Why are cities removing their freeways? A systematic review of the literature

ABSTRACT

A scientific consensus has recently emerged suggesting that the dominant twentieth century paradigm of solving transportation congestion problems by building more freeways failed. The legacy of the freeway construction era is clearly visible in polluted and congested cities worldwide. To battle these ills, planning academics have been promoting more sustainable built form aligned with dedicated public/active transport provision. Partly as a result of the push coming from academia, a number of cities have sought to remove their freeways and replace the freed up space with alternate transport infrastructure, such as streets and boulevards. To discern if the transportation planning profession is currently undergoing a paradigm shift or whether freeway removal is merely a temporary fad, we have conducted a systematic review of the literature. In this article, we unpack the underlying reasons which have led some cities to removing their freeways. Results reveal that a paradigm shift has arguably not yet taken place in transportation planning. While many cities are creating human-scale and active transport spaces, currently these spaces tend to coexist alongside freeways. American cities, which were once the pioneers of freeway construction, appear to be lagging behind cities in Europe and Asia in this respect. If the current pace of freeway removal continues, it may take a few decades before the transportation planners, politicians, policy makers, and communities adopt radically different norms, methods, and goals. However, a radical approach may need to be taken sooner given alarming global warming predictions.

KEYWORDS:

• Highway removal
• freeway removal
• paradigm shift
• transportation planning
• boulevards

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In most European cities, widening and straightening old narrow streets required demolition of large section of built environment which was resisted by local residents. Thus, in contrast to United States, many large European cities do not have major traffic arteries or freeways running into the heart of their downtown areas (Downs, 2004).

2 The term “freeway” is used consistently throughout this article to encompass highways, motorways, limited access highways, elevated highways, and freeways.

3 While freeways that dissect cities are the most detrimental, freeways linking urban peripheries to airports or bypass ring freeways that circumscribe cities are less damaging, and may be necessary in some cases. Also, the role of freeways cannot be completely discounted as they serve cargo and freight functions too.

4 The final core Boolean search was as follows: (“freeway removal” OR “highway removal” OR “expressway removal” OR “motorway removal” OR “ring road removal” OR “freeway teardown” OR “highway teardown” OR “expressway teardown” OR “motorway teardown” OR “ring road teardown” OR “freeway demolition” OR “highway demolition” OR “expressway demolition” OR “motorway demolition” OR “ring road demolition” OR “freeway destruction” OR “highway destruction” OR “expressway destruction” OR “motorway destruction” OR “ring road destruction” OR “freeway deletion” OR “highway deletion” OR “expressway deletion” OR “motorway deletion” OR “ring road deletion”) AND (city* OR metropolitan* OR town* OR metropolis* OR municipality* OR urban* OR “urban area”). To confirm that all the pertinent literature was captured, the search was conducted once again without including (city* OR metropolitan* OR town* OR metropolis* OR municipality* OR urban* OR “urban area”). This returned an additional 44 papers (mostly of which were deemed irrelevant to the aims of the present study).

5 While the removal of several hundred metres could result in a marked impact to the local environment, our experience suggests there would be insufficient documentations for such cases making comparison to those included in the paper problematic. For verification purposes, we re-conducted the search, and indeed no papers documenting freeway removals of less than half a kilometre were returned.

6 It is possible that we have underestimated this figure given that we did not include non-English papers and more recent cases.

7 There may be studies on freeway removal in languages other than English which are not included here.

8 Where sources reported different removal lengths and dates, the maximum length and earliest removal date was used in this study.