Originally Posted by
cramerro
GhettoP has a valid point, and you are over-simplifying it to make yourself sound smart. What defines a "suitable" road, road network, or system is all in the eye of the beholder. If Ryan Road were a street that went though a local commercial district and was fronted with homes and shops and had schools on either side, then YES, you would consider narrowing it down.
There is no magic formula that says you must be able to go from 6 Mile and Haggerty to the Ren Cen in exactly X minutes of less. There are plently of people who EXPECT that they are ENTITLED to make that trip in X minutes. Just because it was built and is fast doesn't mean anything less would mean a breakdown in civilization, and that point is proved by the fact that you can shut down entire stretches and people don't have to go on long-term disability from commuting paralysis.
The Southfield Freeway, the "Gateway" I-75/I-96, how about even the stretch of I-696 that wasn't finished for 15 years?
In an age of declining [[or hopefully steady) population, the whole system of planning for growth and building roads and sewer/water to accomodate that is flipped on its head. It can in many cases make the suburbs vs inner city problem even worse, becaue the housing units kept growing while our population was shirinkin, for a good 4 or 5 years at least.
I'm not advocating for removal of any freeways, but there is a case for changing our thinking when it comes to the road network. Ann Arbor and Lansing have implemented "Road Diets" where a 4- or 5- lane road with tons of extra capacity is re-striped or in some cases reconstructed as a 3-lane cross-section. The extra space you free up can be used for a combination of extra curb lawn, extra sidewalk, bike lanes, on-street parking, or even dedicated transit lanes.
Last example is a [[growing) place like Seattle, where they are tearing down the 'stacked' freeways along the ocean and replacing them with 4-lane boulevards. Capacity is cut by 75%. Guess what? They are assets to the city, businesses, and residents... even though [[gasp!) the traffic through that stretch of town can't go 80. Now, they foolishly aligned thier spending policies to improve transit and access to other modes [[walking/biking) to help reduce/slow growth of traffic demand, but that must be crazy west-coast thinking.