city had many, didn't make any loss to tear down two or three hundreds of them) to make way for this wide boulevard + elevated freeway (see it here on Google). The result was awesome, the are is not in decay - on the contrary - and the freeway provide easy access through the area.

So if they demolished a whole swath of the Oud Zuid in Amsterdam for a freeway spur, it wouldn't make much a difference, for instance, as the city has so many old buildings anyway.


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## Rebasepoiss (Jan 6, 2007)

^^ The one in Genova is simply horrendous.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Rebasepoiss said:


> ^^ The one in Genova is simply horrendous.


IT's not horrendous, it has a higher than average clearance, and it provides much needed breathing space (once, there were claustrophobic streets no wider than 3m (I'm serious: check Google Street View around that link northward and you'll see how horrendous that area is) all the way to the docks.

A first clearance was made when they opened the railway in 19th century, then they cleared some much-needed space near the waterfront.

The views you get from driving there are a-ma-zing!


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## Illithid Dude (May 17, 2011)

Nima-Farid said:


> Isn't it? Come on!! It is the biggest city in middle east after Cairo and before Istanbul!


Just because a city is big does not mean the city is great.


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

The Sopraelevata of Genova may have been much needed in terms of traffic relief, but in urban terms it is indeed horrendous, unless you prefer asphalt and noise over cityscapes. But since you call the former "modernity" and the latter "the old", it seems that you do. And of course nobody can stop you on this point, but at least you should be aware that you are a <1% minority.

Back to the urban boulevards, I do see the point of capacity reduction through bus lanes, but that is not something you have on the Amsterdam roads that I mentioned. Pedestrian crossings? Maybe, but they don't prevent that access from the A10 to the Amsterdam city centre from the East is relatively quick, also when compared to other cities of comparable size. Completely removing pedestrians is even quicker of course, but contrary to Suburbanist's thinking, pedestrians are there and a balance needs to be struck. Suburbanist seems to have lost every sense of balance with wet dreams of towns made up out of cars, in which non-cars are only tolerated if they live by the rules of the cars.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

-Pino- said:


> The Sopraelevata of Genova may have been much needed in terms of traffic relief, but in urban terms it is indeed horrendous, unless you prefer asphalt and noise over cityscapes. But since you call the former "modernity" and the latter "the old", it seems that you do. And of course nobody can stop you on this point, but at least you should be aware that you are a <1% minority.


The question is that: Genova, as with most Italian cities, had too much old stuff built there. That is because Italy was relatively poor well into 20th Century, so modernization and clean-up that reached German, French or British cities arrived late in Italy. 

So it's not like they demolished everything in the city, but that the city had too much old stuff and taking a swath down was feasible. Look how well integrated is the Sopraelevata with the nearby buildings.



















How is this any more intrusive than an elevated railway? 











> Completely removing pedestrians is even quicker of course, but contrary to Suburbanist's thinking, pedestrians are there and a balance needs to be struck. Suburbanist seems to have lost every sense of balance with wet dreams of towns made up out of cars, in which non-cars are only tolerated if they live by the rules of the cars.


I'm not advocating that at all! I just think certain pedestrian crossings should be a bit more spaced (like over the Damrak) and, in the case of high-flow areas, pedestrian underpasses (instead of level crossings) should be built. Doesn't need to be something that is a wheelchair barrier: you can use ramps, and make a small bike-pedestrian (Separated by fences) tunnel - for instance, on the ways leading out of Centraal Station, between the Museumplein and the Concertgebouw etc.


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

Suburbanist said:


> Look how well integrated is the Sopraelevata with the nearby buildings.


A freeway as an extended type of balcony is not what I call well integrated. As much as that is a matter of taste, the fact that you are not even finding others with the same taste on an infrastructure forum means that you are sub-1% minority with your taste.

By the way, I don't think that Italy's "late development" has been the key reason why Genova has a route like the Sopraelevata. Despite its late boom, the country was early at developing modern infrastructure like motorways and fast train tracks. And particularly Mussolini never really bothered when it came to demolishing larger residential areas to make way for urban infrastructure. The situation in Genova is more due to the fact that Italian planners never really cared about the place, in combination with the fact that its location between sea and mountain makes it an impossible place to construct fast routes without severely affecting residential areas.


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## italystf (Aug 2, 2011)

Suburbanist said:


> An elevated freeway can actually be an addition to an otherwise dated place, bringing some touches of modernity to mix with the old. Looks at this example: Genova, Italy. It's an area close to the old port, full of 18th century buildings. In the 1950s, they cleared whole swaths (the city had many, didn't make any loss to tear down two or three hundreds of them) to make way for this wide boulevard + elevated freeway (see it here on Google). The result was awesome, the are is not in decay - on the contrary - and the freeway provide easy access through the area.


That expressway ruined the coastal landscape of the city, they would't build anything similar in those days. I know that is very useful but a new undersea tunnel with 3 or 4 lanes for direction would be more efficient than the present 2+2 freeway. And obviously more eco-friendly. Genova is an historical city, not a modern industrial city like Mestre where the elevated A57 isn't so destructive.


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## italystf (Aug 2, 2011)

-Pino- said:


> And particularly Mussolini never really bothered when it came to demolishing larger residential areas to make way for urban infrastructure.


You mean the boulevard "Via della Conciliazione" built in 1936 in Central Rome after demolishing a medieval neighborhood? This project wasn't as bad as the elevated expressways through Rome, Genoa and Neaples and the result is still aestethically pleasant. (don't think I'm apologizing fascism, it was an horrible period for Italy, I'm only speaking about urban planning).


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## Yuri S Andrade (Sep 29, 2008)

^^
I share Suburbanist's views over lots of things, but I can't believe he's serious here. This elevated expressay over Genoa is AWFUL, TERRIBLE. Really, what's better for you? Nice or Genoa waterfronts?

OK, you may support the "suburban way of life". I, for one, the first to condemn this hysteria against suburbs and cars. However, advocating the demolition of historical cores of European cities is over the top. You can't be serious.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Of course a tunnel could be built there, but in the 1960s that would have cost a hell of money, and it still would today! Tunnels are usually better options to open-air structures for noise containment as well.

I'm not saying an elevated expressway in Genova is better than a tunnel, just stating that it is better than no structure at all, and by that I mean that whole area being build-up until the waterfront line, with no traffic artery.

One should also notice the port isn't even the main area of Genova. Its most representative buildings are uphill a bit, and are being properly taken care of. The buildings destroyed to make way for the expressway were mainly from mid-to-late 19th century, after a first wave of demolitions had followed the arrival of the railway. Just a handful of buildings originally built before 1800 were cleared for the Sopraelevata. In other way: considering the huge architecture heritage of Genova, the losses were minimal for the benefit new transportation brought to the city.


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

One point to add in respect of overpasses and underpasses for non-motorists, you'd need to look at the Bijlmer area of Amsterdam. It's 1960 urban thinking, in which planners thought that they had created a perfect neighbourhood for both motorists and non-motorists. So they created a neighbourhood in which motorists and non-motorists would never be conflicted, thanks to completely different routes.

But what happened in practice in the area is that everybody feels unsafe. Motorists have the idea that they drive through an urban wasteland in which they, if needs be, can never ask anybody for directions. Non-motorists of course freak out at the overpasses and underpasses, which are tight places that don't permit you to go anywhere if you run across someone after you. But even in other areas, non-motorists feel unsafe, as they are not sharing the road with motorists that would see a robbery that might occur.

That's cities à la Suburbanist ...


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

The Bijlmer issues were exacerbated by the fact that these all quickly became housing of the lowest income group, which usually comes with high crime. I wouldn't attribute the Bijlmer problems completely on the fact that some (one actually) main road is grade-separated. Bijlmer would've been a rundown area without the S112 as well.


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

^^ Probably. You can even see it in my neighbourhood, which was built around 1992 and therefore a nice place for the City of Amsterdam to relocate some folk that had lost their houses due to the 1992 El Al crash. Let's say that they have not made the area much nicer ...

Anyway, notwithstanding the rundown folk that lives in the Bijlmer, I think that you can take it for a fact that overpasses and underpasses create a sense of insecurity among non-motorists. And the _unheimisch_ feeling that motorists associate with driving through a neighbourhood where you don't see any non-motorist out there sounds very familiar too.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

I am in Toronto now and I think it definately needs some freeways specially some from north to downtown and some parallel to 401. I also think they need to make 407 free or at least cheaper and they should continue the subway line up north to Richmond hill.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

Having expressway in the middle of the city doesn't look that bad:


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

Nima-Farid said:


> Having expressway in the middle of the city doesn't look that bad:


The lights look pretty cool, and I like the camera effect with the cars...
But they only look good here as its a pretty photo, not quite the reality of inner city motorways which tend to be big grey, noisy, and very undesirable...


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

When I was in the city one month ago it wasn't that bad. The city would be dead without them. (Although public transportation is heavily used and people are packed in the busses and metros.) And it doesn't ruin old districts of the city because it is not near the core downtown. The neighborhoods are not devided because of good access to residental areas, lots of pedesterian bridges and good public transportation.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

-Pino- said:


> ^^ Probably. You can even see it in my neighbourhood, which was built around 1992 and therefore a nice place for the City of Amsterdam to relocate some folk that had lost their houses due to the 1992 El Al crash. Let's say that they have not made the area much nicer ...
> 
> Anyway, notwithstanding the rundown folk that lives in the Bijlmer, I think that you can take it for a fact that overpasses and underpasses create a sense of insecurity among non-motorists. And the _unheimisch_ feeling that motorists associate with driving through a neighbourhood where you don't see any non-motorist out there sounds very familiar too.


I repeat my recommendation to read Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The importance of street life in traditional neighborhoods, and the lack thereof in modern public housing, was one of the things that most sticks with me about that book (which I read a good 20 or 25 years ago). She was ahead of her time in rebelling against postwar urban-planning thinking (she was writing around 1960).


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

Seems an interesting read. Part of the Bijlmer problem is not only the lack of street life around that type of building, but also that they deliberately tried to move any remaining form of street life away from the streets. As Chris mentions, s112 is the only fully grade-separated road of the area, but the streets that have their at-grade intersections are clearly not intended for non-motorised traffic. There is a lack of a sidewalks and bike paths; non-motorists are supposed to take different routes through the area. And those routes do cross underneath the streets intended for motorised traffic.

So the type of housing combines with streets that exclude any form of street life to create a failed neighbourhood.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

2 days and no comments yet!


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

Nima-Farid said:


> 2 days and no comments yet!


I think everyone came to their own conclusion that urban motorways are unsustainable, undesirable, pollution magnets, traffic jam generators and community dividers...put that in your pipe and smoke it *clicks*:baeh3::smug:


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

A cancelled expressway is synonymous with an urban motorway to you?

Anyway, there are numerous examples (especially Spain) to prove those arguments wrong.


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## strandeed (May 31, 2009)

depending on the setting I think urban motorways are just fine and certainly would solve a lot of the problems in my home city of newcastle

Chicago










Cleveland










It's not so much urban motorways are fundamentally bad... they are not.

However it can be difficult to implement them correctly, especially in historic cities.


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## -Pino- (Aug 12, 2007)

ChrisZwolle said:


> A cancelled expressway is synonymous with an urban motorway to you?


Not to me. Even though the reasoning behind those abandonments is completely different. In Germany in particular, one can identify many cancelled non-urban motorways too. Unlike urban motorways, I think that the key driver for those cancellations must have been the idea that those roads were unlikely to sustain a traffic density that justified motorway construction.

Does anyone really miss the following German routes that were never built?
- A4 Olpe - Bad Hersfeld
- A5 Giessen - Bremen
- A8 Pirmasens - Karlsruhe
- A45 Aschaffenburg - Stuttgart
- A48 Dernbach - Siegen
- A60 Wittlich - Bingen
- A93 Regensburg - Rosenheim
- A98 Basel - Rosenheim

On the other hand, some of those cancelled motorways are slowly but surely being turned into expressways. Parts of the cancelled part of A93 are now becoming a Gelbe Autobahn. In the Hunsrück they are slowly but surely upgrading B50: not in a place where A60 was once planned, but B50 will serve through traffic in a comparable manner. And in the mid-term future (as "Weiterer Bedarf"), there may even some further construction on the A4 between Olpe and Bad Hersfeld.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

strandeed said:


> depending on the setting I think urban motorways are just fine and certainly would solve a lot of the problems in my home city of newcastle
> 
> Chicago
> 
> ...


That thing in the foreground of your Cleveland picture is not a motorway, but the Detroit Avenue/Superior Avenue bridge: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=41.494098,-81.703037&spn=0.004484,0.00825&t=m&z=17&vpsrc=6

(You can, though, get glimpses of the "Shoreway" along the lake.)

Must get to Chicago soon....


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

ChrisZwolle said:


> A cancelled expressway is synonymous with an urban motorway to you?
> 
> Anyway, there are numerous examples (especially Spain) to prove those arguments wrong.


Pretty much all the cancelled ones are the urban ones...


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## Xpressway (Dec 2, 2006)

Nima-Farid said:


> In most of Western cities there were lots of expressways and freeways planned after WWII but because of their spoiled democracy :bash: most of them were cancelled.
> These cities were Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, London, Paris and much more.


Even though i agree with you with the fact that many big cities should have more urban highways, democracies overall have better transport infrastructure than non-democratic countries.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

I know that but the faster growing democracies are countries like South Korea, Japan and Malayssia.


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## Xpressway (Dec 2, 2006)

Nima-Farid said:


> I know that but the faster growing democracies are countries like South Korea, Japan and Malayssia.


Actually Japan didn't and doesn't grow much.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

but they did excellent after WWII


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

Japan and the US are not perfect examples of Democracy , too many holes and corruption mostly when it comes to Infastrature like Roads and Rails and now the Energy Grid.


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## city_thing (May 25, 2006)

That freeway in Chicago is terrible. It totally separates the city from the beach.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

^^From what I know of Chicago, those beaches are quite heavily used. And it's obvious from the picture that the presence of Lake Shore Drive didn't adversely affect residential development.

I'll leave it to a Chicagoan (are there any here? It would be ironic if there weren't, on a forum named SSC...) to say how the Drive feels on the ground.


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## mgk920 (Apr 21, 2007)

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^From what I know of Chicago, those beaches are quite heavily used. And it's obvious from the picture that the presence of Lake Shore Drive didn't adversely affect residential development.
> 
> I'll leave it to a Chicagoan (are there any here? It would be ironic if there weren't, on a forum named SSC...) to say how the Drive feels on the ground.


I'm not from Chicago, but I live close enough to it to have driven Lake Shore Drive many times and my sense is that it's as much a part of Chicago as is the CTA's 'Loop' elevated structure. It is an incredible (and very useful) drive and there are ample ways for pedestrians and bicycles to get from one side to the other. It fits in.

Also, the high-rise neighborhood along Lake Shore Drive in the foreground of that above image is known locally as the 'Gold Coast'.

Mike


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

city_thing said:


> That freeway in Chicago is terrible. It totally separates the city from the beach.


This is a problem in any touristic city. This can be solved with a local-express system and the local acts as a touristic route for people from other places and as a parking while the esxpress lane will be used by locals. elevated highway is not a good choice in this system most of the times and we know why but a wide on the ground or a tunnel expressway with local on top or other choices will be more useful


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

For me river, ocean or lake side motorways are the worst of the worst. The routes I guess were chosen as a way to get a motorway through a town without having to demolish much...But it means that any form of idyllic relaxing environment cannot be built...

...I'm imagine sitting out in a nice bar or restaurant hearing the rumble of 8 lanes of traffic...


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

^^ US has THOUSANDS of miles of coast/lakeline. Probably more than 10.000.

Less than 200 of them, AT MOST, are "spoiled" by railways or highways just by the waterfront.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

^^I'm not taking a position on Lake Shore Drive, but not all of those thousands of miles of coastline have major cities on them. You do see the difference?


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

poshbakerloo said:


> ...I'm imagine sitting out in a nice bar or restaurant hearing the rumble of 8 lanes of traffic...


Imagine living in a metropolitan area of 10 million people, and it has freeways! Oh the humanity.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

^^Now you're just being silly. I think.
:bash:

But, in case you're not, there are places in a metropolitan area, regardless of how big it is, where freeways are appropriate, and places they're not. 
:cheers:


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

A strip of land where a couple hundred thousand people live seems appropriate.


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

Anyway, here's a European counterpart of a beachfront freeway, the B-10 in Barcelona, Spain. It appears that American engineers never really majored in fitting in freeways in the urban landscape. This European example shows how an urban freeway can coexist with the urban surroundings. Silent pavement, depressed and partially tunneled. Maybe even a truck ban.

Not all urban freeways are noisy concrete monsters.


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## GCarty (Dec 4, 2010)

ed110220 said:


> Indeed, and I believe this is a perfectly natural process, unlike the political/ideological line that sees it as an inherently bad thing and sees the inner cities as virtuous and to be promoted and the suburbs as evil and to be discouraged.


Aren't suburbanization and city-centre gentrification two sides of the same coin as described in Pedestrian Observations's Urbanism, Gentrification and Romanticism?

*20th century suburbanization*

_Recent-historical trends_ - Industrialization, rapid urbanization
_Resulting problems_ - Slums, overcrowding, industrial pollution
_Romanticized past ideal_ - Pre-industrial peasant life
_Elitist "solution"_ - Suburbia, cars, homeownership, Euclidean zoning
_Application to existing cities_ - "Urban renewal", modernist towers, city as playground for suburbanites

*21st century gentrification*

_Recent-historical trends_ - Globalization, suburbanization
_Resulting problems_ - Sprawl, loss of community, traffic congestion
_Romanticized past ideal_ - Early 20th century city life
_Elitist "solution"_ - Dense urban neighbourhoods, mass transit, condos, mixed-use development
_Application to existing cities_ - Demolishing low-density development and either replacing with higher-density development or returning to countryside


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## the_sage (Nov 27, 2009)

poshbakerloo said:


> For me river, ocean or lake side motorways are the worst of the worst. The routes I guess were chosen as a way to get a motorway through a town without having to demolish much...But it means that any form of idyllic relaxing environment cannot be built...
> 
> ...I'm imagine sitting out in a nice bar or restaurant hearing the rumble of 8 lanes of traffic...


Agreed, could you imagine walking the Nice waterfront if they had ripped up the promenade d'anglais and built something like the gardener expressway in Toronto!


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## I-275westcoastfl (Feb 15, 2005)

jeremiash said:


> But isnt traffic calming what makes the city centre active? Atleast in theory.


Its supposed to help since the theory is slower traffic is better for pedestrians. For cities that lack an active urban core it just doesn't make sense. If pedestrians are few in number and vehicle traffic is heavier than have crosswalks with signals and keep speeds reasonably low. After that it is the pedestrians job to safely walk around. Cities with an active urban core already have a "natural" form of traffic calming which is traffic and activity slowing vehicles down.


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## italystf (Aug 2, 2011)

CairnsTony said:


> I would agree with the comments about Barcelona as I lived there for a while. You'd hardly know there was a coastal freeway in many places!
> 
> Here in Aus, most roads are designed to get you from A to B as quickly as possible it seems. Just trying to cross the road is an experience in itself...


When, during my trip to Barcelona, I walked many times in the square where there is the big statue of Columbus between the Rambla and the harbour I would never imagine there was a motorway (B10) below ground. I guess that motorway runs some metres below sea level. Could it be the lowest motorway of Europe?


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

italystf said:


> When, during my trip to Barcelona, I walked many times in the square where there is the big statue of Columbus between the Rambla and the harbour I would never imagine there was a motorway (B10) below ground. I guess that motorway runs some metres below sea level. Could it be the lowest motorway of Europe?


I doubt. 

Netherlands has some motorway short tunnels in addition to regular freeways already built below sea level. I guess total length of below sea level freeways in Netherlands is around 170km or so.


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

Westerschelde Tunnel in the Netherlands (N62) goes 60 meters below sea level, though is not a real motorway, but it does have 2x2 lanes and grade-separation. Norway has some subsea tunnels that are more than 200 meters below sea level, but none of those are motorways. Then there is also a tunnel in the KAD around Saint Petersburg that goes below the storm surge barrier.


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## hammersklavier (Jan 29, 2010)

ChrisZwolle said:


> It depends on the function of a city center. In the "new world" city centers have a different function than in Europe for instance. It wouldn't make much sense to traffic calm city centers like Oklahoma City or Denver compared to Rome or Prague.


Historically they were, but this is becoming more and more untrue. Many historical American (Usonian?) urban centers, such as--besides New York--Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and D.C., have become downtowns in very much the European sense of the word, and many other urban centers, such as Denver, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Salt Lake, and even Los Angeles etc., are likewise transitioning. Condos and apartments in the urban core are now some of the most popular new construction...and there is significant real estate data suggesting that the coming-of-age generation here has a strong preference for urban living...

This is not to disparage the extreme office monouse of the classical North American downtown, however.


I-275westcoastfl said:


> From taking road trips to different cities I can say that traffic calming is useless in cities where the city center isn't very active. Like lets say for example the major city centers around my metro, I can easily get up to to 40mph or maybe even faster. In fact its hard to get stuck in traffic in downtown on an average day, you only get stuck on major roads as the grid system goes away and you are forced to use major artery roads.
> 
> However driving through Chicago, Miami, New York, Boston, and other cities you are going to be limited because there is traffic, people, and activity. Traffic calming for most of the US does belong in residential areas, otherwise people should use common sense. I see idiot pedestrians sometimes worse than the drivers. Our road design is due to the way our cities are laid out, if you live in a city where people commute to the city center and after 5pm its pretty much dead then there is no real point to calm traffic as the roads are designed to get cars in and out.
> 
> ...


Bad road design is symptomatic of a larger problem, it's true. So is our permitting people to drive who really should not be licensed to, and our woefully simplistic application process. The larger problem of this is simple: we treat drivers as first-class citizens and non-drivers second-class. What really grates me about our traffic engineers is how uncaring of their creations' surroundings and how _arrogant_ they are.


Xpressway said:


> You should try driving in other parts of the world!
> 
> I drove in California from San Francisco to L.A and inside those two cities, i can say i wish we had your engineers in my country (Chile), despite having brand new highways they are not even close to californian highways when it comes to friendlyness towards drivers. Also the design of american highways makes it much more confortable for drivers during heavy traffic.


We are not talking about highway engineering (as a particular subset of traffic engineering). Our highway engineering is fine. The problem arises because our traffic engineers attempt to apply highway engineering to _every_ road type...which is rather like building _every_ railroad, from yonder freight spur on up, to high-speed rail standards. Quite self-evidently excessively wasteful, no?

When you try to impose a one-size-fits-all solution on an inherently multifaceted and hierarchical system, you're bound to get inefficiencies...This is what the so-called "last mile" problem boils down to. When you hear people discuss that problem, realize it fails to be a problem when you stop trying to--as Charles Marohn would have it--treat streets like roads (and roads like highways).


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## ChrisZwolle (May 7, 2006)

What surprises me in the United States is how wide residential streets in suburban areas are. They are wider than 2 motorway lanes in Europe (8 - 9 m is not uncommon). You'd be happy in Europe if there is a wide enough space left to pass parked vehicles on the side of the road. 5 - 6 meters, that's about it. Narrower streets means more land to develop = $$$ / €€€


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## CairnsTony (Nov 15, 2009)

ChrisZwolle said:


> What surprises me in the United States is how wide residential streets in suburban areas are. They are wider than 2 motorway lanes in Europe (8 - 9 m is not uncommon). You'd be happy in Europe if there is a wide enough space left to pass parked vehicles on the side of the road. 5 - 6 meters, that's about it. Narrower streets means more land to develop = $$$ / €€€


The same here in Cairns. Lake Street where I work for example only has one carriageway each way, but the 'hard shoulder' is wider than the actual road (and often used for illegal overtaking), plus then there's side-on parking. and this would be considered a back street!

I actually think it's an excessive and wasteful use of land space.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

^^ There is a historical reason for the "historic" wide streets of many US cities. It is the width that allowed a standards horse-drawn carriage could turn on its own to enter a driveway to the houses' early 'garages'.


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## I-275westcoastfl (Feb 15, 2005)

I think you missed what they are saying, take for example the suburban street I live on which was built in the 1970's, it could fit 3 lanes of traffic.


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## GCarty (Dec 4, 2010)

Suburbanist said:


> ^^ There is a historical reason for the "historic" wide streets of many US cities. It is the width that allowed a standards horse-drawn carriage could turn on its own to enter a driveway to the houses' early 'garages'.


Shows that Americans were fascinated by the idea of owning their own personal vehicle long before the internal combustion engine was invented.


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

GCarty said:


> Shows that Americans were fascinated by the idea of owning their own personal vehicle long before the internal combustion engine was invented.


It had to do with the Trollys and Streetcars that operated on every street pre-1940. Alot of Streetcar restorations will operate on the older routes due to the wide boulevards...and wide streets.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Nexis said:


> It had to do with the Trollys and Streetcars that operated on every street pre-1940. Alot of Streetcar restorations will operate on the older routes due to the wide boulevards...and wide streets.


And guess from what and why streetcars and rail cars get their common width?


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## GCarty (Dec 4, 2010)

Suburbanist said:


> And guess from what and why streetcars and rail cars get their common width?


The wheel spacing on Ancient Roman carts and chariots? (I think that's where the standard rail gauge ultimately originated...)


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## hammersklavier (Jan 29, 2010)

I-275westcoastfl said:


> I think you missed what they are saying, take for example the suburban street I live on which was built in the 1970's, it could fit 3 lanes of traffic.


Yup. Excessive street widths were mandated in postwar subdivision codes all across the country. You didn't blow mucho dinero on roads = no FHA-guaranteed mortgages for you (thus wrecking your marketability). IIRC the _minimum_ street width in these codes was 50 feet, and then 60, and on up to 100 ft. And lo and behold...excess asphalt! Speeding drunkards! The whole nine yards!


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## Rebasepoiss (Jan 6, 2007)

ChrisZwolle said:


> What surprises me in the United States is how wide residential streets in suburban areas are. They are wider than 2 motorway lanes in Europe (8 - 9 m is not uncommon). You'd be happy in Europe if there is a wide enough space left to pass parked vehicles on the side of the road. 5 - 6 meters, that's about it. Narrower streets means more land to develop = $$$ / €€€


I've thought about it too. Just a random example:

Las Vegas: http://g.co/maps/wrxn5 - pavement width: 10,8 metres / 35 ft
Paris metropolitan area: http://g.co/maps/mykur - pavement width: 4,8 metres / 15,5 ft


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## Xpressway (Dec 2, 2006)

hammersklavier said:


> We are not talking about highway engineering (as a particular subset of traffic engineering). Our highway engineering is fine. The problem arises because our traffic engineers attempt to apply highway engineering to _every_ road type...which is rather like building _every_ railroad, from yonder freight spur on up, to high-speed rail standards. Quite self-evidently excessively wasteful, no?
> 
> When you try to impose a one-size-fits-all solution on an inherently multifaceted and hierarchical system, you're bound to get inefficiencies...This is what the so-called "last mile" problem boils down to. When you hear people discuss that problem, realize it fails to be a problem when you stop trying to--as Charles Marohn would have it--treat streets like roads (and roads like highways).


Thank you for the explanation. Makes lots of sense.


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## Ingenioren (Jan 18, 2008)

ChrisZwolle said:


> Norway has some subsea tunnels that are more than 200 meters below sea level, but none of those are motorways.


No real motorways are sub-sea here:

Operatunnelen 3+3 ekspressway: 45m below sea level 6km long.
Tromsøysundtunnelen 2+2 road: 102m below sea level 3,5km long.
Eiksundtunnelen 2-lane road: 287m below sea level 7,7km long.

Planned:

2017 Solbakktunnelen 2+2 road: 290m below sea level 14,1km long.
2019-2022 Rogfast 2+2 motorway: 380m below sea level 25km long.


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## I-275westcoastfl (Feb 15, 2005)

hammersklavier said:


> Yup. Excessive street widths were mandated in postwar subdivision codes all across the country. You didn't blow mucho dinero on roads = no FHA-guaranteed mortgages for you (thus wrecking your marketability). IIRC the _minimum_ street width in these codes was 50 feet, and then 60, and on up to 100 ft. And lo and behold...excess asphalt! Speeding drunkards! The whole nine yards!


Yes but to be honest it does have some sense behind it. Cars can park on both sides of the street and still have room in the middle for passing through. Many times this doesn't get utilized as much because people park in the garage or driveway but it does get used on my street for example.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Many residential streets in US also appear large because their houses have large setbacks. But I like setbacks: they create healthy open space and increased privacy without resorting to the claustrophobibaction of streets with massive vegetation, walls etc.


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## Rebasepoiss (Jan 6, 2007)

A large setback seems like waste of space to me. There's nothing you can really do there.


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## skyduster (Jul 7, 2007)

Nima-Farid,

You seem to have this insatiable fetish for motorways, but what you've completely failed to realize is that, if motorways were built right through Paris or Manhattan (New York) in the 1960s, those cities wouldn't be considered beautiful or exciting today. Many people _like_ living in cities that are _cities_. Maybe Iran just recently discovered the motorway, but many of us that grew up with it, _hate_ it.



poshbakerloo said:


> The thing is that people look at city planning as a technical and theoretic exercise...When in reality its more about our human wants and needs...
> 
> A load of urban motorways may work in a more practical and efficient manner but so much of London would have been lost...


No, urban motorways are _not_ practical or efficient. This was the expectation back during the mid-20th century, and it turned out to be wrong by the 1980s. During peak travel times, urban motorways do _not_ transport people more efficiently than urban trains do. Many urban motorways all over the world become _parking lots_ during peak traffic times. And adding lanes or new motorways has never solved the problem (Los Angeles keeps adding and adding motorways, but traffic congestion never eases).

Motorways should be for _outside_ of the core of a city (like in the suburbs), and for intercity travel. _Never_ intra-urban. They don't work well intra-urban. _At all._



Suburbanist said:


> Many residential streets in US also appear large because their houses have large setbacks. But I like setbacks: they create healthy open space and increased privacy without resorting to the claustrophobibaction of streets with massive vegetation, walls etc.


You're at the wrooooooong place, my friend. Skyscrapercity is an urban-friendly forum.



Rebasepoiss said:


> A large setback seems like waste of space to me. There's nothing you can really do there.


Bingo. And it's so ironic how much conservatives (specifically American conservatives) don't mind _waste_ when it comes to urban matters, when they preach about being frugal on everything else. Suburbanism wastes space, as you demonstrated, and it also wastes tax money and resources. 1 mile of paved road or sewer in a suburb serves far fewer people than 1 mile of paved road or sewer in the city. Suburbanism is such a waste of resources. A highly-suburban society is living way beyond its means.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

skyduster said:


> No, urban motorways are _not_ practical or efficient. This was the expectation back during the mid-20th century, and it turned out to be wrong by the 1980s. During peak travel times, urban motorways do _not_ transport people more efficiently than urban trains do. Many urban motorways all over the world become _parking lots_ during peak traffic times. And adding lanes or new motorways has never solved the problem (Los Angeles keeps adding and adding motorways, but traffic congestion never eases).


With very few exceptions, even in congested cities like Madrid, Chicago or Sydney (I don't know about Asian cities), the average speed of commute of whomever uses a car is faster than that of a transit commuter.

It is naive to make comparisons like a slow-moving urban expressway with an unimpeded adjacent train line, for instance, because the advantage of cars reveal themselves on not requiring transfers, having zero waiting time (you just turn it on and go), and being extremely efficient for last-mile connections. Really, even a car crawling at 15 km/h speed will be faster than any human walking and most humans cycling.



> Motorways should be for _outside_ of the core of a city (like in the suburbs), and for intercity travel. _Never_ intra-urban. They don't work well intra-urban. _At all._


Even if your anti-highway hate were a paradigm, you would still need connections between highways approaching a given city from different directions. After all, something nobody wants is passing traffic in urban streets or boulevards. Even in Green-hijacked city governments around Europe, there is usually support for highway bypasses, tunnels or whatever that make people going from A to C avoiding crossing urban roads of city B that is in the middle of them.

Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Dallas, Phoenix metro areas, for all the "car-centric" criticism they take, all have average commute times LOWER than those of Chicago and New York metro areas. So apparently urban freeways make in connectivity what they lack, on peak time, in capacity.

Bu then, the average transit activist will say "well, people should live close to work then instead of 40 subway stations and 8 bus stops apart from their workplace"


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## Rebasepoiss (Jan 6, 2007)

^^ The point about Madrid, Chicago and Sydney assumes that not everybody drives. If everybody drove to work in dense cities, you would need to invest A LOT in urban motorways to maintain the same average speed. 

And suburbanist, your philosophy assumes that a street is merely a transport corridor between buildings which is most definitely isn't and it's only the car-centric view of the 20th century that makes people think that. To put it in your "economical" terms, as you like to call them, building an elevated motorway in the city centre results in indirect monetary losses to living quality (noise, air and visual pollution) local businesses and real estate value which you decide to not take into account.

It's fairly logical that city bypasses are favoured even by green voters since they prevent the city from becoming a transport corridor for whoever wants to get to the other side of it.


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## Verso (Jun 5, 2006)

^^ +1


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

skyduster said:


> Nima-Farid,
> 
> You seem to have this insatiable fetish for motorways, but what you've completely failed to realize is that, if motorways were built right through Paris or Manhattan (New York) in the 1960s, those cities wouldn't be considered beautiful or exciting today. Many people _like_ living in cities that are _cities_. Maybe Iran just recently discovered the motorway, but many of us that grew up with it, _hate_ it.


First of all I don't agree with building freeways in the dense central part of the city (Downtown) but not all cities with motorways are ugly and unliveable. Just look at Singapore or Tokyo or Hong Kong. And to decrease the traffic bus lanes or tramway and subway lines can be constructed in the middle of the motorways or parks can be made beside them.


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## skyduster (Jul 7, 2007)

Suburbanist said:


> With very few exceptions, even in congested cities like Madrid, Chicago or Sydney (I don't know about Asian cities), the average speed of commute of whomever uses a car is faster than that of a transit commuter.


Well there are quite a few things wrong with this assertion.

Firstly, you've failed to prove what you're saying. A study that compares the commute times of two people who live and work in the same places, but one travels by car, and the other by train...this would give you credibility, as opposed to comparing two very different cities, when there are so many additional factors at play.

For example, a study comparing two people who make _the same exact daily commute_; both would live in, let's say, Arlington Heights, IL, and both work in Chicago's Loop; the only difference is that one takes the car all the way, and the other takes the Metra suburban rail. A study proving here that the car driver saves time, would certainly prove your point. Now, as a Chicago resident, I can tell you, that the car driver certainly would _not_ get to the Loop faster. But here's your chance to prove me wrong, and yourself right.

Rebasepoiss also gave you an excellent response when s/he said: 



Rebasepoiss said:


> The point about Madrid, Chicago and Sydney assumes that not everybody drives. If everybody drove to work in dense cities, you would need to invest A LOT in urban motorways to maintain the same average speed.


Exactly. If _everyone_ in Chicago or Madrid drove, then commute times would be even longer for drivers. 

And adding more freeways or freeway lanes doesn't solve the problem. In the short run, it will temporarily relieve congestion, but then more people are encouraged to drive, and it will only take a couple years before you're back to square one. This has happened, over and over again, in several US cities, as I already noted, but you [talking to Suburbanist] chose to ignore.

In the longer run, it encourages auto-centric urban development. More space is needed to drive cars and park them, which lengthens distances between most peoples' points A and B, and this in turn encourages [or even forces] more people to drive, and congestion levels never decrease. 

OTOH, a comprehensive system that includes investment in public transit, keeps many people _off_ of the roads, and slightly shortens the commute times for those who still drive. 

Thus, the flaw in Suburbanist's paradigm.

In fact, Rebasepoiss's excellent response also perfectly rebukes this assertion:



Suburbanist said:


> Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Dallas, Phoenix metro areas, for all the "car-centric" criticism they take, all have average commute times LOWER than those of Chicago and New York metro areas. So apparently urban freeways make in connectivity what they lack, on peak time, in capacity.


The "New York and Chicago have the longest commutes" claim has floated around the internet on quite a few websites, and that's where you got this. But it's far from being conclusive. A study mentioned in this this Forbes slideshow begs to differ. It says that the ten "worst cities" for commuters (and they mean metropolitan areas, when you actually read the captions) are as follows:


Atlanta
Detroit
Miami
Orlando
Dallas
Tampa
Washington
Houston
Los Angeles 
San Francisco

There is no mention of New York or Chicago, and 8 of the cities that made the list (Atlanta, Miami, Detroit, Orlando, Dallas, Tampa, Houston, Los Angeles) are auto-dependent, inlcuding all of the top 6. San Francisco only made this list because half of the metro (the San Jose portion) is underserved by public transit. But both the Washington and San Francisco areas are ambitiously expanding their regional rail systems.

Assuming, however, that Chicagoans and New Yorkers _do_ have the longest commutes...if that were true, we'd still be ignoring the following points:


We would be ignoring the fact that -according to expert analysis- New York and Chicago would have even _longer_ commute times were it not for their public transit systems.
We wouldn't be taking into account that Chicago's and New York's respective suburbias are _also_ car-centric, and many people in these suburbias both work and live in the suburbs. Hence, as I noted earlier, comparing city-city is disingenuous, and that comparing equivalent commutes _within_ the same metropolitan areas is much more accurate.
Even New York and Chicago have large areas that are underserved by public transit, due to -even in these cities- decades of neglect in favor of public funds going towards automobile infrastructure. For example, Chicago's South Side is grossly underserved by public transit, and crossing the Hudson River from New Jersey into Manhattan is time-consuming because additional underwater rail tunnels are long overdue (there are far more automobile crossings across the Hudson, than there are rail crossings). And it's worth noting that both the shortage of parking space in Manhattan and the expensive tolls to enter Manhattan discourage people from entering the city by car on a regular basis. So, any relative "ease" of entering the city by car is due to these factors. That doesn't make driving more efficient. Not by a long shot.




Suburbanist said:


> It is naive to make comparisons like a slow-moving urban expressway with an unimpeded adjacent train line, for instance, because the advantage of cars reveal themselves on not requiring transfers, having zero waiting time (you just turn it on and go), and being extremely efficient for last-mile connections.


The major flaw with your argument here, is A) your assumption that cars are "extremely efficient for last-mile connections" and B) your assumption that transit advocates don't take "waiting time" into consideration. Both of these are false. 

To address the latter first: waiting times for trains, between trains, and the walk/drive/bus _to_ subway stations, _is indeed_ included within "total commute time". It _is_ true that _some_ transit commutes can be very long and tedious -depending on the district and the city (unfortunately, there _are_ some areas that don't benefit from the full potential of public transit, because of lack of political will). This problem can be avoided for the vast majority of weekday commuters with smartly-designed urban rail systems that limit the amount of transfers needed, and/or bypass tracks and express trains for more outlying districts, and/or an increase in the number of trains during peak commute times. You're never going to be able to serve _everyone's_ needs with urban rail, but you can serve _most_ people's needs in cities that have one or two -even 5 or 6- major centers of employment. BTW, my commute time, when I lived in Paris, was 25 minutes, and that included two transfers on the Metro.

As for cars being "extremely efficient for last-mile connections", this rests on the assumption that work places (or even places of shopping, entertainment, etc), have a convenient parking space readily available, very close to the building. In very large metropolitan areas, this is far from true. 

In densely built areas, you'll spend a very long time looking for an available parking space, you may end up paying an arm and a leg to park your car, you may spend 10-20 minutes driving up a parking garage and making your way back down to the street, and you may have to walk far (because you couldn't find an available parking space closer to your destination). 

In a more sprawling district, you won't need to look for a parking space, because ample parking space is provided..._but_...you may park far from your workplace entrance (if you work in a large building with a sprawling parking lot), and it can take 10-15 minutes to get from your car to your desk. Additionally, a suburban development designed around parking lots will require longer driving distances, and several turns and loops before you can finally enter the parking lot and reach an available parking space. If you need to take your car across the street (let's say that after work you want to go to the shopping mall across the street from your workplace...and you need to _drive_ because simply walking _across the street_ could be a bloody 20-minute walk), again, you need to navigate _through_ the parking lot, wait for the right time to which will require a number of turns and loops, in order to reach a designated exit from the parking lot, then wait for your turn to enter the street (if traffic is heavy), and then maneuver a number of times in order to enter the other establishment's parking lot, and park in an available parking space over _there_.




Suburbanist said:


> Even if your anti-highway hate were a paradigm...


No, I'm not against motorways. I said that they serve a purpose, and that purpose is _inter_-city, and *not* _intra_-city. A ring around the _core_ of the city (like the Périphérique around Paris proper), with radiating branches into the suburbs (and onwards towards other cities), makes perfect sense. But building a motorway _through_ Paris proper, would be completely _stupid_.



Suburbanist said:


> ...you would still need connections between highways approaching a given city from different directions.


Not sure how this counters anything I've been saying.



Suburbanist said:


> After all, something nobody wants is passing traffic in urban streets or boulevards. Even in Green-hijacked city governments around Europe, there is usually support for highway bypasses, tunnels or whatever that make people going from A to C avoiding crossing urban roads of city B that is in the middle of them.


The *vast* majority of Europeans would never agree to building a motorway right through London or Paris or Rome or St Petersburg. As Rebasepoiss noted, bypasses _around_ cities make perfect sense. 

It's unclear what point you're trying to make here.



Rebasepoiss said:


> And suburbanist, your philosophy assumes that a street is merely a transport corridor between buildings which is most definitely isn't and it's only the car-centric view of the 20th century that makes people think that. To put it in your "economical" terms, as you like to call them, building an elevated motorway in the city centre results in indirect monetary losses to living quality (noise, air and visual pollution) local businesses and real estate value which you decide to not take into account.


+2

Beautifully said.

The mid-20th century model is _dead_. It was a failed concept.


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## RV (Oct 23, 2007)

At least here in Finland the Greens oppose to both by-passes and urban highways. They oppose to all road construction.


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

In Iran greens don't have power. People want the government to construct the new freeways as close to their town as possible. It makes their economy work.


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## poshbakerloo (Jan 16, 2007)

Quite a big one for England in this day and age...

SEMMMS. We don't build roads anymore, they are branded 'environmental improvement routes' LOL! I think this is to stop people worrying so much!

The Manchester Outer Ring Road was proposed in the 1960s, but was cancelled over and over. But in the last few months its been brought back! I'm not normally glad about things like this, but this new road will help a lot!

It was going to be full motorway scale but is now doing to be 2+2 dual carriage way which I guess is better than nothing!


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## Nima-Farid (Jul 13, 2010)

That's good. They can improve the road to motorway standards in the future if needed.


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## GCarty (Dec 4, 2010)

Nima-Farid said:


> That's good. They can improve the road to motorway standards in the future if needed.


Only if the bridges are wide enough, which they often aren't. The M42 is an infamous example in Britain, stopping about 10 miles short of the M1. The A42 all-purpose road which completes the journey is two lanes each way without hard shoulders, and one of the people who worked on it mentioned that they were ordered to build the bridges in such a way that there'd be no room to add extra lanes, for fear that otherwise they wouldn't be able to get the scheme past the environmentalists...


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## skyduster (Jul 7, 2007)

Nima-Farid said:


> In Iran greens don't have power. People *want the government to construct the new freeways as close to their town as possible*. It makes their economy work.


Key word: _*close*_

People want the freeway to pass *close* to their town. Not *through* their town.


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## lambersart2005 (Aug 21, 2005)

skyduster said:


> Key word: _*close*_
> 
> People want the freeway to pass *close* to their town. Not *through* their town.


you're very right, skyduster. I really am a freeway-lover, but really, be honest guys - a cross-donwtown-freeway may look cool for road enthousiasts but who would really want to live there? Like skyduster said, a freeway close to downtown serves traffic as well as a direct-crosstown monster. Having to stop at some traffic lights in the inner core of city won*t kill you!


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## Spookvlieger (Jul 10, 2009)

^^Thing is, lot of European cities have city center freeways, only they are in tunnels or in deep trenches covered by partial roofs and structures. And that's the only way to do it... I remeber an US city that buried it's downtown freeway not to long ago. Was it Boston? Best choice ever in my eyes.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

^^It was indeed Boston - the project was called the Big Dig - but it's notorious for having cost a fortune (and more than was budgeted), and there's been at least one incident of someone being killed in the tunnel by a ceiling tile falling.


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

I-95 in Philly might be demolished and a green way built in its place. Of course if they can get it re-routed first , alot of the older highways in the Urban Northeast were built with a cut style. Those cuts will be covered with parks and retail....over the next few decades....


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## Spookvlieger (Jul 10, 2009)

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^It was indeed Boston - the project was called the Big Dig - but it's notorious for having cost a fortune (and more than was budgeted), and there's been at least one incident of someone being killed in the tunnel by a ceiling tile falling.



I think they've already made back the money they lost building the tunnel just by the fact that the whole area has become more attractive...

I guess the ceiling tile falling was just a coincidence. Have the numbers of crashes risen on that part since the tunnels where build?


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

Nexis said:


> I-95 in Philly might be demolished and a green way built in its place. Of course if they can get it re-routed first , alot of the older highways in the Urban Northeast were built with a cut style. Those cuts will be covered with parks and retail....over the next few decades....


Um, no thanks.


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## Spookvlieger (Jul 10, 2009)

Nexis said:


> I-95 in Philly might be demolished and a green way built in its place. Of course if they can get it re-routed first , *alot of the older highways in the Urban Northeast were built with a cut style. Those cuts will be covered with parks and retail....over the next few decades....*


It cant be that expensive to cover them up I guess, because they already are in trench anyway...


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## Nexis (Aug 7, 2007)

Penn's Woods said:


> Um, no thanks.


Why not ,access to Phillys waterfront is cut off by this monster highway....that shouldn't be that way...it would be the portion between the Ben Franklin and Walt Whitman Bridges... Developers and the city have expressed interest in reuniting Center City with the waterfront. 676 would also be covered.


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## italystf (Aug 2, 2011)

Local politicians want votes. If most of the local community is in favour of the project they also are in favour, if most are against they oppose to it. In that way they hope to be re-elected. For this reason the opinion of the majority (even if stupid and sellfish) has so much influence on the public administration.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

^^And I'm not sure opposing an elevated expressway through a historic district is stupid anyway. Nor is it selfish to want to have a say about what one's own neighborhood is like.


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## RV (Oct 23, 2007)

italystf said:


> Local politicians want votes. If most of the local community is in favour of the project they also are in favour, if most are against they oppose to it. In that way they hope to be re-elected. For this reason the opinion of the majority (even if stupid and sellfish) has so much influence on the public administration.


For this reason at least cities should be ruled by techocrats, in my oppinion.


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## italystf (Aug 2, 2011)

Penn's Woods said:


> ^^And I'm not sure opposing an elevated expressway through a historic district is stupid anyway. Nor is it selfish to want to have a say about what one's own neighborhood is like.


Off course destroying the historical heritage for modern infrastructures is wrong but nimbies oppose also new roads in the middle of nowhere for the only reason they live close to. Public administration should protect the environment and the historical heritage that belong to everybody but not the selfish interests of a community.


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## Penn's Woods (Apr 8, 2010)

^^The New Orleans situation referred to is an example of historical heritage, not the middle of nowhere.


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## Road_UK (Jun 20, 2011)

italystf said:


> Off course destroying the historical heritage for modern infrastructures is wrong but nimbies oppose also new roads in the middle of nowhere for the only reason they live close to. Public administration should protect the environment and the historical heritage that belong to everybody but not the selfish interests of a community.


Are the interests of a community selfish? When did that happen?


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## I-275westcoastfl (Feb 15, 2005)

They can be, for example many highways were cancelled in my metro area because of selfish communities that the majority of the metro area has a poor road network now because of one neighborhood in select areas.


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## italystf (Aug 2, 2011)

Road_UK said:


> Are the interests of a community selfish? When did that happen?


When for example few people oppose to a national importance highway or railway just because they pass close to them, without major damages to the environmental and historical heritage.


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## Road_UK (Jun 20, 2011)

italystf said:


> When for example few people oppose to a national importance highway or railway just because they pass close to them, without major damages to the environmental and historical heritage.


If it's really in the national interested, it will go ahead, no matter what. It is still important that they are heard though. Otherwise it wouldn't be much of a democracy.


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## italystf (Aug 2, 2011)

Road_UK said:


> If it's really in the national interested, it will go ahead, no matter what. It is still important that they are heard though. Otherwise it wouldn't be much of a democracy.


I'm not picking on democracy. But something this goes too far. For example in Campania where they don't build new landfills because nobody want them in their backyard so trash stays in the streets for months. And in that way trash is more harmful to health rather that if was disposed in a proper facility. The same for highways: heavy traffic is better if it flows on modern highways rather than on roads across towns, in term of air and noise pollution and accident rates. Also high speed rail may provide advantage fot the environment if it will be able to replace part of truck traffic. Photovoltaic panels and windmills may look ugly to see, but they would reduce pollution from energy made with non-renovable fossile fuels. But tell those things to nimbies...


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## g.spinoza (Jul 21, 2010)

Road_UK said:


> If it's really in the national interested, it will go ahead, no matter what. It is still important that they are heard though. Otherwise it wouldn't be much of a democracy.


Unfortunately it's not always like that. Trentino-Alto Adige has the right to block every national project, within its boundary limits. A31 Valdastico Nord, anyone?


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## Road_UK (Jun 20, 2011)

g.spinoza said:


> Unfortunately it's not always like that. Trentino-Alto Adige has the right to block every national project, within its boundary limits. A31 Valdastico Nord, anyone?


It is in the UK. Britain is known for not liking new roads, railway lines, airports etc etc. But yesterday the government has announced that a new high speed railway line will go ahead, linking London with Scotland. And there is no turning back. Dialogues have been set up with local communities opposing the plans, and their objections will be heard, but the scheme is going ahead nevertheless.


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## g.spinoza (Jul 21, 2010)

Road_UK said:


> It is in the UK. Britain is known for not liking new roads, railway lines, airports etc etc. But yesterday the government has announced that a new high speed railway line will go ahead, linking London with Scotland. And there is no turning back. Dialogues have been set up with local communities opposing the plans, and their objections will be heard, but the scheme is going ahead nevertheless.


Apparently Trentino has more power than the constituent countries of UK.


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## italystf (Aug 2, 2011)

g.spinoza said:


> Unfortunately it's not always like that. Trentino-Alto Adige has the right to block every national project, within its boundary limits. A31 Valdastico Nord, anyone?


In this case is a more complicated case since the "environmental sensitiveness" conceal economic interests. The president of the region is the main shareholder of the company who manage the A22, that would get less traffic (and so less toll) if a parallel motorway opens. He also opposes the extension of A27 towards Austria for the same reason.


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## g.spinoza (Jul 21, 2010)

^^ But for Trentino it's easy to push the pedal of environment, to focus its inhabitants on this issue, and conceal the true reason.


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## CNGL (Jun 10, 2010)

I have another one: The original routing of Spanish A-2 (Then N-II) between Cervera and Igualada. Originally it was planned for what is now A-2 to follow C-25 for the first few kilometers, and after split off C-25 it would have headed Southeast to meet N-II again at Santa Maria del Camí. Works started, but the project became very controversial and stopped. Finally the motorway got built, but following N-II all the way.


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## RV (Oct 23, 2007)

Road_UK said:


> If it's really in the national interested, it will go ahead, no matter what. It is still important that they are heard though. Otherwise it wouldn't be much of a democracy.


Not in Finland. We have been building tunnels that cost dozens of millions because some squirrels poop has been found, and the II ring road of Helsinki is on hold because of the giant cost of tunnels planned in the middle of nowhere, of the (not protected forest). Instead, they seem to plan building it as a normal road. And then they will need to upgrade it in a few year with double costs...

The New Orleans motorway seemed to have been planned on a railway, so I don't see the problem.


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## Road_UK (Jun 20, 2011)

RV said:


> Not in Finland. We have been building tunnels that cost dozens of millions because some squirrels poop has been found, and the II ring road of Helsinki is on hold because of the giant cost of tunnels planned in the middle of nowhere, of the (not protected forest). Instead, they seem to plan building it as a normal road. And then they will need to upgrade it in a few year with double costs...
> 
> The New Orleans motorway seemed to have been planned on a railway, so I don't see the problem.


Would new roads in the Helsinki area be in the national interest? Slight congestions sporadically in the Vantaa area, other than that the volume of traffic is so low, that you can get anywhere you want within a certain time any time of the day.


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## RV (Oct 23, 2007)

Road_UK said:


> Would new roads in the Helsinki area be in the national interest? Slight congestions sporadically in the Vantaa area, other than that the volume of traffic is so low, that you can get anywhere you want within a certain time any time of the day.


Well, more than 1/5 of the country's population lives there, and roads are mostly substandardized in what comes to capacity and geometry, and mostly not upgraded since the 70's. There are many arteries planned since the 50's, but most needed upgrades are not even in planning stage. Besides, E18, E12 and E75 roads pass there.


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## DanielFigFoz (Mar 10, 2007)

Road_UK said:


> It is in the UK. Britain is known for not liking new roads, railway lines, airports etc etc. But yesterday the government has announced that a new high speed railway line will go ahead, linking London with Scotland. And there is no turning back. Dialogues have been set up with local communities opposing the plans, and their objections will be heard, but the scheme is going ahead nevertheless.


Haven't they only approved it as far north as Leeds?


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