CNU celebrates federal shift from freeways to boulevards
CNU was excited to hear the joint announcement in October of TIGER II grants by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Community Challenge Planning Grants by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). These grants provide funding to begin planning for, or to actually begin removing, three sections of urban freeway. Awards to New Orleans, New York City, and New Haven, Connecticut will remove sections of urban freeway, helping restore the urban street grid and unite neighborhoods that have been divided for decades.
In a major win for CNU, the three identified freeway sections all were included on the “Freeways Without Futures” list, released by the organization in 2009. More importantly, the $20 million granted represents the start of a shift in federal policy away from incentivized urban freeway construction.
The “Claiborne Corridor Plan: Leveraging Infrastructure to Build Inter-parish Access and Equity,” submitted by the City of New Orleans, was given $2 million in a HUD/DOT Community Challenge Planning Grant to study the removal of the elevated Interstate 10, or Claiborne Expressway. The replacement of the elevated Claiborne Expressway with an urban boulevard is near and dear to CNU’s heart, and it reflects recent CNU efforts on the project’s behalf. Learn more about the Claiborne Expressway at www.cnu.org/highways/neworleans.
The New York City Department of Transportation was awarded a TIGER II planning grant for the Sheridan Expressway Corridor, to the tune of $1.5 million. The Sheridan Expressway has been hotly debated in recent years as the New York State Department of Transportation has swayed back and forth on whether a highway to boulevard conversion will work. The South Bronx River Watershed Alliance (SBRWA) and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign have been leading the charge for a vision that supports the existing neighborhoods. The planning grant will be used for a technical analysis that examines alternatives to improve access and come to an informed position about how possible solutions will affect the community.
removal of
Downtown freeway
And, perhaps most exciting of all, is the $16 million in TIGER II capital dollars awarded to the City of New Haven to start Phase I of the removal of Route 34 from the downtown. The New Haven Downtown Crossing will replace the limited access Route 34 with two urban streets. Currently, the depressed road separates the Yale-New Haven Hospital complex and the city’s Union Station from the rest of downtown New Haven. The City of New Haven recognized that rebuilding the street connections will encourage non-motorized transportation and economic reinvestment in important downtown blocks.
Many cities are struggling to determine what to do with aging freeway infrastructure that is routed through some of the most valuable land in their regions. Successful freeway removal projects like the Embarcadero and Octavia Boulevard projects in San Francisco, and the removal of the Park East Freeway in Milwaukee provide examples and best practices. Elevated highways are some of the most expensive road infrastructure to maintain, and replacing them with urban streets reduces costs and knits neighborhoods together in a more economically and civically viable manner. CNU’s Freeways Without Futures lists several more projects that should receive funding.
