Afternoon links: Against freeways

by David Alpert • July 19, 2010 3:23 pm

Image via USA Today.

A really long block party: Could you imagine closing I-95 between Washington and Baltimore for a day to host a "block party"? That's exactly what the Germans did with a 37 mile stretch of an Autobahn this weekend. (Yahoo! News, Erik W)

Google deletes a freeway: Google Earth contains 3D models of many buildings, but not San Francisco's Central Freeway. That means it can show you what the area would look like without the elevated highway. (Pedestrianist)

Tear down I-10 in NOLA?: New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu thinks it's "worth thinking about" a proposal to tear down I-10 through the city's downtown. The freeway demolished a large historic area and divided neighborhoods to speed driving through instead of to the city. (NOLA.com)

Diets work, on roads: A FHWA study of road diets in California, Washington (state), and Iowa found that they reduce crashes. The ones in California and Washington resulted in a 19% decline, and Iowa's an astonishing 47%. (Planetizen, Eric Fidler)

Anti-freeway on the radio: ~~NPR's~~ Marketplace reports on cities' interest in removing freeways including a NYC proposal for the FDR Drive we covered recently. (Steven Yates)

Let's prevent ten 9/11s: Matt Yglesias notes that we spend vastly more money on Homeland Security to prevent another 9/11, which killed 3,000 people, than we do to reduce traffic fatalities which kill more than 10 times as many people every single year. And 1/3 of highway deaths involve speeding, which is eminently preventable. (Erik W)

Clever subway ads: Flavorwire found some particularly creative subway ads including an IKEA-furnished subway car, barbells or beer cans on poles, a ski lift bench, and a few pretty disgusting ones. (Via
@TrackTwentyNine)

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21 comments

Tags: advertising, California, Germany, Google, Iowa, links, Louisiana, New Orleans, New York, road diet, road safety, roads, San Francisco, security, transit, Washington State

David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington. He has had a lifelong interest in great cities and great communities. He worked as a Product Manager for Google for six years and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He loves the area which is, in many ways, greater than those others, and wants to see it become even greater.

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Just a note that Marketplace is produced by Public Radio International, not NPR.

by dozerman on Jul 19, 2010 3:48 pm

Interesting thing about I-10 is that it is one of the only sections in downtown New Orleans that is above sea level; making it a very useful evacuation/recovery corridor. I think that alone with preserve I10 for a long time. Outside of that I10, is useless uglieness.

by RJ on Jul 19, 2010 3:49 pm

It isn't "speeding on highways". It is just speeding.

The danger of driving:

1. Late at night
2. Not using a seatbelt
3. Speeding
4. Local (non-restricted access) roads
5. Youth

I've said before I suspect a large number of deaths are suicides. particular among men.

But highways are far safer than local roads.

by charlie on Jul 19, 2010 4:14 pm

the autobahn -3 million people attended; 1 million with bicycles!

by Bianchi on Jul 19, 2010 4:14 pm

@charlie I guess it depends on how you're measuring safety. Raw fatalities are split about evenly between roads with speed limit 55mph+ and roads < 50mph.

by jcm on Jul 19, 2010 4:54 pm

Adding onto what RJ said, David actually has his description wrong. The stretch of I-10 in New Orleans in question was built to speed driving to/from the downtown. It wasn't built to "speed driving through the city"....I-610 exists for that.

by Froggie on Jul 19, 2010 5:30 pm

I've been making that point about 9/11 vs. automobile fatalities for years. But I draw a different conclusion from it. Yes, we should do somewhat more to prevent auto fatalities. But much more importantly, we should be much, much more skeptical about "anti-terrorism" programs: we should spend much less on them, and be much less willing to give up civil liberties for them.

by Rob on Jul 19, 2010 6:00 pm

OK, so how do you spend money to prevent speeding?

by Nathan on Jul 19, 2010 6:53 pm

What options would their be for travel between DC & Baltimore if I-95 was closed ?

Cars could use BW Parkway but what would trucks use ?

I bet A40 does not get as much use as I-95 does.

If something happen on BW Parkway and Route 50 that day Maryland would never hear the end of the complaints.

by kk on Jul 19, 2010 7:47 pm

If a highway were meant for getting you to downtown, it would actually terminate into city streets somewhere near downtown. As it currently stands, I-10 is for speeding you through the city. Highways should be for driving around and between cities, but not through them.

by NikolasM on Jul 19, 2010 7:59 pm

I'm not from New Orleans, but I can infer from a map that the I-10 freeway gets traffic coming from the east and bound for the west bank to the crescent city connection.

Seems like it would be rather important and not something you'd tear down, unless perhaps an extension of I-510 going through Chalmette and a new Mississippi River bridge was ever built.

by TXSteveW on Jul 19, 2010 8:38 pm

@NikolasM -- I-10 is for commuter traffic from Jefferson Parish or the North Shore. I-610 is for getting through the city. Look at it on the map. (Of course, there was also supposed to be an elevated freeway along the French Quarter river front, suggested by Robert Moses. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/neworleans.cfm At least Mitch Landrieu doesn't have to worry about that.)

by Miriam on Jul 19, 2010 8:51 pm

And from what I can see I-10 from the west should have turned into surface streets at Carrollton Ave and become part of Tulane Ave and perhaps an extended Poydras St. From the east I-10 should have ended into surface streets no later than Orleans Ave.

by NikolasM on Jul 19, 2010 9:13 pm

Nik wrote: As it currently stands, I-10 is for speeding you through the city.

For "those in the know" (including me, who spent 3 years stationed an hour away with several Navy trips via New Orleans Int'l Airport), the section of I-10 in question is for commuters going between downtown and eastern New Orleans and Slidell. I-610, as Miriam noted, is "for speeding you through the city".

by Froggie on Jul 19, 2010 9:36 pm

Just a note on Spurious correlation.

33% of highway traffic deaths may involve speeding, but that does not mean that 33% of highway traffic deaths are caused by speeding, or that reduction of average speed will prevent a third of all deaths.

by CJ on Jul 20, 2010 11:21 am

@dozerman

Marketplace is produced by American Public Media (I swear I put that in the tip).

Why can't we get cool advertising campaigns like they have in the clever subway ads link? Although perhaps the DC equivalent of outfitting a Metro car to look like the next generation aerial tanker wouldn't be as effective.

by Steven Yates on Jul 20, 2010 11:51 am

Freeways serve many people, which is why the elites despise them, without regard to design, routing etc, with such a *generalized* opposition correlating to a desire to push the traffic burden away through less affluent areas: aka the Washington DC scandal regarding the botching of JFK's B&O Route North Central Freeway in late 1963-1964.

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2010/05/1960s-washington-dc-freeway-planning.html

http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2010/05/telling-indifference.html

Yet it is an environmental racism-classism that new urbainists adhere to- to keep the 'others' out.

by Douglas A. Willinger on Jul 20, 2010 12:55 pm

(I find it funny that I-10 has big play on a DC blog....)

I-10 may be useful but it was and is a neighborhood killer. Of course it could have been worse - taking out large parts of the French Quarter and running along the river like it was originally planned. But like all highways it is an ugly beast.

Sadly it may be too late. People have really, really come to rely on it for moving east west and the access to the Miss. River Bridge if nothing else.

by ET on Jul 20, 2010 2:31 pm

I despise freeways because they are generally located in less affluent areas where land is cheaper and citizens are less politically connected. They displace residents, destroy neighborhoods and increase pollution. But this is already well-known.

by Matthias on Jul 20, 2010 8:41 pm

I can certainly despise those that were poorly planned, though, that being the case with some urban railroads, without falling into a trap of thoughtlessness that thereby railroads as a rule are something to despise.

by Douglas A. Willinger on Jul 20, 2010 9:13 pm

Matthias-

re:

You don't know what the hell your talking about or else you would have despised the 8-16 lanes of I-75/I-85/I-20 GA 400 Toll Freeway Connectors the run through Downtown and Midtown Atlanta and Buckhead.

by tim on Jul 21, 2010 12:30 am