This weeks theme, keeping with the last post, is of interchanges that didn’t make it. The powers that be were going to build a highway but funding problems or community opposition killed it. What remains are once mighty traffic machines that never were.

I-95, I-495 - Washington, DC. This is the physical remnants of the infamous Freeway Revolt. Several highways were to bisect and trisect central Washington, DC, many slicing up poor, black neighborhoods so the wealthy, white politicians could get to their homes far out in the suburbs. I-95 was supposed to enter DC from the north here and make its way down to the I-395 spur where it would turn west and form an inner belt highway.

Korean War Veterans Parkway - Staten Island, NY. One of the many roads that Robert Moses never got to build, the Korean War Veterans Parkway was only partially built, the southern section which ends in a swamp. The beginning and end points were constructed but due to intense community opposition against running the highway through La Tourette park, the project was stopped. There was a second proposal 10 years later which recommended connecting the parkway to I-278 further west at this interchange which had been designed to accommodate the parkway had it been rerouted. Thus there are two unfinished interchanges next to each other on I-278 on Staten Island.

US Route 44 - Providence, RI. This is all that was constructed of US 44 in Providence, RI. Originally this highway was to start at an interchange just south of there with I-195. There you can see the off ramps which lead into a park. These were to connect to US 44, which would have run along the river. At the other end you can see where land was cleared for the highway that was never built. This stretch was designed to bypass the congested central business area in East Providence, which US 44 runs through today. I am not sure of the exact reason it was never constructed but since the road was so short and doesn’t cut through many residential areas or parks, I can only assume it was stopped due to lack of funds, which is a primary reason behind many of the unbuilt highways in Rhode Island.

Google Maps recently added a new feature where you can create your own maps and needless to say it is pretty awesome. They are great for making a quick map for someone to show them how to get some place but they are also great for the type of stuff I do. After playing around with it I came up with three maps, all unbuilt highways for Albany NY, New York City, and Boston. Whats even better is that you can download these maps and view them in Google Earth by clicking on the KLM button on the top right.

The first map I made was the unbuilt highways in Albany, NY. These were based on information from Capital Highways, a web site about highways in upstate New York. There are a number of large interchanges with ramps to no-where in Albany and this explains what happened to them. The blue line represents the Mid-Crosstown Arterial which would have cut straight through the heart of Albany and Washington Park. I-678 which would have bypassed the interchange of I-87 and I-90 in Colonie and gone directly to Albany International Airport. This off ramp is all that was ever built of the highway, which now serves as a connection to an office park. Finally the red line represents what would have been a spur off of I-90 through Rensselaer and connected with the Dunn Memorial Bridge. You can see where the bridge stops in mid-air here, where it would have continued east to connect with I-90.

The next map was for Boston, MA. In the Future MBTA section for the Orange Line I talk about how the current Orange Line was built in land cleared for the extension of I-95 into Boston. Here you can see what I was talking about along with the other highways that were to plow through the city. This map was based on information from Boston’s Canceled Highways. The red line represents I-95, both the northern section that would have run through Lynn Woods and the southern section which would have run through Hyde Park and Roxbury. The green line represents I-695, or the Inner Belt which would have ripped through Cambridge and Roxbury, almost completely leveling Cambridgeport for a gigantic interchange at the Mass Pike. You can see the remnants of the highway here where there are dead off ramps off of I-93 (and there is also a road called Innerbelt Road) and here, which was turned into Melnea Cass Boulevard. The yellow line represents Route 2, which today ends abruptly at Alewife but was supposed to carry on further into Cambridge. The blue and purple line represent Route 3 and an elevated relocation of the Mystic Valley Parkway, respectively. You can see the unbuilt portion of Route 3 at the interchange at Route 128. Each would have destroyed the picturesque, tree lined parkway that exists today.

The last map I made was for New York, NY. These are based off of the unbuilt highways section of NYCRoads.com, which is a fantastic resource. Not all of these were Robert Moses highways but many, such as the bridges across Long Island Sound, were. Some were merely ideas for expanding roads rather than actually building new highways, of which Queens Boulevard is a good example. There are far too many for me to talk about here but if you click on the road you will see information about it and a link the it’s page on NYCRoads.com.

Edit: I have now added these maps to this site, check out the Unbuilt Highways section for these and more.

CT Route 2, US Route 6, US Route 44, I-84 - Hartford, CT. Two things blow my mind about this clusterfuck: 1) It is larger than downtown Hartford, and 2) there was supposed to be another highway that wasn’t connected to this interchange. You can see on one of the ramps there is a small unused nub sticking out and if you look at the section of road going north it just ends there.

I-64, I-95, I-295 - Richmond, VA. I don’t know what is more impressive, the interchange or the gigantic freight yard next to it.

I-95, I-395 - Baltimore, MD. This is a favorite of mine. Some brilliant highway planner must have been sitting around one night trying to figure out where to build an interchange in downtown Baltimore without taking too much land and BANG he pulled this one out: lets build it over the water! And not just build a ramp out over the water, lets go far out into the harbor and use all the space we can. It is brilliant and environmentally frightening all at the same time.

While reading the thread about Boston annexing part of Dedham for development, whighlander posted this interesting thought:

No Boston Annexing beyond a bit here and there is a bad idea
However, All of the Cities and Towns within and touching I-495 should be included into a new Metropolitan County
Boston County would absorb all of Suffolk, Most of Eastern Middlesex, Much of Essex, Norfolk much of Plymouth, even a bit of Barnstable
Then the Crazy Quilt of Authorities could be ceded {Debt Free} to Boston County
-Boston County would control Logan, Hanscom Airports, Parking Garages, Railroad Stations, The Subway, Water System
-Boston County would be supported by redirecting {not adding} 1 or 2 cents of the 5 cent sales tax
-Boston County would be governed by an elected County President and a bicameral legislative body {lower house 1 rep per some # of capitas something of the order of 400 reps approximately 10,000 capitas per rep}, upper house 1 per city or town no regard to population}
This moves more government closer to the people gets rid of the massive bureaucracies of the authorities, makes the State gov’t smaller at least a bit
Overall a more representative government
then the Congressional districts can be realigned to get rid of the miserable gerrymandering as Boston County would still have 3 or 4 US Reps and leave one for the Cape and South Coast and one for the extrema of Essex and Middlesex by the NH Border
A dream — but it seemed appropriate to insert it here
Westy

Given how much things have changed over the last 100 years, with highways, high-speed trains, air travel, the internet, etc…, is it time for a new governmental structure too? I am not talking socialism v. democracy, that is theory and I really don’t want that to come into play here, but I mean is our structure of town/city/county/state really the best way to run things when borders are almost meaningless in this day and age?

What do I mean by meaningless? I talk to people who are in Russia, Australia, Japan, South Africa, India, every day via the internet. With the advent of cheap digital cameras I can also see what their lives are like (amazingly they are very similar to mine). Hell, Europe just got rid of most of its purely administrative borders years ago. When this country was founded we were 13 SEPARATE colonies. We could have easily separated and then became 13 separate nations.

The idea of the Megalopolis is not new and I think we are all well aware of it in Boston. I can get on a train or bus in NY or Washington and arrive in Boston and have everything feel very similar (yes there are regional differences but over all things are very much the same, i.e. McDonald’s). And now there are other growing Megalopolises in America, Seattle-Portland, Dallas-Ft.Worth, Chicago-most of the mid-west, Southern California, etc. This idea is far more accelerated in the developing world with mega-cities with 10, 20 million people each. We may think that is far off but remember metropolitan New York City has 20 million people in it today. That only accounts for the city proper, most of Long Island, and small areas of Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and upstate New York.

Given this new urban structure, how can current city and state governments deal with having societies exist that fall under different jurisdictions? When there is a back up on the George Washington Bridge in New York it screws up traffic from Boston to Washington. But there is nothing Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, or Virginia can do about it if the highway department in New York can’t deal with it.

New York City has threatened secession a few times but these have always been seen as purely symbolic.
But perhaps what we really need is some separate governmental level to take into account the needs of these growing megalopolises; a super-county.

Why are cities like New York, Boston, Philly, and Baltimore fighting each other when we are all in the same boat. The northeast is hurting, we are losing people and jobs because it is so expensive to live here. Different cities have different development policies and different housing problems. But when you look at it regionally you see that all these cities are facing the same problems with education and traffic. But cities all have their unique problems that other cities may have an answer for but cannot change their own policies to affect. Philly can never seem to catch a break, New York is looking at more people then it knows what to do with, and Boston is too proud of it’s own farts to do anything about the precarious economic situation it is in (and seems to always be in). There has to be a better way.

A super-county would be between the state and the county. The purpose of the super county would be to help streamline and iron out the differences between areas in the megalopolis and create efficient growth. A state is not going to want to give up its best parts so the rest suffers. At the same time the state needs to make sure everyone in the state gets their fare share. Many city dwellers feel that states take advantage of the city. The super-county would be a balance to this. The super-county would know what was up all along the megalopolis and thus know what it needed from each state. The states would pay taxes into the super-county rather than dolling out taxes to individual counties and cities. The super-county would use these taxes for the benefit of the entire region (like a couple high-speed rail lines). Planning, transportation, development, education, emergency response, and health care could all be coordinated along the entire megalopolan region. Freight traffic could be better transported in and out of the region if ports weren’t competing with one another; and as an added benefit traffic would be better if so many trucks were taken off the road. The super-county would also address the problem where the wealthy middle class leaves for the suburbs. That loss of tax revenue is devastating to a city, especially one which needs that revenue to fund so many of the cultural programs that makes people want to live near a city in the first place. If some portion of those taxes went to the super-county then the entire city and region would be better off.

A huge area for the super-county to affect is the environment. Cities are dirty (air, water, noise, and light pollution) and they create their own weather with all the heat and energy they emit. If New York does something to cut pollution but Philly and Boston do not then the environmental impact is going to be small. If the entire region could cut down emissions then that would have a much larger impact. As it is now all we can do is have different states pass different laws that are skewed to account for the rest of the state. Would you want medicine that is good for a headache when you have a gunshot wound? We need an environmental plan that deals with the specific problems caused by large urban areas.

The point of a super-county is to have a level of government that can address the needs of multi-millions of people living close together, something that has never happened on this level ever before in human history. We need a machine to run this type of environment because what we have now is not adapted for the brave new world that is ahead of us.

I know that posting crazy looking interchanges isn’t a new idea but it is still a fun idea. I knew of a few web sites that had a similar feature but stopped after a while. I am going to try to keep this going as long as possible and once I get enough interchanges I plan on making an Interchange Quilt (like a music quilt of your favorite albums or whatever).

Here are the first few:

I-95, Route 1, Route 128 - Lynnfield, MA. You have Route 1 on the left and I-95 on the right. The Route 1 interchange is this crazy trumpet thing that juts southward and ends at a gigantic rotary. The I-95 ramps are quite liberal with their use of space. I don’t know if these were built before or after the moratorium on highway construction within Route 128 or not. If they were built before then this interchange would have been a four sided stack with I-95 continuing south through Lynn rather than stopping and hopping onto Route 128 around Boston.

I-787, Route 9/Route 20 - Albany, NY. This one is close to my heart. Growing up in Troy whenever we needed to go down state we would pass through this mighty traffic machine. I would love to walk along the Empire State Plaza and gave out as the access roads from the plaza snaked their way into the whirlpool of ramps. It was designed to handle much more traffic than it actually does. If you notice on the far side of the bridge there is a section that dead ends. This was supposed to cut through the town of Rensselaer and connect with I-90 to the east. If you look at the roads leading into the Empire State Plaza to the west you can see there are sections of road that were never built. Whenever you drive through the plaza you will notice there are 4 arches, two through which you drive but 2 where there is nothing. These were to handle the extra traffic.

I-95, I-295, I-278, I-678 - Bronx, NY. That’s right, 4 interstate highways converge at one point. Thank you Robert Moses. This behemoth connects Bruckner Boulevard (I-278), the Cross-Bronx Expressway (I-95), the Hutchinson River Parkway (I-678), the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge (I-678), and the Throngs Neck Bridge (I-295).