“That’s one of the things about freeways: They tend to fail when you need them the most”
Fantastic interview with John Norquist in Next American City about how freeways hurt cities and what can be done to improve the situation. I’ve been saying this same stuff for years. Probably my favorite bit, naturally about San Francisco:
A robust street grid, with lots of connections, will distribute traffic much better than a few large freeways. […] For example, when the Embarcadero Freeway, a double-deck freeway, was torn down, a majority of the trips—according to a study by the city of San Francisco—got shorter and faster because of the increased connectivity. With the freeway, there were a lot of trips where you overshot your destination and had to come back. It also attracted trips that didn’t add any value to the neighborhood: People going from Oakland to Marin County were cutting through San Francisco. When the freeway was torn down and replaced by a boulevard, it suddenly didn’t look so attractive to go that way, and [drivers] found a different way to get to Marin Country or, in some cases, didn’t make the trip.