Freeway Removal. Freeway Lids

[Ernie]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_lid

This is a thread to discuss Freeway Removal, Freeway Lids (caps and stitches), etc.

Please do not engage in promoting left wing/right wing ideology or critiquing the actions or viewpoints of a particular political party or political leaning in this thread.

Please keep partisan comments/debates out of this thread - avoid comments that reflect negatively on either right-leaning or left leaning political persuasions or characters.

Please keep this thread focused on the topic.

[Ernie]

Wikipedia says this...

Freeway removals most often occur in cities where highways were built through dense neighborhoods - a practice common in the 20th Century, particularly in U.S. cities following the 1956 enactment of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. These highways often created blight that minimized use of land space and reduced the quality of life for city residents. In the United States, the routes for interstate highways were often built through minority neighborhoods in urban centers, which often led to increasing racial segregation by creating physical barriers between neighborhoods.

I have no doubt that freeways were often built through minority neighborhoods in urban centers.

What I'd like to know is whether they were also often built in non-minority neighborhoods AND whether the planners deliberately avoided middle class and upper-class neighborhoods.

[Josh]

They are in the process of removing Route 59 in Akron (which was never fully built). This road got very, very little traffic. A lot of money was spent building it and making sure it served the surrounding area well (a depressed freeway to reduce noise, at-grade crossings for streets into neighbourhoods around it, frontage roads, etc.)

They are also considering doing the same thing with Route 2 in Cleveland.

Overall, I see downtowns as having a problem of bad traffic to the point eventually people avoid them due to the congestion and prefer more suburban laid out areas that have easy freeway access. I don't think it's really good to remove transportation facilities from downtowns, particularly ones that are safer (freeways have far fewer accidents per vehicle mile travelled than city streets or other roads with at grade intersections do) and are more suited for carrying heavy truck traffic. For a downtown to thrive, it needs to have a way for trucks to get in and out.

I would see these projects somewhat similar to the very hare-brained ideas 50-75 years ago to remove streetcar lines and railroad lines from cities with the idea of replacing them all with freeways. Perhaps it would be best to not just rip up and destroy perfectly good infrastructure.

[Josh]

Wikipedia says this...

Freeway removals most often occur in cities where highways were built through dense neighborhoods - a practice common in the 20th Century, particularly in U.S. cities following the 1956 enactment of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. These highways often created blight that minimized use of land space and reduced the quality of life for city residents. In the United States, the routes for interstate highways were often built through minority neighborhoods in urban centers, which often led to increasing racial segregation by creating physical barriers between neighborhoods.

I have no doubt that freeways were often built through minority neighborhoods in urban centers.

What I'd like to know is whether they were also often built in non-minority neighborhoods AND whether the planners deliberately avoided middle class and upper-class neighborhoods.

I have never seen much grounds for these claims. When we lived in Cleveland, we lived right next to I-90. It was in a white neighbourhood and bisected what were traditionally Irish, Polish, and Slovak areas. The area was middle-class when it was built and is now upper-middle-class.

Where my dad grew up in Canton was majority-white when he grew up, although it is majority-black now. I-77 and U.S. Route 62 were built right through the middle of that. Likewise, U.S. Route 30 was built right through the area he was born in - one of his relatives was hoping some of his city land would get bought for U.S. 30 but he missed out on it being needed by a few feet.

It also seems that having a freeway nearby is a good thing, not a bad thing. It means truck traffic moves from your streets onto the freeway so there is less noise, and you also have access to a facility that means you can travel to other places quickly. I suppose we could do this thought experiment: what if freeways were never built near minority neighbourhoods? What would that mean?

I don't think it makes sense to claim freeways are 'physical barriers' between neighbourhoods, either. One can simply use an overpass or underpass to cross the freeway and go somewhere else - or use the freeway to travel. As kids, we did this all the time. It wasn't a big deal at all.

Where I grew up in Australia, we didn't have freeways, and it took a long time to go anywhere. My dad's work was only an 18 mile drive but it took over an hour to get there. Public transportation was even slower, mostly because the trams in the last mile were quite slow. The other problem was public transportation was union and frequently had strikes. It's not really an option to not show up for work just because yet another strike was going on. So eventually my family bought a second car and my dad started driving to work.

If people want to have modern conveniences like trucks, cars, Ubers, taxis, long distance trucking, city deliveries, food delivery, and so on, then freeways are necessary. One could look at Europe such as in Germany or the Netherlands for examples of ways to build them a little better around existing city infrastructure. But the idea freeways were built with some kind of agenda of oppressing minorities is just silliness.

[barnhart]

I have no doubt that freeways were often built through minority neighborhoods in urban centers.

What I'd like to know is whether they were also often built in non-minority neighborhoods AND whether the planners deliberately avoided middle class and upper-class neighborhoods.

The paradigmatic example of this is Robert Moses who built more NYC infrastructure than any other single individual, slicing through numerous poor areas he called "urban blight". In his biography, Robert Caro detailed how the Northern State Parkway was built in a swerving course to fall over the land of small farms and avoid the large north shore estates of the industrialists. After the cross Bronx expressway and the displacement and ensuing economic decline, public tide began to turn. By the time he proposed an expressway crossing rich neighborhoods in Manhattan to connect the Lincoln tunnel to the Long Island Expressway, he was defeated and retired.

[Josh]

I have no doubt that freeways were often built through minority neighborhoods in urban centers.

What I'd like to know is whether they were also often built in non-minority neighborhoods AND whether the planners deliberately avoided middle class and upper-class neighborhoods.

The paradigmatic example of this is Robert Moses who built more NYC infrastructure than any other single individual, slicing through numerous poor areas he called "urban blight". In his biography, Robert Caro detailed how the Northern State Parkway was built in a swerving course to fall over the land of small farms and avoid the large north shore estates of the industrialists. After the cross Bronx expressway and the displacement and ensuing economic decline, public tide began to turn. By the time he proposed an expressway crossing rich neighborhoods in Manhattan to connect the Lincoln tunnel to the Long Island Expressway, he was defeated and retired.

I read a good rebuttal of this about 20 years ago, "The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths" by Randall O'Toole. (See it on Amazon.) Interestingly, the author was someone who prefers cycling and riding trains to driving cars.

One problem with discussing this further is that it is inescapably political. For example, the reason there weren't freeways when I was growing up in Melbourne is because the Labor Party was militantly opposed to them, and would rip up half-completed ones and sell of property acquired by eminent domain by the prior Liberal Party government, along with things like putting traffic lights on freeways and creating intersections to try to make them slower to use. This was a highly contentious, highly political issue in the 1970s.

[Bootstrap]

Wikipedia says this...

Freeway removals most often occur in cities where highways were built through dense neighborhoods - a practice common in the 20th Century, particularly in U.S. cities following the 1956 enactment of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. These highways often created blight that minimized use of land space and reduced the quality of life for city residents. In the United States, the routes for interstate highways were often built through minority neighborhoods in urban centers, which often led to increasing racial segregation by creating physical barriers between neighborhoods.

I have no doubt that freeways were often built through minority neighborhoods in urban centers.

What I'd like to know is whether they were also often built in non-minority neighborhoods AND whether the planners deliberately avoided middle class and upper-class neighborhoods.

Think of it this way: if you have to acquire land by eminent domain, where is it easiest to do that?

1. Where property values are low and people don't have high-powered lawyers? or
2. Where property values are higher, people have high powered lawyers, and often have very good political connections and lobbyists?

Which is likely to cause more headaches and make it harder to get the project done at all?

[Ernie]

Wikipedia says this...

Freeway removals most often occur in cities where highways were built through dense neighborhoods - a practice common in the 20th Century, particularly in U.S. cities following the 1956 enactment of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. These highways often created blight that minimized use of land space and reduced the quality of life for city residents. In the United States, the routes for interstate highways were often built through minority neighborhoods in urban centers, which often led to increasing racial segregation by creating physical barriers between neighborhoods.

I have no doubt that freeways were often built through minority neighborhoods in urban centers.

What I'd like to know is whether they were also often built in non-minority neighborhoods AND whether the planners deliberately avoided middle class and upper-class neighborhoods.

Think of it this way: if you have to acquire land by eminent domain, where is it easiest to do that?

1. Where property values are low and people don't have high-powered lawyers? or
2. Where property values are higher, people have high powered lawyers, and often have very good political connections and lobbyists?

Which is likely to cause more headaches and make it harder to get the project done at all?

I understand that, but in the quoted post, I am trying to understand what actually happened.

[Ernie]

One problem with discussing this further is that it is inescapably political.

It would not surprise me if politics are/were involved, but I am trying to learn what actually happened as it pertains to the quote from Wikipedia. I'm wondering if the Wikipedia quote is slanting things by what it says and what it omits.
Did freeways across the country get built in minority areas, non-minority areas, middle class areas, and upper class areas? And is there documentation that shows that minority areas were particularly selected in more than a few isolated instances?

[Neto]

There are tricks they use to classify areas as "blighted". For instance, houses that do not have an attached garage can be more easily considered blighted, thus opening the door to take the property for other uses, whether for non-residential development that will bring in much more tax revenue, or for highways.

One of my Uncle & Aunts owned a farm in central Kansas. When the freeway was put through, they had to go much farther to get to the church house. Some farms were cut up, with the freeway going right through the middle. The farmer then had to drive the tractor and other farm equipment for miles to get to the closest overpass. Obviously the developers do not want to put one at ever mile road. There are farms close to where I grew up that were cut up this way as well.

In Oklahoma, there is an Amish district near the MB cemetery where my Dad is buried. The ones on the same side of the 4 lane highway use the MB cemetery, because they cannot safely cross those 4 lanes with a long string of buggies. (It is not even limited access, so there are crossings at every mile road, but that also means that there are no over or under passes - they are forced to cross where the highway traffic does not stop.)

Note (after seeing other comments made after I started writing this):
From what I have seen minority and poor areas were favored for this type of infrastructure development. They would point to land acquisition costs as the reason, which is true, for the reasons others have already given. But it's also true that in the cities, those home owners were the least able to defend their right to the land or lot.