Highway Engineering Madness: 10 Waterfront Freeways That Need to Go (North America Edition)

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Another one for all you Cities Skylines players! From a highway engineering perspective, siting freeways along waterfronts and riverfronts just makes sense: shorelines are typically flat, requiring no structures or tunnels, and the natural barriers of a river, lake or ocean means fewer intersecting conflicts. It's a highway engineer's dream.
But traffic engineering doesn't always (or usually) take account of competing objectives we might have for waterfronts, like active and recreational uses or dense mixed-use development.
So today we're going to look at the ten most egregious examples of misguided freeway siting and waterfront dereliction in North America, with MANY dishonorable mentions along the way. ANd, if you're like me, you're going to want to rinse your eyes out with bleach after this one. I apologize/you're welcome.
Featured freeways (in no particular order)
Gardiner Expressway (Toronto)
I-278/Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) (Brooklyn Heights)
I-5 (Portland)
Storrow Drive (Boston)
I-5 (Sacramento)
I-787 (Albany)
I-64 (Louisville)
I-76 (Philadelphia)
I-95 (Philly)
I-5 (San Diego)
I-705 (Tacoma)
FDR Drive (New York)
I-190 (Buffalo)
I-580 (Berkeley / East Bay)
I-376 (Pittsburgh)
Lake Shore Drive (Chicago)
I-91 (Hartford)
I-293 (Manchester)
I-25 (Denver)
Hwy 315 (Columbus)
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- Big Four Bridge By Zepfanman.com from Louisville, KY, USA - Big Four Bridge, opening weekend, CC BY 2.0, commons.wikime...
- Embarcardero Fwy 1 By Evp - Own work, CC BY 3.0, commons.wikime...
- Embarcardero Fwy 2 By USGS - infotrek.er.usg..., Public Domain, commons.wikime...
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- Alaskan Way Viaduct By Dicklyon - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikime...
- Alaskan Way Reconstruction By Sea Cow - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikime...
- East River Video by Sarowar Hussain: www.pexels.com...
- Westside Elevated Highway Chambers St Ramps By Steven Zane - This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID hhh.ny0443
- Westside Elevated Highway 1973 By Chester Higgins - The National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, commons.wikime...
- Westside Elevated Highway at Canal St By Steven Zane - Library of Congress, Prints and Photograph Division, Historic American Engineering Record: HAERNY,31-NEYO,88-10, Public Domain, commons.wikime...
- FDR Drive (thumbnail) By Christopher Down - Own work, CC BY 4.0, commons.wikime...
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23 сен 2024

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Комментарии : 1,9 тыс.

@kitschmensch-chip Год назад

As a Chicagoan, I've progressively come to identify LSD as a horrendous sore. When I owned a car, I was initially enamored by how beautiful of a drive it was, especially on the north side, but I quickly got annoyed with slow travel times and traffic. There's a bizarre stoplight on the north side almost immediately after a near 90-degree turn (even despite the drive lacking the infamous 's-bend' for decades now), and every single time I've driven that segment I've felt like I've narrowly missed a wreck. It doesn't help that people drive 70 mph even though the posted speed limit is like 45mph. Outside of a car, all the glorious green space along the lake is marred by noise and air pollution, and frequently you have to walk a half a mile to get to the nearest bridge or tunnel. After rush hour, residents are kept up all night by drag racing cars. I've tried to go on walks with friends on the lovely paths by the lake, and often we have to shout at each other due to the noise. On multiple occasions I've seen cars that have flown off the road over concrete barriers. If there must be a road, make it a two-lane tunnel underground with a new L line, please. So sick of our cities designed for cars instead of people.

@tedschmiedeler1336 Год назад

lakefront trail rocks, but LSD takes so much potential away from it. Bothers me so much how people have come to embrace it in Chicago.

@fabes89 Год назад

IMO the bigger crime in Chicago is how wide Wacker Drive remains in one of the most pedestrian heavy portions of the city. The Riverwalk is nice, but segmented far too much; so when you DO pop back up - Wacker is just... so much wider and less protected than makes sense for a roadway that already has a dedicated below grade service street. Especially East of Michigan Ave. - where the top level could honestly possibly be removed entirely without impacting traffic significantly. Heck, the width of the thing between LaSalle and Michigan is an abomination given how pedestrian dense the area is. Agreed on LSD though - last time I visited, I walked from my hotel north of the river to the museum campus and was shocked to find that the only connection from the north side riverwalk to the walking/biking path East of LSD was via surface streets all the way up by Navy Pier.

@martyk4096 Год назад

I totally agree! LSD should be entirely closed and made into a park and new L line. Also Wacker in the Loop should be underground only.

@jaredking31 Год назад

@@tedschmiedeler1336 I think the biggest thing taking away potential is the continued stupidity of both bikers and pedestrians on the lakefront trail. Would love to see annoying speed bumps or something similar to keep the bike path and pedestrian paths separate and safe. My wife and I used to walk the path a few times per week but I'm not taking my 2 year old on the path lest a biker going 30mph blast him over

@potterfollower Год назад

Completely agree. I'd wonder if it would make more sense to convert LSD into a bus-only facility, since I'd imagine making it a train line might be way too pricey for the city. In my mind it's a beautiful Euro-style grassy two-lane affair, but who knows. I live just north of that horrible traffic light you mentioned, and the intersection is obviously appalling at the pedestrian level; having basically an expanded 147/151 bus with increased frequency and capacity running down LSD would be life-changing for anybody close to the shore.

@AtariTheAquarist Год назад

You should do "build a city" series whenever you pick a smaller city with the potential to be a great place to live and how you would build it out

@emjackson2289 Год назад

Would be built on rock and roll?

@viensolis Год назад

I like this idea. Because the current landscape is flawed by design

@salamipitza Год назад

yeah make him play city skylines

@familykaplan1341 Год назад

I lived near NYC for 65 years. East River Drive skirts the Upper East Side of Manhattan, so there’s no alternate route for it! In a perfect world there’d be public transportation into cities and and all suburbanites would use mass transit and only commercial vehicles would be on the streets but Big Oil, Big Auto and Big Tire block this. Lake Shore Drive the same deal.

@ucantSQ 5 месяцев назад

I love this idea. Two or three cities where I grew up are slowly merging, and it's all a car dependant nightmare. They'll be as bad off as DFW in a decade. If they put in some good light rail now, they could avoid an absolute cluster later on. It could be a paradise! But they're not talking about it at all yet.

@JineousJ Год назад

The second worst thing about lake shore drive is talking to people who are convinced that the city will crumble without it.

@inspectahdick2406 Год назад

Chicago needs LSD to function! /s

@GenericUrbanism Год назад

Lake Shore drive is a place where suburbanites can go into the city and don’t have to interact with the city beyond their cars.

@LoneWoIfPack19 Год назад

It is necessary for tourists or people from the suburbs to have an easy way in and out of the city.

@thatpersonsmusic Год назад

@@LoneWoIfPack19 Metra can do the same

@TeamRAR Год назад

@@LoneWoIfPack19 That's what the L and O'Hare are for.

@lite1979 Год назад

I lived in France 25 years ago, and visited Paris multiple times back then. When my wife and I went there this past September, I was delighted to see that they had made the streets along the Seine much less accommodating to vehicular traffic, and there was a noticeable increase in bicycle and pedestrian activity. :)

@RooiGevaar19 Год назад

France, however, has some boulevard motorways too, e.g. M6/M7 Lyon, and I guess some of the autoroutes connecting Paris with the rest of France are boulevard ones as well (yup, first kilometres of A4 from Boulevard Peripherique are by a river). Anyway, Europe generally does the job better in this matter.

@RooiGevaar19 Год назад

Also the country where I live (Poland) has a boulevard expressway (kind of) in the capital city (namely Wisłostrada in Warsaw), and it sucks with its amount of traffic and destruction of the view from the western Vistula river shore. However, European commies had different priorities when projecting the roads... :D

@xouxoful Год назад

@@RooiGevaar19 there are long term projects for downgrading the m6/m7 into a classic at-grade boulevard. As usual, some are predicting chaos etc. but with already 3 by pass on the east, we need not to build a fourth one on the west!

@JuanWayTrips Год назад

I think one thing you forgot to mention: waterfronts were actually not desirable places to be/live in the past because they were full of existing shipping activity and ports, which weren't pleasant to be around. That's why you also see railroads along them (like the Tacoma one at 1:50) as that was often the cheapest place to build railroads and then highways. Now, they are desirable places to be as cities don't really have individual ports, or if they do they're further up/downstream so they are more pleasant places to be.

@nunyabidness3075 Год назад

Yeah, today’s city planners only hate on thing more than yesterday’s city planners. Houston. 😂🤣😂

@newagain9964 Год назад

Will also need to consider sea level rising and restoration of wetlands/drainage FIRST before tearing down and putting in housing.

@jackieknits61 Год назад

This in particular. Despite all we do to keep waterfront of all types static and where we want them, mother nature will get prissy and rearrange things to suit herself. Best to leave some room for that.

@dianethulin1700 Год назад

When I was growing up the area down by the water in Santa Barbara was the wrong side of the tracks with low-rent SROs. Now that area is seaside resorts for the rich and famous

@CityNerd Год назад

They called it the Tacoma aroma for a reason

@neilworms2 Год назад

Chicagoan here: About the only thing I'd keep with Lake Shore Drive is the numerous express buses that use it. I think it would be way better if it was narrowed and turned into an exclusive bus way for express routes that oftentimes (when traffic is low) get you to the loop faster than taking the L.

@traveller23e Год назад

Although by the time you're shrinking it to two lanes and making it bus only, it might be worth considering a tram with grass between the tracks.

@urrywest Год назад

I am also a chicagoen much of the traffic comming from the north has no way of getting down town through the north side of chicago without a lof of noise polution and so on... . I feel like a ribin of highway in the lake the far north side to replace trafic on Sharidan Road as well as stacking or tunneling much of the north side.

@neilworms2 Год назад

@@traveller23e I wish, but the USA is allergic to such sensible transit solutions...

@morganboutwell8231 Год назад

Agree

@gabetalks9275 Год назад

I think it should be converted into a light rail line. That would be amazing.

@simoneh4732 Год назад

Here's the lowdown on Toronto's Gardiner Expressway. In the 1950s when it was started, during Toronto's short lived urban highway boom, The urban portion of the Gardiner was 100% industrial due to the Port of Toronto and the neighbouring CN rail corridor and massive yard. The construction of the Gardiner coincided with CN moving it's mainline just north of the city (eventually the old ROW was purchased by GO Transit). Fast forward to recent years and the Gardiner is crumbling and requires massive investment to repair, and the waterfront is now prime real estate. In 2015 city council voted 24-21 against tearing the least used eastern portion. Surprise surprise, 100% of the urban councillors voted to tear it down and 100% of the suburban ones voted to reinvest in it. This political imbalance has been forced and reinforced on urban Toronto for decades by Conservative Premiers of Ontario. Cities don't have any constitutional power in Canada, only what provinces delegate to them, so they are free to mess with city politics. A small eastern portion of the Gardiner was removed this summer because it was the least used and necessary for the reconstruction of a bridge as part of the re-naturalization of the Don River (an amazing project worth checking out).

@Droxal Год назад

To add on, Toronto used to be a way smaller city, but was merged with neighbouring cities as a cost saving measure by the provincial government. One consequence of that is that suburbs have way more power and say in the city of Toronto politics then they would have otherwise.

@simoneh4732 Год назад

I count at least 3 times the power of Old Toronto was diluted. The most recent was a few years ago when Conservative Premier Doug Ford drastically reduced he number of city councillors, reducing the percentage of Old Toronto councillors. Before that in the 1990's Conversative Premier Mike Harris amalgamated Toronto with its suburbs, flipping the balance of Toronto council to the suburbs. Before that Metro Toronto existed, which had power over metro area issues, but not over all aspects of old Toronto. It was originally tilted towards the more populated, older, more urban townships, but that changed when they were amalgamated into the City of Toronto in 1967 by Conservative Premier John Robarts, reducing the number of urban votes on Metro Council.

@omgbutterbee7978 Год назад

@@Droxal Merged as a way to move power away from urban minded folk and toward car minded folk you mean. You don't save money in your city by attaching yourself to suburban leeches.

@truedarklander Год назад

@@davieee1168 he's a Liberal which is to say a centrist

@JonBarraquio Год назад

Another sad fact is that the construction of the Gardiner also resulted in the disconnect between High Park and Parkdale and the destruction of Sunnyside Park. Parkdale was an affluent neighborhood prior to this and is only recently slowly being revitalized

@rossbryson8720 Год назад

You should look at Glasgow as an example of a European city that adopts American urban planning, it’s been featured in so many films as a stand in for NYC or Philly. We’ve got a waterfront freeway of our own - the Clydeside Expressway - and it’s a complete carbuncle that deserves to go!

@GusPlayer94 Год назад

yup, the the fact they even listed the kingston bridge, I just....

@emjackson2289 Год назад

Washington, Tyne & Wear asks Clydeside Expressway if it wants a date? Edit* I should also add a whole swathe of Teesside around the A19/Teesside Park whether north facing to Hartlepool or south facing toward Redcar.

@nathanb3301 Год назад

I live in Chicago. When I first moved here I lived in Rogers Park (North of the beginning of LSD) right by the lake and it was amazing. I walked the dog right up to the lake every day and spent time enjoying the lakefront nearly every day. After moving further south, it's been a real bummer having a highway between me and the lake and I don't think most people here realize what a barrier it is. Now I nearly never visit the lakefront and nobody else I know goes there outside of trips to the beach in the summer. Most people here have never lived North of LSD and simply don't know what they're missing. After living a couple of years deeper in the city and spending time in different neighborhoods, it's clear that LSD is really a huge barrier to the lakefront, especially on the South side. It's incredible the amount of pavement near the lakefront south of the loop. Even by Jackson Park, the main lakefront rec area on the south side, there are amazingly few places to cross LSD and the one by Promentory Point is a particularly dilapidated tunnel underneath the drive. A side note: Lots of people will say that the transit is bad towards the lakefront but there are a lot of buses that go that way and many that even use LSD to run an express to the loop. The capacity on all the lakefront transit is always under a lot of stress, but that's because of the population density along the transit lines and is an issue of its own that is arguably being partially addressed by the CTA already.

@CannabisTechLife Год назад

For sure. I live in Southloop and I only feel safe biking to the LFT by using the Field Museum tunnel that goes under LSD. Trying to cross topside seems chaotic.

@adamhammond8379 Год назад

I live on the edge of Jackson Park. Currently, to cross the park and get to the beach I have to cross 16 lanes of traffic (three busy roads/hwys). It is a good example of the wall created by LSD that it will cut the new Obama Center off from the lake shore.

@CityNerd Год назад

The screengrab I got of people carrying their bikes down the stairs to go through the tunnel under LSD was just chefs kiss for me. I mean are you kidding

@MTM358 Год назад

Agreed Chicago runs an amazingly solid bus service compared to pretty much any other American city.

@tomslastname5560 Год назад

wow I just wandered the lakeshore near Oakwood Beach on google streetview and was in disbelief at how empty the park is, and on a beautiful sunny day in June! In Montreal a park like that would be full of thousands of people picnicking on the grass and the air would be thick with barbecue smoke! lol (people in Montreal use parks as their backyards so in the afternoons everyone is having hangouts and beers with their buddies in the park)

@antzleah5413 Год назад

The one great thing from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco was the eventual demolition of the Embarcadero Freeway. It was a horrible event and we will always remember those we lost, but losing that great hulking cement monstrosity and allowing sunshine into the lower part of the city was a gift.

@parsonator529 Год назад

Technically, Storrow Drive is there for out-of-town parents of college students to embarrass themselves on September 1st by opening the top of a u-haul like a can of catfood on a low overpass. Outside of that, it's just where people park unwillingly, honk, and yell obscenities at each other.

@arielioffe1810 Год назад

Also supposedly a faster way to get to the airport

@reneadilsaver9903 Год назад

NC is fascinating. We originally never built densely close to waterfronts because our coast is constantly changing and hard to tame. It’s also important to note that while we don’t have any big and impressive bodies of water like the Great Lakes or the Mississippi, we have many smaller rivers that flow from the mountains that are of high water quality. We have tons of groundwater here no matter where you are in the state. Well water was commonly used, especially in the piedmont and the mountains because we have high mineral content and fine clay soil that naturally filters water. As cities (Raleigh, Greensboro, etc.) started to grow in population along freight rail lines, reservoirs became more common, but the reason we have so many reservoirs and lakes today actually has to do with when our state started building infrastructure for electricity. None of our lakes are naturally occurring. Most, like Lake James or Lake Norman, were engineered by Duke Power as hydroelectric projects over a century ago. So none of our major cities are built on our prominent bodies of water because the bodies of water were man-made after the cities were established. Now you just have a lot of suburban developments on Lake Norman, Jordan Lake, etc. because people have figured out living by water can be very nice!

@Legendazdubce Год назад

North Carolinas cities are surrounded by reservoirs, meaning that any water which could be making a river is just force into a man made lake. There is one semi major river going through Fayetteville but there is not much development around it. Also there isn't a single major river which gathers most of the water in comparison with other areas. Its actually quite an interesting phenomenon. :)

@oaxtec765 Год назад

Although Ashville and Wilmington (albeit neither in the Piedmont) both have pretty significant rivers right near their downtown. The highways and train track around Ashvilles waterfront are kind of a shame. Wilmington though has done an incredible job with waterfront redevelopment!

@collinpearsall9084 Год назад

NC became more populated much more recently than a lot of other regions and at a time that trucking was the dominant mode of transporting goods, so waterways for transport weren't really a factor.

@notactuallymyrealname Год назад

Ohhh is this a TVA thing? I never considered that! TVA has been the answer to so many weird questions.

@KBJ910 Год назад

Idk Wilmington isn’t a major major city but it’s a good sized. The downtown right on the river which often gets flooded when bad hurricanes come through. Wilmington has also done a good job at keeping interstates out of the city also.

@phillip3273 Год назад

There's been some talk of building a River District in Charlotte as some sort of exclave. It'll be on the Catawba between Belmont and the airport. But it's just going to be another suburb with lipstick, probably.

@KanalFrump Год назад

The Clara Barton parkway in Washington DC should get a mention. A major commuter traffic artery placed alongside a stunningly beautiful part of the Potomac River with rocky promontories, waterfalls and natural attractions that are pretty much inaccessible to residents on the hills above in some of the most attractive parts of the DC area. The defunct C&O canal goes along the river from Georgetown and all the way to Cumberland, MD and back in the 1960s car brained traffic planners wanted to pave it over and turn it into a highway, making the whole river like the Clara Barton section. Thankfully that didn't happen.

@hank9th Год назад

Chicagoan chiming in. Lake Shore Drive certainly bothers my urbanist sensibilities, but I also feel like it has a weird romantic appeal to a good number of people. If you're forced into a car-centric lifestyle (which many Chicagoans are, sadly), it is a really cool stretch of road to drive down. But as someone who has been car-free in Chicago for a decent number of years, I lament how much worse the lakefront experience is due to LSD.

@JoeJoe-lq6bd Год назад

In my experience, those who really like LSD are suburbanites. That land would be worth so much more even just economically, if that road were not there.

@josephmogavero1355 Год назад

It's definitely a trade-off. If LSD didn't exist, I'd probably have to move far out to commute to my job, and that would just contribute more to sprawl. LSD is the only way for me to connect to the expressway.

@collinpearsall9084 Год назад

It's legally supposed to be a "pleasure drive" which is sort of commendable (but not really). And it doesn't even abide by that.

@newagain9964 Год назад

Remove LSD and would become property of the economic and social elites by proxy. At least middle and low income ppl can use it as is.

@AlecSchwengler Год назад

I think converting it into a boulevard with a high frequency transit option is a good solution. It allows some car usage to remain for those who need it, but also provides a transit alternative to get people out of cars & make the parks more pleasant.

@luke8936 Год назад

Halifax, NS, where I am from, almost put a freeway along the waterfront in the 1960s. It was stopped and now we have an incredibly vibrant waterfront and boardwalk. All that was built of the freeway was a single interchange, which is currently being demolished and redeveloped into mixed-use and green space.

@charlesd2109 Год назад

Glad you mentioned this one Luke! I was going to mention exactly the same thing. I am not from Halifax, but knew about the cancelled plans for the freeway. Major bullet dodged! I cannot imagine what Halifax would be like now with a freeway instead of the great, people friendly waterfront. The naval dockyards necessarily block a lot of the waterfront, but there would have been nothing left if they had build the freeway.

@rabbit251 Год назад

Should do a Top 10 of cities that reverted and show what the difference is like.

@NebulonRanger Год назад

Halifax has its own issues but a neutered waterfront ain't one

@OneNewHope Год назад

You ever read a title and just know you're going to be in it? #Chicago checking in.

@synura8086 Год назад

12:50 The location of many of these cities is determined by the "Fall Line". The Fall Line is the border between the costal plain along the East Coast and the "Piedmont" foothills further inland. At these locations, rivers had rapids and they were the harbours for river shipping in the past. These inland harbours grew into a string of cities in the modern US that stretches for thousands of miles.

@PJNormand Год назад

Many east coast cities started as mill towns before wide spread steam power and needed the rapids for hydro power for mills and factories.

@granthancock3622 Год назад

Well, true, but Raleigh and Charlotte, the two largest cities in NC, aren’t on rivers. Raleigh was intentionally selected away from them because a site for the capital was being chosen during the revolutionary war and people feared the British coming up the rivers. Charlotte was established where it is because it’s at the intersection of Native American trading routes. Set up to take advantage of that trade. Assorted smaller cities I have no idea. It’s certainly a geographical oddity to have none of the states largest cities sited on rivers.

@sickofguysnamedtodd2293 Год назад

@@granthancock3622 even without being directly on rivers, both Raleigh and Charlotte are close enough to rivers that the army corps of engineers was able to create lakes by damming the rivers to create reservoirs so they’d have drinking water.

@Dwafiz Год назад

The fall line is an awesome phenomenon/concept. Basically anywhere where a shift in transportation mode is required, becomes a likely catalyst for a town/city. But since the fall line hinges on rivers, it's totally counter as an explanation for the lack of rivers in North Carolina's major cities.

@thebuttermilkyway687 Год назад

None of the named cities are on the fall line.

@knutthompson7879 Год назад

Most inland North Carolina cities were built along railway lines. This is actually true of much of the southeast, which has only a few major rivers. So they may look random if you are expecting waterfronts, but there were reasons.

@mowplsu Год назад

What is the source of water for those inland cities? Underground water from wells?

@mattgopack7395 Год назад

@@mowplsu It comes from reservoirs - there were a bunch created in the early to mid 20th century IIRC. At least for the 3 biggest cities in NC (Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro)

@knutthompson7879 Год назад

@@mowplsu There is enough water supply via surface, reservoirs, and ground water, just not enough for significant navigable waterways.

@ivanoffw Год назад

Having lived in North Carolina for a few years, I know that the news almost never talked about the agricultural runoff from hog, turkey, or whatever other animals or plants that they raised. Remember, it was the coast of North Carolina where we learned of the "Red Tide". I have a theory that for most of its history, North Carolina used its waterways as open sewers, so deciding where to build your home, would you rather live in a lush green area, or alongside the open sewer, and the people living in North Carolina spoke with their pocketbooks.

@chazdomingo475 Год назад

I think this is just how most cities operated in the up until the environmental movement of the late 1900s. All the old folks have stories of the mutated fish that comes from the rivers of the city and why you should never swim in them.

@Rubycon99 Год назад

Almost everywhere used waterways as open sewers for most of history.

@cameronleman1538 Год назад

I just visited Duluth MN, and it was disappointing that the whole downtown was separated from the Superior by their freeway. Points to them for capping some of it to make a park, but there's just no great way to get to the lake because of the road.

@556m4 Год назад

My grandfather was from Duluth.

@sarelloo Год назад

There is much talk of dismantling the freeway there. And of course much of the typical pushback from tourists and out-of-towners 🙄.

@AlecSchwengler Год назад

The Duluth freeway usage is significantly below what planners expected. The state will need to spend close to $500 million to repair it, so there are a lot of folks pushing to remove it instead. I don’t know if they will succeed or not, but I wish them luck! Duluth is a beautiful city & removing that freeway would make it even better!

@CityNerd Год назад

Yeah I looked at that one for this (and for my earlier video on freeway caps). Not good!

@letitiajeavons6333 Год назад

I spent 3 years growing up in West Michigan near Lake Michigan and even I think Lake Superior is too cold to swim in. Tear down the Freeway and use it for ferries and boats.

@samishahin9642 Год назад

Boston mentioned! 🎉🎉🎉 As a BU alum, the part of campus right next to Storrow Drive is called the "BU Beach", not because it's by the water, but because the sound of highway traffic supposedly sounds like ocean waves (if you close your eyes)

@json8119 Год назад

Glad to see Storrow Drive make the list. It's a DCR (Dept of Cars and Roads erm I mean Dept of Conservation and Recreation) parkway so the State of MA has full control over its use. Even better there are solid alternatives like multi subway and commuter rail lines and EVEN AN INTERSTATE HIGHWAY like i90 right next to it. The Esplanade/Paul Dudley Bike Path runs next to it but it gets extremely narrow (8 ft or less) at times due to all the roadways there. There's also Memorial Drive on the Cambridge side which should really get a dishonorable mention too. I also like i293 in Manchester, since i93 runs as an alternative right there. You could easily truncate i293 at the 101/Everett Turnpike interchange and free up a shit ton of land for recreation and transit use.

@seantroy3172 Год назад

At lest Mem drive is closed on sunday right? 😆

@json8119 Год назад

@@seantroy3172 yeah during the warmer months. I'd prefer transit or a mix of transit/pedestrian/cycling infrastructure instead of a 4+ lane roadway blocking easy access to the river front though.

@newenglandgreenman Год назад

One particularly nasty aspect of Storrow Drive is that it is named after Helen and James Storrow, who helped make possible a green space along the Charles. After James died, Helen fought on against the construction of the highway, which she successfully prevented until her death in the 1940s. Naming the highway after the people whose vision it violated is just offensive.

@perfectallycromulent Год назад

i live in Allston, and Storrow Drive is how you get around here and into Cambridge or further east. the highway in cambridge is also extremely useful to local people. cities are crowded and actually need roads, even multiple roads going to similar places, so stuff like ambulances can get around and people don't die stuck in traffic.

@seantroy3172 Год назад

@@perfectallycromulent I don't think anyone is saying cities don't need roads, but there are ways to build better roads and infrastructure that can make cities healthier and happier for everyone. A good transit network can reduce stress on those roads, and offering people easy and safe access to waterfront can increase the attractiveness and enjoyment of these areas.

@sinisterdesign Год назад

Chicagoan here! I spent pretty much the whole video wondering if you were going to bring up Lakeshore Drive. 😅 My take: the tunnels under LSD do make it relatively easy to access the lakefront on foot, though using them is decidedly less pleasant than just strolling on foot at grade would be. The real issue with Lakeshore Drive is the noise--it generates constant noise that seriously hampers one's ability to really enjoy the city's otherwise incredible stretch of lakefront parks. There are a few express buses (most notably the 156) that make good use of LSD for fast public transit, though in all honesty the 156 is largely duplicative of red line trains for all but the richest of lakefront property owners, so I'm not sure how many points that should really award it. If I had to guess, I'd say that demolishing Lakeshore Drive will be a hard sell politically, as many Chicagoans rely on it for daily commuting. We should still totally do it, though, then pump whatever funds that frees up into expanding the L system and running more frequent trains.

@qazwsxedc6723 Год назад

I just moved to Chicago last year, and it seems like Lake Shore Drive is a bit of a sacred cow for Chicagoans. It has some pretty great views along it that people love to talk about it, but it's a terribly engineered death trap that completely cuts the city off from the otherwise amazing lakefront. The lakefront is definitely the best part of the city, but the downtown sections are ruined by the fact that you're sandwiched between the water and an 8 lane highway. Chicagoans will not hear any criticism of their beloved highway because of the "epic city views", but it just underscores how the city is totally engineered to be something you drive through instead of actually wanting to be in. If that was a useful thought process, we should just build an interstate through all our national parks. Lincoln Park is gorgeous and would be one of my favorite urban parks in the country if it actually bordered the beach instead of being drowned in road noise and almost completely cut off from the coast. I think LSD started out as a small two lane parkway, but has somehow turned into a giant monstrosity that wrecks one of Chi's best features.

@AlecSchwengler Год назад

IDOT is planning to rebuild the northern section of LSD over the next decade. One option would convert an existing car lane to bus only, while another option would remove park space to add two more car lanes… be sure to tell your alderman & state rep/senator that you want transit on LSD instead of cars so they can push IDOT in the right direction!

@123userthatsme Год назад

Scenic drive in Red Rock Canyon and the Blue Ridge Parkway prove that Americans aren't afraid to throw a road into a national park. I get that they cover a lot of land, but when the point is site seeing, it just seems reckless and idiotic. Maybe I could support something on tracks with a mechanism to yield to wild animals.

@JelliThePilot Год назад

if you see someone crying when you mention tearing down LSD its because they're the people who are drag racing up and down it at midnight on a friday

@gregoriogurda3420 Год назад

Don't forget about Bueller!

@allenwinston9225 Год назад

LSD exists because of a poor transportation network for cars. It results from 3 major interstate highways coming through Chicago from the Eastern us. 80, 90 and 94. There is no good way to move through the City. Those interstates have insane traffic. LSD makes moving North South tolerable. Years ago in 60s there was a crosstown expressway proposal that would have fixed it. The amount of freight that goes through Chicago .

@sebastianjoseph2828 Год назад

Baltimore actually has a great story of freeway revolt, stopping I-83 and I-70 from being extended to connect to I-95 by cutting through the Canton and Fells Point waterfront neighborhoods. One of the lead activists was Barbara Mikulski, our first female senator. Another video idea, best urban hospitals? There's a newly built hospital near me and while there are protected bike lanes and bus access, it's otherwise in a suburb far from easy access for many. Good hospitals need to balance the need for road use (ambulances) and open space (helipads), with accessibility for patients by mass transit including disability-compatible transit (elevators in stations, etc) and with being near a large population for patients and employees.

@urbanderek Год назад

As someone who has been going on I-25 in Denver for well over a decade, I can say I had no clue it went by a river.

@skiinggator Год назад

Exactly. It hides the river.

@gogreen7794 8 месяцев назад

I guess you don't ever get off I-25. It's obvious if you get off the freeway and travel other roads. But then, I-25 doesn't always follow the Platte through the Denver metro area, which isn't much of a river, anyway.

@ThomasGeist Год назад

Wow! Finally someone mentioning North Carolina’s weirdo absence of city waterfronts! I live in Charlotte, NC since 2007 and I have always wondered about this. And there’s the pretty sizable Catawba River right next to the city!

@davehause8571 Год назад

Wilmington and Asheville are the only cities I can think of with a waterfront.

@mentalrectangle Год назад

Atlanta isn't on a river either. Similar deal. GA and NC share many similarities, except instead of one big city we have five smaller ones.

@lentilreflection2676 Год назад

See also: Cleveland, Ohio. The Shoreway (an east/west highway) cuts off downtown from the lake. Huge missed opportunity for tourism. There is currently a proposal to turn the Shoreway into a boulevard and add a land bridge connecting Downtown (which sits atop a 60-foot high bluff) to the beach.

@jackfordon7735 Год назад

Very good point, I've driven along i90 many times and it really is atrocious how it completely cuts of the city from its lake.

@7777777777daniel Год назад

Can't mention this without Burke airport smh.

@mryesinberea Год назад

And of course, the decision to build a football stadium right next to the lake. Cleveland is slowly waking up to the tourism/recreational possibilities of Lake Erie, but it will take decades to undo many of the mistakes of the past.

@tomsmith5584 Год назад

As for I-25 in Denver, it followed the railroad right of way from 38th Avenue to Evans Avenue (the railroad the highway followed was abandoned south of Mississippi Avenue). The South Platte River also flooded often until Chatfield Dam was built in 1975, so development in the flood plain was limited.

@CountryViewMeadows Год назад

intersting... I didn't know any of this. good history lesson

@TheHoltzmgh1 Год назад

Best part of Storrow Drive is how low the walkways and overpasses over the road are, it’s not uncommon for trucks and moving vans to tear off their roofs trying to drive underneath them, we literally call it “getting Storrowed”

@FreeBurd0620 Год назад

A nice clean can opener

@MTM358 Год назад

Yup and so many height warnings and devices

@bryanCJC2105 Год назад

As a Chicago resident, Lake Shore Drive (LSD) presents with a love-hate relationship for me. I run in the park every day and avoid the pathways nearest LSD, although there are constricted sections that are right along LSD and you can't avoid running close to LSD and are rather unpleasant. The tunnels under LSD are pretty cool places for me. I've been through all of them and rather like them. They're placed at about 1/2 mile intervals. Some have cool entryway artworks and paintings. Over the many years I've been going through them, I've never known them to be dangerous. What I do love about LSD, are the all-day express buses that I use to go to the Loop. I rarely use the L because I can get to the Loop in 15 min on the express bus w/o traffic. They run until late at night. So, I love LSD for that convenience but hate it for taking so much park space. The city is thinking of re-designing LSD with dedicated express BRT lanes and perhaps addl infill to add park land. In beautiful Jackson Park, the presence of LSD is especially egregious as it presents as a near continuous wall right up against the water. I do remember, when I was a kid in CA, and my Dad would use the Embarcadero Frwy to get into Chinatown or North Beach quickly. I remember that is was a bleak freeway to be on. The lower deck was dark and gloomy. I didn't even know what the Ferry Bldg looked like until the 90s when they tore the freeway down. It was only then that I realized just how the city opened up after it came down. My whole life, the city was cut off and shunned the Bay, now The Embarcadero, and especially the Ferry Bldg, is a jewel of the city. The cities of NC are located along the Fall Line. This is where hard rock gives way to soft soil and, as a consequence, as far as water borne freight can go. Most of NC's large cities are located along this line. Cities were located along the Fall Line for the water mills, transportation facilities, and commerce. There is a line of cities located along the line from DC to Atlanta.

@peterlewis6886 Год назад

As a Chicagoan, the Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Lake Shore Drive really is every bit the barrier that you describe and it’s past time to depave it! I would love to replace it with a green tramway!

@frojo9 Год назад

It's actually called "The artist formerly known as Lake Shore Drive" now.

@CityNerd Год назад

Contract it out to the Swiss

@codnewbgamer Год назад

My only concern against an LSD light rail is the Illinois funding problem. I can't support it when there are a number of other projects that would help the city more--namely a circumferential route taking advantage of the right of way at Cicero.

@tomslastname5560 Год назад

Oh I'd love to hear how Americans pronounce "Jean Baptiste Point DuSable" 😂

@frojo9 Год назад

@@tomslastname5560 Two fun parts: 1. We don't! We just say Lake Shore Drive 2. Anyone who does says it either "zhawn bap-teeste pwahn Dew-saw-ble" (not good at writing phonetics) or "Jeen bap-teeste poynt dew-saw-ble" If the second one was the joke you were looking for

@JakieJake88 Год назад

I love how, with the dishonorable mentions, you've listed basically half of the major cities in the U.S. lol. As a current Chicago resident and a Pittsburgh native, I completely agree. Honestly, I don't know how the city would be able to redirect the traffic cause 90/94 is ALWAYS a nightmare and driving downtown from Rogers Park would take at least twice as long going through neighborhoods. Still, would love to try and figure it out!

@GraniteJet Год назад

I have a layover in Chicago when I take the train to my hometown to visit family. Lake Shore Drive absolutely floored me when I first encountered it in Grant Park. In one of the most well-planned cities on the continent, it is pretty baffling, though I have heard about plans to give it a road diet and return it to its roots as a pleasure drive.

@Rhino42680 Год назад

I literally worked on the East Hartford side of the very section of river you were talking about *and* I have season tickets to LSU games so I figured I should finally comment. You are right about the stadium, it just happens to make staggering amounts of money; football pedigree plus, "The South". Between seats ranging from $800ish to over $3,000 apiece per season, concessions, paid parking, etcetera, it's absurd. Something like 100+ Baton Rouge police are there every game absolutely ruining traffic to make everyone miserable. Most free and paid parking is a 15-20 minute walk to the stadium, it can take 2+ hours to get to the interstate (I-10 Westbound, the one right next to the stadium) and if you're extra lucky they'll literally trap everyone in a single parking lot for over an hour without letting anyone leave. Love your videos and snark.

@Splenda257 Год назад

Funny thing is that most of those locations, including Chicago, the highways are close to, but not on the river bank, and the actual river banks are filled with good uses, especially in Chicago where there's a great trail, marinas, piers, parkland, and even a golf course.

@nolin132 Год назад

It almost makes it worse. Riding your bike down the Lake Shore trail in Chicago when it's only a few feet from a giant freeway is so loud and bad for your lungs. It's like the city planners were designing Chicago specifically to maximize particulate matter inhalation.

@slavkovalsky1671 Год назад

I don't know about Chicago, but in Toronto nearly all the land lakeward of the expressway is landfill. Many buildings further inland have weird features that make no sense until you realize that's where the waterfront used to be.

@danhobson2879 Год назад

@@slavkovalsky1671 Historical context, everything east of Michigan Ave from about Cermak Rd (22nd St) to Oak St was built on landfill as part of the Columbian Exposition. Michigan Ave literally was at the lakefront.

@mark123655 Год назад

Think that's the biggest point... Much of these sit on landfill, or former warehouses that went into disrepair as river commercial traffic declined. It was simply the easiest way to add a road without demolishing a swathe of the city.

@txikitofandango Год назад

Lived right off Lake Shore Drive for a few years, near the north end by Foster Ave. I used to walk to the shore all the time, no problem. Some factors that mitigate the yuck: Yes, I did have to walk under the tunnel, but once you cross under, you get this glorious wide expanse of beautiful lush green fields and trees. There was a dog beach there, and lots of other beaches all the way to downtown. The pedestrian/bike path gets crowded at times, but it goes nowhere near the road. It would be nice if they widened it or added another one. Also worth noting that freight trucks aren't allowed on LSD, and this probably keeps pollution lower?

@Skip6235 Год назад

I lived in Chicago for 5 years, and I can count the number of times I went to Lincoln Park on one hand. Also, the amount of people who claimed to love LSD was depressing as hell

@pjschmid2251 Год назад

I was born in Chicago and as an adult moved back there and lived there for something like nine years and I don’t remember ever seeing LSD as a barrier. I went to the park all the time; rode my bike there took walks there and Lakeshore Drive was just a road. A Larger road that you had a cross at specific points but nonetheless it never stopped me from using the park.

@JineousJ Год назад

People just can’t imagine a lakeshore without lsd. It’s such a shame, we would be the undisputed #1 waterfront in the us if we could rightsize it.

@jamesedghill3726 Год назад

Yeah LSD is a disgrace but that is a super unpopular opinion here likely due to inertia and not being able to imagine where all the traffic goes. I saw a horrible r/Chicago post saying they can’t get rid of LSD because then everyone will take the red line and the red line is at capacity.

@JoeJoe-lq6bd Год назад

@@jamesedghill3726 Yeah, there are a lot of terrible takes on LSD. They also looked at burying a large section of it but they determined it was too expensive.

@klobiforpresident2254 Год назад

@@JineousJ I'm from an incredibly flat area (low countries levels of flat). Until travelling I only saw mountains in pictures. While I've never been exposed to Lakeshore Drive one could say I'd have a hard time imagining mountains without LSD, the other kind. After reading your comment I imagine someone who has never seen a large, still body of water in person. Someone who "couldn't imagine a lakeshore without LSD".

@Jarekthegamingdragon Год назад

Man tacoma is just AWFUL for any thing traffic related. There's non stop highways in every direction, confusing off ramps in every direction, random bottlenecks for no reason, and just SO MUCH TRAFFIC. You haven't even got to Seattle proper yet and you're getting the experience. I also hate I-5 being where it is in Portland, thankfully it's not on the side of the river people really use for walking. It makes downtown a lot nicer not having that highway. Problem is I don't know where you would put I-5. It does need to exist, it's THE interstate that connects the west coast and redirecting all of that traffic to I-205 alone would be an awful solution. I-205 already has too much traffic. You can't really loop I-5 to the west of the city because then it'd be on the other side of the Tualatin mountains. The sunset tunnel is already hell going through. Really the only solution is a MASSIVE tunnel project that I don't see happening ever.

@jacobbwalters8133 Год назад

The reconnecting communities fund removed a freeway in Detroit. I would love to see your analysis on that project- Detroit is sort of a dichotomy. The city is super car centric but also has an award winning River walk and a lot of new walking paths being installed to make the city walkable.

@donkensler Год назад

I will be so pumped once it's not possible to take I-375 directly from I-75 to Jefferson Ave! Next step: terminate M-10 (aka "the Lodge" at I-75, and leave Detroit as it always should have been, with no freeways entering the core downtown, and with I-75 at a respectful mile or so inland from the river. I grew up near Philadelphia, and had figured the combined atrocities of I-76 and I-95 through Philadelphia would have made the main list. It's so dispiriting if you're in the historic area of Center City to have to cross ten lanes of freeway (expressway in Philly jargon) on a concrete deck to get to the waterfront. Philly has a great downtown that is pretty much ruined by the freeways. The only saving grace is that in the 60s PennDOT proposed running expressways along pretty much every waterway in the city www.phillyroads.com/history/expwy-map_1966/

@Spido68_the_spectator Год назад

Detroit should have the I 75 numbering follow I 94 and 96 around midtown, so everything between that bypass and water front (the current 75, the route 10 and the 2 little bits that end up in downtown waterfront) could be torn down into multimodal arterial roads, with midtown reconstructed entirely (it's just decaying skngle family homes spaces by empty lots that are sometimes used to grow crops) to higher medium density multi - use, districts (that would be like 6 superblocks) with some having social mixity. Being like sizable villages, with each its own bakery, pharmacy, school and other everyday things. Would see the city suddenly live again.

@jacobbwalters8133 Год назад

@@Spido68_the_spectator actually, that’s pretty much the cities master plan right now. IDK if the state and feds will go with tearing out the highways, but the neighborhoods idea is pretty similar to what the city is already encouraging in terms of development.

@Spido68_the_spectator Год назад

@@jacobbwalters8133 a giant reconstruction would bring great stimulus, with thousands required to work. Close suburbs could follow suit to become medium density

@bennicbennicbennic Год назад

Burlington Skyway (QEW) is a death trap at best. From the collisions, winds tipping over large trucks, people speeding, etc. I took driving lessons in Hamilton when I was in college and I had to drive near there. Long story short, I’ve chosen to live car free.

@unicornpower Год назад

Too bad that dump truck didn't take out the Skyway completely in 2014... would have done us all a favour.

@jacobkorducki6940 Год назад

Lake Shore Drive bums me out, especially with there being such a nice bike trail running right alongside it. And the one "non-freeway" stretch you mentioned near Millennium Park is super dangerous as there's lots of people trying to cross and drivers frequently run red lights. Right now the only future plan for it is to MAYBE convert one lane to a bus lane, if advocates fight hard enough, which is a step in the right direction but would still leave a lot to be desired. Oh and they're building a lot more pedestrian bridges over it on the South Side, at what I imagine is an enormous cost versus just removing the highway. The South Side stretch especially is way overbuilt for the amount of traffic it gets. But lots of people here seem to love the highway, as it is a really pretty drive. It'd still be just as pretty of a drive as a 4 lane BLVD though, just saying.

@jaredking31 Год назад

if you tried to reduce lanes on the south side I can guarantee there would be an outcry over equity. Also, removing the highway would be an enormous cost vs just bridges.

@peskypigeonx Год назад

@@jaredking31 If you’re really suggesting pedestrian bridges on this channel, you’re not gonna have a good response. Bridges would just be a bandaid to an arm long scratch

@tylerkochman1007 Год назад

Nearby Hartford, the riverfront of Springfield MA has shameful highways on each riverbank

@patrickhehl9881 Год назад

I appreciate the "shout-out" to Hamilton. Ever since I moved here in 2015 the lack of water access because of the Q has always been a headscratcher for me

@hgman3920 Год назад

A few years back, the Greensboro NC planning dept. was looking for ways to liven up their downtown, so they sen t a delegation to visit Chattanooga, TN. When I heard about this, I joked that the number one recommendation they would come back with would be to re-route a rive through downtown Greensboro. All joking aside, upland North Carolina (i.e. beyond the navigable fall line) doesn't have many sizable rivers. There are lots of smaller waterways and creeks, but nothing like the large rivers found up north or in the mid-west.

@sk33t_38 Год назад

I would love an entire video about the Alaskan Viaduct in Seattle! the entire removal and remodeling project was a headache for us in Seattle. Stacked freeways have always interested me the same way that true crime interests many.

@hancin993 Год назад

And then the city decided that it needed the stroadiest of stroads to replace the missing viaduct, which means the area will never reach the true potential. so sad.

@neckenwiler Год назад

I think CityBeautiful did a vid on the Alaskan Viaduct. It might not cover everything you're looking for though.

@SomeGuyWhoPlaysGames333 Год назад

@@hancin993 Not really. There are way worse stroads than that one.

@CityNerd Год назад

I'll be back in Seattle one or two times next year, maybe it's a good time to do that video!

@FeelItRising Год назад

@@CityNerd and maybe coincided with a mention of why Pike Place road at Pike Place Market isn't pedestrian only or perhaps delivery vehicles only.

@bobbarnett691 Год назад

I live in a high-rise Loop apartment overlooking the lake, which of course means that I also overlook Lakeshore Drive (I'm looking at it and hearing it as I write this message). City officials deserve some credit for re-orienting Lake Shore Drive a few years ago to move it inland and create more lakefront property that includes the museum campus. Having said that, however, I would love to see it completely re-engineered to eliminate car traffic. If the roads cannot be removed entirely, I would like to see them modified to incorporate public transportation, such as a tramline running the length of the city. As it stands now, none of Chicago's many lakeshore amenities are accessible via public transportation (in fact, I could guarantee you that Chicago leads all major cities worldwide in the fewest tourist amenities available via public transportation, a function of our commute-focused approach to public transportation). In any event, perhaps Lake Shore Drive could become some combination of tramline, bus lanes, and bike lanes. The nearby Lake Shore Trail, running for 18 miles along the lake, currently has excellent running, walking, and bike lanes, so maybe the bike lanes aren't necessary. But get rid of those damn car lanes!

@johnl2727 Год назад

I assume you listened to the noise when you took your ultra expensive apartment.

@nikevisor54 Год назад

Didn't expect a QEW callout but damn that hit home. Thanks for your hard work, Ray

@dougjardine8545 Год назад

The QEW in Stoney Creek (Hamilton) is nasty, but it isn't serving as an urban freeway here: it's the main road connection to Niagara Falls and Buffalo from the rest of Ontario. There's always going to be some use for it, no matter how much modal shift to RAIL freight EVER (typo corrected) occurrs because the road it bypasses (the former King's Highway 8) is completely unsuitable to heavy through traffic. TYPOs CORRECTED

@1489mjwilson Год назад

Glad to see albany get a mention here, massive interchange in downtown for a bridge to nowhere. The state has at least started looking at alternatives for the highway so maybe it'll be gone before I am.

@jon1913 Год назад

My metro area is along the Mississippi river and our turn of the century downtown was completely destroyed to make a 4 lane, 40 mph stroad right along the river. Chicago at least put a contiguous park next to the lake, I wish my area would have done the same.

@edinnes Год назад

Chicagoan here; LSD is an absolutely gorgeous roadway that blends in nicely with the parks and the lake. It releases pressure off our interstates, and diverting that traffic to the interstates would bring them to a 24-hour traffic jam, a la Los Angeles. You're going to take local streets from the Loop to the North or South Sides? Fifteen minutes just became an hour. If LSD were such a barrier to the lakefront, there would be no one on the lake; guess what, it's not a problem we have.

@benputano Год назад

I live about 2 blocks from Lake Shore Drive. It doesn't stop anyone from reaching the waterway via tunnels and overpasses, but it's definitely overbuilt. It should go down to 4 lanes (from the 8 currently) and add more green space. Or better yet, widen the Lake Shore Trail!

@josephmogavero1355 Год назад

I wholeheartedly agree with this! The trail should definitely reclaim more space down near the Loop. There are never enough cars there to justify the sheer amount of lanes. I'm surprised FDR is not #1 though. It is an extreme eyesore that destroyed any chance of Manhattan having any accessible waterfront.

@aditahmed8519 Год назад

I grew up near Hartford and used that interchange constantly. The entire 91/84 viaduct laid such compounding hurt onto the city, and splits the region east/west in a way that I don’t think gets discussed much. A lot of big money projects in the city are lined up along either freeway, making it even easier to go to the Science Center/Convention Center/Baseball Stadium and want to leave as soon as possible

@pjkerrigan20 Год назад

I also grew up around Hartford. Three generations of my family lived in the city, my grandma’s childhood home was actually demolished to build 91. It makes me so sad to see the ever declining state of the city. Especially having lived in Worcester the last few years, I’ve seen just how much better a small post-industrial New England city can be. And even woo still is far from perfect! So many wonderful little cities in our region that have been ruined by terrible anti-urbanism, but at the end of the day all of these places have such great bones to be urbanist wonderlands. Hopefully some day, Hartford will be a lovely place to live again

@malloc7108 Год назад

Caltrans figured they didn't need to build a freeway in Venice because between the two close airports (local Santa Monica and LAX), I-10 a mile or so north, large Marina del Rey marina, and leaky crude washing up on shore due to natural currents everyone there would have sufficient petroleum exposure regardless.

@allankcrain Год назад

The really fun thing about Lake Shore Drive, as an occasional Chicago tourist, is that it lets you see all sorts of cool places that are nearly impossible to get to thanks to Lake Shore Drive.

@dvferyance Год назад

Lake Shore Drive is not a freeway it has stoplights.

@The4thTurning Год назад

You can literally get the exact same view by walking, biking, riding a bus, or a train. The South Shore Line commuter train even has park-and-ride stations. "Nearly impossible" is factually incorrect. Also, the view from any of those is superior because you don't have to focus your efforts on driving your car. Just look out the window, or stop your bike and look around.

@tylerjacobs2200 Год назад

There is a nostalgic joy I get when I am on Lake Shore Drive heading downtown, but it's usually ruined anytime I try to get to the Lakefront Trail when the pedestrian tunnels are flooded during a heavy rain, or any time a car has decided to utilize the cycling/pedestrian paths as their personal detour because the traffic has backed up on LSD, and for some reason there is pavement connecting the two. A number of recent cycling deaths related to negligent/aggressive drivers on LSD near Grant/Millennium also makes it clear that this roadway needs to be deprecated or redesigned for pedestrian and cycling safety. Bury it, cap it, slow it down, whatever... Make it safer for people not in cars.

@jasonreed7522 Год назад

The bare minimum separation between car space and pedestrian space to me is a wall of boulders. (NY uses them to defend hiking trails from motor vehicles). Cities may choose decorative concrete bollards but personally they are uglier than rocks. Although i think some provision should exist for emergency vehicles to access these spaces, but a simple security gate would suffice IF you wanted to ensure you could drive an ambulance down the ped path. (I assume this is why its connected by pavement, that or ease of construction but I'm not familiar with the area so I don't know for sure)

@jimpern Год назад

While this is a noble sentiment, there are a number of these where the freeway is essential to traffic movement and there is no viable alternative (as you mentioned with Hartford), so the only real alternative is replacing the road with one underground. While this was done in Boston and Seattle, it is horribly expensive. Only in locations were there are alternative routes available would this really work.

@danmarsh5949 Год назад

A couple of years ago I read that city-dwellers seeing their rivers as something that's supposed to be scenic, is actually fairly new. The example was Kalamazoo, Michigan, whose river in the mid-20th century would run white because of the runoff from paper mills. And so, older buildings in their downtown, face -away- from the river. It's only more recently that office buildings and restaurants have been designed to incorporate the river into their scenery/design.

@bearcubdaycare Год назад

Like the river that actually burned, near Cleveland Ohio.

@CityNerd Год назад

It's interesting, and probably related to the National Environmental Policy Act. A lot of the rivers and waterfronts used to be quite a bit more polluted.

@andrewdiamond2697 Год назад

@@CityNerd I lived in Cleveland when the river caught fire in 1968 and burned out of control for three days. It was the event that led to the establishment of the EPA during the Nixon administration. (Back when conservatives would, you know, conserve something).

@danmarsh5949 Год назад

@@bearcubdaycare Yeah. Although that sort of this isn't as rare as one might think. Isn't there a mine in Pennsylvania that's been on fire for decades?

@inconnu4961 Год назад

@@andrewdiamond2697 Everything we conserve, Progressives try to ruin! So, if we dont conserve it, you cant ruin it! LOL

@sblack53 Год назад

The QEW is currently the only viable connection between Hamilton-Niagara-Buffalo, and is almost EIGHTY years old. Since CN and CP don’t want to actually run railroads, all the goods that would go through Buffalo have to be loaded onto trucks and taken on the QEW. There’s a ton of industrial along the Burlington Bay, and a Ford plant in Oakville.

@mattgalper5397 Год назад

My Pittsburgher urbanist dream list includes us removing all of I-376 and I-279 within city limits including the I-579 spur known as Crosstown Boulevard. All of them should be turned into surface boulevards with dedicated rapid transit right of way and separated cycle tracks as well as plenty of side walk space and then the areas surrounding these new streets should be zoned for transit oriented development. 51 should also go through a complete streets treatment as well as be rezoned for TOD within city limits too. So many tightly packed neighborhoods surrounding 51 that would benefit greatly from having an actual main street attached to it. Edit: Routes 28 and 65 can go to

@garyholt8315 Год назад

Canadian here, I cannot think of any city that could benefit more from freeway removal than Pittsburgh! huge huge potential !

@andrew8501 Год назад

With the beltways going in, I think changing rt51 is more viable. However, you would need good transit to everything within the beltway. Then 51 can exist with slower speed limits and less lanes.

@c.a.mcmullen7674 Год назад

Another great video but one item you could have added ( and I hope you read this): beyond taking out lovely green space connecting Back Bay and BU to the river, when they built Storrow Drive they installed an at-and-above-grade interchange smack in the middle of Charlesgate Park, a flood control park and part of the Emerald Necklace designed by Frederick Law Olmstead. Yes, THAT Olmstead. They destroyed an Olmstead Park for a highway interchange into the Fenway. Hardly punishments enough for such an intergenerational crime.

@austindavis5016 Год назад

I ride my bike through that zoomed in section of river trail in Denver every day. The city and private developers occasionally publish plans to redevelop the riverfront, but we’ll see.

@JohnstonRobare Год назад

@austindavis5016 Hey fellow rider! I commute the Bear Creek trail and the S Platte as well. Ride safe and I hope to see you out there 👋

@benpete592 Год назад

Have you seen the river mile project where Eliches currently sits?

@sylviacarlson1017 Год назад

As a non-car owning Chicagoan who lived a block away from the lake for 15 years I never really minded lake shore drive that much until the pandemic. They closed off the entire lakefront east of Lakeshore drive and even if you were on the west side of Lakeshore drive to walk your dog or on your own "short jog" as allowed by the mayor, you could not even see the lake! For several months in 2020 the only way you could see the lake from my lakefront neighborhood was from a highrise building or from a car driving on Lakeshore drive. Obviously not the worst thing about the pandemic but it just felt so counterproductive and unnecessary. Now I enjoy the lakefront farther north where Lakeshore drive doesn't exist - unfortunately neither does the bike path, but at least there's not a highway cutting me off from the best source of natural beauty in the city.

@missingmiddlegames6742 Год назад

This is one I actually have mixed feelings on. Waterfronts have historically been used as primary transportation corridors for moving people and especially cargo, and in many cities developed into heavy industrial areas as a result even before cars. Rivers already represent a significant barrier to foot traffic, and lakes or coastlines are obviously a dead-end on foot. So if you must have a busy highway, putting it alongside polluting heavy industry, at a location which is already a natural barrier to foot traffic, makes a certain amount of sense. The flip side is, of course, that waterfronts can be some of the most enjoyable, people-oriented destinations in their own right; and of course, we should be trying to reduce pollution in our waterways anyway. So yeah, blocking them off kind of sucks too. I guess once again we arrive at the "just get rid of the freeway entirely" conclusion.

@nashi_shuai Год назад

Check out Binhai Boulevard built in Shenzhen, China. Two decades ago, the waterfront area was reclaimed to build the expressway. Thanks to a former major at that time, some of the reclaimed land was allocated to a waterfront park (the Shenzhen Bay Park). Still, the noise, air pollution, and land segmentation brought by the expressway are still annoying when walking in the park. Nowadays, a segment of the Boulevard is getting tunnelized. After the project completes, that area will become a complex of surface parks, artery road tunnels, underground bus terminals, and a transit hub of subways and intercity railways. I look forward to its completion.

@nycurbanist3616 Год назад

The other day I was walking around east midtown and wanted to go look out at the East river from the Manhattan side (I live in Queens and always look at it from the opposite end), as I got to the end of 42nd street, past, ironically, Robert Moses Playground, I was sad that there was no over/under pass to the East river, despite there being an actual pedestrian zone for it across the FDR, I would have had to go down quite a few blocks and didn't feel like it. So I did the only other reasonable thing, and walked up to 59th street to walk across the Queensboro bridge. But at the same time, the nightmarish reality of the FDR not existing would make it really difficult to get out of Queens easily and see my family in New Jersey, I wonder what would be a better solution (other than good transit to the suburbs obviously).

@apv Год назад

not my favorite solution, but making the FDR go the way of the west side highway could be a compromise and you'll still be able to drive relatively easily to your family in jersey.

@johnathin0061892 Год назад

The FDR is a necessity, it should be upgraded to a proper freeway to modern safety standards, not torn down. Where would all that traffic go? Maybe bury the FDR, but it needs to be there in some form. (And they should have built the Westway in the 1980s to replace the West Side Highway.)

@nycurbanist3616 Год назад

@@johnathin0061892 God a completely underground highway system in NYC would be such a vibe, it's time to revisit that dream.

@queens.dee.223 Год назад

I also live in Queens, and unless I'm going to the places in Brooklyn that happen to be along my few subway routes into Manhattan, any trip to Brooklyn or elsewhere in Queens is usually twice as long by transit, or more, and I know better than to rely on the regularity of buses at this point. I wish my car collected more dust -- I'd happily trade driving for easy transit to Brooklyn and the rest of Queens. I'd say that's a prerequisite for getting ride of the BQE or FDR.

@alb12345672 Год назад

@@nycurbanist3616 Up in Albany there is a huge push to get rid of 787, a 6 lane highway that cuts off the city from the Hudson. Not sure if they could ever get rid of the FDR though.

@jobw Год назад

East Hartford always baffles me how it is more highway interchange than anything else. Just an ginormous knot!

@senecaflint6853 Год назад

On a much smaller scale, Waukegan, IL built a multilane freeway along their Lake Michigan waterfront in a futile effort to lure heavy industry back. The Amstutz Expressway ended up being so little-used that it became a favorite among movie directors for filming highway scenes.

@awong2668 Год назад

Thank you for putting Sac on here, we have a quiet but slowly growing freeway lid movement for I-5! Fun fact: Its built below the rivers water table so it has water sumps on 24/7

@alexweech451 Год назад

When I moved to Boston, I was just floored by how nearly every waterfront had a nasty road beside it. From Morrissey to Storrow to Revere Beach to Quincy Shore, the DCR sure knows how to make an inhospitable environment. I enjoyed the dishonorable mention of I-293 in Manchester, NH. I'm not aware of any talk of improving the situation, but it would be so great if the west side could get some good amenities. Just to the north in Concord, NHDOT is widening I-93 from 4 to 6-8 lanes. Concord has been trying to build a riverfront greenway, but now it'll have to be entirely on the far side of the river from downtown. I wish they would build the bypass that people have been talking about for decades and just remove I-93 from downtown.

@IaHarbour Год назад

At this point we should just put DCR in charge of every highway in Massachusetts since it's basically a part of their job description at this point

@person3triple0 Год назад

Surprised you didnt talk about I95 in philly more. They're actively looking to expand it to 10 lanes and it's going to require a complete rework of the 676/95 interchange

@andrewdiamond2697 Год назад

I-95 is already just a brutal gash/wall between Center City and the Deleware River. It's really the worst. On the other hand, I-76 is pretty inoffensive as it usually runs about 15-20 feet below grade between the river and Fairmont Park, for the most part.

@roger1818 Год назад

A dishonourable mention should have gone to Ottawa, Canada. The Rideau Canal (a Unesco World Heritage Site) is surrounded by two parkways and a freeway. The Ottawa river also has parkways running along it on either side of the downtown core.

@Potatoaster Год назад

Interesting tidbit about I-376 in Pittsburgh: I-376 eastbound running adjacent to downtown is an elevated interstate, with a Mon Wharf riverside parking setup (that regularly floods with sediment), and the Three Rivers Heritage Trail also running below deck. On the trail itself, you can get a nice view of Station Square on the south shore, but the ambience is occluded by semi-truck engine brakes and crotch rockets blasting by the overpass on a regular basis. The trail shadows I-376E all the way to Schenley Park in Oakland, a whole 3.5 miles. It then splits off to become the Great Allegheny Passage, while I-376E continues East to Monroeville.

@eriknovak496 Год назад

Having lived in Rio de Janeiro for most of my life, I can point out the Aterro do Flamengo freeway, which is 4-lanes either way and cuts right through one of the city's most beautiful parks. It reminds me a lot of the Chicago situation, in fact. Similarly, in São Paulo, the city's two main expressways are along the margins of the city's main rivers, and are even called "The Marginals". Both are worth having a look at!

@inconnu4961 Год назад

Wow, very interesting! Rio is definitely on my to-do list for world travel. Any background on why they built the road where they did?

@felipefeldman9149 Год назад

O “avançamento urbano” feito durante a época da ditadura foi realmente uma loucura…eu queria muito poder ver como parecia o Rio nos anos ‘40!

@lifetime805 Год назад

The 580/880 freeway is an interesting problem because the foothills in Eastern Oakland and Berkeley block off an alternative route, and the land next to the freeway is a low value, unappealing industrial wasteland with a major train line as well. If the freeway disappeared entirely, it would take a long time for anything nice to get built, especially when you get a terrible smell during low tide.

@potterfollower Год назад

I don't know if I can call myself a Chicagoan exactly, but I do live up on the north side here and absolutely love it (also acknowledging the huge disparities between north and south side, especially in terms of street pleasantness re: car presence). Some of the best transit and walkability out of anywhere I've been in the US (then again, I moved here from Phoenix, so not huge competition). I live just north of LSD, and those tunnels aren't the *worst* thing ever, IF they were more frequent. I know people who commute by bike specifically from Lakeview to Edgewater, and based on my own experience and what I've heard from others, people kind of treat the pedestrian facilities like an extension of the red line; the tunnels roughly correspond with the train stops, and because of the infrequent permeability of LSD, you're biking from the Lawrence "stop" to the Bryn Mawr "stop." If LSD could be converted into some kind of integrated transit facility within an expanded lake shore trail (like a tram or bus line) it would do so much for connectivity and accessibility of an asset that's already such a good park. Plus they could get rid of that stupid golf course while they're at it.

@KWMacdonald Год назад

Since you asked: Raleigh was established by act of the NC legislature, to provide for a more central capital city (compared to New Bern, the original one) at a time when western NC was threatening secession. Then, when a wood-burning railroad was established from Raleigh to Hillsborough (a colonial-era city, at a ford of the Haw River long used by native people as part of their Trading Path), they needed a fuel stop between the two. While others offered to sell land for a train station, a young doctor named Bartlett Durham gave his away, knowing that the land he owned around it would thus appreciate in value. Durham's Station evolved into the City of Durham. As for the other towns, from Charlotte to Greensboro, I'm not sure, but they do all lie upon the old Native American Trading Path.

@KWMacdonald Год назад

Correction: Eno River, not Haw

@Mergatroid Год назад

I grew up walking distance from Lake Shore drive, and I never thought about it back then. It was only once I moved to a different part of Chicago that I realized how bad it was. I remember always having to go through the pedestrian tunnels to access the lake front, but not I just find it insane that it's there. Yes, the downtown section is less unreasonable, but it's still completely stupid and just results in a lot of congestion and pollution in a line up and down the city that doesn't need more of it.

@JRaymondT Год назад

I'm an architect and urbanist who has lived in Chicago for my whole career, and I would like to propose some qualifiers to your diss of our Lake Shore Drive. 1.) It is a drive, not an expressway, even if people ignore the speed limits. 2.) It doesn't have a single interchange like the spaghetti of which you show aerial views in other examples. On and Off ramps are compact and parallel the drive. There are numerous pedestrian bridges and underpasses giving pretty good lake access. 3.) Chicagoans are absolutely crazy about our lakefront (particularly in the type of weather we enjoyed the last week) are out in droves doing all manner activities: tennis, golf, boating of all sorts, cultural activities, lounging, and enjoying the beaches and lakefront food concessions. 4.) Our lakefront parks are the absolute jewel of urban living in the midwest (I'm looking at you Detroit and Cleveland) and were the smartest thing our city fathers and mothers ever did. If the drive were removed, putting the additional car and bus traffic on our existing city streets might actually have a negative effect on the lakefront parks. I would propose adding another El / Subway line along the lakefront connecting the many hi-density population areas in a line I would call the "Tan Line" (all our train lines are given color designations) in honor of our five months of sun bathing in the greatest city that lacks 110 degree heat in the summer. Thanks for what you do. Jack R. Taipala, AIA

@johncaswell2648 Год назад

The thing about the Platte river in Denver is... it's not scenic, and it frequently smells (algal blooms mainly) which aren't something Denver itself can fix, so it's a lot less desirable to hang out near the Platte than it might look like from a satellite view. I'd be all for moving I-25 out of Denver and around the city (the only beltway the city has is partially toll roads) so I don't have to drive through when I'm trying to get south of Denver, just as I'd be all for hopping on a train when I do want to go into the city, but neither of those are actually doable currently, so priorities...

@jasonreed7522 Год назад

Similar deal with the Connecticut River in Hartford, the city of Middletown just downstream actually has a waterfront park but its gross because the river is gross due all the upstream development (and waste water treatment) that runs off into it without significant natural water purification in the river. In contrast the St. Lawrence River which i grew up near is way cleaner and nicer despite having way more upstream development. (This is partially due to the settling in each of the lakes, the invasive filter feeders, and the abundant wetlands along the shores of the watershed purifying it). I'm not sure if its chemically less polluted in the thousand islands region but its certainly much more aesthetically pleasing and pure enough to not need filtering before drinking. (But i would recommend sterilization)

@dpayne1943 Год назад

I know it is your wish list but I5 is staying and you know it. It is the only real way to get up to Washington (unless you go way out of the way and use 205...fun fact, I crossed 205 on the day it opened in December 1982). And I-580 was there looooong before it became valuable waterfront and was just industrial use (that used both the roads and the railroads to transport goods). It is now Emeryville (mostly) one of those fake new city malls. It would be helpful if you would suggest your alternatives routes to these changes as the list is kinda of worthless without the solutions. And no, the solutions are not just get rid of them.

@Kedai610 Год назад

Yeah, when it comes to the freeways in the East Bay I see no real alternative to the 580-80 stretch. 980 you can get rid of, hell you could probably even remove the MacArthur stretch of 580 if you boosted BART and other public transit, but that 580-80 stretch is essential and impossible to replace. My solution would be to develop the waterfront on the other side of it, which is already done in areas like the Albany Bulb, Emeryville Harbor, and Berkeley Harbor.

@mistuhdragonfly5574 Год назад

I’m from North Carolina. It was always super weird to me how NC’s 4-5 biggest cities did not have much topography or bodies of water near their downtowns. Cities like Charlotte look well planned around downtown and Raleigh is up and coming but the lack of water, promenades/boardwalks, river front parks, skyline views over a river/lake always left me dissatisfied. It limits the options for exercise and tourist attractions, and we have no excuse since we have an ocean, mountains, lakes, and rivers. Go to Asheville with the river arts district and new breweries/ restaurants along the water or Wilmington with its beautiful boardwalk and see the difference water features can have on the vibe of a place

@Tokahfang Год назад

Richmond, VA was slated to build one of these things, but the news of it united every potential group of river lovers into a singular block that not only stopped the freeway, but also began the process of making what is now the beautiful and recreationally bounteous James River Park System instead!

@sunandsage Год назад

I know it's not in the US but a city you might want to take a look at for a good example of what to do with the Waterfront is Odesa in Ukraine. It looks like they have a pretty sizable Green Belt between the Urban Development and the beach. It is entirely possible that it needs to be cleaned up a little bit but it shows a lot of promise and it seems like a good example of what all cities should be doing with their waterfronts. I'm also not totally sure what kind of shape it's in as a result of the war.

@aronenark8184 Год назад

My city of Edmonton thankfully avoided building a major freeway network in its river valley. Edmonton’s river valley is pretty unique, as it is very steep and almost entirely undeveloped. In the 70s, the city put out the idea of putting a freeway network in it to connect downtown with the suburbs. The residents of Edmonton opposed this, and aside from a single atrocious interchange at Scona Road and 98th Avenue, it was never built.

@akittenplays4104 Год назад

One interesting thing about this -- the reason so many highways were built along waterfronts back in the day is because watefronts weren't considered as valuable as today. Rich people wanted to live up on a hill, away from the polluted, smelly water. Since we've fixed a lot of pollution problems, people have realized that waterfront is pretty and nice. We have a whole river where I am (Hartford CT) that was put underground when sanitation wasn't as good, because it smelled so bad. Large waterfronts were also centers where sailors and unsortly people often were, decreasing their value even more because of higher crime, and more disgusting areas. The other reason highways were built where they were is related to the first one. When rivers weren't valuable, more black and brown people moved there (since wealth and race are intertwined in the US). When developers across the country had a choice of which communities to destroy in order to put in a freeway in the 1940s, they were all to happy to displace and devalue the homes of poor, black and brown Americans. Altogether this explains how it got so bad in so many places. It's very hard to change, especially with car-centric culture, and it should be changed, but it's important to acknowledge how it got this way. The Hartford one is a good example of this phenomanon.

@cwacwa876 Год назад

The Park River was capped because it smelled, but more importantly because it would flood downtown. If we could only get it back...

@akittenplays4104 Год назад

@@cwacwa876 didn't realize it used to flood! makes sense though, the ct river does that sometimes too. there has to be a way they coulda prevented flooding without covering it entirely though

@Maxime_K-G Год назад

In Belgium the worst offenders would probably be: 3. The ring around Bruges in the North and East. In the West, it's a decently appealing avenue but in the North and East it's just ugly and I feel bad for the people that live there who need to cross it every day to enter the beautiful medieval town. 2. Gent has a lot of wasted potential. The Ringvaart design is kind of crazy, it's super noisy and they've made sure to maximise the negative externalities by putting the highway on both sides of the canal. The Vlaamsekaai is also pretty ugly. 1. Liège wins this contest by a mile. They've taken Brussels' urban highways and put them along practically all of the waterfront they have. Even though it's a relatively large city with a lot going for it most people consider it ugly and I bet this has a big influence. I could only imagine the difference it would make if there were some sections that weren't 24/7 car sewers.

@JailBlazersNoMore Год назад

I'm curious if you think there's any appetite among policy/urban planning people for removal? I5 through Portland seems like such an obvious one to get rid of, but ODOT is currently pretty set on expanding it.

@CityNerd Год назад

Depends on the people! I think there was a study (very conceptual) of burying I-5 at one point, which tells you that people recognize the existing condition is a problem.

@kenbrown2808 Год назад

problem is the sheer amount of traffic that passes through portland every day on it.

@thebahua Год назад

Denverite here. I am not happy that the S Platte is the location of the N/S highway, but I honestly am glad that that location was chosen, and not where highway engineers have put similar highways across the rest of America: right through the middle of downtown. Both I-25 and I-70 are positioned well-clear of downtown Denver, leaving the urban fabric from 100 years ago intact. In that, Denver managed to (accidentally?) avoid the evisceration that most American cities underwent when they prioritized highway construction above all other concerns.

@thechaostician2480 Год назад

Re: Cities in North Carolina. Most of the cities in the Southeast are in three bands, which were built at different times and for different reasons: (1) Coastal cities: Mobile, Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, Wilmington. These are the oldest cities in the region. They still have good ports, but are now small cities. (2) Fall Line cities: Montgomery, Columbus, Macon, Augusta, Columbia, Fayetteville, Raleigh (sort of), Richmond. The Fall Line marks the transition between the Piedmont (hilly) and the coastal plain (flat). Most of the rivers in the South are navigable south of the Fall Line and have their first rapids or waterfalls on the Fall Line. They were important transportation hubs as the interior South developed, and were centers of early water-powered manufacturing. They are mostly medium sized cities now. Raleigh only gets sort of included because the mouth of its river is behind the Outer Banks, which is a stormy area bad for shipping. (3) Piedmont cities: Birmingham, Atlanta, Greenville/Spartanburg, Charlotte, Winston-Salem/Greensboro, Raleigh/Durham (sort of). These cities are younger and larger than the other cities in the South. They grew around railroad and later road transport. The rivers in this region are too shallow to use for good transportation, so there weren't cities here until overland transport became competitive with shipping. Most of the cities in North Carolina are Piedmont cities. Rail and road transportation has always been more important for these cities than shipping. At least North Carolina avoiding locating any of its major cities on the Eastern Continental Divide, like Atlanta.

@thomaslgrice Год назад

This is what I came to the comments for. Curious, what is the disadvantage of locating on a continental divide, "like Atlanta"? Is it the demands placed on road geometry or a water system issue?

@thechaostician2480 Год назад

There's not a big disadvantage now that most transportation is by land. It does feel like the worst possible place to put a city if river transportation is relevant.

@c58rytcx Год назад

Chicagoan here. I HATE Lake Shore Drive. It’s supposed to be 45 mph because it’s in a city park, but drivers routinely go 80 or more. And I cycle 7 miles to work along the otherwise beautiful Lakefront Trail… but you’re constantly within earshot of this 8 lane highway. More importantly, cars frequently lose control (due to high speeds and consistently terrible/aggressive Chicago drivers), jump the curb, and run off the highway into the park area, sometimes ending up ACROSS the trail. So the existence of this monstrosity threatens my safety even when I’m engaging in non-motorized transportation. Rip it out, Chicago!!!

@michaelschmitt2427 Год назад

I live in Uptown, a neighborhood in the northern part of Chicago. Every once in a while I need to drive south to get to Rt 55 and it amazes me how absurd Lake Shore Drive is. Such beautiful views and the parks along the lake are so attractive yet I'm zipping by at 60 mph in my closed metal box. I envy all those people on bicycles and who walk or jog along the lake shore. LSD seems to have been dropped in, carelessly, from the sky. It would be amazing to transform it into streets and parkways. Maybe one day?

@longhaulflyer Год назад

I think there's one really important aspect of FDR Drive that, in my opinion, makes it by far the #1 on this list over Lakeshore drive: It only allows passenger vehicles! You can't even make the excuse that it's a necessary arterial road for deliveries or commercial vehicles - The entire east side of Manhattan is deprived of its waterfront purely for the benefit of the minority of New Yorkers who own a car.

@macmedic892 Год назад

In New Orleans, we came very very close to a river front freeway. It would have come be off I-10 just down river from the French Quarter, turned and run parallel to the river for about two miles, then tied in to the then-new Mississippi River bridge. Imagine every view you’ve seen of the cathedral in New Orleans with a double stacked freeway in front. Beignets at Cafe du Monde in the shadow of that freeway (if CDM survived).

@andrew_ray Год назад

The worst thing about Storrow Drive in Boston is that it's officially parkland. Along with many of greater Boston's worst surface roads, it's operated by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation. It should be easy to get rid of, but DCR won't hear of it. I-90 will need to be rebuilt soon, and the state was hoping to do it at-grade to save money, but DCR had fisticuffs with the DOT over the idea that Soldiers Field Rd might have to downsize. DCR has a long history of sacrificing parkland to make room for cars, to the point where many locals call it the "Department of Cars and Roads" instead.

@pjkerrigan20 Год назад

The moment I saw the title of this video, I knew my birth-city of Hartford would appear. In a sadly declining city like Hartford, a riverfront district on both sides of the Connecticut could make such a massive difference. I actually have some very personal beef with 91’s domination of the riverfront, since my grandmother’s childhood home (and the whole Sicilian-American neighborhood it was part of) was demolished in order to build the highway. Hartford is such a wonderful, historic, beautiful city that has sadly been on an awful decline for much longer than I’ve been alive. I hope someday we can see a thriving, vibrant Hartford again. Lack of riverfront access may not be THE MAIN problem Hartford faces, but it’s hard to imagine a thriving Hartford that doesn’t include a lovely riverfront district.

@limescale94 Год назад

Portlander here. Thank you for including I-5 in this. It is a car sewer that is twice redundant and extremely noisy. The mentioned Eastbank Esplanade is a fantastic biking and walking trail with cultural destinations and yet is excruciatingly loud due to I-5. I'm all in for removing it and am part of the effort to stop the State of Oregon from expanding I-5 just north of this waterfront segment.

@Dylan-fb9ve Год назад

A bit far off from your usual area of focus, but Cairo is also a big problem for this. Both sides of the Nile, but particularly the Eastern side, are framed by major chaotic roadways that are the site of countless accidents and deaths. The government has begun constructing pedestrian areas on the river's edge, but one still has to access it by driving or crossing through some of the world's worst traffic. You should visit here one day - enough bad urban 'planning' to provide a lifetime of videos!

@jasonschubert6828 Год назад

Definitely not just a North American thing, Melbourne and Brisbane are both great examples of using riverfront areas to build freeways. Melbourne has the added distinction of almost every freeway being built over a river or creek, and the government trying to heritage list interchanges so they can never be removed. Australia is definitely in a "build more freeways" state rather than considering removing any.