Untangling the Urban Highway System
As suburbia boomed and residents needed new ways to get into cities for work during the middle of the last century, cities across the state watched as highways and expressways were built on top of and through urban neighborhoods.
A half century later, a New Urbanism movement is trying to reverse the adverse effects on urban life that all this asphalt, steel and concrete brought. From Albany’s Interstate 787 to Buffalo’s Skyway, city and state planners are trying to find ways to turn highways into more slow-moving boulevards.
That transition was a hot topic at the South Bronx River Watershed Alliance’s Urban Freeways to Boulevard Summit in Albany on Tuesday. At the summit, city and state officials from major upstate and downstate cities and the municipalities in between gathered to discuss how their sister cities in New York are dealing with turning their major downtown arterials into livable avenues.
“We don’t want to just see this as an exercise for, ‘How can we get cars from point A to point B as quickly as possible?’” Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner said. “That would be a failed exercise. Instead to look at this as a way to connect neighborhoods, particularly for upstate, to look at it as a way to continue to engender economic development.”
Miner’s Syracuse is grappling with a highway problem coming to a head in a few short years: what to do with the elevated section of Interstate 81 that cuts through downtown Syracuse and changed the city’s character to what she described as “land-locked.”
First and foremost, the span’s useful life is set to end in 2017. Second, the highway has cut off downtown Syracuse from the SUNY Upstate Hospital and Syracuse University campuses, both of which are major economic drivers. Miner said the highway has separated intellectual energy from small business and entrepreneurs downtown, blocking potential economic development.
The physical land problem is similar to that of a section of the South Bronx snipped in two by the Sheridan Expressway. While some of the expressway is raised above street level, street grade sections, such as the one running along Starlight Park, make it arduous to reach the green space and the Bronx River.
“To get to the park, it’s almost a life and death endeavor,” said Assemblyman Marcos Crespo, who represents the South Bronx. “You have to cross a highway, you have to pass by speeding vehicles. There is no connectivity. There is a major housing development happening across the street, and everyone in those buildings is going to have a tremendous view of this park, but it will take them a five-minute drive to get there. Why? Because there is no crossway. There is no access.”
Cities with these types of connectivity challenges are exploring boulevard options used in other parts of the country. Some models feature dedicated vehicle and bike lanes as well as large sidewalks. Others feature multiple lanes with room for on-street parking.
Rochester could soon serve as a model for other cities to follow. The city’s Inner Loop East Project will transform the eastern part of the highway that encircles downtown Rochester into a boulevard lined with mixed-use development. Erik Frisch, a transportation specialist with the City of Rochester, said the project has been in the works since the Vision 2000 plan was developed. With construction expected to be complete by the fall of 2017, Frisch said phase two of that project would be to look at the north and west sections of the loop, which carry more traffic.
It’s unclear if and when Syracuse will have a highway-turned-boulevard of its own to help connect University Hill and downtown. Miner said that if a boulevard were built, mixed-use development would most likely replace surface level parking lots currently shadowed by the interstate above.
But two barriers stand in the way of breaking down the wall that is the highway.
For one, transportation funding has been drying up in recent years, a problem not just confined to Syracuse. Miner was adamant that funding would have to be there, though, because before the decade is up the highway will have reached the end of its life. As for where the funding might come from, Miner pointed to federal, state and local sources.
There’s also an emotional barrier to redeveloping the infrastructure. The original I-81 project met resistance from local residents who were ultimately displaced. That left a bad taste in residents’ mouths—one that is still there today. (The project was finished in the late 1960s.) Miner said a deep skepticism about the government's intentions taints development discussions with some citizens.
“I think that change is always hard, and the experience with I-81 has made a discussion about change and embracing the unknown potential,” Miner said, before pausing and changing course. “We have to be better advocates than we have ever had to be before.”