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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
What If We Tore Down That Highway?
Louis and Chris dive into seven American highways that should be removed to improve city life and reconnect communities divided by urban renewal projects of the past.
• Kansas City's North Loop divides downtown from the historic River Market area, destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses
• Syracuse's I-81 removal project is moving forward with plans to replace the downtown viaduct with a boulevard
• New Orleans' Claiborne Expressway displaced 1,500 people and continues to harm adjacent neighborhoods
• Baltimore's "Highway to Nowhere" spans just 14 city blocks but demolished 900 homes and serves no transportation purpose
• Portland Maine's I-295 occupies valuable waterfront property that could be reclaimed for public use and housing
• Oakland's 980 freeway runs through downtown at below capacity and sits on land that could address the housing crisis
• Milwaukee's I-794 removal proposal has state support and would reconnect neighborhoods to downtown and the waterfront
If you'd like to support the show directly, you can do so via our Patreon or by checking out our merch store. Let us know in the comments if there are other highways you think should be removed.
Doors are closing. Public transit that's my way to roll On a metro. I'm taking control my stop's train tracks, it's my daily grind, daily grind. Public transit, it's the rhythm of my life. This week, on Transit Tangents, we discuss seven highways in US cities that should probably be removed. We'll discuss cities such as Milwaukee, oakland, baltimore, portland, maine and more coming up on Transit Tangents. Hey everybody and welcome to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name is Lewis and I'm Chris, and today we are going to be talking about seven highways in the United States that I think could be removed and it would not be a big deal at all and in fact it would make those cities much, much better places to live yeah, that's a, and that's a controversial topic it is in a lot of places.
Speaker 1:It totally is a controversial topic. A lot of places there are movements and cities across the United States for removing highways. We've talked about one here locally in Austin which has been contentious, but there is already construction underway on continuing to make that highway wider, unfortunately. But yeah, in this episode I kind of went through and spent some time just mostly just looking on Google Maps at first and then being like, oh, that one seems interesting. And then looking to see, in most cases, a movement in those cities where, uh, there is a push to do it. So these will be kind of in no particular order. Um, and just at the outset, the, the story of the building of these highways is pretty similar in every single case.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um I think it's been pretty well documented. Uh, especially in the last, I'd say, five years, it's really been publicized to the fact that the the highway systems, as they were built in the United States Initially, weren't really supposed to go through cities but cities. When they received the federal grants, they they took this opportunity to Continue the highways through their downtown, through these neighborhoods that they felt were dilapidated neighborhoods or deserved urban renewal. And what actually happened is they displaced hundreds of thousands of black and brown people, poor people, kicked them out of their neighborhoods, demoed the blocks and built a highway.
Speaker 1:And this story is true in almost every single American city, right, yes, and we story is true in almost every single American city, right, yes, and we both read a book and we actually got to go to an event about a year ago. The book City Limits talks quite a bit about this, specifically in Texas, but the author, megan Kimball, does a good job of. She went to the Eisenhower Presidential Library and found, like you know, there's like notes from Eisenhower talking about how he was disappointed in how the states were using the funds, because the highways were meant to go and connect between the cities, not go through them. Essentially, um, definitely highly recommend the book to go check it out. Um, but yeah, in general we'll touch on some of the history of some of these, but we may kind of move a little bit quickly through the list and talk broadly, because it is a similar story in a lot of these places.
Speaker 1:Um, if you have other highways that you think should be removed as we're going and you we've left them out, let us know in the comments below. Um, as we'll, we'll check them out and maybe we'll do another one. And, yeah, for folks too who are like this will never happen. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Uh, we've done an episode about a year ago talking about three highway removal projects in the United States that actually each went very, very well.
Speaker 2:We'll make sure that video is linked Seattle, rochester and San Francisco.
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly, and the yeah I mean all three of those have been big successes. Some of them and they're all very different stories too, so I think it's it bodes well for the future, and some of these projects that we're going to highlight too, actually are underway and are being removed.
Speaker 2:And I'm excited about this list because we've actually been to a lot of the cities, if not all of them, definitely to most of the cities that are on this list, starting out with one that we've been talking about a lot lately on the podcast, which has been Kansas City.
Speaker 1:Missouri, Absolutely. And while we were in Kansas City we got to see this section of the highway. I did not know before we were going there that there was a movement to remove this. We kind of figured it out as we were arriving, I think. But this is the North Loop in Kansas City. It currently separates the downtown area from the River Market area.
Speaker 2:And Kansas City is notable for having a ridiculous amount of highway miles per capita. Yes, they joke there that they have the highest highway miles per capita in the country. I don't know if that's true, but it's definitely high. It feels like it. It's definitely out there. This particular highway separates downtown from this old market area which was sort of where Kansas City started. In this region the streetcar goes over, connects to this little market square. It's a very nice area, but you have this giant highway that's sort of separating this downtown and this other area. That really could be used for a lot more development and infill.
Speaker 1:Right and kind of restoring the area to what was there. I mean, there were hundreds and hundreds of homes and businesses destroyed to build this just like fully tearing apart the urban fabric of this section of Kansas City. There's a group there called North Loop Neighbors that is pushing forward the proposal to remove this and they've done a fantastic job with some of their media. There are some absolutely wild renderings showing the same building back before the highway was built today, how the highway is now showing the exact same building and then showing what it could be in the future.
Speaker 2:And Kansas City has a unique resource there, where they have this archive of photos of people standing in front of each parcel in the city showing the parcel number yes, so you can actually see what this looked like in the early 1900s, for every property in the city, including the ones that were demoed for this highway.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and thank you to our friends at Urban Lab in Kansas City who kind of shared that with us while we were there. We'll link to our interview with them, where we actually talked a little bit about this project with them in detail there. So Kansas city gets get some more love on the show with our our first on the list of potential highway removals.
Speaker 2:Well, the next one on the list. I have not been to. I have not spent any time in. I guess do you consider this upstate, new York? But Syracuse, I say upstate sometimes and people in New York are like that.
Speaker 1:I think Rochester is both upstate New York and western New York.
Speaker 2:I thought everything upstate was basically everything north of the Bronx, like Schenectady. I feel like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's upstate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would. Yeah, I mean, Syracuse might not be western New York, but it's definitely upstate. Okay, I have spent some time in Syracuse. I've driven this section of highway quite a few times through Syracuse.
Speaker 1:This is a plan that is actually going forward, which is nice. This would be to remove a section of Interstate 81 running right through Syracuse. It's a section where the highway runs up on a viaduct above the street it is currently. The plan is to essentially have the highway reroute around Syracuse on an existing highway, which is currently highway 481. The idea would be to make 481 just 81 and then have the existing corridor be turned more into a boulevard. That would be 81 business. Essentially it would run through Syracuse and then it would reconnect with Highway 690 and then eventually rejoin back up.
Speaker 1:But really positive to hear that this one's actually going forward, which is nice. There's also some really great renderings of what this could have looked like. So the plans that were up there were either to a improve the highway or go with this boulevard model, and both of them were fully rendered out and one of these is a clear winner and I'm glad that the right decision was made. This got a lot of attention in New York. The current governor, Kathy Hochul, was very positive towards making this vision actually happen. So we've given Kathy Hochul some shit on the show before, but more as recent she's kind of.
Speaker 2:She's had a redemption arc. She's come around the corner. Yeah, she's had a redemption arc from transit villain to well, I'm not going to say hero, but to transit meh.
Speaker 1:Yes, yep.
Speaker 2:I also like this idea that both of these have been rendered out. Honestly, this is going back to our Urban Labs conversation in Kansas City, but I think more people should take time to look at corridors in their city, whether it's in a highway or whatever, and create a rendering and just start passing it around Totally, because I think that's such a good way to get a movement going.
Speaker 1:People got to see it, everyone's visual. Yeah, and it's hard to envision an area that has just had like a giant highway bridge running through it for so long as being a place that could be like a spot you might even want to hang out in. You know what I mean. Yeah, I'd say we quit our jobs and just make renderings all day long?
Speaker 2:I would love to. That would be pretty cool. I don't know how we're getting paid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll figure that out later. Yeah, out later, yeah, uh. Next on our list, though, is a city we've been to as part of the show. Uh, we did a new orleans using only public transit video. Uh, early on, this is about a year ago at this point.
Speaker 2:Um, this is the clayborne expressway this is a highway that I have ridden on for all of my life, um going between mobile and new orleans. It is really the main connector of I-10 to downtown and when this was originally built this was like 1960s era. I-10 came into the city sort of dipped down towards the west into the CBD, went back out of the CBD up and then out toward the western half of New Orleans. Later on they they added 610, which is sort of a northern version of this, that goes through city park and connects back into i-10, sort of on the northern part of new orleans.
Speaker 2:It's actually kind of like more direct if you're just trying to drive through it's way it's more direct, it's faster if you're going through the city, to just go through now, the thing about new orleans is that if you don't generally just drive through the city, new Orleans I-10 is already separate from I-12, which runs through the northern part of Lake Pontchartrain. So if you're in this area you're probably going to New Orleans, but this highway connecting into the CBD really may not be necessary, right.
Speaker 1:Because if you're going into the CBD, I mean you're going to get off the highway and be on the surface streets anyway. So you can either you know you'd still be able to like this section where I-10 comes in where we're talking about this is the Claiborne Expressway There'd still be a road, there be a boulevard concept of some sort, so you could drive in that way, or you can keep going on 610 and then drive in more so from the west side coming in.
Speaker 2:There are going to be people who are really against this one. I can already tell, because it does. It is the the easiest connector going in from the east to the west, but also it it skirts the top of the french quarter um during mardi gras season. It's like a primary corridor getting people in and out.
Speaker 1:I I can see people having opposition to this yeah, I mean I think that people oppose a lot of things that they like afterwards.
Speaker 2:I don't disagree, I'm just saying it would definitely met with with some resistance I agree um I, I fully, I would fully support um the removal of this highway or finding a way to make that corridor better. Yeah, because as it stands now, you're driving through and you are really zooming along right at second floor and like third floor windows of houses that this went up right next to. Yeah, you know, when this was built similar story to other places 500 homes and businesses were destroyed. It created the scar through the city. Property values drop.
Speaker 1:Nobody wants to be near this now elevated highway Right, and this is something that has been studied for a while. Actually, the Obama era there was studies funded for the removal. Fast forward to the Biden administration more studies, more money for studies. My complaint there is like, if we studied it during the Obama era, why did we need to study it again during the Biden era? Couldn't we have just actually tried to put some federal dollars towards removal at that point?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, but uh, currently there are no plans directly set in stone here yeah, so, uh, I wanted to keep a keep an eye on um to see if anything comes of it.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely there has been a group that has been kind of pushing for the removal here. It's the clayborne avenue alliance. So if you're interested in learning more or getting involved, if you're in that area, definitely check them out up. Next on our list is in baltimore, and this one is pretty unique. Uh, it looks visually it's wild if you're listening.
Speaker 2:It's going to be hard for us to explain, so you're going to have to go back and look this up on a map.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is i-70 slash the like mulberry franklin expressway.
Speaker 1:So what happened here is, as the interstate highways were being developed around baltimore and this happened in a lot of other cities too there was pushback to these being built in a lot of cities across the us. Um, a lot of cities, you know, successfully managed to limit the number of urban highways that were built. Um, baltimore kind of succeeded in this area, but also not fully. So there was a section of I-70. It was going to approach Baltimore going through Gwynn's Falls Park and then it would connect into downtown along the Franklin and Mulberry corridors. Now, there was a lot of opposition to this at the time and they were successful in preventing the highway from going through gwynn's falls park. But at the same time the franklin mulberry section had already been, was being constructed or already been constructed, and now we're ended up with this really bizarre situation where you have i-70 heading towards baltimore, you have this huge cloverleaf interchange and the highway is like literally like a stub that goes right to the edge of this park, but it's just they've turned that little stretch into a parking lot.
Speaker 1:It almost looks like they sat it there just biding their time, like we're going to get this eventually, Eventually right, and so in addition to that, though the Mulberry and Franklin side, you have a highway that just starts and ends and it's only, it's not even two miles long, I don't think. Yeah, it spans like 14 city blocks, basically. So less than two miles, yeah, and it just starts and ends and it's trenched down in and it's fully divided this community, but it's a highway that goes nowhere, like it's fully divided this community, but it's a highway that goes nowhere, like it's fully useless.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then, in the process, around 900 homes destroyed, 1,500 people displaced, all for a highway. That didn't really happen, which again, is fine the highway didn't happen. It's still really sad that people got displaced.
Speaker 1:Totally. And today, I mean, folks are stuck with this thing there. You still have a lot of the negative effects associated with highways, from, you know, noise pollution to air pollution, to having a literal trench dug, splitting this neighborhood in half. But there is a movement to try to eliminate this section as well as actually like to get rid of the giant cloverleaf intersection that doesn't do anything to. There's been a some talk about removing that and kind of doing some enhancements to the park. But, um, the franklin mulberry section here, yeah, it's pretty annoying what is being proposed at the moment when you told me I was a little, I was a little in shock too.
Speaker 2:If you look at this map, um, like you said, it's not a huge, it's not a long distance, it's not a huge area. It's also not super well built up. It's mostly residential. Yeah, um, but yeah, instead of what would I think would be the logical solution of maybe, maybe and I hate to say this maybe widening the two streets on either side of the. You might not even need to, but yeah, of the freeway and uh, then filling in this trench and making developable land parkland, whatever, no, whatever. No, they have a different plan.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So right now, what seems to be being pushed forward is capping sections of this, which feels like in some of it too, they're saying, well, the long-term vision is to get rid of this. But there is a I'll link the article. There's some from Baltimore Brew, it's a multi-part series about this. They're saying the long-term vision is to remove it. But they want to cap it. But by putting the cap in you're making it so much more difficult to remove. Like this thing is a giant trench in the ground. Fill it in with dirt or do some sort of hill or valley or whatever you want to do, do something with it.
Speaker 2:But capping this super unnecessary highway is the dumbest possible thing you can do, and I'm a big fan of cap and stitch programs, but Not on a highway.
Speaker 1:That doesn't Not this one. It goes from surface streets back to surface streets spanning 14 blocks. It does not make any sense at all. So the West Baltimore United Project is what this kind of falls under, and the project was actually granted $2 million from the Biden administration under the Reconnecting Communities Grant for this cap. So kind of wild, I don't know, not the best solution there.
Speaker 2:The exciting thing is we will be in Baltimore in June. We're going to come by taking the Acela down from the northeast, so we're going to end in Baltimore and maybe we'll get a chance to go and check out this ditch to nowhere.
Speaker 1:Up next on our list is in Portland, maine, which, if you haven't had the pleasure of visiting, it's a lovely little city, very nice Maine. It's the most New England vibes ever. It makes sense where you are, but although not new england. What maine? Maine is not new england. 100% maine is new england. What we're keeping this in, just so that people in the comments can decide. I, I mean I, I lived in new england for for years and okay, I guess it does include maine.
Speaker 2:I think of new england as like the historic, like colonies, but I guess it was part of New Hampshire, right.
Speaker 1:It was part of Massachusetts, I think, Originally yeah, it might have also been part of New Hampshire at a certain point too, but regardless we can set that aside. This is for 295 running through Portland, maine. So you've got 95 running north-south through the area. 295 is a spur that comes off, goes through Portland and kind of runs more so along the coast for little ways. Um, there are other connectors that go from 95 to 295 further up and the concept of running this highway still today through portland main, literally running alongside the ocean for part of it, just feels like the worst use of land ever. We love building highways on waterways, which is just it's wild and I guess you know to give them some credit not credit, I don't know to put some thought towards this during the 60s and 70s, like, a lot of like rivers and whatnot in the US were pretty gross.
Speaker 2:Industrial and gross.
Speaker 1:So if you're trying to not displace people, sure you built it on waterways, but today, when we care about that sort of thing, and like I mean this, this section of the ocean, there's trails and whatnot that go around it and right, you know, separating downtown portland on the west side from a cove, um is this highway, um, it also has made it so that you have, uh, franklin street, um acts as like a, basically just a feeder road into the highway. It's really wide, cars are driving fast on it, um, and it's annoying to cross it. If you're in downtown portland on foot or on a bike, it still sees a good bit of traffic on 295, which is, um, you know, worth noting, but it's not an amount of traffic that you couldn't handle with a boulevard concept of some sort and also seems like, if you are looking at the larger map, if you go up the main highway, there is another connector a little further north.
Speaker 1:That's a full-fledged highway that really could absorb any traffic for this sort of north-south connection right and I think some of the complaint with using that and this isn't a valid complaint is that road has a toll. If you're concerned about the toll, buy out the toll. But people in Maine and New Hampshire are used to paying tolls anyway. It's like pretty common everywhere on roads there not everywhere, but along major roads in New Hampshire and Maine folks are used to paying tolls. So I've spent a lot of time in Portland. I have friends who live there. I think it'd be great to see this removed and I know that housing in Portland is a major issue and utilizing some of that extra space to build housing would be a major benefit to the area because there are some proposed developments and whatnot. But there's a lot of nimbyism from going on and I think it makes sense to to preserve the like cute historic nature of the core of portland. But there is a hundred percent room for development in areas right around that kind of urban core.
Speaker 2:And if you're trying to protect, you know the quaint part of Portland. This is a great part that's not quaint, that you can redevelop. Exactly, take out the eyesore, give the beachfront property back. Yes, all right, we have the last two on our list. The first up is the Oakland 980 downtown. Now, I haven't spent much time in Oakland, but we did take a little bit of time to look at the overhead view of the map, and this is another one that really seems like an unnecessary sort of spur to the highway.
Speaker 1:Totally and, from what I can tell, at one point like this was going to continue further and it didn't. So now it just is like a little cutoff that cuts like right through downtown Oakland. Very easy to reroute around this via 580 and 880. You also have kind of parallel highways running close to each other, so it likely would make sense that you don't maybe even need to do this kind of bypass going around and it would free up a ton of really, really valuable real estate, both from like a financial perspective but also just from the perspective of. This is the Bay Area and if anywhere in the United States has a housing crisis, it's here. This is land that is walking distance to BART stations, is already served well by transit, it can get folks between Oakland and San Francisco and other places throughout the area and feels like a massive no-brainer and I don't know if Oakland is the same as San Francisco and other places throughout the area and feels like a massive no-brainer and I don't know if Oakland is the same as San Francisco.
Speaker 2:I know San Francisco sort of suffers from this historic preservation mindset where they sort of refuse to build their belt, sometimes like very not, sometimes basically like all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very very nimby.
Speaker 2:I don't know if Oakland is the same way, but I feel like if you are removing a highway, this is prime opportunity to build highly dense yes, walkable neighborhoods in the footprint of the old highway. So a really good opportunity there, and this one actually seems like it's feasible. It's been studied by Caltrans.
Speaker 1:There's a political will to get it done, so this is also one to keep an eye on Totally and Connect Oakland has been a group that's really been leading the charge on pushing this and, as you said, I mean they've had some success in getting the backing from some city leaders, state leaders and whatnot. So I think, on a scale of like, could this one actually happen? It? You know, when you first look at it it's like ooh, I don't know, like that seems like it'd be necessary to have, but the highway was was is running currently, uh, at way less volume than it was designed for. Um, it really feels like this one could happen. So, um, we'll keep an eye on that one in oakland.
Speaker 2:Last but not least, though, we've got milwaukee and the home of laverne, and surly, yes, I don't know why that popped in my head.
Speaker 1:Uh, this one actually has a fighting chance at happening as well. Um, the wisconsin department of transportation uh, has they initially had several different options that they were floating for this? Um, the options have dwindled down to two now, and one of those two options is fully removing this section of i-794, downtown. Yep, um, which is pretty amazing. The other is improving it, um, but it does seem like you can tell how I feel about that option.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, it go ahead oh, so this is another waterfront highway too so yeah another opportunity to reconnect to the waterfront right and it's.
Speaker 1:it's like there's one neighborhood in particular and I'll pull up the name of it here but there's one neighborhood in particular just south of Milwaukee that it's cut off by the highway, both from downtown and from the waterfront, and this would do a great deal in really reconnecting this part of downtown. Milwaukee has been growing quite a bit. There's a lot of development going on, there's a lot of emphasis on bringing folks back downtown and the political will is in in this case, just like in california is also totally there.
Speaker 2:so if you're in the area, you want to learn more about this highway removal or connect with people who are also interested in this. There's groups like rethink 794.
Speaker 1:They're sort of leading the charge for this removal, so check them out, yeah a lot of really great renderings and whatnot on their website and, like the, I love when places do these.
Speaker 2:The little slider bar back and forth where you?
Speaker 1:can like peek of, like what it is today and what it could be in the future and it's really impressive what the potential there you know actually could be.
Speaker 2:So um, check them out, get involved.
Speaker 1:Make milwaukee a city that laverne and shirley be proud of In general, though I mean it can seem like a crazy idea to remove a highway for folks who don't look too much at it and like it. It is crazy in the sense that like it is a big undertaking to do but the results are so worth it. I mean I just remember having gone back to Rochester, new York, where I actually grew up, and I remember what the Interloop Highway was like, and then seeing the sections that have been removed and are done. Today. There is still a small section that is yet to be done. It is night and day. It is a place where people live now. There are new restaurants there. It's making the area around the Strong Museum, which is a big draw for folks to go downtown, so much nicer to be in. In an area that was just a trench in the ground, surrounded by like parking lots and some houses that were facing a highway, it's now just like a very cute, vibrant part of the area which is.
Speaker 2:It's just like such an improvement so, and if you want to see other cities where this has been a success, I mean you can go back and look at our episode where we talked about highway removals. But if you've been to Seattle and been on the waterfront where the Alaska Viaduct was sort of recreated, you have access to the waterfront now. Or if you are in downtown San Francisco and you are on the Esplanade, like the changes there are, just it's made the cities so much nicer and more inviting to be in.
Speaker 1:Right, and it's. It's I think it's important to say too. It's like personally, like I'm not against highways in general, but like highways inside of the urban part of your city, right at your downtown. It just made like the reason you go to downtown is because you can walk around and things are close and you go and you enjoy the time. It's not so you can drive around, yeah, in downtown. So you know, make it easy to get to the edge of downtown and then, once you're there, you know if you want to drive there. Great, ideally you have good transit to get there for folks, but like you don't need to go 70 miles an hour through downtown. That's just like not how any of this is meant to work and do it the way eisen planned.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, exactly, exactly. So, with all that being said, if there are other highway removals that you'd like us to check out in the future, definitely let us know in the comments below. If you haven't liked this video already, please consider doing so. It helps us out quite a bit. If you want to support the show directly, you can do so via our Patreon or checking out our merch store below. Uh, we'll hopefully go check out more of these in person. Um, the baltimore one in particular will be in the area fairly soon, but uh, with all that being said, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your transit.
Speaker 2:Tangents tuesday yeah, I'm saving that dough watch me go.