Inside Ring Roads

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Yeah, but it's "unbalanced": go too far away into the west and too close into the north.

I don't think any ring or loop road in the U.S. is going to be much of a sprawl barrier, but the western side (I-275) comes fairly close to the end of the Detroit urban area. Detroit sprawl now goes way north of I-696, but 696 is considered an unofficial dividing line between the inner and outer suburbs of Detroit. I would guesstimate that there are close to 3 million people living in the area enclosed by I-275 and I-696.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I don't think any ring or loop road in the U.S. is going to be much of a sprawl barrier, but the western side (I-275) comes fairly close to the end of the Detroit urban area. Detroit sprawl now goes way north of I-696, but 696 is considered an unofficial dividing line between the inner and outer suburbs of Detroit. I would guesstimate that there are close to 3 million people living in the area enclosed by I-275 and I-696.

I noticed the 23 and the I-69, meeting in Flint, surrouding most of Detroit CSA.

[harls]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Montreal it's very close. It "only" requires two bridges, one north one southwest, to link highways 30 and 640. And it will be one of those very meaningful as it would encircle pretty much all the urban area and the two islands.

There were plans for Autoroute 9 to cross the river right before the Ontario border (connecting A50 and A40 - quite a bit further west of Montreal).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Yuri

I noticed the 23 and the I-69, meeting in Flint, surrouding most of Detroit CSA.

Neither of those roads are very relevant to the Detroit metro area. I-69 never touches the Detroit MSA and US-23 only briefly does through a fairly rural part of the metro. A lot of metro Detroiters aren't even aware that they exist. I-275 and I-696 are the most equivalent to a ring road for Detroit.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Neither of those roads are very relevant to the Detroit metro area. I-69 never touches the Detroit MSA and US-23 only briefly does through a fairly rural part of the metro. A lot of metro Detroiters aren't even aware that they exist. I-275 and I-696 are the most equivalent to a ring road for Detroit.

I'll won't do Detroit. Most obvious reason they don't have a road ring and even if we stretch the definition, it's not geographic meaningful. I assume concepts like the "Tri-County" carries a much heavier weight.

On the Great Lakes, I intend to do Buffalo, Cleveland and Milwaukee. We can make them work.

[plinko]

Phoenix would be an easy one.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Neither of those roads are very relevant to the Detroit metro area. I-69 never touches the Detroit MSA and US-23 only briefly does through a fairly rural part of the metro. A lot of metro Detroiters aren't even aware that they exist. I-275 and I-696 are the most equivalent to a ring road for Detroit.

For a city devoted to the automobile, and which ripped down so much of its inner city to build freeways, Detroit's freeway system doesn't really extend to a lot of the region, particularly north of I-696 running east-west.

It's almost like they had a highway revolt in the 1970s, too, except it was too late to save the inner city and it was entirely suburban.

I have some experience driving around Metro Detroit, and I remember a lot of it involved getting off the highway and driving for miles along one of those arterial roads with the wide median and Michigan lefts, like Hall Road or Telegraph Road. These are definitely faster than your usual suburban stroad, but they're not really a substitute for limited access highways.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

For a city devoted to the automobile, and which ripped down so much of its inner city to build freeways, Detroit's freeway system doesn't really extend to a lot of the region, particularly north of I-696 running east-west.

It's almost like they had a highway revolt in the 1970s, too, except it was too late to save the inner city and it was entirely suburban.

I have some experience driving around Metro Detroit, and I remember a lot of it involved getting off the highway and driving for miles along one of those arterial roads with the wide median and Michigan lefts, like Hall Road or Telegraph Road. These are definitely faster than your usual suburban stroad, but they're not really a substitute for limited access highways.

Yeah, they did have highway revolts in the 1960s and 1970s. I-275 was supposed to extend much farther to the north but that was killed off by a coordinated effort between Farmington Hills, West Bloomfield and the city of Detroit. I-696 was also way behind schedule. It was supposed be finished in the 1970s but wasn't fully completed until almost 1990. I'm a millennial and I have vague memories of when it first fully opened to traffic from end-to-end.

Before I-696 was completed, the only way to go entirely by freeway from the eastern to western suburbs (and vice versa) was to go through the city of Detroit. That's why 8 Mile Road, Telegraph Road, and parts of 16 Mile Road (aka Big Beaver and Metro Parkway) are built to support freeway speeds.

Also, before any of the interstates were every conceived, there actually was a plan to make a ring road beginning with 16 Mile/Metro Pkwy/Big Beaver and completely encircling the Detroit metro area. This would have been a ring road and green belt to contain urban sprawl. That's actually how Metro Parkway got its name. The ring road, to have been named Metropolitan Parkway, was intended to connect all of the parks in the Huron-Clinton Metroparks system. Only one section was ever built.

[Yuri]

Manchester - M60

Lenght: 58.1 km

--- 2021 ------- 2011 ------- 2001 --------- Growth ------------ Area -------- Density
-- 862,157 ---- 779,723 ---- 656,562 ---- +10.6% -- +18.8% ---- 154.8 Km² --- 5,570 inh./Km²

I really enjoyed to put this together. Always nice to see a central area rebounding, specially of the world's oldest industrial city. Growth has been crazy, part of the "back to the city centre" trend. The lenght, due the curves, is similar to Houston's I-160, covers a much smaller area. Density, of course, much higher.

[mrnyc]

^ columbus would be an easy one. to demarcate anyway. I-270 is a classic ring road, or outer loop as we would call it in the states.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah, Moscow doesn't seem that dense to me either, at least based on what I saw on Google Street View. I guess the commie blocks add up quickly.

Also, most people don't calculate Staten Island into their mental math of NYC and its density. The average density of Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx is 34,338/sq mile (versus 29,302 with SI). Brooklyn, Queen, Manhattan, and the Bronx collectively contain nearly 95% of NYC's population.

i would imagine he would use something like the garden state, sie, belt, cross island and then I-95 to loop around the city by highways. that puts the denser northern 1/3 of staten in and leaves out down island which is no loss (in many ways lol), although it leaves out a good part of the bx too. kinda hard to do nyc as there is no clear/perfect way to do it (but not as hard as someplace like cleveland).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

i would imagine he would use something like the garden state, sie, belt, cross island and then I-95 to loop around the city by highways. that puts the denser northern 1/3 of staten in and leaves out down island which is no loss (in many ways lol), although it leaves out a good part of the bx too. kinda hard to do nyc as there is no clear/perfect way to do it (but not as hard as someplace like cleveland).

Yeah, I think it would be way too contrived to try to superimpose a ring road around NYC. Most of the city's land area exists on islands anyway, so the objectives of a ring road are kinda redundant.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by plinko

Phoenix would be an easy one.

Originally Posted by mrnyc

^ columbus would be an easy one. to demarcate anyway. I-270 is a classic ring road, or outer loop as we would call it in the states.

The problem is the excessive number of census tracts. I do one by one. I'm already working on Columbus. Added Downtown, Germantown, the whole Near East Side, Harrison West/Victoria Village. Incredibly segregate, as Houston. Cincinnati is also, to a lesser extent.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah, I think it would be way too contrived to try to superimpose a ring road around NYC. Most of the city's land area exists on islands anyway, so the objectives of a ring road are kinda redundant.

For New York we could use I-287. It encircles almost the whole continental urbanized area of New York. Population number inside would be very close to the actual New York UA, specially as they keep Bridgeport separated and the I-287 don't cross into Connecticut.

[austlar1]

Dallas (IH 635/20) and Fort Worth (IH 820/20) both have ring roads in addition to a vast freeway network. I'd be curious to see numbers for both cities. Texas HY 12 is kind of an inner ring road surrounding Dallas, but it isn't controlled access for much of its route. IH635/20 is the road in Dallas that should be considered.

[bilbao58]

In case anyone thinks there is something especially egregious about the level of racial segregation in Houston, every city in the following list is considered a "High Segregation" city. https://belonging.berkeley.edu/most-least-segregated-cities-in-2020

[mhays]

That's a very incomplete list. The US had 121 cities over 200,000 in 2020.

Wait...you only included the "high segregation" cities.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by mhays

Wait...you only included the "high segregation" cities.

[mhays]

Also LA. Very stark separations on a dot map.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I've never heard anyone ever mention Houston specifically for egregious racial segregation.

The OP twice commented on the "crazy" and "incredible" segregation of Houston in this thread. Not that they're wrong about that, but I just wanted to nip any mistaken notion that Houston is an outlier in the bud.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by austlar1

Dallas (IH 635/20) and Fort Worth (IH 820/20) both have ring roads in addition to a vast freeway network. I'd be curious to see numbers for both cities. Texas HY 12 is kind of an inner ring road surrounding Dallas, but it isn't controlled access for much of its route. IH635/20 is the road in Dallas that should be considered.

I'm currently working on both.