Six Freeway Removals That Changed Their Cities Forever (Atlanta, Marietta: sales, real estate)

[bryantm3]

like i've said before, a million times, TUNNEL IT!

[Saintmarks]

Someone that knows how to navigate this site better than me, go back and link to a post from a year or so back where we discussed putting tops on the connector. Someone had linked to some pictures of what that would look like plus some others with beautification done to stretches on the connector.

Dallas recently put a nice park over the Woodall Rogers freeway which separates downtown Dallas from Uptown. There is a new sculpture garden park on the top now and links the two areas. Very nicely down, not as expensive as tunnelling but leaves one with the feeling that it has been done. I could see much of midtown connecting to GA Tech and Atlantic Station if something similar were done. I could see the stretch from Williams to Freedom Pkwy and then the area around the capitol/Grady done as well. This could make a nice plaza for the Capitol, giving it a nice public space to sit in front of.

[cwkimbro]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

Someone that knows how to navigate this site better than me, go back and link to a post from a year or so back where we discussed putting tops on the connector. Someone had linked to some pictures of what that would look like plus some others with beautification done to stretches on the connector.

Dallas recently put a nice park over the Woodall Rogers freeway which separates downtown Dallas from Uptown. There is a new sculpture garden park on the top now and links the two areas. Very nicely down, not as expensive as tunnelling but leaves one with the feeling that it has been done. I could see much of midtown connecting to GA Tech and Atlantic Station if something similar were done. I could see the stretch from Williams to Freedom Pkwy and then the area around the capitol/Grady done as well. This could make a nice plaza for the Capitol, giving it a nice public space to sit in front of.

You're referring to the vision of greening the connector, which is being pushed by the downtown and Midtown CID.

I fully support their vision.

I like the idea of cap parks, like was done with 5th street. We need more and more pedestrian/bike connections across the connector and build a linear path going North-South.

This is in their plan. http://www.atlantadowntown.com/initi...nnector_Vision

What I don't want to do is over-cap the whole thing. Most people still drive into our city. The connector is our front door to the world. We should beautify it and show off our city to people passing by. It is already an impressive view.

[bryantm3]

the problem is that you can't cap the whole connector without fundamentally changing the structure of it. check out the area between 4th street and ponce. it's completely at-grade. if you tried to cap it, even moving land around on both sides, you'd have a 6 foot high tunnel. it's the same thing between 9th and 6th streets, at the north end of the grady curve, and south of freedom park way it's *above* grade. best case scenario, you can't even cap 10th to 5th street completely without lifting the surrounding streets and creating viaducts, or creating vertical walls which would completely ruin the whole point of trying to create a consistent street grid.

yeah, you could drop the whole connector a good 30 feet and *then* cap it, but at that point, you might as well tunnel it!

[bryantm3]

Originally Posted by cwkimbro

What I don't want to do is over-cap the whole thing. Most people still drive into our city. The connector is our front door to the world. We should beautify it and show off our city to people passing by. It is already an impressive view.

it's an impressive view from the car, but it completely ruins the ability to walk and bike, ruins street life, and creates a huge echo chamber of traffic noise. shouldn't we be more concerned about the people who live in atlanta rather than those who drive through it?

other cities like boston and san francisco have removed freeways that cut through their central business districts, and i don't see them regretting the 'scenic' freeway views.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by bryantm3

other cities like boston and san francisco have removed freeways that cut through their central business districts, and i don't see them regretting the 'scenic' freeway views.

I would be okay with removing the downtown Connector and GA 400 south of 285, or at least converting them to boulevards.

However I doubt there's enough demand to justify the cost. If the private sector wants to do it, fine.

CNU has a lot of good resources on how to do this and the pros and cons.

Highways to Boulevards | Congress for the New Urbanism


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_6zx72SS_Y#t=611

[arjay57]

Here's another good page on it. They feature Atlanta as an example at the end of the video.

Observation Deck: How Tearing Up Highways Could Make Better Cities | Underwire | Wired.com

[tikigod311]

Originally Posted by Saintmarks

Someone that knows how to navigate this site better than me, go back and link to a post from a year or so back where we discussed putting tops on the connector.

Sounded familiar

//www.city-data.com/forum/atlan...us-impact.html

I love the many elements of this plan. Just adding some lighting in key areas would be awesome.

[atler8]

Just so that we would not get results something like the barren & horrible concrete covering that resulted from a similar, smaller attempt to bridge the connector at the intersection of Courtland & Ralph McGill.
I see that concrete monstrosity every day & when you ad in the rusting folk art objects that "decorate" the intersection as the result of a pre-Olympic reconfiguration, it's quite unsightly.
Not to change the subject, but is anyone aware of having seen a past thread on that decaying folk art?

[demonta4]

The problem isn't the freeway, it's the side streets. If we had more ways to get into the city our freeway wouldn't be so many lanes and cutting neighborhoods off. Compare the downtown connector from the opening to now. But I guess the damage is done. But the last thing we should do is get rid of them.