
Urban highways destroy wealth - simonebrunozzi
http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2015/01/worlds-worst-investment-why-urban.html
======
nashashmi
TL;DR version:

\- Urban highways cost more money than urban transit

\- They divide cities logistically.

\- Introduce pollution

\- Are very unsightly to neighborhoods

\- Steal traffic from roads in commercial zones and undermine regional
commercial activity.

\- Put emphasis on car-first neighborhoods and businesses (which give little
ROI).

\- Encourage urban sprawl and community inefficiency.

My take: These points are understood and expected from urban highways, but
then again urban highways were meant to solve a different problem. The points
are simply what the solution costs.

~~~
chad_oliver
What problem were they meant to solve?

(That's a serious question. I'm interesting in hearing how other people view
the purpose of an urban highway.)

~~~
jacobolus
They were meant to get people from far out of the city into the city, fast, in
a way that would only be accessible to professional-class whites, so that they
could keep downtown jobs while moving their families to the suburbs and stop
spending their property tax money on poor brown people.

~~~
ideonexus
It's hard to deny the racial aspect of government subsidies to produce the
suburbs, but the government's official intent was not racial, but emergent and
was strongly influenced by the threat of nuclear war. Shawn Otto of
sciencedebate.org covers this in his book on politics and science, "Fool Me
Twice" (apologies for the typos from my book-scanner):

 _...it has long been the prevailing opinion that American suburbs developed
as a result of the increased use of the car, GI Bill funded home construction,
and white flight from desegregated schools after the 1954 Supreme Court
decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. But in reality the trend
had started several years before Brown._

 _In 1945, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists began advocating for
"dispersal," or "defense through decentralization" as the only realistic
defense against nuclear weapons, and the federal government realized this was
an important strategic move. Most city planners agreed, and America adopted a
completely new way of life, one that was different from anything that had come
before, by directing all new construction "away from congested central areas
to their outer fringes and suburbs in low-density continuous development," and
"the prevention of the metropolitan core's further spread by directing new
construction into small, widely spaced satellite towns."_

 _Nuclear safety measures drove the beginning of the abandonment of our
cities. After being told that "there is no doubt about it: if you live within
a few miles of where one of these bombs strike, you'll die" and "We can always
hope that man will never use such a weapon but we should also adopt the Boy
Scout slogan: Be prepared," getting far enough out of the "target" city so
that the blast might be survivable seemed wise. Those who could afford to
left. Those who remained were generally less affluent, and minorities made up
a disproportionate share of the poor._

 _A far worse development for minorities in America came in 1954, when the
federal Atomic Energy Commission realized that with the advent of the vastly
more powerful hydrogen bomb, "the present national dispersion policy is
inadequate in view of existing thermonuclear weapons effects." But by then it
was too late; the suburbs were growing, but offices were still by and large
downtown. A new strategy was needed. President Dwight D. Eisenhower instead
promoted a program of rapid evacuation to rural regions. As a civil defense
official who served from 1953 to 1957 explained, the focus changed "from 'Duck
and Cover' to 'Run Like Hell.'"_

 _Cities across America ran nuclear attack drills, each involving tens of
thousands of residents, practicing clearing hundreds of city blocks in the
shortest possible time.^° It became clear that this would require massive new
transportation arteries in and out of cities. The resulting National
Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 was the largest public works
project in history. It created a system that provided easier access from the
suburbs into cities as well as a way to more rapidly evacuate cities in case
of nuclear war. The new freeways had to be built in a hurry and were naturally
routed through the cheapest real estate, which usually meant plowing through
richly tapestried and vibrant minority communities, displacing millions.
Although poverty had been concentrated in these very neighborhoods, their
destruction ripped apart the social fabric of America 's uprooted minority
communities for years, destroying social support networks and leading to a
generation of urban refugee._

 _These accommodations for defense brought about an immense change in the
fabric of America, altering everything from transportation to land development
to race relations to modern energy use and the extraordinary public sums that
are spent on building and maintaining roads— creating challenges and burdens
that are with us today, all because of science and the bomb._

Otto's Book:

[https://books.google.com/books/about/Fool_Me_Twice.html?id=6...](https://books.google.com/books/about/Fool_Me_Twice.html?id=6pMqCjVynG0C)

More quotes from the book:

[http://mxplx.com/Reference/id=1284](http://mxplx.com/Reference/id=1284)

~~~
pj_mukh
This is an interesting angle. Though how much of the housing was moved before
the causes of "White flight" were in place? Still seems like Brown v Board
would've caused the majority of the influx?

~~~
rhino369
>Still seems like Brown v Board would've caused the majority of the influx?

Most northern states (where a majority of major cities in the 1950s existed)
didn't have legal segregation. They already had and still have defacto
segregation.

------
lnanek2
Having some trouble swallowing this paragraph: " The richest metropolitan
areas in the US are San José, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Washington,
Houston, New York, Portland, Hartford and Salt Lake City. Areas with
relatively few urban highways are overrepresented in that list, with Houston
being the one big exception. "

When I need to get anywhere in New York, most of the time I am better off
grabbing the west side highway or the FDR rather than going through the grid
and hitting traffic lights and gridlock constantly. So that's two highways,
one on either side of a 2.3 mile wide (at most) island and then 95 crosses it
at the top.

San Francisco similarly has elevated 280 and 80, and 101 mostly on the ground
with some lights slowing it. At least SF is much bigger than Manahattan for
similar amount of highways to help his point.

I get the feeling he just isn't from the US and doesn't know anything about
our cities, though, so that paragraph is just way off.

~~~
DrScump
With respect to San Jose, it's a crock. The only remotely "urban" area is
downtown, and that is fully served with highways (880, 280/680, 87). Light
rail is a joke, with routes having been chosen for political reasons rather
than true demand, and it is _useless_ for transporting goods.

This article, like many on the topic, also take a one-dimensional view of
highways -- as people movers. The flow of _goods_ and _services_ (especially
emergency services) is at least as important. Throughout the Bay Area,
highways are critical infrastructure just to move goods and supplies, if
nothing else. 880/17 in Oakland became a chokepoint after the 1989 earthquake
took down the Cypress structure, for example, and that would have been even
worse had 980 not been completed not long before.

~~~
Brakenshire
> With respect to San Jose, it's a crock

FWIW, the sentence quoted above says that cities with fewer urban motorways
are overrepresented in that list of the richesty urban centres, it doesn't say
every city listed meets that criteria.

The article also discusses goods and services in the case study it's looking
at - comparison between the Montreal subway and highway built for the Expo.
i.e. about how moving passengers onto underground subways leaves more space
for movements of goods or services on the surface. A similar argument applies
to any shift towards more space-efficient modes of transport for passengers.

Also, I don't quite see the argument on emergency services. Inner city
highways/motorways are mostly for moving from the centre into and out of the
suburbs. Emergency services need to go from any random point to the nearest
hospital, which is a different thing. Sending hundreds of thousands of highly
space inefficient cars into city centres (which have a fundamental limit on
street space, and their capacity to handle traffic) is highly likely to
increase congestion and make it more difficult, not less difficult, to move
around on the surface streets from one point to another in the centre. You'd
have to introduce some congestion charging system, or perhaps bus lanes,
otherwise building the road is likely to make the situation worse.

Where highways really shine is in moving goods into and out of cities. If you
have high-volume industry in the centre of a city, or for instance a port, you
clearly need some way of getting the inputs and outputs into and out of the
city. But there does seem to be a continuous, long standing trend of moving
this kind of infrastructure out of city centres. Modern container ports and
factories need greater economies of scale, and tend to be situated on the
outskirts of, or outside, cities where land is cheaper. And Western economies
are moving more towards services rather than manufacturing. A big part of this
debate is about what a city is for, and how to reconcile that with changes in
transport and industry.

~~~
DrScump
"it doesn't say every city listed meets that criteria"

But it does list San Jose _first_ , implying that it is (most?)
representative.

...

"Also, I don't quite see the argument on emergency services... Emergency
services need to go from any random point to the nearest hospital"

Exactly! And what is the fastest way to the nearest hospital _with an open
emergency room_ (let alone a real trauma center) in such areas? I don't know,
but I assume that most cities lack real hospitals within fast access of
downtown by surface streets (due to traffic, if not also distance). In the San
Jose case, you're talking VMC, which would be 20+ minutes away by surface
streets but maybe 8 minutes using 280.

In San Francisco, the _only_ hospital South of Market is SF General.
(Technically South _or_ East of Market, but SOMA is a well-known term).

------
gerbilly
Original in French here: [http://kchozeurbaine.blogspot.ca/2014/02/les-
autoroutes-urba...](http://kchozeurbaine.blogspot.ca/2014/02/les-autoroutes-
urbaines-en-valent-elles.html)

------
euphemize
Living in Montréal, I'm happy to see this article. The highways / traffic
situation is horrible here, but I will point to one example in particular.

Getting to the airport: there is no way to get to the airport easily. There is
a dedicated bus line that might get stuck in traffic for 10$, or you pay 35$
for Uber, or 50$ for a normal cab (which also might both get stuck in
traffic). You need to plan at least 2 hours from your house to get there,
often 3 hours in advance for your flight. I've taken the bus dozens of time,
and you can see the faces of the poor passengers, realizing they thought 1h to
get 20KM away would be enough.

I go back and forth to Amsterdam and the difference is embarrassing. I get to
Schiphol, hop on a train (every 5 mins), it costs 5 euros and I'm at Central
Station in 15 minutes.

Light train? metro extension? How hard can it be?

------
csomar
Is it me or the author is simply making assumptions based on his "intelligent
point of view".

Here is my version: Urban highways create unparalleled amounts of wealth. By
enabling people, businessman, police, firefighters to get from point A to
point B faster; they boost the economy. They also reduce pollution, since you
are not stuck in traffic.

But hey, I have no data to back this up.

~~~
kchoze
I admit that data is hard to find, but that's not a reason to discount
rational exploration of this issue. There's plenty of anecdotal cases for it,
just see the devastation of Detroit, for example.

As to your claim, throwaway as it may have been, here is why I think it to be
wrong.

First of all, police, firefighters and other public services rarely use
highways in urban areas. The reason for that is that urban highways are few in
number due to their monumental construction costs, so each highway tends to be
a few miles away from the nearest parallel highway. As a result, going from A
to B in the same city is often faster on arterials than on highways for trips
that are 6 miles or less, because the detour to access the highway is longer
than the time gain from using it.

Second, highways do speed up longer distance travel, but how much of a benefit
is it really? That depends on the kind of travel. As I wrote in the article,
rural highways that connect regions together serve an important economic role
by helping to speed up the transport of goods and people between them.
However, commuting is quite a different beast, because with regards to
commuting, there is a phenomenon called "Marchetti's constant", people tend to
make choices of location for their residence and their workplace to maintain a
commute time of roughly 30 minutes on average, because people understand
distance as travel time, not as actual distance. So when you speed up travel
inside a metropolitan area (from suburb to city/other suburb), what you do is
that you incite people to live further and further away from their workplace
and from the stores they patronize.

Therefore, urban highways do not really lead to a reduction of commute times
overall (some may have that benefit, but rarely is it generalized) but rather
to an increase in distance driven. Which leads to more pollution (though often
less concentrated), higher transport costs and a development pattern that
makes transit non-viable, therefore forcing people to buy cars to access jobs
and services.

An example of this is that in 1972, a study of commuting time and distance
revealed that the average commuting time for people commuting 20-24 miles to
work was 36 minutes, just 6 minutes more than for people commuting 11-14
miles. In other words, an increase of commute distance of 100% was associated
by an increase in commute time of just 20%.
[http://www.nber.org/chapters/c8824.pdf](http://www.nber.org/chapters/c8824.pdf)
(table 6.7, page 19 of pdf)

So higher speed was correlated with longer commute distances AND with longer
commute times. Correlation is not causation, but that should give people pause
when they claim to want faster roads to reduce commute times.

So higher mode share for cars and greater distance traveled means more
pollution, more wealth expanded just to provide transport (which consumption,
like electricity, has no good in and of itself). That's a drain on the
economy.

Now, because I'm nice, I'll give you one thing: highways allow cities farther
away to become economically integrated, resulting in much bigger metro areas.
Since much of the modern economy gains from concentrating people and resources
in an economically integrated area, this may be seen as a positive. However,
what we've seen in Asia and Europe is that in the absence of highways, metro
areas can still be just as populous, concentrating as many people and
resources in one economically-integrated region... that region just happens to
be much more compact, often concentrated around train stations, with highways
going around inhabited areas, connecting industrial areas, serving essentially
for trips to and from other regions.

~~~
atomicUpdate
> So when you speed up travel inside a metropolitan area (from suburb to
> city/other suburb), what you do is that you incite people to live further
> and further away from their workplace and from the stores they patronize.

I don't understand this point. Living further away doesn't mean they stop
patronizing stores entirely, they just patronize different stores. If a store
sees their clientele move, they can either move themselves, or if both regions
now have enough customers to support it expand to another location.

~~~
jacobolus
What he is saying is that highways encourage people to build everything more
spread out, including residences, offices, and stores. He’s not claiming this
is problem for the stores per se, or that it inherently changes the
relationship between people and stores.

The problem is the increased money and land spent on transportation, the
increased pollution, the unfriendliness of the system for pedestrians / anyone
who can’t drive, and the inability to build mass transit to cover the same
areas.

------
shrewduser
so what, i'm not supposed to have any good way to cut across the city and get
to the airport?

also in the world of automated cars we're about to enter i would think the
amount of people you can transport via freeway would far outstrip rail, not to
mention that there are obvious consumer preferences.

I love rail, but i feel like we're about to see rail become far less pervasive
with automated cars / busses etc coming online. it will just be that much more
convenient to get to where you're going.

~~~
masklinn
> so what, i'm not supposed to have any good way to cut across the city and
> get to the airport?

If you come from inside the city, the city could (and should) have the
transportation necessary.

If you come from outside the city, the article is only about intra-urban
highways, not about circular roads to go around the city if you just need to
go through to the other side.

> also in the world of automated cars we're about to enter i would think the
> amount of people you can transport via freeway would far outstrip rail

That makes very little sense.

> I love rail, but i feel like we're about to see rail become far less
> pervasive with automated cars / busses etc coming online. it will just be
> that much more convenient to get to where you're going.

I'd expect the opposite. With full car automation you remove the necessity for
car ownership and parking, this means you can easily get automated transport
to a hub, then use public transport from there. That's especially the case for
intra-urban transport, even in cities with good intra-urban public transport
there is very limited capacity and convenience to leave your car on the
outskirt and jump on light rail or metro if you come from the suburbs or from
a neighbouring city. Automated cars fix this, you just leave the car and it
goes do something else, the other way around you can notify the system that
you'll need a car when your traincar reaches whichever station, and it can
wait you there.

------
mladenkovacevic
I always had this idea for a highway conversion that makes it into a sort of a
railway for individual cars.

SO imagine you drive on your local streets until you get to this "highway".
Then via some mechanism (something like the drive-through car wash but more
heavy duty obviously), you merge onto the highway and get pulled by electric
motors (perhaps even motors within your own car) along with all the other
cars. You can then relax in your car, read, nap or watch videos until you are
taken out at your exit ramp.

No pollution, no grid-lock, no accidents. Just a smooth ride all the way to
within 2-5km from your destination.

------
mbcrower
Highways are only useful because there are so many of them that connect just
about every community in the contiguous US - what economists call a "network
effect". Therefore adding a new highway tends to make the other highways and
roads it's connected to more useful. Likewise, public transit systems like the
NYC subway are useful because there are so many of them.

When the first train is built in a metro area, it's not going to be useful to
very many people. As more lines are built, however, that first train line
becomes useful to more people because they can transfer to another line, or a
bus line. As the third and fourth lines are built, the marginal utility of
that each new mile of tracks goes _up_ as the train becomes feasible for more
people.

Of course there are examples of both highways and trains that probably
shouldn't have been built where they were built
([http://streets.mn/2014/07/07/strangulation-on-the-green-
line...](http://streets.mn/2014/07/07/strangulation-on-the-green-line/)). My
point is that cost comparisons of building a new highway versus building a new
train are skewed by the fact that most metro areas have a mature (even
crumbling...but that's another point) highway system, but few is the US have a
large network of public transit yet, other than buses that are often slow,
late and dirty.

