The new 2025 “Freeways without Futures” report is out!
For those of you not familiar with this biennial report published by the Congress for New Urbanism (available here), it features a rogue’s gallery of 10 (or so) freeways or freeway widening projects that are really bad ideas and that are really good candidates for replacing, scaling back, or otherwise being brought into a reasonable relationship with reality.
This year’s report (full disclosure: I was a member of the jury that selected the “winners”) highlights 9 projects from around the country. I won’t summarize the findings (you should read the report - it’s an easy read), but I will mention a few of my favorites.
Texas – always striving to be the biggest – wins the competition for biggest, most expensive, most ludicrously oversized projects with the proposed I-45 widening in Houston and the I-35 widening in Austin. These freeways, which run right through the heart of their respective cities, are already way too big and making them even bigger, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, is nothing short of outrageous. There are, of course, alternatives that would be far more sensible for addressing mobility needs while also addressing climate change, urban redevelopment, accessibility, equity, and so on, but these concepts fall onto rocky, drought-ridden soil in Texas at the moment. There is lots of opposition to both projects, but the Texas DOT is moving forward relentlessly – until we stop them.
Buffalo is a hard luck town with some serious problems, but it also has some real assets. Among these is a park system designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, which includes a beautiful landscaped boulevard through the east side of the city, called Humboldt Parkway. Correction: formerly included Humboldt Parkway. Transportation planners decided 60 years ago or so that that wide landscaped median would be a super place to put an expressway. So they did. And today’s generation of planners wants to widen part of the expressway and put it into a tunnel! In case you haven’t noticed, Buffalo is not growing. The last thing the city needs is more ugly, overbuilt infrastructure. This is a perfect time to take down the whole thing and re-establish Buffalo’s “green necklace,” which would be a far better support for a brighter future for the city than an expensive, unneeded, unwanted expressway widening.
Florida enters the list with I-175 in St. Petersburg, a one-mile-long under-utilized, outdated, spur connecting I-275 to downtown but dividing the community. It is, according to one resident, “the Berlin Wall of St. Pete…. literally just a wall of concrete and earth.” Fortunately, the Florida DOT is now conducting an alternatives study which seems to be leaning toward replacing the legacy freeway with a modern, at-grade boulevard, which would serve automobile traffic while reconnecting the city’s street grid. We may be able to chalk this one up as a win for the good guys!
You may have your own favorite after reading the report. More importantly, you may have a freeway without a future near you. Are you near a big, ugly, noisy pile of concrete that lies heavily on your neighborhood or town? Now imagine replacing it with a lively boulevard with a modern tram in the median, connecting you to where you want to go. Or cheerful neighborhood streets with children playing. Or a linear park, with fountains and bike lanes.
The next step is to make the future happen.
