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Originally Posted by plutonicpanda
I'm not sure if I've seen the full plans but I have seen some of his proposed "skyway" routes and they would be beneficial. Mass transit won't solve everything. That is the problem. I do agree, as I said, the transit system needs a huge boost in funding to rapidly expand it.
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Highways are not helpful in an urban setting. They simply fill with traffic that would have otherwise found an alternative route and cannot help ease congestion. They also destroy whole neighborhoods when built as mentioned before and the pollution from the exhaust causes increased rates of asthma and pollution related illness near them. Elevated highways are not a good or useful thing for a city.
For a real world example of what happens when you destabilize a neighborhood by building a highway through it just take a look at the South Bronx which after being built through the center of a working class neighborhood contributed to the destabilization and decline of the entire neighborhood.
Mass transit is the only way to efficiently move the numbers of people that are needed in a dense urban city and no they won't solve congestion because of induced demand. Building more highways doesn't help either though. The only way to prevent congestion in a major city is to use congestion pricing otherwise people will drive as long as congestion doesn't get worse than their personal threshold for being bad enough to push them to use transit.
I have seen his full plan and building it would be catastrophic for New York by destroying neighborhoods and increasing air pollution.