Highways to Boulevards

Transportation topics in KC
aknowledgeableperson
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Re: Highways to Boulevards

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

"And we change the past all the time - at remarkable scales. Look at German cities rebuilt to their original standards after the war. Go to Dresden and tell me you are not impressed with what was once a pile of rubble."

That is not what was meant by changing the past. The past is what got us to the now and present. Now, if you just want to bomb the heck out of the freeways and all to make a pile of rubble that is a way to change the future. The future is a matter of choices. The past is made of choices already made.
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Highlander
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Re: Highways to Boulevards

Post by Highlander »

Semantics. The present is the result of all the good and bad decisions made in the past. Change the results of the bad decisions. It often expensive and painful but It's more than possible to do - we are doing it now with the streetcar. They took them out, now we are putting them back. The decision to put the interstate highway system through the heart of cities instead of around cities like the European model was probably the single worst decision the US made in the 20th century, at least the one with the most lasting negative impact. But it's hardly irreversible.

flyingember wrote: Ha!

It has the raw capacity, it's not designed well to take up N-S through traffic. It's all the merging.

The goal shouldn't be to just move traffic to a new road, it should be to shift it to another mode and make the capacity unnecessary.

This is why removing the freeway should be the last step done
flyingember wrote:
It's an enormous swath of real estate taken out of commission - probably triple the footprint of the southern freeway. What a waste. It's not all that heavily used as a high either since the advent of 670 obviates the need for the northern swing across the intercity viaduct. Not that the space would be immediately filled by building (we cannot even fill out the present day inner loop) but there are interim uses and some interesting things that could be put there - for instance new urban living in an actual urban environment. Picture dense townhomes and apartments with some topography left by the current relief due to the sunken nature of the highway between downtown proper and the river market. I'd live there.
aknowledgeableperson
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Re: Highways to Boulevards

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

"Semantics. The present is the result of all the good and bad decisions made in the past. Change the results of the bad decisions. It often expensive and painful but It's more than possible to do - we are doing it now with the streetcar. They took them out, now we are putting them back. The decision to put the interstate highway system through the heart of cities instead of around cities like the European model was probably the single worst decision the US made in the 20th century, at least the one with the most lasting negative impact. But it's hardly irreversible."

Yes, a case of semantics. But it is important. At least you recognize that it is expensive and painful to correct. I think others tend to discount what the expense would be and how painful it is. I don't think many realize the many side effects of taking out the northern loop out of the system, all they see are the what if's on a positive side, none on the negative side. I know some don't seem to care about the effects on auto traffic but for now it is what we depend on and will depend on for many years if not decades to come. Whether or not the southern loop can handle the shifting traffic, in peak and non-peak periods has to be studied. Getting to/from KCK downtown and KCMO downtown is an important consideration. Even access points to and from the freeways are important because of the affected traffic patterns within downtown and surrounding areas. How many people exit from I-70 to go northbound onto the Broadway Bridge?
Taking out the northern loop without having viable alternatives already in place may end up doing more harm than good for downtown future prospects. If you are going to change things and spend a lot of money doing those changes you need to make getting around easier instead of harder. There is an old saying. Be careful what you wish for, you may get it.
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Re: Highways to Boulevards

Post by herrfrank »

UrbanKC wrote:A recent discussion on Reddit about US-71 brought to mind that, in my opinion, despite being only 16 years old now, the Bruce R Watkins Drive spur of US-71 really should also be decommissioned and turned into a Boulevard or Parkway. Right now it's trying to be a horrid, inefficient mix of highway and parkway that really just divides the poor neighborhoods from the wealthy.

I love the "convenience" of US-71, but I am willingness to sacrifice my personal convenience for better urban development, connectivity and economic activity.

This really should be a critical point of discussion in the city if they are serious about encouraging development East of US-71.
The irony is that this highway was envisioned as a "parkway" partly through the heart of its East Side traverse, exactly because the East Side power brokers wanted it to unify the city and to bring commerce at street level to the Prospect Avenue corridor. The Star covered this debate extensively in the late 1980s.

BTW, although construction ended only a couple decades ago, the land was cleared far longer back, in the late 1960s-early 1970s. I remember as distantly as 1975, looking north on Michigan and Euclid Avenues at the cleared right-of-way after visiting the old church (Linwood Presbyterian). My first exposure to "bad" eminent-domain, perhaps counter-balanced by the "good" eminent domain of Crown Center a couple years earlier.
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Re: Highways to Boulevards

Post by shinatoo »

So are the median portions, the ultra wide ones between 51st and Gregory open for development? Or is MoDot banking those in hopes of someday making it a full interstate highway.

I'm betting on the later. The whole project seams like a huge FU to the neighborhood. Right down to naming an overpass after Mame Huges.
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Re: Highways to Boulevards

Post by herrfrank »

shinatoo wrote:So are the median portions, the ultra wide ones between 51st and Gregory open for development? Or is MoDot banking those in hopes of someday making it a full interstate highway.

I'm betting on the latter. The whole project seems like a huge FU to the neighborhood. Right down to naming an overpass after Mamie Hughes.
I concur, that MoDoT would like to make the whole stretch limited access at some future time. BTW, this highway was planned a LONG time ago -- in the early 1950s, well before the east side neighborhoods south of 27th Street "changed." Some people argued that when the condemnation and demolition really got hot around 1970, it accelerated white flight. Mamie Hughes was one of the people involved later in the long debate about the parkway aspect of the road.

This highway and the "high school wars" (Paseo/ Westport/ Southwest/ Central HS gamesmanship and the MO suburbs funding fight) were the primary local news items during the late 1980s in KC. IMHO the day in 1990 when the school board demolished grand old Paseo high school marks the nadir of KC's political bungling that started in the 1950s, and therefore the day also marks when the city started to improve -- focusing on growing the pie rather than how to divide it.

http://paseohighschool.org/pdf/paseohistory.pdf
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rxlexi
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Re: Highways to Boulevards

Post by rxlexi »

The long-term outcome would likely be what we see in cities that never bulldozed highways through the urban core, and where it is consequently much less convenient to get from one suburb to another: fewer jobs in the suburbs and more in the center.
Which cities are those? Only thing off the top of my head might be someplace dramatically geographically constrained, like Pittsburgh or San Fran, maybe.
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Re: Highways to Boulevards

Post by flyingember »

NYC would be the best example, but they've had a major turnover in industries, once was a manufacturing center that left for the suburbs.
San Francisco doesn't have it's port anymore, freeways didn't stop container ships from moving to Oakland and now LA
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Re: Highways to Boulevards

Post by pash »

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