How to Remove a Highway 

I'm not even contractually obligated to do this, but I really do like my Bellroy backpacks. I bought them way before I got sponsored. Here's a link for 10% off: bit.ly/3LYgYNh

calling highway "endangered" make it sound like it is so important to preserve, probably need other terms for these crumbling piece of infrastructure

I lived in Rochester before the removal. Make no mistake, this was an easy removal because no one used that road ever. Rochester doesn’t have real “traffic” even at 5pm lol. Love the new boulevard they have now.

I’m so mad that NIMBYs here in Syracuse halted the 81 teardown for so long. So many parts of the city feel stagnant and disjointed because 81 runs right through it. The people that are complaining that removing 81 would impact their businesses didn’t seem to care when it took so many businesses and houses away from the city, but oh well

We need a better phrase than "Endangered/Extinct highways". Those are words for animals worth protecting. "Candidate Highways" to "Rebuilt Highways" or "Malignant Highways" to "Excised Highways"

The thing that i most like about city beautiful is that he gives exemples of real life and talks about how to change cities to better, most channels only talk about whats good or bad

To me, as someone who grew up in Europe it's wild that so-called "engineers" think it's a good idea to build highways through cities dividing neighborhoods. In most European countries, highways go around cities, and then they join into local roads. In my local area, in a small country in Central Europe, there's a highway (not like a US freeway) that connects three county capitals (two university cities, and many smaller, but important cities). At one section, the highway used to go through the second largest city in the neighboring county. They decided to build huge infrastructure to bypass the city, and it connects the highway to nearby smaller towns and villages. They built an impressive roundabout on a bridge. This is what highways should be like.

Always nice to see us getting recognized for doing something right, even if it was originally something we did wrong. The intent of the Inner Loop is noble, to relieve the traffic commute for suburbanites into the Center City neighborhood for work, but its execution and immediate effects (razing houses and cutting neighborhoods up, and creating a visual moat around the central business district) were detrimental to city development. Also love that projections graph you shared, as a MAJOR complaint that Inner Loop supporters STILL gloat about is how much traffic the IL was funneling, which studies have contradicted, but supporters persist. One small point of correction: Union Street is not the old Inner Loop. Union ran next to the Inner Loop and never changed, though the traffic pattern did (it's two way now, was one way before). The old Inner Loop is where the apartment buildings and parks are now. Thank you for the positive light shed on Rochester! We need all we can get.

As someone who is currently going to Syracuse University and studying civil engineering, I am really excited to see the I-81 Project take action. Phase 1 is going according to plan and I just cant wait to see when they finally tear down the viaduct!

Albany NY, the only other major Upstate NY city you didn’t mention is also trying to tear down its downtown highway(I-787). The Albany Riverfront Collaborative and the State DOT have received funding for studying removal!!!

The North Loop highway in Kansas City has been a candidate for removal. It's a really redundant highway that just cuts off the river market and Columbus park neighborhoods from the rest of downtown while carrying very little traffic

I-244 through Greenwood in Tulsa is another location with momentum. This section of highway was actually the main catalyst that destroyed Greenwood after rebuilding efforts following the Tulsa Race Massacre.

Kansas City really needs to get rid of I70 on the north side of downtown. It cuts off the beautiful River Market neighborhood off from downtown. I670 does the job as a sunken freeway to get people through downtown.

The great thing about this, is that it focuses on places that are shrinking, these profits can bring a new life into the area or at the very least reduce or stop the devastation that can occur when places are just left to get run down i.e. Detroit or the former industrial towns in the North East of England, Cornwall, Midlands, North West and the valley's in Wales.

I can attest to I-81's impact on the Syracuse Community. I am a fifth-year B.ARCH student at SU and it is a point of contention that has influenced a lot of our studio work. Not to mention the impacts on the community can be distinctly seen when mapping the demographics and economic opportunity within the city. I'm hopeful that the Almond Street plan will materialize soon!

I live in Rochester and am so happy to see you use it as an example!

Great video. Union St in Rochester looks INCREDIBLE, and I had no idea that stretch in Milwaukee used to be a highway.

The Buffalo Kensington Expressway removal is currently in a state of contention where the DOT is proposing a partial cover over it, while the ROCC and ESP Coalition are proposing full removal. The link in the description is very helpful for anyone interested in making a difference for the project

It seems to me that highway teardowns could also potentially be good locations for BRT or light rail lines.

hey city beautiful, would you be interested in doing a video on how much housing the us would need to add, by region, all else being equal (available jobs, employment rate, drug use, joblessness, poverty, homeless & drug polices and services) to significantly decrease unhoused populations? how would you go about modeling this? thanks for considering.

They're talking about removing I-94 between Minneapolis and St. Paul and replacing it with a boulevard and restoring the street grid.

My home is Toronto but Im actually going to University in Rochester atm. I havent lived in Rochester long but yeah I've been to Union in Rochester and its a nice place. They've also started converting the Xerox tower (tall black tower at 0:24) into apartments (mostly aimed at uni students iirc). Unfortunately the core downtown still has a long ways to go to become truly liveable. When I was living in the Xerox tower the nearest grocery store was like a 30 minute walk away, since everything else around there is basically just office towers still. In Toronto we still have the mistake that is the Gardiner, and while a tiny portion of it was removed most of the elevated part through downtown Toronto still exists. It used to be under city jurisdiction and took up half!!! of the total maintenance costs of all roads in the entire city all by itself. The structure itself is basically falling apart, walking under it is super sketchy since you can see exposed rebar everywhere and chunks of concrete just fall off the structure occasionally. Some Toronto councilors wanted to remove it, but instead what ended up happening is that the responsibility for it got uploaded to the Provincial government, who are super conservative and not the most intelligent bunch so unfortunately its probably gonna be sticking around. (a small part of me is kind of hoping it just collapses on its own due to how poor of a state its in, which would mean they're just forced to demolish the rest of it due to safety concerns)

Cant wait to see more of these, please please please Indianapolis, stop making the downtown loop bigger and make it smaller, force through traffic around the city and city traffic to slow down and have more urban hangout spots for us who live here!!! I hope the US keeps going in these small but meaningful changes!!!

Thank you for the “How To.” I was planning on doing this DIY this week and needed the info

Please share any updates you have on highway removal efforts in the comments! I want to hear more!

The Southeast/Southwest Freeway in DC is a bit of a Catch-22 here. With the move to more remote work, a case can be made, but that stretch of road is busy every rush hour and some weekends. A portion of it, the old 11th Street bridge, is being converted into a park. Scrapping the whole thing, which would be great to reconnect a lot of neighborhoods, would be murder for traffic that is starting to come back on the upswing with more DC government workers coming back to the office full-time.

I-375 in Detroit is also in motion to be removed.

I live close to Trenton and always thought it has everything going for it to be a nice city if someone just put a little work in.

Being from Rochester this is 100% true, so much more presentable

Great video as always

Growing up outside of Rochester in the 2000s, it's nice to finally hear some good press about the city. A couple years ago I had learned that it was somewhat infamous for just how poor the planning was for the car based infrastructure. I'm glad they added some biking infrastructure when they removed the loop, as it originally replaced the city's subway system. I'm far too young to have ever seen it, but it makes me wonder if the city could have been a much nicer place in present day if the inner loop was never built.

Minneapolis has 2 highway projects with options to remove them. Part of I94 connecting Minneapolis and St. Paul (they're also throwing around giving it a landbridge instead) and Olson Memorial Highway(very old and no longer really used). Olson Memorial is still taking comments. Both are along tram lines. I think Olson will changed as only one option keeps it as big as it is, but i94 is getting a lot of push back. Locals want it gone but the city seems bent on keeping it.

Yay! I was hoping you would do a video on the removing of the inner loop! More city projects in Rochester coming!

North Loop Neighbors is reimagining the northern portion of the downtown loop in Kansas City

You forgot to mention that other types of uses for these highways could be to put public transit lines in such as light rail and other lanes? I would love it if people could ride public transit north, south, east, and west across the country solely on public transit. If this was implemented it would make access across the country a reality.

The fact that Lake Shore Drive in Chicago isn't on the chopping block makes me sad.

I wonder how this applies to tolled highways, like the tollway in Austin that residents kept voting down, but got built anyway and is not that heavily used. Seems like public-private grifts could be a tougher battle. Also, I liked the juxtaposition of the images of Ronald Reagan Highway and Ronald Reagan Part 2 Subprime Bugaloo Highway.

Awesome video! Growing up in Rochester it was great to see the development of union, hoping the rest of the teardown happens. Maybe one day our downtown will have a future

Great video! I moved to Rochester in 2014, a few years before the removal of the SE section of the Inner Loop. I can attest that the highway, frontage roads, and abutting parking lots were a bleak urban moonscape. The new Union Street isn't perfect, but it's better in every way than what was there before.

Akron OH abandoned a small portion of its downtown "innerbelt" but has not yet redeveloped the area. In Cleveland the Shoreway which is a highway separating downtown from Lake Erie has been suggested to be rebuilt as a boulevard to better connect the city with its lakefront.

Rochester is a town that saw the reality of what losing Kodak and Xerox was going to do, that actually did something about it. First time I went there was 2007 and it was a fucking mess. Didn’t help I went in February. But, over the last decade, it has really put that work in, and Rochester deserves all the credit. It is a very unique town and the way locals pronounce the names of the other towns around Rochester is a dead giveaway about that. Plus, it’s got an awesome music history. Metallica recorded Kill ‘Em All in Rochester, and the House Of Guitars is really awesome. But, Rochester is a night/day place between Winter and Summer. I cannot stress this enough: Visit in Summer first.

I'm curious if you've looked at the infamous "Highway to Nowhere", route 40 in West Baltimore. Several city and state advocates have supported filling it in to reconnect the neighborhoods on the north and south side of it. In that way it reminded me the example you showed of Rochester. My question is, to what extent is "reconnecting" a community a valid argument if there are regular bridges across the road. If one looks at Rt 40 there are bridges every 400 ft that mean the regular street grid is entirely undisturbed for about 1 mile of its length. Especially given plans for the Red Line, instead of filling in the highway wouldn't it be better to use its trench for the train line, keep one road there converted to a bidirectional 1 lane road from a unidirectional 3 lane road, and then leave the remainder as parkland or buildings either at trench or surface level? While a lot of highway removal efforts are well-meant, I think sometimes "removing the highway" is seen as the end-all-be-all instead of one of many potential steps. Similarly in DC, the SE Freeway (I-695 and I-395) doesn't really form a division since there are 16 streets crossing underneath it along its 2 mile stretch from Maine Ave to Water St. Meanwhile that link from east of the Anacostia to NoVa is absolutely vital and used my hundreds of thousands per day. A point could be made that Southeast Blvd (which carries little traffic and has already been downgraded) should be made into regular roads to connect the area between L and M St though the train tracks complicate that. Conversely, 295 in SE absolutely splits communities from the Waterfront and needs lots of more bridges across it. Lastly, Whitehurst Freeway in DC is always cast as a target for teardown for being an eyesore, but from a practical standpoint it provides really welcome shade whenever I bike underneath it, along one of the major bike trails into DC from Maryland. It's elevated, so again it doesn't disrupt the community and there's a park along the waterfront. I'm glad you brought up the economic incentive part of things because I do believe that highway capping or removal to build something useful there is great. But I think the reasons, incentives, costs, and usage (local vs regional) should all be weighed.

Smiled as soon as I saw the thumbnail. Thank you for covering Rochester! Excellent video as usual, Dave. So proud to have my city be a prime example for a step in the direction for urbanism.

Would love your thoughts on Philadelphia’s efforts to cover I 95 and improve access to the river as well as efforts to stitch our bifurcated Chinatown by covering more of 676

That raised I-81 section in downtown is the only part of the city of Syracuse that has any traffic on it at Rush Hour. The city has a beltway you can speed at in both directions at 5pm on a Wednesday

The highway to nowhere (US 40) and the downtown stretch of I-83 in Baltimore need to go 🙋‍♀

We should remove at least 50-75% of urban highways in the US. A few of them are okay, but in general they're awful for cities.

Traffic volumes are an interesting topic: From examples I've seen, cities in Europe accept way higher volumes before they build additional lanes than in the US and Canada. Anything below 20.000 (!) vehicles here in Germany starts a discussion, if we can go down to just one lane per direction (+left turn lane).

I live in Trenton, I had no idea the state started talks (this past year no less) of removing parts of 29, fascinating. It makes sense as the only real traffic it sees is state workers coming into the area from the surrounding (wealthier) suburbs or even the state line in/out of Pensy, since Trenton has no other major industry or infrastructure to support itself rn.

I remember the campaign to remove I-64 in Louisville. That stretch of interstate overshadows the main waterfront Park on the Ohio River. A new East end bridge was already a given, which would have taken on most of the East-West traffic north of the city anyway. Instead Louisville is stuck with an ugly waterfront and struggling downtown. The southern Indiana towns on the other side of the river are taking advantage with booming parks and small businesses. Guess which side of the river I live on 😜

Great, but the solutions offered seem to increase car/pedestrian interactions. Still need this to be a focus of solutions in this area.

Having lived by that Milwaukee example for college, the area is VERY walkable, and that highway removal helped a lot.

Knoxville, TN has James White Parkway. A boondoggle that displaced POC and severed their remaining neighborhoods from downtown. The highway itself was so woefully overbuilt that it is difficult to do anything with it today, even as the usage is tiny. Luckily the city recently won a federal grant to renovate part of the James White Parkway with Ped/bicycle access. Connecting existing greenways and green spaces to historically black neighborhoods and to downtown itself.

A note on the graph of the SR 520 usage at 3:22: the reason the actual use is way below projections is because the bridge is tolled to pay off the construction costs. Drivers around here are notorious for not wanting to pay tolls if they can avoid it, thinking all roads should be free (they are heavily subsidized and we pay indirectly anyway). As it is a bridge across Lake Washington, most people that are going between Seattle and Bellevue/Eastside just take the longer routes either north via I 405/SR 522 or south via I 90.

Speaking of the Skyway in Buffalo, a few years ago, it underwent expensive repairs that lasted quite awhile at the main junction downtown. A few months AFTER the repairs completed, a $400,000 prize was awarded to someone who proposed tearing down most of it, but keeping a section of the waterfront portion near the hockey arena. They proposed turning that part into an observation deck without any form of extra fall protection. I guess people have forgotten how people have died from being blown off the skyway in high winds!

I live in New Haven where route 34 has been cut back a couple blocks - it has opened up a few parcels for development and new buildings and much better streetscapes are going in! However, in removing the lowered expressway, they just widened the surface frontage roads, probably because of traffic projections. The intersection rendering from the video is 10 lanes across, so wide that pedestrians have to cross in 2 phases while highway traffic whizzes by. The end result is still a net positive for the city, but leaves much room for improvement

Great video.

I would love a video that mentions the Quad Cities! I think it's a very unique area that's worth knowing about

Any chance of adding more trees?

The renovation I'm looking for but haven't seen yet is transforming a highway or wide stroad into twinned streets with buildings in between them. A 100+' wide boulevard is hostile to pedestrians and other road users regardless of whether you run transit in the middle. Consider the ramifications of splitting the carriageway into two separate roads.

4:56 the Embarcadero Freeway was removed via rapid unscheduled disassembly aka the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 :).

Wish this came out before the Big Dig. Boston just replaced the highway with a highway with lights.

5:17 - nice shot of Portland with the new county courthouse front and center.

I-81 is CRITICAL I Drove That highway often from Binghamton to Syracuse

I'm glad to see you guys slowly untangle yourselves from the car infested mess that is those huge ugly highways and move more towards roads and boulevards we have in Europe instead! It'll take a while before there will also be things included like specific tram- and bus lanes, but you'll get there eventually I'm sure. But, since I'm from Europe, I noticed these are mainly happening in the so called 'blue' states where Democrats are in power. I also noticed it's mainly 'red' states like Arizona and Texas that suffer the worst with these _huge_ 6 to 8 lane highways, so I'm curious - are there any projects regarding the tearing down of highways happening in these places? It would be a positive sign for infrastructure in general were that the case.

The Gardiner in Toronto is an un-expandable, unfixable mess of a highway that absolutely needs to be done away with. It costs so much to maintain it and it never gets better. Lakeshore Blvd., which runs underneath it can be upgraded and realigned into a much more efficient roadway on our waterfront.

"A gift for you or for yourself" My favorite kind of gift!

2:53 Trenton is in Mercer County, NJ not Delaware County.

I'd be interested in hearing more about your thoughts on the Kensington Expressway in Buffalo. The State DOT wants to put a cap over it, essentially turning a portion into a tunnel. The community group mentioned is fighting this, arguing to remove it altogether. Problem is, it's the main route into the city for all the suburban commuters, and sees a huge amount of volume. I understand the view of "well I guess the suburban dwellers will just have to tough it out.", but the reality is, without their support, and with the opposition of the community, what is likely to occur is absolutely nothing, maintaining the status quo.

There are plans to convert the Bonaventure Expressway in Montreal from an elevated highway to a boulevard, and I'm excited to see how it goes!

I’m here but didn’t know about Connect Oakland!! Will check them out.

Telegraph Ave in Berkeley & Oakland are on multinodal but all that means is that the community still doesn't have light rail. I was hoping you would look at the economic history of 580 / now Nelson Mandela Parkway & make comparison to other such areas. The KC hw approach that was a WW1(?) memorial natural space... We have one in Berkeley for the first war, Olmstead act, it was the Oak Grove, the world's longest urban treesit of 649 days to preserve wild life. I'm really glad you mentioned activism. ❤

3:29 the prediction didn't ever change lol, just the starting point. Same slope on all those lines

My local city in England removed the 1960s central ring road. This led to an expansion of the CBD into areas outside the original noose like road, including cultural and academic sites, housing, and commercial properties. It was not all positive, but on balance, the effects have benefitted the city.

Akron, Ohio’s Innerbelt had a similar story to I-81 in Syracuse, bulldozing a community and separating many more. I believe the are plans to demolish it but personally I’d like to see the original street grid restored

Meanwhile in Toronto, they’ve committed to 3 years of lane shut downs as they repair the Gardiner, instead of doing anything else. Oh Canada…

So rather interestingly enough i DID drive down that street in rochester. Went to the technology museum down the street too, cool place!

They're building a NEW freeway in Spokane where I live. ☹️

shoutout from the syracuse struggle! thanks so much for delving into it. the local politics get really muddy here with a corrupt city council and tax assessment board, parasitic entities like the universities and Upstate medical (who tried to usurp land under 81 which is currently public housing), and Ben Walsh’s greater plans for the area like the invasive microchip industry. but the orgs here are full of dedicated activists, and I’ll definitely be urging my organized friends to intensely promote the finishing of this teardown!

Connecticut mentioned 😎🔥🔥

Building massive, noisy, polluting car-only highways directly through neighborhoods, thus forcing us to be dependent on said noisy, pollutive car-only highways and destroying the neighborhoods in the process is stagnating city population growth????? Whoduhthunk! Tear them out, put in (good, safe, reliable) public transit & safer smaller roads, and rebuild our community and neighborhoods. Highways can of course be kept for cross-country trucking and car travel but they're so painful when slapped into cities. Love hearing about this progress.

CA 15 from CA 94 to the 5 Freeway is another highway to remove, which would help restore one of the most struggling neighborhoods in San Diego. Traffic headed for the 5 can use the 805 instead. There are only two access points of any kind on the 15 between the 94 and 5.

I know the Skyway in Buffalo gets a lot of attention, but honestly the 33 Kensington Expressway and the 198 Scajaquada are the ones that need to go.

One highway San Diego doesn't need is the two miles of CA 163 between University Avenue and The 5 Freeway. It goes directly through one of the leading city parks in the U.S., Balboa Park, home of the San Diego Zoo, and it uses an arroyo that historically had no road at all through it. It only serves as a shortcut from the suburbs to downtown, and The 5 and 15 freeways do that already.

I've seen quite a few highway removal videos now, but one thing they never seem to mention is what happens to all the commuters that used it once it's gone. I am aware of induced demand, and that it can work in reverse, but if you're not building decent fast transit in it's place then what is happening to the journey times of all the people still trying to make the same journey once the highway is gone? I imagine that if the highway was constantly clogged with traffic, then things might actually improve, but if it was free flowing then replacing it with a boulevard is going to introduce so many intersections that will slow things down for everyone. I'm not sure I'd call that an improvement? You're basically turning a road into a stroad, which can't be good, can it? If people used a highway to commute from one place to another and then you remove it, they're not all suddenly going to move house or quite their job. They might eventually, but it could take years for everyone to adjust, so there's going to be a long period of time where things will get worse for a decent number of people.

Meanwhile my city's inner loop was already outdated (too small) when it was built and is now a traffic nightmare 20hrs a day to the point where it's often faster to drive out of the city, use the outer loop highway and then drive back into the city on the other side, adding about 15 miles to the journey. BUT they built a tunnel 20 years ago and put houses and a park on top of it. So at least that's something

pov: the first highway to sleep in the sleeepover😞😭

Birmingham Alabama made a good plan to tear down its elevated portion of I 20/59, which divides the Civic Center and North BHM from the CBD. It failed and they rebuilt the crap as scrappy as before. Maybe you could look at a few of those that failed like BHM and talk about why so that these cities may avoid those pitfalls

Strange this popped up after I spent earlier today reading all about Rochesters East Belt removal. Shout-out to the Strong Museum of play for cooperating.

I think Buffalo Skyway's piers would be a really cool park feature. Remove the deck and preserve them just like that, and landscape around them.

Rochester needs to get rid of (only) the downtown part of i490 as well as the whole inner loop and make it a surface boulevard.

1:10 Route 34 - If it exists, it gets torn down

Another one in the works that wasn't mentioned is the removal of half of Rt 79 through Fall River MA. it's a decent chunk of waterfront property, a good 6 city blocks. the highway is already gone and their putting in the new surface streets now.

build over roads. Cars can move under while buildings, parks or walking/biking space above ...first snd second floors on the side can be made to adapt to the change, third and fourth floor would be the new first and second floor. This can be done in cities who need the space without effecting transportation (ouside of construction time)

Minnesota is considering something similar for the I-94 that runs between downtown Minneapolis and downtown Saint Paul. I largely like the idea but i think there is too much traffic there still and redirecting it won't be as easy as some you described in this video. But there is about a mile near downtown Minneapolis that is nearly stopped every day from 3~6. I drive uber and always try to avoid that area because that 1 mile takes 10+ minutes.

So happy Long Island NY was shown in the video we need change

Nice video

Thanks for this tutorial I successfully removed a highway in my city.

Adding another one to the list, Autoroute Ville-Marie in Montreal, which slices through the full length of downtown! Admittedly some sections are buried and built over, but most of them aren't, cutting off Westmount from the Sud-Ouest and the Quartier chinois from the Vieux Montréal, for example. We should just get rid of it honestly, public transit is great in those areas anyway.

Highways! Don't! Fix! Traffic!