Removal Over Reconstruction: Rectifying Crumbling U.S. Highways

Decades-old urban highways in the U.S. are showing their age. In some cases, factors like deteriorating overpasses, unsafe expressway to city street transitions, and proximity to residential neighborhoods are guiding planners to implement fixes guided by modern safety standards and the prioritization of walkable and bikeable urban spaces.

Plans ranging from highway removal to underground relocation are underway across the country and have already seen wins in terms of economic revitalization, public health, and urban design. Steep construction costs and difficulty in securing funding, however, is making the process of reconstruction or removal challenging for many cities.

"While the federal government underwrote most of the cost of building the interstate system in the 1950s and 1960s, state and local governments now provide about 80 percent of public infrastructure funding. With perspectives on land use, transit, and equity also evolving, many cities are finding themselves at a crossroads when it comes to highways: remove or rebuild?," writes Kathleen McCormick.

The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), a long-time proponent of highway removal, published the 2019 Freeways Without Futures report, detailing case studies of removal projects in New Orleans, Tampa, Dallas, Austin, Portland, Louisville, Denver, Syracuse, Oakland, and Buffalo.

The Senate-led Environment and Public Works Committee approved the America’s Transportation Infrastructure Act of 2019, a five-year program allocating up to an 80% federal subsidy for planning, technical assistance, and capital construction related to the removal of highways in U.S. cities. In response, CNU is preparing a tool kit and best practices guide to provide cities with such tools as "design standards, transportation network concepts, engineering specifications, and metrics to measure success," says CNU board member and Nelson\Nygaard principal and transit planner Larry Gould.

As planners begin to share their experience and understand the benefits of highway removal, it is becoming increasingly clear that the benefits of removal outweigh those of reconstruction.