These 3 Highways Were REMOVED: What Happened Next?

[@TransitTangents]

Can you believe some of the before and after images from Rochester?? Let us know if there is a proposed highway removal near you! Thanks for watching 😊

[@rebeccawinter472]

You should pin this comment. 😉

[@dock_yard1149]

Albany NY, I-787 which blocks the Hudson River waterfront. I think the proposal is a surface boulevard with signaled intersections and a separate trail for non-motorized vehicles.

[@robertuebel7068]

My dad's father grew up in Rochester, and the neighborhood where he grew up was devastated by the construction of the Inner Loop. What was once a very pleasant residential area became pretty much an urban wasteland because the houses on one side of his old street were all removed. I'm hoping that the next phase of the project will restore Grandpa's old neighborhood to something like what it used to be.

[@TransitTangents]

Thanks for sharing your experience! I hope so as well. Appreciate the comment 😊 -Louis

[@robertuebel7068]

@@TransitTangents Thanks for the like! If you're curious, my grandpa grew up on Delevan Street. Only two houses remain there, and where our old family home stood is now part of a parking lot. I also have a number of old photos from the early 1900s of what the street used to look like.

[@TransitTangents]

@@robertuebel7068 If you are willing to share some of the photos, we would love to see them! Feel free to email to [e-mail] If not, no problem as well. Crazy to look at Delevan street on a map today.....

[@jonathanl3945]

I-94 between the downtowns of Minneapolis and Saint Paul is on the radar. MNDoT has identified it as a corridor that is reaching the end of its life, so it would have to be actively rebuilt - or not. Most of the traffic is local. Traffic to and from the suburbs as well as traffic bypassing the cities largely take alternate routes already.

[@passatboi]

City Nerd just did a whole video on this.

[@TransitTangents]

@@passatboi Yes! Definitely recommend it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/n3TSfKyJn76Sq8ksi=o1RO-iyOJDclzuXK

[@passatboi]

You're correct. In first half of the 20th century, urban waterways were polluted and seen as undesirable. This was when industry was located along them and pollutants were just evacuated into the river. Don't forget, the EPA didn't exist until the 1970s. Plus, they were generally flat since they were the natural bottom of the valley, so easy to build on. That's why I-70 follows the river through the mountains in Colorado as well.

[@fallenshallrise]

The Austin example is interesting. I was there during SXSW when the city is filled with thousands of visitors and the couple times I went on the highway it was decently busy but then on other trips going south into downtown on Guadalupe or one of those streets and there was no traffic. Like sometimes literally no cars at all. Full on ghost town. Based on my experience the "need" for that highway cutting their city in half is way overblown.

[@TransitTangents]

I would love to see I-35 come down. The folks at ReThink 35 are doing a great job fighting, but I am getting worried that TXDOT may get there way.... ReThink35 has an open lawsuit against TXDOT and you can contribute to it here: rethink35.org -Louis

[@lws7394]

You can still see the old Rochester highway on googlemaps. At the junction S. Union street and East Ave .. Next step : delete half of the surface parking (for affordable housing nd bike paths , because there is still a parking garage to deal with vehicle parking...)

[@TransitTangents]

It is fun to look at the historical imagery as well if you open it up in google earth and look back before, and then now! Agree on getting rid of surface parking. In time I bet it will happen. Making the area more bikeable and improving transit in the meantime will help make that happen. Personally I don't have a ton of biking or transit experience in Rochester as I haven't spent much time there since high school... Thanks for the comment and for watching! -Louis

[@scpatl4now]

You guys didn't mention the Atlanta freeway collapse on I-85 in 2017. That section carried 400,000 cars per day. You ought to do a podcast on how that all transpired.

[@TransitTangents]

It's on the idea list now! Thanks for watching 👍

[@kelseyhuse]

i didn't know about this one! I'm very curious about it

[@scpatl4now]

@@kelseyhuse There is a Wikipedia page on it. Search Atlanta freeway collapse 2017

[@scpatl4now]

Thank God for Jane Jacobs or who knows what NYC would look like if Robert Moses was given continued free reign

[@TransitTangents]

Totally agree!

[@christopherjones8491]

@@TransitTangents We have to do an entire episode on Robert Moses!

[@rebeccawinter472]

She also came to Toronto and helped stop the Spadina Expressway! She was such an amazing woman.

[@franciscocastro4017]

Induced demand works both ways, that is why removing highways can also help reduce traffic. Cheonggycheon highway removal has been a clear example of this.

[@TransitTangents]

Yes! Agreed. Would love to see it happen in more places! Thanks for watching and leaving a comment 😊-Louis

[@puffpuffin1]

Not true. Other parallel roads in Seoul were widened to accommodate the increased traffic after the removal of the highway. This is often not mentioned in these urbanist videos on YT and other urbanist publications. Removing highways does not reduce demand. People only shift to other roads and clog up roads that were not meant for high car volumes. That is what happened with the Central Freeway in San Francisco. Traffic dramatically increased on alternative routes that still lingers to this day. Luckily, for the area around the Embarcadero, there were a lot of low volume but wide streets that was able to absorb the 60,000 vehicles (not 70,000) that used the freeway. That is what happened and continues to happen in San Francisco at least.

[@Plutonix_5]

Wow, I just discovered this channel and you have a lot of great content! You should do a video on the recent proposed merger of transit agencies in Illinois

[@TransitTangents]

Thanks for the kind words! We'll have to look into that for a future episode!

[@ethanmagnuson2988]

Great work y'all! Looking forward to seeing more from y'all.

[@TransitTangents]

Thankyou for watching and for the kind words 🙌

[@alexclement7221]

7:00-ish: As far as the number of people 'removed', the planners at the time also built that big, hulking Manhattan Square project just to the west of the loop, a block south of East Ave., as well as those projects on St. Paul, and others between Clinton Ave. and Joseph, and the projects on Mt. Hope, as well. So there WAS 'replacement housing', but it was crowded and poorly maintained.

[@jamestong8080]

Detroit is going to remove I375 from downtown.

[@pleappleappleap]

Buffalo also has removed the Scajaquada Expressway. How do you feel about 787 in Albany? I think it carries much higher traffic loads than the Inner Loop.

[@passatboi]

Yep. Traditional photography developed on special photography paper went the way of the dinosaur. PS. The term for a below-grade freeway built in a trench is a "depressed freeway" (depressing, I know), but it's not called a "sunken freeway".

[@TransitTangents]

Well freeways are depressing in general, so not a bad name for it I guess 😅

[@passatboi]

@@TransitTangents yes, the urban freeways that sliced through cities are. But they ARE an efficient form of roadway over others. Take Winnipeg, for example. It didn’t build any freeways in the 50s and 60s. There’s a highway loop around the city called the Perimeter, which all the trucks take to bypass the city. it has a lot of traffic lights on it, so all the trucks have to gear down, stop, wait, then accelerate again to highway speeds. They’re slowly building interchanges to remove the traffic lights. The highway is already there. The trucks aren’t going anywhere. So in that case, having it free-flowing is better and safer than having traffic lights. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[@brendanSD]

thanks for another great episode! 🌳🌇🌳

[@TransitTangents]

Thanks for watching and leaving a comment 😊

[@NapiRockAndRoll]

The term "Urban highway" should not exist. The highways should stop at the border of the city/metro area.

[@TransitTangents]

Strong agree from me lol -Louis

[@alexclement7221]

19:53: Few people thought the Embarcadero was a good idea even when it was built; In Philip K. Dick's book "The Man in the High Castle", during a dream sequence into an alternat reality, people are commenting on how terrible the Embarcadero was going to be, while they were building it. Thankfully the earthquake of 1989 started the 'removal process'.

[@passatboi]

To answer Chris' question: no, there were no other highways in SF to replace the Embarcadero. But they put in a walkable/bikable urban boulevard with a streetcar down it and everything worked out. Same thing with the Hayes Valley stub of the Central freeway (US 101) which was also removed from Market St. to Octavia. They just took that out - and you know what? No one died.

[@puffpuffin1]

No one died my a$$. Typical toxic urbanist BS again. I remember one fatal collision on Octavia right after it opened where a driver was trying to bypass traffic and ended up on the sidewalk and median. Prompted officials to think about the design. I don't know if anyone else died since, but there were plenty more collisions at the new intersections over the years than at the old on/off ramps.

[@garygraeff3914]

for consideration, Providence,RI and New Orleans,LA Thanks

[@TransitTangents]

We didn't touch on highways, but we did a recent episode on New Orleans here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iYbMfnaHipZqhJIsi=X5rHhATpvwWBkH7f Thanks for watching!

[@gulagkid799]

I think that Austin can definitely get rid of the downtown section of I-35 considering there actually are alternatives with US-183+state route 71 and state route 130+state route 45 to bypass downtown, sad TxDOT plams to expand I-35 downtown instead

[@rebeccawinter472]

At 4:11 you guys note that Rochester is “the only case where in the US where a city had an urban rail system and now has none”. The Rochester subway was a streetcar subway and it, like many other cities now has no streetcars. While Rochester was unique in having had a significant portion of its system buried, it is definitely not the only US city to have had urban rail (I.e. streetcars and interurbans) in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, but which now has none. That’s just totally not true.

[@TransitTangents]

Yes- I added a note on screen correcting urban rail to subway- Good catch though! Obviously lots of US cities had streetcars, I misspoke. Thanks for watching. -Louis

[@billstephens8202]

Seattle removed a waterfront freeway also due to an earthquake. While they did replace the freeway with a tunnel, it did all the city to reclaim their waterfront.

[@gregadams6827]

Guys, check out I-10 over Claiborne Ave in New Orleans, LA

[@AlexCaspian]

There should be no more crappy freeways that have already made most American cities much less pedestrian friendly several decades ago.

[@passatboi]

You pronounced Embarcadero correctly. The next one they're thinking of taking down in the Bay Area is the 980 freeway in Oakland, which sliced Oakland in half. It's also mostly a depressed freeway that links the 880 to the 24. Traffic can be routed further down the 880 to the 580 to the 24. To be watched. Interestingly enough, after that same earthquake (Loma Prieta 1989), the Cypress Viaduct part of the 880 freeway also collapsed. They removed it and routed the 880 closer to the waterfront/port (yeah, I know). But it freed up space for affordable housing and the Nelson Mandela Parkway. Used to bike down there.

[@puffpuffin1]

"Traffic can be routed further down the 880 to the 580 to the 24." WTF? You really have no idea what you are talking about. You can't get to 24 from 880 via 580. If you remove 980, you will have to get off 880 and go through the city streets to get back onto 580 or 24.

[@andyb2040]

I-794 in Milwaukee is going to be voted on for potential removal soon. Would be interesting to discus

[@TransitTangents]

Agreed! We'll have to look more into it, but I have added it to the idea list. Thanks for watching. -Louis

[@MrPAULONEAL]

We're gonna do this my way, no highway option...

[@garygraeff3914]

it seems the locating of the destructive highways councided with poverty removal,... intentional??

[@emmettpickerel5016]

San Francisco's Embarcadero freeway is a fairly perfect example of when a freeway isn't there to benefit the city, but allow people to bypass it. When it came down, you could no longer just go from south or east bay to the north bay and bypass SF entirely, but instead had to traverse the maze of route 101. People switched to bypassing SF via northern routes. And yes, people from outside of SF, who wanted nothing to do with the city but as a way to get to the other side, were the most annoyed.

[@puffpuffin1]

That makes no sense. The Embarcadero Freeway never allowed people to bypass the city.

[@emmettpickerel5016]

@@puffpuffin1 Not 100% (you'd still hit surface for a bit), but a LOT more than after it was removed. I forget the exact route as I was 19 at the time of the quake, but I remember suddenly it made a lot more sense to detour completely around unless SF was part of your destination.

[@pleappleappleap]

I'm surprised you didn't cover the Miller West Side Highway in Manhattan.

[@grahamturner2640]

Who made the intro song?

[@peteferguson518]

The urbanism of the Rochester project is good but the architecture sucks.

[@TransitTangents]

Yeah some of it leaves more to be desired for sure. The section you can see at 11:07 isn't terrible, but the buildings right along Union Street could have been a lot better (and a bit taller tbh). But still a big W imo. -Louis

[@peteferguson518]

@@TransitTangents Yeah, literally everything is better than a highway and some parking lots.

[@alexclement7221]

3:42:"..around the time the loop was put in, they re-routed the canal further south." INCORRECT!!! The BARGE canal was opened in 1918, and the Rochester downtown section of the old "Erie Canal" stayed open only until 1920. Once it was abandoned, the empty canal bed was used for the 'subway' (which was 95% above ground..), and this was in usage until 1957, when it was closed and they started building that stretch of I-490. The subway ran along the old canal bed for the entirety of it's length, from Brighton to Driving Park. Really, you should do some research before posting cr@p online.

[@TransitTangents]

Hey there! Thanks for pointing this out- Human here who made a human error. I had it in front of me, but neglected to double check as this was not the focus of the video. I knew from memory that portions of the canal had been used for the subway, other portions for 490. Slipped up on my timeline. My mistake. I'll add a correction to the description 👍 -Louis

[@jarvisjohns]

can you make this video 15 minutes? it's really really slow!

[@getin3949]

I left before 60 seconds.

[@TransitTangents]

Appreciate the feedback- We're going for a more casual vibe/podcast format, but we can always make them a bit shorter still. But this is purely a fun thing for us, and we both have a habit of talking a lot lol... So no guarantees 😅 -Louis

[@passatboi]

You can increase the playback speed up to 2x in the settings

[@marcelmoulin3335]

@@TransitTangents You both have a lot of germane, enlightening comments to make. Additional prepping beforehand would help you to create a succinct, dynamic presentation. (I am a teacher.)

[@jarvisjohns]

@@TransitTangents I like the content! I am not saying you need to talk as fast as Rob from Road Guy Rob but maybe don't chat about the road? honestly speeding it up isn't a bad idea haha