Freeways Without Futures - Replacing Urban Highways

Report by the Congress for the New Urbanism identifies the ten greatest opportunities in America for replacing aging urban highways with boulevards or avenues and reconnecting the surrounding neighborhoods.

Interstate 980 Oakland, California

I-980 today. Image Credit: ConnectOAKLAND

In the city of San Francisco, two of North America’s most successful freeway removals have yielded celebrated results: the Embarcadero and Octavia Boulevards. Now, just across the bay, the City of Oakland is considering replacing an underutilized below-grade section of Interstate 980 with a surface boulevard that would reconnect West Oakland to Downtown.

The project, which has gained widespread support in recent months, would reuse the freeway space for major regional rail service running under a surface boulevard.

While the idea of removing I-980 has been discussed since its completion in the mid-80s, the current leading design concept came from a citizen-led campaign called ConnectOAKLAND, started in 2014 to advocate for the removal of the freeway and the reconnection of the street grid. ConnectOAKLAND’s vision would create or re-open 21 new city blocks—totaling approximately 17 new acres of high-value, publicly controlled land.

“With imaginative engineering and design, [I-980] could be replaced by a boulevard lined with housing at all price levels, reknitting the urban landscape,” wrote John King of the San Francisco Chronicle, in a major review of the concept last year.

Rendering of I-980 as a multi-way boulevard. Image Credit: Dover, Kohl & Partners

ConnectOAKLAND’s vision has gained support with community leaders and in City Hall, including from Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. “Our I-980 is a cautionary tale,” says Schaaf. “It was proposed as a part of a plan to build another Bay Bridge and a shopping mall—but this broken promise leaves us with a scar across our city that separates our residents from opportunity. In its place, we want to reknit our community, building infrastructure that creates local economic opportunity, reconnects neighborhoods, and helps connect the region.”

The freeway is now an underused remnant connecting CA-24 and I-580 to I-880. While it carries only 73,000 cars a day and no freight traffic, it cuts an enormous 18-lane swath through the center of Oakland and isolates the West Oakland neighborhood. The design of the freeway was typical of large scale 20th century infrastructure projects, which disproportionately affected low-income communities of color in a quest to improve commutes for affluent white suburbs.

A new design for this corridor could help repair the wounds of past decisions. “We believe the I-980 project must focus on equity, integration and investment in the community,” says campaign founder Chris Sensenig. “ConnectOAKLAND will continue to work with the City of Oakland to make sure the proper mechanisms are in place to improve the quality of life in the neighboring communities and limit displacement.”

The City of Oakland included the I-980 corridor multi-way boulevard into the Draft Downtown Specific Plan, and is now seeking funding for community outreach, project planning, and engineering studies. The Mayor’s Policy Director for Transportation and Infrastructure, Matt Nichols, has been actively engaging key agencies, including Caltrans, the state’s DOT, as well as HUD and FHWA, affordable housing lenders, and social equity institutions such as PolicyLink.

“While still in the early stages,” says Nichols, “the I-980 transformation could provide not only a ‘highway-to-boulevard’ repair of our urban fabric, but also a showcase for how social equity-led design could be profoundly transformative for Oakland and the region.”

Route 70 Pasadena, California

Route 710 stub today.

Five mayors in the region have common sense: Why spend $6 billion for a tunnel and freeway across Pasadena, South Pasadena, Alhambra, and Los Angeles that citizens have been fighting for more than a half century? Why not use a grid of streets—the tool of a traditional city—to distribute the traffic, contributing to quality of life and land values?

The north State Route 710 tunnel, one of three alternatives proposed by California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) and supported by lobbyists, would likely induce more traffic—yet it seems to have grown a life of its own.

In 1964 the State of California seized a half-mile swath of Pasadena’s most valuable land, demolishing hundreds of houses to extend the 710 Freeway to the 110 and the 134 and 210 freeways. The stub now interrupts the street grid of neighborhoods to the east and west and separates desirable Old Pasadena from key schools, civic assets, and businesses. A similar stub was built in Alhambra and Los Angeles at the southern end.

Rendering of 710 stub removal with new development. Image Credit: Connecting Pasadena Project

The Connecting Pasadena Project (CPP) is a community-based initiative that aims to reclaim this land for mixed-use and diverse housing. Two public workshops have generated a detailed vision based on five principal ideas: “1) Fill the freeway stub with parking and other service uses; 2) Convert the freeway into a multi-way boulevard as it enters the city; 3) Create a new network of blocks, streets and open spaces to stitch together the disconnected sides of the city; 4) Use the reclaimed land for new infill development; and 5) Regulate development in a form that is sensitive to the surrounding context.”

A five-city coalition—Glendale, Pasadena, Sierra Madre, South Pasadena, and La Cañada Flintridge—has been fighting a variety of completion schemes for decades. CPP’s proactive 710 Reclaim plan illustrates the manifold benefits of abandoning the Caltrans/Metro completion plan. The state-owned land between California Boulevard and the 210 Freeway represents nearly 2.5 million square feet of potential development, according to the Pasadena Star-News. A property with 50 developable acres does not exist anywhere else in Pasadena and would be hard to find in Los Angeles County, the paper reports.

Caltrans/Metro is currently completing their Environmental Impact Report, including proposals for both regional surface transportation alternatives such as Bus Rapid Transit and light rail as well as an abandonment/development option. Three years ago, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill effectively killing the surface option for north 710. This left the tunnel on the table as the only freeway alternative. “Except for profiting large engineering firms, the freeway provides no benefit,” says Ian Lockwood, an engineer who helped design the CPP alternative. “Even Caltrans’ traffic models show that the proposed freeway just rearranges the congestion while solving nothing.”

“It’s time for this governor, a distinguished environmentalist and urbanist, to put a final end to this disastrous boondoggle and heal the wounds inflicted by an unnecessary urban freeway,” says Stefanos Polyzoides, an architect and urbanist who led Pasadena meetings and developed the alternative land-use proposal.