Daring to Dream About Highway Removal

Protesting a proposed freeway through Washington, 1970s

Following the positive experience of San Francisco, after that city dared not to rebuild the intracity Embarcadero Freeway destroyed in the Bay Series Quake of 1989, a number of cities are removing the limited access highways that were shoved through their city centers decades ago. Milwaukee in 2002 replaced the Park East Freeway with McKinley Boulevard, resulting in mixed-used development and increased value in the surrounding land (CNU n.d.). Other successful removals occurred in Portland Oregon (1974) and Seattle (2001), and internationally in Seoul (2003) and Madrid (2000s) (Walker 2016).

Such highways had destroyed neighborhoods, facilitated white flight, and brought traffic congestion and air pollution to the places it severed. (For problems created in Los Angeles, see Masters 2014.) "The damage done to cities was twofold," writes Benjamin Ross.

By subsidizing long-distance commuting, expressways accelerated the stampede to the suburbs and sucked the life out of urban neighborhoods. Beltways around cities, justified as bypasses to divert through traffic past congested downtowns, rapidly became crowded rush-hour routes. Meanwhile, the new highways devastated neighborhoods, tearing down what lay directly in their path and spreading a pall of noise, soot, and fumes over what remained standing (2014: 48).

Today in Baltimore, a group called Fight Blight Bmore wants to remove an uncompleted project that displaced 900 families in the 1970s (Reklaitis 2021). There's A New Dallas in Texas, Minnesota has Reconnect Rondo St. Paul, and New Orleans the Claiborne Avenue Alliance. In Seattle, a movement called Lid I-5 is seeking to use overdue reconstruction of that 1961 highway to put a new development atop it (the "lid") that would reconnect the Capitol Hill and First Hill neighborhoods with Downtown, and enable new housing, parks, and shops to be built there (Argerious 2021). CNU's Freeways Without Futures report nominates that one and fourteen others from New York City to San Francisco for removal, at least from sight as in the Seattle case, if not entirely. In other state DOTs, the message has yet to land; the Texas Department of Transportation is determined to take out some more Houston by expanding I-45.

The federal government is starting to show interest. In March 2021 President Biden proposed $20 billion in transportation funds to "reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments and ensure new projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice, and promote affordable access," citing examples from New Orleans and Syracuse of earlier projects that did the opposite. This follows on efforts late in the Obama administration to encourage cities to use transportation money more flexibly (Walker 2016). The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act cut funding for "reconnect neighborhoods" to $1 billion, perhaps enough to do one or two trial runs somewhere.

At that rate, it will be a long time before reconnect neighborhoods funding gets to Cedar Rapids. Still, building I-380 in the late 1970s involved plowing through a number of older neighborhoods, including Czech Village and Little Mexico (Jordan 2021a, 2021b). I-380 is not strictly an intracity highway, as it runs 50+ miles from I-80 west of Iowa City north into Waterloo, carrying 48000 vehicles a day in the city, declining to 24000 by the Benton County Line. Since its construction, however, it has been joined by a number of other limited access highways around the city where capacity far exceeds current usage, particularly the extension of State Highway 100 around the west side of town, about which I was ambivalent but since it's been built we might as well use it. 

The idea, then, would be to disperse I-380 traffic in the center of Cedar Rapids a number of ways. Through traffic could bypass Cedar Rapids by taking US 30 to the SR  100 extension, adding seven miles to what is now an eight-mile stretch--a rounding error for a long-distance trip. Intracity traffic would use either a four-lane boulevard that would replace the highway, or the US 30-to-SR 13 route along the southern and eastern edges. (In slightly more detail, where there are parallel frontage streets, as on most of the west side, I'd keep those and develop the space between. Most of the east side would need a new street, and to work around the railroad yard, the Cold Stream, and such like.)

Surely there could be a higher better use of the space than this:

300 block of 3rd St SW (Google maps screen capture)

The core of the city would enjoy restored connections and land for housing and businesses, allowing for the city to develop around proximity rather than the speed of cars (Tomer, Kane and Fishbane 2019; see also Tomer and Kane 2020). 

1. Residential and commercial development on the west side of the river--Kingston, Czech Village, and Hayes Park--would be connected to neighborhoods currently on the far side of the highway, making for a continuous walkable area where prosperity could spread and be shared.
2. Access to Cedar Lake, currently safe only for cars due to the highway entrance at H Avenue, would be improved for the surrounding neighborhood, with area for development between the lake and Mound View.
3. Continental Terrace, the apartment complex high on the hill off Glass Road, would be connected to shops on Center Point Road, again with area for development between the two.
   

 

Walking but not walkable distance from two grocery stores, a pharmacy, a hardware store, and a trail (Google maps screen capture)

I'm not saying this conversion is likely to happen, but you know, the more I reflect on it the more excited I become. What a difference it would make for housing supply, business opportunity, sustainability, vibe... you name it!

SEE ALSO

Joe Cortright, "Why the Proposed $5 Billion I-5 Bridge is a Climate Disaster," City Observatory, 4 January 2022

Helen Hope, "Three Forward-Thinking Moments from the 'Undoing the Damage of Urban Freeways' Webinar," Smart Growth America, 11 May 2021

Benjamin Ross, Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism (Oxford, 2014)

Robert Steuteville, "Eight Ways for 'Receiver Cities' to Prepare," Public Square: A CNU Journal, 9 December 2021