I don't think that Detroit wants anyone to fund any boondoggle-- I'd just like get the city back from the transportation department! Freeways are a drain on a community in more ways than just "draining" people away. They are a cost with no return in revenue. And it is not just Detroit. Look at a map of Novi, for instance. Close to 10% of the surface area of Novi is taken up with I-96, M-5, and interchanges. No tax revenue in return. Yes, it adds access to shopping areas, but for the most part it is just a pass-through, 12 hours a day for shopping centers, 16 hours a day for office buildings. But Novi has to provide police, fire, and EMS services to all of those drivers, with some help from the State Police.

We have two "caps" here in the area-- Cobo Hall, and the pedestrian park over I-696 in Oak Park. That was a solution that was three decades in the making. It took almost 30 years to build I-696 because of the strong opposition from groups who knew what that ditch would do to their community. They saw the evidence in what the ditches had done to Detroit.

I visited Columbus last year, and to tell the truth, I didn't even realize that there WAS a bridge between downtown and Short North [[which seems to me after my one visit to be a very cool neighborhood). That's how seamless High Street is. I recall the buildings shown in the photos in the blog article, but I had no idea that it was a cap.

Just look at what the freeways did in Detroit [[ I know these DTE photos have been linked to DYes before)

1949
http://www.clas.wayne.edu/photos/par...9/ha-3-144.pdf

1997
http://www.clas.wayne.edu/photos/par...5739-25-57.pdf