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  #21  
Old Posted May 11, 2022, 8:20 PM
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
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
Yeah, Phoenix one is very big and therefore doesn't intrude with Downtown. And it also seems to connect important highways.


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Originally Posted by Pedestrian View Post
(...)

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


https://www.cnu.org/highways-bouleva...-francisco-280

And replacement by something like:


https://www.cnu.org/highways-bouleva...-francisco-280
Yeah, looking at the map, it serves no purpose as the 101 runs just few blocks away. I just think the replacement could be done better. No need for such large boulevards. Maybe they could go wild and make an artificial ravine out of it. San Francisco is not very green and it could be a nice addition.
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  #22  
Old Posted May 11, 2022, 8:30 PM
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Kansas City is a particularly egregious example:



When you get exit numbers like this, something has gone horribly wrong:


Flickr source
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  #23  
Old Posted May 11, 2022, 8:32 PM
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Originally Posted by austlar1 View Post
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.
To me it's still a bit confusing. For instance, one person is heading south in the 35E and use this Woodall Rogers section to go once again to north? If the origin/destin is Central Dallas, it's also confusing as one could drive a coulple blocks to access either the 35E or the 345 directly.

And as Dallas it's the subject, there's this massive amount of land around the river, something uncommon in the US. I imagine it's due seasonal floods. However, couldn't they make a better landscape and turn it into a full park for most of the year? At least from pics, it seems underutilized.
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  #24  
Old Posted May 11, 2022, 8:51 PM
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To me it's still a bit confusing. For instance, one person is heading south in the 35E and use this Woodall Rogers section to go once again to north? If the origin/destin is Central Dallas, it's also confusing as one could drive a coulple blocks to access either the 35E or the 345 directly.

And as Dallas it's the subject, there's this massive amount of land around the river, something uncommon in the US. I imagine it's due seasonal floods. However, couldn't they make a better landscape and turn it into a full park for most of the year? At least from pics, it seems underutilized.
30 is a parking lot as it is with commuters also using the Roger Woodall. Both will dump you onto 75/ 35E and into the suburbs.
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  #25  
Old Posted May 11, 2022, 8:54 PM
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Originally Posted by Yuri View Post
To me it's still a bit confusing. For instance, one person is heading south in the 35E and use this Woodall Rogers section to go once again to north? If the origin/destin is Central Dallas, it's also confusing as one could drive a coulple blocks to access either the 35E or the 345 directly.

And as Dallas it's the subject, there's this massive amount of land around the river, something uncommon in the US. I imagine it's due seasonal floods. However, couldn't they make a better landscape and turn it into a full park for most of the year? At least from pics, it seems underutilized.
Yes, Stemmons Fwy (35 north) serves another huge and busy part of North and Northwest Dallas (also towards DFW airport), and it is hard to access North Central Expressway (US 75) directly on surface streets coming from the Stemmons Freeway corridor. The only direct connect is busy Northwest Highway or way up on the LBJ Freeway. It's important to point out that Woodall Rogers also funnels traffic to and from IH30 (the main freeway from Fort Worth and mid-cities) over to North Central Expressway. I don't think you understand the importance of IH35, IH30, and US 75 to the overall traffic flow in central Dallas area.

The "river" you mentioned is actually a flood plain. The puny little Trinity River threads its way through here, but every now and then it can cause massive flooding, hence the large undeveloped area. Plans are underway to convert this river bottom into parkland with residential and other commercial development on the fringes, but, like all things that happen in Dallas, plans are often grandiose and the reality on the ground is painfully slow to follow.

Last edited by austlar1; May 11, 2022 at 9:05 PM.
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  #26  
Old Posted May 11, 2022, 9:20 PM
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
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.

new orleans? the city thats literally below sea level now, and that had continuous outbreaks of yellow fever (not my words) throughout its history? LOL
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  #27  
Old Posted May 11, 2022, 9:43 PM
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new orleans? the city thats literally below sea level now, and that had continuous outbreaks of yellow fever (not my words) throughout its history? LOL
And it was at one point the most important and largest city in north America and remained one of the most important right up to the early 1900's
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  #28  
Old Posted May 11, 2022, 9:44 PM
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Originally Posted by austlar1 View Post
Yes, Stemmons Fwy (35 north) serves another huge and busy part of North and Northwest Dallas (also towards DFW airport), and it is hard to access North Central Expressway (US 75) directly on surface streets coming from the Stemmons Freeway corridor. The only direct connect is busy Northwest Highway or way up on the LBJ Freeway. It's important to point out that Woodall Rogers also funnels traffic to and from IH30 (the main freeway from Fort Worth and mid-cities) over to North Central Expressway. I don't think you understand the importance of IH35, IH30, and US 75 to the overall traffic flow in central Dallas area.

The "river" you mentioned is actually a flood plain. The puny little Trinity River threads its way through here, but every now and then it can cause massive flooding, hence the large undeveloped area. Plans are underway to convert this river bottom into parkland with residential and other commercial development on the fringes, but, like all things that happen in Dallas, plans are often grandiose and the reality on the ground is painfully slow to follow.
It makes sense. Looking closer, the section is pretty much an extension of this I-30, connecting the massive northern Dallas to Fort Worth.

If they manage to bury the whole section, Dallas could develop a massive urban node right there, certainly more impressive than anything happening in Austin.
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  #29  
Old Posted May 11, 2022, 10:15 PM
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Originally Posted by Yuri View Post
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.
yeah, that's the one. it's just a little expressway stub that carries traffic from the kennedy over the river and into river north where it dumps out onto city streets.

downtown chicago never got a full-encircling expressway loop.

the ohio feeder ramp is not so bad by itself, but the interchange it makes with the kennedy is a land monster: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8841.../data=!3m1!1e3

stupid fucking mid-20th century traffic engineers.

it needs to go away.
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  #30  
Old Posted May 11, 2022, 10:22 PM
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
And it was at one point the most important and largest city in north America and remained one of the most important right up to the early 1900's

of course, but that's my point. the geography of new orleans is much swampier than tampa - one city has had to build a rather complicated network of drainage canals and levees the dutch would be proud of, and the other has not.
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  #31  
Old Posted May 11, 2022, 10:36 PM
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yeah, that's the one. it's just a little expressway stub that carries traffic from the kennedy over the river and into river north where it dumps out onto city streets.

downtown chicago never got a full-encircling expressway loop.

the ohio feeder ramp is not so bad by itself, but the interchange it makes with the kennedy is a land monster: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8841.../data=!3m1!1e3

stupid fucking mid-20th century traffic engineers.

it needs to go away.
Indeed. What a waste of prime urban land.

I guess it's possible to have urban freeways that's not so intrusive even when they go through dense areas. 23 de Maio, a very important north-south freeway cutting right through dense areas of São Paulo: https://www.google.com/maps/@-23.575...7i16384!8i8192

This one it's very important to the city and it could stay there forever. No harm, and I really don't cars.

On the other, the next one is the worst type possible, ruined all this region, but today it became a park on weekends and the region is now the city's trendiest place: https://www.google.com/maps/@-23.542...7i16384!8i8192
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  #32  
Old Posted May 11, 2022, 11:08 PM
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Originally Posted by Yuri View Post
Yeah, Phoenix one is very big and therefore doesn't intrude with Downtown. And it also seems to connect important highways.




Yeah, looking at the map, it serves no purpose as the 101 runs just few blocks away. I just think the replacement could be done better. No need for such large boulevards. Maybe they could go wild and make an artificial ravine out of it. San Francisco is not very green and it could be a nice addition.
The purpose it serves is that the Embarcadero Boulevard, the grand replacement for the Embaracdero Freeway, feeds directly into it and that's especially important now that there is no Embarcadero Freeway to feed traffic onto 101.

Properly designed, I think removing the portion under consideration could work but at some point the movement of traffic does have to get some consideration. As things are, traffic from the northeast quadrant headed south must flow onto and along the Embarcadero Boulevard and ultimately onto I-280. The alternative is to navigate the densest parts of downtown onto 101, a rush hour nightmare.

As to San Francisco's lack of green: In the state of nature, the city was a treeless sand dune. Golden Gate Park was made verdant with soil enrichment by the dung of thousands of horses that populated the city until the internal combustion engine replaced them. But the ceaseless wind still makes the life of most tree species precarious, especially the London Plane Tree (sycamore) that city planners for some reason favor. They plant them all over town and most look unhealthy if not frankly dead. Palms seem to do OK but are expensive and aren't exactly shade trees.
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  #33  
Old Posted May 12, 2022, 12:09 AM
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Golden Gate Park was made verdant with soil enrichment by the dung of thousands of horses
That's total horse shit!
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  #34  
Old Posted May 12, 2022, 1:06 AM
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And it was at one point the most important and largest city in north America and remained one of the most important right up to the early 1900's
In 1840 New Orleans was the third largest city in the US. That's as high up on the list as it ever got. It was never the largest/most populous city in the US or North America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ates_by_decade
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  #35  
Old Posted May 12, 2022, 1:08 AM
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The loop in Phoenix is pretty odd in that the portion closest to downtown (I-10) was the last section completed…in 1993! At least it has a tunnel for a portion. The south and west portions of that loop seem to mostly be truck traffic. When I lived in Phoenix I seldom used it.

Take a look at Tulsa for a city that could lose half its downtown loop (South and East I-444) and not have any real effect.
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  #36  
Old Posted May 12, 2022, 1:42 AM
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Instead of freeway loops downtown, it would be interesting if we went the way of most European cities ( and Vancouver, San Francisco, etc) and just had peripheral highways outside the downtown and core urban neighborhoods that feed into the city via large boulevards, arterials, and parkways.

After all, the fact that crossing through the heart of a major city to get to the other side often involves dealing with heavy traffic tells me that people would prefer avoiding the city center if it's not the destination. And if the city center is the destination, drivers could still get there via arterials radiating from the perimeter highway.

For example, the Downtown connector that passes through Atlanta's core often has the worst traffic in the US. I've been through that shit so many times that the only thing I like about it are the views of the skyline. The Perimeter highway in Atlanta allows drivers on their way to Macon, Augusta, Chattanooga, Huntsville, Savannah, etc to avoid downtown. Yeah, the downtown connector/I-20 theoretically would be the fastest way to get through Atlanta. In real life, it's far from it.
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  #37  
Old Posted May 12, 2022, 3:50 AM
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Originally Posted by jd3189 View Post
Instead of freeway loops downtown, it would be interesting if we went the way of most European cities ( and Vancouver, San Francisco, etc) and just had peripheral highways outside the downtown and core urban neighborhoods that feed into the city via large boulevards, arterials, and parkways.

After all, the fact that crossing through the heart of a major city to get to the other side often involves dealing with heavy traffic tells me that people would prefer avoiding the city center if it's not the destination. And if the city center is the destination, drivers could still get there via arterials radiating from the perimeter highway.

For example, the Downtown connector that passes through Atlanta's core often has the worst traffic in the US. I've been through that shit so many times that the only thing I like about it are the views of the skyline. The Perimeter highway in Atlanta allows drivers on their way to Macon, Augusta, Chattanooga, Huntsville, Savannah, etc to avoid downtown. Yeah, the downtown connector/I-20 theoretically would be the fastest way to get through Atlanta. In real life, it's far from it.
The Atlanta downtown connector is a crime against humanity, but damn if it isn't a real "A-ticket" ride through the downtown and Midtown skyline. It helps to be a passenger rather than the person who has to navigate through all that traffic.
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  #38  
Old Posted May 12, 2022, 12:00 PM
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Originally Posted by Pedestrian View Post
The purpose it serves is that the Embarcadero Boulevard, the grand replacement for the Embaracdero Freeway, feeds directly into it and that's especially important now that there is no Embarcadero Freeway to feed traffic onto 101.

Properly designed, I think removing the portion under consideration could work but at some point the movement of traffic does have to get some consideration. As things are, traffic from the northeast quadrant headed south must flow onto and along the Embarcadero Boulevard and ultimately onto I-280. The alternative is to navigate the densest parts of downtown onto 101, a rush hour nightmare.

As to San Francisco's lack of green: In the state of nature, the city was a treeless sand dune. Golden Gate Park was made verdant with soil enrichment by the dung of thousands of horses that populated the city until the internal combustion engine replaced them. But the ceaseless wind still makes the life of most tree species precarious, especially the London Plane Tree (sycamore) that city planners for some reason favor. They plant them all over town and most look unhealthy if not frankly dead. Palms seem to do OK but are expensive and aren't exactly shade trees.
What about this last section of the 101, after it splits into the 280? It could go away. It cuts right through very dense urban fabric.

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Take a look at Tulsa for a city that could lose half its downtown loop (South and East I-444) and not have any real effect.
That's true. Apparently, Tulsa could easily get rid of it. And please, no boulevards. They could restore the grid fully that probably was there before the freeway.
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  #39  
Old Posted May 12, 2022, 12:41 PM
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Originally Posted by jd3189 View Post

After all, the fact that crossing through the heart of a major city to get to the other side often involves dealing with heavy traffic tells me that people would prefer avoiding the city center if it's not the destination. And if the city center is the destination, drivers could still get there via arterials radiating from the perimeter highway.

For example, the Downtown connector that passes through Atlanta's core often has the worst traffic in the US. I've been through that shit so many times that the only thing I like about it are the views of the skyline. The Perimeter highway in Atlanta allows drivers on their way to Macon, Augusta, Chattanooga, Huntsville, Savannah, etc to avoid downtown. Yeah, the downtown connector/I-20 theoretically would be the fastest way to get through Atlanta. In real life, it's far from it.
This is what everyone is missing when they say, "We can't rip that highway down. The traffic would be nuts!"--why the hell is through traffic going through the middle of the city anyway? Divert that traffic away from the city and rip down the urban freeways, which shouldn't exist in a city center anyway, and all but commuter traffic will disappear.

In my wildest dreams American cities rip down their freeways and turn the ROWs into S-Bahn lines lined with dense development.
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  #40  
Old Posted May 12, 2022, 12:55 PM
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LA's downtown loop is absolutely massive, but the disruption is most pronounced on the north and west sides. Capping the 101 to better connect downtown with Chinatown doesn't look like it would be terribly difficult, but the 110 is such a tangle of ramps that I don't know what could realistically be done with it to make access to the westside better.
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