ironchapman, on Mar 29 2007, 04:11 PM, said:
While I agree that freeways are bad for cities, let's just say you have someone who lives in, say, Smyrna and works in Decatur (a long drive, but there are people who do that). Wouldn't it be quicker for them to take a freeway route through downtown than one rerouted through the suburbs? Furthermore, wouldn't a single, direct route such as a freeway be more efficient to that driver than driving through a network of streets, even if they were under a strict grid?
Don't get me wrong, I'm still not a big fan of freeways, just curious about this.
Well, for starters, of course, you would hope that people would start choosing jobs closer to their homes and vice versa. But even if they don’t want to do that, relocating the expressways out of the central city is still the sensible way to go.
Consider the folks who’ve moved intown because they are not into the mega-commuting lifestyle. Isn’t it extremely unfair to require them to subsidize, by the construction of monster roads through their own neighborhoods, those who are into mega-commuting among distant suburbs? These roads not only have to be built at a cost of billions of dollars, they have to be maintained as well. They generate enormous amounts of air and sound pollution. They take up vast amounts of space and destroy connectivity, dividing the areas they pass through by huge, uncrossable concrete canyons. It’s even more unbalanced to ram these expressways through communities which don't need them, since they are the ones who suffer the burden of the pollution, racket and destruction.
Freeways are not efficient ways to move large numbers of people through urban areas. They bundle all traffic into a relatively few lanes. Consider the connector as it presently exists – 6 lanes northbound and 6 lanes southbound, plus an HOV lane. All vehicles have to proceed in the same direction, and it is very difficult to change lanes or exit. (The next exit north of 5th street is Buckhead, for instance).
In place of that, envision a system of 6 well designed urban streets running north and south, with two lanes in each direction, plus a turn lane. You suddenly have OVER TWICE as much capacity, including 6 new turn lanes that allow people to make stops, change directions, and generally diffuse out into larger areas. Drivers are no longer crammed into a concrete chute – instead, they can stop along the way for shopping, dining and all sorts of other errands.
Now we’re not talking about eliminating freeways. For people who love to use them, they'll still exist. We’re only talking about relocating freeways to where their burden falls on the people who like them, rather than ramming them parts of town that have little use for them. Inside the city, you focus on well designed urban streets, with good connectivity, crosswalks, signals, medians, turnouts, etc. You focus on creating bike and pedestrian access, since you have the density to make it feasible. Inside the city, you also focus on creating a first class system of mass transit, with heavy rail, light rail, streetcars and buses, since you also have the concentration of people and destinations to support that.
Here’s a sketch from another website suggesting one possible reconfiguration. Personally, I’d tweak this drawing a bit more and move the freeways back a mile or two further. Freeway fans would still have their limited access concrete chutes, we just wouldn’t be ramming them though the middle of the city. The city would become much more livable and accessible, and would likely experience explosive growth.
Edited by Andrea, 30 March 2007 - 06:12 AM.
