Back in March, we warned that stimulus money might be spent on a number of huge, wasteful projects around the country. We spotlighted the Ohio River Bridges project through downtown Louisville as the worst offender — it would require a 24-lane monstrosity towering over downtown.
Those seven big infrastructure programs weren’t alone. There are many other highway plans in the works around the country that are primed to be a potential waste of taxpayer funds and increase car use exactly when we should be encouraging the opposite. Here are some of the worst examples.
Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct Tunnel
Everyone is in agreement about one thing: Something has to be done about the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the elevated highway that runs along Seattle’s downtown waterfront. After being damaged during the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, it has to be replaced — or thousands of commuters could be put in danger if and when another disaster occurs.
For much of the past decade, advocates staked their ground on three opposing sides: Some wanted to simply rebuild the viaduct on site, some wanted to tear it down and replace it with a much smaller surface road, and some suggested building a two-mile tunnel under downtown in its place. In the end, Washington state and the city agreed on the latter choice, and the state is planning a more than $3.5 billion investment in the project. As a compromise to transit advocates, about $400 million will be spent on related public transportation improvements by Seattle and King County.
For much of the past year, it appeared that the tunnel’s construction was assured. A contractor is supposed to be picked for the corridor in March 2010.
After winning the election in November, new Mayor Mike McGinn appeared to have become a reluctant supporter simply because of prior commitments made by the city and state, despite the fact that he is a historic opponent of the project, having argued repeatedly for the less expensive and less auto-oriented surface option. But in the Wall Street Journal this week, McGinn said “Nothing has made me think the tunnel is a good idea.” State officials remain committed to the tunneling.
McGinn’s statements suggest that this megaproject may still be defeated. For the sake of a city with exciting light rail plans and big-city potential, we hope this happens, since the tunnel is too expensive and will only advance the interests of car commuters, rather than encourage them to try transit.
Alaska Highway2Highway Project
Most American cities long ago learned the dangers of urban freeways. Beginning in the 1950s, the urban renewal movement advocated building new highways through city centers in the interest of speeding travel times for car commuters. To do so, government planners tore down neighborhoods, with highly unfortunate consequences: more congestion, fewer people riding transit, and less livable communities.
Oddly enough, Alaskan state highway officials seem to want to repeat that story in Anchorage with the Highway2Highway project.
Disappointed with the fact that the city’s two major freeways — the A1 Glenn Highway running north and the A3 Seward Highway running south — end some 3.5 miles apart, project managers want to build a connection between the two. With construction beginning sometime in the mid-2010s, the road would cost upwards of $600 million dollars based on 2005 estimates.
The proposal has yet to be finalized, but all of the alternatives currently on the table share the same problems: They’ll encourage car use and they’ll require the demolition of hundreds of properties. Local residents, and many of the politicians representing them, are unsurprisingly up in arms.
Highway engineers working for the State of Alaska suggest that local roads will be at capacity by 2035, but that’s the point, after all, since these roads run just blocks from the downtown. A vibrant inner-city community is one crowded with people. Rushing people around on big roadways will reduce downtown Anchorage’s attractiveness.
Ironically, proponents of the project argue that it would “reconnect neighborhoods surrounding the project area.” When was the last time that happened after a big road was built?
California I-710 Extension
Some big infrastructure projects, it seems, will simply never be abandoned. One example is Los Angeles County’s I-710 extension between Alhambra and Pasadena: In the works since 1947, it’s still just a line on the state highway plans map.
For the State of California and its Caltrans highways department, the road would provide much-needed traffic relief for a series of over-used highways in the neighborhoods northeast of downtown Los Angeles. For the neighborhoods affected, the project will be a mammoth waste of money and doom residents to years of intrusive construction activity.
Because of strong local opposition, the I-710 Long Beach Freeway simply stops in Alhambra, six miles short of its planned conclusion at the intersection of the Foothill and Ventura Freeways in Pasadena. Opponents were able to eliminate plans for the project in 1993. Now, each end of the gap has a stub-end that feeds traffic into the surrounding streets; this is especially a problem because heavy trucks are big users of the road, since it feeds directly into the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach at its southern end.
In recent years, Caltrans has revived plans for the freeway and is now pushing for twin four-mile deep-bore tunnels under South Pasadena that would be invisible to most of the residents living above. A study completed in 2006 pegged the cost of the road at $2.3 to $3.6 billion, but that number would likely be higher today. A new study now being conducted suggests a variety of possible routes for the project, but so far does not identify any specific source of revenue for the line. The huge cost is the biggest obstacle — though Caltrans still has a motivation to push forward because it would lose billions of potential federal dollars if it didn’t, and it claims it could line up foreign investors to help pay for the road.
But other arguments for the project hardly hold up. The Ports have invested billions of dollars in an improved Alameda Corridor to allow the shipment of goods via rail. If more products were moved via train instead of truck, congestion would decrease significantly.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles has invested hundreds of millions of dollars extending the Gold Line light rail corridor into the affected area in recent years. A convenient road would do nothing more than shift many of the people who began taking transit back into their cars. That’s hardly a transportation solution for the 21st century — especially at such a huge cost.
Washington State SR 704 — Cross-Base Highway
In August, Washington state opened the first segment of its Cross-Base Highway, which it claims will eliminate a major congestion point south of Seattle. The 3/4-mile four-lane road is just a small section of a planned $318 million, 6-mile route stretching east-west between SR 7 and I-5 in Pierce County. It is the first new highway in the state in more than a decade.
Opponents suggest that the road will result in the partial destruction of one of the few woodland prairies left in this area of the state and replace rural equestrian businesses with sprawl. They sued the state unsuccessfully to get the road canceled, claiming that alternatives hadn’t been adequately studied.
These arguments were convincing enough, however, to persuade at least some of the electorate to vote against Proposition 1, which would have funded the road. That referendum went down in defeat, which is one of the reasons why SR 704 has yet to be fully built.
The state Department of Transportation has an adequate defense for the road; the agency argues that surrounding roads are crowded with traffic and that the military bases demand better road connections. In addition, the area lacks elements worth saving; it is filled with invasive species and hardly the natural prairie environmentalists claim.
But this project is located at the far southern edges of the Seattle exurbs; it seems inevitable that more roads in the area will encourage more sprawl.
And local transit agency Sound Transit is already making major investments in the area that could dramatically reduce congestion on the surrounding streets. The Sounder Commuter Rail service will be extended from Tacoma to Lakewood by 2012, with provisions for further service south along I-5. Just adjacent to one of the military bases, a new train station opened last year in preparation for that line. In addition, Sound Transit offers a number of express buses directly from Lakewood to downtown Seattle — and that service is expected to be improved soon.
Shouldn’t those public transportation projects be given a chance to work before more roads are built?
It’s not too late to stop the completion of the road: The state has only been able to raise $43 million of the project’s cost thus far, and it could be years before construction begins.
December 16th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
I notice that the projects you selected are all on the West Coast. Surely there are some boondoggles in the rest of the country that would be worthy of mention..
December 16th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
I think the Columbia River Crossing (CRC) project, with a proposed design of 12 auto lanes, no light rail tracks, and a dark, underside ped/bike path, should be number 5.
December 16th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
[...] Click here to read the post. [...]
December 16th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Boston had the Big Dig.
It was incredibly expensive, and leaks a lot more than the 100 year old Green Line subway tunnels blocks away. Boston is also unusual in that it had two main train stations that aren’t directly connected, North Station and South Station. Someone traveling from New York to Maine by train would arrive at South Station, have to take two different rapid transit lines, then board the Downeaster train to get to Maine. This is despite the fact that the highway they buried goes right past South and North stations in a direct line (and wouldn’t have been particularly difficult to add two railroad through tracks).
They also created the incredibly expensive, multi-billion Silver Line BRT tunnel between Logan Airport and South Station. Despite only being a few miles by the path a crow flies, it takes over an hour to get between the Airport and South Station.
Then they recently wanted to extend the Silver Line again with a billion dollar plus tunnel, but finally decided to route it on the streets to save money. BRT should not cost billions. If they are spending that kind of money, we better get something good from it, like new light or heavy rail.
The Big Dig wouldn’t have been that bad if it cost about half as much, completed the North-South rail link, resumed Green Line service to the end of the E Branch (which was “temporarily” cut in the late 1980s), extended the other end of the Green Line into Somerville (which they thankfully are doing), and never constructed the waste of money known as the Silver Line BRT. BRT would be much more useful on their most heavily used bus routes that emanate from the rapid transit lines into the suburbs not directly served by Green, Red, Blue, or Orange lines.
December 16th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
The Maryland I-270 extension is still moving along. That’s around $4.6 billion that could be spent on Metro extensions, Expanded (and real regional) MARC rail service, etc. It’s got the makings to be the worst boondoggle in the country when compared to other cheaper and significantly better alternatives.
December 16th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
I-422 around Birmingham, Alabama deserves a mention too. It’s a bypass through very rural land. Large tracts of it are owned by mining companies and US Steel. The argument for the highway is either nonsensical (”we have to complete the loop around Birmingham”) or foolish (economic development isn’t created by highways, and the creation of suburban sprawl is obviously not a foundation for an economy).
December 16th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
I emailed this article to my sister, who lives in Seattle, and she had this to say:
“Who are these people?? “since the tunnel is too expensive and will only advance the interests of car commuters, rather than encourage them to try transit.” How can they try transit when the “exciting light rail” is only just now getting underway and won’t serve the area in question for many years to come? If we had the transit infrastructure to provide people who use the viaduct with another option to get where they are going, I would be all for getting rid of it. Also, since cars can use I-5 to get everywhere the viaduct takes them (albeit less conveniently), getting rid of the tunnel is not going to decrease car use, since everyone will just scootch over to I-5. In fact, this very same mayor that they are touting because he is against the tunnel actually said that they might look into increasing the number of lanes on I-5 as an alternative to the tunnel. So where is the reduction in car use there? And finally: the proposed tunnel has LESS capacity than the existing viaduct, so it will support fewer cars, not more than at present.”
December 16th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Thank you for bringing attention to our very expensive proposed highway boondoggle…the 710 Extension.
Your report mentions an estimated cost of $2.3-$3.6 BILLION in 2006 for 4.5 miles of twin bored tunnel. Please revise that to $11.8 BILLION estimated by Southern California Association of Governments in 2007.
And, it certainly wouldn’t be out-of-sight, out-of-mind for South Pasadena, Pasadena or the latino community of El Sereno in the City of Los Angeles with ventilation towers of 100 ft being proposed to exhaust the car fumes.
There is no money for projects that are approved and ready to go, let along one that is DOA.
December 16th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Thanks for highlighting the Cross-Base Highway debacle. It should be noted that Cross-Base Highway has not been adjudicated, and would not likely prevail. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other state and federal agencies have identified and documented numerous deficiencies in the environmental review, including misleading and erroneous information, faulty analysis of existing scientific information, and failure to identify and mitigate significant impacts.
In other words, the environmental analysis sucks as bad as the sprawl inducing Highway proposal.
December 16th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Yonah, have you looked at the highway proposals for Louisville?
I look forward to more boondoggle posts, both about highways (bridge to nowhere, the Louisville spaghetti junction) and transit (everything in New York and the Bay Area, plus the Foothill Extension).
December 16th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
The Highway2Highway isn’t even the worst plan in the city, the Knik Arm bridge is far worse.
December 17th, 2009 at 4:18 am
A principal reason for the “Cross-base” Highway- and 2 additional projects planned in a “2040 Vision” regional plan- is that the politician who headed up Sound Transit’s Board,and the regional Transportation planning body AND was a former executive of Pierce County (where this project is proposed) has tried to get a direct access to I-5 for a “planned community” scheme about 12 miles East of I-5 (as the crow flies)… a project that’s been years in the promulgating, has no housing, is going bankrupt, and for whom said politician is now COO. This is- and has been- PURE PORK and regional chutzpah from the get-go… when investors were “sold” on a logged-off table-land owned by Weyerhaeuser Timber Co. An identical project- and situation- arose east of Seattle on what is now known as “the Sammamish Plateau”. Same song, second verse… except that this one seriously needs squelching. It represents SPRAWL INCARNATE. ^..^
December 17th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Observations:
You guys even hate roads when they are underground.
You want people in Alaska to ride in trolley cars
Unfortunately, these last mile and connectivity highway projects are necessarily quite expensive, but they do a great deal to improve regional connectivity and quality of life. Because only a relatively small portion of trips can be accomplished via mass transit in even relatively dense areas, your commercial and social interactions are going to require road projects. Without such projects you get regional balkanization. Your absolutist stance against roads is self-defeating.
December 17th, 2009 at 11:47 am
@ Eric F: “Without such projects you get regional balkanization.”
Eric (or someone else), can you explain that to me futher? It’s an interesting phrase but I’m not quite sure what it means.
December 17th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
There is no point to the highway in Anchorage.
December 17th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Can highways have a positive impact on liveable streets? I believe in liveable, walkable neighborhoods and busy arterials clogged with traffic are the antithesis of liveability. If that traffic could be diverted to highways, as in Anchorage’s plan, wouldn’t that be an improvement?
December 17th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
[...] Yonah Freemark recently wrote on The Infrastructurist that Seattle’s proposed deep-bore tunnel is one of “The 4 Highway Projects that Would Be the Biggest Waste of Money.” [...]
December 17th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Being a WA resident myself, I know we’re honored to have two of the four projects on this list. Thanks!
As far as the AWV/Deep-bore tunnel goes, these days people are whining about cost overruns. For the record (released yesterday), WA projects are coming in an average of 26% under budget. So much savings, that WA is now ramping up Tier 3 ARRA projects. Because the economy is what it is, contractor’s bids are very competitive. Also, because of lessons learned from the Big Dig, WSDOT will be very careful in administering this project, as far as specs and finances are concerned. I’m not really sure how the tunnel, with no exits to downtown, really benefits Seattle residents, but at least it will be good for freight *shrug*.
And to squirrel lover above (Western Gray), squirrel issues can be mitigated, or the population moved. They’re moving a colony of feral cats in Snohomish County right now. It happens. There’s loads of space out there, and a 70′ wide highway won’t destroy the squirrels. I personally know the project engineer and know that he is exploring all environmental options, but the highway is needed.
I went to college in Tacoma, lived there a few years, visit relatives there, and there are PLENTY of squirrels. My heart bleeds, really. The cross-base highway is a much needed link from Spanaway to I-5, and will reduce commutes (therefore pollution), and reduce congestion on SR 512 (therefore making it safer for everyone). I’m all for public transit and carpooling, but I can’t take a vanpool to grandma’s house, and buses run on roads too.
December 17th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Hey DSL, Sure the CrossBase hiway itself wouldn’t necessarily hurt a specific number of squirrels that might live right in the hiway path, what it WOULD do is slash the last remaining good chunk of oak woodland prairie habitat left in WA in two, further fragmenting an important ecosystem that is quickly disappearing. It isn’t the loss of 70′ wide swath of trees–it’s the fragmentation: easily the number one threat for all wildlife and healthy ecosystems in our highly impacted area. We can’t keep cutting our last healthy bits of clean air and water producing ecosystems and expect it not to affect us!
Squirrels and ecosystems aside….
The roadway would actually increase travel distances for drivers. In the words of the environmental impact statement for the project, “Overall, people would travel a little farther to use the new Cross-Base Highway project to avoid other congested highways and roads; this would increase miles driven” (Cross-Base Highway FEIS, p. 4-201).” How is that good for climate change??
In a 2003 public poll on regional transportation planning and projects contracted by the Regional Transportation Investment District, the Cross-Base Highway ranked last of all proposed Pierce County projects, with only 10% of those polled stating it was a project of importance to the region.
A report prepared by the Washington State Legislature’s Joint Committee on Veterans and Military Affairs in 2004, entitled “Military Bases in Our Communities,” identified the concern that putting a cross-base highway along the southern end of the McChord Air Force base will make it difficult to utilize the entire base and may jeopardize the future of the base.
I think all of those reasons and more should pretty much put that project on the “Waste of Money” Top 4!
BTW–any squirrels you saw in Tacoma were the invasive eastern gray squirrel, NOT the endangered native western gray or native douglas squirrels that rely on healthy native ecosystems. And you can’t just move an animal that relies on a specific ecosystem to survive when the ecosystem is being destroyed.
December 17th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
“Eric (or someone else), can you explain that to me futher? It’s an interesting phrase but I’m not quite sure what it means.”
It means that going from Brooklyn, 8 miles away to Secacus takes more time and planning than going from Cape Kennedy to the Moon. And then imagine the implications for commerce and social interaction between the two places. Stuff like that.
December 17th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
A better title for this blog would be “Infraobstructionist”. The bored tunnel in Seattle is the smartest solution to the problem we have with the crumbling waterfront viaduct. Get those nasty cars under the city and leave the surface for pedestrians, bikes, transit, freight and local traffic.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Washington State’s portion of the tunnel project in Seattle is 1.9 billion directly, 400 million in tolls on the tunnel, pushing the state’s commitment to 2.4 billion.
Here is their estimate.
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/Viaduct/TunnelCostEstimate.htm
Your 3.5 billion number is a billion high.
The state highway can not get bigger if you bury it in a tunnel.
The City of Seattle is obligated to replacing the sea wall (tunnel, or not), they want another half a billion in mass transit, and they have to make street improvements near where the tunnel leaves and returns to the surface portion of the highway. Next thing you know the project is 4.2 billion, nearly half would have to happen no matter which option is selected to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct.
Have some facts.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Just the Cross-Base facts:
The Puget Sound prairies once covered more then 150,000 acres. Today, only about 3% remains - mostly in Pierce County. The Cross-Base Highway would shred Washington’s largest remaining tract.
Drawing comparisons with Mt. Rainier National Park and Nisqually National Wildlife Area, Pierce County’s Biodiversity Network Assessment describes the area as “the most biologically and ecologically rich area remaining in the lower elevations of Pierce County.” The County predicts that these diverse habitats support 20 state or federally listed species, 24 Priority Habitat and Species, and 10 at-risk species, and dozens of other plants and animals.
https://www.piercecountywa.org/xml/services/home/property/pals/pdf/biodiversityreport.pdf
Expensive, destructive, ineffective.
December 17th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
The Alaskan Way Viaduct needs to come down. Its ugly for one and its in disrepair. Trying to fix it is a short term solution.
Replace it with a boulevard, boom you have a beautiful waterfront back and introduce zoned congestion charges by vehicle weight/type for Seattle.
Using the intersection of 3rd and University as the centre ring it out to say:
Alaskan Way - West,
Denny Way - North,
Broadway Ave - East
S Atlantic/ I-90-I-5 interchange - South
The charges will contribute to the cities plans for more public transit (more Link Light Rail, street cars, whatever) and they would also cut down traffic in those areas. Some of the money could be put toward putting a lid over I-5 from Madison to Denny and reclaiming some of that lost real estate. It might be sloping but it could be really nice park or something.
Just a thought
December 17th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Re: “mike says” above
I’m a resident of West Seattle, and use the viaduct daily to reach the U-district. As a daily user, I am completely in favor of McGinn’s surface/transit option. 4 billion is too much. Sure my commute would be longer, but it’s better than locking our city into the cost-overruns for a “solution” that offers nothing to the thousands per day who use the viaduct to get into the city. That’s right: the tunnel is a bypass, not serving the 70% of users whose trips start or end downtown.
So, a tunnel is essentially the surface-transit option, minus improvements in surface and transit, all so we can subsidize a small portion of trips past downtown on a minor highway: for about as many cars per day as use 45th street. THAT is not progress.
December 17th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
RE: Mr Baker
The article says $3.5 billion in state investments in the project, which includes all the other things you listed that bring the total price tag to $4.2 billion before the cost overruns happen.
I never understand why tunnel supporters point out the other costs, sea wall, transit, etc and then conclude that saving $1 billion dollars by going for the surface/transit/I-5 improvements solution is not a significant amount of money.
$1 billion is huge. That’s money that could instead be spent on the Ballard to West Seattle light rail that McGinn has proposed bringing to the ballot next year, on more improvements to the new waterfront we will have when the viaduct comes down or, at the state level, on any number of important services that are being cut because of the budget deficit.
And that’s all before the cost overruns start. While right now projects are coming in under budget because of the recession, it’s unlikely that that will still be true when the tunnel starts being built. It’s also less likely in the case of the tunnel because of the untested construction methods.
December 17th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Eric F: “It means that going from Brooklyn, 8 miles away to Secacus takes more time and planning than going from Cape Kennedy to the Moon. And then imagine the implications for commerce and social interaction between the two places. Stuff like that.”
Yeah we all know how commerce has completely failed in New York, which is only the nation’s largest city for commercial interests. Haven’t seen too many skyscrapers in Anchorage, all do respect.
Sure you may have to know the right plan to get around in the Big Apple, though a quick Google search turned up the 320 New Jersey Transit bus from the Port Authority Bus Terminal was the best way to go and that was for tourists. If you live and work in the city, you will know your way around. Freeways, arguably are equally confusing.
New York’s subway is the life blood of of the city. It was an investment made over 100 years ago that has paid off in gold. I’ve been on it, loved it and had no problem getting anywhere I had to go in the city. God forbid you have to walk a few blocks (which is good for most Americans anyway). My New York friends and family whole heatedly agree and wouldn’t trade the Subway or the connected train lines for anything, especially a car. In fact those that own cars find them to be a burden as it needs storage, maintenance, gas, registration and sitting through New York traffic, whether it be the Lincoln Tunnel, I-278 or Lexington Ave. is far more stressful.
Cities grow. Highways do not. As an Angelino I can testify to the fact that the Freeway has some great advantages. Having them is great, I love having my car, yet as the city’s sole source of transportation, it is a complete failure. Los Angeles ditched it’s, as you would call it “trolley cars” after World War II and it has been trying to get it back ever since. Many of us have turned to bikes and the slowly improving mass transit, though the city is so locked in to cars that you have little choice but to sit in traffic.
Freeways allow sprawl, however are detrimental to communities, destroy them when they are built and cost more than mass transit. Tunnels are a neat idea on paper, however extraordinarily expensive and a waste of time and resources. Most are pork projects anyway.
The writing is on the wall, high speed rail from city to city, light rail and mass transit within a city and urban redevelopment that allows people to live and work without having to travel much. We need more Bike paths and trains. It’s not like your car is going anywhere.
If you want evidence that these methods work, compare Houston to Copenhagen or just about any city in Europe for that matter.
Lastly, Eric F. you say the people here want to force Alaska to ride in trains. Quite the contrary, I think many here would just rather see the money you guys want go to better projects. I personally am tired of paying for expensive ‘bridges to nowhere’ for a state that isn’t even 700,000 people strong). The San Fernando Valley alone is almost three times your entire state for God’s sake, and we have a to-do list of projects a mile long that are begging for federal dollars.
December 17th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
Eric, Calgary maintains high quality of life without much of a freeway network.
As for Brooklyn to Secaucus, I had something to say about that a few months ago.
December 18th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Eric- I would term this blog’s attitude as parochialist.
Often such highly useful, socially efficient projects are opposed by some wealthy overly powerful and neurotic entity, as which happened in the following situation:
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2009/03/parochialist-subversion-of-urban-road.html
Often this goes with the idea of pushing the traffic burden onto less affluent areas, as done by the myopic freeway cancellations within Washington, D.C., as well as that of cross Manhattan tunnels- better to push more of the burden through the CBE.
We need far more highway and railway tunnel projects to serve our urbanized area, not fewer as pushed by this blog’s handlers.
December 18th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Douglas, there were no cross-Manhattan tunnels. There were cross-Manhattan elevated highway projects, complete with proposals to evict thousands of people and demolish tens of blocks. Moses wanted to make the Lower West Side the next South Bronx, and it’s a good thing that he failed and that it became SoHo and TriBeCa instead.
There was no burden to push off the CBE, either - the LoMex was never intended as a bypass, even though Moses pretended it would be. The CBE’s problem is that it bisected the South Bronx (Moses intended it such - he routed it for maximal destruction of black neighborhoods), not that there are too many cars on it. Why would anyone bypass the Bronx through Manhattan and Brooklyn? The LoMex was proposed with so many on- and offramps in Manhattan it was clearly meant to enable more cars to enter Manhattan.
But pointing out how suburb-centric all those highways are is parochial, I guess. The suburbs and exurbs are real America, and cities are just for minorities and intellectuals and must be depopulated.
December 18th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Moses intended it such - he routed it for maximal destruction of black neighborhoods
Except that in 1960 those neighborhoods were predominantly white.
December 18th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
No, they weren’t - the neighborhood he wanted to destroy on purpose, Tremont, was already black by then.
December 18th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
I must be remembering a different Tremont in an alternate Bronx. The leader of the protests was Lillian Edelstein. Here’s a quote about her from the Forward
And in 1953 in the Bronx, what Moses wanted was a road. A very big road. The Cross Bronx Expressway, to be exact. But at the time, East Tremont, like many neighborhoods declared slums by Moses, was anything but that — it was, in fact, a vibrant, lower-middle class Jewish community. But Moses had no appreciation for such neighborhoods and decided to bisect it.
Edelstein was the leader of the resistance to Moses, and the one who fought the hardest, often alone. The Jews of Tremont were a less activist sort than the Jews of the Lower East Side, who would mobilize in the 1960s under Jacobs’s leadership. Edelstein understood that she could not stop the construction of the expressway; what she fought for, instead, was to prevent it from being placed in the middle of East Tremont and alternately move it to two blocks away alongside the park, where it would be less invasive — and a straighter line to boot.
So unless there was a large community of Ethiopians in the Bronx chances are good that they were referring to Ashkenazim. White people.
December 19th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Wrong, there was a later proposal for the Mid Town Expressway that would have used tunnels under the existing streets, preserving the buildings.
http://www.nycroads.com/roads/mid-manhattan/
There was also a partial such option for the LME, but alas not via existing right of way- it would have destroyed the cast iron buildings along Broome Street, so its cancellation (the design rather then the concept) was rightfully canceled.
Both would have served as alternatives to the CBE, and the failure to pursue such as tunnels is irresponsible and environmental racism. Likewise with the lack of a direct highway-railway tunnel from NJ I-78 to Brooklyn.
There is definitely an inner city-wealthy enclave pathological disdain for highways (regardless of design) that reeks of an amnesia of times when people in cities starved, because the roads were blocked and cities with their lack of agricultural resources are by definition unsustainable by themselves.
December 19th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Douglas, the Midtown Expressway was never as serious of an idea as LoMex. Moses wanted to build it through the skyscrapers. Moses is also the person who failed to pursue LoMex as a tunnel - he poo-poohed the idea of mitigation, or of anything other than an elevated freeway. When he didn’t get his way, he tried to get the neighborhoods in the way designated as slums so that he could destroy them anyway. I’m not sure why you’re blaming the urbanists for Moses’s dictatorship.
What you say about people starving in the cities is historically wrong. In the industrial era, people didn’t starve in the cities. The good roads movement never had that urban component of getting supplies to the cities, which the railways did perfectly well; it was rural from day one.
What you say about a wealthy enclave is just as wrong. The freeway revolts started from then-lower-middle class Greenwich Village, not the Upper East Side. And one of the major arguments the urbanists used was that the Cross-Bronx destroyed the South Bronx, so they shouldn’t destroy other neighborhoods.
Adirondacker: in 1953 the South Bronx was still Jewish, but by 1960, when the western parts of the Cross-Bronx opened, it was already majority black.
December 19th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
You forget times of strife (aka wars) when citizen’s roads to the outside were blocked, such as Paris cir 1870. Block the roads and the cities will starve- contrary to any such mythology promoted by movies as The Day After Tomorrow. BTW- the term “roads” refers to both highways and railROADS.
I am thinking about the freeway revolt of sorts that went against the Mid Town Manhattan- which may well started out of Robert Moses unwise prejudice against tunnels, and his favor of clearing blocks of buildings rather then the more clever re-uses and recyclings of existing right of ways. I agree with the movements to stop the major swath cut freeway proposals- it is the failure to build the tunnels that I criticize.
Such revolts do come from wealthy enclaves, aka the Battery Park City crusade against the idea of a West Street Tunnel, and did it to keep their area more isolated.
December 19th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
At the time of the first freeway revolts, Battery Park City didn’t exist yet - it was only built in the 1970s out of the dirt dug out for World Trade Center. The “Keep the area more isolated” revolts have become standard in both wealthy neighborhoods and wealthy suburbs, and more often involve opposition to public transportation. Sometimes the rich actually like having elevated structures to separate them from the poor.
Also: wars can block 12-lane superhighways and 2-lane dirt roads equally well… You don’t increase security by building wider roads; you increase security by reducing the risk of war, which for American cities is practically zero anyway.
December 20th, 2009 at 3:11 am
“The proposal has yet to be finalized, but all of the alternatives currently on the table share the same problems: They’ll encourage car use and they’ll require the demolition of hundreds of properties. Local residents, and many of the politicians representing them, are unsurprisingly up in arms.”
The “Infraobstructionist” lets its anti mass ownership-use of automobiles cause it to neglect reporting the proposed freeway projects political support:
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2009/10/new-underground-freeway-link-in.html
The Fairview Community Council — in the neighborhood that would be ground zero for a freeway in the Gambell-Ingra corridor — stands apart from the other community councils.
The Fairview council has supported the Gambell-Ingra connection since it came up four years ago.
It still supports the idea “conditionally,” said Sharon Chamard, the Fairview council president. The condition is that the freeway would support the kind of development Fairview wants, she said.
As initially proposed, the freeway connection would be sunken. It would be covered over in places to allow neighborhood streets to cross it, and some other developments such as parks or commercial buildings to be built on top of it.
Fairview is already split in two by Gambell and Ingra, which are high-speed, one-way roads that can be scary to cross.
December 20th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
[...] has a list of the four biggest highway boondoggles, and Washington has #1 and [...]
December 21st, 2009 at 5:30 pm
re: WA - Viaduct replacement tunnel
The numbers you give for the tunnel itself are way off.
Of the budgeted $ 1.9 billion (not 3.5 b) for the tunnel;
418 million is for Risk,
and another 166 million is added for Escalation.
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/Viaduct/TunnelCostEstimate.htm
December 23rd, 2009 at 2:06 am
“Can highways have a positive impact on liveable streets? I believe in liveable, walkable neighborhoods and busy arterials clogged with traffic are the antithesis of liveability. If that traffic could be diverted to highways, as in Anchorage’s plan, wouldn’t that be an improvement?”
No. Consider Elmira, NY, where NY route 17 turned into a street with stop lights for several blocks (it’s superhighway on either side). While it was a street with stop lights, it had thriving businesses. When the highway was elevated to make it an expressway, despite the fact that they didn’t take any more space, *all the businesses closed* because the traffic was able to simply go right by without stopping.
Arterials carrying cars support business. Highways destroy said businesses.
December 23rd, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Is not that Route 17 design an elevated bermway.
The design of the project in Alaska shows a below ground/covered freeway.
How many urban boulevards have lively business when bisected by an elated railroad wall?
December 23rd, 2009 at 10:25 pm
“Also: wars can block 12-lane superhighways and 2-lane dirt roads equally well… You don’t increase security by building wider roads; you increase security by reducing the risk of war, which for American cities is practically zero anyway.”
A big enough war will stop anything, but we would have a better chance with greater redundancy in the transport network. Did you see what driving out of Long Island was like last summer with the closing of the Cross Island Parkway ramp onto the Throgs Neck Bridge?
I am not sure how they are reducing the risk of war with all of those cameras when there is no accounting for the sanctity of their feed, nor oversight as to guarding against abuse of PATRIOT Act 4th amendment subversion for 1st amendment subversion.
There is no excuse for the authorities in not planning an I-287 highway - railway tunnel to LI and then New Jersey as a Long Island evacuation route system, starting with upping the bore size of the privately proposed I-287 tunnels to having a lower deck for rail, and upgrading the freight rail project between Brooklyn and New Jersey with the addition of a highway link to I-78.
Likewise to a lesser degree with D.C. I-95.
December 24th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
“How many urban boulevards have lively business when bisected by an elated railroad wall?”
Actually, surprisingly many. Look at London, which is full of elevated railroad walls.
Elevated highway walls? Not so good.
How many have lively business next to a fume-generating highway trench?
However, those are *electric* railways in London — when they were *steam* railways they *did* mess up business.
A key difference actually appears to be fumes and noise. Perhaps electric cars will make a difference, because they’re quiet and fumeless.
—
On another topic, if you really want emergency evacuation of Long Island, evacuation by car is a joke. Railroad is most efficient, certainly; if you’re worried about fragility of the railroad facilities, you build docks for ship evacuation.
Also, if the bridges don’t get destroyed, the fastest way to evacuate on the “road” bridges and tunnels is to close them to cars and simply push great waves of pedestrians across them. That will get a lot more people through a lot more quickly.
December 24th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
For highway trenches, BTW, see Chicago (which is full of them) and also the Cross-Bronx expressway in NYC for examples. For elevated railway berms, see Chicago again, and New York again — and note that the *electric* ones seem to be just fine, but the *non-electric* ones are another matter.
Deep-bore highway tunnels are simply unduly expensive because they require extensive forced ventilation, which also dumps pollution on the neighborhoods above. (Again, this may be improved with electric cars.)
Forcing all the cars onto electric trains and shuttling them through the tunnel (as in the Channel Tunnel) eliminates this pure-waste expense. Deep-bore tunnels with diesel trains have similar problems to highway tunnels, but less so because the diesel trains generate less exhaust.
I wonder — maybe the Alaskan Way tunnel could be marked as “ELECTRIC VEHICLES ONLY”. Would save a lot of money on ventilation.