Why Living Next to a Freeway Is Highly Questionable
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- Опубликовано: 21 янв 2025
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How bad is it to live next to a freeway? Let us count the ways.
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The fight to boulevardize I-94 in the Twin Cities isn't over yet! Learn how you can help:
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Previous CityNerd videos referenced:
CityVisit: Seattle/Northgate • How Seattle Is Becomin...
CityVisit: Atlanta. • The Atlanta Beltline: ...
CityVisit: Minneapolis • What the Twin Cities D...
CityVisit: Houston • You're Wrong About Hou...
CityVisit: Miami • Miami: Ultra-Livable P...
CityVisit: Phoenix • Phoenix: The Good, the...
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Resources:
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www.aqmd.gov/d...
"L.A. keeps building near freeways, even though living there makes people sick" by Tony Barboza and Jon Schleuss for the L.A. Times:www.latimes.co...
www.documentcl...
Askariyeh, M.H.; Venugopal, M.; Khreis, H.; Birt, A.; Zietsman, J. Near-Road Traffic-Related Air Pollution: Resuspended PM2.5 from Highways and Arterials. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 2851. doi.org/10.339...
Khan RK, Strand MA. Road dust and its effect on human health: a literature review. Epidemiol Health. 2018 Apr 10;40:e2018013. doi: 10.4178/epih.e2018013. PMID: 29642653; PMCID: PMC5968206.
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Great episode! One thing you did not talk about but I honestly have not heard this idea anywhere because I came up with it is using Moss to filter highway air next to residential. Even if we eliminated all the combustion engine vehicles, electric vehicles still would have tire pollution and a little bit but much less brake dust. These highways next to homes often have very tall walls and you could put a bunch of moss on there with water misting which would also help catch the pollution. What is needed is a mild stretch of a system like this as an experiment and measure the before and after pollution levels in the adjacent neighborhoods. I wonder also what the long-term mental health implications are because PM 2.5 also affects brain health.
Part of this is path dependency if u tore down an urban highways in european cities or pedestrianized the urban core. Generally they dont have urban highways and there is an abudance of high quality transit. The transit mode share LA is single digits so if u tried that in LA people would literally starve to death because they either couldnt get to work without a car or buy groceries without a car or more than likely both. Also robert moses suggests that pollution isnt and issue as long as long as the freeway is in poor black and brown areas.
They slapp warnings on computers now
Houston keeps building apartments WITH BALCONIES so close to the downtown freeways that you probably find road debris on your balcony.
Unfortunately, this kinda happens in San Diego too, apparently. I remember seeing a comment on another urban planning video (might have been on this channel, can’t remember) where the commenter mentioned that he came out onto his apartment balcony and found what appeared to be black dust everywhere on the floor.
Yes that one building at 45&59 kills me!! Stay warm on our historic second snow day ⛄️
@@Pundit07duh living next to freeway makes car go fast when will Reddit urbanists learn 😂
You are talk about HOUSTON, are you not? You aren't talking about Conroe or Katy or anywhere else in the same sense, right?
Or sometimes some old stuff even ends up hanging over the edge of a freeway. Lake the Castle Court area at the edge of Montrose.
There is so much movement in the public feeling about this stuff. More and more people recognize the dystopian hel*scape living spaces we have created and want a new direction... but then we fall right back (or we are dragged right back) into "we NEED more highway capacity, there is no other realistic option, so just one more lane".
The desire to create a better, safer, cleaner, healthier world leaving American's bodies when they see a poor person on the bus
sounds to me like that means there isn't or not nearly as much public sentiment for it as we'd like to believe, if that's the case
@@critiqueofthegothgf Not true at all, it is a matter of who has the money. Locally, there is a big highway expansion project starting and the public is overwhelmingly against it. Doesn't matter. The Texas DOT has billions and billions of dollars and are incented to spend it and have all the political power so can do whatever they want. And the justification is, indeed, there is simply no other "realistic" option except more cars.
I live in the Twin Cities and I'm so angered/annoyed they took the blvd option off the table. So dumb.
I am too but it’s not that simple of a solution I-94 is heavily used and MNDOT won’t let a widely used highway to be less efficient. But I wonder if we can make a compromise so that things at least get better. People live on that corridor and things definitely need to improve.
@sal-the-man why would it be less efficient? I don't buy that at all. Use the 494 and 694 corridors for traffic around the Cities and make the corridor between better for the people that actually live here.
@ bruh You really think people don’t use I-94? It’s a vital freeway between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul and everyone in between and around it use it. Me personally I don’t really use it as much cause I live north but people who live there use it 494 and 694 are way too far and won’t be used by those drivers. That highway is packed telling me “I don’t buy it” like how are we going to get things fixed if we propose something no one will agree to
@sal-the-man the thing is, people shouldn't have to use I-94 to get anywhere. there should be no highways that barrel through the core; so, you build out the beltways, create safer highway areas, and make the appropriate changes over time. you don't just destroy 94 and hope for the best. why imply that? you're missing the point, deliberately?
@ 100% this. Of course you'd still have uses for it but the highways and interstates should go AROUND the core not right through the damn middle. Then yes over time you make changes to 94 between the Cities with mass transit, better bike lanes...user friendly crosswalks...all the things. It would be awesome if that area was like that.
Ray, take a look at "The Hamilton" apartments in Houston. The I-45 lifted freeway ramp is less than 20 feet from their windows at some sections. I-45 is one of the busiest freeways in Houston. The apartments have balconies too, in case you want to relax a few feet away from high speed traffic. The air quality there must be atrocious!!
On the Manhattan side of the George Washington bridge there are a few highrises canalevered over the highway
I live 5-10 min there so I see it almost daily and every time I’m on 45 I’m just like “WHY????” Btw hope you’re enjoying the snow! I know I am ⛄️
The Switchyard in Carrollton, TX. Bordered to west by I-35, right where it flies over Beltline and traffic bogs down as people try to get off onto the George Bush, to the east by the Dart Green Line and Dallas, Garland and Northeastern Railway (which only runs at night), and to the south by the BNSF mainline, featuring primarily mile-and-a-half long coal and gravel trains.
Can't understand why it's still not fully occupied 2+ years after opening...
Same for galleria parc apartments, the chesela museum district
How many cars are going to end up in top floor apartments for the first time ever! so exciting!
When I worked for the San Diego school district the state Division of Toxic Substances Control banned us (and every school district) from building new schools next to freeways. And rightly so.
Yay, for the Division of Toxic Substances!
@@TDurden527 California, where people pretend to care about the environment. Pass any law you want, pretend its progressive, everyone will pretend too, and vote for it. All the while everyone knows it will have no effect bc subsidized parking, subsidized highways, minimum parking ordinances, ...
Don't short sell your narration style. It's absolutely fascinating to once in a while find an almost imperceptible change in tone or cadence in your narration whenever you can't contain your enthusiasm or depression regarding a topic. It's the kind of needle in a haystack challenge I live for.
It’s a great narration style
I just blew a bugle call into the ears of my sleeping wife and 7 young children to herald the new citynerd video
I used an air raid siren myself
😄
In Atlanta, they just opened a brand new children’s hospital that borders the interstate.
Along with some beautiful gardens and play areas for children overlooking said freeway (I-85...one of the busiest in the US)
The Grady Curve is wild. Fourteen lanes of interstate named after the adjoining Trauma-1 hospital.
Be close to your customers.
Yeah there’s the one support office building right along the frontage road. Though the primary facility is at least set back a bit. Probably somewhere between 500 and 1000 feet, so still not ideal.
@@deargodwhyme 900 feet. I checked.
The noise alone is enough to keep me from living near a freeway. It always puzzles me how (non-deaf) people can stand being so close to so much road noise.
Some folks can just tune it out over time.
I used to live right next to an offramp for the mighty 401 near Toronto and it maybe took me a couple of weeks before the noise didn't bother me.
I live on a fairly busy street nowadays and "normal" traffic doesn't bother me. It's really only the jagoffs with unnecessarily-loud aftermarket exhausts who make me lose sleep.
It's basically white noise. You'll start ignoring it fairly quickly.
I found the noise of a freeway much less annoying than the various yard equipment and dogs you get in low-density residential areas.
I lived right on the other side of the wall separating the 101 freeway from houses and apartments in downtown LA.
Eventually you can't hear it. When I moved I realized how loud it was because it seemed so quiet.
@@flargus7919 Just because you are not conscious of it does not mean it is not affecting you.
@@VitalVampyr I've lived many places, and I have always noticed the difference. Even where I am now, where I have lived for years. I dislike when the atmosphere is just right to make the (approx 9/10ths of a mile away) freeway noise loud at night.
What I find the most egregious is that in most car-oriented sunbelt cities, the very few apartment complexes/medium density housing that do get built in suburban areas are almost always built right next to the freeways. The logic is probably something along the lines of “they generate more car traffic and so we need to put them in the place where that will have the least impact on local streets” but the end result is that you have the densest housing in one of the least desirable locations you could ever put housing.
It’s so unbelievably backwards and completely ignores any of the human-oriented factors of urban environments in favor of “solving” the unsolvable problem that is car traffic and no one wanting it to be anywhere near them, with complete disregard for the actual reality of what this approach creates
New hospitals are built next to freeways, a place for people that are already sick.
It's because the land is cheap because it is next to a highway... they don't have a direct ramp onto the highway, so the apartment is still going to affect local streets.
Cheap land and favorable zoning.
The Seattle thing is extra frustrating because they decided to run the one train line along the freeway. So if you want to live near a train, you need to also live near the highway. Rephrased for emphasis, if you want to live a car free or car light lifestyle near high capacity transit and bike lanes (in a neighborhood like, I don't know, Roosevelt) you need to live directly next to the freeway.
I generally support TOD, but poisoning the resident who live in it is unconscionable.
Oh wait, I forgot a second train line opened... On a different freeway.
In fact this of the main reasons why I left Seattle. The way that city uses its urban planning to enforce class privilege and marginalize the less affluent is positively asinine and puts the lie to that city's claim to being a bastion of progressivism.
What're they supposed to do, bulldoze neighborhoods to build transit lines?
@@davidbarts6144 Yeah our NIMBYs here are as fierce as anywhere. Lot's of "In this house..." signs in the front yards of people who turn up to block upzoning their single-family-home neighborhoods.
@@davidbarts6144, which city did you choose instead, out of curiosity? Have the option to move and genuinely love some parts of the city and figured most other cities are exactly the same with regard to codifying class structures. Have you found a hidden gem that doesn't?
@@emma70707 Initially to Bainbridge Island near (within walking distance of) the ferry terminal (Winslow is small and walkable, and has at least one of every sort of business one needs routinely). Eventually to Vancouver, BC (required navigating the maze of the Canadian immigration process, a story in itself). Vancouver is still expensive and with a housing shortage, but there is a *much* better selection of different rental and multifamily housing types here than in Seattle.
As someone who lives next to a busy arterial the noise pollution is my number one complaint. Without a fan I would consistently be woken up by motorcycles, cars with broken mufflers, or worse, cars intentionally made loud
People still don't care about air pollution nearly enough (btw in many higher income areas the main source of fine particulate matter is the burning of wood in woodstoves but people are not ready to have that conversation)
And gas stoves are a big source of indoor air pollution, and are often not properly vented.
Actually Kids born in or around. Might be Psychologically and Physically unable to Find other locations. YEP
My wife is from West Virginia. When she moved downhill to a larger city in Virginia, she chose an apartment directly facing an interstate because she found the noise so novel. She said it kept her from feeling lonely.
My nice high-rise apartment in the newly developed and urbanized area of my city has a balcony facing the interstate. The air pollution is almost certainly a problem, but the noise from the highway is incredibly pervasive. At times the noise might be ambient but often I’m watching a movie or having a conversation, or any other moment of quiet absolutely ruined by someone on the highway.
I pay rent on sq footage that is utterly useless other than trying to torture yourself.
Going through this myself, brother. You really get a new appreciation for how shitty some drivers are.
Ooh I live in a busy urban area lol what are all these people doing here?!?!
@@iheartlreoy8134people (and urban areas) are fine, it’s cars that are the problem. You can live in the middle of Manhattan and have basically no street noise if it’s on one of the quieter side streets where cars can’t really get above 20-25mph and aren’t honking like they do on the major avenues.
Meanwhile if you’re anywhere near a highway you can be living in a typical suburban neighborhood or even an otherwise rural area and will still have constant traffic noise the second you open a window
@@JordanPeace
Freeway
Rural area
See the issue?
When I moved to Indiana in 2016 I decided to stay away from complexes near the freeway because many of them were featured on the local news for murders, armed robberies and having city services like water cut off due to landlords (corporations) defaulting on payments. I had not considered the air quality there could kill me.
I'm so glad you're covering this. I live in a condo neighborhood by an interstate but during my research I found that 800-foot figure on a study that it wasn't clear if it was done on freeways with or without the sound wall barriers (I assume that traps in more to the immediate area). So, I knew I needed to stay on the far side of the neighborhood. Ironically it's the closest area I could afford to a massive nature-filled park that we have to cross the interstate to get to, but I'm assured that my residence is further than that 800 foot threshold in the neighborhood. There's also a lake in that space, which I also assume (without studies for this) that the pollution for better or worse settles in that more than blowing across the grass to me. I feel bad for the geniuses on the HOA board that live right next to the sound wall (but further from the in/out traffic noise?) but I keep my smart mouth shut, cuz boomers aren't gonna hear me on that, if they don't hear me on the gas leaf blowers we still hire. Def bookmarking this one.
It's probably without sound walls. Sound walls actually tend to distribute the noise further because they deflect it up...
The least healthy year of my life was the year I lived in central Oakland. It was not right next to a freeway, but the tangle of freeways feeding the Bay Bridge made for overall high pollution levels. It was depressing how quickly gritty black tire dust would accumulate on windowsills in the summer. And one of the reasons I no longer live in Seattle is the near-impossibility of finding multifamily housing (can’t afford single-family) not immediately adjacent to a freeway or an arterial there.
I would make an exception for luxury country clubs and golf courses next to freeways.
But they shouldn't be in cities anyway.
@@tommarney1561fair enough
If you must put them in a city, then put them there
I live like 500 feet because another 500 feet is the light rail. But also I have air purifiers running constantly for a variety of reasons including the interstate...
Missed my Citynerd fix last Wednesday! This will curb the withdrawals thanks Ray 😅
thought we were about to receive some rare good urbanist news for once, only for my smile to fade instantly after the reveal 1:03
We used to live a block and a half from Freeway A, and the dust is real. After we moved in, low income housing apartments were built across the street from us. After we moved out, luxury housing apartments were built on the block *closer* to the freeway.
We moved near, but farther away from Freeway B. No dust, but we can still hear the cars. Also, there are two schools right up against this freeway, one on either side of a pedestrian over crossing. It's so noisy that you cannot both walk across the over crossing and hold a conversation. Today, I biked over Freeway B on a different over crossing, past apartment buildings that have balconies facing the freeway. Sigh.
I lived in a top floor apartment about half a mile from the freeway and the noise actively interfered with my sleep. Just a constant cacophony.
I was closer than half a mile, but me, too.
Back in the day, Vancouver had zoning policy that allowed single-family homes along main roads and then denser housing in the blocks along the local streets. Basically the exact opposite of today. The idea was it was a utilitarian policy that exposed the fewest people to pollution from cars.
Unfortunately it’s been completely reversed, and most new dense housing in the city is being built along the major roadways. At least we don’t have urban freeways. . .
And that policy was right. Not to mention that SFH people use the highways more, so it makes sense to place them there. It's only for their convenience!!
The question then becomes, "What do you build next to a freeway?" They aren't going away any time soon. You can only place so many Cheesecake Factories in a given area.
One option becomes "remove the freeway if it is not necessary". Per the example in the video, Minneapolis could have done this to highway that locals were begging to turn into a multimodal boulevard, but chose not to. Perfect is not the enemy of "much better", and a four lane arterials is way less pollutting than an 8-10 lane high-speed car sewer.
It is good that urban freeways make you insane. But freeways exist everywhere & people live next to all of them. While it might not seem like a great idea to put MORE homes next to freeways, there is a silver lining. High-rise residential towers usually have their air-intakes on their roofs. Most of that road-way dust stays low, so high rises with roof-top air-intakes should actually be encouraged. (hopefully they have good air-filters too)
When I look for apartments, the first thing I look at is how close it is to a main road. Anything within a mile of a freeway is a automatic no go.
Simply, because I'm not gonna breath the shlt that traffic kicks into the air, and be poisoned. Cities, most cities are abominations, anti-life, and dysphoric prisons that the common people can't escape, because that's where the jobs are.
That reminded me of a complex I visited in December. It was within five blocks of a busline that goes to my job. Unfortunately, the main road nearest to the complex is a one-way street running parallel next to the freeway. And of course, the interchange of that and a second freeway is closer to the complex than the bus stop. Without a car, that apartment complex is far down the list of my choices.
I lived next to i25 in Denver for 2 years and it was so bad. The sound was some of my least favorite part. I would jog across a bridge over 10 lanes of ultra high speed traffic weekly. Finally moved to a walkable neighborhood (Cap Hill best neighborhood in Denver) and holy shit my life feels so much better. I didn't realize how much it stressed me out.
It's not only health. Which child do you think will do better in school? One that has slept well and isn't coughing while learning or one that can't sleep because of the highway and not concentrate because of the noise?
I've been asking myself this very question for a while now! A interesting follow up topic would be to explore the quantity of air pollution a typical person would inhale while commuting. Imagine spending hours each week sitting right behind a idling car in traffic, gradually inhaling more and more exhaust that inevitably exits the car in front. Note: I know not EVERY car you sit behind will emit exhaust, rather, I wish to explore the general topic.
The tailpipe is only one of the pollutants. Electric Vehicles are heavier, so they will generate more particulates from road and tire wear, and will aerosolise road dust just the same as IC vehicles. So the problem is cars in general.
@17:00 Melbourne does have freeways near/in its city center, its CBD is ringed by freeways. However most people take the train for commuting which greatly reduces the amount of car infrastructure needed in the city center.
I've always wondered about this, I live in SLC, Utah and more of these apts are being built next to the freeways. I travel to LA, San Fransicso and entire medical centers are right next to the freeways Howard Hughes Medical center for example. Thanks for this subject.
I live 300ft from the Vine St. Expressway in Philly. The air quality is pretty bad and is the trigger for my move next month. Arguably worse is the main street leading to it - heavy truck traffic, black dust accumulates fast on the porch and window sills, and no traffic calming is approved since it’s an access road.
What I’ve learned is that it’s hyper local - 2 small blocks north is so much better. During winter air inversions the air quality is intolerable. Also, many of the pollutants are VOCs, NOT PM2.5 particulate matter. This is incredibly hard to measure with consumer equipment. Had I known it was this bad I would have passed on the unit.
Thank you Ray. You really understand the big picture.
The problems of siting housing within at least a hundred yards of a freeway are too many to count, but I had to chuckle at the "LA's Car Culture!" reference. The last time I heard of that was probably a LIFE magazine cover from 1968
It's really depressing to hear LA called out so much but we set ourselves up for ruin for decades. We had a chance to help reduce this issue but the city kept zoning to keep all the high density housing along major thoroughfares and kept the vast majority of the land for SFH. Plus we keep expanding freeways, even if it's only a mile or two at a time. I'd like to move closer to the core of LA but seeing LA sliced up in so many chunks by freeways make me hesitate. It's depressing to hear this problem so concisely described but it needs to be said more.
I really wish LA will start tearing down freeways in my lifetime but I'm not so sure sometimes. The 105 and 710 are the easiest ones to start with, the C/Green line already runs in the median and the 105 seems to only exist to make it easy to get to LAX and was already cut off before it reaches the 5, and the 710 is basically just a funnel for semi trucks to/from the port and they're working to increase train bandwidth there, and is again cut off. Any freeway could easily be converted to a Metrolink line and turn into a regional corridor.
I've lived next to freeways my whole life. I've learned to tune out the constant driving noises and frankly use them as a sound machine of sorts.
living deep in the city is only worth doing if the city is worth living in. I used to live in the city center, a 15 minute drive from the nearest freeways, through awful intersections with malfunctioning traffic lights. i had no interest in the cutesy places in town designed to delete your money, and all my friends and family were in other exurbs. I now live closer to the freeway and can walk to the nearest train station/ cvs/ urgent care/ multiple grocery stores and fast food joints and I'm much happier.
You would love LA developer Geoff Palmer. He's known for developing what many people call 'Palmer's Tuscans.' They are faux Italian apartments built right next to the freeway in DTLA. And there are a lot of them. Orsini, Medici, Visconti, Da Vinci, Lorenzo, Piero, Ferrante and I think I'm missing one or two. They are huge, and are right next to the 110/101 Interchange in DTLA.
Fire starters that look like stone Are futuristically Like A bottle of Counterfeit Cupcake wine
One significant such building project where housing and hotels being built next to freeways is concerned is a major hotel and resort being built next to I-5 in Chula Vista near the Chula Vista Marina by the H Street exit that's tentatively scheduled to open later this year. During my time living in that portion of San Diego County, I actually lived in four motels that were next to I-5 between Coronado Avenue and the border, two of which were practically at the Coronado Avenue interchange (EZ-8 on Outer Road and a TravelLodge on Hollister Street, which is now a Motel 6).
Another place where this is an issue is near Disneyland, with the abundance of motels and hotels on Harbor Blvd. near I-5 and Disneyland, though the hotels at the Disneyland Resort itself are off the freeway a bit.
Apartment dwellers are more used to background noise. Living in an apartment is so annoying because you will have at least one or more other noisy inhabitants on one of the walls you share with someone, so this kind of living is not so far from the constant freeway noise. Also, high rise apartments are multi-function sound barriers, so people living in single-family homes can have some peace and quiet.
In a highly competitive housing market, I obtained a condo in Denver next to a six-lane thoroughfare. Worst decision of my life. Its not so much the pollution; our local elevation brings good breezes out of the State Park next door. The real issue is the absolutely horrendous noise. This is an example of "why would they build housing this close to the highway?" My guess would be that this was not really recognized as a health hazard 40 years ago when the place was built, and the perception of a hazard was in tension with some developer's potential profit margin.
a lot of new high-rise luxury apartments are still built next to freeways today (specifically in NYC) because that's where the only available land is. Not only next to highways, but also next to former industrial areas or even polluted canals. The more desirable residential areas are already developed and you aren't going to build new construction there without getting into a big battle over neighborhood character, etc.
South Denver here. At the intersection of 6-lane I470and its parallel County Line Rd ,4-lane Santa Fe Blvd and the major North-South railroad line, apartments galore were constructed. This area happens to be one of the worst PM2.5 and Ozone sinks in the south Denver region. A very large tract a few miles away from this pollution sink, formerly a large business concern, offering glorious housing development opportunities is now slated to become a very large retail development with 10 years of tax advantages. Local government follows the development dollar and nothing else... nothing.
It should be obvious. One, put the highway in a trench or wall it off to reduce noise. Two, keep the highway a reasonable distance from the center of town. Three, line the highway with at least a block of commercial and industrial development.
Thank you so much for pushing this. My wife’s mother died from lung cancer and they live right next to an interstate. I worry so much about how that’s impacted my wife growing up. Not to mention the health effects of freeway noise.
Somehow placing an apartment building away from highways and arterials would be a traffic problem, but thousands of homes along myriad miles of rural suburbia are not, in my county. My mountain city has a few apartment buildings a little way away from busy highways, or along a not very busy highway, but more close to the main highway. Somehow I rarely see cars coming out of or going into a huge apartment complex along the street I take to get home. Traffic seems like an excuse.
Freeways don't even work in dense cities. The bottleneck for urban roads is mostly not lanes...but either intersection capacity or ramp capacity. Ramps are very inefficient for dense traffic and a horrible use of land. Much better is alternating one-way roads with synced lights...those are very efficient. As for the pollutants, I wonder how much of this is truck exhaust...I bet most. Diesel pollutes way more than gas...especially with NOx which causes cancer. China has dabbled with cleaing up their air and found the diesel trucks are the worst. A diesel tax to discourage diesel usage would help. Lastly it should be noted not just cities suffer from pm2.5 counts...in colder rural areas, everybody is burning something to keep warm. The worst neighbors are those who burn wood and use garbage as a fire starter. This is a major health hazard nobody talks about.
It's possible but with mansion prices. Extreme anti noise measures. Windows towards the freeway are just semi transparent air filters.
I wouldn't know how to deal with living that close to a freeway. I'm a block away from a 4 lane state road and it's bad enough.
Spikes???
If you look into papers from Norway, you'd probably find quite a lot of this fom Oslo. As it's a well known problem not just in areas near major roads and expressways, but the city itself also sits between hills, and mountains. So the air quality can be pretty bad at times, even now that most cars in Norway, let alone Oslo are electric.
You still get a lot from dust from the tire wear, etc.
Measures such as gradually putting expressways, ringroads etc in tunnels have helped, but what they've done for some of these is reduce the speed from 90-80 kmh to 60 kmh.
They change this during the winter months, though some have also gotten permanent changes, such as Trondheimsveien through the area of Groruddalen.
I'm currently in the hunt for an apartment in a very freeway-ridden city (Kansas City), I'm glad I saw this because it confirms my wish to find an apartment away from the interstate, even if they're harder to find.
Thanks goodness for an uplifting video. It really helps lift the curtain of doom draping over us.
I am beyond thankful that Raleigh doesn't have an urban freeway flying through its downtown.
As a 24-year resident next to an I-405 sound wall, I've long chosen to keep the windows closed and HEPA filters blowing. The air and sound pollution does make our outdoor space less inviting, but we've managed to abate most particulate matter inside the house. *fingers crossed*
I live quite near I-95 as it runs on the " west coast" of the Delaware Riv through Philadelphia.
Good sound proofing in my home means I don't hear the continuous traffic noise.
Check out the “Crossroads Westside” apartment complex in Kansas City, Missouri. It’s parked directly between I-35, Broadway boulevard, and several BNSF tracks to the south, a not-so-perfect mix of emissions, tire and brake dust, and noise from cars and trains…
Melbourne was brought up as a good example, and it is when you look at the CBD grid, but Southbank unfortunately has a freeway with many new developments overlooking. Fortunately, the inner suburbs are entirely free of highways since they were built before car-centrism existed.
I once lived next to a freeway with the only laundomat in the area existing across the freeway. absolute hell I never want to experience again,
Amen! Preach! All of the new apartment complexes in the area I moved to several years ago were right next to 95...I mean, right next to it. I moved into one and lived on the opposite side of the complex from the highway, but it was still too close. I can't stand that they take down so many trees just so everyone can see the apartments and then living there stinks.
As a planner who reviews local housing plans/codes for a living (also, hi Ray! We met briefly at the Lil America food carts), it’s so abundantly clear that the high density housing cities plan for - if they plan for any at all - are always located in the worst possible locations. Either in areas that are isolated, impractical to build, that expose people to hazards, or more likely some combination of the three.
It makes sense politically - after all, they are the areas of least resistance to siting denser housing. But it is such a clear reinforcement of segregation that directly contributes to the health, educational, and employment disparities we see happening. Worse still, how do you solve something so systemically entrenched like this?
Certainly income segregation is still accepted / ignored in our society. The proof is everywhere you look.
I live about a block away from a highway. Very normal in dense areas actually
Would be Weirdo.. To not walk under one at least once
Thank you for the continued great work, Ray. Amazing that people call it a “war on cars” when the cars are killing so many people either directly through traffic or indirectly through ailments and sedentary lifestyle. And electric cars will only improve one aspect of this (tailpipe emissions).
"Homelessness is part of Los Angeles' fabric, and building subsidized housing is unrealistic."
Hi Ray!
I currently live quite near a 4 lane freeway (about 200-300 meters). There is a noticeable amount of sut/dust piling up especially in spring on the front side of the building. But luckily, our house is 20m elevated related to the freeway and the air intake is at the back of the house, from where a forest with a lake beings, bringing clean air. The air intake filters here don't actually look any worse than ones I've seen from buildings that are not in the vicinity of a freeway.
But anyway, it's still too close for my liking and planning to move out.
We live in a car centric society. It's assumed that without a car we can't survive. In a sense that's true because we need to get to a place to make money and also to buy food. But the only true essentials to survival are poison-free food, clean air and lead-free water. Build walkable communities and we not only eliminate the second biggest investment after housing, but we also get cleaner air, more exercise, noise reduction, eliminate the second largest cause of accidental deaths in the United States, have on average an hour more of free time since no more daily commute. Those are just a few of the benefits of a car-free life. But I don't have any illusions, Americans are in love with their cars
Well, you could think of living near a freeway as pre-ordering housing next to a future mass transit corridor.
Thankfully I am healthy as an adult, but as a child I was regularly hospitalized by asthma. Few things make me as furious as the notion that asthmatics have "weak lungs" instead of being victims of a development pattern that fills the air with poison. Just the other day at the grocery store, I overheard a mother say to her son "Stop running! You'll start coughing again." It's devastating for me to see another generation growing up without the social and health benefits of exercise. We have to do better than this.
You should make a video talking about in natural disaster zones such as how we build in wildfire areas, flood zones, etc.
Living near railroad tracks isn't very pleasant either. In Pittsburgh, some of the crappiest neighborhoods to live in were adjacent to the noise and smell of trains going by day and night. One neighborhood, which is now basically gone around the Pennsylvania main line under the Bloomfield Bridge was called "skunk hollow", although I don't know how many literal skunks would live down there.
And in many town and cities the particulate pollution from domestic wood burning far exceeds those from traffic emissions and is as equally deadly.
the conclusion reached by NRAP are a full concession to car centric infrastructure. basically an explicit acceptance of freeways next to housing, as something that's here to stay, diverting the focus to improving technology rather than preventing the problem in its entirety.
I’m so sad I missed out on tickets to see you at my own Alma mater 😢 hope you come back to NYC soon!
If you look at those next to the highway in the Bronx and Queens, a lot of them were already there.
They dead ass Already burnt.. The apartments smell like Idk old Gas station
Unfortunately sometimes you just have to find a place where you can make the rent. "Easy Highway Access" as a selling point is laughable, and is just a euphemism for instantly reduced quality of life
‘Balance other considerations’ ie consider the all cause mortality, and consider the money, and decide how much those lives are worth to the state
16:00 this hurt
I used to live near a highway in the Bronx, it wasn’t so bad. It was a parkway though, only passenger cars. At least my apartment was walking distance from a subway station
Intro suggestion: Bronx, Highway aww snap
Watching this from my apartment of Highway 75 in Dallas 😆
Thanks for discussing this, I haven't heard it come up in local development discussions. My city has factories/warehouses/etc lining the highway and as those become vacant, they are the prime place to build large apartment buildings. NIMBY homeowners support these more than upzone infill within the existing residential areas (MUH PARKING!!!). But I see how diesel train emissions go almost directly into the air near apartments and that just seems like it can't be good. People want 3+ bedroom apartments to promote families living in the area but doing that near highways is the wrong way to go I feel.
11:27 Ironically (or hopefully not), Jeremiah Caleb played a “Chemo Nurse” on Grey’s Anatomy.
I-10 in downtown Tucson should be changed into a boulevard.
I have been happy to see density development near the Sound Transit one line into Snohomish county from Seattle. Now I realize that the ST one line runs parallel to the Interstate 5. I also think what kind of infrastructure could be located near freeways. Obviously office buildings and industrial buildings or even warehousing requires extended human exposure. At least I think the larger interior open space buildings can have less expensive filtration.
There's an outdoor zipline complex that was just built right next to a high-traffic toll road in the Dallas area :)
I haven't lived next to a freeway fortunately, but I have tried biking next to an urban low speed but high traffic road (literally in downtown San Francisco), and never again if I can avoid it! A 5 minute bike ride had my lungs clogged up and irritated for hours. All that heavy breathing right next to traffic is horrible. Fortunately there were alternate routes with almost no car traffic, or else I would have had to ditch the bike and drive to/from work instead cause my body can't bike next to traffic in a healthy way. Merely adding protected bike lanes WON'T fix this. The cars have to be removed, or at least the traffic needs to be cut by over an order of magnitude, which is basically 90% of the way to eliminating cars.
Ironically now I have other health conditions that don't let me bike under most circumstances, so hopefully there will be provisions for micromobility electric mini-cars like the Dutch have (and without the horrible medical gatekeeping / hoops to jump through, as I already am overwhelmed and way behind on dealing with that crap and don't need more of it).
Unfortunately in most cities in the US, the best urban neighborhoods are between or near highways. The only people who get to remove themselves from highway pollution are those in the outer ring suburbs and exurbs unfortunately.
(Who also disproportionately generate the highway pollution.)
“don’t build dense housing near freeways?” and what? build it near transit? then where’s the storage units gonna go, huh?
I think it's been pretty well established in the USA that, if you're poor or working class, you are a second class citizen -- and that citizenship may even get stripped if you were once an immigrant. This is fundamentally a class issue and has been for so many decades now. Cars are the culprit, but the mindset is that they are inevitable and absolutely necessary, so people will just have to put with it if they are poorer. It boils my blood.
I live on an arterial, and I'd love to be rezoned for high-rise. Even eight stories would be enough to get a roof-top air-intake above most of the road-way dust. And thankfully I'm in Vancouver Canada, where it rains a lot. One more reason to love the rain, it washes away all that road-way dust, before it can be re-suspended. ;-)
TFW when Ray zooms on your condo building! :D
..then you realize how bad that is. :(
Do a video on the Seattle Comprehensive plan!
I was so happy to be able to afford a place far enough away from traffic noise. But now I drive for a living. I feel sorry for the people sitting in traffic for over two hours a day. It all adds up.
A "premium" apartment building was just built in my city next to I-275 so close you can practically reach out and touch it. I'm not sure who would pay almost $3000/month for those kinds of conditions. I certainly wouldn't.
that apartment is SO DUMB
9:49 Fabric of the city? Some literal fabrics are being banned because they are unhealthy.
I'm about 1000' from 405 outside of Seattle, so I'm good, right? Thanks for the vid sir, super interesting about the kicked up dust issue.
Good video, as always, but I didn’t need another addition to the endless list of things we need to worry about. 😅
I grew up right next to the 605 freeway in Cerritos CA - not the starship Cerritos. Growing up I thught it was normal for cars to build up a big layer of dust after a single. night. I had/have bad asthma.
Insightful comment posted merely 30 seconds after the video is uploaded.
Edit to include actual insight: The most terrifying part of all this is the road dust. That stuff scares me and even when it’s not kicked up into the air it’s draining into local rivers and basins. It’s also scary because so few people recognize it as a danger.
So we should filter water instead of draining directly to ocean got it. Trains make metal dust too btw
@
Cities that can often do filter the water from their drainage systems. But in times of heavy rainfall they may need to skip that process to prevent flooding. Also not every drop of water necessarily passes through drains or gutters.
Additionally highways pass through areas where that just isn’t possible. Smaller communities can be just as affected by large highways and the pollution they produce.
The amount of road dust per person is far greater than metal dust from trains. Metal dust from trains is also not plastic. Steel on steel contact also doesn’t produce that much dust at all as they have the exact same hardness and thus struggle to scratch one another. Rubber and asphalt on the other hand have obviously different hardnesses which result in rubber particles wearing off.
While it’s not great iron is something that plants, wildlife, and environments do have an ability to cope with and interact with. Again this is not desirable compared to no dust but road dust can include the same metals and occurs in higher quantities.
The infrastructure cost to build and maintain a proper drainage system that filters out all road dust per person along an entire highway is likely higher than just building a rail system.
Your comment reminds me of Technology Connections’ video, “The LED Traffic Light and the Danger of ‘But Sometimes!” In that it points out a flaw which should be (and is currently being) considered but is obviously not an issue when compared to the current alternative.
@@jonm7512 There's also brake dust, which is more synthetic than rubber. Breaking the rubber into bits probably advances its decomposition quite a bit... it is at least a natural product that could again become plant material.
Older generations of stormwater management devices tended to include sediment traps that were designed to be cleaned. Are they cleaned out, that's a different question. But in any case they have gotten away from that.
@@jonm7512 currently not an issue because we don’t have trains to scale blah blah I don’t see the issue and I cannot envision it occurring because of my small mind therefore it’s irrelevant
@ I literally acknowledge that there are risks which should be considered.
The studies I read about metal dust pollution to confirm the risks were conducted in Zurich where trains are to a larger scale. Additionally the researchers behind this study developed methods to measure these pollutants per train per km. Thus they made it incredibly easy to account for the scale of a given train system.
I can imagine it being an issue but it would be an issue at a smaller scale and one that we can go on to solve. After all trains already have methods to capture metal dust.
Hey Ray I got a video topic for you. Your high speed rail city pairs video is still a great watch but you commented how you thought some surprising pairs got left off because of the criteria. I wonder if there would be enough for a video on "higher speed" rail about running trains at lower speeds making different routes viable.
You specifically cited Seattle and Portland as missing in your high speed rail video but maybe that pair would make the cut if the criteria was slightly lower speed at a significantly lower cost