You Wanna Tear Down Central Expressway?

• Exactly. Companies seeking to leech off the city from the isolation of Collin County will face a much more difficult choice. No more easy trips in for the AAC events, Arts District, Deep Ellum night life, Fair Park, etc., etc. that Collin County doesn't have. Cutting the sprawl lifeline that is 75 is a much scarier proposition to Collin Countiers and Far North Dallasites than it is to people actually investing their lives in the core of the city.

• Constant gridlock has destroyed Midtown Manhattan.

• @scottindallas To be clear, the part of Central that the article refers to is the portion south of Woodall Rogers and north of where 45 ends (i.e. the eastern part of the downtown highway noose). You know what it looks like down there. Think about all of the potential value that land has. Right now that stretch of highway acts like a barrier. Land that close to the central business district should be in incredibly high demand, but that stretch is lined with unused space and parking lots.

• You said they built a boulevard and I noted there was an existing street beneath the freeway. Most Texans don't think of a freeway being little more than a mile long and you did not mention that.

• I get so sick of the "three" in all designs bull crap. I get this in landscape design all the time. I use bookends often and thus rely on twos often enough, who ever heard of bookends with three?

• We could just hurl a Holy Hand Grenade at the freeway.

• You're terribly wrong about the land adjacent to Central Expressway. That highway is lined with commercial businesses who covet that sq. footage. Certainly, the stretch of freeway mentioned is all lined with commercial businesses. Those businesses also have a right to expect access to a roadway. You can't impede that without incurring some eminent domain issues, access to any new roadway would be required as well. This is a totally half baked idea.

• I like those blow-pops with gum in the middle, and those other ones with the caramel in the middle.

• Sorry Patrick, you're nuttier than a fruitcake on this issue. I am a residential gardener, in Lake Highlands, Lakewood, Preston Hollow and a bit in UP/HP. I don't like driving on the freeways. I love and use Gaston, Columbia, Garland Rd, Skillman, Greenville, Abrams, Hillcrest, Inwood, Lemmon, Harry Hines, Royal, Forest, Walnut Hill, NW, Lovers, Knox/Wycliff/Douglas, Henderson, Ross, Canton and the other Central Expy. I drive all those cut-throughs and others regularly. You totally crazy. Even if Central were "taken out" you'd need the access roads or some semblance of it. Where have abandoned rail road easements created a boon? You need to get away from that Hydroponic crap you're smoking and get back to something grown in dirt. Cause you're utterly delusional. All our arteries are currently strained to the max during rush hours. Expanding, really doubling their load would create gridlock. Further, your proposal would add to global warming, gas usage as no car gets good mileage when stopped at a light. Again, I think I have some cred as as an advocate of expanding walking friendly development, street cars and many other issues where we'd agree. But, we need all of these options, you don't supplant infrastructure. It was wrong when we ripped up the streetcars, it would be equally foolhardy to rip up Central Expressway. I'm all for revolutionary action that expands choice. We should always act with great trepidation before forcing such significant change on so many people.

• @observist It really doesn't have anything to do with the "obstructed views," and it's not totally irrelevant. It has to do with unlocking the value of the land. The land adjacent to a freeway isn't desirable.

• uhh actually Seattle is pretty fucking nice. Gonna rant about white grandmas getting raped again, douchebag?

• Jesus, I didn't say it was the same. Can you read?

• There will come a time when the overpass will be beyond its operational lifespan. Then Dallas (and other stakeholders) will have a choice: Spend $100-150m to make downtown a better place to live. OR Spend $300-700m to make downtown a faster place to drive past. For a few years, until traffic clogs that up too.

• "I promise you land value will go up...And guess what happens, people who were formerly swindled by the 'drive til you qualify nonsense' (will) abandon those half-built neighborhoods in Oklahoma..." Land value goes up. Housing prices go up. And suddenly the people who moved further out because they couldn't afford to live close-in will come back? Do you even think about what you write?

• The odds of getting money to tear down perfectly good freeways stand someplace between slim and none.

• Removing Central Expressway will make Dallas a world class city. If you don't support it, you don't want Dallas to be world class.

• The point is that removing a double-deck freeway that obstructed views/access to San Francisco Bay is a very, very far cry from removing an elevated single-deck freeway that obstructs views/access to few more drab blocks of Dallas, Other than the tenuous commonality of removing a freeway, it's totally irrelevant.

• "Too big to fail" is a bad thing. "Too expensive" is also. "Have you ever noticed that it is near impossible to get from downtown to its most adjacent neighborhoods, but a piece of cake to get out of Dallas altogether?" If you had a car, and attempted to drive out of Dallas during rush hour on a regular basis, you would understand the stupidity of this statement. You should anyway as it is a simple matter to drive under the freeways on a surface street or to get on a freeway for a short distance and exit well before those leaving the city,

• The Embarcadero freeway was a double-deck freeway with a road beneath it. It stretched all of 1.2 miles -- because it was not connected to anything else as originally planned. The underlying road was enough to meet the traffic demand. Not the same as removing Central Expressway. Heck, if we want more land to develop, let's reclaim DFW airport. It's huge. That will surely help the economy, right?

• I agree.

• As soon as I get the flux capacitor FIXED I will travel to the past and warn them about the future they are creating .

• @Brian - but even with our existing highways more businesses have decided to move into the suburbs and out of downtown. Hence the city of Dallas has a larger residential tax base than corporate tax base.

• And when all the traffic from 75 and 30 are also on those roads? That trick is going to become mighty tedious.

• Imagine a Dallas that stagnates east from the Trinity, unserviced by freeways until LBJ. Deep Ellum rendered useless by constant thru traffic, Loop 12 and Lower Greenville constant gridlock, and a dying corridor of high-rises that can no longer find anyone to buy a lease.

• Don't be an ass, I was just adding to the list of cities mentioned in the article that have successfully torn down freeways. In no way did I imply that Dallas will be just like the San Francisco waterfront.

• Yes, if we remove Central Expressway, the north end of Dallas will be just like the San Francisco waterfront!

• I lived there through the transformation. It was worth every penny of that $22 billion (or whatever).

• I lived in south Dallas county for nearly two decades, and Central is a vital route into the city. Choking it down won't do the vast majority of county residents any good. Let's fill up downtown with residents and mixed use development, bringing it back to a thriving daytime/nighttime environment first, and go from there. We're still waiting on that.

• Hooray! Crazy granny rapist guy is back!

• And taking headshots at Olan Mills.

• Dude, if you're going to keep up with the schtick, at least don't suck at it. Get outside once in a while, you might get a fresh idea or 2.

• The problem is that almost everyone working in downtown lives in Plano and far north Dallas. Reducing highway access to downtown will simply move all the office leases to Addison and Las Colinas. The examples given in places like Seattle, Cleveland, and Buffalo were short highway spurs that were suppose to be connected to something but never were. Think "deadman's curve in south Dallas. The stretch of US 75 from Woodall Rodgers to 30 is a core link in the system. Shutting it down will back up traffic region wide. I think Deep Ellum can prosper with out taking down the rest of Dallas.

• Shows how much you know bitch. I live in the Mexican/black neighborhood south of I30 near Grand. You probably live in the white libtard enclave of Lakewood or "north oak cliff".

• SOMEBODY needs a hug.

• It's because 3 is a magic number.

• "Vital" = "Get my ass back to my sad McKinney subdivision"

• Funny. White people also apparently like clever names like "You are embarrassing."

• Planning in twos and threes but only building one is the Dallas Way: three Calatrava bridges, three Bullington Truck Terminals, two Cityplace towers, etc. etc. etc.

• I think 'daylighting' the and beautifying covered Mill Creek (runs underneath Haskell at Ross down to Exall Park, Hall Street/Baylor and into Deep Elllum) would yield better results for less money. The original Kessler Plan 100 years ago called for both Mill Creek and Turtle Creek to get the same treatment but only Turtle Creek was done...

• No, I had not noticed how difficult it was to get to or from downtown Dallas to or from its most adjacent neighborhoods. There are roads like Ross, Gaston, Hall, etc that do the trick for me.

• Yep. Highways blocking access is the only problem with downtown. Nothing else far more practical would work....

• There will never be another Boston Big Dig project in our lifetimes, so that's out of the question. If anything, we can see how well the Woodall Rodgers Park performs by visually eliminating a segment of freeway and see if we can replicate that with other parts of the freeway loop. I can definitely see other deck parks in Dallas' future. Something I find interesting is that Seattle's Freeway Park is (to my knowledge) the first deck park over a freeway but it was HORRIBLY designed. It had so many places for rapists to hide that it became a huge problem in the early 2000s. The lesson here is that we shouldn't rush to do things just because they seem cool or good policy.

• Too bad for your naive white libtard ass, G David, everything I wrote is true. Call me a racist all day and night, it does not change the facts at all. Dipshits like you shriek "racist" in an attempt to make facts they don't like go away.

• All we need to do is get rid of all highways, roads, bridges(except the signature ones), anything that could be used to travel on and then get rid of all the tunnels, and then build a fence around Dallas, put a lock on it, Caraway will have the only key to it(possibly Michael Vick, too); and then I believe Downtown Dallas will be totally AWESOME and nobody will ever want to leave(because they won't be able to) and a beautiful rainbow will shoot across the sky with lollipops raining down from the Heavens.

• Wow, somebody found out how to use "copy and paste". Your dumbass racist rant is the same one you post every time somebody mentions Seatlle. Yes, you truly are embarrassing. To yourself.

• This story about the impact a similar road project had in Seoul, Korea is really interesting and is very similar to the Central Expressway idea: http://daily.sightline.org/daily_score/archive/2011/04/01/gridlock-traffic-crying-wolf-in-seoul

• To zobzerto - I don't give a shit what you think about my style, everything I wrote is still true.

• And part of it caved it and killed people.

• Yeah, you're right. You're writing like someone who should be taken seriously. My mistake.

• No, everything I wrote is true.

• Also, San Francisco tore down the Embarcadero freeway instead of repairing it after the earthquake in 1989. A ground-level boulevard was built in its place. If you've been there you know what a wonderful decision that was.

• The notion that it is too expensive is sort of like the idea that they are too big to fail. So we should just keep failing? It is defeatist. It is far more expensive to maintain the highways than to get rid of them (which actually suppresses an asset for the state/city -- both broke -- valuable real estate close to the engine of downtown). Furthermore, building a highway at first means getting some return in economic development by way of unlocking new land further out. But once all that land is gobbled up and the city has expanded outward as far as it possibly can (as identified by half-built subdivisions -- you've seen them flying in), then the proposition of freeways is all expense and little return. If you actually want to think about the math, how much do we spend replacing/expanding sections of freeways? hundreds of millions? In the case of Project Pegasus, we're talking about $2billion. On hold because we don't have the money, thankfully. It is intended to add capacity, speed traffic, yadda yadda. Every capacity expansion leads to induced demand. Roads get traffic. Big ones also expel any incentive to live or be anywhere near them. The demolition part of that budget can run about 20% of the total cost. Instead of getting the exact same result, new road, more traffic, we get actual neighborhoods. We sell off the hundreds of acres available to a range of private developers. We set up a TIF to build the network of neighborhood-scaled streets and parks for the new neighborhoods as I promise you land value will go up (and be taxable since it is now improved, private land). And guess what happens, people who were formerly swindled by the "drive til you qualify nonsense" abandon those half-built neighborhoods in Oklahoma with zero amenities and a mandatory hour-long commute to participate in the local economy powered by Dallas and return home, back to Dallas. A family can shed one of their cars and the $7-10K yearly cost that goes with it. They can now walk, bike, ride DART, or an expanded streetcar system. Transportation mode balances out (and this also means less cars on every other road to get in your way if you happen to be driving). Sounds like win-wins all-around to me. For a long time, I was under the assumption that freeways actually were quite permanent because of the nature of their construction. It turns out that between the very nature of their construction, the intense pressure put on them by use (which is created by the road in the first place), and the need for these roads to be in primo condition at all times lest they erode, they are actually quite impermanent. Hence, the failing grade given to the nation's freeway/bridge/infrastructure system. It should be stated (once again) that different types of freeways must be distinguished. There are intra-city freeways and inter-city freeways. Inter-city freeways are absolutely necessary in interconnecting regional economies, i.e. Houston to DFW. Eisenhower's interstate system was a great achievement for the country and propelled us as a nation forward. However, as history suggests, the predominant form of transportation inevitably gets corrupted. It takes Keynesianism to its destructive logical end. Meaning, people are making money off of the construction of over-sized roads, so you aren't stopping this gravy train, that (at least in the near-term) is providing some notion of progress. The highways that expedited the evacuation of downtowns and downtown adjacent areas once served a purpose. Cities of the industrial age were overcrowded, dirty, polluted, poverty- and disease-stricken. Today, what industry is left in this country is either clean or on its way out from urban cores as land is just too expensive (kind of like land that is too valuable for freeways). Leaving downtowns for residential populations and commercial businesses that seek the advantages of clustering. But to for businesses to cluster effectively and citizens that desire real live community you also need local inter-connectivity. The inner-loop (and virtually all of the freeways in Dallas proper) interrupt local connectivity, the foundation of all great neighborhoods/cities, which instead exist within bubbles frayed at the edges, almost in spite of all the factors weighing against them. If they were interconnected, they could strengthen each other instead. Have you ever noticed that it is near impossible to get from downtown to its most adjacent neighborhoods, but a piece of cake to get out of Dallas altogether? Like uptown, these areas possess the greatest potential for new qualitative growth, for new development, new tax base. DART could use the increased ridership brought about by a less convenient driving infrastructure, the real estate industry could use a more predictable pattern that is less scattered and chaotic as brought about by the centrifugal force of freeways, the city could use the tax base from a more desirable urban core and more available land for more affordable, in-town housing. Citizens could use a system less shackled to car ownership and the expenses therein, reinstating that necessary pillar of any free market system, real, live, actual choice. Certainly there are legal hoops. But if you can't get a broke city and a broke state to see the light then I guess we're all just screwed and the defeatist tone of Downtown 360 is appropriate. But in the end, I'm not sure we'll have to make the choice and economic factors (both macro- and micro-) will make it for us and there won't be freeways within loop 12 by 2050.

• I didn't claim they were white cities. I was referring to the Dallas Observer's "journalists" and most of its readers, especially those who think tearing down vital highways so they can have white libtard hipster bike parties is a good idea.

• You're doing a bit, right?

• really? New Orleans? Cleveland? WHITE?!?

• Seattle is full of heroin junkies, drunk bums paid to drink with welfare, crackheads, naive white libtards who coddle the rapidly-growing black gang population letting them literally get away with murder (the Tuba Man), "progressive" wimp ass-kissers who cry when the fact that blacks make up only 8% of Seattle but that half of all murders in Seattle are committed by blacks ... 14 of the 28 in 2008, 12 of the 21 in 2009, at least 8 of the 17 in 2010, maybe if we coddle and excuse them some more and rename the county for MLK and paint cheezy hagiographic murals of him in the courthouse while gangsters smoke crack right outside of it's glass doors and the police don't do shit about it because they are so chickenshit that some "It's Pat" bulldyke is going to shriek "racist" at them. And it is cold rain for 9 months straight.

• potayto, potahto

• COB, do you think those tolls will be rebated when you get stuck in a wreck after some douche in an SUV hits some douche in a truck while watching tv on his iphone?

• You know that for a fact they have to expand it even more? Don't be silly. Alot of 75 traffic dies before Woodall Rogers. Yeah, you're trip to Conroe might take 20 minutes longer, but oh well.

• What exactly is "shitty" about Seattle? Granted, I never cared much for Mudhoney, but it is still a great city.

• The LBJ reconstruction project is building six lanes of tunnel that will be tolled. The surface lanes will continue to be free. The tolls on the tunnel will rise as traffic becomes more congested in order to keep traffic in the tunnel moving.

• They will have to expanded even more. The studies they used for these expansions did not include increased traffic from a 75 and/or 30 not going through downtown. Also, the "expansion" on 635 will mostly be toll lanes. It is very unlikely that trucks carrying goods will use those lanes.

• Toll roads!!! OH NOES!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_and_Lancaster_Turnpike

• "Stuff White People Like"

• At an extremely high cost.

• Cleveland, Seattle, and New Orleans are even shittier shitholes than Dallas is, you naive white libtard fantasists.

• so we tear down all public roads (75, 30, 635) and leave us with the private toll roads. Am I the only one who sees the scary progression here?

• "So, are you prepared to expand I-35E, I-20 and 635 to handle the increased traffic they will see?" 635 is already going through an expansion. There are plans for 35. So what's your point?

• Boston buried a highway (The Big Dig) and built a park on top.

• It would still interrupt the flow of traffic going through Dallas and force it over onto 35 (probably by way of 635, which is about to be turned into a toll road).

• Lots of roads cross state lines, that does not make them a part of the Interstate Highway System.

• Oh, I see what you did there. But professor 75 is not part of the Interstate Highway System. . And these guys are not proposing to destroy ALL of 75, just a portion that is probably less than a mile long.

• Strange, it goes all the way to Tulsa, Oklahoma.

• U.S. 75 is not an interstate. The guys behind the knocking down 75 could probably have been more specific in their effort's name, but shorthand works.

• It would take several years to do, but the results could be well, well worth it. Imagine a Dallas that blooms east from the Trinity, unblocked by a freeway until the LBJ. The CBD linked to Deep Ellum, to Ross, to Lower Greenville, to Lakewood, to Hollywood-Santa Monica, to White Rock Creek/Lake. Tearing down 30, while much trickier, could yield similar results.

• Tearing down 75 and 30 has pros and cons. Though, I do have a question. Since these are interstate highways (and partially funded by federal and state money), will the federal and state governments have anything to say about this? Both 30 and 75 are used to transport goods through the Dallas area. So, are you prepared to expand I-35E, I-20 and 635 to handle the increased traffic they will see? For people traveling to downtown, I really do not understand anyone who takes the highway. It is much easier (and usually quicker) to take DART. Perhaps, instead of completely removing the highways, they could remove the exits and entrances in this area and achieve the desired effect?

• You could fit a State-Thomas between downtown and Deep Ellum. Thats a heck of a lot of $$$ going back into the local economy. Or we can keep letting the highways suck the $$$ out the local economy...

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