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  #61  
Old Posted Dec 1, 2019, 5:05 AM
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Remove not for the sake of it, but replace it with a more efficient layout to take its place. And voters are more likely to vote for taxpayer projects that benefits cars than transit.
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  #62  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 12:17 AM
authentiCLE authentiCLE is offline
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Originally Posted by Sun Belt View Post
Take Note: there weren't any stats provided with his post.
Thanks for the warning.

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Adding lanes does actually alleviate congestion. Decreasing lanes Increases congestion.
This is wrong.
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  #63  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 12:19 AM
authentiCLE authentiCLE is offline
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Originally Posted by glowrock View Post
Wow, condescending much? You're forgetting that a hell of a lot of the traffic going along the Kennedy/Ryan and Eisenhower are through-traffic, in other words traffic that is independent of increased transit options and frequency.

Aaron (Glowrock)
Why did we build highways through urban areas for through-traffic?
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  #64  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 12:33 AM
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Originally Posted by authentiCLE View Post
Thanks for the warning.



This is wrong.
Decreasing lanes at a time when congestion is increasing in our cities alleviates congestion?

SSP Logic!

Also, no source for your claim, despite recent SSP discussion threads that cite the exact opposite.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...cities-by-far/
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  #65  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 1:03 AM
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Originally Posted by authentiCLE View Post
Why did we build highways through urban areas for through-traffic?
At the time, people thought it would be good for cities. Cars were the future, and if cities opposed freeways, then the prosperity would go to the fringe. How else do the good men of the metro go from their comfortable suburban abodes, with their adoring wives and children, to their leading management positions in the center city? Freeway building was an essential civic duty.

People thought interstates would operate analogous to transit lines. Obviously, they had the exact opposite impact. By the time they figured out that it sucked prosperity out, rather than concentrating it in, it was too late. And no one cared about the wrecked neighborhoods in the highway path (because these areas were too black, poor or old).
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  #66  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 5:08 AM
mhays mhays is offline
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Deleting highways would be a disaster in many cases. Let's say the long-distance traffic could be rerouted to the freeway ring...

Even in the more urban cities (minus NYC perhaps), enough commuters arrive by freeway that removing a freeway would cause a lot of employers to leave. That includes buses on freeways.

Part of the freeway-removal equation is generally adding to the surface-street capacity to win the middle-ground councilmembers or voters. This tends to mean very busy surface streets, which can be much like highways in some cases.

In many regions including mine, much of the region's local traffic funnels through the center of town, or a bridge or two, on high-capacity highways. You can discourage some of that through the "stick" of heavy traffic, but do you want your surface streets serving pass-throughs that don't want to be there?

For my city, which is growing fast, I'll take one-to-one replacements of highway capacity, in tunnel and bridge form when possible. I'm against increases in capacity however. The larger work should be transit. Per the articles linked a couple posts ago, this philosophy is basically what's happening in our region and it's working in terms of people's mode splits.
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  #67  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 2:58 PM
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Originally Posted by 10023 View Post
These freeways wouldn’t be missed if they had never been built so close to downtown.
which is a fine idea, but misses both the reality we live in and the point of this thread.

the topic of this thread isn't "Should Expressways Have Ever Been Built in Our Cities in the First Place?", it's "Is It Time To Take Highways Out Of Cities?"

chicago's expressways WERE built where they are and have been in place for over half a century now. they aren't going anywhere.

and while i might agree that it is time to start thinking about taking them out in chicago's case, i can't for the life of me think of any practical way in which that will come about anytime in my lifetime.

the only expressway in chicago that i could see being removed anytime soon is the ohio street feeder ramp, which is a spur off of the kennedy into rivernorth. that one, along with its OBNOXIOUSLY large interchange, is not necessary.

so while it might be fun to dream of a city better than the one i have, in this particular case, it's an exercise in futility, at least for the amount of time i have left in this world.

perhaps my children or grandchildren will one day inhabit an expressway-free chicago. what a glorious day that would be.
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Last edited by Steely Dan; Dec 2, 2019 at 4:17 PM.
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  #68  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 3:07 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
which is a fine point, but misses both the reality we live in and the point of this thread.

the topic of this thread isn't "Should Expressways Have Ever Been Built in Our Cities in the First Place?", it's "Is It Time To Take Highways Out Of Cities?"

chicago's expressways WERE built where they are and have been in place for over half a century now. they aren't going anywhere.

and while i might agree that it is time to start thinking about taking them out in chicago's case, i can't for the life of me think of any practical way in which that will come about anytime in my lifetime.

the only expressway in chicago that i could see being removed anytime soon is the ohio street feeder ramp, which is a spur off of the kennedy into rivernorth. that one, along with its OBNOXIOUSLY large interchange, is not necessary.

so while it might be fun to dream of a city better than the one i have, in this particular case, it's an exercise in futility, at least for the amount of time i have left in this world.

perhaps my children or grandchildren will one day inhabit an expressway-free chicago. what a glorious day that would be.
I think Chicago's highways aren't all that damaging overall, because they're mostly absent from the areas surrounding The Loop, plus the city's urban fabric is so large, and transit connections are solid enough, that things like 90 walling off the West Side aren't a big deal.

The one exception I would say though, although technically not a true highway, was the decision to construct Lake Shore Drive. Chicago's lakefront would be incredible if it wasn't there.
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  #69  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 3:18 PM
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
Chicago's lakefront would be incredible if it wasn't there.
well, i'm of the opinion that chicago's 20+ miles of public access lakefront are already pretty damn incredible.

but yes, it would be even better without LSD. however, LSD has been entrenched in the city's transportation network for nearly a century now; it simply ain't going anywhere anytime soon.

the only practical thing that can be done is to mitigate LSD's negative side-effects. more over/underpasses. and my pet dream: extended buried sections to bridge the park itself right over LSD.

stuff like this mulit-billion dollar pipe-dream to fix the oak street beach "S" curve:


source: https://chicago.curbed.com/2017/2/9/...dings-new-park
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Last edited by Steely Dan; Dec 2, 2019 at 3:30 PM.
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  #70  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 4:25 PM
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This is a dumb topic, Elon Musks pipe dream of Pneumatic tube hyper-loop and putting highways underground in tunnels is more feasible.

The private passenger automobile driven manually or by a computer is not going anywhere. Most cities are not designed to operate without highways and do not have enough surface road capacity nor enough public transit to make up for the difference with highways being removed.

You are stuck with cars, and highways, and roadways until a more efficient mode of individual travel is invented. Sorry boys and girls, this is a pointless thought experiment.
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  #71  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 4:59 PM
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
Most cities are not designed to operate without highways and do not have enough surface road capacity nor enough public transit to make up for the difference with highways being removed.
Most urban highways have the opposite effect, since they usually remove thousands of traffic routes that would otherwise be available to drivers. Sunken highways cut off secondary roads that are not deemed important enough to bridge over the highway.
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  #72  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 5:20 PM
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Originally Posted by iheartthed View Post
Most urban highways have the opposite effect, since they usually remove thousands of traffic routes that would otherwise be available to drivers. Sunken highways cut off secondary roads that are not deemed important enough to bridge over the highway.
Madness, you know good and well residential neighborhoods would do what they could to block traffic rolling through their streets as ways to avoid congested streets, speed bump, traffic controls to slow people down and remove the advantage of route. You can see that in older historic residential neighborhoods close to downtown's now. They regularly limit access to their neighborhoods to prevent exactly this.

If you take all of the highway traffic in most US metros and throw that on surface streets you get gridlock. Not a problem in DC, Downtown Chicago or Manhattan that are urban enough for people to walk, or take a train.

For the other hundreds of millions who live in less dense cities this would be a total disaster.
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  #73  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 5:46 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
This is a dumb topic, Elon Musks pipe dream of Pneumatic tube hyper-loop and putting highways underground in tunnels is more feasible.

The private passenger automobile driven manually or by a computer is not going anywhere. Most cities are not designed to operate without highways and do not have enough surface road capacity nor enough public transit to make up for the difference with highways being removed.

You are stuck with cars, and highways, and roadways until a more efficient mode of individual travel is invented. Sorry boys and girls, this is a pointless thought experiment.
Right now, passenger cars seem inevitable because there's no other viable alternative on that scale but all it takes someone to come up with a disruptive idea and change the entire status quo. I don't think the notion of planning/anticipating a post-car future is unrealistic.
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  #74  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 6:41 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Originally Posted by JManc View Post
Right now, passenger cars seem inevitable because there's no other viable alternative on that scale but all it takes someone to come up with a disruptive idea and change the entire status quo. I don't think the notion of planning/anticipating a post-car future is unrealistic.
Okay you let me know when you see a new individual mobility vehicle that can move 2-8 people and hundreds of pounds of goods quickly and easily and cheaply than automobiles.

I dont foresee anything replacing cars for quite some time.
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  #75  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 6:48 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
the only expressway in chicago that i could see being removed anytime soon is the ohio street feeder ramp, which is a spur off of the kennedy into rivernorth. that one, along with its OBNOXIOUSLY large interchange, is not necessary.
Has there ever been a serious plan to deck over the trenched part of the Kennedy expressway between Kinzie and Van Buren? There already is an overpass at practically every block. You could probably recoup the decking costs in the sale of land/air rights alone.
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  #76  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 6:59 PM
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Has there ever been a serious plan to deck over the trenched part of the Kennedy expressway between Kinzie and Van Buren?
yes, there have been plans over the decades to "cap" parts or all of the kennedy trench in the west loop with green space.

none ever seem to go anywhere because money.
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  #77  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 7:11 PM
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Originally Posted by Obadno View Post
Okay you let me know when you see a new individual mobility vehicle that can move 2-8 people and hundreds of pounds of goods quickly and easily and cheaply than automobiles.

I dont foresee anything replacing cars for quite some time.
I don't either and didn't say there was but i don't discount the possibility that an disruptive alternative might present itself.
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  #78  
Old Posted Dec 2, 2019, 7:11 PM
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Originally Posted by hipster duck View Post
Has there ever been a serious plan to deck over the trenched part of the Kennedy expressway between Kinzie and Van Buren? There already is an overpass at practically every block. You could probably recoup the decking costs in the sale of land/air rights alone.
No, because if that were true then it would already be done.

Building over a highway (or railyard, etc) is always significantly more expensive than building on terra firma - there's a construction cost premium in building a deck, long span structures, ventilation, egress, edge conditions, etc. So, the price of the air rights has to be less than or equal to the price of comparable land, minus the construction cost premium. If comparable land is worth less than the cost premium alone, then there's no way to get deck development unless the government steps in with a subsidy.

What I'm saying is, air rights aren't a cash cow. If a government (or private railroad, etc) legitimately wants air rights development, they have to price those air rights appropriately - which is never going to be a huge payday.

Chicago got stuff built over the Union Station tracks because of the immense value associated with that location - over 100,000 wealthy commuters pouring out of Union and Ogilvie stations every morning. Other "air rights" development in downtown Chicago (Illinois Center, Lakeshore East, etc) is really on terra firma, so there wasn't much construction cost premium.

Also, in the case of the Kennedy I'm guessing there's resistance from IDOT as well to any kind of decking scheme that would constrain them in the future. When I worked on a Kennedy-adjacent building just north of Hubbard's Cave a few years back, we had to meet with IDOT who required a 12' setback, because - amazingly - they want to preserve the ability to widen from 10 to 12 lanes in the future.
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Last edited by ardecila; Dec 2, 2019 at 7:29 PM.
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  #79  
Old Posted Dec 3, 2019, 3:57 AM
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Originally Posted by JManc View Post
I don't either and didn't say there was but i don't discount the possibility that an disruptive alternative might present itself.
The only thing that will ever disrupt cars is trains. Cars are the perfect solution to the problem of individualized transit, and their designs have been worked on for 100+ years.
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  #80  
Old Posted Dec 3, 2019, 6:14 AM
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What makes you say that? They're incredibly inefficient, astonishingly expensive, dangerous, and an environmental problem on every level.
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