Roads
New Haven next to boulevardize a freeway
In 1957, New Haven tore down a neighborhood near its waterfront to build a freeway. It created a barrier between downtown and Union Station, cut off streets, created dark shadows under huge ramps, and fostered more car-oriented and pedestrian-unfriendly development in the hospitals and huge parking garages that were built there.
Pre-freeway, post-freeway, and hopefully post-post-freeway.
The freeway never went anywhere, with other neighborhoods successfully fighting the destruction that the freeway wreaked on Oak Street. Now, Tri-State Transportation Campaign reports that New Haven is proposing to tear down the freeway, develop new mixed-use buildings in the space, and reconnect the street grid.
Why is Washington DC's Mayor instead intent not only on keeping those freeways that should be boulevardized, like the Whitehurst, but also rebuilding long-gone roads through our parks?
 | David Alpert is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Greater Greater Washington and Greater Greater Education. 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.   |
Comments
- Latest Metro map drafts add Anacostia parks and other tweaks
- Bikeshare is a gateway to private biking, not competition
- DC Council makes major policy changes overnight
- Short-term Washingtonians deserve a voice, too
- Public land deals have both benefits and pitfalls
- Parklets give every block a little park
- Judge denies injunction against closing schools
No matter what you do will fix the traffic unless you go underground. Getting rid of a Freeway or a highway and replacing it with a boulevard will only make the traffic go to the surrounding streets and make those more congested; whatever you do you will either create more traffic problems for the sake of beauty or the other way around.
When you look at this as a whole you can see that it may make the area better looking but it will hurt other areas around it.
Whatever you do if you get rid of a freeway build something such as a stadium or a group of buildings it will hurt the surrounding areas it may be with property values, traffic, crime etc. there are countless different ways that something can effect an area, even if building larger roads that can accomidate the traffic but at the expense of people trying to cross the street.
There should be people looking at how it effects the area not before or doing the demolition but after to.
by kvan on Mar 28, 2008 5:01 pm • link • report
As one example, if we replace the freeway with housing, some of the people who now drive on the freeway to work will live there and walk to work instead. Other people may take the train (which stops right nearby), and perhaps the added development can generate enough tax revenue to fund more train or bus service. There are many ways that building walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods reduces the need for freeways.
by David Alpert on Mar 28, 2008 5:06 pm • link • report
by NikolasM on Mar 28, 2008 5:17 pm • link • report
However sometimes there is not a train station or train system near or any space for development within an area or within a reasonable distance of that area.
by Kvan on Mar 28, 2008 5:35 pm • link • report
by David Alpert on Mar 28, 2008 5:47 pm • link • report
by DingDong on Mar 31, 2008 2:10 pm • link • report
Bulldozing its right of way will not bring back the buildings that were lost to urban renewal (removal), and it would reduce serviceability to far more people then gained by the new development.
by Douglas Willinger on Apr 17, 2008 2:52 pm • link • report
http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-urbanism-threat-to-pedestrians.html
by Douglas Willinger on Oct 10, 2008 11:28 am • link • report
by Douglas Willinger on Oct 3, 2009 2:36 am • link • report
Add a Comment