Orphan Road

Interesting piece in the Boston Globe talking about how cities like Seattle are re-thinking big downtown highways after the Big Dig. The article notes that the federal juice isn't there like it used to be -- the Dig would basically never have happened had Tip O'Neill not been Speaker of the House.

Of course, we've got our own Tip O'Neill here in Seattle, but thankfully she's focused on funding for transit, not big downtown highway tunnels.

I also liked this bit from John Norquist:

John O. Norquist, a former mayor of Milwaukee, concedes that his plan to tear down a 0.8-mile stretch of an elevated highway would not have passed a public referendum.

Instead, he persuaded Milwaukee's downtown property owners that the old Park East Freeway was hurting their land values and undermining economic progress. Then he took the plan to the governor and bartered a deal, he said.

Norquist is so convinced of the economic and cultural values of the project that he now goes around the country advocating highway removals, as president of the Congress of New Urbanism.

Norquist argues strenuously that successful cities are not built on their lack of traffic congestion. He offers Detroit as an example of a city that has defeated congestion, but has yet to recover from its economic problems.

"The thing that makes Boston valuable isn't its fast traffic," he said. "The thing that makes Boston is its complexity."

As much as it pains us to admit it sometime, traffic congestion is a happy problem. It means people have lots of jobs to go to. If Microsoft were to close up shop in Redmond, I'm sure it would ease traffic on the 520. But at what cost?