Louisville Wrestles With Freeway Dilemma

Critic Michael Kimmelman, fresh back from Louisville's Idea Festival, questions why that quickly emerging city wants to double down on a new freeway expansion through its downtown while other progressive cities are tearing theirs down.

1 minute read

September 26, 2012, 1:00 PM PDT

By Matthew Kuhl


Louisville is intent on constructing a new bridge and expanding an existing interstate freeway along its waterfront with the Ohio River. A move that runs counter to the prevailing wisdom of freeway removal and increased mass transit as a means of attracting people and talent to cities.

Michael Kimmelman laments the 1950s era line of thinking that has many of the region's civic leaders, "[p]ursuing a plan that would, in part, enlarge the downtown highways and construct a second bridge next to the Kennedy. It would even eat up some of a park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, of Prospect Park and Central Park fame. Louisville is a car city with auto plants and a big investment in the auto industry... The proposal, so clearly out of step, has been met with grass-roots opposition and is now in the courts, tied up over issues about financing, tolls and the environment."

Thanks to Matthew W. Kuhl

Wednesday, September 26, 2012 in New York Times

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