The History Of US Interstate Revolts 

really happy with how this video turned out! Also the longest video on the geo channel which is lit

I know this city is in Canada and not the US, but an important city to talk about is Vancouver. There were plans to build a north-south freeway and an east-west freeway, but both were stopped by an unlikely alliance of Working class people, NIMBYs, environmental advocates, and Chinese people.

This is an excellent first look at Freeway Revolts in the USA; keep up the great work, Beaver Geography! I look forward to seeing your take on the people of Portland, Oregon thwarting Robert Moses's plans in the mid-1970s in perhaps another installment. I especially appreciate your highlighting the inherent racism of building urban freeways not for the benefit of those who live in the city, but for those who want to get from the suburbs to the business districts and back as fast as possible. Thanks for another awesome video!!

The SF Bay Area's Loma Prieta Earthquake, the one that collapsed the double deck Cypress Frwy in Oakland and collapsed the upper deck of the Bay Bridge, seriously damaged the Embarcadero Frwy which allowed the city to demand its removal instead of reconstructing it. The Central Frwy also required expensive earthquake retrofitting so it was also an opportunity to tear it down. Th Embarcadero was truly ugly. I remember when my Dad would drive on it when I was a kid in the 70s. The lower deck was dark and spooky. I never knew SF without it until after it was torn down and I was stunned at how it opened up the city's waterfront that was walled off by that hideous freeway. I think one of the most dramatic examples of how freeways destroyed communities is in New Orleans where the Claiborne Expwy portion of I-10 was literally bulldozed right over the main commercial street, the wide, tree-lined Claiborne Boulevard lined with bustling businesses, of the 7th ward, New Orleans's Black community. The freeway decimated the neighborhood's busy downtown and divided the community. The neighborhood suffered from divestment, loss of jobs, plummeting property values, and noise and air pollution. It never recovered. Seeing a picture of the way that this expressway literally was laid over a boulevard is jarring to say the least.

Love this video! I would also point to the I-40 freeway revolt in Memphis which led to a US Supreme Court case - Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe (1971). The unused ramps and other remnants of what would have been a route through the center of Memphis were just removed about 15 years ago. The part of the route that was built became Sam Cooper Blvd. which is controlled access for 4 miles then becomes a divided surface street before terminating at the Zoo that would have been demolished if I-40 had been completed there.

Good stuff. Keep up the grind man this channel is on it's way up

The other effect of this is that now any public works project takes decades if it ever gets built and costs multitudes more than in any other country in the world. This NIMBY movement is why the condition of our infrastructure is at the bottom of the developed world. It’s why HSR has never managed to get off the ground.

In at Louis, there is a vibrant little Italy neighborhood called “the Hill”. Interstate 64 cut right through the middle of the neighborhood. There was a lot of opposition to the interstate from the neighborhood, but it was built anyway. The southern part of the neighborhood remained vibrant but the northern half separated by the new highway withered away.

"Highway" to Nowhere here in Baltimore is a tragic reminder of how inept our politicians are. Spend money to build expressways but broke to build our rapid transit network... JFX could have been far worst than what it is today

Check out I35E in St Paul. A freeway revolt almost left 35E disconnected through downtown St Paul. A compromise was reached that allowed the freeway to finish

Oh so that's why U.S.101 is freeway from L.A. to San Mateo where the San Fran airport is and then you have to drive the congested city streets of San Fran to the Golden Gate Bridge. It finally made sense, thank you!

Love your channel and content! Please don’t stop ❤️

The Beverly Hills Freeway would have run from I-405 to US 101, roughly along Melrose and Santa Monica Blvd. The fact that this assault on the West Side of L.A. flopped so hard that no one remembers it was ever proposed shows how much money and power can do in Los Angeles. The planned junction with 101 is apparent Vermont crosses. Today, a storage center occupies most of the land that would have been used for the interchange.

Great video! I’d like to suggest for another video on the freeway revolt of Atlanta. The location of the Jimmy Carter library is where an interstate was proposed in the 60s.

Love your content man!

Near San Francisco...I've always wondered about I-380. It abruptly terminates in San Bruno at I-280 with several incomplete ramps and and a paved underpass. It looks as if it was intended to extend west to Hwy 1 in Pacifica.

Another awesome video!!! It's obvious that you take some time doing research for each of your videos! Keep up the great work! I can't wait to see how far your channel will go!

Absolutely underrated channel keep it up 👍

Great video! Would’ve loved to see some coverage on Portland, OR with examples such as the infamous Mt. Hood Freeway! Otherwise all around very informative and well put together, appreciate the hard work!

Excellent video!

Great work beav

Excelent video, I'm just learning English and I watch your videos bc they are short and well explained, so I can have easy access to information that I'd like to know more about but I can't find any content about it in my language D:

You make content of the very stuff I find interesting

One city that was majorly changed by freeways is Nashville. Several historical neighborhoods were bulldozed in the ‘60s. Several streets are buried and just end at the base of the interstate. Some bridges are being built now to reconnect the areas.

Great stuff! Enjoying all the content you put out! If a part 2 is ever made for this video, South Florida needs to be talked about. Miami-Dade and Broward County had plenty of long stretches of expressways cancelled. Hialeah being the 2nd biggest city in Dade county was notably very anti-highway

A freeway revolt story from Philadelphia: In the 1960s, there was a plan to build a freeway along South Street, which is the border between Center City and South Philly. Because of this plan land values plummeted and many properties were bought by hippies leading to South St becoming a center of counterculture in Philly. The freeway was eventually cancelled, and South Street eventually evolved into a center for arts, concerts, and nightlife in the city.

I too immediately thought of Portland. Here in Canada significant freeway revolts happened in Vancouver and Toronto. They started building a few: think of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts in Vancouver, Allen Road in Toronto.

Seattle also had its share of Freeway Revolt. After building I-5 through the heart of the City, the community said "enough". and stopped/delayed plans to connect I-90 to I-5 as well as the proposed RH Thompson expressway, Bay Freeway, NE 50th Street expressway and I-605. It should also be said that in some cities freeway construction was used as a tool/weapon to demolish lower income and minority communities.

"we're not going to build a road!" "what if we made it a toll road" "so, I was thinking about how we should build a road out there"

Fine! I subscribed

Make a part 2. I am very interested in our nation highways.

great video

Thank god for these revolts! Also, I was the 100th like on this video :) Keep these videos coming!

Like to see highways built for military use and why also the Pan-American Highway and the NAFTA Highway also the...excellent channel.

You should definitely look into the Mount Hood Freeway revolt in Portland, and how the plans turned into the MAX light rail

Boston in addition to the inner belt cancellation, there was I-95 that would have cut through areas southwest of town and then move to the North Shore through Lynn. Instead 95 paired with circumferential Rt 128. US 1 leads north from downtown Boston to connect with I-95.

The cancellation of I-95 through the Boston area has led to chronic traffic problems ever since. I-95 was clumsily rerouted along Route 128 from Canton (where northbound traffic funnels down into one lane and goes around a loop ramp to merge onto Route 128) to Peabody where 95 splits from 128. At both interchanges,the prevailing movements favor 128.

A sequel to this video should also include the canceled I-755 in St. Louis

5:05 - In San Francisco the Embarcadero was destroyed.

A rural revolt that failed is the route of I-80 from Laramie, WY to Rawlins, WY. The Wyoming Highway Department (forerunner to current WYDOT) wanted the route to follow the US 287/30 route. Feds said nope, this is one that may be worth looking into for a future video of yours. One source available is a book called "The Snow Chi Minh Trail" by John Waggener.

I'd like you to do a focus on the Boston and New York City freeway revolts, thank-you

I've driven the entire length of 70 from Baltimore to Utah, then to LA, then up to Eureka Cal. My dad grew up in FElls point. They kicked them out because they were going to connect 70 though. he later got the chance to buy the house back for $5k. but had to fix it up or whatever they are million-dollar homes now

the Baltimore revolt also prevented 95 from running through Federal Hill. the DC revolt prevented the Anacostia Freeway [I-95} from being completed between the Beltway at College Park [similar terminus as I-70] to RFK Stadium

If a sequel to this video is done, I-895 in the Providence area in RI & MA is another example.

I'm in the Minneapolis, MN area. Its weird to see, old maps of proposed roads, that never happened. The ones that did get done, were planned so long ago. Its like proposing and implementing a Nasa probe to Saturn and its moons, takes forever.

That’s quite a start on covering proposed freeways that were canceled. Several comments mentioned other examples like the DC area, the original plan for I-40 in Memphis and proposed I-755 in St. Louis. I’m from the Kansas City area, and covering it would take a video of a healthy length. There were several proposed freeways that were canceled, two of which resulted in the notorious Benton and Jackson curves on I-70. One that was planned but sat idle for decades was the proposed South Midtown Freeway which ended up as Bruce Watkins Drive. MoDOT planned it as a freeway, but the local government wanted a parkway instead, and it was tied up in the courts for years. The compromise was a parkway section from the 75th Street interchange to the 51st Street overpass. It now carries US 71.

Might add I-40 in Memphis to your part 2

Glad you brought up I-70 in Baltimore, although there was also I-83 which was meant to connect to I-95 and just randomly ends downtown now. Another one I'm familiar with is the cancelled Somerset Freeway that was supposed to run from Trenton, NJ to I-287. I-95 had a random gap in it as a result which was only just recently filled in 2018 with the completion of an interchange between I-95 and the PA Turnpike.

They should’ve just made I-70 concurrent with I-695 up until 695’s junction with I-95 in Arbutus. Destroying Leakin Park would’ve been terrible, but ending I-70 at a Park-and-Ride like how it is now just sounds ridiculous 😕

I-275 in the Detroit area was originally planned to run from I-75 just north of Monroe to reconnecting with I-75 just south of Flint, but was canceled north of Novi (I-96/696) due to public resentment. That area is now one of the most congested places in all of SE Michigan.

Imagine if the central artery was still around today. The traffic would probably contest Sao Paulo. 3 lanes on each side, only 1 tunnel from the artery to logan airport, dumb drop off ramps, dense population, and dirty air. I'm happy the Big Dig happened lol

Could you do a video on I-70 West of Denver to the Colorado-Utah boarder. A lot of interesting history there and would be awesome to hear about!

Good shit as always, never knew that the US Interstates had such intresting history

West of Philadelphia in the 1960s there was a proposed interstate that would cross Delaware county but connect interstate 95 with the Pennsylvania turnpike from Chester to Valley Forge. Only problem was it went right by Swarthmore college and they protested for over 30 years. Although much needed it was finally worked out in the 1990s and built but during that time it was referred to as the blue route because it only existed on engineering designs.

I-70 was truncated by Section 4(f) of the 1966 Transportation Act, which bans federal aid highways through parks. It's stopped more stupid roads than any other federal law. The impact of the future 170 on the neighborhoods inspired Baltimore citizens to stop the full project. The Denver suburbs are currently planning a new freeway through the former Rocky Flats plutonium factory, which is heavily contaminated and shouldn't have construction (of any kind) that would disrupt the pu contaminated dust. Freeways will be our "Angkor Wat" after the oil is depleted.

There is IH 40 in Memphis, Tennessee. It was stopped before IH 40 through Overton Park. But that was not before a six or seven mile stretch of future IH 40 was built in from the east loop. This piece of freeway is named Sam Cooper Blvd. plus there are ghost ramps in the IH 40 and IH 69 interchange west of the park.

As someone who has ridden and driven on I70 between exit 16 on the Baltimore Beltway to Washington Pa for 55 years, I know this highway well. The only interstate with a traffic light in Breezewood Pennsylvania, and the stretch between 79 south, and Claysville Pa finally becoming up to interstate standards not until 2010.... and as of 2022, always still under some kind of construction.... We love our I 70!

NC-147 (Durham Fwy) in Durham NC is another good one to investigate and how it was routed through Hayti

The Hoan Bridge (I794) in Milwaukee was the bridge to nowhere for the longest time. After a limited access parkway was built south of the bridge it's seen more use, though. Milwaukee is littered with unfinished freeways and even had a spur demolished.

So basically it usually but not always boils down to Efficiency/Productivity vs. Beauty. That would be a hard juggle. Dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t.

Would it make any sense to build either a tram or busway to connect that Park and Ride directly into the city

While at the time it was not an Interstate, it could be now. It is in Kansas City, MO. There was going to be the Cross Midtown Expressway, US 71, built to Interstate standards. However it was blocked by the same reasons, and a court battle for 40 years. A compromise was agreed and now a three mile section has stop lights. Now people are complaining about the lights, and a multi million dollar study to fix it. If it is brought up Interstate standards, it will become I-49.

Atlanta and Miami is another major player in highway revolts

interesting, this should be called the interstate channel

The bigger problem with highways in NYC is trying to pass through. The I-95 through the Bronx is a parking lot. A single accident in the Manhattan section can ruin everybody's day because there's no way around it. Going from Jersey to New England or Long Island can feel like it takes about a month.

Don't forget about the Long Beach Freeway's unbuilt northern section that was supposed to terminate at the interchange of state route 134 and I-210. The people of Pasadena were able to get that one killed after a fight of about 30 years.

With any luck (and technological advancement) all of these freeways will be built underground and some of the existing interstates will move underground as well.

I grew up in the NYC area, seeing signs for I-78 and I-495 in both New Jersey (leading to the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, respectively) and Queens (near JFK airport and on the Long Island Expressway), and wondering why the "Part A" of each did not connect to its "Part B"; it offended my sense of logic. It took while for me to understand why people might not want two elevated highways going through Midtown, SoHo and Little Italy. They would have made getting some places easier (same thing with getting to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco), but I get it.

Great Video! This reminded me of the planned Harrisburg Freeway in Houston. The freeway was a planned extension to connect Texas Route 225 to Downtown Houston and level a historic hispanic neighborhood and through many protest and revolts the freeway was cancelled.

There was actually a third east-west Manhattan freeway planned for Harlem?

Talk about the I 10 monster in Phoenix that was gonna be made

I would also look at Phoenix and their Freeway Revolt and how it stopped I-10 for decades and then lead to all the expansion later on and what that looks like now.

I lived in Cambridge, Mass., in the '70s during the revolt over the inner belt that you talk about. Good summary! Also worth mentioning is the cancelling of the southwest expressway, which would have carried I-95 to downtown from the circumferential Route 128. (There was a racism angle to that proposed routing, by the way. Good that you mentioned that issue!) Then-Governor Michael Dukakis cancelled the southwest expressway and the inner belt (proposed I-695). I-95 moved to Route 128 west of Boston. The central artery and existing southeast expressway became an extension of I-93.

So glad the freeway revolts saved Baltimore. Otherwise that city would be a total shit-hole now.

In New Orleans, there was a plan to build a riverfront expressway that would go through the French Quarter, the oldest neighborhood in the city and biggest tourism magnet. The plan was killed by a freeway revolt in the late 60's led by some of the city's most prominent citizens. While that project was killed, another freeway went ahead as planned about a mile from the French Quarter and cut through Treme, one America's oldest black neighborhoods.

The freeway revolts in Portland Oregon were interesting, because remnants of the cancelled freeways are visible all over the place. There are ghost interchanges on some of the bridges that go nowhere and are fenced off so you don't accidentally drive off the bridge deck into the river. There is also an oddity on I-84, where when you drive east, it feels like you are exiting the freeway, and re-merging back onto the freeway again... This is because the original planned route of I-84 was further south along powell blvd. The current I-84 was supposed to just be US-30, so where it exits, and re-merges, was the originally planned interchange for US-30, I-205, and I-84, with 84 and 205 being duplexed between the planned and current route. This is also why Powell Blvd is so wide, becuase ODOT already acquired all the land to route I-84. After that section of freeway was cancelled, some of the land was returned. It was also interesting when I took an class on LA geography in college. I-710 and I-210 were supposed to connect, and form a loop around the city, but a bunch of residents in Pasadena registered their homes with the Historic Society, effectively blocking construction and preventing the freeways from connecting, which is why the 710 and 210 are the way they are.

Great Video! I think a pretty interesting one would be NY-135 and it’s history of plans to go from Long Island to Connecticut. Please check it out! :D

I wish that you would have covered the freeway revolts in Buffalo because there were a lot of highways planned for the city and suburbs. We are trying to either tame down or get rid of the SR 198 expressway through Delaware Park which was a horrendous mistake. There is talk of covering a mile of the SR 33 expressway on Buffalo’s east side to repair the severe damage done to that neighborhood 60 years ago. Than there is the I-190 Thruway on the waterfront that people would love to see either moved or completely demolished since it sits on our waterfront. The SR 5 Buffalo Skyway is another roadway whose future is now up in the air due to public pressure to demolish it.

Another interstate stopped by revolts is I-275 north of I-96/I-696 in Oakland County MI

Don't forget the cancelled Paradise Expressway in Phoenix

I'm not an expert on this stuff but I feel we only need highway for crosscountry travel and shoul dnot be placed incities

I-335 was an proposed freeway that connected I-35W and I-94 just north of downtown Minneapolis that was canceled because of public backlash and the funds were redirected towards the existing I-394

Boston, in particular, hits home for me. I lived in southern New Hampshire and would commute down MA-2, I-495, US-3, and I-95. US-3 between I-495 and I-95 is set up to handle five lanes. But they only have three (bridges are built five lanes wide). That coupled with the merge of I-495, US-3, and the Lowell Connector, makes life miserable for the average commuter. Eight lanes merge into three. The entire stretch is bumper to bumper at five MPH most of the day. The radio stations don't include it in their traffic reports because it's always clogged, and everyone knows it. I-95 is another sore spot. There are places where it could easily be made four lanes but there's only three. Boston just doesn't want to upgrade their 50+ year old freeway system to handle the four-times number of cars that it was designed for back in the mid 1900s.

9:12 - Nelson Rockerfeller, Governor of New York state through the 1960s, until Summer 1974, when Gerald Ford selected him to be Vice President.

@0:20 well youd think, then again its america, i dont put it beyond you guys to just design an speedway (snel-weg) to end in an parking lot, probably with a wal mart attached

you can make a 12 hour video instead.

Cool video. In San Francisco we stopped many freeways, and I wish we could get rid of the rest of them. The Earthquake of 1989 helped a lot to remove them, since no one wanted to spend tens of billions to rebuild and retrofit a lot of these collapsed or compromised freeways.

Because, people are not capable, or driving over (or under) a freeway, to get to where they need? Here in Las Vegas, we built the C-215 because we were not waiting for the federal government, to tell us how to do things. We also have built the first part of I-11.

I-696 linking I-94 and I-96 was delayed for a number of years while activists and engineers argued about how to maintain pedestrian access from neighborhoods to the synagogues that served those neighborhoods. Since you frequently had to cross the expressway route you had either to build a prohibitive number of bridges or change the way you designed the bridges. The current interstate has enabled the citizens to maintain their freedom of worship and not break Shabbas by walking more than a Sabbath Day's journey while still carrying a substantial traffic flow.

Freeways are a good thing in the right balance. But in some places in the U.S they were overbuilt in the cities. In Canada as a general rule, it is done differently. Few freeways were built through residential neighborhoods and into the city's core. I don't believe racism directly had much to do with why black neighborhoods were chosen to put interstates in. They were poor and lived in dilapidated houses. If you're going to destroy homes to build a freeway, those are the ones. But the problem is, they paid market value for those houses meaning, the residents who were poorer couldn't afford better. However, especially at that time, racism was a contributing factor for them being poor and in those neighborhoods to start with. The U.S. does need more Interstates in places, but this video proved that putting them through the cores of cities, can often be troublesome and detrimental. They're better off building the Interstates around the city

I always can't believe how many people have never heard of the freeway revolts, it's not taught in us history for a reason

I22 was actually built 1 exit too short because a buisness refused to have their building demolished to make way for another mile long interstate

Massachusetts 695 wasn't killed entirely by homeowner displacement complaints. Downtown merchants also believed drivers would bypass Boston businesses. There's an element of truth to that. Cambridgeport and Somerville didn't get torn up, but the solution we ended up with cost many times more.

You should also talk about freeways that weren't built because they would've gone through residential neighborhoods that HAD money. Like I-275 in SE Michigan, for example.

I-40 through Overton Park in Memphis.

Maybe a less sensational narrative about the many highways proposed might be that the engineers knew that there would be opposition and in anticipation had Plan A, Plan B etc.

Leakin Park. 30 seconds in and I'm having This is Dan Bell flashbacks >_>

If you want to talk about racism and highway planning, you need to visit the story of TX 75 (Central Expressway in Dallas) and the Freedman's Former Slave Cemetery. What a battle royale!

Excellent video. If you like revolts, you really should check out Detroit's sorid history. I-96 along Grand River was never built (leaving two bizarre intersections in an S-curve to surface streets namely the Davison (now M-8) which a few miles to the east was the U.S.'s first urban depressed freeway. The Davison was planned on being extended in both directions as intended by the engineers. To the west to I-96, to the east to the the Mound Road freeway. Land was acquired for that but it was never actually constructed leaving a huge stack interchange on I-696 complete with service drives again connected only to a surface street. I-275 a beltway and intended Detroit trucking bypass but was stopped halfway through leaving a huge 3/4 mile wide interchange connecting to nowhere for 25+ years. Eventually it was extended 4 miles in large highway configuration, partially using those ghost bridges. The middle section of I-696 was almost delayed about 20 years due to one complaint which stuck (it goes right by the zoo) leading to a capped freeway design and an underground stacked interchange at Woodward that was the most expensive in the U.S. until Boston's Big Dig blew that number out of the water. Gratiot road was also supposed to be freeway-ized and where it connects with the Chrysler (at modern day I75 and I375). It was going to be a crazy giant spiral interchange. Only half the loops were actually built. The big part of the story is Coleman Young a charismatic black mayor who got elected partially on the promise to stop all these freeways ruining the black neighborhoods. After getting elected he told all the white people to "hit eight mile road" (Detroit's northern border and inspiration for the movie "8 Mile"). Unsurprisingly most people with money did exactly that and what was at the time considered the worlds greatest modern city promptly went in the toilet.

All interstate highways are numbered south to north and west to east except New York where they’re numbered from Now York city!