Quote:
Originally Posted by Lee_Haber8
I was looking at another forum about large U.S. cities without freeways and it might be that Winnipeg may be the only large city of over 500,000 people. Whether it was intentional or good fortune, I think it is something Winnipeg should be proud of: that we haven't made the mistake that has blighted so many cities on this continent.
Now, hopefully we can get around to improving public transit and urban life to kill any ideas of building freeways in the future
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Not wanting to take this thread off track but I just thought I'd respond to this first post by providing Vancouver as a potential example of a large NA city 'without' freeways. In the City of Vancouver (outlined in black) with a population just over 600,000 there is only one small stretch of the Trans-Canada Hwy dipping through in the northeast corner. There are highways in the 'burbs though of course.
There were plenty of plans drawn up in the '60s for an elaborate freeway system to funnel people downtown but due to public opposition (people didn't want to see historic neighbourhoods torn down to make room) the plans were never realized. It's an event that many cite as the reason why Vancouver's core is so livable and successful today.
Despite the lack of freeways around the core, traffic is no worse for it. A study a year or two back showed that Vancouver was the only city in Canada to see commute times decline over the last few decades despite having built no new freeways in that time (in the City proper or the suburbs). By comparison, Seattle has a heavily freeway-ed core yet they have notoriously bad traffic.