The thing is that it’s not just removing highways, that’s relatively easy. You’ll need densification (the kind that was rejected by Rochester), new mixed use developments, and the provision of adequate mass public transit to replace that demand for transportation. It’s so much more than taking down concrete
Inner Loop East was filled in with relatively high density development , and Rochester has both a decent bus system and considerable bike infrastructure and focus on walkability in its urban planning. The difficult part for Inner Loop North is that it doesn't really run through downtown but rather a historically residential area. Most of the buildings in the area are single family arts and crafts style cottages built in the late 19th early 20th century on 1/10th acre (400m^2) plots. You could build higher density but it would be still be separate from the downtown core and a bit of an island. And for what its worth downtown Rochester has more than doubled its number of apartments in the past decade so it certainly isn't neglecting density.
Agreed. I love the change in roading infrastructure, but there needs to at least be medium density if not high density to allow people the chance to share in home ownership and make best use of resources.
I went to engineering school in Rochester and lived there for most of the early 2000s. Since the 1980s, Rochester saw enormous job losses as the major employers of Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, GM auto parts and Ford auto parts laid off much of their workforces. Kodak alone laid off over 80k employees. The city only ever had a little over 500k residents at its peak. These layoffs first hit the racially segregated jobs that were held by African-Americans and Puerto Ricans. Through to the 1970s, these folks were "Redlined" into racially segregated neighborhoods on the north and west sides of the city, closer to the heavily polluting factories. In the 1950s when they built the highways in the city, they tore out the street car system, which included a section underground in the downtown core. For a city that gets as much snow as it does, having underground mass transit was important. However the switch to car centric travel ended that. This means that if one can afford it in the slightest, they try to have a car, which leads to a lot of older, polluting, poorly maintained cars on the road. For many years, the city was similar to Detroit, with whole blocks of abandoned single family homes being torn down and replaced with grass lots. Since then, Rochester's economy has pivoted towards the education and academic research sector, mainly UofR and RIT (but there are a dozen other universities in the area as well). The two big universities stopped building on campus dorms and apartments and started encouraging their students to live off-campus, along the southern side of the city. As students have graduated, many have stayed in Rochester and opened tech startups, art studios and other small businesses. Many grants and scholarships were made available to kids from the inner city to attend the universities, who have then graduated and worked in the region. Since 2005, Rochester has built a ton of new apartments in the downtown core. As recently as the early 2000s, the downtown core would be totally empty on a typical weeknight. They tore down a vacant mall at the very center of the city and replaced it with dense apartments. Many of the surface parking lots have been redeveloped into apartment towers. Inner Loop East was basically a moat between the downtown core and the main arts/ entertainment/ restaurant areas of East Main St, East Ave and Monroe Ave. The Inner Loop North does cut off easy bike and pedestrian traffic from the historically segregated north side, but this is also done by the existing CSX/ Amtrak railroad right of way through the city, that cuts along the northern edge of the city's core from east to west. The Inner Loop North runs parallel with the tracks for much of its length. Removing the Inner Loop North will reduce the width of this divide, but not eliminate it. Mostly, it will rationalize the traffic patterns in this stretch of the city and provide some lots for politically connected developers to get hand outs from the city. The city can politically afford to take down these sections of highways because they don't serve any purpose under the current economic climate of the city, which is still shrinking and it means that they don't have to maintain all of these bridges anymore. The federally funded interstate designated highways on the southern side of the city (I-390 & I-490) that separate the young, white, middle class neighborhoods close to the universities from the downtown core aren't going anywhere anytime soon. What Rochester really needs is a new mass transit system that connects the less economically advantaged neighborhoods on the north and west side to where the jobs are on the south and east side. Busses take well over an hour, typically with a transfer downtown, what it takes 20 minutes to do in a car. There are enough abandoned railroad rights of way that could be rehabilitated that it could be separated from most road traffic as well, while still providing convenient transportation for everyone.
At 7:40 Tearing down a highway in the city centre to build single family homes seems like a waste of valuable space. Thos should be mid-rise blocks to give as many people as possible an opportunity own a space in the city close to work and services etc.
I can agree with this. Affordable mid-rise low density housing is the way to go... no high density condos which will only make property values and house prices skyrocket.
now most of new development in US city downtowns are apartments and offices. Those homes were built a long time ago when planning was just for small population.
Building single family homes around the inner ring of a city just seems weird to me (as a European). To make truly alive and vibrant cities more mixed middle density is needed.
The funny thing is building more single family housing is what's driving the cost of property values to go up. If you want more affordable housing, you need to build denser buildings that are mixed use. You are only displacing yourself at that point, unfortunately.
There needs to be a variety of housing, If they make cities too dense, they will be accused of "creating ghettos" Most cities have already built a range of housing, and many are building high-rise residential buildings. I dont trust what the establishment has planned. They say they care about communities and affordable housing but rental prices are skyrocketing in most western cities. Just renting a property as a single, low wage worker is becoming out of reach. Apartment buildings are being bought out by investment firms and rents are increasing. I dont trust them.
This isn't accurate. Building more single family houses creates more supply and lowers prices. Many cities do apartments and condos and prices are very high, so denser buildings aren't going to work.
@@pracidiname2615 this is wrong and your example is wrong. We do build condos and apartment, but it’s limited. The issue isn’t single family zoning; rather, I should have said it’s Euclidian Zoning (single family only for most of the city) that is the issue. People will still build plenty of single family homes, but now we have the chance to build more duplexes, condos, mixed use, and other missing middle housing options. That is what will lower the price down.
@@pracidiname2615 The prices for single family homes are higher in cities compared to apartments and condos. Apartments and condos increase supply by more than single family homes given that they simply house more people using the same land. The reason that cities are generally more expensive to live in overall is because of how desirable living in the city is in the first place; people want the convenience of living in the city and since this is really rare in the US there isn't a lot of overall supply and the demand outpaces it (meaning people go homeless even with a job). The only way to fix this is to build enough housing so that everyone can afford it.
In downtown Boston we put the highway underground and turned where the highway was into green spaces. It makes it a much nicer place to live and visit.
But that project also cost $22 billion in 2020 dollars and had loans to pay for thirty years after the project was complete. The end result is nice but I can't help but think there may have been ways to allocate that much money for more impact.
They want to get rid of these highways, but they also want single-family homes? Do they not want people to be able to get anywhere easily? If you want walkable areas, you can't zone for single-family homes. That just leads to sprawling suburbs and more traffic.
In Rochester, those neighborhoods that were cut through had mixed development with corner stores, three story buildings, etc. Every four blocks or so is a walkable mixed commercial area from the early 20th century, the old way cities did things.
Yeah force people into the misery of high density apartments nothing like screaming kids from above, a barking dog from below and an arguing couple from the side!
@@Ushio01 No, give them townhouses, condos, multi-plexus, etc. with corner stores and cafés. It’s not all single family or apartments, there’s a thing called middle density.
Basically a good idea to tear down highways, but... The proposed single-family housing is always bad for a metropolitan area. 4-6 stories high apartment buildings creating a population density high enough to make nearby stores, retail, restaurants, cinemas and more work (often placed on street level and the apartments above). You simply need smaller shops and restaurants nearby, so people actually walk instead of using their car. And if you have the "once in x generations" chance to rebuilt such a wide and long stretch in your city: Think ahead and built (or reserve space) for a light rail system :)
Lol this guy doesn't realize that the article scarcity in housing supply is on purpose. Zoning codes are voted on by homeowners and homeowners have 0 interest to increase supply to meet demand. Artificial scarcity only makes a homeowner wealthier.
rochesterian here! the old inner loop was a nightmare. those who were unfamiliar with it would often get “trapped” on it going around downtown four or five times. glad to see it’s now a lovely little walkable couple of blocks.
Making the development on the inner loop be single family homes may backfire for that. Maybe make them be condos that people can have ownership... making low density exclusive housing would probably just continue to leave many residents without the ability to build wealth and also burden these residents with the cost of maintaining an entire home. Not to mention it being continued car dependent development in a city that very much needs to get away from it.
@@Greengoblin420-69 apartments will always be cheaper than building single family homes because the land cost is divided between 50+ people. A single family home is like ordering a meal for 50 and paying it all yourself better to split the bill that way everyone gets a better deal.
@@Greengoblin420-69 we call them luxury flats where I’m from. I didn’t think condos were always luxury because lots of the condos in New York aren’t luxurious just expensive because they’re in New York.
@@Greengoblin420-69 I mean a dense development that still allows for home ownership. A condo is not by definition an expensive type of housing. Single family homes are much more exclusive and can potentially be a huge financial burden. I get that they have to work within the system of a house being an important asset to build wealth and POC Americans (especially black Americans) missed out on that but having it be exclusive to the lucky few without adding a general benefit to the community seems like a missed opportunity as the area needs more resources like an actual grocery store. Still I also get not wanting to repeat the east side development since that was done just to increase land value within the area and attract white people whether that hurts or helps current residents or not. The reality is Rochester does need investment and wealth brought into the downtown core but the city should be protecting the current residents while doing so, so they can be the ones who benefit. I just don't think single family homes does either.
Not only USA, I've heard of similar ambitious projects in European countries like Belgium. Even my hometown in spain recently downgraded one of our main avenues from 3+3 traffic lanes to 1+1, turning the remaining ones into bus lanes, bike lanes and wider sidewalks. The age of urban motorways might have come to an end?
@@donnerwetter1905 Only making space for cars and building cities around the use of them was a bad idea. I'm not sure completely removing them is a great idea either though. It's maybe something worth striving for, but not by forcing it. I'd take the approach of making public transport so fast and good that people want to use it instead of a car. While I barely use a car during the week, I do have to travel to other places about 100km away so see family and friends. Doing so by public transport takes at least twice as long, if not more. I also have to deal with trains and busses that don't come on time and they might be packed. If instead we can have high speed rail connecting all cities above let's say 100k, it would be faster to use that instead. That way you naturally end up with less cars on the road. You can make roads with fewer lanes, replace traffic lights by roundabouts and make more space for people instead of cars. For the few trips that are better to do by car, you can leave a small amount of infrastructure in place, which you'll anyway need since you'll have to account for the increase in delivery vehicles on the road.
Idk about that. I think it makes ton of sense in situations like this where the highway is underutilized and the community needs fresh redevelopment. Rochester’s growth predated interstate. Fastern growing regions that have exploded since the advent of highways in the sun belt could t afford to removed them.
Rochester (my hometown) has more problems than you can shake a stick at. The entire downtown core is economically dead and has been for 30 years. Even fast food packed up and left decades ago. Crime is outrageous. Many gorgeous old buildings were demolished in the 1960's, replaced with ugly modern office towers that now sit mostly empty. The economic decline of the past 50 years has been shocking and there is really no end in sight.
we will literally hit rock bottom within the next 10 years, i could see us becoming another gary indiana, just another ghost town in between a bustling brand new rebuilt buffalo with the bills new stadium and syracuse being good again all whilst we just fall into limbo with non stop crime and everyone trying to get out.
If you're worried about current residents getting priced out, you have to build more housing. A lot, not just the little you can get from single-family homes. That said, props for tearing down the loop. A big step in the right direction regardless.
The quality of your guys videos lately has been absolutely phenomenal. These are so much more than just construction videos. Real stories, struggles, and triumphs are being told in every video!
Thanks so much! It's really important to us that we explain the impact construction really has on all of our lives and the communities we live in. If people get that, then they'll take the industry more seriously. It's our goal to change how the world sees this sector! More on that here - www.theb1m.com/about
Its the classic liberal philosophy. They want affordable housing but no gentrification or redevelopment. Its why Democrat cities are rundown. They claim to be for the poor but actively screw them and price them and their children out of their cities
@@KrisRyanStallardif they are asking for single family homes only then, they are also the problem. They have been fed the belief that only their own single family home with a lawn all their life while at the same time fed propaganda against anything else, so they don’t want it near them.
@@KrisRyanStallardno, its what they claim people want. The fact is cities dont plan for affordable housing because it brings in crime, drugs, prostitution you name anything bad & those are their reasons. However if you dont provide affordable housing it makes people homeless which brings in even bigger problems. We knew all this 40 years ago but still nobody built affordable housing & these cities only have themselves to blame & they refuse to accept accountability for creating their homeless. It will simply grow.
Whenever visiting the USA, (Seattle springs to mind first) I can't help but admire their road system, just amazing, I've thought. The highway teardown in the USA has really opened my eyes to a social & suburban problem which hadn't occurred to me in my previous 3 visits. Im from a wee country with a 'piddly arsed' road system who'd rather hold up traffic for half an hour at a time with workers repairing previous poor road workmanship instead of providing our nation with a decent road system. Love the quality of US highways and the efficiency they provide Americans and visitors alike. A joy to drive. Thanks for pointing out the negative impacts these highways have had on American society. Made me stop and think.
As a tourist I imagine these highways might be a joy to drive on, however, if you live here you begin to notice that they are far from a pleasant experience most of the time.
"The Big Dig" to bury Boston's elevated highway was to replace something that originally was built to cut off the dirty, working port area from the rest of the city. Now that same area is luxury hotels, expensive condos, and office buildings with a park over the underground highway. There was talk of "roofing over" the depressed highway that cuts Providence, RI in two, but I'm not sure what's become of that (really good) idea.
The big dig was a extremely reckless usage of funds. At the end of the day, it still served to inject cars right into the downtown, clogging the streets and choking the air
@@gfasterOS As Thomas said, the cost overruns and the poor quality of work do not suggest that the center of Boston is not significantly more pleasant and healthy now than it was before.
SeaTac did the same thing Before 2019 Alaska Way and Interstate 5 and part of Interstate 90 where above ground viaducts. After the Seattle Earthquake the mayor ordered them torn down. Interstate 90 and Interstate 5 were done first then Alaska Way was torn down now SeaTac has a new waterfront and they have better access to the ferry docks, Fisherman's Warf, and the Pikes Place Fish Market.
Surprised you didn't bring up Boston's Big Dig Project. It took a highway overpass that divided the city into an underground tunnel. Above it is now a Greenway (parks) that makes the city much more connected and pedestrian friendly.
…At a cost of $20-billion. Something that local citizens never would have approved had they not been lied to & told the cost was much less. That is the trickery advocates for major projects use just to get these projects started. They assume the public will pay the billions more rather than throw away what has been done.
Reminder that a lot of these cities also buried their natural waterways (rivers/streams) in underground tunnels, hopefully we see most of those coming back as well.
@@pietrojenkins6901 Trust me it’s better to have the water ways above ground, and have blissful walks along side it than have it covered in concrete. Even if the water is pollute it’s still worth keeping above ground so that people may enjoy it.
@@Raven_The_Huntress That happened to London too. I saw a documentary a few years ago about a secret underground river nobody knew about until architect's were building a new skyscraper or something. Its mental.
Another example is Albany, New York. It was first settled in 1614 after Henry Hudson sailed up the river later named after him, where the Dutch claimed it and constructed Fort Nassau (which was eventually rebuilt due to a flood as Fort Orange). Access to that river was completely destroyed in the sixties by a highway system so complex, it was used in the movie Salt. Neighborhoods were destroyed for the highway and the state office complex. There's now a project that looks into replacing the highways with a boulevard, which will result in the same amount of acreage that was destroyed for the state office complex to be used for residential development, including low-income and mixed-use housing, and most importantly, once again provide access to the river for all to enjoy.
Hey! Milwaukee did that too! Now the whole strip is becoming dense residential/commercial infill. The Milwaukee Bucks have built Fiserv Forum and the Deer District on the west side of the river and the west side is filling in with a dense walkable neighborhood. Hard to replace what was lost but putting our cultural amenities in the space seems like a logical bridge between communities.
...where the "Park Freeway was. There is currently a movement to tear down east I-794 that cuts through the south end of downtown to the lakefront. and repurpose the land for mixed commercial, high multi storey residential. and community development. Sadly the rest of 794 will remain, which cuts through Bayview and my old neighbourhood of St Francis, resulting the removal of several classic wooden bridges over of the rail line the highway parallels and creating more of a noise nuisance than the freight occasional trains that pass through. The really silly part is it peters out east of Mitchell Airport at S Pennsylvania and E Edgerton turning the former from a side/backstreet into a 4 lane "!stroad". Progress I guess.
Birmingham, UK, removed their inner ring road (like the inner loop) at the turn of the century. The change has helped to spread development out of the city centre, but the main problem is that the local and regional authorities haven't invested in the sustainable transport network or provided green spaces, meaning the mode shift benefits were never realised there. Hopefully other cities don't forget to also invest in sustainable transport as well as just removing stuff!
The US seems to love their buses, but doesn’t want to invest into Bus Rapid Transit or make Park and Rides a wash for bikes. Both of these would improve the system.
B'ham UK is a disaster in deveopment, a souless city centre and 60s concrete nightmare. Horrible place. It started a few years before they concreted over the New Street Railway station, which itself looked like crap before recent redevelopment. It's hard to find an Englishman in B'ham, and that is the problem.
@@29brendus to be fair most cities in the uk are 60s and 70s concrete monstrosities and could do with being rebuilt with actual looks and not just the cheap option Source: i'm british
7:40 I am so glad other people are pointing this out in the comments. Single Family Zoning and SFH-Only development will exacerbate the problem. Mandatory low density zoning and development, as well as many other regressive land use policies, are THE cause of housing shortages, skyrocketing rents, prices, displacement, etc. To only build those kinds of low density housing and nothing else is extremely foolish and misguided. Not to mention, those "megablock" developments are actually a good thing. Those apartments actually contain a ton of affordable and low income housing units. If anything, you should be supportive of those buildings!
I saw a video on 5 on 1 building which actually is the cheapest way to build houses in the US. Singaporean HDB style is also a good idea, not fully car dependant but you get nice greenery and community spaces.
@@fridgemagnet9831 Yup, bingo. Although I am not the biggest fan of the "Towers in the Park" method of urban development, Singapore style density is still pretty good. Although I'm more of a fan of the Tokyo model of urban density and zoning.
It will be hard to keep the SJW's (social justice warriors) in check. They need to be heard but decisions made from an ideological standpoint are rarely the best choices.
Yep, they are all gonna get up by zillow and other rich folks, price hiked up and these POC residents they were supposed to protect are going to get pushed out of the center
As someone going for a masters in Urban and Regional Planning this fall, This is actually something that warms my heart, as this is something that I actually want to implement myself. Also, I wonder if in tearing down the old highway connections, we could use parts of this space to begin metro hubs, to help connect communities even more, and further improve the transit of each city, reducing the traffic even more. Easing the stress on the roads which might still be heavily used otherwise.
@@gregoryeverson741 ask California how practical and affordable public transportation is especially commuter trains. Why would it be different anywhere else?
Interstates are great for connecting cities, and transporting goods, but they are not good for actual cities and it's residents. Ideally you will have an interstate to a city which in the city will turn into a avenue or boulevard. You can always build bypasses for those driving through that bypasses the city as a whole.
I disagree, Interstate should end at the city or go around it. Alternatively, the city should have overpasses allowing the highway to go underneath the city. See Isabelle Ave, Livermore CA it’s part of Highway 84 and lets bikes share the road and ride in a bike gutter while the speed limit is 55 mph
@@KRYMauL That's what he said. End the freeway and convert it into main boulevard at the city outskirts. Overpasses still have the issue of loss of land from building a trench. It would be better to tunnel instead, but it's verry expensive and you still want to refrain from building exits/entrances within the city itself.
@@taoliu3949 I've driven the freeway tunnels in Sydney. They seem to do a good job at providing high speed automobile access into and out of the city, and providing local city street access too while keeping neighborhoods/districts intact.
@@FreewayBrent The reason you don't want to have exits/entrances within the city is because it dumps all the traffic into the city in a single location. That is what causes congestion. It's better to keep the exit/entrances on the outskirts so that the traffic can be dispersed and absorbed by the street grid.
Not-so-fun-fact: most of the money that was allocated for the _interstate_ highway system was actually spent building highways _inside_ cities. In reply to @McMicGera: Indeed the price/mile for building inside cities is naturally higher, but the pitch for the FHA-Act of '56 was Inter-State connections with an emphasis on national defense destinations. Transportation infrastructure (e.g. rail and paved streets) inside cities already satisfied urban national defense and connectivity worries, it was the rural unstandardized gravel and dirt roads that were the primary problem. The reason a majority of funding was spent inside cities was the lobbying done by the National Highways User Conference (a consortium of auto, oil, rubber industries led by General Motors). This lobbying was so successful that the GM corporation got prominent government positions in the Eisenhower administration and received significant influence over the Interstate project. The goal of NHUC and GM was making the downtowns of cities easily accessible by their cars, as well as the continued (industry led) normalization of roads and streets being places only for cars, the association of cars with patriotism, and eventually widespread auto-dependency.
Well, that is somehow logical, because you have to by the valuable land in cities and tear down houses, build bridges and tunnels and so on which makes it more expensive than building on the green field.
@@McMicGera Indeed the price/mile for building inside cities is naturally higher, but the pitch for the FHA-Act of '56 was _Inter-State_ connections with an emphasis on national defense destinations. Transportation infrastructure (e.g. rail and paved streets) inside cities already satisfied urban national defense and connectivity worries, it was the rural unstandardized gravel and dirt roads that were the primary problem. The reason a majority of funding was spent inside cities was the lobbying done by the National Highways User Conference (a consortium of auto, oil, rubber industries led by General Motors). This lobbying was so successful that the GM corporation got prominent government positions in the Eisenhower administration and received significant influence over the Interstate project. The goal of NHUC and GM was making the downtowns of cities easily accessible by their cars, as well as the continued (industry led) normalization of roads and streets being places only for cars, the association of cars with patriotism, and eventually widespread auto-dependency.
@@tomgucwa7319 First off, boondoggle is a hilarious word, I love it. Second, I live in Milwaukee, which due to the highways: has suffered dramatic decline in population, city-based manufacturing jobs, and municipal revenue; we got i-794 (despite local opposition and i43/i94 being about a mile away) which cuts the downtown area in half thanks to whiney suburbanites (some whom don't even live inside city limits); we lost our electric rail connection to Chicago and our streetcar/tram/trolley network which we now have to rebuild; oh, and like pretty much every other US city, we've got widespread auto-dependency. At least city officials want to do the right thing now, but a lot was lost and the city doesn't have much funds to try and fix it (due to suburbanization, city limits being fixed, state laws restricting the city, etc.)
Actually I skimmed through a journal that said cities wanted interstates. The association of municipal something felt that not including cities would leave them behind and had a lot of political clout to withhold support if they didn't get their way.
I grew up in Rochester, NY and the Inner Loop really did separate so many neighborhoods from downtown. I drove on the Inner Loop several times a day and I can say I am happy to see it being re-imagined.
In NYC, they started to take down The West Side Highway, an elevated highway, almost 30 years ago. Today the area is more open to light and pedestrians. IMO, it worked out well.
Same with San Francisco when the 480 was torn down after the Loma Prieto Earthquake in 1989. Today, you'd never know there was a freeway in front of the SF Ferry Building.
These are super interesting! I'm glad that America is finally making roads and infrastructure better. We need highways and car-oriented things, but there still has to be the walkability and beauty within cities and suburbs alike. There has to be a good medium to blend both together easier, keeping things efficient while nice.
Do you realize that this video is one sided and doesn't have opposing views? Higher density would create more demand, thus pushing rents up for local residents. They are hurting the community they want to help, by making it unaffordable. When people (or developers) realise they can build 50 units instead of 10 on the same lot, that lot's price will go wayyy up.
@@FirstLast-qy7hf Manhattan is on an island and has nowhere to go but up. The type of mid density urban mixed use development needed in most American cities would not look remotely the same as Manhattan. Thankfully in my city, (Oklahoma City) the open lots in and near downtown are being redeveloped into such mixed use mid density neighborhoods. There is a huge demand for walkable mixed use cities in the US and it's now starting to become reality in places such as Austin, Phoenix, Atlanta, and many cites across the country.
Just built ring road around the cities and town, scale down highways inside the ring, leave rural highways be. Problem is bad city planing, not bad highway venture.
@@QuarioQuario54321 I forgot you don't have those, better trains are a given, but don't be ridiculous, outside the cities highways are necessary for survival, if you want cars to be less predominant do it European way - make 60% of gas prices a bunch of taxes. American Cities are built backwards, instead of industry being on the outskirts, along ring road it goes through the middle of city along the highway and in the old town "sO eVeRyoNe hAs tHe sAmE dIsTanCe tO iT" that's another thing you would have to social engineere. I'm Poland, we were late to the party so our highway system is newest in Europe, most technologically advanced and unfortunately most expensive, and in opposition to for example Belgium it's not made retarded due to ideology - anti car extremism is not the an answer to too much cars
@@10hawell well it was actually lobbying and administration, department and Bureaus of highways as city planners don't build or commission highways, and as those highway departments only tool is roads, as the old adadge goes : when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I encourage to do more research on the introduction of highways and their real purpose. Their dysfunction is not at all due to bad city planning. Highways need to go and trains need to be in our future. For both the environment and consumer.
If we’re talking about how expensive highways are, you don’t want to know about subways. Population density in nearly all cities in America makes subways unlikely
Rochester had a subway system from 1927 to 1956. Not enough people rode it to support it financially through fares and that was before the two- and three- and four-car household. If they build a new one, not enough people will ride it to support it financially through fares.
I love the timing of this video. I just started watching NotJustBikes a couple months ago, so I've been getting a better understanding of car dependency in the U.S., and what moves are being made to reclaim our streets, and news has been slowly coming out bit by bit. It's great to see examples of what works, and hear ideas of what else we can do. Thanks for making this!
Something I didn't see mentioned in the video is that Rochester is a city whose population has declined over the past fifty years. So it makes sense to repurpose a road that is no longer being used.
What doesn't make sense is devaluing people's houses by trying to merge neighborhoods. People who cared for years, invested time and money into keeping the neighborhood nice and clean.
Even in Malaysia, we have a lot of highways (and stacked highways) and tolls. It's only going to get worse as the city is only getting more reliant on cars.
But high density and public transportation (thus not being overly dependent on motorcycle infrastructure) are not mutually exclusive. Your countries might not be the greatest fans of Japan (and for some pretty good reasons, I have to admit), but in this regard they could really take a page out of the Japanese book. They know how to do public transportation and disincentivize driving.
@@malvinolimit can attest. Here in the Philippines, they're planning to build more elevated highways around the country, especially in and around Manila. Although I am glad we're also rebuilding our entire railway system from scratch. Plus we got new trains from Indonesia and Japan.
At least you guys have tolls. Here in America toll roads are rare, which basically means we not only have made things car reliant, we are completely subsidizing cars.
@Jimmy Exactly, you need to pay to use the road. Just as one pays to use mass transit. Those roads dont pay for themselves. Cities go bankrupt over them. Unless you prefer gas taxes(which may or may not actually go towards maintenance of the roads), pick one.
Good stuff B1M! My two cents is YT's channel "Not Just Bikes" as a template type for thoughtful ideas in urban redevelopment for improved city connectivity and livability.
The Government is starting a massive project in Detroit with the demolition of I375 and returning it back to a large Boulevard. Which I believe is the largest of their undertakings with this to date. Unfortunately it only opens up the eastside of Downtown to the rest of the city that was cut off.. It’s just too bad we have Interstates and expressways cutting off the westside of Downtown and the north side as well.
Hats off as always. As an American who has a pretty above average understanding of the Highway and its overall impact, I learned so much about the current state and future state of a major piece of american society and economy.From across the pond you hit the hammer on how race is deeply rooted in american government and how resolving these issues are very complex and there is no blueprint. Our toxic govt acts as if we are dumb and is incompentant. Cnat wait to share this knowledge randomluy with my friends and fam. Ive said it for at least 2 years now, B1M is top 5 channel
Hello fellow REAL HUMAN. It's nice to see so many comments reinforcing just how credible this channel is. I believe every comment, let's delete all the negative ones! Only room for agreeing here! :)
From colourful shirt guy: having a highway there segregated neighbourhoods - Bad. Having no highways now and making the area better raises property values and price some out - Bad.
If they own the house I don't really see a reason for those communities to be affected much. The rents will go up but that's just how development and economics go together.
I live in Rochester, and my last apartment was a block from the Inner Loop East project. What is important to understand about Rochester is the density curve we see as you move out from the city center. It falls off a cliff, I've been to a lot of cities and I've never seen anything quite like it. Having single family homes in that area really would not seem out of place with how the city functions. When the gentleman talks about the property value discrepancy, it's really quite astounding in parts of the city. Where I currently live is all single family homes in the city proper, and during the pandemic property value growth hit Top 5 in the US. Yet I could also drive 5 minutes to see the manufactured economic hardship due to the inner loop. Rochester has always had great architecture for homes. East Ave and Park Ave are largely ornate homes converted into apartments. So our mid-density stuff already looks like Victorian and gothic homes. An aesthetic I personally hugely prefer over what's gone in with the first inner loop project. Rochester is a city of suburbs if that makes any sense lol. It has been unfortunately shaped by white flight. Even the city proper resembles a suburb in many spots. Happy to answer any questions lol
@@vintagejaki751 I actually would say Rochester is quite active for a city of its size, it just doesn’t really take place downtown, the inner loop basically turned downtown into an island where people only go for work during the week
The video said the community wanted single family housing as opposed to the larger apartment complexes…. From what you added I think they possibly want something aesthetically pleasing, more than anything. There are videos explaining why new buildings are forced to look like that (a la regulations) but I suspect your city would see the value the combo of mixed use buildings if it wasn’t such an eye sore.
Great to see a city moving forward on this but I am skeptical that this is done in most situations. When an idea goes from $25 billion suggested to $1 billion appropriated, that says a lot. America ad a whole dimply doesn’t value public goods and public space.
15b to 1 billion was stated. To tell the truth Rochester is unique in that its core industry and employers are defunct. This is a community that has seen huge change in the past couple of decades, and these changes to it's infrastructure are incredibly promising.
These videos are great for our architecture studio given the fact we are working on a train transport hub system connecting cities together. Appreciate the quality and up to date information. Helps us a lot and gives us ideas and perspectives to think about that are current in our society. Look forward to more like this one.
I disagree, at least with this particular video. I see America investing in waste as long as THIS Biden administration is involved. This money wasted, will bring in many more homeless and probably the final curtain of America. Idiots are running the zoo and failure will soon follow. Many American cities don’t have mass transit train hubs. This is another case where government planning and spending are wasted time and money.
Railways: We're the backbone of this country! Highways: You know the rules, and so do I- Cities: Tear down highways for positive development Railways, with a reverse UNO card: *SAY GOODBYE!* Saddest part is as those highways in the 60s sliced through neighborhoods, they took the historic identities of these places with them. I know car drivers may be mad about this, but they should be on board regarding new urban development with transit when you think about it this way. More people who take transit, the less cars on the road. Isn't no traffic a good thing?
Would love to see you analyse what Seattle did in tearing down the Alaskan Way Viaduct. Traffic diverted into tunnels but still a big roadway where the Alaskan Way was, I think? Seems a missed opportunity to open up pedestrian access between the waterfront and the city.
It does seem like it might be a little bit too wide to attract the pedestrian counts that city officials are hoping for. Only time will tell though. Still, the waterfront already looks a heck of a lot better without the Alaskan Way Viaduct, although I do miss driving it for the awesome views it afforded.
I live in the area and can tell you that the “south side” inner loop deletion saw great success because the area is still decent, night life is good, there’s lot of college age people there and so on. Trust me, the city knows this and wanted to show people that it works so they picked the only area where it would work to showcase it and lay groundwork for the rest of the project. The remaining parts of the inner loop are located in areas where the opposite is true, areas where crime is rampant and sirens never stop whaling. I think they’ll approve the plan and then have to build all subsidized housing (apartments) to make it work because no developer will do it any other way which will in turn balloon the cost of the project as a whole.
0:35 that's Long Beach, California. The highlighted road is not a freeway, but a street called Ocean Blvd. In the old days, the ocean went up to that street until land was built out and a breakwater was constructed.
Seeing The 980 in Oakland CA at 0:33 brought me back to when I used to live right next to it. It was so obvious that there was a racial/class divide between West Oakland and the Uptown/Downtown area, you could literally feel the vibe changing when you moved from one side to the other. Very intentional and a rather useless highway.
I really like to see this shift happening in America. I am born and raised in the Netherlands so cycling, walking, and public transport is what i use 90% of the time. But what is happening in this video is also what we here in the Netherlands have been doing years ago, it brought is good, and it brought as better roads to drive the car on as well. But since i have been watching the channel “not just bikes” a lot i cam to understand how the American infrastructure works. And what the enviromental impact of it is. Imagine doing this in a lot more city’s and then see what this will do for the enviroment. #goforit
It works in Europe, but America is a completely different story, a great percent of the population lives in the suburbs and won't go to work riding a bike, they still are going to use cars and there will be large traffic jams.
@@tinchoo182 It works in US cities, not outside the cities, Chicago, NY, DC, Boston, Seattle all did it and it works there, everyone else needs to catch up
The Netherlands is a very small country with the majority of the people living in one city. I would like to bike around cities in the US but this place is way too big and the cities and suburbs are vastly spread to successfully do this in parts of the country. Over 70% of Canadians live in within Ontario/Quebec so maybe it could work in Canada but the US is just massive.
@@darreldennis7115 Thank you, one of the things people tend to fail to see the differences between Europe and North America is primarily Geography, US itself is already a behemoth overlayed on top of Europe if you remove Russia, going from LA-NY is similar to London to Tel Aviv in Israel, plus European countries are far more dense and relatively much closer making it easier for them to connect the to the next city with things like High speed rails and other transit methods, the same thing can't be said about North America in general. It's too large/too sprawled out and lower in population and demand. No sane person will want to come from Toronto to go to Vancouver by "train" or Seattle to Miami, it's simply too long, places like the NorthEast and West Coast in LA can actually see more transit connections however Suburbs can however see the removal of high ways and 3-4 lane roads for 1-2 lane roads with sidewalks and bike paths, but even that will hardly work out because of just how big and spread out their places really are
San Francisco has been quite successful at tearing down inner-city elevated highways and redeveloping as boulevards, with increased public transit, cycling, and pedestrian areas, etcetera. It's good to see Rochester's and other cities progress, too.
They were successful in tearing down highways. They've also made traffic 10x worse in the process. A terrible commute does increase housing prices locally, so I guess that's a win for people who own their houses.
@@djinn666 Traffic got worse in San Francisco because the population exploded, reaching levels not seen since the 1940s, and with people who were using San Francisco as a bedroom community for jobs down on the peninsula. The tear down of the hideous elevated freeways - many of which collapsed in the ‘89 earthquake - had nothing to do with that. Indeed, removing them has revitalized every neighborhood they were removed from and opened up tons of land for housing and business where land is in short supply.
@@sunspot42 Traffic did get worse where the Central Freeway was removed because they removed one lane on Octavia Blvd. The neighborhood in the immediate area improved, but the neighborhoods that the freeway fed into were adversely affected.
Exactly the tunnel that replaced the above ground expressway was built at an extraordinary price which any city would have difficulty funding. In Seattle its now a toll highway. You cant just tear down a highway and expect the cars to simply ho away.
So my question is, the chap with the flowery shirt was complaining I quest that the new housing was going to be to expensive because it was near the expensive housing, firstly would the people in the cheap houses prefer their house values to go up or down? Secondly would the people in the expensive houses prefer their houses keep their value or go down? I could guess the answers to both. His answer seems to be to drag the value of housing down to the lowest common denominator and in doing so make slums
That's not quite true. Something that will be a guarantee is that the value of the currently cheap housing will rise. This will occur because these houses will now be more easily able to access the services and benefit from the proximity to the centre of town, whereas before they were cut off by a highway - sure you could always drive, but now they will be opening up walking and cycling, and likely more pleasant driving as well. Now as for whether the expensive housing will retain its current value, that's harder to guarantee, but the real question is why would it lose value? I don't know about Rochester specifically, I'm not even American, but if it's a poor neighbourhood then that doesn't inherently reduce nearby housing values. If it's a high crime area, then yeah becoming closer in proximity might have an effect, but it's hard to say without knowing more specifics of the area. So overall, it's highly likely (in my opinion, without specific research at least) that the value of the cheap housing will rise significantly, and the overall quality of the neighbourhood will improve, and this may be accompanied by a minor drop in the expensive housing value, but it also will likely rebound eventually anyway in our world of forever rising house prices. The next problem these guys might face is the poorer community members getting priced out of their own neighbourhood - but that's a different problem.
That's another problem in the USA: You change your houses like others their underwear. In Europe a house is meant as a family home for generations (even the new built ones), not an investment that is bought and sold like stock. It is anyway surprising that houses are so expensive at all in the USA, where land is abundant and also ruthlessly designated as building land and the houses themselves are made of plywood and papier mache ...
@@hape3862 for houses location matters, especially in how the US designed their cities. all the land in the world is expensive to deliver services on so density matters
If you remove the highway dividing a rich neighborhood and a poor neighborhood, the poor neighborhood is not suddenly going to become rich. The complete opposite will happen.
In Maastricht, The Netherlands, there was also a highway (A2) cutting directly trough the city. A few years ago they tunnelled the highway and created a long walkway / park and more trees in is place.
Not mentioned in this story, but also very significant in destroying city centers in the middle of the 20th century was the Urban Renewal project. The federal government provided huge amounts of money for cities to identify "blighted areas" which were then completely bulldozed after all privately-owned land had been taken by condemnation. In a great many places, Urban Renewal and freeway construction happened concurrently to the same tracts of land, wiping out absolutely everything.
And given it was still the era of Jim Crow, it was also 'oh so convenient' that most of those 'blight areas' were communities and neighbourhoods where the majority of residents were 'minorities'- in other words, they were black neighbourhoods.
First cycling in Oulu (and other cities) and now this. I'm so glad you've created such important and needed content which starts a discussion about irresponsible and irrational infrastructure investments in a completely different audience. We all love huge projects but if they aren't thoughtful of scarce resources and inclusive to entire society, what's the point?
Sooooo they kind of want to tear down a highway but then build single family homes and no public transportation, It would be a perfect site for a lightrail, still better than nothing but americans need to understand that the problem is the lack of High density living
If we are forced to buy electric cars by Government these cars cannot go on long road trips. And since getting the car charged is so hard with rolling black outs why would you need more highways anyway?
@@rachelnorthweather9365 how shit is your electrical grid that you have rolling blackouts im an electrician in canada and ive never even heard of it happening here unless your in the far north
Pushing people out of their cars into no alternative isn't solving a problem, it's a start, but it's only addressing a symptom of inefficient American city/transport planning. Establish alternative public transport options THEN cut back on the car, otherwise this movement will fail as quickly as it began.
No kidding. Too many lemmings (i.e. urbanists, advocates, etc) follow the "it's so easy to remove a freeway" mentality without considering how it truly affects people. Too many idiots just say "ride a bike!", "take the bus!" without realizing they aren't able to, it takes hours longer, etc and other non-viable alternatives. I bet that is why the infrastructure bill shrank because of these idiots spouting their ideology without seeing how it affects people not like them.
My neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY has this issue. The highway goes right through it and it is a major disconnect. There was a proposal a few years back to cover just a section of it to create a green park but there has been no word as to whether it will ever happen. The main issue (other than the disconnect) is the poor air quality from the vehicles.
I'm torn because there are a lot of dumb roads that should be repurposed but there are also a lot of dumb people who think every highway should be repurposed.
@@HipHopIsLifee Houston is an extreme example and almost a lost cause; it is one of the least pedestrian friendly cities created. While highways might not be removed I can still see them reduced/repurposed over time, but the majority of people willingly living in Houston will likely shut it down anyway and so it's doomed to be for cars only.
what is my arguement for this: A. Trains will do a better job if we build them correctly B. All the vehicles getting transport are mostly unneccary C. If we had a more vast network of Alternatives (like trains, trams & buses) then we could live without any cars
Hi everybody! What an excellent source of information to learn from about this topic! Due to the fact I'm a native New Yorker, this city needs a full gut renovation on the aging interstate system. I hope I be around to witnessed the completion, but I'll see what the future holds. Good luck to everybody out there to accomplish such a big task!
I recommend anyone passing by reading this to look into a concept called “super blocks”. Cities like Barcelona have tried this out and it’s proven to be better for overall mental health, walkability, and the environment
It's no accident that 2 major cities in upstate NY are looking to tackle these issues with real gusto, the population of upstate NY's major urban areas Rochester, Syracuse & Buffalo have been steadily falling for a few decades now and the latest Census only confirmed that, if anything, that trend is intensifying, amongst *all* communities. As much as anything else, the lure of very mild Winters further south is holding less and less folks back from migrating. These cities have to do something to start making themselves more appealing places to live and I think they've looked at European models where cities with similarly severe Winters manage to hold on to their populations more successfully, perhaps in part by making those cities very amenable places to live and ones that don't rely on owning a vehicle.
I-80 was built right through the residental areas north of Downtown Des Moines, IA in the 1950's and 1960's. Neighborhoods such as Sherman Hill (full of historic 1880's Victorian Era architecture), were cut off from other similar areas, such as Drake and Evelyn Davis Park. It is not any better on the east side of the river, where the East Village is cut off from Capitol Park (also full of Queen Anne and Classical residential architecture).
No one is tearing down the interstate system. People from outside the country don’t realize how big the US is and how much it costs to keep the infrastructure in good shape. It’s why road construction is a constant.
You see, intercity/interstate highways aren't a problem. For such a spread out nation they are a great and convenient way to get between these spread out locations. The issue is when these highways go through towns, or especially cities. Between cities and allowing access to rural areas, highways are great! But within cities, they are neighborhood destroying, traffic generating, and destructive walls between neighborhoods.
Walkable cities and mass transit is the future. We still need highways but they should not be the only or main way of transporting goods and/or travel. Invest in co-housing communities as well.
It may have been better for rochester to develop a light rail or BRT along that corridor for year round use rather than bike lanes. Nobody bikes for half the year because it's too cold. Lake effect is in action from November to March. Bike lanes make sense for denser developments in cities where you don't need to worry about snow (Houston, Dallas, LA, Miami, Atlanta, etc). Rochester gets several feet of snow every year.
Oklahoma City has already torn down the old raised highway that ran just south of the city, too further south, and placed it back on the ground and in some places it is below the ground level to aid in noise abatement. As well adding more lanes to handle rush hours times. Also, with the big shift it open up many projects near the Canadian river. I've give it a solid A.
It was an ugly trestle and was always congested at rush hour and probably before and after Thunder basketball games (I have only been to 3 of those since they came here and I avoided the highway to get to them). As it got old, I didn't like taking it. I haven't seen the new I-40 get that congested.
Not only that, but it appears that the Expressway was diverted to a different route over part of it, with the original route turned into a city street of sorts.
7:40 Why would you support SINGLE family home ownership when there's a general housing shortage all over the country? I understand why few people would like a giant concrete block next door, I'm with you on this one, but there are lots of steps in between which provide more space for more people, which in the end should be economically and ecologically more reasonable ...
Many people don't get that it doesn't even have to be giant concrete blocks. It absolutely can be brickwork or brick-clad low-to-middle rise apartments with 3-4 stories. Americans take cutesy photos of these when on holiday in Europe but somehow forget that such development can be done back home too.
i appreciate the nuance needed is talked about, also in some cases, if the highway is removed - it will redirect traffic and people away from an area and allow that area to lay fallow and lose interest from development - think about how in certain areas of Florida when the rail line and original highways were redirected, small and vibrant rural towns basically disappeared - some towns that were highway stops as late as the 1940s have seen little serious interest since the opening of US-90 and then I-10 almost 75 years ago
I love the Interstate highway system but when they get into the city they look ugly. They're only beautiful out in the country in my opinion. We need high speed trains and better local trains inside the city.
I feel like we are right in the cusp of the future watching this. 10:18 sounds almost like an interlude of a sci fi movie in a way. I grew up always hearing about Interstate Highways, traffic jams, and more. For them to redevelop and build mixed use roadways is a sign of the times. I think they should even use light rail too if they have enough to spend. As cars, buses and trucks soon enough start to become autonomous as well, I wonder how all this is going to play out. The tearing down of old Highway infrastructure is also better for the environment, promoting more trees, bicycles and electric personal transportation such as E-Scooters. But, I'm mostly for this. It looks better and prettier on the eye and is easier to repair into the future.
The way I see this is the city council or Government is not good with their spending so they sell part of this freeway section to developers to get a cash grab.
A large part of this "Not good with their spending" thing is building car-centric infrastructure in the first place, though. Maintaining a highway costs an absolute fortune in the long term, and with cities that mostly consist of suburbs you will need a lot of highway per household to service the population. That is a huge expense compared to the tax income available to sustain it.
They got property where the community did not have the power to protest the build, other proposed highways got reroute because high income/white areas would not allow it. This was done during the time redlining was still in effect
Looking at it from Italy, Highways in the US are completely absurd. Here, we would never allow something as bonkers as a highway going inside a city. It's totally unacceptable. Highways (the name in Italian is "autostrada") always touch the external border of a city, where they connect with local highway loop around the city (the name in Italian is "tangenziale", meaning a road that is tangential to the city). To me, it looks like that cars in the 50's were more important that people's life, and that created a distorted culture that still lives today. No wonder in the US there are no bullet trains, and public transport is ridicule. I don't want to be rude, but from an external point of view, the entire mass transportation system in the US is totally outdated, expensive, stressful, and entirely unhealthy.
it’s completely true and frustrating. the only public transportation where i live is the bus, and people would look at you weirdly if you told them you took it.
@@CATinBOOTS81 Well that's obvious from a European perspective. From an American perspective that's eyeroll worthy. It isn't like the US has a high density issue; the US is a massive country and thus it requires mass transportation to get from place to place. You can argue that bullet trains from big cities would be beneficial, or more public transportation -then I'd agree. But overall the need for mass transport via cars is the same.
@@stephenjenkins7971 America very much has a high density issue. Have you ever looked at an aerial view of most American cities? There's almost always a small section of skyscrapers, then miles and miles of single family homes. That kind of development makes public transit less effective, it wastes hundreds of square miles of land, it makes people dependent on cars to get anywhere because everything is so far away, and it costs the city billions of dollars each year to maintain all that sprawling infrastructure. America's cities need medium and high density and mixed use development urgently. It's not legal to build it in most parts of the majority of cities, and building it would make cities more walkable, less sprawling, and better for public transportation. Also, America doesn't need just bullet trains, it needs any kind of trains. Only the northeast U.S has regular train service via Amtrak. The rest of the country has practically nothing, even in areas where it would make sense. Texas, for example, has several nearby cities that could use any kind of regular train service. If you make cities denser, and build good public transit and intercity train services, the need for cars would be extremely low. Sure, rural areas might still need cars, but the only reason American needs cars is because we built it to need cars.
The truth is they built them thru parts of cities that were the cheapest and easiest to get threw. If a highway had to go through a part of town that had rich white people on one side and poor white people on the other, they went through the poor white people's part. It was less about race than economics but of course everything these days has to be about race or some kind of "under represented people's" in order to get mainstream attention. We will all be better off when folks stop pushing divisive rhetoric and stop dredging up stuff from a time when none of us were alive. I understand the importance of knowing history so it will not repeat itself, but there is a point when I feel like people are either using it to get an emotional reaction for the reason of making money or some other disingenuous purposes. We have come a long way and we should also highlight the good as often as we do the bad.
![Stroads are Ugly, Expensive, and Dangerous (and they're everywhere) [ST05]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ORzNZUeUHAM/mqdefault.jpg)
At the other extreme, check out "The Arctic City Where Everyone Cycles" - ruclips.net/video/TpnYkiqUmj0/видео.html
I watched it - SUPERB!
Maybe take a look at what Berlin did with the space where the wall once stood? That seems to be a glorious example of doing it right to me.
The one mistakes here: the desire to redevelop into single family homes. Single Family homes are not the way forward for North America.
Imagined censorship, imagined crusade that was never happening. These are your last days.
@@m3n4cE6 It helps if you address who you are talking to.
The thing is that it’s not just removing highways, that’s relatively easy. You’ll need densification (the kind that was rejected by Rochester), new mixed use developments, and the provision of adequate mass public transit to replace that demand for transportation. It’s so much more than taking down concrete
So they are going to put single-family homes next to 500k neighborhoods? How are they going to stop the price of these houses going into the millions?
Inner Loop East was filled in with relatively high density development , and Rochester has both a decent bus system and considerable bike infrastructure and focus on walkability in its urban planning. The difficult part for Inner Loop North is that it doesn't really run through downtown but rather a historically residential area. Most of the buildings in the area are single family arts and crafts style cottages built in the late 19th early 20th century on 1/10th acre (400m^2) plots. You could build higher density but it would be still be separate from the downtown core and a bit of an island. And for what its worth downtown Rochester has more than doubled its number of apartments in the past decade so it certainly isn't neglecting density.
So crazy removing highways to build single family homes. What a waste of the new land, and cost spent tearing down the highway.
Agreed. I love the change in roading infrastructure, but there needs to at least be medium density if not high density to allow people the chance to share in home ownership and make best use of resources.
I went to engineering school in Rochester and lived there for most of the early 2000s. Since the 1980s, Rochester saw enormous job losses as the major employers of Kodak, Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, GM auto parts and Ford auto parts laid off much of their workforces. Kodak alone laid off over 80k employees. The city only ever had a little over 500k residents at its peak. These layoffs first hit the racially segregated jobs that were held by African-Americans and Puerto Ricans. Through to the 1970s, these folks were "Redlined" into racially segregated neighborhoods on the north and west sides of the city, closer to the heavily polluting factories. In the 1950s when they built the highways in the city, they tore out the street car system, which included a section underground in the downtown core. For a city that gets as much snow as it does, having underground mass transit was important. However the switch to car centric travel ended that. This means that if one can afford it in the slightest, they try to have a car, which leads to a lot of older, polluting, poorly maintained cars on the road.
For many years, the city was similar to Detroit, with whole blocks of abandoned single family homes being torn down and replaced with grass lots. Since then, Rochester's economy has pivoted towards the education and academic research sector, mainly UofR and RIT (but there are a dozen other universities in the area as well). The two big universities stopped building on campus dorms and apartments and started encouraging their students to live off-campus, along the southern side of the city. As students have graduated, many have stayed in Rochester and opened tech startups, art studios and other small businesses. Many grants and scholarships were made available to kids from the inner city to attend the universities, who have then graduated and worked in the region. Since 2005, Rochester has built a ton of new apartments in the downtown core. As recently as the early 2000s, the downtown core would be totally empty on a typical weeknight. They tore down a vacant mall at the very center of the city and replaced it with dense apartments. Many of the surface parking lots have been redeveloped into apartment towers. Inner Loop East was basically a moat between the downtown core and the main arts/ entertainment/ restaurant areas of East Main St, East Ave and Monroe Ave. The Inner Loop North does cut off easy bike and pedestrian traffic from the historically segregated north side, but this is also done by the existing CSX/ Amtrak railroad right of way through the city, that cuts along the northern edge of the city's core from east to west. The Inner Loop North runs parallel with the tracks for much of its length. Removing the Inner Loop North will reduce the width of this divide, but not eliminate it. Mostly, it will rationalize the traffic patterns in this stretch of the city and provide some lots for politically connected developers to get hand outs from the city. The city can politically afford to take down these sections of highways because they don't serve any purpose under the current economic climate of the city, which is still shrinking and it means that they don't have to maintain all of these bridges anymore. The federally funded interstate designated highways on the southern side of the city (I-390 & I-490) that separate the young, white, middle class neighborhoods close to the universities from the downtown core aren't going anywhere anytime soon. What Rochester really needs is a new mass transit system that connects the less economically advantaged neighborhoods on the north and west side to where the jobs are on the south and east side. Busses take well over an hour, typically with a transfer downtown, what it takes 20 minutes to do in a car. There are enough abandoned railroad rights of way that could be rehabilitated that it could be separated from most road traffic as well, while still providing convenient transportation for everyone.
At 7:40 Tearing down a highway in the city centre to build single family homes seems like a waste of valuable space. Thos should be mid-rise blocks to give as many people as possible an opportunity own a space in the city close to work and services etc.
I've had a look in Google Street View and it seems like they've replaced the already completed parts with apartments.
You're right. Building Single Family Homes, and nothing else, in the MIDDLE of the downtown area is especially foolish!
I can agree with this. Affordable mid-rise low density housing is the way to go... no high density condos which will only make property values and house prices skyrocket.
Seems like they want more Free HUD Housing to be Built.
now most of new development in US city downtowns are apartments and offices. Those homes were built a long time ago when planning was just for small population.
Building single family homes around the inner ring of a city just seems weird to me (as a European). To make truly alive and vibrant cities more mixed middle density is needed.
If that's what they want to do its their home.
Not what I would do but I don't live there.
It’s all rosy abou “reconnecting neighbourhoods” but in reality it’s more elite single family homes haha
I found that really weird as well. "We want affordable housing, but let's limit the available units by building single family homes"
Why do you cáre? You’re European. Go pay your ridiculous taxes
@@664theneighbor5 Why shouldn't we care? Don't be so salty.
The funny thing is building more single family housing is what's driving the cost of property values to go up. If you want more affordable housing, you need to build denser buildings that are mixed use. You are only displacing yourself at that point, unfortunately.
This is why rent rates are so low in NYC.
There needs to be a variety of housing, If they make cities too dense, they will be accused of "creating ghettos" Most cities have already built a range of housing, and many are building high-rise residential buildings. I dont trust what the establishment has planned. They say they care about communities and affordable housing but rental prices are skyrocketing in most western cities. Just renting a property as a single, low wage worker is becoming out of reach. Apartment buildings are being bought out by investment firms and rents are increasing. I dont trust them.
This isn't accurate. Building more single family houses creates more supply and lowers prices. Many cities do apartments and condos and prices are very high, so denser buildings aren't going to work.
@@pracidiname2615 this is wrong and your example is wrong. We do build condos and apartment, but it’s limited. The issue isn’t single family zoning; rather, I should have said it’s Euclidian Zoning (single family only for most of the city) that is the issue. People will still build plenty of single family homes, but now we have the chance to build more duplexes, condos, mixed use, and other missing middle housing options. That is what will lower the price down.
@@pracidiname2615 The prices for single family homes are higher in cities compared to apartments and condos. Apartments and condos increase supply by more than single family homes given that they simply house more people using the same land. The reason that cities are generally more expensive to live in overall is because of how desirable living in the city is in the first place; people want the convenience of living in the city and since this is really rare in the US there isn't a lot of overall supply and the demand outpaces it (meaning people go homeless even with a job). The only way to fix this is to build enough housing so that everyone can afford it.
In downtown Boston we put the highway underground and turned where the highway was into green spaces. It makes it a much nicer place to live and visit.
But that project also cost $22 billion in 2020 dollars and had loans to pay for thirty years after the project was complete. The end result is nice but I can't help but think there may have been ways to allocate that much money for more impact.
@@TheVonMatrices what impact? Urban redesign is one of the most influential non-controversial things to invest in.
@@krunkle5136 It also pays for itself with increased property values and private investment.
They plan on doing that in the Bronx also here in NYC
Boston underground looks scary, old, and ugly just like NY. What shameful? Do they know how to manage the public facilities?
They want to get rid of these highways, but they also want single-family homes? Do they not want people to be able to get anywhere easily? If you want walkable areas, you can't zone for single-family homes. That just leads to sprawling suburbs and more traffic.
In Rochester, those neighborhoods that were cut through had mixed development with corner stores, three story buildings, etc. Every four blocks or so is a walkable mixed commercial area from the early 20th century, the old way cities did things.
Yeah force people into the misery of high density apartments nothing like screaming kids from above, a barking dog from below and an arguing couple from the side!
@@Ushio01 You talk as if there’s nothing in between those 2 extremes
@@alleghanyonce it is a possibility unfortunately
@@Ushio01 No, give them townhouses, condos, multi-plexus, etc. with corner stores and cafés. It’s not all single family or apartments, there’s a thing called middle density.
Basically a good idea to tear down highways, but... The proposed single-family housing is always bad for a metropolitan area. 4-6 stories high apartment buildings creating a population density high enough to make nearby stores, retail, restaurants, cinemas and more work (often placed on street level and the apartments above). You simply need smaller shops and restaurants nearby, so people actually walk instead of using their car.
And if you have the "once in x generations" chance to rebuilt such a wide and long stretch in your city: Think ahead and built (or reserve space) for a light rail system :)
This would mean that America would turn into Europe. That's no good!
@@diegoperez2090 which is basically the US in the 1920s. Haha.
Lively communities with medium density residential buildings and shops and restaurants? Sounds like communism to me.
100%. Density, Greenspace, Car-Free areas, Priority for Bike and Walking infrastructure.
Lol this guy doesn't realize that the article scarcity in housing supply is on purpose. Zoning codes are voted on by homeowners and homeowners have 0 interest to increase supply to meet demand. Artificial scarcity only makes a homeowner wealthier.
rochesterian here! the old inner loop was a nightmare. those who were unfamiliar with it would often get “trapped” on it going around downtown four or five times. glad to see it’s now a lovely little walkable couple of blocks.
Can confirm, I got lost on it, and my GPS was no help...
Baloony
@@spencer8035 yes hi hello it is me ballooney
@@spencer8035 inflaty
Hey ballone. Good ta see ya
Making the development on the inner loop be single family homes may backfire for that. Maybe make them be condos that people can have ownership... making low density exclusive housing would probably just continue to leave many residents without the ability to build wealth and also burden these residents with the cost of maintaining an entire home. Not to mention it being continued car dependent development in a city that very much needs to get away from it.
LMAO CONDOS IN ROCHESTER. Did you hear the guy say some homes are sold for 65,000. People can't afford that expensive white people bullshit.
@@Greengoblin420-69 apartments will always be cheaper than building single family homes because the land cost is divided between 50+ people. A single family home is like ordering a meal for 50 and paying it all yourself better to split the bill that way everyone gets a better deal.
@@someguy255 Condos and apartments are not the same thing BUDDY...... maybe read both comments in entirety
@@Greengoblin420-69 we call them luxury flats where I’m from. I didn’t think condos were always luxury because lots of the condos in New York aren’t luxurious just expensive because they’re in New York.
@@Greengoblin420-69 I mean a dense development that still allows for home ownership. A condo is not by definition an expensive type of housing. Single family homes are much more exclusive and can potentially be a huge financial burden. I get that they have to work within the system of a house being an important asset to build wealth and POC Americans (especially black Americans) missed out on that but having it be exclusive to the lucky few without adding a general benefit to the community seems like a missed opportunity as the area needs more resources like an actual grocery store. Still I also get not wanting to repeat the east side development since that was done just to increase land value within the area and attract white people whether that hurts or helps current residents or not. The reality is Rochester does need investment and wealth brought into the downtown core but the city should be protecting the current residents while doing so, so they can be the ones who benefit. I just don't think single family homes does either.
Not only USA, I've heard of similar ambitious projects in European countries like Belgium.
Even my hometown in spain recently downgraded one of our main avenues from 3+3 traffic lanes to 1+1, turning the remaining ones into bus lanes, bike lanes and wider sidewalks. The age of urban motorways might have come to an end?
@@donnerwetter1905 Let's go back to horses! That would be even better.
@@saranciuc7717 yeah i forgot that bikes shit all over the road my bad
@@donnerwetter1905 Only making space for cars and building cities around the use of them was a bad idea. I'm not sure completely removing them is a great idea either though. It's maybe something worth striving for, but not by forcing it. I'd take the approach of making public transport so fast and good that people want to use it instead of a car.
While I barely use a car during the week, I do have to travel to other places about 100km away so see family and friends. Doing so by public transport takes at least twice as long, if not more. I also have to deal with trains and busses that don't come on time and they might be packed.
If instead we can have high speed rail connecting all cities above let's say 100k, it would be faster to use that instead. That way you naturally end up with less cars on the road. You can make roads with fewer lanes, replace traffic lights by roundabouts and make more space for people instead of cars. For the few trips that are better to do by car, you can leave a small amount of infrastructure in place, which you'll anyway need since you'll have to account for the increase in delivery vehicles on the road.
@@dominikjakaj1999 That way you connect better with nature.
Idk about that. I think it makes ton of sense in situations like this where the highway is underutilized and the community needs fresh redevelopment. Rochester’s growth predated interstate. Fastern growing regions that have exploded since the advent of highways in the sun belt could t afford to removed them.
Rochester (my hometown) has more problems than you can shake a stick at. The entire downtown core is economically dead and has been for 30 years. Even fast food packed up and left decades ago. Crime is outrageous. Many gorgeous old buildings were demolished in the 1960's, replaced with ugly modern office towers that now sit mostly empty. The economic decline of the past 50 years has been shocking and there is really no end in sight.
I've heard Rochester called a doughnut city because of this.
I have been alive to see it all happen. It really is a tragedy.
Not what it used to be.
Especially since the "affordable" housing on the old inner loop isn't actually affordable. Most of it appears to be sitting empty.
we will literally hit rock bottom within the next 10 years, i could see us becoming another gary indiana, just another ghost town in between a bustling brand new rebuilt buffalo with the bills new stadium and syracuse being good again all whilst we just fall into limbo with non stop crime and everyone trying to get out.
If you're worried about current residents getting priced out, you have to build more housing. A lot, not just the little you can get from single-family homes.
That said, props for tearing down the loop. A big step in the right direction regardless.
Agreed
Zoning laws make it difficult to build anything other than single family homes
Absoeffinlutely
The quality of your guys videos lately has been absolutely phenomenal. These are so much more than just construction videos. Real stories, struggles, and triumphs are being told in every video!
Thanks so much! It's really important to us that we explain the impact construction really has on all of our lives and the communities we live in. If people get that, then they'll take the industry more seriously. It's our goal to change how the world sees this sector! More on that here - www.theb1m.com/about
The videos have become less logistical and more political.
@@zarathustra7974 Exactly.
Affordable housing but they only want single family homes?? What a joke…
Its the classic liberal philosophy. They want affordable housing but no gentrification or redevelopment. Its why Democrat cities are rundown.
They claim to be for the poor but actively screw them and price them and their children out of their cities
It's what the local community seems to want, and they would know what they need more than us
@@KrisRyanStallardif they are asking for single family homes only then, they are also the problem. They have been fed the belief that only their own single family home with a lawn all their life while at the same time fed propaganda against anything else, so they don’t want it near them.
Cite an example of new yorkers "buying out your community". For all we know you just went on a rant about nothing...
@@KrisRyanStallardno, its what they claim people want. The fact is cities dont plan for affordable housing because it brings in crime, drugs, prostitution you name anything bad & those are their reasons. However if you dont provide affordable housing it makes people homeless which brings in even bigger problems. We knew all this 40 years ago but still nobody built affordable housing & these cities only have themselves to blame & they refuse to accept accountability for creating their homeless. It will simply grow.
Could you talk about any infrastructure in Australia if possible.
Nice
That Chinese are elite there and own all things yea we know NEXT!
@@dcorica79 nIcE
What the Bruce highway then what
Perth is going crazy with road upgrades. Probably to keep the economy going?
Whenever visiting the USA, (Seattle springs to mind first) I can't help but admire their road system, just amazing, I've thought. The highway teardown in the USA has really opened my eyes to a social & suburban problem which hadn't occurred to me in my previous 3 visits. Im from a wee country with a 'piddly arsed' road system who'd rather hold up traffic for half an hour at a time with workers repairing previous poor road workmanship instead of providing our nation with a decent road system. Love the quality of US highways and the efficiency they provide Americans and visitors alike. A joy to drive. Thanks for pointing out the negative impacts these highways have had on American society. Made me stop and think.
As a tourist I imagine these highways might be a joy to drive on, however, if you live here you begin to notice that they are far from a pleasant experience most of the time.
@@jacksonknoll5350it’s not a joy, you get stuck on them all the time
"The Big Dig" to bury Boston's elevated highway was to replace something that originally was built to cut off the dirty, working port area from the rest of the city. Now that same area is luxury hotels, expensive condos, and office buildings with a park over the underground highway. There was talk of "roofing over" the depressed highway that cuts Providence, RI in two, but I'm not sure what's become of that (really good) idea.
This was done with about half of Duluths highway that runs along the shore and it's made wonderful parkland.
The Big Dig is so underappreciated... but that won't solve the traffic until the commuter rail is renovated. So it was also a but half measure.
The big dig was a extremely reckless usage of funds. At the end of the day, it still served to inject cars right into the downtown, clogging the streets and choking the air
@@gfasterOS As Thomas said, the cost overruns and the poor quality of work do not suggest that the center of Boston is not significantly more pleasant and healthy now than it was before.
SeaTac did the same thing Before 2019 Alaska Way and Interstate 5 and part of Interstate 90 where above ground viaducts. After the Seattle Earthquake the mayor ordered them torn down. Interstate 90 and Interstate 5 were done first then Alaska Way was torn down now SeaTac has a new waterfront and they have better access to the ferry docks, Fisherman's Warf, and the Pikes Place Fish Market.
Surprised you didn't bring up Boston's Big Dig Project. It took a highway overpass that divided the city into an underground tunnel. Above it is now a Greenway (parks) that makes the city much more connected and pedestrian friendly.
They just put the highway in the ground, that is only 3 lanes each way, but den again every city’s situation differs
…At a cost of $20-billion.
Something that local citizens never would have approved had they not been lied to & told the cost was much less. That is the trickery advocates for major projects use just to get these projects started. They assume the public will pay the billions more rather than throw away what has been done.
Was gonna say the same plus tunnels are less prone constant weather effects plus the salt thrown at winter
.. Which is why I can’t understand why the fully-underground completion of the 710 freeway is so summarily rejected
Reminder that a lot of these cities also buried their natural waterways (rivers/streams) in underground tunnels, hopefully we see most of those coming back as well.
#daylighting 👏
@@Raven_The_Huntress that's exactly what India needs to protect and keep its rivers unpolluted.
@@pietrojenkins6901 Trust me it’s better to have the water ways above ground, and have blissful walks along side it than have it covered in concrete. Even if the water is pollute it’s still worth keeping above ground so that people may enjoy it.
Now that comment and observation, I can agree with.
@@Raven_The_Huntress That happened to London too. I saw a documentary a few years ago about a secret underground river nobody knew about until architect's were building a new skyscraper or something. Its mental.
Another example is Albany, New York. It was first settled in 1614 after Henry Hudson sailed up the river later named after him, where the Dutch claimed it and constructed Fort Nassau (which was eventually rebuilt due to a flood as Fort Orange). Access to that river was completely destroyed in the sixties by a highway system so complex, it was used in the movie Salt. Neighborhoods were destroyed for the highway and the state office complex. There's now a project that looks into replacing the highways with a boulevard, which will result in the same amount of acreage that was destroyed for the state office complex to be used for residential development, including low-income and mixed-use housing, and most importantly, once again provide access to the river for all to enjoy.
Based Albany
Thank you Kim Jong Un very cool
Courtesy of Nelson Rockefeller
Great
Hey! Milwaukee did that too! Now the whole strip is becoming dense residential/commercial infill. The Milwaukee Bucks have built Fiserv Forum and the Deer District on the west side of the river and the west side is filling in with a dense walkable neighborhood. Hard to replace what was lost but putting our cultural amenities in the space seems like a logical bridge between communities.
Why is this not recommended as a comment all the others are dooming it is becoming single family
...where the "Park Freeway was.
There is currently a movement to tear down east I-794 that cuts through the south end of downtown to the lakefront. and repurpose the land for mixed commercial, high multi storey residential. and community development.
Sadly the rest of 794 will remain, which cuts through Bayview and my old neighbourhood of St Francis, resulting the removal of several classic wooden bridges over of the rail line the highway parallels and creating more of a noise nuisance than the freight occasional trains that pass through. The really silly part is it peters out east of Mitchell Airport at S Pennsylvania and E Edgerton turning the former from a side/backstreet into a 4 lane "!stroad". Progress I guess.
Birmingham, UK, removed their inner ring road (like the inner loop) at the turn of the century. The change has helped to spread development out of the city centre, but the main problem is that the local and regional authorities haven't invested in the sustainable transport network or provided green spaces, meaning the mode shift benefits were never realised there. Hopefully other cities don't forget to also invest in sustainable transport as well as just removing stuff!
The US seems to love their buses, but doesn’t want to invest into Bus Rapid Transit or make Park and Rides a wash for bikes. Both of these would improve the system.
Birmingham is a lost cause
@@Kylirr true
B'ham UK is a disaster in deveopment, a souless city centre and 60s concrete nightmare. Horrible place. It started a few years before they concreted over the New Street Railway station, which itself looked like crap before recent redevelopment. It's hard to find an Englishman in B'ham, and that is the problem.
@@29brendus to be fair most cities in the uk are 60s and 70s concrete monstrosities and could do with being rebuilt with actual looks and not just the cheap option
Source: i'm british
7:40
I am so glad other people are pointing this out in the comments. Single Family Zoning and SFH-Only development will exacerbate the problem. Mandatory low density zoning and development, as well as many other regressive land use policies, are THE cause of housing shortages, skyrocketing rents, prices, displacement, etc. To only build those kinds of low density housing and nothing else is extremely foolish and misguided. Not to mention, those "megablock" developments are actually a good thing. Those apartments actually contain a ton of affordable and low income housing units. If anything, you should be supportive of those buildings!
I saw a video on 5 on 1 building which actually is the cheapest way to build houses in the US.
Singaporean HDB style is also a good idea, not fully car dependant but you get nice greenery and community spaces.
@@fridgemagnet9831 Yup, bingo. Although I am not the biggest fan of the "Towers in the Park" method of urban development, Singapore style density is still pretty good. Although I'm more of a fan of the Tokyo model of urban density and zoning.
It will be hard to keep the SJW's (social justice warriors) in check. They need to be heard but decisions made from an ideological standpoint are rarely the best choices.
Yep, they are all gonna get up by zillow and other rich folks, price hiked up and these POC residents they were supposed to protect are going to get pushed out of the center
@@chapter4travels But when their ideology is as twisted as theirs, they don't need to be heard. Unfortunately they will be.
As someone going for a masters in Urban and Regional Planning this fall, This is actually something that warms my heart, as this is something that I actually want to implement myself. Also, I wonder if in tearing down the old highway connections, we could use parts of this space to begin metro hubs, to help connect communities even more, and further improve the transit of each city, reducing the traffic even more. Easing the stress on the roads which might still be heavily used otherwise.
public transit doesnt work
@@gregoryeverson741 ask California how practical and affordable public transportation is especially commuter trains.
Why would it be different anywhere else?
@@gregoryeverson741 Japan: Am I a joke to you?
@@gregoryeverson741 Europe and East Asia: am I a joke to you?
Interstates are great for connecting cities, and transporting goods, but they are not good for actual cities and it's residents. Ideally you will have an interstate to a city which in the city will turn into a avenue or boulevard. You can always build bypasses for those driving through that bypasses the city as a whole.
I disagree, Interstate should end at the city or go around it. Alternatively, the city should have overpasses allowing the highway to go underneath the city. See Isabelle Ave, Livermore CA it’s part of Highway 84 and lets bikes share the road and ride in a bike gutter while the speed limit is 55 mph
@@KRYMauL That's what he said. End the freeway and convert it into main boulevard at the city outskirts.
Overpasses still have the issue of loss of land from building a trench. It would be better to tunnel instead, but it's verry expensive and you still want to refrain from building exits/entrances within the city itself.
@@taoliu3949 I've driven the freeway tunnels in Sydney. They seem to do a good job at providing high speed automobile access into and out of the city, and providing local city street access too while keeping neighborhoods/districts intact.
@@FreewayBrent The reason you don't want to have exits/entrances within the city is because it dumps all the traffic into the city in a single location. That is what causes congestion. It's better to keep the exit/entrances on the outskirts so that the traffic can be dispersed and absorbed by the street grid.
I have heard that Eisenhower thought of interstates going around cities so military convoys wouldn't be in traffic jams
Not-so-fun-fact: most of the money that was allocated for the _interstate_ highway system was actually spent building highways _inside_ cities.
In reply to @McMicGera: Indeed the price/mile for building inside cities is naturally higher, but the pitch for the FHA-Act of '56 was Inter-State connections with an emphasis on national defense destinations.
Transportation infrastructure (e.g. rail and paved streets) inside cities already satisfied urban national defense and connectivity worries, it was the rural unstandardized gravel and dirt roads that were the primary problem.
The reason a majority of funding was spent inside cities was the lobbying done by the National Highways User Conference (a consortium of auto, oil, rubber industries led by General Motors).
This lobbying was so successful that the GM corporation got prominent government positions in the Eisenhower administration and received significant influence over the Interstate project.
The goal of NHUC and GM was making the downtowns of cities easily accessible by their cars, as well as the continued (industry led) normalization of roads and streets being places only for cars, the association of cars with patriotism, and eventually widespread auto-dependency.
Well, that is somehow logical, because you have to by the valuable land in cities and tear down houses, build bridges and tunnels and so on which makes it more expensive than building on the green field.
Boondoggle ,how did your local politicians do . Chicago thew Minneapolis st Paul...I got a lush transportation system ,
@@McMicGera Indeed the price/mile for building inside cities is naturally higher, but the pitch for the FHA-Act of '56 was _Inter-State_ connections with an emphasis on national defense destinations. Transportation infrastructure (e.g. rail and paved streets) inside cities already satisfied urban national defense and connectivity worries, it was the rural unstandardized gravel and dirt roads that were the primary problem. The reason a majority of funding was spent inside cities was the lobbying done by the National Highways User Conference (a consortium of auto, oil, rubber industries led by General Motors). This lobbying was so successful that the GM corporation got prominent government positions in the Eisenhower administration and received significant influence over the Interstate project. The goal of NHUC and GM was making the downtowns of cities easily accessible by their cars, as well as the continued (industry led) normalization of roads and streets being places only for cars, the association of cars with patriotism, and eventually widespread auto-dependency.
@@tomgucwa7319 First off, boondoggle is a hilarious word, I love it. Second, I live in Milwaukee, which due to the highways: has suffered dramatic decline in population, city-based manufacturing jobs, and municipal revenue; we got i-794 (despite local opposition and i43/i94 being about a mile away) which cuts the downtown area in half thanks to whiney suburbanites (some whom don't even live inside city limits); we lost our electric rail connection to Chicago and our streetcar/tram/trolley network which we now have to rebuild; oh, and like pretty much every other US city, we've got widespread auto-dependency. At least city officials want to do the right thing now, but a lot was lost and the city doesn't have much funds to try and fix it (due to suburbanization, city limits being fixed, state laws restricting the city, etc.)
Actually I skimmed through a journal that said cities wanted interstates. The association of municipal something felt that not including cities would leave them behind and had a lot of political clout to withhold support if they didn't get their way.
I grew up in Rochester, NY and the Inner Loop really did separate so many neighborhoods from downtown. I drove on the Inner Loop several times a day and I can say I am happy to see it being re-imagined.
I know what you mean. And i have to cross a fricken road to check my mailbox its annoying
In NYC, they started to take down The West Side Highway, an elevated highway, almost 30 years ago. Today the area is more open to light and pedestrians. IMO, it worked out well.
Same with San Francisco when the 480 was torn down after the Loma Prieto Earthquake in 1989. Today, you'd never know there was a freeway in front of the SF Ferry Building.
These are super interesting! I'm glad that America is finally making roads and infrastructure better. We need highways and car-oriented things, but there still has to be the walkability and beauty within cities and suburbs alike. There has to be a good medium to blend both together easier, keeping things efficient while nice.
Do you realize that this video is one sided and doesn't have opposing views?
Higher density would create more demand, thus pushing rents up for local residents. They are hurting the community they want to help, by making it unaffordable.
When people (or developers) realise they can build 50 units instead of 10 on the same lot, that lot's price will go wayyy up.
@@FirstLast-qy7hf Without zoning, it would be possible to build very tall skyscrapers to fill in the demand.
@@stanzhang3187 isn't that what Manhattan did ! look where we are right now.
@@FirstLast-qy7hf as opposed to lower density and unaffordable 👍🏽
@@FirstLast-qy7hf Manhattan is on an island and has nowhere to go but up. The type of mid density urban mixed use development needed in most American cities would not look remotely the same as Manhattan. Thankfully in my city, (Oklahoma City) the open lots in and near downtown are being redeveloped into such mixed use mid density neighborhoods. There is a huge demand for walkable mixed use cities in the US and it's now starting to become reality in places such as Austin, Phoenix, Atlanta, and many cites across the country.
9:13 motorist has a clever way of saying hello to the camera
why on earth would you want to build single family houses in downtown???
continue that trend and you will need that highway back in 5 years or so...
It's the American culture pack, they are well known for the endless rows of suburbs
Stop and think about it. And keep it mind that it's ROCHESTER, not HONG KONG.
0:10 I can’t believe how much Atlanta change
Just built ring road around the cities and town, scale down highways inside the ring, leave rural highways be.
Problem is bad city planing, not bad highway venture.
Still would be lots of destruction. Build a bunch of rail lines, then shut down, then shut down or make toll roads out of existing highways.
@@QuarioQuario54321 I forgot you don't have those, better trains are a given, but don't be ridiculous, outside the cities highways are necessary for survival, if you want cars to be less predominant do it European way - make 60% of gas prices a bunch of taxes.
American Cities are built backwards, instead of industry being on the outskirts, along ring road it goes through the middle of city along the highway and in the old town "sO eVeRyoNe hAs tHe sAmE dIsTanCe tO iT" that's another thing you would have to social engineere.
I'm Poland, we were late to the party so our highway system is newest in Europe, most technologically advanced and unfortunately most expensive, and in opposition to for example Belgium it's not made retarded due to ideology - anti car extremism is not the an answer to too much cars
@@10hawell well it was actually lobbying and administration, department and Bureaus of highways as city planners don't build or commission highways, and as those highway departments only tool is roads, as the old adadge goes : when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I encourage to do more research on the introduction of highways and their real purpose. Their dysfunction is not at all due to bad city planning. Highways need to go and trains need to be in our future. For both the environment and consumer.
I believe that's the plan. Rural highways don't harm much.
I went to RIT, and saw the impact the removal of the Inner Loop had firsthand and its awesome to see B1M cover this.
Surely this should be a golden opportunity for these cites to build subway systems!
If we’re talking about how expensive highways are, you don’t want to know about subways. Population density in nearly all cities in America makes subways unlikely
Rochester had a subway......we removed it too 🤦♂️
Rochester already tried that once
Rochester had a subway system from 1927 to 1956. Not enough people rode it to support it financially through fares and that was before the two- and three- and four-car household. If they build a new one, not enough people will ride it to support it financially through fares.
@@TheJttv Looking like Rochester want to kill the city centre, is it building new orbiting centres hubs for the populous to move to?
I love the timing of this video. I just started watching NotJustBikes a couple months ago, so I've been getting a better understanding of car dependency in the U.S., and what moves are being made to reclaim our streets, and news has been slowly coming out bit by bit. It's great to see examples of what works, and hear ideas of what else we can do. Thanks for making this!
No car means Time table dependency.
@@DrJams we cant have a city fully without cars. We need to be half way 50/50 or even 70/30.
@@DrJams Well-planned public transport runs so often that there's no time table dependency there either!
@@DrJams things in a walkable distance = time table dependency? not having to use your car for every. single. thing in life is time table dependency?
@@AnymMusic also needing a place to park that car
Something I didn't see mentioned in the video is that Rochester is a city whose population has declined over the past fifty years. So it makes sense to repurpose a road that is no longer being used.
What doesn't make sense is devaluing people's houses by trying to merge neighborhoods. People who cared for years, invested time and money into keeping the neighborhood nice and clean.
Kodak/Eastman's collapse wasn't even mentioned!
Seems like a good plan to revitalise the city!
@@TermlessHGW is living by poor/black people really worse than a highway. I mean not even racist like living next to highways right.
@@TermlessHGW quite a long explanation of stating that they're just plain racist. Hahaha.
Even in Malaysia, we have a lot of highways (and stacked highways) and tolls.
It's only going to get worse as the city is only getting more reliant on cars.
Live in Tangerang, Indonesia and I can confirm this statement. A lot of SouthEast Asian country are very motorcycle dependant.
But high density and public transportation (thus not being overly dependent on motorcycle infrastructure) are not mutually exclusive. Your countries might not be the greatest fans of Japan (and for some pretty good reasons, I have to admit), but in this regard they could really take a page out of the Japanese book. They know how to do public transportation and disincentivize driving.
@@malvinolimit can attest. Here in the Philippines, they're planning to build more elevated highways around the country, especially in and around Manila.
Although I am glad we're also rebuilding our entire railway system from scratch. Plus we got new trains from Indonesia and Japan.
At least you guys have tolls. Here in America toll roads are rare, which basically means we not only have made things car reliant, we are completely subsidizing cars.
@Jimmy Exactly, you need to pay to use the road. Just as one pays to use mass transit. Those roads dont pay for themselves. Cities go bankrupt over them. Unless you prefer gas taxes(which may or may not actually go towards maintenance of the roads), pick one.
Good stuff B1M! My two cents is YT's channel "Not Just Bikes" as a template type for thoughtful ideas in urban redevelopment for improved city connectivity and livability.
YES NJB IS AMAZING!
Haha had to scroll too far down to find this comment. This should be the top comment in my opinion!
one of the best channels on YT
ye NJB is a good youtuber
The Government is starting a massive project in Detroit with the demolition of I375 and returning it back to a large Boulevard. Which I believe is the largest of their undertakings with this to date.
Unfortunately it only opens up the eastside of Downtown to the rest of the city that was cut off..
It’s just too bad we have Interstates and expressways cutting off the westside of Downtown and the north side as well.
Loving these more reflective looks and looking at the bigger picture rather than just a limited look at this big building
Hats off as always. As an American who has a pretty above average understanding of the Highway and its overall impact, I learned so much about the current state and future state of a major piece of american society and economy.From across the pond you hit the hammer on how race is deeply rooted in american government and how resolving these issues are very complex and there is no blueprint. Our toxic govt acts as if we are dumb and is incompentant. Cnat wait to share this knowledge randomluy with my friends and fam. Ive said it for at least 2 years now, B1M is top 5 channel
Hello fellow REAL HUMAN. It's nice to see so many comments reinforcing just how credible this channel is. I believe every comment, let's delete all the negative ones! Only room for agreeing here! :)
From colourful shirt guy: having a highway there segregated neighbourhoods - Bad. Having no highways now and making the area better raises property values and price some out - Bad.
Yep. Some people complain about everything. It’s part of their agenda and helps them line their pockets.
If they own the house I don't really see a reason for those communities to be affected much. The rents will go up but that's just how development and economics go together.
The city at 9:50 (Portland, Oregon) was the first city in the US to tear down an existing highway. We did it in the 1970's and removed Harbor Drive.
I live in Rochester, and my last apartment was a block from the Inner Loop East project. What is important to understand about Rochester is the density curve we see as you move out from the city center. It falls off a cliff, I've been to a lot of cities and I've never seen anything quite like it. Having single family homes in that area really would not seem out of place with how the city functions. When the gentleman talks about the property value discrepancy, it's really quite astounding in parts of the city. Where I currently live is all single family homes in the city proper, and during the pandemic property value growth hit Top 5 in the US. Yet I could also drive 5 minutes to see the manufactured economic hardship due to the inner loop.
Rochester has always had great architecture for homes. East Ave and Park Ave are largely ornate homes converted into apartments. So our mid-density stuff already looks like Victorian and gothic homes. An aesthetic I personally hugely prefer over what's gone in with the first inner loop project.
Rochester is a city of suburbs if that makes any sense lol. It has been unfortunately shaped by white flight. Even the city proper resembles a suburb in many spots.
Happy to answer any questions lol
That unfortunately sounds like Houston TX.
What do you think would help bring the city/town back to life?
@@vintagejaki751 I actually would say Rochester is quite active for a city of its size, it just doesn’t really take place downtown, the inner loop basically turned downtown into an island where people only go for work during the week
The video said the community wanted single family housing as opposed to the larger apartment complexes…. From what you added I think they possibly want something aesthetically pleasing, more than anything. There are videos explaining why new buildings are forced to look like that (a la regulations) but I suspect your city would see the value the combo of mixed use buildings if it wasn’t such an eye sore.
Great to see a city moving forward on this but I am skeptical that this is done in most situations.
When an idea goes from $25 billion suggested to $1 billion appropriated, that says a lot.
America ad a whole dimply doesn’t value public goods and public space.
15b to 1 billion was stated.
To tell the truth Rochester is unique in that its core industry and employers are defunct.
This is a community that has seen huge change in the past couple of decades, and these changes to it's infrastructure are incredibly promising.
@@jimurrata6785 yes, I intended to state $15 billion but keying error.
These videos are great for our architecture studio given the fact we are working on a train transport hub system connecting cities together. Appreciate the quality and up to date information. Helps us a lot and gives us ideas and perspectives to think about that are current in our society. Look forward to more like this one.
I disagree, at least with this particular video. I see America investing in waste as long as THIS Biden administration is involved. This money wasted, will bring in many more homeless and probably the final curtain of America. Idiots are running the zoo and failure will soon follow. Many American cities don’t have mass transit train hubs. This is another case where government planning and spending are wasted time and money.
Railways: We're the backbone of this country!
Highways: You know the rules, and so do I-
Cities: Tear down highways for positive development
Railways, with a reverse UNO card: *SAY GOODBYE!*
Saddest part is as those highways in the 60s sliced through neighborhoods, they took the historic identities of these places with them. I know car drivers may be mad about this, but they should be on board regarding new urban development with transit when you think about it this way. More people who take transit, the less cars on the road. Isn't no traffic a good thing?
Nah the problem is we need to have population caps for cities, and start shrinking cities
@@Brain_With_Limbs oh, so my crime is for being a human, and now I’m getting the death sentence.
This guy has never been to Texas!! Freeways are alive in well in Texas and getting more epic!
Would love to see you analyse what Seattle did in tearing down the Alaskan Way Viaduct. Traffic diverted into tunnels but still a big roadway where the Alaskan Way was, I think? Seems a missed opportunity to open up pedestrian access between the waterfront and the city.
It does seem like it might be a little bit too wide to attract the pedestrian counts that city officials are hoping for. Only time will tell though. Still, the waterfront already looks a heck of a lot better without the Alaskan Way Viaduct, although I do miss driving it for the awesome views it afforded.
Massive roadway is still there, keeping people from accessing the waterfront at a prime location
Pedestrian access to be accosted by junkies and step over feces. Sign me up.
The US highway system actually began in the early 20th Century. It is the Interstate Highway system that began in the 1950s.
I live in the area and can tell you that the “south side” inner loop deletion saw great success because the area is still decent, night life is good, there’s lot of college age people there and so on. Trust me, the city knows this and wanted to show people that it works so they picked the only area where it would work to showcase it and lay groundwork for the rest of the project. The remaining parts of the inner loop are located in areas where the opposite is true, areas where crime is rampant and sirens never stop whaling. I think they’ll approve the plan and then have to build all subsidized housing (apartments) to make it work because no developer will do it any other way which will in turn balloon the cost of the project as a whole.
Single family homes instead of dense mixed use buildings sounds illogical to be honest if you want to affordable homes.
0:35 that's Long Beach, California. The highlighted road is not a freeway, but a street called Ocean Blvd. In the old days, the ocean went up to that street until land was built out and a breakwater was constructed.
Seeing The 980 in Oakland CA at 0:33 brought me back to when I used to live right next to it. It was so obvious that there was a racial/class divide between West Oakland and the Uptown/Downtown area, you could literally feel the vibe changing when you moved from one side to the other. Very intentional and a rather useless highway.
The traffic probably turned shitty and added more time to people's commute.
I'm from Rochester and the downtown is completely dead even after they took out the inner loop
To fix that they will have to be way more improvement
I really like to see this shift happening in America.
I am born and raised in the Netherlands so cycling, walking, and public transport is what i use 90% of the time. But what is happening in this video is also what we here in the Netherlands have been doing years ago, it brought is good, and it brought as better roads to drive the car on as well.
But since i have been watching the channel “not just bikes” a lot i cam to understand how the American infrastructure works.
And what the enviromental impact of it is.
Imagine doing this in a lot more city’s and then see what this will do for the enviroment.
#goforit
This is absolutely one ofc the things I appreciate about Amsterdam
It works in Europe, but America is a completely different story, a great percent of the population lives in the suburbs and won't go to work riding a bike, they still are going to use cars and there will be large traffic jams.
@@tinchoo182 It works in US cities, not outside the cities, Chicago, NY, DC, Boston, Seattle all did it and it works there, everyone else needs to catch up
The Netherlands is a very small country with the majority of the people living in one city. I would like to bike around cities in the US but this place is way too big and the cities and suburbs are vastly spread to successfully do this in parts of the country. Over 70% of Canadians live in within Ontario/Quebec so maybe it could work in Canada but the US is just massive.
@@darreldennis7115 Thank you, one of the things people tend to fail to see the differences between Europe and North America is primarily Geography, US itself is already a behemoth overlayed on top of Europe if you remove Russia, going from LA-NY is similar to London to Tel Aviv in Israel, plus European countries are far more dense and relatively much closer making it easier for them to connect the to the next city with things like High speed rails and other transit methods, the same thing can't be said about North America in general.
It's too large/too sprawled out and lower in population and demand. No sane person will want to come from Toronto to go to Vancouver by "train" or Seattle to Miami, it's simply too long, places like the NorthEast and West Coast in LA can actually see more transit connections however
Suburbs can however see the removal of high ways and 3-4 lane roads for 1-2 lane roads with sidewalks and bike paths, but even that will hardly work out because of just how big and spread out their places really are
San Francisco has been quite successful at tearing down inner-city elevated highways and redeveloping as boulevards, with increased public transit, cycling, and pedestrian areas, etcetera. It's good to see Rochester's and other cities progress, too.
They were successful in tearing down highways. They've also made traffic 10x worse in the process. A terrible commute does increase housing prices locally, so I guess that's a win for people who own their houses.
San Francisco hasn't been successful at anything. Compare 1970s San Francisco to today and it's a different world. A much poorer and nasty one.
It is also first in the country by ammoint of human feces and needles in the public places. Great achievement
@@djinn666 Traffic got worse in San Francisco because the population exploded, reaching levels not seen since the 1940s, and with people who were using San Francisco as a bedroom community for jobs down on the peninsula. The tear down of the hideous elevated freeways - many of which collapsed in the ‘89 earthquake - had nothing to do with that. Indeed, removing them has revitalized every neighborhood they were removed from and opened up tons of land for housing and business where land is in short supply.
@@sunspot42 Traffic did get worse where the Central Freeway was removed because they removed one lane on Octavia Blvd. The neighborhood in the immediate area improved, but the neighborhoods that the freeway fed into were adversely affected.
One of your best videos yet, keep up the fantastic work!
Thank you so much!! 🙌
Another related project is the tearing down of the waterfront highway here in Seattle. An amazing improvement to the area.
You didn't mention they built a tunnel to replace that road. Some of these projects have nothing to replace them with.
Exactly the tunnel that replaced the above ground expressway was built at an extraordinary price which any city would have difficulty funding. In Seattle its now a toll highway. You cant just tear down a highway and expect the cars to simply ho away.
So my question is, the chap with the flowery shirt was complaining I quest that the new housing was going to be to expensive because it was near the expensive housing, firstly would the people in the cheap houses prefer their house values to go up or down? Secondly would the people in the expensive houses prefer their houses keep their value or go down? I could guess the answers to both. His answer seems to be to drag the value of housing down to the lowest common denominator and in doing so make slums
That's not quite true. Something that will be a guarantee is that the value of the currently cheap housing will rise. This will occur because these houses will now be more easily able to access the services and benefit from the proximity to the centre of town, whereas before they were cut off by a highway - sure you could always drive, but now they will be opening up walking and cycling, and likely more pleasant driving as well.
Now as for whether the expensive housing will retain its current value, that's harder to guarantee, but the real question is why would it lose value? I don't know about Rochester specifically, I'm not even American, but if it's a poor neighbourhood then that doesn't inherently reduce nearby housing values. If it's a high crime area, then yeah becoming closer in proximity might have an effect, but it's hard to say without knowing more specifics of the area.
So overall, it's highly likely (in my opinion, without specific research at least) that the value of the cheap housing will rise significantly, and the overall quality of the neighbourhood will improve, and this may be accompanied by a minor drop in the expensive housing value, but it also will likely rebound eventually anyway in our world of forever rising house prices.
The next problem these guys might face is the poorer community members getting priced out of their own neighbourhood - but that's a different problem.
Shawn Dunwoody is pretty well known in the community and has a lot more to say than what could fit in this video. He is in it for the right reasons.
That's another problem in the USA: You change your houses like others their underwear. In Europe a house is meant as a family home for generations (even the new built ones), not an investment that is bought and sold like stock. It is anyway surprising that houses are so expensive at all in the USA, where land is abundant and also ruthlessly designated as building land and the houses themselves are made of plywood and papier mache ...
@@hape3862 for houses location matters, especially in how the US designed their cities. all the land in the world is expensive to deliver services on so density matters
@@itsjonny1744 Tell that the officials in your sprawling cities with their zoning laws … 😜
Nice video.
The video came out 4 mins ago and is 10:47 mins long and you've already watched the entire video to know its a nice video? Lmao my gosh!!
@@youngmicrowave127 He commented whilst watching the video
@@youngmicrowave127 Normally I would now changing it to First, but I already get a heart.
If you remove the highway dividing a rich neighborhood and a poor neighborhood, the poor neighborhood is not suddenly going to become rich. The complete opposite will happen.
SHHH. Quit talking sense...
In Maastricht, The Netherlands, there was also a highway (A2) cutting directly trough the city. A few years ago they tunnelled the highway and created a long walkway / park and more trees in is place.
Not mentioned in this story, but also very significant in destroying city centers in the middle of the 20th century was the Urban Renewal project. The federal government provided huge amounts of money for cities to identify "blighted areas" which were then completely bulldozed after all privately-owned land had been taken by condemnation. In a great many places, Urban Renewal and freeway construction happened concurrently to the same tracts of land, wiping out absolutely everything.
And given it was still the era of Jim Crow, it was also 'oh so convenient' that most of those 'blight areas' were communities and neighbourhoods where the majority of residents were 'minorities'- in other words, they were black neighbourhoods.
First cycling in Oulu (and other cities) and now this. I'm so glad you've created such important and needed content which starts a discussion about irresponsible and irrational infrastructure investments in a completely different audience.
We all love huge projects but if they aren't thoughtful of scarce resources and inclusive to entire society, what's the point?
@@Phisherman86 I'm not talking about people of color. I'm not even from the USA.
@@Phisherman86 they didn't say anything about black people! Only you did, which says alot about you!
Sooooo they kind of want to tear down a highway but then build single family homes and no public transportation, It would be a perfect site for a lightrail, still better than nothing but americans need to understand that the problem is the lack of High density living
You, Mr. Narrator, have a terrific voice, accent and clarity of speech. Thank you.
We don’t need more highways or less highways, we need more high speed rail and better public transportation
How cool USA would look with trains that go 300 to 400 kph 🙂
If we are forced to buy electric cars by Government these cars cannot go on long road trips. And since getting the car charged is so hard with rolling black outs why would you need more highways anyway?
@@rachelnorthweather9365 how shit is your electrical grid that you have rolling blackouts im an electrician in canada and ive never even heard of it happening here unless your in the far north
@@duskodragic649 Florida has a high speed rail! Nicest in the US!
@@rachelnorthweather9365 That's not true in the slightest.
Pushing people out of their cars into no alternative isn't solving a problem, it's a start, but it's only addressing a symptom of inefficient American city/transport planning. Establish alternative public transport options THEN cut back on the car, otherwise this movement will fail as quickly as it began.
No kidding. Too many lemmings (i.e. urbanists, advocates, etc) follow the "it's so easy to remove a freeway" mentality without considering how it truly affects people. Too many idiots just say "ride a bike!", "take the bus!" without realizing they aren't able to, it takes hours longer, etc and other non-viable alternatives.
I bet that is why the infrastructure bill shrank because of these idiots spouting their ideology without seeing how it affects people not like them.
My neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY has this issue. The highway goes right through it and it is a major disconnect. There was a proposal a few years back to cover just a section of it to create a green park but there has been no word as to whether it will ever happen. The main issue (other than the disconnect) is the poor air quality from the vehicles.
Someday they will tear down the BQE, and a million residents will be able to breathe a sigh of relief.
This is really interesting material. I appreciate the effort you put into providing it. Many thanks!
Robert Moses did a number in NYC, good and bad affects from his planning.
I'm torn because there are a lot of dumb roads that should be repurposed but there are also a lot of dumb people who think every highway should be repurposed.
For real. Lots of highways do a good job at transporting vehicles. Larger spread out cities like Houston, Texas, highway removal is not an option
Unfortunately most of these dumb people are in positions of power.
Couldn't have said it better myself. There needs to be a balance.
@@HipHopIsLifee Houston is an extreme example and almost a lost cause; it is one of the least pedestrian friendly cities created. While highways might not be removed I can still see them reduced/repurposed over time, but the majority of people willingly living in Houston will likely shut it down anyway and so it's doomed to be for cars only.
what is my arguement for this:
A. Trains will do a better job if we build them correctly
B. All the vehicles getting transport are mostly unneccary
C. If we had a more vast network of Alternatives (like trains, trams & buses) then we could live without any cars
Hi everybody! What an excellent source of information to learn from about this topic! Due to the fact I'm a native New Yorker, this city needs a full gut renovation on the aging interstate system. I hope I be around to witnessed the completion, but I'll see what the future holds. Good luck to everybody out there to accomplish such a big task!
They started fixing the Utica region as well
I recommend anyone passing by reading this to look into a concept called “super blocks”. Cities like Barcelona have tried this out and it’s proven to be better for overall mental health, walkability, and the environment
It's no accident that 2 major cities in upstate NY are looking to tackle these issues with real gusto, the population of upstate NY's major urban areas Rochester, Syracuse & Buffalo have been steadily falling for a few decades now and the latest Census only confirmed that, if anything, that trend is intensifying, amongst *all* communities. As much as anything else, the lure of very mild Winters further south is holding less and less folks back from migrating. These cities have to do something to start making themselves more appealing places to live and I think they've looked at European models where cities with similarly severe Winters manage to hold on to their populations more successfully, perhaps in part by making those cities very amenable places to live and ones that don't rely on owning a vehicle.
I-80 was built right through the residental areas north of Downtown Des Moines, IA in the 1950's and 1960's. Neighborhoods such as Sherman Hill (full of historic 1880's Victorian Era architecture), were cut off from other similar areas, such as Drake and Evelyn Davis Park. It is not any better on the east side of the river, where the East Village is cut off from Capitol Park (also full of Queen Anne and Classical residential architecture).
Same in salt lake with the 80 and 15
Oh Pete, you killed South Bend. Great job
"the interstate system needs some modifications"
Americans : tear it down, tear it down
No one is tearing down the interstate system. People from outside the country don’t realize how big the US is and how much it costs to keep the infrastructure in good shape. It’s why road construction is a constant.
You see, intercity/interstate highways aren't a problem. For such a spread out nation they are a great and convenient way to get between these spread out locations. The issue is when these highways go through towns, or especially cities.
Between cities and allowing access to rural areas, highways are great! But within cities, they are neighborhood destroying, traffic generating, and destructive walls between neighborhoods.
You don't need highways. Just give tax breaks to companies that have fully Work From Home.
Walkable cities and mass transit is the future. We still need highways but they should not be the only or main way of transporting goods and/or travel.
Invest in co-housing communities as well.
It may have been better for rochester to develop a light rail or BRT along that corridor for year round use rather than bike lanes. Nobody bikes for half the year because it's too cold. Lake effect is in action from November to March.
Bike lanes make sense for denser developments in cities where you don't need to worry about snow (Houston, Dallas, LA, Miami, Atlanta, etc). Rochester gets several feet of snow every year.
Some PPL bike during winter
Oklahoma City has already torn down the old raised highway that ran just south of the city, too further south, and placed it back on the ground and in some places it is below the ground level to aid in noise abatement. As well adding more lanes to handle rush hours times. Also, with the big shift it open up many projects near the Canadian river. I've give it a solid A.
It was an ugly trestle and was always congested at rush hour and probably before and after Thunder basketball games (I have only been to 3 of those since they came here and I avoided the highway to get to them). As it got old, I didn't like taking it. I haven't seen the new I-40 get that congested.
An A just for putting a highway back on the ground? Seem like C- to me
Not only that, but it appears that the Expressway was diverted to a different route over part of it, with the original route turned into a city street of sorts.
7:40 Why would you support SINGLE family home ownership when there's a general housing shortage all over the country? I understand why few people would like a giant concrete block next door, I'm with you on this one, but there are lots of steps in between which provide more space for more people, which in the end should be economically and ecologically more reasonable ...
Many people don't get that it doesn't even have to be giant concrete blocks. It absolutely can be brickwork or brick-clad low-to-middle rise apartments with 3-4 stories. Americans take cutesy photos of these when on holiday in Europe but somehow forget that such development can be done back home too.
Great video. Also anyone catch the flipping bird b-roll at 9:14 😂
i appreciate the nuance needed is talked about, also in some cases, if the highway is removed - it will redirect traffic and people away from an area and allow that area to lay fallow and lose interest from development - think about how in certain areas of Florida when the rail line and original highways were redirected, small and vibrant rural towns basically disappeared - some towns that were highway stops as late as the 1940s have seen little serious interest since the opening of US-90 and then I-10 almost 75 years ago
I love the Interstate highway system but when they get into the city they look ugly. They're only beautiful out in the country in my opinion. We need high speed trains and better local trains inside the city.
I feel like we are right in the cusp of the future watching this. 10:18 sounds almost like an interlude of a sci fi movie in a way.
I grew up always hearing about Interstate Highways, traffic jams, and more. For them to redevelop and build mixed use roadways is a sign of the times. I think they should even use light rail too if they have enough to spend.
As cars, buses and trucks soon enough start to become autonomous as well, I wonder how all this is going to play out. The tearing down of old Highway infrastructure is also better for the environment, promoting more trees, bicycles and electric personal transportation such as E-Scooters.
But, I'm mostly for this. It looks better and prettier on the eye and is easier to repair into the future.
That guy is flipping at the camera at 9:14 Lmao
The way I see this is the city council or Government is not good with their spending so they sell part of this freeway section to developers to get a cash grab.
That is often the case, but sometimes it is the lesser evil if the government is close to bankruptcy or has other priorities.
A large part of this "Not good with their spending" thing is building car-centric infrastructure in the first place, though. Maintaining a highway costs an absolute fortune in the long term, and with cities that mostly consist of suburbs you will need a lot of highway per household to service the population. That is a huge expense compared to the tax income available to sustain it.
*Don't forget to mention the lobbying done by the automobile industry* Nice of tax payers to foot the bill for all this car focused infrastructure.
I don’t know if it was entirely about segregation but instead more about buying the cheaper properties to build the highway on.
They got property where the community did not have the power to protest the build, other proposed highways got reroute because high income/white areas would not allow it. This was done during the time redlining was still in effect
9:01 Politicians rarely keep their word. Never trust a politician
Nice video
Looking at it from Italy, Highways in the US are completely absurd. Here, we would never allow something as bonkers as a highway going inside a city. It's totally unacceptable. Highways (the name in Italian is "autostrada") always touch the external border of a city, where they connect with local highway loop around the city (the name in Italian is "tangenziale", meaning a road that is tangential to the city).
To me, it looks like that cars in the 50's were more important that people's life, and that created a distorted culture that still lives today. No wonder in the US there are no bullet trains, and public transport is ridicule. I don't want to be rude, but from an external point of view, the entire mass transportation system in the US is totally outdated, expensive, stressful, and entirely unhealthy.
it’s completely true and frustrating. the only public transportation where i live is the bus, and people would look at you weirdly if you told them you took it.
@@fl0pZ3 I lived in the US for 3 weeks, and I can understand this.
@@CATinBOOTS81 Well that's obvious from a European perspective. From an American perspective that's eyeroll worthy. It isn't like the US has a high density issue; the US is a massive country and thus it requires mass transportation to get from place to place. You can argue that bullet trains from big cities would be beneficial, or more public transportation -then I'd agree. But overall the need for mass transport via cars is the same.
Yeah you've pretty much summed it up
@@stephenjenkins7971 America very much has a high density issue. Have you ever looked at an aerial view of most American cities? There's almost always a small section of skyscrapers, then miles and miles of single family homes. That kind of development makes public transit less effective, it wastes hundreds of square miles of land, it makes people dependent on cars to get anywhere because everything is so far away, and it costs the city billions of dollars each year to maintain all that sprawling infrastructure. America's cities need medium and high density and mixed use development urgently. It's not legal to build it in most parts of the majority of cities, and building it would make cities more walkable, less sprawling, and better for public transportation. Also, America doesn't need just bullet trains, it needs any kind of trains. Only the northeast U.S has regular train service via Amtrak. The rest of the country has practically nothing, even in areas where it would make sense. Texas, for example, has several nearby cities that could use any kind of regular train service. If you make cities denser, and build good public transit and intercity train services, the need for cars would be extremely low. Sure, rural areas might still need cars, but the only reason American needs cars is because we built it to need cars.
The truth is they built them thru parts of cities that were the cheapest and easiest to get threw. If a highway had to go through a part of town that had rich white people on one side and poor white people on the other, they went through the poor white people's part. It was less about race than economics but of course everything these days has to be about race or some kind of "under represented people's" in order to get mainstream attention. We will all be better off when folks stop pushing divisive rhetoric and stop dredging up stuff from a time when none of us were alive. I understand the importance of knowing history so it will not repeat itself, but there is a point when I feel like people are either using it to get an emotional reaction for the reason of making money or some other disingenuous purposes. We have come a long way and we should also highlight the good as often as we do the bad.
Many of the designers were racist dude
@@darthmaul216 Where did Vader go to buy new shoes?
“Why America is tearing down its highways”
Me, a Houstonian: Ha!