Highways and Pittsburgh (Progress, Manchester: loans, houses, neighborhoods)

[whiskey&raybans]

I stumbled on an interesting short video on the unfortunate effects of highways cutting through our cities. Pittsburgh's Northside immediately comes to mind...

On the other hand, it would be much more difficult for the majority of Allegheny County's population outside of the city to commute downtown if it wasn't for direct routes via highways such as 279. I'm torn on this issue ...but it probably doesn't matter either way because I don't foresee Pittsburgh's dependence on highways to ease up in my lifetime.

How Highways Wrecked American Cities - Digg

[Craziaskowboi]

I-279 took a lot of traffic off Perrysville Avenue and other surface streets on the North Side after it was built. It sucks that part of a neighborhood was knocked down for it, but it made other neighborhoods on the North Side more livable nonetheless. And despite I-376 being a grossly inferior highway in terms of both design and capacity, it's very unobtrusive, passing in between city neighborhoods and inner suburbs rather than going straight through them.

[SuburbanPioneer]

When the government blanketed America with highways in the 1950s and '60s, they did not consider the consequences thousands of miles of criss-crossing pavement would bare on the country. Today, we feel the effects.

We do indeed. As it is hard to underestimate the impact of the highway system on the economy of this country and the quality of life for the majority of her residents during the second half of last century.

In an article in the Review of Economics and Statistics in 1994, Ishaq Nadiri and Theofanis Mamuneas looked at the impact of the highway system. In all but three of the 35 industries they studied, costs fell sharply—by 24 cents for each $1 invested in the highways—thanks to easier and cheaper transport. As a result, the authors reckoned, the highway system had a big impact on productivity. During the late 1950s, they said, interstate-highway spending was responsible for 31% of the annual increase of American productivity (at a time when the economy was growing at 6% a year). Its contribution to productivity growth obviously slackened over time, but in the 1960s was still about 25%, before falling to 7% in the 1980s as the system neared completion.

[Moby Hick]

Originally Posted by Craziaskowboi

I-279 took a lot of traffic off Perrysville Avenue and other surface streets on the North Side after it was built. It sucks that part of a neighborhood was knocked down for it, but it made other neighborhoods on the North Side more livable nonetheless. And despite I-376 being a grossly inferior highway in terms of both design and capacity, it's very unobtrusive, passing in between city neighborhoods and inner suburbs rather than going straight through them.

The North Side didn't just have part of it knocked down. It was effectively split in half and large portions of it buried in traffic noise.

And 376 is not at all unobtrusive or passing between city neighborhood. Among other things, it cuts Greenfield in half. If it were actually a highway with the kind of capacity some people want, it would be even more of a problem to city.

[fts11]

Originally Posted by Craziaskowboi

I-279 took a lot of traffic off Perrysville Avenue and other surface streets on the North Side after it was built. It sucks that part of a neighborhood was knocked down for it, but it made other neighborhoods on the North Side more livable nonetheless. And despite I-376 being a grossly inferior highway in terms of both design and capacity, it's very unobtrusive, passing in between city neighborhoods and inner suburbs rather than going straight through them.

I-279 did not make the North Side neighborhoods more livable, it cut the North Side in half. Look at the difference between the two sides of East Allegheny that were separated by the highway.

What I-279 did was enable unsustainable urban sprawl to develop rampantly through the northern suburbs like Wexford and Cranberry.

[SuburbanPioneer]

Originally Posted by fts11

What I-279 did was enable unsustainable urban sprawl to develop rampantly through the northern suburbs like Wexford and Cranberry.

We seem to be sustaining it pretty well up here

[lifepgh2op]

Pittsburgh is pretty tame compared to pretty much every other city when it comes to urban sprawl and rampant development of suburbs. There is still tons of wooded land and the "rural feel" throughout Pittsburgh's suburbs, including the North Hills. It could have something to do with the topography and lack of (large) highways/Beltway in the area.

[gladhands]

Originally Posted by SuburbanPioneer

We do indeed. As it is hard to underestimate the impact of the highway system on the economy of this country and the quality of life for the majority of her residents during the second half of last century.

That is one of the worst examples of conflating correlation with causation that I've ever seen. The decline of American productivity just so happens to coincide with Asian industrialization.

[corpgypsy]

Growing up in the 50's and early 60's I recall the talk and debates regarding all the new roads, ncluding those that were/are in Pittsburgh (as I was born and raised here prior to wandering around for subsequent decades). I am too lazy, at the moment, to research the following remembrance, but wasn't there a military reason following WWII that was a catalyst for President Eisenhower's ( formerly General Eisenhower) push for and accomplishment of the interstate and intrastate systems? Something about when he was commanding troops in Europe there were great issues with access and markings of roads or...??? In any event other reasons were to connect cities that were impossibly isolated from each other. Progress meant for the era and the times!


As an aside, context, or lack of context, have been a recurring theme for a generation gap issue that I am watching more frequently than I ever thought would be possible. Regarding that last comment, for those of you on the other side ( from me) of the generation gap, our mantra of the sixties, "Trust no one over 30"!

[Geeo]

That was an interesting video. It showed the mindset of the post-war era to knock down and build for a new world focused on cars. I doubt that it could be done that way again. The people who were displaced were mostly poor and minority; the wealthier neighborhoods had the power and money to stop the highways from coming through (northwest DC and southern Manhattan). The highways provided a clear path to government-subsidized suburbs (low interest loans with no down payment for GIs), while the poor and minority populations who were thrown out of their houses were not permitted to buy homes in the new suburbs.

While I realize cars and highways are necessary today, it would have been nice if the government had helped construct a more balanced system of highways, trains and streetcars instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water. We might not have the mess we have today.

Pittsburgh was a little more fortunate in that it didn't have the massive amount of highways cut through like Cleveland or Detroit, which wrecked neighborhoods for generations. We do have our share of eyesores, like the 279 moat through the North Side and the Ohio River Blvd. elevated highway that destroyed the Manchester business district. The Mexican War Streets would have been wiped out under the original cross-northside plan.