5 ms·
The Interstates between cities are a modern marvel whose impact can barely be overstated; the Interstates within cities were an unnecessary, destructive mistake
by dionidium 4y ago
The Interstates between cities are a modern marvel whose impact can barely be overstated; the Interstates within cities were an unnecessary, destructive mistake.
- xienze 4y agoAre interstates just supposed to end once you reach a city, and in order to continue on you’re supposed to navigate a series of roads that take you to the other edge of town, where the interstate starts again? Seems less than ideal.
- bobthepanda 4y agoGoing around is an option.
- dionidium 4y agoWe could have built the interstates around urban cores and connected them to existing thoroughfares within cities. Most of our urban cores have expanded out to where those highways would have been built then, anyway. There was no need to go right through existing neighborhoods.
- Anarch157a 4y agoEvery city in the path of an Interstate should have a ring road around it, instead of cutting the city in two or more parts. Basically, a giant roundabout.
- jdsully 4y agoThis is traditionally accomplished with ring roads that go around the city. Take Minneapolis for example, you'd be crazy to take I-94 through the heart of the city. If your driving through on your way out west your going to take the 694 bypass.
- eropple 4y agoIt is, but less so on the East Coast. Not enough to make the point irrelevant, but enough to complicate the generality some. Like, if you're going north from southern New England, for example, you're probably taking I-93 straight through the city. Which is a lot better than it used to be thanks to the Big Dig (which gets so much bad press but really is a great example of an infrastructure project that did, eventually, work), but is still not pleasant, and it's because taking 95 (or, further out, 495) all-the-way-around is as significant detour.
- kragen 4y agoCircumnavigating the cities would be a reasonable alternative, and the Interstate system has incorporated many such "belt roads" since its inception. In retrospect this would have been a much better option than running them through downtowns.
- tshaddox 4y agoCorrect, interstates are not supposed to directly visit every home and business in the country.
- myself248 4y agoThe system was engineered to incorporate both loops and spurs, and it's encoded in the numbering system: I think most folks know that 2-digit interstates with an even first digit are east-west, and with an odd first digit are north-south. But 3-digit interstates exist too. An even first digit means it's a loop around a city (like I-475 around Flint), and an odd first digit means it's a spur into downtown. (I-375 into Detroit). These numbers can be reused, for instance there's another I-375 in Florida. I think the argument here is that the _default_ should've been to loop around cities.
- pandaman 4y agoAccording to this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Primary_(one-_and_two-digit)_Interstates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System#Prim... there is no encoding in separate digits, only the whole number being odd or even has meaning. E.g I-10, I-14, I-30, I-70, I-72 etc are east-west and I-25, I-45,I-65, I-83 etc are north-south.
- erik_seaberg 4y agoWeren’t a lot of those loops absorbed by later growth? Much like siting an airport, it’s hard to pick a route that will always remain outside a city without just going to the middle of nowhere. Wikipedia says I-280 was planned in 1955, and I think Silicon Valley was mostly still fruit orchards at the time. The silicon transistor would be invented one year later.
- 4y ago
- phil21 4y agoPractically every major city with an Interstate has what is called a bypass, typically at least two. These look like a ring around the city in most cases and are (typically) the even numbered 3 digit interstates. The bypasses are almost always faster to take if you're just moving on through to the other edge of town. These would have been totally sufficient in almost all cases w/o plowing the Interstate itself through/near the downtown cores in addition to the bypasses.
- chasd00 4y agoEvery major city that I’ve been to has at least one and sometimes more than three loops around it. You drive down the interstate then take the loop around and back on the interstate to avoid city congestion. It’s like a round-about with the city in the middle.