Highway Removal
Streetsblog Basics
Advocates Defend New Haven’s “Downtown Crossing” Highway Removal Plan
Earlier this week we ran a story about why local livable streets advocates with the New Haven Urban Design League are disappointed with the city's decision to replace a section of grade-separated highway with a plan that remains, on balance, car-centric.
March 29, 2012
Instead of Reclaiming a Despised Highway, New Haven Plans a Close Replica
The "most defacing scar from the 1960's Urban Renewal era" -- that's how local advocates describe the Route 34 Expressway through downtown New Haven. Just about a year and a half ago, this small New England city won a TIGER grant to heal that scar. But another disfiguration may be growing in its place.
March 26, 2012
12 Freeways to Watch (‘Cause They Might Be Gone Soon)
If you make your home on the Louisiana coastline, upstate New York or the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, chances are you live near a highway that really has it coming. It's big. It's ugly. It goes right through city neighborhoods. And it just might be coming down soon.
February 6, 2012
Chuck Schumer on Niagara Falls Highway: “Tear Down This Road”
Most members of Congress are excited to cut the ribbon for a new stretch of freeway, but it's a smaller set indeed that will stand up for the removal of a highway, no matter how neighborhood-blighting. As of yesterday, count New York Senator Chuck Schumer among their number.
December 13, 2011
DCP’s Sheridan Teardown Analysis Based on More Than Just Traffic
The Department of City Planning continues to display an openness to the possibility of tearing down the Sheridan Expressway. A slideshow prepared for a September public meeting, recently posted online, shows how the agency is applying a comprehensive approach to the question of what to do with the lightly-used, Robert Moses-era highway along the Bronx River.
November 2, 2011
What Should Happen to the Sheridan Expressway? Share Your Ideas Tomorrow
The potential teardown of the lightly-trafficked Sheridan Expressway in the South Bronx is the most exciting street reclamation initiative in the works anywhere in NYC. For years, local advocates doggedly built the case for replacing the aging highway with housing, parks, and other uses. Recently we've seen some major breakthroughs that make the teardown an increasingly realistic scenario. Most notably, the U.S. Department of Transportation is funding a comprehensive study by the New York City Department of City Planning to determine what could take the Sheridan's place.
October 14, 2011
Take a Tour of the Sheridan Expressway (While You Still Can)
When taking a tour of the Sheridan Expressway, the first thing you realize is that you're also taking a tour of the Bronx River Greenway. The two pieces of infrastructure -- one a 1.25-mile stub of highway, the other a still-piecemeal bike and pedestrian path reconnecting Bronx neighborhoods to the water -- both run through the low river valley. The greenway and the cleaned-up river, products of decades of community activism, are signs of the incredible revitalization of the South Bronx.
July 29, 2011
To Study Sheridan Teardown, City Pulls Back the Lens
When the state Department of Transportation studied removing the lightly-used Sheridan Expressway, it considered two scenarios. One predicted conditions with the Sheridan kept as is. The other imagined closing the highway to traffic without making any other changes -- simply fencing off the 1.25 mile structure.
July 22, 2011
Syracuse Looks to Highway Removal to Revive Downtown Economy
All cities have physical barriers that divide neighborhoods and social classes. In Syracuse, one of the biggest is Interstate-81.
June 17, 2011
Construction Industry Objections to Sheridan Teardown Don’t Stand Up
The fight over the future of the Sheridan Expressway, a stub of a highway that Robert Moses built but never finished, heated up this week. The construction industry announced its opposition to any Sheridan teardown in a Crain's op-ed this Sunday, days before experts at a Municipal Art Society panel forcefully made the case for replacing the underused roadway with housing and park space.
April 15, 2011