Should we get rid of I-375?

[professorscott]

I know a lot more about transit than road building, so I wonder how much of this applies, and maybe a road person can chime in. In transit, if you want to make costly service improvements with Federal money, you have to do an alternatives analysis, which basically compares the costs and benefits of various solutions to the status quo. In the case of I-375, the status quo simply isn't an option; the freeway and bridges can't just be left alone to rot. So my suspicion is, MDOT has to prepare some kind of document exploring what seem to be the only two alternatives, rebuilding it as it is or rebuilding it as a surface highway, and giving the estimated costs and benefits of each. I suspect - again, I don't know for sure - that if Uncle Sugar buys in to the process and results, they'll help fund either option.

[DetroitPlanner]

PS, the same applies. What you are talking about is known as the NEPA process [[National Environmental Policy Act). NEPA was put into place so that large projects are not shoved through [[think of the Jacobs vs Moses). Since this is technically part of the Interstate System [[though a 'spur') it is held to an even higher standard. Status quo is known as 'Do Nothing'. There could actually be several alternatives evaluated not just two.

[ghettopalmetto]

I agree with you on the 'lip-service' of pedestrian bridges. Better than not having them, I suppose.

But the question isn't whether pedestrian access is good, and whether vehicular access is good. The question is how to best achieve the best result at a responsible cost.

Even if you like the freeway, it might now be worth the additional expense of keeping it in place vs. a surface street. Freeways are avoided mostly because of the expense of the bridges. Bridges are fiercely expensive. Of course here you have the cost of filling in the hole. But its only dirt vs. steel and lead paint abatement.

Something I haven't heard discussed yet is whether the feds will contribute money to a non-freeway rebuild. The reason this is a freeway is mostly because of money, I suspect. Anything with I- is a federal road, with 90% federal money. I'm sure even if the city officials at the time wanted a boulevard, they couldn't resist the fun of spending someone else's money. Replacement money? I don't know. Does anyone?

I should have phrased my above comment differently. This study isn't *strictly* about pedestrian access. As has been stated, throwing up a few pedestrian bridges isn't going to address the long-term maintenance costs of the freeway and the bridges. It is an important consideration, though, given the opportunity to reshape this corridor. That MDOT is even considering pedestrian access at all is a huge step forward compared to some of the "planning" exercises they've done in the past.

From my perspective, removal of the freeway is a win-win-win. Lower maintenance costs, better pedestrian access [[= new development), and if San Francisco and Milwaukee are any example, reduced vehicle traffic on Jefferson.

[royce]

LP resident in favor of filling in 375 here. i love my neighborhood and bought my place for the surroundings. it is beautifully designed but the one thing i dont like is how it is more suburban in nature and to me its saving grace is proximity to downtown. a five to ten minute walk and im in campus martius enjoying everything that an urban center has to offer. if 375 were capped my hopes are some of that urbanity would trickle east of downtown. sadly most of the homes from downtown to grand boulevard are suburban in nature which i think is unfortunate.

royce - there is private security in the co-ops that help curb more serious crimes. there are security lights on all of the buildings as well which really light the area up at night. i have never once worried about someone in a bush because it isnt that difficult to see. also, i hope you are complaining about the route to get from LP to other locations and not the fact that it would take 10 minutes. pretty sad if a ten minute walk gets you up in arms about a place.

Walking 10 minutes is a problem for me when the nearest thing I can get to takes 10 minutes. I grew up in an eastside neighborhood where within ten minutes I could walk to school, church, three parks, three party stores, two grocery stores, a florist, the cleaners, a vet, a hardware store, the bank, a barber shop, a dentist, the library, two gas stations, and a McDonald's. Even in my current neighborhood on the westside of Detroit, I can walk to many of these same places within ten minutes. So, I guess I'm spoiled and I expect that if I have to walk to something, that I can walk to a lot of things within 10 minutes as opposed to one of two things if I lived in Lafayette Park. Walkable to me is being able to get to something at the corner, not four or five blocks. That's just me. I guess I should have been a New Yorker.

[daveyarm]

This terrible plan would create monstrous traffic problems. People coming into downtown on Southbound I-75 now have the choice between Grand River, Madison, Lafayette, and Larned to enter the area. If this plan goes forward, all that traffic will dump onto ONE surface street, creating unheard of jams.

[ghettopalmetto]

This terrible plan would create monstrous traffic problems. People coming into downtown on Southbound I-75 now have the choice between Grand River, Madison, Lafayette, and Larned to enter the area. If this plan goes forward, all that traffic will dump onto ONE surface street, creating unheard of jams.

I'm not understanding your point. Nobody is going to bulldoze Grand River, Madison, Lafayette or Larned, so those options remain available.

As it stands, however, I-375 and the Lodge both dump their traffic loads directly onto Jefferson when they terminate.

[Detroitnerd]

This terrible plan would create monstrous traffic problems. People coming into downtown on Southbound I-75 now have the choice between Grand River, Madison, Lafayette, and Larned to enter the area. If this plan goes forward, all that traffic will dump onto ONE surface street, creating unheard of jams.

Portland, Ore., tore down four-lane Harbor Drive in the 1970s. Highway engineers predicted gridlock catastrophe. On the day it was closed, there wasn’t a ripple of disturbance to the flow of traffic. The greenway that now occupies what used to be a freeway proved an early anchor to that city’s redevelopment.

After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, calls intensified for the removal of the Central Freeway in San Francisco. Critics complained that closure would surely result in unprecedented traffic jams. However, after the earthquake forcibly closed the highway, the congestion failed to materialize. It was torn down in 1992. The neighborhood formerly occupied by the freeway saw a boom in real estate prices.

In 2002, Milwaukee's Park East Freeway was taken down. Among critics, the resulting traffic jams were cited as a major complaint against this project. Milwaukee has used the land freed up by the freeway removal to create three new neighborhoods, spurring economic investment. The traffic jams never appeared.

Or, to steal from streetsblog:

The fatal flaw in the rationale behind freeways is the mistaken belief that building separated structures for cars can effectively whisk traffic through dense urban areas, says Norquist. The actual result is that freeways clog up with traffic “when they’re needed most,” he said.
Meanwhile, building street-level boulevards and allowing traffic to distribute through a street grid allows travelers more choices in the routes they take and the modes of transport they use, resulting in far less congestion while preserving the livability and economic value of urban neighborhoods.
Some amount of car traffic is also induced by the construction of freeways and seemingly disappears when they’re gone. A 1998 study of international cities found that amount to be between 14 and 25 percent, on average.
Essentially, urban freeways just don’t solve the problems they set out to address, and often make them worse, while costing a lot of money and doing damage to a city’s livability and economic vitality. “The freeway is a rural form. It doesn’t belong in the city,” said Norquist. “It concentrates traffic and creates congestion at the nodes.”

[royce]

Can anyone answer this question: "How far would this surface street extend?" MDOT's not saying anything. Again, if the freeway ends at Gratiot, you would have to close the entrance from the eastbound Fisher lane because there is no way that traffic coming off of the Fisher could stop safely to come up at Gratiot near Madison. That traffic would have to go to where the Fisher ends at Gratiot/Eastern Market and then travel back south on Gratiot to get to anything in the CBD.

A surface street also interferes with Greektown traffic coming from Monroe Street. How would that traffic get back to 375/75 north? That traffic would have to do a Michigan left if the surface street is boulevarded. Not impossible but a traffic light would be necessary at Monroe and the new surface street. This is where the real backups will occur.

For me, as mentioned earlier, any eliminating of 375 with a surface street should be done to improve walkability along Jefferson by eliminating the terminus of 375 at Jefferson and ending the freeway at Larned. If that was done, there still wouldn't be a true surface street. The area would just resemble the Fisher/Gratiot terminus.

[Detroitnerd]

Well, in the early '00s, they were still discussing turning Jefferson into a limited-access roadway, completely encircling downtown in freeway. At least we're starting to see the pendulum swing away from those excesses.

Can it be botched? Sure! Anything can be botched. But one thing I think we forget in this "boulevard" discussion is that I'm pretty sure we're talking about laying in a network of cross-streets as well. The cross streets will handle the job of dispersing the traffic that used to be gridlocked heading downtown. Maybe it needn't even be a boulevard. I mean, how many cars per day does I-375 handle, anyway?

[Hermod]

When I worked in downtown Detroit, the expressway network was just beginning. The eastern terminus of the Ford was Gratiot and the Chrysler only ran north to the Ford. I drove Gratiot from 7-mile to downtown everyday and it was total gridlock. Two to three light cycles getting through the Harper traffic lights [[longer if it was raining). Yes, a six lane boulevard should handle the same traffic as a six lane expressway except that you will get a light at each cross street and the traffic will only pull away from the light slowly, so you may have to wait more than one light cycle. Unless you have side-by-side one-way streets like JohnR and Brush, you can't sync the lights so that a car has clear sailing.

[Detroitnerd]

When I worked in downtown Detroit, the expressway network was just beginning. The eastern terminus of the Ford was Gratiot and the Chrysler only ran north to the Ford. I drove Gratiot from 7-mile to downtown everyday and it was total gridlock. Two to three light cycles getting through the Harper traffic lights [[longer if it was raining). Yes, a six lane boulevard should handle the same traffic as a six lane expressway except that you will get a light at each cross street and the traffic will only pull away from the light slowly, so you may have to wait more than one light cycle. Unless you have side-by-side one-way streets like JohnR and Brush, you can't sync the lights so that a car has clear sailing.

Yeah, but then again downtown Detroit was never really the center of the region as you have said. And the streetcars, which nobody liked, as you have said, weren't an option anymore. And the dispersal of capital, industry and commerce, which your generation cheered on, hadn't yet begun, so I guess we're living in a different world.

Have you seen the congestion in Manhattan? Jesus! That place must be a backwater to have no freeways criss-crossing it and saving all that time and money. Sure would be hell if Detroit had traffic like that. Like, worth carving up large parts of the valuable city to build automotive sewers so people can eat McBarfer burgers while they drive to the next blacktop lot. God bless America.

[professorscott]

PS, the same applies. What you are talking about is known as the NEPA process [[National Environmental Policy Act). NEPA was put into place so that large projects are not shoved through [[think of the Jacobs vs Moses). Since this is technically part of the Interstate System [[though a 'spur') it is held to an even higher standard. Status quo is known as 'Do Nothing'. There could actually be several alternatives evaluated not just two.

Thanks DP. My one point, though, in transit if we look at the Woodward alternatives analysis for example, there is already bus service up and down Woodward. So the "do nothing" alternative, technically called "no-build", is just keep the buses running up and down Woodward as they are doing right now. With I-375, though, the roadway and bridges have deteriorated so not doing anything is really not an option. The three options I know about are: [[1) rebuild it as is, [[2) abandon it [[close the road and close all the bridges spanning the road), or [[3) boulevard it at grade.

Someone earlier was asking to see the details. There are no details; at this point it is just a concept. If anyone at MDOT has even done any preliminary sketches I'd be surprised. We're about at the stage we were at with M1 Rail the day someone first proposed the concept.

[Detroitnerd]

I like option two, actually. Abandon I-375, close the road and close all the bridges spanning the road, and it will fill with homeless people a la "Escape From New York." I couldn't think of a finer way for a freeway to end its career.

[mtburb]

I like option two, actually. Abandon I-375, close the road and close all the bridges spanning the road, and it will fill with homeless people a la "Escape From New York." I couldn't think of a finer way for a freeway to end its career.

Perhaps you got this from A Walkable I-375? [[whose title card is on the previous page, the second image), because you may notice some familiarity.

[finster]

Forget about it. Not saying it's right but there's a reason the Lafayette off ramp ends at the entrance to the Greektown Casino, just like they designed it, and yes I know it blows to hell their theory of "Think how much we'll be helping the surrounding area!" [[See Motor City Casino for evidence of how well that works out).

What this means is that the deep pocketed casino will spend whatever it takes to keep this on the proverbial "drawing board" permanently, and yes even with Mr. Gilbert being the owner. He's like Mike Ilitch in this regard as in "I like to be charitable but not that damn charitable!" Think Matty Maroun, who in reality is winning as long as nothing concrete ever gets done and studies and votes ad nauseum go on and on.

[Huggybear]

This group loves to second-guess decisions made long ago on the basis that things were poorly thought out and that people took what they could get. Which sounds like exactly what is happening when a bunch of people fixated on getting rid of freeways glom onto the state's desire to get rid of a freeway to cut costs.

In theory, it should be possible to reimagine, reinvent or replace I-375, and there are many potentially positive outcomes. But bear in mind that I-375 was driven by futurism. What the state proposes to do is to not futuristic or in any way forward thinking - it merely wants to regress to the time before freeways. This does not fundamentally

- solve the problem of using a huge amount of land to move 40,000 cars [[and maybe 50,000 people) per day. A six-lane boulevard would still use a lot of the 40-100 acres of land you could hope to recover from the right-of-way.

- create anything walkable. The only thing that would be walkable would be an essentially greenfield environment cut off by superblocks at both sides. We're also not hurting for walkable downtown blocks that are already contiguous and compact - but fallow. Fill those, cover I-75 north of downtown, and then start looking east.

- intelligently redeploy the considerable existing infrastructure [[starting with a huge, ready-made pit with utilities and drainage). This would cost tens of millions [[if not hundreds) if you had to excavate it for a project.

- do anything forward thinking at all. You could put parking under there, put a train line there, or basically anything you want - but you can't do any of those things easily once you've impulsively filled the roadbed.

So I think people need to take a huge step backwards and consider what you could do with the space before blindly following the next Judas goat [[remember, I-375 was the product of following the pack). People should hold the state's feet to the fire and demand that it contribute to a meaningful solution, especially in light of the displacement this state-constructed freeway caused in the first place. How much are they spending on the accursed I-94 expansion?

And I can see why the LP people are against it - if all you are offering is moving a sound-deadened freeway up to the surface so it is louder and more light polluting, they would understandably give you the finger. I-375 was sited and sunk as a natural barrier to make LP more attractive to families that did not want to be right up against downtown and not have a porous western border. And given the nature of the existing development, whch is designed to be serene, quiet, and nearly 100% residential, it's hard to imagine any reason why you would want random people walking from downtown into the neighborhood. Going the other way, nothing you are going to do is going to improve LP residents' access to downtown - since Shapiro Hall and the Woodward Academy make the sole access points Gratiot, Lafayette, and Larned.

But if you came in with something that extended the neighborhood or even did high-density development in a way that was not jarring in style or format to the existing developments, I think you could get support frm the existing residents.

HB

[Wesley Mouch]

Well, in the early '00s, they were still discussing turning Jefferson into a limited-access roadway, completely encircling downtown in freeway. At least we're starting to see the pendulum swing away from those excesses.

Hear, hear.

Since de-freewaying this is so obviously a great move, let me push forward Phase II.

Continue the idea.

There's really no reason why most of the traffic on I-75 [[Chrysler to Fisher, from Ford to I-96) needs to come near downtown. 90% are just passing through. So as long as you're widening the Ford, reroute I-75.

From 75/94 to 75/96 [[near bridge) can be reached just as easily via the Ford Freeway and I-96. So just move the I-75 designation over there. We're already going to spend money to widen 94, so just fix a few more ramps [[S75 to W94 and W94 to 'S'96 and their mates) and you could then turn Chrysler S of 94 and the Fisher Fwy downtown into surface streets.

Frankly, its difficult to get across town now. If you're near Cass Tech and want to get to Eastern Market -- how do you do this? Try it and weep. And if its a game day -- forget it.

Let's not just follow Frisco, Seattle, Boston. Let's lead the pack.

[Hermod]

People should hold the state's feet to the fire and demand that it contribute to a meaningful solution, especially in light of the displacement this state-constructed freeway caused in the first place. How much are they spending on the accursed I-94 expansion?

The state didn't construct the freeway, the city did. It used 90% of the money from Uncle Sugar and the rest was a mixture of state, county, and city funds. The siting, planning, and contracting was done from the city of Detroit Bureau of Expressway Design [[I know, I worked there in 1961 in the Water Board Building). The state and county signed off on the plans, but the city did all the detail work. The one exception was the Southfield Expressway which was designed, planned, and contracted by Wayne County.

[Hermod]

I-375 was sited and sunk as a natural barrier to make LP more attractive to families that did not want to be right up against downtown and not have a porous western border. And given the nature of the existing development, whch is designed to be serene, quiet, and nearly 100% residential, it's hard to imagine any reason why you would want random people walking from downtown into the neighborhood.

I-375/I-75 up to Six-mile was sited and aligned in 1945. When did Lafayette Park begin to be conceived and planned? By 1961, I-375/75 was already in the ground up to I-94.

[Huggybear]

I-375/I-75 up to Six-mile was sited and aligned in 1945. When did Lafayette Park begin to be conceived and planned? By 1961, I-375/75 was already in the ground up to I-94.

As I understand it, the timeline was:

1949 - U.S. Housing Act passed. Black Bottom clearance project begins.

1951 - land cleared on the north side of Lafayette

1954 - team changed from Yamasaki/Gruen to Mies/Hilberseimer

1956 - Townhouses started

1958 - Pavilion completed

1959 - Townhouses completed.

1959 - Lafayette Towers started; 1300 E Lafayette started [[second phase of Lafayette Park)

1959+ - Chrysler goes in [[there are pictures of the Pavilion Apartments completed and standing over the open pit).

1961 - City plan shows today's configuration of Lafayette Park on one side of the Chrysler and the "institutional" urban renewal project [[now the strip on the west side of 375).

1964 - 1300 completed; Lafayette Towers completed [[the two towers not built simultaneously). I-375 opens.

1965 - Four Freedoms House [[now Skyview Apartments); Navarre Place

1966 - Regency Square [[Parc Lafayette)

1967+ - Cherboneau, Chateaufort; Jean Rivard

1967+ Elmwood

Interesting that the Chrysler was a city project - when did it pass to state control?

HB

[Hermod]

As I understand it, the timeline was:
Interesting that the Chrysler was a city project - when did it pass to state control?

When it got integrated into the Interstate system in order to suck up the fed money. All of the freeways were referred to by their city names [[Lodge, Ford, Chrysler, Jeffries, Fisher, Southfield) on the plans. As the interstate system was built in outstate Michigan, the city segments were absorbed.

We had all of the plans there in our officer and we let the contracts. During the six months I worked there [[got called into the army), I worked the detail design of the Ford-Chrysler interchange drawing and blueprinting cross sections every fifty feet and computing earthwork cut and fills. All of the contracts were let from our office. We had many pipe racks with plans of the whole road from Jefferson up to Holbrook which was as far as detailed planning had gotten in 1961. We were really only complete up to Warren Ave with a temp connection to the east and west bound Ford.

In 1961, I used to go down Gratiot to work and hang a left onto St Aubin [[which was still pretty slummy), go down and hang a right on Lafayette. Everything south of Lafayette was pretty much cleared and some guy was running a cheap dirt parking lot at Lafayette and Beaubien. I would walk a couple of blocks on Lafayette to Randolph where my building was. If the wife wanted the only car, I would take the Gratiot bus to Hudson's and walk down Farmer St to work.

[iheartthed]

Hear, hear.

Since de-freewaying this is so obviously a great move, let me push forward Phase II.

Continue the idea.

There's really no reason why most of the traffic on I-75 [[Chrysler to Fisher, from Ford to I-96) needs to come near downtown. 90% are just passing through. So as long as you're widening the Ford, reroute I-75.

From 75/94 to 75/96 [[near bridge) can be reached just as easily via the Ford Freeway and I-96. So just move the I-75 designation over there. We're already going to spend money to widen 94, so just fix a few more ramps [[S75 to W94 and W94 to 'S'96 and their mates) and you could then turn Chrysler S of 94 and the Fisher Fwy downtown into surface streets.

I agree. I proposed this on another thread we had about getting rid of the Fisher a few years ago. If I had my way I would dual-sign I-96 as I-96/I-75 from the Ambassador Bridge up to where 96 crosses 94. I would then have 75 dual-sign along with 94 cross town until it reaches where it currently interchanges with 94. From there 75 would split and go north out of the city on it's current path. I would completely get rid of the Fisher and the part of the Chrysler that runs south of its junction with I-94.

It serves the same purpose of moving people both cross town and north south without carving up the city center as much as it does now.

[DetroitPlanner]

I agree. I proposed this on another thread we had about getting rid of the Fisher a few years ago. If I had my way I would dual-sign I-96 as I-96/I-75 from the Ambassador Bridge up to where 96 crosses 94. I would then have 75 dual-sign along with 94 cross town until it reaches where it currently interchanges with 94. From there 75 would split and go north out of the city on it's current path. I would completely get rid of the Fisher and the part of the Chrysler that runs south of its junction with I-94.

It serves the same purpose of moving people both cross town and north south without carving up the city center as much as it does now.

I-94 can't handle the traffic it has now. With all of the protesting regarding 'widening' [[which is actually 90 percent making the ramps operate right), it, I would be surprised if it will be able to handle that and more in the future.

I-75 N of Downtown has not lived its useful life. If abandoned now the state will have to pay the feds $100's of millions. That is how fed-aid works.

[Detroitnerd]

I-94 can't handle the traffic it has now. With all of the protesting regarding 'widening' [[which is actually 90 percent making the ramps operate right),

That's poppycock, DP. Adding continuous service drives to the project, deepening the cut, doing away with bridges, changing the interchanges, etc. have nothing to do with on- and off-ramps and are about 90 percent of the job.

Any way you look at it, expanding I-94 is a bad idea. There are better strategies to develop crosstown and bypassing routes than simply deepening and expanding a mistake of the 1950s.

[iheartthed]

I-94 can't handle the traffic it has now. With all of the protesting regarding 'widening' [[which is actually 90 percent making the ramps operate right), it, I would be surprised if it will be able to handle that and more in the future.

If the proposed trade off for widening I-94 is to get rid of the Fisher then I think a lot fewer people would be protesting it.

I-75 N of Downtown has not lived its useful life. If abandoned now the state will have to pay the feds $100's of millions. That is how fed-aid works.

Yes, this is a theoretical exercise. Detroit wasn't unfortunate enough to have a natural disaster put a premature ending to its biggest urban planning mistakes like some other cities.