What if all the freeways within the city limits were turned into boulevards?

[iheartthed]

Transit certainly has to be a part of it, but even with getting rid of thousands of cars a day, the existing freeways carry HUNDREDS of thousands of vehicles per day. That excess traffic has to go somewhere. hence, you couldn't simply get rid of the freeways as roads. I just think boulevards or some other form of surface street might be more appropriate.

From the video, what I found interesting is that after the West Side Highway in Manhattan collapsed the traffic was just absorbed into the already existing street network. I believe this was before West Street was restored too. So neither the highway or it's replacement was vital to the traffic flow in Manhattan, despite it being very heavily used while it existed.

[ghettopalmetto]

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From the video, what I found interesting is that after the West Side Highway in Manhattan collapsed the traffic was just absorbed into the already existing street network. I believe this was before West Street was restored too. So neither the highway or it's replacement was vital to the traffic flow in Manhattan, despite it being very heavily used while it existed.

The same thing happened with the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco after the 1989 earthquake. It was predicted that mass gridlock would ensue. What the traffic engineers found, however [[through the magic of traffic counts on roadways), was that many of the trips formerly carried by the freeway simply *disappeared*.

Which, if you think about it, makes sense. How many cars per day did I-696 carry before it was constructed? ZERO.

I swear, this country treats freeways like a teenage love affair. We somehow can't imagine what life was like before the freeways, and we can't ever imagine what we'd do without them in our lives--no matter how destructive they may be. So instead, we hang on for dear life, too scared to do anything reasonable for our own well-being.

By now, we're well into the abusive marriage phase. We know that the freeways are expensive, that we have no money for road maintenance, and that we've seen nary a freeway without congestion during rush hour, yet we're too damned afraid to do anything except keep pouring money into freeways. It's really no wonder the Asians and Europeans think we're stupid.