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Urban highways destroy wealth

urbankchoze.blogspot.com

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Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#41

Post by marcosdumay »

chad_oliver wrote: post #4
nashashmi wrote: post #3

TL;DR version: - Urban highways cost more money than urban transit - They divide cities logistically. - Introduce pollution - Are very unsightly to neighborhoods - Steal traffic from roads in commercial zones and undermine regional commercial activity. - Put emphasis on car-first neighborhoods and businesses (which give little ROI). - Encourage urban sprawl and community inefficiency. My take: These points are unders…

What problem were they meant to solve? (That's a serious question. I'm interesting in hearing how other people view the purpose of an urban highway.)

I don't know what they were created for, but today they solve the problem of making a city grow integrated, instead of like a lot of small (probably poorer) cities near each other.

And they are the best tool for that job. The problem is that they alone are not enough, but any other option alone won't be nearly as good.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#42

Post by marcosdumay »

stuaxo wrote: post #29
jff wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem of getting from one side of town to the other very quickly, without clogging up the "walkable neighborhoods" in the middle, with their narrow streets and wide sidewalks. The people going through get on the highway, out of the way of the people actually living in the town.

In the UK we have built bypasses for most towns and most of the traffic goes around them instead of through.

In Brazil, every city bypass we build becomes the new city center in about a decade. The city just moves there.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#43

Post by kaybe »

awjr wrote: post #27
pmiller2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think it's primarily moving people from point A to point B (or, possibly from point C to point D via some stretch in between A and B). [Begin Rant] This brings up the biggest problem I have with Bay Area public trasnportation. I live 11 miles from work, but it's impossible to get there via any reasonable public transportation-based route in less than 1 hour. On flat land, I can bike at least 50% faster than t…

BART + fold-up bicycle?

Or/And, if safe storage exists at both ends, bicycle with electric support, which should increase the no-sweat speed even further.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#44

Post by Zach_the_Lizard »

chad_oliver wrote: post #4
nashashmi wrote: post #3

TL;DR version: - Urban highways cost more money than urban transit - They divide cities logistically. - Introduce pollution - Are very unsightly to neighborhoods - Steal traffic from roads in commercial zones and undermine regional commercial activity. - Put emphasis on car-first neighborhoods and businesses (which give little ROI). - Encourage urban sprawl and community inefficiency. My take: These points are unders…

What problem were they meant to solve? (That's a serious question. I'm interesting in hearing how other people view the purpose of an urban highway.)

There was a political problem. The interstates were spending truly ungodly sums of money in rural area; the whole system cost something like $400 billion - $500 billion in inflation adjusted dollars. If you were a city, your residents--who tended to be wealthier than rural areas--were footing the bill and getting nothing in return except maybe somewhat lower shipping costs.

So what's a politician to do? Easy: extend the highways to cities. In the 1950s the thought was that cars were going to lead us to a glorious future, free from congestion on public transit, so urban leaders gladly paved over their downtowns. There were (and still are) huge subsidies for suburban areas, and other fears were that without these highways cities would be irrelevant as everyone moved to the suburbs and jobs eventually moved with them.

In the wake of the planning failures of the 50s and 60s with regards to highways cities moved huge amounts of planning powers to hyperlocal areas and requiring environmental reviews, stopping all the highway nonsense. Unfortunately, it created a new villain in the form of the newly empowered NIMBY.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#45

Post by ihsw »

Zach_the_Lizard wrote: post #44
chad_oliver wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem were they meant to solve? (That's a serious question. I'm interesting in hearing how other people view the purpose of an urban highway.)

There was a political problem. The interstates were spending truly ungodly sums of money in rural area; the whole system cost something like $400 billion - $500 billion in inflation adjusted dollars. If you were a city, your residents--who tended to be wealthier than rural areas--were footing the bill and getting nothing in return except maybe somewhat lower shipping costs. So what's a politician to do? Easy: extend…

How do you reconcile urban sprawl with the sorry state of urban transit?

Wealthier residents categorically avoid urban transit in many major municipalities because they are generally unsightly (dirty, littered with ads) at worst and generally unreliable (complete and total lack of consistency in travel times and distances from homes) at best.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#46

Post by rayiner »

ihsw wrote: post #45
Zach_the_Lizard wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a political problem. The interstates were spending truly ungodly sums of money in rural area; the whole system cost something like $400 billion - $500 billion in inflation adjusted dollars. If you were a city, your residents--who tended to be wealthier than rural areas--were footing the bill and getting nothing in return except maybe somewhat lower shipping costs. So what's a politician to do? Easy: extend…

How do you reconcile urban sprawl with the sorry state of urban transit? Wealthier residents categorically avoid urban transit in many major municipalities because they are generally unsightly (dirty, littered with ads) at worst and generally unreliable (complete and total lack of consistency in travel times and distances from homes) at best.

Wealthier residents generally avoid urban transit simply because they do not live in urban areas. Post white-flight, cities are generally quite a bit poorer than their surrounding suburbs. Cities that were built before that phenomenon (e.g. NYC), have good transit that even wealthier residents use.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#47

Post by dinkumthinkum »

superuser2 wrote: post #18
jacobolus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were meant to get people from far out of the city into the city, fast, in a way that would only be accessible to professional-class whites, so that they could keep downtown jobs while moving their families to the suburbs and stop spending their property tax money on poor brown people.

He's not exaggerating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#Roads Urban highways in the US are a facet of the American Dream vision of the suburbs as "a safe place to raise your kids," which is basically a euphemism for "far away from the scary minorities who live in cities."

Well, out of curiosity, do you think suburbs are actually safer than inner cities?

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#48

Post by dinkumthinkum »

pj_mukh wrote: post #36
ideonexus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to deny the racial aspect of government subsidies to produce the suburbs, but the government's official intent was not racial, but emergent and was strongly influenced by the threat of nuclear war. Shawn Otto of sciencedebate.org covers this in his book on politics and science, "Fool Me Twice" (apologies for the typos from my book-scanner): ...it has long been the prevailing opinion that American suburbs de…

This is an interesting angle. Though how much of the housing was moved before the causes of "White flight" were in place? Still seems like Brown v Board would've caused the majority of the influx?

I would think people on HN would be more familiar with the parent's "angle" (which actually the correct understanding) given the history of Internet; I'm a little surprised.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#49

Post by JackFr »

SFjulie1 wrote: post #17
chad_oliver wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What problem were they meant to solve? (That's a serious question. I'm interesting in hearing how other people view the purpose of an urban highway.)

Shortening the time it takes to go from north to south. All island are plagued with the "points of entries and congestions". Montréal is 30x40km island. With limited bridges. So by making a large artery that almost lead people from bridge to bridge (N/S) you may think you can create a traffic that will not interfere with the inter urban traffic... (laminarizing) thus getting rid of intra congestion. (Since it is in a…

With regard to the island problem, in Manhattan any bridge or tunnel which leads from a highway and primarily dumps you onto a local streets has a toll on the way in. This is expressly a throttling measure, as it's considered better to have a traffic jam on the highway going in rather than gridlock -- literal gridlock -- on the local streets.

Re: Urban highways destroy wealth

#50

Post by JackFr »

jdminhbg wrote: post #12
GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I think of major US cities that are under-served with urban highways, the one that immediately comes to mind is Baltimore (granted, I-95 goes thru, and I-83 (81?) dead-ends near downtown, but otherwise good luck). For the ones he's mentioned DC's got big sections that aren't well served by highways, but there is still the beltway, the BW parkway/I295, I395, the southeast freeway. I don't know Hartford that well,…

> When I think of major US cities that are under-served with urban highways, the one that immediately comes to mind is Baltimore (granted, I-95 goes thru, and I-83 (81?) dead-ends near downtown, but otherwise good luck). I-83 ends downtown. There's also 695 (the beltway), 395 (from 95 to the stadiums/downtown), 895 (Harbor tunnel), and 195 (BWI airport connector). It's never felt underserved highway-wise to me, but I…

I-70 -- Baltimore, MD to Cove Fort, UT
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