Highway Removal

It's been called a "noose around the neck of downtown." The Inner Loop in Rochester, New York -- a regrettable 1960s-era sunken highway -- completely encircles the city's downtown, forming a wall between residential neighborhoods and the central business district.

The evolution of state and regional transportation agencies is painfully slow in places like Missouri and Ohio, where officials are plowing ahead with pricey highway projects conceived of decades ago. But plenty of Midwesterners have different ideas for the future of their communities, and they aren't shy about speaking up.

For three years, grassroots advocates in St. Louis have been pressing for the removal of elevated portions of I-70 through downtown. This group of urbanists and architects, with little to no financial support, came together to make the case for highway removal.

Community activists in the South Bronx have been fighting a long time to remove the Sheridan Expressway, a short freeway that cuts off their neighborhoods from the Bronx River. After the state Department of Transportation rejected the teardown in 2010 and city agencies ruled it out  again last year, advocates trimmed their sails and worked for the best option short of complete removal. And last night, the effort to reimagine the Sheridan took a major step forward: The city's study team officially recommended transforming the Sheridan Expressway to a surface road, opening up land for park access and new development.

The city is close to recommending that the Sheridan Expressway, a short, sparsely-used interstate that community activists have targeted for removal for years, be transformed into a street-level roadway that opens land for new development and improves neighborhood access to parks along the Bronx River.

While the city's refusal to remove the Sheridan Expressway left South Bronx advocates frustrated, the fight to transform the under-used highway continues, with the city's federally-funded planning study on track for completion in June. A presentation to community partners last week [PDF] shed new light on options the city is considering, offering some hope that the highway's footprint could be drastically reduced, essentially becoming a surface road.

Beginning at Niagara Falls State Park, you can hike around the great gorge carved out of the base of the falls over thousands of years. But you'd best arrive in a car.

The idea of removing the northern section of Highway 280 near Mission Bay in San Francisco is gaining more traction as planners look for ideal ways to usher in high-speed rail and transit-oriented development in the city's core.

In the wake of the city's refusal to consider removing the Sheridan Expressway, advocates from the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance gathered last night at a town hall meeting to revise their game plan. Although the long-term vision of removing the highway lives on, the discussion focused on other potential improvements along the Sheridan corridor.