Well said. Such a thought is incomprehensible to the Norman Bel Geddes adherents who believe that people should be able to drive through cities just as freely as planes fly over them. That runs in direct contrast to the 5,000-history and purpose of cities, and that's why American cities declined so precipitously in the New Deal era and especially after World War II....

 

 

Do European technology institutes read Urbanohio? 
 

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/05/european-trio-creating-solar-highway-system/

 

1 hour ago, KJP said:

 

Yet downtown parking lots and buildings are still a long way from capacity.

21 hours ago, Foraker said:

Yet downtown parking lots and buildings are still a long way from capacity.

 

That's probably where the 15 percent is. The suburbanites are still driving as they were. The downtown workers are staying home.

On 10/16/2020 at 9:47 AM, KJP said:

 

That's probably where the 15 percent is. The suburbanites are still driving as they were. The downtown workers are staying home.

Some suburban workers are staying home too.  🙂

On 6/1/2018 at 4:52 PM, jmecklenborg said:

They do snow sheds on mountain roads, but those typically aren't interstate highways.  The big problem, aside from the immense cost of covering an interstate highway, would be that vehicles that drive off the road could hit the upright supports and bring a big section crashing down on the roadway.  That wouldn't be such a problem on an urban stretch with jersey barriers. 

 

I know i'm rather late to this conversation, but I agree with that safety concern, but this concept would be perfect to build over all rail routes in the US...🤑 but that is for another thread. 

 

On 9/8/2020 at 2:40 PM, thebillshark said:

Do European technology institutes read Urbanohio? 
 

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/05/european-trio-creating-solar-highway-system/

 

With ODOT being the largest landowner in the state, has anyone at the state level ever seriously studied whether the useless land inside our freeway interchanges could be used as solar or wind farms? 

 

America’s highways have significant solar potential; University of Texas Ohio is a pretty sunny state, and has a lot of ODOT land, so we rank pretty high on the list.

 

The lands primary purposes are buffer zones between ROWs and for storm water retention, but there are acres of unused land at each interchange, and the potential power produced could help ODOT light its roadways with 100% renewable energy, then maybe even become an energy exporter. 

 

And while not too recent, has some interesting data to support the idea of adding solar to highways and rail:

Solar Freakin’ Highways: The US Has Enough PV to Cover One Lane of Its Interstate Highway System

 

It can be done

 

 

From post on another topic (posted by @Foraker)

 

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/05/07/are-solar-canopies-ready-for-prime-time/

Brilliant! 

 

 

That one person looking at their phone and not paying attention at a light, on a freeway at start and stop..etc and causing a few secods of lull in movement. Multiply it by how many times that is now happening. Our new traffic problem when we shouldn't be having one is hundreds of drivers not paying attention to actually driving and moving when its time to move.

 

We are in a pandemic, everyone is working from home.  Yet traffic is terrible. Notice all the slow response of people not paying attention to what is going on in front of them when you drive around....i don't drive much but I notice it when I'm in cabs or Uber.

Edited December 12, 20213 yr by metrocity

Remember when people were in a hurry for the light to change? Now they don't want it to change so they can look at their phone longer. 

I see some of you are already backsliding on your New Year's resolutions to be driving at highway speed by the end of the merge lane.

I love the people that pass me on the highway on ramp.

A little bit of Chicago here

 

 

Not a brick street, but the wooden road Hessler Court is getting restored:

 

Building highways through Black communities is not just history. It’s not even in the past. It is still happening....

 

Why is South Carolina still building roads on top of Black communities?

Residents in Sandridge, South Carolina, are up in arms about a proposed highway that would destroy their homes

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/25/sandridge-south-carolina-highway-conway-perimeter-road

I think we need to abandon the hyperbole when describing construction of roads. Roads cannot be racist, people may be but a road is not racist. 

 

People also need to move on from the 60s mentality that we are still battling redlining and race wars. We are not.  It is certainly worth discussion on whether it is a good idea to build a road through a poorer inner city area but it is not racist to do so.  This is not the 60s, the same arguments are not relevant.

 

In the 1960s, you could at least argue that redlining and other restrictive policies on land transfer forced African Americans into poorer sections of town and did not offer them the opportunity to get out. Then you have highways that cut through the neighborhood and further destroy the value of their properties. I will at least acknowledge that argument. 

 

But... today, those restrictions are gone. Yes, there are some reverberations of those policies that has left people poorer than they may otherwise be but there are opportunities for African Americans all over. They are no longer stuck in crumbling ghettos anymore. When gentrification comes to an area or other potential developments, there are options unlike in the 1960s. Now, it would be fair to categorize that many of these decisions are made without taking into account the voices of the poor who live in those areas, but poor and race are not the same. If you want to have the argument about whether building such a road is harmful to economically disadvantaged, then it is a worthy argument and has merit, but we need to drop the race pretext. The sixties are not coming back. 

Certainly some aspects of society has moved beyond racism.

 

But this

3 hours ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

Yes, there are some reverberations of those policies that has left people poorer than they may otherwise be but there are opportunities for African Americans all over.

is a lot bigger problem than you think.

 

Just as one example, if you own a home in a redlined neighborhood, your home is not worth nearly as much as the same home in a non-redlined neighborhood.  The only way to "move on" is to take a big loss on the sale of your home. And if you want to stay and improve the neighborhood, you're very constrained from making improvements to your home because banks still look at the neighborhood's depressed home values in valuing the house.  Redlining has "ended" but its effects linger and keep some neighborhoods poorer than they otherwise would be even decades after redlining ended.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-13/why-it-s-so-hard-to-invest-in-black-neighborhoods

14 minutes ago, Foraker said:

Certainly some aspects of society has moved beyond racism.

 

But this

is a lot bigger problem than you think.

 

Just as one example, if you own a home in a redlined neighborhood, your home is not worth nearly as much as the same home in a non-redlined neighborhood.  The only way to "move on" is to take a big loss on the sale of your home. And if you want to stay and improve the neighborhood, you're very constrained from making improvements to your home because banks still look at the neighborhood's depressed home values in valuing the house.  Redlining has "ended" but its effects linger and keep some neighborhoods poorer than they otherwise would be even decades after redlining ended.

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-13/why-it-s-so-hard-to-invest-in-black-neighborhoods

I get that but the problem is that you cant look at it as "racist" in this case, but more the after affect of prior policy that may have had racist undertones. There is a big difference.  If this were the 1960s which many in the race wars want to perpetuate, you would have the following scenario. 1) a redlined neighborhood mixed with poor and middle class African Americans, 2) The city/state wants to put a highway that goes through such neighborhood without offering any direct access to such neighborhood and allowing the community to share in the potential benefits of the highway. 3) While the land value in the redlined area may be depressed, the government buys the land through eminent domain, 4) Those who are displaced or want to move because of the negative externalities of the road, are limited in the neighborhoods they can choose, and must essentially live in the same neighborhood or comparable poor neighborhood due to the policies and deed restrictions in place.  This was the 1960s. This scenario does not exist today. Let's recognize that and re-frame the conversation to actually address the problem at hand instead of engaging in the same race baiting semantics that the progressive left perpetuates.

 

Now I am not going to say things are peaches and roses today, but the major difference today and one that is the most important differentiator is that now, when the highway comes in and buys the people's homes, they can move to whatever neighborhood they want and are not left to live in a ghetto anymore. There is opportunity for upward mobility. Now, this does not absolve the sins of the past forefathers but from an equality standpoint, those barriers have been removed. Yes, economically, the wealth is not there, but the way to correct that is not through handouts but by removing the barriers that prevent the opportunity for advancement.  

 

The key issues have been solved, but it will take a generation or two to fully realize that for many. We need to keep working toward advancement and removing barriers when we see them but the past is the past, it is time to quit living in the 1960s because they are not coming back.

I'll just add too, not only with the redlined neighborhood, but also the socioeconomics in these areas is very difficult for people to "get out" even if there is "opportunity". You still need to get the opportunity, it isn't given to you. And for people who have lived in areas with generational poverty, crime, father has issues or not around, mother same thing, etc., it makes it very very difficult to get through even high school let alone have good enough grades to make a college or even KNOW how to work. This isn't an issue with the inviduals themselves, they are a product of their environment. Things need to be done to mentor young people in disadvantaged communities to push them them to be their best in every facet, and if we don't do that, poverty begets poverty and the cycle continues. So, IMO when looking at these road projects, etc. (I didn't even read the article), is there a better way to do it? Can they move it somewhere, can they make it more transit friendly/more walkable so all people can use it, will they replace the housing, etc. Moving people up and out of their neighborhoods into worse situations could possible affect generations of people in those specific families.

27 minutes ago, IAGuy39 said:

And for people who have lived in areas with generational poverty, crime, father has issues or not around, mother same thing, etc., it makes it very very difficult to get through even high school let alone have good enough grades to make a college or even KNOW how to work. This isn't an issue with the inviduals themselves, they are a product of their environment. Things need to be done to mentor young people in disadvantaged communities to push them them to be their best in every facet, and if we don't do that, poverty begets poverty and the cycle continues.

That is all true, but that is not racism or racist policy. That is more socioeconomic issues that transcends race and should be recognized as that. 

23 hours ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

That is all true, but that is not racism or racist policy. That is more socioeconomic issues that transcends race and should be recognized as that. 

It does transcend race for sure I agree with you there, but my question is, are the majority of these projects still going through Black neighborhoods? Though the policy isn't inherently racist or racism, if it disproportionately affects a certain race, that's an issue that needs to be fixed. Maybe some of this or all of this is unavoidable, but if it continues to happen / keeps happening in the future then we need to think outside the box.

These days the official policy is to avoid residential if at all possible but the most removed type today is extremely low density ribbon development with houses on 1-5 acres since those are the areas seeing the most freeway expansion and it's not a very good development pattern to start with. These properties tend to be occupied by white people. Nonetheless, individual projects are still capable of affecting Black areas disproportionately. The question I have is a project that uses that much new land in an urban area really necessary in 2023? People by now should understand that driving in the city might not be as easy as it is in a suburb or semi-rural area.

57 minutes ago, IAGuy39 said:

It does transcend race for sure I agree with you there, but my question is, are the majority of these projects still going through Black neighborhoods? Though the policy isn't inherently racist or racism, if it disproportionately affects a certain race, that's an issue that needs to be fixed. Maybe some of this or all of this is unavoidable, but if it continues to happen / keeps happening in the future then we need to think outside the box.

I think the disparate impact cannot be applied in all situations. To your point, is it unavoidable? That is a worthy question. I do think that today, as opposed to the 1950s and 1960s, road projects are not designed with race in mind. Whereas in the 50s and 60s, interchanges and roads were purposefully routed through African American parts of town, and they were also left off the interchanges leaving them no access to the highways. 

Today, based on migration patterns for people of all races, people choose to live in certain areas that require them to commute to city or other areas of town. In Charleston for example, it is a growing city that needs its infrastructure to catch up to its growth. Much of this is inevitable. But that does not mean that road cannot be designed to minimize the effect. But also, the key difference to keep in mind is that today, vs the 1950s and 60s, the people who live in that neighborhood have options to move to a better neighborhood, and more importantly, there are housing advocates looking out for their interests which will lobby for a higher eminent domain payout than they could get 60 years ago.

On 7/27/2023 at 2:36 PM, Brutus_buckeye said:

I think the disparate impact cannot be applied in all situations. To your point, is it unavoidable? That is a worthy question. I do think that today, as opposed to the 1950s and 1960s, road projects are not designed with race in mind. Whereas in the 50s and 60s, interchanges and roads were purposefully routed through African American parts of town, and they were also left off the interchanges leaving them no access to the highways. 

Today, based on migration patterns for people of all races, people choose to live in certain areas that require them to commute to city or other areas of town. In Charleston for example, it is a growing city that needs its infrastructure to catch up to its growth. Much of this is inevitable. But that does not mean that road cannot be designed to minimize the effect. But also, the key difference to keep in mind is that today, vs the 1950s and 60s, the people who live in that neighborhood have options to move to a better neighborhood, and more importantly, there are housing advocates looking out for their interests which will lobby for a higher eminent domain payout than they could get 60 years ago.

 

So "today . . . road projects are not designed with race in mind," people of all races freely choose where to live in areas that require a commute, anyone has an option to move to a better neighborhood, and they needn't worry because housing advocates will lobby for them to get a better deal than they could 60 years ago.  Everything is roses!

 

In other words, the mostly-poor, mostly-black residents in Cleveland's Forgotten Triangle just "chose" not to move and to not live near jobs, and the "Opportunity Corridor" wasn't built there because the residents are *black* but because it was a poor, polluted neighborhood (ignoring how it got that way) -- and the neighborhood should be thankful that they now benefit from having better highway access and the displaced residents got more than they would have in 1950 (and they should be thankful for that)!   Nope, racism in highway planning is dead.

On 7/28/2023 at 5:02 PM, Foraker said:

 

So "today . . . road projects are not designed with race in mind," people of all races freely choose where to live in areas that require a commute, anyone has an option to move to a better neighborhood, and they needn't worry because housing advocates will lobby for them to get a better deal than they could 60 years ago.  Everything is roses!

 

In other words, the mostly-poor, mostly-black residents in Cleveland's Forgotten Triangle just "chose" not to move and to not live near jobs, and the "Opportunity Corridor" wasn't built there because the residents are *black* but because it was a poor, polluted neighborhood (ignoring how it got that way) -- and the neighborhood should be thankful that they now benefit from having better highway access and the displaced residents got more than they would have in 1950 (and they should be thankful for that)!   Nope, racism in highway planning is dead.

1) I never said that everything was roses. I think we agreed on that fact. Certainly, there are issues where you have the poor and marginalized that are left behind and sometimes swept aside in road project. We have both agreed on that.

 

2) That again does not make things racist. It is also a disservice and divisive to focus on the problem as race matter instead of a socio economic matter. While the fact that the majority of people affected may be African American because they are in a certain neighborhood is not always a race issue and it is a lazy narrative designed to stoke anger and divide people to treat it solely as a race issue. We are better than this and need to move on from this.

 

 

Yes, it is a fact that some of the sins of yesteryear have caused a portion of African Americans to be left behind in poorer areas of town and have had disinvestment. But those sins of the past are not going on today. Yes, we have residual effects of this, but we are not actively designing roads to eliminate a portion of the community based on their race. Let's move on from that false narrative.

 

If i am not mistaken, the whole concept of the "Opportunity Corridor" is to spur investment in the city around key employment drivers. In this case, the point was to provide better access to the Clinic. This would make sense given the Clinic location and difficulty accessing it from the suburbs and other parts of the state and region. In addition, the goal was to use the Clinic as an anchor to attract more jobs and investment to that area and have it spread out to the surrounding areas. There has been some objection to this because the road goes through a very poor area that has been subject to disinvestment over the last 70 years. it is not just the neighborhood where the Opportunity Corridor is going to go but throughout a good portion of the area even the area by the Clinic. For many years, there outside of the Clinic, there was no investment and when there was, it was often behind a wall and had no connection to the street.  With an employer like the Clinic, their financial heft and size could be used to reactivate a neglected neighborhood and spread to other areas nearby. To do this, there needed to be infrastructure investment by the city to spur development in that area first and then hope it spreads to nearby neighborhoods. 

Unfortunately, in the process of doing this, which was the prudent thing to do, a neighborhood had to be sacrificed in the process. However, the hope is that the benefits of the project more than make up for this by providing increased opportunities to those who live nearby. 

 

This example is not racism nor is the planning for the Opportunity Corridor racist. It is a chance to provide investment to the community that ALL PEOPLE can share and benefit from and provides the opportunity to lift up a community.  I remember going down to the Clinic many times over the last 30 years and it really was not an appealing area to be in. It is improving now and the area around it is too. It is an investment that benefits many people, but yes, there are a few poor people who are displaced in the process. That need to be handled delicately for sure but without the investment in the OC, investment would not be coming to the area and nobody benefits. 

Let's tone down the hyperbole regarding the roads for calling them racist is really not accurate

Starting with Pittsburgh's Manchester neighborhood which was destroyed by PA Route 65

 

Syracuse's 15th Ward, desroyed by I-81:

 

 

 

https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/racism-by-design-the-building-of-interstate-81#:~:text=After the mid-century extension,country had ever embarked upon.

Milwaukee (click to enlarge)

 

This also reflects where the most freight tonnage hauled by railroads is routed...

 

Average Daily Long-Haul Truck Traffic on the National Highway System (2015).

Fascinating. For all the handwringing about I75 and the Spence, it looks like I65 is busier. I wonder how a connected I74 would change things...

Map of Mahoning Trail that led from the salt springs to Old Cuyahoga Town, from the 1796 survey. I can't tell if any current roadway follows the route of the old path. He would be interesting to see what remnants of this trail still exist.

 

I love looking up weird google Earth stuff when I waiting on files to open or save. This area (Yerba Buena Island) on the Bay Bridge entrance to San Francisco, looks like the most "Video Game" created fake area ever. The weird roads, crazy landscape and odd mix of architecture on top of the fact that it is a rocky, small island with a tunnel just looks too made up to be true. Any body else have areas that look too fake to be real?

On 5/25/2024 at 9:25 AM, KJP said:

This also reflects where the most freight tonnage hauled by railroads is routed...

 

Average Daily Long-Haul Truck Traffic on the National Highway System (2015).

 

90, 80, and 76 coming together will do that.

 

If the rail flow is the same it looks like demand was determined accurately.

 

If only there was a container port with a close by airfield in that stretch....

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