Downtown Freeway Loops
 

One of the most peculiar characteristic of American big cities is the freeway loops that cut completely cut their Downtowns from the rest of the cities. The negative impacts are very well documented and they're one of the main responsible for the urban decline between the 1950's and 1990's.

As recently there are many projects about removals (Rochester, Detroit, Houston), I thought we could discuss those projects or potential ones.

I was map googling Dallas and to me the northern section of their loop seems completely useless: https://www.google.com/maps/@32.7852...8057323,14.58z . They've buried part of it, but if they completely get rid of it, it doesn't look like it would have a major impact.

What are your thoughts?

Actually, Detroit's proposed removal will only eliminate one side of the downtown encircling. The others are remaining and are mostly just as bad.

Tampa is pretty ridiculous. Did they really need 2 E-W freeways a couple of blocks apart?
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ta...!4d-82.4571776

I could conceivably see Chicago getting rid of the Ohio street feeder ramp (and most importantly it's stupidly large interchange with the Kennedy) and the Stevenson extension over to LSD, but I don't think the Kennedy/dan ryan will ever be going anywhere. Together they carry the co-routed I-90 & I-94 interstates, the two MAJOR east-west interstate trunk routes for the northern tier of the nation.

The best possible outcome for it would be to deck over the Kennedy trench for the mile or so it passes through the west loop.

I hope someday Cincinnati will cap Fort Washington Way.

The Woodall Rogers is actually pretty busy. Traffic around downtown during rush hour already is a nightmare so I think without it, it would be even worse. Plus, it's the best way to get to areas just north of it; McKinney Ave./ Victory Park areas.

Canadian Cities generally faired much better for true urban expressways, with Toronto being the only one with a big, downtown expressway that isn't buried. And even then, it's only one which was built through lakefront industrial areas at the time and only removed a relatively small amount of residential areas in it's construction.

Montreal does also have a downtown freeway, but it's buried through the core so it doesn't really feel like it does.

Some Cities had big plans for freeway loops though..

not a single one of these was built in Edmonton:

https://i.imgur.com/kmbiLLg.jpeg

Toronto, like many cities also had a larger planned network (only the solid lines got built):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...nto_Expwys.gif

About Detroit's, it's the northern or the eastern section they will be removing? It's the eastern, right?

The northern would make sense as well. It pretty much ends in the eastern one.

Tampa seems really bad. When I was working on my Downtown's thread, I read about every city on Wikipedia and Tampa's Channel District is doing very well. I imagine it would be great to remove this barrier between it and Downtown.

And this massive freeway link the two parallel ones is completely nonsensical.

Tampa has some of the best natural geography in the States, but it feels squandered with the excessive freeways and lack of mid-density.

Some times the routes of highways went where land was cheapest

Our downtown loop is pretty huge with actual downtown only taking up a small area of the loop: https://goo.gl/maps/ZzpCD6TqgVPptaYw8

What's so great about Tampa's geography?

I googled and is it the small section linking the street to I-90? Yeah, that's bad. Just 1 km of a massive freeway. It should go away.

BTW, the famous Cabrini Green is very close to it. I've always imagined it was somewhere far away on northwest. I thought this whole area north of the Loop was very wealthy.

I'm googling everything! It seems this is a very important link, to the bridges and to other highways.

On the other hand, there's this massive road just south of it, by the river. It seems to me completely useless. It should be removed and turned into a green area by the river. Cincinnati could make one of the greatest and most interesting urban parks in the US instead of it.

The Dallas freeway segment you mention (Woodall Rogers/TX 366) connects North Central Expressway (US75) with IH 35 and also with IH30. Traffic counts on Woodall Rogers are around 165,000 vehicles daily. While not the busiest freeway segment in the DFW region, it is extremely congested, mostly because the road connects with two much larger and also extremely congested freeway segments. Woodall Rogers is ranked as one of the ten most congested freeway segments in Texas. If Woodall Rogers was closed, surface streets in that part of central Dallas would be swamped with unnecessary thru auto/truck traffic. My link is to the Google mobile traveling on TX366 through the north side of downtown Dallas. Looks like a fairly typical mid day on this segment of freeway.
https://www.google.com/maps/@32.7921...7i16384!8i8192

But it's like what? 3 km long? On the other side of the river, it ends in a regular avenue. It pretty much links one freeway to another that will be linked again just few kilometers through the southern section. Without it, the CBD and this highrise area just north of it would be fully connected and it would be quite urban despite the wide streets.

On the other hand, you can judge me, but this point on Commerce Street below the freeway, between CBD and Deep Ellum is quite cool: https://www.google.com/maps/@32.7826...7i16384!8i8192 . A bit urban rough in a Los Angeles sort of way. It doesn't even have some São Paulo vibe going as well.

The bay is gorgeous with good beaches and ample sun. If if had the built form of an old NE city, it would be a US favourite.

You are kind of missing the point of this segment of freeway. It is an alternative link to the two major north south freeways passing through central Dallas. The southern link you mention is swamped with traffic and makes for a clumsy connection for traffic headed to or from the north. The connection to the new bridge to West Dallas was, while not exactly an afterthought, not the main reason this segment was built. The connection to West Dallas is sort of a work in progress. There are a lot of powerful business interests in Dallas that are hoping to see that under-developed area take off with new large scale projects. My only real objection to Woodall Rogers is that the whole thing should have been built below grade, and more of it should have been capped.

This battle is largely over in San Francisco, partly due to citizen activism that prevented the completion of large scale freeway development in the 1950s and 1960s, and partly due to Mother Nature that damaged what was built to the degree that repair was either very costly or near impossible.

Freeways that were mostly never built:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...PnEOc&usqp=CAU
https://www.google.com/search?rls=en...ftcnd0LAKVkzOM

Freeways that are gone:

- The Embarcadero Freeway can be seen in its entirety here, peeling off from the Bay Bridge ramp (I-80) and heading north along the waterfront

https://opensfhistory.org/Image/700/wnp27.7879.jpg
https://opensfhistory.org/news/2021/...a-closer-look/

Its replacement is a surface roadway/streetcar line:

https://image.shutterstock.com/image...1249120684.jpg
https://www.shutterstock.com/search/embarcadero

- The Central Freeway

All but the northward terminus seen here:

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos...e-id1321921841
https://www.gettyimages.ae/detail/ne...oto/1321921841

Also replaced by a surface boulevard:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i..._lMOA&usqp=CAU
https://www.google.com/search?sa=X&r...sybhk0uio_C75M

The current battle is over removal of the terminus of I-280:

https://uniim1.shutterfly.com/render...&ts=1652299181
https://www.cnu.org/highways-bouleva...-francisco-280

And replacement by something like:

https://www.cnu.org/sites/default/fi...ist_SPUR_1.png
https://www.cnu.org/highways-bouleva...-francisco-280

That isnt good geography thats modern preference.

Good Geography is New York Harbor or San Francisco Bay. Before modern times Tampa would have been a swamp filled with malaria it has a decent bay but requires a lot of work for it to handle ships of size. Cities that were large and important going back a few centuries. Those are the ones with good geography.

There a is a reason it didn't really grow until modern times like many cities in Florida, while places like Mobile and New Orleans did.