Capping downtown highways

[DetroitPlanner]

I don't think we should get rid of the freeways altogether, but there is also no reason why through traffic from Ann Arbor and Toledo to Flint and Port Huron needs to be routed right through the middle of the city. The damage is basically done at this point, but it would have been interesting to see the difference if, back in the day, the freeways had been made to dump into some kind of circulator belt with underpasses at major intersections [[Livernois-->Davison-->Mound-->Mt. Elliott, maybe) and left the downtown area more or less intact.

Bear, if you're driving from Toledo to Flint you do not go through Detroit at all; the most shortest distance is US-23. E-W traffic travelling from say Battle Creek to Port Huron would not use I-94, but rather I-69. Most of the traffic that you see in the Detroit urbanized area is generated from and to points within the Detroit Urban Area. It will nearly always have at least one trip end within the Detroit Urbanized Area.

In your scenario, wat might have happened would be that nearly all business would have died in Downtown Detroit in the 1960's in favor of more accessible sites in Southfield, Livonia, Madison Heights, or St. Clair Shores. The problem is you can't second guess history. The best you can do is be very careful in reviewing EIS [[Environmental Impact Statements) and EA [[Environmental Assessment) documents for major project impacts. The National Environmental Policy Act [[NEPA) was created only after seeing the uneven impacts of freeways on urban growth as a way to provide mitigation strategies and public comment.

[Meddle]

In your scenario, wat might have happened would be that nearly all business would have died in Downtown Detroit in the 1960's in favor of more accessible sites in Southfield, Livonia, Madison Heights, or St. Clair Shores. The problem is you can't second guess history.

No need to speculate or second guess. You can see the fact in your statement along 275 and parts of 696 and the businesses that used to be in Detroit.

[Bearinabox]

In your scenario, wat might have happened would be that nearly all business would have died in Downtown Detroit in the 1960's in favor of more accessible sites in Southfield, Livonia, Madison Heights, or St. Clair Shores.

Are you seriously suggesting that if we hadn't ripped downtown to shreds trying to accommodate as many cars as possible that it would be even deader than it is now? How much worse could it possibly be? I think people would be more likely to want to invest in downtown if it felt like a downtown and not a few blocks of tall buildings surrounded by parking lots and expressway spurs. Trying to out-suburb the suburbs hasn't worked out very well.

[DetroitDad]

Connecting vacant lots with "green space" or building buildings to connect vacant buildings owned by slum lords is not worth even thinking about, even as an exercise in creativity. Other cities did this because they had two or more somewhat active districts that stood to benefit from capping the freeway.

I love this idea, but we really need something worth reconnecting first.

[jtf1972]

The way traffic planning worked "in the day" was that you took your areas of greatest congention and built a freeway or a toll road to remove that traffic from the congested road. The first example of this was Davidson. The Lodge and the Ford were planned long before Eisenhower became president. These freeways were then integrated into the interstate system. The original part of the Ford was built to move the industrial workers from Detroit to the war-built defense plants near Willow Run.

Essentially, you used to ID an expressway required. You then routed it the cheapest way possible with ramps at convenient locations and crossing bridges every so often between ramps.


Editted to add:

If your expressway was a part of the Interstate System, Uncle Sugar ponied up 90% of the cost of construction while the state ponied up 7.5%. The locality only had to pay 2.5%. They were playing with "house money".

Close, but you are assuming everything was by the book. Robert Moses built the Cross-Bronx straight through an area where another study showed it would be cheaper & make displacing half as many residents, by simply moving the highway south a few blocks. He refused. It came out years later that friends of his owned a good chunk of land that would be much more valuable with a highway close by, compared to the rated the government was paying for the property. Politics & backroom deals had a huge impact.

It was 1958 when the 90/10 funding split came to be. I think in 1950it was about 50/50 [[without looking up the numbers)