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Freeways are the arteries and veins of the country. Almost everything in most people's houses and offices was on a freeway inside an 18 wheeler at some point.

Freeways are the arteries and veins of the country. Almost everything in most people's houses and offices was on a freeway inside an 18 wheeler at some point. I would even say they are so relied upon that arial bombing or terrorist attacks at major freeway intersections would cripple the economy for months and create a ripple effect lasting much longer.

hylaride 7y ago
The argument being made isn't that freeways shouldn't exist at all, but should be rammed through already established neighborhoods. Plenty of the world's greatest cities (London, Paris, Rome, arguably NYC) have no to minimal freeways running through them, yet they all thrive. If you look at where Robert Moses wanted to build freeways in Manhattan, you'd no longer have some of its best neighborhoods, like Greenwich Village. If you look at where the highways were built, particularly Queens and the Bronx, the neighborhoods declined. The same things happened in most cities that had highways rammed through already established communities.
- volkl48 7y ago
  The seemingly eternal problem in the NYC metro area is the timing of the highway revolt. There's a bunch of giant pieces of infrastructure that were built to serve those intended highways. That's not to say I wish the highways were built, only that it's made cutting down on cars significantly in Manhattan nearly untenable from a regional transportation perspective, because the outlying "rings" to avoid going through the core are lacking. I wish it came 10 or 20 years earlier and that said pieces of infrastructure were instaed better "outer rings" (ex: Things like A Long Island Sound road crossing) to be able to avoid going anywhere near the core for many trips.
kd5bjo 7y ago
When I lived in California, the town I lived in was surrounded by freeways to the extent that there was only one way out of town that didn’t require traveling over or under a bridge, and that required you to drive the wrong way on the freeway to find the one spot where there’s a gap in the concrete barrier. If there had been a sizable earthquake, it would have been effectively cut off despite being right in the middle of a wider urban area.

hylaride 7y ago

The argument being made isn't that freeways shouldn't exist at all, but should be rammed through already established neighborhoods. Plenty of the world's greatest cities (London, Paris, Rome, arguably NYC) have no to minimal freeways running through them, yet they all thrive. If you look at where Robert Moses wanted to build freeways in Manhattan, you'd no longer have some of its best neighborhoods, like Greenwich Village. If you look at where the highways were built, particularly Queens and the Bronx, the neighborhoods declined. The same things happened in most cities that had highways rammed through already established communities.

volkl48 7y ago
The seemingly eternal problem in the NYC metro area is the timing of the highway revolt. There's a bunch of giant pieces of infrastructure that were built to serve those intended highways. That's not to say I wish the highways were built, only that it's made cutting down on cars significantly in Manhattan nearly untenable from a regional transportation perspective, because the outlying "rings" to avoid going through the core are lacking. I wish it came 10 or 20 years earlier and that said pieces of infrastructure were instaed better "outer rings" (ex: Things like A Long Island Sound road crossing) to be able to avoid going anywhere near the core for many trips.

kd5bjo 7y ago

When I lived in California, the town I lived in was surrounded by freeways to the extent that there was only one way out of town that didn’t require traveling over or under a bridge, and that required you to drive the wrong way on the freeway to find the one spot where there’s a gap in the concrete barrier. If there had been a sizable earthquake, it would have been effectively cut off despite being right in the middle of a wider urban area.