Secular Café: Removing Urban Highways

Secular Café For serious discussion of politics, political news, policy, political theory and economics and events happening round the world

Removing Urban Highways May 2nd 2012, 10:12 The latest wrinkle in urban planning? Removing urban highways or else burying them. Urban Highways Offer Cities New Opportunities for Revitalization | TheCityFix End of the Roads: When Highway Removal Works – Next American City Urban Highway Removal: To Your Health – Next American City Making cities more friendly to alternatives to cars lets people walk, bike, or use public transit more -- and get more exercise and become healthier than they otherwise would be. Some successes in removing urban highways: Seoul tears down an urban highway and the city can breathe again | Grist San Francisco's Embarcadero | Congress for the New Urbanism Portland's Harbor Drive | Congress for the New Urbanism Milwaukee's Park East Freeway | Congress for the New Urbanism Boston's one was buried instead of being removed, but the great expense of doing so has overshadowed its positive outcomes: Removing Urban Highways: Thank the Big Dig : Mike the Mad Biologist Freeways Without Futures 2012 | Congress for the New Urbanism lists some in various stages of planning: Quote: 1. I-10/Claiborne Overpass, New Orleans 2. I-895/Sheridan Expressway, New York City (Bronx) 3. Route 34/Oak Street Connector, New Haven 4. Route 5/Skyway, Buffalo 5. I-395/Overtown Expressway, Miami 6. I-70, St. Louis 7. West Shoreway, Cleveland 8. I-490/Inner Loop, Rochester 9. I-81, Syracuse 10. Gardiner Expressway, Toronto 11. Aetna Viaduct, Hartford 12. Route 99/Alaskan Way Viaduct, Seattle That's a nice idea, but I'm concerned that it may become of the victim of the US culture wars, as high-speed trains have (Trains: the latest culture war - Secular Café). Consider the US right wing's willingness to object to *anything* that their villains like, even when doing so is *totally* contrary to their most cherished principles. They've taken the side of employee rights and wasteful government spending (Bill Clinton's firing of those travel agents), pacifism (Clinton's wars), junk food (Michelle Obama on healthy food), etc. and denounced Romneycare when it became Obamacare. Given this track record, I wouldn't be surprised if "movement conservatives" start defending urban highways and denouncing plans to remove them. Michele Bachmann, George Will, and Newt Gingrich have claimed that liberals want to force everybody onto trains, with the latter two adding that liberals want to force everybody out of cars. This seems like something out of a grove of John Birch trees, but that's what they said. It would be a small step from there to denouncing highway removal as a similar sort of conspiracy against cars and freedom of travel.

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