Roads to Rails

Posted by on . 5 comments.

Streetsblog takes us to a new report from Congress for New Urbanism on the highways most in need of demolition. Making the list is the Southeast Freeway in Washington. No disagreement for me.

Urban freeways have phenomenal opportunity costs. You look at the SE/SW Freeway, and you see a highway which doesn’t actually deliver that big an increase in road capacity over a grid. In the process it sucks up a lot of additional land of significant value, and it reduces the value of whole neighborhoods by establishing huge barriers between sections of the city.

The additional automobile connectivity gained by extending a freeway into a dense urban area is small, and absolutely not worth the lost land value. Neither is it a reasonable use of urban land to hold freeway miles designed to carry through traffic. If other institutions want to pay a central city to bury a freeway so that through traffic can have an uninterrupted straight-line journey, then fine, but central cities shouldn’t volunteer to undermine the value of their greatest asset–dense, gridded neighborhoods near job and residential centers.

Some will complain that those job centers thrive because of suburban commuters into the central city. I don’t think we should understate the role of District residents and transit commuters in supporting the District job market, but that’s somewhat beside the point. The question is: if we got rid of these urban freeways and replaced them with boulevards and (perhaps!) better transit options, what percentage of drivers-

1) Would stop driving, and

2) Would not switch to transit, and

3) Would not move to a more convenient location?

Not a huge number. And then ask, to what extent is the value of those lost suburban commuters offset by the increased value of the salvaged urban land, and the residences and commercial space it supports?

Comments

  1. Dave Murphy says:
    September 23, 2008 at 2:38 am

    I don’t think that this is the best idea until density and transit access are increased in adjacent car-oriented areas in Montgomery, Prince George’s, Arlington, and Fairfax Counties.

    I think it would be an interesting study to compare the impact of car oriented areas different distances from the urban core with the amount of traffic they put on a freeway through the urban core or transit systems through the urban core. Does Tysons Corner have a larger effect on DC auto traffic than Columbia? Will it change when the Silver Line comes to Tysons? It would probably help determine when and how we can get rid of that freeway and others like it.

    I would also like to point out that freeways in DC have the added benefit of keeping military and industrial traffic off of city streets and boulevards. I think that this is very important, and there should be some separated roadways to serve this purpose. Perhaps not the SE-SW Freeway, though.

  2. BeyondDC says:
    September 23, 2008 at 9:20 am

    > don’t think that this is the best idea until density and transit access are increased in adjacent car-oriented areas in Montgomery, Prince George’s, Arlington, and Fairfax Counties.

    Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The problem with your position is that
    1) Density and transit access aren’t likely to rise significantly if large parts of town remain car-oriented,
    2) Large parts of town are likely to remain car-oriented if driving remains the easiest way to get around them,
    3) Driving will always remain the easiest way to get around them if we continue to provide huge driving facilities.

    Further, you talk of removing the highway to Tysons (I-66), but it’s a much lower priority because unlike the Southeast Freeway, I-66 doesn’t cut through and destroy otherwise urban neighborhoods. I-66 is a traffic sewer, but it doesn’t harm much of anything walkable, so removing it is not a priority.

    As for military / industrial traffic, I don’t see why they need their own highways cutting through the city.

  3. Cavan says:
    September 23, 2008 at 9:58 am

    Dave,
    If you read Z. Schrag’s book “Great Society Subway: History of the Washington Metro” you’ll find that the highwaymen of the ’50s and ’60s used the exact same arguments against building the Metro. It’s a completely circular argument that has been used over and over again by the Highway Lobby. It’s just a self fulfilling prophecy that’s used for the profits of the Highway Lobby. That argument is also used by fellas like Gleaser in his pro-sprawl, anti-transit papers. (sprawl exists because people love it!) It’s even been used locally against constructing the Purple Line (in fairness, not this decade, now they’ve shifted to BRT as their NIMBY “alternative”). In my advocacy for the Purple Line, I use downtown Bethesda as an example to support the “if you build it, they will come” line of thinking. Would there even be a Bethesda if I270 had been extended down Wisconsin Ave as originally planned?
    For an excellent example of a freeway teardown and illustration of the value of urban land, read up on the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco.

  4. Barbara says:
    September 23, 2008 at 11:25 am

    I drive on the SW freeway (only recently started as part of reconfigured commute because of child school changes). I have to agree that it probably takes up a lot of valuable property for delivering minimally increased access to various points.

    Making it a boulevard would be totally acceptable. Most people use it literally as a little cut through or short cut to avoid no more than 1/2 to 1 mile of urban traffic with lights. That’s certainly the case for me, as I could easily go right over the 14th Street Bridge to traverse the three blocks through the city I don’t have to by using the SW Pkwy.

    Also, I recently drove in Mexico City and was expecting nightmares, but found it to be relatively easy, especially the practice of having “express” and “local” lanes so that people going through would not have to stop so much. This could easily serve as a model for a ground based boulevard to replace the SW Pkwy. Mexico also has a lot of pedestrian overpasses and walkways, I assume because unlike here, there are so many pedestrians that they actually represent a real constituency.

  5. Dave Murphy says:
    September 24, 2008 at 12:49 am

    I’m all for getting rid of the Southeast Southwest Freeway, don’t get me wrong. I just think it should be part of a plan that includes a very large addition of public transit amenities. I feel Cavan’s argument applies more if we were building a highway rather than getting rid of one.

    I don’t think taking out a freeway is like “ripping off a band-aid”, it ought to come with a plan that promotes more walkability and transit not only in the immediately adjacent areas, but in the areas that tend to feed the freeway.

    Furthermore, I think it is extremely important to have segregated highways for military traffic, ESPECIALLY in Washington, DC. It doesn’t need to be the SE-SW Freeway, but it ought to be something. I don’t want military vehicles parading up and down K Street for every passerby and tourist to see. This isn’t Pyongyang. And as long as this is the Capital of the country, there is going to be a need to move military traffic through the city.